Cutter (44 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The hospital was ten minutes from my house. Natalie was sitting in Emergency, her arm wrapped in gauze. Her face was ashen. She leaned back against the bench as if she was likely to fall down if she tried to stand up.

I sat down next to her, but I didn’t dare ask her how she was feeling. I could see she was shaky.

‘What’d the man say?’

‘Take me home, Jimmy, will you? He says I shouldn’t drive because of the painkillers. Whatever he gave me, I feel like I’m riding the airwaves.’

I got her to her feet and guided her to the exit.

*

‘You couldn’t stay in forensics.’

‘No, Jimmy P. I could not.’

‘So what’s the story — I mean your version?’

‘Kelly and I got called into a domestic. We walk in the front door, uninvited, because the battle’s going on between common-law lovers. We enter and all we see are arms and legs flying, like a barroom brawl. She’s got a broken bottle, and I catch it on the forearm. Sixteen stitches. I lose a quart of oil. No big deal.’

‘What about Danny Kelly?’ He was the other uniform, her partner. 

‘He is very big-time pissed when he sees me leaking on this domestic’s rug. He pops the sweetie with the jagged-bottle piece. He nails her on the kneecaps. The bout is over. But hubby is angry that dearie is injured and rolling around the floor. Comes at Danny and me with a broom handle. Danny repeats the swat to the old man’s kneecaps and dow
n
h
e
goes. Now everybody’s moaning and groaning, me included. Then our backup arrives and I still got enough in my tank to make it to the hospital and then you show up with your own personal cavalry ... You look tired.’

‘I
look tired? You ought to catch your own act.’

It was three-forty in the morning. We were into the dregs of winter. It seemed like the change to spring would never take place. We had ice and hail and snow. It had been a putrid March. And our wedding day was set for April 23rd. Natalie had us running in circles trying to complete all the details for the ceremony.

I picked up her injured arm and I kissed the fingers sticking out of all that gauze.

‘You’re going to need plastic surgery.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. She finally started to cry.

‘I will not do this,’ she muttered. But the tears came anyway. ‘One month till the wedding and this bitch has to screw me up. I’ll have a scar on this arm and you won’t want me.’

‘You say that again and I’ll swat your fanny.’

She straightened up toward me and kissed me.

‘You’re not all turned on by perfect forearms, then?’

‘Not especially, Natalie, although I’m not happy this sweetheart hurt you ... When’s the plastic surgery?’

‘Next week.’

‘What really pisses me off is this wench cut me off tonight. Now it’s really personal.’

‘I wouldn’t worry, Jimmy. I think I can still manage to generate a little heat for the both of us.’

She straightened up and let me have it again, right on the lips. I picked her up and carried her as gently as I could into her bedroom.

*

It hit me when I was going through some casework downtown. Plastic surgery. That had to be Marco’s next move. It was radical, but it was the only thing that was going to keep him on the streets — unless he tried to leave the area or the country. Which would he try? A new face or a new location? I asked Doc Gibron.

‘New face ... But who’d do him now that he’s so famous?’

*

‘There’s a guy. Some rich bastard up in the burbs. Lake Forest, I think,’ Billy told us. He had relocated to a crib in Cicero. He’d been moving every week, he told us.

‘Guy named Richmond. John’s got a fuckin’ lien on his property, you might say, but I don’t know the reason ... You think Farm Guy wants a new puss, is that it?’

I thanked my cousin and told him to keep mobile. When he caught my drift, his smile turned to something a lot more somber and serious.

*

‘When do you expect Dr Richmond in?’ Doc asked the nurse.

‘He’s taken a two-week vacation. I think it’s to the Caymans, but I’m not sure. It’s odd because he never confirmed his destination and he always leaves me a number where I can reach him. You know, in case a patient needs to reach him.’

I thanked the good-looking redhead and we departed.

‘You think the good doctor has straightened her nose and enhanced her features?’ Gibron asked me.

* 

We tried Richmond’s house, but we got no answer. We walked around to the rear of this multi-million-dollar estate where he resided in Lake Forest. We knocked at the rear entrance but there was no response.

Doc saw the jimmy marks near the door handle. When he pressed that handle, the door popped open. So Gibron went back out front and radioed for backup from the County Police. We didn’t need a warrant because I thought we had probable cause to enter Richmond’s home.

County pulled up in five minutes flat. They didn’t tolerate creepers in this neighborhood. Burglars, thieves, breaking-and-entering experts.

The County deputies entered the house with Doc and me at the back door. We walked in with our weapons drawn. It was unlikely the guy who’d broken in was still here, but you never knew. We saw no car parked close to this three-acre lot.

There was nothing on the main floor. They had an old-fashioned spiral staircase that I assumed led to the bedrooms above us. I led the way up, but we were not shouting out that we were down there. Doc and the pair of County deputies were behind me.

The smell hit me as soon as I’d reached the halfway point on the spiral staircase. I began to hurry upward. My pulse and heartbeat were beginning to skyrocket.

I found the girls first. They had separate bedrooms at the top of the flight. They were young teenagers, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. Their throats had been cut and they had died in their beds. Their eyes were closed as if they had expired in their sleep. The four of us walked in and out of the two bedrooms and headed down the hall.

The doctor and his wife were in the master bedroom. Their throats had been likewise slashed. Dr Richmond had had his hands cut off. They lay at the foot of the bed. Mrs Richmond had fared worse. She lay on top of the bedspread with her intestines exposed and her head nearly severed. I was betting that she was missing some of her major organs, but I’d leave the examination to the ME. The strangest item here was the fact that there appeared to have been no struggle. The teenagers looked like they simply never woke up, and the couple in this room seemed to have never been aroused into a struggle either.

‘He used the ether on them. At least they never saw what hit them,’ Doc offered as an explanation.

