Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

  I’ll keep swinging by the bakery during lunch time. I get an hour from my cousin, so I have time. It’s only a mile from the butcher plant. I got nothing else to do after I eat a sandwich from one of the fast food places in the neighborhood.

  It’s bad at night, sometimes. You get used to a warm body next to you, and then you roll over onto the cold sheets, and it works on you. I never meant to let her get to me this way. Hell, I meant to cut her throat and throw her in Lake Michigan, which is the current plan once I locate her. But even when I think how satisfying it’ll be to see the fear in her eyes when she sees the razor, I know it’ll mean I can’t have her anymore once I get rid of her.

  By the time I get to Mary, the six girls will be filed in ‘cold case.’ ‘Unsolved.’ Whatever.

  I got time. I still have a chunk of the two hundred grand I got from the civil suit, so I won’t starve even though they tried to shut me off like a sprinkler hose. The cops think I’m isolated, sort of like being exiled, but they’re wrong. All this is just temporary. Things’ll loosen up. They always do. People forget, and then they latch onto something else. Cops don’t solve every murder they work. Only the dumb shits get caught, and I’m not a dumb shit even though I don’t have a diploma from some college.

  All right, I admit it. Losing Mary hurts bad. I want to cut her. I want to take her back in with me. It’s like a teeter-tauter, going up and down. Sometimes I just want her to be here with me the way it was, and other times I want to cut her, flay her slow, letting her bleed to death for hours before I finally finish the job.

  Lots of unfinished business to attend to. But I have to be patient. One dose of the joint at Joliet was enough to last a lifetime. I wasn’t meant to spend life behind bars. And getting fried or gassed or whatever it is they do in this state ain’t part of the plan, either.

  I keep trying The Pig’s Ass to see if any of them show up, but it’s no go tonight. There’s just the bikers and the whores and the shift workers who like cheap beer and the smell of cigarette butts and piss covered over by sawdust.

  I sit in the corner by myself with my shoulder blades brushing the wall. Just like Wild Bill Hickok, I’m thinking. The one time Hickok didn’t cover his back, he caught a bullet in the melon.

  After a half hour of sipping on a warm and flat draught, one of the biker bastards sets his eyes on me. I know he’s looking for a dance before he ever says a word.

  He’s got the usual facial scar from one of the brawls he didn’t do too well in. His head is shaved bald, and he’s got forearm tats on both muscle bound arms. He’s wearing a Born Killers vest made out of black leather, and his tee shirt has the gang’s logo on it in red and black.

  “Ain’t you the bad man who killed all them little girls?” he asks as he leans on the table, his face looming close to my own.

  I swing the glass beer mug and catch him flush on the temple. He crashes face first on the table, and I bolt to my feet.

  There are three of his buddies all over me before I can run out the door. They do the complete job on me, in the bar and outside on the lawn, and when they get done putting the boots to my head and my ribs, I don’t see anything but black, all over me.

  *

  I wake up at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn. The Born Killers have broken three ribs and they’ve added a concussion to the menu. The cop who interviews me when I wake up doesn’t seem enthusiastic about finding the gangbangers who busted me up.

  “You’re Casey McCaslin,” he says, matter-of-fact.

  “So?”

  “Nothing. I just heard the name before, is all.”

  He gives me a dumb ass grin. Like he wishes he could’ve joined in on the fun with the Born Killers.

  He asks me for a description of the bikers. I give him one so he’ll stop asking me questions. My head is throbbing, and I press the button for the nurse to come dope me up. I wait ten minutes. The interviewing cop left five minutes ago. I start yelling out loud, but my yelling makes my head feel even worse.

  The nurse comes loping in after twenty minutes, and so does another uniform.

  “Casey McCaslin, you’re under arrest for assault. As soon as the doctor okays it, you’re going to jail. Until then, you’re confined to this room. I’ll be here with you.”

  Two days later, I’m hauled before the judge. He tells me that the charge has been dropped and that I’m free to go. My attorney, Fred, smiles, and we leave the court room.

  Parisi pulls me over at half past noon as I take a ride by the bakery. I thought I could see Mary in the bakery window for just a second, and then I saw his strobe light behind me.

  He gets out of the unmarked squad and approaches me in the Mustang. I look in the rear view mirror, but I don’t see the tall man in the unmarked Ford.

  “C’mon out of there,” he tells me.

  I don’t want to give him an excuse, so I get out.

  “C’mon over to my car. It’s cold out here.”

  It’s the day before Thanksgiving, I remember now. It must be in the lower thirties, and there’s a chance for snow.

  I get into his ride on the passenger’s side. He left the motor running, and it’s warm in here, at least.

  “What? What do you want?”

  “I want you to confess, but I know that’s not likely.”

  I look into those brown guinea eyes, but I don’t see any sense of humor there.

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “You were always a badass, weren’t you,” he says.

  His face is blank.

  “You got anything else?” I ask.

  “Got your ass kicked proper, this time, no?”

  “Thanks for the concern.”

  “You mistake concern with bemusement.”

  “The fuck’s that mean?”

