The Holy Terror (10 page)

“Green, are we?” Morisette came this close to cracking a grin.

“Like you’re the seasoned veteran...” Rizzi grinned back.

Truth be told, they’d seen worse. Back in ‘82, when Gecht and Korkoralis were (according to the defense lawyers: allegedly) slicing off prostitutes’ breasts and eating them during satanic rituals. They’d both been there when the last victim was found near Burnham Harbor. And Morisette was working mounted patrol in the forest preserves when they found the remains of the DeSouza boy in the tree, missing five years.

It just didn’t help for Rizzi to have seen all that deli meat under the floréscent counter lights in the corner window. And now standing ankle-deep in old trash, staring down at a severed leg at the base of the wheelchair, a partial hand next to the wheel closest to the street.

Both limbs were already stiff and grey from the cold and the gravel and shit the wind was blowing down the alley again.

* * *

By eight o’clock, the alley crowd was crowded with the men who only got together when someone cashed in their chips, voluntarily or otherwise.

Bervid, the Assistant M.E., speculated that, due to the lividity and possible muscle contractions, the owner of the severed limbs should be considered deceased. He didn’t make it a joke, because it was a big enough yuk that everyone there had to wait in the damn cold so that he could tell them what they already knew.

There was minimal blood patterns, and the thought of a killer with a blowtorch seemed that much saner. Unless he was cocky enough to be bringing the body parts back to the scene of the abduction, after killing the crippled man elsewhere.

The photographer snapped away, the lab tech leaned against the alley wall and caught a cockroach in his collar for the effort. Morisette was informed by the day bartender at the Rialto that a guy in a chair often hanged behind the bar, back by the steam vents. Name might be Hatch or Hutch, and, yes, he bought a bottle of Night Train most every time he was in possession of ninety-eight cents plus state sales tax.

Morisette went back to the scene with the possible I.D. to find Detectives Daves and Petitt from the Violent Crimes Unit checking the alley for clues and bagging several pieces of evidence that the tech had already dusted.

The bags were labelled like this:

* * *

The Forensics Lab was on the sixth floor of the James G. Riordan Police Headquarters on Eleventh and State, renamed in 1981 after the highest ranking officer—a deputy lieutenant—was killed in a shootout at the Marina Towers.

Waiting for the elevator in the lobby, a television reporter investigating corruption in the Marquette District overheard the technician and photographer talking about the most recent killing. That night, the newscast played it up for all it was worth, one bottle blond anchorperson making a plea bordering on tears for the Painkiller to stop attacking men who couldn’t defend themselves properly.

Later in the newscast, conveniently fresh-faced again in a taped segment, the newswoman began a five-part exposé on diet fads.

“Wish you could be here for the party.” Mike Surfer’s raspy voice was overlapped by the clacking of pool balls. He was wheeling alongside Gramma on her left, down the red-and-white carpeted center aisle of the Marclinn.

At one of the tables that hadn’t been lowered for those in chairs, Reve Towne and Evan Shustak played a game of Eight Ball. The two often ran errands for the residents. Reve was a stunning henna-haired girl of twenty who had just started a freelance writing career, after graduating from Columbia that spring, whereas her companion, Evan, fancied himself a superhero who answered to the name The American Dream. It was Reve’s plan to write about Evan one day, but not out of love or money. She certainly felt a liking for the twenty-nine year old cerebral palsy victim, but the story she would tell would not be one of exploitation.

“Hush, now, Michael.” Wilma placed a pale fish of a hand over Surfer’s own. To her right, Etch was furiously writing something in his notebook. “You’ll be fine with all these friends... Reve and Evan will be there, right?” She said this last in their general direction, and both echoed the fact. “And that fellow you mentioned, Vic was his name...?”

“Oh, I know it be time you was visiting the cemetery.”

“Why, you won’t even miss me, you anchorhead!” She continued on as if maybe he was a news commentator: the 5:00 television personalities were constantly interrupted, contradicted, and generally put in their place by the Wilma Jerricksons of the world. “And it’s not like your Surf City party is going to be the last one the boys here ever throw!”

“Don’t know why I went an planned this thing for the ninth...”

“Hush now, Michael.”

“But it’s not like I forget when Madee’ya’s day rolls around, and I can even remember the last time I be talking with Chubby Love and Reggie.” His head moving back and forth in disbelief at his, to him, stupidity. “I’m supposed to be knowin’ your special days, Gramma!”

“I said hush..” She put a finger over his shunt, took it away almost as quickly. “Gritty. You make sure you clean it after dinner, Michael!”

“Aw...” Surfer’s voice was a raspy whisper when he didn’t cover the plastic. He wasn’t falling for her attempt to change the subject.

“Aww...” She said right back. “Just keep an eye that Karl he takes good pictures. Tell him to get one of you under that sign I colored.”

Both looked back at a 16x20 placard that was hanging above a row of potted plants. Brilliant reds and blues helped it stand out on the wall of herringbone grey:

SURF CITY

Come hang ten on Friday, December 9 1988

It wasn’t until she crayoned the date in red that Wilma had realized that the day was also the tenth anniversary of her husband Herbert’s death. Later that day, she would wheel out to her normal “sightseeing” perch by the Chicago Theater, caddy corner to the Marclinn. Instead of coming back, though, today her nephew Henry was picking her up at the end of his shift. Henry worked for Streets & San, and Wilma got such a kick out of being lifted into the cab of the blue city vehicle.

