Burke's War: Bob Burke Action Thriller 1 (Bob Burke Action Thrillers)

by William F. Brown

  That morning, when Angie and her entourage blew through the front doors of the office, Margie opened her mouth and began to say something, but quickly realized it was hopeless. Ed was gone, Bob was missing, and Margie recognized a pack of braying lawyers when she saw one.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Burke,” she offered with a polite nod.

  “Margie,” Angie replied pleasantly enough, just waiting for an excuse. When one didn’t come, she swept around the reception desk and through the frosted glass doors without breaking stride. The business office consisted of neat rows of five-foot-high cubicles arranged along several horizontal and vertical aisles. The people who “officed” there called it “the bull pen.” In addition to the small cubicles, there were glass-walled individual offices along the floor’s outer windows for the managers and department heads. Angie walked to the center of the room where the two main aisles crossed, and stopped. Hands on hips, she slowly turned around to survey her new empire. This morning, the bull pen was filled with the usual noisy din of a busy office — the clicking of keyboards, the chattering of printers, and buzz of worker bees talking and laughing with each other over the partitions or on the phone. How nice, Angie thought as she put two fingers in the corners of her mouth, and let loose with a nerve-shattering whistle, loud enough to summon a New York City cab in rush hour. In addition to her taste for expensive, single malt scotch, the loud, two-finger whistle was one of the few things her father taught her that stuck. It was a guaranteed showstopper.

  Every head turned and the room fell silent. She stood on her toes and extended herself to full height, raised her arm, and waved the court order high over her head. “Yo, everybody! Stop what you are doing, and I mean now!” she screamed as her eyes swept across the top of the cubicles. Between the loud whistle and her commanding voice, every conversation on the floor suddenly stopped. Heads popped up over the walls of the cubicles like gophers coming up for a quick look on a hot summer day, and every one of them turned her way to see what was going on. Eyes went wide as they saw it was the dreaded Angie, and a collective groan and a half-dozen loud obscenities quickly passed through the room.

  “Nice, real nice, people!” she responded as her eyes turned hard and angry. “Well, get this! I’m holding a Court Order. Those of you who can read the itty-bitty lawyer language will see that it says I’m now in charge of Toler TeleCom — ME! Angelina TOLER and no one else.” She did a slow 360 to study their shocked faces. “After you morons digest that little tidbit, I suggest you get back to doing whatever the hell it was you were doing before I came in. While you are busily working away, these nice gentlemen in the dark suits will come around, department by department, cubicle by cubicle, and meet with you. They have a list we put together this morning that says which of you still have a job here and which of you don’t. In a few cases, I’ll be calling on you personally to give you the big news. Most of you know who you are, so you can save both of us some time and start clearing out your desks. And if there’s anyone else who can’t accept the prospect of daily contact with my delightful, radiant personality — well, you can get the hell out too!”

  Angie walked over and slapped the Court Order down on the closest desk, and glared around the office again. “Oh, one other thing,” she said. “For those of you who will be departing, don’t try to take anything with you except your lunch money. These nice young men from Ambrose Security will be checking everything that goes out the door, including you; and I’m told they love body cavity searches. So have a nice day, or what’s left of it.”

  Angie motioned for one of the larger security guards to follow her as she turned away and marched through the office, up one aisle and down the other, pointing at people, saying, “You, get out! You too, out! Oh, yeah, you can get out too. Now!” and began quickly terminating everyone and anyone who she knew was loyal to Bob or who gave her a problem. Having dealt with the petty offenders in the cubicles in less than ten minutes, she slowed her pace and began to circle the manager’s offices around the perimeter with a maniacal grin. After years of slights and perceived insults, she intended to enjoy every minute of this. Slowly, she strode down the outside row, skipping most of them and going directly to Charlie Newcomb’s office. He sat at his desk watching the show, and shaking his head as she stepped in.

  “Angie, you’re certifiably nuts.”

  “Be that as it may, are you gonna stay and help me, or are you leaving too?”

