“You have no idea who you’re messing with,” Carbonari continued to vent.
“Yes, I do, but you made a big mistake tonight. I was almost willing to give you a walk on Vinnie. After all, he was a hothead, as you said. He probably started it, and he owed you a lot of money, didn’t he? I get that. But the Expressway? I had ‘civilians’ in that car with me. Up ’til then, I figured it was just an accident and I’d let bygones be bygones, but that pissed me off, so I took those guys off the board. I wrecked their car and probably wrecked them too. Then you got real stupid and sent these three out here. Now it’s your turn, Donnie, and I’m coming after you,”
“Nobody talks to me like that, you little prick!”
“I do! The score’s five to one now — the two in the Lincoln plus these three you sent here. And I’ll tell you a little story. I just love to run up the score on perps like you.”
“That’s big talk.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard anything yet. I’m going to take your lunch money, break your toys, and then I’m going to sit you down in the mud, just like I did with the bullies back in third grade.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m waiting for you,” Carbonari screamed into the phone. “I’ll even comp you a room, but pack a lunch. You may be here for a while.”
Carbonari broke the connection, and maybe the phone, as the line went dead, leaving Bob staring at a blank screen. “That was rude,” he muttered. “I didn’t even get to any serious name calling or talk about his mother. Oh, well,” he said as he dropped Shaka’s iPhone on the ground next to the three handguns. “At least I have your attention, now, Donnie, don’t I?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bob pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. It only took two rings for the emergency dispatcher to answer, “Arlington Heights EMS, how may I help you?”
“This is Bob Burke at 847 Poplar Drive…”
“Sir, we just had multiple reports of gunshots at that location.”
“There was only one… but I guess it was pretty loud.”
“There are multiple units responding to the scene. Are there any injuries?”
“None that I’ll lose any sleep over, but tell your shift sergeant I’m sitting in a chair in the alley behind my garage with the three intruders whom I’ve disarmed and incapacitated.”
“The three intruders you’ve…?”
“That’s right. And mention the name Burke. I have a skosh of history with you folks. Again, I am unarmed, I’m in a chair in the alley, and I’m sure I’ll see them soon.”
“Uh… Yes, sir!” the 911 dispatcher replied as Bob hung up.
As he began to make a second call, he saw Godzilla the Cat stick his head around a trashcan across the alley. The cat looked over at him, still unsure, and then slowly walked across the alley toward him. His fur was standing up down the center of his back, and his head continued to rotate warily from side to side like a radar dish. Given all that had happened, the cat’s attitude was understandable, Bob thought.
“Good boy,” Bob called out and put his hand down out to welcome the cat back. “I’m glad you returned on your own, because I wasn’t looking forward to an all-night cat hunt.” Bob even wiggled his fingers, offering to pet the beast, but the cat would have none of it. Instead, he slowly walked over to Hulk Two, whom he had thoroughly mauled a few minutes before, and sat down four feet away from him, close enough, but just beyond the big man’s reach. The cat then stared up at him and cocked his head, apparently studying him, as only a cat can do. When that got no reaction from the large, nearly comatose gunman, the cat began to mew. Finally tiring of the sport, the cat began to clean his paws, carefully licking off the blood, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the goon.
Between his own pathetic moans, Hulk Two finally lowered the towel far enough to see the big feline cleaning his paws and staring up at him. That did it. The goon began to tremble. “Keep that thing away from me!” he pleaded.
Bob shrugged. “He came back for another piece of you, so shut up or I’ll sic him on you again,” as if he had any control whatsoever over the beast. Well, to the victor belong the spoils, and the cat was staking out his new turf, which now included the alley and the dummy in the chair. Personally, Bob had always preferred dogs, like a German Shepherd or a Golden Retriever. If things ever got really dicey and your life was at stake, the dog would give it up for you, while a cat would turn and run away, thinking it was every feline for itself.
Hearing the first police sirens in the distance, he picked up his cell phone again and completed the call. On the third ring, Ernie Travers answered.
