The Holy Terror Page 13

  On the sixteenth, a partly decomposed body was found on the Salt Street underpass. Assistant M.E. Bervid decided that the probable cause of death was exposure. Limbs that had hooked partially severed were most likely eaten by dogs before the corpse froze to the ground.

  A wheelchair was found by the Our Lady of The Lake rectory on Sheridan that same week, but Area 4 Homicide felt fairly certain that their killer was only hunting in the Loop. The chair at the church showed no sign of recent use.

  The temperatures would drop to thirty below, a harbinger for the days to come. And though everyone involved, the street cops and Detectives Daves and Petitt included, knew to whom the severed leg found in the Benton Place alleyway on the tenth belonged to, the chief Medical Examiner for Cook County flew in an anthropologist from Indianapolis to run tests at the Harrison Street morgue.

  The Mardinn residents held a makeshift ceremony and Mike Surfer lit a votive candle to the statue of St. Dymphna, near St. Sixtus’s west wall, that entire week.

  In what was perhaps the unkindest cut of all, because of its impersonality, on December 20th, the city paid a $24.4 million subsidy to three wealthy developers that they might build an office complex where the Spaniel block of buildings, including the Mardinn, stood. It was the largest urban renewal incentive in Chicago history. Designed by architect Helmut Jahn, the base structure of the office-over-retail building included a glassy structure that would connect, in a visual sense, the Marshall Field department store with the Picasso structure in Daley Plaza. The developers, PG Anderson Ventures, guaranteed relocation of all the tenants of what the city planning department referred to as Block 37. Initial plans had been authorized by the Washington administration, way back in 1983.

  This was too much for Mike Surfer. First Gramma, now the entire Mardinn. The city wasn’t even going to wait for the Painkiller to get them all. He stopped cleaning his shunt three times a day, and didn’t have Evan Shustak buy him new cleansing straws at the Walgreens.

  Three days before Christmas, a body was found frozen solid into a wheelchair next to the Lincoln statue in Grant Park. The corpse was completely intact, although one of the fingers snapped off when the Crime Scene Unit photographer dropped his flash bar on the hand of the dead body. Life went on as it does, whether you want it to or not.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve, Victor Tremulis (which was still his name on Honore Street, you) watched Tour of Duty and Hunter, drank several cans of Pepsi, and argued with his mother, who ended every sentence the same way. “When are you going to find a job that pays real money, you ?”

  On the ten o’clock news that night, another elderly man in a wheelchair was reported missing near the Hotel Leland on South Wabash and 14th. He would show up later, after an all day holiday toot, drunk and meandering, but his initial disappearance prompted a local news anchor to again plead with The Painkiller to please stop killing the crippled citizens of the Loop.

  Her constant wringing of the string of pearls around her neck was as much for ratings as it was for her own conscience. Tremulis often watched this woman with the bleached blond hair, and others like her. The ones who told the city what was happening to it each and every day and even finding time to joke about it.

  Maybe helping to catch this Painkiller was his ticket out. He was in his mid-thirties and still living with his parents in their safe little rent-controlled building. A domineering mother and a hard-working, hard-drinking father. In his best case fantasy, he’d move into an apartment with Reve. In the second best scenario, the Painkiller would kill him.

  What he was living now was the type of family scene that was the favorite of psychological profiles on unknowns like the Zodiac Killer or the guy in today’s back pages of the Trib whose claim to fame is killing prostitutes in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

  Sons killing their time until dear old dad buys the farm and Every Mother’s Son can then blame it on the bitch goddess mommy when he gets caught Ted Bundying the co-ed population of middle America. Or so the paperbacks in the current events section at Kroch’s and Brentano’s would advertise. Or the decomposing corpses along the interstate would say, if they could speak of their ultimate knowledge.

  The Dziennik Chicagoski from the day after the Surf City party sit on the bottom tray of the coffee table, he could read it through the glass.

  ZNALEZIONO ZWLOKI KOBIETY

  it read. Woman found slain, simply said.

