Cutter

by Laird, Thomas

  It’s difficult to shed the past.Marina didn’t have to worry any longer about what preceded meeting a semi head-on on a Wisconsin highway at three in the morning.The police thought that Aaron,her new spouse,had fallen asleep at the wheel,but nothing was ever proved.I just wish that Aaron could have survived so that I could’ve gotten close to him before he died a natural or accidental death.

  But it was not to be.

  I’ve still got her photograph.I will never let go of it,although I keep saying I don’t live in history.She was beautiful.Perfect.No statue could recreate the way she appeared.You could look at Marina from any angle you liked and she had no bad sides.She was sweet and gentle.Her touch was like a moist breeze on a sultry night.Her glance could make anyone’s heart palpitate.Her form was pure.She was a blonde Greek.A rarity,my parents used to tell me.Ancient Greeks had blondes until the mixing of the breeds took over with all the bloody fucking conquests.But Marina was a throwback.I’m blond,too,but I’m more what they call dishwater.Marina was a very golden hue.

  Now,of course,my hair is much darker.My beard and mustache have to be colored to match what’s on top.I wear glasses with clear lenses.I wear hats quite often.More often than I ever wore them before the operation.I’ve also put on fifteen pounds of muscle by working out regularly with free weights at my apartment.My chest and upper torso have all expanded noticeably.I’m in the finest physical condition of my life.

  I can see Parisi or one of his partners touching the frame of Marina’s picture at my parents’ home.I’d like to slice those digits away.He’s doing recon on me,gathering research.He’ll be looking into my family,but he’ll receive no great aid from my mother and father.They won’t let him have anything that would help him to track me.

  I have business to attend to.Apparently Sal’s two shots to the back end of Billy Ciccio didn’t take.I hear Billy Cheech is still alive,but I hear he’s on the move constantly,burrowing into various safe houses.But I’ll catch up to him.It is inevitable.Sal is secure for the moment,although I sense he’s becoming nervous about his future.He’s probably figured I’m on the way to flying solo in this business. Iknow more about our computer links than he does and I’ll be able to secure my own transportation for the goods I market.The jet to Europe and southeast Asia is really all I rely on Sal for,at this juncture.He will become expendable soon.

  And I have to dispense with John Fortuna before very long.He does not allow people to do business in his name unless he receives tribute.Which we’ve never sent his way.Since the demise of his dear sister,Mary Margaret aka Ellen,it’s him or me.Which suits me fine.I’ll have no need for the Chicago version of the Mafia just as soon as I set up my own network.With a new face and an almost new body,everything is about to fall in place.The final stage is to recruit new field operatives.Men who can do the removals for me.When I branch out,it will confound Parisi and his friends and condemn them to sheer misery,I am confident.I’d like to be a fly on the wall of their offices when it all occurs.

  I should not bring Marina to the forefront because when I do,I suffer.I do not have a great threshhold for suffering.I’m not a big fan of endurance.That’s why I use the ether as often as I do.There are only some occasions when I enjoy watching misery.But there arenoinstances when I prefer to stick pins in my own flesh.Marina tests me to my limits.I wade in my own figurative blood when I call her to my consciousness.I don’t know why I even keep her picture,except that I somehow could not survive without her portrait somewhere near my person.

  Her lips were full.Her body was elegant and pure.She was too good for life,so she lost it,naturally.

  I really would like to meet with Lieutenant James Parisi.I would like to meet with anyone who is close to him,as well.I could stand to give him a dose of the pain he doled out to Elena and Niko.He’d enjoy giving me a lifetime behind a wall of bars.

  There are things to take care of first.Perhaps later.Maybe one day I’ll meet face to face with Lieutenant James C.Parisi,Chicago Homicide.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  My son was a little old to be ring bearer, but I wanted him to be part of this ceremony. Michael carted the jewelry to the front of the church without complaint. Kelly, my daughter, served as a bridesmaid.

