The Subtle Art of Brutality, page 18
“The Three Mile High cops found the murder weapon left at the scene. Some other guy he was selling drugs to.”
“Did they find the shooter?”
“Yeah. Dead.”
“So maybe she killed him,” Riggens looks me in the eye, his youth betraying him. “Like I said. Cock. Slaughter. Fest.”
“No,” I say, hand on his shoulder. “Drug deal gone bad.”
“I dunno, Mr. Buckner.”
“I do. My buddy said so.”
“Well, I should at least give him a call. What’s your buddy’s name?”
“Smith,” I look at Clevenger who knows exactly what happened even though I never told him. He knows me.
“Smith? Okay. What—”
“No. Jones,” I say.
“What? Smith or Jones? Which is it?”
“What?”
“You said Smith and then Jones. Which—”
“You mean Johnson?” Clevenger rolls his eyes. Riggens can’t see it.
“Who?”
“Up in Three Mile High.”
“Yeah. What was your friend’s name that—”
“What are you talking about?”
“No, what are you talking about?”
I turn the kid away from the dry erase board. “Tell you what. This doesn’t sit right to me. I need you to keep working the Shitski angle until he’s alibied out of it.”
“Here are all the pieces,” Riggens says, trying to motion to the board. “Fit ’em together. How can this not sit right with you?”
“I’ve been solving crimes since you were practicing un-doing a bra with your mother’s dirty laundry. Trust my gut when it says something doesn’t sit right in it. Understand me?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Riggens looks away. Looks back. Disappointed.
I slap his shoulder and turn him towards the door. “Dig around for Shitski. Keep your ears out for those other two flame-dicks in your department. Let me know what they turn up. I’m pretty sure they won’t get back with me.”
“Okay.” He takes my card and heads for the door. I look to Clevenger, he looks to me.
“Oh, and, Mr. Buckner?” Riggens says.
“Yeah?”
“I have heard of you. I know you been gone a long time but people still speak your name. And no matter what anybody’s opinion of you is they all say one thing.”
“Really? What?”
“You’re the baddest motherfucker to ever wear this uniform.”
“I could have told you that.”
I think he smiles and leaves. Clevenger closes the blinds and comes back to the board.
“Alright. Catch me up,” he says, hands me the marker.
46
I tell Clevenger about the dope angle. Cherry and Danny. The other buyer, this Pinky Meyers.
“Might be Delilah killed everybody. Burned everything down,” Clevenger says.
“Sure. Maybe,” I say, thinking.
Clevenger looks at me and says: “What now?”
“I start talking to more people.”
He snickers. Then: “Think you might kill one of ’em?”
I look him in the eye and start erasing the board. Ben Boothe’s name disappears. Finally I say: “Yeah. Probably before it’s over.”
47
What I remember is Clevenger beside me at my hospital bed.
I think Molly was with him sometimes. The constant beep of the monitors. The way my arms were restricted by medical tape and IV needles. Having to lay flat on my back. No amount of pain killer took away the dull, pervasive throb of my head wound. The catheter pinched. It was foreign; the sensation of something sneaky trying to invade my body through alternate routes. Slithering.
I never had a lucid head while in the hospital. My memories of that place are as vivid as a strong dream: scenes cut from one moment to the next. No connections or clarity as to why the movie reel of my mind was running the way it did. Dialogue stood out clearly, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell who said what. I might have imagined the whole thing. It was a thousand piece puzzle broken up and scattered just enough to where the picture could be made out even without the pieces fitting together. But the light in the room kept changing colors and the brain never made sense of the puzzle. The function wasn’t there.
So many things fragmented. My mind smearing was so much worse then. The boiling frustration at the onset. The realization that a human brain is eons more complex than any traffic scheme, any computer program simultaneously solving multiple algorithms, more complex than the movement of the winds and the tides and the interplay between all life and nonlife.
