by Frank Zafiro
I try calling her but she doesn’t pick up. I leave her a voicemail that I ought to be ashamed of. All lovey and miss you babe. Another drink.
Some time has got away from me as I’ve been drinking because I just checked my watch and it’s like one thirty now. I sit down heavy on the edge of the bed and do a little weave. I look at the table across the room and the bottle looks to have only about two more big drinks left. Fuck it, drunk enough. Drunk isn’t even the right word.
A slideshow of stray snapshots from earlier today starts running in my mind. Skansi laying there hissing up at me, Andros shooting the old bitch and her head bouncing back against the back of the wheelchair. Then, there he is. Kos, with that stupid ass grin and neck like a goose. Then he points at me. Fucker.
I do the slow lean sideways and as soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m out.
After getting the car rented early this morning, I drive to O’Hare and check into the Hilton inside Terminal Two. I pay up for a week in advance. Never know, might need to fly instead of drive when the time to split comes, and it will come.
Inside my room, I stow the two hundred thousand in the safe in the cabinet under the TV. I set the same combination as before at the Marriot and tuck the slip of paper with the numbers on it back inside my wallet.
I drive around a little bit after getting some breakfast — which I almost tossed up as soon as I finished. I’ve been thinking about calling Mick, too, but I figure I’ll wait for him to call me.
At some point, I pull into a parking garage of the Oak Park Mall, just off the Eisenhower. It’s a Saturday, I think, so every level is loaded with cars and that’s good, a good cover. When I lean back in the seat, the lights go out again until Mick’s call.
This train we’re on right now, though, I mean holy shit, this is the worst. It’s not doing me any good here. Mick just got done giving me the low down on what’s up and where we’re going. I think I heard about half of what he said, although I got the part about the necklace being out of play just fine. I’m drinking my third cup of coffee trying to clear my head which is banging like a mother. Let’s just say I’ve had better nights and damn sure better days. I’m still green.
“So, what’s with the fuckin’ Orient Express train travel here, Mickey boy?”
“You look like hell, Punk. Did you catch anything I just told you about Jimmy and Speedo?”
“Fuck off.” I take the little sippy ass plastic lid off and take a good slug of coffee.
Mick stares at me in frustration. “The necklace being seized and then returned, the earrings still out there, Speedo… anything ring a bell?”
I’m sitting right across from him but my attention is on the guy down at the other end of the car. I’ve been watching the car since we got on looking for anybody that’s looking, if you know what I mean.
“Yeah, I got it, okay? What the fuck, Hero? You think I can’t hear? And by the way, you still sound like a cop reading a report. Why can’t you just talk regular?”
Mick doesn’t bite. “We’re almost there, stud. One more stop and then the next will be Comiskey.” He pauses, then adds, “You want to find a bar, get a couple drinks when we get off the train?”
“What’d you say Little Jimmy’s address was again, smart ass?” The train is slowing down, making the last stop before Little Jimmy’s. I’m trying to be casual while I’m looking through the windows, watching who’s getting on, who’s getting off. And yeah, I’m way paranoid by now.
“Apartment Four B, corner of Pershing and Wells.” Then he leans in closer and looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “What the hell is with you, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“No, it’s something. And not just a hangover, either.”
“Don’t worry about it there, detective. You just be ready when we talk to Jimmy Kerrigan.” I finally look at him. “By the way, how we handling this? Hard or harder?”
He sits back again but he is still eyeing me. “I think we see how it goes and just play it by ear. We’ll know what to do.”
A couple of minutes later and we’re off that fucking train finally, walking down Wells Street a block away from Jimmy’s apartment.
“South Side’s a wonderful place, huh?” I actually feel pretty good here because there ain’t no pale skinned Russians creeping around this part of town and I’m sure as hell not going to run into anybody I know.
