The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One Page 3

  And there she’d been, smack-dab in the middle of the street, trying to start a 1979 Mercury that wouldn’t start, her lights growing dimmer with every unsuccessful attempt. There’d been no way to get around the Mercury, cars had lined both sides of the street, there’d been a parking place or two but nothing large enough to let him slip past, he’d have had to back up three-quarters of a block to avail himself of another street route, so he’d taken his flashlight and walked to the stricken Mercury to find her hunched over the steering wheel, her parka hood over her head, and above the weakening grind of the starter he could hear her cussing a long bright-blue streak, employing words that Lockington would have hesitated to use at a longshoremen’s convention. He’d knocked on the Mercury’s window, she’d spun to stare out at him and snarl, “Get the hell away from this automobile or I’ll call the police!”

  Lockington had said, “But, ma’am, I am the police!”

  He’d pulled his wallet and spotted his badge with the flashlight, and she’d said, “All right, dammit, then do something.”

  Lockington had said, “Pull your hood release.”

  She’d said, “But— “

  Lockington had said, “Please, ma’am, don’t argue with me—pull your hood release, will you?”

  She’d complied and Lockington had popped the latch and hoisted the hood, leaning under it, exploring the intestines of the Mercury with the aid of his flashlight. The hood had come down with a crash, slamming Lockington in the back of the neck, driving his face into the battery. Lockington had fought his way clear of the entrapment. He’d said, “Jesus H. Christ, guillotined at midnight! Why didn’t you tell—”

  “I tried to tell you—that damned hood just won’t stay up!”

  Lockington had appraised the situation and said, “Look, can you navigate this thing with no power steering?”

  “But I have power steering!”

  “You won’t have power steering with the engine conked out. Can you handle it?”

  “I can try. Why?”

  “Then maybe I can nudge you into that parking space just ahead with my car.”

  “That won’t get me home!” She’d been dark-eyed with a fairly prominent nose that was running in the cold, more than could have been said for her automobile. Lockington had said, “Ma’am, first things first—we have to start somewhere, don’t we?”

  They’d gotten it done after a fashion—the traction had been poor, the Pontiac’s rear wheels had spun, its tires had screamed and smoked, and she’d had a terrible time maneuvering the Mercury without the aid of power steering. They’d left her car at the curb, more or less, its rear end protruding into the street at a dangerous angle and she’d gotten out, locking the door, saying, “Okay, now what?”

  “Now we get to a telephone. There’s a tavern just around the corner on Barry.”

  “I’ll never get help in a storm at this time of night, and you know it!”

  Lockington had spread his hands defenselessly. “Well, ma’am, if we don’t give it a shot, we’ll never be sure, will we?”

  When she’d piled into the Pontiac he’d noticed that she had very good legs, and he’d driven her to Barry Avenue and a small neighborhood drinking place. He’d bought her a rum and coke, he’d ordered a Martell’s cognac, they’d called a dozen towing services with no luck, and they’d sat in a booth looking at each other. She’d been pleasant enough to look at, early thirties maybe, he’d liked her chestnut hair, rumpled by the hood of her parka, and he’d approved of the set of her dimpled chin. Above all, he’d appreciated her smile, a frank, open thing, when she’d finally gotten around to smiling, which had been during her second rum and coke. She’d shivered from the chill still in her, and she’d said, “Pardon me, but aren’t you slightly drunk?”

  “Slightly.”

  “No problem with that—so am I. I was at a Christmas party.”

  “So was I. I could probably drive you home. Where do you live?”

  “Des Plaines.”

  Lockington had whistled, and she’d said, “Long way in a blizzard, isn’t it?”

  “That’s not all—you’d have to get back to your car in the morning.”

  She’d shrugged a dismal shrug. “So here I am at square one. Any suggestions?”

  “Just one.”

  Her second smile had been every bit as good as her first, but it’d been of the knowing variety. She’d said, “Your place?”

  Lockington had nodded.

  She’d dropped her head, laughing. She’d said, “Oh, Jesus, am I ever easy!”

