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Authors: James Patrick Hunt

BOOK: The Betrayers
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Narcs could be like that. Shrouding themselves in mystery and intrigue as they nabbed a series of mid-level dope dealers and forced them to become informants on the bigger dealers and so on and so forth, forever and ever and ever and ever. Hastings himself had mixed feelings about the war on drugs. He wondered if arresting scores of people did any good. Yet he believed that even marijuana use should remain illegal as long-term use did its damage to the spirit. He didn't pretend to know the answer and he didn't have the energy to argue with people who cried hypocrisy and pointed out the damaging effects of whiskey, cigarettes, and over-prescribed Prozac. He believed everybody needed at least a little hypocrisy just to get through the day.
He made a series of turns and got back on the interstate to head west, out of town. Once he was in steady traffic, he called the station.
Stacy, their secretary, answered.
“Homicide.”
“It's George. Let me talk to Murph.”
Murph came on and said, “George?”
“Murph, I got a lead. I'll be in around noon.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Secret stuff.”
“What?”
“No, I'm kidding. It may not be anything. I'll tell you when I get back.”
Duke's was an ugly, empty little place run by an anvil-faced man who had come from South Philly. The carpet was rough and stained and there was a smell of pickles and hamburger grease and smoke. UAW signs and a picture of labor leaders, including George Meany. But it didn't need to be pretty. In fact, being pleasant-looking would probably have been bad for business. Men and women coming off eight- and ten-hour shifts of doing the same thing over and over would want beers and whiskey in a place that didn't feel too good for them.
Hastings saw the black man wave at him when he walked in. Elliott. There was a white guy with him who looked a little like Dennis Miller from his
Saturday Night Live
days, but with glasses. The guy had an intense look on his face, the face of a man who doesn't want to relax. When he shook Hastings's hand, he introduced himself as Chester Gibbs.
Justin Elliott was tall and slim, in his early forties. He wore expensive cowboy boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket. Handsome fellow. He shook Hastings's hand after Gibbs had done the same, though it was apparent that he would not have otherwise.
The three of them took a booth. Hastings ordered a cup of coffee. Elliott lit a cigarette and pulled a red plastic ashtray toward him.
Gibbs said, “Hummel was undercover.”
Hastings waited a moment, looking between the white lawyer and the black cop. Two very different looking men, color aside, but they seemed to share a common seriousness and purpose.
Hastings said, “You mean in narcotics?”
Elliott said, “Yeah.”
Hastings said, “But he was in uniform.”
“No,” Gibbs said. “We're not talking about the night he was killed. Before that, he was undercover. Long-term. Deep. For about—” He turned to the cop for an assist.
“Fourteen months,” Elliott said.
“Fourteen months,” Gibbs repeated, in case Hastings hadn't been listening. Gibbs said, “He was on a joint task force with DEA and SLPD. We wanted to bust a meth-lab ring run by Steve Treats. You know him?”
“I know of him,” Hastings said.
“He was one of the big ones,” Gibbs said. “Ran most of the crank labs in South County. White trash guy. But smart, very smart. So we borrowed Hummel from the county sheriffs and sent him in. He was brilliant. A natural.”
Elliott said, “When it began, only four people were in the loop. Me, Chester, Chris, and my captain.”
“Roger Bejma?” Hastings said.
“Yeah,” Elliott said. “Like Chester said, Chris was a natural. In shorts and a ball cap,
I
didn't recognize him. He made buys, got active, got close to Treats. They became friends. Good friends, according to Chris. When Chris testified against him at the end, Treats couldn't believe it. He was sure that Chris was just another dealer turned informant because no cop could have fooled him. He was too smart for that.”
“Even at trial,” Gibbs said, “the look on Treats's face when Chris testified against him, it was like he was seeing his brother wear a dress.”
Hastings said, “You convict him?”
“Yeah. Eighteen to twenty. Treats is in Marion now.”
Hastings leaned back against the red padding of the booth. Mid-morning gray light came in through the front window. Waylon and Willie and the boys on the jukebox, singing we've been so busy keeping up with the Joneses, the volume set low at this hour so you could hear I-44 traffic in the distance, east to Illinois or west to Rolla and beyond.
Hastings said, “So you think Treats had Hummel killed?”
Elliott tapped embers into the ashtray. He said, “It makes sense, doesn't it?”
“Yeah,” Hastings said. “But what about the young cop that was with him?”
