by Thomas Laird
Mary is blanched porcelain, once more. She looks like she might be under a wave of nausea, herself.
“Help me, Mary. You can do a good thing. Find that razor for us. We can’t get inside the apartment because of legal shit you don’t need to know. But you can help get some justice for all those other girls and for his other victims. McCaslin’s a real smart guy, too, but his smarts are all about doing evil, terrible things. You can stop him.
“But if you won’t, I understand. You’re living very dangerously, now, and he might be ready to go back to his old ways, with you, this time. You can’t trust him. You understand me?”
She refuses to answer me.
“I’ll walk you back, then.”
“I’d rather go by myself.”
“All right. I’ll let you go, then.”
She turns back to me after a few steps.
“I believe in him. He’s good. He isn’t an angel. He might even be a thief. But he never killed anyone. I know him. He couldn’t.”
I remain seated on the bench. She turns and walks slowly back in the direction we came.
I sit and let the sun bake me. But I don’t mind. Even in this July sun, all my warmth has fled, and I feel a chill traversing down to my lowest extremities.
*
“So?” I ask Doc, downtown.
“He don’t know nothin’,” Doc laments.
“Neither does his girlfriend. She says she’s eighteen.”
“You believe her, Jimmy?”
“She couldn’t show me any identification, and she looks more like thirteen. If you look below her neck, she could be legal. The face is absolutely childlike. Like a virgin, or someone who ought to be.”
“Did she buy what you sold her about her boyfriend?”
I shrug.
“Who knows what evil lurks.”
“She better buy it, or he’ll be back to work, soon enough, and maybe he’ll start with this child princess,” my partner pronounces.
Chapter 17
Mary O’Connor, 1980
The cop was lying to me because he just wanted me to help him turn McCaslin, but I’m not falling for it. I’ve never believed a policeman. They’re just like anyone else. They have their little games, and they want to play them with you. It winds up being against you, in the end.
The first time I find a guy who gives a sweet damn about me, this detective is telling me he’s some kind of loony killer, says he killed six girls. I saw the stories about them on the TV. You get yourself a shot of being delivered from this shitty life on the streets, and the first thing you know someone’s trying to pull it all out from under you. I don’t know how many alleys I slept in or how many johns I had to do to make money to eat on, but the list is longer than I care to remember.
Casey came on the same way they all did, at first. And I thought it was all a one-time shot until he moved me into his apartment with him. And I thought it was kinda hincty that he didn’t want to take me out anywhere, at first. But now we go out all the time. I can understand if he wanted things to cool off, if he was catching a little heat for boosting whatever, and I’ve been with a lot worse kind of guys before, so I’m not looking for a halo over his head. I’m nothing angelic, either.
I could’ve lied about my name to him the first time we met, but I felt safe with Casey. He took care of me and got me off the street, and it seems like things get better every day for us. He’s never said he loved me, but he kinda shows me he does by the gentle way he treats me. With the guys I’m used to, you take a beating every once in a while, and it’s to be expected. They get drunk and they take their troubles out on you. That was the way my old man was to my old lady. He beat the shit out of her sorta regular. But they moved from beer to cocaine because of my dad’s success with the horses at Hawthorne; they both became more interested in taking it up the nose than getting into brawls with each other. The coke will kill them both pretty soon, I figure. It’ll blow them up on the inside, the way it does, but I won’t be there to see it. Funny thing was, the more they snorted, the more the old man won with the trotters. The problem is he spends everything he wins on their addiction.
I’m gone from all that, now. I have been since I was seventeen. Been living in Youth Services from time to time. They tried reuniting me with my parents, but the social workers found out that they’re both cokeheads, and so I got back to Services, until I ran away, a few months ago. Then, as I said, I’ve been sleeping in alleys or abandoned cars or wherever, until Casey came along.
He does have a straight razor, but I’ve seen him shave with it. I never saw anything that looked like blood on it except for a spot or two when he nicks himself keeping the hair off his face.
That Parisi told me that he cut the eyes out of a guy that Casey knew—this O’Brien dude—and I know he knew this other guy because he talked about him from time to time. They ran together, but he runs with a crew and I know they’re not a fucking benevolent organization, for crissake. But that’s the way it is in this ‘hood. It’s hard to do anything else, the way things are around here. The game is fixed, I’m saying. It costs too much to go to college, and the public schools in this city are more like holding pens for cattle than they are schools.
I did pretty well in the year I went to high school, but the work was too easy. They just wanted you not to raise hell, and then they gave you A’s or B’s if you did what you were supposed to, and even the dumbasses got promoted because they didn’t have the space in the rooms for the flunkers to re-take the courses.
Casey never went past high school, he told me, but he’s really smart. He could’ve been a doctor of something if he had money in his family, but he comes from a family as fucked up as mine. If I were in charge, I’d make parents take courses in how to be moms and dads. Most of them would flunk out, the dumbasses.
He’s sweet to me. He’s never rough. He couldn’t be a killer because he hasn’t got it in him. You can tell. It’s what they call intuition. And if he were mean the way the cop said he was, he would’ve shown it by now. He coulda cut my throat any time I took sleep to my eyes, but he didn’t.
