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

by William F. Brown

“Tomatoes, to-mah-toes, but ‘steal’ sounds a bit harsh, don’t you think?” he smiled.

  “Bob, where I grew up in Detroit, most of the guys had Grand Theft Auto in their resumes by eighth grade,” she laughed. “One thing, though, my daughter gets out of school at 3:30. I need to be there to pick her up, and then I’m taking her to my sister’s in Prospect Heights. I don’t want her anywhere near this stuff.”

  “Good idea,” he nodded. “After we switch cars, we’ll swing by Charlie’s house, and then go pick up Ellie,” Bob told her as he reached inside the brown manila envelope, pulled out the flash drive Eleanor had left, and held it up. “Getting in this thing would be a piece of cake if I was at the office or could get to my own machine at home. I could pop it open like a beer can, but I guess those are both out.”

  “I have a computer at my house, and it’s a lot closer,” she offered.

  “No, the cops will be watching my apartment and after what you said you did to Greenway’s face, Scalese’s people will be watching your house too; so those are out. Besides, the flash drive is probably encrypted and Charlie has all kinds of software.”

  “You don’t think they’ll be watching him too?”

  “I don’t know. I guess that depends on how many men they’ve got; but one way or the other, we need to find out. We have the reports and if the stuff on the flash drive ties it together, that will help our bargaining position with O’Malley and the local cops,” he added.

  “Do you think it’s enough to put Greenway and the rest of them in jail?”

  “Do you think Eleanor would have risked her life for anything less?”

  Linda thought about it for a moment. “No, she was brave; but she wasn’t stupid.”

  “That’s why we need Charlie’s computer. But we need to change cars first, then we’ll figure out how to crack the flash drive.”

  Whether or not Tony Scalese agreed with Mister DiGrigoria, he was the Boss, and Tony always did what the old man told him to do. Driving west on Golf Road and then south on Route 53 toward the CHC offices in Indian Hills, the midday traffic was as thick as usual, but Tony didn’t mind. It gave him time to think.

  The old man put him in charge of Greenway’s lucrative healthcare scams four years ago for one simple reason. Scalese was smarter than all of DiGrigoria’s other underbosses put together. He knew how to make money, lots of money, and everyone knew it. Someday, if things broke right, Tony Scalese expected to be Salvatore’s successor; but that would require the old man’s blessing and a lot more. He would also need the agreement of Salvatore’s older brother Pietro on the South Side and his younger brother Enzo up in southern Wisconsin. Get their agreement or take them out, one or the other, and everyone knew that too. It was the way it was in their “business.” He would also need at least the tacit approval of the heads of the families in New York. They would expect two things in return: a somewhat peaceful transition and a bigger piece of the Chicago action.

  Salvatore had three daughters and no sons, and women were never part of the “family” equation. They had been married off to various minor lieutenants and “made-men” in the organization. While they and their husbands received a modicum of respect and reasonable income, they were no threat or competition. Pietro, on the other hand, had two sons — a Neapolitan curse if there ever was one. He was eight years older than Salvatore, and aging badly. Even if he lived a few years longer, he was not likely to put up much of a fight with Tony Scalese over the North Side succession. The focus of the two brothers would be to solidify their own positions in their father’s South Side territory and fight each other off, not on expanding into their uncle’s North Side territory. By the time they tried, Tony Scalese would already have them locked out.

  Then there was Enzo. He was Salvatore’s and Pietro’s much younger brother, and the most hotheaded. He made no secret of his long-standing belief that he was the heir apparent with a God-given natural right to take over both of his older brothers’ territories and consolidate the entire Chicagoland operation under one supreme boss when they died. That was why Scalese and Pietro’s two sons would face an immediate challenge from their dear ‘Uncle Enzo,’ long before they faced challenges from each other. Unfortunately for Enzo, that was easier said than done. He was called “the Kid,” and not in a friendly way, by his brothers and their underbosses; and that did not bode well.

