“No, no.” Patsy quickly shook her head and backed up a step, glancing at Linda’s chest and then down at her own, still laughing. “You’re perfect. I… couldn’t hope to compete.”
“Oh, thanks! Looks like you’ve gone over to the ‘dark side’ with him, girl.”
“Linda, there’s $100,000 in that bag. Which would you rather try to stroll through the TSA checkpoint with? A canvas Citicorp cash bag or the ugly one with the sunflowers?”
“I suppose you want a dreamy bedroom smile to go with it?” she asked.
“Great idea,” Bob answered. “But remember, if those million-dollar lips of yours don’t work, you could be looking at six hours with the FBI and a body cavity search or two.”
“Well, since those areas are reserved exclusively for you now, I’ll guess I’ll opt for the sunflowers.”
“Somehow, I thought you might.”
They walked back to the United Airlines counter. Bob was able to book First Class seats on a flight to Chicago using the company credit card. The airplane wasn’t leaving for three hours, but with their First Class tickets and Linda’s cleavage, they sailed through the TSA checkpoint without a ripple.
“Some security,” Linda grumbled as they headed for their gate. “If I unbuttoned the next button and leaned forward, I could’ve walked through leading an elephant.”
They found seats in the lounge, and the wait proved longer than the flight.
“God, I want out of here. My butt’s gone numb,” Linda grumbled as they finally boarded the 737. “People who complain about O’Hare should try a long layover in Philly with those hard plastic seats and horrid food.”
“You know what W. C. Fields put on his headstone? ‘Better here than Philadelphia.’ ”
“Well, at least we’re up in First,” Patsy added.
“Free booze, free pretzels, and a free movie for three times the price of coach.”
“With your position and all the business travel you do, I can’t believe you don’t buy a company jet. The new G-5 would do wonders for your image.”
“And our bank account?” Bob shook his head. “You’re forgetting, I spent a career in small aircraft with my own personal pilots.”
“Yeah, but they had bullet holes in them and machine guns hanging out the doors. I meant the ones with a bar and soft Corinthian-leather swivel chairs.”
With time to kill, Bob pulled out his cell phone and pressed the speed dial phone number for an unlisted cell phone in Area 312 in Chicago. After five rings, he heard a muffled voice answer, “Yeah… Travers.”
“You sound tired.”
“That’s because I’m tired. Is that you, Burke?”
“Who else? I heard you got promoted to captain and called to congratulate you, but from your voice, it sounds like they’re already working you too hard.”
“You have no idea, and the really stupid part is that I let them pull me out of the best damned job in the entire Chicago Police Department. I was drawing lieutenant’s pay — not exactly shabby — ran my own little office out at O’Hare and was sliding gently down that slippery slope to retirement. Nobody bothered me. I was my own boss. I could come in late, leave early, and eat all the donuts I wanted… and then you had to take that goddamned flight from Washington and land on my doorstep.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch…”
“It was perfect,” Ernie continued, completely ignoring him. “I didn’t have to deal with department politics, nobody was shooting at me, hell, nobody who was anybody even knew I was out there. Now look at me. The donuts are stale, the coffee’s cold, and I can’t even see the top of my desk anymore.”
“What did I read they made you? Vice Chief of the Organized Crime Division? And on a captain’s pay. Wow! All that power and the big bucks too.”
“Big bucks? Power? They moved me down to the ‘Head Shed’ at 35th and South Michigan. You know where that is? The gangbanger capital of the world — hookers and twelve-year-olds with crooked baseball hats, their pants falling down to their knees, and 9-mils jammed in their waistbands. I’ve got the brass in my shorts every time I turn around, I can’t get a parking space in the damned garage, and I need a SWAT team escort to get to my car in the surface lot. Some favor you did me.”
Burke smiled. “Well, yeah, we did put a few dents in their operation.”
