by Thomas Laird
I don’t lie around awake at night in Diana’s bed thinking about how she and Li stack up against each other. They’re really nothing alike. Li was my maiden, I guess, even though she wasn’t a virgin when she met me, I found out. Diana is an experienced, worldly kind of woman, and so they are not alike at all.
If all this with Tommy goes wrong, and if Diana is hurt or killed and if I’m still alive, then I’ll pop my own grenade pin on myself. If I can’t get to Costello and if anything happens to her, I’m truly done. There’s no tomorrow or next chapter to my story. So I get Tommy Costello and I flee the United States—the country I bled for, a while ago—and I take Diana Kaserides into uncharted territory.
I figure it has to be Mexico. Canada is used, as far as escape routes are concerned for us. I’m sure if I get to Tommy without this Chicago detective nabbing me in the act, Parisi’ll figure I’m headed south.
But Mexico is a very big country with lots of lost corridors to hide in. I’m not thinking of known spots like Mexico City or Juarez or tourist traps like Acapulco. Maybe something in the very deep south, almost at its southern tip. I’ll have to buy a map at a bookstore, maybe do a little research before Tuesday is over and finished.
I’ve got about 75K left, and Diana thinks she’s got around 50K left in the insurance she got from her dead husband. She put that cash in a CD, and it’s collecting interest now in a savings account which she says she’ll close on Monday.
The only thing we have together for certain is this weekend, and today’s Friday and the clock literally is ticking. I’m feeling a little pressed for time, so I figure Diana is as well.
She’s only going to be fifty-three. Women live into their late seventies these days. We could have another twenty, twenty-five years together, if I don’t check out before she does. I’ll take two decades or two decades and a half with her. I’m twenty years younger, but I won’t be looking for a newer model when she gets up there and turns a natural gray. Most people would think I’d likely dump her when she hits old age, but they’d lose their wagers on it.
This is the last time for both of us, so we have to make it work, we have to make it last until there’s nothing left for either of us.
Mexico’s a huge country. Mountains and hills and rainforest and jungle.
There has to be a hiding place where we can be swallowed up forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Orland Park, Chicago, 1985
I don’t talk to Diana about it, but I know it needs to be done. I borrow her Bug again and drive into the city. It’s early on Monday morning, the morning before Costello gets released from the hospital, so I don’t have any time left.
I follow Steven James from his house to the Academy for the Chicago Police, and when I see where he’s headed, I’m thinking I really asked for it this time. There are would-be cops and real uniforms and detectives and cop brass all over the place, and here I am with the most noticeable face in the country. But I made up my mind that this was a part of the unfinished business I had to attend to before I got Costello or Costello got me or the police and this detective, Parisi, got me.
He’s inside the building for three hours, and I’ve got to piss now, so I walk inside the Academy and ask the police sergeant at the desk in front where the johns are.
“You have business here, sir?” the cop asks.
He barely looks up to see my face.
“Yeah, I’m here to pick up my brother, Steven James? I had to take a leak, and I didn’t see a gas station or anything, so I thought I’d try inside here. Is it okay?”
“You gotta go, you gotta go,” he says, and he points to the left and then I see the sign for restrooms.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“Don’t go anywhere else, though,” he says, and this time he takes a good look at me.
I don’t press my luck, so I go in the men’s, take a quick whiz, and then I make sure to smile and wave at the sergeant at the entry. I head right back to Diana’s Volkswagen.
An hour later, I see James come out that front entrance with about six or seven other fellow wannabe police. He makes his way to the parking lot, about a half block south down the street.
I follow him there, and then I get out. I don’t want him getting Diana’s license plates.
I walk up quickly behind him. I see there’s no one else around his parking spot, and before he can turn around to see who’s coming up behind him, I have the .22 inside my jacket pocket pressed against his back.
“Don’t turn around, Steven. Just get in and keep your hands on the steering wheel where I can see them.”
He doesn’t answer, but he unlocks the door.
“Unlock mine when you get in,” I tell him.
I hurry around to the passenger’s side, and I get in after he pops the lock.
“Where is it?” I ask.
“Glove compartment,” he says.
I open it and retrieve the .38 police special.
“Your private piece?” I ask.
“Under the seat.”
“Take it out by the grip.”
I’ve got the .22 pistol pointed at him right now.
He removes the snub-nosed .32 Colt from underneath his seat and hands it to me with two fingers on the grip.
“Drive somewhere,” I tell him.
“Where is somewhere?”
“Anywhere we can talk.”
“I’d prefer if you’d get it over now, right here. There’s no one else around to see you do it, Evan. Nobody can catch you, can they?”
“Drive out to the lake. Park us in some parking lot.”
“There’ll be all kinds of witnesses there.”
“Just head east, Steven.”
He pulls us out of the lot and heads toward Lake Michigan. It’s only May, so the beaches won’t open officially until Memorial Day. By then I hope to be somewhere in Mexico with Diana, or more likely I’ll be dead.
