by Thomas Laird
‘Yeah. I’m a member of a crew. So? Ain’t nothin’ illegal about that, is they?’
‘You a member of the street gang called the Vice Kings?’ Jack wanted to know.
‘Ain’t nothin’ wrong wid it, is they?’
‘Did you walk into Arthur Ransom’s apartment and cut his throat and slice up a pet cat of his?’ I asked him.
The directness set him back, but it didn’t stop him. He wasn’t afraid of either of us. He wasn’t afraid of the law, the system of justice, the courts, the prisons — he wasn’t afraid of any of us.
‘I don’t know nothin’ about any of that,’ he said evenly.
‘Somebody gonna squeal, Rico. Then they might try you as an adult,’ Jack told the teenager.
‘I think we might call the Department of Children about your little bro, Rico,’ I warned him.
‘I told you. My auntie at work.’
He pronounced auntie more like ‘awntie’. Not ‘ant’.
‘They can sort it all out,’ I said.
‘You do what you gotta do,’ Rico hissed.
‘If you were there, Rico, and even if it wasn’t you who cut the old guy, it’ll be murder one, and they’ll burn you down just like the guy who actually did the killing.’
‘You want to talk anymore, I want a lawyer,’ he declared.
Someone had already schooled him on dealing with the five-oh.
‘Next time we talk, you might need a counsellor,’ I smiled.
I motioned for Jack to come on out of there, and we left.
‘Going to call Children’s Services?’ Jack asked me on the way out to the Taurus.
‘If I don’t keep my word, that young man’s not going to believe me the next time I predict his future.’
We got to the unmarked squad and got in. I waved to the two uniforms as they pulled away from the curb. They were given their freedom, and I knew they’d be happy to be the hell out of here.
It was getting too late into the shift, and we didn’t have time to visit the other two names on our list from Tactical.
We would encounter the other two young blooded bangers in the morning. Joellyn Ransom was right. We weren’t about to receive any aid from the indigenous personnel in this barrio. By the time we got to Rico’s partners, they might have both disappeared underground, somewhere in this concrete, blacktopped netherworld called the West Side.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Howard and Jenks, the other two banger friends of Rico, were invisible. No one had sighted them in over a week, Tactical informed Wendkos and me.
The Count had two vics under his bat cape, and we had no idea where he’d vanished to. We tried Leonard Bliss at the club Merlin’s once more.
‘Hello, Leonard. Have you heard from your PO lately?’ I smiled.
‘Hey, Lieutenant. If I had anything for you I woulda called.’
Leonard looked nervous at the mention of his PO — parole officer.
‘Has Albert Finnegan been in this bar lately?’ Jack asked. And before Bliss could whine that he didn’t know any Albert Finnegan, Jack shoved the photo at him.
‘Albert Finnegan’s The Count?’ Bliss asked.
‘Maybe. That’s why we’d like to get close to him. See, he cut the Lieutenant here, and that makes me very mad,’ Jack told him. ‘And you can imagine how it makes Lieutenant Parisi feel.’
Jack was about nose to nose with the biker as he leaned over the bar toward Bliss.
‘So if this son of a bitch has been in here recently and you haven’t told us —’
‘Okay ... all right. I seem to remember he was in here, maybe a week ago.’
‘Did he have friends?’ I asked.
‘All these fucking Goths travel in packs, Lieutenant. Shit, I didn’t know he cut you.’
‘So?’ Jack continued.
‘He was with a woman. Or a kid. Christ, it’s hard to tell how old these fuckers are, with the make-up and everything.’
‘You catch a name on the woman?’ I asked.
‘No. But she comes in here all the time. I mean like every night. He’s not as regular, just once in a while.’
‘How come you didn’t tell us all this the last time, Leonard?’ Jack wanted to know. He was leaning toward the bartender again.
‘I can’t be talking about clientele and keep my job. You understand, don’t you, Lieutenant?’
He looked over at me for help. Jack was almost nose to nose with the tattooed barkeep.
