by Thomas Laird
But there was no list of co-workers. The government had shredded any evidence of the exploits of Tactical Five. They were just fantasy, anyway. That’s what any prosecutor in the country would say if we brought all this up in public.
Our theory was just another Halloween scare, like the Orson Welles hoax about the Martian invasion.
‘Let it lie, Jimmy. It can’t go anywhere. They’ve covered their tracks with a mountain of sand. Anglin disappeared into it when he pulled the trigger. He’s a survivor. He understands what it takes to keep breathing in a river full of snakes.’
‘What if he goes back to our streets and starts it up again with some new young girls?’
‘We’ll have to deal with him if he does. Right now he’s gone beneath the surface. Maybe he’ll leave Chicago alone. Maybe he’ll go after a colony of prairie dogs in Nebraska. Maybe the fucker’ll slip and fall in the shower and he’ll break his sly little neck.’
The waitress finally emerged from her hiding place. She filled our cups and then she retreated to wherever it was she’d been hiding, waiting for the sun to come up and end her shift of slinging cheese sliders and pouring coffee.
‘You never thought you’d be involved in the murder of a President of the United States, did you, Jimmy?’
‘No. You’re right. We’re wading into deep water. It’s time to move on back where we can operate.’
‘That’s my boy. Don’t take it personal. Everybody’s gotta learn their limitations. It’s painful to reach that point of awareness, but there it is. We don’t get to hunt down Judas Iscariot, nor do we get to cuff Hitler or Mussolini. We miss out on a lot of justice. You just have to put things in perspective, James.’
We had to keep the evil genie confined inside the jar. We could never unscrew the lid and let him loose. Our caseload did not include the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
And Carl Anglin’s name had apparently been deleted, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
[June 1999]
The gang had been put on hold as far as Anglin was concerned. We had Tactical on round-the-clock watch over the Regals. The bangers had been told by our people to lay off. If they didn’t cool down, Tactical had promised them a roust like they’d never seen before. Our people let them know that all their business in the hood would be effectively shut down for as long as it took. The pressure seemed to work, since money was more important to them than one gang member’s sister. The urge to vengeance went only so far, then it was back to business as usual.
My mind wandered back to the conversation that Doc and I had had late at night a number of years ago. We’d been talking about Anglin’s big hit. The one that got him all this federal aid. I’d blurted out that I thought Carl Anglin had fired the head shot that had killed Kennedy. To my amazement my partner had agreed. We’d sat in some White Castle at near-dawn, having a few burgers and some coffee, and I remembered the chill that had hit my spine when Doc went along with my spoken-out-loud nightmare. Anglin had assassinated JFK, not Lee Harvey Oswald. And Anglin had had help.
Renny Charles was the help I’d had in mind when that horrible theory came into my head. Renny Charles, who’d taken a header out of his front-room window when Doc and I had first made contact with him.
I was going back to Charles. He might have been the key to finding out what had happened back in the 1960s. I was hoping that I was wrong. I truly was. I wanted Oswald to be the shooter. I wanted this whole matter to boil down to the murders of ten young women and nothing more. I didn’t need the complications. But the idea of a lone assassin still stuck in my throat like a dry hunk of Thanksgiving turkey.
I was not involving my partner in this one. He’d been right the first time we discussed this insanity. We should have got on with our caseload and kept our noses out of shit we couldn’t shovel.
I made my way back to Renny Charles’s North Side apartment in my family Chevy. This was off the clock.
When I approached his apartment building, it was 9.46 p.m. I checked my watch with the help of the nearby streetlamp. It was a moonless night. Hot, humid, the usual June Chicago evening just before the real summer hit the streets.
I didn’t have Doc’s little burglary kit, so I had to enter in the normal fashion, via a ring of the doorbell. I buzzed Charles’s apartment. No answer. I rang again. Same silence. So I buzzed his neighbors on the other two floors, and fortunately one of them responded. When I arrived at Renny Charles’s door, I knocked four times.
