The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  “Wouldn’t tell you if I had.”

  “It’s a long trip to the Loop, Ms. Giroux,” Doc warns.

  She’s not impressed. Her name is the same as Celia’s maiden name. Jean’s never been married, Celia told me.

  “Look. We can help her if we can find her... Can we come in for a minute?” I ask.

  She softens visibly and then she motions for us to come into the apartment.

  “How can you help Celia?” she wants to know.

  Doc and I remain standing in the middle of her small living room. She is also as tidy as her sister is. Nothing is out of place, nothing is even slightly askew.

  I look at her eyes and wonder if I’m falling in love with Jean. She is like a twin of her sister.

  But she isn’t Celia. Something is missing, but it’s not physical.

  “I can save her life. Because if she tries to take out Chaka and Bobby Louis Wells, the two she thinks are responsible for Andres, she’s not going to make it. They’ll kill her, Jean.”

  Her eyes widen with my last sentence.

  She has been in contact with Celia. She knows where she’s hiding. I don’t need much intuition to smoke all that out of her.

  “She can get help if she comes in. The court’s not going to treat her the way they’d treat those other two sons of bitches. She’s sick, Jean. Not like she’s a raving madwoman. I don’t mean like that. But you know how she gets when she fixes something in her head. I’m no shrink, but I think I know what obsessive behavior looks like.”

  I find myself scanning the room here, but Jean doesn’t break her fix on me.

  “Celia was in the hospital just after she got out of high school. She had some problems,” she says quietly.

  Jean’s eyes drop to the carpet.

  We wait for her to go on.

  “She had problems with a boyfriend in the twelfth grade. She got herself pregnant and then she had an abortion... We’re Catholics, Mr. Parisi.”

  I nod.

  “She blamed herself and she blamed that boy. When he took off on her and let her drop that child all by herself at the clinic, why after it all happened, she went out and found that boy and she damn near tore his eyes out with her own fingernails. She cut him up pretty bad. So the court made her go on into the hospital. You know, the psychiatric ward. She was up there for three months. But she came out and she looked pretty good. Celia wasn’t angry no more. Not at least that we could see. And then she got hooked up with another boy. The one she had Andres with. That’s when Momma threw her out. She almost went after Momma, but I was there to stop her. She went after me with those claws of hers, but I hit her upside the head with a broomstick, and that cooled her off enough.”

  Doc looks over at me, but he hasn’t got anything to add.

  “Celia’d kill me if I told you this, Detective, but yeah, she did talk to me on the phone. Said she needed a place to stay. I told her this’d be the first place the po-lice’d come to lookin’ for her, and she musta known I was right because she didn’t ask me again. But if you think I know where she is now, you wrong. She didn’t like leave no forwardin’ address. I’m sorry. I’d tell you if she did. See, I saw the way she can get. She’s one of these ‘control’ people. You just about never see Celia lose it. But when she does... You don’t want to be there when she does.”

  “Three men found out,” Doc tells her. “The hard way, they found out.”

  “You mean the bastards who killed my nephew.”

  Doc looks at her right in the eyes.

  “If I knew where she was, I’d tell you. I ain’t lying. I’d tell you.”

  She reminds me so much of her sister that I have the sudden impulse to reach out and embrace her.

  But this isn’t the real article. This isn’t Celia. She looks so much like her sibling that you could mistake her for her sister. But when you get within touching distance, there simply isn’t the same energy or chemistry or whatever it is that works on me from Celia.

  “She tries to make contact, please try to find out where she is. She won’t come in until she thinks it’s over. I know her pretty well.”

  “She told me all about you, Lieutenant.”

  She smiles with a matching ‘Celia’ smile. But I still don’t react the way I do when I’m around her physical twin.

  “You know how I feel about her, then.”

  She looks straight at me, but she doesn’t blink.

  “I love Celia, Jean. This is personal, not just business. I don’t know how much she told you, but I want her to live. She doesn’t have to go out and get killed. We can take care of those other two bangers without Celia sacrificing herself or whatever the hell she thinks she’s doing.”

