Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

  Chapter 21

  Casey McCaslin, 1980

  “You ever been married?” she asks me.

  “No. Why?”

  She gets this secret little smile she can make on her face. With her kid-like looks, she thinks it has some kind of weakening effect on me, and maybe she’s right, but there are times I get that faint urging to find my straight razor and do to her what I thought I was going to do, the night I picked her up.

  “I just wondered,” she grins.

  She also has me at a disadvantage seeing that she’s on top of me and I’m buried as far as it goes inside her and she’s got that clamp on me that only a few women I’ve ever had are able to do. They call them snappers. But it doesn’t hurt like it’s some crab that’s got its pincers clamped onto your dick. It’s like she’s got you altogether surrounded in some kind of wet, warm embrace.

  “Why’re you wondering about that?” I ask.

  “Where do you think this is going, Casey?”

  “Where do you think what—”

  “Us. Where are we goin’?”

  “You want us to get married?”

  She starts the rhythm going again, atop me. She’s trying to make me forget the natural disinclination I have toward getting trapped by a woman, any woman, including her.

  Then she starts moving on me, and pretty soon things get uncontrollable and she’s got her head thrown back and something like a soft growl, if there is such a thing, comes purring out of her mouth, and I can’t stop what’s happening, and I’m thinking this skunk better still be using those pills, and the sweat is glistening off her belly and she keeps on way after I’m depleted, empty, and then she flops off me and lies next to me on these wet, destroyed sheets.

  She rubs my chest until I can start breathing regular again. Then I let all the pent up air out of me and I feel that fine tingle all the way down to my toes, and that sweet exhaustion takes hold of me.

  “I’m not going to marry you, Mary. I’m a dozen years older than you, and you know you’ll grab onto something your age and your style before long, and you’ll be takin’ off on me, and I understand. Maybe it might be better that way, some day, when it happens. Bad things happen around me, and you don’t want to be part of them when they happen.”

  “What bad things?”

  “You know what I do, and I don’t mean workin’ for my cousin, cuttin’ meat.”

  “You mean stealin’?”

  “Yeah. Yeah…That’s what I mean.”

  “You can quit doin’ that, Casey. We don’t need any more than we got, now. All I need is you.”

  “You’re eighteen. You still don’t know what the hell you really want. My mother was your age when she married the old man, and it didn’t turn out well for her, or me. Let yourself live a little. What we got is fine. Maybe it’ll go on for a while longer, but everything stops, Mary. Everything ends, and it ain’t later—it’s sooner. You got to enjoy what you have and stop thinkin’ about all this forever bullshit. There’s no such thing as forever. And stop believing the horseshit you see on those afternoon talk shows, or the crap you read in those magazines.

  “And like I said, it might get dangerous, hanging around here too long.”

  “I’m not afraid. You want me to leave any time soon?”

  The tears begin to well up in her eyes. She’s only a kid. She looks like she’s barely a teenager. Then that cloud comes over us and I get the itch to grab her by the hair and—

  “You just tell me that you want me to go and I’ll do it. I don’t want to be here if you don’t want me to be.”

  “Shut up, will you?” I shout.

  Then the tears cascade down her cheeks, and I soften just the way I’m sure she figured I would, and I do the damn fool thing and I haul her into me, and I’m getting hard again, though that’s the last thing I want to do, encourage her, but I flop back over onto her and I’ve got her wrists stretched back to the headboard, and her legs are pulled up with her knees up, and I’m thrusting into her and I want to hurt her, I want to make her bleed like I’m cutting her with my razor.

  Only I can’t. I can’t seem to find the steam to attack her and maul her and savage her. It all gets her even more worked up than the first time, and it’s lucky I don’t have neighbors in this building to worry about.

