Season of the Assassin

by Laird, Thomas

  We’re close to the Lake, so we can smell the water. The heat and humidity are oppressive. But there’s no place to hide.

  The violence starts in the late afternoon and builds to its crescendo by 9.00 p.m. or so. I don’t have time to look at my watch. I’m dressed in my blues, like everyone else out here. When our line of cops withstands the first charge of punks and paid ‘revolutionaries’, it’s dusk. It’s a wave of freaks against a double line of coppers. We get aggressive and drive them back. Only a few of them offer any real competition. Some of our guys get out of control and they beat the snot out of several of the protesters. I have to grab one uniform who’s about to club a female into submission. The little shit calls me a pig motherfucker for my trouble, so I kick her in the ass hard, and she retreats to her own lines.

  They throw some bottles and bricks, but where we are is fairly stable for the rest of the long night. The brutality some of our number use seems sufficient to slow these kids down. But they’re not all kids. Some of them are much older, much more mature. They’re the ones with a cause stuck up their asses. Or they’re on the payroll of someone who wants to change the world. The usual assholes.

  All I know is Eddie and I are prevented from doing our work because the Convention and the yips and dips and freaks are all standing in our way.

  *

  The weeks that follow seem to be a simmering down. The rads are still in the streets, the war is still slogging in the wrong direction in Vietnam, and Carl Anglin is still living the good life on the North Side.

  He has babes wandering in and out of his apartment. Amazing. These women must know his reputation, but they are attracted to him nonetheless. Some very nice-looking women, too. Maybe it’s the rush of danger. Maybe it’s the times. Maybe he’s got a foot-long schwantz. Who knows?

  Eddie and I book two dozen no-brainers in July. Mostly domestic squabbles that went bloody. Husbands stabbing wives. Wives poisoning the old man, siblings blowing each other away. Nothing remotely out of the ordinary.

  Carl Anglin is the case. There is no other. Not before. Not now. Even my partner thinks I’m beginning to ‘obsess’ about him. Every time we’re free from an overload of murders we find ourselves surveilling Anglin’s apartment.

  Carl throws a party at the end of the month. He’s just signed a book contract. Six figures, major publisher. And I hear there is a possibility of a movie tie-in. The son of a bitch even has a literary agent.

  ‘No, Jake. Don’t do it.’

  ‘It’s an open bash, Eddie. Why wouldn’t we be invited?’

  I convince him to get out of the car with me. We walk up to Anglin’s apartment building and I ring his doorbell at the front door. He buzzes us in immediately and we’re on our way up to his third-floor flat.

  The smell of dope is thick in the air. I see men and women of all colors crowding his small place. They are primarily younger people. Mid to late twenties, mostly.

  ‘Jesus, Jake. Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Eddie moans.

  We have to squeeze to get through the entry.

  ‘Somebody call the pigs?’ a well-endowed topless blonde giggles.

  ‘Yeah. Someone called about a public indecency rap,’ I tell her.

  ‘You mean someone called because I’m giving my breasts a little night air?’ she asks teasingly.

  Eddie’s got his stare fixed on her melons.

  ‘Nah. No one called. Just kidding.’

  ‘Would you like to find out if they’re as tasty as they look?’

  ‘Nah. I’m just here to support Carl.’

  ‘A cop here to support Carl?’ she asks. Her tits bob as she takes a deep breath of this marijuana-laden air. There’s plenty of beer and hard stuff on scene as well.

  The blonde comes closer. Close enough to brush her nipples against my sleeve. I look over her shoulder and I see some male performing oral sex on a brunette female. The brown-haired sweetie is on top of the dining-room table with her legs straight up in the air, and this guy is going at her like a starved hog at a trough. Which reminds me that Eddie and I are both ‘pigs’ here.

  ‘You like what you see?’ the blonde inquires.

  ‘Very interesting,’ I reply, smiling. ‘But I’m married.’

  ‘So ’m I,’ she grins.

  She is very blown out. The stench of weed is heavy on her hair and face. She almost makes me gag with the acrid stench.

  ‘You’ve got great breasts,’ I tell her.

