Suddenly, the hostile impulse flees. I want to touch her. I want to make love to her. I want her back. Close to me.
I do indeed reach out with my hands as I nearly make it to the top of the flight, but her right hand shoots out at me. I don’t know if she’s trying to take my hand or if she’s trying to shove me backward, but I stumble on the penultimate step and I’ve lost my balance and I’m leaning dangerously backward and I can hear Eleanor cry out and now my heel is dislodged from the step and I’m tumbling backwards head over heels like in a comedy movie as if it’s some kind of sight gag but I can’t stop rolling over and over backwards and I can hear something snapping beneath the back of my skull and the last sound I hear is the clean soprano shriek of my beautiful wife Eleanor.
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
[May 1999]
Susan Malkin, Martha Eisner, and Renee Jackson. The list of murders beyond the original seven sat with Doc Gibron and me. We were all there was between Anglin and his complete freedom. No one else seemed inclined to go after the son of a bitch.
Until this twenty-eighth day of the month that celebrated the Virgin. We received a call from Anglin telling us that he’d been assaulted. Homicide didn’t get the call originally, but we heard about it from Violent Crimes. Renee Jackson had a nineteen-year-old brother, Wayne. Wayne was a member of the Regals, a South Side street gang. He was near the top of his outfit and he didn’t see justice being done by our letting Carl Anglin walk the streets of Chicago. Wayne Jackson had put out a contract with his own crew to get Carl Anglin.
So Carl came home with one of his many doper girlfriends who had an IQ of seven in the hole and the young lady got her face slashed. Anglin broke the cutter’s neck with a move Carl had perfected in Asia while he was in the military.
We knew it was the Regals because the Violent Crimes investigator recognized the stiff. When the homey was ID’d at the hospital, and when he was pronounced dead, we received the call. It was in our hands now.
Carl looked shaken. We saw him at Presbyterian Hospital, on the North Side. He was there for his lady, Dolores Claiment. Exotic dancer. Soft-porn star. Brain dead.
‘She’s gonna have to have extensive plastic surgery, man,’ Anglin complained to us.
‘Send the bill to the Regals,’ Doc told him. Anglin appeared to ignore my partner.
‘They got a claim on me,’ Carl said. ‘Are you gonna do anything about it?’ he demanded.
‘We investigate all homicides. You killed a man named Arthur Wells…You broke his neck, like you were wringing a chicken’s.’
‘Military training comes in handy once in a while.’
‘You must really be up on your old self-defense,’ Doc said.
‘I go to the gym five days a week.’
‘Got to keep in shape for your next bestseller,’ Doc added.
Anglin was unfazed. ‘Are you going to do anything about these punks?’
‘We’ll look into it. Sure,’ I told him.
‘I don’t like your low level of enthusiasm.’
‘I don’t either,’ I told him. ‘Maybe it’s those ten kills you’ve got on your fuselage, Anglin. But I will look into it anyway…You might want to change your address and your habits. These kids are deadly. Just ask anyone from Tactical.’
‘You ain’t funny, Parish.’
‘I don’t mean to be…You remember my father? His name was Jacob.’
Anglin’s face lit up, a twisted grin appearing on his lined features.
‘Whatever happened to your old man? I lost track.’
‘He died. In an accident at the house. Fell down some stairs.’
‘Oh yeah! I seem to remember reading about it. Sad, that.’
He never took his stare from my face.
‘You ain’t blaming me for the old man too, are you, Lieutenant?’
‘It’s comforting to know there are people out there who want to get close to you.’
Now Anglin’s smirk began to fade.
‘I heard there was something strange about the way your old man checked out. I heard — ’
‘It was an accident. It was over thirty years ago. Back when you were able to do more than one girl at a time. Back when you weren’t a sad old bastard who had to screw female sewers like Dolores to make you think your little cheesedick still works.’
The grin was completely gone. He moved closer to me, and I stepped up to him. Doc edged his way between us.
‘Gentlemen,’ Doc murmured placatingly.
