Burke's War: Bob Burke Action Thriller 1 (Bob Burke Action Thrillers)

by William F. Brown

  As the office staff got up in years, they appreciated the personal safety and lack of crime in the area around the building, day or night. While the building and adjacent parking lot featured lights, security cameras, and its own private security guards, not to mention frequent visits by the company’s own “field personnel,” it was said that the primary deterrent to street crime was an incident that occurred some 35 years earlier. As the story goes, Mister DiGrigoria happened upon four young men who were breaking into a car and trying to assault one of the company’s young female employees in the company’s rear lot. The four thugs were half DiGrigoria’s age, two were high school football players from the West Side of Chicago, and they all carried knives or clubs. Twenty minutes later, when the police arrived, the old man exhibited a few minor cuts and bruises, but one of the thugs was dead and the other three required ambulances, major surgery, and lengthy hospital stays prior to prison, which none of them survived. Simply put, Mister DiGrigoria was a very moral man who did not appreciate criminals, unless they worked for him, of course.

  It was late morning. Salvatore DiGrigoria sat behind his large, oak desk in his fourth-floor corner office. His shoes were off and he dug his stocking feet in the thick, plush carpet, as was his habit. He grew up in a one-room, cold-water basement flat with bare, cold, linoleum floors off Maxwell Street on the city’s tough West Side. There were times when young Salvatore didn’t have shoes, much less socks or a carpet, so wiggling his toes in his very own plush carpet became one of his delicious little pleasures. While he put extra money in this top-of-the-line carpet, his desk, the overstuffed leather desk chair, the two armchairs in front of the desk, and even the leather couch along the sidewall were discount-store ordinary. Like him, the office was working-man solid, neither large nor ostentatious, and the furniture was meant to last. There was no computer on his desk, because Salvatore would not know how to turn one on, much less how to use it if he did have one. Instead, he used a yellow legal pad, a neat stack of orders and sales receipts, a half-dozen freshly sharpened #3 pencils, a 1940s-era “hand crank” adding machine, and an old-school, green canvas-backed ledger book sitting on the desk in front of him.

  It wasn’t that Federated Environmental Services didn’t have computers. Most were located in the accounting department on the second floor. They were used for the myriad of legitimate businesses owned by FES and federated investments, but the reports they produced were solely for the benefit of the IRS, state regulators, and nosy state and Federal prosecutors, or “Dem pricks!” as Salvatore called them. The only “books” that really mattered in his business were the green, canvas ledger books sitting on his desk, where he wrote in a neat, abbreviated, colloquial Italian dialect that could only be understood in a handful of very small villages in the hills above Naples, Italy, taught to him by his sainted grandmother. In truth, Salvatore didn’t need the ledger books either. As Uncle Luigi preached to him many times, “Keep da good stuff up here, in your freakin’ head, boy.” Luigi “made his bones” as a young foot soldier in the Capone mob in the late 1920s. As the old man often reminded his young nephew, “When dem Federal pricks finally nailed ‘Big Al,’ it weren’t for no murder, no bootlegging, or da ‘rackets,’ it was for income taxes, for goddamn income taxes! Remember dat, Sal. Paper’ll come back around and bite you on da ass; so, don’t make it easy for dem!”

  It wasn’t that Salvatore didn’t believe in modern business practices, but he believed much more in security. No one — no vendor, no repairman, no plumber, no electrician, nobody — got past the lobby unless he was cleared by his guys and accompanied by one of them the entire time. They swept the offices and phones daily for bugs, and not only the crawling kind. Recently, he installed a new high tech “white noise” jamming and acoustic system, which rendered directional microphones, other listening devices, and even cell phones useless and sent the neighborhood dogs running. His office used “old school” dial phones. There were no fax machines, only one closely-monitored copier, no internet, no computer network, no e-mail, no scanners, and no recording devices, anywhere. Cell phones? “If I don’t freakin’ need one, nobody freakin’ needs one,” was his simple reply. Even with all these precautions and the hi-tech security, inside the office he spoke in guarded phrases, when he spoke at all.

