God Makes Them Mean

Chapter 4

Scum like Jay Mavis, you find them where the cockroaches thrive, the gutters are full and the local watering holes are standing room only with society's rejects. Places where no respectable citizen go, where most time neither police nor ambulances will answer calls, and the fire brigade will brave it only if escorted by a few squad cars.

'What are we doing here?' Jeff Rojitzki asks.

'We're paying a visit to that shining example of respectability, Jay Mavis.'

'Do I get carte blanche?' Since I taught him that expression, he uses it all the time.

'You do, as long as you leave enough wind in him to answer a few questions.'

'Good.' He pops his knuckles. The noise is tantamount to gunshots. Jeff Rojitzki is a scary individual. He's the size of a fire department truck, and carries the punch of a tank. His face has been reshaped many times in the course of a career in havoc-making that has not stopped even after he joined the Police Force. He's a rough-hewing bastard that in another lifetime, with just a nudge in the wrong direction, would've ended up being a bruiser for some local kingpin. He enjoys few things as much as punching a man within an inch of his life. You can see his eyes glitter with merriment when he hears the noise of snapping bones.

In the Department, he's known as a blunt instrument to be used when the situation calls for brute force. To that, he'll add a hint of malice. Just for his own benefit. If I didn't know the Devil himself must be scared shitless of Jeff, I'd say he's bound straight for hell. As things stand, when his time come he'll probably bring down the gates of Heaven if St Peter doesn't let him through.

There are a few reasons why he's here with me, beside his love for violence. He's married to my youngest cousin, for once, and I know of his proclivity for stepping into gents bathrooms with glory holes to get his knob shined by like-minded fellow enthusiasts. No, don't ask me why I stumbled upon this precious nugget of information.

So, we're in my car, a pea-colored Ford sedan belonging to another era. Every year she gets slower and sucks more gas, but I have a sentimental feeling for my steed. Here I lost my virginity, here I killed my first man and made my first collar as a Detective in Homicide. Not all at the same time. If you raise the carpet on the passenger's side, the dark stain is Ed Connelly's blood. I never had it taken out. Memories are made of this. Nothing cures the gloom better than half a pint of rye and a good, long, hard stare at that dried pool of gore.

'What has he done now?' he asks. His voice is like shouting inside an empty letterbox. Deep, cavernous, a little bit metallic. He has never learnt about volume, and that words can have a lilt to them.

'Apart from all the other things we can't pin on him?'

'Yeah.'

'I think he has murdered Burt.'

'Who's Burt?'

'Better known as Santa Claus in some circles.'

'I don't follow. He killed Santa? Do we have to call off Christmas?' I never get if he's actually witty, or just as dense as concrete. Man's as unreadable as Buddha's beatific mien.

'He's just a suspect for now.'

'A suspect suspect, or just your suspect?'

I shrug my shoulders. 'As if you'd care any which way it is.'

'We all know you have a hard on for that guy. Since Brandy happened.'

'It goes well before that.'

'I wouldn't want to get into the middle of an Internal Affair mess just because you keep dumping every crime in the Greater Chicago area on the same guy.'

'I got a gut feeling he's our man.'

'You always do. Until one day they'll ask for your badge back and you'll end up in court on a few dozen counts of Police harassment.'

'That's grim.'

'Is there even the remotest chance he's actually connected to the killing?'

'He usually is. It's like every time he does something I'm the one put in charge of the investigation. It's fate.'

'No, it's an obsession.'

'I got a gut feeling.'

'That's because you eat too much. You're obsessed. Obsession is bad. Mark my word. Just shoot the guy and be done with it.'

'No.'

'No?'

'It has to be a clean thing. He needs to spend time in jail for his sins.'

'That's where Beppe comes in?'

'Yep.' I wink at him.

Giuseppe Lombroso, friends call him Beppe. Wwe grew up together, same school, same neighborhood, same block. He came to dinner at our place, I went to his. His family owned a grocery store with ties to the Mafia. He walked in his father footsteps and went one step further, which got him landed in jail. Life sentence plus five years. We're still friends. In exchange for favors and a better lifestyle, he feeds me snippets of news from the inside, or makes life hell for whoever I point my finger at. It's a sweet deal. 'Jay will wish he'd died on the streets.'

'You know Eric, sometimes you scare me.'

'I thought nothing could scare you.'

'You do.'

I grin.