  “Me? Work for you? I don’t see how that could work for very long,” he said with a sad smile. “Besides, why would you even want me? We both know you’re going to do whatever you want, and you aren’t going to listen to a damned thing anyone has to say, much less me. So what would be the point?”

  “The point, Charlie? The point is you think I’m an idiot, and usually I am, but even I must admit that you’re very good at what you do. You’re right, though, I am going to do whatever I want, as much as I want, anytime I want; and I’m probably not going to listen to a damned thing you say. Even still, I might want to get your thoughts on something from time to time, so who knows? Maybe I will listen to you, and you can’t turn down a challenge like that.”

  “Oh, yes, I can; because you enjoy pulling the wings off butterflies and torturing puppies, and you always have. Since Bob isn’t here for you to kick around, you need a proxy — a dumb schlub like me — and I’m not getting paid half enough money to put up with it, or with you.”

  “Charlie, Charlie,” she smiled and shook her head. “Whatever did I do to give you such a low opinion of me?”

  “Angie,” he smiled back at her, “that would take more time than…”

  She threw up her hands. “Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying, can you? Okay, what did Bobby tell you when he called you this morning?”

  “Bobby? Why would he call me?”

  “Don’t get cute with me, Charlie. He’s going to need help to get out of this — a boat load of help — and I figure you’re about the last friend he’s got.”

  “You’re wrong, Angie. He’s got a lot more friends than you think he does, a whole army of them,” he said as he picked up his briefcase and began to stuff some papers into it.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” she snapped. “As you’ll soon learn, I have a team of shiny new bean counters that’ll be here by noon, and everything in this office stays right where it is — pens, papers, cell phone, keys, files, laptops, briefcases, everything — except your fat ass.”

  He smiled as he put the briefcase back on the floor, stood up, and walked out the door. “Have it your way, Angie.”

  “I always do, Charlie,” she called out after him. “I thought you’d have learned that by now.” He strode away down the main aisle and she quickly walked around to the other side of his desk. Since Charlie was so interested in taking the briefcase, she picked it up, opened it, and poked around inside. After that, she went through his desk drawers, still having no idea what she was looking for even if she did find something. Still, for years, Charlie had treated her as if she were a nitwit, and getting this first taste of raw revenge left her with a growing appetite for more. One down and a whole lot more to go, she thought with a self-satisfied smile, as she took a last look around his office. All in all, not a bad way to start a day.

  By lunchtime, Angie had finished her stroll through the managerial and executive offices, having sent a half-dozen more people packing, and she felt even better. Most of the ones she fired were the new hires Bob brought in after her father died. Since then, she rarely went into the office, and barely knew most of the company staff. Whether they were competent or not, they were Bobby’s people, and there were more useful things Angie could to do with her time than sort out loyalties and reeducate disgruntled employees. With this morning’s preliminaries completed, she turned and approached her father’s old corner office. The President’s Office! That was the big prize. Sitting outside the door at her own large desk was Maryanne Simpson, her father’s and Bob’s long time Executive Secretar
y and Administrative Assistant, and Angie’s stern and unofficial “aunt.” From the expression on Maryanne’s face, she did not approve of Angie’s antics this morning, not that she ever did.

  “Well?” Angie asked as she stopped short of the desk, arms crossed in front of her chest, glaring down at the older woman.

  “Well, what, Mrs. Burke?” came the polite and proper reply.

  “Mrs. Burke? When did we become that formal, Maryanne?”

  “Oh, I suspect it was this morning.”

  “Ah, you noticed I was making a few changes.”

  “Yes, and I think someone is very full of herself, if I may be so bold as to say,” she turned away and muttered.

  “Maryanne, you can stay or you can go, it’s entirely up to you; but don’t start being a smartass and think you have a free ride.”

  “I work at the pleasure of whoever occupies the corner office. My job is to make theirs easier, so I’m afraid it is entirely up to you.”