  Natalie’s family had gathered from out of state, and the small cluster of people sat behind us here in St Anthony’s Church on the North Side.

  Doc Gibron was my best man, and one of Natalie’s friends from the Department, Sharon Olsen, was maid of honor. Except for Doc and me, everyone wasyoung in this church, outside of a few oldsters in the pews. Doc’s wife Mari, the pediatrician, sat in the crowd with Doc’s adopted little girl. The red-headed Captain, my boss, was there too.

  It all went by in a blur until Natalie lifted her veil. I began to have images of the dead. My wife, Erin, who had died of breast cancer two years ago, and Celia Dacy, the woman I had loved who had lost her son and her life because she had tried to square things for the murder of her boy Andres.

  But their images departed, and there was no one else next to me except my new wife, Natalie. Tears tracked her cheeks, so I tried to smile at her.

  I looked over at her once-scarred forearm, but the plastic surgeon had worked magic. I moved toward her and our lips met when the priest, Father David, told me I could kiss the bride. Our kiss went on and on and I felt almost embarrassed until Natalie pressed against me with all her strength. Then I heard the applause coming from the pews and I decided to give them their money’s worth. I turned, still locked to Natalie, and I saw that they were giving me and her a standing ‘O’. That was when I had to come up for air.

  *

  I came out for a little oxygen at the reception at Dominic’s, a restaurant on the near North. Doc and I walked outside as I left Natalie to handle the fifty or so guests inside. It was a fragrant Saturday evening in early spring. Late April, just past Easter and the Resurrection.

  ‘You are a very lucky hombre,’ Doc said.

  There were a couple other guests out here taking a smoke break, but we walked a few paces away from them at the entrance to Dominic’s.

  ‘You going to be able to handle things for two weeks?’

  He was in charge while I took two weeks with Natalie in Wisconsin. We were going up north, near the UP where there was still snow.

  He smiled at the absurdity of my query. Doc was my teacher, my mentor. He was the Big Dog and no one else was close to his status yet. I hoped to be, someday.

  ‘I don’t like that this guy has gone quiet,’ I told my partner and my closest friend.

  Jack Wendkos came walking toward us.

  ‘Congratulations, Jimmy,’ he said as he offered me his hand.

  Jack was probably becoming the only other close friend I had in the Department. Everyone else but Natalie was just a coworker. I didn’t get close to too many people. I never had. I’d stuck primarily to family. The outer ring seemed too distant for me, most of the time. I could tell these two men anything and feel comfortable. Working with Jack previously helped develop our newer and closer relationship, and I’d worked with Doc since I’d started in Homicide.

  ‘We were talking about The Farmer’s downtime,’ Doc informed the junior partner.

  ‘I don’t think he’s been down,’ Wendkos told us.

  ‘You think he did the black prostitutes too,’ I offered.

  ‘Yeah. I think he’s trying to be cute by going away from his usual type of victim. I think he’s filling orders again, Jimmy. I think he might have been in a pinch when we almost got to him out on his farm, and I think things were backed up and he had to come up with the best goods he could. You notice he’s never sliced open a male, not to fill a request, anyway. He didn’t remove anything he could sell with Dr Richmond.’

  ‘It sounds likely to me,’ I responded.

  Doc grunted some kind of half-hearted affirmation of Jack’s theory.

  ‘I still think he’ll go for Sal. And for Big John too,’ Doc said.

  ‘The FBI has more fucki
ng electrical wire rigged on those mobbed-up fucks than Vegas does on its electric billboards,’ Jack added.

  ‘Here we are at a festive occasion and we’re talking shop,’ Doc admonished. ‘Let’s go back in and I’ll get loaded. Mari’s driving tonight,’ Gibron smiled.

  We walked back toward the restaurant. Doc pulled me to a halt, and Jack stopped as well.

  ‘I don’t like it that your name’s popping up in the newspapers and on TV all the time. I think this guy might begin to think it’s between you and him, James.’

