by Thomas Laird
That rubble, and the debris that remained from the Chicago tragedy, has been bulldozed away by now. But the films keep the horror fresh. No monster movie will ever give the American public the dose of sheer terror that that day in September supplied for all of us. And it came calling again, like Death itself, on the twelfth day of that same month.
The Europeans understand devastation better than we do. We’ve always been sort of isolated in North America, but those days are behind us. Now we have to share in the universal misery—there is evil everywhere. No one is exempt. There’s no place to hide.
So I help bring another child onto this planet. Someday I will have to make amends, to apologize for what he is about to inherit, the mess we’ve all tolerated on this earth for all these generations. We’ll tell these kids about hope, and we’ll pray that they fall for it as an excuse to get out there and change this blood-soaked globe.
They’ll probably fail, just as we have.
Funny thing is, most people don’t leave the movie or throw the book aside until the ending has arrived. It’s the mystery in life that sustains us. We all have to know what happens. We have to keep turning the page until that final scene. The climax, the denouement…What happens?
“So we beat on, boats against the current…”
That’s the way it ends in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a book most of us read in high school or college. It explains the way we are. We know the trip is going to be harrowing and that everybody’s story ends exactly the same way, but we’re compelled to stick around until the end anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Marty Van Dyke picked up right where he left off, attacking Grodnov and the Russian Mafia just as soon as he returned from his trip to New York City to visit Ground Zero. He had moved into his new condo on the northwest side just prior to his pilgrimage to the site where three thousand perished at the hands of real madmen. So he felt somehow renewed in vigor to go after the culprits who murdered his fellow Chicagoans.
Again, the Russians threatened lawsuits, but the threats were hollow. Their lawyers knew that the courtroom was no place for their clients at the moment, since the CPD and the FBI were playing tag team tactics against Grodnov and his henchmen. They also knew that the Italian Mafia, the Outfit, was feeding information about the Russians to the Chicago cops and the Feds. It would of course be to the advantage of the Sicilians to see the one-time Soviets go down in flames. So Marty got away with his public invective toward Grodnov & Company, and the Russians seemed to be scurrying everywhere around the city in disarray.
Van Dyke’s new condo wasn’t as lavish as the old place where he and Cathy lived, but it was suitable for a single man. One bedroom and a study. A living room and a kitchen. A bathroom and a small balcony/patio from which he could use his charcoal grill to barbeque his favorites—bratwursts.
It suited his needs, it was quiet, in a quiet neighborhood of upper middle class, mixed race people.
Marty had been suffering from insomnia for two months. He’d talked to his doctor about it, and the M.D. prescribed some sleeping pills that only occasionally worked. Tonight was one of those nights that invisible fingers clenched at the back of his neck. He knew it was stress, so he popped a sleeping pill about 12:30 AM. He knew he would have to finish his column early in the morning so that the edit crew could scrub his copy for the next day’s edition of the Herald, so he understood he needed to rest to get all his work done.
The pill seemed to take effect just as he felt himself bolt upright when a loud, elongated snore interrupted his slumber. Or he thought it was his own snoring that awakened him.
Then he heard the quiet rustling come from outside his bedroom’s door. Marty kept the .38 police special in his drawer, next to the bed. He left the shells in the box in that same drawer, right next to the Smith & Wesson that Jimmy Parisi had lent him illegally. Parisi said he’d take care of the paperwork, but Van Dyke had never asked him if he had by now.
Marty fumbled with the box that held the bullets. The noise became more distinct, and he knew the movement of the intruder was headed toward the bedroom.
“Christ,” Van Dyke murmured as he awkwardly attempted to load the .38.
