Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

  Doc’s got the bullhorn. The uniforms are telling pain in the ass bystanders to get inside their homes, and they accede to the commands.

  Doc calls his name and tells him to come out with his hands raised—the usual drill. We all have our weapons drawn, and I can feel the SWATs’ scopes fixed on the entrance door or maybe on his front window, but I can’t see them in their elevated positions.

  Nothing and no one comes out the front door. The Mustang is parked in front, at the curb, but Louise told us about the Chevy and she gave us the plate numbers—it’s her thing about memorizing numerals. We haven’t spotted the Chevy, but we’re a little busy at the moment.

  After five minutes or so, the uniforms get out our mini battering ram. All we need is a moat with alligators in the water for us to cross over and assault the fortress.

  The first smash knocks in the entrance. Six of us rush inside and up to his apartment, and two solid bashes knock down his door.

  I’m concerned about booby traps, an old habit from the war, but I doubt McCaslin had time to set us up.

  There’s nothing and no one inside as we swarm his place. The SWATs have the outside surrounded, front and back.

  I have an all points issued on the Chevy, and then a sergeant tells me I have a call outside. They’ve spotted his ride on the Outer Drive, and now we’re headed for more high speed horror.

  Doc winks at me as we run to the car.

  “Never comes easy, does it,” he says, just before we tear away from the curb with all those backups right behind us. The sirens wail their loud lament and the strobes whirl over our heads, and we weave our way to the Outer Drive, the crown jewel of byways in Chicago.

  When we get on Lakeshore Drive, another name for the same highway (it does have a number, after all) we punch it, and most of the traffic gets out of our way, but there are some teeth-optional yokels who don’t get much of anything, and we have to thread our way around the dumb shits. We almost ass-end a few of them, but we get clear. Luckily, we’re still an hour away from rush hour, four o’clock. It’ll start clogging up soon.

  We get a message on the car radio that McCaslin has pulled off Lakeshore Drive into the parking lot at Oak Street Beach, my favorite sandbox. We arrive there in just three minutes, I see from my wristwatch.

  The lot is full of squads, now. There are remnants of the snow we got in this stretch of December. I see the circle of police vehicles surrounding the Chevy that I assume is his. When we pull up, I see the tag is his, courtesy of Louise the total recall for numbers savant.

  Everyone’s got their weapons drawn, and some of the officers have shotguns and some have assault rifles. But I don’t see a head protruding from the car.

  There’s no one inside the Chevy. We pop open the trunk and find one green body bag, but no one’s occupying it. We even check under the vehicle, just to be thorough.

  “He’s loose. He’s fucking loose again!” I sputter.

  “Let’s check the beach,” Doc suggests. “Wait a minute.”

  He goes back into the car and gets his binoculars out.

  Then we walk toward the cobalt blue colored lake water and he points the binoculars south.

  “Nothing,” he pronounces.

  Next he does a 180 and checks the north.

  “Wait a minute. Let’s go.”

  “What?”

  “Someone. It’s not a good day for sunbathing. Who the fuck else can it be?”

  I tell the uniforms to go back on the drive and to cut him off, to the north. They can’t drive the sand because it’s too soft and they’ll get stuck. A sand dune buggy would’ve been nice, but this ain’t fucking Miami.

  I tell them we’ll hoof it after whoever it is, and then they hustle to their rides in the blacktopped parking lot.

  Doc and I start trotting toward the direction that my partner spied the dark spot of a figure, down the water’s edge.

  We take it slow because this is a distance race, not a sprint, and the police in the cars will have whoever it is cut off at the far end. He can’t out run a squad.

  He’s maybe a half mile from this deserted sand, but we can see his black form moving fast, away from us. I don’t see the twirling lights of the police vehicles, yet, but they should be way ahead of him in minutes.

  We cut the difference to a quarter mile, and I feel the cold and the exertion tugging at my endurance. Doc is older than I am by more than a decade, and I hear him huffing. Neither of us speaks because it’s tough to run in sand and because we can’t afford to waste the oxygen.

  It’s down to a city block, between the two of us and the figure running away from us.

