by Thomas Laird
She nodded, but the waterworks didn’t stop.
“Then get off the goddam things.”
She stared up at him, and finally the wetness subsided.“What brought all this on? You pissed at Carmen?”
“The hell do you care? You want a kid, or don’t you?”
He squeezed her left breast and he bent down and kissed her roughly on the lips. She responded a bit more warmly, then, and Rossi started the ritual all over again.
She halted him by clasping him tightly with her legs wrapped about his middle.
“If we have a baby, will you divorce her and make an honest woman out of me?”
He smiled and stared down at her.
“Whatever,” he laughed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Tony C was inside his fortress, and he had a hundred men spread out all over the grounds of his property in Lake Forest. If Ben Rossi showed a hair on his rear end, Calabrese had the firepower to blow that scrawny ass off.
There was still a siege mentality going on, and Calabrese never ventured forth from his home unless he was accompanied by a full complement of his best button men. Tony C heard it was the same way with Rossi. It appeared that the Boss of Bosses and his former lead capo were playing defense, each waiting for the other to see what that other man might do. So far, they were both holed up in their compounds.
Business was nil, anyway, so there was really nowhere to go unless you wanted to take a chance of getting popped by some drive-by shooter. Tony thought he would let Benny Bats make the first move. Then, after Rossi got shredded, Tony C was going to make certain that Carmen Rossi got hers, as well. He became more and more certain that she tried to slip him something in that flute of champagne. It had to be the only reason she would have played coy with him the way she did.
It was becoming the middle of May, and it was way too late to be suffering from cabin fever, locked up in his own mansion.
And his wife was being a pain in the ass, too, always complaining about her hips or her back pain or some goddam ailment. Tony felt like slapping a pillow over her face and shutting her whining mouth forever, but he knew it was stupid and risky. She’d be dead soon, anyway, so the smartest plan was to let nature take its course.
But the hours of being confined here were droning on endlessly, and Tony C’s patience was wearing thin.
*
The twins were back from Milwaukee after collecting on a due debt from a couple of punks who were behind on payments on two or three bets laid at one of Rossi’s joints in Chicago, and Benny Bats was greatly relieved they had returned. Rossi didn’t have much faith in Romano and Cordero. The Balboas were stone killers, but Andy and the other punk were just novices. Chris and Charlie Balboa were his knights, his paladins, and now that it was just Calabrese and the Cicero capo, Ben needed his best people around him twenty-four-seven. You couldn’t rely on these goddam kids to protect you from the Boss of Bosses.
Tony Calabrese was about to burst. Ben could feel it in his gut. There’d been all this static stuff. Inaction. Inertia. Whatever the fuck. The bubble had to pop.
Then there was the concert at the Ambassador East in the Loop. Ben was expected to show, and so was Anthony Calabrese. Dean Anthony was in town, and the goombah crooner was there at the Boss’s request, and if Rossi didn’t show it meant Benny Bats was yellow, that he was being cowed by the guy in Lake Forest. Ben couldn’t have any of that. It would make him look weak.
The concert was the next evening at 8:00 P.M., and it was a black-tie affair. The war would have to be put on hold and Ben and Carmen were going to have a front table at the ballroom of the Ambassador. The mayor was going to be there, also, with his Irish mob of sycophants and ward committeemen, so anyone who was anybody was going to be there. It wouldn’t do to call in sick on Dean’s appearance in Chicago. It had been publicized in every rag and on TV and the radio, as well.
He was glad the twins were back, indeed. They were his life insurance. Those other clowns in his crew were just bodies. Chris and Charlie were too good to be absent from his entourage—Romano and Cordero were just added baggage. But they’d be there, too, for added security.
It wasn’t likely that Calabrese would try something at the concert. Mafia etiquette suggested that blood be spilled elsewhere. It was a night to hob nob with the pezzanovante, the big shots.
Ben heard that the Archbishop of Chicago would be there, as well, so the mayhem would have to stay on hold.
