by Thomas Laird
Walking into the front door of Priest’s and Priestess was a male with a blue Texas Rangers ball cap and flowing white hair that reached his shoulder blades. He was wearing a blue blazer over a pair of faded blue jeans, and when he turned I saw he was wearing a red T-shirt under the blue blazer. It had some kind of picture on the chest that I couldn’t make out from almost a half block away even with the use of field glasses. There was enough light in front of this strip club for us to see him clearly.
Everyone let him walk right in. Then we began to tighten the noose. The three of us in our vehicle were going to take the point and enter the bar. We got out of the Ford and proceeded toward the entry.
There were no hobbling breasts to peruse as we walked inside. There was the sound of a low-volume juker in the background, and the bar was bathed in a red glow. It was like walking into a submarine.
This joint also employed ex-bikers as bartenders. Somehow all that hair and all those facial scars gave the owners a sense of security. Which was why they were constantly being robbed blind at their tills. These dicks were criminals, not employees.
The Mexican sat at the bar alone. It was closing time and all the patrons had gone elsewhere — home, likely. It was an early Thursday morning.
Our guns were drawn before we walked inside. But we had held them at our sides.
The first shot from Cabrero knocked Jack backwards, his arms extended to the ceiling. His Nine clanked on the bar’s floor as I let loose with a round from the .44 Bulldog that tore into Cabrero’s right thigh and turned him around as if he were doing a ballet pirouette. Doc’s round caught the white-haired drug runner in the sole of his left foot as he flopped horizontally and bounced as if he’d hit a trampoline.
Cabrero screamed out: ‘Don’t! Don’t fuckin’ shoot me again!’
I rushed toward him as Doc went back to our partner Jack, who lay on the floor of this saloon with his arms and legs akimbo.
I put the tip of the barrel under Cabrero’s chin as I picked up his .22 Saturday night special. Even the grip was taped to make it cold and untraceable.
‘You aren’t going to die tonight, shitbird,’ I warned him, the barrel still wedged under his chin as he lay flat on his back.
‘Doc! What’s the story with Jack?’
‘I’m ... I’m a little bit hurting, Jimmy. These vests don’t stop it from feeling like the world’s best right hook to the chest.’
Doc was helping Wendkos to his feet. We all wore the vests tonight. It had become standard for forays into the field like this, but you always feared a headshot or a blast to the family jewels. Your vest didn’t prevent those catastrophes.
We were lucky Cabrero didn’t have enough time to foil the vest by planting one in Jack’s forehead or his crotch. Wendkos would feel like he’d been pounded by a heavyweight, but he wasn’t going to wind up in a bodybag.
I hadn’t had time to be terrified for my partner. It would be a delayed response thing, like in the old lost war I fought in.
‘Get up, you and your microscopic little pecker,’ I told Cabrero.
‘I’m bleedin’, man,’ the drug dealer begged.
‘How about I shoot you in the other leg?’
By now the titty bar was overflowing with law enforcement. County, State, Federal — we had a quorum from everybody.
‘You can’t do —’
I cocked the .44 under his chin again, and he struggled to his feet. Someone had called the paramedics, so they took Jack out first.
‘I’m bleedin, goddammit!’
‘Then bleed, asshole.’
I cuffed him, and then the next batch of paramedics put Cabrero on a gurney — his hands were cuffed on top of his belly so they could transport him before he went dry on us. The medic pressed a wad of bandage against his gaping thigh wound from the .44’s blast, and Cabrero screamed loudly. The scarred badass biker behind the bar, who had only just now emerged from the floor behind the bar, blanched, passed out, and hit his noggin on the oak slab and knocked himself cold.
‘Medic!’ I yelled out. It was out of habit, yelling for the doc, I figured. A habit I thought I freed myself of over thirty years ago in Southeast Asia.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jack Wendkos took a ride to Emergency at St Luke’s with Doc and me for company. We rode in the back next to our stretched-out younger partner. The vest had saved his life, but no one particularly enjoyed wearing them, lightweight as they were, because they reminded us how vulnerable we really were on the streets.
