by Thomas Laird
‘There are more ways to abuse someone than just the physical way, Michael.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you? I never got any serious wounds in the war, but what I saw left its marks. Here.’
I pointed to my head.
‘But they’ve gone away, haven’t they?’
‘Why, Michael? Just because I don’t scream in the middle of the night? I get cold sweats all the time. My breathing becomes irregular. My heart palpitates. I have anxiety attacks like you wouldn’t believe. I have to get up and walk around before they’ll leave me alone. I’m not trying to make your problem look smaller than it is, because it’s a big deal. But this counsellor was right. You have to learn to live with your pain. And you can’t let it hop on your back like a goddam jockey, Mike.’
He looked straight ahead, out the window of the van.
‘I’m getting better, Pa ... I really am. It’s just sometimes ...’
‘Yeah, that sometimes is a bona fide bitch, ain’t it.’
I tried to smile, but my face wouldn’t allow it. Michael kept watching the traffic ahead of us on this salted, sloshy Chicago boulevard.
*
Rico Perry was still in the pink. We brought him in for questioning the first week in January about the murders of his two bro yos, Ronnie Jenks and Bobby Howard. We were sitting in the downstairs interview room, here in the Loop.
‘You shoot your two main men, Rico?’ Jack asked.
The kid’s slow eye or droopy eye was looking at me and his good eye was planted in Jack’s general vicinity. The split stare was almost unnerving.
‘Hail naw!’ he laughed.
‘Don’t kill your own kind?’ I asked.
‘This a roust. I want mah lawyer.’
‘You make that call and we’ll be here the better part of the day,’ I explained. ‘You’ll have to wait til that shitbag attorney of yours drives all the way down here —’
‘Aw right! What you want?’
You put this kid in any kind of athletic uniform and you had a blue chipper. He just looked like a natural jock.
‘We want you to tell us why you killed Arthur Ransom and the old lady, Dilly.’
He saw that I was serious, that I wasn’t playing with him the way coppers always had. He’d been questioned before. Rico was an old pro at fifteen.
‘You admit to what you did, and the prosecutor might go juvy with you.’
‘I ain’t did Arthur what-the-fuck’s-his name. And I ain’t did none of that old bitch, either.’
I slammed the palm of my hand against the back of his chair and he flew forward and almost hit the table in front of him with his face.
‘You can’t lay no hands on me! I know my —’
This time Jack slammed the back of his chair. He was taken unawares yet again, and that bad eye seemed to be gathering moisture after he nearly met the surface of the table once more.
‘I want my lawyer! Now!’
‘Sure. You can go,’ I told him.
‘For real?’ he asked.
He wasn’t buying his good fortune.
‘You gon’ whack me in my fuckin’ haid if I get up, ain’t you.’
I nodded and smiled.
‘You cain’t do none of that shit. I know my motherfuckin’ rights!’
‘So get up and leave,’ Jack told him.
‘This ain’t right. All y’ all doin’ is trying to motherfuckin’ coerce me into saying I done the old man and old woman.’
‘The Constitution gives you your rights, Rico. You can leave,’ Jack repeated.
‘For real?’ he asked.
For the first time in the interview, he sounded like a frightened little boy.
‘For real, Rico. G’wan. Get out.’
He rose slowly. Then he saw we weren’t going to come at him again, and he regained his West Side strut and left the interview room.
‘We don’t have jack against him. Not even his two buddies to flip him, Jimmy.’
‘You’re right. But at least he knows we like him very very much.’
*
Natalie had us signed up for a fitness centre in one of the Northwest suburbs. It was so expensive that we couldn’t afford not to go regularly. We took the toddlers with us because they offered free child care — and that removed a load off Eleanor, who was becoming a bit too familiar with our girls.
I’d been doing weights and running. I’d also stopped looking for instant gratification. The Redhead did not buy junk food for our household any longer, and it had mightily pissed off Michael, who seemed to be getting just a fraction better after each of his counselling sessions. But Natalie bought fruits to replace the chips, dips and salted snacks. Michael had given in and now ate apples instead of Fritos.
