by Thomas Laird
When we pull the Ford over to the curb, she speeds up her walking pace. Doc and I get out of the car and hustle after her, but she’s almost into a trot when I call out to her.
“Police, Louise. Slow down.”
I wait a beat, and then she slows before I have to call out to her again.
She stops in her tracks, her back to us.
“Louise, we just want to talk,” I say.
When she wheels about, I’m watching her hands. Doc has his hand by his holster.
Her hands are empty, and Doc relaxes.
“Let’s go back to the car,” I tell her.
“I don’t give discount blowjobs,” she warns us.
“Not a problem,” Doc laughs loudly.
When we get back to the ride, she sits in the back with Gibron.
“You ever seen this man?”
I show her the by-now famous artist’s sketch of Casey McCaslin.
Doc puts on the overhead dome light. She takes a quick look.
“No, I never,” she says.
Then I know hers is the voice I heard in the interrupted call, a while ago.
“You never talked to me on the phone, a few days back?” I ask her.
“No. I never talked to you. Before now, I mean.”
“You know what a problem you can make for yourself by lying to us?” Doc demands.
“I’m not lying. I never talked to either one of you guys before, and I never seen this guy on the picture. Now can I get on with what I’m out here for? I’m losing money, and you guys ain’t Vice, right?”
“You know what we can do if we sic Vice onto you, don’t you, Louise?”
She glares at my partner.
“You guys don’t come off as that kind of prick.”
“We’re absolute hardons when it comes to catching the guy who killed six little girls and an assortment of grownups, too.”
She looks at Doc and I’m thinking she believes him.
“You’re going to lose a lot more than money if we find out you’re lying, Louise,” I tell her.
“What can I say?”
“If you’re afraid of him, we’ll make sure you’re protected,” Doc explains.
“You can’t protect me from these fuckin’ streets, so don’t tell me that lie.”
“You think you’re safer with McCaslin on them?” Doc tells her.
“Look. I told you guys the truth. I never seen him, and I never called you on the phone,” she looks up front to me.
“I think you saw him take one or two of these girls into his muscle car Mustang, and I think your conscience finally got to you and you tried to call me, but you thought he might be the king shit of Old Town and that speaking up might get you in trouble with him and his crew. He killed one of his own, a guy named Mick O’Brien—tore his eyes out and made them a centerpiece on O’Brien’s bed. You ever see an eyeless corpse, Louise? What if he hears there’s another witness besides the bag lady he whacked? How long you think he’s going to allow you to be out here?” I ask.
It seems as though I might have hit a raw nerve with the last bit, because her tired face flinches, just slightly.
I hand her my card.
“If you’re thinking I’ll slip that information to that son of a bitch, you’re absolutely incorrect. Look at me, Louise. You hear me? It won’t come from either of us. We’re on your side, no matter how you make us. Go on, get back to work. Here’s my card.”
I hand her the card, and then she gets out and walks back down the street, and she takes one quick backward glance at us in the ride, and then she disappears into the darkness.
*
There are no calls, the next few days. I play the recording of that telephone voice that wanted to tell me about the man who killed a half- dozen teenagers, and I know that voice belonged to Louise. I’m not going to spring Vice on her. The poor broad is getting up there in years, and she hasn’t got long, one way or the other. Some mug’ll beat her to death or she’ll OD on something she snorts or injects or it’ll be syphillis that gets her, or just a broken soul.
I would greatly prefer that Louise dies a natural death at a very advanced age, but it isn’t likely. If McCaslin ever were to sniff her out, he wouldn’t hesitate to waste her, regardless of all the heat we’re putting on him now.
*
Mary O’Connor works in a bakery. One of the Robbery detectives was following both of them from Casey’s apartment, and he saw him drop her off at the place. Then he followed McCaslin to his job at the cousin’s meat packing plant. They’re both apparently trying on the roles of solid citizens. Casey isn’t boosting anything because the Robbery boys are on his ass constantly, but Mary is going the domestic route. She shows up doing the housewife deal at the grocery store and at the laundry. I’m wondering if she still remembers our encounter. I’m also wondering if she’s figured out what a monster she’s living with. It had to put a shadow of a doubt in her head. She had to consider whether this guy’s capable of doing what I told her he did.
Unless she’s thinking with her pussy. Or worse yet, she’s fallen in love with that fucking beast.
I wait for her around noon. Doc’s sitting in the car at the curb, about a half block down. She has to come out for lunch or for a break some time. Maybe she doesn’t smoke, I think. Then I’ll have to go inside to her. But that will only make her clam up with all the other customers in earshot.
About 12:12, out she comes, and when she sees me, she blanches.
“I’m not going to bother you, Mary. I just want to talk.”
“You already got me in trouble once,” she says as she walks down the street, away from the bakery. “Casey heard you talked to me, and he was really angry. I was scared.”
She’s ambling in the opposite direction from Doc and the Ford.
“Are you supposed to meet him for lunch?” I ask.
“No, he eats at the packing joint. He’s got a real job. He isn’t a thief. I don’t know why you can’t leave us alone!”