  ‘Yeah, Doc. And he’s right. Itis between him and me. And all my troops, too.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be that fucking bold, would he?’ Wendkos asked.

  ‘Not likely. He’s probably no more inclined to go after a policeman than Sal or Big John Fortuna would be. But I think you should be careful, Jimmy. This guy’s beyond "attitude",’ Gibron warned me.

  ‘You didn’t make public where you and Natalie are headed?’ Jack wanted to know.

  ‘You don’t even know, do you?’ I asked Wendkos.

  ‘No. Hell, no.’

  ‘Doc doesn’t know either,’ I told him. ‘Just my mother and the Captain have the number where we’ll be.’

  ‘I’m putting someone on your mom and kids, Lieutenant. Please don’t argue with me,’ Doc said.

  The concern in his eyes frightened me a little.

  ‘Okay,’ was all I could muster. ‘We got manpower on everyone else. It can’t hurt, can it?’

  Neither of my partners answered. Doc broke the ice by grinning and leading me back into Dominic’s before my wife had to begin a detective career by looking for her old man.

  Chapter Thirty

  I visit cemeteries professionally. I don’t make a habit out of coming to them on my own time. Except to visit the markers for three people. My old man, Jake, who’d been a homicide lieutenant, was one of the three. He was buried on the far southwest side at Birch Tree Cemetery. My mother owned the plot where she’d be buried next to my father. Jake Parisi fell down twenty-six steps at our family home, and I went through a lot of pain and therapy about whether my mother intentionally shoved him down those stairs or whether the whole deal was accidental. I suppose it was the detective in me. But I thought I’d come to terms with a question that had no answer. (My mother wasn’t sure herself if she didn’t subconsciously mean to waylay the old man, who could at times be a verbally abusive drunk.) And then there was the question of my parentage. It wound up that my biological father was really my Uncle Nick. Early in my mother’s marriage it seemed that one of my parents wasn’t able to produce offspring. My mother went to a doctor, but the old guy refused. She got a clean bill of health. So my mother assumed it had to be Jake’s swimmers that weren’t pulling their weight. Later on I learned that my dad had had mumps in his late teens, which my family doctor explained to me might have caused him to become sterile. Whatever, my mother conspired with my Uncle Nick to produce a child. Nick had loved my mother before Jake got into the picture, but Nick took off to the Southwest when he was young to try and make a fortune in petroleum. Which didn’t pan out. He was gone two years, and so Jake married Eleanor, my mother, before Nick could return and start things up with her. Because Nick still loved my mother, he finally agreed to do what artificial insemination does today. Their thing worked out, but I didn’t find out about my true genetic makeup until I was forty years old. It was a long story, and it was so ridiculous it was true.

  So I was copacetic with all of it now. I knew my real father, but I visited the man who brought me up, here at his current resting place.

  Then there was Erin, who was buried at the other end of the city. My beloved wife. Still was beloved, always would be. I didn’t think Natalie had a problem knowing Erin was still inside me and would always be in there. And Celia Dacy. The woman I agonized over because of the difficulty we had nailing the sons of bitches who had killed her kid, Andres, that caused her to seek the vendetta against those same gangbangers who had snuffed her boy’s future. She was black, and that was a problem between us. It was a difficulty for both of us. But it wasn’t a matter of prejudice for either Celia or me. It was the climate, the city, that we shared.

  Celia lay on the South Side, not too far from my dad’s resting place.

  I visited the three of them every few months. I prayed over them because I was a practicing Catholic. There were moments when I had a lapse of faith, so then I thought I was wasting my time and my efforts for the three of them. But I visited them regularly. It was a need, I supposed. My own need to do it was a sort of ritual I performed for them, to let them know somehow that they were not forgotten. That I held them inside like some kind of flickering candle that I was afraid would be extinguished if I didn’t continue to visit them.