  By its nature, change is abhorrent to any bureaucracy. The underbosses and lieutenants on both the North and South Sides were not about to welcome a new boss whom they did not know and did not know how he might affect them or their turf. Further, either of the two Chicago territories dwarfed whatever money, organization, and prestige Enzo could command in Milwaukee and southern Wisconsin. True, he was a DiGrigoria, and blood always counted; but what counted far more was the ability to make money, a lot of money, for those above you and below you. That was where Tony Scalese excelled. Whether Enzo, Pietro, or his two sons liked it or not, that was why Tony Scalese would eventually end up running the entire Chicago region, not them, provided he kept Salvatore DiGrigoria happy, stayed out of jail, and managed to live that long. But above all that, Tony Scalese wanted it. He was smarter and more vicious than the three of them put together; and he wanted it all. Three Neapolitan pissants who happened to have the proper last name were not about to stop him.

  Unlike your average Mafioso, not only could Tony Scalese read, he was an avid reader ever since he was a child. In particular, he enjoyed history. He read everything he could get his hands on from Medieval European, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian history about the political intrigues and empire building of various kings, princes, and even popes. He read and reread Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and The Godfather so many times that his copies were dog-eared. That was why Tony made it a point to remain friends with Pietro to protect his flank. When Pietro passed on, which wouldn’t be long now, Tony would build a strategic alliance with one of his two sons, presumably the weaker one. With “Crazy Enzo,” as he called him, Tony had made soft forays into his Milwaukee empire, making friends with several of his underbosses. Above all else, he kept in close contact with the New York and New Jersey Dons, anticipating the day that Salvatore finally passed on.

  Until then, Tony knew his priorities. It was time to make the CHC operation disappear and snip off all those loose ends, “without leaving a ripple in the water,” to quote an old Italian saying. To do that, the meddlesome “telephone guy,” as Salvatore called him, also needed to disappear. Unlike Salvatore, however, he was beginning to suspect that Burke did not have much to do with telephones, and he might not be all that easy to make go away.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As they continued east on the I-90 Toll Road past O’Hare Airport, Bob drove Linda’s Toyota through a spaghetti bowl of interchanges that took them onto Higgins Road and then Zemke Road, which ended at the massive O’Hare Economy Parking Lot F. All the way along this tortuous path, he kept an eye on the rear view mirror and the traffic behind them.

  “I think we’re clean,” he told her. “I don’t see anyone following us.”

  “How could they? I’m lost; why wouldn’t they be?”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” he laughed as they pulled up to one of the automated ticket kiosks at the entrance to Parking Lot F.

  “Sheesh! Nine bucks a day?” she said as she read the rates posted in large letters on the front of the machine. “I don’t fly much, but that’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s for the cheap seats in the Economy Lot. If you prefer the close-in convenience of the big parking ramp, it’s sixty bucks a day.”

  “Must be nice to travel on an expense account,” she said, as he pulled the ticket from the machine.

  “Maybe, but I won’t pay that much either, even if it is a business trip — twenty-five dollars one-way to check a suitcase, big fees to change or cancel a reservation, heck, they’re even starting to charge for carry-ons. The nickel and diming has gotten ridiculous.”

  “If it’s a bus
iness trip, it’s not your money.”

  “The company’s money is my money, Linda. I own twenty-six percent of it, or I do until Angie gets finished with me. And if it makes you happy, I usually park right here in the F Lot or get dropped off at the terminal.”

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry. You are a true ‘man of the people,’ ” she laughed at him.

  “It’s not that. My dad was a hard-core, card-carrying AFL-CIO union member. He hated big business and bosses and foremen, and all that stuff. However, the one thing he did drill into my pointed little head that stuck is to try to do the right thing, especially when it comes to other people’s money. Whether it’s the Army or a business I may own part of, you don’t spend what you don’t need to spend.”

  “Wow! They sure don’t look at it that way at CHC. Greenway doesn’t,” she said as she looked out over a sea of parked cars. “What now?”

