by Thomas Laird
“I left my wallet…Or did you already help yourself to it?”
“I’m out of here.”
“Good.”
I start hauling it toward the door behind her.
As I pass, she lashes out with an open hand and catches me on the cheek. I drop the bag on the floor, and I pop her back with a straight right, like I’ve seen on the boxing matches on TV. She staggers backwards because I caught her good, right on the chin, but she doesn’t go down. She puts her hand to the place where I smacked her.
“You little shit. You little fucking shit.”
“Get outta my way,” I tell her. I try to make my voice sound mean, like I intend to pop her again, but this time harder.
“Where’d you suddenly get the guts to fight back?”
It almost looks like she’s beginning to grin at me. That’s always a bad sign, but this time she at least sounds sober.
“You hit me, and I’ll kill you,” I tell her with all the serious I can muster.
“I believe you’d try. Maybe them streets have toughened you up, some. Have they?”
“The hell do you care? Don’t let me keep you from warming up that stool at Fat Jack’s.”
I believe I see something like wet gathering in her eyes, but it’s probably from the reflex of getting hit in the chin. There’s no cause for me to start mistakenly feeling that there’s a human somewhere inside her. I know her too well. There’s only the Mr. Hyde, like in that story. There’s no good person trying to come out of all that mean.
“Don’t come back here, Mary. There ain’t anything for you to come back to.”
Funny. It doesn’t sound like the usual threat aimed at me, the way it always sounds.
“Once you leave, stay away.”
Something wet does travel down from her left eye, but I’m not going to weaken and ask her what she’s doing.
“Go on! Get the hell out of here!”
“I won’t bother you again. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t let the goddam door hit you in the ass on the way out of here. Get out.”
She doesn’t yell it at me. She just says it soft, as if there’s pain coming out of her with those crocodile tears. I brush her just lightly as I get to the door behind her, and I leave as quick as I can. I run down the stairs as if the devil is right behind me, but when I get outside, I turn and see that no one’s there, and I’m back out in the dark, just like before I went in.
*
Jimmy Parisi, 1979
We have an artist’s rendition, and that’s all we have. There was no evidence among any of the four body bags, and all we have that points to Casey McCaslin is a bag lady’s description, which I don’t think would hold much weight in court. Not after a slick defense attorney got through with her.
At least we have a place to start, so we put him under surveillance for a few days. Getting used to Doc’s all night jazz station is my first hurdle. I like classic rock and roll, but he’s into Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, and all that modern jazz made up of quartets and trios and quintets. The musicians all seem as though they’re playing their own tunes, all at once.
I must be acquiring a taste for them on the third night in front of McCaslin’s apartment building, however. It’s beginning to sound pretty good to me, in fact.
About midnight, McCaslin strides out his front door, gets into his green Mustang, and pulls away from the curb. We’re right behind him, at a discrete interval. Doc does the driving because I don’t drive unless I have to. I’m especially adverse to high speed chases—they’re dangerous and usually destructive and fruitless. That’s why we have radios in the squads. No one can outrun radio waves, to date. The bad guys almost always lose the chase.
He drives east to the Outer Drive, and then he heads north on Lake Shore. We follow him until he gets off on Fullerton. Then McCaslin heads west. He goes another two miles until he gets to Ashland Avenue and then proceeds north for another couple of miles.
We’re beginning to think he’s fucking with us when he pulls into our favorite hangout, White Castle. He goes inside as we wait out in the lot. He’s inside for about twenty minutes.
“I have a plan for peace in the Middle East,” Doc says.
“What brought this on?” I smile.
“Boredom. Sheer ennui,” he grins.
“So?”
He waits a beat.
“We bring all the Jews from Israel, and we give them New Mexico. Maybe a piece of Arizona, too, if it’s too crowded.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I counter.
“Perhaps on the surface it sounds strange, but think of all the benefits to the Israelis and to Americans. We get all those mostly well-educated immigrants, and they get a new homeland where they’re not surrounded by fucking nutjobs. No more missile attacks. No more lobbing bombs in and out of their country. They make a pasture out of a desert, in New Mexico, and we get migrants that are pretty much a plus to the nation. Oh, I know they must have their share of shitheads, too, but it’ll keep their police busy. You gotta have five-ohs.”
There’s a tap on the glass of the passenger’s side window. I had the thing down only about a third way. Before McCaslin can blink, I’ve got the .38’s barrel pointed at his face.
“I come in peace,” Casey says. “Please don’t shoot.”
He raises his hands and steps back from the door.
“I was just hungry, so I stepped out for a bite,” he grins, his hands still held over his head.
“You went a long way for a snack,” I tell him.
I put the .38 back into my shoulder holster, but as I turn to my partner, I see Doc’s got his own Police Special on the seat, right next to his right hand.
“Can’t take your eyes off the cocksucker,” Gibron whispers.
“What was that?” McCaslin grins widely.
“Did you have a nice early breakfast?” I ask.
“I didn’t do those girls,” he says. “You’re wasting a lot of high-priced manpower, tailing me.”
