Season of the Assassin

by Laird, Thomas

  *

  We sat in the car outside the apartment where Charles supposedly resided. Before we got out, we both checked our weapons. Doc didn’t want backup and neither did I. We wanted to keep Charles and his location quiet because of his background. If this guy was the killer he’d been made out to be, then he was probably being watched by his own folks. The Government was exceedingly paranoid about its covert personnel. We didn’t want this to become a media event. So we were going in alone in spite of the potential danger.

  I had the Bulldog .38 strapped to my ankle. It had remarkable stopping power. It’d drive a melon-sized hole out of the back of you as it blasted through. The Nine was in my shoulder holster. I used an automatic so that I had firepower comparable to what was on the street. I had a straight razor in my jacket pocket and a sap in my pants. Doc had a snubnosed .38 on his ankle and a .45 Colt in his shoulder holster. He also carried a switchblade in his shirt pocket and a sap in his pants.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked.

  He nodded and we got out of the car.

  It was a chill and rotten night. Snow flurries, penetrating damp. A dead cold. Made the bones quiver.

  Renny lived on the third floor of a three-flat, there on the North Side. The flurries made it all but impossible to see three feet ahead of us. The wind was blowing a gale, straight into our faces. We got to the front door and made it inside. It was a relief to be able to catch our breath in the entryway.

  We were not going in the usual way, of course. Doc buzzed the tenant on the first floor.

  No response. So he tried tenant number two.

  Same silence.

  Out came his toolbox. He had the lock popped in less than one minute forty-five, and the reason it took so long, he said, was because it was so damn dark in there.

  We were up the two flights quickly. We’d noticed a light on in the apartment while we’d sat in the car checking our weapons. I was hoping it was not just Charles’s nightlite.

  Doc knocked on Charles’s door. We didn’t hear anything.

  ‘Renny Charles…Police! Open up!’

  I heard something moving inside. Doc raised his size twelve foot and smashed the front door open. We lunged into the room, both of us hunched over, and there was a burst of orange flame and an accompanying crack! as we stumbled to the floor.

  I scrambled toward the shot and let loose with the Nine as I went. Six shots, scattered all over the living room. Another flame roared out at us and Doc emptied five rounds into the darkened room.

  Then we heard a crash. The window in the front room had been shattered, and there was a blast of icy air rushing at us from the hole the body made as Renny Charles had apparently plunged three storeys to the lawn below.

  We rose and raced toward the landing. Then it was down the three flights of stairs and out that entrance door, Doc huffing directly behind me, and we saw a man lying on the snow-glazed grass in front of us.

  ‘Stop!’ I yelled as soon as I had enough breath. The snow was flinging itself into my eyes. I had to put up a hand in front of my face.

  Doc saw the .22 pistol on the ground, three feet away from Charles.

  He picked it up as Charles writhed in agony.

  ‘My fuckin’ leg. I broke my fuckin’ right leg. Call an ambulance,’ he pleaded.

  I went to the car and called 911.

  *

  ‘So why’d you cut loose on us?’ Doc asked.

  ‘It must have been that illegal entry,’ Charles said and smiled grimly, his cast-covered leg held up by taut wires.

  We were at St Luke’s.

  Renny Charles was a six-foot three-inch cracker whose parents obviously never beat him enough. He was easy to hate. I could see how Anglin would find this guy a soul mate.

  ‘We identified ourselves as police officers. You didn’t respond,’ Doc told him.

  ‘You didn’t have a search warrant,’ Charles responded.

  ‘Who says?’ I grinned at him.

  The bluff seemed to work.

  ‘Why would you want a search warrant to get to me?’ he asked, a little less sure of himself.

  ‘Because we want to find your old buddy Carl Anglin, asshole,’ I explained.

  ‘Anglin? Christ, I haven’t seen him in — ’

  ‘That’s not what we heard…You’re up for attempted murder, right now. But we can make all of your immediate problems disappear.’

  ‘If I hand you Carl.’

