by Clark Howard
“You on shit again?”
“No, man, nothing like that; I wouldn’t never shoot dope again.” He glanced down. “I been doing a little gambling, that’s all: basketball games, fights—”
“And you’ve been working with tools again to cover yourself?” Kiley shook his head. “I don’t fucking believe this, Reggie.”
“Just happened twice, Joe,” his friend mitigated. “I got in over my head a couple times on the fucking point spread in the Bulls games. I had to pay off,” he shrugged, “an’ I couldn’t take it out of my place here ’cause it would’ve fucked up my cash flow.” Reggie reverted to his businessman image. “You see, Joe, when you run a small business, cash flow is the primary element of a successful operation—”
“Spare me the fucking song-and-dance, Reggie,” Kiley cut in irritably. “What did you hit?”
“Liquor store on 63rd, electronics store on Garfield Boulevard.”
“Any hassles?”
“No, man. Clean jobs, both of ’em. I don’t get caught, Joe, you know that. I only ever got caught once an’ that was by you—”
“What was all that bullshit you were handing me about it being a long time since you worked?”
“I was jus’ trying to let you know that I’m not up to any of the new locks and stuff.” Reggie looked down at his shoes and shifted them around like a little kid would do. “You pissed at me, Joe?”
“More surprised than pissed. You realize what you stand to lose, don’t you, you get caught in some store?”
“Yeah, I do, man, an’ I ain’t letting myself get in that position again, believe me. No more big bets for me, I swear. Hunnerd bucks is my limit now.”
“Okay,” Kiley nodded. He sighed quietly, no longer feeling guilty. “Listen, I’ve got to split now. I’ll call you on that other thing.”
“I’ll be here for you, brother. Most definitely.”
“I know you will,” Kiley acknowledged quietly.
Kiley left the barbecue restaurant and walked back to his car, shaking his head at this newest revelation in his life. When was he going to learn? he wondered. Nobody ever changed. It was that simple.
Nobody ever fucking changed.
When Kiley drove up to his apartment building late that afternoon, he noticed two men sitting in the front seat of a car parked across the street and down a few doors. The first thing he thought was that Vander had set up an IA surveillance on him to try and develop additional information to support the suspension charges against him. But that premise quickly seemed unlikely to him because the car was a late-model Cadillac, which was not standard issue for police department stakeout cars. Besides that, he then noticed, the car was carrying dealer plates.
Uncle fucking Gino, he thought tiredly. He found himself wishing that Stella would hurry the hell up and tell the Bianco family that she had de cided to marry dickhead Frank, so Gino and Frank would get off his case. If they kept fucking with him, he was going to lose patience and see to it that Frank had to get married in a body cast.
Locking his car, Kiley walked over to the Cadillac. As he got close to it, he saw that Gino and Frank were not in it after all; the two men were Ray Rinni and Michael Russo, Gino’s two sons-in-law. That immediately incensed Kiley: not Gino and Frank come to try and talk to him again; now two punk used-car salesmen married to Gino’s fat daughters, sent to watch Kiley, to spy on him, to log his comings and goings. Guinea prick bastards, he thought.
At the car, he used a knuckle to tap on the driver’s side window. Ray Rinni, behind the wheel, rolled it down.
“Waiting for me?” Kiley asked, with forced affability.
“We’re not waiting for nobody,” Rinni said innocently. “We’re just sitting in a car minding our own business.” He smirked—a mistake. “Any law against that?”
“You bet your ass there is,” Kiley said calmly, his irritation waning, a sense of enjoyment kicking in. “It’s a violation of city ordinance number seven-eleven, which reads, ‘No assholes shall sit in a parked car on Joe Kiley’s block without a permit issued by Joe Kiley.’ You got a permit?”
“Very funny,” Ray Rinni said dryly.
“You’re not going to think so very long,” Kiley told him. He opened the car door. “Get out of the vehicle.”
“What for? We ain’t breaking no law—”
“Get—the—fuck—out—!” Kiley suddenly raged, mood swinging back to anger again.
