by Thomas Laird
“I am one of the guys when I’m with you, Detective Spencer.”
“Yes ma’am,” Tommy mock-salutes.
My wife slaps him on the shoulder playfully. Tommy gives her a warm smile in return. They’re friends now too, it appears.
“I’m not cutting Grodnov out. He’s dirty on this thing…But what if he’s not in this by his lonesome? What if Walker S. hired him or put him up to it?”
“Maybe Grodnov’s not his only employee,” Tommy said.
“You’re both scaring me,” Natalie says. “I liked it better when there was only one bad guy—the Russian.”
“First it was the Arabs,” Tommy laments. “Then it’s the Russians, and now it’s Walker S. and the fucking Russians. Christ, I’m getting a headache.”
“But maybe it’s screwy enough to be true. Maybe Walker S. has a reason to sic the Russians on his old lady, who happens to be among the victims of the Anderson explosion. Let’s say we were right when we figured that the bombing was supposed to be concealed by what happened on nine one one. It was supposed to be a deflection, sleight of hand that they were lucky enough to have the feds go along with—for a while. We sort out the fact that it’s a Russian mafia thing to blackmail the wealthy for protection. Seems reasonable. Maybe that’s exactly where Hansen wants us to take our theory. Look, we thought it was a two layered cake, but the frosting’s on the third level. That’s where Hansen is…Maybe.
“And maybe you’re both right. Maybe this is where all good paranoids wind up, in a maze of their own making. Maybe I’m looking for a conspirator in every bush. It’s what everyone said with Carl Anglin. The ex-Marine shot Kennedy, not Carl and his CIA buddies. I was paranoid on that one too. Think they’re warming up a suite for me at Elgin? Right next door to Mrs. Grant, that poor woman?”
Natalie covers my hand.
“Play it out and see if it works. This is your last case, isn’t it, my love? Let it all hang out in the fresh breeze. See where it leads. Don’t spend the rest of our lives wondering if we went only half way. There are a thousand souls depending on you—and on us. So I say go for it, Jimmy.”
The food arrives. I kiss my wife.
“No kissing on duty,” Spencer says, right before he chomps into a cheeseslider.
*
The Russians won’t turn each other, the Professor at Northwestern told us. So we’ll have to have someone on the outside turn them instead. If I’m right about Walker S. Hansen, then it might be time to try and put him in a situation where it would be advantageous for him to drop the dime on Alexei Grodnov and company.
So we spend some time watching Mr. Hansen at work and at play. He has a special affection for massages. He gets one every noon at the CrossRoads Health Club, near Wacker Drive.
His masseuse is Julie Garibaldi. A six foot babe who resembles one of those lean beach volleyball players. But she tells us right off the bat that she’s a licensed therapist and that nothing immoral or illegal happens on her massage table.
Natalie reminds her that we’re investigating the murders of a thousand people, and then the tall woman’s demeanor softens.
“I lost three clients in that horrible thing.”
“Walker Hansen lost a wife,” Tommy reminds her.
“Yes.”
But her face hardens again. It’s as if she’s suddenly become defensive.
“You know anything about Hansen’s relationship with Greta, his wife?” Natalie asks.
I tell myself to let my wife pursue the questioning. Julie Garibaldi seems more responsive to the Redhead than toward me or Tommy.
“I know it was very volatile…People do like to talk while they’re on the table.”
“What did Hansen say about her?” Natalie continues.
“She had…I don’t know if I should tell you this. Isn’t there something about client privilege?”
“That’s for lawyers and priests,” Natalie smiles.
“And this is a homicide investigation, Julie,” I remind her. “You might help us do justice for all those people if you try to remember anything you can about Hansen and his wife.”
“Okay. All right…She had a taste for cocaine.”
“We heard,” Natalie smiles at her. My wife has Julie Garibaldi in the palm of her hand. I’m thinking Ms. Garibaldi’s gay and that my wife knows it. I think Julie is rather smitten with her. We never told the masseuse that we were married.