Elliott said, “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Hastings said, “Yeah, but to put a hit out on a cop …”
Elliott said, “You doubt that he did it?”
“I didn't say that.”
Elliott said, “Steve Treats is a piece of shit. He's killed before. Rival dealers, but nothing we could ever hang on him. I know what you're thinking, detective. You're thinking this ain't Colombia or Sicily and crooks don't put out hits on police officers. But do not doubt for one minute that Treats is capable of that. He's got eighteen years to spend in prison. Not much to do and a lot of time to think about vengeance.”
Hastings said, “I'm not discarding it, Elliott. It's a lead and I'll work it. All right?”
Lieutenant Elliott stared at Hastings for a moment. Hastings let the stare bounce off his forehead and then said, “Why did he go back to patrol?”
Elliott said, “What?”
“Why did Hummel go back to uniform patrol?”
Elliott said, “You ever work undercover?”
“No.”
Elliott nodded a
yeah, that's what I thought
and Hastings fought the urge to tell the guy to calm down and put his dick back in his pants because they were both on the same side. He told himself that the narcotics officer had lost someone he knew and liked and maybe deserved the benefit of the doubt. Homicide detectives had a reputation for being snobs who resented the proles telling them their business. There was some truth in this generalization and Justin Elliott probably
knew it. Hastings said it again. “No, I never worked undercover.” Telling him he won the point so they could move on.
Elliott was quiet for a moment, shifting his mood and posture out of a defensive position. Finally, he said, “Well, if you do it you'd know that you get burned out quickly. You live on doper time, tweaker's hours. They don't start the day until nine or ten o'clock at night; go to bed at seven or eight A.M. And you gotta move when they move because if it's going down, it's going down now. You don't get to make appointments, schedule lunches. There's no structure to the life. And half of the buys don't pan out. Everybody lies. Everybody's a player. Informants who are dealers double dealing cops and other dealers. Try living like that for fourteen months. Chris almost got divorced.” Elliott leaned back in his seat. “I guess it doesn't matter anymore.”
Hastings said, “So he wanted to go back to patrol?”
Gibbs said, “He wanted to go back to patrol about three months after he started the job. But he said he made a commitment to the job, that he would stay until we got Treats.”
And who filled the void left by Treats? Hastings wondered. Probably a thousand applicants. He could ask these guys, but it would offend them and it wasn't his place anyway.
“Okay,” Hastings said. “Can you give me your file on Treats?”
Gibbs said, “Anything you need.”
“You bring him down,” Elliott said.
Hastings didn't respond to the order.
Rex Reed's voice was coming out of the radio. Not the sound system that was set in the bar; not the jukebox, but a little Sony radio that Kate had on the rail behind the bar so she could listen to it during the slow hours. Rex Reed was on a talk show guesting with Roger Ebert and it was supposed to be some sort of watershed event; Reed saying nasty things about Jennifer Aniston—“
Rumor Has It
Aniston stinks”—and so forth, Ebert responding that she was actually a very talented comedienne … a fop and a movie nerd talking about the girl as if they knew her from high school.
Kate listened to bits and pieces of it, wondering if the gay guy was a permanent replacement for the critic who had died a few years earlier. She thought that might be okay; being gay wasn't his fault and the things he was saying were kind of funny even when they were mean.
She was wiping the bar when the telephone rang. She turned down the radio before she picked it up.
Answering the phone, she said, “McGill's.”
“Let me to talk to Jack, please.”
“Hold on,” Kate said.
She was an attractive woman. On the low side of her thirties, tall, ruddy cheeked, and firm-bodied. She wore her red hair in a ponytail and rarely put on makeup. Jeans and a green T-shirt tucked in at the waist, flattering her form. It was early, between ten and eleven in the morning, and the bar was quiet and clean.
Kate Regan was co-manager of McGill's, a pub in the Bridgeport/ Canaryville neighborhood of south Chicago. The bar was in the 11th Ward, approximately ten blocks from the Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church, where they had Mayor Daley's funeral in 1976. Kate
had vague memories of that day, holding her mother's hand as they stood outside the church with the rest of the neighborhood. Kate's mother said the man had built Chicago and that was the main thing to remember.
Kate called out for her husband, twice, before he came out of the back room.
Jack Regan was a big man. He did not exercise and he still smoked a pack a day, but his appetite was modest and he had not gotten a stomach in middle age. In his mid-forties now, he had streaks of gray in his thick black hair. Black Irish, wearing black slacks and a white collar shirt with the cuffs rolled, more handsome now than when Kate had fallen in love with him. At least, that's what Kate thought.