  We move into the apartment past her. Past the guy performing cunnilingus, and then into the kitchenette. There must be fifty people crammed into Anglin’s one-bedroom apartment.

  A man in a suit stands by the refrigerator.

  ‘You want a beer?’ the suit asks.

  He goes into the icebox and gets out two for us. Eddie takes his and I grab hold of mine. We’re on duty, but we don’t need to stick out anymore than we already do.

  ‘James Henry,’ the suit says. ‘I’m Carl’s literary agent. I’m from New York,’ he explains.

  ‘Hear Carl made big money with his book,’ Eddie says and grins.

  ‘Six figures. But there’ll be a paperback and, we hope, a movie.’

  ‘Why would you dirty your hands with blood money?’ I ask.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said, why would you dirty your hands with blood money made from the murders of seven young women?’

  ‘Who…who are you?’

  ‘I’m Jake Parish’

  ‘And what’s your line?’ he continues.

  ‘You mean what do I do? Oh. I’m a police officer.’

  Suddenly the small group around Eddie and me is very quiet.

  ‘I’m in Homicide. Like my partner Eddie here.’

  ‘Jesus,’ James Henry moans.

  ‘No. Jesus ain’t anywhere in the vicinity tonight,’ I tell him.

  The brunette is bucking up against the face of her boyfriend. Apparently she’s arrived at wherever he’s taking her.

  ‘I’ll bet this book’s going to be a best-seller. No?’ I ask him.

  ‘Look — ’

  ‘Look nothing, asshole. Where’s Carl?’

  James Henry looks both of us over. The brunette’s moaning inside her afterglow.

  ‘He’s in the bedroom.’

  Eddie and I squeeze by the literary agent and the half-dozen fans of the beer in the fridge.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say.

  We wade through the tokers and the smokers and the midnight jokers and we find Carl right where the agent said he’d be. The door to the bedroom’s open and Carl Anglin’s on the bed without his pants or Jockeys and he’s being fellated while his female partner is getting it from another male in what is generally referred to as doggie-style.

  We break up their little three-way, however. The female and male grumble and then walk off back to the party.

  I can see Anglin’s green eyes even in the haze of the smoke and summer humidity.

  ‘Well, hello,’ he says. He rises to put on his underwear and pants.

  ‘How you doin’, Carl?’ Eddie asks.

  ‘I was doing just fine until you two broke it up. That girl is a swallower, by God. Ain’t many of them wandering these mean streets.’

  ‘Well, she can come back and gargle with it in a minute,’ I tell him. ‘We just came by to pay our respects.’

  ‘Did you come to partake, or are you here to pinch us all?’ he asks, grinning slyly. He leans back against the headboard of his bed. He’s sitting up now, attentive.

  ‘We’re Homicide. We don’t bust up community blow jobs,’ Eddie reminds him.

  ‘Oh, yeah. You two were the policemen who cracked the big case of the seven nurses…You know, I hear those girls partied heavily. I mean, I heard they threw some downright orgies at that dormitory.’

  ‘How would you know anything like that, Carl?’ I ask him.

  ‘Oh, word of mouth…Get it?’

  ‘So you’re soaring high here. Women you don’t have to rape. All the d
ope you can smoke…This the kind of life you lived when you were in the service, Carl?’

  Anglin’s grin disappears. It appears I’ve found his sensitive spot.

  ‘What are you referring to, specifically?’ he wants to know.

  ‘Oh, nothing. It’s just that I was impressed reading about your exploits with the CIA.’ I smile.

  ‘You don’t know nothing about no CIA because I never been a part of them. You’re trying to get a little rise out of me by showing up here and now I’m getting bored with both of you so why don’t you just get the fuck out?’

  ‘We could screw up your little party in a big way, Carl,’ I remind him. ‘There’s a whole lot of illegality goin’ on around here.’

  ‘You’re not that chickenshit, Parisi!’

  ‘Buck buck, motherfucker.’

  Then I smile at him and Eddie and I move out of his bedroom. His bright green eyes watch us all the way out.

  The blonde is now masturbating the literary agent. She’s taken out his cock from his trousers, and she’s working him with both hands. By the time we pass the two of them, she’s on her knees and he’s moaning with his back up against the refrigerator.