He grabbed Ray Rinni by the coat with both hands and dragged him out onto the street. Rinni tried to resist, but Kiley had fourteen years’ experience with people who tried to resist; he easily avoided Rinni’s clumsy attempts to pull away and fight back. When Kiley had him all the way out, he dug a hard right fist solidly into Rinni’s stomach, well below the belt. A burst of breath expelled from Rinni’s suddenly wide-open mouth and he bent over double, clutching himself with both arms. Kiley then grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face against the Cadillac’s rear door. Rinni groaned and slumped to the pavement.
“You mick cocksucker—!”
It was Michael Russo, out of the car and rushing around from the passenger side. Kiley saw him slip a pair of dull gray brass knuckles onto his right hand and close it into a fist.
“You dumb fucking jackoff,” Kiley said scornfully to Russo. Methodically he drew his service revolver, leveled it at Russo, and cocked the hammer.
Russo froze at the front of the car, mouth dropping open in surprise. “You—you can’t draw no fucking gun on me for this,” he said indignantly.
“Fuck I can’t,” Kiley disputed. “Brass knuckles are classified as a deadly weapon, greaseball. You are about to be shot in your pasta gut—”
“Kiley, don’t do it!” Russo yelled, throwing his hands up, face draining white.
“Take off the knucks,” Kiley ordered. Russo quickly obeyed. “Toss them over by the curb.” Russo did, the brass knuckles clanging and bouncing in the gutter when they hit.
Kiley uncocked his gun and holstered it. Then he moved deliberately over to Michael Russo and kicked him brutally in one shin. Groaning in pain, Russo leaned back against the front fender of the Cadillac and drew his knee up to clutch the point of impact. When he did that, Kiley kicked him in his other shin, and Russo collapsed onto the street. Kneeling next to him, Kiley spoke in a menacingly calm, ominously quiet voice.
“Tell your no-balls dago father-in-law that if he pulls this shit again, I’m going to permanently cripple whoever he sends. I mean it, punk. No more games—or they get serious. And I get serious.” Kiley bobbed his chin at Ray Rinni, who was struggling to his feet at the rear fender, face smeared with blood from a broken nose—exactly as Regent Lennox’s had been the previous day. Two for two, Kiley thought. “Take that asshole and beat it,” he told Russo.
The two men negotiated themselves back into the car, Russo behind the wheel now, Rinni slumped in the passenger seat holding a handkerchief to his nose. Both shins shooting streaks of pain to his brain, tears streaking his cheeks, Russo started the car and drove slowly away.
Reaching down, Kiley picked up the brass knuckles and slipped them into his coat pocket as he walked over to his building.
Twenty-Four
At ten o’clock two evenings later, Kiley drove at a moderate speed along a dark, two-lane suburban road. On one side of the road was a forest preserve; on the other, spaced well apart, were driveway entrances leading through high privacy shrubs into a community of estates, some small, some large, known collectively as Madison Acres. Once beyond the privacy shrub, which grew six to eight feet in uneven height, each entrance drive extended in a slight curved arc back to the individual house, which was set out of sight of the entrance itself. Each estate was on at least a two-acre lot, moderately wooded on each side, with a deep manicured lawn in front of it and a portion of the splendid Madison Acres Country Club golf course rambling around behind it.
Kiley had spent the better part of the previous afternoon, as well as the morning of the current d
ay, reconnoitering the area. He had located Fred Scarp’s estate through the DuPage County property records, Madison Acres being just across the Cook County line, a few miles west of the Tri-State Tollway. Scarp had the property in his own name; he even had, to Kiley’s surprise, a listed telephone number. On reflection, Kiley had realized that there was really no reason for the retired crime lord to conceal where he lived. He had been out of active participation in the rackets for more than two decades; if he had left any enemies behind—alive—he would have heard from them long ago. The old man’s only protection, as far as Kiley had been able to determine, was the live-in chauffeur-companion-bodyguard who accompanied Scarp out to dinner at suburban restaurants several nights a week, took him to the track during racing season at Sportsman’s Park, Hawthorne, and Aurora Downs, and helped him in the cultivation of a large rose garden along one side of the house.
