The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  “What if Bobby Wells is after all three of them? He’s the type of guy who doesn’t pink slip his incompetent employees.”

  “Yeah, guinea, but it does create an air of paranoia on the Green if he goes about killing his own. But a better explanation I don’t have.”

  We collect the garbage. We pick up the offal. Yeah, we’re in waste management. All we’re missing are those big, noisy-assed trucks that rumble down the alleys in this city and wake people up long before it’s time to go to work.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We cruise the Green and the near north trying to make Chaka and Creel before someone else makes them dead. It seems sometimes as if we should let Bobby Wells or Whoever finish the last two jobs for us, but Doc and I know that’s not the way it works. Rashaan Abu Riad isn’t in charge of cleaning up homicide messes. If he’s playing vigilante for the Chicago Police Department, he can go sodomize himself. We don’t want his kind of help.

  And then I get to thinking about what Doc said about Riad making bad P.R. with the rest of the brothers on the Green. You don’t want the locals pissed. You want them anesthetized with the junk you’re peddling if you’re Bobby Wells. It makes no practical sense for him to start up a war with Chaka and Creel’s relatives, if they have any.

  Chaka might be freelancing, doing the other shooters at his Boss’s request in order to take the heat off Abu Riad. I start to think that my threats to Wells might have started this whole thing off. Maybe Ronnie and Antoine died so I’d get off the Main Guy’s ass.

  I keep on coming up empty with the way this scenario ends. Who did who and why, I mean.

  “You think too much, Jimmy P. You just have to play observer and watch how shit unravels.”

  Doc is a pragmatist, or so he would have me believe. I’ve never seen him not get all balled up worrying about whether or not the bad guys get away with it.

  “Really. Maybe you ought to take a vacation. Get away with this girlfriend you don’t want to talk about... Oh yeah. I know all about Celia.”

  “How is it you know about her?”

  “Coppers come in and out of hospitals, Detective.”

  “Coppers have big fucking mouths.”

  “There it is, Jimmy P.”

  “And you disapprove of Celia.”

  “Hardly. The woman I’m seeing is a deeper shade of blue than Celia is. I love all kinds of women. With women I got no prejudices, as long as they heat up those cold winter nights.”

  “You still seeing Mari?”

  Now his cheeks heat up.

  “I got my sources, too, you sour old man.”

  We’re turning right at the comer when Doc spots him. Black leather gangbanger jacket. Down to the thighs. Their uniform around here.

  “Chaka,” is all Doc mutters.

  We’ve got the photos from the mugbook. Chaka has been a frequent poser for the people who take pictures for the po-lice.

  “He made us?” I wonder aloud.

  “Not yet. We’ll take it easy and see if we can’t run him down an alley or some deadend street.”

  Doc takes the Taurus into a slow glide. There is no one coming up behind us to get all irate and start honking for Doc to move his dead ass out the way. It’s almost dark and most people are already home from work and are about to eat dinner. It’s about 6:20. Traffic has got to where it wanted to get. Only people like police are on the roads right now.

  “Take it slower or he’ll see you out of the corner of his peripheral fucking vision,” I mutter.

  Doc laughs softly.

  Chaka trods along in that same dude bop that I pictured him doing when he crossed that vacant lot just moments before Andres Dacy died.

  Then he turns on his heels, takes one quick look at the Ford we’re driving, and he bolts into the next alley and sprints away from us.

  Doc guns the engine and we’re squealing our way after him. We charge into the alley where Chaka disappeared, and Doc almost runs a kid on a bicycle over. The boy slams his bike into a garage door and just manages to avoid a fatal collision with us.

  “Jesus Fucking Harold Christ!”

  Doc swerves us too far to the right side of the alley and we belt into a half dozen trash cans which go flying to either side of the police car.

  “Motherfucker. There he is.”

  Doc points to the fleeing figure perhaps two hundred feet away from us. When Chaka reaches the end of the alleyway, he bolts off to the right and disappears around the corner.