  The brunette is now lying atop her partner in what is known as the sixty-nine configuration.

  ‘Must be hell,’ Eddie concludes. ‘Going to all those parties and having to perform. He must be one tired snatch-sucker at the end of the shift.’

  We muscle our way out of the stifling-hot apartment and down to the car.

  ‘We may never get him, Jake. He doesn’t need to kill anybody now that he’s got all this attention. He gets the cooze, the booze, the dope. It’s all legit, so why take chances?’

  ‘Because he likes it, Eddie. He’s going to get bored with all this celebrity shit and he’s going to want to lay out the challenge. He’s being protected by somebody for something and he thinks he’s invincible. Like some Indian in his ghost shirt. He thinks he can stick our faces in it and have all the good little things his newfound fame has brought him…No, Eddie. He won’t stay happy with what he’s got. You always want what you can’t have. I’m trying to convince him that he can’t have it the old way. I want to push him out the door and make him grab at it.’

  ‘That could be real dangerous for the local population, Jake.’

  ‘I understand. This guy’s a loose cannon — with a quarter-inch fuse, no less. He’ll go back to it because he likes it. I’m just trying to make things seem easier for him.’ I aim us in the direction of the Loop. ‘But if he kills again, Eddie, and we can’t bring him in front of the man…then I’ll just naturally have to shoot him right in the head.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  [February 1999]

  Doc had an in at the military archives. He wouldn’t give me the guy’s name. All he’d say about this source was that he was reliable and that he’d served alongside Doc in South Korea during the mid-1950s. We’d used this mystery man as a source before, so I couldn’t complain about his anonymity.

  Doc had found out Anglin’s affiliation in the Navy. He had also found out the addresses of two Chicago-area vets who’d served with Carl.

  John Grinder lived in the northwest part of the city. He was the owner of a liquor store in Ravenswood, a North Side neighborhood. Doc and I got into our unmarked vehicle, the Taurus, and we headed out to Grinder’s store.

  Grinder was a big man. Much heftier than Carl Anglin. He had a middle-aged paunch sticking out in front of him.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he greeted us, smiling as we approached him at his counter. The place was called, very simply, ‘John’s’.

  We showed him our ID. He blinked, but he smiled again.

  ‘I didn’t kill the old lady. She’s at home and in the fuckin’ pink,’ he cracked.

  ‘We’d like to ask you about Carl Anglin,’ Doc said.

  His face darkened.

  ‘Anglin? That son of a bitch?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I told him. ‘But we’d like to talk to you off the premises. Can you arrange that?’

  ‘Sure. I guess. I haven’t talked about him in — Shit, since I left the service twenty-five years ago…Let me get my son to watch the counter.’

  He called out ‘Danny,’ and his son promptly came up front. Good-looking kid in his mid-twenties.

  ‘I’ll be out for a few minutes. Watch the goods.’

  Danny smiled and said, ‘Sure.’

  John Grinder asked us if we could talk somewhere other than police headquarters, downtown. He didn’t like to leave the business for too long. Since he was being cooperative, we settled on going over to the Garv Comeback Inn in Berwyn. It was Doc’s hangout. He called the Comeback ‘a noir saloon’. Claimed he did all his best thinking there. It was really because he liked John Garvin’s bratwurst.

  It was truly a saloon, standing near the railroad tracks in this western suburb of Chicago. It was a middle-class Slovak neighborhood that never seemed to change.

  Garv himself was a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. His limp, as he plodded toward the three of us, gave an indication of the price John Garvin had paid to run this sawdust-floored bar until he hit retirement age.

  ‘What can I do you for?’

  His opener was another thing that had never changed chez Garvin.

  ‘I’ll have a Diet Coke,’ I told the old World War II vet. Doc had a Sprite, and John Grinder ordered a black coffee.

  The barman ambled toward the cooler. ‘We’ll try to keep this brief,’ Doc started. ‘Anything you can tell us about Carl Anglin?’

  ‘Anything?’ Grinder said. ‘Where would I start…The guy was a natural-born killer. He did those seven nurses, didn’t he?’

