by Rex Miller
"Did you have a nice rest?"
"You crazy face da borco —"
He slapped her viciously and spoke in his soft tones. "You can make this hard, you know. Very hard. And your life will end for you in a soundless and tongueless scarlet sheet of awful, mind-mangling pain. Say hello to me missus."
"Hu — hello." The point of a knife was touching her throat. She imagined a trickle of blood.
"Say, Hello, Mary Pat."
"Hello, Mary Pat." She knew this was it. It didn't matter what he said to her. She could see the insanity and death in his hooded eyes.
"If you do as I say I will let you live. Otherwise, I will let her slake her thirst on you here —" He penetrated and she fought back a scream. "And here." Angelina cried out in pain.
"Now do as I ask or Mary Pat will SLICE AND CARVE AND TEAR UNTIL YOU ARE ANYTHING BUT RECOGNIZABLE, YOU GUINEA SLUT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"
"Yes."
"Good." He moved out of her vision for a moment and she heard a clicking noise and he held a piece of paper on it with a typed message. "Read exactly what it says. If you fuck with me Mary Pat will rend the side of your face into pumping, dripping shreds of bloody meat." His icy calm was more frightening than the screaming. She read as he held the small microphone to her mouth: " 'I am alive and well. You must do as I say. Dagatina m-mus' die. Here is what you mus' do if you want me to live.' " She had read almost all of the message before it occurred to her what she was reading. She figured the lunatic would play this for Joey, her older brother, to convince him to whack out the old man. Even then, she kept reading. Angelina did not want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.
It actually began with the most unlikely of sources, the one and only BeBop Rutledge, and a conversation between Bud Leech and his snitch along the lines of, "You gotta help me, man, this ain't FAIR."
"Life's a trade, BeBop. You gotta give to get."
"I gave till it hurt, man. I come right to ya with it."
"You ain't give us shit."
"Murder fucking one."
"You're goin' down behind that righteous coke bust and we both know it. I can't go to MY boss and get somethin' for you with no better'n this. I mean, I can talk to Her Honor for ya, but you want some heavy-duty clout you got to gimme. You got to bring some to get some."
"I didn't SEE the fucker. Just that second or two in that funky light from the goddamn EXIT sign. I don't think I'd know the dude if I bumped into him."
"That's a shame, BeBop. Dig it, my man: the lieutenant's got him a SLIDE into Wilma Smith. I mean, if you could really think, put your shit down tight for it and give us a better sketch. Shit, The Man would start talkin' and you'd start walkin'."
"Aw, man. I guess I could sit down with the dude again. Whatsisname with the drawings."
"Weyland. Yeah. That's it, my man, you need to sit down with the dude again. Concentrate. Think real hard. Maybe he'll come back to ya." So it was that, fuliginous visibility notwithstanding, a refined Identikit got put together. Sort of. More or less. The more BeBop thought about Judge Smith stomping his grapes the better his retroactive vision became. He saw the light so to speak. And there is no vision with greater clarity than 20-20 hindsight.
With the exception of Eichord, perhaps held in check by the powerful fabric of SEE NO EVIL intuition, only the wise guys still worked to nail a lone assassin. The cops themselves appeared to no longer be interested or concerned with the mad enforcer — only that the thing, whatever it was, be contained from escalating into wide-open gang warfare throughout the inner families and ethnic fringe factions.
"The Two Tonys gang is a fuckin' memory," Eichord heard one cop tell another, "and that means you know what."
"Turf up for grabs."
"Fuckin' A." It was times like these when a couple of defecting gunmen could start all-out war by themselves — never mind the "lunatic chief enforcer" theory. But Jack did not share their preoccupation. He listened quietly as they talked.
"Russo torched the old man, right? So what have you got here? You got a power thing from the inside." Sally Dago! The madman had managed to reach inside the prison walls. Soak the old man with oiled gasoline and torch him in his cell. Joey Russo righteous for it.
To Eichord it was so clearcut now. The enforcer had kidnapped Angelina. Somehow got through to the brother in the slams: either hit the old man or your sister dies. Some scenario along those lines. She'd told him how close they were. The watcher had been watching. Had he also been listening? Anybody with this level of skills would find audio surveillance little more than child's play.