  Mister DiGrigoria was in the process of posting the week’s receipts from the card rooms, whorehouses, loan sharking, street crews and bookies in a series of cryptic, handwritten notations in his newest ledger book. When he was finished, he would place it on top of a stack of 37 similar ledger books, one for each year he ran the business. Other than seventy or eighty thousand dollars in “petty cash” to be used for city permits, minor purchases, and bribes destined for the pockets of various local cops and inspectors, all that was in the safe was the cash and the ledger books. They were the only reason he owned the safe to begin with. It was a huge, double-walled Yale model, which he inherited from his uncle Luigi. Standing six feet high and four feet wide, it weighed over six hundred pounds empty, requiring special floor bracing, a crane, and a small army of movers to get it up to the fourth floor to begin with. It was specially built for Luigi, who added one additional number to the combination, making it very difficult to crack. The safe’s interior walls were also reinforced, and the amount of Nitro it would take to blow the door open would bring half the building down. As his uncle Luigi said proudly, “Now, dat’s a safe!”

  Salvatore was finishing his last series of meticulous entries in the ledger when his spinster older sister and longtime secretary Gabriela buzzed him on the intercom and told him that Tony Scalese would like to see him. Secretaries, lawyers, accountants, underlings, and even hit men might come and go, but as Uncle Luigi often said, “blood is forever.” When he was doing the books, Salvatore’s office door was always closed and locked, the window shades pulled down, and an Italian opera playing on his old Victrola phonograph, so Tony could wait. Gabriela knew Salvatore would unlock the door when he was ready and not a minute sooner. He took one last look at the entries and numbers, put the ledger book back in the safe at the top of the stack, closed the door, locked it, and spun the dial. He dropped the service order forms and receipts into an industrial-strength paper shredder, which sat in the corner and turned the paper into a fine dust. Back at his desk, he put on his shoes and suit jacket and straightened his tie. Only then did he walk over, open the door, and motion for Tony to come in.

  After both men settled in their chairs, Tony Scalese got right to the point. “This ‘thing’ is startin’ to spin out of control, Mr. D, and I don’t like it.”

  “Yeah, me neither. Too bad, but it happens,” the old man replied cautiously, as was his habit. “We made good money wit dem pills and dat clinic ‘thing;’ but nuthin’s forever in dis business, Anthony. Besides, you and me, we got bigger fish to fry.”

  “You think it’s time to shut it down?”

  “I think it’s drawin’ too much attention now, like from dat prick O’Malley I keep seein’ flappin’ his mouth on TV. Pretty soon, somebody’ll start talkin,’ then it’s film at 6:00.”

  “Yes, sir, I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Good. I see alotta freakin’ loose ends over dere, like dat guy from the airplane.”

  “Yeah, him and his big mouth need to disappear… permanently.”

  “Yeah. He ain’t da only one, but you better make him da first.”

  “We’re lookin’ for him, but he took off. He’s been a little hard to find.”

  DiGrigoria shrugged. “So I hear. Why don’t you squeeze his wife, or dat bean counter? They’re always the first ones to squeal. But stay away from dat Chicago cop. We don’t need dat kinda trouble, but somebody knows where he is. And after you do him, shut all da rest of it down, all of it. Dat Fed rat bastard O’Malley’s gettin’ too damned close.”

  “The doctor, too?”

  “Especially dat prick! He’s a freakin’ pre-vert. He ain’t got no respect for women, and you know what I think
of pre-verts, Anthony. Worse, he’s reckless. Shut it down and get rid of him. Da big money’s all been made, anyway. All dat’s left now is peanuts. Roll da cash and da bank accounts offshore to da Caymans. And get rid of dat dumb ass Bentley, too. You can never trust a crooked cop. Remember dat. Dey ain’t got no loyalty, and dey ain’t got no ethics.”

  “Yeah, he’d be the first one to flip on us.”

  “Dat’s da problem with loose ends, kid,” DiGrigoria said as he leaned across the desk and glared at his young protégé with the hardest, coldest eyes he had ever seen. “You gotta snip ’em off, before somebody snips you off. So, get your boat out. I want dem pricks out dere where I can see ’em, if you know what I mean.”

