by Thomas Laird
I thought my pulse had come down a little after making love with Natalie in an overpriced cabin for two weeks — a fortnight, the old-timers called it. But it began to surge once I returned to shift. Natalie and I were both on the midnight run. We both slept during the day while the kids were at school. My mother was very quiet because, as I said, she was married to a cop and she too was a veteran of the midnight shift.
I visited the cemetery alone, but I invited Natalie to make the rounds with me. I told her I didn’t want to do anything alone anymore. I told her I was thinking seriously about jumping at retirement in five years when I hit fifty-five, but she didn’t seem to take me seriously. Then I explained I’d be getting out of her way, since she wanted to work in the department where I did business. Homicide. She said she couldn’t picture me not working with stiffs, but I tried to convince her that she was all I needed.
I came home after visiting the three burial plots of Jake, Erin, and Celia. I had to punch in our security code. Then I got in without it sounding like a prison break off The Rock or Joliet in ‘a thirties gangster movie. Merlin was yapping behind the door until he saw me. Then he wagged his tail and wet the carpet. He was not quite housebroken yet.
Natalie walked up to me in her robe and nothing else. She let the robe come apart in the front.
‘Oh! What about —’
‘Mom’s gone to the mall and then out to dinner with her cronies. She said not to wait up for her. I’m off tonight, so I’ll watch the kids.’
She’d become familia instantly. She thought of Eleanor as a second mama, and the kids were damn’ near her own by now. Kelly and Michael had taken to her instantly.
‘I got to go on shift about 10.30,’ I reminded her.
We’d be hunting for our boy again, aided this time by an artist’s multiple renderings of Karrios’s possible new mug. What good that would do us, I wasn’t certain.
‘Would you like to be a father, Jimmy?’
She made me push her back to arm’s length.
‘Oh! You said we’d wait about five years. Get your career going. Remember?’
‘I can have a baby and a career. Women do it —’
‘All the time. But I think we should wait and let the idea percolate and settle in.’
‘You afraid the marriage won’t take, Jimmy?’
She saw the hurt in my eyes.
‘I didn’t mean that. It was stupid ... Let’s have a baby. Let’s have twins. Let’s do it all at once.’
She kissed me and pressed her warmth against me. She started helping me take off my own clothes. I was down to my jockeys when she halted.
‘You do want a baby with me, don’t you, guinea?’
‘Yes. You know I do.’
‘Then let’s not wait for anything anymore. Let’s do everything and do it right now, and if we’re lucky enough, we can keep on doing it again and again. By the time we’re through we’ll have little guys hanging from the curtains.’
She’d said she wanted two when we’d discussed this earlier, but now she was carrying me away with her. When she got a load of taking care of one child, I was sure the enthusiasm would wane. It had with Erin, after Mike was born. Two sure as hell were enough.
When this proposed little guy was sixteen, I’d be ... Damn. Daddy would be baby-sitting in a wheelchair. They’d be setting my gray beard on fire and I’d be helpless to stop them.
Natalie had me pressed against her. She was backed up against the dining room table. We were naked and doing our best to fulfill her reproductive intentions by the time we hit the bedroom.
*
Jack Wendkos said the relationship with the geology professor was progressing nicely, whatever that meant. Doc was still in love with his Indian-born second wife Mari. He was still adjusting to parenthood, and he was still wistfully telling me he was going to retire next year and write his Great American Piece of Literature that he’d been threatening to do since forever. He’d had a couple dozen short stories published in literary magazines that catered to MFAs, he called them — Masters of Fine Arts graduates. But he wanted to break through to the big time, like all writers really do, he said.
It seemed that family and friends had diverted my complete attention from finding this bloody bastard who was quickly reviving all kinds of interest in Jack the Ripper. There’d been a lull since my honeymoon, and it appeared that there were those who believed that Marco Karrios had opted for new hunting grounds.
‘It’d be the smart move, Jimmy,’ Jack Wendkos suggested while Doc and he and I were cramped inside my work space. I was looking out that window toward the Lake. This portal was my only favorite thing about my office. I’d been whining to the Captain to give me a grown-up’s office, and he’d promised me he’d see what he could do.