Driving down the country road now, Kiley had to make five passes by the Scarp driveway before he found himself with no other cars in view in either direction, enabling him to turn off his headlights unobserved before pulling into the drive. Keeping as far right as he could, he eased his dark car along until he came barely around a stand of American pines, just far enough to see the front of the Scarp house. Taking care not to go off the asphalt, into dirt where he would leave tire tracks, Kiley stopped, turned off the engine, and rolled down the window on his side. He listened intently. Nothing reached his ears except night sounds from the woods around him. From the passenger seat, he picked up his binoculars and focused on the house.
Fred Scarp lived in one of the smaller Madison Acres homes: a two-story Tudor-style house which, according to the property records, had thirty-one hundred square feet of living space and an attached three-car garage. As Kiley studied its night face now, he saw lights in two downstairs front windows, and a third light coming from a single window toward the rear of the house. Lowering the binoculars, he settled back to wait, window still rolled down so that he could hear any unusual noise that might occur.
As he sat there in the dark, it occurred to Kiley that this was the first time he had used his binoculars since the night he and Nick were trying to find Tony Touhy, when Kiley was watching the Lake Shore Drive garage for the teal blue Jaguar to leave. That had been the night Nick was killed. So much had happened since then; so many things he couldn’t even have imagined: Nick dead; Gloria, whom he hadn’t even known then, dead also; he and Stella entwined in sexual activity, something he’d only previously fantasized about; finally, his suspension from the police department. Before the night he and Nick had answered the radio call about Ronnie Lynn’s body being in the alley behind the 4-Star Lounge, he could not have predicted a single significant change that would have been likely to alter his existence anytime in the foreseeable future. As far as he had been concerned, he was probably scheduled to go on living a comparatively inconsequential life of acceptable bachelorhood, a mostly boring job but with a decent pension at the end of it, a good partner whom he sincerely cared for, that partner’s family of which he had been made a kind of honorary member, a secret passion for the partner’s wife, which he had been able to accept and adjust to—
So common, so ordinary, so regular his life had been. Then he had come up with the great idea of Nick and him bringing in the girl’s killer themselves—because he thought that killer was the kid brother of a rackets boss. From that point on, the reality, the very essence, of who he was, what he was, why he was, had turned into a nightmare steeped in darkness and doom.
He had fucked up everything about his life. There seemed to be no more reason for living—except to get Nick’s killer. That was all that was left. When that was done, he really didn’t give a fuck what happened to him. Tonight he was going to prove that.
Kiley had been sitting in the dark car for about an hour when he saw a light go on in one of the upstairs windows. Putting the binoculars to his eyes, he watched closeup as the two downstairs lights in the front of the house went out. Then a second upstairs light went on. The downstairs rear light on the side became dimmer but did not go out entirely.
Rolling up the car window, Kiley got out and stood silently listening for a moment. There were only night sounds, forest sounds. Kiley was dressed tonight much as he had been the night he tossed Tony Touhy’s apartment: in dark-colored garments made for easy movement. His shoes were different; instead of his old crepe-sole shoes, he had on a pair of new Sperry Top-Sider deck shoes, navy blue canvas, with a sole made to resist wet, slick surfaces. Kiley did not know whether he would be able to avoid walking on dewy or water-sprinklered grass, but he did not want to take any chances. He had one additional article of clothing tonight: a dark blue lightweight wool muffler that he now put around his neck and tied securely in back with a double knot. In one jacket pocket he carried a five-inch leather-covered lead sap; in the other, an empty Cherry 7-Up can.
Leaving the car, Kiley walked briskly along the edge of the driveway, careful to keep away from the ground area beyond the asphalt where he, like his tires, might leave tracks. There was a half moon in the sky, throwing a bare, eerie light over the grounds of Fred Scarp’s small estate, lending definition to the outline of the manicured lawn, the low, box-like shrubbery around it, and the facade of the ivory-colored house that loomed up in the background. Except for a night-light above the front door—and possibly one in the rear—there was no outside illumination except for the moon. Kiley’s figure, as he moved stealthily along, was like something dark and unearthly being carried by a night wind.
