by Thomas Laird
*
We find the dvd lodged behind all the commercial tapes and dvds in their home entertainment center. It’s almost as if he did a half assed job of hiding it just so he would never forget about its presence in his home.
Tommy turns on the equipment and we play the dvd. The first thing we see is Robin Grant, tied with electrical tape to a folding chair. Then the camera shows us Mrs. Grant, also tied with black electrical tape, her four limbs fastened to the four corners of a bed. It’s hard to notice the woman’s beauty as you look into her terrified eyes. Her mouth is sealed with that same black tape, so she can’t scream during the recording.
A man with a black hood enters the scene. He is naked, but he is carrying a medical valise. When the woman sees what he has in the valise, you can see Mrs. Grant’s face redden severely, almost like a deep sunburn. Her cheeks expand, but she can’t release the shriek behind the tape.
I’ve never seen the like of what the hooded man takes out of that medical bag. It’s not a sex toy or a dildo, but it is something large and purply-red and hideous. It doesn’t look like an artificial penis. It looks real. But I still can’t identify it. It doesn’t seem human, that’s for sure.
I want to tell Tommy to turn this filth off, but we have to see it. We have to know what has happened to Mrs. Grant and the rest of her family.
It’s like watching a video of the actual hell. This is something you’d see in the physical inferno that Dante described. No human being would ever do this to another human being, I’m thinking.
My gorge rises as it finally comes to an end. The camera pans over to Robin Grant who has mercifully passed out. But then it focuses on Mrs. Grant.
Her eyes are protruding the way Carlton’s eyes bugged out. There is foam dripping from the tape above and below her lips as though she’s suddenly become a mad dog.
And then the picture goes black, and I try to begin breathing again.
We stop at Garvin’s. I can’t face Natalie because I feel I need a shower.
I order a bourbon at Garvin’s. I never drink whiskey, but I need one now. Tommy joins me with a shot of his own.
“I feel like I need to be sandblasted,” Spencer admits.
“Yeah, me too.”
“What the hell was that?” he asks.
“You mean that thing he…Jesus, I don’t know. We’ll have to get forensics…Somebody.”
Tommy took the dvd with us so that we can get it analyzed. If Robin Grant finds it missing, I don’t think he’s going to run to the cops to complain.
“What are we dealing with here, Jimmy? It sure as hell isn’t a who.”
“He’s human, all right.”
“You could’ve fooled me…Killing a thousand people to collect on a policy. Shit, that I can almost understand. But what he did to that woman, Jimmy…That goes way beyond…way beyond evil.”
“We need to begin to make his life miserable. Time to take off the gloves.”
“I thought we already had,” Tommy grinned. It was a sad grin, however.
Garvin was working again at his son’s sports bar.
“What’s with you two? Turning into alkies?”
He placed the two Jim Beams in front of us.
“Halloween is already past, right?” I ask the barman.
“What the hell is wrong with you? It’s the New Year plus three days, stupid!” the old guy smiles. Then he saunters off down the bar, as usual.
Natalie could not convince Robin to come clean about what happened to his wife, so we brought Nadine in to interview her, next.
“What did Grodnov do to you?” I ask her.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“We’ve seen the dvd.”
Nadine directs her eyes at me.
“You filthy—“
I grab her hand before she can slap me.
Natalie sits her back down.
“You’re going to let this pig get away with that,” Natalie tells her. “You’re going to let him get away with raping you too.”
She loses her steam at me. Then she settles back into her chair, here in the interview room.
“He said he’d kill us all.”
“We’ll protect you,” I tell her.
“He said he’d kill us all, but not until after he’d done to me what he did to my mother. Do you understand?”
“We will protect you, Nadine. The FBI will help you. New identities, whatever it takes.”
Then her stare becomes hard and cold.
“Just tell us the name of the man who did this to you and your mother and father,” I tell her.
