by Thomas Laird
“The police. Yeah. I can finish the last two years almost free, with the GI Bill while I begin my career with the Department.”
“This is not the time to be joining the Army. There’s this shit in Iraq—“
“I know, Pa. That’s one of the reasons I joined.”
“You have to be kidding.”
“You fought in Vietnam.”
“I got drafted.”
“But you didn’t run away from it either.”
“You can’t pick your wars sometimes, Mike, but—“
“I see all these guys at school, Pa. They think that way—let some cracker from Georgia or some black or Hispanic kid from the hood do the fighting. I can’t do that.”
“This war is bullshit, this thing that’s coming. You don’t need to go there. The Army is all a choice thing, now. Don’t be stupid, Mike.”
I try to take a bite out of this cafeteria burger, but my mouth is too dry, so I take a tug at my bottle of Diet Coke instead.
“I don’t want to make you upset, but this is something I had to do on my own…I signed up for airborne. I want to get into the Rangers.”
“Do you have any idea—“
“Yes, Pa. I talked it over with the recruiter. He tried to scare me off too, but we agreed that’s where I want to be. If I make it, that is.”
“Mike, this thing in Iraq is bullshit.”
“Wasn’t Vietnam bullshit too?”
“Yeah, but—“
“Then why didn’t you take off to Canada, Pa?”
“Because I couldn’t look my family in the eyes if I did.”
“Even though you thought the war was bogus.”
“You’re very sly, Michael, but I wonder if you’re right.”
“Hussein has to be stopped.”
“Hussein’s not the problem. Bin Laden is in…”
“Afghanistan, they think. Iraq is a training ground for terrorists. They think Al Qaida trains people there. And Hussein is a tyrant. He’s responsible for making the Middle East…”
“Mike! Can’t you see this guy is just trying to get even for his old man? Can’t you see…”
“I want to serve my country. You did. Grandpa did in World War II. Now it’s my turn, and like you said, you don’t get to choose your wars. I think we need to stop Hussein. Maybe the guy in the White House has a personal beef, but I still think we need to settle things in Iraq before we can ever feel safe in this country again. I want to find out what I’m worth, and I’ll never find that out on a college campus.”
“You’ll never find out what you’re worth drawing a bead on another human being, Mike. That’s not what a real man is.”
“I know it’s not that simple. But I believe in freedom, Pa. I believe in my country.”
“You sound like a fucking recruiting slogan.”
“I love my country, and I want to serve. And I want to become a policeman. Someday I want to be a Homicide, like you.”
“Christ, Mike.”
“It’s too late, Pa. Don’t be angry with me. I meant what I said. I love this country, and I need to be where I can help. I want to make a difference, and this is the only way I can figure to do that.”
“The only good thing about Vietnam is that it’s finished.”
“But you never ran away from it.”
I take hold of his right hand.
“I can’t afford to lose any of you.”
“I’m not going to die on you,” he says, and he squeezes my hand back. “But I have to go. I couldn’t hack another day in that school while other people go off and take care of the dirty work. I have to clean up my own space. I can’t pass it on to some other guy to do.
“I read a thing in one of my classes. It was by a Greek, talking about the cost of democracy. Anyway, he said sometimes this freedom we have has a price tag.”
“They’re going to hit the wrong people, Mike! Bin Laden’s not in Iraq, and they’re not really certain that Hussein is connected to that prick!”
“Take it easy, Dad. I didn’t want you to get all upset.”
“Then you should’ve stayed in college, goddammit!”
He looks down at his untouched meal. The cafeteria is empty. The cashier looks over at us when I raise my voice. I look at her and wave my apologies.
“I have to do this, Pa. I’m not trying to be a hero. I just want to do something…I just want to do something.”
I take another slug at my Diet Coke.
“Rangers? You want to be a Ranger?”
“Yes, Pa.”
“Christ Almighty, Mike.”
I touch his cheek with my right hand. Then I get up and so does he. I take my son in my arms and I hug him close to me. I can’t remember the last time I held my boy like this.
“I can’t afford to lose any of you. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Pa.”
I hold him there for a long moment. Then I hold him at arms’ length.
“Let’s go visit your little brother some more.”
*
The next day at Headquarters, Nadine Grant walks into my office.
“Put him in a lineup. I’ll pick him out for you.”
Grodnov is released on a hundred thousand bond for the explosion at the Picasso Sculpture in the Loop. He will appear before the grand jury when they indict him for Mrs. Grant and what he did to Nadine in the islands. Before Grodnov can appear before the grand jury, however, we’ll have to locate him. Our tails lost him en route from HQ to his apartment at the sprinkler outlet on the northside.
“We’ve got him but we’ve lost him,” the Captain says to Tommy and me in the Boss’s office downtown.
“He just disappeared three blocks away from here,” Spencer says.
“Unfuckingbelievable,” the Captain says.
“There it is,” I agree.
“We searched his apartment?” the Boss goes on.
“Affirmative,” Tommy tells him. “No passports, cash, anything that would lead us to believe he’s about to take off for parts unknown.”
“I would think this swinging dick would try to get back to Mother Russia, his old stomping ground. With phony ID, of course.”
