Black Angel

by Thomas Laird

  The list goes on like that. Benjamin Anderson is the aberration. He’s the “high-profile” murderer that the media always wants to know about. They don’t ask about all those other murders because they regard these demises as too “mundane.” Too ordinary. So they don’t get the press.

  But they’re just as dead, and the crimes against them are equally heinous. Everybody knows we’re the last resort. We’re the guys who speak for the dead. It’s been well-documented in fiction and in fact. It’s one of the reasons I became a policeman. I’m an advocate for people who no longer have a voice. They might have lawyers, but attorneys won’t keep on coming after the felons responsible for their non-existence. Lawyers have billable hours to deal with, and I understand that. They’re businessmen, like most everybody else out there in the charge-as-you-go world.

  Cops aren’t exactly like that, however. We do a lot of research and investigation off the clock—at least, the best policemen do. And homicides are extremely reluctant to let a case go frozen solid. Some pursue perpetrators even after the coppers’ retirement. The stories are legend about detectives who just won’t quit, just won’t let go.

  I won’t let go of Benjamin Anderson now, and I won’t release him any time in the future, should he still be running free out there. I’ll be after him until they close the curtains on my life, if he doesn’t die first.

  *

  In early April, I’m still living with Hannah. I’m a fixture in her house by now. I’m giving up my lease on the Clark Street apartment in the summer when it comes up. I’m betting that we’ll really tie the knot in June and that I’ll be a resident here eventually. So there’s no point in hanging onto my own flat. I’m not going to sublet, though. I think I want to hang onto it until the lease runs out just so I have somewhere to go to if things don’t turn out the way they appear to be turning out.

  Because everything just gets better and better for Hannah and me. I get closer to Barbara and Beth all the time. Beth has even been calling me “Dad.” It feels rather strange when she does call me that, too, but I rather enjoy it. I haven’t gotten to that level with Barbara yet, but our relationship seems solid. We get along, all four of us. We’re a family, and I love the sensation of being a cog in that familial wheel.

  “You still love me?” she smiles hazily in afterglow, here in Hannah’s large bed.

  “What do you think?” I tease.

  “I think you’ll tire of me,” she groans softly.

  I roll away from her.

  “Hey? I was only kidding? Hey?”

  “I wish you’d stop that kind of kidding.”

  “Some day you’re going to develop a sense of humor, Will Koehn.”

  I roll back to her.

  “You think?”

  “I think, baby, yes. I think,” she smiles.

  We start at it all over again.

  *

  We have that security system in place at Hannah’s. I chipped in to enhance it to top grade, too. At first, she resisted my donating to the cause, but I explained it’d make me feel more comfortable if she had state-of-the-art in the house, since I was now an inhabitant. So she finally agreed, and we have a quality system in place.

  The girls, however, are still never left alone here. Hannah still has the snubnose .38 in her purse or in the bed stand at all times, loaded with hollow points that’d blow a hole in a raging rhino. I keep my weapon under my pillow. I also keep a .25 automatic strapped to my ankle when I’m out of bed and when I’m dressed. Otherwise I keep it under her pillow when we’re asleep.

  There is nothing new on Anderson’s whereabouts. The Staties in all 50 in the Union have his picture in their patrol cars. He’s a feature snapshot on the Net. He’s on the FBI’s most wanted list. I know Pete Donato and the NCIS are still after him for murder and desertion raps. Interpol would love to snare him should he wander abroad. Scotland Yard is aware that David Crowley owned three townhouses in the London area, and one farmhouse in Scotland. Defending thugs pays well, as everyone knows.

  No one has seen a hair on the Captain’s wholesome looking scalp, word is. Word is there’s no word.

  So Jack Clemons reaches out to his Russian buddy one more time, now that we have the news the Russian’s been spotted on the streets again.

  *

  “Kady. It’s been a long time,” Jack smiles as he shakes the Soviet’s hand.

  “Not long enough,” Kormelov says.

  “You don’t sound friendly tonight,” Jack tells him.