  Now I see the strobes from the uniforms’ cars over to the left and ahead of the dark form. They must have stopped in the parking lot, about a quarter mile ahead of our quarry.

  Suddenly the black figure takes a hard left and heads toward the street that runs parallel to the beach. Doc and I swerve toward him and let loose into a full sprint with the little we have left. But we continue to gain on him because he seems to be slowing down even more.

  A few of the strobes have disappeared, and it must mean that they’ve seen him head west, off the beach. They’re trying to help us triangulate his ass.

  I’m almost through. Doc is wheezing, but then we see the grass that precedes the Outer Drive. We get up on that turf and I see our guy about a quarter-block ahead of us. He stops abruptly and slaps his palms on his knees in apparent exhaustion. It looks like McCaslin, from here. But just as I think we’ve got him, he straightens up and runs out into traffic like a crazed, foaming at the mouth mutt. Cars screech on their brakes and narrowly miss him, and then the two of us are playing the same game, trying not to run into the near-rush hour traffic. There are eight lanes to cross until we reach the other side, but he’s got the coppers from the southbound lane beaten as he finally arrives at the far side.

  There’s a grass hill that extends upward at a forty-five degree angle, and Casey lopes up to the top just as we get to that same far side.

  Then he disappears into a ragged neighborhood that is populated by middle classed, blue-collar types and that is pocked on both sides of the street by two and three flat apartment buildings. He’s disappeared into one of the multiple side streets that lay before us, an overcast, gray-blue sky above us.

  We can see no one on those streets. Everyone is at work, the factory, the business, whatever. It’s too cold to be out walking for chuckles, grins, and shits.

  *

  I only get to be with Erin and the kids for a few hours on Christmas Eve, and then Doc and I are out searching for him. There’s an all points that includes the Midwest and the rest of the country and Canada and Mexico, too. The State Police, the FBI, and just about every police agency in North America are looking for him. I tell myself there’s just too much manpower out there for him to get clear of us, this time.

  But that’s what I thought when we surrounded his building, and the prick just de-materialized into that ‘hood where we lost him.

  I go over to Mary’s room at the YWCA, and I tell her a cop will be with her in the building, just outside her room, twenty-four seven until we catch her old boyfriend.

  Then Doc and I check into St. Luke’s where Louise is, and I tell her the same thing about her being protected by a Chicago policeman, round the clock, until we’ve got Casey.

  Neither Mary nor Louise looked all that confident about their safety, and I don’t blame them. McCaslin is like some of the ghosts we fought against in Vietnam—the sappers, the spooks, the guys who slipped under the wires and popped a cap in some of us.

  He should have been in special forces instead of being a psycho fuck job killing innocents over here. They should’ve sprung him on the NVA and the Viet Cong. What a nice assassin he might have made.

  I’m so busy trying to track him down that I haven’t had time to feel the depression, the frustration, I know I’ll experience if he really does slip us all again.

  *

&n
bsp; The New Year arrives, and the decade officially begins. Reagan’s in office, and the Peanut Guy is history, and the hostages have come home to claim all those yellow ribbons, and it’s January and it’s even colder than late December was, and the spring seems an eternity away from me. Doc tries to ease my anxiety by telling me his experiences at cold cases, but he knows and I know that there is no palliative for losing a killer. A multiple killer, at that. And we’ve been watching him squirm through our fingers for well over a year, now.

  I look out my window onto the frozen tundra of what was once a dark blue surface of a Great Lake, and I can’t see a happy ending to any of this. We continue to close other cases, some more difficult than others, but the red names disappear off the white board, one by one. The cluster that includes the six teenage girls and the bag lady and the night watchman all remain. It’s as though it isn’t erasable ink up there. It’s like the scarlet is indelible. It will never wash away or be erased by that pad I use to wipe a name away to put it in black in my ledger for solved cases.

  Doc and I keep looking. We try his cousin first, and we read him the riot act about aiding and abetting if he’s lying to us about his cousin’s whereabouts.

