by Thomas Laird
‘That I do know about. There have been several complaints about Father Mark ... our Bishop is trying to deal with Father Mark and two other priests in this diocese.’
‘I’d like to talk to Father Mark myself.’
‘I really don’t know where he is, Jimmy.’
‘Then find out from the Bishop.’
He sat forward, his elbows on the table, his hands clasped.
‘Is this part of some criminal investigation? I know you’re a policeman —’
‘It’s personal, Father William.’
‘I see ... Are you planning on getting some kind of revenge from this priest?’
He cut right to it. He wasn’t playing throw and duck with me.
‘I’m not seeking revenge. I want to know where this man is, and if he’s still a priest, I want to know why.’
‘The Bishop is currently preparing a public —’
‘I don’t give a shit what the Bishop says.’
Father William sat back in his chair.
‘I’m not used to talking to a priest like this, you understand. I was raised to respect anyone with a collar. But your brother priest crossed the line, like a number of other reverends we’ve been hearing about lately.’
‘It’s a scandal, Jimmy. I can’t lie to you.’
And you really don’t know where they’ve put this man.’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Or you won’t say.’
‘Both, Jimmy.’
‘Then you’re part of the problem.’
‘You shouldn’t become personally involved in this. You’re a cop. You know you don’t investigate something personal like this. You can’t be objective.’
‘You’re right. But I don’t see anything happening unless I find out where he is. And I’ll be happy to involve several people I know from the city’s newspapers.’
‘That sounds like blackmail, Jimmy.’
‘It sure as hell is, Father.’
He clasped his hands again, not in prayer but in anxiety, it appeared.
‘You might want to try the five o’clock. At St Pat’s. All the way out in Glenbrook.’
It was all the information I was getting from him, so I stood and then left him sitting with his hands squeezed tightly together. His knuckles appeared bone white, just before I turned and walked out on him.
*
Father Mark did the five o’clock, that next Saturday night. I was slated to return to work the following Monday. Tuesday the stitches were to be removed.
I arrived at 4:00 p.m. for confessions. St Pat’s was a small church in this big suburb, Northwest of Chicago.
I walked into the confessional and shut the door behind me. I sat down next to the screen that you talked through. The flap opened and I saw a faint outline of a face.
‘Father Mark?’
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Jimmy Parisi.’
‘Yes?’
‘My son’s name is Michael Parisi.’
‘Yes.’
‘You recall the name?’
‘No.’
‘I think you’re lying, Father.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘You know who Michael Parisi is. You had him as a server at St Catherine’s before they moved you because you couldn’t keep your hands off little boys.’
‘I’m sorry but —’
‘You’re not sorry about any goddam thing. That’s why you do the things you do.’
‘I think you might want to speak to someone who’s —’
‘I want to talk to you, Reverend. You didn’t get my son to play with your dick. But you left him with scars anyway.’
I heard him getting up.
‘You leave this confessional and I will shoot you in the head, Father. Do you hear me?’
I clicked the hammer back on the .44 Bulldog that was now in my right hand.
I heard him slough back down in his chair. ‘What you are doing is not only immoral but illegal,’ he said.
‘You’re absolutely right, Father. But the good news is that I haven’t blown the top of your head all over this nice confessional. But I wouldn’t put it past me to change my mind.’
‘All right. All right ... I remember Michael Parisi.’
‘He sure remembers you.’
There was silence from the priest’s side.
‘So what is it that you want?’
‘I want you to resign. Quit. Now. Before the Bishop finally gets around to shit-canning you.’
‘I can’t do —’
‘Yes you can. Your brethren of the cloth who’ve been caught at that shit have given it up, with help or without it. You’re going down that road with a little shove from me.’
‘But this is blatant —’
‘I know what it is. I’m a cop. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. You want to call for help? Go ahead. You want to call someone downtown and try to squeeze my nuts? Go ahead. There are a hundred ways I can make you dead, Father. That doesn’t mean I’d resort to something as drastic and as immoral as that, but I just wanted you to know I could.’
He didn’t respond.
‘Did you catch all that, Father Mark?’
‘Yes.’
‘There are worse things that could happen. You could wind up in the shithouse with a gorilla who takes a liking to your backside. You hear what I’m saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s been a real pain in the ass looking you up. You’ve given my son nightmares. If our little talk has done anything to inspire bad dreams in you too — well I’m just happy we’ve had this little conversation. Now I’m going to try and find a real priest who I can confess all this shit to.’
I got up and slammed the confessional door behind me on my way out. I could hear the noise reverberating all throughout the church here at St Pat’s.
*
Doc was tired of fishing. He was tired of his time off. But he was taking another month-long leave of absence because his mind wasn’t right yet, he said.
‘I like hanging around the house. With Mari and our girl.’
Mari was his paediatrician wife. The girl was his adopted, black, teenaged daughter.
‘You going to make this holiday permanent?’ I asked him.
We were sitting on his deck in back of his suburban home in Palatine.
‘You look like you could use a longer rest, Jimmy.’