“You let us worry about it, McCaslin,” I reply.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll be going home now. You don’t need to follow me.”
He walks away from our ride.
Doc picks up his piece and returns it to his shoulder rig.
“That was careless of us,” he says.
“Next time, leave the Jews in Israel.”
“They’d be far happier and more secure in New Mexico. Maybe they could rename it New Jerusalem.”
“I never knew you were all that religious, Doc.”
“I’m not.”
He turns on the motor, and then he pulls us out of the White Castle’s parking lot.
*
“Where’s he getting the body bags?” Doc asks as we sit in my office, back downtown. The only perk of my office is the big slab of window that looks eastward out onto Lake Michigan. I can see Oak Street Beach from here, and if I use my binoculars I can make out some of the female talent on that strip of sand. Erin wouldn’t find my babe watching very amusing. But I only look; I never touch. I’m too aware of how well I have it at home.
“Mortuary?” I answer.
It’s still dark outside, but we’re getting to the close of our midnights’ shift.
“Want to make some calls tomorrow afternoon after we wake up?” he asks.
“I think we ought to try the immediate vicinity of Mr. McCaslin,” I say.
“Sounds like a plan.”
*
Casey McCaslin, 1979
All they have is the witness, but I can’t figure out who saw me with one of them. Had to have been a street person, just a passerby. There are just about no pedestrians on the sidewalks when I locate them. What are the odds anyone’s going to be out walking that far past midnight? Got to be another whore or some street bum.
Maybe a homeless asshole.
I’ve seen a few of them out that late. Tracy hung out by the Marquette Theater. That’s where I picked her up. No one but whores and
bums hang around there late at night.
There was one old bitch that was searching out garbage cans the night I nabbed Tracy. Baggy socks, sweater in the middle of a heat wave. Maybe I should go find her and have a talk with her. But it could have been anyone, and I’m too tired. Leading those cops around pooped me out pretty good. My eyes are about ready to close on their own.
But if I close my eyes it’ll be the same as usual. I’ll have to revisit her, the way I do most every night. She keeps coming back to me. She never spent as much time with me when I was a kid as she does now when she’s been gone for eighteen years.
The old lady was never around much when she lived at home. It saved me some pain that I’d rather not think about.
She never apologized for what she did.
The old lady did work in a factory on the west side, and it was amazing that she didn’t get canned, but she dragged her dirty blonde ass to work every weekday morning, got on the CTA bus and made it to the job, hung over or not, and she knew the factory gig was a paycheck and a paycheck was money to get her load on because it was her way of fucking coping with her fucked marriage to my fucked old man.
I dream of young girls. Creatures who were the polar reverse of the old lady. They were young and innocent and pure. But give them time and they’d wind up like her. High school terminals or high school dropouts, like most of the cunts in this ‘hood. Going nowhere except to the maternity ward.
The old bitch was sixteen when she had me. The old man married her because he was afraid of my mother’s father, who was a local hood in an Irish crew—in fact it was the same gang I joined some years later when I was old enough to hold a piece and fearless enough to pull the trigger.
Sure, those young twats would end up the way my mother did. Unless someone stopped them. Unless someone nipped their little buds in the budding.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m preventing it from happening.
When I grab them by the hair and when I start to cut them, it’s just some temporary suffering for some long term peace. I’m doing them a favor, a kindness.
The old lady’s been gone almost twenty years, but she keeps returning at night.
I close my eyes, and before I know it, here she comes, flying at me like some tiger in the jungle, like some tiger in the forest.
*
Jimmy Parisi, 1979
He’s keeping close to his apartment, now that he knows we’re looking at him for the girls. We don’t watch him every night, any longer, because the captain can’t justify the hours for us to pursue someone we have no case against, other than that drawing from the street woman. I understand the captain’s predicament. He knows Doc and I like him for the four girls, but right now we have to back off on McCaslin. We do have other cases.
The other cases are primarily slam dunks. Lots of domestic killings in which you’ll have a solution within forty-eight hours, usually by confession.
Which is why I don’t like our deal with Casey. He lies the way other people tell you the straight out truth. There are no pauses, the way liars stop in the conversation and make shit up as they go along. There’s no hesitation with McCaslin because the son of a bitch has no conscience. I don’t know how you could have that little moral device if you were able to slice up four adolescent girls the way I know he did. If he had any sense of guilt, he’s keeping it well hidden.
Doc and I work our other cases, but Casey is our main entrée. We’re not giving up on him. We make an appearance out front of his place at least once a week just to let him know we’re there. I’m certain he sees us out by the curb. We’re not being at all inconspicuous. It’s for his benefit that we show ourselves. Now he knows we’re not giving up on him. We won’t, either.
I got lucky getting paired up with Doc Gibron. He does have his tics, of course. Like the all night jazz stations that I’m now becoming addicted to.
