by Thomas Laird
“You think it was this MIA brother, Mark.”
He looked at her and rested his gaze on her fascinating eyes. Every time he saw that color grey it gave him pause.
“Yeah. I think a ghost skinned this miserable son of a bitch. There were tales of terror in Vietnam about the enemy suffering unusual demises just such as this. Most of us thought it was beer talk, but never rule out brutality, Dani. Even brutality as bad as that.”
He pointed to the body bag.
“It must have taken him a lot of time, the head and the whole torso.”
“He took his time on Cabretta. The ME said the surgery on Vince was almost professional caliber.”
“I’m going to have to talk to my queasy stomach again.”
“Go ahead. Then we’ll get the hell out of here. It’s dinner time.”
She ran for the john again and he laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it.
*
They took their dinner hour at a White Castle on 79th and Loomis, but all she could stand was a Coke. He ordered and consumed six cheese sliders, but Dani tried to look away as he ate. The smell of the onions almost made her retreat to the facilities, but she overcame her nausea. She tried to show him she could adjust to all this grand guignol.
“How’re we ever going to trace down this guy if he’s really still alive?” she asked him when the food was gone.
“They’ve wiped him off the records, so it ain’t going to be easy. But I think the wife of David Johansen might be the place to start.”
“She didn’t leave any forwarding address, right?”
“It wouldn’t be a challenge if she did. That’s why they pay us the big money, Detective Hawke. Your name is really theatric, you know?”
“Yours is just ethnic,” she retorted.
He laughed.“You feeling any better?”
“Yeah. But I still can’t eat anything.”
“Don’t press your luck. We don’t need any upchuck in the car.”
She watched him drink the rest of his Coke, and she took a sip of her own, and then she burped with a surprised look on her dark brown, pretty face.
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. We’re partners. It means you’re automatically excused.”
She reached over and took his hand.
“I’ll try not to embarrass you in front of other coppers again.”
“Everybody’s had their days with the pukes. There’s plenty to make you get the trots about in this line of endeavor. I told you, no more sorrys.”
She squeezed his hand more firmly.
“I like when you touch me. I especially like when you grab my hand unexpectedly. Like you do in the movies from time to time.”
“I’d kiss you but that would be unprofessional public display of affection. No PDA for police.”
“Says who?”
He bent over in the booth and kissed her briefly on the lips.
“Later,” she told him.
A pale blush spread over her cheeks.
“It’s the brother. He’s the one with the motive to do that kind of work on the two Outfit punks. It’s not some internal thing. I could be wrong, but they tend to use a little economy when they take each other out. The things with Cabretta and Fortunato were both messages. Sicilians aren’t the only ones who leave little love notes to each other. This was bush savagery, the stuff of jungle blood sport. The message was aimed at Rossi. And I expect we’ll see a gathering of Benny Bats’s soldiers at his Cicero outpost, very very soon.”
She finished the Coke and he drained his own glass of pop. He gave the waitress a ten and told the middle-aged woman to keep the change. The waitress was impressed and the two cops walked out of the White Castle.
*
They drove to Cicero the next day, on afternoons’ shift. There were a lot of cars parked at the curb by Ben Rossi’s brick abode. There were two cars in the side driveway and neither of the plates belonged to the Outfit capo. Dani called in to find out who the owners were. Both monikers ended with a vowel.
“It’s an armed encampment,” he told Dani Hawke as they sat halfway down the side street in the first available parking place.
“The neighbors’ll be pissed when they see this traffic jam,” she offered.
“I don’t think there’ll be any complaints, do you?”
“I guess not,” she replied.
“He’s already reduced the local population by one, here,” Jimmy said.
“I suppose we should bring in our own troops and ask for gun licenses, don’t you think?”
“Might as well light a few fires and set a few boundaries with these pricks.”
She called in for backup squads.
Five units arrived in under ten minutes. When they showed up, he and Dani got out of the Ford into the freezing, Arctic, December chill.
They knocked on Rossi’s front door after they flashed their badges at the four hired help blocking the way. Rossi himself emerged quickly.
“What?” he asked Parisi brusquely.
“We’ll see their hardware licenses. That’s what.”
“This is Cicero, Parisi. You got no whatchamacallit…”
“Jurisdiction? Actually, Cicero has extended us a cooperative type invitation to aid them in their investigation of several ongoing homicides that overlapped a few of our own cases. So show us the paper or we’ll call the locals and they’ll be happy to cart your asses to us in the Loop.”
Rossi glared at the two Chicago Homicides.
“Show them,” he barked to the four soldiers on the front porch.
They went to their wallets and brought out the firearms licenses.
“Now the assholes in the house,” Jimmy said.
Rossi went inside and four more goons came outside into the cold. They came up with the goods, also.
“Anybody else lurking around here?” Jimmy asked.
“Don’t she talk?” Rossi grinned.
“First words you hear from me are ‘you’re under arrest.’”
He laughed loudly.
“Spirited, that’s what she is,” Rossi said.
“She can shoot the eyes out of a mosquito from a hundred yards. You ought to see,” Parisi retorted.
