by Thomas Laird
‘Jake…How do I convince you that I ain’t got enough clout to know names the way you want — ’
‘You know who to ask.’
Marty groans and looks down at the appetizing plate of lasagna the waiter’s just set down before him.
‘You ruin a good meal, Lieutenant.’
But he takes his fork and stabs at his dinner, and then he takes a swallow of the food.
‘Best lasagna in the freakin’ city and you have to ruin my appetite. If I find this name for you, all other bets are off. I owe you nothing and you don’t pull this familia shit on me anymore. And you personally don’t get involved in busting my balls over my business. Does that sound fair, Jake?’
*
Marty’s call comes to me downtown three days later. I’m to meet him at the Loop Laundry at noon. Eddie and I are there waiting at 11.52.
The time passes as we wait for my cousin. First fifteen minutes. And then it’s suddenly 1.00 p.m.
A patrolman walks into the Laundry place, here on Monroe Street.
‘Lieutenant Parisi?’
‘Yeah,’ I tell the uniform.
‘You have a call from downtown. They said they couldn’t get you on your radio.’
We’ve left our radio in our unmarked car. Eddie and I go out to the vehicle on Monroe Street.
I make the call. I get the address, and then Eddie and I are on our way.
*
There’s nothing of Marty Genco really remaining. The roof of his car has been blown forty feet away from his Cadillac Seville. The doors have been hurled twenty feet to either side of the explosion, and the only thing recognizable as a piece of the body is on fire. My cousin has been reduced to a charred, overcooked beefsteak. There’s not enough of him left to fill a coffin.
There are plenty of other coppers on hand. Their word is that it’s a mob hit, pure and simple.
This kind of explosion looks to me more like something military. The level of overkill is what strikes me first. The Outfit kills efficiently. They’re usually very careful about trying to avoid hurting innocent bystanders. But this blast has sent shards of the auto’s glass into the scalps of some pedestrians who were at least a hundred feet away from the vehicle when the bomb went off.
‘It looks like they were blowing-up a fucking half-track, Jake, instead of a fucking Cadillac,’ Eddie says.
‘That’s the way it looks to me, too.’
‘You don’t think it was his own people?’
I look over at him. There are numerous FBI agents in the vicinity, so I don’t say anything more. We’re not involved in this investigation. Clarence Cahill is the Homicide cop on scene. Calling me was a courtesy because they know Genco and I are related. So Eddie and I bow out and leave.
*
I call Marty’s wife, Maria.
‘I don’t want to speak to you, you son of a bitch,’ she says over the phone. I’m calling her from my house in the northwest part of town.
‘I know you think I’m involved in this, but I’m not…Don’t hang up, Maria…I always liked Marty. You know I wouldn’t hurt him intentionally.’
‘So you did this unintentionally,’ she accuses me.
‘No. Somebody outside the cops and outside the Outfit did him. But I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.’
Her interest is aroused. She allows me to come over to their apartment in Berwyn.
Maria has kept her good looks. I was at their wedding, about twenty years ago. She’s in her prime, actually. Early forties.
And now she’s a widow.
But I sense anger more than grief in her attitude.
I walk into their flat on the third floor.
‘Who killed Marty, Jake?’
‘It wasn’t us and it wasn’t his own.’
‘Who’s that leave?’ she demands.
‘Did Marty say anything to you about why him and me were supposed to meet yesterday?’
‘He said you were squeezing his balls. That’s my job, Jake.’ She’s not smiling. Still angry. ‘I’m a widow, now…And I hear you might as well be a widower, the way it’s going for you and Eleanor…I never liked her much.’
‘What’d he tell you, Maria? It’s important. Much more important than starting a vendetta against me…Sure, I put his nuts in the vice, but that’s the way it goes when you’re in Marty’s trade…Come on, this is important.’
‘When’s the last time you had a woman?’ She’s not teasing me; she’s tormenting me. ‘Come on, Maria — ’
‘It’s about this Anglin guy, no?’
