Season of the Assassin (4 page)

This is my judgment, my penance, my punishment. I don’t need a padre to explain it

to me. God’s kicking my ass for all my faults. And even though Jimmy doesn’t really belong to me, the illusion was better than nothing. Better than no son at all. Better than sterility and an unhappy marriage. He was there for a while, and now he’s about to leave.

The rain begins to fall gently as I’m halfway down our block of bungalows. House after house is identical to its neighbor.

I feel the warm droplets soak my shoulders. I’ve forgotten to put on my jacket.

*

The waitress at the rib joint doesn’t want to talk in front of the boss. So Eddie and I take her for a short drive when her break comes up at 7.30 p.m.

Her name is Estella Johnson. Black, thirty-five years old, divorced, she lets us know.

She sits in the back of the car with Eddie. She’s big-bosomed and very sexy. Eddie is already red in the puss.

Estella smiles perfect pearlies at my Polack partner.

‘This po-lice captain makes a big deal of the fact that we all agree what we saw the night Robinson got tapped.’

‘What did you all agree on?’ I ask from behind the driver’s wheel.

Eddie’s about ready to swallow his tongue from lust. Estella’s got to be a big draw for the rib joint.

‘That it was fo’ black mens in the car that drive by and pop Johnny Robinson.’

‘And you disagreed with that story?’ I ask.

‘I has my doubts.’

‘About what part?’ Eddie finally queries.

I look in the rear view and see him smiling and squirming. He’s single and he’s wondering what a black woman would be like after all those lily-white Polish girls from the southwest part of town.

‘It might be that the dudes in the car were a little lighter in the complexion than your captain would want us to believe.’

‘You think they were white shooters?’ Eddie asks.

‘There were only two in that car. Not four. I could see them right out the front window. They must’ve knew what time Johnny go outside for his nicotine addiction. They were there the second Johnny walk out, and then I see the passenger’s window roll down and then I hear the pops. Motherfuckers usin’ a .22. Everybody in this neighborhood know that a small piece like that is used by them professional killahs. Them slugs go all crazy when they gets inside you.’

‘You think they were white,’ I repeat.

‘Didn’t look like brothas to me. But I could be wrong.’

‘And there were two, not three or four?’ I ask. 

‘Both of them was sittin’ up front. I couldn’t see them all that clear, but I know they wasn’t from this goddamn neighborhood. Y’all need to check closer to home.’

Estella takes hold of Eddie’s hand and pulls it to her left breast. I have to tear my gaze away immediately from the two of them. Estella giggles. I pity my partner.

[January 1999]

The Feds eventually lowered their weapons, as did Doc and I. But they gave us no information — what we found we discovered on our own. What my partner and I did locate was Anglin’s yearbook. I stuffed it into my briefcase, and we carried it off the premises of Anglin’s Utah dwelling before the Fibbies could scream foul.

Back in Chicago, I took a good look at our subject. He’d been an athlete and a scholar and had seemed to get along well with his peers. A member of the swimming and cross-country teams. Honor roll, several times. The guy fit a more modern kind of serial profile — like a Ted Bundy.

We needed to interview Anglin’s mother. Perhaps he’d contacted her in the ten months since he’d disappeared.

The man could be dead. This could be some other player that we hadn’t picked up on. It could be a copycat. Someone who’d read all the literature on Anglin.

I didn’t think so. I thought he was geared up for a comeback. He was having all that fun being a celebrity killer who got off the hook. Doing the talk shows, appearing in the tabloids. Playing the victim to the hilt. And all the while
his
seven victims, the seven nurses, had no one to speak for them. Once that had been the role of my father, Jake. But after his accident, if that was what it was, the Department had put Anglin on the back burner. Life went on, everyone kept insisting. You couldn’t keep kicking a dead pooch. The son of a bitch got off. We didn’t nab him. My father went to his death and never had the satisfaction of Carl Anglin’s incarceration.

The problem with Anglin’s mother was that she’d be very old if she had indeed survived. Had to be in her eighties, Doc figured, reasoning that Anglin was in his sixties. If Carl was still breathing.

Yeah, he was alive. I could feel his pulse off in the corner of my office. I could remember my dad telling me about the greenness of his eyes. Like some jungle cat’s, Jake had said.

My old man did not tell horror tales. He wasn’t trying to spook me. I’d heard about those eyes from my father’s partner, Eddie Lezniak, as well. Eddie had retired and now lived in Indiana on a ten-acre piece of land with his own pond full of fish.

Jake Parisi never talked much to me at all. It was like he was keeping me at arm’s length because he was afraid I’d get too close. When I found out I was really Nick’s son, I understood why Jake had never let me close any distance between us. But I always felt he loved me in spite of my biology.

