by Thomas Laird
‘So what’s our next move, my Lieutenant?’ Jack asked as we waited for the paramedics to transport yet another attractive thirty-year-old loner to the hospital.
‘He doesn’t know we’ve been here. Why don’t we wail around for him to take another transfusion. All right with you, Dr Van Helsing?’
‘I can’t wait to say hello,’ Jack shot back at me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We got Theresa Meecham transported to Christ Hospital on the Southwest side. We had the Crime Scene technicians finish their business, and then Jack and I took the first six-hour shift after we’d both been home to change clothes, shower, and say hello to our wives.
Natalie had been exercising at home on the treadmill, and she’d been doing all kinds of other exercises. She did some work with weights, but she liked push-ups and sit-ups and things which did not require barbells. Natalie said she didn’t want bulk; she wanted lean and mean. The mean part I never witnessed, regarding my wife.
We had just fifteen minutes to make love in a rush in our bedroom. She was now using the pill because we decided to cease making little Parisis. We were both Catholics, but the pill didn’t seem like a sin to us. And neither of us much liked some priest in Rome making our bedroom decisions.
When we finished that outburst of passion, I was sweating profusely and had to take another shower. Natalie, however, simply smiled and hadn’t burst forth with a single bead of perspiration. She had just been toying with the old man, here.
*
Jack was to take the first watch. We had four crews of partners to stay inside Theresa Meecham’s apartment. Six-hour shifts. I had already called the Captain and let him know about the screw-ups on Missing Persons. The Captain said he would take pains to make sure those so-called police officers found new work and perhaps new careers. I almost felt sorry for those poor bastards, but then I remembered the helpless look on Theresa Meecham’s bloodless face when we entered her crib.
‘You think he’ll really come back?’ Jack asked.
‘He left all his goodies behind. Maybe he didn’t see the Crime Scene guys take everything out of here. He might come back — if he’s as arrogant as I think he is.’
I was referring to the several vials of blood that the forensics people had taken into evidence from here.
‘I don’t figure he’d go to all that trouble and then leave it all behind.’
But he had eluded us before when it seemed we had him. I had no great confidence that he’d be bold enough to return, but right now it was all we had. The kid was like a fucking goblin or ghost. He evaporated just when you were about to lay hands on him. I’d never admit as much to Jack or anyone else, but this Maxim Samsa or The Count or whoever he really was had some unusual ability to remain elusive when every copper in Cook County was aimed at his pale white ass.
I missed Doc on stakeouts. Jack was too quiet, too reserved. Doc would make me laugh even when things were supposed to be dreadfully serious. Gibron had the knack for bringing out the silliness in both of us. I liked Wendkos a lot. He just wasn’t Doc Gibron.
‘I’ll crap out first. Wake me after two hours — and this time, Jack, I don’t give a shit how sound you think I’m sleeping. You will awaken me. Got it?’
He smiled again and nodded. I was lying on the couch in Ms Meecham’s front room. Her blinds were all shut so that no one could see in. Jack stood by the window where a table and lamp stood. The bulb was dim wattage, but Jack was standing there trying to read the Sun Times sports page.
I started to doze off with the quiet rustling of the pages as Jack turned them.
I was standing on a very narrow platform. It was only wide enough for me to have my heels on top. My toes hung over the edge. It was like a cliff with just the tiniest ledge for me to stand on. And below were alligators or crocodiles — I could never distinguish between the two. They were leaping and snapping at me, and each time they rose toward me, they got just a little bit closer. There was no escape from my ledge.
There was no way to climb higher. And the gators or crocodiles were waiting, below.
Then I had a sensation of slipping off that precipice. I tried to turn and grab hold of the side of whatever it was that lay behind me, but I could not establish a grip. All this time I could hear the snapping of the reptiles’ jaws. They were leaping higher and higher with each try, and coming closer and closer to me while my precarious position was becoming more and more compromised
Then Jack shook me. It was two hours later, he informed me by showing me his watch. It was a cheap Timex, but cops couldn’t afford better if they weren’t thieves.