  ‘Very perceptive, dickless,’ Doc said dryly.

  ‘You two can go hump yourselves.’

  Doc unhooked the bracelet over his right wrist and attached Renny Charles to the frame of the hospital bed.

  We turned and walked to the door.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Charles said.

  ‘You have a change of heart?’ I queried.

  ‘I saw Carl Anglin two weeks ago. He was living near the El tracks. Just south of Evanston…Christ, I’m not tight with the prick. I’m not into the shit he’s into. Killing those girls. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you made me bust my leg. I’m in my fuckin sixties! I’m a veteran! You know that?’

  ‘You better be a little more specific with an address, Renny. And maybe you’re a stranger to this town. Policemen here aren’t fond of getting shot at, cheesedick.’

  ‘How’d I know who you really were? Anybody can say he’s a copper…Look, Anglin lived at an apartment on something like Kensington Place. That’s all I remember…You’re not really gonna bust me for attempted homicide, are you?’

  ‘You were in the service with Anglin. You saw the little things he liked to do. Especially to women who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Yeah. He had strange tastes. I don’t deny it — ’

  ‘Maybe you’ve become a suspect in his last two jobs, Renny,’ I continued. ‘Maybe at his advanced age he needs a little help to get to those young things. He’s not as spry as he was when he roped up those seven nurses and tore them all up. That was thirty years ago when you were both in your primes. Lean, mean killing machines. That’s what you both were, but now time’s dulled you. All that bad hooch and even worse dope…They’ve blunted you both. Taken pieces out of you…No. Maybe we’ll look into where you’ve been the last few months. We’ll see when you really saw Carl Anglin last, and if you’ve been lying, then we’ll let you spend those sunset years in a hole like Menard.’

  We walked out the hospital room before Charles could whine at us again.

  ‘You really think he worked with Carl?’ Doc asked as we passed one especially attractive blonde nurse.

  ‘He did once. It doesn’t really matter. He has more to tell us. He’s gonna be a fount of information, I’d say, Doctor.’

  Doc turned his head and tried to catch another glimpse of the Nordic beauty who just a moment before had crossed our paths.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  [August 1968]

  The summer gets hotter and so do the times. The streets are no place to be. They’re sweltering with distrust and outright hatred. There’s even open bad blood between white and black policemen. That kind of thing was kept under pretty tight wraps until recently.

  Jimmy writes us from a place called Bong Son in Vietnam. He’s in the bush, he says. On active service. He’s already made corporal, Stateside, and he says he might have a shot at sergeant before long. If he stays healthy, he explains. I write him a letter and tell him not to talk about shit like that when he knows Eleanor is going to read the letter. Jimmy shoots me back a note and apologizes, saying it won’t happen again — that business about his health being included in his correspondence. From then on his weekly letters sound much more upbeat. So I know he’s lying for his mother’s sake.

  He keeps talking about how many black soldiers are stuck in the bush with him. Jimmy the Liberal. He says there are too few white guys in the shit. He says they, the Anglos, find their way to the rear echelon. I never knew my kid would turn out to be a Democrat.

  I wrote a few letters myself from E
urope during the Second World War, so I understand why Jimmy’d be interested in his ‘health’. It’s just that you can’t share any of that with mothers or wives or girlfriends. It only makes them more frightened than they already are.

  I close the Greek’s regularly these nights. There’s nothing to go home for except to sleep. I usually eat out with Eddie, except for dinner when we’re on days.

  We received the predictable warning from our Captain that we were not to harass Carl Anglin any longer. Anglin’s lawyer has been on the blower to downtown, so we’re supposed to lay off his star client.

  I visited the cemetery where two of the girls were buried, in the southwest part of town. It seems two of them were distant cousins, so they wound up in the same churchyard. Big crosses over their remains. The families went all out on the funerals. The victims were both Hispanic, both Catholics — like me and my family. Guineas from Sicily tend to go Roman.