It troubles me a little to hear about that straight razor. Parisi could just be guessing Casey has one because a lot of men do. Not just for shaving, either. It’s a nice little weapon to keep in your pocket, in these parts. Guns are expensive and hard to get, but more of these gang bangers are finding them, anyhow. Pretty soon everyone will be heeled. Then this neighborhood’s going to be a war zone.
He talks about me going back to school even though I’m really eighteen years old. I’ve always had this baby face, but my tits and the rest of me say it’s a lie. Men look at my face and think they’re getting a cherry because I look so young, but when they get my clothes off, they see I’m a woman, plain enough. Casey likes my body, but he thinks I’m just prematurely mature, if that makes any sense. There’s this disease that makes children look like old people—I forget the name of it. I was thinking maybe I have some reverse thing where my face makes me look younger than I really am. One thing is sure. I won’t likely need any plastic surgery for a real long time. Most women would take it as a blessing, I suppose. But I know I’ll get carded long after I turn twenty-one.
If I told him the truth about how old I really am, I suppose I could tell him I could go back and get one of those GEDs or whatever, and then maybe I could go on to a junior college. I told Casey that I wanted to get a job so that I could help pay the bills around here, but thinking I’m younger, he said I got no one to sign the permission form until you’re sixteen.
I’m going to get some ID soon, somehow, so I can get a Social Security number, but the only way that’s gonna happen is if I go back to the old man’s apartment and get my birth certificate. You need a Social Security card to get any job or to get a driver’s license.
All that hinges on me telling him my real age. I suppose I’ll have to, anyway, if we’re gonna stay together. You can’t build anything of value on a bunch of lies. He’s a good
man and I love him, even if he doesn’t love me, yet. When he sees how serious I am about us, maybe that’ll turn the trick and he’ll say those three magic words to me. Then it won’t be all about my young face and my perfect shaped titties and my round ass and flat stomach and smooth skin. It’ll be more real if he understands I love him and that I want a life with him that goes beyond a few weekends in bed.
I’m not saying I want babies or any of that shit. I been on birth control for as long as I been on the street. They give you a free exam and the pills at the health place near the Loop, and they don’t ask for ID or anything. They take your blood, too, and check to see if you got any bugs need killing, and since I made all my johns use a skin, I been lucky.
I don’t think of myself as a whore, but like the pros, the real ones, I don’t let anyone kiss me, and I do clean up after blow jobs. I try to stay clean, anyway.
If Casey wanted to have a kid, I don’t know what I’d say. When you’re with someone permanent, babies seem like the next natural thing. But a kid would make my titties sag, and they might make me gain weight I can’t lose, and all I want to do is make him happy.
But if he really wanted one…..I don’t know.
When he’s asleep, I look over at him and study his face. I look for any sign that he could do what that cop said he did. Is this the face of a cold blooded bitch murderer? I can’t believe it is. My gut tells me he can’t have done the like. The way he touches me tells me it’s all a lie. Cops have quotas. They have all kinds of pressure on them to make busts, even if they grab the wrong guy. It’s numbers. It’s making their bosses happy, and making the newspapers and the people who read them happy. Someone’s got to get grabbed to make all of them restful about this at-large creep who slit all those girls’ throats. It’s so they can rest easy at night knowing that animal, that monster, is behind bars.
McCaslin is their fall guy. He’s the way they fill in the blanks and dot the I’s and finish everything off. Tie up those loose ends, as they like to say. But I look at that peaceful face and I know there’s no blood on his hands. He’s just the sacrificial goat. It like, appeases all the big shots if you throw them into the volcano. But they’re not sacrificing him, not my man, because he’s all I’ve got. I got no one else to love on this earth. Up until him, I just been a sort of receptacle for guys to do their business in. No more. I’m not like that, now. I’m living with a man who gives a damn about me, who takes care of me, who touches me as soft and gentle as I’ve ever felt touch before. They’re not taking that away from me by putting all this poison into my head about him.
I’m in the john, now, holding that straight razor. I could find out for certain if he’s innocent of all the shit Parisi said he did. They could like test it and find out if there’s anybody else’s blood on the blade. I read that you can hardly get all the stuff off something like this as much as you try to clean it away. All they need is some microscopic leftovers on here and they’ll know if he cut that O’Brien’s eyes out of his head. If he did O’Brien, then I’d know the hard truth. It’d be a way to put all this shit aside, and I wouldn’t have to worry about whether I’m sleeping with some…some thing.
But I place the straight razor back in the medicine cabinet, and I close it as quietly as I can.
He’s standing right behind me when I turn.
A little cry escapes my lips.
“Jesus, I didn’t mean to startle you, girl,” he says.
“You were just there, all of a sudden, babe.”
“You ain’t still scared, are you?”
“No. You know I’m not.”
He brings me close to him.
“Feel like takin’ a shower with me?” he grins.
He holds me tight and strokes my sides with his hands, and it makes me tingle, the way it always does. He slides down my bikini panties real slow, and they drop to the floor.
“Are you wet, girl?”
He touches me and finds out that I am. He makes me wet just looking at him, sometimes.