‘Jesus, if I’d known he’d cut you —’
‘When does she come in, usually? About what time?’ I asked Bliss.
‘Like ten, ten-thirty. Has a couple of wine coolers and waits for the other bloodsuckers to show up. Sometimes she hangs with the guy on that picture, but not always. These bitches sleep around. I wouldn’t fuck any of them. They probably got AIDS or some shit.’
It was only 9:35. We’d have to wait outside in the car. Jack and I would never fit in with Leonard Bliss’s ‘clientele’. So we walked out to the Taurus, and then Jack parked us across the street and down the block aways. These Goths had no use for the po-lice either. Just like Rico and his boys in the Vice Kings. The Goths weren’t known for criminal behaviour, but we were the Establishment, of course, and weren’t to be trusted.
When I did stakeouts, Doc was usually at the wheel. He always brought along his portable radio with the headset, and he invariably listened to an all-night jazz station out of Evanston. I would watch him bob his head to the rhythms of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane or Ramsey Lewis or Ahmad Jamal. Jack preferred to sit in silence. He only spoke when I talked first.
My scar was itching. I had some lotion with me to assuage the annoyance, so I took off my leather coat and rolled up my sleeve and I applied what the doctor had prescribed. That prick Albert Finnegan would have chosen the night I was wearing my good suede jacket. The suede was ruined. But I could’ve bled to death, so I tried to look at it that way.
My mood had declined, suddenly. I felt tired. Worn out. Maybe even beaten-up.
When you got older, death became proximate. When you got sick, it took much longer to rebound. It was harder to find the bright side in anything. Homicide did not lend itself toward a bright and sunny attitude. We dealt with human misery, human loss. All day every day. You tried to separate yourself from the misery on the streets, but it became more difficult as the years burned away. I couldn’t recover, the way I used to. I took all the unsolved cases too hard, too personally. I wasn’t following my own experience of letting go of the killers we couldn’t catch.
But Albert Finnegan laid hands on me, and even though no one would ever connect humiliation to me because he cut me, I would. It became absolutely personal when someone drew blood. Finnegan crossed the line. Being cut by a punk is something, I thought, that I never would have allowed to happen ten or fifteen years ago. I would’ve sensed him in that kitchen with me or I would’ve at least heard him breathing. Smelled his presence, at the very least. But I had done none of the above. I’d been cut to the bone and had to be helped by my partner, and his stopping for me had cost us a collar. And it might cost us another murder, now that Albert roamed freely.
It was ten-twelve, the next time I looked at my watch. Jack hadn’t said a word in all this time.
‘There she is,’ he said. It shocked me upright. I was almost dozing off.
‘You sure?’
‘It’s dark, but she fits the general description.’
‘So now we wait for real.’
We weren’t going to follow her into the bar. We were going to follow her on her way back out. She might lead us to Albert. If she didn’t we could always question her later.
‘Your turn,’ Jack said. He meant that it was my turn to try and get some sleep. Merlin’s had a four o’clock license, and neither of us figured this Goth girl would be an early riser. So she wouldn’t be leaving until closing. More than five hours.
I leaned back and shut my eyes.
‘Jimmy. Wake up.’
> ‘What time is it?’ I asked Jack.
‘Four. Closing time.’
‘What? Why the fuck didn’t you wake me up?’
‘You looked like you were all done in, Lieutenant.’
‘I don’t need a fucking nanny, Jack.’
‘It’s all right. I wasn’t sleepy.’
She came out with the rest of the Goth crew.
‘Slow night. Only saw ten or twelve of these whatevers walk through the front door.’
Their back exit was chained up. We’d noticed the chains when we talked to Leonard the first time. It was against the law to do it, but we weren’t there to bitch about fire codes.
She came out with two other females. They could have passed for sisters, from a distance, but Albert’s squeeze was taller than the other two. Albert’s lady was almost six feet tall, it appeared. So it wouldn’t be tough picking her out of a crowd of these neo-zombies.
They walked down the street to a blue Camaro. Albert’s lady wasn’t driving. So we followed the Camaro through New Town and found that the women were headed east.