I could hear the guy who’d buzzed me in cursing when he realized no one was there for him.
I knocked four more times. Then I simply reached for the knob, and found that the door was unlocked.
I took the Bulldog .38 from my ankle holster, and then I walked inside.
Darkness. I reached for a switch. I clicked it up, but no light-bulb came on. The drapes were closed, so no illumination streamed in from the sidewalk outside. Light from the streetlamps was shut out.
I took two more steps — and a blow to my head sent me plunging down into Renny Charles’s carpet.
When I came round, I found I was sitting in a chair in the apartment. I thought I was still in the living room, but I couldn’t be sure.
‘Good evening, Lieutenant.’
I couldn’t see the source of the voice, but whoever it was was apparently seated directly in front of me. I decided to stand up. Then I remembered I’d dropped the .38. The Nine too was missing from my shoulder holster. The guy in front of me was holding all the cards. So I stayed seated.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m the Major.’
It hit me with a shock of revelation. He was the man in Tactical Five. The vague name we’d got for Anglin’s splinter group of spooks. ‘Why’d you sap me?’ I demanded.
‘Because it’d be a bit inconvenient for you to see me. Don’t you agree?’
‘All right.’
‘You were looking for Renny Charles?’
‘That must appear obvious…Major.’
‘I really am a major, you know.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
‘Lieutenant…I’m here because I want to try to help you.’
‘So you crack my noggin as a way to get acquainted.’
‘We could not meet in any usual way, but I’m sorry for the pain nonetheless.’
‘Where’s Charles?’
‘He’s deeply hidden, Lieutenant.’
‘Does that mean dead?’
‘No. You see, he comes under the umbrella that Mr Anglin has opened. We have an understanding with Carl. I’m sure you’ve guessed as much by now.’
‘Yeah. I figured he had your nuts in a vise over something pretty valuable to himself.’
‘Indeed. He has the greatest life insurance policy ever written. The big companies would be envious of Mr Anglin’s coverage.’
‘You didn’t kill me.’
‘No. I’m hoping I won’t have to.’
‘Why would you have to?’
‘Please, Lieutenant Parisi. Please. You know what this involves. You know that Anglin worked for us and that he was clever enough to insure his survival by leaving documents in the hands of people who could do this country very great harm. You’re a policeman, and that’s why I’m giving you this courtesy. But if you continue to look into Anglin as a suspect for the murders of — ’
‘He killed all ten of them, you son of a bitch!’
I was standing by then. But I remembered he had the weapons, and it was a useless gesture. I sat back down.
‘Yes, he did. He killed them all.’
‘And you want me to allow him to go on doing — ’
‘We are negotiating a solution for Mr Anglin. We are attempting to locate the owner or owners of the documents that serve as his protection from us — and from you, as well. Let us find the documents at their source, Lieutenant, and justice will be served. But if you insist on bulling your way into matters that don’t concern you…Well, that would be unfo
rtunate for both of us. Let us negotiate a settlement with Mr Anglin — ’
‘You haven’t been able to for thirty years. Why now?’
‘Remember there are things we are only just now discovering about World War Two. It takes decades, sometimes, to unearth evidence, facts…You have a family to consider, Lieutenant. Your wife is a police officer, too. You have three lovely children — ’
‘You threaten my family — you come near my house, you or any of — ’
‘None of that will be necessary if you just leave him to us. Think, Jimmy. Think.’
I wanted to grab one of my missing weapons and light up this room with gunfire.
The Major went on: ‘I have no desire to harm you or your family. You must provide them with protection. You must ask yourself if an animal like Carl Anglin is worth the risk…Is he?’
‘It’s my job. It’s what I do.’
‘Your job does not entail digging up the agony that this country endured over thirty-five years ago. This nation survived the pain. We put matters to rest. It serves no purpose of justice to dredge it all back up. And those girls will have their justice if you will only allow us to pursue Mr Anglin in our own way. Doesn’t that satisfy your personal and professional needs?’
