Season of the Assassin

by Laird, Thomas

  I rose out of my chair and looked out the window at the lake. The sun would not rise for a few hours, but I was feeling an urgent need for the rays from the east to touch my window here sooner than that. All the lights were on in headquarters, but it wasn’t bright enough. Only natural sunlight would drive this dank feeling out of my bones.

  *

  Doc Gibron was married to a baby-doctor, a pediatrician. She was Indian and outrageously beautiful. Far too good for the likes of my partner. They had adopted an African-American girl who happened to be blind in one eye. The girl was the heart of their happiness. Doc was in his sixties, as I said, and Mari, his wife, was in her early fifties.

  They were a unique couple. Doc had his PhD in Literature from Northwestern University in Evanston, not far from where I sat. He kept threatening to quit and chase the coeds, but he said Mari’d slap the shit out of him and he couldn’t bear having her angry with him. Besides, he was a father now.

  As was I. But I hadn’t seen any of my three offspring in thirty-six hours. It was time to go home and leave Carl Anglin for the next shift to worry about.

  *

  ‘You ready to call it a day?’ Doc grinned.

  ‘I was born ready.’

  I tried to sound as enthusiastic as I could after a day and a half of overtime. The extra hours had turned out to be fruitless. There seemed to be no progress on either of the two homicides. The old adage held true. With a murder, the longer it went, the worse it went.

  Doc and I took the elevator down and walked over to the corner cafe where we bought coffee or soft drinks whenever a break was called for. I bought the Tribune from a newspaper vending machine before we went inside the cafe.

  At 4.00 a.m. the joint was half full. It reminded me of that painting, Night Owls.

  We ordered a coffee for my partner and a Diet Coke for me. I took the caffeine-free soda pop. Because of my blood pressure.

  ‘We can’t shoot him,’ Doc said.

  ‘What?’ I laughed, looking up from the Tribune’s sports page.

  ‘We can’t just whack him. But you know some people who could.’

  ‘Quit screwing around.’

  I eyeballed him, and he too finally broke out laughing.

  ‘It might just be an option, Jimmy. Tell one of your Sicilian cousins to put one behind his fucking ear.’

  ‘I don’t deal with that side of the family. Not anymore.’

  One of my underworld cousins had been murdered by the Farmer, Marco Karrios, in that case we’d just finished up last year. The poor son of a bitch had been butchered like some of Carl’s victims. Killing Marco Karrios hadn’t made me feel any better about the loss of my cheap-thief relative.

  ‘Yeah. I almost forgot about that,’ Doc lamented. ‘I’m sorry I brought it up, Jimmy.’

  ‘Forget about it. He was a big boy. He understood the danger. If you lie down with dogs, right?’

  Doc knew it was a sore spot, so he let it go.

  ‘You know how much trouble and money would be saved if someone popped a cap on the son of a bitch…’

  ‘We don’t do murders, we solve them,’ I recited. It was like a Homicide cop’s Pledge of Allegiance.

  Doc grinned.

  ‘You did homicides, justifiable though they were, with that other uniform on…Anyway, it’d be a sweet way to bring closure to our current caseload.’

  The night sky seemed to be turning just a little bit lighter. I was looking out the plate-glass window. Perhaps the lights inside here were playing tricks on me.

  ‘I’m going home, guinea. It’s my little girl’s birthday. I’ve got to be at Walmart when they open. Got a $500 budget. Mari says not to spoil her…You coming over tonight for the cake and crap?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I affirmed.

  Doc patted my hand like he was my loving grandma, and then he left the coffee shop.

  I thought I’d stick around until the first rays of the rising sun appeared. I didn’t want to walk to my car in the lot by myself in the dark, squeamish as that sounded. I was armed to the teeth, as always, but I didn’t want to make that short trip alone, or at least without the sun to light my way.

  I was getting old and perhaps more careful with it. Homicides had never bothered me before like this one was doing. I could leave my work at the office, for the most part. Now I was dragging Carl Anglin wherever I went. Natalie had noticed it, around the house. She said I was more moody than usual. I denied her allegations, but I was lying when I did.

