by Lee Thomas
“Detective Lennon,” Hayes said.
“The Italians.” After he’d said the words, the pain receded. What had they attached to him? How could it know fact from fraud?
“Do they pay you well?” Hayes wanted to know.
“Yes.”
“Do they pay you well enough to die for them?”
“No.”
“And your family? Do the Italians pay you enough to put the necks of your family under Mr. Brand’s knife?”
A gray fog of panic settled over him. He pictured Bette and Gwen playing on the stoop of their house, marching dolls across the living room floor, kneeling besides their beds and saying their prayers wearing matching sleeping gowns and slippers. He saw their laughing faces over the dinner table, remembered them chasing gulls on the lake shore. Then he pictured Edie’s face, and she looked at him with disappointment—such a familiar expression.
“You haven’t answered me,” Hayes said. “Do the Italians pay you enough—”
“No,” he barked.
“Very well,” Mr. Hayes said, “we’re going to take your identification, Detective Lennon. It will have your home address on it. You know what that means, yes?”
“I’ll kill you if you go near my family.”
“Well, we’ll hope it doesn’t come to that,” Hayes said.
Brand shook his head as if in wonder of an idiot.
“We’re done, Mr. Brand,” Hayes said. He placed a hand on the muscular shoulder of his accomplice. “He knows nothing about what happened here or why it happened.” Hayes turned his eyes back to Lennon. “Thank you, Detective. Perhaps one day we’ll meet under kinder circumstances.”
Brand reached out and yanked the metal pin from Lennon’s shoulder. He flipped it in the air like a coin and slid it smoothly into the pocket of his leather apron. Then Brand hopped off the sofa and followed Hayes from the house, leaving Lennon stunned, ashamed, and intensely frightened. He rolled off the couch and struggled to his feet. He was in such a hurry to reach his car, he didn’t bother closing Lonnie Musante’s front door behind him.
Chapter 12
Monster in the Closet
Rabin sat in his car, staring at Ripper’s Gym from half a block away. The neighborhood was typical. Drab. Low brick apartment buildings hovering over dismal retail spaces, a full third of which were empty, their windows soaped with instructions for prospective renters. Rusted ladders and steel grate platforms clutched the filthy exteriors like metallic insects. On the corner a boy with oddly sized features—ears and nose too large, barely enough chin to support his lower lip—hawked newspapers and occasionally blew warm breath into his palms. Rabin sipped from his thermos cup, having replenished his coffee at a diner down the street. Though he hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours, he didn’t feel fatigued. He was somewhat disappointed because he had not been able to visit his wife, but Irene had always understood about his job, even if she didn’t know exactly what it was her husband did for a living. She’d taken him at his word when he’d told her that he worked for the city as a hog inspector, and since she rarely asked about the details of his day, the lie had been easy to maintain.
The police’s failure to capture Butch Cardinal came as little surprise to Rabin. The authorities in this city had gotten lazy, so used to having their jobs done for them by the men they’d been hired to pursue. A few roadblocks and some dim-witted ox at the train station wouldn’t be enough to catch a gaggle of nuns in full habit. Cardinal’s file had revealed no personal connections, save for a sister named Clara who lived in Pennsylvania. Rabin already had that address, if he needed to use it. Otherwise the dossier had been useless, with one exception: the gym. He wasn’t surprised a detective like Conrad would dismiss such a thing. A typical Chicago cop, though certainly not Conrad, might lift weights or skip rope in the gloomy basement of the police station, but few of them had any genuine commitment to physical fitness. To them, a gym was a place of annoyance and chore, but to an athlete like Butch Cardinal it would be as warm and comforting as a mother’s lap. Likely the police had spoken with Rory Sullivan, the gym’s owner, questioning him as they would any other acquaintance of Cardinal’s, never understanding the deeper connection.
Of course Rabin had fashioned this logic retroactively.
