The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  “I belong right here, don’t I? Maybe it isn’t much of a life, the way we’re living it. But I’ll take it. I’ll take it compared to the way it is when I’m separated from you. You’ve got nothing to do with Erin, Celia. This is no competition. I don’t sit around thinking about how the two of you size up head to head. She was someone different. You’re someone different, too. It’s not like you have to measure up to her because you’re not even a little similar, the two of you. I don’t think that way, that measuring up crap, and I hope to Christ that it isn’t in your head anywhere. Even a little bit.”

  She watches me, but she’s no longer shaking.

  “You still ought to take off. Now, Jimmy. While you still have the chance.”

  “Not likely.”

  “There are things you still don’t know about me.”

  She stops me in my tracks. Cold.

  “What things?”

  She looks at me carefully.

  “You don’t know where I’ve been. You don’t know what I’ve be doing other than the little bit we told each other about ourselves. There’s a whole life I’ve never got around to explaining.”

  “You been in jail or something?”

  I try to smile, but it’s a failure.

  “No. I never been. But there’s so much else I could tell you if I had the time, but there never seems to be any of that for us. I close my eyes after you’ve loved me, and then you’re gone. The time at work and the time alone in this apartment seem like forever, but the time you’re with me flies so fast I can never grab a hold of it and let you know who I really am. And I want you to know. I want you to know everything. Every time I see you I want to tell you what I need to explain. I’ve got all these things inside but I never seem to get the chance to let you see them, let you hear them. There’s never enough time, Jimmy. Not if we’d been together for all the years we’ve lived.”

  “Why don’t you start, then? I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She looks at me, and as she does, her eyes moisten up.

  “Christ, Jimmy. You make everything sound so easy.”

  “I’ll make it easy if you let me.”

  She’s shivering again. I wrap her in my arms as tightly as I can, but it does no good. It’s not cold in her place, so turning up the thermostat or bundling her with blankets won’t help. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do, baby. You just don’t know.”

  I watch her eyes, and then a flicker of recognition crosses her face.

  “Oh sweet God. Oh sweet Jesus.”

  The tears begin now, and she sobs in my arms. But I don’t say anything more, and she doesn’t talk about confessing again, this morning.

  *

  I open the small cabinet and I retrieve the carving knife. I put it in a paper sack and I walk directly out of the apartment. Celia’s been gone to work for three hours, and I stopped by here during my lunch break. I’m working days. The civilized shift, Doc calls it.

  I never hesitated as I entered her flat and made my way to the kitchen. I wasn’t thinking; I wasn’t juggling any goddam options. I walked up, opened the door, and I took the blade with me.

  Driving to the Loop on the Dan Ryan is never a pleasure, but traffic is not quite so snarled at midday. It takes only a little over a half hour for me to arrive at the Downtown

  Division. I make my way up to the Crime Scene Specialists, and I drop the knife off. I explain what I want them to look for, and the criminologist takes down the information.

  “Is this a rush, Lieutenant?” the auburn-haired, pretty girl asks me. I haven’t seen her before. Then I notice the engagement ring on her left hand. Christ, it must be too simple for some people to be happy.

  “Please. As soon as you can manage. It’s an outstanding homicide. You heard of the Andres Dacy case? The black boy who was shot, back a few months at Cabrini Green?”

  She nods slowly. I think everybody in the building is aware of this large thorn protruding from my side. That’s what Andres’ murder still feels like.

  “I’ll get it to you ASAP. I promise,” the redhead says.

  She must be in her mid-twenties. Beautiful face, excellent figure. The kind of woman I would’ve fantasized about before I met Erin. Or Celia.

  I’m old enough to be her old man. Her father. I’m surprised she doesn’t grin at me as if I’m some doddering geezer who’s drooling over a young beauty like her. She’s probably noticed my kind of stare before, a million times. It makes me embarrassed. Feeling old, that is. It’s as if I’ve aged a century just since I got back Downtown. That fucking knife must weigh three hundred pounds. I never hoisted weight like it in all my career. The paper bag sits next to the carving knife on the redhead’s desk.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, Lieutenant?” she smiles.