I’d lost six pounds in two weeks. My collar was getting looser and so was my waist button.
But she didn’t sign me up primarily because of my weight gain. Natalie was too sly. She had another agenda. She was trying to run me out of mid-life burnout, and we both knew it. Red had spied the black dog running loose in our household, and she refused to let that dark canine feast on my self-pity and depression.
But she had never suggested that I go back to the CPD shrink. I’d been there and done that.
She was trying to help me sweat out this evil that had crept inside one of my weak spots, one of my apertures. She was trying to draw it out, the way you’d lance a boil. You either did a little cutting and draining or you learned to love the sheer agony and misery of self-defeat. I knew all that without having her explain it to me, and I knew that she knew that I knew it.
All this vile shit on my plate. The Count, Arthur Ransom and Dilly, the four Goth princesses. Low and high profile vile shit. The business that I was born to labour at. Murder. And the faces that attended each of them. It was as black as the black dog itself.
Run, Jimmy, my wife was telling me. Run it off. Swim it off in the Olympic-sized swimming pool at the club. Lift weights that’d take the place of the real weights that burdened me. Keep moving, she begged.
Don’t look back. Do anything else, but for Jesus Christ’s sake, don’t look over your shoulder. There was no retreating in the homicide business. The only way out was straight ahead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I didn’t want to think about him. I didn’t want to bring back any memory of the connection he had to my life.
Abu Riad. He was the gangbanger chieftain who was responsible for the death of Celia Dacy, the black woman from Cabrini Green who lost her son, and then tried to take her revenge out on Abu Riad himself. Three of his henchmen had been responsible for Celia’s son Andres being shot in a drive-by situation in front of Cabrini several years ago. Celia finally went after the head of the snake himself, and she was shot to death for her trouble. We were in love at the time, and although it could have cost me my job — you don’t get involved with anyone involved in your cases — I had thought about marrying her. It was that serious.
Now he came back to haunt me with Arthur Ransom, Dilly Beaumont, and two faceless bangers, dead in a West Side alley.
‘Why didn’t you bring him up before?’ Jack asked.
I explained about Celia and her son Andres.
‘You think he might be behind all these killings?’ Jack wanted to know.
‘I think he’s behind most of what goes on in that neighbourhood. He hides behind his version of Islam. He pretends to be a religious neighbourhood champion. Black rights. But he’s a gangbanger and he’s always been nothing but a thug. And I didn’t want to bring him into play for personal reasons and I was wrong, Jack.’
Wendkos nodded.
The ride to the West Side was becoming routine, but it was never without tension. As always, we were accompanied by two black uniforms.
Abu Riad — real name, Charles Jackson — resided in a fine brick ranch home. The West Side used to be prime property a half century ago. Now it resembled Berlin in 1945 when the Allies marched through a blown down scene of devasta
tion. The West Side was pretty close to a double of Berlin at the end of World War II. The buildings were just slightly more vertical than the German dwellings of almost sixty years ago.
‘Hello, Charles,’ I said as he opened his front door for the two of us.
I was surprised. Usually you saw his two bodyguards before you were allowed to be in his presence.
I called him Charles because no one was allowed to call him by his legal name.
‘Lieutenant Parisi.’
‘This is Sergeant Jack Wendkos,’ I informed him.
‘What happened to Gibron?’ Riad wanted to know.
‘You remember my partner?’
Riad nodded.
He was shaved bald. It was the fashionable thing to do in the hood, these days. He was a shade taller than five eleven but he always claimed to be six one on his sheets at the police department. He had a handsome face. Very black, very African. He’d been a fair athlete in high school — football and basketball. Abu Riad had been All City in both sports. But the call of the streets was stronger for him than the lure of the college athletic recruiter, so he made his living in the hood off the misery of others. He portrayed himself as a civic minded member of the community. The CPD knew him as a criminal, but he hadn’t been caught to date. He was Teflon, nothing stuck to him no matter how hard the city or the federals tried to make a case on him. Abu Riad always managed to have someone else shoulder his weight.
