by Thomas Laird
“The more to love.”
“Bullshit. Who loves a stroke walking?”
“You’re rather harsh on fat people, Lila.”
“I’m not harsh on them. I just don’t embrace their lifestyle. I’m going to keep running. Get it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Danny, are you really happy about all this?”
“Ecstatic. Can’t you read it all over me?”
She looks at me as if she’s a trained clinician.
“I mean I really need you to be happy about this.”
“Your needs have been fulfilled, lady.”
“Don’t call me lady.”
“I forgot. It’s the eighties.”
“Which would you prefer? Boy or girl?”
“I’d like one with all the equipment, and I’d like all their equipment to be highly functional. It doesn’t matter. Which would you prefer?”
Lila purses her lips. We’re still seated on the bed.
“Boy. You already have one with indoor plumbing.”
“That doesn’t matter. Just make it like I said, healthy. I’ll take what I get.”
“We’ll both have to. That’s the way it always works anyway. Right?”
I bend over toward her and kiss her.
“This isn’t going to stop our sex life, is it?” she asks.
“That’s up to you, Lila. You’re the pilot, remember?”
“I intend to wear you out until my water’s ready to break. And then about a month and a half after the birth, we’ll start on the second in the batch.”
“You don’t intend to go back to work?”
“They can’t can me for getting knocked up. Remember, this is the eighties. Power to the bitches!”
She kisses me, this time. Then I put my hand on her lower belly, and she bursts out bawling.
We’ve had sightings on two of the stolen cars from DesPlaines. One of the vehicles was abandoned on the southside of the city, and the other was pulled over with the booster still in the driver’s seat. But he wasn’t Franklin Toliver, of course. He was a sixteen-year-old white kid who wanted to go on a joy ride, and now his ride has become joyless.
I have dreams of hooded phantoms. I never see Franklin’s face, but I know who it is, inside the hooded sweatshirt. It’s the object of my search. He’s the sole name on my whiteboard, currently. He’s the kernel of my monomania. He’s Ahab’s white whale and Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter and Holden Caulfield’s phonies. Franklin is the object of my singular desire.
His face is shrouded in shadow. He comes meandering toward me in my dreams. Walking down my block, he approaches me. I’m standing outside our house, and I’m ready to run with Lila on our usual route, but for some reason, she’s not with me on this pre-dawn morning.
And here he comes. He’s in no particular rush, but when he gets into range, I reach for my waist, for my gun, and the holster’s empty. I don’t have a knife or a club or any weapon at all, but Franklin has something dangling from his right hand, which is at his side, right at his right thigh.
I look around frantically for something to defend myself with, but it’s hopeless. There is nothing to wield, nothing to swing at him or to hurl at him.
I have only my bare hands and my feet. He has the advantage. He can pull on me and kill me without touching me. But I have to somehow take the offensive. I can’t just let him raise that hand and kill me.
So I rush at him.
And his right hand rises.
46
I begin to feel the aches and pain after our run on a Sunday morning in late November. Thanksgiving has passed peacefully, but not entirely so. Franklin is still at large, and the pressure is building downtown for me to deliver and put Toliver away for the last time.
If he returns to Elgin, in other words if I don’t kill him, they intend to put him in an ultra maximum security area, and if the lights go out again, they’re going to have him in a cage with deadbolts that don’t rely on electrical power to keep him inside. Dr. Talbot called me two weeks ago. He was very apologetic, but I reminded him that security was not his responsibility. It didn’t seem to make him feel any better. He said he felt personally responsible that Franklin Toliver was on the loose. He also said that Franklin should have been sent to prison because he’s just too dangerous to be in any hospital, at least a traditional mental hospital. I didn’t argue with him or tell him I told you so. I hung up after telling him that I’d catch up with our hooded monster, sooner or later.
