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

by William F. Brown

  “Screw you, asshole!” she coughed and gasped. “Screw you!”

  Greenway snapped. Looking down into her eyes and seeing the anger and hatred behind them, he felt himself getting a powerful erection and squeezed even harder, completely cutting off her air. Her face turned beet red this time. She turned and twisted, her naked body writhing beneath him, which excited him even more. As she began to lose consciousness and her eyes closed, he slowly drew Tony Scalese’s stiletto across the side of her neck. With surgical precision, it neatly severed her carotid artery. Her eyes shot open and Greenway quickly pulled his hands away as her blood squirted sideways across the pool deck, narrowly missing him. As he sat on her naked body and watched her bleed out beneath him, feeling the life flow out of her, he had an orgasm. It was his usual reaction in times like these, but this one was stronger and more vivid.

  Greenway looked down into her lifeless eyes and whispered, “Thank you, Angie.” Finally, he rolled off her, got back up on shaky legs and dropped the stiletto next to her body. Before he left, he stepped over to the pool, stuck his hands into the water, carefully washed her blood off his surgical gloves, and dropped them into his medical bag. Nicely done, he thought. There was nothing here to link him to her murder. But Tony Scalese? That’s his knife and those are his fingerprints all over it. Tony Scalese the North Side Rapist? Who would have guessed?

  Greenway returned to his car, drove slowly down the driveway, and turned left at the street. At the next major intersection, he saw a combination Shell gas station and McDonalds restaurant. He parked his Mercedes in the side lot and walked inside. He saw a pay phone hanging on the rear wall between the two stores. The restaurant was crowded with high school kids, and no one was going to notice one more adult. He picked up the receiver and dialed 911.

  An emergency operator answered after a few rings. Greenway placed his handkerchief over the mouthpiece and hurriedly told her, “My name’s Samuel Jamison with FedEx. I was making a delivery at 242 Stanley Court in Winnetka. The front door was hanging wide open, so I knocked and called out ‘FedEx’ a couple of times. I finally stepped inside a little bit and called out again, but that was when I saw those bodies. There’s a woman lying in the kitchen and another one out in back by the pool. She’s been cut up, somethin’ bad.”

  “Are you at the scene, Mister Jamison?” the operator asked.

  “Hell no, lady, I got my ass out of there.”

  “I’m dispatching a patrol car right now, but I’d like you to go back and…”

  “Me? I didn’t see nuthin’ else, and there ain’t no way you're talkin' me into goin' back there.”

  Greenway hung up, casually wiped down the telephone handset with his handkerchief, and walked away smiling. That should stir things up, he thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tony Scalese sat in his office, waiting. He hated waiting, so he spent the time cleaning and reloading his pistols — a Glock, a Beretta, and his old standby, a Colt M-1911 — plus his favorite sawed-off shotgun. It was only 7:30 p.m. The guns were oiled and reassembled now and lay on the desk in front of him in a neat row. He had cleaned every piece and part there was to clean, and all he could do now was sit and wait for the rest of his crew to arrive. Ten of his men were already there. Three were “regular” hourly security guards, who would be staying to watch the building. The others were from various “crews” down in the city. They were hanging around downstairs smoking and drinking coffee in the employee lounge, playing gin and pinochle, or studying tomorrow’s Racing Form for nearby Arlington Park. He had another ten to twelve men coming up later -- all that firepower against one ex-Army “telephone company” creep and a goddamned receptionist? Even if Burke did call in a few friends to help, maybe some duck hunters, maybe a “moke” with a deer rifle, or maybe even a few of his old Army buddies; it would be a slaughter. He and his crew would kill them all. After that, he would kill Sylvester, Bentley, Greenway, and all the rest of them. Tonight he would snip off all those loose ends, as Mr. D ordered. He’d snip them all.