  Lockington had said, “Well, look, I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  She’d said, “The hell you will.”

  “Then you’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “The hell I will.”

  7

  Three hours later, he lurched to his feet, paid his tab, tipped his waitress, and headed back to his apartment. The rain had stopped but the respite would be brief because there was a stiff breeze out of the west. Muted thunder mumbled from that direction, and Chicago’s night sky was a mass of writhing black clouds, reminding Lockington of a vast snake pit, a strange collation, since Lockington had never seen a snake pit, and he was glad for this because, the way his luck had been running, he’d probably have fallen into the damned thing headfirst.

  He plodded homeward on the south side of Barry Avenue, picking his way through a maze of sidewalk puddles, staying close to buildings in an effort to avoid the spray from eastbound vehicles, passing a darkened shop doorway from which stepped a pair of Hispanics, sharply dressed young fellows, mid-twenties or thereabouts. Their white-toothed smiles were ingratiating. They could use a few bucks, they told Lockington.

  Lockington took the revelation under consideration and said well, this was probably true, but then couldn’t just about everybody?

  The Hispanics said sí, quizá, but apparently Lockington was overlooking one highly-compelling factor—just about everybody didn’t possess switchblade knives like theirs. They showed their switchblade knives to Lockington. They were expensive switchblade knives, chrome-trimmed, bone-handled with white plastic inlays; their blades glittering menacingly in the pinkish glow of the only streetlight on the block.

  Lockington nodded. Magnificent, utterly magnificent, he said.

  Ciertamente, the Hispanics said before inquiring as to how Lockington would like to have one of their utterly magnificent switchblade knives inserted in his vientre boton.

  Lockington wasn’t on speaking terms with the Spanish language, but he managed to interpret enough of the question to grasp its meaning, and he was duly impressed by the ramifications thereof. He was so duly impressed by the ramifications thereof that he hauled out his .38 police special and shot the Hispanics, one through the liver, the other through the left lung.

  He stepped carefully over his twitching, groaning ex-tormenters, retracing his steps to the little Italian restaurant where he telephoned the police, ordered another bottle of beer, and stepped into the men’s lavatory. Following his first ten or twelve bottles, beer had a habit of going through Lockington like Grant tore through Richmond, although Lockington didn’t know for a fact that Grant had ever been within fifty miles of Richmond. He had only his old American history book’s word for it—history is written by the winners—and Lockington had flunked American History three times running.

  8

  Monday’s Chicago Morning Sentinel hit the streets with a bang—KILLER COP STRIKES AGAIN, SLAYS TWO! Gone were Stella Starbright’s flowery phrases, Stella got right at it—the Hispanic kids could have been talked out of their aborted mugging attempt had Sergeant Lacey Lockington quieted his itchy trigger-finger long enough to appeal to their better natures. There was absolutely no excuse for an off-duty, thrice-decorated Chicago police officer gunning down two underprivileged lads in the flower of their manhood without making an honest effort to dissuade them. It was a hard-hitting column in which Stella branded Lacey Lockington as a man with two more notches in the h
andle of his gun, a creature driven by an irresponsible Dodge City mentality, prone to gross violence, a born exterminator, undoubtedly an incurable psychopath, and she concluded her terse piece by recommending that Lockington be suspended pending a painstaking investigation of his having transformed Chicago’s northwest side into a shooting gallery. When, Stella Starbright demanded to know, “Oh, Dear God in Heaven,” when would some form of corrective action be taken?

  Lockington, whose aging torso bore several switchblade scars accumulated in police service, was oblivious to Stella Starbright’s third broadside—he didn’t read the Chicago Morning Sentinel, he rarely read the Chicago Chronicle save for its excellent sports section, and he avoided as many television newscasts as were avoidable. He was a man fed up with reports of prissy-assed, self-serving congressional investigating committees telling military people how to conduct military affairs, he was weary of left-leaning, publicity-grabbing press piranhas boosting themselves to national star status by constantly harassing officials of state under the protective blanket of wanting to know the truth. The media angered Lockington greatly. Lockington was a conservative.