‘He may have something here, Holmes,’ Doc agreed.
The irony about calling me ‘Holmes’ was that Doc despised Arthur Conan Doyle. Doc preferred mystery writers like Ross McDonald and James Lee Burke. ‘Holmes’ had just become a generic name tag for someone who looked about as British as Tony the Pizza Guy at Fabrizzi’s Restaurant in the Loop. No one mistook me for an Anglo, I was saying.
‘Smart move? Since when has this guy done anything all that bright?’ I asked them. ‘Yeah, he’s clever about saving his ass, but he takes way too many chances. And I think he thinks of this city as home. In fact, I’ll bet he’s almost sentimental about this town. And the Doctor — the FBI profiler — said he likes to hunt where he feels comfortable. Look, he’s only gone outside the North Side twice. The geology teacher that Jack’s in love with …’
I saw Wendkos color darkly.
‘Shit, what’s the matter with you?’ I asked. ‘You got great taste ... And the two black hoos he did, which he did no matter what the fuck anybody else on this floor thinks.’
The prevailing scenario was that the black prostitutes had been killed by a copycat.
‘Other than those three women, he’s a homeboy. I’m excluding Mary Margaret Fortuna — Ellen Jacoby — because that was a domestic beef for Karrios.’
I watched them for their reactions. They didn’t seem to have a dispute waiting for me.
‘You think he’s trying to put us to sleep,’ Doc proffered.
‘Yeah. I think he’s trying to charm the snake with all this soothing-interlude crap. He’s setting up for a move. Even though he’s no dago, he’s learned something from them. Maybe from his brother-in-law or common-law brother-in-law or whatever. You put your enemy at ease just before you whack him. We let down our guards, he goes on a spree. Pretty soon that Victorian London killer, Saucy Jack, starts looking like a piker compared to the numbers Marco’s putting on the boards.’
‘You think he’s going to be that hard to catch?’ Jack asked.
‘How ‘bout that Unibomber!’ I teased.
‘That’s the FBI,’ Doc tried to explain.
‘Maybe. But we still haven’t been on the same page or the same block of ground with this prick yet, so I don’t think we got any room to dis our federal friends at this point.’
‘Then all we really have is to hope he makes a move at the Big Tuna — Jackie Morocco — or at Sal Donofrio,’ Doc said.
‘Or at me or my cousin. Marco’s a very knowledgeable sociopath. He can hit a number of places, and he knows by spreading us thin he can wear us down and maybe even out.’
‘You’re painting a really gloomy scene here, partner,’ Jack lamented.
‘It is a gloomy scenario at the moment ... There are two coppers in my household. So let’s say I send my family off with Nick, my uncle. He’s not a player. The Ciccios don’t know about Nick. He wasn’t a copper like my old man and he never had anything to do with the Ciccio family. He’s an unknown, so my mother and kids’d be safe with him out in Elmhurst, where he lives. That’s a decent distance. The kids’ll be out of school in a few weeks. No problem there —’
‘What’re you talking about, Jimmy?’ Doc wanted to know.
�
��I’m trying to say I make myself available to the electronic media. I tell them over and over what a limp-dick psycho Marco really is. I make up a lie about how he’s despised by his own mother and father. I say he was sexually abused by his fucking uncle. Whatever. I make it very inflammatory. This guy’s overly emotional. He can fly off the handle. We know that about him. If I can get him to come for me, we’ll be placing him inside the closest thing we’ve got to a controlled environment. And that’s my plan.’
‘You talk this over with Natalie?’ Jack queried.
‘Yeah. She’s a cop and a very fine one too.’
‘It’s ridiculous, Jimmy. Why don’t we just ride with the vendetta Marco’s got against John Fortuna?’ Doc demanded.
‘We got to shove this rectal birth out of the hole. Or his list gets longer. He’s a businessman too. He’s going to kill because the money’s too good not to ... We’ve got Interpol working on the European end, and they say they might have some good news for us soon. But there’s no promise about results from them. We’ve got to hook Karrios before he carves a bigger chunk out of the female population of this city. And I’m not reflecting pressure from the Captain or the people above him. This comes straight from yours truly. Enough is enough!’
