by Thomas Laird
‘Aren’t you politically correct.’
I looked at her and she knew we had talked enough shop. Our time together was too precious, too sacred, to waste it on business. Until we got our schedules in sync, we were loving each other on a hit-and-run basis.
‘Marry me,’ I told her.
‘That’s number 286,’ she smiled.
‘Number 287. Marry me.’
‘And I told you I will. When I —’
‘Graduate, get settled on the job, and find out what section you’re assigned to. I can’t wait.’
‘Neither can I,’ she admitted as she kissed me hard on the lips.
‘Will you relent, then?’ I asked.
‘I probably will. Let’s talk about something else,’ she insisted, as she led me to her small bedroom.
*
We had three possibles, via the computer. Sex offenders all. Two had a history of violence. All three had spent time in jail.
We ran into Marco Karrios at his nearby North Side home.
‘Hello, Marco,’ Doc smiled.
Karrios was walking down the flight of steps in front of the three flats where he occupied the middle apartment. Marco was educated. Worked for himself in stocks and bonds. No one had hired him because of his record, so he was fortunate to be a middling genius in the stock market. He lived in a decent if not affluent hood, but he drove a new BMW.
‘Do I need to call my lawyer?’ the blond, muscular man asked us.
We were standing in the wind. The hawk was blowing in from the northeast this afternoon. Straight off the Lake.
‘This is simply a friendly talk,’ Doc informed him. ‘You want a mouth, you could be hung up here all day. We just have a few questions and then you can boogie.’
Marco thought it over. He had been arrested three times. Twice the charges were dropped. We thought he had intimidated the two teenaged victims into backing off, but we could get no cooperation from the girls or their families. So he walked. The third time the victim was a thirty-year-old legal secretary. She did cooperate, but the judge was a limpdick and gave Marco two years for a minor sex beef.
‘Okay. Let’s make this quick. Time is money, gentlemen.’
‘It says in your file that you were in the military. That right?’ Doc asked.
I looked into the blond guy’s eyes. I watched his shoulders and torso. I was looking for some body language. Something.
‘I was. That’s correct.’
‘You serve out of country?’
‘Yes. I was in the Middle East.’
‘And you went to medical school, it says here,’ Doc continued.
‘And I flunked out,’ Marco responded.
He shifted his shoulders and shrugged, but I was not sure if he was simply uncomfortable with Doc’s directness.
‘You flunked out?’ Gibron asked. ‘A smart guy like you?’
‘I wasn’t fit. I never really wanted it. My parents were big on having a doctor in the family. Greek immigrants, you know?’
‘A blond guy like you? A Greek?’ Doc smiled.
‘Lots of Greeks are blonds. Depends on which part of the country you’re from.’
‘Can you account for your whereabouts on these two dates?’
Doc shoved the documents in front of him. Karrios stared at the two for a while, and then a smile formed on his lips.
‘I was with my girlfriend. Both dates.’ He grinned.
There was no movement from him this time. His body settled firmly in place.
‘Where does your girlfriend live and what’s her name?’ Gibron prodded.
‘Ellen Jacoby. She lives with me. Would you like to have a talk with her? She’s home right at this moment.’
Now it was a full, bright smile. He showed Doc and me all those teeth, and their whiteness almost shot out a glint, a gleam of their own.
*
Ellen Jacoby concurred when confronted with the dates. He’d been with her all the time on both evenings in question. She was a brunette. Not pretty. But seemingly very sexual. There was something seeping out of her. She had long, dark, curly hair, and she sent out some very strong signals. I could see why Karrios overlooked the cosmetic beauty.
‘Is that all you wanted to know?’ she asked, eyeballing me until she obviously expected me to break our interlocked glances. But I outlasted her, and she finally stared in the direction of her man, Marco Karrios. When the two of them locked up, eyeball to eyeball, Doc nudged me and we got the hell out of there before those two started dropping their pants on the spot.
Outside, Doc asked the obvious.
‘You like him?’ he queried.
‘No. But I like her a lot better.’
Gibron laughed briefly, but then his face went serious as we made our way back to the car.
