by Pete Lister
§ § §
4
“What d’ya mean, gone?” Shiv Thompson was livid. He spoke quietly, but with an edge, carrying more venom, more threat, than if he’d raised his voice.
The twenty-hundred post Ops supervisor wasn’t happy having to make this call. “Shiv, I had to walk in tonight. The fence wouldn’t lay down. When I got here, both Ops doors were open.”
“Bullshit, Duke. There’s no way those doors were open. I designed that place myself. Somebody’s got to throw the switches to open those doors.”
“No, sir. Both Ops doors were unlocked. When I got into Ops, it was empty and both switches were duct-taped open. I couldn’t go into Count or the hallway, of course, but I can see that everybody’s dead. They’re all laying on the floor not breathing. Looks like they threw up and pissed themselves, too.”
“What? They been shot?”
“No, sir. I didn’t see no blood. Just layin’ there not breathin’s all I can see. The rest of this shift will start comin’ to work soon, you know? Y’want I should call them to stay home?”
“Yeah, do that. Then go over to Curtis’ place and wait for me. I’ll be there soon’s I get Willy to fire up the chopper. I’ll meet you at Curtis’ in a couple hours.”
“Uh, Shiv?”
“Yeah?”
“Curtis’ place is closed up, all the lights are out. Curtis and his brother’s dead, too. I found them layin’ on the road by the barn.”
“Damn, same as the others?”
“No, sir, looks like a bullet to the back of the head, both of them.”
“Any sign of the pickup?”
“No, sir. Just those two Thibodeaux boys laying on the drive next to a pile of gas masks. By the way, Lawrence’s Bronco’s still in the lot, but his body ain’t here.”
“That rat bastard took the truck. Okay. Get them two off the drive , and wait‘ll I get there. Put them in the barn and wait for me in Ops.”
“Yessir, I’ll take care of it. I’ll be here when you get here. I’ll call everybody to stay home ‘till further notice, too.”
“Yeah, wait, no, don’t call them. Let them come in. Tell them I’m on my way. Tell them to cool their heels, I don’t want nobody leaving ‘till I get there.”
“Shit, Shiv,” said Duke. “This is gonna be one screwed-up night, ain’t it?”
“It already is, Duke. It already is.”
Thirty-year old Duke Hazelton was still sitting in Ops, all 230 pounds of him. The tall half Irish, half Winnebago, an ex-con biker with his head shaved, was drinking coffee from his thermos and listening to the oldies on WOLX out of Madison when Willy set the chopper down by the barn. Duke spotted it on the monitor and opened the ramp as Shiv walked down the drive. The light spilled out of the tunnel onto the dirt road, making Shiv’s walk a little easier.
Shiv Thompson was forty-two, barrel-chested, almost 6’ tall, stocky, but carrying his weight well. His brown hair was turning silver, and he had a vicious look about him, accentuated by the scowl that looked burned onto his face. He wore a tailored linen sport coat over an off-white silk shirt. A large gold signet ring on his right hand was always noticeable, as he unconsciously turned his hand wherever he went, so it would be seen by all in the immediate vicinity. It had been his first jewelry purchase when he took over the Midwest heroin trade, and was still his favorite.
§ § §
Shiv had grown up in Cabrini-Green, the hard-scrabble projects on Chicago’s near north side. Hard work, intelligence, and ambition had fueled his rise from hustler to pick-pocket to drug dealer to foot soldier for Iron Mike Nadolinski. He’d been twenty-seven the day he’d been called into Nad’s office.
“Shiv, I gotta job for you. It’s important, and if you handle it, you move into the front office.”
“What is it?”
“I just found out Dan Newman’s a snitch. Ralph di Stasio heard some dick talkin’ about it. I want you to take care of him.”
“Today?”
“Right now. I told him I needed to talk to him. He’s gonna be parked in the alley behind Carson’s in about twenty minutes. Tell him to brief you on the project he’s working on, then you take it over. Use this piece, and get rid of it afterwards.”