  She cries out like she can’t stand it, but the way she comes back at me I know she craves more, and pretty soon, the heat takes over and we’re both spent, and she’s lying by my side again, but this time I lean over and kiss her, and it’s as if she’s a cherry, with the kissing. She fucks like a woman who’s had it all her life, but the kissing is like she’s a virgin going at it for the first time. She gives me her tongue and I give mine back, and her mouth is opened wide and her hands are all over me, not like she’s trying to get me going again, it’s more like she’s touching me soft and gentle, and I never had this before with any whore, and I don’t know how to take it, how to figure her hands out.

  “I won’t bring the other up again, Casey, but I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want anybody else, and I know you could never hurt me. I don’t care what you do, out there. I just want to be here with you and I know I don’t want to leave. Don’t make me go.”

  Then the tears go back into her eyes, all welled up, but there’s no flow.

  “I don’t want you to go, either. But just don’t talk about what you’re gonna want, down the road. This shit is all temporary, you understand me?”

  She nods, and then she starts kissing me again, but this time she seems surer of herself, and it keeps going on and on for longer than I can figure.

  *

  They don’t answer my calls. None of them. Andy Shea, nobody. It’s like they all blew town. I try hitting The Pig’s Ass, and none of them are there. I try knocking on their doors, and not one of them answers. It’s like I’ve been shunned.

  Now I’m worrying that one of them will finally cut a deal with the cops, and I’m wondering if I should start making them all disappear. But I know I have to be very careful with my moves because Parisi and Gibron will be thinking the same way I am, and I don’t want to go back to Joliet or any goddam prison. I’ll never go back, in fact. That much I have clear in my mind. Mary has complicated my life a fuck of a lot more than I ever figured any woman could, and I still might take a knife to her. I warned her. I tried to tell her what might happen if she didn’t take off.

  But the thought of losing her changed me. I didn’t think anything could quench that thirst for blood I had with the six girls. None of them satisfied me. Killing them was never enough, and I would’ve gone on and on and on until I got caught or got shot by that cop Parisi or the big guy, his partner.

  I’m sitting in The Pig’s Ass on a chilled night in early October. The weather changed from hot as fuck to a northwest cool, and I wore a jacket out, the first time since the early spring.

  I figure Shea has to show up here sooner or later because the kid’s already a fucking alkie, and he’s only in his twenties. The booze will kill him if the cops don’t plug him in the middle of a boost.

  There’s only the bikers and the whores and the bedraggled old house slaves who’re escaping the old man and the kids for a few hours. And there are guys getting shut of the old bitch at the house, as well. Some of them will be sympathy fucking each other before the night ends. The Pig’s Ass is a depressing joint. You don’t see many young, unattached kids in here. They’re all clubbing it in Old Town or in some swank, expensive meat market near the Loop.

  Parisi sits down at the table where I’m sitting. He doesn’t say anything. He looks me in the eyes, and then he waves the skinny bartender over to us.

  “Give him another, and give me a Coke,” he says.

  “I don’t recall asking you to sit down.”

  “I’m not into asking you for anything at all, you cocksucker.”

  I start to get up.

  “We talk here or we talk downtown.”

  “You can’t—”

>   “You overestimate your power over the police, McCaslin. You’re on a free pass for that one fuck up. But you got your money and you got your space from us, but then you went right back out and whacked O’Brien.”

  “You here to arrest me?”

  I don’t like the look in his eyes. He has the usual brown, guinea orbs, but there’s something like what they call sinister about them, like he’s not all proper and by-the-book inside him. Maybe it’s dangerous or reckless or something like that, but I’m not comfortable around him, in spite of the fact that I have to look like I don’t give a shit what he says.

  “No. You know better. If I were going to cuff you, this place would be full of backup.”

  “This is a bad place to come in all alone.”

  “Thanks for the concern, but if it ever got tight, be sure you’re the first motherfucker who goes down with a face full of lead.”

  “What is it you want, Parisi?”

  “It’s Detective Parisi, cocksucker.”