  But we’ve caught up as Doc speeds toward that same corner, and once we hear the tires shriek as we’re making our own right turn, the black gangbanger coat is again in our sights. We’re almost parallel with Chaka when Doc stomps on the brakes.

  We both fling open the doors to the Taurus and we’re in pursuit. We neglect to yell out that we’re police. Not in this hood, brother. In ten seconds we’d be the antelopes and they’d be the lions hunting our asses down. Guns or no guns. It’d be like the limeys against the Zulus all over again except this time the Zulus also have the fire power. We don’t need to make this noisy or to make this a scene that the neighbors’ll join in on.

  In a block we’ve blown our collective breath. Doc is bent over at the knees, clutching his .38 on top of his right knee. And I am equally spent.

  After we suck air for a few extended moments, he has his second wind.

  “I knew it was a fucking mistake to get out of our ride.”

  We turn and walk back to the Ford. I’m holding my right side. There is a shooting fire torching that flank of my torso.

  “Motherfucker. He ought to be a miler,” I huff.

  “Nah. Eight eighty, I make it.”

  It’s dark, now, and we both feel like those poor bastards who got turned loose in the dinosaur park after dark. We’re both waiting for that Rex son of a bitch to come honking word of his approach.

  But this isn’t a movie and there are no reptiles out of the past. Just modern day snakes. Those are the mammals walking these streets. They’re a lot more dangerous than some oversized gator looking for carryout in a jungle.

  When we finally arrive at the car, all four of our wheels are gone. They’ve boosted them and left us sitting on top of cinder blocks. Luckily they didn’t steal the car radio. Doc calls for help. For someone to come pick us up and for someone else to take care of the amputee victim that was once our ride.

  Doc leans on the car and begins laughing.

  “Fucking balls. You gotta hand it to them. It didn’t make no nevermind that it was a copper ride.”

  Then he starts leaning against the tireless Ford and he can’t seem to stop giggling.

  He laughs until the patrol car arrives and takes us away. And then he laughs in the backseat until he begins to embarrass me. The patrolmen in the front seat start to chuckle, too, and then the four of us are all going off together.

  *

  Doc comes into my cubicle at Downtown Division.

  He sits in my favorite recliner chair because I’m at the desk trying to write up what happened to the Taurus. I really don’t know how to say it other than we got boosted while pursuing a wanted felon who was afoot. Why we decided to get out of the car and make it a track meet is still a baffling question that I’m having difficulty answering.

  “Chaka’s the man,” Doc pronounces.

  I look over at him from my desk, but I don’t dispute his assertion.

  “You don’t agree?” he asks.

  “I don’t know, yet. Let me get back to you.”

  “You never argue with the ESP of your favorite homicide dick.”

  “No. I’m not saying you’re wrong.”

  “Then what is the major fucking malfunction, Jimmy P?”

  “No malfunction. It’s just the way the second guy was cut. Slice on top of slice. It doesn’t make sense that Chaka would be all that angry with Antoine. Unless we’re missing something, here. If Chaka were just doing his workmanlike thing, the way he might have with the first guy, Ronnie, why would he cu
t him and cut him over and over? I don’t see that kind of rage in that murderous little prick.”

  Doc doesn’t answer. A shadow seems to overtake his face.

  “I don’t like it when you make me sit down in the discomfort zone, guinea.”

  “I don’t mean to put you there.”

  “I know, but I’m there anyway. So you think Chaka would have done it in a more organized fashion.”

  I smile at him. We’ve both attended the FBI lectures about profiling killers who do things with a method to their madness. Organized and disorganized murderers. We sat through the whole weekend seminar at Quantico.

  “He still could be our guy. Who knows what Antoine might’ve done in the last few days to set this cocksucker off. Anything’s possible.”

  “So you still think Chaka should be our primary target,” Doc offers.