  The two women glared at each other for a moment, locked and loaded, until Angie turned away toward the President’s office. “All right, but there is something you can do for me,” she said as she noticed “Robert T. Burke, President” painted in black letters on the door. “Get a painter out here and change the name on my door… and I want the lettering in gold. That will make it look more… permanent, don’t’ you think?”

  She continued into the office and closed the door behind her. Bobby had occupied it for the better part of two years, not that anyone could tell. It looked almost exactly as her father left it. Despite her incessant needling and prodding, Bobby never did any redecorating or even replaced the furniture. It was as if the room had fallen into a time warp. Other than carpet cleaning and vacuuming, each piece of furniture sat where her father originally placed it years before. Well, she thought, there’s a new Sheriff in town and that’s gonna change. She looked around at the PR photographs and ‘Chamber of Commerce’ plaques hanging on the walls; at the pads of paper, stapler, and pen and paper clip holders lying on the credenza; and at the standard array of business books and telephone directories in the bookcase. This was supposed to be the president’s office of a moderate-sized corporation, yet it looked as if it was on a weekly rental and Bobby did not have the time or inclination to change it.

  The only personal touches she had added, over Bob’s strenuous objections, were the two Army photographs on the wall and a beautiful, silver-framed photograph on the credenza of Bob stuffing cake into Angie’s mouth at the wedding. It made her pause. Who were those people, she wondered? They were smiling, attractive, and obviously very much in love, at least back them. She turned and looked at the two Army photographs on the wall, the one from Iraq and the one from Afghanistan. Bobby was laughing and grinning in the middle of those two god-awful, rock-strewn, Middle Eastern deserts, having the time of his life. She walked back to the credenza and picked up the wedding photograph, turned, and compared the expression on Bob’s face with the ones in his two Army photographs on the wall. Where did he look happiest, she asked herself? For sure, it wasn’t the wedding photo, she quickly concluded. That was why she came to hate the other two. They were a constant reminder to her that she was only second-best. She understood it the minute she hung them on the wall; and despite his denials, he knew it too. Angie let loose an anguished, frustrated scream, and sent the wedding picture crashing into the sidewall.

  If it was an unhappy morning in the offices of Toler TeleCom in Schaumburg, things were no happier in the offices of Federated Environmental Services in Evanston, some 15 miles to the east. While Schaumburg was the glitzy new retail and high tech center of the northwest suburbs, located at the junction of the region’s two major interstate highways west of O’Hare Airport, Evanston would always be the stolid dowager queen of the north side, located on Lake Michigan at the end of the scenic north Outer Drive. Evanston featured big oak and elm trees, old brick homes, and the lovely campus of Northwestern University. As with the rest of Chicago’s older, “inner ring” suburbs, Evanston had been in slow decline for decades. It now featured patches of deteriorating buildings, gangs, a thriving drug trade, and rising street crime. This was not true everywhere in the city, however. The area on both sides of Sheridan Road along the lake shore between the sprawling Northwestern campus and the north branch of the Chicago River was still relatively prosperous and problem free. Another area with virtually no crime, for those who cared to closely examine the statistics, was a two or three-block strip on either side of Green Bay Road to the west of City Hall. While it might be politically correct to attribute the absence of drugs and street crime there to its proximity to the municipal buildings and Police Headquarters, those on the other side of the law knew full well that this “no-fire zone” had much more to do with a very ordinary four-story red brick office building at its center.

  The sole tenant in this building was Federated Environmental Services, one of central Evanston’s oldest and most stable businesses since 1959. It now employed 75 full-time people in the building, plus another 400 or so in its trash and recycling trucks and in its trash and recycling centers throughout the northwest suburbs. Those numbers only counted the people on the official FES payroll, however, and did not include a much larger number employed in numerous illegal operations on the city’s North and West Side, from downtown Chicago to Aurora in the west and to the Wisconsin state line in the north. Those activities included bookies, wire rooms, meth labs, houses of prostitution, card rooms, heroin and cocaine-cutting parlors, a small army of wholesale and retail distributors on the streets, and a hard-core cadre of “made-men.”

