The store seemed shabby. It was U-shaped, with the upper arms of the U ending in twin store fronts, only one of which opened to the street. The two arms connected near the back of the store where a service desk sported a hand-lettered sign: “72 hour waiting period for handguns; 24 hours for long guns.” A jar of money on the counter was labeled “Help keep guns legal.” Merchandise filled bins and large cardboard boxes on the floor. Behind and under old-fashioned plate glass counters lay a mind-boggling selection of holsters—labeled “right-handed” or “left-handed”—and handcuffs, nightsticks and guns, gun grips, and uniform accessories. Street Weapons, book and video, was available “for law enforcement only.” There were racks of jackets, belts and shoes. A poster advertising the movie Homicide was autographed by Joe Mantegna. There were mountainous displays of ammunition and gun cases and rifle stocks, as well as scopes, and how-to books. The patrons all looked like security guards or Chicago cops—big men, mostly, with ponderous guts, and a few women in uniforms that fit poorly. A clean-cut clerk alternated between watching the customers and the news on small black-and-white TV.
Joanne felt like a sheep at a trade show for wolves. She must have looked out of place to the other, long-haired man who stepped over to wait on her.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“What if I want to buy a gun?”
“Do you have your firearms card with you?”
“I don’t have one.”
The salesman seemed to lose interest. “Sorry, you have to have a Firearms Owner’s ID card.”
“Where do I get one?”
He pointed to the service counter. “You fill out a form and pay fifteen dollars. It takes one to three months.”
One to three months! In a week I could be dead. I don’t have three months! She said, “Forget it.”
“If you’re looking for protection, why don’t you get yourself some pepper spray?”
Twenty-One
If naming a thing gives you power over it—as ancient people believed—then making its likeness might really capture its soul. Joanne had first felt something like that power when she’d discovered she could neutralize the things she feared by catching them on film. Perhaps the close proximity necessary to get the picture caused habituation.
Once she’d decided to neutralize Dossi, it took her only fifteen minutes to find the real-estate tax-index number for the only Dossi listed in Highland Park—Angela, although she had to go to the County building in Waukegan to look it up without attracting attention. She called the county assessor’s office from a pay phone before she left there, and a clerk who sounded like a six-year-old gave her the street address.
Her next stop was the building department at the Highland Park Public Works. She waited outside the two-story brick-and-glass edifice until the parking spaces were completely filled. Then she followed the driver of one of the pickups inside and upstairs where the permits were issued.
As she’d expected, all the clerks were occupied. She watched and listened for a while, then followed a man who was directed to the office of the building inspectors—beyond the service counter, at the end of the hall. No one paid her any attention.
Beyond the restrooms and the coffee setup, just past the water fountains, the green, 2-foot by 3-foot plat books lay on a counter in a messy pile. The shelves below the counter held a bonus—books showing sewer and water easements. It didn’t take long to find the property she was looking for, less time to photograph the page and put away her camera.
She was restoring the water/sewer book to its place when one of the clerks came up behind her. “May I help you?”
Joanne turned around. “Could you explain how to get a building permit?”
The property was huge, bordered by equally large estates on two sides, and the Heller nature preserve on a third. The surrounding high brick wall was topped by iron pikes, and marked at intervals by a security system logo and signs warning “Beware of Dogs.” She drove past slowly. The wrought iron gate was closed, probably operated like a garage door by a remote device.
The neighbors on either side looked equally impregnable. Joanne spotted an infrared sensor guarding the drive of one. The other had gates that were open, but had an unimpeded sight line from the front of the house. After she’d memorized the salient features of all three houses, so she would recognize them from another angle, she drove on.
She was back the next morning in camouflage pants, an olive-drab jacket, and navy knit hat—hunting garb. It was overcast and cold, so her upturned collar wasn’t conspicuous—not that there was anyone around to notice. She’d brought her field tote and the old Canon loaded with black and white film. She left her car in the lot at the Heller Nature Center.
She took her time. She was used to long hunts. Sometimes it took her a week to get the shot she wanted. The trick was to seem innocuous or be beneath notice, to hang around long enough to become as invisible as the ever-present cable installers or the FedEx guys. In a forest preserve, carrying a camera was good camouflage. She hammed it up, pointing at crows and cardinals, and winter-drab finches, stopping to set it on the field tripod to “snap” stands of winter-bare trees. It was almost two hours before she made her way around to where the 54-inch storm drain marked on the plat emptied into the nearby branch of the Skokie River—what would have been called a creek where she’d grown up. The mouth of the outfall was protected by a heavy metal grill so old the bolts holding it in place were crumbling to rust. According to the plat book, this was lower end of a channel that ran under Dossi’s property.
Where there were storm drains, there were manholes, and were there were manholes, there were manhole covers. She stowed the camera and got out her flashlight and the crowbar she’d brought. The manhole was fifteen yards from Dossi’s brick wall, surrounded by a thicket. A piece of cake.
