Frenzy dje-2

by Rex Miller

  * * *

  Jack "met" Willie Ray a couple of days later. He'd been working on his revised, updated "family tree" and crime chronology. On it the crime families were the international automobile industry. It was a thing he sometimes did as a learning trick — giving things a metaphorical identity. He looked at the National Council or Commission as the CEO and VPs from the big automakers. The Colombians and Syrians and other factions were the Japanese car market — hated competition but in bed with the Americans. He gave Sally Dago the rank of general as in General Motors. Tony Cypriot, Gaetano Ciprioni, was the admiral in charge of Ford. Rikla was Oldsmobile and Measure was Buick, and so on.

  Certain patterns in the kills had begun to emerge. There was something else. A thread running through all the gangland wet work. Drugs? An internal power play by a rogue lieutenant? Who was left? The X factor. It was in the murders at the lower end of the spectrum. Jimmie the Hook Russo and Lyle Venable still both appeared to Jack to be gang whack-outs. But the way wise guys were turning up missing, and the civilian hits — something there. His mystery madman involved.

  Eichord had not been watching his television or hearing a radio that morning so he had no idea there'd been another hit — a black dope dealer tied to the family, two cops and a bus driver had all been killed in another bombing. So he was doubly amazed to learn that Paul Rikla, his "Buick" competition also now dead and gone, was waiting at Police Headquarters to "turn state's evidence." Rikla wanted protection, as he had told a bewildered cop.

  Rikla had "given himself up," as he put it, because of a black dope dealer by the name of Willie Ray Campbell. They'd never met. Campbell, thirty-two, coal-colored, with Son of Kong lips and smack-brown eyes, was aboard a federal prison bus headed for extradition to Kansas, where he was wanted for bank robbery.

  When the television newscaster had reported the story about Willie Ray being extradited he had accurately referred to him as an "alleged narcotics dealer in the family headed by Paul Rikla. Rikla, owner of the Rikla Towing Service, is believed by police sources to be tied to the sale of narcotics and child pornography in the St. Louis area. Rikla, allegedly an underboss in the Dagatina organization, could not be reached for comment."

  Rikla was now as scared of the Dagatina people as he was of the Measure crew, what was left of it, but what happened to Willie Ray was the final straw.

  At about eight-thirty that morning Campbell, head covered in an old-fashioned do-wrap over his straightened, styled "conk" that looked like something from a Negro documentary, was just sitting there on the bus minding his beeswax, sitting there in his jail clothes when the whole frig-gin' bus blew up.

  A two-man guard detail and the driver were also killed. No fucking reason. All the police told media was mere was evidence of electronically detonated high explosives. No known motive. No suspects. Another in the series of gangland-related homicides that had St. Louis terror-stricken. And now Measure gets taken down and his people are STILL goin' under. Suddenly Rikla felt like he had cross hairs painted on his forehead.

  The bus bombing had occurred at approximately four-forty. The news had it on the early cast. Five minutes that included a three-and-a-half-minute sound bite at the crime scene and lots of gore. Rikla was home, watching it on a tummy TV, with a real bad case of the green-apple quick step. Two hours later, Paul Rikla and a pair of attorneys from Rozitsky, Karp and Nathan were waiting to see the DA and talking about RICO and the Federal Witness Security Program and trying to put some kind of a deal together for their very nervous client. Rikla figured, "I'd rather be a live rat than a damn dead man." Which pretty well summed up the situation. The consensus among all those close enough to hear the comment was that he'd described himself accurately, one way or the other.

  Rightfully, Rikla had told his personal mouthpiece, "I don't know who's doin' da shit, if it's coppers, wise guys, or a crazy contract man that's doing the work. Whoever they are if they got the balls they can blow up a federal prison bus. I'm not waitin' around for 'em to come for me. That's it. Fuck it. I'm history."

  So there he sat in his "surrender" clothes. The bottom half of an eighteen-hundred-dollar silk suit, and a Neiman's cardigan over a LaCoste golf shirt, gold chains, watch, ID bracelet, pinkie diamond big as a grape, pure twenty-four-karat wise guy, wanting to go public behind the "witless protection program," as Leech had called it.