  He leaned back in his desk chair, spun it around, and looked out through the third floor window into the dark night. His office faced west. Until the first day he worked out here in the “burbs,” he would never have believed there could be so many trees in the world. There must be millions of them. From the occasional twinkle of lights, he knew there were thousands of houses out there too, hundreds of stores, gas stations, and McDonalds restaurants; but the trees were much taller and hid most of them. Their crowns were all you could see as far as the horizon. Scalese grew up on the near North Side where trees were spindly little things. As a kid, he believed they kept them around for the dogs, so they’d have something to pee on. He was a city boy, and still found all that green out there a bit disconcerting.

  When he first saw the CHC building, he figured he would take an office facing the city. From the third floor, you could see downtown on a clear day, with the Hancock and Sears towers, the Prudential building, and all the rest. That was what he told his pals back in the city, that his new office looked out at “Big John” Hancock. That was something they would understand and envy, but he lied. He passed on Big John and took an office facing west, where he looked at the pretty sunsets and all those goddamned trees. He loved the sunsets and at times, he even liked the trees. If he was honest with himself, however, the scale of it all was beginning to creep him out. He remembered that Lord of the Rings movie, where the trees got up and started going after that wizard in the white robe. There was something primordial about that, something a city kid like him didn’t “get,” and didn’t want to.

  Last month, Scalese tried to meet the trees halfway. He went out and drove around the back roads for a couple of hours. He even visited some of the County Forest Preserves, but he still didn’t “get” it. What did that Aussie guy in the movies, that Crocodile Dundee, call it? “The Great Outback?” All those trees — or were they woods or forests? To Tony, they were just a waste of good lumber, construction sites, union jobs, kickbacks, paving contracts, pension plan loans, permits, bribes, and escrow scams. Yeah, the more he thought about it, no matter how many gunmen he brought with him, he was nuts to tell that moke Burke he’d meet him in the woods, especially at night.

  Looking out his office window, the sun had long set on what had been a tiring day — too long and too tiring, he thought. 11:00 p.m. He should have never given that prick Burke that much time. Scalese had the kid and Burke had a panicked mother to deal with. That should have sealed the deal and let him put an end to this business hours earlier.

  That was when one of his men, Jimmy DiCiccio, knocked on the frame of his door and said, “Boss, dat local cop Bentley’s downstairs. He says he needs to talk to you.”

  “Tell him there’s too many ears around here. I’ll meet him over at that big white water tank of his in ten minutes,” Scalese answered as he used his handkerchief to pull Greenway’s little .32-caliber Mauser “pimp gun” from his pocket and check the magazine. “Tell him I have a present for him from Mr. D, something special. And tell him he should bring that fat turd of a nephew of his, Bobby Joe, with him, too.”

  Scalese got to his feet and picked up his favorite .45-caliber Colt automatic off his desk. After checking that magazine too, he jacked a round “up-the-pipe” and tucked it behind his belt in the small of his back. He opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a wrinkled, brown paper lunch sack. Inside were a dozen small plastic envelopes containing rock crystals of crack cocaine. Good, he smiled; as he rolled the sack closed and brought it along. He picked up his sharkskin blazer from the chair where he had tossed it, pulled it on, and headed for the door until he felt his cell phone vibrating in his pants pocket. He paused and pulled it out. Odd, he thought as he looked at the small screen and saw a phone number he did not recognize. Odder still, because only a handful of people knew this very private cell phone number.

  “Yeah,” he said as he answered the call.

  “This is your fri
end downtown,” he heard, and immediately recognized US Attorney Peter O’Malley’s voice. “Go out and find a pay phone, and call me back. We need to talk.”

  “This phone’s clean.”

  “Anthony, it’s time you learned that nothing’s clean. So stop arguing and do what I told you. It’s important,” O’Malley said as he rang off. Scalese stared at the phone, growing angrier by the moment. O’Malley! He was another one of those loose ends the big Italian couldn’t wait to snip off.

  There was a Pizza Hut three blocks away, which he and his crew frequented, and he knew he could always use their phone. When he got there, he gave the manager a fierce glare and took their delivery phone from his hand. He dialed the number and said, “It’s me,” getting increasingly tired of being told what to do by anyone. Hopefully, that would all soon end.

  O’Malley began without any pleasantries “I talked to that guy a little while ago. Despite your best efforts, it seems he got his hands on those CHC reports.”