  Did Wilma Jerrickson have any children? Her body was even identified positively. No funeral.

  His father wasn’t an out-of-the-closet-finally gay, or an in-the-children’s-bedroom abuser. Mother Diedre and Father weren’t yuppies or yippies or dope heads or deadheads.

  They were for the most part loving individuals who made do with what God tossed their way. A traditional second generation Polish family who couldn’t understand their prodigal son.

  He thought back, during a commercial for the new Michelob Dry, about the newswoman finishing her plaintive request in the appropriately sober tone, as good as any recovering and/or born again fill in the blank on Oprah or Geraldo might. He was thinking about her still when the next commercial for Lucky Dog dog food came on.

  Tremulis reflected on his life at home, his too few nights working at the Hard Rock Cafe for people who gave a shit about him. He thought about how someone could go through the hardships Mike Surfer had and still smile every goddamn day. The others at the Marclinn, as well.

  Szasz had lost his legs in the Amtrak wreck in 1974, O’Neil his arms in Lebanon, when the US Embassy was bombed. Or so he had heard. He wondered if the new generation of cripples were any prouder. The armless men with glasses never wore artificial limbs. Maybe it was a military upbringing. Semper Fi and all that.

  Colin Nutman’s story was an odd one. His father was stationed at USAF Bentwaters in 1956 and was exposed to some weird radiation from an unidentified object his Venom night fighter chased over Suffolk. He didn’t know about the poisoning until after Mable Nutman was three months pregnant.

  And what of the people who hadn’t found refuge at the Mardinn? Where did Blackstone Shatner fall? Or Reggie Givens, who couldn’t stay at the Mardinn three days in a row without needing to hustle? Mike had mentioned him several times, and Colin had told him that most everybody thought the Painkiller had gotten him.

  He wondered what kind of childhood Reve had that she would hang out with freaks. That’s what they all were. And Evan Shustak, what the hell had happened to him to make him hide behind the mock display of The American Dream?

  Most of all, he wondered what kind of father could call the Painkiller his son.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Patrol Log of The American Dream

  Sat Dec 24 1988

  AS I HAVE BEEN DOING SINCE THE TRAGADYTHE TENTH PRIMARILEY SET ON FINDING THE PAINKILLER.

  8:15AM called 16th District (Chicago Aye). Nothing from night shift on Painkiller. Spoke w/ Officer Ileana Cantu. Recall the name, poss. from murder investigation of lawyer murdered on Lake Street El over summer months)?)

  8:20AM Heard incredible story from Lynch about subway murder the night before. Had head the story from O’Malley the precinct captain. Even with ALL THAT’S BEEN GOING ON this is still hard to believe.

  * * *

  “…. they found some guy he actually exploded or somethin’ down round Roosevelt Street.”

  “You’re shittin’,” Lynch said. Something to tell The American Dream, for sure! Maybe the guy would give him a few bucks toward blow. “Exploded.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Exploded,” Lynch repeated.

  “Got shit in your ears, Addict? He fucking exploded.”

  “Shit, don’t that beat all.” Lynch then told O’Malley that he would vote for the proper candidate in the mayoral election coming up, and the precinct captain left.

  Minutes later, the American Dream walked up, making his rounds of Connors Park. Behind where the two of them stood in conversation was a row of abandon
ed buildings that once housed expensive strip joints. In those days, the late seventies, The American Dream could not do much to help the police deter such crime. He was not of drinking age. He listened to Lynch talk, and while the black man gesticulated with long, delicate fingers, he recalled the gaudy neon of The Candy Store and Selina’s KitKat Club. The street had smelled of a different kind of desperation back then.

  “It was on the news this morning, didn’t make the papers,” Lynch said. “Kepp sayin’ you should get yourself a Walkman.”

  “We’ve been through this, friend,” The American Dream replied. “It would hinder my crime fighting tactics.”

  “Or, how about—” Lynch was fresh with ideas.

  “I anticipate your thrust again, Lynch, and you know how the police feel about me as well”

  “Yea,” Lynch said, leaving it at that.

