Black Angel

by Thomas Laird

“It’s a lost cause, Ben. You’re not going to go for a rerun on me.”

  “What do I have to do to convince you I’m harmless, when it comes to you?”

  “I’ve read about women who marry guys like you when you’re in prison. I never understood them, until I got to know you a little better. But I don’t think I want to get that close to you. No one seems to survive very long when they do get around you.”

  “That’s all history. I can’t do any of that anymore.”

  “Why? Did you find Jesus?”

  “No! It’s just too risky.”

  “I can’t believe it’s out of your system. I’ve read about you guys in journals. You always have a taste for it. It never goes away.”

  “It has with me. I just want to get out of here and disappear.”

  “From what Jimmy tells me, you’ve got enough to live comfortably on for the rest of several natural lives.”

  “He’s right.… But still. It gets lonely here. Just the two of us. And you’re too frightened of me to let me get close to you, Helene.”

  “There. You’ve grasped it!”

  We laugh together.

  “He must be paying you very well,” I tell her.

  “It beats forty hours in a hospital. Yes.”

  She always has that handbag with the pistol close at hand. A very bright girl. Not the type to be convinced by flattery, so I don’t go there.

  “I think Jimmy Z wants me dead.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. I’ve got a little book with lots of information on him and his crew. He’d really like that book, and he’d really like me dead.”

  “So why doesn’t he kill you, then?”

  “My father has attorney friends in Chicago. Several friends. And one of them has that little book, and that lawyer has instructions to hand it over to the Chicago Tribune and to the State’s Attorney—a copy to each, of course. It would put Mister Z in a very bad light, I’m afraid. He and all of his associates.”

  “So you’re a blackmailer, too.”

  “Is that bad?”

  She laughs with me once more.

  “I could almost believe that you’re not a killer at all. But then I’d be thinking with my pussy and not with my head.”

  I find myself aroused suddenly. I haven’t felt this way about a woman since the whore in Mexico.

  “I have an idea.”

  “You do?” she queries.

  “Tie me up on the bed. But be carful of this shoulder.”

  “I’m a nurse. Remember?”

  “You mean you’d consider it?”

  “I mean I’d have the gun in hand throughout.”

  “Sounds very exciting.”

  “Sounds dangerous, to me.”

  “You’d have the gun and I’d be strapped to the bed.”

  She stops to consider the proposal. I should say proposition.

  “Is money a factor?” I ask.

  “I’m not a fucking whore,” she tells me, with a grim look on her middle-aged face.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I know you’re not like that, Helene.”

  “Okay, then.”

  We sit and watch each other for a few moments.

  “I have the gun. You’re tied securely to that four-poster. Right?”

  “Exactly,” I agree.

  “You blink, and I shoot you right in the fucking head,” she grins again.

  *

  She has me knotted to the four-poster bed. The knots are tight and secure, too. As promised, once she gets naked, the Saturday night shooter is in her right hand. She’s taking no chances, just as she said.

  I know she’d pull the trigger. I can see it in her eyes. She’s been around Zagnarelli long enough to sniff out a con. She’s been with guys who’ve pulled the trigger or shoved in a blade before.

  “Maybe I should charge,” she grins as she gets on top of me and guides me inside her.

  She has a much younger woman’s body. Erect breasts, no waistline, trim hips and ass. This is the kind of frame my Mexican prosty had. A working girl who’s kept herself in shape. I doubt she’s ever had children. No telltale sags that I can spy.

  She thrusts herself heatedly on top of me. The naked nurse with the palmed pistol has excited me even more than my pro, south of the border. It’s the notion that she might pull that trigger on me that has me revved up. For Carl Thomas it was the nipping and biting factors that got him where he wanted to be. For Brandon it was adolescents who threw him into a sexual fury. Everyone has his boiling point. With me, it has always been jeopardy—even if I was only a witness to the murders and rapes. The chance of being caught, and then getting away with it, has always been the catalyst to my arousal.

  Now she begins in earnest. The thrusts are faster and more regular in rhythm. She holds her left breast with her free left hand; the .22 is in her right.