  Her smile is discombobulating.

  “No. I think that’ll do it.”

  “Yeah. Probably. How long you been on the job?”

  “Only six weeks,” she glows.

  “You’re getting married, huh?”

  She doesn’t respond for a moment.

  “Oh. You mean this.”

  She raises her hand.

  “This was my grandmother’s. I use it to keep pests away, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Pests like me?” I smile. I feel the heat in my cheeks.

  “You’re no bother, Lieutenant.”

  There’s more warmth emanating from her face, and then I remember she’s not a hell of a lot older than Kelly — only a little over a decade. To me ten years isn’t much.

  I remember Celia as I look down at this beautiful, desirable, young criminologist.

  She tells me she graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago when I ask her where she did her undergraduate work. The redhead tells me she’s going after her master’s at Northwestern in Evanston, and then she informs me that she did four years in the Air Force before she became a college kid. She’s twenty-seven, she tells me.

  This is the longest conversation I’ve had with anyone other than Doc or Celia in months. My interrogations haven’t gone this long, lately.

  Look at the redhead, Jimmy. She’s not laughing at you. You still must have a little juice left. This is what could’ve been if you hadn’t got yourself all tangled up... With a black woman is what I’m really thinking. There is no denying it to myself. I’ve told Celia that her color didn’t mean anything to me, but it was a lie. I love her, partially, because of her beautiful, dark skin. It’s who she is. There’s no twisting the truth around. The one thing I’ve always despised in police work is self-delusion. And that’s exactly what that blade on my desk is.

  If the tests come back positive, I’ll have to arrest her. I’ll have to figure a way to explain how I got hold of the murder weapon, but I can’t hold back anymore, no matter what I feel for Celia. If she’s a murderer — or is it a murderess? — she has to fall for it. I can’t live with this fucking tug of war inside me any longer. I don’t think she can take it, either. And I don’t think it’s Chaka who’s making her quiver. I think it’s guilt. If she’s the human being I know she is, it’s got to be those familiar pangs. She’s not like that gangbanger punk that I ran down on Oak Street Beach. She’s not like him. Celia was evening up for her son. She was bringing him to justice when I could not, when the system of laws not men failed her. It has to be tearing her apart. Celia Dacy went on a vengeance raid just like some modern version of a pissed off Comanche who’s had his family wiped out. And with Celia, when Andres went to the street, Chaka and Creel and Ronnie Jackson and Bobby Louis Wells took everything she ever had or wanted to have.

  I was no replacement for Andres. Anybody knows you can’t replace human beings with other human beings.

  If the tests come back positive, if it’s Creel’s and Antoine’s and Ronnie’s traces on that blade, I’ll have to go find her. I’ll have to read her her rights. But how can I do it?

  I could get Doc to make the pinch. He’d u
nderstand. He wouldn’t question me about why it took me so long to find her. She did it for the most logical, the most obvious, of reasons. Revenge. What the guineas call ‘the vendetta.’

  Redhead is watching my eyes. She seems to be wondering where I’ve gone, suddenly.

  “Well thanks. I won’t hold you up any longer, Natalie.”

  Her nametag says ‘Natalie Manion.’ It’s the first time I was ever happy that the Department requires us to wear ID in the building.

  “You’re welcome, Lieutenant Parisi.”

  The lightning bolt just arrived.

  “You ever go to Brannigan’s, down the block?” she asks as I’m about to turn.

  “Not too often. Once in a while.”

  “They’ve got great buffalo wings on Friday nights,” she returns. But she’s not smiling anymore.

  She’s a fucking kid, Jimmy, I remind myself.

  “Yeah? You hang there often?”

  “Not often, Lieutenant. Just on Fridays, here and there.”