  They were joking about the four-hundred-pound hit man who had been given a new face with plastic surgery, a new identity, and flown from the Boston area to Seattle, where he was relocated under a new name. After a few months of boredom he went back to his old line of work and was promptly found and obliterated, being the only four-hundred-pound hit man on the West Coast with a South Baaahston accent you could cut with a knife. What they cut with a knife wasn't his accent.

  Rikla, who had been Sally Dago's counselor, friend, confessor, confidant, and sounding board, knew where all the bodies were buried. He went back to the beginning of the Dagatina thing. He claimed he knew things that nobody else in the family knew and if the feds would take him into the program he'd testify. Give us an example, the big boys asked him, and he teased them with a tale of a chief enforcer trying to wage a one-man war against the families, and tantalized them with the promise of dirty cops.

  "When I know I got full-time protection and d' coppers or the Dagos can't touch me, I'll give you the whole outfit. Right from the top down and you won't fuckin' believe it. I've got coppers runnin' my own scams right here in St. Louis. I ain't just talking about no bagman, I'm talking about swindles where you go in a certain place of business an' if we don' get five cents the coppers will come around and shut the house dis way," meaning they'll close the business down.

  "Give us a for-instance — like what jurisdictional area?"

  "I'll give ya a taste but dat's it until I see the thing come together for me. Awright, would you believe Metro East?"

  And it went on like that for a while and the big boys took him away for bigger and better things, and Leech told Eichord about it. They were both tired. First thing they got off on "what's the worst thing you've ever seen" stories, and Leech told his, which was the old lady that committed suicide with an ax. Eichord said he didn't believe it and Leech told him,

  "Emmis, my man, she was a stout old gal about eighty years old, big heavy old gal with arms like this, and she went nuts, got into it with her old man, and chopped his head off with an ax while he was dead-drunk. Doubt if he ever knew what hit him. Then she decided to kill herself."

  "With the ax?"

  "Exactly."

  "Hey. Could I ax you a question?" a cop named Wunderlicht said, and they laughed. "How can you do it with an ax, slit your belly open?"

  "Nope. She took hold of the handle with both hands like so, held it as far out as she could, and goes WWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAAAMMM-MMPPPPP! Right smack dead-center in her forehead. Right between the running lights."

  "Bullshit."

  "I got the fuckin' lab photos if you want to lay a ten on it. Jack. You can see it. She's still got a holt of it, and you can see the skull and that sucker is wedged in the brain real good, like a big ole ripe melon that busted open."

  "This conversation has made me hungry. Let's go get some melons."

  "Seriously, how can you —" And for ten minutes they lost themselves in a discussion of the ax weight, and the best way to hold an ax to kill yourself with it, and on and on like that.

  Eichord knew cops. He liked them, too. He knew what made them tick. Why they were there and what it took to keep you sane on The Job. This kind of talk was just blowing off steam. It was a way to say. This dirt I live in, this filth that I work in, it's not real. It doesn't really touch me. It doesn't exist. Just words. At least this was the way he looked at it.

  He listened to another cop, Pat Skully, talking about the time back when he was a narc and they raided a house and dead babies were everywhere. It was the worst he'd ever seen and there was no joking during the story. Two dealers had beat th
e cops to the pad, which was a shooting gallery for hypes. The woman who ran the house had four little kids ranging from a newborn baby to about six or so in age. When the narcs found them the dealers had killed all of them in a rage. The babies were flattened. As Skully started telling how it had been done, Eichord got up quietly and unobtrusively left the room.

  Bud Leech caught him down on the street.

  "Let's catch a buzz," Eichord said.

  "Why not?" And they went in the nearest tavern and tilted a cold one each.

  "The funniest thing about Rikla, you know, giving himself up today. I know this pervert from way back. I go back to when I was working in a little hick community and hearing horror stories about how Mr. G. ran St. Louis, an' these St. Louis ad vice guys were telling me all about this dude named Paul Rikla who was a chickenfucker. And I told them, You mean he liked little boys, like a chickenhawk. No, he liked fucking chickens.