‘Your old man laid hands on me once. He got away with it,’ Anglin hissed.
‘If I ever lay hands on you, I’ll break you piece by piece.’
‘You think you’re badder than that homey I wasted?’
‘Gentlemen,’ Doc said again. He was still keeping us apart.
‘You’re real expert at killing hundred-pound females and one crack cocaine addict who should’ve stuck you and forgot about slashing the sewer…No. We’ll handle this by the numbers, Anglin. You got me provoked, but this is as far as it goes. Next guy to talk to you will be the County Prosecutor.’ I stepped back, but I didn’t lose eye contact with him. This was one pissing contest I wouldn’t back down from.
Finally Anglin turned his gaze toward my partner, the referee. ‘My attorney is just slobbering over the chance to do you two.’
‘Maybe you ought to hire a counsel with two legs instead of four,’ Doc said, grinning.
‘I assume you think you’re quite the badass too,’ Anglin told Doc.
‘If I ever got really mad at you, Carl, I’d use a baseball bat. See, the guinea there believes in coming up on a guy from the front. Me, though, I don’t have any problems busting animals like you from behind. I mean, why would I want to make a contest out of it? I’m too old and impatient. No, if I came for you, Carl, the first thing you’d know about it was when you were picking splinters out of the back of your skull. But now, with aluminum bats, you probably would never be conscious long enough to wonder what it was that laid you low in one swipe.’
We were through threatening Anglin. He was through baiting us. It had gone to the brink. Someone was about to get hurt. You could smell it in the atmosphere, there in the waiting room at the hospital where Anglin’s paramour was getting stitched from cheek to chin.
‘You have anything else you want to say?’ He was looking at both of us. He had assumed the stance. He’d learned karate and judo during his hitch. Standard training.
‘The Lieutenant’s a black belt. Which degree was it, Jimmy?’ asked Doc.
I didn’t answer him. I was waiting for Anglin to move.
‘Same training I had, I bet.’
‘My father was a Ranger in 1944-45.1 didn’t want to disappoint him.’
I was waiting for the first kick, the first jab, but it never arrived.
Finally Anglin turned his back. I was relieved. I was fifty-two, Anglin was well into his sixties and Doc was only a bit younger than him. I could just see hospital security breaking up a bout between three geezers our age. It was an embarrassing image.
‘We’ll look into this Regals thing,’ I said.
‘But I think you’ll have made them even more pissed off with you this time.’
*
We took a ride to the far southwest part of town. Regal Territory. Gangbanger Central. We found Wayne Jackson on the street with several of his bros. It was a bright, clean day, there on a playground in bangerland. The bros were engaged in a trash-talking marathon game of hoops, while Wayne, Renee Jackson’s brother, watched at the sidelines.
‘You the two Homicide Ds ain’t caught shit with this Anglin motherfucker.’
The brother seemed bright, in spite of the homey dialogue.
‘We’re the two,’ I responded. Doc watched the ongoing trash-a-thon. There was not much basketball going on, however.
‘He kill ten fuckin’ women and he been walkin’ the streets for over thirty motherfuckin’ years, and you here gon’ tell me about so
mebody tried to nail that cocksucker.’
I nodded and he laughed.
‘You think I’m the dude behind the hit?’
I nodded again.
‘So you roustin’ me or what?’
‘I want you to let us take care of Carl Anglin. He already killed your sister.’
Doc turned toward our conversation now. ‘You know my sister?’ Wayne asked.
‘I’m investigating her death. You know I never knew her.’
Wayne was a tall, very black African-American. Very good-looking, very athletic-looking. Which made me wonder why he wasn’t out there on the court.
‘We wasn’t close. I mean I love her because she my sister, but she had her way and I got mine. She was a school girl. Always in her books. Momma love her, but she got no use for me, and hey, I unnerstan’. Momma believe in makin’ your dream come true. Renee her dream. It was comin’ true, too. Girl was gon’ graduate, be a nurse, all that fly shit…Now she as dead as…We wadn’t close, but we was blood. Renee never look away when I come around. She still care about what I do. Told me to go to school and shit like that, but she never could get it in her head that me and her…We was the same blood, but we was different.’