Kate said, “You got a call.”
Jack Regan did not ask who it was. He never asked and neither did she.
Regan picked up the receiver.
“Yeah.”
The man on the telephone said, “Can you meet me today?”
It took Regan a couple of moments to place the voice. Alan. Alan Mansell. The lawyer.
Regan said, “We got lunch coming up. Can you wait till two?” Two meant four. Mansell understood this.
“Two will be fine,” Mansell said.
 
 
Regan drove his green 1972 Buick Skylark north on Lakeshore Drive and peeled off at the Lincoln Park exit. He parked then walked down the path past sailboats and yachts drydocked and wrapped up for the winter. A few weeks shy of Thanksgiving and the harsh cold wind already coming off the lake, whipping against his cheeks and neck. Regan kept his hands in the pockets of his navy blue pea coat. He had left his gloves at the bar.
He came to a light blue BMW 745Li and stopped to look at it. A man inside, behind the wheel.
Regan walked up, looked in the window, then opened the passenger door and got in.
Alan Mansell said, “Cold out, huh?”
“Yeah,” Regan said.
“They say you get used to it,” Alan said, “But I've lived here all my life and I sure as hell haven't. I need to move.”
Alan Mansell looked like a lawyer. Balding, slight of build, glasses. He wore a tailored suit and an Italian silk tie, a black cashmere overcoat and leather gloves. Lawyer's uniform, which he wore comfortably. He was partners with Lewis Dushane. Neither Alan nor Lewis was Italian, but the local media called them “Mafia lawyers” all the same.
Regan said, “Where would you move?”
“I don't know. Arizona, maybe Miami.”
Regan looked around him. “You got a new car,” he said.
“Yeah,” Alan said, “What do you think?”
“It's all right.” Regan had never bought a new car in his life. He was not drawn to flashy things.
“Yeah, I traded the Jag in for it. It drives better, but it's got this goddamn i-drive thing. Had to have my son teach me how to use it.”
“Hmmm.” Regan knew less about modern technology than Alan Mansell had forgotten. His own vehicle had the stock AM radio, which was good enough for him.
Mansell realized the man was not going to say anything else about the car or its doodads. He said, “How you been?”
“I've been good,” Regan said. “What's up?” It had been almost a year since he'd seen the lawyer.
Alan said, “Zans wants you to help him.”
Zans was the nickname for John Zanatelli. He had been arrested and charged with racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering. The judge had denied bail and Zans was in county jail awaiting trial.
“All right. Something new?”
“Yeah,” Alan said, “you could say that. We got tapes in discovery.
Tapes from the prosecution. Like over a hundred of em'. Lewis and I listened to them, but a lot of it's Italian guys and we couldn't understand
what
the fuck they're talking about. We had a set of copies made for Zans and he listened to them too.” Alan said, “He understood them better than we did. Anyway. You ever heard of this listening device called a roving bug?”
“No.”
“What it is, it's a portable microphone. Sits on the end of a sort of stick or boom. You point it at the people you want to hear and it picks them up. Sometimes clearly, sometimes not so clearly. The feds, they say all these tapes were obtained through legal process; that they had warrants and authorizations from a judge before they used their microphones. They're only supposed to use the roving bugs if they don't have enough information on where and when the suspects are meeting. The thing is though, feds lie to judges. They say they don't know where or when, so they can use the roving bug as much as they want.
Ma
jor violation of the Fourth Amendment. Well, that's lawyer talk. The point is, if we could prove that these tapes were obtained wrongfully using the roving bug, if we could prove that the feds misled the judge, we could get the tapes suppressed and kept out of trial. Basically, take away their case.”
Regan said, “Okay.” He didn't see what this had to do with him. But he imagined the lawyer would get to it. If Zans had sent him.
“Well,” Alan said. “On one of the tapes, Zans heard voices, real low, in the background. Two guys talking. And they're not Italian. They're not the guys that are supposed to be bein' taped. They're feds, whispering to each other. See, the feds were whispering to each other while they held the roving bug. Well, Zans played that tape over and over because he heard something that he thought was very important.”
“Important to his defense?”
“No,” Alan said. “Important to him.”
They sat in the car quietly. Traffic went north and south on Lakeshore Drive in front of them, the gray lake and sky lay flat beyond.
Regan said, “Why is that?”