“Not you again?” the big Chicago police captain asked.
“Is that any way to treat a long-lost friend? You got caller ID, huh?”
“I finally get home, put dinner in the microwave, and… Don’t tell me, who’d you kill?”
“No time for details. You got any friends in the Arlington Heights Police Department?”
“After your last escapade, I doubt I have friends anywhere anymore.”
The sirens were getting closer now, and then they suddenly went silent. “Can you give them a quick call, Ernie? They’re rolling to a 911 call at my townhouse. Maybe you can tell them I’m one of the good guys?”
“Oh, all right. But why’d you call 911?”
“Because I have three hitmen from New Jersey lying on the ground next to me and…”
“You didn’t kill them, did you?”
“No, no, I just dented them a bit. Two of them are trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys, and my cat’s guarding the third one. Anyway, I need a character reference. Can you give them a call?”
“You took all three of them down?”
“Not really,” Bob answered as he saw a police car enter the alley to his left and another one enter from the right, with their lights off. “I bagged one, Linda coldcocked another with his pistol, and the cat took down the third.”
“This I gotta see,” Ernie laughed. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right over.”
That was when both squad cars turned on their headlights, bracketed him with their spotlights, and hit the loudspeaker. “You in the chair, put your hands in the air and remain where you are.”
Bob gave the police his biggest smile as a half-dozen tactical officers with full body armor and automatic rifles closed in on him from both ends of the alley.
It took three more minutes for the Arlington Heights police chief and assistant chief to arrive, fifteen more for Ernie Travers, and another hour before they finished interviewing Bob, Linda, Patsy, Ellie, and the cat. Only then did they remove Bob’s handcuffs. They made several attempts to interview Shaka Corliss and Hulk One but they “lawyered up” and refused to say anything. Hulk Two, on the other hand, never stopped talking, begging for a doctor and pleading for them to shoot the cat. By that time, Crookshanks was the picture of innocence, curled up asleep in Ellie’s lap in a kitchen chair.
After the cops hauled Shaka and the Hulks away, Ernie introduced Bob to the Arlington Heights Police Chief. “This isn’t the first time we’ve rolled our Tactical Units to this address, Mister Burke. You seem to attract some very dangerous company.”
“I didn’t invite them, Chief,” Bob replied as he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the wrinkled FBI business card that Henry Stern, the Citicorp branch bank manager had given him. “After you finish booking them, run their guns and fingerprints, and give this guy a call.” The police chief looked down and saw the name Philip T. Henderson, FBI Resident Agent, Northfield, NJ. “I suspect he can give you some background on them.”
“And I have a friend with the New Jersey State Police,” Ernie added. “I’ll have him give you a call too.”
“This isn’t our usual fare out here in Arlington Heights, Mister Burke,” the Chief said with a wry smile. “Not to pry, but I read you inherited a beautiful house on the lake in Winnetka. Chief Novak runs a real fine department up there. You ever thought of relocating?”
“
With all this unwanted attention from New Jersey, you never can tell.”
“Well, when you do decide to move, give me a call.” The Chief smiled politely. “I’m sure I can get a dozen volunteers to help load that truck.
Bob laughed. “I’m sure you can. Meanwhile, we’ve decided to take a little trip down to North Carolina, if that’s okay. Captain Travers will know where we are if you need us.”
“We’re leaving again?” Linda whined. “But we just got home.”
“Given what happened here, I think your husband’s right, Mrs. Burke, you’d be safer someplace else. Our patrol units can keep an eye on the place while you’re gone.”
“Let’s throw some stuff in a suitcase,” Bob said. “Then we can swing by Patsy’s and let her grab some stuff, too. We’ll get some motel rooms for the night and fly out tomorrow. Call your sister and ask if Ellie can stay with her for a few days.”
“Will she let me bring Crookshanks?” Ellie asked as she hugged the cat.
“Why not?” Bob answered. “Tell your sister we’ll keep the cat. I think he earned the right to be part of the family now, and your sister can’t argue about that deal.”