Carmen was all jazzed about the event downtown, too, and she spent two grand on an evening gown, so Tony C’s demise would have to be put on simmer.
*
Parisi and Gibron and their fleet of copper squads followed Ben Rossi wherever he went, and they used the triangulation method of tailing the capo. Someone was always within sight of Rossi and his band of thugs. They followed him to The Green Door. They followed him to mass the other day when he took Carmen to church. He was never left unattended.
Where was Johansen’s brother? There was no sighting of the van that the Nebraska trooper had pulled off the highway. He probably ditched the Voyager and bought a second ride. Johansen hadn’t been sloppy yet, and Jimmy understood that Mark was a professional and that he had likely done hits outside of the military since he had been ‘disappeared’ by the Army for security reasons. You couldn’t survive long in the sniper/assassin trade if you made mistakes.
But Parisi knew he’d enter the picture inevitably. Benny was left over business for the ex-Greenie. Johansen knew that Ben had called the order on Mark’s brother. No one got whacked accidentally in the Outfit. There was a chain of command, just like in the Army. You followed orders. You didn’t think independently. You did what you were told.
Cabretta and Fortunato were underlings. They never made a decision in their careers. It was Rossi, and Johansen knew there was only one way to end his personal vendetta.
Where was the son of a bitch?
*
The son of a bitch was in Rock Island, Illinois. He found a garage to rent a space, and he planted the Plymouth van there for later. He told the guy at the garage that it would be for a few days only, but Johansen paid him a week in advance, anyway. The garage man was happy for the business.
“I’ll find this vehicle in one piece when I come back. Right?” Johansen grinned.
“Nobody screws with me or my cars and shit. Nobody.”
The stumpy, toothless old boozer seemed sincere, so Mark handed him the cash.
He bought a wreck that no one would notice. It was an old Ford that had a little rust on its sides. It was a dark blue, almost navy, and the tires didn’t have much tread, but the motor looked all right. He took it for a trial run before he handed the $400 in cash to the used car salesman. He drove the van over to the garage that the salesman had put him onto, and he picked the Ford up after a bus ride back to the lot. It was only a mile between the garage and the used car lot.
He took the car across the Mississippi into Illinois, and he headed to Chicago via I-80. Johansen took a ride by the house in Cicero, but he made sure to wear a ball cap and a pair of shades, but the gunsels on Rossi’s porch were too busy bullshitting with each other to notice him as he drove by.
He took a room in a flea trap in Berwyn, a ‘burb adjacent to Cicero. It was cheap and it was close to Benny Bats’ house.
When he stretched out on the full-sized mattress, he read the Chicago Sun Times. The article about Dean Anthony’s concert at the Ambassador was the lead story in the Entertainment Section. What caught Mark’s eye was the mention of Anthony’s notorious connection to Tony Calabrese’s Outfit. If Calabrese was going to be there, it figured that Rossi would be in attendance, too. Rossi couldn’t stay out of the limelight. None of those hoods avoided the center ring. And Benny Bats would look like a pussy if he avoided the concert. He’d look like he was steering clear of the Boss of Bosses, and with these guys everything was a pissing match. Territory-marking. No, Ben Rossi couldn’t afford to look scared in front of all t
he glitterati in the city.
Yes, Rossi would make it his business to be there.
And Mark Johansen thought he might show up to join the party.
*
Jimmy and Doc had the late watch that night. Doc had his tapes, but Jimmy caught a few zees while Gibron listened to his jazz collection. Parisi found the music soothing, and he dozed off from time to time.
When Jimmy awoke, the shift was nearly over, and the sun was stabbing its rays out of the east, in the direction of the lake and the Loop.
“I think the Greenie’ll show up at the Ambassador tonight,” Gibron said as he yawned.
“With all that security? It’d be suicidal. So I’m guessing you’re right, Doc.”
“If he’s holed up with his brother’s wife and kids, why would he take the chance?”
