Season of the Assassin (3 page)

‘I used to be faster,’ he apologized, smiling rather embarrassedly.

We took out our weapons. We entered the living room slowly and quietly.

Doc tried to turn on the overhead light in the room, but nothing happened when the switch clicked. I took out the flashlight from my flight jacket, and turned its beam toward the floor.

We worked our way toward the kitchen. In the kitchen we found a large refrigerator. It seemed Anglin had done fairly well from his novel about the oppression he’d experienced from the Chicago Police Department.

When Doc opened the refrigerator’s door, he hopped back in fright.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Shit. The son of a bitch has left an opened can of tomato juice. It’s turning fucking black. Christ, has the man no sense of hygiene?’

‘You scared the shit out of me. I thought you’d found somebody’s goddamn body parts.’

‘Nah. That was that other homicidal fuck from Milwaukee.’

I heard a soft sound coming from farther back in the house.

Doc touched my sleeve. He put a finger to his lips, and then he removed his nine-millimeter from his shoulder holster.

I had the Bulldog still tucked into in my ankle holster, but I had my own nine in my right hand now.

We made our way quickly and quietly into the interior of Anglin’s house. It was cold in there. His heating must have been turned off after he’d been gone a few months.

Doc directed me toward the single bedroom on the left, at the back of the house.

He checked his weapon and I checked mine. Then we kicked open the door and found Special Agent Mason and his attractive female assistant aiming their own guns directly at our noggins.

[June 1968]

The girl is still traumatized by whatever horrors she endured at the hands of Carl Anglin. Now the Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined the fight to put the nails into Anglin. We are required to assist them, but we do not like to share the playing field with the FBI investigators. It’s a matter of pride and territory. They’re pissing on our trees. The fucking government has to intrude into the job. They can’t just fuck up their own patch. Eddie thinks I’m paranoid about the Feds because they’re staring over our shoulders. I’m not sure what ‘paranoid’ means, but I know when someone’s breathing down my neck. This is the 1960s. Racial harmony, understanding, integration, Martin Luther King…I’m all for equal rights. I’ve seen the work some of our black men in blue have done on the streets — when I start talking race, everyone assumes I hate blacks or anybody darker than a wop. Truth is, I hate any guy who blames his load on his background. Sink or swim, motherfucker, on your own.

Things come up with the aid of all that government money, though. We find out unusual information about our subject. Anglin’s not the ignorant hillbilly we thought he was. He graduated high school in the upper third of his class and he has two years of college behind him. He studied languages at a junior college, and his grades were high. Then he entered the US Navy and saw duty just after the Korean War. It appears he was a member of an elite force in the Navy, but his active-duty records are ‘classified’. Which disturbs the shit out of me. I was in the Rangers, but everything we did was on record. Practically everything, anyway. When they start showing you ‘classified’, it means that this guy was part of something that would probably embarrass the US Government. Which means he was probably in the murder-for-hire business, but it’s not called that because he was wearing a uniform when it took place. I’m talking about a well-trained assassin. I understand that I’m doing a lot of guesswork here, but there’s got to be a reason Anglin’s under the veil.

Eddie thinks the guy works for the Spooks — the CIA. Eddie reads a lot of fiction.

But it gets my nose turned upwind. Isn’t it remarkable that one witness turns up dead and another has two-way conversations with her thumbs in a mental ward? It’s too remarkable.

So we set out to examine the demise of Johnnie Robinson, the dishwasher. When we talk to the people at the rib joint where he worked, across the street from the infamous death dorm, they give us a sullen look when we ask questions. It seems they’ve been grilled by the top people in Homicide and now they don’t want to go through the procedure again. It’s as if they were frightened by the previous investigators.

I find out that Captain Quigley, my boss, did the preliminary investigation of Robinson’s killing. It is very unusual for a police captain to be doing such routine fieldwork. So after Eddie and I get done talking to the brothers at the rib joint, I go back downtown for a talk with Quigley.

‘I hope you don’t mind answering a few questions I have about the Anglin case,’ I say to the balding, six-foot-two captain.

The case is over. We need to catch the real killer,’ he informs me, a very sour look on his face.

‘I don’t think it is…over, sir. I think we got the right guy. But what troubles me is losing two witnesses in such a short time-span…It makes me smell a fix.’ 

‘Are you accusing me of something, Lieutenant Parisi?’

