by Thomas Laird
“I’m looking for an ex-military, Jackie. You need to spread the wealth with your connections in Washington. You know, the Pentagon. You still have some buddies there?”
“I have friends everywhere I go.”
“I’m sure you’ll make some tight associates in prison.”
“I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
“I hear your disease doesn’t have a cure.”
“Yeah…you were saying?”
“I’m looking for the new version of a guy named Mark Johansen. Ex-Beret. The hardcore kind. A real killer.”
“Why are you looking for him?”
“Since when do you need to know something like that, Jackie?”
“You’re right. I don’t…how much is your client willing to pay?”
“His funds are limitless, within reason.”
“What’s so tough about finding this guy?”
“They made him dead. New ID. That kind of problem.”
“That could be very expensive. They’re fairly close-lipped about their recently and dearly-departed.”
“But you can find out.”
“Yes, David. It is possible.”
“Forty-eight hours. That’s the deal. Don’t disappoint me. You know how I get.”
The red nose on the Irishman turned a darker shade, and he rose from his seat and left the bar.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
February didn’t let up. It was colder than January, but the snow finally tapered off. There was still six inches on the ground, but traffic was unsnarled after the ploughs cleared the roads and after tons of rock salt had freed the surfaces of the highways. With Valentine’s Day gone, there was little to look forward to until the thaw of March. But there was no real sign that the freeze was soon going to end.
They had to meet in a motel in Orland Park for a nooner. It was the only time Carmen could slip away from Ben’s bodyguards, but she wouldn’t have to return home until nine or ten that night because Rossi was in Cicero at The Green Door recruiting more soldiers for his personal war against everyone else in the Outfit.
Joe was late, as usual. When he arrived, they went at it immediately.
He was bigger than her husband, and he liked to punish her with his fleshy weapon. It wasn’t that she was too small in that area of her anatomy; it was his length and girth and his predilection for ramming as deep as he could go without tearing her up inside.
Carmen tried not to register pain. She knew it was what Bertelli required. It was about power, like a rape. She outlasted him, though, and when he was spent he rolled to her side, wasted.
“Jesus, you’re an animal,” Joe huffed, his breath shot.
He was sweating profusely, and the front of her body was slick with him.
“You do your old man the way you do me?” he grinned, staring at the ceiling of the motel room.
It was one of those places that offered ‘naps’ for twenty bucks. If you stayed longer than four hours, you paid the full rate of $35.
“No one does me the way you do, Joey.”
She gave him the requisite torrid smile.
“How many times?”
“I couldn’t count that high?” she laughed.
He tried to catch his breath.
“When’re we going to remove him from the picture?” he asked.
“Soon,” she replied.
But the sated smile was gone from her lips.
“I need a more precise date on that, Carmen. You keep saying the same answer over and over again.”
“When’re you going to get a divorce from Vivian?”
“I won’t need one.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“She’s got cancer. Stage four.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I had to find out from the doctor myself because she was keeping it from me. I knew something was wrong, so I went to her gynecologist’s office. She told me about patient privacy, and I made it clear I was going to get an answer or she was going out of the practice the hard way. She knows who I am.”
“Jesus. How long?”
“Maybe two or three months. It’s in her liver. It’s fucking everywhere.”
“So we’ll be able to get married. In the church. The whole nine yards. We’ll both be widowers. Very convenient.”
“Who said anything about marriage?” Bertelli laughed.
“I just did. You’re not going to make me sneak around anymore, are you, Joe?”
“I don’t know. It gets me off, doing it on the sly, and don’t say it doesn’t do the same for you, Carmen.”
“You read me wrong. I’m not that kind of girl.”
She smiled coyly at him, and then she went down and readied Bertelli again. Once he was up, she straddled him. He didn’t like her on top. He only liked to ride missionary style, but she had him where she wanted him and he went along with it.
It took longer, this time, but he was done in less than twenty minutes. She was in command, and she brought him to a finish when Carmen was ready to end it.
When he lay thoroughly exhausted, she went into the john and shut the door. She took her purse with her. Bertelli figured she was taking care of hygiene or something, but when she came back, he saw the silencer at the end of the handgun. Before he could rise and grab her, she pulled the trigger twice, and the muffled pops were the last thing Bertelli ever heard.
She took a shower. Then she dried off and dressed. When she was clothed, she thoroughly wiped down the gun and the silencer and left it next to him on the king-sized bed. Carmen put on her coat, finally, and she wrapped a scarf over her head. The last touch was a pair of black, oversized sunglasses that she didn’t need because the sun was already down outside. But if anybody saw her emerge from the room, there wasn’t much of her face to see.
She had already put stolen plates on her car, on the Buick. She’d put the genuine ones back on when she got back to Cicero. There’d be plenty of time before Ben returned home.
She didn’t see a soul outside. It was a late Wednesday afternoon, and the motel was virtually empty. Joe had registered, so the guy at the office had never seen her, and they hadn’t used this place as a point of assignation before.
The ride home only took forty minutes because it was 6:30 P.M. The rush hour was over and the roads were clear. It was dinner time, and all the working slobs were home by now to partake in the leftover meatloaf from last Sunday.