Both Surfer and Gramma sat, and chatted about other things, and soon after they waved goodbye to Reve and Evan, who would be by later for the party, Surfer looked over at Wilma Jerrickson to find her softly snoring.

His thoughts drifted to his own “special day”— August 2
^nd
—the day his only lover had died. Mike Surfer had met Madee’ya Stonewell in 1972, a young girl with muscular dystrophy attending City-Wide College and majoring in business. He had been Mike Surles back then, a messenger for Lassa Services on DesPlaines. The “Surfer” part was unthought of: the crippling arthritis born of dozens of childhood falls, an equal number of Chicago and Gary, Indiana winters, had not yet set into his hips and knees.

Not all that many people seemed to be bothered by Surles’ physical condition, but he was also mostly ignored. Madee’ya, sloe-eyed and light-skinned, was the first to show any physical attraction towards him,

Their living together had been forged in the roiling pit of unwary confidences specific to their times. Almost two decades ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and gang members considered themselves part of social clubs instead of factions in religious organizations, they shared a garden apartment on Federal Street, near the Robert Taylor Homes. Racial discrimination, at least that of the blatant kind, was in its death throes. But black on black crime will always be a kind of plague in this city.

The bullet intended for another—weren’t they all?—that took Madee’ya’s life also served to cripple Surles. He soon gave in to the chair, to the street. The street gave him independence, and he understood why Reggie Givens liked staying on those streets, playing his cards for days at a time, shacking up at another hotel for weeks at a time. Surfer had done that routine to sing out the seventies.

Done did it good. Spent a decade in the vicinity of the Viceroy on West Madison, starving for tears and liquors. If it wasn’t for the Marclinn and Gramma, well, he could very easily have ended up like Screaming Mimi, up at the St. Benedict’s Flats, or Blackstone Shatner, a man who spent his days huddled in the shadows of the Congress Parkway off ramp, drinking Johnnie Walker out of a faded Dynamo detergent measuring cup.

Once, he thanked the Lord above for a woman named Madee’ya. If it wasn’t for Gramma, though...

He watched as she slept, the dark hairs on her upper lip moving from left to right as she quietly snored. At torso level on the white pillar behind her was a bronze plaque. It was a gift presented to the Marclinn five years ago by Randall Andrew Sink, a resident who had moved to Torrance, California, after selling his first novel, a journal entitled Paingrin. As Wilma Jerrickson’s chest rose and fell, her hair touched the bronze, making Surfer to think of the sun and the moon.

The plaque was the most quoted of the former resident’s personal entries. It read:

LOVER DOLL

Eleven pm: the nightly tryst with me the empty vessel. I arch my back to receive it. A moment’s relief to complete a task. Muscles tighten, Paingrin purrs. How long since I lost my virginity?

Randall Andrew Sink

Chicago: March 5 1984

Reading the words made him think of Madee’ya once again. Abruptly, Wilma uttered a snore that sounded like a plane going into a stall. When the imaginary plane crashed into her chest, she awoke.

“I said, I’ll tell Herbert you said hello, and that you’ve been watching over me, Michael.” She grabbed his calloused hand and kissed it softly.

* * *

And so it was that he had been walking down State Street, just north of Madison, content upon having just purchased a salmon-colored shirt from Chess King. He had actually spoken a few lines to the sales girl. Her name was Candie. She had liked his Australian jacket.

And here he was on the street, smiling. It was early rush hour, and he felt certain and secure. Moving through the crowds at any pace faster than the trudging majority, as well as competing with commuters rushing single-mindedly to catch their subway trains and buses, one had to have the grace and perseverance of Walter Payton or Brian Piccolo. The Bears linebacker who had died of cancer had always been a personal favorite of Father’s. And it was worse in the summer months, when hip-hop wannabes and bongo players took up two whole storefronts with their pointless gyrations.

He was standing next to the kiosk for the Washington Street subway when he spotted his next chosen one. It wasn’t like a fever withdrawal from the evils of drugs or alcohol had suddenly overcome him; he wasn’t gouging canals in the sides of his face, or hallucinating imaginary fifteen-foot clowns dangling from the fire escapes of the old State-Lake Building.

No, it wasn’t anything as simple as that. It was a head rush from his god—Haid had once heard a song entitled “Drop Kick Me, Jesus” and it made sense to him—his true father, The Lord, a gurgling orgasm of sudden rapture, of sedate knowledge and understanding barreling through his senses like a runaway train.

A divine feeling, perhaps the same kind that Uncle Vince had gotten from his drinking, from forcing Haid to walk around the Tooker Place apartment half-nude. He enjoyed being controlled. Now, with this... this power, he was a puppet to a HIGHER FORCE, and that meant that martyrdom was his. But there was so much to do, so many to take with him...

He watched the old woman in the wheelchair crossing Randolph Street. She would be happier inside of him, with Heaven only a breath away.

Behind him, an Electronics and Pawn Shop was blaring the same radio station over a dozen stereo systems. A band named Cutting Crew was singing a song...

“I just died in your arms tonight, it must have been something you did...”

He crossed the street to follow the woman. Snatches of conversation: two black women talking about their jobs at a credit collection company on Michigan, loud voices punctuated by louder munches of caramel corn, jabbering about Gee-Mac, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, dressed in black trench coats, their brown hands and red fingernails diving into the bags of corn like predators’ claws. A bike messenger for one of the law firms singing “Spread your wings and fly” as he weaved south against the red light. The heady smell of damask roses from Callen’s Flowers, almost obscene in the bone-chilling twilight.

The woman in the chair would not have to worry about the cold much longer, Haid thought.