“We’ve got a man at O’Hare and at Midway. If he flies commercially, we’ll nab him,” I say.
“What if he tries to go out of some out of town port on a small jet or what if he tries to break to Canada or Mexico?” the Captain asks.
“We’ve got everyone available trying to find him, Boss,” I say.
“This man cannot escape us, boys. Oh no. He better not get loose from us.”
There is genuine fury on his face. His pale skin and red hair are accentuated by the scarlet anger on his cheeks.
“We’ll locate him. He’s too hot to get away from us. We’ve got everyone from the FBI to the INS helping us on this one.”
“Three fucking blocks from the Station and he ‘disappears.’ Am I right?”
Neither of us nods.
*
We work eighteen hour shifts. I haven’t seen Natalie or Jimmy Junior in two days. I haven’t been able to get close to Mike to try and change his mind about the Army and the Rangers. I’ve been too busy trying to find this Russian son of a bitch. So it’s time to squeeze Wade S. Hansen.
“Tell us where he hides out. Point us in his direction. I’ll get you witness protection if you tell us where he’s hiding and if you testify in court that he agreed to blow up the Anderson Building. You are aware that when we nab him all by ourselves, and when he agrees to roll over on you, this deal will already have been withdrawn from the table. So you have a chance to save yourself, Hansen. Last time offer.”
His lawyer Johnny Adams knows that it’s the truth that I’m telling Hansen. If we nail the Russian, he’ll try to make a deal on Wade. It’ll be all that’s left for him to do to avoid life in prison—But someone is going away for the Anderson massacre very soon. It is only a matter of time, Adams knows. He understands that the massive forces of the City and the
Feds are going to find Grodnov eventually because his case is the highest profile. All that attention has a high rate of incarceration. We will find Grodnov, and the blond Russian will try to save himself.
“You guarantee witness protection?” Wade says suddenly.
He has the look of the hunted on his face. I’ve seen that look before. I’ve seen it in the interrogation room many times. The game is over. There are no more moves for him to make. He knows we will have him soon, and now he’s looking for a way out. And there’s only one avenue left.
Wade S. Hansen is not a stupid man. He knows checkmate when he sees it on the board in front of him. He sniffs spending the rest of his life in a cage with some very unsavory roommates.
“Get the FBI over here. I want to see this in black and white,” his wily attorney, Johnny Adams tells Tommy and me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Captain is in here with Tommy Spencer and me and Special Agent Kelvin of the FBI. Wade S. Hansen, dapper and handsome as always, is present in the interrogation room with his omni-present mouthpiece, Johnny Adams.
I’ve been elected to do the talking, and the whole interview is being video taped, as is the present custom.
“Why would you kill all those other people to murder your wife?” I ask.
“You’re very tactful, Lieutenant,” Wade smiles.
“You think there’s anything faintly amusing about that question?” I ask.
“I am here to cooperate with the investigation of Alexei Grodnov—“
“You’re here to save your ass, and for no other reason. The agreement was that you answer all our questions. That was question number one. Play it cute, you can walk and take your chances in court or with the Russians.”
He eyeballs me with his best venom, but I don’t divert my eyes from his stare.
“Why’d you have to kill all those bystanders, Wade?”
“I thought you already knew…It was to make it look like—“
“I know that answer. I’m asking why it was necessary to waste all those other people just to get at one woman. You could’ve paid any gang in town a grand and they would’ve made her disappear into the Lake and the Chicago River, in multiple parts…Why all this?”
He’s got no answer for me. Just his stare. But the glance tells me that he didn’t care about the collateral mess. He just thought he was being clever enough to get away with murder by hiding behind the terrorists in New York and having the Russian terrorist pull the trigger, so to speak, at the Anderson Building.
“You knew Grodnov made threats about blowing the building to Gary Merton?” I ask.
“I did not know of any such threats.”
“Because Grodnov was trying to double dip—take you for half of Greta’s insurance and then milk Glamour Properties out of another two million. Is that correct?”
“You’d have to ask Grodnov. I only knew of our deal.”
“What did she do that provoked all this misery? What could she have done to start all this?”
Again, there is the casual smile.
“She made me mad.”
“She made you mad?” I repeat as a question.
“Yes.”
“How’d she accomplish that?”
“She had an affair.”
“We heard that she had several affairs. Why was this one coupling different from all the others?” I ask him.
Johnny Adams appears as if he’s got an objection, but he sits back in his chair opposite me.
“This one was different.”
“Yes. But why?”
“She went over the line.”
“What does that mean, Wade?”
“It means that she picked a lover…who was objectionable to me.”
“Weren’t they all?” I ask. It’s hard to veil my incredulous tone, but I’m trying to keep my voice level and objective throughout.
“No. They weren’t all out of bounds. We had an open marriage.”
“Meaning you could have sexual relations with other men and women.”
“Yes…Up to a point.”
“What was this boundary line you’re referring to?”
“Social.”
“In what way, Mr. Hansen?”
“She chose to ‘couple’ with someone far beneath her social status.”
“So you had a snob’s agreement about who you could bone?”