  "He had priors going back to this time they answered a disturbance call about some perv waggin' his wienie in this residential neighborhood. Man in a car nude, they hear. They investigate and there's this Coupe De Ville parked there, and the cops go up to it and shine the light in, and out of the Caddy hops Rikla, stone mother naked and carrying a butcher knife all covered in blood. This is a true story, by the way. He looked like he wanted to be shot real bad and he almost got his wish 'cause they damn near popped a cap on him when they saw him like that.

  "Inside the car was the rest of the story. He has this beautiful young Syrian daughter, and she was with him in the front seat of the car, and the vehicle is covered in blood and feathers. Rikla would slice the head off of a chicken and daughter would take and jam the fowl's severed windpipe down on Daddy's cock-a-doodle-doo, and the headless bird would flop and bop him off."

  "I —" Eichord started laughing before he could get it out.

  "I swear, man. If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'."

  "Oi. It's been a long day. Let's go get somethin' to eat and get outta here," he said, draining the last of his Light.

  "Okay. Where you wanna eat?"

  "Colonel Sanders?"

  Eichord liked Bud Leech a lot. He was good people. Jack could imagine how much the incident of the lost tail would goad Leech every time he thought about it. He was a good cop and it could have happened to anybody. What Eichord didn't know was that very soon Bud Leech would acquit himself of his great sin.

  But Jack's thoughts kept returning to that teaser from the very frightened Mr. Rikla. The "bullshit" story about a chief enforcer waging his own solitary vendetta. His SEE NO EVIL brainstorming and hunch-playing finally had the vestiges of a motive to chew on. One superkiller. What if they were dealing with a mad enforcer on a rampage?

  They were on their way to chow and picked up the call on the two-way. Eichord knew what it was before he heard the word Russo in the clear. Multiple-shooting fatality. One male, two female Caucs down. Christ. The house had been under "loose surveillance," which meant that once an hour or so a scout car would slowly roll by, what they call a "boogie man." Wonderful.

  Eichord knew he'd find Angelina and her mother dead. All the way out there be thought about the unpunished crimes. The crimes committed every day by land barons, police officials, network executives, union bosses, TV evangelists, petrochemical tycoons, political figureheads, automakers, commercial mavens — all the dirty, mendacious hypocrisy. The bush-wacking, degenerate, back-shooting no-good bullshit that people get away with. It kept his head busy till they got to the crime scene.

  The killer had massacred the bodyguard, the maid, and Rosemarie Russo. No sign of forced entry. No sign of Angelina Russo.

  A news reporter had phoned the archdiocese to inquire about the state of health of Auxiliary Bishop O'Consky, and while he was on the phone and they were chatting he happened to comment about the terrible thing — how awful for the lovely Russo family — he was a personal friend, and with James and Phillip taken like that, sure 'n' it would be so hard on the rest of the family. And the newsman seemed so unusually solicitous, the man on the other end told him how there was a special service being planned, and one thing led to another, and in the course of the conversation the caller discovered that the bishop had never actually met any of the Russo family, and one thing and another.

  So when the bishop himself called from the archdiocese to inquire if he might come 'round tomorrow just to pay his respects to the Russo family, and give them some mementos of the deceased, also to show them some material that had been donated to the Cardinal Glennon College Seminary School, of course he'd be welcomed in and greeted by the grieving survivors, Mother and Daughter Russo.

  "Dominus vobiscum," the good bishop whispered, crossing himself in his own special way as he made his way up the steps.

  "Et cum spiritu —"

  A passing motorist might have observed the bishop himself helping the exhausted and grief-stricken Angelina Russo down the steps and into a waiting vehicle. Ominous vobiscum.

  Angelina, now hog-tied, gagged, blindfolded, weeping silently on the floor of the back seat, would be the next visitor to learn of the peculiarities of Spain's house. They traveled down a long, winding gravel road. The house was located on four lonely wooden acres.

  Following the road, rather indifferently maintained county gravel, one reaches the end of the county's responsibilities. Winding past a small family cemetery with its overgrown headstones and massive, horrifying ironies, an old graveyard beginning to push up remnants of the long dead. Past the weed-choked graves in dark, deep thickets, where old bones are working their way toward the surface.