“Yeah, but it’s like Whack-a-Mole. Whether it’s the Black P. Stone Nation, the Gangster Disciples, the Latin Kings, the Russians, the Jamaicans, or the Italian mob, you knock one of them down and two new faces pop up to take his place. But it’s been that way in Chicago since Al Capone, Frank Nitti, and Tony Accardo. It’ll never change.”
“Cute.”
“Hey, I haven’t talked to you since the wedding. How’s life out in the ’burbs? Linda doing okay?”
“She’s fine, Ernie.”
“You don’t deserve her, you know.”
“I know.”
“So what’s up? You didn’t call me to get an update on the Chicago mob, did you?”
“No, I’m calling the Vice Chief of Organized Crime for the Chicago Police Department to get a little intelligence information. You ever hear of the Carbonaris, in Atlantic City?”
“Oh, Christ!” Ernie groaned. “What’d you step in now?”
“Not me. You remember Vinnie?”
“Deadeye Vinnie? He was a fantastic shot with that sniper rifle.”
“Well, now he’s just dead.”
“Dead? Whoa! What happened?”
“Donatello Carbonari says he fell off a fifth-floor ledge trying to climb out a window in the Bimini Bay casino, but I’m not buying it. I think they threw him out.”
Ernie was silent for a moment, thinking it over. “Am I to assume he owed them a lot of money? That’s usually the last thing a bookie or a casino would do. They might break his leg or throw him out a window later, but it’s hard to squeeze money out of a dead man.”
"That's what they said, too," Bob paused and reluctantly agreed. “I was at the scene right after it happened, and I can’t figure it out. Vinnie’s body landed too far out from the building for him to have slipped and fallen. That geometry just doesn’t work. He had to have been pushed or thrown out.”
“When did this happen?”
“About an hour and a half ago.”
“And you’re still in Atlantic City?”
“No, we’re at the Philly airport.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me, Linda, and Patsy Evans.”
“God, this is horrible. I assume there will be a service. Did he have any family?”
“Yeah, half of Fort Bragg. I’m sure there will be a service down there after the New Jersey State Medical Examiner’s Office and the Army forensic people get finished.”
“That sounds like a lot of investigators.”
“Yeah, but they won’t find anything. He fell five stories onto concrete. The rest is supposition. What we don’t know, and we’ll never know, is the why and the who.”
“Sounds like you should be the detective captain, not me. Let me know when the service is and I’ll be there.”
“Thanks, Ernie, the guys will appreciate that, and it’ll give me a chance to introduce you to a lot of people you’ve never met.”
“Even though I was only with your guys for a couple of hours that night, I felt I really got to know them — Vinnie, Ace, Koz, and Chester — they were good men, all of them. In Iraq, I was only a Reserve MP Colonel running a POW stockade and trying to keep up with you guys, but I worked with a lot of other infantry and special ops guys, too, and they were all straight shooters. I became a big fan.”
“Thanks, Ernie, but before you go down to Bragg, I have a couple of favors to ask.”
“Tell me you’re not thinking of taking on the Carbonaris, are you?”
“I hope not, but do you know anybody with the FBI in New Jersey? One of the bankers down here gave me a name — Philip T. Henderson in the FBI field office in Woodbine.”
“I
’ll check, but like most cops, we avoid the ‘Feebs’ whenever we can. They always seem to have an agenda of their own when they're dealing with regular cops,” Ernie told him. “But I attended a conference in Detroit a couple months ago and traded drinks with the number two man in the New Jersey State Police Organized Crime Task Force, a big guy named Carmine Bonafacio. You'd like him.”
“An Irish boy?” Bob asked, surprised.
“Trust me, nobody hates the Mafia worse than an Italian cop. The mob runs Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, Atlantic City, and most of the rest of the place. Keeps the cops hopping. I’ll give him a call and see what I can learn.”
“Okay, I’ll leave that up to you. Just be careful.”
“Me? You’re telling me to be careful? Oh, that’s rich.”