Chapter Seven
I went to funerals. The idea was that killers sometimes liked to relive their crimes by being around the mourners of their victims. I didn’t remember ever catching somebody at a funeral or at a wake, but I figured I would take any edge I could get. Someday it might work out.
But not at Delores Winston’s service, out here at Oak Hill Cemetery on the far South Side. The only attendees were a mother, a sister, Doc, Jack Wendkos, and me. It seemed that Delores had been a loner in life, and that was the way she was going out, too.
No one looked remotely like a potential cutter. Unless the guys working for the mortuary were double-dipping as moonlighting killers.
Delores’s mother, Frances, thanked the three of us for coming on out here.
‘I know you don’t have to do this,’ she smiled sadly.
‘Actually we do. We come out to have a look at the folks in attendance, Mrs Winston,’ I explained. ‘But we would’ve come anyway. We get more involved in things like this than most people imagine.’
She looked a bit confused, so I didn’t try to clarify anything.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Jack said as he extended a hand to the bereaved mother.
Doc nodded and shook her hand, and then we walked toward the parking lot and the two cars we’d arrived in.
I was telling her the truth. Delores was not just a number on the board for Doc and me. Or for Jack, either. It became personal. When I started doing the reading on each of the victims I investigated, the first thing that hit me, over and over again, was that each of them had a history. Every one of the dead had a mother and a father, at least initially, and every one of them spent nine months in utero, and they all popped out the chute thereafter in order to learn to stop dirtying their underwear, to grow up, to make friends, to play ball or ride a bike, to mature, to have a life — and then to have some murderous piece of shit end it with a knife or a gun or a lead pipe or whatever. Yeah, they all had a background. I knew because I read about them. I did research on each one of them. And then some miserable son of a bitch stopped time on them and the file closed.
That was when Doc and I entered the picture.
*
I was thinking this guy was in business with the organs. I don’t think he was a Jeffrey Dahmer cannibal. I can’t imagine him storing the vitals in some freezer as a trophy. Some of the shrinks who advised us downtown had that theory about our man — who had now acquired the name ‘The Farmer’. I don’t like nicknames for murderers. It gave them too much opportunity for gaining space and headlines in the newspapers. They got a ‘rep’ and then they had to live up to it, again and again. It all fed their fires.
‘We checked the hospitals,’ Doc concurred. ‘We had some of our people see how many body parts are being used as compared to the number of surgeries they had on the books. And then we hit our contacts to see if anyone’s doing a side-order business, because you know this guy is not exactly working legit.’
I grimaced at him and he smiled.
‘We’ll never find anything by asking the hospitals. If they’re getting illegal supplies, there ain’t going to be any paper trail,’ Doc admitted. ‘So who’d know all about a highly illeg
al activity like black-market body parts?’
He was grinning at me.
‘I find that remark highly racist, Doctor.’
‘All you guineas are so goddam sensitive.’
*
Billy Cheech — William Ciccio — was the cousin of an Outfit guy that Doc and I had launched into Joliet Prison a few years back. Danny Cheech was the Don before he was busted. Busted for having several Loop restaurant-goers gunned to death in a botched attempt to kill some piece of shit Ciccio wanted gone. We finally got him before an IRA assassin got to this Outfit asshole.
Billy was on the periphery with the Chicago version of the Mafia. He and Danny and I were all distant cousins. Which was nothing my side of the familia had ever been too proud of. But I always liked Billy. And my little cousin had always had the bad habit of confiding in me when he thought the outlaw side of the clan had gone over the edge. In other words I had used my own cousin as an informant from time to time. Nothing big. I didn’t want him to get wasted because of his generosity in providing his coz with information that could be harmful to Billy’s health. The days of omerta — total silence — had gone. Gotti was in the pen and Sammy the Bull had a book out, I heard. There was no Don Corleone ‘honor’ on the streets. There probably never was. These guys did their grannies if the price was right. Honor among thieves and murderers was Hollywood’s version of these wastes of flesh. They had no honor. They were businessmen without a code to do business by. I had never found them romantic or amusing or attractive.