“I want a lawyer,” Nadine says.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Chicago Herald January 12, 2002
I made a pact with my wife that she would never die before I did. She has blown all bets. My wife was my partner, my lover and friend. She couldn’t keep up her end of the bargain, but of course I forgive her. She was killed along with about a thousand other souls on Nine One Two at the Anderson Building in Chicago, Illinois—just in case you never heard of her. She and I did a TV movie review series called Van Dyke and Van Dyke. She was the intelligent and good-looking member of the pair, as you might recall.
We all looked on in horror and disbelief on Nine One One as the Towers were exploded by two jets. We all became enraged as we found out that these terrorists worked for Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden, a billionaire Saudi who has a thing against Americans and against our way of life. We are now finding out just how different Bin Laden is from his Muslim brethren. He espouses a kind of holy war called a ‘jihad’ that most Moslems don’t buy into. At least one can only hope that most of them don’t buy into it. There have been numerous assaults and even a few murders of Arab-Americans. A new act called the Patriot Act has stripped us of some of our rights, all in the name of National Security.
And if you’ve been reading this writer’s column lately, you know how a number of Federal Police Departments—most auspiciously the Federal Bureau of Investigation—have been profiling those same Arab/Americans the way Blacks have been profiled since 1863 in this nation. It is a shameful moment in this country’s history. Make no mistake about it. We are now rumbling about a war in Iraq. It seems someone’s Youngster has an axe to grind with Saddam Hussein—who is no doubt a vile villain. It also seems we are about to put our young men and women in arms in harm’s way. We supposedly learned our lesson in Vietnam, but it appears we are on the verge of a new adventure, this time in the Middle East.
I have wandered far afield from a memorial for my beloved wife. I ask your indulgence. She has never left my mind and she never will. My wife was the liberal to my conservative. It was obvious even in the way we reviewed films. She was ever the avant garde, and I was the stodgy curmudgeon. She was constantly telling me to beware the new powers that be, in this country, but I was the patriot who proudly voted for the Youngster, son of a previous President.
It is not evil to confront evil. It is evil, however, to lie about your motives when doing so. It is also evil to pursue one villain when it is another Simon Legree you should be going after. We seem to be allowing Osama Bin Laden to disappear somewhere in the hills of Pakistan or Afghanistan—it doesn’t matter where he’s fleeing. We’re re-directing our forces toward Iraq. The man responsible for Nine One One is on the loose elsewhere. Perhaps my mind has been dulled by my grief, but it seems Wrong Way Corrigan has led the charge against our enemies.
Why this tirade? The FBI and other police agencies pursued Osama Bin Laden for the Anderson Building tragedy when they knew that they should have been pursuing the Russian mob. Alexei Grodnov is assumed to head that Russian mafia, and he has employed terrorist tactics to gain great wealth while the Federal Bureau of Incompetence has insisted that Al Qaida is responsible for the blast in the Loop.
Confucious, or Kong Fuzi as the Chinese spell his name, once wrote that the people must have faith in their leaders or that all is lost in that country. These are indeed trying ti
mes for Americans. This country was built on tolerance, but all these years and decades later we have learned to ignore our highest virtue. We have been intolerant to numerous minorities, starting with Native Americans and African Americans. We have incarcerated Japanese Americans in World War II, illegally and without reparations. Now we are jailing Arab Americans, and many of them are being imprisoned without justification, other than that of their national origin. It is one thing to lock up a man because he boards a plane with TNT in his sneakers. It is another thing altogether to incarcerate a man or woman because they pray to the East on a prayer matt. And if we should remind ourselves of the Nazis’ attitude toward the Jews and Slovs and Gypsies…
I wake up every day without purpose. This writing does not salve my soul or save it either. I am without the only person I’ve ever known who helped me make sense of my own existence, and now that she is gone, I can understand bitterness. But worse than bitterness is injustice. It is not what we are about as Americans.
I will soon jump off my soapbox, never fear. I will leave you to your channel surfing and endless quest for the big game on TV.