She pulled the Buick into the garage and got out. She turned on the overhead light and then she found a screwdriver and she replaced the plates back to the originals.
Carmen went into the house and found some gin and tonic in the kitchen cabinet. She got out a glass, some ice, and then she filled it up and drained it in just two or three swallows. The booze hit her hard, but it relaxed her.
It was her very first murder.
*
Parisi and Gibron were called to Orland Park once the locals IDed Bertelli. The Chicago Outfit required Chicago Homicide to be present at the demise of one of the city’s major hoods. It was just good manners, Parisi and Gibron figured. They’d been spending a lot of man hours in the ‘burbs, lately. These recent deaths were probably related to Ben Rossi, and Rossi was the main suspect in the Johansen slaying, and they’d fished the poor man out of Lake Michigan.
There was no doubt that CPD’s Homicide Unit was state of the art in and around Cook County, and the suburban police were grateful for the added expertise.
Gibron and Jimmy walked into The Black Wolf Motel on 195th Street off Mannheim Road, and the first thing they observed other than the crew of technicians and Orland Park detectives was the remains of the Outfit capo, Joe (Giacomo) Bertelli.
Two taps to the forehead, closely spaced. Two direct hits to his brain. It looked professional, neat. Rigor had set in long ago. The man in the office of the motel hadn’t found him until it was time to check out, the day after he’d checked in.
Jimmy and Doc wen
t to the office to talk to the attendant. The Orland people had already interviewed him. His name was Sam Jeffords, and he was just a kid—barely twenty-one. He appeared shaken.
“I go to college at Loyola in the city,” the rawboned redhead said.
Jimmy thought he might have been a basketball player. When he stood to greet them, the Chicago detectives were impressed. He had to be more than six and a half feet from soles to crown.
“Was he with a woman?” Doc asked.
“I didn’t see her if he was,” Jeffords replied. “The man registered and paid.”
“Did you recognize him?” Jimmy asked.
“I thought he looked familiar. I might’ve seen him on TV or something.”
“You know who he is now?” Doc went on.
“Yeah. The other cops told me…I gotta sit down.”
He sat.
“You okay?” Doc asked the tall redhead.
“I’m a little shaky.”
“Yeah. It goes that way, sometimes,” Parisi explained.
“So you never saw anyone else. Did you see her ride?” Doc queried.
“Yeah, I did. It was a dark colored Buick.”
“Do you remember the plates?” Gibron asked the kid.
“No. I just wrote his down, the way I’m supposed to.”
“They were here a few hours?” Jimmy continued.
“I don’t really know. I just came to roust him because he only paid for the nap. I was supposed to do that last night, but I fell asleep studying for my sociology test. Don’t tell Wally.”
“Who’s Wally?” Gibron asked.
“The owner of this flea trap. I’m his nephew.”
“You think you need any medical help, Sam?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“I don’t think so.”
“You might want to tell this Wally you need to go home and relax,” Parisi explained.
“Okay. I’ll call him.”
“Make sure the Orland cops are finished with you,” Gibron told him.
“They said I could go when Wally shows up.”
“Then give your uncle a call,” Doc said.
They walked out of the office and left the tall kid by himself.
*
It was 9:35 P.M. when they made their dinner break at 95th and Cicero at the White Castle.
“One more slider and my ass end is going to become distended like a fucking tail on a monkey. The ones with the red heinies,” Jimmy told his partner.
But it didn’t prevent Parisi from inhaling six cheese sliders. He followed with sixteen ounces of caffeine and sugar, the large Coke.
The place was deserted. It was the upside of eating dinner this late. The downside was the farting and belching and the reruns of onion flavor that came up with all the burps. It could take two days for the gas to be gone.
“We have to find somewhere else to poison ourselves,” Jimmy complained.
“Nowhere else will have us,” Doc quipped.
“Maybe we should start eating green shit. The methane is overcoming my soul, Doc.”
Gibron laughed.
“You think the Green Beret was in on Bertelli, Jimmy?”
“Why would he want to drop him? It’s Rossi’s scalp he wants.”
“Maybe he plans to weed the Outfit, one greaseball at a time.”
“I don’t think so, Professor. I think he has a narrow focus, this GI killer.”
“Yeah, I think so, too. Which makes this pop all the murkier. Would Benny Bats go after him this quick?”
“I think he might.”
“We need to go talk to Mr. Rossi,” Gibron concluded.
Jimmy belched twice.
“Excuse the fuck out of me.”
“Yes, darling,” Doc cracked back.
*
It was ten-thirty by the time they reached Ben Rossi’s front door. One of the five punks directed the detectives to The Green Door, Rossi’s home away from home.It was eleven before they got to the Outfit hangout. The joint was crowded for a Thursday night, but Parisi figured no one inside this dive had to worry about getting up at five or six to do a job on some factory line.
There were bodyguards at the door, and they demanded ID, and the two detectives obliged them. Rossi sat in his usual place, at the back.
Benny Bats didn’t look happy to see the two of them.
“Do I need legal representation again?” he asked them.