‘I’m sore,’ Jack moaned.
He was a tough guy, an ex-Golden Gloves second place finisher in the middleweight category, so if he was sore, he was truly hurting.
‘Better sore than the other thing,’ Doc laughed and patted his shoulder.
Matt Cabrero was in another ambulance with three of our brother Homicides in attendance. After we saw Jack into the hospital, and after he was released, we’d see about Cabrero — who was likely going into surgery for the two gunshots he’d taken. I was certain that my round from that squat Bulldog did the most damage. I hoped that I hadn’t severed anything major in his leg because I wanted to get at him as soon as possible.
‘I never saw him pull the piece,’ Jack admitted.
‘It was dark in that fucking hole,’ I told him.
‘Dante’s ninth concentric ring, young man. You arrested the devil himself tonight, so be proud of yourself,’ Doc told him.
‘He’s no devil. He’s just a punk dealer with an overly large legend,’ Jack tried to grin.
‘He must be an important punk. The Outfit uses him,’ I reminded Jack.
‘He better come up with Samsa. I think the little joint broke a rib or two,’ Jack again groaned. This time he put his head back down and we rode the rest of the way in silence.
*
Jack Wendkos had indeed broken a rib — and bruised another. I was surprised that a .22 could do such damage to a vest and the body behind it, but Wendkos would be walking gingerly for a week or two, the ER surgeon told him as he released our partner.
The report on Cabrero came to us as we drove, the three of us, back downtown. My shot hadn’t hit anything critical, and the shot to his foot was superficial, and we would be able to talk to him in the morning.
*
The Mexican squinted as if he’d just awakened. He had his eyes on us every step of the way into his hospital room.
‘Give us Maxim Samsa,’ I told him as we sat in folding chairs about his bed in this private room guarded by two uniforms outside.
‘Why don’t you ask for Emiliano Zapata, too?’ he cracked.
‘He’s dead. Fuck you. We haven’t got time to play with you, jackass, and here’s your alternative. You talk, right now, or when the doctor says so, I’m going to let you walk.’
He studied my face.
‘Let me walk? I’m supposed to buy that cart of shit?’
His white hair was shoulder length. It lay in clumped strands, next to his weather-beaten Indian face, on his pillow.
‘I let you walk out of here and you’ll be dead inside twelve hours,’ I smiled.
He tried to smile back at me, but he couldn’t pull it off.
‘You know who I’m referring to, don’t you,’ I told him.
‘Yeah. I guess.’
‘They’ll put a .22 short into the back of your brain in half a day, partner. You didn’t pay tribute to the man, and you know how that works out.’
‘You put them on me,’ he said.
Doc and Jack were seated on either side of me. They watched the Indian.
‘How much is Samsa really worth to you?’ Cabrero asked.
‘How much is continued breathing worth to you?’
He looked over at my two partners as if to ask was I for real.
They didn’t blink, but Cabrero finally did.
‘I’ve got his cellphone number and his beeper ... you won’t find them because they’re both stolen, of course.’
‘Here.�
��
I handed him a pad of paper and a pencil.
‘You’ll be staying here until we have him. So these better not be fictional. See that phone next to you? Get him on the blower now. Fix a meet. Make it somewhere public so he won’t be suspicious. Tell him you have an order — double the fee — for some fresh female blood. You know? His kind of thing. What was your percentage?’
‘Ten per cent. He still owes me for ... Look, you ain’t going to take me down with him, are you? I mean, I’m handing him over to you —’
‘You’re all out of negotiations, Cabrero. But maybe we can keep you away from the hangman — in this state he uses a needle, though.’
‘Christ, I —’
‘Get him on the phone now,’ I told him.
‘Where do you want the meet?’
I looked at his white hair and creased face.
‘Oak Street Beach. Five a.m. Tomorrow morning.’
He looked at me, smiled, and then he picked up the phone.
*
Jack wasn’t making this trip. He was to go home and rest his broken rib for a few days. He wasn’t happy that he couldn’t go along with us early in the morning.