We both sipped at the expensive exported beer he’d served in frosted mugs. It was chilly out on his deck, but it was a clear afternoon and it was comfortable sitting with my partner.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘That good?’ he smiled.
‘Even worse.’
‘You never let anyone cut you before, Jimmy.’
‘Yeah. The Redhead has made me aware of it in no uncertain terms.’
‘Good for her.’
He laughed and looked out at the barren woods behind his pretty house.
‘We both slowed up sometime back, Jimmy ... Didn’t you notice?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
We received the call about two hours into our day’s shift. Dilly Beaumont had been shot to death. She was the interview with the large dog. They shot the dog as well. We saw the two of them, woman and malamute, in Dilly’s living room in her apartment on the West Side, not far from Arthur Ransom’s place.
The woman had been shot twice — once in the chest and once through the forehead. The dog had been shot at least four times, as far as we could make out on first appraisal. Apparently they did the dog first. He was positioned in front of Dilly. He most likely went down first. But the Crime Scene people seemed to think someone else bled on Dilly’s living-room carpet. There was a pool in front of and underneath the malamute, and there was Dilly’s blood around and near her. And there was another trail, going from the living room with the two bodies out to the front door of the apartment and then down the steps toward the entrance. There the trail ende
d. The Crime Scene people would have something for us shortly, regarding the third party’s presence in Dilly’s apartment.
*
‘They shot her because they thought she put us on to them,’ Jack said in the Taurus as we sped toward the Loop. Jack was driving which was why we were at a high speed. I didn’t believe in high m.p.h., whether it was during a pursuit or on the way to the dentist’s. I was convinced that the tortoise knew how to run the race. Half of the issue was just getting there.
‘It seems suspicious, doesn’t it,’ I agreed.
‘Gang related?’ Jack posed the question.
‘It seems that way, also.’
Our next move was to become friendly with the Gang Tactical people.
*
‘The Vice Kings are your probable perpetrators, in that neighbourhood, Jimmy,’ Lieutenant Dan Kray of Tactical told us. ‘They’d be the dirt I’d dig on this one, if it really is gang related. No one else walks those blocks at night. They own that hood. Have owned it for the past eighteen months.’
‘They killed her for talking to us about the Arthur Ransom murder, I think,’ I told the sandy-haired Tactical cop.
‘They kill people just to lower their inventory of ammo, Jimmy. You know the types,’ Kray said.
He was a big man — six five and about 250 pounds of well-honed muscle. Kray was an avid bodybuilder. I’d previously seen the numerous trophies in his office where we sat. He wasn’t overly bulked, however, like an Arnold the Austrian movie guy. He was just ripped.
‘To me ... I’d guess initiation, for Ransom. Insurance, for the woman.’
‘I was thinking along those lines, too, Dan,’ I told him.
‘Good luck trying to substantiate any of it. None of the yos know nothin’.’
‘We’ve heard that one about thirty times,’ Jack affirmed.
‘I’d be looking at a kid. A new inductee. I’ll see if I can come up with any names for you, Jimmy. But like I said, I can’t promise much. We mostly try to keep the fucking lid on. We don’t prosecute many felons in that neighbourhood. Never any witnesses. I didn’t see nothin’, you know?’
He rose when we did. We shook hands and headed back to my office.
*
We found Arthur’s granddaughter at her part-time job at the branch library some six blocks from where Ransom was sliced to death along with his cat.
‘I’ll get in trouble if I don’t keep busy,’ Joellyn told us.
She was replacing books back onto the shelves.
‘We talked to Miss Irving,’ I told her. Miss Irving was her supervisor in this small but clean branch of the Public Library. ‘She said it’s okay to talk to us for a few minutes.’
‘I don’t know what I can tell you,’ she said.
Jack handed her a copy of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. He took it off the top of her stack on the four-wheeled cart.
‘We have an idea that this killing had to do with a local gang. Your grandfather didn’t have anything to steal and we can’t find any connection to drugs,’ Jack said.
‘Of course it was them.’
‘You mean the Vice Kings?’ I asked.
‘They’re the lords of these streets, ain’t they?’
I could see fear in her eyes. It was only natural. These bangers were lethal, and everyone in this vicinity knew it. The few merchants who did business around here paid tribute to them, Kray had already explained, and anyone who didn’t make payments got relieved of his or her existence.
‘You can’t get to them, Lieutenant. But they can get to us. You know?’
‘They can be had,’ I told her.
‘Yeah? And who’s going to mess with them?’
‘I am,’ I explained.
‘Ain’t no Tactical has made a dent in that bunch,’ Joellyn snapped back. There was plenty of sarcasm laced within her words. It sounded obscene coming out of that pretty face.
‘They know. I know. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make an arrest.’
‘You even gonna try?’ she smiled bitterly.
‘Yeah. We are,’ Jack shot back.
‘Well, you let me know when five-oh solves a kill in this hood.’
Five-oh was the po-lice. Us.
‘I’m going to do whatever I can.’
‘No offence, Lieutenant, but we heard all that before. Like I told you before. My grandfather was no big man. He didn’t have no weight. He’s what those Tacticals call “low profile”, when it comes to being some po-lice investigation.’