The realization that my brain had been derailed. Permanently. The sickening feeling of it. I had arrested guys like me. The smeared. I hated dealing with them. Now I was one.
But one night I know Molly was there. Her voice was a song from out of an old Disney movie. Through the beeps of the monitors she asked: “So, Richard, why did you want to be a cop?”
Anything that came in through my eyes was a blur. The light was too much, the shadows made me afraid. Her hair had a glow; a blonde aura that gently hung about her. An angel’s halo. But the question, it was small talk. I think my answer didn’t make sense. She never brought it up again.
“My mother took one beautiful picture,” I said. “It was on the mantle.”
It wasn’t a real mantle, my folks just called the central shelf a mantle the way they also called Miracle Whip mayonnaise, the way the called Spam dinner and oil-stained scraps of cloth diapers were Kleenex.
The smell of my childhood home greeted me with the memory of a place I have painted black. Home. omeHParked on three wheels and a jack. Utilities being constantly cut off and switched back on. I never liked it when it came back on—even in winter—because that meant that dad had spent his beer money on the utilities. Ergo, he’d become a real motherfucker.
My mother fought her instincts and tried to be domestic, planted flowers once in the community garden. Mrs. Beckman had to tend them, the same way she wound up tending to me as I grew up.
The smell of wet ash rising out of the throw rug mom laid down still filled my nostrils all those years forward. The lights illuminating the highway billboard outside the park we called a neighborhood would drown out the starlight and the moon. Billboard light would rain down through my bedroom window, which was a screen with a tear through it and a towel for a curtain. There was no glass at all. Ever. Got kind of shitty during the winter. I got good at taping up trash bags as patches. They would breathe with the night breeze and whoosh in and out. I’d fall asleep to that constant sound. Like the tide.
“I was seven when she killed herself. My one-picture mother.”
I say killed herself because that’s what it amounts to. What I call suicide Dad called adultery and come-upins. He died in a bar fight long before I ever had the balls to ask how he got away with it. Mom’s suicide.
“Dad stopped in every now and again to make sure the fridge was stocked with beer. It was for the next time he stopped by. Realizing he had some milligram of responsibility for me, he would go to the bulk store and buy a cardboard palette of Spam and some canned vegetable. It changed every time. Lima beans, carrots, stewed tomatoes. Once he bought an entire palette of mixed peppers. Jalapenos were the mildest in the bunch. Left the palettes on the kitchen table with a can opener. It was my breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
I remember sneezing then in the hospital and how much it hurt. “Whenever his bar tab would come due I knew I had to make the palettes last. New ones wouldn’t be forthcoming.”
My throat was dry all the time in the hospital. Not having a cigarette killed me. It was the longest five weeks of my life.
“My first job was at the age of eight. I used it to buy a hot plate. I hate cold Spam, and when they shut off the gas the next time Dad left it alone. He would shower at a girlfriend’s house. But having our gas off, it would ease the financial burden on his drinking. Everything seemed to revolve around that.”
After he died the bar came after me to settle his debt. I gave them the lousy seventeen dollars I had. At age thirteen that’s not bad. The bouncers asked for the other six hundred or so and when I quipped that I couldn’t believe they let him drink that much on credit they didn’t find it funny.
Dad always hit me in the ribs and kidneys. I assume it was to avoid visible marks. Maybe it was because he just got used to never hitting Mom in the face because he wanted her to always be pretty and those were muscle-memory habits he would then use on me.
The bouncers, they hit me in the face.
In the hospital bed, my head swam. I remember that. Molly just sat there, her hand, a loving oasis in the sea of my pure misery, it rested inside mine. Here and there she would squeeze harder. I was worried Clevenger didn’t like it. He never said anything. Looking back on it I’m sure he knew it was for comfort.