I slammed my desk top, and the THUMPPP! startled me too.
Doc looked right into my eyes.
‘You or your new wife gets hurt, I’ll never forgive you. I love you, paisan, but if one of you catches a cold on this, I won’t be able to let go of it. I’m telling you true, James,’ Gibron said in the stoniest voice I’d ever heard come out of his mouth.
‘This idea of mine might already be in The Farmer’s skull, Doc. We all talked about it before. I’m just going to turn up the heat.’
He shook his head, but he put up his palms in defeat shortly thereafter.
‘Playing who’s-got-the-balls with a conscienceless dildo like Karrios. There is no percentage ... I assume I’m wasting my breath?’ Doc conceded.
I nodded my head slowly at my senior partner.
Chapter Thirty-One
I see you, but you don’t see me.
I watch the home where John Fortuna lives, in Skokie. It seems rather humorous somehow that the local Sicilian chieftain lives in the midst of all these Jews. Most of the guineas tend to cluster in their own neighborhoods, but Fortuna lives in what was his father’s house. His father, I am told, was a dentist and had no connections to the Outfit at all.
Wherever Jackie Morocco goes, he is accompanied by no less than six goons. Then there is the FBI surveillance, which I’m sure he’s aware of. The federals are always around. But none of them knows my new face, which makes it possible for me to try and get close to Fortuna.
*
John does not believe in electronic security. I’ve heard him say he pays men to do that kind of work. So when I walk up to his home on this Thursday night — actually it’s an early Friday morning-1 see that the two FBI agents are asleep in their van, parked a half-block up the street. There is a light on in Fortuna’s front window. The house itself is inauspicious. He doesn’t show his money by the appearance of the dwelling or by the neighborhood he lives in. It’s part of the reason he’s always been low-profile. He’s not like that guy Gotti in New York. There’s none of that flamboyance.
I’ll try the back way into the house. I saw three of his associates go in, around midnight, but I think that’s the total number of crew assigned as his bodyguards. I assume they work in shifts of eight hours, one awake at all times. So that means at least one of the bodyguards is sitting up, keeping the vigil. I’m betting the one sentry is in that living room where the light burns. It’s 2.48 a.m. John Fortuna should be asleep at this hour. He’s not a public womanizer, either. Other than what Ellen told me about him fucking his own sister, all those years ago, I don’t know much about his private life. He lives a rather solitary social life also.
I pick the dead bolt on the back door only to find there’s a chain, but I’m able to get my gloved hand inside far enough so that I can find the chain and its bolt. I maneuver my knife until I find the metal piece that houses the bolt, and then I wedge the tip under that housing. I’m able to dislodge the chain and bolt because the screws that secure them must be loose. In under two minutes I’m inside.
I’ve never been in Fortuna’s home. I’ve only seen him on the street or at one of the Italian-American ‘clubs’ that he frequents. He never had any particular use for the man who was fucking what used to be his sole property. I think he would’ve wanted Ellen to live here with him if she would’ve agreed to it, but she despised her big brother. It wasn’t consensual sex that she engaged in with him. He brutalized her and beat her and tortured her from time to time, but no one in her family would believe that the Big Boss was capable of incest. Ellen said the dentist and his wife were staunch Catholics who could not believe such a thing was possible — until Ellen ran away and got married. She never talked directly to John Fortuna again. But she did set me up with Sal Donofrio.
I make my way toward the living room. I see one of the bodyguards sleeping in the chair in front of a television with a picture but no sound. He’s making it too easy. I stand by the lamp. The table on which it rests is next to him, on his left. I don’t recognize this one. I’m about to cut his throat with my nine-inch blade when a voice tells me very softly, very gently, to stop.
I pivot and I see the Boss himself.
He’s got a nine-millimeter pointed at my head.
‘Why don’t you sit down? We can talk.’
‘No, thanks.’ I smile.
‘I don’t think I know you, do I?’ Fortuna asks.
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Your voice sounds familiar, though.’
