Guilty or Else jo-1

by Jeff Sherratt

  I started to shake. I didn’t like the sound of extreme measures. But I wondered what I could tell him. He already had the cassette tape; he already knew what I knew about his operation.

  “Why don’t we start with the obvious question? How many people have you told about the unfortunate conversation you’d taped at Chasen’s? Illegally, I might add.”

  Illegally. He had to be kidding. The guy runs drugs and teen prostitutes and he talks about what’s legal. I glanced around. My left brain told me that I’d never get free. My right brain still tried to figure out an escape route. Gus stood behind me with the gun pointed at my head; Angelo, the monster, hovered off to the side. Other than the revolver in Gus’s hand I saw nothing in the office that could be used as a weapon.

  “Come on, O’Brien, speak up. Don’t be shy.”

  I remained silent.

  He paused for a beat, then his voice changed, became hard. “Angelo,” is all he said, but the way he said it made my skin crawl.

  Angelo stood and flexed his fingers as he moved toward me. He backhanded me twice across the face. I tasted blood.

  “Goddammit, I haven’t told anyone about the recording.”

  “You expect me to believe that? You’re working with Sica. You would’ve told him right off the bat.”

  “Yeah, I told Sica. I forgot.” Let him take up the issue with the Sica gang. I didn’t give a shit.

  “Who else?”

  “No one.”

  “What about that fat Jew you hang around with?”

  Oh Christ! No way would I tell him about Sol’s involvement. “He’s just a friend. We don’t talk about business.”

  Angelo whacked me again, three times in rapid succession. I could feel my face pulse as my mouth started to swell. Blood ran down my shirt. He hit me again, harder.

  “I know you’ve discussed the tape with that cute little piece of ass you have running around your office. We’ll be chatting with her too.”

  Oh God, no! What have I done? Shit, not Rita.

  “She knows nothing, goddammit. She’s a filing clerk, that’s all. I don’t confide in her about anything. You told me yourself the tape is illegal. Believe me, she knows nothing.”

  “You’re protesting too much. She’s in on it, all right.”

  I squirmed, wanting to get my hands around his fat ugly neck and squeeze until his eyeballs popped out of their sockets. “God damn it! I told you she doesn’t know anything!”

  Angelo hit me with his fist this time. My head snapped back and my vision blurred. I shook my head, spraying blood around the room.

  “You’re a lying sack of shit, O’Brien. But we have ways.” Karadimos reached in his desk drawer again. This time he pulled out a syringe and held it to the light. A drop of viscous fluid oozed out of the tip of the needle.

  C H A P T E R 49

  Angelo jerked me out of the chair and dropped me onto the old, ratty car bench seat that Karadimos used as an office couch. I didn’t dare resist, not with Gus keeping the gun trained on me.

  “Lay him out and tie his arms and legs down.”

  Karadimos tossed Angelo the roll of duct tape. He came around from his desk, holding the syringe. “Don’t try anything, O’Brien. Wouldn’t want to have Gus shoot you here and mess up the upholstery.”

  I realized what he was going to do: pump me full of Sodium Pentothal or Amytal-truth serum. Early in my LAPD career, I’d seen a detective use the stuff on a prisoner. It wasn’t pretty. The cop gave the guy too much and he convulsed and almost died.

  “No, you sonofabitch!”

  Angelo backhanded me across the face again. The blow loosened one of my back teeth. I pressed it with my tongue and felt it move. My face must have looked like hamburger. “Shut up, and do as you’re told,” he snapped. “Or I’ll whack you again, harder.”

  Now I couldn’t move. Angelo had tied my legs too tight, cutting off the blood flow to my feet, and Gus stood over me with the business end of the revolver pressed against my forehead. Karadimos held the syringe up to the light; a tiny stream of liquid shot out of the needle. “Two milliliters should do the trick, don’t want to knock you out entirely.” He jabbed the needle in my thigh, right through the fabric of my pants.

  The hell with Gus and the gun. I twisted and bucked, tried to kick my feet. No good, my legs were trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey. I struggled harder.

  As Karadimos slowly depressed the plunger, he shouted, “Hold still, O’Brien. You’ll break the goddamn needle. Angelo, for chrissakes, pin his legs!”

