The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  We head toward Cabrini. Doc asks the dispatcher to send a patrol car to meet us. My partner tells the dispatcher an ETA, an estimated time of arrival.

  “You know anybody in the buildings who carries a blade — even if he doesn’t seem to have a damn thing to do with any of this?” I query Wendell.

  His partner is sitting at the security desk and he’s watching his color monitor.

  The two uniforms are standing by the entrance. They don’t want to sit out in the car alone.

  Wendell thinks about it with a serious glare in his eyes.

  *

  “You know, there is a guy who lives all by himself on the twelfth floor. Name of Aaron Mitchell. I think he was some kind of decorated war hero — the Korean War. He’s about sixty, living here on some kind of disability check. Something like that. There’s a rumor that he snuck weapons through our security system. You know, the metal detector. Nobody ever caught him at it. We never had cause to check out his apartment. But I heard he’s got a small arsenal up there. You know, like souvenirs from the War.”

  “What’s his room number?” Doc asks.

  Wendell looks it up on his rolodex.

  “Twelve eighteen,” he reports.

  Doc motions to the two uniforms, and they move toward the security desk and us. We all head toward the elevators only to be told by Wendell’s partner that the lift isn’t operating. So it’s up the twelve flights of stairs. We’re all gasping after floor number seven, and we’re all palming our pieces. It’s become SOP for anybody who gets called on site.

  Finally we arrive up to floor number twelve. The piss and fecal smells are as thick as a shithouse, and it almost gags the four of us. You don’t get a nosefull like this when you rise in the elevator.

  Aaron Mitchell doesn’t or won’t answer his door. We have the pass key that Wendell gave us, but we don’t have a search warrant, either. Which won’t stop us from going on in if we think we need to. We’ll worry about Aaron’s civil rights at a later date.

  “Turn your backs,” Doc finally tells the two uniforms. After bashing five times on

  Mitchell’s door, Doc uses the key.

  “Don’t turn around unless someone shoots our asses,” he explains to them. “Now you can truthfully say you never saw us make entry.”

  “This illegal shit gives me quite the stiffy,” I tell my partner.

  One of the patrolmen snorts.

  “There’s nothing funny about this, Sergeant,” Doc informs the bigger of the two black cops.

  “Fuckin’ A,” the Sergeant retorts.

  “I’m with my sergeant,” the other copper agrees.

  “I’m glad everyone’s with the program,” Gibron exclaims.

  Then we’re both through the door with our pistols aimed at the guts of the apartment.

  Doc flips on the overhead bulb and I feel the usual queasiness that comes on when I’m somewhere I know I shouldn’t be. It’s the nausea that is always attendant when I figure we might both come to some bodily harm.

  We burst into the bedroom, and still no one’s home. We begin next to carefully toss Mitchell’s apartment.

  Then his telephone rings.

  Doc looks at me.

  “Should we answer it?”

  I hear myself giggling like some kind of crazed burglar.

  “Why not?”

  Before I can stop him, he’s got the receiver cradled in his hand.

  “Thanks,” is all he says. Then he hangs up.

  “That was Mr. Wendell. Aaron Mitchell is on his way up the stairs. Even as we speak.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  We’re waiting for him out in the hall. Mitchell sees all these po-lice and he starts looking for an exit.

  “Mr. Mitchell?” Doc asks. “We just want to talk to you. That’s all.”

  Mitchell is still scoping for a way out, but the four uniforms have surrounded him. Quietly and quickly.

  “Y’all just wanta talk, why you got all these soldiers with y’all?”

  I smile at the pitbull attitude of the old dude.

  “Can we go inside your apartment?” I ask.

  “Might as well. Seein’ that y’all probably had a good look inside already.”

  “That would be an illegal search, Mr. Mitchell,” Doc tells him.

  Aaron Mitchell unlocks his door for us and we enter the apartment for the second time. The uniforms all stay outside, this time.

  “You ain’t afraid to be in here — just the two of y’all?”

  “Should we be afraid of you, Mr. Mitchell?” Doc grins.