  “My sister don’t want to live anymore. She told me she lost her boy and she lost you and she don’t give a damn what happens no more. And she knows you found that knife at her place. She knows where she’s goin’ if you get hold of her and she don’t want to live if she got to live in a cage. She’s been there, when she was locked up in that psychiatric ward.”

  “They don’t lock them in cells where she’d be headed,” I tell her.

  “You better tell her that your own self. She didn’t believe none of me when I tried to tell her the same damn thing.”

  I hand Jean Giroux my card and I tell her to call if she hears anything at all. She nods and then she leads us to her door.

  *

  “I hate high speed pursuits,” I remind Doc.

  He’s got the blue light up top and we’re weaving in and out of near north traffic at rush hour, 5:25 P.M, it is.

  After ten minutes of near misses and of dodging irate drivers who are compelled to pull off to the side, we arrive at the three flat on Harvard Street.

  “Figures that a brain dead would have his crib on Harvard Street,” Doc cracks.

  There are three patrolmen waiting for us.

  “Is he in there?” I ask the Sergeant, standing with the other two at the doorway to the three flat.

  It’s cold on this February afternoon, but it’s clear. The snow we had in January has all melted away and all the talk at work is about an early spring. I’ll believe it when I feel it.

  “I don’t think so. Downstairs neighbor said he left about three hours ago. Drove away in an Audi. Can you imagine a fuckin’ banger in a fuckin’ Audi?” Sergeant Johannes smiles.

  “Let’s take a look,” I tell him and his two partners.

  Doc’s got the paperwork. It’s Chaka. We’ve located his crib, his home, his apartment, his cave — whatever the fuck it is he’s been lurking in.

  We get the landlord on the first floor to let us in. We walk up to the third level, and Doc pries open the door with his passkey — his old Burglary equipment, he calls it.

  We go in with our pieces out, just in case the landlord’s mistaken about Chaka’s whereabouts. But he’s nowhere in here, we find out. We send one of the uniforms downstairs to keep an eye out for Julius Johnson.

  It’s Doc who finds the Uzi. It’s under the bed and beneath a floorboard that was removed carefully by Chaka in order to sheath this automatic weapon.

  We station the three coppers in and around the apartment to stake out the place so we can pinch the kid when he comes home. Doc and I speed off in the Taurus with the Uzi so we can see if we have a match on the slug that took Andres out.

  We literally run the piece up to ballistics at the Downtown Division. We roust the technicians out of their dinner period and we tell them we need an immediate check on the Uzi. When I tell the two technicians which case we’re on, they stop their griping about missing their meal.

  In ninety minutes we have the answer. The gun is a match. We’ve got the little prick. We’ve got him without an eyeball, this time. We’ve just shoved ballistics up his rectum, and the sun is shining up there. The Candyman has his physical evidence, finally, and there’s no double jeopardy to sweat since he was in court for assault and stalking and assaulting a police officer the last time he went to court.


  We rush back to the three flat on the near north side, and now Doc and I take over the stakeout.

  I’m relieved that Celia hasn’t found him as quickly as we have. But she doesn’t have the resources we do, of course. We’ve had Tactical and Homicide on him for months, and finally an anonymous phone call landed Julius Johnson. Apparently someone else was offended by the odor Chaka leaves behind him.

  We finally have him. All he has to do is come home.

  Doc tells the plainclothesman in the unmarked Chevy across the street to go get us all some dinner. The other cop takes off after Doc talks to him on the radio.

  “Service with a smile,” Doc grins.

  “You’re lucky he’s new to plainclothes,” I say.

  Evans is in his first tour after leaving the beat. He just got his gold shield two weeks ago, so he’s enthusiastic and not too willing to tell Doc to get his own fucking grits. At least the kid in the Chevy shows some respect for his elders.

  “We got to him in time, Jimmy. At least we got that much. And she can’t get near Abu Riad. I hear he’s on high alert. Word got to him that someone’s gunning for him.”

  “How would he hear that?”