They dropped our subject off all the way out at the Gold Coast. Apparently she was a monied Goth. A doorman let her into a very high-rent building here on Michigan Avenue.
Jack and I parked at the entrance to her building when she’d made it inside. We both got out and walked up to the doorman. He had the red cap and the grey uniform and the whole doorman’s outfit.
‘Gentlemen?’ he asked.
Jack showed him the badge and the ID.
‘Oh. Yes sir. Can I do something for you?’
‘Her name?’ Jack asked.
‘Pardon?’ the doorkeeper asked.
‘The white-faced ghost who just checked in. C’mon. We don’t have all night,’ I told him.
‘She’s ... Her name is Janet Meyerson. She lives with her parents. On the sixth floor.’
‘Good. You did fine — what’s your name?’
‘Richard, Richard Friar.’
Jack smiled at me. The doorman was quivering. He apparently didn’t have to deal with gendarmes too often in this hood.
‘Does Oprah live near here?’ Jack asked him.
‘Why, yes. Three blocks down, as a matter of fact. Are you investigating her?’
‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘But I like Doctor Phil a whole lot.’ We were tired of messing with him, so we walked back to the car.
‘Twenty-four-seven surveillance on her. It starts now. We need to find out everything we can about her. She may get lonely for her boyfriend, and we want to be there for the two of them.’
The next day we received the fruits of Jack’s labours, late in the afternoon. While I caught up on routine paperwork, Jack had done the intelligence work. Goth girl, alias Janet Meyerson, was a sometimes student at Columbia College in downtown Chicago. Sometimes because she had a habit of dropping classes and then returning for a semester or two. Her father was Philip Meyerson, a rich banking investor who worked in the Loop. Celeste Meyerson, mommy, was an heiress connected to real estate in northern Illinois. Going to college was just a hobby, it appeared. Staying out all night with goblins like Albert Finnegan seemed to occupy much more of Janet Meyerson’s time.
We had surveillance on her, just as I’d ordered the night we followed her home. Jack and I were the team on her tonight. There were four teams of surveillance on her, six-hour shifts for each of us. The lucky teams were the daylight cops. Janet was very still during daylight. She only started to rock and roll when the sun was down. Around about the witching hour was her peak of activity, you might say.
*
She was headed to Merlin’s again. This time Jack and I only had to wait until 12:45 a.m. when she emerged from the club. But she came out alone. She drove a black Lexus. Brand new. Immaculate. It would be no problem picking her out in the scarce traffic past midnight.
She turned east. We thought she was headed home. But she turned left onto the Outer Drive, Lakeshore Drive, and we were pointed north. She got off at Fullerton and proceeded to go west. She apparently didn’t spot us because she drove conservatively and slowly all the way to her destination on Fullerton and Park Streets.
It was a three flat in an upscale northside address. We stayed well behind her, but we saw her walk up to the apartment building and buzz at the entrance way. She got a return buzz and entered the dwelling. There was only one light on among the three floors, and it was on in the middle apartment.
We didn’t know if it was Albert Finnegan, of course. She could have been visiting any of her friends or lovers. But Leonard Bliss had been rather convinced that Janet Meyerson and our boy were a couple.
We sat and waited. Jack got out and checked the names by the doorbells. The second floor was occupied by B. Jenkins, Jack told me.
We didn’t have grounds for a search warrant. Judges wouldn’t let you kick doors down on a hunch. But Ms Meyerson was the closest thing we had to a lead on The Count, so we would have to be patient. We couldn’t show ourselves to the girl yet, either. If this were someone other than Albert Finnegan, our lead would immediately dry up.
She stayed inside for forty minutes. Then she got back into the Lexus and drove farther west until we arrived at Fullerton and James, about two miles west. She got out of the car, went to the entrance and again buzzed for entry. She was inside another three flat. This time Jack found out the name was M. Martinez.
‘You think she could’ve made us, Jimmy? And now she’s just leading us around?’
‘I don’t think so, Jack. We’ve kept a pretty good interval.’