  “Do you think it’s that guy what everyone’s calling The Painkiller?” He said before The American Dream was out of earshot. “Do you think?”

  * * *

  11AM am angry and hurt that the police did nor report the subway incedent to me.

  Unless UNLESS it has NOTHING to do with the pain killer himself. Sick people in the world today.

  1220PM Am sitting in Mariano Park hoping for news. Rush Street deserted. One man walking buy. Singing.

  Got me a newborn son.

  Gonna buy my newborn son a gun.

  Gonna buy my newborn son a gun.

  1230PM Who put me on this world, in this city?

  Who put this world in me...

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ten hours before, down the State Street subway line. Somewhere between Monroe and Roosevelt:

  Strutting down the stairwell on Dearborn like Elvis in his prime, proud as a boy saying the word cunt into the mirror for the first time. Father had told him that it was time to cruise the trains. Let’s forget this shit about walking the streets in twenty below or what the fuck ever.

  Haid hated the subways, except maybe those around the airport, where Jane Byrne dedicated each of the O’Hare extension stops in honor of James Doyle, William Fahey, and Richard O’Brian: three cops murdered in February of 1982, the latter two shot dead after attending the funeral of the first.

  The long tunnel connecting the Jefferson Park-O’Hare line with the 95th Howard line was empty. It might have been because of the Christ-Moses freezer box up top, or more likely just one of those odd moments, a break in the midnight clockwork.

  The fare lady paid him no mind as he flashed his Special Users pass against the window like it was a badge or something. It had taken four letters from his Uncle Vince’s neurologist to the CTA to get him the pass four years back. In this city, you weren’t physically or mentally handicapped, you were a Special User. Go figure.

  How it was, there were a ton of pedways—connecting tunnels—between buildings and the transit lines. In addition the west-northwest route connected to the north-south route by a similar tunnel which ran the length of the alley between Dearborn and State. During the day, the tunnel was brimming with commuters from the North side avoiding just one block of walking above ground to their banks and offices in the West Loop. During the night, the bums and the musicians came out to play their dirges to that part of the population that took to the streets when the sun went down, the clubbers and the flashers. Haid had often seen men in wheelchairs in this tunnel.

  But tonight it was empty.

  So now what? Walk, just walk. Warm up a bit. He came out of the tunnel around Monroe Street, boarded up maintenance rooms behind the escalators leading upwards. Piss stains on the cement stairs. There were a few people sitting on a wooden bench next to a Hindu-run newsstand. All they sold were smokes and stroke magazines. A TV screen above the newsstand flashed useless information about bus schedules and ads for cigarettes.

  There was plenty of desolation between the shacks and the pillars alongside the tracks and the people who didn’t care as long as it wasn’t them. Across the tracks leading north, Haid saw ads for the Penthouse Pet of the Year and the Bill Murray film Scrooged!

  To his left, he saw, blocks north, the lights of the Washington Street platform. And a man he would know as Lex Bastoni.

  * * *

  Haid first saw him as a white guy with curly black hair and blue jeans with shiny knees. The guy was sitting in the shadows of a maintenance shack, near an overhead read and white sign that read

  HOWARD

  trains ahead (typesetting note: smaller size)

  and which had several squirts of ancient tobacco on its underside. Haid had been thinking that all the white cripples must hide themselves out in the suburbs, like Hinsdale and Buffalo Grove. Well, if they were in the city, they certainly weren’t on the streets. When the man introduced himself as Lex, Lex Bastoni and extended a hand with long polished fingernails, Haid was thinking on what the man wanted to confess to him.

  Haid pulled his hand out of his suede jacket and shook Bastoni’s. A firm handshake, but half-hearted on Haid’s part.

  “Name’s Frank.” An errant page of a discarded magazine slid off of the platform on the El tracks. It was an ad for that chick on TV who says “Don’t hate me for my hair.” The chick’s face flipped over and kissed the rail. Haid watched this, then continued. “Out late, huh?”