  Scalese swallowed hard. He knew exactly what the old man meant.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As they began to exit through the rear door of the Bob Evans restaurant, Bob paused, held out his right arm, and blocked Linda’s way. “Wait a minute, let me look outside first,” he said as he opened the door to the parking lot. He made a quick tactical scan of the area from left to right, his training taking over as his eyes searched the parked cars and open spaces for any potential threat or anomaly.

  “No problem, simply checking,” he told her, trying to sound casual, but he could see she wasn’t convinced. “We can go.”

  He opened the door for her, but as she passed by, she wrapped herself around his right arm. “I thought we should pretend we’re a couple. You know, camouflage and all,” she said with a nervous smile.

  “Uh, wait a minute,” he said as he pulled his arm away.

  “Oh, God, forget I did that, Bob. Sometimes I can be so stupid,” she said as she quickly let go and backed away, embarrassed.

  “No, no, it’s not that,” he countered as he stepped around to the other side of her and held out his left arm. “Here, take this one. I’d rather keep my right hand free, in case… well, you know,” he said, leaning in closer to explain. “In case there’s someone out there we’d rather not bump into.”

  She stared at him deadpan for a moment. “Boy, I’ve heard of some lame excuses in my day,” she said as she suddenly smiled and wrapped herself around his left arm this time, pressing into him with her small, firm breasts and squeezing tight.

  “You’re right,” he smiled. “It is pretty good camouflage.”

  She looked up at him for a second, and then finally said, “This has been such an insane, terrifying couple of days. All you’ve done is try to help me, and I’ve acted like such a jerk not believing you and not trusting you.”

  “After what you’ve been through, I understand,” he said as they walked out the door and headed toward her car. Unfortunately, they were so busy talking, and smiling, and touching, that they did not notice two men come out of the restaurant behind them.

  “All right, Mister, that’s far enough!” Bob heard and turned his head far around to see it was the manager of the Bob Evans and an overweight, baby-faced private security guard. They stood in the doorway behind him, not ten feet away. The early morning sun was reflecting off the manager’s thick glasses as he held up the morning’s newspaper and showed it to Burke. The security guard carried an old 38-caliber Smith and Wesson Model 10 police revolver in a holster on his hip. Wide-eyed, he pulled it out and pointed it at Bob. The guard’s hand shook, and it was obvious the kid was in uncharted territory now.

  “Whoa!” Bob answered as he turned and saw the gun. “Be careful with that thing.”

  “No, you be careful, Mister… Burke!” the manager said as he pointed at the newspaper. “That’s right, we know who you are,” he added as he pointed to Bob’s picture on the front page, below the headline, which read, “Manhunt on in Suburbs.”

  “Oh, not that thing again!” Bob quickly countered as he raised his hands in frustration, shook his head, and laughed. “Once they print that kind of stuff, there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it,” he laughed as he began walking toward them, keeping himself between Linda and the revolver.

  “That’s close enough, Sir!” the security guard warned in a high-pitched voice as he raised the revolver higher and his hand started to shake even more.

  “That photograph -- it’s not me. They got them reversed. I’m a soccer coach and they were doing a story on our team, but they ran my photo with that man’s story, and his photo with mine. They apologized, but as you can imagine, that’s all I heard around the office this morning,” Bob added as he read the fat security guard’s nametag and kept walking toward them. “Look at the photo, Leonard,” he said as he pointed at the newspaper. Like a lemming, Leonard turned his head and looked, which was when Bob snatched the pistol out of his grip. Bob’s hands moved so fast, he could have been catching flies. He grabbed the pistol with his left hand, his palm holding the hammer back, and twisted, while his right hand grabbed Leonard’s forearm. Bob pressed his thumb into a nerve in Leonard's elbow and he pulled the pistol from the guard's limp hand before Leonard even knew it was gone.

  The guard’s jaw dropped as he looked down at his empty hand, and then up at Bob.

  “I told you to be careful with this thing, Leonard,” he told him as he glanced around the lot. “It’s a good thing you left the safety on, or you might’ve actually hurt somebody. Now come on, both of you,” he told them, casually waving the revolver toward the dumpster enclosure twenty feet away along the rear of the building. He walked them to it, opened the gate and shooed them inside.