Shiv had taken the automatic, nodded, and left the office. Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the alley and got out of his car, carrying a plastic soda bottle. He slid into the passenger seat of Dan’s Mustang, and took a hit off his drink.
“How’s it going, Shiv?”
“Okay, Dan, you?”
“Everything’s copasetic. I’m waiting for Nad.”
“Nad ain’t comin’. He told me come, instead.”
“What’s with the piece, Shiv? We gotta problem?”
“I ain’t, but Nad seems to. He heard you been talking to some cop.”
“That ain’t true, Shiv. You gotta tell him, that ain’t true.”
“Dan, Nad don’t make that shit up. I’ll give you a chance, though. What did you tell the cops?”
“I’m telling you, Shiv, I ain’t no snitch! I never talked to no cops!”
“Then tell me, waddya know that John Law might be innerested in?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you one thing. Nad’s taking a delivery tonight. It’s the biggest score he’s ever made, and it’s comin’ from Cuba.”
“How big a score?”
“A truckload of black tar.”
“How come I ain’t heard nothin’ about it?”
“I don’t know. I heard about it by mistake.”
“How d’ya hear something like that by mistake?”
“I was pickin’ up my pay from Chris the other day, and I heard Nad on the phone. I been doing Chris, and I asked her what was going on. She told me.”
“So why is this any different from the usual deliveries?”
“It’s 'cause the stuff ain’t actually bein’ delivered. Nad called me in the office and told me to round up some guys for a pickup tonight. I’m supposed to pick it up at the Lake Forest Oasis west side parkin’ lot. It’s gonna be in a white truck with red mud flaps. That’s all I know.”
“When’s this pickup supposed to go down?”
“Two o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“So who’d you get?”
“I ain’t got nobody, yet. I was gonna do it right after I talked to Nad.”
“Nad says you already talked.”
“I ain’t, Shiv, I swear I ain’t!” Shiv nodded and upended the bottle, draining it.
“Okay, Dan, I believe you. But, you know, if the deal gets busted, you’ll find out what the bottom of Lake Geneva looks like, right?”
“Christ, Shiv, what if somebody else rigged the action? How can Nad hold me responsible then?”
“Tell you what I’ll do, Dan. I’ll tell Nad you’re straight. He’ll believe me. Where you supposed to take the stuff after the pickup?”
“I’m supposed to meet Nad on the west side parking lot of the Hinsdale Oasis.”
“Okay, Dan. I’ll let Nad know you’re on the up-and-up.”
“Thanks, Shiv. Tell him he won’t be sorry he trusted me.”
“He won’t be.” Shiv told him, as he brought the gun up, firing a single round through the plastic bottle, directly into Dan’s right temple.
That night, when the truck delivering Nad’s black tar arrived at the Oasis, Shiv was waiting. He walked up and nodded at the driver. When the driver stepped out of the truck, Shiv fired through another bottle, then climbed into the truck and drove off, southbound on I-90.
The next morning, Shiv was in the office before Nad arrived. He asked Chris, Nad’s secretary, to go out and pick up donuts, telling her that he and Nad were expecting people first thing. Chris had just left when Nad walked in.
“Shiv, what happened with Dan?”
“I don’t know, Nad. I spent all yesterday looking. He didn’t show for the meet, and he wasn’t home or any of his usual places. Nobody’s seen him in a couple of days; it’s like he disap
peared. I come in this morning to see if you got any idea where I can find him.”
“That sonuvabitch! He was supposed to arrange a pick-up for me last night, and I wanted you to tell him to back off and leave you make it, instead. Now, I don’t even know if it went down. I think he copped the stuff and took off with it.”
“What kinda stuff?”
“Black tar. you know the Cuban, Raul? He made me a deal. I gotta make a call, see if anybody picked it up.”
“Nad, I did hear something you might wanna know about.”
“What is it?”
“There’s been a change of management.” Shiv fired five rounds through the pocket of his coat, directly into Nad’s chest.