‘Why should I trust you? You’ve let him slide, and because you did, he’s murdered three more young women.’
‘Carl Anglin was one of the best field operatives I have ever trained. His hard heart made him the perfect assassin. It didn’t matter who his target was. It was simply a task to be performed. He was also one of the best shots I have ever seen. Anglin could do head shots at more than 200 meters. The best pair of eyes I’ve ever encountered. Then he came home and did jobs in South America and Central America. And finally he was on the beach at the Bay of Pigs. Anglin was taken prisoner. He was raped and mutilated in prison. They cut off one of his testicles in that jail. But he escaped with some Cuban nationals and made it back to Key West. The jail thing turned him into something worse than an assassin. He’d always had a problem with women…You see, it was a female at the prison who cut off one of his balls.’
‘And I’m supposed to feel sorry for the puke.’
‘No. I just thought you might be interested in Anglin’s history…Let me take care of him, Jimmy. We’re almost home. Can you trust me for, say, one more month?’
‘He and Charles did John Kennedy, didn’t they?’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘Lee Oswald couldn’t hit a barn with a bowling ball.’
‘Absurd. No one would believe such a lunatic story.’
‘But it’s true anyway, isn’t it, Major?’
‘This is my last offer. Let him go. Things will become very unpleasant for you if I ever have to talk to you again.’
Then it was silent in the apartment.
‘Major?’
No response. I waited a full two minutes before I got to my feet. Then I stumbled toward where the voice had come from. I found the chair, its seat still warm from the Major’s body. And I found my .38 and my Nine lying on top of the seat. There was a lamp next to the chair. I switched it on, and the dull glow from the low-wattage bulb barely illuminated the living room. He must have run out the back, through the kitchen. I switched lights on as I proceeded to the back.
There was no trace, though, of the Major. He’d slid out of the place as noiselessly as he’d arrived. I felt the welt his sap had made on the back of my head. Then I remembered my most dangerous blunder: Telling him about Anglin and the Presidential whack. My idea was so humiliatingly idiotic when spoken aloud that the Major knew no one would believe me if I repeated it. So many conspiracy nuts had claimed to know the identity of the ‘real’ slayer of JFK that even to speak about the subject had become a joke. Like Elvis sightings and UFO abductions. I wouldn’t be able to get a soul to believe my theory about the true history of Carl Anglin, so the Major didn’t really feel threatened by me.
But he wanted me to back off from Carl because he thought he could free the G from the threat of Anglin’s blackmail document. That document had to be a hell of a lot more convincing than a lone Chicago Homicide cop with a squirrelly notion of who’d killed a famous American President.
The Major must have come across new information about where Carl had stashed the goodies that kept the Spooks from his door.
Anglin had no such deal with me or the Chicago Police Department. He was just another piece of shit to us — and especially to me.
No, the Major wouldn’t come after me unless I put Anglin in a position to tell all to the media. He wanted a month. He’d already had three decades.
He couldn’t stop going after this butcher. And neither could I. I told Doc about my evening at Renny Charles’s place and my partner went into a rage.
‘Let’s go have a talk with Mason.’
‘Wouldn’t do any good. I don’t think Mason knows the Major. This guy is Superspook. I never heard him before he conked me, and I never heard him get out the room, either.’
‘He’s flesh and blood, Jimmy. Screw him. Let’s go find him.’
‘No. He made his threat. He wants us to lay off Carl for a while because he thinks he can take off his other nut. He thinks he can defuse him. They must have located Anglin’s “representative”.’
‘When they do, they’ll kill Carl.’
‘Like swatting a fly hovering over shit.’
‘And we’re supposed to sit back and let them do our business?’
‘I was hoping you’d see it that way.’
‘Shit, you scared me.’
‘Anglin put his piss-scent on our territory. He doesn’t get any free rides…Tell your wife to keep her eyes open, anyhow.’