“Come on, I’ll buy you a burger at the McDonald’s.”
“I don’t want anything from you. Just leave me be!”
“It’s a free lunch or a free ride downtown. Don’t make me ask again, Mary.”
She huffs out some air, but then she allows me to take her inside the fast food place. It’s only a block from where she works, and she was probably headed there anyway because she’s not toting a brown bag with her.
We go up to the counter.
The place is pretty jammed, but the counter people are moving everybody along. The middle-aged, female manager is kicking ass, I hear. She keeps the counter kids in perpetual motion.
“Order whatever you like. It’s on me.”
She orders the double cheeseburger and a large fries and a strawberry shake. I order a large Coke. Doc and I are through with burgers for a while.
We take our order to a booth and I sit opposite her. If I were eighteen, I’d want to sidle up to someone as pretty as Mary. She’s got that fresh look that belies the life she’s lived for the last few years.
“You got yourself a job. So that means you must have ID. Can I see them?”
She frowns as she takes a bite out of the double cheeseburger, but she digs into her new-looking purse and she draws out an equally new-looking wallet, and she passes it over to me.
She’s indeed got some new ID—a picture ID, a driver’s license, and a Social Security card.
“You’re an official person, now,” I smile at her.
She doesn’t smile back. She eats hurriedly because she’s likely only got a half hour for lunch.
“Can’t you just leave us alone?”
“It looks like I’m the only one who’s been telling you the truth, Mary.”
“I told him about you when he got pissed. I told him I don’t believe a damn word you’re saying about him.”
“Someone’s seen him with two of the girls who were killed. Someone saw him put them in that souped up Mustang that he likes to t
ake you tooling around in. Look at me, Mary. Do you really see a happy ending to you and McCaslin? Do you really?”
“He doesn’t like to talk about the future. I’m not trying to tie him down, and what happens, happens.”
“Let me tell you the future. We’re going to get him with this witness, sooner than you suppose. And then you might get picked up for lying to us about who and what McCaslin is. I told you, I grew up with him. He’s no damn good, and he never was. You’re thinking he’s changed, he’s not like anything I say he was. People can change, right? Not someone like your lover. He’s a murderer and a thief. You can’t shake the killer in you, not when it becomes a habit like his, and very soon nature will start calling him back to his natural habitat. He’s a jungle creature, Mary, and you have to start believing me.
“What, did he tell you we’re trying to frame him because we’ve got to nail somebody for those murders? Did he give you that horseshit?”
Her eyes begin to widen as she sucks down the last bit of the shake.
“Yeah. He told me all you want is an arrest, and I believe him. No cop ever showed me anything except his foot to my rear end or the back of his hand to my head. They kept pushing us around, and then they’d let those Children’s Services pricks loose on us. No one ever wanted to really help me. I been on my own since the doctor cut my cord. You aren’t gonna tell me any more lies about Casey.”
She slurps the last out of her strawberry shake.
“Thanks for the lunch. As for the rest, thanks for nothin’.”
“I don’t want to see that pretty face turn up in a body bag. You ever seen any of those things in the apartment, say stuffed in the bottom of a closet?”
She stares at me with dripping rage in her innocent baby-face.
“Only reason we didn’t find them is because we messed up with the search warrant, and now the judges are gun shy about giving us one for your boyfriend, McCaslin.”
“I gotta go.”
“I know. You have to get back to work.”
“You’re not going to screw me up at work, are you? Because—”
“No, Mary. I’m not going to mess you up at your job. Congratulations on all your many accomplishments.”
“Thanks,” she says, laying on the heavy sarcasm with just a solitary word.
“You might want to look around for those dark green bags. They have to be somewhere in the three floors of that building the two of you live in, all alone. I’ll bet you already found the straight razor, and I’ll bet it didn’t have any blood on it because McCaslin made sure to wash it in boiling water and then he bleached it. We still might get lucky and pick up a tiny piece of it on the handle or on the case.”
“I have to go.”
“Sure,” I tell her. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay here and finish my drink. You go ahead. You don’t want anyone to see me with you, I understand.”
She walks quickly away. She leaves all her trash on the table, but I’ll clean up.
“You take care of yourself, Mary,” I say to her retreating form.
But I know she’s out of earshot, now.
Chapter 23
Mary O’Connor, 1980
I always loved Halloween, ever since I was a little girl. I was still at home, of course, and the two dopers let me get a costume from the five and dime, usually some Disney character, and I took a shopping bag and went out trick or treating with the other kids from the block. We made the rounds of about a half mile and then came home with that shopping bag piled to the top with candy and other crap.
I’d eat until I got sick. The two of them thought it was very funny when I’d get green and have to puke. They probably figured it was good training for when I’d OD the way they did from time to time.
Casey doesn’t even notice it’s Halloween, and he won’t let me answer the doorbell. He probably figures it’s the cops with a warrant for his arrest. I didn’t like the looks Parisi gave me with those eyes of his. He’s not a big guy, the cop, but there’s something scary about him. He was probably in that war in Vietnam, like most of the other cops in Chicago. They like to hire Army guys and Marines because they already know how to use the guns they carry and they already know how to go after people.
