by Thomas Laird
“Anything that happens to you involves me. That’s the way partnerships work…And you were fucking lucky Grodnov didn’t record your little threat.”
“It wasn’t a threat.”
“Yeah, I know it wasn’t. So we put a few guys on Natalie and the kids, twenty-four, 365, until we nail that prick. But don’t go over into his yard and make…okay, promises, unless you’ve got at least one backup.”
“I saw her at that clinic. There’s no mistake. It was Karin Vonskaya. I recognized her from the FBI photo. Remember how we said she was a dead ringer for Natalie?”
“I remember.”
“She’s taller, with dark hair, but she’s a double, and that’s why I could pick her out of a line-up. She was there, and I don’t believe in coincidence or accidents. She was there for Natalie. When she saw me, she took off in a hurry. Maybe she figured Red would go to her appointments alone. They’re trying to pressure me by getting to Natalie.”
“Getting to her how?” Tommy asked.
“Kidnapping, maybe.”
“That’s why we have your wife under surveillance starting now.”
“Set it up with the Captain.”
“Sure, Jimmy. Just promise me there won’t be any more cowboy shit. We’ll do this together, all right?”
“I told him I’d kill him. The bitch too. And I meant it.”
“Then you’d better remember all those little Parisis who count on daddy to come home every night…You need to calm down, partner. This Russian woman really got to you.”
“Wouldn’t she have got to you, too?”
Tommy looks down for a moment.
“Probably, but that don’t mean killing her is the right thing to do, either…Look, we protect Natalie, then we don’t have to worry about this Vonskaya broad. They’re not known for stupidity. Going after a cop who’s the wife of a cop is absolutely brainless, Jimmy. It ain’t going to happen. They’ll back off. She knows you made her, right?”
“I guess.”
“Go to the shooting range. Plug some paper targets. Run a couple miles. Karin Vonskaya ain’t getting close to you or yours. I won’t let her…Do you trust me, Jimmy?”
I look into his sky blue eyes. He’s not Doc. He’s his own person and I’ve grown close to him in a hurry. If this is my last case, it’ll be hard to break off with Tommy Spencer.
“I trust you. You already knew that.”
He slaps me on the arm and then goes off to the Captain’s office to set up the watch on my wife and the treasure she holds within.
*
“His lawyers have been raising holy hell about your most recent visit,” the Captain tells me in his office.
I shrug, sitting in the leather chair opposite him.
“Spencer tells me that you spotted one of their people, a woman, at the health facility where Natalie goes.”
“Yes.”
“I read her jacket. She’ll be watched. Don’t worry about her. They can’t be that stupid.”
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me.”
“They wouldn’t go after a cop.”
“I’m worried about the baby, too.”
“I know you are, Jimmy.”
“They’re beginning to look desperate. Going after Natalie tells me they’re frightened. The FBI has all kinds of toys to procure evidence. Even their silence won’t save them anymore and they know it. One thousand murders was a bit over the top, even for them.”
“I heard you called off Ciccio and his troops.”
“I told him there’d be no mercy for him if they didn’t back off. We don’t need a gang war to complicate all this shit. It’s complicated enough.”
“Yeah. Well…Is it true you threatened to kill him and this Vonskaya woman?”
“Yes.”
“I must be going fucking deaf. I didn’t hear a word you said…You’re lucky he didn’t have you recorded. You’re lucky you walked in unannounced.”
“He crossed the line, with that woman, Captain. She let me see her. It was a message.”
“Like one of your dead fishes?”
The Captain isn’t smiling, however.
“He crossed the line, Captain. And now there’s no taking it back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Carlo doesn’t show up for thirty-six hours, and the Missing Persons Bureau contacts me because they know Carlo’s a player in the Anderson business. We try his wife first, but Gina Ciccio is the one who turned him in as missing.
“This is on you, Jimmy Parisi. He’s dead, and this is on you.”