  “So what, that bitch Purdue is dead and nobody can prove a goddamned thing.”

  “He also claims he has a flash drive that she left. He says it has all of your books and financial reports, the ‘real’ ones. He thinks it has the list of all the people you guys are paying off. He hasn’t been able to get it open yet, but we both know whose name he’ll find prominently displayed in there, don’t we?”

  “Ah, he’s blowin’ smoke up your ass, O’Malley. Old Sal’s the only one with the ‘real’ books, and he keeps ’em locked in that big damned safe of his up in Evanston.”

  “Maybe, but I’m taking the version of the real ones that you gave me to the Grand Jury. If Burke suddenly shows up with a different set of real ones that implicate you and me, my campaign will go down in flames before it even gets started, and you’ll lose all that money you spent trying to elect a friendly new Governor.”

  “Then you won’t need to worry, will you? Neither will I, because old Sal will plant the both of us out in Lake Michigan five minutes after the Tribune lands on his front doorstep with a story like that. But it ain’t ever gonna happen, because that little prick Burke and his reports and spreadsheets ain’t gonna survive the night. Neither are Greenway, Bentley, Linda Sylvester, or anyone else who knows anything about any of this.”

  “Be careful, Tony. That guy Burke is dangerous.”

  “So am I. Look, we got the computers from Purdue’s office and from her house, and we got Sylvester’s, we got Burke’s, and we even got his friend’s up in Wheeling. We busted ’em all into a million little pieces, so how…”

  “None of that matters. The documents are on a little flash drive; and one way or another, he’ll get it open,” O’Malley warned. “You know what he had the balls to ask me? He asked if he’ll find my name in there, so maybe he already knows.”

  “You think he’s bluffin’?”

  “How should I know? But if he didn’t have something on us, something big, don’t you think he’d have cut and run a long time ago?”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. We’re takin’ care of him tonight. He’s a dead man.”

  “Good, because my Grand Jury meets next week, and this thing’s starting to unravel.”

  “Not unless you let it, and I’m paying you a lot of goddamned money to make sure it doesn’t do that, Governor. Two weeks ago, I gave you enough stuff on old Sal, to put him, his brothers, and his nephews in the Federal pen for a long time, plus a dozen other wise guys who ticked me off. So, what are you waiting for? Get it done!”

  There was a small, gravel parking lot at the base of the Indian Hills water tank. When Scalese turned in off the main road, he immediately saw he chose his spot well. A tall, ragged, hedge surrounded the small service lot, and there were four ground-mounted floodlights illuminating the big water tank, but leaving the parking lot below in deep shadow. Police cars tend to put a chill on late-night romance and the drug trade, so the only cars in the small lot were the two white and green Indian Hills police cruisers — Bentley’s and Bobby Joe’s. They were parked side by side facing the water tank, so Scalese pulled in behind them, blocking them in. He pulled on a pair of paper-thin, Italian leather driving gloves, pulled Greenway’s little Mauser from his jacket pocket, and dropped it in the brown paper sack with the cocaine. When he got out of the car, he took the sack and left the engine running.

  He walked around the rear of the Lexus and then between the two police cars, stopping next to Chief Bentley’s open window. The two cops must have been talking as Scalese walked up. Bobby Joe sat on the hood of his car with his feet dangling over the side, looking like a fat, grinning toad; while Bentley sat inside his car smoking a cigarette, his seat tilted back as if it were his personal recliner on wheels.

  As Scalese stopped next to him, Bentley looked up and saw the gloves. “A little hot for them things tonight, ain’t it, Tony?”

  “I like to wear them when I’m driving. Lets me pretend it’s a sports car,” he answered. “So, what’s so goddamned important that you had to see me tonight, Chief?” he asked as he leaned through the window and gave Bentley his best crocodile smile.

  “Plenty. Look, I don’t know if you heard about Burke’s wife, yet…”

  “Burke’s wife? Heard what?”

  “Seems she got herself killed this afternoon.”