When their flight was finally called for boarding, they quickly took their seats in the First Class section of the 737, with Bob by the window and Linda and Patsy next to him in aisle seats across. Linda closed her eyes and melted into the soft cushions. “Much better,” she said with a contented smile. “No broken glass, no shotgun, no demolition derby.”
Bob slipped his briefcase under the seat in front of him and stuffed the sunflower print bag under the seat in front of hers as a graying, middle-aged flight attendant elbowed her way through the line of boarding passengers to take their drink orders. “Oh, that sunflower bag is so cute,” she gushed. “I’m from Kansas, and I’ve been looking for something just like that.”
“Well, Christmas is coming,” Linda said as she opened one eye and looked up at her. “If you’re a really bad girl, maybe Santa will bring you one, too.”
“Is that how you got yours?” the flight attendant shot back with an alligator smile.
“You have no idea,” Linda retorted as she ran her hand down Bob’s inner thigh. He jumped, and she asked, “How about a double martini for me and one for my friend across the aisle. You want one too, Stud? After all, you’re paying.”
“None for me,” Bob replied. “I promised the Fraternal Sisterhood of Flight Attendants that I’d never drink on one of their flights again, not ever.”
The flight attendant shrugged. “To each his own,” she said and then scurried back to the galley to fill the girls’ drink orders.
Two hours and fifteen minutes later the airplane landed at O’Hare. Without any luggage and sitting up in First Class, they were out of the plane, down the concourse, and onto the parking lot shuttle bus in twenty minutes.
“We need to pick up Ellie and her new cat before it gets any later,” Linda reminded him as they got into Bob’s old Saturn. “Patsy, we have an extra room and you haven’t been home in weeks. Come stay with us for a couple of days. This isn’t something you should go through alone. Besides, Ellie really misses you.”
“Okay,” Patsy reluctantly agreed. “Normally, I’d insist on going home, but I haven’t slept for two days and I’m too tired to argue with anyone right now.”
Bob was brain dead too, and it took a few moments for Linda’s words to sink in. “Did I hear you say ‘Ellie’s new cat’?” he asked with a puzzled frown. “You know cats don’t like me.”
“That’s not true. You don’t like them, and cats are very sensitive. They can tell.”
Bob turned his head and eyed her suspiciously.
“The cat’s a present to Ellie from my sister," Linda tried to and she absolutely loves him. The therapist at her school says she’s very fragile right now after all that happened, so we can’t say no.”
“Fragile? If Ellie was here, she’d be the most mature and well-adjusted female in this car,” he said as he shifted his forearm, anticipating a sharp elbow to the ribs.
Linda saw the arm block too. “You’re learning, Burke, but time is on my side and I can wait. I have a lot more of it left than you do, you know.”
“But it won’t be half as much fun,” he quipped. “You know, there’s two kinds of people in this world — cat people and dog people.”
“Every kid needs a pet, Bob,” Patsy chimed in. “And little girls just love cute little kittens, especially a girl like Ellie, after everything she’s been through.”
Linda began to fidget in her seat. “Well, uh… this isn’t exactly a cute little kitten,” she said as she went into full “escape and evasion” mode.
Bob finally got it. “Oh, no! Not that big, ugly tomcat of your sister’s? She isn’t trying to foist that beast off on us again, is she? A kitten? He’s the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, arrogant, ornery, and what does he weigh? Twenty? Twenty-five pounds?”
“Yes, he needs to go on a diet, but Ellie has really bonded with him,” Linda explained.
“I can see it now, cat hair everywhere, scratched furniture… scratched me!”
“You need to see them together, Bob.”
“…and I hate to think of how many times he’ll set off my alarm system.”
“You will absolutely break her heart if you make her send him back.”
“What’s his name, Godzilla?” Bob asked as he turned in the seat and glared at her, knowing full well he was trapped, which was exactly what her sister had in mind.
“No, she named him Crookshanks. Besides,” Linda added, grabbing the last stake to pound into his heart. “If you’re nice, I’ll try extra special to make it up to you.”
He glanced back at her again. “Extra special, huh?”
