Black Angel

by Thomas Laird

  “And that is…?” Hannah smiles.

  “Don’t point it at anyone unless you intend to shoot them dead.”

  Hannah colors just slightly.

  “It just means keep the muzzle low or high unless you intend to use it. Don’t let it sit where kids can get at it, but hide it where you can get at it quickly. You won’t have time to lock and load in the middle of the night when you’re half asleep. Because if that guy shows up, you know he’ll be wide awake and ready.”

  He smiles to try and reassure her.

  “I know this guy,” he nods at me. “Ex-Marine. You probably already know that. Did you know he was NCIS?”

  “Yes. Will’s told me.”

  “Did he tell you he rose to Homicide in the shortest time in anybody’s memory on the force? I was there thirty-five years, and I never saw anyone else move up as quick.”

  “He’s very bright.”

  “Yeah. But your friend here has more than that going for him. He’s a bulldog.”

  “Bulldog?” Hannah laughs.

  “He’ll never let go of this Anderson guy. I know this man’s type. He’s book smart, but he’s street-smart too. Deadly combination. I’d say Anderson is a prohibitive underdog.”

  I feel myself blushing slightly, now.

  “Don’t be embarrassed, kid. I’m not trying to pump you up in front of this pretty lady. It’s just the truth.… If I were you, Hannah, I’d forget the gun and let this guy take care of business.”

  “That’s kind of you, Art, but I want her to have some insurance.”

  “Okay, then. We’ll have to fill out the papers, but I’m betting this lovely lady’s got no priors or even a jacket at all downtown.”

  “Not even a speeding ticket,” Hannah smiles at this affable Irishman.

  *

  We take the .38 snubnose back into Art’s personal target range. It’s more like an oversized basement, below the store. He lets the cops try out their purchases here before they take their weapons home.

  “Here,” Art tells us as he hands us earplugs and goggles. “Safety first.”

  The basement is well lit and must be a hundred and fifty feet long and perhaps half as wide. He’s got fluorescent lights all across the seven-foot ceiling.

  The targets are at the far end, and I can see the padding behind the bulls-eyes that are there to swallow the slugs.

  He shows her how to grip the piece.

  “I’ll be the teacher, today. It’s like having a relative teach you how to drive,” he explains to Hannah as he nods toward me.

  Art has his son-in-law working the counter while we’re down here.

  He shows Hannah the proper firing stance. He tells her how to grip the snubnose .38, and then he takes the weapon and shows her how to load it.

  “These bullets are called hollow-nose. They will make an enormous hole in whatever you hit. Preferably you’ll stop him with one shot, but this is no competition, Hannah. Empty the piece into him, and if you can, hit him in the melon or in the torso, preferably the upper chest. Try for something vital if you have time, but if you don’t, just unload this thing on him, and if that doesn’t work, reload and keep firing until there’s nothing left of the son of a bitch.”

  She giggles like a schoolgirl, but Art’s not smiling back.

  “I’m serious, Hannah. You’re shooting to kill. You have to make certain he can’t get to you because this man is absolutely evil, and those kinds of pricks don’t die easily. Excuse my French, Ma’am.”

  She takes the pistol when he offers it to her. Our earplugs and goggles are arranged, now. She assumes the firing stance, and then she holds the piece two-handed, as he showed her, and without hesitation she pulls the trigger six times. Even with the plugs, you can feel the boom of the shots. The sound must be deafening to the naked ear.

  She’s hit the central part of the target five times. No bulls’ eyes, but excellent for a first-timer.

  “Jesse James, for Christ sake!” Art exclaims with a smile. “Nice shooting, Ma’am.”

  “Phenomenal,” I add.

  “You ever shot before?” Art asks her.

  “Never. Not bad, huh?”

  “If it was a crossbow, you’d be freakin’ William Tell,” Art laughs.

  *

  Detective Frank Menlow comes into my office the day after we got Hannah the gun. Art says we can pick up the piece in seven to ten days, when the paper comes through.

  “Think I have a little something for you, Will,” Frank says.

