by Thomas Laird
Juanito delivers me down the halls and out into the air and into the limousine. When he secures me inside the Cadillac, I feel almost disappointed that I’m still here, still breathing, still in this world.
Where do I run next? In which direction do I aim myself? Where will the wind take me now?
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Sheriff had men around the perimeter, just as we did. This was a cooperative bust, county and city.
Once Marco Karrios’s picture made it to the newspapers and other media, it only took a few days for all this to turn up. It appeared that Marco and Ellen had done their shopping at a store in the college town. One of the cashiers made him and her from photos, and then we found the farmhouse.
We were going in about 4.00 a.m. It’d still be full dark. There was not much to illuminate the area surrounding the farmhouse. Just one dim streetlight from out at the end of his quarter-mile driveway.
Everyone had their bulletproof vests on. If he was in there, we expected that he’d know we were coming. There was only one car parked in front of the house. It looked like a Camry, but we couldn’t be sure from where we were sitting.
I radioed the Sheriff’s people it was time to go. They affirmed, and Doc and Jack Wendkos and I got out of the Taurus. Jack took out his Nine, as I did. Doc removed the.38 from his holster. I had the Bulldog strapped, and I also had the switchblade in my pocket.
We moved up to the house. There were four cars in front and five behind the place. We were in communication with the Sheriff’s cops at the rear. We waited until the time we had set, and then two cops hit the front door with the horizontal sledge that we used to pop open doors. The jamb and panels splintered and we crashed inside.
There was no light as we barged in. Doc sought and found the switch in the living room. No one was in here. The Sheriff’s police rammed the back door, and now they were in the house with us. The bulb was in an overhead fixture and it made everything in the living room appear garish, nightmarish.
We saw the blood when we scoped out the rug. There were large pools of it and there were ropes of it threaded across the carpet. Someone had lost more than a few pints out here, and it was rather recent, too. The rug was still wet with the stuff.
Jack yelled to me from the bedroom. When he emerged, he leaned back against the wall near the doorway. His face had turned white in a hurry. Doc and I rushed past him into the bedroom.
Wendkos had turned on the overhead light in that room. The room was bright, like in a hospital.
Ellen Jacoby was hung upside down by her ankles. She dangled from the ceiling fan next to the globe of light. She’d been tom open, and her entrails hung out over her chest and face.
Marco had also taken the time to give her a Colombian necktie. He’d pulled her tongue and its connecting tendons out of her mouth and had looped it around her neck. It was what the drug guys from down south did to anyone who betrayed them.
Her throat had been cut, her eyelids severed, and there were too many stab wounds to count. She dangled just beyond the foot of the bed. There was another pool of blood beneath her. This job appeared recent. We hadn’t missed him by too many hours, but the ME would let us know how close we’d come.
‘This guy’s a fucking hound, Jimmy. We got to put him to sleep. She might’ve had it coming, but then nobody has all this coming,’ Doc said softly.
The Sheriff himself walked in behind us.
‘Oh my lord ... It’s like a slaughterhouse in this room.’
When we’d seen enough, we got out of there. There were policemen all over the farmhouse. There were cops out in that one-time cornfield. But Marco Karrios wasn’t here with the rest of us.
*
‘You could go on vacation today.’ Billy smiled when we sat down on his couch in the safe house in Evanston.
‘Yeah? Why?’ Doc asked him.
‘Because Jackie Morocco don’t allow shit like this to happen to his own family. That’s why,’ Billy laughed.
‘You saw that woman, Billy Cheech, you wouldn’t be laughing,’ I told my cousin. ‘This guy Karrios might think he owes himself an informant, namely you.’
Billy lost the grin and he gulped.
‘He tore her up real bad, I guess,’ he admitted.
We didn’t answer him.
‘I thought you said you’d protect me.’
‘Yeah. But from who? They’re standing in line to whack you, coz.’
‘Jimmy. You are gonna find this Karrios prick, aren’t you?’