  ‘Screw him,’ I said to my Coke cup.

  The waitress, Arlene, was passing by and overheard me.

  ‘Not you, beautiful,’ I told her.

  ‘I’m so disappointed,’ she said, pouting.

  I left her an extra buck tip, which took away her frown.

  *

  The parking lot was deserted. Doc, of course, was long gone, headed for an open Walmart. The overhead lights were on, but the lot was not very well illuminated.

  I decided to take my Nine out of my shoulder holster. Usually I touched this piece twice a day. Once when I donned the shoulder rig and went off to work and the second time when I arrived home after a shift and took it off. But now I felt the need so I palmed the piece. My family automobile was a Chevy Cavalier. It sat way in the back, in one of the rows closest to the headquarters entrance doors.

  You’d have thought coppers would park out in this lot to give the place additional security, wouldn’t you? It was probably our arrogance to think that no one would be foolish enough to assault a police officer on his way to his vehicle, but I was thinking that Carl Anglin probably didn’t give a shit who his target was. And I meant to warn Doc to watch himself when he was alone or off duty. I could picture Anglin going for either of us. He was protected, remember? He was untouchable, invincible.

  I heard something coming up behind me. I pivoted toward the sound, and I found a squad car with two patrolmen inside pulling into a space behind me. I was glad I was holding my piece against my thigh. It could’ve been embarrassing if I’d assumed the shooting stance, aiming my gun at two uniforms getting off shift.

  ‘Jesus,’ I murmured.

  I put the piece back in its holster by my armpit.

  *

  I rolled away from her. I couldn’t get my breath.

  ‘Jimmy?’ Natalie asked gently.

  ‘Oh, my. You take my breath away,’ I said, smiling.

  She knew I was stealing lyrics from one of her favorite songs. It was in that movie with Tom Cruise. Top Gun.

  ‘You do the same for me,’ she said softly, and then she ran her fingernails gently through the hairs on my chest.

  ‘You are one hairy guinea,’ she teased. ‘Indeed…You want me to Nair off this shit?’

  ‘Not on your life, wop…Your pulse is racing. Did I do that?’

  She had hold of my right wrist. As if she were a nurse, listening in on me.

  ‘I been taking my medication, Doc.’

  Which reminded me to find out about those prescriptions for Theresa Rojas.

  ‘He’s been bothering you, Jimmy. Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘Lie to you about what, Red?’

  ‘Anglin. Everybody knows you’ve been a little tense over this guy.’

  ‘Sure. It’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You better have a checkup. Your pulse is irregular. I was a nursing student for a year. Remember?’

  ‘Really? It’s off?’

  ‘Not terrible. Just a little off. See the man, lover. Let go of this Anglin. Even if you don’t catch him, someone else will. All else failing, Jimmy, God’ll whack him Himself.’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Really believe what?’

  ‘Do you really believe God deals with the perps who come floating his way?’

  ‘Sure, Jimmy. We’re Catholics. You recall all that parochial-school stuff?’

  God would take care of Carl Anglin. I said it over and over in my head, but it didn
’t relieve the pressure. Now I could feel my heartbeat. Not a good sign. The blood-pressure medication must not have been working. Or it wasn’t a sufficiently high dosage.

  Anglin had a hold of me, inside and out. I could feel his grip on my temples, inside my chest. It was a crushing embrace he’d slapped on me. Like a bear hug.

  ‘God will take care of Carl Anglin,’ I said out loud.

  ‘I’ll get you a couple of Tylenol,’ Natalie insisted as she crawled hurriedly out of bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  [October 1968]

  I feel them coming up behind me. I want to walk everywhere with my weapon drawn. The shrinks call it paranoia, but I think it’s plain, healthy fear. They’ve defiled my house, whoever the hell-they-are. They broke in to kill me or to scare me and they sure as hell accomplished the latter.

  I install new dead bolts on all the doors. I have new clasps put onto the windows to keep them locked. But anyone in the police knows that locks won’t keep anybody out if they really want in. It’s like with car boosters. You can put an air-raid horn under your hood and it won’t keep them from stealing your automobile. It’s just that spending some money and time on security gives you a feeling that at least you’re trying.