  I let Clemons do all the talking with Arkady Kormelov. It’s his connection, after all.

  We’re at that teahouse again near the Loop.

  “If I had anything on this Anderson, I would tell you,” Kormelov explains after the waiter has departed the table.

  “I think you know something and you’re holding back,” Jack explains.

  “Are you going to bust my balls and start talking about deporting Russian girls who play the piano?” Kormelov says.

  “I don’t punk out on my deals, Kady. How about you?”

  The Russian waits until the drinks have been delivered. He is drinking tea, of course, but the two of us shocked the waiter by ordering diet soft drinks. It just isn’t done in a teahouse, apparently.

  “This man has connections with the Italians. I could get into major complications for telling you this, Jack. The father, the one who was incinerated, was very well-hooked-up with the guineas. You’re talking to the wrong man. The only guy I knew in this deal was that son of a bitch Carl Thomas who liked to chew on cunts. Now if there’s nothing else…”

  “Who do we contact?” Jack insists.

  “You are becoming difficult, Jack.”

  “Was that a threat, Kady?” Clemons grins.

  “I would never threaten a policeman. I’m a businessman, and you know this.”

  “Okay. Who?”

  “Jimmy Zags is the man you want to talk to.”

  *

  Jimmy Zagnarelli lives on the far southwest side. He “owns” six pizza joints, but his real living comes from whores and loans and union deals and drugs. The FBI has a full dossier on him, but they still can’t clamp him in irons because to date he’s been too careful and too smart. He does it the way the old mayor of this town accomplished it. He let other men take the fall for his misdeeds.

  We meet him at Linguinis on 87th and Pulaski. It’s one of the few southwest side neighborhoods that hasn’t gone Black and Hispanic. It’s mainly Polish and Irish and Italian. White Sox territory. Cub fans have their asses handed to them in this hood.

  He’s about five feet nine, and he must go about 185 pounds of muscle. He’s thick, but not fat. He wears the usual pinky ring on his right hand, and he’s got a big ruby ring on the wedding-band finger on the left hand. His hair is oily and curly, and it looks like your own hand would get stuck if you ever tried to put your fingers through his top mop. Jimmy Zags smells of the garlic they use in his restaurant. His breath is foul, too, when you approach him. He’s appropriately slimy.

  He has those guinea cupid’s lips, as well. They’re thick and way too red for the rest of his swarthy face. It’s as if he’s grinning malevolently all the time. His expression only changes when he smiles and shows you his white, feral teeth.

  “I know you?” Zagnarelli asks me.

  “No. I know someone who knows you, though,” I explain.

  We sit in a booth, the three of us, including Jack.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but I gotta make nice with Homicide or you’ll call those health cocksuckers. Am I right?”

  “If you say so,” I smile at him.

  “What is it? I’m a businessman.”

  The cook comes out of the kitchen behind us and he yells out for someone named Gino to “get the fuck back in here!” Jimmy Z stares over at the cook, and the guy in the white tee shirt and white pants beats a retreat back where he came from.

  The waitresses are uniformly big-breasted. They all wear old
-fashioned piled up hair, and they all have very unnatural hues, up top. They wear low-necked blouses, and they give all the customers a free shot at some gigantic tits. I’m betting Jimmy Zags hand-picked all of them.

  “Benjamin Anderson.”

  “The guy who waxed the little kid and her family on the North Side. And he torched his fuckin’ old man too I read the fuckin’ papers. I went to school, but I don’t wear suits except to impress the hoos.”

  He grins, and you can almost see the evil in the perspiration on his upper lip.

  “You had connections to David Crowley. You had money muled to his foster son so he couldn’t be tracked with a paper trail.”

  “Prove it, Officer.”

  He purses those cupid’s lips, and his face takes on an obscene appearance. He makes you want to get up and get out of here.

  “If I could prove it, you’d be downtown in the shit already, and we all know it. So let’s cut through the bullshit, Jimmy Z.”

  “Here comes the health department.”

  “Here comes the way it is,” I tell him. This time Jack’s the silent partner.

