Season of the Assassin (16 page)

[May 1999]

Special Agent Mason required information from us about the relocation of a material witness in an ongoing federal investigation. He was very unhappy with our insistence that we were ignorant about the matter. He thought we were full of shit. I’d like to have agreed with him, but I bit my lip.

He’d been nosing around Homicide for the last day or two. In and out of my office. Bugging the captain, who didn’t take well to irritants on account of his background in the Army Rangers in Vietnam. Our captain was more used to shooting people who pissed him off. He’d had a great deal of trouble adjusting to the politics of the police, but he’d made the change. 

‘Is there something I can do you for?’ I asked, with the most malicious grin I could muster.

‘Don’t fuck with us, Parisi,’ Mason threatened. His leggy, gorgeous assistant special agent was standing beside him inside my doorway.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said and gestured to the young lady. She must have been fresh out of Quantico.

She smiled, but didn’t blush. I could picture her pulling the trigger on any perpetrator. Tough young woman.

‘You’ve got Theresa Rojas, and you’re going to be facing federal charges once we find out where you’ve stashed her.’

‘It’s been amusing, Mason.’

He wasn’t amused at all.

‘You don’t have any idea what you’re screwing around with, do you?’ he declared.

‘I heard that same message from someone else.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Carl Anglin. Himself.’

‘Look, Lieutenant. Anglin is old news. Beyond history.’

‘Then why does his name keep coming up?’

Mason reddened. Doc walked past them, into my rectangle of an office. He stood with his back blocking the view of Lake Michigan.

‘Hello, everyone. Especially hello to you, ma’am,’ he said warmly. 

She did not return Doc’s amicable, toothy smile.

‘Ohh, I see. We’re fighting,’ Doc observed, grinning.

‘Lieutenant…I’m not going to give you another…notice. You’d better deliver Theresa Rojas in twenty-four. Last chance.’

He turned and waited for the great-looking special agent to head toward the elevators.

We’d been duly warned.

*

The Dr Engstrom business gnawed at me. The last time I’d called up the Food and Drug Administration, they’d told me that Engstrom was on extended vacation and that he couldn’t be reached — by beeper, cellphone, anything. If we ever got through to Theresa, we wouldn’t have his expert testimony on how someone’d kept a murder witness in hibernation for three decades. Doors kept slamming.

Carl Anglin kept a low profile. We kept an eye on him, but we couldn’t justify round-the-clock surveillance on him because he was not officially under investigation. The murders were over thirty years old. But we tried to maintain a daily check on his whereabouts by agreement with brother Homicide cops who went out of their way on their own time just to make Anglin sightings.

Well, the target had gone under for the last five days. His apartment was empty, according to the owner of the building on the nearby North Side. But Carl Anglin hadn’t broken his lease, the owner claimed. He was still paid up for six months in advance. It appeared the book deals and the movie deals and all the other spin-offs of his memoirs had kept our man’s head above water financially. He wouldn’t starve — and he wouldn’t pretend to go away permanently. We’d lost sight of him for two or three days on previous occasions but this was longer than usual.

On the sixth day Jack Brennan, a Homicide cop, called me and told me Carl was back in his place. Jack had seen him emerge onto the street from the North Side apartment just a few hours ago.

I wondered whether to be angry or relieved. I knew Anglin wouldn’t just disappear. He wouldn’t go under permanently. He wouldn’t be found in the Lake, face down or with a .22 slug in the back of his head, behind one of his ears. Anglin had the Feds by the very short hairs, and I figured that if he was as cute as I thought he was, he had another manuscript containing a lot of fascinating details locked up somewhere safe. And that prick literary agent of his was salivating to get it into print — but of course that would only happen if Carl Anglin fell victim to a terrible accident. Whatever trump card Anglin held was keeping the G at bay. Otherwise one small-caliber round would’ve dispatched our man long ago. You had to give Anglin credit for learning how to survive against bigger jungle animals.

*

I visited Theresa on Sunday nights. I had to be extraordinarily careful about seeing her. My wife Natalie dropped me off at Doc’s apartment building. Then I went out the rear exit of Doc’s complex, and I used his car to make my way to the small private hospital where we kept her. I knew they were following me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to lose them for much longer.

I had members of our own surveillance team at CPD check my car and my house for tailing devices. The Feds were big on electric toys. So far we hadn’t found anything, but they had very sophisticated devices that they used out on the street.

They’d find Theresa, if they hadn’t already. They had the men, money and time.

This Sunday night, I brought her her usual yellow rose. Her lips puckered a bit, and she damn near smiled. Or maybe it was just the angle I was watching her from.

I didn’t say much to Theresa. I’d already told her everything she needed to know. So I watched some TV with her, even though Sunday nights were vast wastelands on the tube. We sat together quietly and watched some movie-of-the-week nonsense. Occasionally she got up from her bedside chair and walked to her window. She looked out into the darkness, and then she went back to her chair and watched the rest of the show. Sometimes I bought her a bag of buttered popcorn from the cafeteria. Theresa enjoyed this treat. She ate every last kernel. I’d sip a Diet Coke and watch her gobble down the popcorn.

*

We moved Theresa to another hospital. This one was in rural Indiana, near a town named Lebanon. It was really isolated. And it meant I could pay her very few visits because of the distance and the greater chance of one of us getting spotted.

She was not happy with the move. She liked the view of the city from her old room. Now she had only a view of several cornfields for amusement — that and the TV, of course. The Indiana location offered her greater security, but she was used to the noise of Chicago. Now the relative solitude might become unbearable for her.

