A Wake of Vultures

by Patrick Kansoer

  For the next hour they enjoyed a well prepared dinner. Sherman paid the bill and they parted company in the parking lot.

  The following day Keren went through the few records in the office that pertained to her association with Douglas Gunn. It only took fifteen minutes or so to find the address for Noble Petris in Possum Knob, Missouri. She placed the Manilla envelope into a larger one with her office return address on it along with a short note explaining the circumstances and sent it off with the late morning mail.

  6 A CACKLE OF HYENAS

  “Mr. Laughlin?”

  “Yes, this is Maurice Laughlin. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Mr. Laughlin, my name is Sherman. You don’t know me but I have accidentally come into possession of a communication to you from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I’m sure it is something that you would be very interested in having returned to you. I am looking only to be recompensed for my time and effort in getting it back into your possession.”

  “I see Mr. uh Sherman. Well, since you have my telephone number I am certain you also have my address in Wilmette. Why don’t you just stop on over and we can make arrangements for the return of this communication and a suitable reward for your troubles?”

  “Well, you see Mr. Laughlin, I really wouldn’t feel comfortable coming over to your place. It would be better, in my opinion, if we were to meet somewhere in public. Someplace like a coffee shop or diner or something.”

  “O.K. Mr. Sherman, I can understand your caution. Do you have any particular place in mind for this public meeting?”

  “Well sir, I guess it should be somewhere where we can have some kind of privacy yet be public. There’s a fast-food burger restaurant on Waukegan road in Glenview between Lake street and Willow road. It’s on the west side of the street. Do you know the place?”

  “I’m not in the habit of dining at burger joints Mr. Sherman, but I’m sure I can find the place. When and what time did you want to meet?”

  “How about day after tomorrow around three-thirty in the afternoon? That way they should be past their lunch rush and it won’t draw attention if we are at a table for a while. I’ll be wearing a red pull-over sweater and I would ask you to wear a blue shirt so we can know who each other is.”

  “Sounds a little cloak and dagger to me Mr. Sherman, but if you insist. Will five hundred in cash be a suitable reward for your troubles?”

  “It would be a good start Mr. Laughlin. It would be a very good start.”

  With that sentence Sherman Melvin Jacob sealed his fate. “There is an old saying in the stock market,”; Bernard Laughlin thought to himself; “Bulls make money, bears make money but hogs get slaughtered.” Out loud Laughlin just said; “I’ll see you day after tomorrow at the burger restaurant in Glenview on Waukegan road at three-thirty. Goodbye Mr. Sherman.” Laughlin broke the connection and sat a few minutes in thought. The first thing he did was to check his caller I.D. and saw that the call had come from a number registered to Sherman Melvin Jacob in Skokie, Illinois. Running a reverse directory check he found the number was registered to a business called “Snoop-wiki.com”. This was not something that Laughlin needed in his life right now.

  Things were just settling down and he didn’t have the internal resources to deal with an annoyance like Sherman Jacob.

  Maurice Laughlin didn't like bothering the CFO with things he should have been able to take care of himself but the snoop that was looking to shake him down was getting into things that had a bigger scope than just Laughlin's illicit weapons business. He was still uneasy dialing the CFO's number, a feeling that he seldom felt and didn't like at all.

  On the third ring the connection was made;

  "Yes?"

  "Sir, this is Laughlin. I have a situation that requires your guidance."

  "Situation?"

  "Yes sir, it seems as though a party got a piece of misdirected correspondence regarding the last equipment transaction and is looking to help himself to a percentage of the deal. What's an even bigger complication is that he runs a popular snoop website and he is suggesting that the background of the transaction would be of interest on the net."

  "And why would this be of interest to me or the Chairman or anyone at C&A? Don't your regular people have operators who could negotiate this problem away?"

  "Yes sir, normally I would have handled this myself but the correspondence in question has a link directly back to my organization and I need an independent contractor to handle it cleanly with no obvious link back."