I’ve had a phone call from Alderman Tony Vronski, also. He wanted an “update” of where I was on the escapee. I tried to be civil to him because I could not be polite. If I made wise with this political wiseguy, our beloved Captain would be the recipient of the doo doo that always flows downhill. I’m just a drone, a cog, so I’m certain my boss would have become the fall guy if I insulted the oily son of a bitch. So I didn’t, and the call only lasted about three minutes.
As I say, the aches and owwies have set in. When we get back from our neighborhood trot—it is 37 degrees outside—Lila takes my temperature, and it reads 101. She gives me the two requisite Tylenol, and then she makes me go back to bed. It’s our day off, one of the few we share now that we aren’t partners on the job, any longer, so I protest and tell her we’re going out for breakfast, because even with the elevated temp, I still feel hungry, oddly.
So she concedes, and we head out for Derek’s, a nice Greek joint that doesn’t flatten your wallet too badly. The owner is Derek Antonopoulos, and he’s an ex-cop who went into the restaurant business after he put in his thirty years. Derek is only in his mid-fifties. He became a patrolman when he was around twenty. He knows both of us because we come in here all the time, and he constantly comps us our meals even though we always try to talk him into letting us pay. He makes the other coppers pay full, but I think it’s because he’s got the hots for Lila. He never flirts with her, but you can see he’s taken with my fiancé.
He tries to pick up the check again, this morning, but I’m too fast for him. I snatch it up before he can fist it.
“You’re gonna go broke, comping us every time we’re in here, and I’m starting to feel guilty about it, Derek,” I tell him.
He looks like one of the guys from Crete in Zorba the Greek—the movie, I mean. He reminds me of the man who cut Irene Pappas’s throat in the flick. He’s got the salt and pepper hair and a full head of it, and he’s got a gray and white- flecked mustache. I fully expect him to cry out, “Hoopa!” every time we get ready to leave his place.
There are Greek landscapes hung on the wall and a picture of the Parthenon. He has spacious booths and long, comfortable tables to sit at. He’s in the heart of the Loop, on State Street.
He sits down next to me in the booth. Lila sits across from us. His waiter brings us all coffee. He joins us in a cup.
“You look poorly, Danny. This case making you ill?”
“Yes,” Lila tells the restaurant owner.
“You should make him go to bed, Lila,” he smiles.
“I’ve been trying.”
“You two are getting married soon?” he asks her.
“Right before Christmas,” she answers.
Her face beams when she tells him the date. I can’t believe, now, that she’s the same woman who kept me at arms’ length for so long. But now it’s as if we’ve been together since always. Mary is becoming fainter and fainter, the last few months. I won’t forget my ex-wife, but I’m not clinging onto any notions that she’s ever coming back into my life, either.
“Beautiful,” Derek says. He smiles broadly. He’s got the perfect set of teeth, also. The man could’ve been a Hollywood actor with his good looks. He’s probably six two, maybe 200 pounds. No fat, no waste. He must take care of himself. Derek rose to Burglary/Car Theft before he retired, he told me. He’s been here for about four years.
“You do look sick, Danny. You eat, then you go home and go to bed. The bad guy will still be there tomorrow or the
next day. And don’t let the pols make you sick with their bullshit in the papers. You’ll get him. I know you will.”
Derek Antonopoulos rises and smiles at Lila, and then he excuses himself and goes off to schmooze with some other customers. I remember I’m still clutching the bill so he won’t grab it, as usual.
“So I look sick,” I say as she prepares to stick the thermometer in my mouth again, once we’re home.
I can hear the dogs barking in the backyard, so I try to get up and see what’s going on.
“Sit your silly ass back on the bed,” Lila commands.
I comply. I haven’t got the juice to battle her this morning, anyway.
“You can watch the Bears’ game in here on the TV,” she tells me.
We’ve got a 25 inch color set on top of the big chest of drawers, in here.
The Bears are playing in Green Bay. I’m only slightly concerned about professional football—or about anything else extraneous to my singular task at hand, and I don’t need Lila or Dr. Fernandez or Derek Antonopoulos to explain why my resistance is down, right now.