I had to make elaborate plans just to see her. A faked fishing trip to nearby Quinn, Indiana was my ruse for being out of state. When it got dark, Doc and I decamped and headed home — with a side trip to the hospital. 

I was fairly certain we weren’t tailed from Quinn, but there was no way of telling for sure. Our security people swept our vehicle before we left, and I didn’t see any aerial surveillance on our asses.

You never did see them, however.

*

Theresa seemed angry with me, this time. She wouldn’t even look at the yellow rose.

‘I won’t be coming to see you for a very long time,’ I told her.

This news seemed to soften her sullen expression.

‘It’s too dangerous. Someone might be following me, and they’re so good at it that I won’t even know they’re out there. So I won’t be coming out anymore unless…unless you get better.’

She flinched slightly.

‘Theresa…Do you really hear me?’

She looked out into the cornfield. Perhaps the field was the backdrop upon which Theresa Rojas replayed the horrors of 1968.

*

We walked into Susan Malkin’s North Shore apartment. We were almost out of the city limits — that was how far north we were. The lights had all been unplugged or broken. 

The blood on the carpet looked black, like oil on a concrete floor, in the darkness.

Doc trained his flashlight toward the woman’s bedroom. Susan Malkin had not been heard from in three days. Her mother had become alarmed, had reported her to Missing Persons, and then the owner of this very elegant apartment complex had reported a strange smell emanating from the flat. But the owner was too spooked to enter the place himself, so it became a suspected homicide scene and here we were.

‘Police,’ Doc said loudly. ‘If anyone is in here, come on out slowly with your hands visible.’

No response. We didn’t think there would be one. Susan Malkin was dead. She was back in that bedroom and, Jesus, we could smell her.

Doc flipped the overhead light on. The two uniforms following us stopped dead in their tracks when they saw it. Susan’s head had been stuck atop one of the bedposts. The headless body lay at the center of the bare mattress, the legs forced wide apart. It was almost as if she had been split up the middle, like a wishbone. There was a lot of blood around the genital area. She’d been stabbed in the torso repeatedly, so there was not much skin that wasn’t lathered in gore.

One of the uniforms was already making use of Susan’s bathroom, next to where we were. 

The eerie thing about the head was that the eyes were wide open, as if she had been forced to watch it all happening to herself.

On the neck were two very precise razor strokes. Very clinical. As distinct from the rest of the savagery. Doc knew without being told. The razor cuts had killed the woman. The killer had done much of the damage while Susan was bleeding to death. The beheading had been for our benefit. He’d left a witness for us.

*

We were at Anglin’s apartment at 3.12 a.m. He was not there. Doc and I sat in the dark of his living room on a very expensive couch. The backups were all out on the street. They had this place surrounded. If Carl came in, he wouldn’t get away without company.

‘He didn’t leave anything for us, of course,’ Doc said.

‘Of course not. He’s a pro,’ I concurred.

‘So we’ll just be going through the motions with him again.’

‘Yeah. He’ll lawyer up, and we’ll have to let him go. There’ll be no hair, no prints, no witnesses. He’s very good. You have to give him that.’

I took out my nine-millimeter gun.

‘No, Jimmy. You can’t.’

‘Yes, I can.’ 

‘No. You won’t. You have a wife and three children, and I’m a married man with a daughter of my own.’

We sat in the dark for some minutes.

‘He’ll get away with this one, too,’ I reminded Doc.

‘Maybe not. All the reports aren’t in. You know how much time it takes to — ’

‘Too much time. This makes ten that we know about. He likes to pick out individuals in his old age. Carl likes to work on single subjects now. Takes his time.’

We were sitting in a darkened apartment waiting for a killer to come home so that we could arrest him and then let him go again. It was a sick game we played with Carl Anglin. We knew. He knew we knew. We knew that he knew we knew. And so on.

‘Maybe we should shoot that FBI agent, Mason,’ Doc suggested.

‘And leave the blonde assistant a widow?’

‘You think he might be boning her?’ Doc laughed.

‘Jesus, I hope so.’

‘If I weren’t married, I would’ve offered my services to her long ago.’

‘You’re old enough to be her daddy.’

‘True enough, Jimmy, but so are you.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘The truth is the truth. We’re both too old for the luscious assistant special agent.’

I was thinking about what he’d said about shooting Mason. Not that I was going to pop Mason. It was just that I hadn’t considered going after him as a suspect in a homicide investigation. But why should the Feds be exempt from our scrutiny?

I got a squawk from my handheld radio. I told them I copied, and then I turned the radio off and Doc turned his off as well.

Someone was on the way up. So Doc and I positioned ourselves on either side of the doorway.

The key turned in the lock, and a dark, tall form entered.

When Anglin heard the click of Doc’s .38, he froze.

‘Stand still,’ I told him.

I shoved him into the room, and then I flipped the overhead lights on.

‘Oh — oh. I must’ve killed somebody,’ he said, a grin on his face.

His green eyes seemed to pop out at you at first glance.

‘Where you been, Carl?’ Doc asked.

‘More appropriately, how the hell did you two get into my — ’

Doc showed him the search warrant.

‘You found a conservative judge,’ Anglin said and smiled bleakly.

‘He’s one of your fans,’ I told him.

‘Where you been, Carl?’ Doc asked again.

‘You still driving that Ford?’ Anglin said.

‘Yes,’ I answered. 

‘Get it warmed up. Let’s go downtown so I can call my lawyer and get this whole lame process over with.’

‘What makes you so sure we haven’t got something that ties you to the scene?’ I queried.

‘Shall we just get on with this?’

‘All it takes is a thread, a fiber…Maybe you whacked off in the living room and just one small remnant of your DNA is swimming on her carpet,’ Doc said.