  I can’t withstand it any longer, and I climax violently inside her. I can feel her tighten and go off just after I do.

  She rises from the bed, all sweaty and wasted. She nearly wobbles as she gets to her feet. I’m still connected to the four-poster.

  “You’re my first serial killer,” she laughs. “I think Jimmy’s guys I’ve been with have all just been glorified boosters. They’d rather steal than fuck, too.”

  “I think my arm is cramping up.”

  I wince severely to make my point.

  “Sorry,” she apologizes. But she shakes her head and smiles at me.

  With one violent swing, I rip the injured arm free, and then I punch her right between the eyes. She goes down like a stunned steer. I quickly untie my other hand and my feet. She’s groaning on the floor, but she’s still semi-conscious. The pistol came flying loose, off to her left on the carpet. When I’m able to get off the mattress, I grab the piece first.

  “Please,” she begs.

  “You were very difficult,” I tell her, pointing the barrel at her head.

  “Please. You kill me and Jimmy…”

  “Yeah, yeah. Jimmy’ll come find me. But I’ve got news, Helene. I’m going to find your boss first. You know why? Because he planted a cunt like you on me, gun in handbag. That was unnecessary. Especially after all the money David Crowley made for him. I expected a nurse, not a jailer.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “That all you got?”

  “Ben. Please don’t.”

  “Very clever. Call me by name. Personalize this so I won’t look upon you as an object. You’ve been reading JAMA, haven’t you.”

  “Ben…”

  I shoot her twice in the forehead, and her head bounces twice from the shots. There’s a mess of red, pink and white underneath the back of her head, and the blood is pooling beneath her skull—or what’s left of it.

  She was right. Twenty-twos make a very big mess, even if they are small caliber.

  My shoulder is indeed stiff, but it has healed nicely. Helene was very good at stitching, and the anti-biotics have all kicked in fully by now.

  I find my clothes in the closet, and I dress quickly. She calls in to someone every half hour, so I haven’t got long before they know something’s wrong here. Then Z’s people will swarm the place, and I can’t beat his numbers. No, I’ve got to meet with Jimmy Z one-on-one.

  *

  I take Helene’s Camry into the city. I’ve got to unload it and buy some new wheels in a hurry. The car I was driving before I was shot by the FBI woman is of no use. Zagnarelli has made that vehicle, so I need to buy a new car, preferably a junker. Something an old man might drive, like a Buick. Something unobtrusive. Something the cops wouldn’t be expecting me to wheel about.

  I stop at a neighborhood lot in Tinley Park after an hour’s drive from the near-Joliet location. They deal in cash. I can’t trade in the Camry, obviously, so I purchase the Ford Fairlane for a grand. I give the salesman two hundred to expedite the paperwork, and I’m out of there in under an hour.

  *

  Jimmy Z is a creature of habit. I�
��ve dealt with him since I was in college. The old fellow, David Crowley, introduced us several times when we visited Chicago. I’ve always been a student of human nature. I watched him carefully, and I found out that he had a penchant for strippers who were also whores. He cannot resist the pole dancers.

  So I go into a joint in Cicero not run by Zagnarelli, and I make conversation with an Asian bar-girl because I know Z really digs Asians. I pay her five hundred dollars to skip tonight’s performance in Cicero and for her to go to Zagnarelli’s home bar of Pennyloafer’s in Berwyn. She agrees when she sees the cash and when I tell her I’ll give her another five bills if she gets Zagnarelli to a motel room three blocks from Pennyloafer’s. (It’s a convenient four-hour-nap joint on 22nd Street.)

  She asks me what’s going on, and I explain I’m working for Jimmy’s wife in a divorce situation. I tell her I’m going to take pictures. She asks where my camera is, and I tell her it’s out in the car. She acts as if she’s done all this before, so I don’t get an argument from her.

  I follow her over to Z’s home pad. She drives a beat-up Thunderbird, but the black shorts and black haltertop she’s wearing ought to work. She gets out of the car and enters Jimmy Z’s bar.

  Forty-three minutes later, she’s coming out of the place. But he’s not with her.