  We didn’t answer him.

  ‘I understand. Ongoing investigation.’

  ‘Yes. He killed them,’ I said.

  Grinder looked surprised at my candor.

  ‘He was part of a special force that I was a member of. Sort of like the Seals, but not exactly. We did the things the papers never print. The embarrassing little jobs. You know, the cut throats in the hotel rooms. The dead camel jockeys who show up disemboweled in their sandy little tents out in the middle of fucking nowhere. We did the covert stuff the CIA wouldn’t or couldn’t do. They always invoked the “National Security” flag to cover everything we did, whenever Congress got a whiff of it…But we were disbanded officially during the Eisenhower administration, right before Nixon lost to JFK. But that didn’t stop the Navy from using us — unofficially. Look, I won’t get specific with you because I signed an oath and, believe it or not, I love my country. I thought I was doing my duty, back then. Sometimes I wonder about it all now, but I gave my word. You understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We were in the service, too. Doc was in South Korea with you, and I was in Vietnam for two tours.’

  ‘Outstanding,’ Grinder said and smiled.

  ‘Just stick to Anglin,’ Doc offered. ‘You don’t have to name names or places or dates. And everything you tell us is between us. You’ll never have to repeat it.’

  ‘No witness chair?’

  Doc shook his head.

  ‘I remember Anglin. He was the one with the big-time grudge when the end came for us. We were called Tactical Five. I got no clue why. That’s all we were ever called. We did a lot of assassination stuff in Asia. In places like Hong Kong. Singapore. Places peripheral to the actual thing in Korea. They flew us in by helicopter, dropped us close to shore, and then we swam the rest of the distance. We made our assigned kill, swam back to the meeting place and a chopper or some other form of transport’d pick us up.’

  ‘You said Anglin was angry about the end of Tactical Five?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. The rest of us just saw it as duty. Or at least the guys I was close to felt that way. And when it was over, we didn’t question it. Orders were orders. Anglin couldn’t accept it. And he never came home with the rest of the outfit.’

  ‘He stayed on in Asia?’ Doc asked.

  Garvin arrived
with our drinks, set them down, and then shuffled away.

  ‘He remained. Went AWOL, far as I remember. The MPs went searching for him, but when Carl wanted to, he was one of the best I ever knew for going deep under.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ I moaned at my partner.

  ‘You’ll have a lot of trouble trying to find that fuck if he wants to go invisible. I saw him do it more than once. He’s better than a magician. Blends in like one of those little lizards.’

  ‘He never arrived Stateside?’ Doc queried.

  ‘Not that I know of…But what I heard from a member of the old crew was that somebody picked up his contract in Hong Kong. That was where Carl wound up. The prick was off making himself a new career was what I heard. Gun for hire…Now that was just rumor, you understand. I can’t personally verify it.’

  ‘He didn’t go home, but he started to contract out to private outfits,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yeah. That’s what I heard…He killed those girls. I know he did. I wasn’t surprised when they arrested him all those years back. He had a reputation for going physical on any on-scene females that happened to be in our area of operation.’

  ‘You ever see him kill or rape anyone?’ Doc asked.

  ‘I would’ve shot the fuck myself if I had. No. I never saw that. But everyone knew about it. He liked to cut them when he was through with them, the word was…Look, I gotta get back. I got a business to run…But one last thing. You want to find Anglin, you might want to find Renny Charles. That was Anglin’s number one bro in Tactical Five. They were what you would call inseparable. Renny took off when Anglin did. They were partners. And I heard Renny was living somewhere in the city. I heard that a little while ago. So…’

  We finished our drinks, went out to the car and began the drive back to Ravenswood.

  Doc contacted his anonymous friend about Renny Charles. It was true that Charles had served in a classified outfit with Carl Anglin, but we got no further information about him. So we went to Computer Services and set their gears in motion.

  We tried credit cards. We tried Division of Motor Vehicles. We came up with a zero for our efforts.

  Then Doc reached out to the IRS. He found Renny Charles through an audit that had taken place just a few months ago. The address was on the near North Side.