There was a new boss in the Chicago heroin trade.
§ § §
Duke buzzed the doors as Shiv approached and waited as he walked into Count. Shiv recoiled as he entered the room, reaching for his handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose. Spinning around, he bolted for the door. After quickly glancing around the hallway and the fallen employees, he hurried to the loading dock and up the ramp. Duke watched on the monitors as his boss emerged from under the old loading ramp and stalked to the ‘root cellar’ entrance. Two minutes later, Shiv entered Ops and leaned over Duke’s console.
“Jesus Christ, Duke! The whole place smells like shit, piss, and puke! How many showed up, so far?”
“The two guards and a Counter. They’re waitin’ in their cars. I didn’t think you’d want them inside ‘till you got here. We’ve had a couple of pickups come in, too. I told the drivers to stay with their trucks in the parkin’ lot.”
“Good thinkin’. Keep them out there ‘till we’re ready in here. Send one of the guards somewhere to pick up a coupla gallons of bleach and a couple of fans, so we can get this place cleaned up, and Duke, lemme know right away if anybody don’t show tonight.”
“Yessir.”
“I’m gonna go get one of them gas masks and look around. Keep everyone else in the parkin’ lot ‘till I tell ya.”
Making the return circuit from Ops, Shiv stopped to pick up the three gas masks from the side of the road in front of the barn. As he crossed the parking lot, he stopped to talk to the guards waiting to go on duty. Pulling the mask over his head, he re-entered Count.
The Counters lay slumped over their tables, and the guards had dropped where they stood, one in the vault, the other in the hallway, just as Duke had reported. Each of the counters still had several inches of bills in front of him, the remains of the bundles they had been counting when they died.
Shiv thought he smelled the stench in the room, even through the mask. He grimaced at the sight of thousands of dollars worth of vomit-stained bills. The counters had thrown up as their heads dropped onto the tables, mindless of the currency cushioning their fall.
The two guards, wearing the other two gas masks, had entered behind Shiv. Looking around quietly, the younger one, the one with a scar across his cheek, turned to the boss. “Shiv, what the hell happened here?”
“That’s what I wanna know. You guys know anything about what went down here tonight? Maybe you heard something din make sense ‘till you saw this?” They both shook their heads vigorously.
“No, sir, Shiv,” said the older one, the one with the gray comb-over. “If I’da knowed about this, I damned sure wouldn’t have come to work tonight. I’da been on the phone wit’ you, awready. That’s for damn sure.”
“Okay, check these guys. Lemme know you see any holes, any blood.” Shiv watched as they started checking the dead, but no wounds were found. It was like everyone had blown their lunch at the same time and then died.
“Awright, I want everyone else to stay in the parkin’ lot. Grab your guns off these guys. I want you two to comb the parking lot and around the barn. Check the road from here to Curtis’, too. I doubt if there’ll be any more problems tonight, but you might find something. Keep your eyes open. I wanna know you see anything don’t look right. If you find anything, don’t touch it, jus’ lemme know.” Nodding, the two hurried out.
Shiv walked over to the intercom panel on the wall inside the vault. “Duke, you listenin’?”
“Yeah, Shiv, I’m here.”
“Call Willy on his cell. Tell him to go back to Chicago and pick up Scott and di Stasio. As much as I pay them to keep their goddam noses turned the other way, they ought to be able to act like cops when I need them.”
“Got it.”
“Then, tell Chris to scramble the supply truck. Tell her I need a load, like yesterday. I need half a day’s supply. Have the truck meet Willy and the cops, then reload and hit the road. I need to replace what’s gone, an’ I need it quick. We got a coupla trucks here already and another a couple more’ll probably come in while we’re waitin’. And, Duke, tell her to keep her mouth shut about this until I talk to her. She shouldn’t say nothin’ to nobody. Got all that?”
“Got it, Shiv. I’m on it.” Shiv had seen him taking notes as fast as the instructions poured out of the speaker. He heard Duke click off the intercom as he reached for the phone. ‘He’s a good man.’ Shiv thought. ‘I wish I had a dozen more just like him.’