A car comes bouncing down the road in front of us. The rap is turned up so loud that the bass is shaking my fillings. My headache is back, too. The car slows and the four brothers inside it give us the once over and they keep staring us down. Finally, they stop and put it in reverse following along the curb matching our walk. Long stares from the bloods, so I stop and stare back at them. I’m about two seconds from pulling my gun out. I ain’t going down in some fucking drive-by shooting bullshit with a car load of seventeen year old shines.
Mick, though, he just looks at them and smiles. Then he puts one finger to his ear and says something to nobody while staring at the sidewalk. Looks up again and hooks a quick thumb to them. Jerks his head real quick for them to go. Like he’s giving them a break, a pass or silently telling them he’s got bigger shit to fry. Goes back to his imaginary earpiece. And fuck me, they stop and put it back in drive.
He still looks like a cop and they sure as hell know what one looks like. The car pulls away slowly, goes down to the corner and turns onto Pershing.
“That was pretty good, Hero. Gotta admit. We, uh, kinda stand out a little bit here right?”
Mick is looking straight ahead. “Yeah little bit, but then so does Jimmy.” He nods forward, “There’s the apartment building up on the right.”
“How do we even know the little fuck will be here, inspector?”
“White Sox home opener is a week away. I was told he’d be here. If not, we wait.”
The place is a fucking dive. Big shock there. And noisy, real noisy on the first and second floor. As we head up it gets a little more quiet. One thing for sure, if the little turd is here, we’re the only three white boys in the building.
Mick knocks twice on the door that has a rusted, upside down four hanging on by a thread and the B is gone but you can see the dirty outline where it used to be.
No answer, no shadow under the bottom of the door. Nothing at all.
Mick knocks again, three times and harder. I’m standing to the side to where Jimmy won’t see me right away.
“Get the fuck outta here, you little rat bastards!” The shrill voice from inside sounds tight and high strung.
Mick knocks again even harder. Four, five times.
The door flies open and Mick puts his foot along the bottom of the door. I step into the doorway too, where Little Jimmy can see me.
He doesn’t rattle right away. “And who might the fuck you be?” he snaps at Mick.
“We’re your friends, Jimmy.” Mick smiles at him.
He looks at Mick and dismisses him. “You, I never seen before and I’m glad for that.” He looks up at me and squints. “You though, you big fuckin’ mope, you do look familiar.”
I look at Jimmy and my head is still bangin’ but I can’t help but grin at him. Then I look over at Mick, “I don’t normally like pickin’ on midgets but fuck me, this is gonna be fun.”
I take one step towards him and of course he tries to close the door. Mick shoots an arm out and easily opens it up even farther. Then I shoot an arm out and easily knock the little pint-sized fuck about halfway across the kitchen floor. I swear he leaves two fingers and maybe a thumb still gripping the door.
He’s sitting on a ratty ass folding chair now in the center of the living room, if you want to call it a living room. His head is swiveling back and forth between me and Mick. We got everything shoved to the walls to give us room and we’ve barely started on him.
Mick, naturally, is the good guy.
“Look,” Jimmy says, “I was kidding around, okay? I just didn’t know who you guys were. How the hell was
I supposed to recognize the Sawyer brothers? Especially together, right? I mean, shit.” He looks at me, all pleading like. “I only seen you when you were like fifteen or some shit. I, I have to act tough, but I ain’t, you know.”
His voice is high, excited and he is all motion. Just like his jittery meth freak son, Paulie, but older, much smaller and not all cranked up.
They don’t call him Little Jimmy Kerrigan for nothing. He’s five foot zero and that’s on his tip toes, probably only goes about one thirty five, one forty, sopping wet. He’s got short cropped red hair going quickly to grey. Pinched in face, long nose and no chin, except the false purple one I just formed by knocking him into last week. I mean, this homely-ass guy probably hasn’t been laid since the Cubs won a world series.
All I know is he must be smart, sneaky, or maybe clever because he ain’t got much else going for him. Him and Speedo must have looked like Mutt and Jeff running around together.