He’d been watching Cardinal’s apartment building. For three days, the place had been conspicuously observed by a number of police officers. A blind and slow child would have spotted them. Rabin first saw the white-haired Paddy on Monday. The burly Irishman, made all the thicker with a black overcoat and cable knit sweater, had sauntered onto the street and walked to the end of the block, pretending not to notice the officers on either side of the road. He’d reached the far corner, turned, and didn’t come back that day. Rabin saw him again Tuesday afternoon, when the white-haired Irishman repeated the performance. Yesterday, however, the police had cut back their surveillance of Cardinal’s building to the dogleg shift, and the Paddy had returned. This time he lingered on the block, pretending to look for an address. Then he’d walked to Cardinal’s apartment building, unlocked the front door with a key and slipped inside. Less than ten minutes later, the man emerged, and Rabin followed Sullivan to Ripper’s Gym.
From that point on, he’d foregone even the most cursory reconnaissance of Cardinal’s apartment building. The Paddy was the key. Rabin knew it. The wrestler had skipped town, and by Rabin’s thinking it was the smartest move the man could have made, but Cardinal needed something here, or at least needed to know where he stood, and the Irishman was acting as his connection to the city. Not a bad move, Rabin thought. The cops wouldn’t give the old geezer a second look, as was demonstrated on more than one occasion. Rabin knew better. He’d figured it out and had taken to parking outside the gym, keeping his eye on the stout little Paddy and following him on any number of pointless excursions. Eventually, the old man would lead him to the wrestler.
Or you could just go in there and cut the information out of him, a small voice whispered to the back of his mind. Rabin shook the voice away, though he liked its tone and message. That side of his personality, the savage side, needed to be kept in check. He’d spent his entire adulthood managing the monster, keeping it in the closet, keeping it quiet, and only releasing it in the course of performing his duties. He didn’t dare let it run loose.
Ahead on the street, a young woman stepped out of the entrance to the building. Her thick red hair fell over her shoulders in lush waves. The black pea coat she wore hung to her knees, so Rabin had no impression of her figure, but that was of little concern to him. She held a snow shovel in gloved hands and her breath appeared in soft clouds, like bits of soul floating skyward.
Then Rory Sullivan exited the gym and walked up to the girl. He spoke to her, and she didn’t like what she heard. The cold-burn of her cheeks went crimson and her hands slapped the air in consternation. The white-haired man’s demeanor did not change, and the redhead discarded the shovel before punching her fists to her hips in a stance of defiance. The man said something else, and she shook her head. Then Sullivan walked to the south, leaving the young woman fuming in front of the gym.
Sullivan turned left at the corner, and Rabin pulled away from the curb to follow the man. After a dozen blocks it became clear the Irishman was headed for the L station and a flare of rage ignited in Rabin’s chest. By car he’d have to meet the train at every station to see if the Paddy disembarked, but he stood a greater chance of being seen on foot. Neither choice was satisfactory, but one had to be made. Frustrated he found the first available space at the curb and parked the car.
As he made his way up the stairs to the train platform, he questioned the move. If nothing else, he should have driven to the next stop and waited there. Either Sullivan would get off and Rabin could stay on his heels or Rabin would be overlooked, considered a random passenger commuting like all the rest.
At the top of the stairs, Rabin continued to the back of the platform and leaned forward, peering down the trac
ks. Then he backed away, checked Sullivan, and then dropped his gaze to the muddy smears on the tips of his toes. The Paddy was on guard. Checking his periphery, and doing a respectable job of it. Rabin would keep his direct observations of the man to a minimum.
The train arrived and Rabin walked into the car behind the one Sullivan entered. Rabin positioned himself by the door, standing, holding a strap. At the next stop, he turned and checked the platform to see if the man exited, and when he saw that he hadn’t, Rabin resumed his casual stance. He repeated this ritual several times, until the train pulled into the Clinton Street Station and Sullivan disembarked. The Irishman walked south, and Rabin felt another tickle of annoyance, guessing at the man’s next destination.
