Two flake cops named McCluskey and Scheige had caught Charles Maitland while they were playing Hawaii Five-O over at the First. Every day they'd play something, these flakes. Like one day they'd be Kikes 'n Robbers, and all day long it would be Jew and Nazi gags. And today it was all TV cop crap, Columbo and Kojak bits all day long. And McCluskey was closest to the phone when it rang in Homicide and on the first ring Scheige had gone,
"That could be the phone."
And his partner went, "McGarrett, Five-Oh?" like he was answering a phone, and then smoothly picked up the receiver and said "Homicide," breaking Scheige up, and then listening and hanging up and telling his partner, "Jesus. Somebody just killed old Charlie Maitland the lawyer. Let's go."
"Well, book him, Dano," Scheige said, pulling on his coat. And within half an hour somebody had Eichord down at the crime scene looking at the old man's fresh corpse, and sniffing around the already-cold trail of another Lonely Hearts murder.
This one was a little different, and not just the MO. The target was W. Charles Maitland II, one of the richest heavy-hitters in Chicago or for that matter Cook County politics. Wealthy, but like so many rich men, power hungry in a profession where power is the abiding lust and common denominator.
As one of the founding senior partners in Symington, Maitland, Eaves, and Cox, he had carefully sculptured a stratum of political machinery that Eichord was told would now come crashing down around the cop shop like so many tumbling boulders in an avalanche of payback. Someone would feel the wrath of the gods, and his new colleagues informed Jack that the trick was to make damn sure the buck didn't stop with them.
Charles Maitland had been the living embodiment of Lord Acton's oft-quoted truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely. He had lobbied in the mecca of corruption, trading in weaknesses and follies, dealing in conflicts of interest and political vulnerabilities, in the foulness of old-time Cook County ward healers, fund-raisers, feather bedders, judges, a couple of congressmen, a senator here, a governor there. Maitland had bought and sold people like rental properties, paying so much down, buying them on paper lock, stock, and porkbarrel, paying them off in time payments, amortizing them, netting thirty, depreciating their corrupt asses, and now this merchant of corruption was dead. Someone had killed him and butchered him within two blocks of one of the most carefully guarded high-rises in Chicago, mutilated Charlie Maitland within TWO BLOCKS OF FUCKING LAKE SHORE DRIVE and people wanted fast answers. There'd be shit rolling downhill and you could count on that, Eichord was told.
The movie was Burt Reynolds in something or other and the other one was something something Part Two, and it all looked so totally irrelevant and predictable and bogus and boring and they just stood out in front of the giant marquee, looking up at the one-sheet for this piece of Hollywood dreck, and he turned to her and said, "Uh . . ." and she looked at him and he locked his little finger with hers and she smiled at him and he said, "Just how badly do you want to see this award-winning motion picture anyway?"
And they both broke up. And he made a couple of other suggestions and she kept holding on to his finger and then they were holding hands and walking back to the car.
The motel couldn't have been worse, first off. It might have been okay if he'd been some cocksman and had planned it all out, rented a nice Best Western or something up front, had the room key, a nice out-of-the-way room, and driven right up to the door. But he'd pulled into the first motel they'd found, some little dumpy Mom and Pop No-Tell Motel, and she'd had to sit there alone in the front seat cooling off while he watched some dour old character who looked like a hype he'd once busted spill ashes all over himself and fumfer around making sure Mr. and Mrs. J. Eichord, Eichord Company, Self-Employed, cash-in-advance, weren't going to get away with the broken twenty-one-inch Zenith in 312. And by the time they got in the room it was like oh good Christ what are we going to do now and the prospect of actually undressing in this fleabag was so depressing and remote that when he sat down on the lumpy bed she went over and sat in the sixteen-dollar sling chair by the window.
There's a little production of hanging coats up that he does, and then he sees her sitting there kind of forlorn and he just goes over and takes her hand, talking soothingly, very softly, talking about nothing, and they're sitting together on the bed and it just doesn't seem that natural to be in a motel room with him, she thinks, but she is a grown woman and nobody's forcing her to do this against her will, and she tries to relax, and he kisses her very softly on the cheek, and then again, and then it begins between them for the very first time.
Very very chaste, unsexy, brother and sisterly smooches. Just holding each other, tentatively, with him doing most of the movement, leaning in to her, exchanging a couple of little-kid-type kisses, and from out of nowhere he's shooting this enormous fucking boner into her leg as they are halfway lying in bed, one of her feet still touching the dirty carpet, and they both break up laughing and that helps some and then he's embarrassed and rolls over on his back wishing it would go away and knowing now what a mistake this whole thing was.
And she can sense that this is a very nice man here, a good man, and they can at least laugh together, and she leans over him now and kisses him softly on the lips, and he says it's all a mistake and she says don't be silly and he says I know you don't want to do this and she goes it's probably bad for a man to get a great, throbbing erection and not—you know—climax, and when a man is aroused like that she should reach an orgasm. You know, it's no big thing. We don't even have to do anything together or make love yet. Why don't you masturbate, and it sounds so silly they both break up again.
But she persists with it and she knows what she's talking about, she says, it's probably bad for you to be aroused and so on and so forth and he says yeah very hoarsely yeah it probably is and she kind of takes things in hand herself and begins rubbing him gently and oh my oh oh oh my godddd GOD-DDDDD that feels so good so wild and now he know he's going to be going off like a rocket and he unbuckles his pants and slides his pants down and the embarrassment is gone and hell, he thinks, let her do it and she has matters in hand. A mercy cuddle, he thinks, that's what this is turning out to be.
"Edie, that's almost it, but don't let the top come up like that. You wanna' keep your hand real slick there, see—and just keep a nice steady movement up and down on it, not too loose and not too tight." I should know, he thinks, after years of devoted whacking off. "Yeah. That's oh that's it! That's more like it. Do that. Oh yeah. Don't-stop!"
Thing about sex. Even when it ain't too good it's great, he thought. And so they began inauspiciously, to say the least, with a mercy jerk.
Chaingang
He has formed a kind of grudging respect of sorts for the little people. He readily admits they soldier better than we do but that's saying nothing. Our childish, arrogant bumblers are reckless and inefficient in the field. At least the little people have some soldiering ability. He loves to kill them—to ambush them and feel the life flowing from their wiry little bodies. He likes to chainsnap them, crack them open like rotten fruit, slice them, eat their strong life source. Eat their raw hearts.