  “Don’t know what the fuck you smilin’ at, son.”

  I have to restrain the mirth that wants to cross my own face.

  “We hear you might be collecting an arsenal of weapons up here,” I explain.

  “That bullshit. Cops done been up here before. They didn’t find nothin’ then, and y’all won’t find nothin’ now.”

  “We don’t have a search warrant. Would you give us permission to —”

  “Fuck naw,” Mitchell interrupts Doc.

  “You got something to hide?” I query.

  The old man finally breaks into a grin.

  “Get you a search warrant and then you can find out.”

  “You know Celia Dacy or her boy Andres?” Doc continues.

  “I know about them. I sat with the boy a time or two when the mother was lookin’ for a sitter while she was takin’ a test or somethin’ for that registered nurse thing she was studyin’. I helped her out a few times, like I said.”

  “How’d you feel about the three guys who killed Andres?” Doc asks.

  “What you mean, ‘how I feel’?”

  “Just that. You get real angry about it?” Doc says.

  “Yeah. I got real angry about it. How about y’all?”

  “I’m still very upset, Mr. Mitchell. But I’m not roaming the Green killing the guys who might’ve been responsible for the shoot,” Doc answers.

  “So that why you all here. You think I been wastin’ those niggers who killed Andres.”

  “We have to ask around, sir,” I confirm.

  “Well this gone be a very short whatayoucallit — interrogation. You want to talk to me, I want my lawyer here with me. Ain’t as stupid as you suppose.”

  “Well, you better call your counselor and have him meet us downtown,” Doc counters.

  “You really mean to take me wid you?”

  “I’d hope you would cooperate, Mr. Mitchell,” I tell him.

  He puts out his hands as if we’re going to cuff him.

  “You’re not under arrest, sir. Let’s just make this a friendly interview, okay?”

  He looks at me and shoots me a set of beautiful, stunning-white teeth. His first gesture of pure pleasure.

  *

  After a half hour of futile interrogation, we let Aaron Mitchell loose. His lawyer made the perfunctory appearance at the Downtown Division with us, but the counselor said very little during the thirty minutes. Mitchell was cool and calm. He answered all our questions very quietly, and his mouthpiece never once objected to a query we posed. I was amazed at his lawyer’s silence.

  After the interview was finished Doc looked up the lawyer.

  “There’s nobody by that name, Ronald Renault, practicing law in Cook County. Or in Kane County or Will County neither. It was probably his fucking brother-in-law.”

  Mitchell appears to be another dead end. We don’t have sufficient cause to toss his place. We can’t get a warrant, and that’s the end of his story for now.

  “We wait until Wendell sees that he’s out for an afternoon or evening and we go over his crib the old fashioned way,” Doc suggests.

  “No. I don’t think so. We’re pushing the envelope with this old dude. Korean War hero. I can see the headlines when we get our asses caught creeping his place in the project. Shit, we’re in trouble enough now trying to locate those other two punks. Let’s just have Tactical keep an eye on him.”

  “Jimmy. We
’re getting outwaited on this one. The odds are getting very bad indeed.”

  “I don’t think the old guy’s worth our jobs. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Doc lets it go. He knows Mitchell is a longshot as a player. The old dude babysat for Celia a few times. That doesn’t mean he’s gone to the mattresses for her to avenge Andres’ death. It just doesn’t click anywhere inside of me.

  Ronnie and Antoine are history. Chaka and Creel are still out in the bush. And we’ve got some damn phantom taking the place of justice at Cabrini Green.

  My uncle’s construction company keeps looking better as a career change every day.

  *

  I get the call at home on a Wednesday evening. I’m just sitting down to dinner when I get the message from Doc.

  My partner picks me up with the usual ride, and we’re off to the Inner City one more time. This time it’s straight to Abu Riad’s crib.

  They open the door for us as soon as we arrive, and this time there’s no look of hostility from the thugs who work as Bobby Wells’ bodyguards.

  “I want you two to see something,” Abu Riad tells us. He sounds as if he’s lost his breath. And if a black man can appear ashen, he’s found a way to make a dark face turn white-gray.