‘Of course not, sir.’

I can sense Eddie squirming behind me.

I’m sitting in the chair in front of the captain’s desk, and Eddie is standing a pace or two back.

‘Then what is this bullshit you’re throwing at me?’

‘Why would a police captain investigate a murder that would normally be processed by somebody like me or my partner here? Was it considered high-profile? The popping of a dishwasher on the west side?’

‘All murders are high-priority, Lieutenant. You should know that.’

I don’t grant him the courtesy of agreeing because we both know it’s a lie. All deaths are not equal. Just like all lives aren’t — in the real world of the streets.

‘I find it strange that you’d have the time or opportunity to investigate the death of one witness in a case that’s already been tanked, for all practical purposes.’

‘I don’t much care what you find odd about what I do, Parisi. And if you don’t want some hot jets to scorch your ass, you better find a new angle on this case, Lieutenant.’

The captain is a fucking harp. A Mick. He thinks all of us goombahs are connected to the Outfit. Like most Irish, he can’t distinguish one Italian from another. We’re all freaking Sicilians, to him.

End of discussion. I stand and we leave.

*

Eddie sips at his coffee in my office. I prefer Coca-Cola. There are no windows in my cubicle. The room seems perpetually dark, even with the lights on.

‘Carl Anglin was into something. I think Robinson was a pro job, not a drive-by. I think somebody got to any witnesses on scene when Johnnie caught his death of cold,’ I tell my partner.

‘I don’t like all this sidelight shit. I liked it better when it was a simple multiple homicide.’

‘I’m sorry to screw up your day.’

‘Why would anyone want Anglin off the hook?’ Eddie demands.

‘Because he’s done something somebody thinks is worse. Something a lot more embarrassing to somebody.’

Eddie sips at his black coffee again, and then he puts the paper cup into my wastebasket.

‘I hate fucking complicated shit like this. We catch a killer, they get lit up. That’s how it’s supposed to work, Jake. This is bat shit, this.’

He walks out the door, announcing that he’s going to take a dump and read the sports page. It’ll clear his mind, he says.

‘Hello, Greek.’

This time it’s gone beyond the usual limit of five.

‘Maybe I better get you a cab, Jake,’ the Greek says from out of some corner where I can barely see him. ‘You’re wrecked, buddy. Let me call you a ride,’ he repeats.

Again words of refusal come out of me from some unknown place.

I stagger out of the Greek’s and make my way to the unmarked car that I use. I stop suddenly and start vomiting beside the driver’s door.

Puking is unusual for me. But it clears my head a bit, and I think I’ll be able to navigate home now. I get inside the car and open all the windows in the four-door Ford. But I can still smell myself when I get inside, so I reach into the glove compartment for the mints I stash in there, just in case. My badge’ll get me by if I bob and weave, but you never know if some hard-on’ll try to make a name for himself by busting a cop for Driving While Intoxicated. So the breath mints are insurance.

I make it home without incident. But the vomiting frightens me.

Eleanor is not up waiting for me at this hour — it’s 4.35 a.m. So I go directly to my bedroom.

My son Jimmy is going to the university downtown to get his bachelor’s degree, but he says he wants to join the police force when he graduates. I try to dissuade him every way I can. I tell him about the corruption on the job, about all the assholes who make it on sheer politics rather than ability. But he won’t listen. He has wanted to be a cop since he was twelve, I think. All the way through high school until now. And there’s nothing I can think to say that’ll point him in a different direction. He’s a smart boy, Jimmy. Good grades.

He reads a lot. I don’t have the time or the will. He’s quieter than I am, too. My wife told me that when Jimmy turned six. He’s the thinker in the clan, his mother insists. He’ll be a better husband and father, I guess. He seems to have a lot more patience than the old man.

I can’t say ‘nigger’ or ‘spic’ or ‘wop’ or anything with a flavor of the street in front of the kid. Eleanor has threatened to shoot me.

I think of him as I drift off on top of my mattress. I can smell the puke again, but I wander off in spite of the odor.

*

‘I’ve been drafted,’ my son tells me at the dinner table the next evening. Eating dinner with both of them is an event which takes place only rarely.

‘What’re you talking about? You haven’t graduated yet.’

‘They’ve taken the 2-S away. I’m 1-A. Took the physical last week.’

‘So?’