I rarely get colds or the flu. I had the measles, mumps and chicken pox as a child, but that was typical of most kids. I rarely got run down because I was an athlete, and I was in shape all through grade school and thereafter. I never stopped being active. I never ceased exercising, even when I went to college and in my adult years following school. Then the military made sure I didn’t get flabby or dormant. We were trained to go on three or four hours sleep, maximum, in the Army Rangers. It was the life. Even when I returned from Vietnam after my tours, I only averaged about five hours sleep a night.
With Lila, for some reason, I’ve learned to stay in bed longer, but not for additional hours of sleep, of course.
So it has to be my one case that’s running me down. It has to be Toliver. Maybe if I crap out here most of the day, I figure, I’ll be ready to roll tomorrow. I’m scheduled for days’ shift until I catch him, but I usually work far longer than eight hours. My days have spilled over into afternoons, and I’ve cruised the area of DesPlaines and LaGrange and Lyons and Berwyn and Cicero—all the surrounding suburbs that Franklin Toliver might be hiding out in. I’ve driven the streets of the western and southwestern edges of Chicago looking for him, as well.
The odds that I’ll confront him are very poor. One man in one vehicle is not exactly a dragnet, but I do it for my own peace of mind. Lila has not been amused by the overly long hours I’ve put in chasing this madman, but she hasn’t outright ragged me about it. She probably thinks it’s better I’m at least doing something active in pursuing him. She has frequently offered to accompany me in my forays out into the night streets and boulevards and avenues, but I keep on insisting that she needs to stay close to the house when she’s not at work. At least she has a partner on the job, so there’s always someone there to watch her back. And I know I’d be with her if she were to come along with me, but I want her as far away from this case as I can keep her, and I’ll never say as much because I know what she’d say. Lila would tell me she can take care of herself, and I know it’s true. But now that the baby is inside her, things are different.
She made that trip to the gynecologist, and the home test was confirmed. She is definitely with child. So I’m trying, in my feeble way, to minimize the amount of time she is out in the field, where, somewhere, Franklin Toliver still remains.
I fall asleep, watching the Bears at Green Bay. When I nod off, I begin to dream again. But this time no hooded phantasm invades my dreamscape. This time I’m newly married to Mary. I’m remembering the heated passion of our time together, before she decided to disappear me from her life.
Then the dream switches to Kelly, Kelly when she was using, Kelly when she was purging and turning into a wisp, a fragment of herself.
Then the dream wanders off again, but this time the backdrop is very unfamiliar. I’m on some kind of a boat. And I’m dressed like some ancient Greek sailor. And Derek Antonopoulos seems to be the captain of our vessel. The ship has sails, and we appear to be out on either a very large lake or an ocean. I can taste salt in the air, so I assume it’s an ocean. Maybe it’s the Aegean. Perhaps it’s the Mediterranean. With my friend the Greek restaurant manager as our captain, I’m leaning toward Greece.
We seem headed toward danger because all the crew members are leaning into their oars. But for some reason, I’m at the front of the ship, standing next to Derek. I don’t feel like I’m in command of this crew, of this ship, but I’m standing in a position of prominence.
Finally, I ask Derek:
“Where are we headed?”
“Wherever this foul wind blows us,” he replies. His handsome face is lined and furrowed in seriousness. We’re running fast toward trouble, but he won’t tell me exactly what kind.
“We’re all headed for death,” he pronounces.
Then he smiles at me as if to cancel his last utterance.
“But then, what is the purpose of life if not to head toward that place from which no one re-emerges?”
He smiles again.
“Death is nothing, Danny. Death is peace. Death is rest.”
I want to remonstrate with him, telling him that I have a wife (soon) and a baby (on the way) and that I have no desire to meet that final rest just yet.
