Black Widower

by Thomas Laird

  It all lasts maybe five minutes.

  She rolls over on top of me before we have a chance to disengage. Jackie starts my motor up all over again before I can have time to sputter about exhaustion.

  Ten minutes later, she’s drooped atop my chest. She finally rolls off, both of us sweating like coal miners, and I’m having trouble catching my breath.

  When I’m able to take air in normally again, I turn toward her.

  “What the hell’s going on, here?” I ask.

  She laughs.

  “I don’t know. I swear to God I don’t. The notion just popped into my head that I had to call you. I was off men, Jimmy. I was going to go celibate for the rest of my life when I threw that jerk out of here two weeks ago, and then I just had to call you, I had to have you back. You must think I’m the original slut.”

  I reach over and touch her flank.

  “You’re nothing like that, Jackie. Don’t ever say that again. Please.”

  “You are a strange man, Jimmy Parisi. I just knew you’d hang up or tell me to go to hell, but I called you anyway.”

  She leans into me. I have us close together. Then she kisses me hard on the lips.

  She stops and hauls me close.

  “So where do we go from here, Jimmy? Huh?”

  “Now that’s an excellent question.”

  Chapter 13

  They’re charging me with the assault and battery of Mary Alice Bennett, some whore whose name I’d forgotten. A cop named Mark Keller bangs on the door of my house and he and three uniforms haul me down to the Headquarters and then they read me my rights.

  I refuse to talk to them, and I get my call in to my lawyer, Seth Charles, and Seth has me sprung in ninety minutes. Charles thinks the case against me is bogus and that it’ll be a, he- said, she- said deal, and it’s likely a jury will side with a policeman over a prostitute.

  Seth gives me a ride home after the theater at the Headquarters. I’m thinking this is Parisi’s way of hassling me because he knows the charges won’t stick, but since he’s got nothing on the murders, he’s trying to make my life miserable. Carrie is doing a great job at that already.

  She’s gone. I’ve been casing her apartment building and the salon where she works, and she’s vanished. Parisi probably suggested she take off after he got wind that her flat had been trashed. This Homicide is like a piece of apple skin stuck between my teeth, and now it’s becoming more than annoying—it’s becoming downright painful.

  So I think I’ll return the favor.

  I sit in my car outside his bungalow. It wasn’t too hard to find since he’s one of the few coppers whose address is listed in the phonebook, along with his home phone. The guy must be nuts, letting the world know where he lives. But it fits his profile. He’s one of those rare birds who doesn’t take money. He’s squeaky-clean, unlike most everyone else on the CPD.

  I see him pull his car into the driveway on a warm night in early April. It’s already dark, so I’ve got perfect cover. He won’t think I’m bold enough to take our little war to his home front.

  But he is a cop, so he’ll have a firearm or three in that bungalow. There might be a dog, as well, but I haven’t heard any barking, yet.

  I heard he has two little kids and that he’s a widower, like me. Except I’m an intentional widower, if you follow my logic. I’m not exactly mourning the death of my beloved Jennifer. Parisi, however, is known to have suffered a lot over the loss of his old lady. I think she died of cancer.

  I could see killing the Homicide. But not now.

  I pull away from his curb. I’ll have to be well-prepared for him, when the time comes, and I’m not in any hurry to get caught killing a cop.

  *

  When I get home, it’s late. I feel like having a woman, but I’m too tired to go out and hunt down one of the street queens. It’s too late to cruise.

  So I pop open a beer from the fridge, and then I crap out on the sofa. Before I can finish the beer, I’m out like a dead light bulb.

  I hear some rustling sound, and it brings me back out of the darkness. I lean back into sleep, but the sound happens again, and my eyes pop open. I sit up and rub my eyes. I look at the digital clock by the TV and I see that it’s 3:12 A.M.

  Then I hear it again.

  “Goddam it, Jennifer. Why don’t you just stay the fuck dead,” I mumble.

  I rise from the couch and head to the john, where she seems to have taken root.