  The last hundred yards of this dirt road becomes a mudhole in heavy rain. You want to make certain you're never caught out on this road in a rainstorm because should your vehicle bog down and you go to the nearest house for help, your gracious host may prove unpredictable. He might be witty, urbane, even comforting. All the amenities of telephone, warm fire, even a libation, might be offered.

  The next few minutes might be uneventful. Simply a pleasant, comforting respite from the elements while you waited for a taxi or a tow truck or a friend. And then again, there could be minutes that would drag like days. Minutes that would plunge you down into an unspeakable world of sudden and exquisite pain. Because your host is two, very different, wildly unpredictable men.

  Both of the men who call themselves Spain kill. But the second Spain, the one whose madness has taken him far out over the edge and flung him screaming down into the bloody nightmare of his psychoses, this Spain kills without reason.

  These split halves of the killer live in that ordinary-looking brick residence by the side of the lonely, gravel road. Spain the psychotic. The cold-blooded, trained assassin who is killing in a blood lust of revenge. The Spain who plots to take Ciprioni and Dagatina down. The one whose kills are premeditated. Carefully prepared.

  Then the other half. Even more dangerous because he kills from some unknown, dark, and motiveless wellspring. Taking human lives at random. Lashing out without cause or fear of consequences, murdering blindly, spurred by some psychotic fountainhead that has burst within his soulless center.

  Here, in the house that had heard the tortured screams of Blue Kriegal, the house of Ben Lowenstein's final agonies, in a murder laboratory less than two yards wide, this is where Angelina Russo's blindfold is removed. And the first thing she sees is the face of the smiling madman, and behind him the bloody wall of the charnel in which she now awaits his pleasure. And the split halves of Spain silence her scream in a steely-fingered grip telling her, "Now now now now now. There now," in his soft, measured speech, "there, there now. Calm down. You could wake the dead." And her tears flow and, angry now, she forces the crying to stop and spits in his face. And she knows she is dead and only hopes it will be quick and merciful as she says to herself. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of . . . And she sees him laughing as he carefully wipes her spittle from him and says to her, "You should meet my wife. You and Pat have a lot in common. Perh
aps later. Yes, very soon, in fact, I'll let you say hello to Mary Pat. And you and the bitch can talk over your mutual interests. She has a great thirst ... for companionship. And she's dying to meet you." And he chuckles again and asks her, "Do you believe in demons?" And her throat is very dry now and a faintness is coming over her like an ocean wave and he says, "Would you be surprised to learn that I am what you would call in your quaint underworld patois a worker? That I was your society's chief enforcer for many years? That I was the cutting edge of your Capo di Tutti Capi and never in all the contracts went shy? Never. Would you be surprised to know that succubi transfuse me while I sleep? Do you believe in magic?" And he touched her then and she fainted.

  "Did you have a nice rest?"

  "You crazy face da borco —"

  He slapped her viciously and spoke in his soft tones. "You can make this hard, you know. Very hard. And your life will end for you in a soundless and tongueless scarlet sheet of awful, mind-mangling pain. Say hello to me missus."

  "Hu — hello." The point of a knife was touching her throat. She imagined a trickle of blood.

  "Say, Hello, Mary Pat."

  "Hello, Mary Pat." She knew this was it. It didn't matter what he said to her. She could see the insanity and death in his hooded eyes.

  "If you do as I say I will let you live. Otherwise, I will let her slake her thirst on you here —" He penetrated and she fought back a scream. "And here." Angelina cried out in pain.

  "Now do as I ask or Mary Pat will SLICE AND CARVE AND TEAR UNTIL YOU ARE ANYTHING BUT RECOGNIZABLE, YOU GUINEA SLUT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

  "Yes."

  "Good." He moved out of her vision for a moment and she heard a clicking noise and he held a piece of paper on it with a typed message. "Read exactly what it says. If you fuck with me Mary Pat will rend the side of your face into pumping, dripping shreds of bloody meat." His icy calm was more frightening than the screaming. She read as he held the small microphone to her mouth: " 'I am alive and well. You must do as I say. Dagatina m-mus' die. Here is what you mus' do if you want me to live.' " She had read almost all of the message before it occurred to her what she was reading. She figured the lunatic would play this for Joey, her older brother, to convince him to whack out the old man. Even then, she kept reading. Angelina did not want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.