  However, she drives the three blocks to the Pleasant Hill Motel, home of the “nap,” and within ten minutes, here comes Zagnarelli in his black Lincoln. He has only one bodyguard, riding shotgun next to him. He must feel like he’s in his neighborhood, in his comfort zone, and he knows he’s a made man, too. No one fucks with a made man, especially in his own home territory.

  I wait ten minutes before I approach the car with the bodyguard. He’s still sitting in the passenger’s seat when I tear open the door, and while he tries to blink, I hit him squarely on the bridge of his nose and shove the flat of my palm at his head. The blow doesn’t kill him, but it stuns him. I drag him out of the car, and then I see he’s a tall, thin man. He’s got a shoulder holster and an automatic in the sheath. While he’s on the blacktop next to the car, lying flat on his back and bleeding profusely from the nostrils, I stomp on his throat three times, quickly and furiously, and then he stops moving. And breathing. I haul him into the back seat and shut the door behind him.

  I wait until they’re in Room 106 for about twenty minutes. Just enough time for foreplay and for getting naked. I’ve got Helene’s .22 in my jacket pocket, and I park the Fairlane right next to the black Lincoln.

  It’s rather late. Probably 1:30 a.m. I don’t have a watch on. So I go to the door and knock. She’s been told to answer the knock, and she does. When the door cracks open, I shove her back inside and quickly close the entry.

  No Jimmy Z.

  “He’s in the can,” the lush-lipped Asian girl says.

  “Thank you,” I tell her.

  “Where’s my money?” she asks.

  I remove the .22 from my jacket pocket. Just when she’s about to scream, I shoot her in the jaw. The jaw comes unhinged, and then she falls flat on her lovely ass.

  I rush to the john door. I open it to find Jimmy Z whacking himself while sitting naked on the commode.

  “No! No!” he cries out.

  “Helene was more polite. She asked please. But she never had time for the thank you.”

  I shoot him twice in the throat, and the shots throw him to his right, against the bathroom wall. He slumps, and then I see the arterial spray.

  I walk over to him.

  “You fuckin’…”

  He can barely whisper, but he still has a voice.

  I watch his eyes. They are the windows to the soul, the philosopher says. The lights are dimming in his attic. He’s bleeding out on the john floor.

  I don’t have much time to linger because the popping sound of the pistol might draw some attention in a fuck flop like this. But I have just enough time to watch his eyes lose their light.

  I have just enough time to watch my dad’s old mob buddy die.

  36

  Jimmy Zagnarelli’s people react as you would suppose they would. They’re hitting the streets and the pavement with a vengeance. They’ve found the car that Jimmy supplied Anderson with, and we’ve found the body of Helene Markham, the “nurse” who supposedly watched over Benjamin in some safe house far southwest of the city, somewhere in the Joliet environs near the house we previously raided looking for the ex-Marine killer.

  “Why’s he kill one of his buddies?” Pete asks us as we walk on Michigan Avenue on our lunch break. We’re working days this week, so we eat and sleep pretty much when normal people do.

  “Pete,” I tell him. “You got to get beyond motive with these guys. That was our mistake when we started all this. First it was the oil bullshit, and then he created a new scenario in Mexico, according to the cops down there. Mexican nationalism or fanaticism, depending on whom you believe. Now he whacks a wiseguy from Chicago’s outfit, and we all wonder why. In my primitive understanding of the criminal mind, I have to believe this guy just kills for the hell of it. I think he has a genuine feel for it, a taste for it. Women don’t appeal to him much, except as targets. Money doesn’t mean shit, unless he needs it to operate.”

  “You’re telling us he’s the pure sociopath,” Jack Clemons says to Pete and me.

  We’re walking “The Golden Mile” in the downtown area. It’s April, but the thaw hasn’t arrived yet. The temperatures are hovering near freezing, but there’s been no snow or ice, thankfully. April can be a slippery bitch in this city.

  We can see our breaths as we walk amid the streams of sidewalk traffic.

  The thought of our child growing inside Hannah causes my stomach to twitch, the way it always twitches when I think of them.