  But there’s no steam and no water and no white vapor and no ghost Jennifer. Nothing.

  The shove pushes me forward into the shower door, and the force of my contact shatters the glass and I’m flung into the stall. I lie on the coating of broken shards, but I turn over to defend myself before whoever it is, is on top of me. When I see the form rushing me in the darkened john, I shoot both feet out at his midsection, and the contact drives him backwards out the bathroom door.

  I feel for a sizeable piece of glass, and I have it in my right hand, and I see it juts out from my grip like a six-inch dagger. The surprise of my retaliation has the figure on his back. I loom over him. I’m much bigger than he is, I see as I snap on the light in the crapper.

  The force that drove him onto his back has him temporarily stunned, but as I stand over him, I see the blade in his hand. Before he can lash out at me, I kick him in the face, and then I stomp that face one more time until I flatten his nose. I can see the red blood on him, now that the illumination from the bulb behind me has cast its glow out into the living room where he lies bleeding and semi-conscious.

  I relieve the fallen man of his blade, and now I’ve got the shard and his weapon in either of my hands.

  He tries to sit up and I kick him in the groin.

  He screams and doesn’t try to get up, anymore.

  I go into the john and retrieve a cup full of water, which I toss in his face. He bleeds some more, and then he blinks.

  I turn him over on his stomach, and he grunts.

  I reach into his pants pocket and rip out his billfold. I find the driver’s license. The name reads Tony D’Marco.

  Then I roll him onto his back again.

  “Tony? You hear me?”

  “Yeah,” he sputters.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody.”

  I kick him in the gut, and more bile spews up out of his mouth.

  “Try again,” I warn him.

  “I was just…trying to take some shit. That was all it was.”

  “I don’t believe you, Tony.”

  I step on his throat and he tries to reach up and grab my leg, but I loosen the pressure and kick him in the Adam’s apple.

  He gurgles and gags, and when he can breathe again, I lean over and show him the broken glass and his own knife.

  “You were a booster, you would’ve taken off, Tony. You wouldn’t have gone after me. Now I’ll ask you again. Who sent you?”

  “Nobody.”

  I put my foot on his neck again, but this time I hold it down until his hands flop to his sides.

  I go back in the head and fill the water cup again. Then I toss the liquid in his gored-up face.

  “You don’t want to die for this asshole who sent you, do you?”

  I raise my foot again.

  “No! No!”

  “Tell me, Tony, or this time I’ll break your larynx.”

  He’s still grunting from the pain, and he’s only able to breathe out of his mouth.

  “Come on, Tony. Last chance.”

  I raise my foot one last time.

  “All right, all right! It was…It was Tommy Pastore.”

  “Frank’s brother?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it was him.”

  “You did the right thing, Tony.”

  “Let me up. All right?”

  “Sure,” I smile.

  Then I spike his throat with the shard of broken glass, and a fountain of red comes rushing up from him.

  It doesn’t take him long to die. I watch his eyes
go blank and his limbs go limp.

  The only thing I’ve got to wrap him up in is my top sheet from the bed, and it’s white, so I go back into the can and get a small hand towel that I wrap around his throat to stanch the blood flow. Then I retrieve the top sheet from the bedroom and wrap him as securely as I can.

  I lift him up on my shoulder. He can’t weigh much because I’m able to get him aboard without much effort. I take him out the back door, and then I put him inside the trunk. It was fortunate I was still fully dressed when I conked out on the sofa. No wasted time. My keys were still in my pocket.

  The only place I can think to dispose of this hood is in a slough out in the southwestern burbs. I know one that has fairly deep water, and I’ve got some dumbbells in the trunk to weigh him down with.

  I pull the car out of the driveway slowly. I don’t see any lights from the geezer’s house next to me. So far I’ve been lucky.

  But there’ll be a mess to clean up when I get home.