  “It means I don’t give a shit about your health. Not even a little bit. And it’s probably going to get worse for you, out there.”

  “That a threat?”

  “Take it any way you want to, McCaslin.”

  “I got things to do.”

  He looks out the windshield as if he’s waiting for someone to appear.

  “You killed them. We both know you did. You hid yourself very well. It was just sheer fucking chance that I recognized you, but I have this funny thing about faces. I don’t have total recall or a photographic memory or any of that shit, but I’m really exceptional with remembering faces. And it doesn’t matter if they cover their faces with a beard or a mustache or scars or makeup or whatever. Once I see it, I’ve got it here, forever. I could pick you out in thirty years, when you’re a very old convict. You can’t hide your face from me, Casey. It’s my one little gift.”

  “I need to leave.”

  “Your cousin’ll understand. I’ll talk to him personally.”

  “This shit is harassment. You remember the last time you pricks pulled that on me?”

  “You really let this girl get to you, didn’t you.”

  My face burns a bit.

  “Why didn’t you kill her, then, too? Make her number seven? Because she got into your head, and maybe parts south, too. ”

  “Listen you—”

  “Don’t get testy. I wish you would get physical, though.”

  “I’m not gonna give you a reason, Parisi.”

  “You ever felt any remorse about the six girls?”

  I don’t answer him. I know when I’m being baited. But I can’t pop him the way I popped the first biker. He wants me to. I can smell it. He gives it off like the scent of blood.

  “I mean, as one guy to another, does it ever wake you up at night?”

  “You’re wrong. You’ve been wrong since the beginning, Detective.”

  “I’ll let you go in just a minute. I wouldn’t want you to let Fred the lawyer loose on me again.”

  “So? What?”

  “Nothing eats inside at you? We talked to your mother. Did I tell you?”

  I jerk my eyes at his.

  “Where’s she living, now?�
�

  He laughs.

  “I can’t give out that information. You know that. A jailhouse attorney like you knows that kind of thing. Right?”

  “I was just—”

  “She saw who you are in those dead fucking eyes of yours while you were disassembling her face. She said you had dead eyes, like a shark. It was like you were at a task, she said, beating the crap out of her and almost killing her.

  “No. You won’t confess to me or anybody else because you got no clue about what you did, to your mother or to any of those people. I just thought I’d tell you that the only way you’re going to escape the shit storm that’s brewing all around you is to haul your dumb ass in and give it up. You could save yourself a helluva lot of pain by doing it, and Cook County and the City of Chicago would appreciate it, too. You might not even get executed. You never know.”

  “Can I leave, now?”

  “You never had to stay, asshole.”

  I move to the passenger’s door and I open it and get out.

  “I’ll see you around,” I hear him say as I walk away.

  *

  I walk into the bakery the next day, and there are no cops to stop me. The kid I knocked to the ground still isn’t back at work, and he probably won’t be. I figure he busted something when he hit the concrete in the alley.

  She looks up at me with ice in her eyes.

  “You need to leave,” she says.

  The bakery has about four customers, and she’s not waiting on anyone.

  Some old guy who’s probably the owner or the manager walks over to her and asks if there’s a problem.

  “No, Gus. It’s all right.”

  He walks away.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  “I want you back.”

  “Cops ride by here all the time, Casey. You really better leave.”

  “I ain’t afraid of them. I just want you to come back.”

  “I’m afraid of you,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “For what you did to Barry, and for what you probably did to those girls and to some other people.”

  “I told you I—”

  “I don’t need to hear you lie any more. I got to get to work.”

  Her face is as young and as pretty as it was the first time I saw her. I told myself that maybe I’d keep this one alive, that if I cut her I couldn’t have her anymore and that it wasn’t likely I’d ever see her like again. She was different. Mary wasn’t some piece of meat that you cut like a slab of bacon.

  “I got a customer. Don’t come back, Casey. Please don’t come back.”

  Then there’s nothing more to say because I look into her eyes and I know she means what she says. There’s nothing for me, there. Whatever there was is gone.

  I might as well have sliced her, because she’s dead to me, now.

  Chapter 27

  Jimmy Parisi, Present

  Losing Karen Quinn hit me about as hard as I’ve been slugged, in a long time. Losing Doc Gibron to natural causes was worse only because we were partners for a very long time, but the young woman’s murder hit me hard, as well. She wasn’t even an official police officer. She was just going along for the ride to pick up experience out on the byways. Then three apeshits decided they’d have a little fun with fireworks, and Karen Quinn’s history came to its end, unnaturally early.

  I don’t think I would’ve chosen this road if I’d had an alternative. But my old man, Jake, was a Homicide, and it seemed like a legacy thing, something I could not escape. It was meant to be, the way some things seem to be whether you believe in free will or not. I’m not a philosophic man by nature. I’d rather watch a ball game than talk politics or current events or the fucking meaning of existence. I can be as bull-headed and non-responsive as the next swinging dick, on occasion. But important matters do cross my mind from time to time. Loss and death force it on you, here and there. I lost my first wife, Erin, and a partner and a lover in the space of the last forty years, and I could’ve done without all that loss. Knowing the way a life runs its course, though, you better harden your heart at what’s got to happen because if you don’t, you wind up dead or at the Elgin State Mental Facility.