§ § §
Shiv was in the parking lot, talking to some of the waiting employees, when one of the pickup drivers cranked his engine and started up the ramp. Shiv was just turning to stop him when Duke called over the parking lot intercom, “They’re here, Shiv. I got one of the pickups meeting the chopper to get the stuff.” Duke walked over to the column and thumbed the press-to-talk button.
“Good headwork, Duke. Take an attaboy out of petty cash.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just something Hawkeye used to tell Radar.”
“Who?”
“Never mind, Duke. Good job.”
Shiv stepped onto the loading dock as the two Chicago detectives, Sonny Scott and Ralph di Stasio, came walking down the ramp, looking like they had slept in their rumpled suits. They looked around in amazement.
The Mutt and Jeff of the Chicago P.D., the African-American Scott was thirty-six, tall and lean, while the Italian di Stasio, at forty-one, was like a 5’6” fire plug, and almost completely bald, with a bushy mustache like Mario on the computer game. In fact, the other cops often called him Mario. Except for being on Shiv’s payroll, covering Shiv’s business, they were pretty good cops.
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, Shiv.” Scott stared around the parking lot, taking in the ramp and the loading dock. “What the hell is this place?”
“It’s my outa-town office, waddya think? C’mere.” The three men walked through the door and into Count together. Neither detective reacted. They had seen dead bodies, and knew what happened when people died, but neither of them had ever seen this many vics in this small a room. Scott pulled a small jar of Vicks out of his pocket and rubbed some under his nose, passing it to di Stasio, who used it and passed it to Shiv.
“What’s this?”
“Rub a little under your nose, covers the stench,” Di Stasio told him, as Shiv copied the two detectives, handing the jar back to Scott before stepping to the intercom.
“Duke.”
“Yeah, Shiv?”
“Crank up the air, willya? It stinks in here.” Almost immediately, fresh air poured from the vents, and the smell slowly began to recede.
The two heavy-duty wooden tables in the room still held the opened bundles of cash, unmoved since the Counters had passed out in mid-count.
The four Counters, arms extended toward the cash and the counting machines, had simply keeled over onto the tables, still sitting at their posts. The Count guard had collapsed in the vault.
The two detectives looked around the room and, without a word, pulled on light blue nitrile gloves they had been carrying in their pockets. They started around the perimeter walls, going in opposite directions, checking the room and the fallen guard, examining his head and hands. After checking the empty vault, they checked the Counters, still slumped over their table
s. di Stasio rubbed his hand across a table and studied his fingertips.
When they finished in Count, they went down the hall to the dispensary, talking quietly together, checking the fallen guard in the hallway, with Shiv trailing behind. Duke buzzed them through, and they checked the dispensary thoroughly before returning to Shiv, waiting in the hallway.
They looked through the glass wall at Duke, then looked closely at the spider webs in the glass, and the bullets on the floor.
“Shiv,” di Stasio started. “Looks like a robbery here.”
“No shit, Sherlock. C’mon, Ralph, this ain’t no laughin’ matter. Now, tell me something I don’t know.”
“This ain’t TV, Shiv. We can’t just look at a crime scene and tell you what color shirt the perp was wearing and what he was driving.”
“I don’t need that shit. I know who done it. I know what he was wearing and what he’s driving, too. Now, what can you guys tell me about my ‘crime scene’?”
“How do you know what he was wearing?” Scott asked.
“I checked the archive.”
“What archive?”
“See all them cameras? They all record 24/7. It’s on my computer in there.” He tilted his head toward where Duke sat in Ops, watching them.
“How does that guy get in that room? No door, I can see.”
“There’s a door in the wall behind him. The door release buttons are on the panel in front of him. It leads to the old root cellar by the barn. There’s no direct access between that room and the rest of the place.”
While the two detectives stepped back and talked quietly for a couple of minutes, referring to their notebooks, Shiv stepped to the intercom.