Rossi dismissed two of his henchmen to another spot in The Green Room.
They gave Gibron and Parisi their best bad looks.
“Friendly fucks, your boys,” Gibron said.
“To what do I owe your presence?” Ben asked them.
“Bertelli took two to the melon,” Doc explained.
“Word’s already out,” Rossi smiled.
“Didn’t break your heart, huh?” Jimmy added.
“Not really. We never played well together.”
“Where were you last night around seven?” Parisi shot back.
“Here. Got all kinds of witnesses, too.”
“I’ll bet,” Doc replied. “Anybody not on the payroll saw you here?”
“Why do you suppose they all belong to me?” Ben said.
“Because no one can stand to be near you,” Gibron grinned.
“You don’t need to be rude. I already told you I can line up witnesses out the door, so why don’t you two just get out of my fucking face?”
“Would you like a little jaunt down to Headquarters, asshole?” Doc sneered.
“You really are being impolite.”
“Heartbreaking,” Gibron added.
“We’ll need their names,” Jimmy said. “Soon.”
“I’ll have my personal messenger get them to you.”
“You have twelve hours,” Parisi told Rossi.
“Yeah. Are we done, now?”
“No. Neither is that Green Beret who took away two of your finest parasites,” Jimmy smiled.
“You have a really bad attitude, Parisi.”
“Jesus. I’m ashamed of myself. I’ll have to go to confession.”
“Why’re you two wasting your lives annoying solid citizens like me?”
“I’m laying odds that the Green Beret says hello before the spring thaw arrives,” Gibron said as he stood.
“You’d never survive in Vegas.”
“Twelve hours, I want that list,” Parisi reminded Rossi.
“Yeah. I’ll be right on time.”
“This marksman can explode a small melon at a mile or more. I saw guys like him do it in Southeast Asia,” Parisi said as he rose to leave.
“Really? You went off and fought for fucking strangers in that fucked war, huh?”
“Your vocabulary is stunning, Benny Bats,” Jimmy told him as the two Homicides walked back to the front door.
*
When he got home, Parisi was met by his mother, Eleanor, at the front door.
“Why aren’t you in bed? You’re staying the night, aren’t you?” he asked her.
“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep. Even Burl Ives on the Carson show couldn’t knock me out.”
“Kids all right?”
“Of course, Jimmy. They’ve been asleep since ten-thirty…rough night at work?”
“I need a shower. Maybe a sandblaster.”
“Why don’t you do something else?”
“You already know the answer, Ma.”
“You’re just like Jake. Just like your father.”
He kissed her on the cheek.
“I’ll make breakfast for you before you take the kids to school.”
“You work too hard around here. You gotta start letting me pay you.”
“Be quiet and go to bed. It’s late.”
He kissed her again on the other cheek, and then he trudged wearily up the steps to the bedroom that he shared, long ago, with his wife Erin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Carmen is the apple of daddy’s eye. He’s always there, near her, and the older she gets the closer he i
s to her. Not just in a fatherly way, though, she thinks. When she reaches adolescence, Daddy looks at her differently. It’s not the way it was when she was just his little princess.
When she begins to bloom as a young woman, Carmen sees him staring. And he’s not staring in a kindly, paternal way.
Then he begins touching her in places where he’s never laid his hands before. Carmen knows it’s wrong, but this is her Daddy and he would never hurt her, never harm a hair on her head. He’s told her so in those exact words.
It makes her feel very ashamed. She wishes he would stop.
Carmen goes to her mother and tells her that something’s wrong with her father, but Mommy doesn’t want to listen. She tells her daughter that it’s just something that happens, that it happened to Mommy when she was a young girl, and look, Mommy is all right, she survived it. But Carmen is not to tell anyone about it. She’s not to mention it to a teacher at school or to the priest after mass or even in confession. Men do things for their own reasons, Mommy says, but when Carmen gets older it’ll stop. It stopped when Mommy became a full-grown woman. It won’t last forever, and Daddy won’t really hurt you, she tells her daughter. Daddy’s can never hurt their children. Especially their darling, sweet little girls. Because Carmen is Daddy’s princess, his sweet child, and he’s only loving you, Mommy says.
Loving you, Carmen. He would never harm a hair on your head, Mommy tells her.
*
The girls come down with acute bronchitis, and Morgan and Elizabeth wind up in Christ Hospital in Sawyer overnight. Mark is right there with Marilyn. They sit in the waiting room in Emergency to await the word from the ER doctor, and when it comes, they’re almost relieved it isn’t pneumonia.
Mark wants to head back to Chicago and finish his business with Rossi, but he knows it isn’t possible now. Elizabeth and Morgan and Marilyn are all his responsibility, and he cannot leave them when this illness arrives. Marilyn has been feeling poorly, as well, and Johansen can’t leave the three of them at this juncture.
He loves them, all of them. And the girls belong to him and Marilyn is really and legally his wife. It doesn’t matter that they’ve got county approval of their marriage. Mark has fallen in love with the idea of familial responsibility. He’s never experienced anything remotely like it before. The idea that he could take off to do murder just won’t resonate; it won’t stay down.