“Extra, extra special,” she said with a knowing smile as she blew him a kiss.
Patsy started laughing. “God, are you whipped.”
“Tell me about it,” he muttered.
“You two aren’t gonna keep me up all night with that noise again, are you?”
“Only if she starts screaming,” Bob answered. “Usually, she just moans.”
“He is so lying! …But we’ll put you at the end of the hall, just in case.”
Bob and Linda’s modest townhouse in Arlington Heights dated to his bachelor days after he and Angie separated. It was very different from the Toler family “mansion” up on the lake shore in Winnetka, which he recently put for sale. No way was he ever going to move into that house again. After he and Linda got comfortable with each other, he would find them a new place; but for now, the townhouse suited them just fine. It was a tall, narrow, two-story middle unit sandwiched between two end units. Each contained three bedrooms, with two baths up, a large living room and kitchen down, a rear yard surrounded by an eight-foot-high board fence, and an attached two-car garage that opened onto a rear alley. It came with standard "builder finishes," to which he added cheap, disposable furniture. He also added large-screen HD TVs in the living room and the other bedrooms, a good Onkyo CD player, Tyler Acoustics speakers, and two standing racks for his prized collection of jazz CDs. Other than an occasional weekend football game, the TVs were a waste of money. His schedule rarely afforded him time to watch much of anything unless he recorded it and fast-forwarded through the commercials.
Bob had no interest in remodeling or tinkering with any of the furniture or finishes before he met Linda, and even less now. After they moved on to a real house, she could do those things to her heart’s content. Other than the TV and audio system, the only other thing he spent much money on was a state-of-the-art, integrated security system. Old enemies can be the most persistent, especially Middle Eastern ones, and he had made them by the dozens during his fifteen years in the Army. With the help of some “black ops” pals from Fort Bragg, they installed the system one weekend without getting permits or posting any of those cute little stickers on his doors or windows. He wired the doors and windows with sensors, and installed motion detectors and miniature video and infrared cameras in all the first floor rooms and the garage. The wiring, contacts, and motion sensors were almost invisible. Finally, they hid the control panel and video recorder on a high shelf in his closet behind a box. They were easily accessible for him, but the last place anyone else would think of looking to disable the system.
If a sensor tripped when he was away f
rom home, it would activate the cameras and the interior and exterior lights on the house, the garage, and the yard, and then send an alarm and live camera feed to his cell phone. He knew from experience that bright lights were usually all it took to send an intruder running. On the other hand, when he was home, the sensors would only activate a series of small flashing lights, codes, and faint beeps on his phones. They would not activate any of the inside or outside lights, but he could quickly stream a rotating set of camera feeds to his phone or bedroom television. That way, he could keep his options open, determine the extent of the threat, and decide which countermeasures to employ.
It was almost 11:00 p.m. before they got home. They picked up Ellie at Linda’s sister’s, and she and Patsy were sound asleep, arm in arm in the backseat with the cat lying on his back, paws up in the air, between them. As he turned off the main road into his townhouse complex and reached the rear alley behind his unit, he pulled out his cell phone and toggled the home security app, as he routinely did every time he came home. He looked at the screen and saw that none of the door or window sensors had been tripped. Neither had the garage door, so he reached up and pushed the button on the garage door opener. When the big double door began to tilt up, the bright exterior and interior garage lights came on. He continued to see nothing amiss, so he pulled his old Saturn inside the garage and turned the engine off.
Bob got out the driver’s door, looked back inside, and saw he was the only one still awake. Linda and Patsy were easy to awaken, but Ellie and her big cat were down for the count. “I’ll carry Ellie inside,” he told Linda. “You grab the cat, and Patsy can bring the two bags with the money.”
Linda reached inside and picked up the big cat in her arms. “Jeez, Godzilla really does weigh a ton, doesn’t he?”
“His name isn’t Godzilla, Mommy, it’s Crookshanks,” Ellie corrected her as she got out of the car by herself and immediately took the big cat from her mother.
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