  He leads us through the bungalow toward the kitchen. Then he takes us out into the backyard. He flips on one of those bright halogen globes and we see it lying on the middle of the grass in his small, rectangular backyard.

  The head is separated from the rest of the body. It looks like it used to be some kind of bulldog.

  “He was the meanest motherfucker pitbull money could buy,” Bobby tells us.

  “Someone cut his head clean off,” Doc says as he bends over the dead canine.

  “How the hell could anyone get close enough to him to do that to him?” Bobby demands.

  “Poison,” Doc concludes. “I’ll bet we open up his stomach and we find rat poison. Arsenic maybe.”

  “Somebody probably enticed him with some meat,” I say.

  “That dumb bitch motherfucker did let anybody feed him. And then he’d still bite your fucking face off in gratitude.”

  “We’ll have the M.E. check out the contents of the animal’s stomach. But that won’t help us much in finding out who did this to your... pet.”

  “He wasn’t no pet, Parisi. He was a fucking guard dog. And that head there is a fucking message we all three understand. Don’t we.”

  Doc doesn’t answer him and I haven’t got a rejoinder either.

  “You might want to keep that light on at night,” Doc suggests.

  “You want to pay my motherfuckin’ electric bill, motherfucker?”

  “Watch your mouth, Bobby,” I warn.

  “All right. I fuckin’ apologize. But someone got to find out who’s doing all this. You know goddam well this is the same son of a bitch who did Ronnie Jackson and Antoine.”

  “How do we know that?” Doc asks.

  Abu Riad shoots Doc a glare, and Gibron smiles back at him.

  “All right. Bust my balls. Go right ahead. But my lawyers are going to be on the phone to that Captain of yours. You bust my balls and I yank your dicks, too.”

  Bobby turns toward the house and walks back inside. He turns off the halogen bulb as soon as he’s inside.

  “Cheap bastard,” Doc observes. “Save money on your light bill, bitch.”

  “A frugal druglord. There’s a brand new wrinkle. Something original every time out, partner.”

  He smiles at me.

  “Someone is trying to get to Bobby. They ain’t gonna be finished by waxing his mutt. This is a tease. That’s all,” Gibron tells me.

  “Looks like. Somebody made the connection between Chaka and Creel and Antoine and Bobby Wells. And I haven’t forgotten Ronnie, either,” I say.

  “It gets curiouser and curiouser,” my PhD partner laments.

  “I read Alice in Wonderland. Quit stealing. I’m not that goddam illiterate.”

  Doc whips his head away from me toward the darkness of the alley behind Abu Riad’s crib.

  “What?” I whisper.

  He pulls his automatic and motions for me to follow him out back.

  Doc opens the back gate as quietly as he can, but there is a creak as the gate swings open. As soon as we set foot out into the alley, we can hear it but we can’t see it. There are footsteps running south, to our right. The footfalls are crunching sounds that are getting farther and farther away.

  “Son of a bitch came back to take a look at his handiwork and to see how Abu Riad’s pissed his drawers,” Doc says softly. “Jesus, I hate these on-foot pursuits.”

  Then we’re in full trot after the southbound sounds. The alley is pitch because that cheap prick gangbanger’s turned off his lights in the backyard, and as soon as we’re thirty yards down the cinders we see that it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had expended his bulb. All the lights in the alleyway have been popped out by the little shits who enjoy tossing bricks and rocks at the city lights back here.

  The sounds of whoever it is in front of us are getting softer and softer, so we pick up the pace.

  “It’s the guy who did the dog, Jimmy,” Doc huffs. He doesn’t want to lose this guy any more than I do, so we both pick up speed and keep our mouths shut.

  When we get to the next sidestreet over, we see a figure bolt into the next alley down in front of us. We can barely make him out. It’s a male runner, but it’s impossible to tell anything else about the son of a bitch. He’s driving himself forward, though, as if he’s determined to outlast us. And he’s about to do a good job of keeping ahead because I can hear he’s gaining again.