‘You’re probably right.’

One of the County deputies was new on the job, so he ran toward the closest toilet. The other deputy appeared to be turning a shade of green.

I nodded for him to take a walk down the hall too. It was not something just any stomach could handle.

‘He didn’t stay out of circulation very long, did he?’ Doc asked. ‘Or maybe he was pissed about the job the physician there did on him. Chopped off the doc’s moneymakers.’

‘I think he was making sure Richmond was out of play. Then he decided to take advantage of the missus. She’s about mid-thirties, no?’

‘Yeah, Jimmy. But it’s hard to tell age on a slaughtered animal. She doesn’t look quite human, the way he left her.’

‘Fortuna was right. This guy’s a
n
animal
e
. We probably ought to let Jackie Morocco’s people handle him.’

Doc looked over at me and didn’t even blink. He knew mindless anger and frustration when he heard it.

We made the calls and pulled all of our people in place. The Medical Examiner, the forensics people — both city and County.

It was our guy Karrios, of course. So County would let us in the door. I didn’t know of any outfit outside the CPD that would want The Farmer dumped on them to handle alone. And the FBI would shortly be on scene as well. I called Terry Morrissey, the agent working with us, and he said his group of investigators would be arriving soon. Dr Richmond’s estate would be loaded with strangers. 

‘Why’d he have to kill the girls?’ I asked my partner.

Doc grew distant at the question. He went into hibernation with the deaths of two young black girls a few years back, and now I was sorry I asked the question.

Doc got out his little notebook and Bic pen and went to work.

*

‘Jesus Christ. He hacked up the guy’s whole family?’ Billy asked. This time we were in Oak Lawn, on the southwest side.

‘Two little girls. Just becoming young women,’ I explained to him. ‘Billy, it’s time you told us who The Farmer’s contact was. It’s too late to worry about getting whacked by whoever it was in the Outfit. And I have the honest feeling that Marco Karrios doesn’t deal with Big John directly. So how about telling us who it was who opened business with the capo’s crew.’

Billy lit a cigarette. I never saw him smoke before.

‘Put that fuckin’ thing out. You’ll gag the three of us,’ Doc commanded.

Billy stubbed out the butt.

‘Oh man. This’ll make sure they button my drawers, Jimmy.’

‘You’re dead if we don’t get them before they get you. You’re smart enough to figure the move here, Billy,’ I told him.

‘Oh man, oh man. You’ll find me with a fuckin’ cattle prod up my heinie.’

‘Come on, come on. It’s too late for all this shit,’ Doc reminded him.

He picked up the dead cigarette out of the ashtray and rubbed it to dust.

‘It’s Sal Donofrio. That’s this guy’s connection — but don’t think Big John doesn’t know what his troops are up to, Jimmy. Fortuna’s no fuckin’ cherry in this. He’s just pissed his old squeeze, his sister, got whacked on the deal. What you said about John maybe not knowing about The Farmer’s business? That’s bullshit. Sal ain’t smart enough to pull it off ... They say Fortuna’s got crocodile tears. Remember that, when we were kids? He can fool you that he’s all sincere about something, and then he bites your fuckin’ head off. Like a crocodile. He ain’t clean on this thing, Jimmy P. But he’s got a personal thing with this guy Karrios now. And he’s got the people to find the son of a bitch maybe even before you do, and if he does, I’m fuckin’ dead. You guys gotta win this one, coz. I’m beggin’ you.’

I’d never seen him so desperate. I would have liked to assure him that we’d get to Karrios and Fortuna, but I couldn’t lie to him. He was right about the miserable odds.

*

‘Hello, Sal,’ Doc said, as we sat down in the interview box downtown.

‘You guys get randy, I’m lawyering up,’ the short, powerfully muscled Sicilian told us.

‘We’re dutifully threatened,’ Gibron conceded.

‘We know you’re hooked to Karrios,’ I said to him.

‘Case closed. I want an attorney.’

‘Listen, asshole. Your lawyer’s not going to save you from Jackie Morocco when Big John finds out you been doing business for a second time with Karrios. He doesn’t know that you put Marco onto the plastic surgeon, does he? He’ll figure it out. We did. Then what? You’re going to need some cosmetic surgery yourself when the Big Dog finds out you been cutting your own deals ... And what happened? Did Marco threaten you? Is that why you were so hot to start the business back up again? ... When we catch up to Marco Karrios, and we will, he’s going to dump you right into John Fortuna’s lap. Either way you jump, you’re dead.’

‘I want my lawyer,’ Donofrio repeated to me.

‘Sure, Sal. But there’s one deal that might save your ass.’ 

He didn’t ask for his counselor this time.

‘We put you away safe after you give us John Fortuna. We got the FBI standing right on the other side of that one-way mirror. They’ll get you into witness protection, John goes away for life, and we have our hands free to deal with Marco and Marco only ... Now, before you give me the code-of-silence rejection, you better think about what’s best for you. Marco didn’t tell you he was going to whack the doctor and his whole family, did he? He probably made you think the two of you are still business partners the way you were. You can’t be stupid enough to think he’s going to let you go on breathing when he can try to set up his own business with his own contacts. You know how bright this piece of shit is. You don’t think he can fly solo, without you and the crew? You that dumb, Sal?’

Donofrio sat motionless. Then he sat up and folded his hands in front of him.

‘You got paper on me? ‘Cause if you don’t, I’m leaving.’

Doc opened the door. It appeared at first as if Sal was debating on getting out of his chair. But he finally did and he walked slowly out into the hall. Just as he was about to disappear, he turned toward Doc and me. It looked like he had something to tell us. But the moment passed, and then he turned and walked out.

*

‘That was our best shot at him. I really thought he might take the deal,’ Doc said.