  FES was a privately held corporation and a wholly owned subsidiary of Federated Investments, which was in turn owned by Federated Industries, a privately held Delaware corporation, owned by Diamond Tropics in the Cayman Islands, owned by S-D Investimenti in Naples, Italy. While “environmental services” cover a wide range of activities, Federated’s main business was trash hauling and recycling. It was now the almost exclusive player in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with virtually every restaurant, hotel, residential complex, and large or small business under contract. Their corporate offices in Evanston were a throwback to the 1960s and a comfortable, quiet, perfect fit for the small city. Their trucks were always clean and well maintained. Their “field” personnel were always in uniform, clean, polite, and among the best paid in northern Illinois, and loyal members of Teamsters Local #485. Federated Investments was co-located with FES and had still broader interests to include some of the best-managed restaurants, busiest car dealerships, concrete and asphalt plants, and, more recently, neighborhood clinics and health care. The walls of its lobby were covered with plaques, photographs, and awards from every city, town, and Chamber of Commerce in the northwest suburbs, showing smiling mayors shaking hands with FES’s Chairman and founder, Mr. Salvatore DiGrigoria. The ultimate irony was that “Sally Bats” was now making far more money from his far-flung legal businesses than he ever did from the rackets.

  “Mister DiGrigoria” as he was invariably called by his employees and the sycophants and back slappers standing with him in the photographs, was a short, stocky, block of a man with muscular shoulders and forearms, a large head with thinning black hair, and a pencil-thin mustache. Some of the people who met him thought he resembled a wine barrel on legs, but they usually kept observations like that to themselves. Mr. D could crack walnuts with his bare hands, and you wouldn’t want to aggravate him when he was shaking one of yours in his. Unlike many of his business associates, especially those from the New York and New Jersey families, he was quiet, polite, and soft-spoken, unless prodded. He didn’t start out as a street thug, thief, or killer. He grew up in “da garbage business,” not “the environmental business,” “the sanitation business,” or “the trash business,” and was never embarrassed to admit it.

  Over the years, Salvatore rose through the ranks of power and influence in the Chicago mob. As he did, he grew to detest those Mafia m
ovie names and ancient Sicilian titles such as “the Don,” “Capo,” “Consigliere,” and all the rest, and insisted upon being called, “Mister DiGrigoria.” This wasn’t some uppity affectation on his part. When asked where he came from, he would always say he was born and raised on Maxwell Street. When asked what he did, he would always and proudly state that he was a “garbage man and a card-carrying member of Teamsters Local #485.”

  He began working on the garbage trucks for his uncle Luigi, or “Louie Griggs” as he was called. Salvatore mostly worked the garbage routes on the tough West Side of Chicago, standing on the rear bumper of the moving truck, hanging on with his left arm, while grabbing and lifting trash cans with his right, over and over again, all day long. It gave him a powerful right arm and a unique perspective on life. When Uncle Luigi died, Salvatore’s older brother Pietro, or “Petey D,” took over the South Side territory, while his younger brother, Enzo, who everyone called “Da Kid” for lack of anything more original, took over Milwaukee and southern Wisconsin down to the Illinois State Line. The territory between, from Wisconsin down to Madison Street in Chicago, the unofficial 38th Parallel or DMZ between the North and South Side interests in the city, became Salvatore’s and his alone.

  The office staff on Green Bay Road in Evanston worshiped Mister DiGrigoria. Most had worked for him for decades, and he knew their birthdays, their spouse’s names, their children’s names, and even the names of their grandchildren. He was very paternalistic toward all of them, which was how he believed any employer should act. If there was an illness in anyone’s family or a personal problem, Mister DiGrigoria seemed to know it as soon as they did, and expected to be informed if they or anyone in their family needed help. He believed in the old-fashioned virtues of honesty and loyalty to one’s employer. “If a man puts bread on your table, dat’s da least you owe him.” Disloyalty, dishonesty, embezzlement, and petty theft never happened in his office, and no one who worked there would ever think of talking to a reporter, a cop, or a lawyer. They knew better.