  “Maybe I’ll try it out. I like wings. But I don’t drink much.”

  “Teetotaler?”

  Now her face warms up.

  I’ve got to clean up the mess with Andres. I’ve got to arrest his mother pretty soon, too.

  “Maybe Friday. Like I said I can handle the wings and maybe a beer or two.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you there. I usually wander in about 6:30. Right after work.”

  This time I’m smiling in spite of all the whirling debris that’s whipping around inside me.

  Buffalo wings. If I told Doc about this, he’d remind me about the state’s attitude toward statutory rape.

  *

  Natalie calls me two days later and tells me to stop by the lab. It’s Thursday. A day before I’m supposed to make an ass out of myself at the buffalo wings bar that’s only a few blocks away from Division. A lot of younger coppers hang there, Doc informs me after I ask him if he knows anything about the place.

  She’s sitting behind her desk. She seems as natural as a fresh June breeze off the

  Lake.

  “We have some splotches I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”

  Natalie has her professional demeanor on her visage at the moment. It takes me by surprise.

  “Looks like you found the murder weapon for three outstandings.”

  She shows me the sheet. It looks like a positive match for Creel and Antoine and Ronnie.

  “The perpetrator tried to clean his act up, but this is an old blade with quite a few gouges in the surface. All we need is a microdot of serum and rock and roll, full automatic, as the boys around here say.”

  I feel a familiar sinking in my middle. It’s as if Celia’s dead to me, now. Just as dead as my wife is. I’ve just disappeared her, like a magician. We were lovers and in love just a moment ago, and now she’s vanished.

  “Something wrong, Lieutenant?” Natalie wants to know.

  “Yes. There is.”

  “Can I help you in any way?”

  “No, Natalie. I wish you could. But no.”

  I wander away from her office area. There is a remaining query on her face as I turn from her.

  *

  “You should’ve come to me earlier. I could’ve helped,” Doc says.

  “Yeah? How?”

  Doc puts up a conciliatory hand.

  “I’m sorry. You’re in the shit on this one and I’m not. But we can take care of it, Jimmy. You didn’t have anything until you got the report on the carving knife.”

  “I never saw it coming, Doc.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  I look at him carefully.

  “You suspected her?”

  “It was the usual reason to cut the living hell out of somebody, Jimmy. They killed her son.”

  “You didn’t pursue it.”

  He knows I’ve just stated the obvious, but he lets it slide.

  “I didn’t want to fuck things up, and she wasn’t the most likely perp, even though she had the best reason to do those three dickless wonders. And the way she stayed close to you... I just didn’t have enough to approach you on the matter, Lieutenant.”

  “You’re softening up, old man. In the old days you would’ve been at her door with the first scent of blood up your nostrils.”

  “I just couldn’t do it, Jimmy. I’m sorry.”

  “I couldn’t do it either, Doc. You got nothing to be sorry for. I’ll have to do it now, though, won’t I.”

  He doesn’t answer me. He stares down at the pop top of his can of Diet Sprite. I’ve got him hooked on Nutrasweet, he complained to me just yesterday.

  “Jesus Jesus, Jimmy. What a fucking mess.”

  He crinkles the soft aluminum can, but he doesn’t look up.

  “Jesus Jesus,” he repeats.

  *

  I go alone to take her in. It’s 7:00 at night. She should’ve been home for an hour by now. There’s no one inside.

  I walk around the apartment, trying to find a trace. Nothing. All the furniture is still sitting where it was. But when I try the closets, I see she’s moved almost all of her stuff out.

  In the bedroom closet all her garments are missing, as well. And there was a bag full of Andres’ toys that used to be on the floor in this storage space. The bag is still there, but it’s been dumped upside down. The contents are spilled on the floor. I’m trying to remember what she had stored in the bag. There were a few of her son’s games. There was a teddy bear. The games and the bear are here below me. What else was in here? What was she in such a hurry to get at that she sprayed all Andres’ things all over the carpet? Celia is a very fastidious person. She doesn’t leave messes.