‘That’s why they sign the checks, Cheech.’
‘Come on, Doc. You’re gonna haul in Jackie too, ain’t you?’
‘The Feds are in it with us,’ Doc told him.
‘See? It’s a done deal, then. The Feds take out the Big Man and Chicago’s finest deliver that fuckin’ Farmer guy.’
He gulped again when he saw that neither Doc nor I gave him any solid affirmation.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sal Donofrio is my contact to Jackie Morocco. He’s the guy I did business with. I know it’ll be difficult to ask him for any favors after they’ve heard about Ellen, but I’ll make him a fine offer. It’s one of those kinds of deals you just don’t turn down.
I arrive at his bungalow at 4.00 a.m. I arrive, of course, unannounced. I get through his screen door and his back door with a burglar’s pick. Things that Sal taught me. Sal’s a made man and a soldier, but his allegiance to John Fortuna goes only as far as Sal’s wallet. These men have no codes, other than greed.
But he wouldn’t help me out because his boss would kill him if he did, and so I have to put the screws to my one-time contact.
I lean over his bed. His wife is snoring. I jostle him lightly.
‘Huh?’
‘It’s me, Sal. Get up ... No, no, no. Don’t reach for the night table.’
I show him the blade.
He sits up slowly. His old lady continues to snore.
‘Whatta you want?’
I motion for him to leave the bedroom.
‘Don’t reach for anything, Sal, or I’ll do you just like I did your boss’s sister.’
He’s fully awake now.
We walk into his kitchen. I sit him down at the table.
‘I need a plastic surgeon. You know the guy I’m talking about. Up in Lake Forest.’
‘Dr Richmond?’
‘Yeah. I need a new face.’
‘And why the fuck would I help you get one?’
He’s a forty-year-old guinea. Short, squat. Wears all the usual gold around his neck. You can picture Sal standing out front of one of their private ‘clubs’.
‘Because I’ll tell Big John you helped me. I’ll let him know you tried to keep me going even after his sister got all cut up.’
‘He won’t believe you, you crazy motherfucker.’
‘He’ll believe me. He knows your end of the take on our business venture. He’ll believe you want me to get us up and running again. You’re losing a lot of cash by my being unemployed. No?’
‘It ain’t gonna work, Marco.’
‘Yes, it will. I get a new face. I disappear. I give you the same cut you’ve been getting — without Fortuna’s tribute. How’s that sound?’
He stares at me.
‘Or I could slice you and that Saturday-night cocksucker you’re sleeping with.’
I show him the blade.
‘You’re not such a bad man without your piece, are you, Sal? You ought to sleep with that .45 under your pillow.’
‘You talk to the boss and you’re dead. You better make sure this prick with a scalpel makes you look a lot different ... All right. I’ll call him ... You say we’re still gonna be in business together?’
I nod slowly.
‘We got three orders to fill from Thailand. They’re indirects, like always. Some business people from Germany and Switzerland are goin’ through our broker in Europe.’
‘I’ll be back in the saddle just as soon as the stitches come out ... We
have this Dr Richmond under certain restraints?’
‘John got him out of a hit-and-run homicide. The good doctor was drunk and he ran over some jogger running on the Outer Drive. He owes us major. It’s no problem.’
‘Call him, then.’
‘Now, Marco?’
I look at him and I turn the blade over and over in my hand.
‘You are one goofy motherfucker. Why’d you have to do John’s sister?’
‘She betrayed me.’
‘How the fuck did she betray you?’
I rip a slice across his cheek before he’s able to pull back. The blood ripples down his cheek.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ he cries out. He puts a hand to the cheek to stanch the blood.
‘Women always betray you. She was how they were going to get to me. She was the way the cops were going to find me. If you hook yourself to a woman, they’ll find a way to drag you down before they leave you. Haven’t you figured that out yet, Sal?’
‘Jesus God, you’re nuts.’
‘Get on the phone. Do it now.’