The figure in the doorway of the bedroom became a gray-black blur as it rushed Van Dyke and flattened him onto the mattress. The intruder was the widest human being Marty had ever encountered. He wasn’t tall, but he seemed to fill the room with a huge slab of muscle. Van Dyke was pinned to his own mattress, and when he dropped the pistol to the floor, he felt the man’s thick hands on his throat. The fingers felt stubby and enormously powerful. Van Dyke tried to send a knee into the other man’s balls, but his leg was flattened also, beneath the weight of his incredibly strong adversary. Marty’s hands reflexively shot up to his attacker’s suffocating grip, but he could not secure release. Van Dyke was being slowly choked to death. His air was almost completely blocked off, now.
Then he remembered the gun on the floor at the side of his bed. He wrenched his body toward that right hand side, and with enormous exertion, he finally got his hand onto the floor where the .38 should have lain.
His fingers searched the carpet, but he could not find the gun. He could not make out the face of the broad-bodied assailant atop him because it was too dark in the bedroom and because his garlic-stink face was too close to see clearly.
Then he found the handle. He remembered that he had only had time to load two bullets into the cylinders. Four cylinders remained empty, then, and it would be Russian roulette until he squeezed off a live round. Marty tried to tear the punishing hands from his throat with his left hand, but now he had the Smith & Wesson aimed at the head of the man who was attempting to strangle him.
He pulled the trigger and it clicked.
“Huuuhmpph?” the wide man spat.
Marty pulled the trigger the second time and still there was no discharge. His attacker leapt off him and charged toward the doorway. Van Dyke’s oxygen slowly returned to his lungs, and then Marty sprang off the mattress, weapon in hand.
The wide man had bolted toward the back door, the kitchen door. Marty saw his shadowy figure in a blur. Van Dyke was only running on two thirds of all his cylinders, he figured, but he leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger three more times.
The second and third pulls exploded with discharge, and the running man straightened up and stumbled.
But he kept going, and he clattered down the back stairs, all the way out to the street.
*
The blood trail lead Parisi and Spencer out to the curb. There the trail ended.
“His ride must have been parked here, looks like,” Tommy observed.
Parisi saw that three of the neighbors’ lights were still lit. He and Spencer started with the first lit living room on the left.
The owner of the ranch house saw somebody screech away from the curb in a dark colored Honda. It was one of those large expensive models, but he couldn’t pin it down, and no, he hadn’t made a license plate.
The second still-lit home owner got a partial plate because he’d heard the retort of the two slugs Marty had let loose.
The third witness, on the far right of the three consecutive houses gave Parisi and Spencer the color and make and complete license plate number. He was a Neighborhood Watch block captain and had been waiting for an event just like this one, he told the two Homicides.
The car was stolen and ditched on Sawyer Street near Wrigley Field. The car had been reported as boosted a week ago, Parisi and his partner ascertained from Burglary/Auto Theft.
The blood trail didn’t pick up outside the stolen car, but there was plenty gore splattered all over the interior of the boosted vehicle. Whoever the driver was, he’d had to be in a bad way.
So they checked the nearest hospital, St. Martin’s. They went first to the ER. They found the doctor on call that night, and he was happy to inform them that he’d treated a gunshot victim who had produced a knife and who had threatened the ER surge
on to keep his fucking mouth shut until the bleeding man had been treated and released.
“He was not the kind of man you said no to…I just called it in, about five minutes ago. You’re quick,” Dr. Feldman told the two Homicides.
“Where was he headed? Did anyone watch which way he went when he left?” Tommy asked.
“Best bet?” Feldman said. “The El station is three blocks down. But there aren’t many trains running this time of morning. It won’t be light until—“
Parisi and Spencer took off for the El station. It was, as the doctor said, nearby, and according to Feldman, the wounded man had a forty minute head start on them. Parisi thought the odds were that an El had come and gone by now.
When the two cops got on the platform at the Crane Street location, they saw no one sitting on the benches and no one standing and waiting. They saw the lights and heard the screech of a train that had only recently departed.
“If he was on it, we just missed the prick.”
“Let’s try the john,” Parisi suggested.
“We could try to drive to the next station and see if he gets off,” Spencer suggested.
“I don’t do high speed chases. Get on the phone and have some uniforms check the stations ahead.”