  Angelo’s two hands were like vice grips, clamping my knees against the seat. But it didn’t matter. There was nothing I could do now. The fluid coursed through my veins.

  I’m weak, muscles like Jell-O and warm, very warm. Pain in my face, disappeared…a nice…no, a wonderful euphoria coming over me. I’m floating…drifting in the air. Eyelids heavy…vision closing in…a circle of light, getting smaller, smaller in the darkness.

  “Wake up!” a faraway voice said. I felt a slap across my face. Didn’t hurt, and I didn’t care. Someone slapped me again. Just want to sleep, such a beautiful sleep…

  I felt another slap. “Wake up!” the voice, closer this time, almost in my ear. “Can you hear me? Wake up, you son of a bitch!”

  A sliver of dim light…eyelids heavy, each weighed ten pounds. I floated on the car seat, weightless…Karadimos, floating too. His face inches from mine. A blur, a hand whipped across my face…why…what have I done? The Greek…mad…not floating anymore. My tongue is thick. Hard to breathe…focus, focus, try to focus. Nothing hurts. He said to relax…relax…

  “I could’ve given him too much.” Karadimos’s voice.

  Have to talk…tell him how I feel. “Good morning…what a wonderful day.” My voice is strange. I said that?

  “Wait, he’s coming around. In a few more seconds he’ll jabber like a cockatoo. I want to hold him in twilight. Gus, get me the black satchel by my desk. Has more juice in it, in case we need it later.”

  “I like juice…like coffee better, but my coffee tastes like piss,” I heard myself say and had no idea what I was talking about. “Rita makes good coffee…goddamn; she’s pretty…fucking beautiful. Wait, I’m her boss. Wouldn’t be right…”

  “Welcome back, Jimmy. How do you feel?”

  “Fucking great, thank you very much.”

  “We’re going to have a nice little talk. Do you feel like talking to me?”

  “Yeah, a nice talk. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Tell me about the tape recording.”

  Tape. I began singing the words to “Hey, Jude.”

  “Jimmy, listen to me. Did you tell anyone about the tape?”

  “I lost the tape…my favorite, the Beatles. They don’t perform anymore, you know…”

  “Not that tape. The one you recorded at Chasen’s.”

  “Lost it, too…let a hooker steal it…she gave it to you. Sol said she worked for you.”

  “How much does Silverman know about my business?”

  Sol’s smart…he’s my friend.” I could hear my voice echo in my brain. Don’t talk. Don’t talk about Sol. I shouldn’t talk about him. “Sol doesn’t like you.” I rolled my head. So confused, hazy, but I couldn’t stop talking. “Sol wants to put you in jail.” Christ, keep your trap shut.

  “Did you tell the police, or the district attorney, what you heard on the tape?”

  “She hates me…”

  “Who hates you?”

  “Bobbi.”

  “Why?”

  “Thinks I lied about your airplane.”

  “You did, Jimmy. You lied to her. I didn’t kill that girl.”

  “Bobbi’s pretty too, I’d like to-oops, not gonna to say that. We have a Chinese wall…” Is this a nightmare? I wanted to throw up.

  “What’s he talking about, boss? What’s this crap about a Chinese wall?”

  “Shut up, Gus! He’s talking, that’s what counts.”

  It beca
me quiet for a moment. Tired…I felt tired, but not as tired as before. The shadows in my mind started to brighten…I’m coming back. I remember now. Oh Christ! He gave me Pentothal!

  Karadimos slapped me again. “Tell me about Rita, your secretary. What does she know? Had she heard the tape?”

  “Fuck you, Karadimos!”

  “Gus, get me another syringe out of the bag.”

  Do something, and do it fast. Act drunk, something. Act like someone who’d overdosed on Pentothal. I began singing again.

  “Hold it. I think he’s still under the influence. If I give him any more he might blackout or croak. We won’t get shit from him.”

  “Lady Madonna… children at your…feet, sweet feet.”

  I slurred my voice. The Beatles would shit if they heard me sing their music.

  “O’Brien, tell me about Rita. What does she know?”

  “Aw, sweet little Rita. Dumb as a box of rocks. I only keep her around because she’s got a cute ass…”

  “O’Brien! What does she know?”