“Look, Jimmy, just tell us what happened and tell us how to find what we said we need. We really don’t want to hurt you. But we will.” Mick’s leaning in as he’s talking but then straightens up and walks away. “You can bet your ass we will.”
“I, look, I just don’t know nothin’, boys. Really, seriously.” He’s got the saddest look on his face I think I ever saw. But hey, you know.
I step up and hit him so hard in the chest I think I might have broke his fuckin’ sternum. He flips over backward in the chair and goes straight back real hard, his head bouncing off the old wood flooring. He lays there for a minute holding his chest with both arms and then he starts laughing. I trade looks with Mick.
Then we both realize he ain’t laughing. His chest is heaving up and down. Then he curls up. What we’re hearing is crying. The old guy is balled up and crying like a baby. Real crying.
I look at Mick again and walk to the filthy window with no drapes.
In between the pitiful sobs, I can hear him saying, “Ahhh you guys…oh no, no more” and “Okay, stop. Okay, please stop.” The guy is falling apart. Finally he slowly rolls up on a bony elbow and stops the loud crying, but the tears are still coming.
He looks at Mick and the old guy is just done, running on empty. Hell, he was done ten, fifteen years ago, no doubt. You can tell by the eyes and I’ve seen those eyes before. So has Mick, I bet.
To tell you the truth, I don’t want to hurt the old guy anymore. I don’t want to mess him up more than he already is. This guy never really hurt anybody, probably never killed anybody. Just a loser, trying to get by in life. I can’t mess with him anymore. But I gotta act like I will.
I walk over to where he’s laying, sneak a look at Mick and draw back a fist “We ain’t done. Come here, you old fuck.”
“Hold it a sec, Jerzy.”
“Why? He ain’t telling us shit.”
“He will.”
“Ah, fuck that. You’re only feeling sorry for him because he’s a fucking leprechaun, Mick. Don’t go all Irish on me.”
I raise my fist again, but Mick says, “Wait.” He kneels in front of where Jimmy is. “Tell us what we need to know, Jimmy. Please do it. Because here’s the problem,” he looks up at me and back down to Jimmy. “He won’t kill you, he’ll just keep hurting you. Bad. He knows how to do that.”
“I know…I know.” Jimmy was gasping for breath and trying to save whatever dignity he had left. He looks at Mick, then over to me and I can see the fear. I can also see the crumble. He is wore the fuck out with life and getting beat on just wasn’t worth it. Pretty sad little fucker and he was making me feel bad, I’ll admit that. And that, governor, is pretty damn rare.
“I’ll tell you everything I know, boys. Just no more, though, ‘kay? Please?”
Mick put his hand under one arm and lifted him back up to his feet. Jimmy grimaced and held his chest. I maybe didn’t break it, but I must have at least cracked something.
I put the chair back up on its legs and he falls into it.
“You want some water, or a drink? What do you have?” Mick asks him.
“I got some Jameson in the cupboard.” He points into the ragged ass kitchen and his face tightens up again. Then he forces a smile.
I go get it and hand it to Mick. Mick, the good cop that he is, hands the bottle to Jimmy like he’s his oldest friend in the world.
Jimmy takes a long swig and then another short one right after that.
I stand over Jimmy’s right shoulder but he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t have to. He can feel me there.
“We had it dicked.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and keeps going. “We had the fucking jewels and nobody was gonna catch us. Clean, it was so clean. I had it planned down to the last detail.”
“Yeah, what then?” Mick pulled another chair from the kitchen and sat down across from him.
“Speedo couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Bragged to a couple guys in the bar the night after it went down. Fucking dumbass.”
There was a pause and you could see his mind working its way through it. Remembering. The one chance he had probably ever had in his rotten little life to make some decent money.
Breaking that pause, out of nowhere, some kids went screaming down the hallway right outside the door and I wondered how the hell anyone could live like this. Their yells trailed off.
