Black Widower

by Thomas Laird

  He woke up before the Dominican girl did. He thought it was lucky he did. She might’ve relieved him of his wallet, but he didn’t give her the chance.

  Instead, she threw in a free blowjob before he let her shower. He figured he’d bathe when this silly bitch was gone.

  Then he drove her back and dropped her off where he’d picked her up. Finally, he headed the truck back to Plank. It was another long drive home, but Leonard felt a little less knotted up, on the way back.

  His first stop was to the Ace Hardware, where he picked up three brand new windows—with screens. He bought all the other stuff he’d need to install them, and put the bill on an unused Mastercard the bank had peddled him last Christmas.

  First thing he did back at the shack was install all three. It took some messing around with the dimensions of the holes, but he rigged them in over the gaping holes, and Leonard figured it was step number one in his remodeling plan. The next thing he was going to do was install some of that central air conditioning, but he wasn’t going to set it at 80 degrees like Mama. Oh no, it was going to be Arctic chill in his new place.

  Then, maybe, he’d paint the son of a bitching shack, and maybe later throw on a new roof, as well.

  The heating and cooling guy gave him a discount because the heating guy was a vet, too. Army, he told Leonard. It took him the whole day to install it, but Leonard could see the humor on the installer’s face as he hooked Leonard’s squalid shack up to air and heat.

  “What’s so funny?” Leonard asked the installer.

  “I mean no offense, Leonard, but this system is likely worth more than your house.”

  Leonard had to laugh, too.

  “Well, I aim to upgrade this hovel, starting now.”

  “You’re not angry, are you, sir?”

  “After the deal you gave me? Hell, no. I know where I live.”

  There was money saved up in that bank in Plank. Leonard had always lived frugally, but now he figured he had to do something to turn his life around.

  Ghosts and heads and The Lady in the Lake, and all this shit. It was time to fight back. She could go to hell, out there in the swamp, if she wasn’t there already. It wasn’t Leonard’s fault, just like the pretty shrink had told him. Someone else had done that poor woman, dragged her all these hundreds of miles from Chicago and fed her like fish bait to the gators.

  What kind of a man did a thing like that? He couldn’t fathom it. He’d killed often enough in the war, but it wasn’t some innocent blonde lady that stalked him in those jungles. It was Viet Cong or the NVA. It was a war, and anyone knew death was part of the deal.

  But when you took the killing back to a city’s streets, then it was heinous. Then it was murder.

  Leonard felt compelled to go outside his now enclosed, cooled to 68 degrees dwelling, and he walked out onto the dock with his sawed-off. The canon wasn’t for her. It was just in case some more prehistoric beasties wanted to emerge from that black-blood swamp, like they did when the priest ventured out here with him.

  Ten minutes after midnight and the swirling shroud was back again, standing at the far edge of the wooden pier.

  “I ain’t afraid of you, lady. I know someone killed you and threw you in for the gators. But it wasn’t my fault. You hear me? I never did you any harm. And I called the cops and they’re looking for the prick who did this to you.

  “But it’s not my fault, and it’s not my problem, either, goddamit! Now go away!”

  He raised the shotgun at her, but it didn’t move away. It simply hovered, stubbornly, in place.

  He lowered the weapon.

  “Go away. Please. You want to take me with you, too?”

  Then the mist retreated out over the waters and disappeared.

  Chapter 15

  The guy calls me and tells me the ‘ghost’ won’t go away, and what am I supposed to tell him?

  “Leonard, you been to the VA, yet?”

  “Yeah, not long ago, and I talked to a shrink and she made me make a few more appointments. She gave me some kind of sedative, Detective Parisi, and I’m sleeping better. I also put some windows and air conditioning into my place.”

  His place is barely more than a falling-apart log cabin, but it’s good to hear he’s trying to improve himself. My heart went out to Leonard when I saw the way he was living, but I still don’t have a clue what to tell him about The Lady in the Lake, as the State cops are calling this ‘phenomena’ in Leonard’s neck of the bayou.

  “You going to go?”

  “I suppose……I been to a priest, too.”

  “And what’d he tell you, Leonard?”

  “That I been watching too many movies. But he about shit himself when some gators came crawling out after us on my dock.”

  “Why’re you calling me, Leonard? It’s not because I don’t appreciate hearing from you, but what can I do for you?”

  “You have any leads on who killed her?”

  “You know I can’t talk about the case, my man.”

  “I figured. But I’ve got the feeling it ain’t going to go away until this thing is fixed.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Detective?”

  “I’m a Catholic. There’s the Holy Ghost, now known as the Holy Spirit, I suppose.”

  “Sounds like you’re not all that sure about God, either.”

  “I have my problems with Him, from time to time, yeah.”

  “I understand.”

  “Leonard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want you coming up here and getting involved in this thing.”

  “Can’t sleep at night, even with the pills, Detective.”

  “Go back to the doctor and get some pills that work.”

  “Nothing’ll work except making it right, and we both know that.”

  “It’s my job, not yours, Leonard.”

  “Seems like that lady out there has something to say about it.”

  “Leonard—”

  But he’s already hung up.

  Doc walks into my office.