‘The fuck?’ I said. I thought that last snapping critter was about to grab hold of my left leg. ‘Oh. Sorry, Jack,’ I apologised when I realised he’d saved me from my own nightmare.
‘All’s well, my Lieutenant.’
I got up and let him have the comfortable three-seat sofa. He didn’t argue. We both hadn’t slept more than three hours in the last thirty-six.
I sat in the straight-backed leather chair by the window and the dim wattage bulb. But I had no desire to read, and I couldn’t have anyway because I’d left my reading glasses at home on the nightstand.
I took a quick glance out at the street as I put my fingers between the blades of the blinds. Nobody out there. It was very late. Past two a.m.
Then I heard someone coming up the stairs outside Meecham’s flat. The entry door downstairs didn’t have a lock. This was a very old apartment building, and the owner obviously didn’t concern himself with security. Whoever it was had just walked right in.
I called for back-up, and dispatch said two squads were within three or four blocks of Jack and me.
I walked over to Wendkos and shook his shoulder as he lay on his side.
‘Jesus, Jimmy, I just shut my —’
‘Someone’s coming.’
He sat up like he’d been jolted with a bolt of electricity. We walked over to the door.
But the footsteps had stopped. Maybe Samsa, if it was he, had smelled something wrong. The way you thought you smelled natural gas when you suspected a leak.
We waited another fifteen or twenty beats. I was on the left side of the doorway and Jack was opposite from me. I had my Nine out and aimed chest level at anyone coming in, and Jack had his Nine out also, but his was pointed at head level for a man like Samsa.
The knock on the door shocked us both by its abruptness. I cocked my weapon and so did my partner.
I looked at Wendkos quizzically. Who the hell was knocking on this door at two in the morning? Samsa wouldn’t, I knew.
I yanked the entry door open, Jack and I stepped into the opening, and we aimed our pieces directly at the noggin of a Domino’s Pizza delivery man.
‘Shit,’ the delivery guy croaked. He couldn’t have been far past twenty-one. He was tall and skinny, but he had a very red complexion at the moment.
I looked down and saw the little puddle he was making on the floor of the hallway.
‘Shit,’ he murmured again.
I thought he might faint, so I grabbed hold of the arm that wasn’t holding the rectangular pizza box. I helped him into the apartment.
‘Jesus,’ was all that he could muster once we’d lowered our weapons.
‘We’re police officers,’ I explained.
‘I hope to fucking God you are!’ he shot back. ‘I pissed my fuckin’ drawers!’
*
After he’d gone into Meecham’s john to clean himself up as best he could, he came back to us in the living room.
‘You know who ordered the pizza?’ I asked.
‘There’s a name on the ticket. And an address. That’s all I know.’
The kid had sandy brown hair and a full head of it.
I read the ticket. It had Theresa Meecham’s name and address and phone number on it.
‘How come you didn’t call to confirm the order?’ Jack asked the deliveryman.
‘Because we’re busier than hell ... W
e’re always busy.’
‘What fucking time do you close?’ Jack asked.
‘Four. We deliver late. That’s why we’re always busy. We deliver up ’til a half hour before closing, at four. They’re thinking of going to a twenty-four-hour business because we don’t serve booze or beer.’
‘We’ll need to go talk to your supervisor or boss,’ I told the pizza man.
*
We caught some luck. The Domino’s had caller ID. The ticket for the pizza also included the time the order was taken. I called downtown and had them look up the address for the number on the caller ID, and we got an address that was less than a half mile from Meecham’s apartment. But the cop who looked up the number gave us the bad news.
It was a corner payphone.
We thanked the pizza man with the pissed-up blue jeans and we thanked the supervisor too. Then we got in the Taurus and took off toward the location of that payphone. We didn’t expect that The Count would be sticking around to wait for us
And then I told Jack, our driver, to hang a U turn and head back to Meecham’s.