The first thing we found out was where Anglin’s mother worked. She was a single parent, my old man’s files informed us. She lived in Cleveland and worked at Richardson, Robinson and Trask, it read. A law firm. She was a legal secretary. When we contacted the Cleveland firm, we found she’d moved to Chicago fifteen years ago. We got her address at her new firm from the old group. When we called Smith, Talbot and Turner, we heard that Patricia Anglin had left that legal group six years ago. They had an address for her, and we decided to visit her in person.

*

Patricia Anglin was in her early eighties, as Doc had guessed. But she seemed very bright. When we asked a question she responded promptly, even briskly. There was obvious antagonism in her eyes as she answered our questions, here at her retirement complex. She had an apartment in this village of senior citizens.

‘You hounded Carl thirty years ago, and now you want to start up with him all over again.’

‘We want to talk to him. Yes,’ Doc told her. He smiled at her, but her response wasn’t exactly amiable.

‘You were after him and you couldn’t prove anything because my Carl is not a murderer. Did you know he was in the Navy?’

I nodded.

‘Did you know that he was involved in secret operations for our government?’

‘Yes,’ I told her.

‘My son was a hero…And then he decided he wanted to get out of the service. But they didn’t want to release him. They said what he did was too “classified”. Whatever that meant. So he stayed on for two more years, and then he really quit. It was like they’d kidnapped him. I don’t know where he served or what he did, but he came back different. He wasn’t the same boy they’d signed up. He was quieter. More sullen…But he wasn’t the monster who killed those nurses. If he killed anyone, it was while he was wearing a uniform…Now, I’m very tired and I haven’t anything else to say to you, and if you ever come back I’ll need to have an attorney present.’

She stood as straight-backed as an Army drill instructor. 

‘You don’t have any idea where your son can be located, then?’ I asked, trying to smile encouragingly.

She huffed, we said thank you — and we got the hell out.

*

‘Tough. She made you, you know,’ Doc said to me as we drove the Taurus back to the Lake Shore.

‘Made me?’

‘She recognized your name as soon as she heard it. I saw it on her face. Instant recognition, Jimmy. She made you as Jake’s boy. That old broad’s got a bear trap for a memory. She knows where sonny boy’s at, too.’

‘You think so?’

‘Enough to have her eyeballed until further notice.’

‘Surveillance?’

‘Indeed, Lieutenant Parish’

‘So be it,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll set up the shifts when we get back to the office.’

The stages of the drive from the retirement home back into town were marked by changes in the smells. When we reached the outskirts of Chicago, we sniffed the stink of the chemical plants on the western edge. As we changed direction and headed eastward, there was the smell of the icy lake water. The Loop had a scent of its own. There was nothing exactly like it.

We pulled into the parking lot next to the central downtown headquarters. I halted the navy blue Taurus in its marked spot, we hopped out, and then we headed up in the elevator to the floor that housed Homicide.

*

He’d cut their throats twice. That had been to kill. The other damage was done postmortem. That was the style of the newest slayings as well. It looked like Anglin, and I had a feeling my father would have said it felt like him, too. Maybe he was getting too old to do multiples simultaneously, the way he’d murdered the nurses. Or maybe he was working himself up to another grand finale-type multiple homicide. I was trying to figure it his way. He was tantalizing us. He knew, if he read the papers, that I was on this investigation. My name had been in print more often than I’d have liked it to appear. It didn’t help us for him to know who was coming after him, but it was a free press.

Perhaps, after all, it was to my advantage, his being aware of me. Maybe he’d remember my dad and Eddie Lezniak. Maybe he’d recall how he got lucky with them, losing two witnesses against him. Or maybe he knew why it was a fix. A sure thing.

We headed back to the point of origin. To the location of the original killings. We stopped at the rib joint across the street from the girls’ dormitory, there on the West Side. It was thirty years later, but we found out that Billie Lee still owned and operated the restaurant. Billie Lee was close to retirement age. She appeared to be about sixty-five. Black woman, medium height, natural ‘do’. They used to call that style ‘unconked’.

We took a walk outside the small rib house with Billie. She looked a little sullen and suspicious when Doc explained what two Homicide cops were there for.

‘That been over for, what — thirty years?’ she complained.

‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over,’ Doc said and smiled at her. The two of them. Senior citizens, I was thinking. Doc was sixty-three. They were both Korean War-era.

‘What you expec’ me to recall about somethin’ been gone for three ten-spots?’ she asked, smiling. She was trying to appear relaxed. Even nonchalant.

‘I think you gave the police some bad evidence the night your man got popped out here on the street. You said you saw a car full of African-Americans drive by and kill our witness. I think you saw something else,’ I told her.