  I sit there tapping my pencil atop my plastic notebook that holds the auto report.

  “I’d like to talk to this guy Wendell. You know. The security dude at the Green.”

  “You mean the ex-cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The hell for?”

  “It was the way he looked when he talked about Celia, Doc.”

  Doc’s eyes go dark, and then they brighten.

  “Shit. You think he might have a thing for the mother. Like he’s the guy who’s going to even matters up for the woman he — “

  “Maybe he is in love with her. It isn’t a difficult way to be.”

  Gibron looks over at me as if he’s trying to come up with some comedy to lighten me up. But his face goes deadpan serious.

  “That’s a possibility. And you got all this by the way he talked about her in that two second conversation you had with him that night.”

  “You go with your gut, just like you keep telling me.”

  “Let’s find another car and take a ride back out to the Green.”

  “If the Captain catches us losing two vehicles in one shift, I might as well shoot you and then you can shoot me.”

  *

  Wendell is again on duty, and it makes me wonder if he ever goes home.

  “Oh,” he laughs good naturedly. “I’m a widower. Lost my wife just three years ago. That’s why I work a lot of double shifts. I’m saving to retire and go back to Louisiana. Back to my own personal bayou.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Doc grins.

  “How can I help you, Detective?” Wendell aims back at me.

  “Do you remember if you were on shift when Ronnie got cut?” I ask.

  “Why yes. I was here doing a double.”

  “And you were doing a doubleheader when Antoine met the end too.”

  “Yes. You both know that.”

  Wendell’s eyes narrow. He’s an ex-copper and he knows what an interrogation sounds like. But he’s not going to ask us if we think he might have been the cutter because he knows the first thing a for real perpetrator does is get himself all huffed out denying he’s involved with anything. So he stays cool and tries to ride us out.

  “You know Celia Dacy very well?” Doc asks.

  “Only to say hello to. And I’ve helped her take her groceries upstairs when the elevator ain’t moving.”

  “And that’s all there is to tell about the two of you,” I query.

  “That’s all. There’s nothing left to tell.”

  “You have any kind of relationship with the boy?” Doc wants to know.

  “Absolutely none. But he was a good little man. Never a harsh word from him. His mother had him trained very well. He was the kind of child I would’ve wanted as my own. But I never had very much to do with him, or with his mother either.”

  Then Wendell smiles at the two of us like he’s beaten us in blackjack eight straight hands with the ace and the one-faced jack every time out.

  “You have your partner as a witness to where you were on both the nights in question,” Doc says.

  “He was with me only when Antoine was killed. The other night I was alone because he called in sick. Had the flu.”

  “But you’re not really tied to the desk the whole shift, are you,” I say.

  “No. I have to move around if I get a call. I go upstairs if I’m needed there. But mostly I’m right here at the desk.”

  He’s being toothsome again.

  “We’re not suggesting you had anything to do with the murders,” Doc concedes. “We’re just trying to eliminate anyone we can. It gets crowded in homicide investigations. Of course you understand that as well as I do.”

  Wendell nods. He’s still all brightened up.

  Doc is getting pissed off. I can tell. He’s on the verge of asking this guy downtown, but he knows we’ve got no real reason to be hassling this fifty-something man about a crime it’s dubious he committed.

  “Was there anything unusual about those two nights that you might’ve forgotten to mention the other times we were out here?” I continue.

  “No. I can’t think of anything. No one came in who looked out of place. And I never saw either of those other two, those nights. I’ve got their photos right on my desk. I would’ve certainly made those two.”

  “That’s one nice thing about having an ex-police at this desk,” Doc tells him.

  Wendell watches Doc’s eyes, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Doc tells him.

  We walk away from the security desk and then we’re out the door.

  “Cocky dick he is,” Doc grumps.

  “Think he’s telling the truth?”

  “When have we ever interviewed anybody who wasn’t a lying sack of shit?”