‘Call it off, Wayne. He’s not worth your death as well.’
The young black man looked at me oddly, like he couldn’t follow my words.
‘That motherfucker is dead.’
Now there was no trace of his homey accent. He’d simply made a straight-up statement.
‘That motherfucker is dead,’ he repeated.
‘Then we’ll put you in the hole and your sister’s still gone,’ Doc explained.
‘You all come get me when you ready. You know where I lives.’
He turned away from us, and the conversation was over.
*
The apartment was in the federally subsidized complex, there in the far southwest part of town. It was 4.29 a.m. The sun wouldn’t rise for an hour and a half. Doc and I had plenty to fear, being two white spots in an all-black hood. So we took four black patrolmen along with us. They were a little nervous, as well.
The call came through 911. Sounds of gunfire. Which wasn’t unusual for this area. But a good citizen called it in and a patrolman found the body in the bedroom. The cop didn’t see the other body in the bathroom until he went to squeak a leak in the toilet.
Wayne Jackson had a hole in the back of his head about the size of a baseball. He was lying on the mattress in the bedroom. There were fragments of skull and bits of gray matter sticking to his pillow and the wall behind the bed’s headboard.
The female in the bathroom had been shot similarly. One hole, the size of a hardball, in the back of her noggin. The shooter had done Wayne and then caught the female taking a dump or a whiz in the head and dispatched her soul along with Wayne’s.
‘High-caliber. Big hole,’ Dr Gray, the M.E., told us. He’d beaten us to the scene. I couldn’t help wondering how come he’d got here so quickly. But he probably just wanted to get in and out before the sun rose and all those friendly neighborhood faces could welcome him.
It was a tense scene. No one felt comfortable there.
‘Not a gangbanger job, do you think?’ Doc asked.
‘If it were, I’d expect some more violence to the bodies. Doesn’t look like anger. Looks like a professional execution.’
Doc knew it was Anglin’s associates. You had to hand it to them for balls, coming into a black enclave, here in the southwest part of town, and doing a tap on a honcho banger while he was balling his old lady. Real brass balls, it must have taken.
‘We better get this show on the road before Wayne’s troops and the media show up,’ I told my partner.
It was a very quiet crime scene. No one was cracking wiseass jokes. No one was making snide remarks about the girl getting hers in the shithouse.
‘They’re out of control, Doc. Nothing stops them. These people are insane. They shield a murderer. They hit a gang leader in his own crib. This goes beyond nuts. These guys don’t care who they have to kill.’
‘You think they’d go this far to protect Anglin?’
‘Look at their track record. He gets them to remove anybody who’s a threat to him.’
‘And what about us, then?’
‘It has to have a side story. No, the papers can call this business with the Regals something internal. Inter-gang warfare. There’s no conspiracy here. Nothing you can grab hold of, at least…And who knows? Maybe they’re going to be right. Maybe I’m reading this all wrong, just like my old man did. We got this common obsession, and it’s fried both our brains. Carl Anglin has become the fucking boogeyman. There’s a monster in everybody’s closet. Maybe I need to go back into therapy, Doc.’
‘Then I’ll be in the next chair, sitting right beside you.’
We got through with the on-scene investigation in another half-hour. The sun was just barely up in the east as we pulled away from the complex.
Wayne Jackson joined his sister on a list that Carl Anglin had been composing for the last three decades.
*
The key was Mason. I told Doc that more than once, and even though he was nervous about going after a federal agent, I couldn’t see any other way to get to the roots of the Anglin problem. He was like a weed. You had to get him all the way out of his soil or he just kept popping back up.
We couldn’t do this with the blessing of the Chicago Police Department. It was going to be Doc and me on our own against him. On our own time.
We watched Mason’s house when we were off shift. We did the surveillance in Doc’s Chevy Celebrity. It was an old beater like that some teenager would use to drag his ass to college. Didn’t look like a cop vehicle. The thing was painted mauve, for Jesus’ sake. It stood out so badly that it didn’t stand out, for our purposes.