  "I see. I want you to understand, Laughlin that I am not happy with this. We don't like loose ends. It's inattention to details that ends up getting people, shall we say, separated from our association. Nevertheless, under the circumstances I will have someone from sanitation get in touch with you within 4 hours."

  With that the connection was broken and Laughlin was listening to dead silence.

  About ninety minutes later, Laughlin’s phone rang again. The caller ID said “Kenneth Tobert” and a number in Waukegan, Illinois.

  “Hi Mr. Laughlin. My name is Ken, but they call me Crazy Kenny around the shop. The head of the sanitation department told me to call you. Says that you have a disposal problem that needs to be taken care of.”

  Laughlin explained to Kenny about the meeting set up for the day after tomorrow at the burger joint on Waukegan road in Glenview. He explained that he was meeting with a Sherman Jacob and that the guy was a real problem that needed to be taken care of. Jacob was nervous as any wharf rat so Kenny would need to be careful to trail him to where he could be neutralized.

  “He’ll be carrying five hundred in cash which you can consider as your bonus once the job is complete.”

  “I know the place Mr. Laughlin. It’s a Burger King. I’ll make sure I’m there by five minutes to three so I can keep an eye for you both.

  I’m good at what I do Mr. Laughlin. That’s ‘cause I like my work. You know what I like most is the hunt, the challenge of hat the thing. The killing for me is secondary. I get no rise out of it…for the most part. But the figuring it out, the challenge—the stalking and doing it right, successfully—that excites me a lot. The greater the odds against me, the more juice I get out of it."

  Laughlin thought to himself; "They didn't call him "Crazy Kenny" for nothing."

  Kenny claimed that he first killed in his teen years, using a straightened clothes-hanger to beat a neighborhood kid who had bullied and teased him. By the mid-1990s, he had earned a reputation as an explosive pool shark who would beat or kill those who annoyed him.

  Eventually, Kenny's criminal activity brought him to the attention of Chicago's North suburban Outfit Crew, who hired him for his first job in an outfit warehouse in Waukegan, where he met and married Barbara Pedrici.

  Beginning in the spring of 1994, Kenny began prowling Chicago's Uptown neighborhood searching for victims.

  He came to Chicago numerous times over the following months and killed people, always men, never a female. It was always someone who rubbed him the wrong way, for some imagined or extremely slight reason.

  He shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned men to death. He left some where they had dropped. He dumped some into the nearby Chicago River.

  Murder, for Crazy Kenny, became a sport.

  The Chicago police came to believe that the bums were attacking and killing one another, never suspecting that a full-fledged serial killer from Waukegan was coming over to Chicago's North Side for the purpose of killing people, to practice and perfect murder. Kenny made the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago a kind of lab for murder.

  Barbara later told friends that once, during an argument in a car, she told Kenny she did not want to stay in the car. She felt a pain in her neck and, when she touched it, she felt and saw blood. Kenny told her, "That is a lesson: never leave me." She said he stabbed her with an ice pick.

  A petrified Barbara told her best friend another story.

  "One night me and Kenny had an argument about me talking to some g
uy at the supermarket. Wasn't nothing to it but Kenny got real pissed off.

  Next thing I know he storms out of the house.

  A little later, Kenny comes back into the house with this black guy at gun point. He makes me strip and go down on the terrified black guy as he watched.

  When it was over, the black guy ran out of the house. Scared that Kenny would find him and kill him or that he would be accused of rape, he booked to the neighborhood police station and told the cops what had happened.

  The cops came to the house to check out the guy's story and found out that Kenny was the guy with the gun, and he forced me to do that to teach me a lesson not to flirt with strange men. Since the cops were on the take, they just told Kenny to cool it and that was the end of that."

  “Crazy Kenny” for sure.

  Two days later Kenny Tobert was sitting at a table at the back of the Burger King near the rest rooms at three fifteen when a short nervous looking guy carrying a large manila envelope and wearing a red pullover sweater walked through the door. He took a look around and then walked over to the order station to get himself a burger, fries and a drink. Paying with a wad of crumpled bills, he took his tray of food and took a table in the far back corner with his back to the wall where he could watch the door.

