Time of the Assassins

Chapter 1 Chicago, Illinois DECEMBER 2, 1977 8:22 A.M. Cleveland Emmett Barksdale, Sr., the senior partner in the LaSalle Street law firm of Barksdale and DeVito, P.C., was in his corner office in the fifteen-room, thirtieth-floor suite from which his corporate practice did business. On the desk in front of him were the morning editions of theWall Street Journal, the New York Times, and theChicago Times-Herald. It was a daily ritual for the senior partner to read each paper before the business day began. Also on top of the desk was a bone-china coffee service from which Barksdale poured himself cup after cup of strong black coffee, and a bowl-shaped brass ashtray into which the attorney dumped ashes and butts from the Marlboro cigarettes that he chain-smoked. Barksdale vowed to give up smoking as a New Year's resolution. However, the New Year was nearly a month away. Until then, he planned to continue feeding the nicotine poison into his body. Barksdale and DeVito, P.C., had been founded by Cleve Barksdale and Joseph DeVito in 1959. Although listed as a corporate law firm, it did not accept clients "off the street," but had a select client list, which kept the firm on an annual retainer of $1 million per client. Seldom did attorneys from Barksdale and DeVito ever appear in any courtroom, and the work that they did for their clients was not clear to anyone outside of the firm. But they did perform valuable services. Very valuable services indeed. On this winter morning, Cleve Barksdale was the sole surviving founding partner of the firm. Joseph DeVito had been shot to death during an invasion of his North Shore mansion in the summer of 1975. How the armed robbers managed to circumvent the alarm system and enter the house was a mystery. A fortune in jewelry, paintings, furs, and other valuables were taken, and a wall safe in DeVito's study had been blasted open. The safe's contents were known only to DeVito. Now, eighteen months later, the case remained unsolved. Cleveland Emmett Barksdale, Sr. was a man of average height and weight. He had graying hair receding from a high widow's peak, signifying his sixty years. His features were as unremarkable as the rest of him, and he would easily go unnoticed in a crowd. However, this blandness of appearance had never held him back, instead; he had used it as an asset. Most people meeting Cleve Barksdale for the first time had a tendency to underestimate him, which was a serious mistake. Barksdale finished reading theNew York Timesand picked up theTimes-Herald. He only glanced at the national news section before turning to the Chicagoland local news. He liked to keep abreast of the events going on in his hometownhe was a graduate of the 1939 University of Chicago law-school classeven though most of these events were as far removed from his daily life had they occurred on another continent. Taking a sip of coffee and lighting another cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter, which had been a birthday present from his late partner, Barksdale's eyes fell on the lone photograph on his desk. The picture was of his grandson, Cleveland Emmett Barksdale, III. Unlike his grandfather, "Clevey," was anything but average. In the gold frame on his grandfather's desk, Clevey was wearing his brown and white football uniform bearing the number "57." He was a high-school sophomore playing linebacker on one of the best teams in the state. At the age of fifteen, he stood 6?4", weighed 255 muscular pounds and had a big, square-jawed face topped by a head of thick, dark brown hair. His grandfather thought that Clevey looked like a young Ernest Hemingway, and Cleve, Sr. had plans for him. Plans which would make Clevey a great deal more successful than Cleveland EmmettHolton, Hugh is the author of 'Time of the Assassins', published 2001 under ISBN 9780812577785 and ISBN 0812577787.