The Undertaker

She pulled the big bag over and dug her arm down to the bottom, fishing around inside until it came back out with a bottle. She opened it with her teeth and handed the bottle back to him. Parini dropped a half-dozen pills into his hand, popped them into his mouth, and lay back chewing them. “Thanks, kid,” he said. “And I take back every ugly thing I said about you.”

“The name's Sandy.”

We drove west to Halsted Street and south through the city. It was mid-morning and big CTA commuter buses, semi-trailer trucks, and delivery vans clogged the streets and slowed us to a crawl. I turned around in the seat and looked back at him. He had lost a lot of blood and I was getting worried. “You okay, Gino?” I asked.

“I've been shot a lot worse than this.”

“Then you need to find a new line of work,” she commented.

Parini's eyes were closed, but I saw a thin smile. “Yeah, a new line of work. I'll write that down, so I don't forget.” We crossed the Chicago River and continued south through a series of ever more dilapidated commercial areas. “Okay, Talbott, who you really workin' for? Justice? Some rinky-dink local outfit? The Santorini people never heard of you. Who then? Rico Patillo?”

“I work for Symbiotic Software in Waltham, Massachusetts, Gino, or I did until you dragged me into this thing.”

“Yeah, and I'm the freakin’ Easter Bunny. You expect me to believe you figured all that stuff out by yourself?”

“I'm a rocket scientist, remember.” I smiled innocently at him.

“Yeah, right,” Parini opened his eyes and looked at me. “Back in Columbus, I saw you at the funeral home and then I saw you at that bogus accounting office down on Sickles. I didn't know what to make of those, but when you walked inside Tinkerton's office building dressed up like a delivery boy, the only thing I could figure was you were one of them and you were reporting in. Later, when you went strollin’ into Varner's fruit clinic and all the rest of them showed up, I had no idea what you were up to.”

“I was looking for proof.”

“Proof? What you almost got was dead. Tinkerton's a real head case, him and that Sheriff Dannmeyer.”

“He was,” I smiled.

“Yeah,” Parini laughed. “I saw you run over him with that ambulance.”

“A sheriff?” Sandy's mouth dropped open. “You ran over a sheriff?”

“Not me, the ambulance driver did. He was the one who helped me escape from the embalming room, before Dannmeyer shot him.”

“I don't believe this.” She smacked her forehead again. “You killed a cop?”

“That guy deserved it,” Parini answered for me. “And Dannmeyer was no cop. He was a stone-cold killer with a badge, like the rest of Tinkerton's people.”

“You could have helped me, you know.”

“I ain't your Fairy Godmother; you keep forgettin’ that.”

“Bullshit. You could have stopped him,” I said.

“Stop what? I didn't know what he was doin’ down there or how far he'd go. What I did know was you were flushing them out and doing my heavy lifting for me.”

“You really are a bastard,” Sandy told him.

“There goes that mouth again,” he chided her. “A nice Italian girl should know better than make negative comments about a gentleman's heritage like that.”

“You're a gentleman like I'm a “nice” Italian girl,” she quickly responded.

“Okay, okay, Gino.” I turned toward him. “So tell me what's really going on.”

“Me? Tell you “what's really” going on?” Parini chuckled.

“You've been using him for bait,” Sandy told him. “And you owe him one. You owe me one, too. Time to pay up.”

“Come on, Gino,” I tried to draw it out of him. “I know what they've been doing. I know who's doing it, and I even know how they're doing it, but I can't figure out why.”

“You wanna know why, huh?” Parini thought it over and finally relented. “You heard of the Federal Witness Protection Program, right?” I nodded. “It's run by Justice, all top secret and hush-hush. They say in the last twenty, twenty-five years, the Feds have taken maybe 6500 mopes into that program and maybe 8,000 dependents.”

Sandy eyed him suspiciously in the rear view mirror.

“That's right out of Time Magazine, Sweet Pea” he reassured her. “Hell, the Feds even brag about it. ‘Cause in all that time, with all those people on the lam and hiding out, they claim they never lost one. Not one! Never had any of them clowns run back to our side. Never had any of them hit. Not one. Never. Ever. Unbelievable, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I frowned, still not getting the point.

“Think about it. Most of them cruds are small fish, but there's some big ones in there too, like sixteen “made men” from New York and New Jersey — Jimmy ‘the Bull’ Gravano, ‘Noodles’ Fortuno, Barty Marzini, and your pals Richie Benvenuto, ‘the Mole,’ Pauli Martucci, even that damned bean counter, Louie Panozzo. And I gotta tell ya, seein’ a bunch 'a bums like that sittin' on the beach in Florida, while a stand-up guy like Jimmie Santorini is bustin' rocks in Marion, that ain't fair.”

“Yeah, a freakin’ tragedy,” Sandy mumbled.