‘We’re here to ask you about those two dead boys in the alley. You know? The ones minus their faces?’ I asked.
‘You know I don’t have anything to do with violence. Especially in my own neighbourhood.’
He spoke very grammatically when he was in the presence of cops and reporters. When it was just another yo or yoette, he could talk that talk just as easily.
‘They were two of your own. Two little Vice Kings,’ Jack said.
‘I do not affiliate with any street gang. You both know that.’
Hell, he ran them. We both knew it. He knew that we knew it. It was the little game we played.
‘We think those two and a kid named Rico Perry were responsible for the murders of Arthur Ransom and Dorothy Beaumont.’
‘I don’t know those two names,’ Riad explained.
‘I’m sure you don’t. But you gave the order on them both. You had Arthur burned because that was their initiation. Then you had the old lady done because you heard she talked to Jack and me.’
‘That’s absurd, Lieutenant. Are you trying to make headlines by connecting me to some gangland killings? If you didn’t come after me, they’d just be —’
‘Low profile,’ Jack offered.
‘Yes. Indeed. Low profile. Indeed,’ Riad smiled at my younger partner.
‘There ain’t no such thing, Charles. You will fall, one day. It’ll make the biggest boom this forest ever heard. Just wanted to let you know we were thinking of you.’
‘How many years that bitch been gone now?’ Riad smiled.
I lunged, but Jack got between us.
‘You ever refer to her by that word again and I’ll tear your eyes out.’
Jack pulled me back from the still-smiling banger.
‘Been so nice to see y’all again.’
Then we were out the door as he slammed it behind us.
*
‘He ordered it. There’s no doubt in my mind.’
‘You should’ve let me in on it sooner,’ Jack said as we drove east on the Eisenhower Expressway.
‘I didn’t want to bring it back to him. I knew it all along, but I didn’t want to have to deal with him again. It got too personal, with the way Celia Dacy died.’
‘I understand, Jimmy. But shit. This is a homicide investigation. Don’t leave me out of the picture again, all right?’
‘I’m sorry, Jack.’
‘Okay. It’s okay. Just consider me the way you would Doc.’
‘All right. That sounds fair.’
Jack smiled, and we headed for the Loop.
*
We went after Janet Meyerson with everything we had. She was the only link we had with Maxim Samsa — aka Albert Finnegan. We set up an interview with her downtown, but she insisted on having a lawyer with her. His name was Terrence Raddigan. He was a very expensive downtown mouthpiece who rarely litigated. I’d known him for almost twenty years. He specialized in druggies and Outfit members. The guy wore a ponytail and was a throwback to the late sixties. Thought of himself as a radical.
‘My client is here in order to cooperate in a murder investigation,’ Raddigan announced as we were seated in the interview room that we Homicides used.
‘Very nice speech, Terrence. Your client is a solid citizen,’ I smiled.
Janet Meyerson wasn’t wearing her black uniform or her white pancake face this afternoon. She looked like the affluent Gold Coaster she really was. Well-dressed, well-groomed. Clean and squeakily so.
‘Where do you suppose we could find your friend Maxim?’ Jack asked.
‘My client has no knowledge of Mr Samsa’s whereabouts.’
‘You want to let her answer for herself, Terrence?’ I asked.
He nodded, and then he swished his chestnut brown ponytail as if he were a stallion swatting flies.
‘Where would you look if you wanted to find him?’ I asked again.
She was a pretty girl, but not a beautiful one. She was too gaunt, too razor thin.
‘He always contacted me. I never sought him out. He lived in that apartment where you went after him. I never knew of any other place where he crashed.’
‘You don’t have a phone number, then?’ Jack asked.
‘Just the one at the old apartment.’
‘Does he have other friends?’