“Because Zans heard one fed say to another, ‘Dillon was right.'” Alan paused, said, “Do you understand now?”
Regan said, “You mean Mike Dillon?”
“Yeah.”
“Mike Dillon was working for the feds?”
“That's what Zans thinks. And that's all that matters.”
Jack Regan smiled. Alan was a diplomat. He was not going to say that Mike Dillon was a rat, working for the FBI. That's what Zans thinks. Very cautious, very clever.
“How about you, Alan,” Regan said. “What do you think?”
Alan stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “It doesn't look good,” he said.
“Okay,” Regan said. “Zans thinks Dillon ratted him out.”
“That's right.”
“Well, it would explain some things, wouldn't it. Mike disappearing, Zans's arrest. Danny's arrest. Yeah … it would explain a lot.”
The U.S. attorney used something called the kingpin statute of Illinois along with a lot of federal codes to snag Zans and some other guys. Most of them Italians, some of them Irish. The local media and some law enforcement referred to them as “dinosaurs,” bit players trying to relive Mafia nostalgia. But even the U.S. attorney had said it wasn't as simple as that. The counts filed by the U.S. attorney had asserted that John Zanatelli had been operating a “continuing criminal enterprise.” And he was right about that. The enterprise had many employees, principals, and agents. Some of them lawyers like Alan Mansell and some of them freelance assassins like Jack Regan.
Though Jack Regan never thought of himself as an assassin. He didn't think of killing in such high-minded concepts. He had quit counting how many times he had done it over the years. Some years, as many as five. Some years, none at all. He did count the money, though. He always counted the money.
Alan Mansell regarded Regan now.
“You believe it?” Alan said.
“I don't have trouble believing it,” Regan said.
“But you know Dillon.”
Better than you, Regan thought. Mike Dillon—Irish Mafia chief and federal rat. But anyone with sense enough to discard the blarney would know that Mike Dillon was capable of anything. Dillon, who spoke of Ireland like it was a mystical, magical homeland but had never once been there; who lived with his mother until she died, but had made widows of other mothers; who talked about keeping drugs out of the south side, but took weekly protection fees from every dope dealer south of Thirty-first Street. Jack Regan was no moralist, but he hated blarney.
“Right,” Regan said. “Zans want him clipped?”
Alan Mansell hesitated. He knew Jack Regan's business and he knew that Zans had insisted that they use Regan. He got right to it, and maybe that was a good thing. Still, the man's attitude chilled the blood.
After a moment, Alan said, “Yes. That's what John, what Zans wants.”
“Okay,” Regan said. “You know where he is?”
“Dillon?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I don't know.”
Regan knew Alan's partner had once represented Mike Dillon. Regan turned slightly in his seat.
“You sure?” Regan said.
“Yeah,” Alan said, getting his meaning. “I'm sure.”
“I don't judge, Alan. I'm just asking.”
“I know what you're thinking,” Alan said. “Yeah, we've represented Dillon before. But that was years ago. Zans is our guy now.”
Regan sighed, hid a smile. “Bloody mercenaries.”
Alan smiled. “You in?”
“How much?” Regan said.
“Hundred.”
“Hundred?” Regan said, “For Dillon?”
“That's a lot of money.”
“Not for Mike Dillon. He's a lot of things, but he ain't dumb. He's probably got bodyguards. It ain't the same thing as a millionaire in a parking lot.”
“Well—”
“Well, what? I get clipped, my wife's got to run our place alone. We eat up a hundred in overhead in less than a year.”
“We'd make sure she'd get taken care of.”
Regan stifled a laugh.
“Would you now? Come on, Alan. I've heard that shit before. Remember Timmy Frears?”
“That's—”
“They told him to keep his mouth shut and they'd take care of his wife and kids. Well, he did and his family went on welfare. Humiliating. Things like that make a man sitting in prison wonder who his friends are. And that's a man who was alive. You gonna tell me you'd treat his family better if he were dead?”
“Okay,” Alan said, “you made your point. What do you want?”
“Well,” Regan said, “I'm not lookin' to retire on it. Just fair treatment, that's all. I'll do it for two.”
“Two hundred?”
“Yeah. Half now, half when it's done.”
Alan Mansell made a face.
“Come on, Alan. We both know Zans clears fifty a week with his operation. He can spare two hundred and more.”
“Okay,” Alan said. He took an envelope out of his coat and handed it to Regan. “There's fifty in there. We'll get you another fifty tomorrow. You get the other hundred when it's done.”

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