  Eddie hasn’t had the pleasure of an intruder, but I’ve got him wary. He’s sent his wife and kid to his mother’s until things calm down or until we grab Anglin.

  I still tail Carl. I let him see me once in a while. He smiles at me when he catches a glimpse, but I don’t react with similar good humor. I just watch him to let him know we haven’t let go of him. The strange thing is that we haven’t heard from his lawyer about harassing him. He must still be amused by our stakeouts. He’ll get bored with our presence soon.

  *

  Andrew Callan’s death weighs heavily on me. I can’t dismiss him as a suicide, even if I were to set aside his sister’s plea. I don’t like his crime scene. It’s too organized, too clean, too readymade. Whoever prepared it was someone who understood Homicide investigative procedures. They laid everything out too neatly for us.

  I go to our lab and ask them to reexamine the contents of Callan’s stomach. I ask them to look at his blood again. Even though this is a slightly unusual request, Dr Brisco humors me and says he’ll have a look, on his own time. I tell him not to mention the favor to anyone. Brisco eyes Eddie and me oddly, but he understands this is about the murder of someone from the Bureau, so he suppresses his curiosity.

  ‘What could they do him with that wouldn’t leave a trace?’ Eddie asks as we drive toward Anglin’s place to administer our daily dose of harassment.

  ‘Digitalis,’ I tell him.

  Eddie nods. It’s true, sometimes it doesn’t leave much of a trace.

  ‘Curare. That native stuff they put on the darts in the jungle. It paralyzes the victim. Cuts off their air,’ I suggest.

  ‘Spooks doing spooks?’ Eddie asks.

  ‘Callan wasn’t a spook. He was just an FBI agent without any particular connections. He was disconnected on Anglin, that’s for goddamn sure.’

  We head toward the murderer of all those young girls. It’s become something of a ritual for the two of us.

  Dr Brisco makes a personal stop at my office on his way to lunch the next day. He motions for me to come walk with him. Eddie is reading Sports Illustrated in the shithouse in order to clear his mind for detective work.

  We walk down toward the cafeteria. I stop at the soda machine and get us both Cokes. Brisco takes a sip, and then he indicates that we need to keep moving.

  ‘You aren’t wired, are you, Jake?’ he asks, smiling.

  ‘What’d you find?’

  ‘Just the slightest of traces. But whoever did the original autopsy — and it wasn’t me — missed it. Curare. That South American stuff that the Jivaro Indians use. Modern medicine uses it now, but the Indians originally employed it to stun their prey, whatever they were hunting. But if you use too heavy a dose, it shuts down the victim’s breathing so that you suffocate them. It leaves barely a trace of itself, Jake. The first M.E. might really have missed it legitimately. You have to be actively looking for it, it’s so easy to miss…Whatever. It looks like your man Callan was stunned with this stuff before he was fed the pills that supposedly killed him. In order to get curare into him, someone might have given it to him in a drink. Or they could’ve just barely pierced his flesh with a fine-point needle. I don’t know. We should probably exhume the remains.’

  ‘They cremated him three days ago.’

  ‘Then it’s lucky they held onto his blood, his serum workups.’

  ‘They seem to be very confident people, Doctor. They broke into a Homicide lieutenant’s house. They murdered an FBI agent. That’s just some of the small stuff they’ve probably done.’

  ‘Well, Jake, I don’t know what else to tell you, now that the body’s gone. We’ve got the blood, true, but we would’ve needed some more of Agent Callan to bring anything into a court of law. I’m sorry.’

  Brisco takes another sip of his soda and walks away from me.

  *

  I tell Eddie about the doctor’s findings. He already knows about the cremation, so we’re left with our peckers hanging out in the wind. Which is becoming a familiar routine in this case.

  ‘Maybe God don’t want us to solve this one, Jake,’ Eddie laments.

  I too am beginning to think cracking this case ain’t in the cards for either of us.