Yes, I am bitter and hopeless. And hopelessness is my illness. It needn’t belong to anyone else of good will. This country has endured worse than the Youngster and Bin Laden, forever throwing sand at each other’s chests. If we march into Iraq, it will cost us our sons and daughters. Even more, it will cost us our dignity in the world. We will be hated for intruding on a nation’s borders for no just cause or reason. We will be creating a false Crusade that has no notion of justice.
My beloved, adored wife is dead. Nothing, and justice neither, will bring her back to me. But in the name of that same justice, it’s time our Leaders started telling the truth to their own people. It’s time we aimed our righteous indignation down the right barrel at the right targets.
The Russian Mafia blew up the Anderson Building, according to our best and most immediate information. It’s time to stop hating the Arab Americans for striking this blow to our city and to our hearts. It’s time to stop hating altogether.
Clarence Darrow, the famous Chicago attorney who defended Leopold and Loeb and defended John Scopes, put it this way:
“Never hate the sinner. Hate the sin.”
Marty Van Dyke
*
The calls came to the Herald within minutes of publication. The Russian-American community was going to sue Van Dyke and sue the newspaper as well. The Herald did not, however, back down. They ran Van Dyke’s piece in the following day’s edition as well.
None of the calls of protest, though, came from Alexei Grodnov or anyone in his ‘outfit’.
“You want me to keep tabs on Grodnov’s people…Jimmy, what’s wrong with your guys at the CPD?”
“Some of them are on Grodnov’s payroll. I assume you can handpick the guys you chose to watch him?”
“How in the hell does this help out me and mine to do your fuckin’ job?”
“It’s survival, Carlo. Haven’t you noticed?”
They were talking in his office. It was several weeks after Jimmy Parisi suggested there was something Carlo could do to help nail the blond Russian.
“I’m telling you this in strict confidence.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I saw a video of what he did to one of my witnesses.”
“Yeah. And?”
“He’s got no bottom. I’ve seen meanness repeatedly on the job—some of it coming from your guys. But never anything like this.”
“So what did this Grodnov do?”
Parisi gave him a blow by blow of the video.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Jimmy! How do you expect me to get hard ever again after hearing that?”
Parisi observed the paleness that took over his cousin’s face for a moment.
“I’m sure you’ll get over it.”
“What the fuck. You don’t think I’m human too?”
Parisi didn’t answer.
“Well fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Jimmy P.”
“Okay. You told me to get fucked. Are you going to send out some eyeballs to get something on this prick or not?”
Carlo shifted his eyes, but he couldn’t hold his focus, then.
“Why you come in here and tell me vile shit like that? How’m I supposed to go to sleep again? You’ll give me fuckin’ nightmares.”
“Yes or no? Si or no?”
Carlo looked at his copper cousin.
“Si.”
*
Marty Van Dyke moved to a condo on the far northwest side. Parisi and Spencer tailed the movers to see if the Russians might be following, but the two Homicides could scope out no tails.
Van Dyke took a leave of absence from the newspaper and then took an Amtrak to New York. He wanted to see Ground Zero in New York City for himself.
Jimmy Parisi’s detective wife Natalie was beginning to show, but she decided to work the Anderson case until she was forced onto maternity leave. Her husband didn’t allow her to go anywhere by herself. He was her constant companion, and he was fully armed with a .44 Bulldog, which could knock down a stampeding bull at a hundred feet, his nine millimeter sidearm which he lodged in his shoulder holster, and, finally, with a six inch buck knife that he had strapped to his left ankle. It was his typical arsenal of weapons for venturing out on the street.
They went to see the OB/Gynecologist for another of Natalie’s check-ups. Natalie carried a nine millimeter in her purse and a snub nosed Smith & Wesson .32 in her coat pocket. She also carried pepper spray, and they both wore Kevlar vests underneath their winter coats, now that Grodnov was out in the open as their adversary.