“Yeah yeah. Are we done?”
“You think all these greaseballs can protect you from who’s coming? You must not have seen what’s left of Manny, Benny Bats. He looked like a skinned dog. Nothing but red meat.”
Rossi remained mute.
“I hear it’s the brother. I hear Vince and Manny were two messages for you. If what I hear is correct, he’s the kind of guy who’ll slip inside your armed fortress and cut all your goons’ throats, and before you know it he’ll be carving you all up, just like Cabretta and Fortunato. And when the cops arrive, they’ll find bullet holes tattooed into the foreheads of the four fuckfaces you got lined up outside. Personally, I’m betting on this ghost-brother. How ‘bout you, Ben?”
Rossi slammed the door behind himself and Jimmy and Dani walked down the front steps and headed back to the Crown Vic, halfway down the block.
*
“You really think it’s wise to rile him up that way?” she asked.
They were sitting in the warmth of Parisi’s cubicle in the Loop Headquarters. It was already dark, so there was no view of the lake.
“The devil made me do it.”
“I hear Doc Gibron might be back in a month,” she said.
Her face had turned into a frown. Her eyes were cast down on his desk top.
“Yeah. I talked to him yesterday.”
“Then what happens with us?” she asked.
“We just won’t be partners. They’ll saddle you up with another detective. Why? You think that’s going to change anything with me? Doc’s not my type in that kind of a relationship.”
“I know. But I won’t be with you nearly as often as I am now. And I probably won’t get the chance to finish this Outfit thing up with you.”
“You’ll have other ca
ses. We never run out of work. And who knows? Something bigger might come along.”
“You don’t really think so, do you, Jimmy.”
“I can’t lie. Probably not. I can’t recall anything bigger for me since I’ve been in Homicide, but who the hell knows? I will, however, miss your presence in a very big way.”
“You think we’ll stay together when Doc comes back?”
“I have every intention of keeping it that way.”
She turned her head and looked out onto the murk of a frigid Lakeshore Drive.
“Things have a way of working out very differently from the way you’d like.”
“I’m right here, Dani, and I’ll still be right here. It won’t come from my end if it comes at all.”
She looked back out into the blackness and neither of them said anything for a very long time.
*
“So you have something going on with your partner,” Gibron smiled.
Doc was back in his apartment, but he was still a few weeks away from returning to work.
“How in hell do you know about that?”
“Loose lips sink fucking battleships. You know no one can keep a secret in that hotbed of rumors, James.”
Parisi grimaced.
“I don’t always know what’s going on in her head.”
“You mean like the way it was with Rita Espinosa, the law student who departed to Champaign, Urbana, on your dumb eye-tie ass?”
“I don’t see the humor.”
Doc’s second floor flat on the north side not far from the lake was stocked with books from the floor to the ceiling on all three walls in the living room.
“You got to get rid of some of these books. You could have one hell of a forest fire here in your living room.”
“I didn’t mean to stick the needle in you like that.”
“It’s all right. What am I gonna do, right?”
“I don’t want you to see any reruns of Rita, or Celia.”
“Not likely Dani’s going to get shot by some gangbanger. She’s got her shit wound very tightly.”
“Why always you, dago?”
“You tell me.”
“Que sera and so forth. Like you said. Who knows what happens when the wind picks up?”
“We should be talking about your health, not my love life.”
“You won’t believe this, Jimmy, but your life does affect my health.”
“Then don’t let it.”
“You ain’t that tough and neither am I…But I’m feeling pretty good. The shrink has actually helped me without making me an addict to anything. He says I need to meditate, and I have been. I’ve been meditating about what I can change and what I can’t, and I figured out the only thing I can grab hold of is my own balls. The street is the street. We’ll never see it any different from the way it is. Might get a little worse or a little better, but it’s going to remain mean no matter how it shifts.”
“Now you’re a philosopher, Doc.”
“I don’t like my own philosophy, my own world view. But there it is. You have to keep going. You have to keep breathing. And you won’t matter shit if those streets put you in the ground worrying about the way they’ve always been.”
“Sounds like you’re a fatalist, Doc.”
“Every story ends the same way if you take it to its logical conclusion.”
“Who said that?”
“I wish it was me, but it was Hemingway, James. He’s a bit better known as a writer than I am.”
“Not forever, Doc.”
“Ain’t you the sweet talker?
They both sipped at the fancy German beers that Gibron had poured for them in his small kitchenette.
“How’s the big case going?” he asked Parisi.
“I think the guy who did Vince Cabretta and Manny Fortunato might get to Rossi before I do.”
“Who tried to nail the Boss of Bosses? Same guy?”
“With the two soldiers I think it’s the brother. His name was Mark Johansen.”
“Was?”
“He’s supposed to be dead, back in the bush maybe fifteen years ago or longer. They have him MIA. More likely KIA. But they never retrieved a body. This guy was a bone cold killer in the shit, Doc. And the way those two pieces of shit were butchered…He’s got the absolute best motive.