‘He’s decoyed us out of her place. He wants his shit,’ I explained.
The tires squealed as Wendkos floored the Ford.
We had our weapons unsheathed once again as we trod the stairs toward Theresa’s flat. There was no creaking because we walked on the extreme sides of the staircase. The door was unlocked, as we had departed in haste. Jack turned the knob and we saw the living room in the exact state that we’d left it.
The Count couldn’t know that the Crime Scene people had removed the vials of blood unless —
I switched off the light and peered between two blades of the blinds. The street was empty —
Until I noticed a dark figure that stood in the doorway of the three flat directly opposite from us.
‘The motherfucker’s playing us again, Jack. He’s across the street ... Get on your cell and have every available squad in the area seal everything off within a three-block radius of us. Give them Samsa as a description.’
Jack opened his cell and made the call. This time we weren’t going to go charging outside until the troops had arrived.
I gave them five minutes. Then the two of us walked slowly down the stairs from Theresa’s place toward the entry door. I stopped us at the door and looked out of the glass toward the figure that still stood directly opposite us. The troops had been instructed not to use their emergency lights as they approached this area of operations.
I cracked the door open, and then we made our way out and toward the black outline of a man. The dark figure didn’t flee. He simply remained in place.
Tall, thin, dark clothes. It had to be Samsa.
But he wasn’t running. He didn’t flee as he had all those times previous ...
Then we charged across the street. Blue lights suddenly strobed behind us as we aimed our weapons head high at the man in the doorway.
‘Police!’ Jack called out as we made it within five yards of the still motionless man.
‘Oh! Hey!’ he yelled and raised both hands.
He was tall and thin and very pale, we saw, when we got near him. The only illumination out here was the street lights behind us, and also the sweeping blue lights of the four patrol cars that had appeared behind us now, as well.
‘The fuck!’ the tall man blurted.
It wasn’t Samsa.
‘Police,’ Jack repeated. This time he said it almost quietly.
‘What’re you doing out here at 3:00 fucking a.m.?’ I asked.
‘Waiting for my fucking ride — you ain’t gonna shoot me, are you?’ he pleaded.
We holstered the pistols.
‘I asked you what you’re doing out here at this hour.’
‘Waiting for my ride.’
‘Your ride?’ Jack asked the tall, pale man.
‘Yeah. I work, you know?’
‘What shift starts at this hour?’ I demanded.
‘I’m a fucking baker, officer. I make fucking bread, you know? At the Sunshine Bread Company out on Western Avenue?’
Jack asked him for ID. His name was Vernon Veldt, and he even had an ID card from Sunshine Bread Company.
We apologised, but Veldt wasn’t satisfied.
‘You guys scared the fucking hell out of me. I ought to report your asses to someone downtown ... fuckin’ cops. You coulda shot me —’
Jack took him by his black leather jacket’s collar.
‘You don’t calm down, I might just shoot you for fun. You know how cops always have an extra cold piece they carry, just in case they shoot the wrong guy. I mean, you watch TV, don’t you Vernon?’
That ended the bitch session. Vernon’s ride drove up just about one minute later. It was some delicious looking platinum blonde who was a baker herself, Vernon explained as he pouted and walked toward his ride.
The blonde smiled at Jack out the driver’s side window of her yellow VW. Blondes and brunettes — all women — seemed to smile at my partner.
I dismissed all the patrol cars that had converged on Vernon.
‘He’s ten steps ahead of us every time out,’ Jack admitted as we walked back to the scene of an attempted murder. ‘This prick is pulling our yash, Jimmy. Oh, he’s cute, this son of a bitch is.’
‘Cute’ wasn’t quite the word I had in mind for The Count, Maxim Samsa.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We were on the way to Joellyn Ransom’s apartment when I blacked out.
At least Jack Wendkos let me know that I had blacked out when he pulled over to the curb on a West Side boulevard and slapped my cheeks lightly until I came back.