Carlo’s people were gathering information on the Russians, but they hadn’t come up with anything worthy of an arrest, yet.
Dr. Morrisson reminded Natalie to remove her winter coat, and when she did, he saw the Kevlar vest.
“Expecting Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp and the Clantons to show up?” Morrisson joked.
“No. But I’m afraid the Russians are coming. The Russians are coming,” Natalie Parisi smiled.
Parisi had already installed a home security system in his northwest side house. That system was a result of the cases with Marco Karrios and Carl Anglin. Both killers had become a bit too personal in their animosity toward Jimmy, so he spent the money necessary to protect his family.
And they had a border collie named Sonny who patrolled the inside and outside of the grounds at Casa Parisi, as Jimmy referred to it. Sonny had been trained to never take anything from strangers and to never eat anything that didn’t come directly out of the hands of Jimmy or Natalie. The training insured that he wouldn’t be thrown something poisonous to get him out of the way from some intruder. Jimmy had spent some cash on the dog’s training, as well.
But it was arriving at the point where Jimmy Parisi thought his mother and two younger daughters might like to move in with his Uncle Nick in Elmhurst.
“Absolutely not,” Natalie said. “Grodnov will not separate this family. The Farmer didn’t do it, and Anglin didn’t do it. And this miserable excuse for a man will not, either.”
There was no arguing with his twenty-year-younger wife when she got something in her mind. They weren’t moving to Uncle Nick’s. End of story.
*
Life on the streets for Arab Americans never returned to normal. They did resume going to work. They showed up at restaurants and ball games and movies. But they were always wary, and there was always a stray comment that hovered the air wherever they traveled. Homicides had ceased, as far as recent hate crimes were concerned, but there was the occasional assault on people from the Middle East who had migrated here to Chicago.
The talk about war with Iraq had increased in its frequency and its intensity. Saddam Hussein was an easy target. People remembered the arch fiend from the early 90’s. They were still angered at the way he got away with the first Gulf War. They were infuriated that here was another Arab who thumbed his nose at America and wal
ked away clean and unscathed.
Americans were enamored of closure. They wanted events to end properly—like a movie, with a satisfying finality at its conclusion. No untied strings. No unfinished business. In that way Americans were romantics. They were believers in the happy ending. And with Saddam, there had been no satisfying denouement.
So the Youngster told the people that they had weapons of mass destruction. He told them that they were connected to Al Qaida. He had certain knowledge of all these things, he said. And the flames were fanned once more. The Iraqis were given a deadline. Their time to follow through was steadily diminishing, like the sands in an hour glass.
It was like a scene out of Revelations in the Bible. The Four Horsemen were on the way. Death was the sheriff riding in Saddam’s direction.
And Hell was following behind.
Grodnov recognized the scenario better than a lot of his fellow citizens. He was old enough to remember the black mariahs, arriving in the early morning hours, making Soviet citizens disappear in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and in Moscow. Those citizens disappeared into the notorious prisons of Russia, pain palaces where people disappeared permanently.
This time it was the Arabs who disappeared in the early morning hours. This time it was Middle Easterners who never came back to their families.
Grodnov felt as though Chicago were becoming a lot like Leningrad and Moscow. The winters weren’t as cold in the Windy City, but it was starting to feel just like home.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We hear from Carlo’s people that Viktor Rustov has a thing for the ponies. He likes to watch them, but more importantly he likes to fix the races at Hawthorne whenever he has an opportunity to pay off the jockeys. So Tommy and I decide to set up a sting on Viktor Rustov, Alexei Grodnov’s Number One Man.
The racing season here isn’t open until spring when the trotters can run on a non-frozen track. But Viktor likes to bet via a bookie on the California and Florida trotters, courtesy of his bookie, Johnny Campo, one of Carlo’s people.
Campo sets things up with Tommy and me, courtesy of the Capo, Carlo Ciccio.