Men and women, bundled in layers and hunched against the cold, scurried along the slick walks. One unfortunate soul—a bum clad in tattered, gray rags—clumsily approached and stretched out his hand to Rabin in a silent act of begging. Rabin smiled in response. A flicker of anger showed in the transient’s eyes, all but daring Rabin to voice what he found so amusing. The bum ground a damp toothpick between his teeth and pulled up his chin as if in defiance, perhaps to say, You wait until I’m back on my feet.
Rabin could all but hear the echoes of similar sentiments bouncing off the brick buildings around him.
It seemed every other man on the street was a down-and-outer, a guy who’d been somebody just a few years ago, only to be hollowed out and left a panhandling shell. They wandered, dazed, as if disbelieving life could have betrayed them so wholly: discarded by the society they’d helped build; forgotten or ignored by those who feared sharing their fate.
These were glorious days for Rabin and the men who employed him. Notions of community and compassion eroded under the constant abrasion of personal uncertainty and loss. Rabin knew humankind could join together, could build wonderful things, could help one another, so long as it meant the individuals involved didn’t lose too much in the process. When the individual had so little, they shared nothing, and their brains went primitive, clicking into a survival mode that created a splendid tunnel vision. Immediate needs had to be met. A desperate man robs and murders for a bottle of gin, and a woman will eagerly trade her body at the prospect of feeding her children. The hungry man spends the remainder of his life in prison, and the woman doesn’t understand that a stranger might use her body in any number of ways, many of which would not result in the nourishment of her children. Granted, such trades were willingly made at any point in human history, but this depression had created winds that carried the pollen of brutish self-service across the entire nation. A leader with vision, one who understood the power of hope among the desperate, could conquer the world, and stand like a sun for all of the miserable weeds to feed from. What else did they have? They borrowed nickels and dimes at exorbitant interest rates; they hocked family heirlooms; they bet their final pennies on horses as floundering as themselves, and each ridiculous step was a gamble that they sincerely believed would pay out the beginning of an easier life. For mere heartbeats they forgot that their futures couldn’t help but rise from the foundations of mud they’d built them upon, and instead chose to believe their destinies lay in sweet fields made bright and fertile with the rays of hope.
Every human being was a victim of something, whether it was desire, addiction, ignorance, or faith. Simple…weak…victims.
Rabin wouldn’t have it any other way.
He checked on the direction of his target. His annoyance grew when Sullivan entered Union Station. He’d considered this possibility. Apparently, the trip was not coming to an end; it was just beginning.
• • •
Rabin considered himself an intelligent man, exceptionally so. He knew that if the Paddy had noticed him on the L platform, then being seen again in the train station would take away his advantage. Instead of following Sullivan to the ticket window to eavesdrop on his destination, Rabin paid a boy a quarter to do it for him, and when the boy returned and told him, “Indianapolis,” the boy received his coin and a smile.
After that, it was a matter of staying out of Sullivan’s sight, an easy enough prospect. Twenty minutes later, when the train boarded, Rabin again took the car behind the Paddy’s, settled into his seat and lit a cigarette. The train pulled out of the station and Rabin noted his fellow travelers.
Ahead and across the aisle, a young couple snuggled under an ugly woolen blanket. The boy’s cheeks were unshaven and the girl’s hair, despite having been bundled and fastened atop her head, frayed with untidy wisps. The man sneezed twice and blinked, and the woman quickly drew her hand from under the blanket. She held a white handkerchief, which she used to wipe the man’s nose like a mother tending a baby.
Rabin warmed to the display, but not because of its tenderness. The sight merely confirmed a notion he had long held to be true.
The entire country had been infantilized. An adult could weigh his options and think a problem through, but children only knew want; they demanded immediate satisfaction of that want and were more than willing to sacrifice any number of needs to have it. The young threatened and wailed and gnashed, but if they were supplicated—with kisses or candy—they would forget for a time that their diapers hadn’t been changed, and that they remained swathed in their own shit. Anyone who had enough cheap candy—a criminal, a factory owner, a reverend, a government—could keep the soiled babes distracted indefinitely, and the children would know nothing but the pleasure that momentary sweetness brought to their mouths and the want—the Hope—for another piece.