“And what else?” Natalie asks.
“For men too.”
There is a smirk of disdain on her pretty lips.
“You think she cheated on her husband,” Natalie queries.
“I know she did. He told me.”
“Who’d she cheat with? Did he ever say?”
“No names…She was pretty democratic about who she fucked. She was screwing her masseuse here. His name is Terry Adler. But don’t let him know I told you, okay? I don’t want to become the local rat around here. You said it might help get whoever killed all those people. Right?”
“Exactly,” Natalie tells her.
Julie is not the brightest bulb in all of the sockets around here. But she seems sincere about wanting to help us.
“So who else was she having affairs with?” Natalie asks again.
“There were lots, according to him. And he said he’d get angry and have his revenge on her, by screwing some of her friends. It like escalated and escalated. She’d cheat, and he’d nail someone she thought was her close friend. You know?”
“Did she try to get back at him for doing all her close buddies?” Natalie went on.
“He said he drew the line when it came to business. He said she crossed the line one time, and he said she would simply have to learn from her mistakes.”
“She had an affair with one of his business partners?” Natalie asks.
“Someone he did business with…That’s really all I know…You ought to come in for a massage. I’ll give you fifty percent off,” Julie Garibaldi smiles. There’s a blush on her face now too.
“Sounds good,” Natalie says. “Especially now that I’m pregnant. My back has been killing me.”
“You’re pregnant?” Julie asks.
“It’s all his fault,” my wife laughs and points at me.
Julie shoots a look of pure venom my way.
“Will you give Tommy and me fifty percent off, too?” I ask her.
But she’s stopped smiling, and her face reddens.
“Mr. Hansen’s wife was a bitch. To hear him tell it. He loved her and he hated her. I don’t which was stronger—the love or the hate. She cheated on him plenty. But the one time, with the business associate, you could tell that time was different. You could hear it in his voice, and his whole back stiffened up on him when he told me all about it. I can tell. My fingers can sense tenseness, anxiety. I know. This affair was different.
“Mr. Hansen can be a very scary guy, sometimes. You know?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We interview Gary Merton once more, now that I’ve got the scent of Wade S. Hansen back in my snout. He is the CEO of Glamour Properties, owners of what used to be the Anderson Building.
“We’re going to put it back up, state of the art,” Merton smiles.
He has black hair and black eyebrows which need trimming. He wears a vulgar royal blue sports coat and a pink shirt and a flaming red tie. If he weren’t a big shot here in the Loop, I’d pick him out as a carny, a sideshow tout. He doesn’t look his part at all.
The ‘it’ he was referring to of course is the Anderson Building. They’re erecting it on the very site where it fell to pieces.
“Too bad you can’t resurrect those thousand souls too,” I tell him.
He gives me a furtive look.
“Only Jesus Christ can bring back the dead, Lieutenant.”
“I know,” I smile.
His office is everything walnut. All wood and all that medium brown color—the desk, the chairs, the sofa. All the same same.
“Why are
you back?” Merton cuts to the chase.
“You know Wade S. Hansen?” Tommy asks.
My steadily widening wife sits uncomfortably on one of his walnut-colored straight chairs.
“Yes,” he says. His face goes solemn, as if he’s guessed why we’re really here, now.
“How do you know Hansen?” I ask.
“He is one of our largest shareholders, here at Glamour.”
“He’s got his fingers in all these Loop properties too?” Tommy asks.
“Yes.”
“But you’re the CEO,” I assert.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So you call the shots,” I go on.
“Yes. More or less.”
“More or less, Gary? You mean you don’t consider yourself captain and lord of the vessel?” Tommy inquires.
“I make corporate decisions, but the shareholders have some say in the matters of business.”
“So you’re a semi-democracy,” Tommy says.
“Not really. But our shareholders have a voice—“
“How much voice does Wade Hansen really have?” I ask Merton.
He turns and looks out his window onto Randolph Street, here in the heart of the Loop.
