Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

  “Yeah?’

  He’s pudgy and past sixty. I’d hate to ask him to fix my faucet. He probably has a maintenance man do all the dirty work.

  “I’m looking for Steven James. He’s an old Army buddy of mine.” I smile as brightly as I can muster.

  “He moved.”

  “Yeah. The lady told me he went to Chicago.”

  “Luanne’s got a big mouth.”

  He looks as if personal hygiene is not a priority in his life. He smells a bit ripe, and the hair in his pits sticks out from his sleeveless undershirt—they called them dago tees in the military.

  “Would twenty bucks get me his new address?”

  “Keep counting higher.”

  I throw him back into his apartment, and luckily there’s no one in here with him.

  He’s on his back on the floor of his living room, stunned, and I haul him upright by his flimsy tee shirt. It rips as he is raised.

  I flop him on his couch, and then I bend toward him.

  “Only one chance to survive, greaseball. Tell me the address, or this place is going to stink a lot worse than it already does.”

  I pull him toward the kitchen table. Then I locate a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen.

  “Make it the right address, or I’ll come back and cut you in parts and flush your ass in the toilet.”

  He scribbles out an address.

  “You’re sure you got it right?”

  “I’m good at addresses,” he whimpers.

  “You remember numbers, no?”

  “I’m a card counter, too.”

  “You don’t remember a thing about me, do you?”

  “You? I forgot you once you walked out the door.”

  “Good. Because I never break my word, and you’ll never live to break in a new dago tee if you open your mouth about me to anyone.”

  I turn around and shut his door behind me.

  *

  The next order of business is the job in Evansville, so I rent a car and make the long drive. When I get there, I stay at a Howard Johnson motel. They have a restaurant attached, and I have a prime rib and baked potato with sour cream and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. It’s the best vanilla ice cream I’ve ever had. I wish I could say the same for the prime rib.

  I drive to the address at 3:50 a.m. He lives alone, recently divorced because his wife found out what he really did for a living, and she took off with the two kids. Perry Donadio is my target. He felt the heat from the folks I do business with when they caught him skimming off the top in one of the whorehouses he operated in the Bay Area, and my associates didn’t look favorably upon theft unless it was they who did the stealing. The verdict on Perry was me.

  I use my burglar’s pick to open the door of the house he’s rented. It’s truly amazing how sly my new employers are at locating runners. They can find anyone anywhere. The world’s not big enough to hide in. It doesn’t matter what town you choose or what continent, either. They put out an all points on your ass, and these guys are serious adversaries. We could’ve used their help in Southeast Asia. We would’ve cleaned out the VC hierarchy in six months.

  There’s no light on in here, and it’s a few hours before dawn. So I head into the bedroom. I open the door quietly in what appears to be the bigger bedroom—I checked the bedroom opposite this one, first.

  I get inside and close the door quietly behind me.

  Then I see a black blur coming toward the right side of my face and I try to avoid it and I feel a glancing thud on the edge of my right cheek and I swirl and kick him in the face and down he goes.

  “You son of a bitch,” I say to the crumpled form on the bedroom floor.

  Dude tried to sap me, but the sap is on the floor and out of his grasping right hand. He reaches toward the blackjack, so I stomp on the hand and he squeals like a stuck sow. I think I’ve broken most of his fingers, but just to make sure, I stomp it again, and he squeaks another shriek. The windows are all shut and his air conditioning is on, so I don’t think the neighbors will hear any of this.

  Just to make sure, I stomp his face hard three times. I think I might have killed him, but then I hear a hoarse breathing emanate from his destroyed face. He spits out several teeth and tries to sit up, so I pop him twice more with his own sap. This time he’s out, and he’s barely breathing.

  All this was not part of the plan. I was going to send my standard single shot to the lower cranial area on the back of his head, and then I was going to get the hell out, as per design. None of this would’ve been necessary if he hadn’t tried to smack me with his blackjack-sap.