He won’t turn his glance toward me. He eyes the horizon. And then I see the outline of land. I can smell earth on the salt breeze. We are approaching landfall, and the ship runs fast and true toward a distant beach.
“What is this place?” I ask Derek.
“This place? It’s hell, Danny. We’re headed straight for that dark coast where dawn never arrives.”
He isn’t smiling, and he still won’t turn and look directly at me.
I want to jump overboard, but as I peer into the deep, somehow the waters seem more forbidding than the coast we’re aimed at.
When I look back at Derek, it isn’t him, anymore. He’s transformed into someone else.
The new master of the ship looks directly into my eyes.
“There is no escape there, my young friend. The water is no longer our home. It hasn’t been, for thousands and thousands of years. You and I have been exiled to this vessel, to this voyage, for twenty years. We’ve encountered gods and goddesses and sirens and one-eyed monsters, and still they will not let us go home. To rest, to be at a final peace. To be one with our brides. The fates have determined our voyage for us, and now we are headed for a land which offers no respite for the weary traveler.
“We are condemned to follow this path, young man. It is pointless to seek refuge when there is none. This is our way, and there is no other.”
Suddenly, this unknown commander turns back into Derek Antonopoulos. The ex-cop turned restaurant owner.
“You want some more coffee?” he abruptly asks. “Danny?”
“Danny? Danny? Danny?”
I open my eyes and see Lila’s beautiful face. She’s in the first blush of her pregnancy, and I want to reach up and kiss her, but I don’t have the strength to rise toward her. She sits at the side of our bed.
“Here. Drink this.”
She’s got a large glass of orange juice in her right hand, and the delicate appendage is stretched out toward me.
“What were you doing? Dreaming?”
I nod, woozily.
I take the orange juice and I gulp down a third of the glass.
“Easy! Don’t choke yourself.”
“I’m so damn thirsty. I dreamed I was on a boat. A ship, I mean. But it had to be two thousand, three thousand years ago.”
I see the thermometer. She inserts it, waits, and then removes it.
“One hundred two,” she says. “You’re going to a doctor, tomorrow. If it goes any higher, we’re going into emergency, and no talk about it, either, Buster.”
She gives me two more Tylenol, and I put them down with another gulp of the orange juice. My thirst has risen, but I don’t feel at all hungry, anymore. T
here is no nausea. I just feel as if I’ve been beaten with a bag of phone books.
“I don’t like this, Danny. Maybe we better go to emergency, anyway.”
“No. I’m better off here, with you. If it goes higher, we’ll see, but I’m not that bad.”
“I’ve never seen you ill, so I have nothing to compare this to, and you’re scaring me.”
“It’s just the flu, and you need to keep away from me. No more kissy. No more exchange of bodily fluid,” I try to smile.
Even my lips are beginning to ache.
After ten minutes or so passes, I think the Tylenol kicks in, and I’m beginning to feel a little better. She takes my temp again, and it’s still 101. But she seems to feel more relaxed about my condition. At least it didn’t get worse.
On the other hand, only ten minutes have gone by.
“Tell me about your dream, Danny.”
By the time I’m ready to tell her, I doze off. The last thing I see is her watchful face.
This time, though, there are no dreams at all.
47
Dreamless sleep is the other side of the coin for heaven and hell. The great nothingness. Nada. Nihil. It’s the stage before conception, I’d guess, but I’m certainly not a philosopher. I was a grunt, then a patrolman, and finally and now, a detective. So you could say I’m sort of an underground detective, seeing that I deal so often with the dead.
The dead are trouble enough, but the living are far more of a pain in the ass. Living creatures like Franklin Toliver, and all the other killers I’ve dealt with, task me more than those souls gone underground.
When I finally wake up, it’s 7:35 A.M. By now we usually are done with our running route around the neighborhood. I look over at the other side of the bed, and I see the covers pulled back and I see Lila’s work clothes laid out and her .32 snub nose resting inside its holster and I see her work shoes lying on the floor next to the bed.