  There isn’t much to do at their resting place. I read the inscriptions. The date of birth and death on each tombstone. The little quotes of Bible poetry they elect to leave as remembrance on the stones. That’s not a whole lot to stand for a couple of lifetimes, even ones as short as theirs were.

  And then I would start remembering Anglin’s jungle-green eyes and I’d want to go find him and kill him. But that, of course, would have put me in the same league as this ex-Navy thug whose military record is closed and whose history is unavailable to the CPD because of what the military calls ‘National Security’. I know and Eddie knows that there’s something in his files that’d help us understand why Carl Anglin has eluded us.

  He’s done something very bad, I’m thinking. Something bad enough for the government to hang tough in the face of our court orders and injunctions — all of which have failed to open the book on Anglin.

  There are people I know who could find out what it was they have to hide, but I don’t deal with that branch of my family. Some of my clan turned left when they got to this country. In other words, some of my cousins are members of the Outfit, the Chicago version of the Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or whatever you want to call them. I call them thieves and murderers. We’ve never gotten along, and I ask no favors of them. I’ve never attended family reunions, weddings, or any gatherings where any of them might show up.

  I’ve had my opportunities to go on their books. There are lots of cops who take money. It’s a standing joke in Chicago about payoffs to police from taverns and nightclubs. I could’ve had Jimmy’s college tuition paid ten times over if I’d nodded my head to them. It’s not because I’m a pristine virgin. It’s because I know them too well. I know what they’re like. Once you say ‘Yes’ to them, it’s yes for the rest of your life. I’m afraid of a debt that large. I’m afraid of owing my soul to them. Perhaps it’s the Catholic in me, but I know what they’re like, and it’s not what you see in the movies. They have no honor. They kill their own people for money. They murdered a whole lot of the male population of Sicily, and now they’re trawling more fertile waters here in this country.

  So I won’t use those connections to find out what Carl Anglin was doing in Asia during the Korean War, and the government shows no inclination to help us get him back into court. Two witnesses. One dead, one might as well be.

  I visit the Rojas girl at least every two weeks. I saw her most recently last Thursday. Eddie does not come into the room with me. He had a sister who had a nervous disorder, so he’s not too fond of the surroundings at Elgin State Mental Hospital.

  When I went into the room, I found her sitting down. She was staring out the window. The sun was shining that day, so her room was bright, maybe even cheerful — to someone who didn’t have to live there.

  ‘Hello,’ I say to her softly.

  She doesn’t turn toward me or the nurse. The nurse signals for me to make it brief. The girl will be taking her meds pretty soon, she explains, before she turns and leaves me alone with the sole survivor of the massacre.

  ‘I’m Detective Parisi. Jake Parisi. I’ve talked to you before…I know you can hear me and I promise I won’t stay long and bother you…If you are hearing me inside somewhere, I want you to know that I won’t think you’ve done anything wrong if you can’t respond to my questions. I know he frightened you. I know it’s worse than I or anybody else can know…But I have to tell you that you’re all we’ve got to get to Carl Anglin. He’s the man who killed the other girls. He’s the man who would’ve killed you too. If you hear me, think. I know you’re hiding deep inside yourself. I’d be hiding too. I know these doctors know a lot more about just exactly where you are, but I’m asking you to come on back out and help me. Help me — and help the families of those girls who were your friends. Don’t let Carl Anglin get away with this. I have to tell you the truth. If you don’t come on back to the surface, he’s going to get away with killing your friends.’

  There’s not even a tremor in her face. She hasn’t heard me or she’s simply not even in the same room with me, which is what the nurse continually tries to explain to me. Theresa Rojas has left us. Her body is all that remains.

  ‘Don’t let him do this, Theresa. Don’t let him wipe them out. Let me speak for them, and for you. You can do it if you come back. Please try. Please…I’ll come back in another couple of weeks. You rest. Get strong…God help you, Theresa.’

  I turn and walk out of her private room toward my waiting partner.

  ‘Can we leave now?’ Eddie asks.

  The place makes him frantic, so I hurry him out the doors.