  And so was Chicago Police Superintendant Nelson G. Netherby, to an extent—to a greater extent when the pendulum of public opinion swung pronouncedly in that direction, to a lesser extent when it didn’t. Nelson G. Netherby was demogogically flexible, rolling with the tides, reading both Sentinel and Chronicle, never missing a television news program, keeping a finger on the pulse of politically sensitive issues local and national, particularly local. Netherby was a political creature with lofty political ambitions, gifted with the acutely responsive devices visited upon that vile and despicable breed, and the panels of his early warning systems were lighting up like Christmas trees. A storm was brewing here, a crusade was in the formative stages—that muckraking Chicago Morning Sentinel and its rabble-rousing Stella Starbright were out there in the concrete jungle, beating the drums, whipping up controversy where there was no controversy to be whipped up, gathering a posse, and posses must be cut off at the pass. Chicago Police Superintendant Nelson G. Netherby knew something about the interception of posses.

  9

  On the hazy Monday morning following his four-day break, Lockington sat straddling a splintered brown locker room bench, smoking a cigarette and sucking on a cup of atrocious coffee while awaiting muster and assignment. Chances were they’d send his ass back to Division Street, there to sit in the tail end of a stuffy Chevy van across the street from a run-down tavern he’d never set foot it, peering through a rusty chink, awaiting the arrival of a man he’d never laid eyes on who’d probably skipped to Emlenton, Pennsylvania, three months ago, and this would go on and on until somebody filled Grand Canyon with potato chips or Christ returned to set up His earthly kingdom, whichever came first. Well, what the hell, as long as he was doing that, he wouldn’t be doing anything else. There was a heavy clomping out in the hall and the bulk of Officer Kevin O’Malley darkened the locker room doorway. O’Malley boomed, “Hey, Lacey, you in here?”

  Lockington peered around the corner of a row of battered olive-drab lockers. He said, “I’ll let you know when I finish this coffee.”

  Kevin O’Malley said, “Super wants to see you in his office.”

  Lockington growled, “When?”

  “Like pronto—he’s probably gonna give you the fucking croix de guerre.”

  Lockington frowned, checked his watch, tossed his coffee container into a trash can, and drove over there, reaching the dim, dingy foyer of the rapidly deteriorating three-story red brick building at 8:00 on the button. The Police Superintendant’s suite was off a dusty blue-carpeted east wing hall and Lockington stopped at the receptionist’s desk. He said, “Okay to go in? I got an appointment.”

  Henrietta Mosworth glanced up from a check list she’d been perusing, putting it down to study Lacey Lockington as she’d have studied a pile of steaming moose manure. She smiled the smile of a vampire in a blood bank. She nodded, rasping, “Oh, brother, do you ever! Certainly, hurry right in!”

  There’d been a marked absence of cordiality in his dealings with Henrietta Mosworth since he’d nixed her explicit proposition of a few weeks earlier. He hadn’t nixed it, exactly, he’d attempted to step around it. He’d told Henrietta that he had a ticket for the White Sox game that night. Henrietta’s mouth had tightened at the corners. She’d said, “All right, tomorrow night then?”

  Lockington, beginning to get that hemmed-in feeling, had said, “That’d be just great, but, oddly enough, I got a ticket for tomorrow night’s White Sox game, too.”

  Henrietta Mosworth’s eyes had glittered like little stainless steel ball bearings. She’d said, “You really dig baseball, don’t you, Lacey?”

  Lockington had said, “Yeah, great game, baseball—very scientific!”

  Henrietta had said, “Well, you lying sonofabitch, you’d better take a look at a schedule—the fucking White Sox are in fucking Seattle!”

  Lockington, a Chicago Cubs fan who’d known less about the Chicago White Sox than he’d known about nuclear fission, had said, “Oh,” not knowing what else to say to a woman who stood six-one, weighed 233, and was said to trim her pubic hair with shrubbery shears.