“With Tony C, I have no idea. But with the Outfit gunmen, I think it was this Johansen phantom who took their scalps and pretty much everything else they had. I need your help. Dani’s fine, but I need you back. I’m feeling all outnumbered, Professor.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Christmas was white and cold. Seven inches remained on the ground and the temperatures lurked in the low twenties, near zero at night. The New Year came and went and Ben Rossi wandered in and out of Nick’s old bedroom looking for a remnant of his boy. But there was nothing. No echoes, no scent. Nothing.
Both of his best soldiers were dead. Torn up, mutilated. It seemed as if they were coming at him in every direction.
But he still had Carmen, and all her heat burned even hotter. It was as if she thought she could make them a new heir. Her baby-making days were gone. Her tubes were still tied, and her gynecologist kept telling her that it was too late. Carmen believed in miracles, Rossi thought. He couldn’t figure how else to explain her being in heat when middle age was upon them both. The sex was spectacular, and he had no energy left over for Maureen or for anyone else strange.
Then there was the issue that he was under siege and couldn’t very well leave the house in Cicero without an army in tow alongside him. He wasn’t certain if Tony C was the mastermind or if it were that fuck Bertelli. Maybe it was Bonadura or Carbone, but those two were keeping a low profile, and none of their soldiers had been making drive-bys of The Green Door, the only place that Ben dared to inhabit outside his brick home.
Tony Calabrese likely figured that Benny Bats was behind the assassination attempt in front of the Boss of Bosses’ estate in Lake Forest. It would be his first reaction. Bertelli was Tony’s favorite son, Ross reckoned. He was the heir apparent because Ben was too reckless, too wild. Benny Bats took too many chances, and this thing with David Johansen had alienated Rossi from the Boss of the Outfit.
Maybe everyone was gunning for him, he mused. Maybe they were all coming at once, like the assault at Normandy. It certainly was a siege mentality around this ‘fortress.’ There were half a dozen button men in front of and in back of the house. He had an entourage of at least a dozen soldiers wherever he went, and Ben didn’t sally out very often, lately.
He was developing cabin fever, and the Arctic chill wasn’t making things easier. Carmen heated him up in the sheets virtually every night, but she couldn’t bring him lasting peace. Ben had to get things fixed with Bertelli and with Calabrese—with the other two capos, as well.
There was only one way to make things right. He had to kill them all. There was no negotiating with these animals. They were jungle creatures. Just about the same species as Benny Bats was. Rossi understood himself that much. It was fucking wolves and sheep. Dominant alpha males, all of them, and there was no sharing the wealth with these pricks. It had to be total war to straighten this shit out once and for all.
“I gotta kill them all,” he told Carmen while they lay in bed after yet another torrid bout.
“You what?”
“You heard me, Carmen. I have to take all of them out.”
“And how much blood and money will that cost, Ben? Are you crazy?”
“I’m tired of hearing that shit. I’m not nuts.”
“Do you ever listen to yourself?”
The sex was drained out of her face. The lust, the flame, was extinguished. He watched his wife’s face evolve into something devoid of anything they’d just shared a few moments ago. She was all business, and it stunned him a little.
“So what do you think we should do, wife of mine? Sit around and wait for that fat fuck old man to come to our door with a case of dynamite? Should we
lay back and let Mr. Slick Bertelli napalm us to hell?”
“You’ve been watching too much TV, Benny. You’re talking out of your head. You have to negotiate with all of them. A war is out of the question. This is the goddam ‘90s, husband of mine! Stop acting like you’re some hardon from New York in the ‘40s. You can’t do that cowboy crap anymore. It all winds up in the papers first, and then the indictments come down from the feds…And have I mentioned the Chicago Police Department? You think they’re gonna stand on the sidelines and let a bloodbath happen?”
He watched her grey eyes stab into his own. She was heated up in a different way, and he remembered how she wanted him to let her take a place at his table, in his business, just like some soldier or lieutenant to his captain. It wasn’t done, but he could not explain it to Carmen. She was into this women’s liberation shit, but he was raised to be the man in the house, and women didn’t take part in the family concerns. He understood that Nick was dead and her maternal responsibilities had died with his son. But she had to come back to reality.
Maybe there was something she could do out in the civilian world. Work at a hospital, charity work or something. They didn’t need money. She didn’t need to work some real, legitimate job. It would embarrass him if his old lady had to go out nine to five like the slobs in the neighborhood like Johansen and his clan.
He wondered what happened to the wife and kids, where they’d disappeared to, but there was no word about that ghost ex-Green Beret brother of Johansen’s. All they had was the first name, Mark. All he knew was that his best two men had been cut to hell, Manny peeled like a fucking piece of fruit and Vince emasculated with his eyes cut out.
Ben would have to increase his effort to find out if this misty legend were still made of flesh and blood or if he were just a rolling fog. All air and no matter.
All these enemies. All at once.
And the cop Parisi was making his presence known. His outside help had spotted the Homicide dick and his dark-skinned Indian partner with the long black mane trailing behind her driving by the compound now and then. The drive-bys were occurring more often, lately, his men had informed him.