Mason lived alone. We saw no trace of the lovely assistant.
‘I’ll bet she’s gay,’ Doc snickered.
‘Then life as we know it would not be worth living,’ I replied.
We were listening to Doc’s all-night jazz station on a portable battery radio that my partner always dragged along on stakeout.
‘You think anyone funny’ll show up here?’ Doc asked.
‘That’s why we’re here,’ I moaned. I hadn’t had enough sleep lately. Natalie had been questioning me about all the ‘overtime’.
‘We need to tap his phone,’ Doc concluded.
We got one of our own technicians to do the illicit deed for us. He owed Doc big time on a woman my partner had set the technician up with a few years ago. The blind date became his wife. His wife was a major babe, so Ralph Krenski could hardly refuse Doc’s request.
‘I’m tapping a freakin’ Fed’s residence?’ Ralph gulped.
They’ll never get us to squeal on you,’ Doc said to the tech.
‘Jesus, we could all go away for a long freakin’ time — ’
‘Think how lonely you were until I helped you out,’ Doc reminded him.
‘If you really don’t want to, Ralph, I understand,’ I told him.
‘This is about Anglin, Doc tells me.’
I nodded.
‘The varmint who killed all those nurses?’
‘Yes.’
‘My beeper goes off and I’m comin’ out of there like the speed of bleedin’ light.’
Doc got out of the Celebrity.
‘Where’d you acquire this ride?’ Ralph asked.
They walked toward the darkened house of the FBI agent. Mason was not due home for three hours. We’d made sure he was at his headquarters before we’d come to this northwestern suburb. We were not far from Arlington Race Track.
Doc had his magic bag with him, and in moments Ralph the Techie was inside.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
[April 1978]
Erin clutched hold of me and kissed me. My young wife cried as we shared the award of my detective’s shield. All the years prior to this moment had finally come to fruition. Th
is was the moment for which I’ve been waiting all my professional life as a police officer. Detective James Parisi. And it didn’t stop with my assignment at Burglary/Auto Theft. I was headed to Homicide. It was clear in my mind as my wife’s lovely face was as she stood near enough to me to make me go cross-eyed.
I held her at arm’s length to look at her properly. Erin Galagher, now Erin Parisi. Schoolteacher. Lover. Wife. The mother, someday, of my children.
I’d left her to go to Vietnam. I served two tours in spite of her begging me to come home after twelve months. Explaining how the second tour would pay our bills for my schooling didn’t seem to stop her pleading. She wanted me out of Asia. Erin didn’t care about our finances. But I knew that lack of money would become a factor adversely affecting our ability to get married as soon as I returned home, so she more or less gave up the battle over my second hitch in Vietnam.
The war was part of my preparation for my career. I looked at it that way so I could endure the heat, the mosquitoes, the lunatic lifers — all the horseshit attendant on the misery that ended a few years ago. When I returned Stateside in 1970, the war was already lost. The will to defeat the communists was long gone. The country wanted to shrink back inside its borders and refused to become the superpower watchdog of the so-called free world. It was a time, I suppose, much like the 1920s. It was a decade of reaction against sacrifice, brutality, and loss. I understood why people began to turn inward. They wanted this nation to reject the notion that we were conscience and copper to the world. Music, sex, drugs, booze, property. We became the nightmare antithesis of anti-materialism.
All these things that I heard about in college turned out to be pure politics. The world I came back to was interested primarily in the pleasures of the groin. Life was meant to become painless. The Big Aspirin was the cure-all of an ancient malady.
That was the big lie of the 1960s and 1970s. At least it was the bullshit that my nose got a whiff of when I came back, when I arrived home in 1970. The war didn’t make a philosopher out of me. It made me more resolute. I was going to get the bad guys. It was as simple as the plot of a Hollywood western. Good prevails over the shitheels of the world. There is a God, He is just, and we are His instruments. Just like in Catholic grade school. Very simple and straightforward.
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