  We try to locate the remaining members of McCaslin’s old crew, but they are buried out there in the murk, somewhere, hiding in some rabbit hole. Andy Shea has dissolved, along with the rest of that gang of Irish punks, and if Casey knows where they are, more power to him.

  The FBI has darkened our doorway to try to filch information out of us, but Doc laughs and tells them their guess is as good as ours, and the federals don’t believe we’re sharing, but we figure fuck them. They don’t share with us, either.

  Doc walks into my office to break up my glare at the ice skating rink that used to be Lake Michigan.

  “It would’ve been easier to grab him if all that shit was on the beach that day.”

  “Only if we had skates, and neither of us can ice skate, Doc.”

  “You given up on him?”

  “No. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Good. Neither have I, Jimmy.”

  “Act as if ye had faith.”

  “What was that, Jimmy?”

  “That’s what Catholics are called to do. Act as if ye had faith.”

  “I always thought you mackerel snappers were a little fucking nuts,” he says.

  Chapter 30

  Casey McCaslin, 1981

  My cousin says he kept his mouth shut, but I can’t trust anybody. He said Parisi and Gibron already gave him the aiding and abetting threat, but he said he wouldn’t give me up because we’re blood, we’re first cousins. I want to believe him, but I already got the full dose of family with the old lady and the old man.

  I had to get rid of the Chevy, of course, and I borrowed (with his permission) my cousin’s old T-Bird. He’s been good to me, so far, I have to admit. But the cops haven’t jumped down his throat, yet. That warning is only the beginning from Parisi. Like I said, I know his reputation in the old neighborhood ever since we were kids. I read about him in the paper when he solved his first homicide, a couple years ago. He was just a rookie on Homicide, and he cracks this big deal, multiple murder thing about a guy cutting old ladies after he steals their money for bogus home repairs. It made all the papers. Parisi was the rookie phenom or some shit like that.

  His life went one way, and mine went the other.

  My cousin also gave me an unoccupied basement apartment to flop in. He owns the building, on the far southwest side. I moved in at night, of course, but the T-Bird sticks out like a cow’s ass in that ‘hood, so I have to boost a car and give the cousin back his classic ride. I’ll need to keep changing vehicles all the time. Stolen cars get too much attention from the Robbery dicks who’ve tried their best to help Parisi make me miserable.

  I have to get to Mary. She is also unfinished business. And I know it was that whore who called herself Betty that fingered me for two of the girls. I should’ve killed the old cunt when I had the chance, but there are too many cops watching my every move, and I don’t think dumping another body bag in the lake will improve my chances of staying out of the hole in Joliet. I’m thinking that I’ll hide right under their noses, and after I meet up with Mary and Betty, I’ll find a way to go to Canada. I figure they’ll be expecting me to go south because Mexico seems to be a popular destination for outlaws like me. There are too many gringos there, I figure, so I’ll go to the icy fortress of Canada. Sorta like Superman, no? He had some retreat or some shit up at the North Pole—his Fortress of Solitude. I don’t give a shit about the solitude. I just want to stay out of the shithouse at Jolly J.

  The second night I’m crashed at the basement flat, I hear a car running outside the window that faces the street. The window is eye-level with the lawn. I can see the headlights out there, and it’s 2:50 A.M. It’s either the cops or it’s boosters, trying to crack into the T-Bird.

  My cousin gave me a piece. It’s an old World War II .45 Colt automatic that his old man brought home from Germany. He told me it was worthless for distance shooting but that up close it was like a mini elephant gun and that it would blow down anything in the way.

  The headlights go out, in the street. I’m not going to get trapped in here. If they’re police, I’m going to avoid jail the hard way and I’ll take a few of them to hell with me.

  I go out the back way, into the yard, and then I circle around. Half the street lights are out, on this block, so it’s damn near pitch black outside. I walk up the gangway to the front, and I hear Spanish being spoken, and these cocksuckers are bold. They don’t even care if the neighborhood can hear them. They’re conversing in a daytime volume to each other.

  “Hola,” I say to the three of them. They have a breaker bar and they’re trying to wedge the iron into the window to pop the lock.