  At exactly three thirty Bernard Laughlin, wearing a navy blue Izod golf shirt walked in the door and immediately went to the order line where he ordered a large iced tea.

  Carrying it with him, he walked up to the table in the back and without any further ceremony said; “You are Mr. Sherman?”

  “Yes, I am. Please sit down.” Sherman’s voice was quivering slightly. Usually he did his dirty work on line or over the phone and didn’t do confrontation well because of his emotional disability.

  “Is that the communication in the Manilla envelope by your tray?” Laughlin demanded.

  “Yes, it is. Did you bring the cash?”

  “Right here in the envelope in my shirt pocket. I need to see the communication before I give you the money.”

  Jacob slid the envelope across the table and Laughlin opened it.

  “What kind of bullshit is this?” Laughlin hissed. “This is a copy, not the original. What do you think you’re trying to pull here?”

  “Just protecting myself Mr. Laughlin. I wanted to make sure that the money was real and that you weren’t going to do something to me. I’ll mail the original to your house as soon as I get home.”

  Laughlin was certain that Jacob was lying but under the circumstances he figured if Kenny did his job it really wouldn’t matter.

  “I guess I’m just going to have to trust you to keep your word. Here’s the money.” Laughlin slid the envelope across the table to Jacob who stuffed it into his pocket.

  Seeing this action, Kenny stood up from the table and went out to his car to wait for Jacob to leave.

  “Aren’t you going to count it?”, Laughlin asked as Jacob pocketed the five hundred.

  “I’ll count it later,” Jacob mumbled as he slid out from the table and made his way to the door.

  Laughlin watched as Jacob left and shook his head thinking to himself that the little nebbish only had an hour or so left to live. Laughlin’s timing was just slightly off.

  Sherman Melvin Jacob was in a hurry. In a hurry to get away from the Burger King, in a hurry to get back home and count the money and in a hurry to figure out how he would shake Maurice Bernard Laughlin down for the second and bigger payoff. He never noticed Kenny’s dirty gray Toyota following him back south on Waukegan road turning east on Dempster. Kenny was just a little disappointed that Sherman wasn’t any challenge to tail. As Jacob turned back west on Bronx, Kenny continued just past the corner on Carrol and waited for five minutes or so to allow Jacob to get settled in his house.

  Kenny walked casually but quickly to the house and carefully made his way to the back door.

  He already had put on the medical gloves and removed the glassine envelope containing the “knock—out” powder. Being as quiet as possible, he mounted the back porch and positioned himself just to the right of the doorframe. He knocked hard on the door and called out; “Skokie police, open up.”

  When Sherman opened the door Kenny blew the scopolamine powder into his face and within three seconds, Sherwin had lost all conscious control of his thoughts and actions.

  It was no effort at all to direct Sherman back into the house and into the bedroom where there was a convenient armchair. Kenny secured Sherman’s arms to the chair with a pair of zip ties, removed his trousers and secured Sherman’s ankles to the front legs of the chair and stuffed a dirty rag into Sherman’s mouth as a gag. This gave Kenny the opportunity to return to his car on Carrol to get his bag of equipment. “This is gonna be fun.” Kenny thought to himself. On the way into the bedroom Kenny stopped at the dining room table to retrieve the envelope that held the five hundred in cash. By the time Kenny had returned to the bedroom the effects of the powder had worn off enough for Sherman to regain consciousness but not muscle control.

  “It’s party time my little friend,” Kenny said to Sherwin as he pulled the dirty rag from Jacob’s mouth. “You and me are gonna have all kinds of fun. Yes sir. Yes we are.”

  Crazy Kenny beat and tortured Sherman with workmanlike precision using a ball peen hammer, a length of rubber garden hose, an ice pick, a men’s sock filled with sand.

  He lined up the first shot like a lead-off man laying down a bloop single.

  “FLUMMPT!” A short sharp blow to the right ear with the length of hose followed by Sherman’s cry of pain, “OWWWWW!”.