“Because he believes in closure.”
“What if Johansen’s the one who gets shut down permanently?”
“He doesn’t reason the way most guys do. He wants to stop them from coming after him and his new family, if they’re really with him somewhere. He wants to stop looking over his shoulder. Rossi doesn’t know how to quit, either. It’s this Sicilian vengeance shit. The Greenie did Cabretta and the ape, Fortunato, and now Benny has to run the table with Johansen. It’s their fucked -up code.”
“How did you Italians ever spawn people like DaVinci or Michaelangelo in the same country with the forbears of Ben Rossi?”
“It’s a mystery, I suspect.”
“So Johansen is sure to crash this bash.”
“I think so, Doc. I think we better go home and rest up for a very eventful evening.”
“Black tie, I read.”
“Too bad. I only have the navy-blue sport jacket.”
“I only have the suit I wore when I got married to the Wicked Witch of the East or whatever, and it’s two sizes too small…how many cops you think we need with us?”
“Figure a hundred, and the National Guard, too.”
*
“I’m going to be out late tonight, Ma,” he told Eleanor.
“Something special, or work?”
“It’s no date, I’m afraid. We have to show up at some big deal at the Ambassador East.”
“The thing with Dean Anthony?”
“Yeah.”
“I read about it, Jimmy. Lucky you.”
“I don’t like crooners. They should’ve shot Bing Crosby before he died of old age or whatever.”
“Don’t say things like that. Not if the kids are around.”
Parisi laughed, and then he hugged his mother.
“I’ll get you Dean’s autograph if I can. Don’t hold your breath. He doesn’t like cops. His buddies hang from the other side of town.”
“You think he’s connected?”
Parisi laughed again.
“You’ve seen too many gangster movies, Ma.”
He never called her by her given name. Nor his father, Jake, either. It seemed disrespectful to Parisi. You only had the one mother and one father, even though Jake hadn’t been his real old man.
“Why are the cops going to be there?”
“The mayor needs company,” Jimmy smiled at her.
He felt the need to lie to her. He wasn’t in the habit of trying to worry Eleanor.
“How late you figure?” she asked.
They were sitting at the kitchen table. The kids were in the living room watching some sitcom. Dinner was almost ready. Parisi could smell the meat sauce on the stove. Eleanor was making lasagna, his favorite.
“We’re on shift until midnight, the earliest. Could be overtime tonight.”
“When’re you going to find a little female companionship, Jimmy?”
“I’m gonna be a lifetime bachelor from here on in, Ma. Women and I don’t see eye to eye.”
“Baloney. You and Erin…”Her voice drifted off.
“You ought to try a little harder, Jimmy. You’re not getting any younger and soon the kids’ll be grown and out of the house.”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Fifties are way different from thirties. You’re still a young man. It isn’t healthy for a man your age to be alone.”
He grinned at her steadily.
“All right, all right. I’ll stop with the rag,” she laughed.
She went to the stove and stirred the simmering meat sauce. The pasta was boiling in the pot opposite the skillet with the sauce.
“You got the right,” he told her. “You can rag me all you want. It’s like your job.”
She put the spoon in the mixture she’d been stirring and she went over and kissed him on the forehead.
“You’re all I got, you and Mike and Mary. Don’t make up stories to me about this thing tonight. I was the wife of a Homicide detective. You guys aren’t hired babysitters. You be careful, tonight. I know who’s going to be at this fancy concert. It was in all the papers. Those criminals are going to be there, so you have to make sure they don’t kill each other and half the city with them.”
She walked back over to the stove.
“I wish they’d shoot each other when you aren’t around. How many nights I was afraid your father wouldn’t make it home and some policeman with a real sad face would come bring me the news in the middle of the night.”
Jimmy stared down at the table top.
“They won’t start anything at this concert, Ma. They’ll pick another spot. Don’t worry. I’ll call you when I’m on the way home, no matter what time it is. I promise.”
