by Thomas Laird
‘What kind of players?’ Jack asked.
‘You are gonna keep me out of this, no?’
I nodded, and I gestured with a roll of my right hand for him to continue.
‘From what I heard ... I hear shit that I should probably forget around here ... I hear that they come from families with big political connections. You know. Well-heeled Gold Coast motherfuckers. Like that.’
‘The ’zine arrives tonight,’ I repeated.
‘Not until after midnight. But they’ll appear almost the minute I lay the copies on the shelves. It’s like they know exactly when to blow through that front door.’
‘Who publishes this thing?’ Jack asked.
‘Nobody anybody’d recognise. It comes out of a basement, man. It’s like extremely crude. Some fucker does it with a computer and a printer and a stapler. No copyright — comprendo?’
‘Personal publishing,’ I said.
‘That would elevate the quality,’ T. Johnson explained.
‘If these two don’t show tonight,’ I warned him, ‘I’m going to think someone informed on us, Tee.’
The blush accentuated his pock scars.
He raised his hands in surrender.
‘I always cooperate with the gendarmes, man.’
‘If I think you dropped the silver coin on us with the albino and his lady, I’ll sick Lady Dracula on you. You know. The sweetheart with the fangs who just left,’ Jack grinned.
‘You cops like to fuck with people’s heads. Don’t you.’
‘It passes the hours, braindead,’ Jack replied.
‘You wouldn’t really put that bitch on me, would you?’ he begged.
‘We’ll be back tonight, Sparky,’ I told him.
‘What the fuck’s a sparky?’ T. Johnson moaned.
‘It’s the old nickname for the electric chair,’ Jack told him, with a smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We were waiting outside the ’zine store. Jack and I were in the Taurus, and I was once again emulating Doc Gibron by listening in on the jazz station from Evanston with earphones I stole from my eldest daughter Kelly’s room.
I was starting to appreciate the jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. I thought I heard he was from Chicago, but I always confused Jamal with Ramsey Lewis, another piano player I was learning to admire.
Before we arrived out here by the underground magazine store, I had done some phoning to Tactical about Joellyn Ransom. She had not been spotted anywhere near Abu Riad in at least three weeks. In fact, Tactical hadn’t eyeballed Arthur’s granddaughter for a month. I made a mental note that Jack and I were going to have to have another face-to-face with the young lady I was convinced had been involved in the demise of her grandfather.
And I received a call a few hours earlier from the Prosecutor’s main office that Father Mark had indeed been indicted for child molestation. They seemed confident that my son Mike would have to take the stand if there were a trial. I called Mike after I spoke with the Prosecutor, and my son never blinked when he told me he was ready to serve as the state’s witness against the priest. I almost choked up during the conversation with my boy because I don’t think I had ever been as proud of him as I was when he responded as he did.
‘You sure you want to see this through,’ I told him.
‘Yeah. I’m sure, Pa.’
‘If he’s got a good lawyer, he’ll try to make you look like you were compliant.’
‘I know, Pa. You already warned me.’
‘It’s no holds barred in a courtroom, Mike. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘You don’t need to protect me, this time, Pa. I got it straight in my head.’
‘You certain?’
‘Pa’
‘Mike ... I ...’
‘I can do this thing, Dad.’
My chest swelled, and I wanted to hold him, but he was too big for public embraces.
*
It was well after 1:00 a.m. We were still awaiting the albino and his lady friend with the great root job. The radio station I was listening to was doing a tribute to The Modern Jazz Quartet. Just when they were about to play the Quartet’s Greatest Hits, a black Jaguar pulled up to the curb in front of the ’zine store.
The albino had long, platinum blond coloured hair — just like the tall, willowy female creature who got out of the passenger’s side of the black Jag.
We let them both enter the building. I wanted to give them time to grab a copy of their favourite vampire periodical. When I figured we had waited long enough, Jack and I got out of our copper ride.
They had just been rung up by the proprietor of the mag shop. We had our IDs in their faces as they turned to see who was behind them. The white-haired albino showed us both a pair of no-shit fangs and he hissed at Jack and me. Before I could control my instincts, I saw my own right arm and hand with the .44 Bulldog at the end of them both extended and pointing right at the fangs the albino had flashed us with.
‘Jesus, man!’ the male blurted.
He’d closed his mouth very quickly.
I could see the protrusions beneath the skin of his girlfriend’s cheeks. She opened her mouth and bared her set of false fangs for Jack’s benefit.
The woman didn’t hiss when she bared her over-large canines. But the effect was still a bit discombobulating, to say the least, because the next thing I saw was Jack’s Nine in the lady vampire’s face.
‘Shit, man!’ she protested.
‘We don’t bite, for Christ’s sake,’ the albino exclaimed.
‘Funny, you had both of us fooled,’ I told the two.
Jack lowered his piece, and then so did I. When we saw that they weren’t going to employ their unusual choppers, we put the weapons back in our holsters. I could hear the two children of the night huff out some air of relief.
‘What is it you want?’ the blonde she-vampire asked.