  “Can I shoot these two?” Linda asked. “You shot the last ones.”

  “Well,” Bob paused for a moment, looking at the two men and then at her as if he were deciding. “Nah, I don’t think that’ll be necessary; do you, guys?” he asked as he bent down and opened the pockets on Leonard’s patent leather security guard equipment belt. He pulled out two full bullet autoloaders and tossed them into the dumpster. “No handcuffs? Figures,” he grumbled, but he did find a handful of plastic Kwik-Cuff zip ties, the latest in “cop toys,” and pulled them out. “Sit down, both of you,” he motioned toward the dirty concrete pad next to the dumpster. “You weren’t in the Air Force, were you, Leonard?” Bob asked, but the guard quickly shook his head no. “Just curious, because I think I met your twin brother.”

  He used the zip ties to secure their wrists, and then one man’s hand to the other man’s ankle, as he did with Bentley, Bobby Joe, and Ernie Travers the night before, finally tying them to the thick steel handle on the dumpster. “If I were you, Leonard, I’d find a new line of work, maybe the Post Office, because you’re going to get yourself hurt doing this stuff.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” he turned and said to Linda as he threw the .38-caliber revolver into the dumpster, too.

  “You’re not going to get away with this, Mister!” the restaurant manager glowered at him, red-faced.

  Bob looked down at his nametag. “George? Sure I am. Look, I figure you worked your way up through the ‘Bob Evans’ ranks out here in the burbs, and they finally gave you your very own store, right?” he asked the manager, who reluctantly nodded. “Well, think about it, George. No shots were fired, no one got hurt, and you get to brag to your bosses back in Ohio how you and Leonard saved the restaurant. You got a vicious murderer and his psycho girlfriend out of your store, into the parking lot and away from all your good paying customers; and you saved the cash register, to boot. Dude, if you play that right, it should be all over the papers this afternoon, maybe even make the national news. You two will be heroes back in Ohio, so it sounds to me this was one hell of a great morning for you.”

  As the light bulb slowly came on behind the manager’s thick glasses, Bob added, “Better still, your little Bob Evans here is going to become a local tourist attraction. You can put a shiny brass plate on that booth that says, ‘The Bonnie and Clyde Breakfast Booth,’ and people will line up to take ‘selfies’ sitting in our booth eating a plate of your biscuits and gravy. God, the promotional opportunities are endless!” He let that sink in for a moment, and added, �
�Unfortunately, I didn’t do any of that stuff they’re talking about in the newspaper. That will all be cleared up in three or four days, so you’ll want to get your story out today and milk it for all it’s worth before that happens.”

  “You gonna leave us tied up here like this?” the manager squawked.

  “Oh, shut up George,” Leonard told him. “How do you want him to leave us?”

  “Leonard’s right, George, it could be a whole lot worse. So sit there and behave. I’m sure someone will be out here looking for you in short order. Meanwhile, y’all have a nice day.”

  Bob led Linda out of the dumpster enclosure and closed the gate behind them. “That should hold them for a while. Let’s get out of here,” he said as he continued to scan the lot until they reached her car.

  “The ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ booth? Not bad, for a ‘telephone guy.’ ”

  “Oh, that was nothing. When you asked if you could be the one to shoot those two, I thought Leonard was gonna wet his pants right there.”

  “That was kind of mean of me, wasn’t it?” She tried not to laugh too loud. When they reached her car, he drove out of the parking lot, wound his way back to Mannheim Road, and headed north again. “Look, Bob, we have the reports and that flash drive Eleanor left. If we need a computer to open it, why can’t we just go buy one?”

  “I’d rather try my friend Charlie first. He’s my head of Finance and Accounting, and the closest thing to a computer whiz I know. Even if she encrypted the flash drive, he has software that can pop anything open in two seconds flat. That’s why I need to call him and find out if he’s learned anything,” Bob told her as he looked out the driver’s side window and saw they were passing a long line of motels and fast food restaurants. “I’m sure there must be a pay phone in one of these motel lobbies. It won’t take very long.”