  He looks at me and smirks. We both understand that there are coppers on payrolls, so information isn’t hard to come by for Bobby Louis Wells.

  “Motherfuckers,” Doc grumbles.

  After Evans drops off our tin-foil-covered lasagna dinners with a two litre of Diet Coke, we eat our meal in the Taurus. It’s been dark for a while, now, but the days are gradually getting a little bit longer. Maybe spring isn’t so far away afterall.

  The Bulls are on Doc’s portable battery radio at 7:30. We turn it on at tip off. We’ve been parked here across from the three flat for more than two hours.

  Then we hear the crackle of the radio. Dispatch says that Chaka’s Audi has been sighted on Lakeshore Drive, headed south. I think he’s on his way home, so I tell them to tail him but to stay away from him. He won’t be doing much traveling without his beloved automatic pistol. Chaka probably has the Nine in his jacket pocket, but he won’t be far from his true love, his Uzi.

  The detectives who’ve picked him up in traffic have him in a parallel tail. It looks like he is headed home, though, after he pulls off the Outer Drive and is headed west, away from the Lake.

  “He’s coming right to us,” Doc smiles. He takes another belt out of the double litre of soda pop.

  I take out my nine milimeter and check it. Then I return it to the shoulder holster. Next I pull the Bulldog out of my flight jacket’s pocket. I check to see that I’m fully loaded, and then I return the bulky piece to my pocket.

  I’ve got the Bulldog loaded with hollowpoints. Fuck department policy. If this kid wants to go down swinging, he’s going to go down with a grapefruit sized hole on the backside of his noggin. I’m not letting him take my kids’ old man out of the picture. They’ve already lost one parent in the last year.

  “Hollowpoints? Extreme prejudice, huh, Jimmy?”

  “Extreme prejudice. Yes. If he points that piece of his at anybody or anything, I ain’t waiting.”

  “I hear you. I must be rubbing off on you, Jimmy P.”

  “He had his trial. It’d be just fine with me if we ended his career here and now.”

  Doc looks at me as if he’s worried about my state of mind. Then the radio crackles on again.

  Chaka’s about a mile and a half from us. I radio over to Evans to see if he’s ready. He replies that he’s all saddled up.

  There is no moon tonight, and we’re far enough away from the streetlights so that Chaka shouldn’t make us.

  It’s a red Audi, the detectives informed us over the radio. They gave us the plate numbers, too. GHJ 1357. The car is registered to Bobby Wells, the copper on the air tells us.

  It’s too dark to make out color, and I’m no expert at picking out car models, but Doc is a past master at it. Day or night, he can spot them. Year, color, make, all that crap.

  “Here he is,” Doc tells me. “Here is Mister Motherfucker himself.”

  I see the headlights approaching from the north end of the street. But I don’t see any headlights coming up behind him. That’s because Doc told the tail to let him come home solo, to wait at either end of the block in case we need backup. Or in case Chaka tries to bolt.

  “Here he is, Jimmy. Here he finally is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The headlights come at us slowly. So slowly that it appears he’s almost stopped dead in the street. He’s recognized us, somehow. Or he’s got the scent up his nose like the mad canine that he really is. Something in his instincts tells him it isn’t safe.

  He seems to be rolling at us instead of driving. And then the red Audi bucks to a stop, a quarter block away from us.

  “Something’s up,” Doc whispers. He gets on the radio with Evans and tells the new guy to stand by. Then he relates the same message to the parallel tail cops who’re blocking off either end of Harvard Street.

  I hear the motor rev, and then Chaka’s tires squeal like a knifed porker. He peels right toward us, and before we can head our two cars away from the curbs, he’s blasting right by us. Doc hurls us into a fast u-tum and we’re after him. I see Evans flying after us as I look into the passenger’s side view mirror. I see Chaka ahead. The cops have planted their unmarked surveillance car in the middle of the road, blocking the intersection, but Chaka wheels the Audi up onto the sidewalk and screeches around the patrol car that’s blocking traffic. The plainclothesmen in the squad lay some rubber of their own as they turn about and give pursuit. We’re right behind them and Evans is still pulling up our rear. The other patrol car has been notified, and they’re coming up alongside Chaka on the next street over, to the west. We’ve also called dispatch and now it’s all one bull bitch pursuit.