  But I’ll finish the job the way I planned on doing it, and I drag his lanky, six foot three inch ass out into the kitchen area and I strap him to the kitchen chair the way it was meant to go, and then I find the small duffel I left by the door and I take out the .22, and then I proceed to kill him with said single round.

  I look around the apartment and try to think if I’ve left anything behind. I never touched him with my hands. I haven’t stepped in any of his blood. There’s only the feeling of a slight welt on my cheek. I’ll have to ice it so it isn’t noticeable to Li, and I told her I wouldn’t lie to her and I meant lie to her about anything.

  When I feel I’ve left no trail behind, I shut Perry Donadio’s front door and I lock it with my burglar’s pick. Then I get into my rented car and drive directly to the airport for the first flight back to San Francisco.

  *

  I’m thinking about Steven James and about Chicago, but I’m in no hurry to pick up Steven James. I’ve been to Chicago twice already, and from what I’ve read it isn’t a great idea to incite the detectives in Chicago Homicide. In my research about that city I’ve found that their police force is by nature and by culture very corrupt. But when it comes to homicides, they can be very state of the art about their investigations, and it seems to me that since I’ve already dispatched two of my former brothers in arms there that it might be wise to wait and let the smoke clear before I go back and attempt the trifecta.

  The flight to San Fran takes longer going back because we’re heading into the wind this time. I have three and a half hours to consider what’s going on in my homicidal world as of the moment. I have a nineteen-year-old homeless girl living in my apartment, and Christ knows she could’ve brought in a legion of druggies to live in my place while I was gone and she could have hosted a drug-a-thon for the denizens of the Wharf District where we live, and there could be a legion of cops waiting at my place for me to come home and yell “SURPRISE!!” to, and then Steven James and the other two remaining operators get to escape the Reaper, who is me, and they get off the hook for the murders they committed in the heat of battle, and then I get to spend a lifetime in a cage with people who’ve committed equal or worse atrocities in The World.

  If it happens then I’ve brought it all on myself by opening the door to my small refuge, to my miniature castle of solitude.

  But I still have dreams of that village in Quang Tri Province, although it happened a dozen years ago. I still suffer the night sweats and the black terrors of my own, personal abyss. I have to finish what I started. I don’t know what will happen to Li, but I figure this voyage of mine is terminal, if not now then sometime soon. I care what happens to Li, and as I said, she was a major tactical error in all this.

  She may be my one true fatal flaw.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Chicago, 1984

  He invites me to lunch because he says he can’t take the chance telling me on the phone. So I meet Staff Sergeant Sterling Hammond at Nick and Tulio’s Pizza on 82nd and Pulaski. I arrive there about 12:45, late in the day shift’s lunch hour—Homicides don’t get a regular break for lunch; we eat on the fly.

  He’s still the chiseled vet who survived four tours in Vietnam. He says he’s going to retire in five years regardless of what his wife insists. Sterling told her that the Army is what he is, not what he does, and it seems she’s learned to live with it, accord
ing to the Staff Sergeant.

  Nick and Tulio’s is the typical pizzeria–sports bar. They serve Old Style on tap and all the other beers come in a bottle. It’s a White Sox joint, and all the habitués have been suffering since the Dodgers took the Sox in six games in ’59. The Cubs are in vogue in the city, but they’ve broken hearts on the north side for a long, long time, too. Since 1908 and the billygoat.

  We sit at the red and white checkered table-clothed rectangle, and he orders two Old Styles. Sterling is a native Chicagoan, like me. He grew up on the south side, not far from my stomping grounds. I went to St. Rita High School, and he went to St. Leo’s.

  “I shouldn’t drink when I’m on duty,” I tell him.

  “Neither should I, and I’m on duty, too. That’s why the beer tastes so good. It’s like sex with your sixteen-year-old sweetie. Too good to pass up and too dangerous to open your fly.”

  “But you do it anyway.”

  “The smaller head always does the talking and the thinking.”

  The barman brings the two draughts, and Sterling orders us a sausage and peppers pizza.

  “My tab, Jimmy. For the good old days in the shit.”