Linda smiled as Ellie gave him a big hug.
At 10:30 the next morning, Martijn Van Gries knocked on Donatello Carbonari’s office door and let himself in. The big man sat slumped in his desk chair, looking surprisingly unkempt. He hadn’t shaved, his hair was mussed, and while he wore a white shirt, he was without a tie or jacket. For him, that was as bad as it got. Van Gries was halfway across the room before Carbonari made a halfhearted motion toward one of the empty armchairs in front of his desk.
“Sit,” the big man glowered. “I’ve been up since 3:30. Know what I’ve been doing?”
Van Gries thought for a moment. “Deep-sea fishing? Duck hunting? Robbing a gas station? What else do people around here do at that hour?”
Carbonari’s eyes narrowed. Clearly, he wasn’t amused by Dutch humor this early. “I’ve been on the phone with lawyers, and you know how much I hate lawyers, especially in the middle of night. It started when I got a phone call from that moron Shaka Corliss asking me if I wanted to watch him ‘do’ Burke. He was going to video it on his cell phone for me, if you can believe that, maybe take a goddamn ‘selfie’ with his body!”
“Calm down,” Martijn warned. “You’ll pop a blood vessel. Did he get the money?”
“No! A few minutes later I got another call on Shaka’s cell phone from Burke! He took out Corliss and those two dummies he took with him, and now he’s coming after me. He says he also took out Lenny and Gino.”
“That accident on the Expressway? He did that?”
“Apparently it wasn’t an accident. Then, he’s got the balls to tell me he likes to ‘run up the score’ on guys like me.”
“He killed Shaka and the other two?”
“No, much worse. They’re locked up in the Cook County jail. They’ve been booked on a half-dozen charges from Assault with a Deadly Weapon to unregistered firearms, RICO violations, and the list goes on. I had to call that law firm in Chicago our ‘friends’ there use. By that time, the switchboard was lit up with calls from the Arlington Heights cops, wherever the hell that is, the newspapers, the New Jersey State cops, even the goddamned FBI! I ain’t taking anymore. They can subpoena me if they want, but I ain’t talkin’ to nobody no more.”
“I warned you that Burke could be a problem,” Van Gries reminded him, knowing that when Carbonari waxed into New Jersey colloquialisms, he became exceedingly dangerous.
“You didn’t tell me squat!” Carbonari leaned forward and glared at him.
“Can you get them out of jail?”
“The lawyers say probably. It’s Cook County. It all depends on the judge we draw and how much money we want to pay him, but we can’t leave them in there. The FBI’s probably working on them already, trying to get them to flip on us.”
“I see the problem. Anything you want me to do?”
“Yeah. Find out who this guy Burke really is. He said he was Army, and claims he’s running some kind of phone company, but I don’t believe any of it. The lawyer I talked to back in Chicago said he remembered that name from all the stuff that blew up with the DiGrigorias and Tony Scalese a few months ago. About two dozen of our guys got whacked back there. He thought it was some kind of turf fight between the DiGrigorias, but he didn’t know much else.”
“Do you think he’s some kind of undercover cop or something?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea.”
“What if I phone our local congressman? We’ve given him enough money over the years. If Burke has any kind of an Army record…”
“No, I don’t want that tracking back here to me.” Carbonari thought for a moment. “But my father had a black congressman in Harlem on the payroll. Call him.”
“Will do,” Van Gries said as he stood up. “With the three of them in the can, what do we do about security?”
“I was going to call Philly, maybe Brooklyn, and have them send me some of their boys.”
“Before you do that, give me the rest of the day to do some checking.”
“Why?” Carbonari asked suspiciously.
“I doubt your friends from New York would be any better than what we had. If Burke is coming after you now, you need to ratchet things up.”
“You know somebody?”
“Not me, but my brother knows people. Let me call him,” Van Gries said as he stood and headed for the door. “What about Corliss and the other two?”