“Anyway, Chicago PD was tipped off because Speedo couldn’t shut the fuck up. Somebody told somebody. I don’t know who it was, never did and it really don’t matter. They come down on me and Speedo both. Your dad catches word of that and heads for the hills, just in time. And I do mean just in time.”
He takes another swig of Jameson. Clears his throat and tries to straighten up in the chair but catches his breath and can’t do it.
“So Speedo lawyers up with this guy who knew people. People downtown. Powerful guy. Don’t know how Speedo got hooked up with that guy but his ass was in good shape. He says he was just the driver, he was just somebody your dad and I had drug in at the last minute. Bullshit on top of bullshit.”
“Keep going, Jimmy,” Mick says. “You’re doing good.”
“Well, the city was, like, embarrassed, right? Because of it being an international crime and all. They didn’t really give a fuck about hammering us. They just wanted it all to go away. So when Speedo coughed up where I hid the jewels, well, his lawyer hit a homerun for Speedo. Fucker ends up spending a couple months, I think. I go away for three, and hey, no big deal there for what we did, right? Three years is three years, boys.”
“Considering everything?” Mick said, and gave his head a little shake. “No, not all that bad. So?”
“This bullshit with me and him has never been about the time I had to serve. It’s always been about his big fuckin’ mouth ruining a perfect take. Been about him fuckin’ your dad and me over. Been about Speedo screwing me out of my half of the bar…and him trying to kill me at one point. That’s what it’s been about.”
Mick was looking at Jimmy real close as he was talking, just like cops do. He wasn’t just listening, he was watching him like a fuckin’ hawk, looking for tells like poker players do.
“You know what, though?” Jimmy says, staring off at the wall. “Yeah, Speedo told the cops where to find the stuff. He was a rat fuck piece of shit …but they only found the necklace, right? They didn’t never find the earrings. At least, I don’t think?”
Jimmy looks at us both. “Or did they?”
Neither of us answer.
Jimmy shrugs. “My guess was always your dad found a way to hang onto them. And you know, whatever. Better than fuckin’ Speedo Mullins getting them.”
Mick patted him on the shoulder and we stood to leave. He was taking a long pull off that Jameson when we closed his door. As we walk out of the building, I look over at Mick and can tell he was thinking hard on something.
“What are you thinking about, Hero? How’s that match up with your inside guy’s information?”
“Well, what do you think, based on what Speedo told
you?”
“Fucking cop. Always answering a question with a question.” Mick didn’t react, so I shrugged. “All right, here’s what I think. I think that poor little fucker up there is telling the truth and I think Speedo Mullins is a liar. A fat, gimpy ass, liar.”
Mick looks at me, spits and then smiles.
“What the fuck does that mean, detective?”
“That means that this is one of the few times that you and I will ever, ever agree on anything.”
We walk all the way back to the train station, five blocks or so, without saying anything. Too much to think about.
TWENTY
Mick
The train ride was long and quiet. Jerzy was quiet because he was obviously hung over. Plus, I think the pitiful Jimmy Kerrigan actually got to the heartless bastard just a little.
But there was something more, too. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I could sense it.
That made me smile. Gar was famous for his almost prey-like instinct when it came to trouble. He could sense subtle nuances that were out of kilter. I never knew him well enough as an adult to determine if his wisdom went far enough to know exactly what was wrong, or if it stopped at merely knowing that something was wrong. The first was a high echelon gift. The second was more common, but still a valuable trait. Gar had passed it on to Jerzy and me in spades.
I used to think we used it for different purposes. Now I know we only honed the natural ability into a skill in different places. Him more in the criminal world, me on the job. It didn’t matter, though. We both used what gifts the old man bestowed upon us to survive.
That’s how I knew something was up with Jerzy. But I didn’t know what. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“The fuck you smiling at?” Jerzy asked, half grunting out the words.
I shrugged. “Just that we’re doing exactly what the old man wanted us to.”