She’s a natural redhead who’s dyed her hair blonde, platinum blonde. I’ve seen her as a redhead, and she looks much prettier. But she’s let herself go in the thirty years I’ve known her. Carlo, as I say, is on my mother’s side of the clan. My mom also is a Ciccio by birth.
“You got him killed because of those fucking Russians. Now you can go find what’s left of my husband, Jimmy, and it’s on you.”
Spencer and I leave her in her brick house in Cicero. It was supposedly once one of the safe houses used by Al Capone and Frank Nitti, here in this western suburb.
We get the black stripper’s name and address from one of the other exotic dancers at the bar where the ebony beauty danced. She lives in an apartment in a nice complex in Oak Lawn, on the far southwest side. We ring the superintendent of the complex and we take him to the apartment to unlock it if Cheryl Ramsey, the black girl, doesn’t answer. I think Tommy and I know she won’t and why she won’t.
The super is a fat man in his early seventies, and when the odor hits us at the door, we send him back home before he gets a look at what we’ll have to deal with.
The two of them are in her single bedroom. They are tied back to back with concertina wire, and there are several strands of the wire with multiple barbs around their necks. Finally there is a single strand that holds them in position by locking their heads back to back. Their legs are pointed at either side of the bed. They are seated on the middle of the blood-soaked mattress. Both of them are naked. Both have electrical tape covering their mouths. The strand that holds their heads skull to skull is so tightly pulled that it has cut deeply into both of their necks, and so their jugulars were cut and thus the copious blood beneath them.
Tommy calls for the Crime Scene Specialists and Dr. Gray and the Medical Examiner’s people.
“Gina was right. This is on me,” I tell my partner.
“Bullshit, Jimmy. You know better. He was in the life. He knew the way his thing always ends—like this or in some shit hole of a prison. Don’t let her make you believe it’s your fault because that’s pure crap and you know it.”
I look at my partner and I know what he’s saying is true. Carlo was in the life. He was here cheating on his wife. He was a lifetime criminal, maybe a murderer for all I knew. And for all that I’m still tugged in the direction that says I set him up for all this.
*
Dr. Gray states the obvious for the record:
“These two died of blood loss. If the blood loss hadn’t killed them, the asphyxiation would have a little while later. The body temps suggest they’ve been dead at least twelve hours, but I’ll be more certain after we thoroughly examine the remains.
“It took powerful hands to yank that concertina wire so tight that it cut both their throats simultaneously, Lieutenant. Some kind of strong individual. But as you’re aware, it probably took more than one perp to do all this handiwork. But then that’s your job, Jimmy, no?”
The photographers finish, all the evidence is collected. We check every room of Cheryl Ramsey’s love nest here in Oak Lawn. Then the bodies are untangled, and they take my cousin and his lover away in separate body bags.
They are able to lift a print off the inner thigh of Cheryl Ramsey, and the surprise is that the print doesn’t belong to Carlo Ciccio. It belongs to Sergei Chernov, one of the folks in the photo collection that Special Agent Kelvin sent us to display the Chicago Russian Mafia. Since Rustov took h
imself out of play with his needle in the neck, Sergei has taken over as the new lieutenant to Grodnov.
We locate his address with some more help with the FBI, and there are twenty federal agents and six US Marshals with the dozen Homicide detectives who surround Chernov’s home in Berwyn, another western burb.
It’s three-twelve in the morning, and the neighborhood is asleep. Even the early risers who work the days’ shifts in the plants have not yet arisen to greet this beautiful oncoming spring dawn. Early as it is, you can smell the dawn breeze beginning to stir.
The FBI guys all wear their signature navy blue windbreakers, as do the US Marshals. The Marshals are here as a courtesy to the Fibbies, and all this is a show of cooperation between policemen. It was Kelvin’s idea, and I have no gripe about all the help, but Tommy and I are going in first.
I tell my plan to Jack Malcolm, the ranking FBI agent on scene.
“It’s okay with me. We’re here as backup anyway,” the thirty year veteran with the shaved bald head and the bright red eyebrows tells me and my partner.