He continues to hold his wound and walks to the wall phone.
‘The bleeding’ll stop soon. I just nicked you. Tell her you did it shaving.’
He makes the call. I can hear that Richmond’s all pissed off at being awakened.
‘He wants to know when, Marco.’
‘Now. Forty-five minutes. At his clinic.’
He tells the doctor.
‘He says you’re crazy.’
‘Tell him the Sun Times’ll love a story about a surgeon who owes the Outfit big time.’
Sal repeats what I said.
Sal nods at me.
‘Forty-five minutes,’ he says.
*
‘I usually have a nurse to aid me.’
‘You’re working alone.’
He nods.
‘You understand what happens if anyone contacts the police about this procedure? You understand what happens if you put me under and decide not to go through with this?’
He nods again.
‘Sal will kill your wife and your two teenaged daughters. And your parents, both of whom are still living. Right?’
He nods once more and I finally see perspiration on his brow. Dr Richmond also serves as anesthetist this morning. He injects me and we begin.
*
I hide out at Sal’s when Richmond transports me there after the operation is completed. I’ll need to stay at Donofrio’s until Richmond can take the stitches out. Sal is not happy to accommodate me, but he’s sent his wife to her mother’s until I’m not around anymore.
When the stitches come out, I’ll have to color my hair. I’m going to be fitted with contact lenses that change these blue eyes to brown — as opposed to the way it is in the song lyrics. I’m going to buy eyeglasses despite my twenty-twenty vision, and I’m going to grow a mustache and beard. This will all take weeks, but Sal knows I keep my word. He knows I’ll rat him out to Big John and that I’ll kill him and his old lady as well. He knows how good I am at my work. He heard all the details about Ellen from their contacts at the police department. He understands how thorough I am. And there is always the element of greed, which is the final weight in convincing him to help me out. I’m his moneymaker. It would’ve been like a pimp killing his best whore if he’d done me. These guys are close to death all the time. What motivates them even more than survival is profit. They are the ultimate capitalists minus the restrictions. Businessmen.
The days go by slowly. Sal brings me videos. I have a taste for a woman, but it’s too dangerous until I’ve made my metamorphosis. I keep waiting to see a sign on this guinea’s face that he’s going to turn me over to Jackie Morocco, but the days pass slowly and uneventfully.
Then the good Doctor shows up at Donofrio’s bungalow to remove my stitch-work. He is very professional, very artful in the way he works. There is virtually no pain. When he is finished, he shows me his handiwork in a mirror.
‘The swelling and the bruises should be gone soon. A week or two. Here’s something for infection.’
He hands me a bottle of penicillin.
The doctor leaves us, and I start packing.
‘I’ll be in touch about that triple order within two weeks. Make sure you tell them the goods are on the way,’ I tell Sal.
‘You better keep your end of the deal, Marco. You squeal on me, you won’t have Big John to worry about no more. I’ll cut your eyes out myself’
‘Hey, we’re businessmen. This is business, isn’t it? We’re going to make a lot of money. Dying people all over the world standing in line for a shot at a new life. They can’t wait for all those generous donors. And the guys we have as customers have the cash to make it happen. They don’t have to stand in line. That’s the service we provide, Sal.’
‘You are a crazy motherfucker, Marco.’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
I take my bag. I put a hood up over my head, and I leave by his back door, just the way I came in here.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Karrioses were in their early seventies, but the old man, Niko, had jet-black hair with only a trace of gray on the sideburns. The mother, Elena, showed the cruelty of age more readily.
Doc and I had tracked them down. They lived in Kankakee. Quite a little ride south of the city. We again had to clear things through the local coppers, but everything worked out smoothly.
We sat in their two-bedroom home in a not-very-fashionable area of this town. He was a retired brakeman for the railroad, and she’d worked as a checkout person at a grocery store for thirty-six years. They’d come here as immigrants, Niko told Doc and me, but they wanted better things for their son. They wanted him to be a doctor, but the boy decided to join the Army when he was in his twenties, instead of finishing college. He wound up as a medic in the Gulf War, but he came home very different, Elena told us.