  “Psychology still hasn’t caught this prick. How many shrinks have we talked to, the last month?” Jack asks.

  We don’t answer him because it was just a thought Clemons made audible. He already knows we’ve been to four psychiatrists, two of whom work for the CPD; the other two are in private practice, and they both consult for us, occasionally.

  “You’d think the guineas could locate him and shoot him.”

  “Give them time,” Jack tells Pete.

  “I don’t have time,” Donato counters. “I’m going to be called back to ship eventually. My stay here is limited. He’ll become a cold case again soon, it looks like.”

  I stop in my tracks.

  “We need to keep squeezing the Italians. They’re the only ones who’ve come in recent contact with Anderson.”

  “We tried that,” Jack says.

  “You have a better idea?” I ask him.

  *

  We talk to the guy in Tinley Park who sold him the car after the used car salesman recognizes Benjamin Anderson from Eyewitness News on TV. The salesman’s name is Kerry Daniels. He’s a good looking black man who stands at least six-six. He tells the three of us he played basketball at DePaul in Chicago about twelve years ago.

  He tells us he sold Anderson a Ford Fairlane. He also shows us the paperwork, and Jack calls in the information for an all points, even though we know it’s likely our boy has already ditched the Ford. He hasn’t made stupid mistakes yet.

  But the half million he robbed from Crowley’s safe in LA won’t keep him in cash forever if he’s trying to go subterranean, as he usually does after he snuffs anyone. We can only hope it hasn’t been convenient for him to get rid of the Fairlane yet. The nurse and Jimmy Z have only been chilling for seventy-two hours or so.

  The Outfit actually reported the two murders. Remarkable. But I think they want us to help them locate Anderson. It just increases the chances of his being grabbed. It’s gotten to the point that they want him in a cage before he kills any more made men, just for laughs, the way he smoked Jimmy in the motel.

  It was a ballsy move. But Benjamin counted on Jimmy’s hubris. It was Zagnarelli’s ego that got him shelled. He felt too comfortable in his own territory. He coul
dn’t conceive of anyone fearless enough to reach out and touch him. And Anderson apparently knew Jimmy Z’s true weakness—Asian strippers. I feel bad for the stripper. She’s the “innocent” member of the dual murders. She didn’t deserve to go down. He can’t care about witnesses anymore, but his old habits of purging his kill zones must die hard or not at all.

  It’s pretty clear that Benjamin Anderson has a death wish, himself. It doesn’t take an MD or a psychiatrist to come up with that analysis. He’s burned all his bridges and all his escape routes too. Now he’ll want to come after me before he goes down courtesy of the dagos, the FBI, or the Chicago Police Department.

  He has to make the grand exit before he finally gives it up.

  *

  I warn my dad to be extra vigilant. He’s got the .45 war souvenir close at hand wherever he goes. It isn’t licensed, but I don’t give a shit at this point, and I’d like to see a cop prosecuting him for illegal possession of a firearm. He’s the father of a Homicide detective, and that ought to be worth some consideration for my old man.

  Sammy is packing again—this time, it’s a .32 snub nose that he purchased legally in Champaign. He’s still with Megan, and he never lets her go out alone anymore.

  Hannah has her weapon as well.

  All of the above disturbs me greatly. My family was not the NRA type until this business with Anderson occurred. Now they’re all well-heeled in the gun department. They all take target practice at least weekly.

  The worst part is that they fear to go out of the house, especially at night. And I’m frightened for them all, twenty-four-seven. They have cops looking in on each of them, and a pair of plainclothes is still tailing me, but it pisses me off that I’ve caused them all to live like fugitives. I know I should aim my anger at Anderson, but I feel guilty in spite of reason.

  *

  There is barely a pooch in Hannah’s tummy. She’s told me she doesn’t want to know the sex of our baby, and I go along with her wishes. We’ve told the OB/GYN we don’t want to know if she finds out if we’ve got a pointer or a setter. When I joke about pointer or setter with Hannah, she frowns, so I don’t repeat the gag.

  *

  “When will we be free?” she asks in bed.