Jack pulled Leech aside. "How can I get to Tony Cypriot?"
"You tell me and we'll both know." Leech laughed. Jack just looked at him. "You're serious. Okay. I doubt if you can. Why?"
"I just want to get a message to him. On the telephone. How would I call him?"
"He'd never talk to you. You'd have to go through a million underlings. Shit. It'd take a week."
"I don't got a week. How can I reach the man? Think."
"If you had something he wanted. You could get one of his top people to get the word to him, I suppose. Maybe somebody in New York." Leech sounded very unsure about it. Like it was a total timewaster.
"Humor me," Jack said to the big man. "Who would be somebody could reach Cypriot right now? Rikla?"
"Fuck, no." Leech laughed. He thought for a moment. The wheels turned. "Okay. There's a guy who's inside. Serving a twenty-to-life. If he thought it was in The Man's interest. You know."
"Can you get a message to him quietly?"
"Does Oscar Peterson sweat."
"Oscar Peterson? Oh, yeah, the guy plays basketball for Cincinnati?"
"He could play it if you'd hum a few bars."
"Okay. Hum a few bars of this: tell him to get word to Tony Cypriot. Jack Eichord has something to sell the godfather. He can give 'em the man they want. Tell him that I want the scum dead and I'm afraid if we bust him he'll end up walking. Some high-priced legal talent will plead him fruitcake and he'll be back on the street. If Cypriot wants him handle it through me personally. Him to me. Tell him to call me. I'll do all the talking. He can listen and make up his mind. That — or the man he wants to nail so bad keeps waging war."
Now it was Leech's turn to just stare. "He'll never buy it," he said finally. "No fuckin' way."
And of course he didn't. Not for a second. But within twenty-four hours he was on a telephone in Eichord's ear.
"Don't waste my time. Whatd'ya REALLY want?"
"It's not what I want. It's what you're going to do. You're going to go pack a few things — don't take much because you don't have a whole lot of time. Get on a plane or your private jet or whatever, and fly back here. I'm going to put you in custody. For your protection."
Cypriot began laughing uproariously. Roaring, hysterical guffaws. Eichord waited him out.
"Oh, shit," he said, catching his breath. "I haven't had a laugh like that in weeks. Christ. Oh. You're all right. That's funny. Hey, listen. I got to go now and —"
"HOLD IT! You put this monster on the street for the Council or Committee or whatever you assholes call it. Do you have any idea what the other families will do if I get the word to them that YOU were responsible for all these kills within the organization?" He didn't hear any more giggling. "Your ass will be grass." When Jack Eichord wanted to seriously threaten somebody his soft-spoken tone hardened into a razor-blade edge, and when he opened the floodgates and let all his poison pour out in a hot, acid gush, you'd better not be downhill.
"Forget about it," Cypriot said disdainfully.
"Forget about it, huh? If you don't cooperate with me and come under our protection ... I go right to the dons. I'll tell 'em what I know about your chief enforcer and how you fucked this up." Eichord was winging it now. "And by next week there won't be enough of you left to fill a fucking shoe box. Now you gonna cooperate or what?"
Any other time and Gaetano Ciprioni would probably have told this no-di
ck cop to go fuck his mother. But he'd just had the sad and awful chore of canceling out one of his great friends and one of the company's most trusted vice presidents. The Russo kid had got word to him about the hit. What should he do? he wanted to know. Ciprioni knew that Spain knew — he WAS the godfather, the REAL godfather, to Angelina Russo. No way he'd let her be killed for the old man. So he passed the word back for Russo to do it. He hated to do it. Helluva thing. But sometimes you had to cut your losses. "Go ahead," he said. "Tell him to burn him."
Then they'd finally run down Troxell, the two-bit, whorehouse mouse of a shamus back in Cleveland or Cincy or wherever the fuck he was. Found out about Spain's daughter. Run that back to its origin points. Ultimately this whole fucking grab-ass began to make some sense. Of all people to go over the edge. Spain. He shook his head as he thought about what he should do — and in those few extra seconds he listened to the cop he'd ordinarily have hung up on as he told him, "I know a way to set this guy up but I have to know all about him and how this happened. If you cooperate with me I can guarantee we can get Angelina Russo back, number one, I can guarantee your safety, and I guarantee you we'll take this lunatic down." The more the cop talked the more Ciprioni thought it might work, against all his instincts. Who'd ever believe THIS shit — he smiled humorlessly — the cops an' ME on the same fucking side!