  Now he entered the lair of the mighty, removing his hat to approach Chicago Police Superintendant Nelson G. Netherby who sat behind a highly polished Philippine mahogany desk nearly the size of a carrier flight deck, tilting in his tall-backed genuine Corinthian leather swivel chair, watching Lockington with wary eyes. Netherby was a graying, florid-faced man, heavyset, pompous, an ex-bird Colonel in Army Military Police, a brassbound martinet by any standards. He had the visage of a bereaved water buffalo, the temperament of an arthritic bull crocodile, and the authoritative mien of a Roman emperor. He glanced briefly at the small note pad on his desk blotter and snapped, “Detective Sergeant Lacey Lockington?”

  Lockington nodded, saying nothing, coming to the position of parade rest, his hat held behind him.

  Netherby yawned, put a Zippo lighter to a cork-tipped cigarette, exhaled loudly, and suspended Lockington on the spot.

  Lockington wanted to know what the hell for.

  For transforming Chicago’s northwest side into a shooting gallery, Netherby told him.

  Lockington wanted to know for how the hell long.

  Until the painstaking investigation, Netherby told him.

  Lockington wanted to know what the hell painstaking investigation.

  The painstaking investigation of Lockington’s transforming Chicago’s northwest side into a shooting gallery, Netherby told him, dismissing the veteran detective with a perfunctory wave of a pudgy hand.

  Lockington stood there, a Niagara roar in his ears, struggling to absorb the impact of the pronouncement, counting his years as a police officer, watching Nelson G. Netherby’s overstuffed person half-dissolve into a strange reddish haze, not knowing whether to laugh, weep or blow Netherby’s brains out. He ruled against these options, choosing the last available course of action, that of turning to depart the premises without a word or a backward glance.

  Netherby drew a relieved deep breath. When dealing with these Dodge City mentalities a man hardly knew what to expect. He smoothed his silvering hair with the palm of one beautifully manicured hand, straightening his pale blue silk necktie with the other, a wisp of a smile fluttering across his sagging features. So much for Stella Starbright and her posse.

  The great man pushed an intercom button, instructing Henrietta Mosworth to arrange a hurry-up luncheon press conference—at Cindy’s on Wells Street, he said—12:30, he said—the Wicker Room, if possible, he said—he’d be making an announcement having to do with the Lockington matter, he said—oh, yes, the meal, well, let’s see, he’d have beef barley soup, artichoke salad with vinegar and oil, a small filet medium well, buttered carrot discs, baked potato with sour cream, strawberry cheesecake, and black coffee with a double brandy, he said. Good brandy, he added.

  Meanwhil
e, Lacey Lockington was driving northwest to the Shamrock Pub on Grand Avenue where he hoisted numerous hookers of tequila before going to bed with Edna Garson, which was unusual because Lockington hardly ever drank tequila.

  10

  His Tuesday had been pleasantly uneventful, and Wednesday morning found Lockington, unshowered, unshaven, still clad in pajama bottoms, frayed robe, and worn-out slippers, seated at his living room window, chain-smoking, drinking strong black coffee, watching pigeons peck at gravel along the Barry Avenue curbing. He’d received a telephone call shortly after eight o’clock—a local television station wanting to interview him for its evening news presentation. His sleep rudely shattered, Lacey Lockington had declined that honor with as much charity as he’d been capable of mustering under the conditions. There hadn’t been a great deal of it.

  The jackals were grouping now. Lockington’s days as a Chicago police officer were numbered, that was an obviosity, if there was such a word. Since Nelson G. Netherby had assumed office some eighteen months earlier, investigations of the type confronting Lockington had been fixed—Netherby dictating verdicts long before they were officially arrived at. The procedures had been given an appearance of authenticity by the retention of traditional trappings—the highly-publicized selections of blue-ribbon panels, the haggling, the haranguing, the disputes, but the proof was in the pudding—not a single verdict had gone in favor of the accused. To the discerning eye there was no disguising it—the mavericks, or those perceived as such, were being systematically cut from the herd, branded as unfit, displayed as pariahs in this, the brave new era of sweetness, light, and gross permissiveness. Lockington saw his chances of acquittal as approximating those of a crippled rabbit at a timberwolf reunion.