‘We’d like to know all about that special little publication you’re both palming in your cold-blooded hands.’
The female didn’t flash any of her teeth at me.
*
We brought them down to headquarters in the Loop for questioning. They both protested before we drove them down to our offices, but after they’d seen us react to their fang-baring, they were still a bit in mild shock. So they remained passive and quiet on the ride down here.
They sat close together, across the table from me in the interview room.
‘We know that you know Maxim Samsa. If you deny it, I promise I’ll have you here for hours — especially if you try to lawyer-up on us,’ I told them.
I was seated, but Jack stood in the gloom of the corner behind me. His arms were crossed in front of him.
‘We haven’t done anything —’
I looked into his slightly pink eyes.
‘There have been two women murdered and another almost made it a trio. If you don’t tell us where we can find Samsa, I’m going to make sure you both wind up as accessories to murder.’
The last threat was effective. They both sat up attentively. These were a couple of dilettante vampires. It had become a little too real, now that their asses sat in a copper building.
‘Look, I didn’t know —’
‘Where’d you think he got that five-thousand dollar vial of blood from?’ Jack queried from the dark of his corner.
‘He told us he got it from a hospital where he was working,’ the woman told us.
‘That’s right. We had no idea —’
‘You read the newspapers?’ I asked them.
‘No,’ the albino retorted.
‘So you never heard that Samsa was wanted for these killings?’ Jack shot at them.
‘No,’ the woman replied.
‘You’re lying,’ I told her.
Suddenly there was a trace of almost human colour in her ghastly cheeks.
‘But that’s not what I asked you. I want to know where we can find your blood supplier. You better move this along, or I’ll have you both in a cell, wait
ing for your very high-priced attorneys.’
She looked at the albino, and then their glances locked. He drummed his fingers lightly, and then he transferred those pink eyes onto mine.
*
The apartment was a part of an old warehouse that was in the process of being transformed into living quarters for up and coming yuppies on the near north side. Our two favourite shape-shifters had spent very little time abstaining from squealing on Samsa. The albino had given us Samsa’s new address just after I threatened them both with accessory to murder again.
Samsa was on the top floor. The entrance to the building had no security system, so we just opened the door and entered. There was no elevator, so we had to ascend the four flights of steps. Two uniforms accompanied Wendkos and me, and six other patrolmen were surrounding the perimeter on the outside.
When we got to the top of the steps — I was first, and then Jack and the uniforms — I banged my .44 against the door to Samsa’s crib.
No one answered the loud blows against the entryway. I slammed the handle against the door four more times, and when no one responded, I moved over and Jack laid a powerful foot to the handle. The entrance exploded open, and the four of us rushed in.
The living room — at least I supposed it was the living room — was black. No light at all, not even from the window that overlooked the street outside. I flashed the window with my flashlight, and I saw that Samsa had painted the windows black from the inside. I turned and found a switch for an overhead. It illuminated the room where the four of us stood, but only faintly. The bulb must have been a forty-watt job.
No one home, it appeared. So we walked toward the bedroom. There was no bed inside, just a mattress on the floor without any sheets or blankets.
‘I’m surprised it isn’t a coffin with his native soil inside,’ Jack cracked.
Nobody was in a laughing mood.
One of the patrolmen cried out as if he were in pain, and we rushed out of the bedroom toward the bathroom. We saw the whiteness of the uniform cop’s face because he had already flipped on the bulb inside the john.
It was in the bathtub. Blood. Quarts and quarts — perhaps gallons of it. The officer who’d found it had to rush past us out into the living room. The other patrolman couldn’t hack it in there either, and he made his way out, as well.
The tub was two-thirds filled with blood. I knew it would be human without the ME or some MD telling me what it was.
We found a syringe that an undertaker might have used lying on the floor next to the tub. In the medicine cabinet were vials filled with the same scarlet serum. It had to be human, I was certain.
We searched the kitchen and found no clue as to where Maxim Samsa might be floating on his vampire batwings. We would have to stake this location out for a while, but my heart was descending downward because my policeman’s intuition was telling me Samsa wouldn’t be coming back to his blood warehouse. He was still one step ahead of us. He was living like a man on the lam. Samsa never planned on staying at any location for more than a few hours, I understood. He would be jumping squares ahead of us on the chessboard, always maintaining a distance between us.
We made the call downtown to set up surveillance, but I knew this tree would never bear fruit.
*
‘He’s too clever,’ Jack murmured.
‘Yeah. He’s sly, all right. But no killer’s uncatchable, Jack. This guy’s no Jack the Ripper. We’re not going to let him become a legend.’
I was driving back downtown.
‘So how do we nab this prick?’
‘We keep an eye on the albino and his playmate. They figure they’re off the hook now that they gave us an address for Samsa. They think we’ll move on, away from them.’
‘They are just buyers, in this blood delivery business. No?’
‘They had those goddam fangs made custom, Jack. They’re not the dabblers I thought they were. They’re into the ritual. And Samsa wasn’t collecting all that gore for himself. He was peddling his goods for those big profits. I think we tail the albino and his high-maintenance old lady, and we’ll spot the other members of this cult or whatever it is, and eventually we’ll find Maxim Samsa lurking somewhere very near them all.’