To her surprise, the drain was almost dry—thin shelves of ice a third of the way up the sides marked the water level when the weather had turned cold, but the stream had since receded to a trickle along the floor of the passage. The tunnel angled southeastward and, she estimated, another twenty yards beyond Dossi’s boundary wall before it turned. She had to walk bent over in the center of the stream holding the duffel out in front. She hoped any footprints would eventually be washed away.
Instead of getting smaller, as she’d expected, the passage ended at another outfall-mouth set in the side of a berm topped by a line of spruce trees, and guarded by a metal grate. The grating was shiny and new but bolted to old brackets that clung to the passage wall more out of habit than anything. Beyond the grate, the outfall fed from a detention pond surrounded by the berm and landscaping designed to mimic a natural area. Dossi’s house was two hundred yards beyond that. Not a mansion by Highland Park standards, it was still three or four times the size of her own house.
By prying the brackets loose on one side of the grate, she was able to swing it outward like a door and squeeze her duffel past. She took her time, watching for the promised dogs.
An hour passed as she moved from cover to cover, studying the house and garage, watching for security devices. She didn’t expect Dossi to be home on a weekday morning, but there should be someone there—the wife or a housekeeper. She found a spot among the spruces on the berm that was a perfect natural blind from which she could see the entire rear of the house. She used her 200-mm lens to peer in the windows of the few rooms lit against the gloom of the season. Inside, a dark-haired woman, Hispanic-looking, pushed a vacuum cleaner into view and moved around the room, setting things straight and dusting.
Following the action was difficult with the heavy camera lens. Joanne decided that next time she’d bring binoculars. Next time! What was she doing here even once? She had only Minorini’s word that Dossi was as claimed. After all, Highland Park wasn’t a hotbed of mob activity. In fact, Michael Jordan was the town’s most notorious citizen.
She was about to end her voyeuristic trespass when a limousine pulled past the house and up to one of the thr
ee garage doors. The door opened. The limo pulled inside and the door closed. The adjacent door opened and a gray Volvo pulled out.
Joanne put her eye to the camera and, through the lens, was able to see a young man at the wheel in a dark suit or uniform coat and chauffeur’s cap. Not Dossi. Not the man she’d seen driving away from Crestwood Park. Maybe it was Dossi’s chauffeur leaving for the day. Or changing cars. She couldn’t see the driveway from where she was—only the garage and its approach. She couldn’t see if the Volvo left the property. For all she knew, it was parked at the front door. She debated working her way around to get a better view, but decided against it. Better call her surveillance off for the day. Better find a less conspicuous place to park her car.
She came again at dusk. A park district service road guarded by a padlocked chain was the perfect place to leave the car. The padlock had long since rusted open but had been left on the chain for show. She pulled far enough up the road to hide the car from casual glances, then replaced the chain. As she worked her way around to the manhole access to Dossi’s property, she pondered her motives. Did she hope to confirm what Agent Minorini told her? Or gather evidence of a crime? Or reassure herself Dossi was human and vulnerable as anyone?
Her first glimpse of him in his lair surprised her. He was an old man, sitting in a chair in his bathrobe, reading the news, sipping something from a china cup. He was wearing reading glasses that he rotated forward on his nose to look through—must be an old prescription. Framed by her binoculars, his face was familiar. She’d seen it in the park and at the Daley Center. She tried to conjure up Goodfellas or Don Corleone, but she was reminded of Robert Loggia in Big. Familiarity didn’t necessarily breed contempt, but it did tend to exterminate her fear.
After four evenings and two afternoons, she had a picture, figuratively, of the Dossi household, and half a dozen exposures of the man himself. He seemed to live alone with the housekeeper and two German shepherds that were let out from time to time to do their business. Maybe his wife had died or was away. The housekeeper served him meals in what appeared to be a family room at the rear of the house. Later he would watch TV, or go up to the room above and pace, or stare out at the yard. Joanne couldn’t see his face then, just a silhouette, but she’d caught him with her long lens when he half-turned and the room light lit his features.
Sometime he spoke on the phone. Once he had a visitor, a hard-looking man who dressed like the FBI. The man was ushered in by the chauffeur and led out afterward. The chauffeur seemed to stay in the house, too, on the first floor, next to the housekeeper’s room.
In her darkroom, Joanne watched the last of the pictures materialize—surely that was how one would describe the gradual assembly of the image. By some trick of light and shade, or accident of distortion—or maybe a bad batch of solution—she seemed to have caught the essence of the man—his soul—and it was demonic.
She took the prints into her kitchen and laughed at her imaginings. In the clear light, she saw not the portrait of Dorian Gray, but the man himself. The photos were nothing more than interesting studies, the face of a strong personality with a sardonic expression.
She wasn’t sure what she would do with the pictures. For the time being, she put them in glassine envelopes with their negatives and tucked them in the back of a notebook she kept in the dark room. One day, when the whole Dossi business was far enough in the past to seem like an old B-movie plot, she’d destroy them. In the meantime, she’d use them to remind herself that—mobster or not—Dossi ate his meals alone. And was as vulnerable to a stalker as she.
Twenty-Two
Minorini’s immediate supervisor was Robert Butler, who—to hear him tell it—had been in Chicago since Ness and Capone had gone head to head. After Minorini brought him up to speed on the latest development in the Siano murder case, Butler said, “You checked this Dossi out?”