‘So I lied to you. I dropped out at the end of the semester. I let myself be drafted.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

‘No, Pa. I’m not lying.’

‘But your grades…They were real good.’

‘Yeah. A three-point GPA.’

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’

My wife pours him another coffee.

‘Didn’t you try to stop him?’ I ask her.

She ignores me.

‘What is this? Some kind of goddamn conspiracy?’

‘You never gave him a nickel for his education. You got nothing to say to him,’ Eleanor finally tells me.

‘Don’t start that again — ’

‘It was my call, Pa. Mom had nothing to do with this…Look, the Second World War was yours. This one is mine. I feel like I’m avoiding something I ought to be part of.’

‘Everybody hates this war, Junior. You read the papers?’

‘Did anybody fall in love with
your
fight?’ He’s clever, this kid. He’ll make a fine interrogator. He knows how to counterpunch.

‘I was hoping you’d miss this one, Sonny.’

He hates being called ‘Sonny’.

‘It’s my turn. I was putting off what had to happen. That’s all.’

Eleanor’s crying.

‘Momma. Stop it.’

‘Shut up,’ she warns him.

‘Can’t you sign back up for school? Can’t you change your mind?’

‘He hates living here! Are you a fool? Can’t you see?’ she cries.

I look down at my half-eaten steak.

‘I’ll cut back, if that’s what this is all — ’

‘He’s afraid to bring Erin home. He’s afraid they’ll run into you. Drunk. You, Jake. Do you understand?’

‘I…I can stop. I can change. You don’t need to go to a goddamned war to get me to — ’

‘I’m not going for that reason. I already told you. It’s my turn. You don’t get to pick your battles. They pick you, Pa. How many times you told me just that?’

‘I can stop, Jimmy. For Christ’s sake, all you had to do was tell me that I was…embarrassing — ’

‘You don’t embarrass me, Pa.’

‘You’re a horseshit liar, Jimmy.’

He doesn’t try to keep it up. I get up from the table and walk directly out the door. The moist air smacks my face with its spring lushness, but all I can remember is my son being embarrassed by me. What angers me is that I’ve known it all along. I could see him directing that girlfriend of his — Erin — out our front door as soon as he saw I was home in the evening. I barely got a look at her. And she’s the one he’s in love with, Eleanor tells me. Whenever she’s speaking to me.

I’ve driven my son out of the house. My son. My flesh and blood —

I know better. She can’t fool me. She never could lie to me. Jimmy’s not mine, except in name. He’s my brother Nick’s child. I had mumps when I was a teenager. The doctor thinks the mumps was why Eleanor and I were unable to have a baby, the first few years after we were married. Suddenly she’s pregnant with Jimmy, but I remember we’d been sleeping together very infrequently after the doctor told me I might be sterile. The marriage was going bad. We were drifting apart.

She knew Nick before she began dating me. My younger brother Nick. Then he takes off for the oil fields to make his pot of gold. He fails completely, but when he gets back the two of us are together. Engaged.

He still carries the heat for Eleanor to this day. Somehow she convinced him to help her have a baby. Neither of them have ever confessed and I’ve never put the question directly to them, but I know.

Jimmy’s Nick’s boy. Not mine. I can see his father in his eyes.

But we pretend, the three of us. We play that I got divine fertility on just one night and I made him from one creative burst of sperm. 

Jimmy. Nick’s boy. Pretending to be my dutiful son. I love him, but he’s not mine. We look like a family but we’re not.

She wants reasons for the drink? Do I need another? I know it’s a crutch. I ought to confront her and my brother, get it out in the open. But more than twenty years have passed, and I’m afraid if I ask I’ll get the answer I dread the most. This is one interrogation I can’t handle.

Nick made Eleanor pregnant to console her. So she’d get at least something out of this marriage. It’s more like an arrangement for the both of us. She cleans and cooks and says she wants to get herself a job when Jimmy’s finally out on his own.

I drove my own boy out of the house. Even if I’m not his natural father, I’ve been a father to him for two decades. Nick hasn’t. He’s stayed respectfully out of the way. He rarely comes over here.

Jimmy’s going off to the war in Vietnam. It’s a lousy war and no one likes it.

My war was a lousy war and I hated it. It frightened me, it twisted me, it wrung me out. There was nothing good about it until it was history.

I’ve lost my kid. Now I’ll spend twenty-four months in hell, waiting for him to get out of southeast Asia.