The first look of personal concern crossed Doc’s face. He was a husband and a father, just like me.
I tried to reassure him: ‘I don’t think this spook wants to put the hurt to any of ours — or to us, either. I think he just wants us to know he could, if he felt like it. Power ball, with the big dogs playing.’
‘I taught Mari how to shoot. She carries a legal weapon in her purse. I’ll tell her to stay heads-up.’
Doc had set me thinking about Natalie and my three kids. Natalie could take care of herself. But my three children were innocents, of course.
‘He doesn’t want a shit storm with the CPD,’ I said.
‘No. Hell no, he doesn’t.’
We were whistling in the dark, past the graveyard.
So I had our evidence people dust Renny Charles’s apartment for prints.
One day later we got some positive news. There was a clear thumbprint on the back doorknob. The print was scanned by the FBI’s lab, and we had a name.
Frederick K. Martinson.
Frederick K. Martinson had been killed in Desert Storm. A major in the Army’s Ranger Unit.
The other prints in the flat came from Renny Charles and a few other sources that had no copy in the FBI files. Which meant they were neither criminals nor military.
The Major really was a ghost. He had the hands of a man who’d been dead for eight years.
*
I put Natalie on high alert. I explained to my two older children that they were to be very wary of any adult they didn’t know who tried to get them to go off somewhere by telling them that Natalie or I had been injured and was in a hospital. I told them to be aware of the bullshit spiels that’d trick them into getting into someone’s vehicle. My boy and girl were pretty street-smart, so I was confident they wouldn’t fall for some line.
I’d warned my mother to be wary of anyone coming to our door with a story that would require her to take off, with the baby in tow, toward a hospital.
I’d asked too for a squad car to keep a very high profile in our neighborhood. Especially at night when I was at work. The desk sergeant had been very cooperative. He knew I was working on Anglin.
If the Major didn’t take Anglin out of play in a month, I’d be waiting. But I was not going to sleep much during the nex
t four weeks. I was still after him. Full-time. Just as it was before.
Because Carl Anglin was not finished. He’d never have enough. Losing half of his manhood might have been the spark for all this carnage, but there’d been plenty of hate and viciousness in that scrawny-assed body even before that female Cuban cop had started to cut at him.
Anglin was my business. He was in my district, my parish. The Major wouldn’t beat me to him. My father had started this long chase, and I was going to be there, waiting for Carl Anglin, at the end of the line.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
[July 1999]
After two years in Burglary/Auto Theft, my wife Natalie joined the crew. She became a Homicide cop. A member of the fraternity. Doc and I and Eleanor and Mari, Doc’s wife, and my three children were at the ceremony where she got her promotion.
‘Detective,’ I said to her.
‘Lieutenant,’ she responded. And then she began to cry. And Eleanor and my eldest daughter Kelly began to sob along with her. Soon Mari had to join in. Doc and I and my son and the baby Mary, had the only dry eyes in the vicinity. Natalie’s side of the family had moved to Pennsylvania and couldn’t make the trip because they were coming to see us over Christmas. It was crowded enough around my wife. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt as up as I did then.
There hadn’t been much to feel elated about recently. The welt on my head had finally started to go down, though. The Major apparently knew how to use a sap. It told me he might once have been an M.P. in the military. At least he was no pencil pusher. He’d showed up in person to contact me, and that also told me something about him. He didn’t always pass the dirty work to underlings. He had the sack to do it himself when necessary.
We took the newest member of Homicide to a fancy place in Oak Park — The Elms. It served over-priced food, but it was good, and my wife deserved the swank of it. For too long I hadn’t seen her as much as I’d have liked because of the Anglin case, and she’d been busy moving upward in her career too. I told myself that we were going to take our vacation days together, and later, at The Elms, I confirmed that with Natalie. We were taking five days in southern Wisconsin. We were going to lie on the beach during the daylight hours and we were going to become reacquainted in the bedroom in the evenings.