  The injury sharp enough to split skin and draw blood but not enough to render the Sherman unconscious. A small trickle of blood began to meander its way down the right side of Sherman's neck.

  Putting down the hose and picking up the hammer from the small nightstand, Kenny drew back slightly and swung the ball end making contact with Sherman's right elbow. He was rewarded with a satisfying "GLOK!" immediately followed by a high-pitched "EEEEEEEEEEEE!”

  Jacob, sounded like a rabbit in its death throes.

  Stepping back to admire his work, Crazy Kenny was gratified to hear Sherman whimper, "Please, no more. Please, please, PLEASE, tell Mr. Laughlin I'm sorry. I'll never bother him again. I'll disappear and never bother him again."

  Tobert decided that Jacob had been given enough time to recover from the last insult and it was time to keep the party going.

  He took an old fashioned ice pick from a cardboard sheath in his jacket and moved toward Jacob with an evil twisted smile on his lips.

  Sherman alternated between screaming in pain and pleading for his life. "AAAaaahEEEE PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" "AAAaaahEEEE PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" Over and over as Crazy Kenny stabbed him ten, twenty, thirty times with the sharp point in the sciatic nerve until he got tired of Jacobs pleading and screaming and stuffed the dirty rag back into Sherman's mouth to muffle the noise.

  He gave the pathetic shaking victim a little time to recover and busied himself putting together a little fun machine of his own making. It looked like it had started life as an old army field telephone with two long wire leads terminating in alligator clips on the ends.

  Sherman began to gather his wits about him his eyes widened as Kenny attached one alligator clip to his exposed scrotum and the other to the tender flesh under his testicles.

  “MMMMMMFFFFF!” was the only sound that Jacob was able to make through the rag stuffed into his mouth. “MMMMMMFFFFF!” “MMMMMMMFFFFF!”

  Kenny began to turn the handle at the side of the contraption and the electric current surged through the wires and into Sherman's tender private parts.

  The “MMMMMMMFFFFF!” Became higher pitched and almost continuous.

  For the next three hours Crazy Kenny made sure that he lovingly gave attention to Sherman’s head, collar bones, elbows, knees and crotch only pausing long enough between sessions to keep the would-be shakedown artist from losing consciousness. At the end of three hou
rs, Crazy Kenny Tobert watched Sherman bleed and whimper for a while before gathering up the tools of his trade, making certain that he had gathered everything he had brought into the pillow case he used for a sack and ran his ice pick deeply into Sherman Jacob's right ear before leaving.

  The ringing of the phone startled Maurice Loughlin. He wasn’t expecting any calls tonight. He was organizing his plans for the trip scheduled for tomorrow. “Who the hell is bothering me now?” he thought to himself.

  “Hello?” he answered in a purposely gruff voice.

  “Loughlin do you recognize my voice?” Loughlin felt an unwelcome chill run through him knowing that this call was not good news in any way.

  “Yes, I recognize you. What can I do for you tonight, sir?”

  “Well, it seems as though your janitor got a bit carried away and left more of a mess than you started with. I don’t want any further involvement for the firm at this point so it will be up to you to tidy up.

  Do you still have that old Iver-Johnson that the firm issued to you years back?”

  “Yes, I still have it sir, but as you may be aware, I haven’t been involved in any wet work for a number of years. I’m really out of practice.”

  “Your problem, not ours Loughlin. This thing started with you and now it’s up to you to tidy up in a manner acceptable to the firm. I will have the janitor meet you tomorrow morning at nine o’clock at the rear of Harms Woods grove number two, back behind the picnic shelter near the outhouse. He will be told that you are bringing a bonus for a job well done. Make sure that you have a flash roll of a grand that you can show him as he comes up. He’s a greedy little bastard so you’ll have his full attention when you show him the flash roll. Hand it to him to count and as he is doing that complete the transaction. It should go without having to be mentioned that you need to make certain that there is no possibility of connection to the firm so after the job is completed I would suggest you dispose of the Iver-Johnson afterwards. Do I make myself and the firms’ position clear Loughlin?”