No one knew about the meeting at the beach except for Doc and me and Cabrero and Samsa. We heard him tell Samsa the particulars. My first reaction was to have massive manpower surround him until his back was to the water, but I remembered how often information leaked through our department because some ears were on a payroll in addition to the CPD. I wasn’t going to have a leak. It would be Doc and me and that was all.
I had Cabrero’s phone removed from his private room. His cell and beeper had already been impounded. I sent the two uniforms away and had two new cops placed outside the Mexican’s door. No one was to enter Cabrero’s room except for his doctor and nurses — and they were required to display their IDs for my cop sentries.
I tried to think of any other avenues for foul-ups, but I couldn’t come up with any. Security was as tight as I could make it.
*
Three in the a.m. I was home and awake. Natalie was in bed. So was the rest of the Parisi clan.
I had been on Samsa for more weeks than I could remember. He had slipped me in multiples. He’d contributed to my sense of incompetence and he’d almost convinced me to retire. He’d almost made me believe all these killers were younger and faster than I was. Perhaps they were younger and quicker on their feet, but I tried to remind myself that it was who was there at the end of the contest — who was the last man standing.
‘Jimmy? Aren’t you up early?’ Natalie asked as she came into the kitchen. I had the dim light over the stove on and nothing else. She was in shadow. I could see only her outline. Then she snapped on the overhead light, and when it came on, we both blinked.
I had the .44 on the table, along with my Nine in its holster and the switchblade none of us was allowed to carry.
‘Weapons check?’ she grinned.
I nodded and took her hand as she sat at the kitchen table across from me.
‘Samsa? Finally?’ she queried.
I nodded again.
‘But you can’t tell anyone until it’s done. Only Doc and I are going to meet up with him. On the beach, right before dawn.’
‘Jesus, how melodramatic!’
‘We wanted him to feel safe. Somewhere in public, out in the open. You know how he is.’
‘Yes. A sly little rodent.’
‘A free rodent, Natalie.’
‘Everybody’s string runs out. Jesse James, Doc Holliday —’
‘He’s no legend, Red.’
‘I know, honey.’
She put her warm left hand over mine.
‘No one knows but Doc and me.’
‘I know. You already told me.’
‘Oh. Yeah. But it’s important nobody else —’
‘You’ll take him this time. His luck’s depleted. He’s through, Jimmy.’
I felt the warmth of her palm. I didn’t want her to take that hand away. But the doorbell rang and it startled us both.
‘It’s Doc with the car,’ I explained.
She went out to let him in.
‘Ready to roll, Occifer?’
‘How can you crack wise at this hour of the morning?’ I demanded.
‘Never went to sleep. I’ve been gearing for him all night long.’
Doc sat and Natalie went to get us all some instant coffee. I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but I figured I could use the caffeine.
When the coffee was ready, she brought it over.
‘What if this guy runs before you can get close enough to cuff him?’ Natalie asked. ‘No offence, but neither of you are exactly in sprinter’s condition.’
‘He cannot outrun that,’ I nodded toward the squat .44 on the table.
‘Jesus, Jimmy. It’s a good thing you’re a good shot and it’s even better that you’ve still got perfect vision,’ Doc grinned. ‘That street cannon. Jesus Harold Christ.’
‘Let me go along,’ said the Redhead. ‘Michael can watch the kids. It’s Saturday.’
I looked at my wife. My first reaction was the macho refusal. Then I remembered that she was all those years younger than I, that she had burned down The Farmer right here in our own home, and that she was a black belt in karate — she’d won more trophies than I and my son Mike combined.
‘All right.’
She shot a look at me that displayed her surprise.
‘Boy, that was a quick reversal of the Jimmy Parisi I know and cohabit with.’
‘We can use your help. I just wanted to keep this as simple as possible. No chances for ears to pick up intelligence. You need to wear your vest. I don’t know what Samsa will be bringing with him, but I wouldn’t trust the Mexican if I were Samsa.’