“How much voice, Gary?” I ask again.
“He owns a third of our stock.”
“So he has a pretty strong voice,” Natalie adds from her uncomfortable perch behind us.
Merton looks at my wife.
“Yes. That’s fair to say.”
“Do you know Alexei Grodnov?” I ask.
“I’ve heard of him. Don’t know him and never met him.”
“It’s not a good idea to lie, Gary. Especially in a homicide investigation,” I remind him.
“How dare you suggest that—“
“He threatened to blow the Anderson Building if you didn’t pay him…How much was he asking?”
“Lieutenant—“
“You start becoming very real with me, Gary, or you can call that corporate lawyer of yours and he can meet us down the street at Headquarters for a formal get-together, which I’m sure you’ll find very embarrassing. We know Grodnov blew the Anderson Building or that he had it done. We know he used the horrors of New York to hide behind so that it would look like a second day’s carnage. We know all that, Gary. We just want to know how much money might have saved all of those one thousand dead people. Including Wade S. Hansen’s wife, Greta.
“We know they had a bad marriage, that it was based on one-upsmanship. She and the old man, always competing. Seeing who could screw the other’s best friends. Then she did something he couldn’t handle, and then that’s when he contacted Grodnov. Grodnov would collect if you paid him, but Wade was betting you wouldn’t deal with the Russian Mafia, and he was right. Was the Russian shocked that you didn’t buck up? Or did Hansen pay him to blow the building and forget the extortion money?”
“I want a lawyer. Right now.”
“I think Hansen made the deal sweet enough for Grodnov to forget about how much he was asking you for protection. I think he reminded Alexei that you had a lot more buildings you could pay protection for…And Wade S. Hansen is a one-third owner. He doesn’t care about being squeezed later. He’s got a billion from his own enterprises. He’d just take the extortion as a capital loss. Isn’t that what his corporate lawyers would suggest in private?”
“I want a lawyer, Lieutenant. Now.”
“A thousand people. You murdered a thousand people. And it was just business as usual, wasn’t it. You do business with Wade Hansen and Alexei Grodnov as if it were just another day at the office. Did you know that Alexei likes little boys? Have you got a son at home, Gary?”
“Jimmy,” Natalie says quietly.
I turn and look at my wife. I’m thinking of what that priest did to my son Mike and the anger enflames my cheeks.
“Jimmy. He’s lawyering up,” Red says. “Jimmy.”
“Save yourself the trouble. We’ll be back to talk again. I’m sure your counsel is on fulltime retainer.”
I walk away from his desk. I realize only now that I was leaning over that slab, practically in his face.
*
“Maybe I tipped our hand,” I tell Natalie and Tommy on the ride back to HQ. It’s a short drive. We were only a few blocks away from my office.
We get out of the navy blue Taurus and we walk toward the front door of our Headquarters.
Natalie stops suddenly and grabs her abdomen.
“Red!”
“Natalie!” Tommy blurts.
“She needs complete bed rest. There’s a chance she’ll lose this child unless she gets complete rest, Lieutenant,” the ob/gynecologist at St. Luke’s tells us. The doctor is Mary Louise Reinhart, M.D.
“I mean bed rest,” she goes on. “No more shifts with you two at Homicide. She gave me the plea to okay her and release her back to work, and I refused. I think she’s very pissed at me.”
“Never mind. She’s caught up in…something, with us,” I explain.
Tommy waits for me in the cafeteria.
“Lieutenant Parisi…This is a tough time to have another child—her middle thirties. It’s borderline. I mean it can be rough. And if she’s already fatigued, it could be dangerous. I think everything will be fine for your son.”
“Son?”
“You didn’t know it was a boy?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. She wanted to…”
“I understand. But it sure looks like a boy on the sonogram. He’s standing with his pride showing,” Mary Louise Reinhart grins. She’s a thirty-something brunette with crooked teeth and a big dose of character in her face. I like her immediately.