  He raises his glass, and I clink his stein with mine.

  “The reason for this off-campus visit,” he says after downing a quaff of the Old Style.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve made a few inquiries for you.”

  “You’ve been too good. Don’t get your ass in a sling over this.”

  “Jimmy. Somebody’s killing ex-Special Forces, right?”

  I nod.

  “We can’t have that happen to our brothers, am I right?”

  “You’re right, Staff Sergeant.”

  “Like I said, I’ve made some inquiries, and through a connection from a guy who deals with payroll records for retired vets … I have an address for you on Steven James.”

  “In Indianapolis?”

  “No. He moved a month ago. He lives at 2424 North Belmont.”

  “Up by the ballpark?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, he moved there a month ago. Can I ask you something, Jimmy?”

  “Sure.”

  “You think it’s one of those guys he was with, over there?”

  “It might be. I can’t see anyone just coming out of the woodwork at this late date. It just doesn’t follow.”

  “You have an idea who it might be who’s doing this, Jimmy?”

  “You ever run across a swinging dick named Evan Azrael?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He disappeared after taking a hit. Went right out into the jungle and became Mr. MIA. The remains were never found.”

  “You think he’s capping his own guys?”

  “Maybe he cracked. Maybe they did something that made him take off the way he did. I don’t know. It’s all just guesswork in place of any evidence. You ought to know, Staff. Everything is classified regarding those Special guys. Everything stays in some folder locked up somewhere. We have skeletons, like everybody else. We have a whole lot of closets to hide them in, too.”

  “The only thing I know about like that was My Lai, and they took Calley down for that one. It was a major black eye, Jimmy. You think there was something like that with these guys?”

  “Why would he start, whoever he is, Azrael or whoever, why would he start all this shit unless something really bad, really evil, happened in Quang Tri Province? It could’ve been something under the radar. Maybe none of them ever talked. Maybe they covered their tracks very professionally. People disappeared over there. No one kept immaculate records, like the Nazis in World War II. The jungle is really thick. It isolates little hamlets to the point they’re like little Shangri Las—except there’s no paradise in that neck of the big bad woods. Green hell, maybe, but there’s nothing storybook about those remote villages, the ones off the grid, off the maps. Maybe they really did pull one off that no one found out about.

  “Except for the guys who did it. And maybe one of them had a conscience, after all. And maybe it’s still all guesswork, Staff.”

  The pizza comes, and then we eat and don’t say anything until the meal is finished.

  *

  I arrive at 2424 North Belmont and find his apartment building. It’s an old three flat, here on the north side, and it’s true that Wrigley Field is only about a mile and a half from here. You can smell the Lake in the breeze coming from the northeast.

  I go inside and ring the bell for the second-floor apartment because the second-floor mailbox had no name on it, but the other two did, and neither name was Steven James. I ring him three times, but no one answers, so I try the first-floor buzzer, and I receive an immediate reply. I walk up to the first-floor flat’s door, and an old guy, maybe seventy-five, appears in the doorway.

  Flashing my badge makes him flush in the face. He’s bald, and he’s got a bit of turkey wattle for a throat, and he looks like he’s very sorry he ever opened that door of his.

  “I just want to ask you if you’ve heard the guy on the second floor moving around in the last hour.”

  “Yeah. He’s up there. I could hear him. He has heavy feet.”

  “Thanks for the help.”

  He can’t wait to slam that door in my face. So I ascend the stairs to the middle flat. When I get there, I give the entry three stiff whacks with my knuckles.

  “What?” comes from behind the wooden door.

  “Police. Open up, Mr. James.”

  I hear nothing for several long beats, and then I see the door handle begin to turn slowly, like in some ghost movie where the spook is about to make the broad on the other side scream when it opens.

  There’s no ghost, but there’s a .45 automatic pointed right at my noggin.

  I show him the badge. Then he lowers the piece, and when he does I let him have it in the face.

  He is on his back, and the .45 is off to his right side. He looks as if he’s going to reach for it when I point my own .38 at the middle of his kisser.