  “You don’t tell us this guy’s general location, we’re going to be very unsympathetic toward you when you get nailed for aiding and abetting a wanted fugitive. This is high profile, Jimmy Z, and all your connections are going to bail on you like you’re AIDS when we get done explaining to the local citizens how the wiseguys were helping out a kiddie rapist.”

  He folds his hands on the table here in the booth. He sucks his teeth, and then he produces a gold toothpick. He proceeds to pick his teeth. Then he stops and stares at both of us. He’s going to stonewall us. He’s going to outlast us in a pissing contest.

  The place reeks of olive oil and mozzarella. The ripe odor of garlic permeates our atmosphere. It’s as if we’ve been transported to Little Italy in New York.

  “I’ve heard about you, Koehn. Hardass. Can’t do business with you. Straight-arrow motherfucker. Never cracks a smile. Like one of those Pistol Petes in a fuckin’ Western.”

  He leans his head toward me until I can smell the stench of that garlic in my face. He keeps leaning aggressively toward me until his nose is barely a half foot from my own. He’s trying to cow me, so I lean even closer, back at him, until our beaks nearly touch and until he’s a blur in my eyes.

  “Okay, hardass. We set this guy up with a place out near Joliet. You already know it but you can’t prove it. He had a vehicle also, but he left it in a garage on Tuohy. I’ll give you the address. The last I heard he was in California, calling the shots at a fuckin’ family barbeque.”

  There’s no smile on his acne-scarred and thick-lipped Mediterranean puss.

  “You have no idea of his whereabouts,” I say.

  “Somewhere between LA and Chicago would be my guess.… Look, if I hear, I’ll call you.”

  “By the way, that business about not calling the health department on you? I was lying. Keep your toilets filled with Clorox, asshole.”

  We rise from his booth and leave.

  *

  “You gotta learn to play nice with the wiseguys,” Clemons laughs as we return to White Castle for yet another dose of Ready-Mix to our arteries. The sliders are too good to turn down, though, so we keep coming back. Especially when it’s midnight shifts. And especially when it’s February and there’s not even a hint of spring in the frosted air outside.

  These places remind me again of that famous painting with the denizens of a coffee shop in the dead of night—by that artist Hopper.

  White Castles are places to go to when you have no other place to go to. Cops come here a lot, but so do all kinds of other lonely people who’re searching a spot open long past midnight.

  I worry about Hannah and her kids when I’m working third shift. I worry about her in spite of her new security rig and her .38 with hollow points that’d flatten the Frankenstein creature. I worry about my father and brother. I worry about anyone connected to me.

  Jack has noticed my increased tension on the job.

  “I know it’s not because you need to get laid,” he leers at me after gobbling four cheesesliders without a breath.

  “Thanks for your concern.”

  “You’re letting him get to you.”

  “And Anderson hasn’t got to you?”

  “Not like he has with you. Of course it’s understandable, seeing that my family, such as it is, hasn’t been touched by this motherfucker.”

  “And what if they had?”

  “My mother’s dead. My old man left us when I was fourteen. I’m an only child. Most of my relatives are coots who’re ready to die anyway, so his pickins are rather lean with me, Will.”

  “I see.”

  “Look. I’m just saying. Don’t let him get that far into your head. Because once we do nail him, there might not be anything left worth having. That’s all I mean, Partner. Fact is, I’m becoming rather fond of your silly ass.”

  He goes back to his three remaining cheesesliders and inhales them in rapid succession.

  32

  We find the car at the Tuohy Avenue location. There’s nothing inside, however, that appears to he of any aid to our locating Benjamin Anderson.

  The funeral for David Crowley has already taken place yesterday in Los Angeles. There were plenty of his peers at the burial. Crowley knew everybody who was anybody in the legal trade, so there were plenty of flowers and a line of expensive cars headed into the cemetery.