The Marshals, led by Frank Bancroft, another thirty-some years veteran, agree, and they deploy their men around the perimeter of the home. The FBI has already removed the inhabitants of the two homes on either side of Sergei’s property—just for their safety. It was done as always, noiselessly and quickly.
When everyone is in position, Tommy slams his fist on the door, six times. He steps to the side of the entry. I step away from the front of the doorway also.
The first blast is about waist high, and it blows the Russian’s door out at us.
The Marshals pop smoke grenades and tear gas and fling them through several windows. Another blast from a shotgun blows the Russian’s plate glass window out at us. The shards fly everywhere, and everyone ducks.
Tommy is crouching next to the doorway and I am opposite him. The tear gas starts to waft out toward us, so we have to back away, onto the lawn.
We see the barrel of the shotgun before we see Chernov. One leg makes it onto his front porch before the FBI opens up on him. It’s a barrage of gunfire that isn’t aimed at gaining a survivor of the Russian thug. The hail of gunfire almost literally cuts him in half, and he is blown back into his gas-filled living room.
The FBI agents don their masks and rush the house. Tommy and I stay behind because we have no desire to be doused with the tear gas. The shit stays with you for weeks, sometimes.
Four agents drag out his body. With all the holes shredding his torso, Sergei Chernov won’t be sharing any information on Grodnov or his Russian Mafia cohorts. This guy is way dead. He is limp and thoroughly perforated. They dump him on the grass. It is then that some other agents escort three gagging children and one vomiting female of adult age out the front entry.
I’m guessing she’s Sergei’s widow.
They won’t rat each other and they aren’t afraid to die. It’s difficult to put the squeeze on these people. We still have to get someone to finger Grodnov.
So I make the trip alone out to the Elgin State Mental Facility. Mrs. Grant is still a patient—except that she has a twenty-four hour security guard at her door, paid for by the CPD. She and her family are our only living witnesses, and we have to hope that she will someday emerge from wherever she’s hiding inside herself.
Dr. Monroe, a thirty-something female, pretty and petite with white blonde hair, escorts me to her room.
Mrs. Grant is watching some reality TV show, but she’s not really watching it. The TV is on and her eyes are in the general direction of the tube, but she’s not actually seeing the episode of Growing Up Gotti.
I show the cop my badge and ID, and he lets me in. Dr. Monroe comes in with me.
“She’s improving. But she’s still detached. Sometimes she’ll look at you and you think she hears every word and that she wants to respond…But she hasn’t communicated with anyone, up till this date.”
I smile at the pretty psychiatrist. She’s easy to look at.
I sit in a chair next to the stunningly beautiful, mute woman.
“Hello, Mrs. Grant. I’m Jimmy Parisi of the Chicago Police Department.”
I show her the ID and badge, even though she may very well remember me.
Dr. Monroe stands behind me, and the cop on guard is now outside the closed door of Grant’s room.
“I can’t watch this stuff. I mean these reality shows. I’m a movie fan. Old movies especially.”
The gorgeous woman turns toward me. I think I see the seeds of a smile, but her lips never break upward.
“You can’t let him do this to you and your family.”
“Please, Lieutenant,” Dr. Monroe says.
I smile at her to show I’ll be gentle.
“You can’t let Grodnov get away with this. Your daughter needs her mother. Your husband needs you. I know what he did was terrible.”
She turns back toward the TV.
“But what’s more terrible is that he has gone free for what he did. And you know why he did this to you. It was because he helped murder all those people. And you’re their only chance for justice. You have to speak for them because no one else can, Mrs. Grant.”
I take her left hand and I squeeze it gently. She doesn’t turn, but I feel a slight response in her light grip.
“I know you hear me. I know you can’t bear to come all the way back out yet, but I want you to try. You have all kinds of good reasons to try. You can help us catch a man who murdered a whole building full of innocent people. You can free your daughter from her own fear, and your husband from his nightmare. You’re the only one who can do these things, Mrs. Grant. You and you alone. Nobody else.”