And he’s got me reading literature, too. He’s breaking my bad habits, he calls them, of reading the New York Times best seller list of thrillers and mysteries. My new paperbacks are all written by highbrow authors like John Updike. And Doc likes John Irving, so I’m reading The World According to Garp, and he’s put me on to a Vietnam vet named Tim O’Brien and his Going After Cacciato. Hell, I’ve got a whole required reading list from him, and I have to say that his taste is pretty good. Northwestern is expensive, and they don’t let in all the dumbasses like me who went to a downtown junior college.
Maybe he’s helping me improve my mind. Who knows? Erin has commented that she likes seeing me read something other than commercial trash, and I don’t know if she’s praising me or cracking wise. She’s a school teacher, but at least she never corrects my fucking grammar.
*
Midnights is the most disorienting shift of the three. You never know what day it is. Sometimes you can’t even remember the hour even if you’re wearing a watch.
I think a lot about my old man, Jake. He’s gone now, too. It wasn’t until after he fell down the stairs at home did my mother, Eleanor, tell me that I wasn’t Jake’s biological child. My real father was his brother Nick. The old man had some childhood disease like mumps, and apparently it sterilized him, and so Nick did the deed because my mother wanted a child as badly as she did, and so my uncle accommodated her. Which in turn did a major number on Jake, who was himself a homicide detective. Jake is the reason I’m where I’m at, in life. All I ever wanted to be was a copper, and it was because of my non-biological father. Jake was the brother who was in my life, not Nick. Jake was the only real father I ever had. He had problems with booze and my birth history, but he was a good man, and he was always gentle with me, if not with himself.
He fell down the stairs at the house many years ago, and there was always a faint odor that perhaps Eleanor was the cause of his tumble. But the police believed that it was accidental, and there was no further investigation by the CPD, my father’s one-time employer.
Every time I see my mother, though, the misty notion of her pushing him down the stairs reoccurs in my imagination. Someday I’ll have to ask her, straight out, I know. But I won’t be asking that question for a while, yet.
*
Casey McCaslin, 1979
I have to get out of the apartment. The thirst is building again, and I haven’t seen them outside my building, lately. They were here two nights ago, but they ordinarily show up only once a week, the last three weeks. They’re being told to lay off because they have nothing, nothing except a bogus witness who gave them a bogus description. So they know how weak their shit is, against me, and I think they have finally backed off.
Word in the neighborhood is that Parisi is a hardass—he’s a bulldog. He won’t lay off, once he’s begun. He keeps coming. Homicides are the biggest hardasses, in fact, there’s word going around that once he sinks his teeth in he’s not going to let go of me.
But the fact is that there has been no sign of him or the older cop, Gibron, for a while now, so I have to get back out there. The only way to hold back the bad dreams is to find a girl and stop her in her tracks before she becomes what they all become if I let them.
When I drive around Old Town, I know it’s a bad idea to hit the same area that I’ve hit four times before, but I’m thinking that they’re thinking the same thing. They like to play the same odds that I do, and so I know the cops will not be looking for me here.
But just to play it safe, I steal a car from the next ‘hood over, by the Italians. I like fucking with the guineas anyway, so it’s nice to steal a made guy’s car. So I boost an Outfit guy’s Camaro, brand new. Red. The worst color you can choose because it’s the most visible.
They’re running in pairs tonight.
I don’t see a single straggler. So I’m going to adjust.
It’s after three in the morning; there’s a slight mist rising. I kinda like it. Like London in the 1890s or whatever. And it’s a challenge, having two of them. They can’t be much older than 14, if that old.
They’re sta
nding on a corner two blocks from the Marquette, where I took Tracy. There is absolutely no one else on the streets. They must have absolutely nowhere else to go. So I roll down the window and ask them if they’d like to play a doubleheader, tonight. Or this morning. The blonde kid smiles, but the redhead looks wary. It’s so damp and chilly, though, that it only takes them seconds to make the last decision they’ll ever make.
I open the back door for them, and they get in.
Chapter 4
Jimmy Parisi, 1979
I’m thinking about anything except what they’re about to drag up from the lake next to this pier—this same pier where we found the four body bags all those weeks ago.
It’s a week before Halloween. The weather has turned downright wintry. There’s been no snow or ice yet, but you can smell it’s on the way. I can imagine what December and January will be like, and I don’t even want to think about the end of this decade that’s coming up soon.
They hoist yet two more body bags from almost the exact spot where they lifted the four girls. We’ve been calling mortuaries about missing body bags for weeks with no result. Doc and I know it’s McCaslin’s work before we ever get to open the bags.
After they’ve been hauled from the pier to the beach, the ME gets his first look, and then the photographers take their photos, and then the technicians look for evidence which I’m pretty sure they will not find.
“Cocksucker’s back,” Doc says, hardly above a whisper.
We take notes, me in my notebook and Doc with his photographic memory, and then we head back to our offices downtown.
We hit the Old Town district, once more, but this time there are no eyeballers who’ve seen either teenager. They were both thirteen, hardly making it into that age group. There’s no bag lady, either. We look around for her, but she’s nowhere in the picture. After three hours of canvassing, we head back to HQ with our tails firmly between our legs.
*
We watch his apartment for five straight nights. He waves at us from his front window twice that week just to shove it in our faces. Doc waves back, though.