Billy Cheech was a little simple, and that was why he talked to a cousin he knew was a homicide investigator. All of his associates thought he was goofy, too, but he was related to the one-time big boss, Danny, so they gave the silly kid a little room to be stupid.
Doc and I ran into him at the garage where he was allowed to change oil. One of his cousins owned the place, of course. He was under the hood of a Jaguar at the moment. This oil place catered to the wealthy, it appeared. There were BMWs and ‘Vettes and a few Lexuses.
‘You stealing from the rich now, Robin Hood?’ I asked him.
He banged his head on the way out from under the car hood.
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ! ... Jimmy! Cousin! And you got the good Doctor with you!’
Doc had told him twenty times to stop calling him the ‘Good Doctor’. Billy got under Gibron’s hide. I had to drag him with me to visit my second cousin every time I was looking for a little freebie intelligence on the Outfit.
‘You wanna oil change for that piece-a-shit fuckin’ Ford?’
‘Nah. The Department takes care of the maintenance, Billy ... You got a minute?’
His jocular mood vanished. He knew why I was here now.
‘You wanna get some lunch, Jimmy? Doc? It is that time of the day anyhow.’
Billy excused himself to go wash up after he slammed the hood on that Jaguar that was worth more than my mortgage.
He was back in a hurry. His hands were still filthy, but it was what I put up with for his freebies.
We drove to the Garvin Inn in Berwyn. It was a half-hour from his garage, but he was Billy Cheech and nobody was going to bitch about his two-hour lunch break. It was one of the perks of being connected, of being with a crew.
Garvin’s was where Doc liked to take our noon breaks, no matter what time of day it really was. We could afford better, like at those overpriced theme hamburger joints
that cost you $8.95 for some browned ground chuck, but Gibron liked the brats and the Polish sausage and I never argued with him because there was something about the smelly-assed environment in Garvin’s that appealed to me after all these years. I had never taken my children to Garv’s. It was a male bar — except on weekend nights when the softball players dragged their wives and girlfriends (sometimes simultaneously) in here for an aftergame brew.
Garvin limped toward us. The leg was courtesy of the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge. Old man Garvin had fought with Patton, but I thought Patton was the weak sister of the two.
He took our order and limped away.
‘So, Jimmy. What’s the order of business today? Huh? What do you wanna know from your coz that won’t get me dumped in the fuckin’ Lake with concrete in my wingtips?’
‘You been reading about the murders of those two women? You know, the ones who were what they called ‘mutilated’, down by Lakeshore Drive?’
‘Yeah. I think I recall readin’ about it. But you know we don’t kill fuckin’ civilians, Jimmy P. It is bad business. I’m not talkin’ out of school or nothin’, but you know I don’t get involved in no shit like killin’s. I’m small-fry, cousin. You know me.’
‘I’m talking about some guy who might be marketing some real expensive goods. Like internal organs.’
Doc belched on his Diet Sprite, and then he excused himself to Billy with a grin.
‘Oh man, I don’t know about nothin’ like that. You know how the crew is. They steal shit. They love stealin’ shit. You know. Stuff at airports, trucks, trains. They like hoos and drugs ... But killin’ women for their hearts and kidneys and shit? I don’t know, Jimmy P. Sounds like some freelancin’ business to me. It was too, whatchoocall, ‘high-profile’. These city crews don’t like fuckin’ headlines. They like the dark. This is too fuckin’ bright.’
‘Your mama ever wash your mouth out?’ Doc grinned at Billy.
‘Jesus Christ, Doc. How come you’re always on my ass?’
Doc went back to his brat, now that Garvin had brought the food and limped off down the bar again.
‘Nah, Jimmy. I don’t see this thing as our kinda thing. Cosa nostra, ya know?’
‘Keep your ears open, Billy. There could be a few bucks in it for you if you help me out.’
‘I’m not a rat, Jimmy P. I don’t mind helpin’ you when it don’t hurt me, but I ain’t no fuckin’ rat — excuse my fuckin’ French, Doc,’
‘This guy’s done two women, Billy,’ Doc told him. ‘He cut them open like a couple of fish and left them sprawled out naked. He gutted them like you’d tear open an animal. Then he carved out their insides and took off like the weasel he is.’