  Frank is a young Homicide, late thirties. He’s got kinky brown hair that is almost an afro, but he’s lily-white, damn near anemic-looking. He only colors when he’s pissed, I’ve noticed.

  “Yes?”

  “They found two bodies near Lincoln Park. Some street fuck and a jogger. The homicides seem connected because time of death from the ME was put at only minutes apart. And the bodies were dumped in the bushes, close to each other. But the point of interest is that we got a viable print off the arm of one of them. We sent it to the Fibbies, and they were able to match It’s your guy, Benjamin Anderson. He was a Marine, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it appears that Laughing Boy is alive and breathing, and this time he wasn’t as careful as he was on your vics. He must have been surprised by the jogger. I’d be. Who the fuck runs at that hour in the morning? Oh, it was around 4:00 A.M. Sorry. I forgot. This is my case.”

  Frank colors only slightly.

  “But I knew you and Jack were on this, so I came here as quick as I could.”

  “Thanks, Frank. I really appreciate it.”

  “And the Lake coppers picked a bloody jacket out of the drink. Some idiot fisherman was trying to catch Moby Dick in December, and the jacket hooked on his line. The water’s only about eighteen feet deep by the rocks where this clown was casting, and he snagged it for us. The blood made him think he could become helpful to the department, the guy said. Good citizen.… Anyway. The dead man is ambulating once more.”

  *

  We find out about the blond bagman. He was a junkie named Mark Madigan. He was loosely tied with the Italian Outfit, the Mafia in Chicago. He was of course not a member of the Mafia because Madigan is not quite Sicilian, but he was their gopher.

  We bring in Vic Castigliano, a northside capo. We tell him it’s for ID purposes on Madigan, and naturally he refuses when we contact him, but we explain about how easily all his northside eateries could get inspected by the Health people, and finally he agrees to come downtown for a session with us. Of course he brings his mouthpiece, Marty Parrie.

  We show him pictures of Mark Madigan. He seems impressed by the shot of Madigan with a big slice in his forehead.

  Vic is a blond Italian, a rare color of hair for southern Italians. Vic is one hundred percent Sicilian, seeing that he’s a made man.

  “We want to know if Madigan had any connection to this man.”

  We show him a military photo of Benjamin Anderson, because it’s the most recent snapshot we have of our zombie.

  “Never saw the man.”

  “Vic. Did we talk about the rats in your kitchens?” Jack Clemons says.

  “That sounds a lot like harassment,” his lawyer tells us.

  “It is. Very illegal, probably. But you want to roll the dice and see if anything happens? Look, we’re not after your client, Counselor, but we’re very intent on locating this man, Benjamin Anderson.”

  “He the guy who did that family on the North Side? What’s the name? Milan?”

  “Yeah, Vic. You have an excellent memory for names. Tell us the connection between Madigan and Anderson,” I tell him.

  “You were the NCIS cop back in Kuwait. I read about you in the Tribune.… Maybe I should just roll those dice.”

  “Your crew like kiddie molesters, rapists who do little girls and their families for shits and grins?” Jack asks Vic.

  “Watch your mouth, officer. I don’t need that crap from anybody, cop or no.”

&
nbsp; “Cooperate and we’ll let the FBI deal with you, unless you kill somebody in our jurisdiction,” Jack smiles.

  “You pricks are really hot for this guy?”

  “Yeah. We’re very interested in Anderson,” I say.

  Vic looks at his counselor.

  “You think these guys are bluffin’?”

  His attorney shrugs.

  “All right. I don’t know this kid personal. I know one of my guys uses him as a gopher guy. He’s a fuckin’ nobody. But there is a lawyer.… No offense.”

  He looks over at Marty Parrie.

  “There is a lawyer who does business on occasion with some guys totally unrelated to me.”

  “Right,” Jack grins.

  “You’re dubious about my veracity?” Vic smiles back at my partner.

  “No shit,” Jack grins again.

  “Anyway. Where was I?”

  “This lawyer-acquaintance of someone in your crew.”

  He stares at Jack.