Spencer smiled and took out his phone and made the intercept requests.
The men’s john stank of urine and feces and neglect. This was where rats came to die in the middle of the night, Jimmy Parisi mused.
Parisi took out the squat .44 Bulldog that he preferred in close encounters of the criminal kind. It had the better stopping power, compared to his nine millimeter. The load would put a hole the size of a baseball out the back of any living target you hit. No human being would be left standing after being pierced by one of his rounds.
Spencer took out the .45 Colt that he wasn’t supposed to use on the street. This piece made large holes in perps too. They were not made for target practice, but they were effective close up and personal, like Parisi’s Bulldog.
“Come out come out wherever you are,” said Tommy in a loud and even voice.
There were a dozen or more stalls. They worked their way from left to right, Spencer booting each stall door wide open.
When he’d kicked stall door number seven from the left open, he saw a blue/black blur rush out at him and Parisi. Jimmy managed to loose one round that caught the wide-bodied man on top of the right shoulder. The round spun him around and then he landed flat on his back, back inside the stall.
The wounded man tried to rise. Tommy Spencer put the barrel of his .45 on the man’s forehead.
“Live or die. Choose, asshole.”
*
They transported Viktor Rustov back to St. Martin’s Hospital, the very place that had stitched him up just an hour ago.
“He took one in the lower back. That’s the one I spliced back together…Christ, that Bulldog tore the top of his shoulder off. He might bleed to death,” Dr. Feldman told the two detectives as they watched the ER crew work on the now-unconscious Rustov.
Jimmy located the Russian’s ID after the nurses cut his clothes off. Then the medical people told Jimmy and Tommy to get out of the ER surgery room.
Parisi recognized Grodnov’s second in command as soon as he saw him lying on the cutting table in surgery. The driver’s license confirmed Viktor’s real identity.
There were lawyers in the hospital before Parisi and Spencer could interview the Russian with the two new bullet holes. Jimmy was sure that the slug in his back would match Van Dyke’s piece, a .38 that Jimmy had helped license for the newspaperman.
James Friedman was the Russian’s counselor. He sat with Parisi and Spencer in the HQ’s interview room in the Loop. Rustov was out of surgery, but he’d be night-night for at least four more hours, the ER folks had let them know. Jimmy had four uniforms guarding the Russian, round the clock.
“Tell him to take this deal,” Parisi told the lawyer. “We’ve got him for attempted murder. And he threatened the doc at St. Martin’s too. If nothing else, he goes up for twenty to life.”
“What’s the deal, then?” Friedman smiled.
“Man one. Maybe he does a dime,” Tommy told him. “But he has to finger Grodnov for the Anderson Building.”
“The Russians don’t talk. They don’t turn each other,” Friedman smiled.
“Make him the offer. Don’t be stupid. When the FBI gets through with him, it’ll be life with no parole. This is a one-time offer, dumbass,” Parisi told the lawyer.
A frown replaced the smug smile.
“I don’t appreciate the insulting…”
“You can fuck yourself and your sense of propriety, asshole,” Jimmy grinned at the counselor. “You’re defending a monster. Did you know that? This guy and his boss, Grodnov. Your firm handles both of them, no? So don’t give me the gentility shit and the I’m just doing my job crap. You’re defending two men who are responsible for the slaughter of more than a thousand people. When that cocksucker wakes up, you better sell him on the deal, because I’m not just talking shit about what’s going to happen to him. In fact if he doesn’t take the deal, I’ll be happier. But I want Grodnov more than your client, so he’s got exactly twelve hours to make up his mind.”
The attorney rose. He was grim-faced at the moment. He looked at Parisi as if he had one more point to make, but he turned and left the interview room instead.
*
Viktor Rustov woke out of the anesthetic. It was dark again. It was the evening of his first full day in the hospital. No one was in the room with him. The cops must be guarding the door, he figured.