‘I ... I lost some time,’ I told him as we sat in the Taurus.
‘I noticed ... What’s wrong, Jimmy? You look like an apostle of The Count’s.’
I had trouble catching my breath, so Jack handed me some paper bag left over from one of our fast-food lunches. I breathed in and out into the bag until I felt like my oxygen level was back to normal.
He said I still looked white, so he headed us back to the downtown and St Luke’s Hospital.
‘No heart attack. No stroke,’ the ER doctor told Jack and me after he’d examined me.
‘Your blood pressure is up too high, Lieutenant Parisi,’ the physician explained.
His name tag read Frank Bernard, MD.
‘It’s one-eighty over one-ten. Not good ... Are you taking medication for hypertension?’ Bernard asked.
I told him I was on three medicines. Something for my cholesterol, and two beta blockers — I thought that was what our doctor called the last two.
‘Even worse. My best diagnosis would be severe stress, Lieutenant. I’m the wrong kind of doctor. You need to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist about this sort of thing. I can’t find anything else physically wrong with you, other than you seem worn to the rims. You better get an estimate from some other car dealer,’ he smiled.
I thanked him. We walked out of Emergency, and Jack drove me home.
*
Stress-related. I knew those words before they ever came out of Dr Bernard’s mouth.
My white face had gone. My natural colour had returned, pretty much, Natalie thought.
But she had a blood-pressure cuff at home that she knew how to operate, and she read my rate at one-seventy over one-oh-five.
‘Still much too high, my love.’
She had worked as a paramedic in the military before she’d gone to college and the Police Academy.
‘You need to see the company man.’
She was referring to the department’s shrink. Dr Terry Wilson. I’d seen him before, and I trusted him. We had talked about the death of Jake, my father, and about my hang-ups regarding whether my mother Eleanor had pushed him down those twenty-six steps intentionally.
Wilson told me it was why I had to be a detective. I had to find out if my own mother was a murderer. As it turned out, after talking to Eleanor about it, I believed that she hadn’t meant to cause Jake�
�s death. She had been angry with him for coming home drunk yet one more time from The Greek’s saloon. She meant to poke her finger in his chest to express her rage, but she had not intended for my father to tumble down those stairs and break his neck.
It took years for me to come to that resolution, however.
*
Wilson never asked me to lie down on a couch or any of the usual TV shrink business. He never asked me ‘how do you feel about that, Jimmy?’ He had a way of leading me into a conversation about myself that I hadn’t thought possible. I was not inclined to do any deep soul-searching. I had no intention of penetrating the darkest corners of my soul. With Wilson it always seemed like sympathetic talk between two brother police. He never sounded like a shrink.
He stood with his back to me, looking out his window at the Loop.
‘Your b.p. is not satisfactory, sir.’
‘Yeah. I know it isn’t.’
‘You’re going to tell me eventually that all this blackout/high blood pressure stuff is job-related, aren’t you, Jimmy?’
‘Sounds like a likely scenario.’
‘So let’s skip the chickenshit. What’s really going on?’
He turned and looked at me. He was tall, perhaps six-three, and he had yellow blond hair that could’ve secured him a spot on the Beach Boys or some surfer band of the sixties. But he didn’t have the California drawl. He was strictly a city kid, raised on the Southwest side. We knew each other’s biography very well after all the history between us as patient and doctor.
‘I’m sliding down on the downslope,’ I told him. I figured I might as well cut to the chase since Wilson wasn’t much for polite chatter.
‘You think you’re burning out?’
‘I know I am.’
‘And you think it’s inevitable, Lieutenant?’
‘Isn’t it?’
He smiled broadly. Perfect teeth. He would’ve made a suitable subject for a billboard in LA. He was a handsome forty-five-year-old shrink. The women who worked downtown, here, were mad about him.
‘No. It isn’t, as a matter of fact. But you’ve been in Homicide for a lot longer than the usual ten years that most detectives spend at your kind of work.’