  “You appear perturbed, young man.”

  “Just talked to Leonard Tare out of Plank, Louisiana.”

  “What the hell’s he want?”

  “His resident spook demands justice.”

  “Terrible thing, that post-traumatic stress business. Christ, don’t we have enough anxiety trying to pin our boy Skotadi all by our city-boy selves?”

  “He means well.”

  “You feel sorry for him.”

  “He doesn’t want our pity, Doc.”

  “I understand. He wants a scalp to put the haunting to rest.”

  “Leonard doesn’t see the humor in the situation.”

  “And neither do I, Jimmy. Skotadi’s been a pebble in our shoes for quite some time, now. We need to rip him out of his comfort zone.”

  “Show me the way.”

  Doc stands in the doorway, pensive.

  “How about his former partners?”

  “Character references? The hell for?”

  “You got a better starting point, Jimmy? Because if you do I’m all ears, darling.”

  *

  Joe DeRosa was Skotadi’s last partner before DeRosa got himself distance from Derek the Vice cop. If Joe had a beef about his ex-partner, he never made it public.

  I call his office in Vice. He’s partnered with Clark Buford, now, and Buford answers the phone.

  “He’ll be in in an hour. Had to go to court,” Buford says.

  “Tell him my partner and I would like to stop in and talk to him for a few minutes, if it’s not inconvenient.”

  “Okay, Jimmy. I don’t see a problem. I’ll let him know.”

  He meets us alone in the cafeteria, about seventy-five minutes later.

  I buy our drinks and we sit in a booth. It’s mid-afternoon, and the place is pretty much empty.

  Joe DeRosa stands about six-two. He has some middle-aged heft in hi
s thick middle, but it’s not flab. He looks like a tree trunk with moving parts. I don’t imagine the pimps get happy when he comes visit them. There’s something fierce about the guy, until he opens his mouth. Then he sounds like your best drinking buddy at the neighborhood tap.

  “Jimmy. Doc. Haven’t seen you two since…when?”

  “Long time, Joe. Good to see you again.”

  “Now we got the bullshit behind, what can I do you two for?”

  “Derek Skotadi.”

  “Yeah. The turd killed her, but you never heard that from me,” he grins widely. “We take care of our own, no?”

  “No,” I smile back at him.

  “Homicide has a rep for a weakness. You guys don’t play ball. But that’s about the way it should be. Doesn’t always work that way in Vice and in other parts of our beloved CPD.”

  His smile turns sad.

  “How can I help?” he asks us.

  “We haven’t got shit on him,” Doc tells him.

  “Unfortunately,” I add. “We’re just trying to get a scouting report on him. Anything you can tell us to try and get an angle on him, Joe? Anything?”

  “He beats on whores. Then he exacts his ‘toll’, as he calls it.”

  “The IA was after him, we heard,” Doc injects.

  “Yeah. He’s been on the ropes since forever. But he covers his tracks pretty well, Jimmy. I got out before he buried me along with him. I had to bite my tongue and look the other way more than once, but then I got tired of it. He’s a disease, that prick, and he’s contagious. A guy sees him pull that shit he thinks he might be able to take tolls and beat up whores, too. You got muscle, Skotadi thinks, you were meant to use it. If I had any real balls, I would’ve dimed him myself.”

  There’s genuine regret in his face. He has thick, bushy eyebrows and a full mop of jet black hair. Not a single thread of silver up top, yet, and he must be pushing forty-five. I heard he was working on his fourth divorce.

  “You got absolutely nothing, for true?” he asks us.

  “We got Jennifer’s ID via the dental. We have no prints, no blood except her own. The ME is only guessing, but he thinks she might have been dead before the alligators got her. I’m thinking he just hopes it went that way. A head’s not much to work with all by itself, and in the condition it was in,” Doc explains.

  “I’m thinking she was dead before she got to Louisiana. Too much noise on the trip down if she were alive in the trunk or wherever. And drugging her would be too iffy. I think he just wanted to lose the corpse in order to lose us. And it might still work out for the prick,” I tell the two of them.

  “It’s a dilemma, Jimmy,” Joe tells us both.

  Then something brightens in his eyes. I notice how sky blue they are when I look at him.

  “Could anyone else have done her?” he asks.

  “I don’t know anybody who had motive,” Doc says.

  “Then at least you know it was likely Skotadi. That’s better than some other murders you’ve worked, no?”

  “That’s about the only upside,” Doc remarks.

  “He’ll fuck himself up, boys.”

  “How do you mean?” I ask.

  “He’ll hit some sidewalk Madonna a little too hard, one of these days, and he won’t be able to talk himself out of it. Guy’s a little too tightly wound. His mainspring has to pop, someday……I wish I could’ve been more help, but I have to get back. Thanks for the drink.”

  Before he walks away from us, he stops, wheels, and turns back.

  “You ever talk to his ex-girlfriend, Sarah Murphy?”

  “What about her?” I ask.

  “She might give you something helpful. He was still doing her after he married Jennifer. He bragged about it all the time, the son of a bitch. She might be able to give you an earful.”