Where the driveway curved up to the nearest corner of the house, Kiley paused and stood very still in its immediate foreground, eyes searching the shadows, ears heeding the night sounds. He was more relaxed than he had expected to be; possibly, he supposed, because at last he was doing something, making a move in the direction he was committed to. Everything up until now had, it seemed on reflection, been preliminary: the search of Tony Touhy’s apartment, the talk with the deputy coroner about Gloria Mendez’s death, the shakedown of Fraz Lamont for information, even the visit to Reggie to get that phase of the plan set up. All of it had been preparatory, all of it done to chart the course.
Tonight was the first actual step of that course.
When he had stood there at the corner of the house long enough to assure himself that he was the only thing moving about, Kiley stepped forward and moved quietly up to the triangle of light thrown from the night-light above the front door. There was an entry stoop in the front, a large slab of cement with a tall potted tree on each side of it. Along two edges of the stoop were flower boxes lush with a variety of mixed violets. Their fragrance in the thin night air was sweet and immediate, like a surprise kiss.
Kiley removed the empty Cherry 7-Up can from his jacket pocket and set it near the center front of the stoop, about six inches inside the perimeter of dim light from above the door. Then he stepped behind one of the potted trees, worked the muffler up to cover the lower part of his face, and slipped the sap from his other pocket. Reaching a gloved hand behind the tree, he tapped twice on the side door panel—not loudly, not hard enough to startle; just thud-thud: a what-the-hell-was-that sound.
Twisting his wrist toward the light, he waited as the second hand on his watch made one complete revolution. Then he reached out and tapped the door again. Thud-thud.
He waited.
Another full minute passed. He reached to the door a third time.
Thud-thud.
Twenty seconds later, Kiley heard a muted voice inside the door. He was able to understand only part of what was said: “… out in front, I think—”
Then there was the sound of locks disengaging and the front door opened. In a long, narrow slit of space between the potted tree and the frame of the door, Kiley saw a big-necked, big-shouldered man in a skintight white T-shirt, pause and then take one step onto the stoop. There he stopped, looking with a puzzled frown at the bright red Cherry 7-Up can standing so innocuously at the edge of the stoo
p.
“What the hell—?” the man said to himself.
From somewhere well inside the house, a hoarse voice called, “What is it, Lenny?”
“I’m not sure,” Lenny called back, over his shoulder. “Just a minute—”
Lenny took a step toward the Cherry 7-Up can. When he did, Kiley pivoted from behind the potted tree and swung the lead sap hard against the side of the big man’s head. With a faint groan, Lenny staggered two steps away from the direction of the blow and dropped heavily to his knees.
Jesus Christ, Kiley thought, anxiety rising. From a blow like that, Lenny should have been stretched out unconscious. Instead, incredibly, he was raising one hand to feel the place where he had been hit. Turning his head, he looked curiously at Kiley.
Wetting his lips, Kiley stepped over behind him and swung the sap in a horizontal arc to strike Lenny in the back of the head, just down from the crown of his skull. With the second blow, Lenny pitched forward on his face and lay still.
Putting the sap in his jacket pocket, Kiley looked inside the open door, found a panel of light switches, and turned off both the outside and foyer lights. Then he grabbed the big man by his ankles and started dragging him inside. It was laborious work; Lenny felt like he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, at least. Kiley had to drag him in separate tugs of a couple of feet at a time; he had to get him through the door by pulling his feet and legs in, then taking him by the back of his belt and working him the rest of the way in. By the time he had the big man far enough in to close the front door, Kiley was laced with sweat. Taking a moment to lean back against the wall, Kiley pulled the muffler off his face, sucked in some deep breaths, and wiped perspiration from his face with one sleeve of his jacket.
“Lenny,” came the hoarse voice from upstairs, “what was it? What was the noise?”
Across the foyer, Kiley saw a wide, lighted staircase leading to the second floor. A stooped old man with almost no hair, wearing only his underwear and felt house slippers, was coming down. In one hand he carried a portable oxygen tank; in the other he held a plastic breathing cup which he put to his mouth every few steps. When the cup was away from his face, Kiley recognized him from newspaper photographs as Fred Scarp. Pausing on the landing, the old man squinted down at the unlighted foyer.