  “I don’t like you callin’—”

  “I don’t give a bat’s ass what you like. We’re going to be visiting you real soon, but I wanted you to know that if you hurt that girl—what’s her name, Mary?—I’ll use up the last throw-down I’ve got and I’ll shoot your eyes out. Sort of like a remembrance for your partner, Mick. That kind of shit happens more often than you think, McCaslin. I’m going to have you, one way or the other, but if you hurt that girl, Cook County won’t be wasting any more cash on you.”

  “You got a family, Parisi?”

  “You really don’t want to go there, asshole. My wife has a .45 I took home from Vietnam, and she can clip the balls off a fly at fifty feet. If you think I’m lying, come on over to my house. She doesn’t lay you out, I will. Threatening a police officer is against the law, and you’re under arrest.”

  He pulls out the cuffs, and now the whole bar’s watching.

  His partner, Gibron, walks in with a sawed off shotgun, and he points it at the ceiling.

  “Good evening,” the tall man says to everyone in the bar. “Stay seated, and I won’t have to send anyone to Emergency.”

  Parisi clamps the irons on me, and he tugs me to the door.

  *

  They keep me for a couple of hours, and then they let me go before my attorney shows up. I call the lawyer on the payphone outside the jail before I get on a bus and head back to The Pig’s Ass to retrieve my Mustang.

  He was just fucking with me because he knew I never overtly or outwardly threatened his family, and I also didn’t believe his crap about his wife being Billy the fucking Kid with a .45. It might be true, but I don’t think so. I know it’s bad business to threaten or come after a cop because the police will shoot you on sight if you mess with a policeman or his clan. It just isn’t done, not even by the Outfit, the Italians or any other crew I know of.

  I get off the bus and walk the two blocks to the tavern, and I fire up the Mustang and go back to my apartment.

  “You all right?” Mary asks. “I was worried.”

  “You see that I’m here, right?”

  “I was just worried.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Parisi, the cop?”

  She sits on the couch, and her baby-girl face tightens.

  “I didn’t want to worry you about it. It was nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I yell at her as I slam the door shut behind me.

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. I’m sorry, Casey.”

  “Sorry don’t mean nothing.”

  “I know.”

  “You know this is the son of a bitch from Homicide who’s trying to pin those six murders on me.”

  “Yeah. I know. I read his name in the paper.”

  “What’s he want you to do? Rat me out? Does he want you to find something he can use against me?”

  “Yes. That’s what he wanted.”

  I look at her, and then I walk toward the bathroom.

  “I didn’t tell him anything, baby. I know you didn’t kill anyone. I told him so,” she begs as I rush past her.

  I look in the medicine cabinet, and my razor is still there. I don’t know how many times I’ve cleaned it with boiling water and bleach, but the silver blade gleams in the light of the bathroom fixture.

  Then I close it shut and walk back to her in the living room, and she’s still perched on the cushion on the couch, where I left her.

  “Parisi wants me dead. They got nobody else to smother with those six kids, so he picks me because some old ragbag woman on the streets gives them a sketch of someone who looks a lot like me. And that’s all they got, Mary.”

  “I know that. You don’t have to—”

  “It don’t matter what you or I know. These cops have to come up with a lamb to throw to the fucking wolves, and I’m the fucking woolie they want to throw into the pit with all those snarling fucks. You understand, now?”

  “I always knew it wasn’t you, baby. I told the cop that, too. He just kept going on and on that I should save myself before I joined those kids in the lake, but I knew you couldn’t do anything like that. I told him, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept tryin’ to frighten me.”

  “Did he? Scare you?”

  “No. No one can scare me off from you, didn’t I tell you that?”

  I’m thinking about the razor, one more time. I should go in there right now and take it out of the medicine cabinet and do her and throw her into one of the body bags I have in the dining room closet. It’s what I should do, I know. But I can’t get my feet moving in the right direction. All I can do is move over to her, like I’m stuck in some eyes wide awake trance and I’m moving right toward her.