*
I get Natalie to bed. There are no arguments.
But I don’t tell her I know we have a son on the way. I told Mary Reinhart to keep it from her, that she told me already, and she won’t be seeing my wife again anyway because Natalie has her own ob/gynee.
“Don’t you get up,” I tell Red. “Don’t you do dishes, not a goddam thing. I’ve phoned my mother. She’s moving in until you deliver and there won’t be any arguments about that either. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes, Boss,” she smiles. Her color is back.
The pain in her middle was a warning, but Dr. Reinhart explained rest would take care of things.
We’re going to have a son. I’m 58 years old, I’m already the father of four, two grown, and now I have to begin all over again. Shitty pants. No sleep. Feedings at three. The cliché arises: ‘I’m too old for this shit.’
It passes, however, and suddenly I’m excited about his arrival in a few weeks, actually a couple of months if he’s on schedule.
My father was a drunk, but I loved him in spite of his alcoholism. He was my adopted father. Nick, his brother, was my biological father. Nick met my mother first, but they were separated by circumstance, and then my mother met Jake, my dad. Jake was sterile, they found out, and the marriage soured. My mother feared she would wither up and evaporate, she told me, so she begged my Uncle Nick to try and get her pregnant. This was all before artificial insemination, of course. So Nick would be a donor, she explained—without Jake’s knowledge. His donation wound up being me, and my father didn’t believe in miracles. My beginnings are so ridiculous that they have to be the truth. Only Natalie and my mother and Nick know the truth about where I really came from.
My children all belong to me and my first wife and to Natalie. I know the tug of biology in family. It is a very big deal for Italians, especially. Tu familia. It’s not just an expression from some very famous gangster movie. It’s a fact. Even the crooks in the Outfit on my mother’s side feel that tug, that insistent pull of the blood.
And now we expand the Parisi familia by one. She wants to name him Jimmy Junior. I rather like the idea.
All the days on the calendar are heightened by kids. Especially little ones. There’s a far better kick to Christmas and Easter when you have young children around, and I ha
ve a young wife who I cherish more than my own existence, by a fur piece, as they say. Natalie brought me back to the living after I lost one beloved to cancer and another to gunshot. I never believed in rebirth, until the Redhead entered the picture. Speaking of clichés, nothing is truer than the notion that love makes anything bearable. I went through unbearable depression working on a few recent cases. I was tired and beat to the bone, but each time I came back from something close to death because I was in love with Natalie and with my children. Without them, nothing could sustain me. They are the family treasures, not a house nor possessions nor certificates of deposits…
Then I just got in Gary Merton’s face and I damn near accused him outright of the murder of all those Anderson victims. It was Natalie who stopped me short, but not until I let loose with all the poison that has been building inside since the day all those souls perished in the Loop on Nine One Two.
I came out and said it. I probably should have kept most of it hidden inside me, but it felt liberating to spew it all at Merton. You so seldom hear the truth in any Homicide interview. You more often hear lie after lie after lie…
Yes, the Russian pulled the trigger, but I think Wade S. Hansen supplied the gun. And I think Merton was the poor soul who refused Grodnov’s offer of protection because he couldn’t believe anyone was capable of a mass murder like the one that happened in his company’s building on Nine One Two in the heart of Chicago. And it was all a fix. Alexei got a better offer from Hansen: Kill my wife. Make it look like part of a terrorist plot and we all scoot away free and rich and the Arabs can take the heat from all those Phantom jets.
At least that’s the way it’s playing out in my head.
I still have an ugly after taste in my mouth from the things that happened to our Middle Eastern citizens of Chicago, especially for the death of Barak, that little boy whose head was crushed by a lead pipe. All those casualties. It really is a war—except that it’s not supposed to be fought on our home soil. We’ve been lucky that way. Most of the blood shed since the Civil War has been on someone else’s turf. Now three thousand are dead in New York. I weep every time I see films of the New York City firemen going into that rubble.