The sleeper in the chair is finally aroused.
‘You awake, Vito, you sleepy fuck?’ Jackie Morocco rasps.
‘Jesus, John, I’m sorry —’
‘Shut the fuck up ... Look who just popped in. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the limpdick who lived with my sister Mary Margaret. And the same guy who slaughtered her like an animal.’
There’s no use denying any of this. He’s recognized my voice. He’s heard it often enough when he’s tried to contact his sister at our apartment in the city.
I edge close to the lamp when he turns his attention to his failure of a bodyguard.
‘I ought to shoot you and him, Vito, you lazy fuck. When I get done with this animale, I’ll take care of you.’
Vito gulps but doesn’t try to defend himself. There’s no copping a plea with Fortum.
‘You want to drop that nice big knife? What the fuck is that? Some kind of hairy-assed scalpel? You were a medical student, weren’t you, limpdick?’
The bodyguard stands, next to me, and it diverts Fortuna’s attention just long enough for me to grab hold of Vito, yank him in position in front of me, and use him as a shield just as John lets loose with two rounds. The sound of the two shots is deafening in the small living room. The impact of the two slugs knocks Vito and me backward, but I’m able to grab hold of the lamp, rip it out of its socket, and fling it at Jackie Morocco’s head. The room goes dark, two more shots explode toward the already dead body I’m still holding in front of me, and when I hear Fortuna coming toward me in the dark, I use Vito’s head as a ramming tool and I shatter the picture window behind where the lamp once was. I dump Vito and I make for the opening. I jump out onto the lawn, and two more rounds whine close by me, but I’m not hit. I take off on the lawn and bolt in the direction opposite to the location of the Feds’ van. I’m down the street now but I don’t hear any more gunfire. I run and run until my lungs want to explode. When I’m certain there’s no one still coming after me, I cut through several backyards and make my way back to my own vehicle, using a circular route. I arrive at my car, and the street is quiet. My heart is beating so rapidly and loudly that I think my chest will rip open from the buildup.
After about three minutes of catching my breath, I
’m able to start the car and pull away from the curb. I begin the long ride back to my new apartment on the far northwest side. My knife sits next to me on the seat of the automobile. I never let it out of my sight when I go out. I keep it always within easy reach.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Feds told us about John Fortuna’s nocturnal adventure. Terry Morrissey came into my office as Doc and Jack and I were trying to figure out a plan of attack to draw The Farmer to my house.
‘Apparently he’s not intimidated by John Fortuna and his crew. He managed to get one of John’s bodyguards blown away by the capo himself. Then he busts the window out using the dead guy’s noggin and he runs out into the night. Fortuna’s only able to ID Karrios because of the voice. He said he didn’t get a good look at Marco, though, because all there was was a low-wattage bulb in the lamp behind The Farmer. He remembers glasses and dark hair. At least, the hair was darker than the blond topknot he used to have.’
‘He’ll color it again and he’ll ditch the glasses or buy himself a different pair. Maybe he’ll shave his head,’ Doc told the Special Agent.
‘You’re probably right,’ Morrissey answered. ‘We might as well dump all those new artist’s renderings.’
Then he smiled and walked out of my cubicle.
‘So how do we get Karrios to your house without getting you and your wife hurt? You know the Captain won’t allow this thing to fly.’
I looked at Jack.
‘He’s not going to be told about any of this.’
‘I don’t like it either, Jimmy,’ Wendkos said. ‘It just isn’t done. You don’t get personally involved with these guys. You don’t let them get into your head, and I have to say I think that’s what’s happened here. I’m not trying to sound like a wiseass, but —’
‘He has got into my head. I dream about the son of a bitch. If Natalie weren’t a cop, I’d never allow my house to be the center of a thing like this. But we’ve got a guy who takes anyone who’s after him as a personal opponent. It’s not like I’m a policeman to him. It’s like I’m a competitor. He’s got to beat me and beat me personally. He’s got to get into all our faces. That’s the way I see Karrios, and I think it’s our best chance of stopping his string. I don’t need to repeat his body count for you, do I, Jack?’