My bluntness seemed to have frightened her.

‘I told the po-lice just exactly what I saw.’ 

‘I think you’re lying,’ I said, grinning wolfishly.

Doc stepped in to become her pal in time of need.

‘Easy Jimmy. I don’t see why Billie here would fabricate anything.’

‘Fabricate? What the fuck do “fabricate” mean?’ Billie blurted out.

‘It means lie. It means to bullshit a police officer. You know where that leads, Billie?’ I was bullying her now.

‘Take it easy, Lieutenant,’ Doc said. He gave me a sly wink.

He walked down the street with Billie. They were alone for a couple of minutes, about a half-block from where I stood. Then they headed back my way.

‘Jimmy, I think the lady was strong-armed into giving false evidence. I think we can help her,’ Doc said, his face straight.

‘This all go down thirty fucking years ago. Why you want to mess wid me now?’

‘There’ve been more since Carl Anglin did his thing, Billie. Two more that we know about. And one of the new ones was a sister. I mean she was black, an African-American. And no one’s paid for those seven young girls. You haven’t forgotten them, have you, Billie?’ I asked.

‘I ain’t forgotten them, no. That was a terrible thing. Terrible. I never forget it. We was all scared to take a smoke outside here after it happened…Look. A white po-lice come up to me after the first po-lice — ’

‘That was my father, Lieutenant Jake Parish.’

‘Yeah. I remember his name…The next po-lice don’t give me no name. Don’t show no badge, neither. But he tell me all about the Health Department and how they can find rats in most any bidness, and I figure I ought to cooperate wid this po-lice. Him and his fuckin’ rats. This place all I got, and this man say I’m gonna go on fuckin’ food stamps if I don’t cooperate.’

‘You cooperate with us and I’ll guarantee nobody’s going to shut you down for rats or any other damn thing. You have my word,’ I told Billie.

‘Maybe…maybe it wadn’t no black men killed your witness. Maybe it was just two white men wearin’ ski masks to cover their faces.’

‘You sure, Billie?’ Doc asked. ‘Don’t just tell us something you think’s gonna make us happy.’

‘Nah. That’s the way it was. I was lookin’ out that glass front door, about ready to tell the lazy son of a bitch to get his ass back to work, and along come this unmarked car — ’

‘You mean like a squad car?’

‘Like a detective’s car, yeah…They pull up to him, he turn around like he’s gonna bolt away when he see them ski masks, and they

put two shots in him from a .22. I could tell it was a .22. Heard enough gunfire in this neighborhood to know the difference.’

I could see the fear in her dark face, even out there with only the streetlights illuminating this West Side side street.

‘You gonna get me killed, Lieutenant.’

‘Nobody’s going to know we ever talked to you, Billie,’ Doc assured her.

‘That’s right. We’re going to keep an eye on you. Don’t worry.’

‘Don’t worry. That’s what my two ex-husbands say. First one choke on my own spare ribs. The other one fall flat on his face in Vegas with the only blackjack winner he hit after losin’ three thousand dollars…Don’t worry.’

We walked her back inside, and then we came back out to the car.

On the drive back Doc started to put pieces into the puzzle.

‘Were they ours or were they Feds?’

‘I don’t think they were ours. I know how prejudiced we both are against the government issue, so let’s try to be reasonable. Something’s connected to Anglin’s military service. He was involved in classified operations, so we assume that the spooks were trying to protect one of their own. Maybe Carl threatened to blab everything on
Sixty
Minutes
. Who knows? They saved his ass on the seven nurses because he was involved in something very touchy. Something sensitive enough that they figure it’s national security.’

‘Maybe we’re widening the scenario,’ Doc mused.

‘Could be. Maybe Billie is full of shit. Maybe she gave us what she thinks we wanted to hear…But I don’t think so. I think Anglin was involved in something someone thinks is extremely significant.’

‘What would that be, Jimmy? Did he whack some dictator? Make some despot disappear?’

‘He’s into something they don’t want us to know about…We need to see the workup on the witness’s shooting.’

I made the call to Evidence, and they said they’d expedite.

The return call came in a half-hour.

They had a file for me to see, so Doc and I took the elevator downstairs. We entered their cubicle, and Randy Smithson had the file ready.

Doc and I took the lift back up to Homicide. We went back into my office. Doc didn’t like his space — said it was too small. So that was why he hung out with me so often, even when we weren’t working the streets.

The information about the caliber of the weapon had been razored out. It’d been excised.

‘What’s the story on the cutouts?’ I asked Smithson on the phone.

He professed ignorance, as I’d supposed he would. I hung up. It was no use. The trail was three decades old, and I was trying to follow along as if my father were still around, ending his shift with all those shots and beers at the Greek’s saloon.