  “She doesn’t know her goddamn name…but she can sure swing that sweet little tushy. Good night, Karadimos. I’m going to take a nice li’l nappy.” I closed my eyes and pretended to pass out. I had to control my breathing, relax, let my body go limp. It was my only hope at staying alive.

  Karadimos slapped me again. But I just lay there with my eyes closed, trying hard to keep from slipping back into the simmering fog.

  “O’Brien, wake up! Goddammit, I need more information.” Karadimos’s voice echoed in my head.

  “What the hell was that all about, boss?” Gus asked.

  “The guy sounds like he’s drunk. I don’t think your joy juice worked.”

  “He may be faking,” Karadimos said. “Hand me that lighter on the desk.”

  A moment later someone grabbed my arm. I head a click then felt a searing pain on the back of my hand. If it weren’t for the lingering effect of the Pentothal, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. But the pain would help keep me alert. I clenched my teeth and didn’t move.

  “Maybe you gave him too much,” Angelo said. “Looks like you knocked him out.”

  “Sometimes it happens like that. We won’t get anything more out of him. Besides, he’s getting nowhere in his chicken shit investigation of our organization. He’s nothing; I’ve got him blocked at every turn. It’s that bastard Silverman I’m worried about.”

  “Maybe he’ll quit the case if O’Brien should happen to disappear.”

  “No way. He’s a fucking bulldog. We’ll fight him if we have to. But I don’t want the cops finding any more bodies. There’s too much heat coming down now, because some asshole whacked that Graham bitch before Kruger could get to her.”

  “What do you wanna do with him?” Gus asked.

  “You two get him outta here, right now. Get him outta my sight! Throw him in the garbage pit. Then turn on the grinder.”

  C H A P T E R 50

  Angelo and Gus cut me loose from the couch, grabbed my arms and legs and carried me out the door. With my eyelids slightly open, I saw everything in a hazy blur. My mind was back in focus, but my muscles wouldn’t function. I felt like a sack of wet mush. I couldn’t resist, could hardly move, but if I didn’t get control of my body, I’d soon be dead. As we got closer to the garbage pit, the stench made me want to gag, but I couldn’t even do that.

  The dim yard was spotted with circles of yellow light coming from floods mounted high on posts. The two goons carried me between a dump truck and a huge diesel tractor with a scraper blade toward an area about fifty feet behind the office. One of the floodlights illuminated the pit, a metal-lined rectangular hole in the ground with a chain guard rimming the perimeter.

  They dropped me on the hard ground close to the edge and I tasted dirt. “Go turn on the grinder. I’ll roll him into the pit,” Angelo said.

  “Yeah, the machine has to be up and running or he’ll plug it up,” Gus replied. “I’ll have to feed him in slow and easy with the rest of the crap. You sure he’s out of it?”

  “Hell yes.” Angelo let out a mirthless laugh. “The boss thinks he’s a smart son-of-a-bitch, but he ain’t no doctor. He shot him so full of joy juice it practically killed him. That shit never works. I could’a told him. But he never listens to me.”

  I turned my head a fraction and saw Gus hand Angelo his gun. “Here, use this if he comes to.” Angelo jammed the gun in his belt. “He ain’t coming to. Be more fun if he did. I’d like to hear the bastard scream as he makes a nosedive into the grinder.”

  In my mind I saw a large garbage disposal ripping chunks of my body to shreds as I was being fed into its gaping maw. Not pretty.

  Gus dashed off into the dim light toward a tall iron platform twenty feet away. Beyond the platform loomed a cluster of heavy-duty machinery. I had to act. But I was still too weak to put up a fight.

  Angelo pulled one of the metal pipes, a stanchion connected to the thin guard chain, out of a small hole in the ground and cast it aside, leaving a section open. He grabbed my legs and dragged me close to the edge. I heard Karadimos, probably standing somewhere outside his office, shout, “Angelo, for chrissakes, dump him in the goddamn pit already and get your ass back here. I need help going through these records.”

  “Aw shit, boss. I wanna watch him get chewed up in the grinder.”