  *

  We can’t tap Anglin’s phones. We can’t search his North Side apartment. We’re not welcome at his orgies. Even Narco has been warned not to get a hard-on about raiding one of his little dope-athons. Anglin is strictly hands-off. Which makes me work twice as hard keeping him in our sights. I do some stakeouts on my own time. He comes and goes like a normal blue-collar resident of this blue-collar neighborhood. But the locals know him and seem to give him a lot of distance. The locals don’t go to his parties. It’s the wealthy, affected North Shore crowd that hangs out at his gatherings. He’s a magnet for every bored Gold Coaster who’s looking for a little toot to snoot. Some city celebrities show up at his place from time to time, and so do some of the literary figures in this town. It seems he’s got them buffaloed into believing he’s the new Ernest Hemingway of Chicago. His book has had excellent reviews. It’s sold well, which is why he can afford his new lifestyle. It’s unfortunate that no one seems to realize that his ‘memoirs’ or whatever are strictly fiction. There’s no mention of his days in the service, and according to him the killings happened while he was home working on a collection of his poetry — which is forthcoming from his publisher in New York.

  It would be justice if I shot him. But perhaps I’m just not the kind of hero who would take matters into his own hands. Set things right, like some cowboy legend. I believe too much in the system. My job is to catch them, not kill them.

  I come through the door at 12.35 a.m. on this Thursday morning. Eleanor is waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

  ‘You can’t keep this up,’ she tells me.

  ‘Keep what up?’

  I begin my tired ascent of the twenty-six stairs.

  ‘You haven’t written Jimmy in two months. I haven’t seen you in over a week. This is not a marriage. It’s not even an arrangement anymore.’

  ‘Divorce me, then.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m a Catholic, just like you.’

  ‘To hell with the Church! Divorce me, marry Nick, give Jimmy his real father back!’

  I stop halfway up. I have to grab hold of the banister.

  ‘You don’t want that and neither do I, Jake. Nick gave me a child. You couldn’t. I wanted to ask your forgiveness a thousand times, but I can’t do it. You could’ve got the marriage annulled for it. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Why didn’t I? Let me think.’

  ‘Stop it! Nick gave us both a child. It was for us, not just for me. The doctor sa
id we could never conceive and I did the only thing I knew that would give us a family. My God, Jake, what’s more important than our son?’

  ‘He’s not mine! He belongs to you and my brother!’

  I straighten up and let go of the banister, but my feet aren’t steady because of the six beers and their chasers.

  ‘Why can’t you forgive me, Jake? Why won’t you believe me when I tell you I did it for us. I love you, not Nick. Your brother knows it, too. He was doing it for — ’

  ‘Don’t you say it! He wants you. He wants you now, this day. And you stand there wondering why I live the way I do. Is it too difficult? I’m sterile, just like the two of us together are…But I made my bed, even if it’s not in your room anymore. I keep my word, Eleanor. I don’t betray people. I don’t knife them in the back when they least expect it. I don’t go to another man to change what God set up. We should’ve stayed childless.’

  ‘What would Jimmy think if he heard you? You love your son. Don’t lie to me, you drunk! You’ve always loved him. But your pride won’t back down. You act like you’re impotent. You’re not impotent. You simply had a disease in young adulthood that — ’

  ‘Don’t say it again. Don’t…Jesus, Eleanor, I’m too tired…Maybe we ought to separate. I can find an apartment — ’

  ‘This is our house. I’d rather go on this way than have to explain to people why you’re living somewhere else. I told you I was sorry…I love you. I always will.’

  She turns and walks away from me. I want to stop her, but I am too weary to lift my arms. I sit down on the midway stair of the flight. I put my head in my hands.

  ‘Oh Jesus. Jesus.’

  Then I summon the will to rise, and I walk up the remaining stairs.

  *

  Anglin takes a bust for drunk-and-disorderly. Apparently his neighbors are tiring of his all-nighters. They call the gendarmes and the police are compelled to respond.

  I go down to the lockup to have a look at him. Eddie warns me not to, but I feel compelled to see him.