‘Yes. It’s about Anglin.’
‘Marty told me in bed three nights ago that this guy killed a major player and that if Marty even whispered the guy’s name we all might wind up like my husband just did.’
‘He didn’t even suggest who this victim was?’
‘I gathered it wasn’t anyone in the crew or in any of the crews in this city. No. It had to be a bigger name than anyone in the Outfit’s got. It’d be someone in the big headlines. You know, the bold print…You never answered my question, Jake. How long’s it been?’
I sit down on their love seat.
‘A long time…That make you feel better?’
‘Yeah. Because it’s going to be a long time before I have Marty again. A real long time, Jake. Does that make us even? I don’t think so.’
I stand and let myself out her door. Her stare follows me all the way out.
*
The explosion is definitely a military-type operation. Bombers usually leave their signatures on their blasts. We go into the files to see if anyone’s been using the kind of explosive utilized in this instance, and the only similar cases do indeed involve military-trained bombers.
My cousin was done by the same guys who’re shielding Carl Anglin. I’m convinced of it. I was about to get that very important name and someone caught wind of it on Marty’s side. Anglin’s people must have high-level contacts on both sides of the fence.
‘If you hear a click or two when you turn on your car’s engine, Jake, turn around in a hurry and kiss it goodbye,’ Eddie cracks as we sit at the lunch table by the vending machines downstairs.
‘Kill a homicide copper? Why do that, when you can have so much more fun messing with his brains over this thing?’
‘I hope you’re right, Lieutenant. Otherwise we both might get scattered all over the Gold Coast and Lakeshore Drive, some early morning.’
*
Who’d Anglin whack? They got the guy who did Jack Kennedy. What other big names have been done lately? Maybe it isn’t even an American. Maybe I’m thinking too close to home. Carl Anglin was a world traveler, after all. Perhaps it was some African overlord. Maybe a Sicilian family member.
And maybe it was a member of the American Spook Family who doesn’t get his name in the papers but is someone everyone in that small, clandestine world knows. Perhaps Carl’s killed a made man whose identity would prove embarrassing if it were brought out into the open.
My cousin was my last chance, I’m thinking.
Now the avenues are all closed for me. The Feds and the Bad Guys won’t tell me anything. The Spooks don’t talk to each other, let alone to a Homicide cop, and Carl Anglin still lurks in the alleys, free as the feral cat he’s always been.
*
Jimmy gets hit again. This time it’s in the other leg, in the thigh. Some guy detonates a mine, gets blown to pieces, and my son is standing close enough to him in a rice paddy to get clipped with some more hot shrapnel. The fragment barely misses the kid’s femoral artery, so Jimmy’s smiling all the way to the bank, he confesses. He’s not supposed to scare Eleanor, he understands, but he had to let us know of his ‘good fortune’.
My son goes back on line within five days of his injury. It’s his second Purple Heart, he tells us. He can’t wait for his two tours of duty to be finished, and now that he’s re-upped, he’s got a wallet-sized calendar and he’s marking off the days.
Jimmy asks me about the Anglin case. Whe
n I write him back, I tell him everything. I’m hoping my frustration might dissuade him from becoming the next gendarme in the family, but I don’t hear anything encouraging when he writes back each time with a continuing interest in my caseload.
The Greek is my confidant. He fills my glass and he refills it until I’ve arrived at our mutually agreed quota. He won’t let me stagger out of his place, and I keep telling him all the updates on the big murder cases I’m involved in.
There is only one case, no matter how many names are written on my section of the chalkboard downtown. There is only one.
The Greek’s only concern is that I give him first rights to all the gory details. I sit in his tavern in the late afternoons. The place is pretty empty at that hour. I tell him about my days, as if he were my wife. But he just smiles and sends me on my way each evening, which is why we get along so well.
I get into the car and I head home to Eleanor. But she’s not there even if she is there.