  My body teetered on the side of the pit for a second or two. Then, Angelo rolled me the rest of the way in. As I twisted and started to slide into the hole, I grabbed the chain lying on the ground and held on for dear life. The chain snapped and the pipe stanchion followed, hitting me on the head as I tumbled into the pit and landed on a pile of rotten cantaloupes. My head hurt and blood ran down my face. But after what I’d been through, it didn’t seem to matter.

  Suddenly I heard a loud whirring noise, like a jet engine firing up. The grinder! I felt a vibration, and the rotten cantaloupes under me started to move. I was sinking into the morass. I had to do something fast. Gus must have also switched on the conveyor that fed the giant garbage disposal. It moved under the refuse. I didn’t give a damn about the putrid smell, the viscous slime oozing into my pores, or anything else. I just had to get the hell out of there. Adrenalin pumped through my system, eliminating the Pentothal effects, and my body came to life.

  Holding the pipe in one hand, I reached out with the other, feeling for the side of the pit. Like a gator swimming through a river of shit, I squirmed and kicked and made it to the side, but I continued to sink deeper. The side of the pit was slippery with sludge; no foothold. I scraped and clawed and only slipped farther down into the muck.

  Looking up, I saw stars in the night, but I also caught sight of the edge of the pit, maybe five feet above my head.

  Above and to my left, an angle iron brace crisscrossed the opening. I ran my hand over the chain that was connected to the pipe-rusty and thin. It snapped before when I held it as I rolled in, but I had to try again. It was my only hope.

  Holding the end of the chain, I tried to loop the pipe around the brace. No luck. It fell back and I sank deeper. The grinder made crunching, gnawing sounds as it gobbled up the refuse being fed into it.

  I had one more chance before being sucked down under the garbage heading for the grinder. I brought my arm back like a spear thrower and snapped it forward. The pipe shot upward; it didn’t fall back. It circled the brace and dangled there. I quickly looped the other end of the chain around the angle iron and started to climb out of the pit, hand over hand.

  I prayed Angelo hadn’t disobeyed his boss and hung around to watch, and I prayed that the chain would hold my weight. My prayers were answered. It held.

  I crawled over the edge of the pit, exhausted and covered with rotting garbage, but alive. Sprawled on the ground for a moment, I gasped for air. The pigs in Saugus would have to make do without ground lawyer on the menu tomorrow.

  I shot a glance around the yard: no Angelo. In the shadows off to my right, I could see the
tall platform. I made out the dim outline of Gus standing atop it. He stayed busy feeding garbage that came up an inclined conveyor into a hopper above the giant grinding machine. I also spotted an enormous steel cylinder beyond the grinder and could smell the ground slop being cooked in the long rotating tube.

  Undoing the pipe looped around the brace, I scrambled to the bottom of the platform. I had to get Gloria’s aluminum case before Karadimos destroyed the evidence, and I needed a weapon. Gus had given his revolver to Angelo, but he probably had another gun tucked away.

  The deafening cacophony of the machinery concealed any sound I may have made as I scurried to the top of the platform. Gus turned and faced me, eyes wide, just as I wound up and bashed his head with the pipe stanchion. He fell where he stood. He wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

  Quickly, I went through his pockets and felt around the rim of his pants. I also patted his legs looking for an ankle holster.

  Goddammit, no weapon of any kind. What kind of asshole gangster didn’t carry a hidden gun, or even a knife?

  Back down on the ground, I glanced toward the lights burning in the office. Karadimos and Angelo were still there. It’d be suicide to walk in unarmed. But soon they’d wonder about Gus, and they’d come out to look for him.

  Hunched down, I made a dash for the big D7 Caterpillar parked close to the office and climbed atop the bulldozer. I knew about these beasts from working summer construction jobs during high school. Pushing the button, I started the pony motor-the small motor that starts the big one-and waited a few seconds, then pulled the lever in front of the instrument panel, engaging the main engine.

  The diesel coughed once, belched smoke, and turned over. I feathered the choke, and it ran smoothly. I pulled the throttle out a hair, put the dozer in gear, and jumped off the monster. It crawled away, moving in a circle like a lumbering ogre at about two miles an hour. The dozer’s racket was deafening, drowning out whatever noise came from the grinder.

  I darted to the old house Karadimos used an office and flattened myself against the wall next to the front door.