“I don’t care what time it is. Just do it. Please.”
Eleanor called the kids in for dinner. She didn’t have to call them twice. They had smelled the lasagna cooking for a long time, by now.
*
He wasn’t going to use a suppressor or silencer. He wanted it to be noisy. The confusion was to his advantage. There would be plenty of police and Outfit gunmen, and when all hell broke loose, there would be initial chaos. It was what Mark counted on. If it went the way he hoped, everyone would be hitting the floor. It might just give him time to weave his way out of there.
The lighting would be dim when the performance began, and the darkness would be to his advantage, also.
The element of surprise was what he was really banking on, however. The cops wouldn’t think a crowded venue was an optimum venue for a strike, and neither would Ben Rossi’s crew. He imagined they’d be thinking that the danger zones would be at the entrance and exit of the swank hotel because there’d be more room for a getaway outside, in the street.
He laid the .44 magnum on the mattress. It had stopping power, all right. It would blow a hole that was fist-sized through the man who called the hit on his brother, David. There would be no call for a second shot, but he’d loose several rounds into the air inside the ballroom or wherever this concert was in the hotel. The incredible roar of the .44 might be enough to get them to hit the deck while he found a way out.
He didn’t really think he’d get out of the Ambassador alive, though. Too many things had to go perfectly.
But if he finished Rossi, maybe they’d leave Marilyn and the girls and the new baby alone.
They were worth dying for, taking a bullet for. Nothing else had ever been worthy of his getting killed. Nothing. But they were all worth it, certainly. He was sure of it.
CHAPTER FORTY
The limos rolled up to the Ambassador East by the score. The black stretch rides pulled up to the curb in front of the hotel and let out their illustrious personages. Dean Anthony was a big star, so he attracted all the local constellations. The Mayor pulled up fashionably late, about 8:15, but everyone knew that Dean wouldn’t come on until the house was packed, probably around nine.
The news was there in force, all the local Chicago TV channels arrived an hour earlier, and they were stationed outside the lobby waiting for their glimpse of fame. The photographers were assembled in packs like wolves, awaiting to flash the night sky with popping bulbs that would somehow
resemble fireflies on steroids.
Mark Johansen parked three blocks down the street, out where the illumination was much dimmer. He pulled the Ford by the curb and then loaded the meter with all the quarters it would swallow. He was good for three hours.
He walked toward the Ambassador with his gym bag. The .44 was inside, and so were a few other surprises for Ben Rossi et al. It took a few minutes to reach the alley that led to the rear of the hotel, but Mark knew that the police would have someone at the back entrance where the kitchen staff came in. Johansen had looked the hotel over the night before, and he knew where he was going to go in.
As he traversed the alley, he smelled the rot of the debris in the garbage gondolas. It was sickly sweet and almost brought on a gag reflex, but he kept his bile down inside him.
There was a lone patrolman by the back door, and by the time the Greenie was illuminated enough for the cop to see him, Mark went into an exaggerated stagger. He began to sing the words of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz, and the copper stepped forward at him aggressively.
“You get on out of here,” the uniform warned.
Mark looked up at the policeman, and began to sway back and forth.
“I told you to get your drunken ass out of here.”
He had a night stick, and he raised the club menacingly.
“But officer…”
The cop came close enough to smell Johansen’s breath, but the uniform couldn’t seem to get a whiff of booze from this staggering lush.
Mark sent a straight right that caught the copper flush in the nose, and then he got him again with a savage uppercut that knocked the other man senseless. Down he went. A two-punch fight and a knockout.
Johansen retrieved some rope out of his gym bag, and he proceeded to securely bind the policeman, his feet and hands tied tightly. He stuck a white sock in his mouth and bound it in place with duct tape, and then he dragged the unconscious officer of the law farther back into the alley and stuffed him behind a garbage gondola. The guy was still breathing; Mark made sure that his nose, even though broken, was not covered by the duct tape. Killing a cop was not on his list of things to accomplish.