‘Yeah, but Albert could’ve warned her someone might be following her. He hasn’t been sloppy yet.’
Janet came trotting out of M. Martinez’s building and hopped into the Lexus. Now we had two more names to add to the inquiry.
She drove out to Western Avenue and headed south and pulled into a White Castle.
‘Good. I’m hungry,’ Jack smiled. ‘But I guess we won’t —’
‘What the fuck. I’m hungry too. Let’s go inside with her.’
Jack looked at me as if I were joking.
‘Naw. Let’s get close and personal with this bitch.’
So we got out of the Taurus and entered the White Castle.
Janet was sitting with three other Goth females in a booth. They were smoking and sipping at black coffees. None of them even looked up at Jack or me as we sat at the counter. I ordered four cheese sliders and an order of rings and a Diet Coke. Jack ordered a half dozen plain hamburgers, fries, and a black coffee.
They were in a booth to our right, near the exit door. There was a plate-glass window next to their booth, and suddenly I looked outside, through that rectangle of plate glass, and I saw him. Six feet two, perhaps. Black leather jacket that was cut to the thighs. A white face that made me think of Halloween. Albert Finnegan was staring at the four girls or young women, and then they looked out the window and found him. I turned back to Jack who was working on his black coffee.
‘Don’t look around,’ I whispered. ‘The prick himself is outside on the grass, looking in.’
‘What’ll we do?’ Jack whispered back.
‘Wait and see if he’s coming in ... He never saw us in the light, I don’t think. I don’t figure he’ll recognise us, and we aren’t getting into a gun battle with all those young ladies sitting there. Even if he isn’t armed, which I doubt, someone could get hurt. Go into the john, nice and casual, and call in for back-up. Be real laid back here, Jack.’
Jack sipped his coffee again and then slowly rose and made his way toward the men’s room which was off to our left.
I ventured a glance toward the window and saw that Albert was staring at the quartet of lady Goths and that they were silently staring back at him. What were they doing? Communing? Reading each others’ thoughts? What the hell was the story with this goof? Was he coming in or not?
Our man broke the deadlock with his apostles or whatever the hell they were and he started to walk around tow
ard the entrance. I wondered if Jack had made his call for back-up. I turned back to my plate of high cholesterol fast food, and I waited.
Albert Finnegan walked through the door. He glided toward the four women, and then he sat down.
I put my hand inside my black leather jacket, and I clasped the handle of my .44 Bulldog.
C’mon, Jack, I thought. Get out here. C’mon.
I squeezed the handle of my squat, potent pistol, and I waited.
The girls were giggling at something Albert said. But it was a brief chuckle. Then the five of them went silent, and I saw Jack walking toward me. His hand was inside the pocket of his flight jacket, and I knew he was palming his piece also.
I turned toward the five Goths and Albert Finnegan turned his attention toward Jack and me.
Then he smiled, looked over briefly at the four women, and he bolted toward the entrance.
Jack and I rushed toward the door, and it was then that the four white-faced females shrieked in unison.
CHAPTER NINE
Albert Finnegan must have had some experience at track, because he burst down the block and left the two of us a half block behind him. By the time the back-ups arrived, Jack and I were both out of gas. The squad car that arrived first caught up with us about two blocks down from the White Castle. We got in and the two uniforms gave us a ride back to the parking lot of the restaurant. Then we got into the Taurus and began to search for Albert in this Northwest Side neighbourhood. A total of four squad cars accompanied us, and we went over twelve square blocks before we decided that Finnegan had submerged.
The first item I had grabbed for when we first took off after The Count was the switchblade in my left coat pocket. I had the knife palmed in my left hand as we sprinted after Albert. I don’t know why I didn’t go for one of my two pistols, but I had a sneaking notion that I wanted some payback for the slice job this Goth had done on me. Being vindictive was not one of my better qualities, but I figured I owed the little prick something as a token of my concern for his welfare.
‘I slowed you down,’ I told Jack.
‘No you didn’t.’
‘Don’t stroke me, Jack. I slowed you down.’