  *

  Jimmy’s letters talk mostly happy talk. He’s seen Bob Hope and some other USO shows last Christmas, and he’s looking forward to Hope coming back again. He hates the guy’s jokes, but his show reminds Jimmy of home. The broads that tour with the comedian are a little cheesy and they’re aging poorly, he writes, but it reminds of him of being a kid and watching Sunday-night television with Eleanor, and with me whenever I was home on that evening.

  He’s definitely signing up for the second tour because the money will free him from college loans. I wrote him and told him I’d give him the cash — no repayment required — but he refused, saying he appreciated my gesture but he wanted to come out free and clear on his own. The second combat tour will pay his way.

  This country is hanging out in the breeze, like my pecker on the Anglin case. It’s anyone’s guess which way we’ll blow. That’ll depend on the breeze. We’ve got hippies and yippies and dippies and shitbirds of every stripe, of every attitude and sentiment. We’ve got politicals and apoliticals and outright skullfucks who just want to get high and get laid. I can’t keep them all separate in my head. I can’t figure out who’s for real and who’s a lying sack of middle-class white kid with too much free time on his or her hands. I’ve given up trying to make the distinction. In my business everyone’s really equal. They look much the same when I arrive on scene. That gray pallor. That waxlike look. The smell comes on a little later, like rigor, but human rot is the most unique stink on earth. When we dig up some corpse or open a door behind which lies a victim, the reek immediately hits your nostrils. It’s at that point that you deny we are God’s finest creation. We sure are his smelliest.

  Maybe all this signals the end of the world. Or perhaps it’s just my end, the end of my era. Frankly I’m tired, and like Scarlett’s boyfriend, I don’t much give a damn anymore. Except for the safety of my son, Jimmy. I want him to come home. I want his war to be over, and I don’t give a shit who wins the conflict. Maybe it’s time the country came down from the high we got from my war. Then we felt we could whip anyone — even after Korea. If Truman had let MacArthur drop those bombs across that Yalu River…

  I’m just weary. My tiredness makes me depressed. And so does the booze. I may be an alcoholic, but I’m aware that the hooch is a depressant. I spend my off hours in a South Side saloon with a noble descendant of Plato and Aristotle. My wife does not share my bed any longer. My son who is biologically my nephew is in mortal danger in southeast Asia, fighting in a war I cannot comprehend, and my own life centers on catching
a killer. A killer no one seems to want me to snag.

  I drink, I sleep, I work. And in my nostrils I know it can’t go on like this very much longer.

  I take my suspicions about Agent Callan’s demise to the head of the Chicago branch of the FBI, Dennis Murtaugh. He receives my information with a look of genuine shock on his face.

  Murtaugh has a reputation for being straight, but I don’t know him personally. I’m wondering how all this crap and corruption could be going on around him without him being aware of it. But I understand how it’s possible.

  ‘Curare?’ he asks.

  Eddie makes the leather of the chair next to me squeak. I’m a bit uncomfortable too, but I didn’t know where else to turn. I know my own brother coppers too well. I know about the power a dollar sign wields.

  ‘I know how it sounds, but there it is,’ I tell Murtaugh.

  ‘We’ll have to look into it,’ he says.

  I sense I’m being dismissed.

  ‘This is an outrage. I want to thank you for coming forward, and I hope I can depend on your cooperation in the coming days, Lieutenant Parish.’

  He stands up to shake hands. We’re out of his office in another ten seconds.

  *

  ‘He either thinks we’re nuts, or he’s part of the whole deal,’ Eddie concludes.

  ‘I vote for we’re nuts.’

  ‘Jake, what’d you expect? This is all after the fact. The official Medical Exam said he died of an overdose of those goodies in his apartment. Now, in some clandestine meeting, another physician lays this curare on you. What’d you think Murtaugh was going to do?’

  ‘Slap my hand like my favorite uncle and tell me to have a nice day.’

  I pull the unmarked squad car out into the city streets.

  *

  I can’t sleep at night because I hear noises in the house. So I buy us a dog. One of those border collies that are trained to herd critters on farms. They’re supposed to be extremely intelligent, as far as canines go, and they’re supposed to make excellent watchdogs.

  So I buy a year-old pup that I name Sonny. He simply looks like a Sonny.