  “Seriously kilt,” Bobby Joe chortled. “Somebody broke in her house up in Win-net-ka. They found her out back by the swimming pool, naked as a jaybird with her throat slit. Found her maid too, lyin' in the kitchen with her neck broke.”

  Scalese frowned, not liking what he heard. “Okay, thanks for letting me know.” he said as he straightened up and put his hand in the paper sack.

  “Yeah, well, that ain’t the half of it,” Bentley sat up, thinking Scalese was leaving. “Seems they found a knife layin’ next to her body, a 9-inch Italian–made stiletto. Now, I hate to bring this up, Tony, but every cop in town knows you favor a knife like that, so this business is gettin’ a whole lot more complicated than I bargained for.”

  “A stiletto?” Scalese’s hand patted his inside jacket pocket, but he felt nothing. His knife was gone. “Greenway,” he whispered to himself as his eyes narrowed and his anger built into a towering rage. “That son of a bitch!” Unfortunately, that worthless doctor wasn’t there to be on the receiving end of the big Mafia hit man’s anger, but these two hick cops were.

  “Yeah, and I think it’s high time you and I sat down and discussed our ‘financial arrangement.’ ” Bentley continued, with a new tone of confidence.

  Scalese stared in at him again, “When?” he asked.

  “When? Well, I guess now’s as good a time as any.”

  “No, you moron! When was she killed?”

  “Burke’s wife? I heard a couple of hours ago, maybe three, but they ain’t finished their investigation. It came out over the regional alert system earlier, so I… Now wait just a damned minute, boy! Who the hell you callin’ a moron?” Bentley bristled.

  “You!” Scalese reached inside the paper sack and found the grip on Greenway’s .32-caliber Mauser. In one smooth motion, he pulled it out and extended his arm toward Bobby Joe. The fat cop sat on the car hood with a dumb grin until he saw the small German pistol in Scalese’s hand, and frowned. Some people are too terminally stupid to waste air on, Scalese concluded, especially a very dumb cop. He pulled the trigger three times and put a nice, tight shot grouping into the center of Bobby Joe’s face.

  They call a .32 a “pimp gun” for good reason. The small bullet it fired wasn’t good for much except disciplining a whore by shooting her in the butt when she got out of line, or for scaring away a troublesome John. However, in Scalese’s experience, a .32 or even a .22 was more than adequate to kill someone if you shoot them in the head at point-blank range. A big .45-caliber slug from his Colt would blow half the man’s head off and pass right on through. A .32, on the other hand, makes a little hole on its way in and rattles around inside for a while, turning the brain
to mush. It’s a lot less messy, but the vic ends up just as dead. In Bobby Joe’s case, he toppled over backward onto the car hood.

  The Police Chief’s jaw dropped as he saw Bobby Joe’s body spread-eagled there like an overstuffed hood ornament. Scalese didn’t wait. He turned around and pressed the muzzle of the Mauser into Bentley’s left ear. The chief turned and looked up into the coldest pair of eyes he would ever see as Scalese pulled the trigger, twice. Bentley’s head snapped to the right and his body collapsed sideways across the car seat. Scalese extended his arm and shot him once more in the head for spite. By the time he turned back around, Bobby Joe had rolled off the hood and lay on the gravel staring up at him, quietly blowing bubbles. Scalese was surprised at how little noise even six gunshots from a little .32 made, not nearly enough to be heard over the roar of traffic on the nearby road. He tossed the Mauser onto the ground next to Bobby Joe’s police cruiser. There would still be plenty of Greenway’s fingerprints on the pistol and the shell casings inside. Serves him right, Scalese thought, but it wouldn’t begin to even the scales with the arrogant doctor.

  Scalese reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out a dozen of the small, clear plastic envelopes that contained the yellow-brown “rocks” of crack cocaine. He bent down, picked up Bobby Joe’s hand, and pressed several of the envelopes against his fingertips and thumb before he dropped them on the ground around him. He reached inside Bentley’s car, grabbed his hand, and did the same for four or five more of the plastic envelopes. He dropped two of them into Bentley’s lap and dropped the rest and the empty sack on to the floor of Bentley’s car, where he knew the police Crime Techs would have no trouble finding them later.