I remember Maria asking when was the last time I was with a woman. I can’t remember. But I remember my prostate acting up last year and the doctor telling me then to ‘use it or lose it’. And I can’t handle the self-abuse alternative.
This night I walk into Eleanor’s bedroom, which used to be our bedroom, and I burst right in. She sits up, shocked awake.
I begin to take off my clothes.
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Only a little.’
‘This is new. Tired of consorting with — ’
‘I’ve never whored in my life, Eleanor. I’ve been with no one else. Ever…Christ, Eleanor…I’m alone. I’m sick and I’m tired and I’m alone. For Jesus’ sake, have pity on me.’
She rises from the bed and comes over to where I’m standing.
‘I’m sick and tired and alone, too, Jacob. Where have you been, all this time?’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
[May 1999]
Special Agent Mason required information from us about the relocation of a material witness in an ongoing federal investigation. He was very unhappy with our insistence that we were ignorant about the matter. He thought we were full of shit. I’d like to have agreed with him, but I bit my lip.
He’d been nosing around Homicide for the last day or two. In and out of my office. Bugging the captain, who didn’t take well to irritants on account of his background in the Army Rangers in Vietnam. Our captain was more used to shooting people who pissed him off. He’d had a great deal of trouble adjusting to the politics of the police, but he’d made the change.
‘Is there something I can do you for?’ I asked, with the most malicious grin I could muster.
‘Don’t fuck with us, Parisi,’ Mason threatened. His leggy, gorgeous assistant special agent was standing beside him inside my doorway.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said and gestured to the young lady. She must have been fresh out of Quantico.
She smiled, but didn’t blush. I could picture her pulling the trigger on any perpetrator. Tough young woman.
‘You’ve got Theresa Rojas, and you’re going to be facing federal charges once we find out where you’ve stashed her.’
‘It’s been amusing, Mason.’
He wasn’t amused at all.
‘You don’t have any idea what you’re screwing around with, do you?’ he declared.
‘I heard that same message from someone else.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Carl Anglin. Himself.’
‘Look, Lieutenant. Anglin is old news. Beyond history.’
‘Then why does his name keep coming up?’
Mason reddened. Doc walked past them, into my rectangle of an office. He stood with his back blocking the view of Lake Michigan.
‘Hello, everyone. Especially hello to you, ma’am,’ he said warmly.
She did not return Doc’s amicable, toothy smile.
‘Ohh, I see. We’re fighting,’ Doc observed, grinning.
‘Lieutenant…I’m not going to give you another…notice. You’d better deliver Theresa Rojas in twenty-four. Last chance.’
He turned and waited for the great-looking special agent to head toward the elevators.
We’d been duly warned.
*
The Dr Engstrom business gnawed at me. The last time I’d called up the Food and Drug Administration, they’d told me that Engstrom was on extended vacation and that he couldn’t be reached — by beeper, cellphone, anything. If we ever got through to Theresa, we wouldn’t have his expert testimony on how someone’d kept a murder witness in hibernation for three decades. Doors kept slamming.
Carl Anglin kept a low profile. We kept an eye on him, but we couldn’t justify round-the-clock surveillance on him because he was not officially under investigation. The murders were over thirty years old. But we tried to maintain a daily check on his whereabouts by agreement with brother Homicide cops who went out of their way on their own time just to make Anglin sightings.
Well, the target had gone under for the last five days. His apartment was empty, according to the owner of the building on the nearby North Side. But Carl Anglin hadn’t broken his lease, the owner claimed. He was still paid up for six months in advance. It appeared the book deals and the movie deals and all the other spin-offs of his memoirs had kept our man’s head above water financially. He wouldn’t starve — and he wouldn’t pretend to go away permanently. We’d lost sight of him for two or three days on previous occasions but this was longer than usual.
On the sixth day Jack Brennan, a Homicide cop, called me and told me Carl was back in his place. Jack had seen him emerge onto the street from the North Side apartment just a few hours ago.