  Like the guy had a home. Jee-sus, the epitome of small talk. Bastoni’s hands were dry and chapped. Didn’t have a cup in sight, either.

  “Nowhere to go,” Bastoni replied in a gravelly voice, making a small attempt at a small smile.

  “Same here,” from Haid. “Got a story? Makes you different from everybody else, you got a story to tell.”

  “Everybody got the same goddamn story to tell,” Bastoni said, shrugging. “The lawyers and the bums, ‘n people like you and me,” he itemized.

  “Shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Haid said, moving so that he was stepping in front of the wheelchair. The chair hooked fairly new, and was colored a powder blue. The wheels also seemed to have just come down from a display. A couple of dozen feet down, a small group of post-teenagers made their way down the broken escalator. They walked toward the platform nearest Haid and Bastoni, but not where they would be in direct sight.

  “Don’t go preachin’ at me now,” Bastoni said wearily.

  “Preaching is something I don’t do.” Haid replied honestly.

  The man shrugged with apparent understanding. One of the young adults that entered the subway turned on a cassette player. The radio was tuned to one of the Chicago stations that played “yuppie oldies,” songs from the early seventies.

  “Me, I’m just walkin’ around,” Haid said. “Stayin’ out of the cold, doin’ my best to, at least.”

  Bastoni glanced at the kids with the radio, and Haid caught it then and spoke up.

  “Oh, hey.” He held his hands palms up, the swirls in the first three fingers on each hand a faint blue from the liniment. “I’m not going to roll you, really.”

  Bastoni looked at him, neither curious or leery. Same kind of look Dolezal had given him back at the Cass Hotel. Tired of it all.

  “Find myself thinking too much when I’m up on the street,” Haid gave it conviction. What the hell, he was always thinking about what Father wanted.

  “Now I hear you,” Bastoni said, and they were talking like old friends then. Trains went by to the north and south, but the kids with the radio hung around the Monroe Street terminal. Haid doubted they were finding shelter from the streets because they thought too much. The only thing they were thinking on, most likely, was rolling Bastoni as soon as he left. God help them.

  Bastoni told him that he was forty, come to town from Detroit a few months back. And how it was a bitch-kitty getting a wheelchair onto a Greyhound. Haid told him about his own life, how empty it had been since Uncle Vince had died. But he had left him money to live on.

  The faces of the late night commuters changed. The night shifters, even the happily drunk clubbers, were weari
ng elongated faces as dawn neared, as if the very rumor of daylight called back the skeletal, shit eating grins that dominated the daytime Loop. For the chubbers had to pay the same price as those who worked the graveyard shift. In this city, everybody sang for their last supper.

  The radio played an ad for Jay Leno on Cool Ranch Doritos. Then it was “Sweet Emotion,” by Aerosmith. A yuppie oldie. Bastoni surprised Haid by pulling out a pint of C.C. And, as it had been since time out of mind, it was the drink that made the sinner confess.

  Haid rationalized it later that Bastoni had wanted to be saved, or why would he have told him what he had?

  Bastoni had leaned close, got a scrunched up mean look like the wrasslers on the TV, and told Haid how he was in a chair because he had been shot by a lady cop named Koja in Royal Oak, Michigan, fchrissake, all because he had gone and cut up a few people, you know how it is when you’ve had a few.

  To which Haid replied, no, he didn’t. But he had had a few confessors. Bastoni said what? And Haid couldn’t answer, his head was suddenly hurting so bad.

  The man was evil, yes. But he had paid his price. Yet he’s gloating over this, his glory days story. Haid weaved back and forth, not knowing which voice in his head was his.

  “Hey, you okay?” Bastoni reached forward, grabbing for Haid’s jacket with his hand. He misjudged his sudden lurch, and both men were surprised when Bastoni’s hand went into Haid’s torso up to the wrist.

  The hand was just as quickly expelled. Haid was rock steady now, he knew that it was because Bastoni was evil, that was why his soul was being rejected. At first, Bastoni himself had thought it to be a trick of the shadows.