  Marco Karrios made a trip to their resting places a necessity. It was getting hard to keep up with the number of holes in the ground Karrios was helping to dig. The bodies were adding up. And with all the people who were assigned to pop him, he still wandered loose. With a new face. This time we didn’t have any survivors to tell us how his appearance had changed.

  We had just returned from the honeymoon. I worried for two weeks about my mother and two children. I called them twice a day from the Upper Peninsula resort where Natalie and I stayed, and I thought the calls began to disturb my mother. She had also become aware of the round-the-clock surveillance on our house. She read the paper and she knew about The Farmer. She was the widow of a Homicide detective. Eleanor knew about the assholes we tried to arrest and sometimes didn’t. My mother kept her own loaded .38 in her nightstand. It was a habit she’d picked up when Jake Parisi had still been alive.

  She said everything was all right. She repeated it each time I called until she became a bit irritable about my obsession with their safety. It was, as Doc said, unlikely that Karrios would try to get up close and personal with a policeman, but it was also clear that Marco was a ruthless motherfucker who was willing to cross over and do ridiculously dangerous things. He had killed a female lawyer in the foyer of her upscale Gold Coast apartment building. He had killed the security guard and had raped the woman on top of the guard’s dead body. So how was fucking with a cop too scary for him?

  When I got home, I called the security specialists that Doc had recommended before I’d left on the honeymoon. I put out several grand for their primo operation. Our home became one big bug of technology overnight. Natalie, my mother, the kids and I all had to learn how to punch in and out of there.

  The last thing I did was buy a dog. Michael had been whining for a canine for a long time, so here was his chance. I bought us a Shetland Sheepdog, a sheltie. He was perfect. Neurotic, a barker. (Anybody in the nearby vicinity? Dog went fucking nuts.) My mother said I’d have to take him to obedience school to shut him up some, but I thought I’d wait until Karrios was playing pick-up-the-soap-in-the-shower-room in some high-security shithouse. We named the dog Merlin. Like the magician. The pooch was smart and he was friendly and very territorial. Which was what convinced me to buy him. He was like a sawed-off version of Lassie. And Michael was thrilled.

  My blood pressure was up. I’d had a physical just before we left for Wisconsin. They changed my prescription to something the doctor called ‘the adult dosage’. Our family physician was a wiseass.

  I thought my pulse had come down a little after making love with Natalie in an overpriced cabin for two weeks — a fortnight, the old-timers called it. But it began to surge once I returned to shift. Natalie and I were both on the midnight run. We both slept during the day while the kids were at school. My mother was very quiet because, as I said, she was married to a cop and she too was a veteran of the midnight shift.

  I visited the cemetery alone, but I invited Natalie to make the rounds with me. I told her I didn’t want to do anything alone anymore. I told her I was thinking seriously about jumping at retirement in five years when I hit fifty-five, but she didn’t seem to take me seriously. Then I explained I’d be
getting out of her way, since she wanted to work in the department where I did business. Homicide. She said she couldn’t picture me not working with stiffs, but I tried to convince her that she was all I needed.

  I came home after visiting the three burial plots of Jake, Erin, and Celia. I had to punch in our security code. Then I got in without it sounding like a prison break off The Rock or Joliet in ‘a thirties gangster movie. Merlin was yapping behind the door until he saw me. Then he wagged his tail and wet the carpet. He was not quite housebroken yet.

  Natalie walked up to me in her robe and nothing else. She let the robe come apart in the front.

  ‘Oh! What about —’

  ‘Mom’s gone to the mall and then out to dinner with her cronies. She said not to wait up for her. I’m off tonight, so I’ll watch the kids.’

  She’d becomefamilia instantly. She thought of Eleanor as a second mama, and the kids were damn’ near her own by now. Kelly and Michael had taken to her instantly.

  ‘I got to go on shift about 10.30,’ I reminded her.

  We’d be hunting for our boy again, aided this time by an artist’s multiple renderings of Karrios’s possible new mug. What good that would do us, I wasn’t certain.