But those eyes kinda ate into me and made me almost believe what he was saying about Casey. He looked like the kind of cop who wouldn’t take money from anybody, the kind of policeman who didn’t give a shit what anybody thought of him and who didn’t care if everybody else with a badge was on the take. And he’s the most frightening kind of copper on the street. He doesn’t care about what anybody thinks as long as he gets what he’s after.
I stayed up all night, even though I was in bed with Casey, thinking about this Parisi. I started to get afraid that he’d do what he said, that he’d put him in jail. And then where would I be? Right back out in the gutter. I couldn’t afford to pay the rent and the electric and the food bills. I’d have to go back to alley blowjobs and up-against-the-wall street fucks. I’d be living with the rest of the pigs out there, and eventually I’d run into the kind of animal who killed those six girls. It has to happen to everyone who makes their living servicing street trash.
I’m really tired and I have to go to work at 7:30 in the morning at the bakery, they open at eight. With the sleepless night, I’m wrecked tonight. But he rolls over at me and I can feel his dick, hard against my stomach.
“I’m kinda tired, baby.”
“Whoa! When’d you become the little house bitch who’s too tired?”
He’s smiling, but I don’t believe the smile.
“When’ve I ever turned you down?” I demand.
“Look, now the little house cunt is pissed.”
There’s no smile on his face, now.
“Okay, then,” I tell him, and I take hold of him and slide down the bed to take him in my mouth.
“No, I was thinking something a little different, tonight. Variety is the spice of life, girl.”
I raise my head.
“I don’t like what you called me, Casey.”
“You don’t like being called a cunt?”
“No.”
“It’s what you’re carrying, isn’t it?”
“Why’re you bein’ mean to me?”
“I’m not being mean. I thought you liked your sex hot and dirty.”
“Not with you, I don’t.”
“You tryin’ to get religion on me, Mary?”
“What is it you want?” I ask him.
“Get on your stomach. Turn over.”
“You mean doggy style?”
“No, girl, I mean something better than that.”
“That’ll hurt. You don’t want to—”
He grabs me by the hair and turns me over and he gets up behind me and I can feel him prodding me.
“You’re gonna hurt me, Casey. Why’re you doin’ this?”
I feel him push into me, and the pain is like a flame, and it feels as if he’s tearing me open, and I yell out, but he pushes my head into the pillow and I can’t breathe.
Then he’s all the way inside and I’m screaming into the pillow and I can’t breathe and it feels like he’s stabbing me with his thing, like a knife, and then he’s thrusting in and taking it almost out and then he’s thrusting it harder and harder all the time, and then I feel him finish.
He lets loose of my head when I feel like I’m about to black out from no air and from the pain, and I know I’m bleeding back there.
He gets off the bed, goes into the bathroom, and then he throws me a wad of Kotex.
“Here. There’s some blood.”
I can’t move. All I can do is moan and hurt. Finally I take the Kotex and try to get it inside where I’m bleeding. I lay there for a long time, and I hear him in the shower.
The pain doesn’t subside for nearly an hour, but I’m able to move now, and he’s out in the kitchen getting something to eat. I can hear him clattering dishes and opening the ‘fridge.
I get up slowly and
limp toward the john, and then I throw the Kotex into the trashcan in the bathroom, and then I check my legs to see if there’s any more blood, but there isn’t. I think it’s stopped. I fill the bathtub with lukewarm water, and I ease myself into it slowly. There’s only a little pink from the old blood, but I think it’s dried up by now, and the water gives me some relief.
I stay in the tub for a half hour, and then I see him in the doorway of the john.
“You all right?”
I don’t answer him.
“I didn’t want for you to bleed like that.”
I still remain silent.
“Now you’re not cherry there, either.”
“You hurt me bad, baby. Why?”
“Look, you need to go to the hospital?”
“If we did, what would I say?”
“Are you bleeding anymore?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“All right, then. Dry off and come on back to bed.”
“You go ahead. Think I’ll lay here for a while longer. Leave the bathroom door open.”
“Don’t be long. Look, I won’t bother you like that again. I promise, Mary.”
“You go on. I’ll be back in, in a minute.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me, and then he frowns, all sullen, and he walks away.
At work the next morning, it’s all I can do to stay on my feet, but it feels better upright than when I try to sit down.
Barry, one of the young guys who works the counter with me, asks if I’m all right. They just hired him a few days ago. He’s working this place part time and he goes to college at a place called Columbia downtown in the afternoons and in the evenings. He’s not bad looking, and he’s only a year older than I am. We went to the McDonald’s yesterday for lunch, and he paid for mine when I tried to tell him not to.
“I’m good. I’m okay. I fell in the bathroom, but I think it’s just a bruise on my rear end.”
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he says, but he’s walking down the counter to help a customer. An old lady comes up to me and asks for a loaf of butter crust white bread, so I bend over to get it out of the glass case, and I can’t help groaning out loud.