‘He never talk to us no more. He just live here a little while after the War is over and then he leave without telling us anything. He take his bags and he leave. We don’t hear from him again ... We was close, Marco and me.’
I looked up at the wall with the photographs. There was Marco, and there were his two parents, in several of the shots.
But there was also a photograph of a young woman in several of the pictures.
I rose and walked to the wall with the photos.
‘Who is this?’ I asked the two older people.
Elena Karrios stiffened.
‘She ... she was our daughter.’
‘Does she still live around the city?’ Doc asked.
‘She ... she’s dead. She been dead a long time,’ Niko responded.
‘So Marco had a sister,’ I mused.
She was blonde and stunning. Marco was photogenic, but his sister outclassed him by a wide margin.
‘Yes,’ Elena said. ‘She was Marco’s sister.’
It seemed it was difficult for her to get the words out. She almost spat them at the two of us.
‘Were they close?’ Doc questioned her.
The old man squirmed in his seat, next to Elena Karrios.
‘You could say they were close,’ Mrs Karrios admitted.
‘How’d she die?’ I queried.
Elena looked me squarely in the eyes.
‘It was an accident.’
‘Accident?’ I returned at her.
‘Yes. A car accident. She and her husband die in a car wreck,’ the old woman murmured. Tears came to her eyes, but she did not break. ‘All a long time ago. Hard to remember, now.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell us about Marco?’ Doc wanted to know. ‘If we catch him, he won’t hurt anyone else, and maybe no one’ll hurt him.’
‘You catch him, they kill him in prison. With what? Lethal drug?’ Niko said.
‘They might,’ Doc told him. ‘But it’ll be easier if we get him before John Fortuna’s people catch up with him. You know who John Fortuna is and you know it was his sister wh
o Marco ... killed.’
‘Yes. I read papers. I know who she was ... But we cannot help you anymore ... My wife ... my wife is sick. Her blood pressure is too high. She could have stroke. Please ... no more.’
I got up and thanked them, and then Doc and I began the long trip back to the city.
*
We finally set up a meet on that following Friday. It was at Fortuna’s place on the North Side. It was one of those Italian-American ‘societies’ that the Outfit has in a lot of neighborhoods where a crew is in charge.
All it said was ‘Italian American Club’ on the window of the joint. Doc, Jack Wendkos and I were meeting with Jackie Morocco. He had refused to sit down with the FBI unless they brought him in with a warrant. He knew my cousin Billy was on the run, so I guessed he figured he had some leverage over me.
He made his entrance like some kind of Hollywood star in a movie. He walked in with the long coat draped over his shoulders, unbuttoned, and some thug took it off him before he sat with us in a four-man booth. He planted himself next to Doc, sitting on the outside.
‘Lieutenant,’ John Fortuna said as a greeting.
He was about six-four. Tall for a Sicilian. He had the dark brown, glossy hairdo and a swarthy Mediterranean face. He even looked like an actor. But if you knew his reputation, you didn’t disbelieve when he spoke.
‘I want the killer of my sister found. I’m willing to cooperate.’
Someone arrived at the table with four tiny coffee cups and four tiny saucers. Fortuna drank his brew as soon as it arrived. The three of us left our cups untouched.
‘I want you to leave him to us,’ I told Fortuna.
‘I never thought of doing anything but,’ he said.
I was surprised he didn’t laugh at his own lie. But everyone at this booth knew John Fortuna was in heat for the blood of The Farmer.
‘I don’t want that FBI involved with Karrios,’ he said.
‘The case is ours,’ Doc affirmed.
‘Good. I know they want me because they think I’m somehow involved in this business, but I want you to know I had no involvement with Marco Karrios. His business is infamnia. You know what I’m saying, Lieutenant?’ he asked me.