Beautiful, Rabin thought.
Thirty minutes later, Rabin sat at a table in the club car and looked out on the magnificent world. Despite his lack of sleep he felt exhilarated, wanting nothing more than for the Irishman to lead him to Butch Cardinal. They would both die. That was indisputable. Rabin had received no demands for discretion. Impelliteri wanted a necklace and the knowledge that Cardinal had taken his last breath. All else was up to Rabin, and though he felt elated, he did not feel charitable. In fact, he couldn’t imagine synonymy between the two emotions.
He turned his head from the window to greet the white-jacketed Negro who’d come to take his order, and the face of a boy, standing at the bar caught his eye. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. Black hair. The toned, etched face of a marathoner or a child enduring starvation. Ears and nose too large. Nothing of a chin. He wore a sleek gray suit with a narrow black tie. A cigarette jutted from his full lips.
Rabin didn’t know the young man’s name, but he knew his face; he’d seen it outside of Butch Cardinal’s apartment building more than once. He’d been hustling newspapers on a corner, standing there for hours until his supply was gone. The boy’s performance had been convincing. Rabin hadn’t thought twice about the youth, but he didn’t believe in coincidence. A paperboy didn’t belong on a train headed to Indianapolis. Not this train.
He ordered a soda water with lime from the waiter and immediately turned his attention back to the window to consider the boy’s affiliations. Marco Impelliteri hadn’t sent him; that was a given. Rabin had made it clear that if he accepted an assignment, he did so with the understanding that no one else was offered the contract. The police might use a boy that age for his eyes and ears, but they wouldn’t send him traveling. That only left the Moran syndicate, possibly trying to recover the necklace that seemed so important to Impelliteri, or perhaps to kill Cardinal themselves and present his corpse as a peace offering to the Italians. Maybe the outbreak of violence had gotten to Moran, or more likely the lesser man, Powell, but again, the boy’s age made this supposition less than promising. You didn’t send a novice on this kind of hunt unless you intended to lose him. A friend of the Irishman? Someone to watch his back?
A twitch of agitation skipped through Rabin’s thoughts. He didn’t like uncertainty.
Chapter 13
Life Expectancy
Lennon carried the last of his wife’s luggage down the stairs, a
nd she stood at the bottom waiting for him. Her arms were crossed and her mouth was fixed in a pout.
“Are the girls in the taxi?” Lennon asked.
Edie dipped her chin, nodding.
“Good. This is the last of them. Be sure to call me at the station when you get to Raymond’s.”
“I still don’t understand why we have to leave.”
“Yes, you do. You just want to know more about the why, and I’m not telling you that.” Lennon wasn’t even sure what he’d tell her. It had to do with two men, one of whom carried a knife that looked as intricate as a watch mechanism. They had his identification. His address.
“But Roger…”
“Look Edie, I told you when we were married there might come a time when I packed you off for a vacation, and you promised you wouldn’t ask me why, so now I’m holding you to that promise.”
“How am I supposed to not worry about my husband?”
“I’m fine, and I’ll be fine, but right now the city is a bad place to be. I want you and the girls as far away from here as possible for a couple of weeks. You’re always complaining about not spending enough time with your brother’s family anyhow. Well we’ve got two birds and one stone.”
“You know I didn’t mean this,” she said, exaggerating her petulant frown.
“Yes, I do. I also know you’ll be late for your train if you don’t get a move on. Everything should be fine in a week or two, and then you can bring the girls back and we’ll think about taking a trip of our own. How does Florida sound?”
“You can’t bribe me, Roger.”
“I don’t have to bribe you, Edie. You’re going, like it or not. You can spend your time being angry at me, or you can spend your time looking forward to sand and swimming and sunshine. Your choice.”