‘I never heard him talk about anyone,’ she told me.
‘But you told me you were committed to him,’ I said.
‘Yes, but that doesn’t include ownership, Lieutenant.’
She never smiled. I don’t think I ever saw her teeth to date. I wondered if she had any of those implanted fangs where the canines ought to have been.
‘So this guy shows up whenever it’s convenient for him, and you’re supposed to be on call like some doctor whenever he wants to see you,’ Jack told her.
She didn’t answer. The lawyer’s ponytail swished again. I very badly wanted to take my switchblade and remove that redundant hair with one slash. But I controlled my desires.
‘If your client winds up being much more involved than she’s let on, I’m going to open up the flames on her soles, counsellor,’ I warned him.
‘My client, Ms Meyerson, has been nothing but forthright and cooperative. Is that all, gentlemen?’
‘What’d you do with all that blood, Janet?’ I asked.
It seemed to surprise her.
‘What’d you do with all that blood he took out of those two women? Was it a ritual? Some kind of blood rite?’
If it was possible for Janet Meyerson to appear even more pale than her natural complexion, she had now achieved a bloodless, deathlike pallor.
‘I don’t know anything about ... My God! What are you talking about?’
I began to wonder if she was simply Samsa’s rich-bitch squeeze. Something from the outside. I wondered if she might not really be unaware of what Maxim had been up to during the two killings.
‘He drained almost all their blood, Janet. He must have had some reason for doing it. He must have had some purpose for —’
She tried to rise, but she swooned, and her lawyer caught her before she crashed onto the tile floor below her.
‘Jesus! Did you have to go that far with her?’ Raddigan bellowed. I thought he was truly angry for maybe the first time in his career.
Jack helped her sip some water. She regained her consciousness and her composure as Jack attended to her, and then we let her go.
*
‘You think Samsa’s partying with other folks with this blood ritual?’ Jack asked as we sat in the cafet
eria at the downtown headquarters.
‘Either that or Janet Meyerson’s the finest little actress I’ve ever seen.’
‘She was good, wasn’t she.’
‘Better than good. She was being real, Jack. Nobody’s that good.’
‘So Meyerson’s a dead end.’
‘No. Not really. We have her phone tapped. We have her surveilled. I think maybe Maxim has something in mind for her and maybe for her three other girlfriends too.’
‘You think he wants to create some more personal blood banks?’ Jack asked.
‘I wouldn’t think it was beyond reason. He knows there’s pink flesh beneath that playhouse make-up they wear.’
‘You want the other three to have taps and shadows?’ Jack asked.
‘We can afford it. Remember, this is the high profile case. Just ask the boys at the Tribune and the Sun Times.’
The newspapers had both been running a series on The Count and his two victims.
‘You read a word about Arthur or Dilly or the two faceless bangers?’ I asked.
He shook his head. But I wasn’t happy I’d won the argument, if that’s what this was.
*
Vampire cults. Satanism. Hoodoo and voodoo.
There weren’t too many places to go to do research.
I tried to do what my father Jake, the homicide copper, taught me. To think the way my enemies thought. That was a very old Sicilian adage. But it was a matter of survival too. You didn’t put yourself in the other guy’s shoes, you’d be receiving a size ten toe tip in your ass end. You had to try and jump one move ahead of the other guy. The opponent. The enemy. The perpetrator. It didn’t matter what you called him. He was the opposition, and this was a lethal contest.
*
The Captain was unhappy. The Captain was unhappy because his superiors were unhappy. And everyone downtown knew that shit flows downhill.
‘You got anything?’ the redheaded ex-Army Ranger asked.
‘We’re tapping the phones of those Goth girls that we saw him with before he ran away,’ Jack explained.
‘But you don’t like this Meyerson woman as a real tie to Samsa anymore?’ the Captain asked me.
‘I think he’s got other playmates, but we haven’t sighted them yet.’
‘When do you plan on making contact, Lieutenant?’ the Captain wanted to know.