Billy Cheech looked down at his Polish sausage and at his beer with a look of disgust on his swarthy Sicilian face.
‘Look. I hear anything, I’ll let you know, cousin,’ Ciccio told me. ‘I suddenly lost my fuckin’ appetite,’ he growled toward Doc. ‘I better get back to work.’
Doc smiled at him and suddenly clapped him on the shoulder.
‘A member of a crew with a weak stomach. A new wrinkle,’ Gibron teased. ‘Sit back down and finish your lunch. Your boss isn’t likely to call time on you ... We could use your help, Billy Cheech.’
My cousin looked my partner in the eyes, and then he sat down quietly and finished his meal.
*
Natalie was ready for the streets. That was what she told me after she finished her prep tours. I was at her graduation from the Academy with my mother, my two kids, and with Natalie’s mother from Sioux City, Iowa. Her father died ten years ago. This was her whole family now, she said as she hugged me after the ceremony. She took off her white gloves, here at the rented arena where new coppers get their badges, and she put her hands in my hair and she rose up and kissed me. I felt embarrassed at first because my family had never seen me kiss anyone but my wife Erin, but the sensation fled and I was kissing her back. When we separated, I saw a smile on my daughter’s teenaged face and on my mother’s, Eleanor’s, face too. My mother had been cheering on this relationship ever since I came home with the news that Celia Dacy had been killed by Abu Riad’s bodyguards.
‘She is very good people,’ Eleanor informed me after first meeting Natalie Manion. ‘You hang onto her. You need someone just like her. In fact you need her.’
Now Natalie was a member of the fraternity. She was really one of us. I could see her going plainclothes very quickly. She was intelligent, she had the education, and she had the experience from forensics. She would move up in a h
urry, and her gender wouldn’t stop her. I felt like I was about to be left behind in her rise to the top, somehow.
After the whooping was over, I took my family and Natalie and her mother to Mangione’s for dinner. It was the best Italian food on the North Side. We all ordered the lasagna. I bought us a few carafes of red wine, and then I made a toast to her.
‘You won’t need anybody’s help to go where you want to go. You’ll make it all on your own. You are a first-rate rookie, and you’ll make a first-rate detective in the near future. There are nothing but good things ahead for you, Natalie. And I love you.’
Then I took out the little box and put it on the table in front of her.
‘What?’ She smiled.
‘Check it out for yourself, Officer Manion.’
‘What is it, Daddy?’ my daughter Kelly begged.
My son was thoroughly bored and he poked at his lasagna. My mother was already in tears, and so she hugged Laura, Natalie’s mother.
Natalie opened the box and spied the ring.
‘Oh my. Oh my,’ was all she could whisper.
I knelt down next to her. She was sitting on the end of the booth, next to me.
‘I love you, Natalie. No fooling. Marry me ... I lost count. How many times have I asked you, now? ... Will you?’
She looked at the ring, and then she looked up at me.
‘Yes. I will. Anytime you want me to.’
I bent to her and I had my face against her stomach. Then she urged my face upward and she kissed me. When I stood, all I saw was feminine weeping. My daughter, my mother, and my mother-in-law-to-be. My son Michael was unmoved. He held his head with one hand and he continued to poke around at his meal. He was in his tough-guy mode, apparently.
The people in the half-dozen neighboring booths began to applaud, and so now I had to buy drinks for everyone in the vicinity.
Something new came over me. It was an unusual sensation for a man who dealt professionally with death. I felt like I was nineteen again. Not even out of college. I felt the way I did when I proposed to my children’s mother. Here I was pushing fifty. I thought I could never breathe the same kind of free air that I had inhaled when Erin had said yes. That was the day the world made sense. Every part fit the puzzle. Things were finally sane and I knew why it was I’d begun breathing at birth. This was the reason I came out of Eleanor. This was why we all came from where we began. This moment told it all. The rest was nuts. The rest was crazy and unreadable.