Carbonari looked up at him with the coldest, hardest eyes Van Gries had ever seen. “They’re a problem we don’t need. When they get out, take care of it.”
At 4:30 p.m. the next afternoon, their connecting flight from Charlotte finally touched down at the small Fayetteville, North Carolina airport. It was located some fifteen miles southeast of Fort Bragg, and Linda and Patsy had spent most of that flight arguing whether or not Patsy should return to the house she and Vinnie had recently purchased east of the post.
“Honey, there’s too many memories in that place. Come with us to the Embassy Suites,” Linda told her.
“I’m tired of other people’s beds. I’ll be fine, and I need to start cleaning things out.”
“You don’t need to start right now.”
“She’ll be fine,” Bob said. They were headed toward the rent-a-cars, while Patsy was picking up Vinnie’s car in the express lot, where they had left it before their flight. “But, Patsy, if you change your mind or need to talk, give us a call at the hotel. Promise?”
“I promise,” Patsy said as they parted company, “but you’re treating me like a little kid. I’ll be fine, honest.”
At 2:00 a.m., the telephone on the end table in their hotel room rang. His hand groped about in the dark until he finally found it. “Burke here,” he answered.
“Major Burke, this is Sergeant Iversen with the Fayetteville Police Department. Do you know a Patsy Evans?”
“I sure do, Sergeant. What’s the problem?” he asked.
“There’s been a shooting incident over here at 227 Maple Hill Drive…”
“A shooting? Is she all right?” he asked, at which point Linda was up, leaning over him and trying to hear.
“She’s fine, although a little shaken up. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the man she shot. Apparently he broke into the house, tried to get into the bedroom, and she put three 9-mils in the center of his chest.”
“Nice shot grouping,” Bob quipped.
“That sounds like Delta talk,” Iversen quickly replied.
“Me? Oh, no, Signal Corps, and retired. Does she need a lawyer?”
“I doubt it. Two masked intruders cut the screen and entered her house through the dining room window. We have their muddy footprints down the hallway to the master bedroom from the flowerbed outside. When the first one opened the door, she took him out and the second one took off running. We found some blood on the dining room window frame
, so she might have winged the second one too. Maybe the lab can figure out who it belongs to.”
“My wife and I will be right over.”
“That might be a good idea. The Glock she fired belongs to a Sergeant Vincent Pastorini. The house is registered in both their names. I believe he served with you?”
“That’s correct. He was one of my senior sergeants. We’re in town for his funeral tomorrow, and Patsy is a close friend of my wife and me. Can I speak with her?”
“We’re still taking her statement, so I’d rather you wait until it’s finished.”
“We’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Good. By the way, that three-shot grouping was excellent, but she got off seven rounds at them. Blew the hell out of the wall and doorframe. Since her husband worked for you, I guess he must have been Signal Corps too, ’cause four misses definitely wouldn’t be up to Delta standards, would they?”
Maple Hill Drive was a short residential street on the north side of Fayetteville. By the time Bob and Linda arrived, it was crowded with city police and sheriff’s cars, an ambulance, a black coroner’s wagon, and a large, white police lab van. Sergeant Iversen met them at the front door and led them inside. Patsy sat in the kitchen, and Linda made a mad dash to give her a big hug. Iversen motioned for Bob to accompany him toward the back of the house, where a body lay sprawled in the doorway to the master bedroom, covered with a black plastic sheet. Iversen knelt and pulled the sheet aside. The man wore black slacks, a black turtleneck sweater, and black leather utility shoes. The black balaclava he had worn was lying on the floor next to him.
“Recognize him?” the police sergeant asked.
“Nope, never seen him before,” Bob replied as he knelt and studied the man’s face.
“You’ve never seen him around Fort Bragg?”
“No, but I’ve been gone three years. Did you find anything on him?” Bob asked.
“Nothing, other than some disposable plastic wrist and ankle restraints and a knife,” Iversen answered as he held up three plastic bags. “No IDs, no car keys, nothing.”
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