  There weren’t many things in this sack. Just the games and the teddy bear and a toy pistol. I remember the toy pistol because I told her that kind of gun almost got a twelve year old boy shot by a copper on the near north side —

  Oh Jesus. It hits me now. She hasn’t got time to wait for the .38. I had to take it in to get the firing pin replaced. That was just two weeks ago. She felt very uncomfortable about being in the apartment alone without the piece, but I found the defect in the pin the last time I took her out to the police firing range.

  She’s taking what she has with her. She’s hiding out, but she’s hiding out with a purpose. She’s not through with them. Three was not enough. There is Chaka and there is Rashaan Abu Riad. Maybe her reason has finally given in to her rage. She knows in her head that Bobby is still untouchable. He’s too well guarded. There’s no telling where Chaka’s going to land, now that he really is out on the street.

  Neither situation, neither scenario, is going to stop Celia. It doesn’t matter that the gun’s a lookalike of a real weapon. She has something in mind for them both.

  All I know at this moment is that I have to step in front of her before she meets up with those other two. I can save Celia if I can catch her. I can get her a great lawyer who can give her a knockdown blowout of a defense for the three slayings. She can get the help she needs and she can still have a life before she loses it.

  But I have to arrive before Celia does. She’s very clever. She fooled me all this time.

  Even though I’m still in love with her, she pulled it over me and I wasn’t even watching how she did the illusion. I found out too late. I pray to Christ it isn’t too late to stop her before she arrives at wherever she’s headed.

  I close Celia’s apartment door. I know somehow that we’ll never share this space again.

  Never.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I haunt the hospital on the southside looking for her, but I know she won’t show up here. She’s gone underground. Doc and I drive over to her mother’s with a search warrant, but we find no one and nothing. The mother hasn’t heard from her since she’s taken off.

  Celia haunts me during the nights I lie on my own bed, half asleep, half awake, dreaming that she’s hurt or that she’s in trouble. I conjure pictures of her being chased across th
at bloody street in front of Cabrini Green. I see her wading through an ocean of blood in front of that project, and she’s crying my name out. I can’t get to her. It’s as if I’m not in the dream, myself. I’m just watching her as if I’m some detached, indifferent observer. I wake up sweating with a terrible tightness in my chest. I can barely breathe.

  “We’ll find her, Jimmy. She’s got to light down somewhere,” Doc says.

  Then I remember her ex-husband. So we spend another half hour trying to find him, but he’s moved out of the apartment we found him at earlier. The crabby old woman who lived below him, the one who let us into the building, has died, according to the landlord who answers the ring this time out.

  “She fucking disappears. But she has a sister. The brother is vanished, too, she told me.”

  Doc watches the frustration gather on me. Then he suggests we seek out the sister. We run back to Celia’s mother’s place, and the old lady gives us the sibling’s address. The female’s, that is. She doesn’t know where her boy lives anymore, either. She says he got into drugs and he blew away like smoke.

  The sister, Jean, lives on the far southside. In the Carver Gardens. The Carver Gardens is a scary place because there’s only one entrance and exit, and the entrance and exit are one in the same. You get your ass trapped inside, it’s hell coming on out of there. Coppers detest coming here for calls. It doesn’t make any difference what color the policemen are; we are the enemy in this hood. It’s like Cabrini without the high rise.

  Her sister Jean is a double of Celia. Just a little bit younger, but every bit as beautiful. She lives in a clean looking apartment about six blocks inside this island of concrete called Carver Gardens. She looks at me suspiciously, making me as a po-lice as soon as she comes to the door of her flat on the third floor in this brick building.

  “My name’s Parisi and this is Detective Gibron.”

  We show her the ID and she actually takes the time to read our credentials.

  “You lookin’ for Celia.”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “Have you been in contact with your sister?”