Eichord cinched the deal with some clever tap dancing about the charges that could be brought to bear in the ex-Mrs. Pat Spain, and a general amnesty number, and one thing and another that he thought he played by ear rather well. But long before Tony Cypriot could pack a bag Eichord had talked to the PI in Ohio about his client, and he was back on the phone to The Man.
"One thing I need day before yesterday," he told Cypriot, "is that film."
"What film?"
"What film? The film of Spain's kid. The snuff movie. I need it NOW."
"That's no problem," the man told him, and he called and had two prints on Eichord's desk before you could say "Anytime you're ready, C.B."
And not a minute too soon, either.
Jack Eichord was the official greeter when Cypriot arrived on his company's private Lear. Two bodyguards got off first and Eichord was surprised they didn't fit the usual defensive-left-tackle and nose-guard stereotype. Both were small men, extremely professional, and — like Tony Cypriot — looked like business-men but with a hard edge.
The man himself was distinguished-looking. A natty dresser in a two-thousand-dollar topcoat over quiet Savile Row banker's gray.
"What's he for?" he said to Eichord as a police photographer flashed a bulb at him.
"Publicity." Eichord told him about the setup he was planning. At first Ciprioni balked but it was too late to back out.
Jack said, "I give you the same guarantee as on the phone. We'll take this maniac down and you'll skate clear of your problem." He would be nice and safe in his bulletproof long johns. "He won't hurt you. I promise."
The snitch's Identikit composite had brought forth nothing from the St. Louis area realtors. Cops had been ringing the doorbells at motels, hotels, rooming houses, trying everything from trailer parks to camp-grounds, anywhere they thought there might be a possible trail. Nothing.
Ciprioni looked at the sketch in the car and nodded. "That's him okay, but you can't tell shit from the likeness." He started talking about the hooded eyes and the differently shaped forehead and nose and Eichord promised a touch-up from Weyland, as he visualized the SEE NO EVIL face in the airport gift shop in L.A.
As soon as Mel Troxell had run it all down for him he knew the man Spain was the one. It all fit together, and the killings of a couple of innocents along the way proved Eichord's hybrid theory. Spain was a maniacal schizoid assassin. One deadly and dangerous manhunter who had gone insane.
Ciprioni said quietly, "If that crazy fuck has hurt Angelina I wanna whack him myself," and Eichord thought he'd never heard the transitive verb "whack" as often as he had since he'd started on this investigation. Back home when you got whacked out it was on PCP.
"You know your attorneys have already okayed your deal. You've got complete, unilateral amnesty. So I got a question. The "Eyeball Murders" in L.A. . . . did your, uh, council order them?"
"Nah." Cipriona exhaled. "That's their country out there. Who knows from fucking California." He wouldn't give him anything extra. "That's somebody playing games with the eyes. Like sending the dolls with the pins in the throat. That's all Mustache Pete bullshit. We don't play that way."
"Was this Frank Spain's work?"
"Ehhh" — he shrugged —"who knows? He didn't always clip the numbers himself, ya know? He'd control the job. Hire the workers himself. That's the way he liked to work."
Jack fed the St. Louis area media a juicy photo story on the infamous "Godfather" Tony Cipriot who'd been placed under official police protection. He gave it to some key media friends around the country such as Letty Budge, who would give it lots of ink and mileage. He knew there was no guarantees that Spain read papers or watched television or turned on radios. But the word was also all over the street. Eichord had Gaetano Ciprioni. The man who, more than any other, could be considered ultimately responsible for the kiddie-pom business and therefore the torture and death of Tiff Spain.
Troxell the PI, who'd already been "debriefed" by the mob, had taken Eichord back along the trail of the Dawkins and Nunnaly plan to turn Tiff out as a pros. Met Troxell told him about the boy Nunnaly being killed in a traffic accident. About the missing Dawkins kid's probable fate, the disappearance of the daughter, and the why and wherefore of her death.