  “I hate high speed chases. I hate movies with high speed chases. I hate fucking tv shows with high speed chases,” I moan to Doc.

  He hasn’t got time to console me. I’ve got both hands planted firmly on the dash in front of me. It seems like it’s my crashbar or my lifeline or something. It’s the only thing I can figure to hold onto.

  We’re approaching 70 m.p.h. on these sidestreets, headed north. But Chaka tears left around the next comer up and he slams into a parked car and sideswipes it as he rams the Audi around the comer. He takes another left at the next intersection, and now we’re headed south. Doc has us up to 75, trying to keep up with the cop in front of him and with Chaka. If we don’t kill ourselves and a dozen innocent bystanders, it’ll be an act of God. That’s why I despise high speed pursuits. In the flicks the fucking things are choreographed, like a dance.

  In the streets you run into people and things and those people and things get all mangled up.

  We’re just touching the red bar at 80 as we zoom south. At the next intersection, a van with a woman and two kids aboard barely makes it through before Chaka broadsides her. I see her going west, and I know she’s got a big brown stain in her panties presently because I know I’m working on one.

  He keeps his speed up, this gangbanger. There is another near miss at the next crossroads and even our flashing blue lights aren’t any kind of warning for the arrival of three cars in a hot tail down city sidestreets.

  At the next comer the lead copper, the guy in front of us, swerves to avoid a pickup truck who’s barely entered the intersection, but the front end of the truck nails him as the two of us, the driver ahead, and Doc jam on the breaks. We ram the copper in the front and Doc and I are hurled forward, but the seatbelts save us from the windshield. There is the tinkling of broken glass as the explosion of the collision subsides. We see that the policeman in the car in front of us seems to be moving around all right and that the driver of the pickup seems to have survived the impact, too, so Doc backs us away from the copper’s rear end, and luckily we’re not stuck to his rear bumper. We pull around the accident and Doc gets on the radio and asks the parallel tail g
uys if they’ve got a fix on Chaka. They’ve pulled over one street east and got behind the gangbanger when they heard the sounds of the collision we’ve just survived without a scratch. We don’t have a mark on us, but the front end of the Taurus is fucked. It’s good fortune that the bastard is still functional and running.

  We speed up to try and make up for all the lost time.

  “He’s headed home, Jimmy. He’s taking us back to his homecourt. He’s looking for an advantage, and the Green is what he thinks’ll even the odds for him.”

  I see that my partner is on target as I recognize the direction Chaka’s taking. He is headed north and west. He’s on the way back to the project. The detectives ahead of us are in close proximity to Chaka when we hear the shocking sound of metal on metal — they’ve plowed into a civilian in another interection up ahead of us. Doc asks them if they’re all right, but there’s no answer.

  We’re up behind the site of the crash in less than a minute. The detectives are sitting in the car, but as Doc stops, we see that they’re both bleeding. They wave us on and yell for us to go after Chaka. The guy they hit in the station wagon seems to be okay. He’s out walking in the street, checking out the damage to his front end. Doc calls for the paramedics to treat our wounded brothers in arms, and then we peal off, again trying to catch up with Chaka.

  The red Audi is nowhere in sight. Our backup hasn’t had time to come to the aid of the troops, so we’re on our own.

  “We’re just going to have to give it a shot,” Doc explains.

  He heads us toward Cabrini Green at full throttle. It’s too late to try and pick up a visual on the kid. We’re only a mile away now, and we’ve got an all-points on the Audi.

  Doc heads the Ford toward the project. The neighborhoods slowly deteriorate in front of our eyes. We go from middle class to poverty in a matter of blocks. And then we arrive.

  Chaka’s sitting in the Audi in front of the Green’s entrance. It appears he hasn’t come through the chase unscathed either. There are man-sized dents in the front driver’s door and his hood is halfway up in the air, saluting with smoke rising from the engine.