They would be coming to him with a deal to turn Alexei. He recognized Parisi and the long haired cop, Spencer. He knew they’d been after Alexei for months, and now they’d offer a deal to nail Grodnov for the Anderson Building explosion.
He looked around the room. He was full of tubes, but there was nothing he could use as a tool.
Then he saw the hypodermic needle that lay wrapped in plastic. They figured to be coming soon to give him a shot of something. He already had a morphine drip for the pain. The hypo was probably for some antibiotic, perhaps for anti-tetanus. He knew how to handle needles. He’d seen the medics use them in Afghanistan when he served in the Army.
The nurse screamed when she saw his blank, staring eyes. Then she screamed again when she saw the empty hypo, its needle stuck in his jugular vein.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“The air bubble killed him,” Tommy Spencer said. “It’s a cheap, fast suicide. I’ve seen troopers do it before in Asia.”
“The guys who did themselves usually did pills or an overdose of something in the vein, in my experience,” I said. “But it shows you the professor at NU was right. They don’t squeal, they don’t turn on their own. And Rustov had already done two tours in prison. This one would be life, no matter what happened. He was on his third strike. The Captain informed me of Rustov’s prison record.”
My wife is on home rest until after the baby, supposedly in late June. This is mid-May, according to Spencer’s Monet Calendar, here in his cubicle. I’ve got him hooked on the Art Institute now. He visits on his own, and sometimes with me as a guide.
So we’re down one-third in manpower. We’re both becoming exhausted doing the Grodnov pursuit and the other homicides that are routinely thrown our way. We’ve been on the Anderson case so long that we can’t concentrate on just one job any longer. Manpower at the CPD is at a premium now, too.
Kelvin at the FBI is still plodding along at Alexei and his Mafia, but they are swamped with work regarding terrorist activities in the United States. He is busy with the Chicago area, so he can only assign so many men to nail the Russians. It feels like it’s up to Tommy and me. We were all alone at the beginning of this, and nothing seems to have changed, except that the official line no longer places blame for the Anderson blast at the feet of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida. That much we have accomplished since September 12, 2001.
&nb
sp; The spring is no longer false. The blossoms are profuse on every tree and vine and bush. The Loop explodes in green. The leaves are becoming full-sized, and the temperatures are teasing the beach fanatics. Soon we’ll have a spectacular view of brown and red-sunburned flesh from my office window. Back on September Eleven I wouldn’t have given you odds that the spring would even arrive in 2002. I figured they’d kill us all with nukes or anthrax or biological warfare—that’s how bleak things seemed, last fall.
We are still here, however, by the hairs on our chinny chin chins, and our survival is still iffy. Too many loons with too much creativity when it comes to mass destruction. Too many fanatics like Bin Laden and Rustov with the hypo in his own jugular and Alexei Grodnov and his dvd version of the ninth concentric ring in hell…
And there is Wade S. Hansen, who may very well be equal to or worse than Grodnov. I wonder if they have wings beneath their clothing and cloven hooves beneath their shoes.
No, they are only men, evil men, but human after all. It does us no good to demonize them or give them supernatural powers. They have extraordinary abilities and strengths as it is.
I’ve been going back to Mass, even after giving up the Church after the priest sexually abused my oldest son, Mike. When I got wind of that, I felt betrayed as I have never felt betrayed in my life. My mother took me to Mass regularly. She got me into the habit, as it were.
I don’t consider myself a religious man, but I think I’m spiritual, up to a point. I tend to be pragmatic. It comes with my trade. I require reason and evidence and facts to make up my mind. It’s the detective and the cop in me. I’m the doubting Thomas when it comes to Christ and the Resurrection. I really want to buy into it, but I need to see those wounds on the reborn man Himself.
It’s a lack of faith on my part. I’ve spent the better part of my adulthood being disappointed by human behavior and human nature. People let me down all the time—except for my family, as I’ve said before. The human beings I encounter on the job do virtually nothing but lie to me and my partner on almost every encounter we have with the public, and at age 58, it has drained me. It has made faith nearly laughable.