  “Everybody knows the Outfit is just a myth you guys and the papers concocted.… But anyways. This lawyer hails out of the left-hand coast. He defends some guys I know. So he has this nutty-fuckin’ kid.… This is all speculation and rumor, you know. And this kid needs a place to crash. So the lawyer trades with some free, useful legal advice, and he procures a place out by Joliet for said fucked- up kid to hide out because the kid might have a few problems, legally speaking. Before the sonny boy can move around freely, he has to have regular doses of cash because he cannot use plastic on account of you fine fellows will pick up his whattayacallit, his paper trail. I wouldn’t know about such things myself, being a legitimate businessman.

  “This fuck-up, this Madigan, brought Sonny Boy his weekly allowance. That’s all I know. And this is the end of the conversation unless you’re going to pinch me on bogus charges.”

  “Where’s the house near Joliet?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He stares at me.

  “One call to the Health Department, Vic, and by the time your fine attorney gets it all straightened out, how much in lost income?” I ask him.

  “That is blatant blackmail,” Marty protests.

  “Fuck you, Counselor,” I say. “How ’bout it, Vic? The hard way or my way?”

  “Give me a paper and pen,” Vic tells us.

  *

  When we finally find the house near Joliet, near Route 30, there is no one here, and it appears that no one has been here at least for a few days. The brick house is clean. No remnants, no garbage, nothing to point the way for us.

  “This guy really is a spook,” Jack admits. “We should have had him. First the fingerprint, and then the break with that Sicilian fuck, and I thought we might nab Anderson. Now he’s vapor again.”

  I look around the room we’re standing in, just inside the entrance.

  “You can’t even get a whiff of him. But the fingerprint was intentional, Jack. He was saying hello to us again.”

  We leave the scene with four cars of uniforms from the city and an additional two vehicles with six FBI reps inside.

  It’s a long drive back to the Loop. It’s December and it’s cold, but no snow as yet. I’m thinking about what I buy the girls and Hannah and my father and brother for Christmas. I can’t even picture Anderson in my head right now. He’s disappeared too easily and too often, so I can no longer conjure him on my internal video screen.

  He’s like a nineteenth century Apache. He strikes and he disappears magically into the mountains, and the cavalry and the federales can never capture him. He’s slicker than Geronimo. They’ll never snare him and make a circus clown out of Captain Benjamin Anderson. He’s too elusive, too sly.

  He’s the phantom in your nightmares that always remains just beyond the grasp of your fingertips.

  28

  Christmas is rather solemn for most of those twenty-four hours at the hospital where Carl Thomas is rehabilitating from his wounds so they can stick him in a cage for the rest of his life if he testifies against Anderson and if we catch the Captain in the first place.

  Not many visitors come to the wards, but usually there is a volunteer who comes dressed as Saint Nick. So you can imagine the surprise on the face of the uniform, William Demerest, who sees Santa Claus ambling toward Carl Thomas’s room.

  “Sir, the children’s ward is down on two,” Officer Demerest tells the oversized elf in red.

  Santa never says ‘ho ho ho,’ but he keeps on coming.

  “Sir…”

  Before the patrolman can react, he finds the syringe stabbed deeply into his chest. Since it is 11:30 p.m. and the floor is clear, no one sees the thirty-three year old cop hit the floor. And no one is around probably because the night watch is sharing some punch or some eggnog at the desk, all the way down the hall and around the corner—to see Benjamin Anderson enter Carl Thomas’s room. Thomas opens his eyes only at the last moment to find that twice-used k-bar of Anderson’s sticking in the middle of his forehead. Carl doesn’t even have time to let out a yelp before he’s dead.

  *

  Two more bodies on Anderson’s scalp pole. But this time one is a Chicago policeman, which is intolerable to the CPD. The Chicago police have been noted for their corruption over the years, but killing one of them is definitely out of bounds for any criminal. When it happens, it’s literally like the hounds being unleashed after the fox. Anderson had better submerge deep because everyone is on overtime to apprehend him. Captain Pearce has given us carte blanche to go after him now, no restrictions. Manpower has ceased to be an issue.