He slides down his briefs, and he takes my hand and guides it to his hard thing.
“You want to get wetter?”
I look at the medicine cabinet over his shoulder while he lifts me in his arms and slides himself deep inside me. And then I close my eyes, and he begins.
Chapter 18
Jimmy Parisi, 1980
August is a blistering bitch. We have sixteen homicides since the Fourth, and the number is sure to go way up by Labor Day. We’ve got plenty to keep us busy, but the word I’m waiting for is contact from Mary O’Connor. Last we heard from the Robbery detectives, who have kept the faith and continue to keep tabs on Casey, is that she’s been seen in public with him a few times, and they say she looks happy, or at least she’s keeping up appearances for the coppers who’ve sighted the two of them in restaurants and malls and whatever.
We can’t wait for McCaslin to do his thing on the kid. We have to shake something loose before he kills one more person. The toll is far too high. One is too goddam many. But he’s like morning mist over the Lake. He dissipates, he disappears, before you can grab onto him. Doc keeps telling me to be patient, but patience was never my forte. I’m remembering the schoolyard punk he once was, and it brings me to a boil that he’s escaped me. It’s like the cop in Les Miserables. The whale in Moby Dick. It’s an obsession and has been for a while. But Valjean stole a fucking loaf of bread, and the whale was just a natural creature defending himself. Neither of them was a murderous fucking villain, like this guy, McCaslin.
The pursuit is the same for me, though. Ahab and the cop in Hugo’s book would understand me completely. Once you get taken into the chase, you can’t get out even if you know the pursuit is hopeless and even if you know carrying on after the object of your monomania isn’t catchable.
Our next move is to go back to Casey’s crew. They have to be a little on edge after their boss sliced and diced O’Brien. They probably thought that Mick would be the one to do the cutting on Casey, but I figure even O’Brien feared the alpha male in that gang. They all know he did the girls, the security guard, the bag lady, and, now, Mick O’Brien.
Andy Shea is our first stop. We corner him at The Pig’s Ass, the well-known hangout for these thieving punks. The place is well-named, Doc and I see, as we walk inside. The saloon is a shithole, and I do not exaggerate. How they can avoid the health inspector can only be explained by remembering this is Chicago, and everybody’s palm is extended with the question, ‘Where’s mine?’ All the bars have to pay off health inspectors or the cops or both. It’s the way business is done in this town. It’s also the reason I’m in Homicide. Our department probably has the cleanest hands on the force. Vice and a few others never knew a bar of soap.
We got the tip he was hanging here tonight from Cunio, the Robbery copper. He’s been our constant source of information since we worked together, not long ago.
The place is nearly empty, and Shea sits by himself at the far left end of the bar. You have to lift your feet to wade through the fucking sawdust. He hears us coming and turns around and stands. He throws a five on the bar, and then he begins to walk toward us.
“Sit back down, Huckleberry,” Doc tells him.
He develops a hangdog look on his puss. This dog looks like he’s been beaten too often. I almost feel sorry for him.
Shea turns and sits back down at his stool. I sit on his left, and Doc perches on his right. Gibron motions for the bar lizard to come on over. He comes toward the three of us slowly, hesitatingly.
“Don’t worry,” Doc tells the barkeep. “We’re not from the Health Department.”
“Give him and me an Old Style draught, and give Mr. Finn another of whatever moose piss he’s drinking.”
“What the fuck—Who’s Mr. Finn?” the kid wants to know.
“What grade did you leave school, asshole? Third?”
“I don’t have to take this shit,” Andy Shea tells Doc, as bravely as he can. But you can see the punk thief is rea
dy to piss himself.
“It’s clear that your honcho hasn’t been by to visit you with that straight razor,” I tell him.
“He never killed Mick O’Brien,” the freckled moron says.
“Who do you think dunnit?” Doc teases.
“It wasn’t McCaslin. I know that.”
“You can keep thinking that until you feel the tickle under your chin.”
He looks at me with wider eyes, now.
“You can’t make me stay here,” he pleads.
“Where else you got to go to? A job?” Doc laughs.
“I got a job.”
“You working at McDonald’s, genius? ‘Would you like fries with that, Mister?’” Doc tells him.
“You can save your own ass. Do something smart, one time in your life,” I say.
“And how do I do that?”
“Are you as stupid as you sound? You know Casey whacked the black-eyed Susan. Sergeant Gibron and I saw his handiwork up close and personal. He left the eyeballs side by side on the mattress, next to the body. He taped his mouth and his wrists and his ankles, and I’ll bet you could hear O’Brien holler, even with the duct tape over his mouth. What makes you think you’re not next, Andy?” I ask him.
“He might just be working his way through the crew. Now that he’s knocked off the badass, he probably figures the rest of you’ll be easy. After all, Casey’s got a lot to lose if one of you rats him out. It’s amazing he’s let all of you live this long,” Doc explains.
Shea has no answer. The salamander bartender finally delivers the drinks. Doc and I both take a swig. Shea’s drink, whatever the hell is in that cocktail glass, remains untouched, along with the dregs of his first glass of the brown liquid.