I wondered whether to be angry or relieved. I knew Anglin wouldn’t just disappear. He wouldn’t go under permanently. He wouldn’t be found in the Lake, face down or with a .22 slug in the back of his head, behind one of his ears. Anglin had the Feds by the very short hairs, and I figured that if he was as cute as I thought he was, he had another manuscript containing a lot of fascinating details locked up somewhere safe. And that prick literary agent of his was salivating to get it into print — but of course that would only happen if Carl Anglin fell victim to a terrible accident. Whatever trump card Anglin held was keeping the G at bay. Otherwise one small-caliber round would’ve dispatched our man long ago. You had to give Anglin credit for learning how to survive against bigger jungle animals.
*
I visited Theresa on Sunday nights. I had to be extraordinarily careful about seeing her. My wife Natalie dropped me off at Doc’s apartment building. Then I went out the rear exit of Doc’s complex, and I used his car to make my way to the small private hospital where we kept her. I knew they were following me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to lose them for much longer.
I had members of our own surveillance team at CPD check my car and my house for tailing devices. The Feds were big on electric toys. So far we hadn’t found anything, but they had very sophisticated devices that they used out on the street.
They’d find Theresa, if they hadn’t already. They had the men, money and time.
This Sunday night, I brought her her usual yellow rose. Her lips puckered a bit, and she damn near smiled. Or maybe it was just the angle I was watching her from.
I didn’t say much to Theresa. I’d already told her everything she needed to know. So I watched some TV with her, even though Sunday nights were vast wastelands on the tube. We sat together quietly and watched some movie-of-the-week nonsense. Occasionally she got up from her bedside chair and walked to her window. She looked out into the darkness, and then she went back to her chair and watched the rest of the show. Sometimes I bought her a bag of buttered popcorn from the cafeteria. Theresa enjoyed this treat. She ate every last kernel. I’d sip a Diet Coke and watch her gobble down the popcorn.
*
We moved Theresa to another hospital. This one was in rural Indiana, near a town named Lebanon. It was really isolated. And it meant I could pay her very few visits
because of the distance and the greater chance of one of us getting spotted.
She was not happy with the move. She liked the view of the city from her old room. Now she had only a view of several cornfields for amusement — that and the TV, of course. The Indiana location offered her greater security, but she was used to the noise of Chicago. Now the relative solitude might become unbearable for her.
I had to make elaborate plans just to see her. A faked fishing trip to nearby Quinn, Indiana was my ruse for being out of state. When it got dark, Doc and I decamped and headed home — with a side trip to the hospital.
I was fairly certain we weren’t tailed from Quinn, but there was no way of telling for sure. Our security people swept our vehicle before we left, and I didn’t see any aerial surveillance on our asses.
You never did see them, however.
*
Theresa seemed angry with me, this time. She wouldn’t even look at the yellow rose.
‘I won’t be coming to see you for a very long time,’ I told her.
This news seemed to soften her sullen expression.
‘It’s too dangerous. Someone might be following me, and they’re so good at it that I won’t even know they’re out there. So I won’t be coming out anymore unless…unless you get better.’
She flinched slightly.
‘Theresa…Do you really hear me?’
She looked out into the cornfield. Perhaps the field was the backdrop upon which Theresa Rojas replayed the horrors of 1968.
*
We walked into Susan Malkin’s North Shore apartment. We were almost out of the city limits — that was how far north we were. The lights had all been unplugged or broken.
The blood on the carpet looked black, like oil on a concrete floor, in the darkness.
Doc trained his flashlight toward the woman’s bedroom. Susan Malkin had not been heard from in three days. Her mother had become alarmed, had reported her to Missing Persons, and then the owner of this very elegant apartment complex had reported a strange smell emanating from the flat. But the owner was too spooked to enter the place himself, so it became a suspected homicide scene and here we were.
‘Police,’ Doc said loudly. ‘If anyone is in here, come on out slowly with your hands visible.’