  The drive takes only a half hour in these minutes before dawn. When I get out to Fisherman’s Slough, way the hell out on 111th and Mannheim, the good news is that I don’t see any lights from forest preserve rangers. Their job is mostly to break up all the teenaged copulation with the lovers who park out here. It’s way past their bedtimes, so the parking lot is empty.

  I need to do this quickly, so I lift Tony out of the trunk and I rush him down to the small beach. There are no lights, save for a few street lights behind me in the parking lot, and their illumination doesn’t reach out here where the water begins.

  I lay the body down and unwrap the shroud, and then I stuff the dumbbells into his jacket. Finally, I re-wrap him, and then I wade into the water with the packaged stiff.

  I shove him forward into the slough because I know there’s a quick, deep drop-off only a few feet from the beach.

  And down he goes, immediately.

  I slog back to the car, and still there is no sign of a ranger. I drive slowly, though, because I don’t want to see revolving lights behind me with some copper pinching me for speeding in the parking lot. You never see them until it’s too late.

  But no one’s behind me, as I gaze into the rear-view mirror.

  Tommy Pastore.

  As if Parisi and this cop Keller and his beef about a busted up hooker whose name I can’t even remember weren’t enough.

  Now I have to look up Tommy Pastore. Parisi will have to be put on the backburner.

  *

  Tommy Pastore deals with drugs, mostly. He hangs out at a bowling alley near 95th and Kedzie. The bowling alley is a front for the younger Pastore’s cocaine traffic. Frank used to talk about his younger brother’s growing business at the alley.

  The sales don’t take place at the joint, but he has a phone that takes orders for delivery on the whole southwest side. Vice knows about Tommy and his trade, but most of us are paid for protection. We bust him once in a while, though, just to keep appearances cool with our superiors. You can’t get too greedy, and Frank Pastore understood the way it worked. I almost felt bad about killing the son of a bitch.

  Tommy usually hangs until closing. Then he takes off from the bowling alley’s parking lot around 1:00 A.M. He then heads to his boyfriend’s pad on the Gold Coast, by the Lake. Yeah, Tommy Pastore is a homo. It didn’t sit well with brother Frank, but blood is blood, and Tommy P’s shortcomings were overlooked because he and his brother were made men of one hundred percent Sicilian ancestry.

  I see him walk toward his Vette. It’s red and a convertible. A classic 1973 model, worth a lot of green. He is unaccompanied, fortunately, so I back my car behind him. He’s blocked by a curb in front of him and the wall of the building in front of his ride.

  I hop out, gun drawn, because I know he’s carrying. He wheels around from trying to unlock the car door, and he finds the barrel of my .38 on his nose.

  “Give me the gun. Use your left hand. Carefully.”

  He reaches inside his leather jacket with the left hand.

  “Take it out by the grip. Slowly.”

  He obeys.

  “Two fingers only. Hand it to me.”

  He knows me by sight. He’s seen me with his brother.

  I take hold of his snub-nosed .32, and then I look around quickly.

  No one. The lot is deserted, and there’s no traffic on the side street that runs by this joint.

  “We can discuss this, Derek.”

  This guy favors his brother. Good-looking guy, maybe too good-looking. Just a faint semblance of femininity.

  I put the tip of the .32 under his chin. It’s pointed up toward the bulk of his head.

  “I can give you money. Product. Whatever you like.”

  “You mean like oral, Tommy?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Then I squeeze the trigger.

  *

  I know they’ll just keep coming. You never run out of wiseguys. But Tommy’s demise might make them wonder. I cleaned off the handle of his piece, of course, and I relieved him of his wallet and eight thousand in cash. And I went into the ‘Vette and palmed his stash of white powder, as well.

  All in all, it could’ve been a robbery. There might be a question about popping him with his own pistol, but that might make Parisi and his friends at Homicide think that it was a random event. He might connect the dots back to me, but there’s no evidence and there are no witnesses. I made sure the crime scene would tell no tales. My years at Homicide were well worth it, after all.

  I’m thinking Carrie is out with her old man in California. She always was a daddy’s girl. I have his number in my phone book. When I dial it, it rings and the old guy picks up.