Natalie went into our bedroom. Doc and I sipped the instant coffee. I threw my cup down the sink, and I went into the fridge for my standard Diet Coke — the no-caffeine variety.
She returned in just a few minutes, dressed and vested.
*
We arrived at the parking lot for Oak Street Beach at 4:30 a.m. We parked the Taurus, however, a block away from the lot. That Ford would be an advertisement for the Chicago Police Department.
The cold wind blew in off the Lake from the northeast. We wore jackets over the vests, but the chill penetrated our coverings. We walked toward the concession stand that Cabrero told Samsa would be the meeting place.
The beach was deserted, as we knew it would be. We walked up to that concession building to make sure Samsa hadn’t arrived early. When we circled the concession stand, we saw that no one was here yet, so we retreated to the sidewalk above the beach. We could see the stand clearly from our position behind a copse of trees just beyond that sidewalk. I had my night vision starlights, in case it was too dark to see, but the dawn was greying already, and we could see well enough from where we stood, hidden by a group of tall oaks.
Doc looked at his glow-in-the-dark watch dial.
‘Five minutes til,’ he whispered.
I looked over to my wife. I was in the middle of our trio, and we each occupied the backside of an oak tree. She wore her CPD windbreaker, just as Doc and I did, over the vests. The .44 was still in its ankle holster, the Nine in my shoulder contraption, and the switchblade knife sat in my jacket’s pocket. We had hand-held radios, just in case he took off on the three of us. We could get some patrol cars here in just minutes, but I didn’t want the outsiders in this scenario. If they were called in, I thought, we’d lose Samsa again.
It was on the stroke of five on my own watch that a figure appeared at the edge of the water behind the concession, perhaps a hundred yards north of our position.
‘Let him reach the stand,’ I whispered to Natalie and Doc.
They both nodded in agreement. Natalie was to flank left and Doc to the right. I was going to beeline it straight at Samsa when we rushed him. It was only twenty-five yards to that structure on the sand before us.
The
figure stayed at the edge of the water. It continued on, never veering toward the brick building. Pretty soon, the figure kept going beyond our station. Now I could see it was a young woman and her dog, going for an early morning stroll. She kept going, right down the beach, away from us.
I looked at Doc, and he shook his head. Natalie just shot me a glance that attempted to convey encouragement.
It was 5:06.
My legs were getting stiff from standing in this upright position behind my tall oak.
Another faint figure appeared at the edge of the Lake, perhaps 150 yards north of our location. The figure seemed to glide over the sand in some odd fashion. It seemed to float —
But I knew it had to be something of an optical illusion in this dim pre-dawn light.
It came straight toward the concession stand, and this time I knew it was Samsa. This was The Count. The syringe-bearing killer of all those young women. The object of all my obsessive nightmares for all of these long months.
I raised my right hand to signal Natalie and Doc to swoop down on him. But we had to wait until he reached the building so my two partners could indeed get their angles in order to flank him. When he was in position, he’d have only the lake to retreat into.
I let my hand down when he disappeared behind the concessions. Doc and my wife and I trotted out onto the sand, but Samsa didn’t emerge from behind the building.
When we arrived and circled behind ... We found no one. It was as if he had disappeared.
‘He’s in the water, Jimmy!’ Doc yelled.
I looked out and saw a thin young man freestyling it out toward the middle of Lake Michigan. He was out about 100 feet, it appeared.
I ripped off my shoes and my vest and my shoulder harness, and I took the .44 out of its ankle holder and then I charged toward the water.
‘Jimmy!’ Natalie called out.
Doc ran behind me, but he knew he’d be no help to me in these cold waters. Doc couldn’t swim, and Natalie was a novice. I motioned for them both to stay put before I bolted and ran out into the shallow, frigid water. When I couldn’t run any farther, I dove in.
He was about fifty feet from me, then. He wasn’t exactly Olympic calibre and his freestyle was awkward. I was a capable swimmer, but nothing near gold medal level. But I kept pumping away with my methodical stroke, and slowly I was on him.