Tommy Spencer giggles. The Captain squirms in his chair, and Special Agent Kelvin can’t help laughing out loud.
“That’s highly…inappropriate. Or something,” Johnny Adams adds.
“You’re right. Excuse me,” I apologize.
“She chose a man far beneath…far beneath the dignity of her position in life.”
“She picked a guy who was in a lower class?”
“That’s right.”
“How much lower?”
“Much lower,” Wade says. He’s coloring slightly.
“And because she had relations with this middle class man—“
“Lower middle class, Lieutenant.”
“Pardon me, sir…Because she had sex with this lower middle class man, you had Grodnov destroy a thousand human beings.”
Wade brings back the stare.
“You didn’t answer, Mr. Hansen,” I remind him.
He continues to aim his lasers at my eyes. We lock in for several seconds.
“Yes,” he finally says.
“Who was this man?” I ask.
“I don’t see how that’s—“
“He answers all the questions, Johnny,” I remind his lawyer. “No exceptions…Well, Mr. Hansen? Who was the man who made you angry enough to wipe out a small town’s worth of people?”
He locks on me again.
“It was Crealey. Raymond Crealey. The janitor…The maintenance man at the Anderson Building.”
“Crealey?” I repeat in amazement.
“You see? You see how it made me feel? She chose him because she knew it was more than an outrage. She picked him because she knew he was out of her sphere.”
“Sphere?”
“He’s a maintenance foreman!”
“That was what got all those innocents—“
“Yes!”
He sits back in his chair. I want to turn to Kelvin and make him withdraw his offer of witness protection. This…This thing across from me has no right to go on breathing.
Then I am reminded that I am not a judge or a jury, and that Wade S. Hansen will be the nail in Grodnov’s coffin and the spike through the heart of Chicago’s Russian Mafia. That’s what we get for letting a mass murderer go, a mass murderer near the level of a Nazi in the death camps in World War II. Wade is on the same footing with one of Stalin’s purge artists—men who made Jewish villages disappear overnight. And we have negotiated with this man and granted him immunity from prosecution. We have delivered him to a new life with a new identity. He murdered a thousand souls because his wife fucked a man out of their social orbit. It’s so ridiculous that it has to be true.
“Why didn’t you have Crealey killed too?”
“She brought on her own death. Raymond was simply a pawn. I told Merton to fire him. That was devastating enough for a man like Raymond. He’d worked his whole adult life for Glamour. And I figured he’d know he was partly responsible for what happened to that building…And it was slated for demolition in two years anyway.”
I feel like remonstrating with him, but it is as my father, Jake, once told me: “You can’t argue with an idiot.”
Jake was right. So we close the interview with some more questions about Grodnov’s part in the blast at the Anderson site.
*
Crealey isn’t at the house in Orland, so we try the cemetery where his wife is buried.
“I started the fire with an accelerant. Grodnov paid me five thousand dollars to torch that room where the barrel of fertilizer was. He thought a timer would help the FBI trace things back to him and the Russians. Their timers are like signatures on bombs, so
he thought he’d be clever and throw you a curveball. No timer. The accelerant was burned up by the intensity of the heat. Left no trace. Isn’t that what Grodnov told you by now?”
“We didn’t talk to the Russian. We talked to Hansen.”
“I didn’t want that to happen. She made it happen, not me. She came into my office and locked the door behind her. She told me she was tired of trying to get her husband hard. She said he was ‘jaded’ by all the sex he’d had and that she needed someone ‘real’ to make her feel like a woman.
“My wife was dead a long time and I hadn’t touched a woman in months…And then she was a beautiful woman, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. How could any man turn down a woman like Greta Hansen?”
“She was somebody else’s wife, Raymond.”
He turns from his wife’s grave. A drizzle has begun to fall.
“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I know I cheated on my wife?”
“She’s dead.”
“It doesn’t matter, Lieutenant. My wife never died here.”
He points to his chest, to his heart.
“I’m the one that got all those people killed. For five thousand bucks. Grodnov said he’d tell Hansen about Greta and me, but I knew she already told her husband. I knew when Merton tried to fire me the first time…
“Five thousand dollars. That’s five dollars a person. I set that fire…But I don’t have the balls to kill myself…
“I learned all about accelerants and explosives in the service. See what kind of useful things you learn in the defense of your own country?
“That woman locked the door behind her, and my whole life got changed forever. I took money to kill people. Don’t that make me a whaddayacallit—mercenary?”
“Time to go, Raymond.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“Same thing as Grodnov, Ray,” Tommy tells him. “One thousand counts of first degree murder.”
“I might live thirty years, if they give me life.”
“Say goodbye to your wife, Raymond,” I tell him.
He turns and looks at the marker. Then he turns back to me and I handcuff him.
*
“Raymond’s the sap in this,” Tommy says.
“Looks like,” I say.
“Great piece of ass, elegant woman, flops her goodies in front of a lonely guy, and it leads him into torching a building with the help of the Russians, and all he gets is five grand. Probably enough for that new deck on the back of his house. Now he’s lost all of it anyway—his wife, his life, his job, his house. Everything for one bad judgment call.”