  I have to believe that Anderson is making his way back to Chicago. I know he’s setting me up with all this waiting, but the trip to California was to get some money together for his personal “siege” against me, and perhaps against my family as well. I’ve been on the phone with the cops in Champaign so that they’ll keep an eye on my brother and on Megan too. They were very cooperative and said they’d send extra patrols by his apartment complex every day with the help of the University’s campus police. The Chicago cops are keeping tabs on my father and on Hannah (and me), and on my mother in the nursing home where she lives. So I can’t bitch about the precautions they’re taking. They’ve been very good about everything. Everybody knows about the cop fraternity from television and the movies, and it’s one of the few accurate things about the police, coming out of Hollywood. We indeed do take care of our own.

  We’re keeping a special eye (and wiretap) on Jimmy Zagnarelli also. We’re thinking Benjamin might try to re-open his lines of communication with the Outfit guy who helped him in the past. Zagnarelli wasn’t about to give us any help, but we had to talk to him.

  Five hundred grand was missing from the safe at Crowley’s, according to the insurance man who took care of David Crowley’s estate. And the LA detectives got some intelligence from one of their mob moles that said David Crowley kept a very interesting ledger which had some explicit and damaging information about the Mafia guys that Crowley made a fine living out of defending. We figure Benjamin Anderson might try to peddle the ledger to Jimmy Z’s people, since Ben will need spending money fairly soon.

  We’re only guessing about the content of that missing “ledger,” but we figure it’s not about family recipes.

  *

  I’m also betting that he’ll pay cash for a vehicle and that he’ll use some of his bogus IDs that Zagnarelli’s people fixed him up with to travel this way. I’m betting he won’t use Interstate 80 or any other major highways or interstates to arrive here. He’ll be careful and he’ll take his time. It only adds to his tactic of putting me and us at our ease, making us begin to believe that perhaps he’s not coming back here at all. He’ll think we figure it’s all too dangerous for him to return to Chicago with all this manpower poised and ready for his renewed attempt to kill me and mine.

  Waiting equals anxiety. But it can also add up to carelessness. You just get tired of anything. After a time, you gradually let down your guard.

  It might happen to anyone else, but I have one virtue if I have any: Patience.

  I learned
how to “hurry up and wait” in the military, just as the Captain did. I can sit still for hours in a surveillance without twitching.

  I have to. My survival and my family’s might depend upon it.

  *

  Jack plays Chopin for me and for Hannah, and surprisingly for Jack’s lady INS agent, Sheila Marshand. Sheila is a truly dazzling woman even though she is not what a photographer might call cosmetically beautiful. Her nose is too large and her hips are perhaps a bit too wide and her breasts might not be erect enough—yet, all in all, she’s very sexy. And I know Jack concurs in my estimation of Sheila.

  He’s playing some etude or other on his Kimball baby grand, the one he told me about. He’s very good, at least to this untrained ear. After he finishes the Chopin, we go out to dinner together.

  We try a Czech place not far from Jack’s New Town apartment. The food is excellent and the ambience of the place makes it seem as if we’ve been transported to Prague. I can almost see Kafka hanging out here. They have the red and white checkered tablecloths and the wicker-backed chairs. I can’t pronounce the name of the meal Clemons orders for us, but we leave the ordering to him since he’s been here a lot. Our trust is rewarded with a great meal. It’s unbelievably tasty, and everyone agrees that it’s delicious.

  We walk out into the chill. Spring has not crept up on us yet in Chicago. It’s still as if it’s late January, except that the snows have ceased and the temperatures have risen to the point of clouds producing a cold rain that doesn’t freeze until later at night. Then you have to beware of iced-over byways and sidewalks. But the temperature is in the upper thirties tonight, so we can walk about with some confidence.

  I liked Sheila and so did Hannah. She’s younger than Jack and me, but she seems very intelligent and extremely personable. Jack has begun to date her exclusively, a first for my partner. Playing Chopin for her made it clear to me that he’s serious about her.

  We walk back to his apartment. My hand grips the bare flesh of Hannah’s hand, and I can feel the cool of her skin. She squeezes my hand from time to time, and by the time we say good night to Clemons and Sheila Marshand, I’m ready to go hunt down a justice of the peace and get this thing legal and consummated.