I squeeze her hand. I feel a bit more pressure from her grip, but then it becomes limp and unresponsive.
“You can free your husband and daughter. You can do justice for all those people. Come back, Mrs. Grant. Please come back.”
Then I kiss her on her left cheek.
I get up and nod to Dr. Monroe. We find our way out of the room.
*
I call the hospital at Elgin at least three times a week for updates about her, but nothing changes, according to Dr. Monroe. The psychiatrist promises to call me the moment there’s any development, but two weeks go by and it’s mid-June and she never calls me back.
“Nadine?” I call at the back of the swiftly walking girl. She’s headed for her dormitory, not far from the Art Institute.
Finally she stops in her tracks.
“Come on. I’ll buy you some dinner.”
“I eat at the cafeteria, just like everyone else.”
“You can’t like cafeteria food,” I smile.
I take her to some chain hamburger place on Michigan Avenue. It’s an overpriced burger joint, to be more accurate.
“I’ve told you so many times that I can’t be sure it was him, so why do you keep asking me?”
She plays with the menu but doesn’t study it.
“You’re going to be a beautiful woman. Just like your mother.”
She literally flinches when she hears ‘mother.’
“I don’t want to talk about my mother, either.”
“And your father is in therapy too. He’s sold the house and is living somewhere near the southern border of Wisconsin. We helped him move. But he won’t speak of it either…I don’t blame you. Anyone would be frightened.”
“Then why do you keep hounding me about it?”
There is genuine anger in her child-woman eyes.
“Because you have a chance to cut yourself free of him forever, and you’re letting him keep his hold on you instead.”
“I have…I have nothing to tell, you, Lieutenant.”
“I saw your mom a few weeks ago.”
She flicks her angry eyes at me.
“You did?”
“She’s improving, somewhat. There’s hope she might be out of there, someday.”
“Someday. Yeah. Everything is someday.”
“You dating an
yone?”
“Are you…I haven’t got time to—“
“He stole that from you too. I know you’re seeing a therapist. Your father told me when we got him settled in Wisconsin. He’s a broken man, Nadine. Anyone would be, like I said…But you can still cut yourself and your mother and your dad loose if you’ll just tell a jury who you saw with that suitcase. That alone will put him away for life. He’s a two-time loser. The third strike is a life sentence. Do you understand? We don’t have to put your mother on the stand to tell anyone about the terrible things he did to her and your dad. All you have to do is put him on scene with that bag that blew up by the Picasso. Just those few words from you—“
The waitress arrived and we ordered. Nadine wouldn’t look at me, then, so I didn’t press her for the rest of the meal.
*
We received word from the state police two days later that Nadine’s father hung himself in the basement of the safe house the FBI had secured for him on a farm in southern Wisconsin. The Staties said they found no evidence of anything other than a suicide. He’d got himself dressed up in a three piece suit, and then he tied a noose around his neck and fastened the other end to an overhead beam. There was barely enough room to do the job. The heels of his Italian loafers were only three inches off the concrete floor of the basement when the State Police found him dangling, his unbound hands limp at his sides.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Alexei loved to bite her nipples and watch her wince. Every time he nipped at them, he bit a little harder, and every time he nipped a bit more savagely, she slammed against him. She was indeed a multi-orgasmic mate, and it suited Alexei to bring her pain with her pleasure.
She tried to reciprocate by biting at his nipples, but he slapped her every time she attempted to get even with him.
This time he bit into her left, erect, half dollar sized aureole, and he drew blood. Karin Vonskaya looked down at the blossom of blood and she smiled. She wiped the droplets in large circles around the pink aureole until the blood covered the entire front of her heavy breast.
Then she looked at Alexei, drew his face toward the mammary, and smeared his face with the gore. He yanked his head backward, and then he smiled at her, his face covered with her bright red fluid. He slammed himself deep inside of her until he knew he was hurting her, and when she cried out, Alexei couldn’t figure if she were in the throes of orgasm or the grip of unbearable pain.