  “Now, we pick out a car. I’ll start going up and down the rows. When we find what I’m looking for, we’ll find a space and park.”

  “All right,” she said as they began traversing the center of the lot. “What’s your preference in stolen cars today, Mister Burke? Feel a little racy?” she asked as she wiggled her eyebrows and gave a passable Groucho Marx impersonation. “I see a Volvo over there with your name on it. On the other hand, how about a sleek, two-door Mercedes? That should be what you need to outrun those Lincoln Town Cars. Better still, I see a huge Ford Expedition SUV, if you’d prefer to play Demolition Derby with them.”

  “No, we need something old and nondescript, something no one will pay any attention to.”

  “By no one, you mean the cops? There! I see a dusty, dark-green Toyota two rows back that looks like it hasn’t moved in weeks. I know how to drive one of those. What do you think?”

  “Close, but not quite,” he said as he turned, came back down the next aisle, and saw she was right about the dust. “Look for a domestic car, maybe eight to ten years old, preferably a Ford if we can find one. They’re the easiest to hot wire, and they don’t have any of those new remote control door locks.”

  “That sounds like the voice of misspent youth.” She looked at him suspiciously. “Am I to assume you’ve done this before?”

  “A few times, but overseas, not here in the States, and it wasn’t all that long ago,” he answered. “We might hope to find one that the owner didn’t bother to lock. You’d be surprised how often that happens.”

  “An old, beat-up Ford? Why would they lock it to begin with? They probably left it here with the key in the ignition, hoping it would get stolen.”

  “No, not at these rates. Nowadays, if you want something to ‘get stolen’ out here in the ’burbs,’ drive it back into Maywood, Cicero, or the near West Side and leave it. They’ll have it stripped for parts in thirty minutes, flat,” he laughed. “And you don’t have to pay them nine bucks an hour for the opportunity.” He turned his head from side to side and continued to look up and down the aisle. “I’d like to find one with some dust on it to show it isn’t an overnight trip, but not too much. That might mean the owners are due back soon.”

  “What about that one,” she said as she pointed to an old maroon Ford Taurus, with sufficient dents and rust spots to make him smile.

  “Good call. Looks like an ’03 or ’04, and that should be perfect. It’s less obvious than the imports, and I won’t need a computer to get into the ignition,” he said as he pulled the Toyota into an empty space three cars down and they both got out.

  “So, you’re an expert on old cars too?”

  “Oh, not really,” he laughed, “but I used to own an ’04 Taurus like this one — briefly, I might add — because it got stolen from my driveway before the ink was dry on the insurance policy. That’s how I learned how easy a Ford was to steal. One of the local cops showed me how to do it, and then I got a graduate degree in most of the major civilian felonies in the classes the Army put us through at Fort Bragg during my Special Ops training and Camp Perry for a couple of CIA things.”

  “A couple of CIA ‘things?’ ” she frowned as he parked and they both got out.

  “Charm school, you know. Do you have a phillips screwdriver in your glove compartment?”

  “What’s a phillips?”

  “Never mind,” he said as he shook his head, reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and handed it to her. “While I’m getting the car door open and getting it started, I want you to take off the front and back license plates, and then find two other cars in the next row. Find ones a little bit apart, not sitting right next to each other. If they’re parked head-in, take off the front plates. If they’re backed in, grab the rear ones. We’ll replace them with your two and the two from the Taurus, and put two of theirs on your Toyota.”

  “But they won’t match.”

  “Doesn’t matter. No one looks at both the front and the back plates on a car, not even the cops. They only look at one, unless it’s a full-blown arrest, in which case it won’t matter at all.”

  “Now, that really is sneaky, Bob. Did the Army teach you all that stuff, or the CIA?”

  “Actually, I’m thinking it was an Elmore Leonard novel or an old episode of MacGyver; I can’t remember which. Now get moving. This may be Chicago, but the airport security guards do occasionally drive by, even here.”