  “You normally pull on cops, Mr. James?”

  “The hell’d you hit me for?”

  He’s still stretched out on his backside on the carpet of his living room, and a shabby royal-blue carpet it is, too.

  “You can get up now, but you’re going to let me pick up the piece, and you’re going to sit down at that kitchen table. Okay?”

  He nods, and I motion for him to rise. He gets up and does as he’s told while I retrieve the automatic on the floor.

  I have to watch him very warily because I know his background, and I know I was fortunate to catch him in the mug when he lowered the gun. These people are trained to fight—in the street and in the forests and in the jungle. As I say, I caught some luck when he bought the badge.

  For all I know, James is the one who was pulling the trigger on the rest of his one-time buddies.

  I put my gun away and I hold onto the .45 that menaced me a minute ago.

  “You’re here about Vincent and Miranda and Johnson.”

  “You know about them?” I ask.

  James is the Ranger archetype. He’s only a little under six feet tall, and he’s lean and sinewy, they way they build those guys. He has a long hairdo, now. It’s almost black, as if he were an Asian or a Latino. But he has white facial characteristics, like a German or a Scandinavian. I’m thinking he might have dyed his hair and let it grow so the military ‘do would not set him out in a crowd. He’s hiding out in Chicago, it looks like.

  “I read about Miranda by accident in a stopover on the West Coast. Then I read an account about Vincent when Terry Dellacord called me and told me about Carl. It isn’t too difficult to see that there are dominos falling—what’s your name?”

  “Detective Parisi.”

  “And that’s why you’re here, right?”

  “You’ve got the canon to keep away the boogie man, no?”

  “He is the boogie man, Detective. It’s Azrael. I know it is. The cocksucker was supposed to rejoin us after he got wounded. Bu
t he walked right out into the jungle, apparently, and he never came back to us. I know the other guys wouldn’t pull a number like this. It has to be Azrael. Dude was always strange, never wanted to become one of us. He kept talking about he joined the Rangers to prove himself, but he never said who he was proving himself to. I always thought the guy was Section Eight. Shit, we all did. But he was a good soldier. I mean the guy was a stone killer, like everybody else we operated with.”

  “What do you think made him cross over and go AWOL?”

  “When he got clipped in this little dink village in Quang Tri Province, he started yelling about holding back on the assault. You were in the war, Detective?”

  I nod.

  “Then you know that there’s such a thing as collateral damage to the indigenous personnel. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “How many civilians got wasted?”

  He stops and studies my face.

  “This shit is classified, you understand. I’m not supposed to be talking about any of this shit.”

  “This is a homicide investigation, my man. Two of your partners took a bullet to the back of the skull, Mafia style. Don’t give me the ‘classified’ horseshit, all right?”

  “I know I’m next, Detective. Seven little Indians, and one of the redskins is going down the list of the other six. Don’t take Sherlock Holmes to see what’s going down, Detective.”

  “He seems to be able to find you. He must have some nice connections, whoever he is.”

  “It’s Evan Azrael, I’m telling you. He was always cut off from the rest of us. He was clever enough to keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself when he went through training. You don’t think we have mentals in every branch of Special Forces? You think it doesn’t attract crazies, Detective? You think they weed every one of them out?”

  “So you’re certain Azrael is the one who did Vincent and Miranda and Johnson?”

  “Stupid was never on my personality profile, Detective Parisi. Can I have my gun back?”

  *

  I’m looking out at Lake Michigan, and I know why it’s called one of the Great Lakes. I’ve been in love with the water since I was old enough to wade into it. My dad took me to Rainbow Beach on 76th Street when I was old enough to walk. And he held me upright when the gentle surf came rushing in. The water was always frigid, even in July. It’s mid-October now, and I haven’t heard a word from Rita. Not a phone call or a written postcard. Nothing. So I look out at the Lake as if I’m waiting for some ship to arrive, like in the romances Erin used to read at the beach when we took the kids out there on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when I wasn’t on shift.