  “I know she probably told you that she didn’t want to speak with me, Bill, but if the divorce thing is going to progress, she’ll have to talk to me eventually.”

  “You can talk to her lawyer. Don’t call here again.”

  “Will you at least give her a message?”

  There’s silence on the line.

  “Tell her I still love her. Tell her I don’t want this divorce. Tell her…”

  He hangs up.

  I bring a hooker home after my afternoon shift. It’s two in the morning, by now, and I’m amazed that I have the grit to do anything, but this Hispanic chicken has the right act. She knows how much to talk and how much to get down to it.

  I don’t slap her around because I’m not up for it, tonight. I rather fancy this one. Her name is Margarita and she tells me she’s from Colombia. She’s maybe twenty years old, and the body is dynamic.

  “What do you do?” she asks.

  She has a pretty thick accent, but she speaks understandable Ingles.

  “I’m a new centurion, darlin’. I’m a guardian of the people of the city of Chicago. Yeah, I’m a policeman.”

  Chapter 14

  Life is good for Leonard Tare. He’s got a wife and a child on the way and his country has bestowed its highest award on him—the Medal of Honor. There are journalists from all over the country calling him for an interview, and there’s a big-time, big-name writer from New York who wants to write a book about Leonard. The guy’s name is George Carter, and he’s won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for a biography he wrote on a double-amputee Marine from the Vietnam War.

  He tells Leonard over the phone that he thinks it’ll be worth Tare’s time if Leonard allows him to drive down and tape his interviews for the forthcoming new bestseller (Carter hopes). There’s a six-figure check in it for Leonard, and there’ll be a percentage of the royalties earned.

  When Tare sees the exact amount Carter’s offering, he almost keels over. But Carter says there will be a contract that puts everything in writing, and he tells the Seal that he should have a lawyer look it over. The publisher, he says, will be Simon & Schuster in New York City, and Leonard has actually heard of them, though he is no big reader, himself.

  So George Carter sets a date and tells Leonard that he’ll arrive in Plank next Wednesday around f
our in the afternoon. He asks Tare if there are any motels that he’d recommend, and Leonard tells the writer that there’s a Holiday Inn about fifteen minutes outside of Plank on the main highway. Then the conversation is over, and the Medal of Honor winner is too stunned to talk to Joellen for about fifteen minutes.

  When they sit down to dinner, she asks him what the call was about, and he tells her before he hyperventilates. He’s all red in the face, and it scares Joellen.

  “Oh my God!” is her first reaction.

  “This is going to mean a lot of money for us, for the baby,” he exclaims.

  Then the tears swell in his eyes, and Joellen rushes around to his side of the table and lays a long, intense kiss on Leonard’s lips.

  “Maybe you won’t have to worry about working at Tony’s, anymore,” he tells her after she unlocks her mouth from his.

  “Maybe you won’t have to wrestle with gators anymore, either,” she smiles.

  When she sits down to serve the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, they’re both too excited to eat.

  “I should’ve taken you out for a fancy meal, tonight,” he grins.

  “I like it fine right here with you.”

  “Me, too.”

  They talk about putting the money in the bank.

  “Let’s not blow it on a new truck or anything like that,” he suggests.

  “Maybe for a down payment on a bigger and better house?” she says.

  “Sounds like a good idea. We don’t want to piss it all away in two days…Maybe we’re jinxing it by talking about it before the fact. I mean, before the check’s in the bank, Joellen.”

  “You superstitious, Leonard?”

  “I got something on my dock and I got the notion in my head that it wants me to seek vengeance on the guy who did the deed. Does that count?”

  She laughs, and then he does, too.

  “I used to think it was that—superstition,” he admits. “But I ain’t the only one who’s seen this thing, so I don’t know how it fits into that category. People used to think there were spooks under the bridge and that the earth was flat. I suppose there’s a whole lot of shit we can’t fathom, darlin’.”