“Yeah. He’s the brother-in-law of a known outfit guy. We’ve never looked at him closely because he’s got a successful investment business and a modest lifestyle.”
“Why would he personally do a hit?”
“I think because he’s the million-dollar man.”
“The hit man we’ve never been able to ID?” Butler’s expression betrayed his skepticism. “You’re telling me this guy would risk everything for a hit? Why?”
Minorini shrugged. “It’s what he does. Probably not much of a risk. If I’m right and he’s our killer, he could do a simple hit in his sleep. It may even be a matter of professional pride. Siano’s had a price on his head for a long time. Lessing being on Dossi’s escape route was just his bad luck—nobody can control all the variables. He’s been seen before. He just blends into the scenery so well no one ever remembers him. My guess is the camera freaked him. A photo would do him in, even if Lessing were an amateur. A defense attorney would never be able to get around a picture.”
The Friday before Thanksgiving, Haskel sauntered into Minorini’s office and dropped an envelope on the desk.
Minorini opened it and unfolded the paper it contained. The words “Subpoena” and “Jane Doe” jumped out from the array of words on its surface. “What’s this?”
“A judge is willing to entertain our request for a wiretap on Dossi,” Haskel told him. “If we can convince him we’re not just on a fishing expedition. He wants to question our witness himself.”
“Our word’s not good enough?
“Guess not. Anyway, I figured you’d probably like to do the honors. And maybe you could bring the locals up to speed—as much as they need to know.”
“Tell me again. Why are we doing this, Haskel?”
Haskel gave him a gimme-a-break look. “You’re the one that ID’ed Dossi for our million-dollar hitter.”
“Lessing won’t testify. She knows she won’t have any healthy alternative but the witness protection program if she does.”
“We got the bitch in a vise,” Haskel said. “If she doesn’t cooperate, we just take her into custody as a material witness.”
“You think of them all as just mopes, don’t you?”
“That’s what they are.”
“Then what’s the point?”
Haskel just laughed and walked out. Minorini resisted the urge to put the subpoena through his shredder.
Detective Gray put the two large Starbucks cups on the table of the Major Case conference room and pushed one toward Minorini. “Black.” He sat down and waited.
Minorini took the top off his coffee and tried it. Too hot. He put the cup on the table. In spite of all the recent seminars, task forces, and memos on interagency cooperation, talking frankly with a local cop went against all his training and experience. Nevertheless, Gray was the primary on an open homicide. Minorini told him about Dossi and his suspicions that Dossi might be the mysterious hitter no one had ever lived to ID.
“But you have nothing really definite?” Gray said.
Minorini shook his head. “But unless you’re a real sucker for coincidence, you’ve got to admit it’s a fair circumstantial case. Lessing’s sure she saw him leaving the area. The car he was driving was stolen. And Doris Davis, who claimed to have seen him hit the parked car, was run down by a similarly stolen car not long after she went public with her claim.”
“Why would he do the hit himself? If you’re right about him, he could afford to subcontract the job. Why risk it?” Gray took a sip of his coffee and made a face. Must also be too hot.
“Because he’s the best,” Minorini said. “And the mob’s wanted Siano for so long they’d willingly pay his fee.”
“And the Feds want Siano’s killer so bad you’re willing to try anything to nail him.”
“Siano’s just the last in a series of hits going back thirty years. This is the closest we’ve ever gotten.”
Gray shook his head. “So you’re gonna ruin this poor woman’s life on the outside chance it’ll give you a lead?”
“It’s not my call.”
“Why are you bothering to t
ell me?”
“We don’t want to call attention to our witness by putting her into the system before we have to, especially considering what happened to Siano and Mrs. Davis—this guy’s a wizard. But, since a subpoena’s been issued, there’s a chance somebody’s looking…”
“And you could kill a number of birds with one stone if we kept an eye on your star witness.”
“In a word.”
Gray shook his head again. “I think you’re just setting her up as bait.” He stood and began pacing his side of the table. His heavy face was mottled with rage. “And if she gets hit, we get the heat.”
“To the best of my knowledge, that’s not true.”
“To the best of your knowledge. Isn’t that comforting.” He stopped and leaned over the table into Minorini’s space. “We’ll watch her because she’s one of our citizens. But nobody’s buying your little farce. I personally think it’s a crock!”
Interview over.
Minorini walked out without another word. What was there to say? He hadn’t been told of any plans beyond getting a wiretap on Dossi, but Haskel was panting on this one like a drug dog at the airport. And Haskel was always a whole lot more interested in where he was going than how he got there.
With a rap sheet as long as most of the creeps his testimony had put away, Siano hadn’t been anyone you’d bring home to meet the family. But the Bureau toadies, with the eager help of the U.S. attorney, wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice an innocent bystander to get his killer. And it was a fact that they didn’t have enough yet for a grand jury presentation. So Gray’s charge—that they were using Joanne Lessing for bait—looked more accurate the more he thought about it.
The Fall Page 7