  *

  Sarah Murphy lives on Clark Street, home of the heads and the mainliners and the hypes and every other weird creature that passes for human in Chicago. It’s the ‘60s every day, every decade, in this ‘hood.

  And she looks the part when she opens her apartment door for us. The wreak of marijuana comes wafting right at us.

  “You’re cops,” she says with a very bored scowl.

  “You guessed,” Doc smiles.

  She smiles back and puts out her hands as if she expects us to cuff her.

  “We just want to talk,” I explain. “Can we go somewhere else and talk to you? Maybe where there’s some air?”

  Doc drives us to Lincoln Park, by the zoo. I can hear the roars of lions or some other big cats, in the near distance.

  “I haven’t been to the zoo since I was a teenager,” she grins.

  Her smile is unexpectedly white, even after she lights up a tobacco cigarette.

  “No weed,” she laughs. “I wouldn’t want to get you two in trouble.”

  She has long, cascading auburn hair, the tresses fall in filaments down onto her chest and shoulders. She has a beautiful face—it’s her best feature. The body is covered in sweats and a jacket, and there’s no telling what she would look like in something that would show her real form.

  “Why are we here?” she suddenly demands.

  “It’s like I told you over the phone. It’s about Derek.”

  “And what about him?” she wants to know.

  “He’s a person of interest in a case we’re working,” I tell her.

  “You told me you guys were Homicides. Scared the shit out of me. What would Derek have to do with a homicide?”

  Then the knowledge dawns on her.

  “I read about her in the Tribune—‘body of wife of Vice detective found in Louisiana swamp.’ Right?”

  “Yeah,” Doc says. “But it wasn’t much of her body, and it came out of the belly of an alligator.”

  Her face turns even paler than it already was.

  “You all right?” I ask.

  “Just haven’t had anything to eat today.”

  We take her over to the closest White Castle and buy her sliders because there are really not a wide number of options to choose from. But after the ride here, it seems the queasiness has abated for her.

  “You think Derek did her?”

  “We’re looking into her death,” I say.

  “You don’t really think…,”

  “Tell us why he didn’t do it,” Doc says.

  She stares at my partner, and then over at me.

  “I could see him cheating on Jennifer. Fact is, he was sleeping with me when they were still married. It isn’t something I’m proud of, but I’m not going to lie to you. Lying wouldn’t be smart, would it.”

  We don’t reply.

  “He can be sweet. And he can be mean. That’s why we broke off, before he married her. But he comes back after they’re together for like a year and he tells me how he hates the bitch, how he’s going to divorce her so we can get back together again.

  “And I’m so dumb I start to believe him, because I want to believe him. See, I got pregnant, it was Derek, and then I had an abortion. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but he paid for everything and he didn’t run away when I told him about the baby. We were only together a few months when all of it happened. But we had the heat, you know? I mean there was genuine passion, there, and I thought I was in love with Derek, and then the baby would only complicate everything. I didn’t want him to have to marry me or any of that silly ‘do the right thing’ shit. And no way was I ready to be a mommy to anybody. I have a career. We were going to go to Europe—all kinds of dream shit, you know? And then I thought a kid would tie us both down and make both of us feel trapped.

  “How come I didn’t know where the drugstore was, right?”

  “You said he could be mean,” I tell her.

  She furrows her auburn eyebrows.

  “Yeah. It’s true. He could be. But feeding Jennifer to some lizard? I can’t see it.”

  “He’s got a violent side to him,” Doc adds. “Ever shown it to you?”


  Her eyes narrow and a cloud passes over her face and darkens it.

  “He slapped me around a little, yeah.”

  “How bad?” Doc inquires.

  “Emergency room bad,” she replies.

  “Diagnosis?” I ask the redhead.

  “Broken nose. Busted jaw.”

  “And he didn’t get pinched?” I demand.

  “I swore I fell down the stairs. I was high when I went to the ER and they could smell the weed on me and I swore that I fell down the flight because I was so stoned. And then he was there with me, and I guess they believed me because he was never arrested for it.”

  “Did he show them his badge?” Doc wants to know.

  “He might have. I was in too much pain to notice, and I don’t remember much before I got out of the hospital.”

  “He ever do it again?” I ask.

  “Break my nose?”

  “No. I mean anything like that.”

  “He might’ve thrown me against a wall, once or twice. Maybe knocked me down, a time or two.”

  “Why the hell did you put up with it?” I ask.

  “The usual. I loved the bastard. He always said that love had a price. I think he called it a toll.”

  PART 2

  Chapter 1

  My life would be perfect without Parisi and Gibron. The ‘disturbance’ in the bathroom has ceased, and I’m sleeping again, at night or whenever I’m off shift and not at Carrie’s apartment.

  She’s still spooked about the goddam goblin or whatever it was, and I can’t convince her it’s safe to stay at my place, yet. Carrie says she wants to wait until we sell this joint, and then she’ll be ready to cohabitate with me. So I don’t press her.

  The realtor’s coming through here this afternoon, so I’ll have to be gone before she shows it. The realtor says it’s not good for the owner to be there when a potential buyer comes through because it’ll ‘intimidate’ them about the place. The worst, she says, is when the owner tries to help sell the joint.