  *

  I have moved in with Hannah until Anderson is jailed or killed. She says the kids understand why I’m there and that they actually feel safer now that I’m around except when I’m doing a twelve-hour shift.

  They feel safe even though their mom is toting that .38 snubnose in her purse. She has a license to carry it with her because Captain Pearce made it happen, under these special circumstances.

  I don’t feel safe, however. Not while he’s still out there. With most perps there is no personal vendetta happening. They’re just trying to stay as far away from me as possible.

  Which is why Pearce has me and my family tailed, twenty-four-seven. Sometimes I can spot them and sometimes I can’t. It makes me feel better when I can’t pick them out.

  Jack and I have been waiting to hear from the Russian, but it’s silent. The only thing we learned from Vic the Mafioso was that Anderson’s supply lines have been cut off. No one in their family will touch anything from the hands of David Crowley because he’s about a week and a half away from incarceration, thanks to the IRS and the US Marshal’s Office. It’s getting closer to lockup time for Crowley every hour.

  Arkady has gone into deep cover, Jack informs me. He’s tried to contact the Soviet mobster, but to no avail. He’s gone to earth, just like Anderson after killing the policeman and Carl Thomas at the hospital. He doesn’t want anything to do with all the publicity and public attention. He likes to live in the shadows like all gangsters do.

  The syringe contained an overdose of adrenalin. William Demerest had a quick and lethal heart attack.

  *

  For Christmas, I spent the afternoon with my father and the evening with Hannah and the girls. Hannah’s family does Xmas on the Eve, so she had plenty of time to spend with me.

  It feels awkward making love to her in her own bed, but she told me the girls have accepted me as “the man” in their mother’s life. I still feel a little hincty about their being under the same roof, but I try to imagine us as being already married although marriage has still not entered our conversations.

  I thought about giving her an engagement ring on Christmas Day, but I thought it might be pressuring her too much, especially with the way things are. We’re sort of enduring a siege, I call it. It hasn’t been physical, but it certainly has been an attack emotionally and psychologically. That’s the kind of thing Anderson was hoping for, all these ‘psy-ops.’ Psycholog
ical operations, they call them in the military. Win their hearts and minds by first grabbing their balls.

  I won’t let her talk about him on Christmas Day. I didn’t tell her about Carl Thomas and our copper, but she read about them in the paper.

  “He walks into a hospital just before midnight, and no one stops him?”

  “I’m guessing he rode up in an elevator and changed into the red suit on the way up. The hospital was running a skeleton crew on Christmas. Only the really ill are in there on that day and night. So the staff tends to be a little more laid back than usual, unless there’s a big accident or some other emergency. They’re only human, Hannah. No one keeps their guard up all day every day, even in a place like that. All he needed was a chance for them to relax. Would you be frightened of Saint Nick?”

  “I guess not. But you’d think the policeman…”

  “It was Christmas Day for him too. A guy in a red suit. Maybe he’s there to raise morale, late as it was? Maybe the copper was half-asleep on his feet from doing a double shift. Who knows?”

  I’m not doing a very good job of raising her spirits. I start to think I should have proposed. But now when she’s visibly shaken is no time for the normal things in this life like getting married and so on.

  When I was at my father’s house, I found him cleaning his old .45 that he’d kept as a souvenir from the Second World War.

  “I haven’t seen that thing for years,” I tell him as we watch A Christmas Carol for the hundredth-something time.

  “Neither have I. Not since 1970, when I took it out and cleaned it the last time. You were just a kid, then, Will.”

  “I remember it because I never saw a weapon in this house unless it was my own, since then.”

  “No cause to bring it out. I always felt safe in this neighborhood. Now I’m looking forward to that prick trying to come here for an encore. I’m not shopping for any new furniture or for any more replacement wallpaper.”

  “You won’t have to because we’ll get him before he has the chance to make a comeback.”

  “You have your finger on him, then?” my father smiles.

  “Not quite. But there are ten thousand law enforcement people after Benjamin Anderson. His money train has been run off the rails, and now the Outfit won’t have anything to do with the son of a bitch.”