It takes him about forty minutes to get to Rainbow Beach on 76th Street. He pulls into the public lot, and then he parks. There’s no one within blocks of us. It’s sunny and in the sixties, and even the sunbathers are loath to lie out in this crisp spring air, but there are a few sand walkers, maybe a half mile from where we are.
“This good enough?” he asks.
“You know I did the other five.”
“Yeah. I read about it.”
“Why aren’t you afraid to die?” I ask him.
“I am. I just don’t show it outside. I was never good with overt emotion. My fiancée complains about how cold I appear with her in public. Says I don’t display enough affection. PDA, she calls it.”
“You’re going to get married?” I ask him.
Now there’s a gentle blush in his cheeks.
“We’d been planning on it in June, after I graduate the Academy. I have to be able to support her. She’s been supporting me while I’ve been learning how to be a police.”
The seagulls swarm overhead. They’re checking out the parking lot for scraps.
“It was murder. I had no right. Now I’m trying to pay for my sins.”
“How you going to do that, Evan?”
“By not killing you.”
He breathes out, audibly.
“How come I’m special? I killed some of those people in Dia Nguc. I don’t recall you getting any trigger time in that village. Where’d you go when you came back from the hospital?”
“I lived with some Hmong, and then I came back and I hired out for Tommy Costello and his crew in San Francisco.”
“I read about it.”
“I’ve got those sins to deal with, too.”
“Did you find religion, Evan?”
“I found a woman—actually I found two.”
“Sounds like you had some luck.”
“No, you’re the one with the luck. I have to leave soon, and that might mean permanently.”
He watches me carefully, but I have his two weapons on my lap. I’m not sure he believed me when I told h
im I wasn’t going to kill him.
Maybe he’s carrying something extra, like a knife. He was always very good with a blade.
“You think this mafia guy is going to kill you?”
“If he doesn’t, your police friends might. I’ve been told that this detective, Parisi, is very persistent. Do you know him?”
“Heard of him. Talked to him a few times. About you. I’d be more wary of Parisi than Costello. This Homicide’s ex-military, too, and he wasn’t in Special Forces, but he seems like the bulldog type.”
He watches my eyes, still leery of what I might do. He may be thinking I’m trying to relax him before I pop him. That’s SOP for the goodfellas I used to work for.
“Why are you really here, Evan?”
“I’m not here to ask you to forgive me for the other five. They deserved what I gave them. I deserve worse than what I did to them. And maybe you do, too. If you live a good life, if you make this woman happy, maybe you’ll reduce what we all were part of, and I don’t just mean that one village. I mean all the villages, all the hamlets, all the hits. And I’m the worst offender of us all, Steven.”
“You want me to forgive you? Is this some kind of atonement, Evan?”
“I’m here to let you know you can stop looking over your shoulder for me. I couldn’t just phone this one in. If there’s a God, and it’s unlikely, then he’ll take care of atonement or vengeance or whatever it is he’s supposed to do. I’m more concerned with what happens now. I want to try and live for a while. We both spent too much time with the other thing. I’m calling it quits after I meet up with Tommy Costello.”
“You want me to keep my mouth shut about your whacking him. Is that it?”
“You can tell every cop in this city I’m going after Costello—they already know, anyway. I’m done with getting even after I see that Italian. I wanted you to be the first to know. You see that trash can over there on the sidewalk?”
He nods.
“I’m going to put your pieces in a garbage bag inside that can, and you come back in twenty minutes and collect them. But don’t come back here for twenty minutes. Am I being clear?”
“Crystal,” he says.
He extends his hand. I look at it quizzically.
“I want to shake, that’s all. Good luck. I hope you get what you need. We all get what we deserve in the end. See, I got religion now. My lady’s my religion.”
I extend my right hand, but I watch his eyes.
“Twenty minutes,” I repeat.
“Twenty minutes,” he says.
I get out of the car with the .22 in my hand and his guns in my jacket pockets. He pulls away from me and leaves me in this barren parking lot by the lake. I deposit the pieces into a bag in the trash.
I head for the next street west, and I wait for a cab to take me back to Diana’s Volkswagen.
*
“Where’ve you been?” she asks. “I was afraid you—”
“I’m not going to run out on you. I’m going to that hospital tomorrow and I’ll do the corrective surgery on Costello, and then we’ll drive south together until we get to El Paso, Texas, and then I’ll make some inquiries about getting across the border and about where we’ll head when we’re on the other side. I have a friend in San Francisco who can get us some new IDs. As soon as the papers get to us, we’ll make the crossing.”
She’s standing in front of me, and she wraps her arms around me, and then she kisses me all over my face.
“What? You thought I wasn’t coming back?”
“I thought they might find you—the police, I mean. Any time you go out the door I worry someone will spot you and then we won’t be able to go south together. It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t believe that old wives’ shit, Diana. We’ll make it happen. I’m certain of it.”
“You can’t just leave Costello to the police, can you? They might get him soon anyway, and then all this chasing after him would’ve been—”
“I have to do it, Diana. I let James go. I just got done seeing him.”