  Then I sit down.

  “I didn’t kill anyone, Mary.”

  “You don’t need to keep—”

  “I’ve done some bad things, but I never did that. It’s just a lie. They need to erase a name off a board, you understand? They got their names on a white board. I’ve seen them. They’re in red, the names. And if they stay up on the board, these cops get in trouble and then they get demoted into traffic or some shit. You see? I’m just the fall guy. They put me in, and they get to erase all those goddam names. They don’t give a flying fuck if they got the right guy or not. They just want clean fucking boards, courtesy of guys like me. You follow?”

  “Baby, come here to me.”

  I can’t stop closing in on her. I suddenly see the cut across her throat, and the blood tumbles down onto her chest and stomach. I see the death in her eyes, right now.

  “Baby, come closer,” she urges me.

  Chapter 22

  Jimmy Parisi, Present

  The candidates in the Academy spend a few hundred hours taking courses that they’ll need in order to work on the street, and they also do work with the uniforms out in the neighborhoods—or Areas, as we call them in Chicago. They keep them very busy, that’s for sure, but not knowing what’s going on when you’re out there can be very hazardous to your health.

  My lecture today is on the use of firearms—when they’re necessary and when you keep them in the holster. But when I look down for my star student, Karen Quinn, there’s no one in her usual seat. I keep looking down at the vacant chair the whole hour, and when it’s time for Q & A, no one asks a single question.

  When I get off the stage, Sergeant Jerry Mulhaney takes me by the arm and leads me off behind the curtains.

  Mulhaney’s a thirty year veteran, and he’s going to retire next year. He’s balding up front on the hairline, and there are more wrinkles at the corner of his eyes than I recall seeing before.

  “One of our kids was shot and killed while on duty last night on the west side. Her name was Karen Quinn. Some gang members sprayed the squad with an Uzi, and she caught one in the forehead. Never knew what hit her.”

  He grips my arms strongly. I have nothing to say. Then he leaves me alone in the wings.

  The funeral is the next Tuesday. We’re in mid-October, and all the leaves h
ave turned color in a bright display, and the weather is sunny and crisp, not the way it ought to be for a twenty-something young woman who never got to graduate the Academy and never got to work full time and just have a life at all.

  They’ve got the pipes and the booming salute with the rifles and there’s the normal talk from our Superintendent about how Karen Quinn gave all she had to give, what a wonderful student and prospective policewoman she was. Her mother is there. I’m told the father died of cancer when Karen was twelve. There are also two brothers, neither of whom are cops.

  When the eulogy is delivered and when the American flag, folded into a triangle, is given to the mother, her knees buckle and the Superintendent takes hold of her and guides her to a folding chair and gets her seated.

  I’m in my uniform today, out of respect for Karen and every other slain policeman for whom I’ve had to attend one of these services. I figured I owed them at least this much. They would have done it for me.

  Then the recessional plays and we move away from the grave. Karen’s mother is held up by her brothers on the way back to the limousine.

  Three days later they pick up the three pieces of shit who gunned Karen down. One’s eighteen and the other two are fifteen. The triggerman was one of the fifteen year olds. Hopefully he’ll be tried as an adult, but it might go the other way because of his age. All three are Latinos, and they’re blooded hoods from one of the worst gangs on the west side.

  There will not be any justice for Karen Quinn. Justice would have been a full and long life for her. Putting these things in jail will not restore any moral balance to the world. It is necessary that they forfeit their lives, if only to rot in a prison. But nothing less than having that bullet miss its final mark will ever make anything right.

  *

  Jimmy Parisi, 1980

  Doc and I keep looking for Louise, the last hooker on the list of possible witnesses from the Old Town area where the six girls lived and then died. We do our midnights’ shift cruising the area, and finally we spy a middle-aged woman who fits Louise’s description, the description we received from some of her lady of the night friends.