  It’s like that line in The Great Gatsby: “…boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” You keep remembering the hurts and the glories, both, and the more time you put in, the more events you have to re-live.

  Casey McCaslin was one of those remembrances that keep haunting me. I tried to explain why it was that way to Karen Quinn, but she didn’t live long enough for me to get to the end of the story.

  I really believe he was evil. I don’t think his excuse about having an abusive mother explains why he was the way he was, and his personal background does not let him off the hook for the pain he caused and the lives he took. If there was a positive in his life anywhere is questionable. The Church teaches that all life is sacred and that men by nature are good, and there’s a lot to argue with, there. Some guys are just no damn good.

  McCaslin slips easily inside that category.

  *

  Jimmy Parisi, 1980

  I’d like to shake McCaslin down seven days a week, but I can’t. Doc would like to work him over with a sap and a rubber hose, but that’s all medieval crap. You don’t break that bastard down with physical torture, anyway. He’s too clever, and he’ll take the beating with glee because he’s not just sadistic—he’s a masochist, too. When I talked to him after those bikers beat the snot out of him, he appeared proud of his bruises and lacerations and his broken ribs. I think the ass kicking got his nuts off.

  There will be no confession, in this one. We’ll have to catch him cold.

  And cold is the operative word, here in early December. Christmas is nigh, as they say, and so is the New Year, and there is not a sign that anything is progressing in the closure of six murders.

  The newspapers are having a lot of fun with what a bunch of “incompetent boobs” the Homicide Division is. The captain has not started the shit rolling downhill at Doc and me, as yet, but I know it has to come. We’re moving toward a year since the killings began. McCaslin has already wiped out the better part of a city block, almost, by himself, and we seem as distant from him as we were the day he walked from Joliet.

  I still cruise with Doc and without him, keeping tabs on this shitbird, but it comes to nothing. All I can do is tell myself that I’m hindering him from going back at Mary O’Connor.

  I gave her a ride home from work a few days ago just to see how she’s doing. I did it on my own time on a day off. I kept looking in the rear view window to see if her ex-lover was behind us, but there was no sign of him. Last I heard McCaslin was still butchering hogs and cattle for his relative, so maybe he was still at work, doing some overtime.

  She’s taking courses at the YWCA for her GED, she told me during the car ride to that same location where Doc and I delivered her, all those weeks before.

  “I got a long way to go,” she said as the city blocks passed us by, outside the car’s windows. “I only made it through freshman year in high school before I took off on my own.”

  “You’ll make it. I know you will. I can just feel it.”

  “Why’re you doing this?”

  “Everybody’s got an angle, right?” I smile over at her.

  “Yeah, usually,” she grins back.

  “The street was a harsh teacher to you, no?”

  She laughs.

  “That’s fair to say.”

  “We got you away from McCaslin because we don’t need any more business, Doc and me. We got enough names on a little white board. Six names and more, in red.”

  “You mean dead people, the girls, right?”

  I nod at her and then I look out at the white crystals beginning to fall on the windshield. They’re expecting an inch by nightfall.

  “You don’t have to take me home. But thanks for doing it, anyway,” she says, looking over at me.

  “How
’s it going with Barry?” I ask her. She told me that story the last time I talked with her over the phone. They have a payphone on her floor at the YWCA.

  “I go see him at his house. Last time I went, I took the bus over there, and then his dad insisted they take me back home in their car. All of a sudden I got all you guys looking out for me.”

  “You got it coming, Mary. You’re long, long overdue.”

  There’s a wet sparkle in the corners of her eyes.

  “I can’t watch you all the time. None of us can. That’s just practicality, Mary.”

  “I know. I’m not expecting you to watch over me. I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

  I look over at her and I can feel my face begin to darken without even glancing in the rearview mirror.

  “You have to keep being watchful. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but have you got a knife?”

  She laughs out loud.

  “A knife?”

  “This is highly unprofessional and unthinkable for a policeman to say, and it’s probably as illegal as using a blade, but I don’t give a damn. If your friend McCaslin ever gets close enough, find a knife and stick it to the hilt where he’s supposed to have a heart. Don’t hesitate. Stick him.”

  I look over at her and see the incredulity in her eyes.

  “He’ll kill you if he gets the chance, Mary. I’d give you one of my throwdowns, but that would be dangerous for you and me, too. Those goddam things go off all the time. But at least with a knife, you have to flip it open before you can hurt anybody, and it’s better for close-up shit. Excuse my French.”

  She laughs and tries to tell me she’s not capable of stabbing him.

  “No, just keep it in mind,” I say.

  “Okay,” she replies, and she puts it in her jacket pocket.

  “Remember what I told you.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “Defend yourself. It’s like a moral imperative.”

  She smiles.

  “You coulda been my dad, but you’re too young. Maybe my big brother.”

  “If I were….Look, remember. Don’t slash at him if he ever comes close to you, if he ever finds you. Stick him in the chest, right here.”