*
The surveillance came up with nothing on the warehouse location. Jack and I tailed the albino and his girlfriend, whose names were Richard Cooley and Agnes Dickinson. They were both wealthy offspring of big money on the Gold Coast, as Jack and I had surmised because of their expensive automobiles and addresses.
The two never went out during daylight hours. We had round the clock eyeballs on them, and the dayshift never saw them emerge from the expensive penthouse they cohabited on Michigan Avenue. They moved around at night when Jack and I were on them.
They played it cosy for the first few days we were behind them. Maybe they were frightened that the police were indeed watching. But about one week after our interview, they took a ride in the black Jag to Highland Park, one of the elite suburbs of Chicago. It was three in the a.m. as we cruised north on the Outer Drive.
They arrived at an estate in Highland Park that lay on at least ten acres of wooded property. Whoever lived here obviously didn’t have to worry about mortgages and his kids’ orthodontia. This was an estate, not just some lavish home.
‘We’re out of our jurisdiction,’ Jack warned me.
I took my cellphone and called the local police via 911. They put me on hold.
But not for long. I talked to a Lieutenant Jorgenson of the Highland Park Police, and he offered to send out a few patrol cars as backup — which I accepted for political reasons — it was his turf, not mine, that we were treading on. You didn’t want to make enemies among your own brethren when you were on the job. So it paid to be polite.
We waited until the Highland Park cruisers pulled up next to the Taurus. We were parked at the entry gate. There was a security system.
‘We go over this expensive fence and your department’s getting a call, no?’ I asked the sergeant in the first squad car.
‘Yessir, Lieutenant. Their system sends out a warning to our office. Right.’
‘So can you ignore the warning call, this time?’ I asked.
‘We can respond very slowly, Lieutenant Parisi,’ the sergeant smiled broadly.
‘These very wealthy folks may be engaged in a very strange rite, Sergeant.’
‘Really? What kind of rite, LT?’
‘Satanic. Black arts. Something to do with vampires. Paranormal shit, I’m afraid.’
‘Is that illegal, sir?’ the sergeant asked.
‘No ... but the blood they’re using in the ritual may very well be the stuff they acquired from Maxim Samsa.’
The sergeant perked at the mention of Samsa.
‘He’s the guy who —’
‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Jack affirmed.
‘You two go on, then. We’ll charge in if you think they’re using goods from a murder scene. That’ll be our grounds to come help break up their little get-together.’
Jack and I walked down from the main entrance to a less conspicuous stretch of chain-link fence. It was safe to assume that the security system would pick up on our ascent over the six foot fence, but the Highland Park cops would give us some extra time to assess whether or not there was just cause for entering the estate.
Jack bounded over the chain-link easily. It took me a great deal more effort than it took the junior partner. We walked as quietly as we could toward this mansion on the north shore. I could only hope the owner didn’t let dogs roam his compound.
The night was quiet. It was only a few hours before dawn. The near-dawn air was humid and sweet.
The living-room windows were uncovered since the house lay well back from the road and any prying eyes like ours. Jack and I stood about fifteen feet from that same window, but we were concealed by a large thorny elm. I recognized the tree by the sharp pain I received when I nudged the thorny trunk.
‘Shit!’
I whispered loudly enough for Jack to hear.
I showed him my tiny wound on the tip of my right thumb.
We looked into the window and saw all we needed to see in order to call in the cavalry. I called the Sergeant from Highland Park on my cell. Their communications centre patched me through with the number he’d given Jack and me.
‘They’re in the middle of some ritual, all right,’ I informed the Sergeant. ‘They’re using what appears to be blood. There’s no way of telling if it’s human, however ... What do you think, Sergeant?’ I asked in a very soft voice.
The chanting of a dozen people in black robes was audible, coming through that big picture window in the front room.
‘I think we’ve got just cause for inquiring about the nature of this little get-together, Lieutenant.’
He broke off, I assumed, to call in for more back-up.
When I was nudged by my partner — the two of us still partially concealed by that murderous thorny elm — I turned and saw the dimly lit sight of a nude female lying on a table which was surrounded by the rest of the black-cloaked cult.
I couldn’t make out faces. If Samsa was among them, the large hoods over the cloaks hid him from my line of sight.
Now an apparent priest held a scabbard above his head. Only the light from a fireplace behind the cloaked figures illuminated the room very dimly. The priest withdrew a curved blade from the stone-encrusted scabbard. He raised the blade above the midsection of the naked female lying on the table before him and the other cult members.
Jack and I didn’t wait any longer. We tore around to the front entrance as the flashing blue lights strobed the grounds of the estate. Highland Park Police arrived in four more cruisers.
Jack didn’t need to kick in the front door. The door was barely open, but it was indeed already cracked inward.
When we entered the hallway past the entryway, a dark brown pitbull stood in front of us. The dog bared its teeth. Jack raised his Nine toward the growling canine. I heard my partner cock the hammer.