  I raise the .45 at them. They raise three pieces back at me.

  I can just make out their red bandanas that they’re wearing as headbands.

  “You’ll get me, but I’m going to kill at least one of you three fucks, maybe two. So how ‘bout you get the fuck out of here.”

  The gangbanger standing at the door of the T-Bird with the other two, one on either side, smiles at me. I can see his teeth even in this dim lighting. The street light across from us is working, one of the few that are.

  “You gotta ask yourself, jefe, if you think this ride is worth dying for. You know what a .45 round can do?”

  His smile fades. Then he nudges the two others to get back in their car. But they keep their pieces pointed at me all the while they’re retreating. They flick their headlights back on, and then I hear the screech of tires as they peel away in an old boat of a Poncho.

  My cousin’s car has to go. It’s too much of an eye-catcher, too tempting, too easy to spot. I’ll have to stand guard on the goddam thing every night, and that means no sleep. If I’m going to make it to the Pacific Northwest and to the land of the fucking Canucks, I’m going to have to do it in a ride that no one notices. Maybe some beater like an old man’s Buick would be the ticket. I’ll have to get on it in the morning. Right now I need to shut my eyes for a few hours. I got a lot to accomplish before I head to my Fortress of fucking Solitude.

  *

  I drop off the cousin’s T-Bird at a White Castle on 111th and Kedzie. I called him from a payphone and told him to pick it up, that I couldn’t hold onto it any longer. I only talk to him for a minute because I’m worried that Parisi or the FBI is tapping his phone at the plant. He’ll be picking up his own car, so he ain’t doing anything illegal, and they can get my new address out of him if they’re listening, but I won’t be there when they arrive. I’ll look for something that you pay cash by the night, today.

  There’s a used car lot on 78th and California that I know deals in cash and that doesn’t mind altering paperwork on their sales. There are too many Robbery detectives using cars as bait for boosters, so I’ll take my chances with Neil’s Autos. I find an old Buick, one like
I wanted, and I give him $600 in cash for it. I’ve got about 12K in a gym bag in the trunk, so the Buick won’t make much of a dent in my resources.

  *

  The way to Mary is through that kid, Barry Gold, I figure. She’ll sure as hell be all sympathetic to the little prick ever since I’ll helped him break his arm, so she’ll probably be acting like his personal nurse while he recovers.

  The old Buick is a perfect ride to use to dazzle the copper with my footwork. The license plates are legit. Some old man who died doesn’t know that his car was allocated by Neil and company, and Neil told me it ought to be a while before anyone figures out that the 98 year old guy’s ride has been boosted. But eventually I’ll have to dump this car, too, because they’re going to figure out that the old fart’s car isn’t out front the way it used to be. He’ll probably have a will, like most old goats, and the car is likely a giveaway. Maybe I can keep it for a few days, maybe a week.

  I take a ride past the bakery to see if Mary’s still got an escort. She does. But it’s not Parisi and Gibron giving her a ride home. It’s a pair of uniforms. I’m going to take the chance that they won’t pick me out behind them, so I wait until Mary’s in their backseat, about 5:15, and I’m betting that the coppers’ll be ready for their dinner break and that their stomachs will distract them from keeping their eyes open.

  I stay my distance behind them, and it takes thirty minutes for us both to arrive at the YWCA. What a lovely choice for housing for this fucking gash that I let into my apartment.

  There’s a problem, however. There’s a squad with two more uniforms waiting at the curb by the entrance. Both cops get out and escort the bitch inside, and I know I’ll have to come up with Plan B, real soon.

  *

  I picked up a whore later that same evening. I chanced a round trip back to Old Town because I figured that’d be the last place Parisi would expect me to be. The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. Who the fuck figured that out? They didn’t know criminals very well, whoever it was. The best thing you can do is hide in plain sight. The cops are always waiting in railroad stations or at the bus terminals or at the airport. And they like to fuck up traffic by setting up checkpoints on the numbered highways and the toll ways. I suppose if you’re dumb enough to try and head to any of those venues it partially explains the overcrowding at joints like Joliet and Menard.