Eichord had put Jeeter Oliver to work. Jeeter was the cop shop's guy who handled anything related to motion-picture film, surveillance videos, and similar materials. Eichord was setting up his game in several different locations. Just in case. A couple of extra face cards in the deck, in case of . . . well, just in case. He'd pick locations where he thought Spain might be comfortable. Places he might trust again.
The Special Division had come alive with activity. Realtors and land owners and renters and managers all over the greater St. Louis area were being shown the newly revised revision of the Frank Spain sketch, which Eichord had presented to Bud Leech saying, "What's his name — Rebop? Your snitch?"
"Yeah — BeBop. Yeah?"
"Flaky little fucker's RIGHTEOUS. And give yourself a raise, by the way."
Eichord patted the big fellow on the back and strode briskly back to his temporary desk, leaving Leech scratching his head and saying, "A raise — what the hell is a RAISE?" But Jack hadn't seen that wide a smile from him in a while.
Eichord was taking care of the million and one loose ends that suddenly loomed large on his horizon. Checking out final details of his trap with Chief Adier, through the good offices of Victor Springer, playing it by the book now as he tried to think of everything. Stay one jump ahead. He had the last survivors of the Dagatina family picked up. He had people surveil Pat Spain's insurance hustler, the Dawkins and Nunnaly houses, everybody that manpower would allow. Covering the bases.
No sooner than the pictorial coverage of Tony Cipriot splashed onto the front pages than the switchboard plugged a call into the division and Springer was screaming at Jack, "RUN!"
And Eichord came tearing down the hall and picked up the phone on the lieutenant's desk, conscious of the ubiquitous Realistic recorder plugged into a telephone adapter jack, the machine taping every breath and utterance as he said, "Hello."
"This the cop in charge of the gang-related assassinations?" Eichord made the voice instantly and his flesh crawled the moment he heard the distinctively enunciated, oddly precise speech pattern.
"Yep. And you must be the one and only Frank Spain, right?"
"Very clever. So what?"
"I was hoping we could make some sort of a deal. You know we're not altogether unsympathetic to your situation. Who cares if some worthless vermin get wasted? We're on your side, believe it or not." He could hear his own voice selling too
hard.
The very measured, precisely calm tones in his ear saying, "I have no idea how stupid you are personally so I can only offer what I feel is sound advice and hope you take it. What you do not want to do is to bullshit me, can you comprehend this?" The voice overly precise. Frighteningly cool.
"I meant it about the vermin," Eichord said in his quietest tone. "We've got Ciprioni. We'd consider a trade for the innocent woman if we had certain assurances."
"Will you take a fucking cab?" Spain snorted. "You're either an idiot or you think I am to fall for such silly shit. Either way you're about to lose. What's your name — Officer Oehlert?"
"Eichord. But no, I don't think you're an idiot. I just think we have something mutually —"
"Whoa. Save us both time. Let me cut through. You have some barren, pitiful scheme to entrap me. Okay," he sighed audibly, "I know you have people at the phone company matching pairs and so on. Tell them to forget all that. I've been doing this for a lot longer than they have. By the time you figure out where I'm calling from I'll be long gone. You'll offer to swap that garbage you have in custody for the little lady. You have SWAT and tactical people ready and when I show up I get arrested. The music swells. You get the girl and ride off into the sunset, and the closing credits roll. I've SEEN those shows. No."
"Don't you think I know it is impossible for local fuzz to swap out live bodies?" Eichord started to answer but he said, "Put all that sophomoric DRECK out of your head. You with me?"
"Well, I don't know ..."
"Give it a rest." Spain laughed coldly. "CIA, now maybe THOSE assholes swap people but you guys don't. Well. So why I called you is, I'm going to tell you why your plan won't work and why you will do precisely what you just claimed. Why you WILL give me the scum Ciprioni. Because if you don't several more innocent people will die, not the least of whom is the buxom Miss Russo. Who, by the way, is not doing well at all. If I don't get what I want I don't believe she's going to pull through." Laughing again. For the first time Eichord thought the caller sounded crazy.