“Dad would stare at Mom’s one beautiful picture on the mantle and say: ‘Dick, two other greaser hounds was drooling over your mother, same time I was. Sniffing her skirt. The things men do, you know. And your mother, she picked me. Sometimes I’d think about if she ever wondered what her life woulda been if she’d picked differently.’
“He’d look at me and I’d be afraid to look away, but too mortified to look him directly in his eye. He called that respect. ‘And when I think about her picking somebody else, it’d fill me with rage, Dick. It’d fill me with rage.’”
We had that one-sided conversation several times up to the point my useless old man fucked with the wrong biker and took a face-full of buckshot from twin barrels. Never talk shit when you’re so hammered you’ve pissed yourself unless you know for a fact you are bulletproof.
“I remember one time after he said it’d fill me with rage, me being thirteen and him being within five months of a pine box, us standing in the doorway, he just nodded his head and opened the front door. Then he said: ‘I would think about it all the damn time.’
“Then he left.”
I turned my head towards Molly and my neck scorched from the injection site. “I guess I became a cop because I really liked Dragnet.”
And that was true.
Little Italy in Saint Ansgar’s north end.
I walk into the old barber shop on the corner of 77th and Roma. It’s been a staple in this community for decades. Francis “Temples” Forelli is gently shaving the neck of some greased wop who’s tilted back in an old-fashioned barber’s chair. Five fat guys, all relics of a bygone age where the film The Godfather was a contemporary statement, they’re all lined against one wall and smoking, chattering back and forth. Half their conversations are in their home language. They’re not here for haircuts; this will be the entire day.
I don’t like coming here. They know my face and they don’t like it.
The place is redolent with stale cigarette smoke and stark aftershave. Black and white photographs adorn the walls. Snapshots of the shop just after World War II. Guys long dead standing outside the front door on summer days with a bullet-nosed Studebaker in the background. Big Italian dinner table stuffed full of people. The floor is checkered. There is a candy striper pole outside. Sinatra is crooning from the grave on a record loop somewhere.
Temples has got to be pushing sixty-five but the full head of hair he has is jet black and lustrous with oil, save his brilliant, snow white temples. I guess that’s the nickname’s origin. I brush the snow off my shoes at the welcome mat. The bell jingling above my entrance draws Temples’ eye. He gives a slight acknowledgement and I step off to the side. Leave my coat on. Don’t bother with a seat. I’m not here for a cut.
Temples finishes and cleans up the patron. He snaps the towel off in a crisp, efficient manner, and the old man stands, makes his way back to the other men mumbling back and forth. Temples lights a smoke and walks over to me.
“You know the city banned smoking indoors?” I say, lighting my own.
“To hell with them crooks,” Temples says. Exhales. “Let ’em cite me for it. I know a guy. He’ll make it go away.”
“I bet you do.” I smile. Temples does know guys. That’s why I’m here. “Well, what’s new?”
“Hey, Temples,” one of the old fat guys shouts in a tone meant for the entire block to hear, “get that fucking pig outta here.”
Temples give a side-long look over his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Razor sends his regards, ya damn mook,” another chimes in.
“You know they don’t like me talkin’ to you. Not after Razor got hard time,” Temples says.
“I know.” I look at the men. They’ll remember me until the end of time. It’s why I don’t like coming here. It’s not that they’re anything of a threat; even if one pulled out a sidearm I doubt he could hit the sky if he emptied the magazine.
But, each man is a phone call away from every greaser in town who thinks he’s Joe Pesci in Good Fellas. No one left in this city is that kind of guido badass but they think they are. That’s almost worse. All I need is a bunch of mostly inept wannabe gangsters trying to fill me with lead while they eat cannoli. They won’t hit me but they’ll more than likely shoot up everyone around me. It’s better to play this in a reserved manner.
I say, “Let’s talk outside. It’ll only be a minute.”
“Yeah,” Temples says, “let’s.”
“Razor was a good barber. You had no right—” one of the old men shouts.
“Being a barber has nothing to do with killing his wife,” I say.