  Then the murky figure turns a hard right into a gangway, so trying to close the gap, Doc and I sprint after him.

  When we bolt into that same gangway we see that there’s a three flat before us. There are no lights on in the building — none on inside any of the three floors. Bad business, I’m thinking. He’s gone inside and he’s waiting for us to follow him. He butchered the dog, if this really is the guy I think it is. I don’t favor going into a place nightblind, the way Doc and I are now. It’s like busting into a haunted house on Halloween. You don’t know what kind of spooks are in there waiting for you. I like the edge when we’re called to bash our way into a house on a domestic beef. Domestics are where you get shot, in this business. Every cop hates breaking in that door because of the unknown factor.

  “Jesus Christ, Jimmy. I don’t like this,” Doc whispers.

  Now he’s scaring me. I’ve popped an infinite number of doorways with this guy, and now he’s rattling me.

  “Prick! Why didn’t he just keep on running until we were too tired to follow? So. Floor by floor, James?”

  “I guess. I can’t think of a better way.”

  We start with the ground level apartment. As soon as we walk up the first flight of steps, we see that the back door’s wide open. Either the runner’s inside or the whole goddam three-flat is likely unoccupied and the dog killer’s laughing his ass off at us and has fled the scene and is blocks away by now. But I’ve got the notion that he’s right here. It’s Dodge City time. No use in worrying about where this dude might be.

  We rush through the entry into more darkness, but the street light comes flowing into the apartment from the front window, courtesy of no shades or curtains on the windows. You can see all the way into the flat from the kitchen, like one of those ‘shotgun’ houses.

  The bedroom is off to the left. Doc kicks the half-opened door inward, and we burst through. I flip on the switch and the brightness of a naked overhead bulb shocks our eyes.

  Nobody home. There is no furniture in here. Looks like the place is abandoned.

  “And behind curtain number three, Monty is boinking Carol Merrill,” Doc cracks.

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “Building might just be settling,” Doc quips as he flips off the naked light bulb.

  “Your fucking mamasan.�
��

  “Yeah. You’re right. It’s the guy. He’s up on two, maybe the top floor. Hard to telling these rickedy -assed old three-flats.”

  We make our way back to the stairs at the rear. Our eyes go blind because of the purple blackness of this starless night.

  “We should’ve called for backup. We should’ve driven after this varmint,” Doc snorts. He’s on his way up, in front of me.

  “Varmint?” I ask.

  He never answers. He pushes the second floor door open. My hand is sweaty and greasy and I’m afraid I’m going to drop the Bulldog on the landing here and let this asshole know exactly where we stand at the moment. The only good omen is that there’s no light at our backs to give this clown a good picture of our entry.

  Doc has his gun leveled at the window of the living room, dead ahead. The apartment is a duplicate of the place downstairs. I know the third floor is likely to be a triplet. We creep toward the front. The dim glow cascades onto the hardwood floor before us. This time I veer off to the left and pop into the bedroom.

  It’s barren. Just like the first sleeping quarters.

  “He’s got to be hiding behind curtain number three. It’s always curtain number three where the biggest deal of the day is. Monty Hall wouldn’t screw us. Would he?”

  “Big fucking rat he must be,” I tell my partner.

  “Six footer, maybe.”

  We’re headed toward the back landing one more time.

  “Why don’t they demo these goddam condemned sonsabitches?” Doc pleads.

  “Welcome to Chicago, bra.”

  Up we go again. We tiy to walk on the outside edges of the planks, but we know the runner, this apparent dog-mangler, knows we’re right behind him. He’s known it all along, so who the hell am I kidding.

  “I got a real bad feeling, Jimmy,” he whispers as we reach the backdoor of the third floor flat.

  Then he walks upright into the kitchen.

  There is a curtain across the window of this one, however. There is no aiding illumination coming from the street, this time.

  Now he crouches. Likewise, so do I. It seems like the thing to do.

  “You all come on out so we don’t have to shoot you,” Doc says in a startlingly clear voice. “Come on, now. We have your stupid ass outgunned. So step on out and save everybody a lot of pain.”