  As he expected, one of the Taurus’ rear doors was unlocked. He opened the others and quickly went to work on the wiring harness in the car’s steering column, until he heard her call out to him, “This isn’t doing much for my fingernails, you know. Damn, there goes another.”

  “It’s an occupational hazard.”

  “Maybe yours, but my occupation is not car thief; and I don’t think I’d make a very good one, even if I were… Did you learn this stuff overseas, or wherever you were stealing cars or doing whatever it was you were doing?”

  “Me? I was defending truth, justice, and the American way of life, of course.”

  “You and Superman?”

  “No, not really. I can’t fly,” he smiled as he heard the solenoid click a few times before the starter turned over and the engine finally fired.

  “Tell me something,” he heard her suspicious voice call out to him from the next row. “This business with those guys at Eleanor’s house last night, you seemed to handle them rather easily.”

  “They told you I was some kind of telephone guy, didn’t they?” He smiled. “Toler TeleCom designs and builds highly sophisticated, highly secret telecommunications software and hardware for the Defense Department. We don’t install phones.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” came her sarcastic reply, “because I don’t see much future in stealing cars or installing telephones. Still, that doesn’t explain what you did to the men at Eleanor’s house. They work for Tony, and I know who they were. They are big, with muscles on top of their muscles, and I’ve seen them push people around.”

  "I guess they pushed on the wrong one this time,” he shrugged and set to work taking the front and back plates off the Taurus. “Linda, I spent some time in the Army, quite a bit of time, actually; and I wasn’t a supply clerk. I picked up a few tricks here and there…”

  “A few tricks? Bob, you’re a pretty average-looking guy…”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “That’s not what I meant. They were twice your size…”

  “Size has nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s what all the guys say… sorry.”

  “In that, it doesn’t,” he looked over at her, exasperated. “Neither do muscles from Gold’s Gym… are you done with the license plates yet?”

  “Almost, I’m putting the last one on, but don’t change the subject. I’m not done with you.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time later. I have the car running and the plates are off this one. Bring me the last two and recheck your own car. Make sure you don’t leave anything in the trunk or the glove compartment, then let’s get out of here.”

  “Are yo
u sure my car will be safe here? Eventually, I’m going to want it back, you know.”

  “Linda, who's going to steal a car from a lot where they'd have to pay these rates to get it through the gate? If they do, they're going to pick a Mercedes or a Lexus, not an old Toyota.”

  “Except for 'professionals,' like you, who pick an even older Taurus..”

  With the ignition wires tucked above the steering column, he looked at his watch and said, “It’s 12:45 now. That should give us enough time for me to get to Charlie’s, and I have a couple of other things to do before we swing by the school and pick up your daughter. Hop in, I’ll drive.”

  Bob followed the Exit signs back through the parking lot to the entrance on Zemke Road. Business must hit a low around noon, because only one of the six cashier booths was open, and their Taurus was the third car in line. He pulled up to the open window, handed Linda’s ticket to the bored, middle-aged woman sitting inside, and smiled at her. She inserted it into her ticket reader, stared out at him over the top of the pink, oyster-shell sunglasses that sat down on the tip of her nose, and said, “You only been here twenty minutes, hon, that ain’t very long.”

  “Our flight got cancelled, you know how it goes,” he said innocently.

  “Guess I do, but that’ll be five bucks anyway.”

  “Five bucks? Sheesh, that’s a rip,” Linda said from the far side of the seat as she reached into her wallet, found a five-dollar bill, and reached across Bob to hand it to the cashier.

  “It sure is,” the cashier commiserated as she reached her arm out and patted the price list on the side of the booth. “The mayor says he needs the money.”

  “Told you that himself, I bet.”

  “He did indeed!” she laughed. “Old Rahm parks here hisself and he told me last week.”

  “He’s parking that big black limo in the Economy Lot now?”

  “And he told me to tell you to have an exceptionally good day!”

  “But five bucks lighter.”

  “You got it, hon!” he heard the attendant cackle as he drove away and headed back west toward Schaumburg.