“My God, you went to see him?”
“The best part is that he’s becoming a cop.”
Her eyes widen.
“Are you crazy, Evan?”
“That’s part of my appeal, isn’t it?”
I smile at her.
“You’re not crazy. But you’re taking crazy chances.”
“There’s just tomorrow, and then it’s done.”
“How are you going to get at him? There’ll be police all over and then he’s got his own thugs watching him, doesn’t he?”
“I didn’t say it would be simple.”
She hugs me tightly to herself again.
“If you’re having second thoughts, Diana, now’s the time. I’ll understand, believe me. It’d be the smart move.”
She slaps me lightly on the face. Tears begin to cascade onto her cheeks.
Then she takes me by the hand into the bedroom.
*
“I missed my period.”
“Jesus, you still have them?”
“Do I look that aged?”
“But women normally stop all that shit when they reach your—”
“Usually, but not always. Women older than me have had babies before.”
I look over at her.
“You wouldn’t be trying to talk me out of tomorrow again, would you?”
“I just said my period’s late. I’m usually like clockwork, and then I didn’t think there was any chance of conceiving at my age, either. I’m not lying to you, Evan. I’m just being honest with you. You deserve to know, don’t you?”
“We don’t have time to get you to a doctor.”
“I know. I just wanted you to be aware. It’s probably a false alarm. I’m probably just all anxious about leaving, about what’s going to happen to you tomorrow. Jesus, it’s a wonder I haven’t blown my blood pressure through the roof!”
I take her face between my hands.
“Look, I don’t think you really follow what’s happening with me. If I let Costello go, then he’ll keep coming after me. These guys don’t let their enemies live, Diana. I killed his brother, and Tommy’ll never give up chasing after me. And he’s big into drugs, do you understand? And Mexico, the place we’re headed, is drug country. They supply the fixes that keep America smiling. And all those drug lords, all those narcos, have eyes on every street, and if Tommy puts out the word, we can’t disappear in Mexico or at the North freakin’ Pole! Are you reading me, Diana?”
She begins to well up once more.
“Don’t do that!”
“I can’t help it,” she blurts.
“Then maybe you should just stay here. I told you I’d understand, and it’s still the smart move.”
“Don’t you ever dare tell me that again. Don’t you dare.”
She buries her face against my chest, and I feel the heat and the wet of her on me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Chicago, 1985
She says the words I’ve been hoping she’d never say: “We have some things to talk about.”
It’s Sunday night, and I just got home from making preparations with Doc to make sure that Tommy Costello gets out of St. John’s Hospital alive. I’m tired, and I have to get up early in the morning because we need to set the logistics of the Italian’s departure. We get him on the plane, and then it’s up to American Airlines and the San Francisco Police Department.
And now I have to see Rita at nine-thirty at night when I thought I’d be able to get a few hours sleep.
She doesn’t want to meet at her place, and that’s another very bad sign.
Everything seemed to be all right, until now. There was no talk about a future together, but there was no hint that we’d have something to “talk about.”
We meet at Lou’s Pizza on Belmont and Kedzie, not far from Wrigley Field. We’ve been there before, and it’s a quiet little pizzeria with a bar and the required square tables
with red and white checked oilcloth covers.
Rita is there waiting for me at 9:35. I look down at my watch to find that I’m five minutes late—and that’s strike three.
I sit down opposite her at the dual-colored table.
“You hungry?” she asks, with a faint smile.
“No. I ate.”
“Want something to drink?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I think I need a wine,” she says.
I motion for the waiter, and he ambles over and takes Rita’s order for a Merlot.
When he makes his way for the bar, I have my hands on the table, palms down. I’m steeling myself.
“I’ve got a scholarship to go to law school at the University of Illinois, this fall.”
“Congratulations,” I reply.
“You don’t look happy for me.”
“I am happy for you.”
“Come on, Jimmy. Be happy for me.”
“This is a very big deal.”
“It is. I was never really happy being a cop. You know that. I always had to be better than the male detectives. I had to be smarter, tougher. You know that.”
“You were an excellent detective, Rita. I told you so before.”
Her eyes shift to my hands, still palms down.
“Are you angry with me, Jimmy?”
“I’m going to miss you. You know how I feel about you.”
“It doesn’t mean we’ll never see each other again. Champaign is only a couple hours’ drive.”
“Sure.”
“Please, Jimmy. Don’t be like this.”
“Like what? Devastated?”
“I thought you were happy for me.”
“I am. I really am.”
“Don’t you want to keep on seeing me?”
“You’re like an explosive, Rita. I never know when or if you’re going to go off. Maybe it’s good this opportunity came up. Maybe we weren’t meant to be permanent.”
I look for any kind of sorrow, any kind of remorse that she’s pulling away from me again, but I can’t see it in her face.
“You don’t know the future,” she says. “We could keep seeing each other.”
“We could. But I can’t. I guess I need permanence, like I said. You used to say I had baggage in my life, and you were right. You need to go into something free and clear, and now you have your chance.”