  We get into our new car. It’s just a different color than the other one was. Something dark. It’s hard to tell at night. Blue, black, who the hell knows.

  “He’s got enough arrogance to be our guy, and he had the opportunity to get to both of those stiffs. Shit. He might be all hung on Celia. Just like you, partner.”

  He shoots a look my way, but then he trains his eyes on the boulevard before us.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Another motel equals another wave of guilt.

  “Do you love me, Jimmy Parisi?”

  I nod and I lunge toward her. She smiles when we’re deeply engaged.

  “Do you really love me like you say you do?”

  “I love you more than I can figure out how to say, Celia.”

  She smiles as I slowly withdraw. Then I’m coming back at her, this time much more fiercely and quickly. She matches my every move as if we’ve been making love for as long as an old married couple. We’re in sync the way a pair of experienced lovers is in perfect rhythm with each other, and when we finish it is also nearly in tandem.

  “Oh wow,” is all I can utter. My knees are wobbling as I try to get up off the motel’s bed.

  “Oh wow?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’re one of those misguided flower children, aren’t you,” she grins.

  “Not me. I was in the War. My hair was what they called closely shorn.”

  “You had the do, huh?”

  “Buzz cut. Bong Son, class of 1969.”

  “You get hurt, Jimmy?”

  ‘Nah. Just a little on the insides. Like most of the rest of us.

  “No medals?”

  “A few of those. Nothing spectacular.”

  “Like what?” she insists.

  “A bronze star. A couple less important than the bronze.”

  “I knew you was a war hero.”

  “Bullshit. I was a grunt. Some colonel was in our AO when I popped a sniper and pulled a guy out of a ditch. The kid was lit up with our own napalm. Kid died two hours later anyway. I didn’t accomplish shit, the way I see it. Killed a guy, and the guy I tried to help didn’t make it.”

  “You’re a modest man, Jimmy P.”

  “No. Hell no. If I had any good war stories to tell I would’ve told you by now. You know, to impress you... It’s you who never tells anything about yourself, Cel
ia.”

  “You know anything worth knowing about me.”

  “You never told me about your ex-old man.”

  “Nothing interesting there to tell. His name was Marcus. He was good enough to marry me and give Andres a name. Then he left just before my boy was born. He got scared. Got scared of living on the Green. See, he wasn’t into the usual thing on the Green. No drugs, no gangbanging. He really tried hard to look for a job, but there wasn’t anything out there to find. He never finished high school. No college, of course. Marcus was a sweet man, but he got scared and he just took off. Never even saw his baby’s face.”

  Her own face seems to be about to retreat off to wherever it goes when it hides out on me. So I keep at her to retain her attention.

  I touch her face and then I kiss her. She gets up on her knees, the way I’m on my knees, and we’re holding onto each other like we’re afraid that somebody’s going to storm the door here at the Starlight View Motel. It’s owned by an ex-cop buddy of mine. Franky Vitelli. Narco-vice, he was. He gives me a rate and he can keep his mouth shut. It’s located not far from my house on the northwest side.

  She reaches down to touch me. She knows I’m ready again. All it takes is her hand to graze me. Or all it takes is just for me to look at her. And I thought I had given up on wanting anyone this bad just a few months ago.

  Celia pushes me back down onto my back and then she gets on top of me. She begins slowly, gently. She never speeds things up, although I’m about to beg her to. By the time I’m about to tell her to accelerate, we’re both in those same throes we shared only a few minutes earlier.

  “You’re killing me, girl.”

  I can only manage a whisper. She’s still aboard, on my middle.

  Then she disengages and goes to the bathroom. I’m not worried about conception. Even though I’m Catholic 1 believe in birth control. Celia’s a nurse and she knows what she’s doing. At least we don’t have to carry any of that emotional baggage about.

  When she comes back to the main room, I want her again. I take her by the arms and I push her back down onto the mattress.

  “Old man like you. What you been doin’? Savin’ up?”