“She was a cheatin’ whore!”
“So was he. Is he still in prison?” I ask as Temples put a hand to my shoulder and eases me out the door.
“Whaddya think, ya fuckin’ pig?”
“Oh, that’s right,” I say, smirking. “Later, fellas.”
“Okay. Okay,” Temples says. He shuts the door behind us and the bell jingles inside.
Razor worked here for almost a decade. This was a long time ago now. Razor was known for two things: being a quality barber and cheating on his wife. Notorious for both. Razor was cool with his own infidelities; he was not cool when he discovered his wife had an affair of her own. Razor unceremoniously opened his wife’s neck with his best shaving blade. I guess that’s the nickname’s origin.
Clevenger and I caught the case when her body was found on a trash heap in the city dump. It led here. Razor very proudly admitted what he did. He declared he would not be cuckolded. He declared things were square now.
So Razor is cutting hair in prison. Which is where he will die.
Outside Temples says, “They’re still sore about him. I never cared for the adultery, myself.”
“Thanks for talking to me anyways,” I say.
“Sure.” Temples looks around and says to the world around us, “He was a good barber, I guess.”
Oh well. “I need Paulie Torreno,” I say.
“Now that’s one rat bastard you should put in the slammer.”
“I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have access to the slammer.”
“Well, then. Off the mook.”
“We’ll get there when we get there. Can you get word to him?”
“I can whisper in ears. Yes.”
“Spread the word for tonight at the old Navy pier. I’ll be there at one a.m.”
“Sure. Sure.”
“I’ll wait until one-fifteen.”
“Sure. Sure.”
“This stays between us, right?”
“You need to ask?”
“I guess not,” I say. “Thanks, Temples. Good to see you again.”
“Sure. Sure. Now get outta here before those pissy sons-a-bitches inside hold this against me.”
Navy pier.
1:12 a.m. I rented a car for this occasion. Some four-door sedan job: silver, tinted, nothing fancy. Looks like every other car on the road, which is why I picked it. I’m sure they’ll be pissed I’m chain-smoking inside of it but oh well. I’ve smoked half a pack waiting for this jack off.
My hand lifts to the gear shift. I’m leaving and then in my rearview Paulie Torreno comes walking towards me from some shadow. He pauses ten feet back and huddles his face in front of his hands. A few orange flickers and he’s dragging off his own cigarette. He starts walking again.
He comes to the driver side window and my .44 Magnum is in my lap, pointed his direction. He gets to the window, looks in and sees the iron.
“I been set up?” he says, blowing smoke in my face.
“No. I just don’t trust you.”
“Well, you wanted to see me, Dick. What’s on your mind?”
“Sit down inside.”
“I like the cold.”
“See, that’s strange. I hear you like heat.”
“People say things. I like the cold.”
“I didn’t ask what you like. I said sit down. We need to talk business.”
Torreno drags deep off the smoke and his aging eyes turn to slits. He lowers the cigarette and gives me a hard stare before suddenly smiling bright.
“Oh, what the hell,” he says, cheery. “I ain’t got nothing to worry about from old Dick Buckner anymore. You can’t even write me a parking ticket these days.”
He walks around the hood and comes to the door. Swings it open. Plops down into the seat.
Paulie Torreno is one of the main firebugs who had his heyday working for the mob years back. In the ’70s, if a building burnt down, Paulie did it. The mob liked Paulie because he had a knack for being thorough and for getting away with it. He’s too old for constant work now. He spends his days doing whatever retired mob guys do. How he ever came into my sights is forever lost but his name used to get circulated a lot in the PD. Somehow he never went down for a torch job. Not even the jobs where there were people inside.
Seemed to be a lot of those by the end.
Whoever did the houses connected to Delilah Boothe, if it was a pro, Torreno will know something. Torreno is an animal. He’s a serial killer with a Bic lighter. This is a long shot but I cover my bases.