‘Yeah. Some detectives sort their cases like that. We don’t … Look, we need your help. Someone has to talk. That’s the way most of these things find closure. You hear anything, or anyone you know hears anything —’
‘This is D and D territory, Lieutenant Parisi.’
‘Deaf and dumb,’ Jack answered.
‘That’s exactly the way it is. Ain’t no one gonna talk to me. Not since I was his granddaughter. They ain’t stupid, you know.’
Jack handed her a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Her eyes went down onto the floor.
‘You know I’d say something to y’all if I knew anything. I don’t care what they do to me. Ain’t getting out of here anyways.’
‘You might beat some odds,’ I suggested.
‘This game is fixed, Lieutenant.’
She grabbed three books off her portable cart.
‘Go back and ask those Tacticals to give you some help. I can’t help you,’ she said.
She pushed her mobile cart up the aisle and left the two of us standing there.
*
The scar itched where the doctor had removed my stitches. I was under orders not to scratch.
We sat at Garvin’s in Berwyn. Doc’s favourite bar / haunt. It helped me remember my old partner, and Wendkos didn’t mind being subjected to the stench of tobacco, urine and beer that permeated this saloon.
Garvin was in the hospital having kidney stones zapped by laser, and Garvin’s second wife, Arlene, was running the place. She had an orange bubble of a hairdo that smacked of the 1960s, but she was pushing seventy herself.
She put the Diet Cokes on the oak slab in front of us.
‘Doc was fond of the ambience of this hole,’ I told Jack.
‘Yeah. It has an aura, all right.’
Tactical had come up with three names. Rico Perry, Ronnie Jenks and Bobby Howard. They were the new blood that had just joined the Vice Kings, according to Kray’s intelligence. They were between thirteen and fifteen years old, the Tactical copper had informed us. He had addresses on the three, so Jack and I were headed back to the West Side after the lunch of brats and Diet Cokes here at Garvin’s.
*
Rico Perry lived only two blocks from Arthur Ransom. The apartment building might have been a double of the place where we’d found Ransom’s remains.
We had two new African-American uniforms with us once more. We tried to get different coppers each time we canvassed because we knew how these patrol cops hated this duty.
We rang the bell and walked up the flight after someone in Perry’s apartment at the top of this three flat answered us.
I knocked on the door. The entry cracked open. It was a small young male. He couldn’t have been older than four.
‘What y’ all want?’ the little voice asked.
‘Your mama home?’ Jack asked.
‘Naw,’ the child replied.
‘Your brother or sister here?’ I asked.
He shut the door. I thought we had lost him, but someone else opened up. This time it was an older young male. Probably Rico’s age.
‘You Rico Perry?’ I asked.
I showed him the badge and the ID.
He opened the door and let us in. Apparently he didn’t want the lower neighbours to hear what we had to say.
There was virtually nothing inside that door. A kitchen table in the small kitchenette, two chairs in front of a big screen TV. Numerous cables that hooked video games to that TV — and nothing else. The
two bedrooms were off to the left down the hall that led to the bathroom, it appeared.
‘Do you have a parent, Rico?’ Jack asked.
We were surprised the teenager appeared to be non-hostile. We weren’t used to that kind of feedback from an interview.
The young boy was positioned in front of the 40-inch big screen. He was playing some 007 James Bond game wherein the idea was to murder off everyone who appeared onscreen.
‘Got my auntie. She at work. Works downtown.’
No big smiles aimed at us. But this kid was totally cool and collected.
‘You know a man named Arthur Ransom?’ Jack asked while we watched the child slay bad guy after bad guy on the video game.
Rico looked like an athlete. A real greyhound. Sleek, built for speed. Would have been handsome except his right eye drooped. It gave him a hangdog appearance.
‘I heard that name, yeah.’
‘What did you hear about Arthur Ransom?’ Jack wanted to know.
‘Somebody burned him, is all.’
‘Burned him?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. You know. Waxed, burned: somebody did him.’
‘You hear why?’ Jack queried.
Rico turned and stared at the video game on the big screen.
‘You want to answer the detective?’ I said.
‘Nobody know why,’ he replied. There was still no hint of adversity or snideness in his voice. It was almost as if he were enjoying this interview.
‘We could continue this talk downtown, but then we’d all have to walk out to the police car and you and little bro would have to take the long ride through the hood. And everybody’d see you with the five-oh, Rico,’ I warned him.
‘No one need to do any of that,’ he spat. Now there was a dose of bile in his words.
We waited.
‘Why you come talk to me? I ain’t the only number in town.’
‘Tactical says you just got some blood work done,’ I told him.
‘What you talkin’ ’bout?’
‘You’re blooded now, Rico. You did the old man to make your bones,’ I said.
‘You been watchin’ too many TV shows, Lieutenant.’
‘Let’s go. Turn off the TV and take the kid along, Jack.’
Wendkos walked toward the little brother by the tube.
‘Awright, awright, goddamit!’
‘You have something to tell us?’
