Hit on the House Read online

  Hal suddenly felt the coolness of the rain on his face, and he shook himself, his head clearing as if he had walked out of a matinee and found himself in unanticipated evening. Then he felt alarmed and anxious, but he controlled the feelings. He quickened his pace until he was out of the range of the disturbance behind him, the porch lights and the cautiously calling voices. He slowed down to a normal pace. He could hear distant sirens.

  When he came to a storm drain in the curb, he flung the pistol into it, along with the empty cartridges and the remaining speedloader. A little farther along he peeled off his gloves and tossed them into the branches of a large evergreen.

  It was an incredibly long block. At the moment it looked like a mile to the bright light of the through street at the end. He saw the flickering blue lights of a patrol car as it turned onto Sid's street and then came rushing past him. He did not look back but strode resolutely on. He was only a few paces from the corner when a large Chrysler cruiser skidded past the end of the street, halted, and backed up. It turned slowly onto the street and moved ominously toward him. It drew up and a window rolled down. A very bright light blinded him.

  “Hey, you!” a voice commanded. “Come over here.”

  “Me?” To Hal's dismay his voice squeaked.

  “Yeah, you. Who the fuck you think? C'm'ere.” The front passenger door opened, and a huge man in a raincoat and hat got out. Another man, also in civilian dress and nearly as large, unfolded out the back door of the cruiser. The speaker shined an enormous flashlight full in Hal's eyes. He considered running, but only for a second.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice under control now. He raised a hand to block the light.

  The big detective moved closer, not lowering the light. “You just come from down there?” He gestured down the street with the light.

  “Down there?”

  “What is it, some kinda fucking echo around here?” the voice demanded harshly. “Down there! You see the accident?”

  “Accident?”

  “All right, that's it,” the giant detective said. “Up against the car, asshole. Arms out. Spread your legs. Spread ‘em!” He kicked at Hal's legs, the toes of his shoes cracking painfully against Hal's ankle bones, the heavy hand planted firmly in the middle of Hal's back. The detective handed the light to his partner, then roughly ran his hands up and down Hal's ribs and legs, not neglecting to bang against the testicles. Hal winced. The detective snorted and reached around to check Hal's chest and pockets. Finally he released the pressure on Hal's back and stepped away. “All right, get in the car, asshole.”

  The junior detective held Hal by the wrist and forced his head down with a broad palm so he'd miss the roofline of the car, forcing him into the backseat of the cruiser, next to yet another large plainclothes detective. The smaller detective crowded in next to him, and the boss jumped into the front, making the car sway. He ordered the uniformed driver to go on down to the accident.

  When they got there, the boss got out, ordering the others to stay put. He strolled over to the scene. There were two patrol cars now, their lights flickering, casting a weird blue light on Sid's car, the wreck, the bodies, the people gathered across the street on the sidewalk, the young man sitting on the curb. Uniformed policemen were talking to the people, talking to the young man. Hal sat silently, trying to look mildly interested but not too interested. The boss man stalked about, talking to the cops, to the people, gesturing, occasionally laughing.

  To add to the circus atmosphere, the ambulance arrived with flashing red lights and a dying siren. Then another car drew up, a black Checker, and two detectives got out, one of them a tall, young black man and the other a somewhat older, good-sized fellow wearing a raincoat and hat. He smoked a cigar. The others deferred to him, pointing out one thing or another, while he said little or nothing but just looked on. Hal concluded that this must be the detective in charge.

  More cars arrived with more detectives, and still Hal sat, squeezed in the back of the cruiser between his bulky keepers. A van nosed up to the scene, and more plainclothesmen got out, setting up lights and starting to take pictures of everything, using strobe lights to make it a real light show. The cruiser boss laid a hand on the cigar smoker's arm and pointed back toward the cruiser. The detective listened absently, not looking at the cruiser boss but watching the men around the body of Big Sid. He had a long face with a narrow nose and hooded eyes. His mouth was thin, and when he grimaced, he revealed long, slightly spaced teeth.

  A uniformed officer approached the two detectives and called out, “Mul! The medical examiner's here.” The detective started to move away. The cruiser boss looked annoyed. “Mul!” he roared, “what about this jerk?” He pointed toward the cruiser.

  “Take care of it, Dennis,” the detective called back over his shoulder; “you know the procedure.” And he disappeared into the throng of men around the body of Sid.

  The cruiser rocked as the boss folded himself back into the front seat. “To the Ninth, Stanos,” he growled. “Fuckin’ Mulheisen, in a cloud as usual.”

  The driver placed his arm across the back of the seat and backed the cruiser at a reckless speed, dodging around squad cars and police vans, occasionally shouting jocular obscenities at cops who scuttled out of his way. He had to back up for nearly the entire block, but finally he was able to turn around, and they sped away, toward the Ninth Precinct.

  As they drove, Hal made one attempt to save the situation. “I didn't see a thing, officer,” he said to the big man in front.

  The detective responded by saying, “Read him his rights, Doug. Also,” to Hal, “shut the fuck up.”

  Two

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Detective Inspector Laddy McClain said. He travestied a child's fluttering good-bye wave at the ambulance that was hauling away the remains of Big Sid Sedlacek and Mickey Egan. “And good-bye to you, Mul,” he added.

  Mulheisen didn't acknowledge that remark. He looked at his cigar, which had gotten wet and no longer tasted very good. He was reluctant to heave it away, however. It had cost too much and was only half-smoked.

  “You know something, Laddy . . .” he said finally. He bared his teeth in a grimace that could have been a smile but almost certainly was not. It was these teeth that had earned him the street moniker Sergeant Fang. “Whenever you've got a case you don't like, you shuffle it off on the precinct. I don't complain. But now here's this mob shooting, and you don't even suggest we do the prelim. Now why is that?”

  McClain patted him on the shoulder. “I know how overworked and understaffed you guys are, Mul.”

  “No. That's what you guys are,” Mulheisen reminded him. “I've got a couple guys in this outfit who are pretty good. A case like this can make a young detective like Jimmy,” he nodded toward a young black man standing nearby, “and it wouldn't hurt promotion chances for some of the older guys either. Now I seem to recall a case about six months ago, where a gunman got shot down in a garage and—”

  “That was years ago,” Laddy said.

  “OK, two years ago,” Mulheisen said. He struck a match and held it to the cigar for a moment before puffing it back to life. It still didn't taste right. “But you still owe me for that. And then there's—”

  “All right already,” McClain said. He laughed and punched Mulheisen's shoulder playfully, but hard. “Do the prelim. Then we'll see.”

  “Fine. And you'll do the press?”

  “I'll do the press,” McClain said, rolling his eyes with mock exasperation.

  “And keep Buchanan off my ass?”

  “Buchanan's your boss, your problem, but I'll have a word with him.” He turned and looked up at Big Sid's house. “Isn't this something? A fine citizen like Sid gets blown away in his own driveway, and nobody even comes out to see what happened.” He shook his head.

  Mulheisen waved Jimmy Marshall over, and the two of them stepped over the knocked-down fence and trudged up to the house. They rang the doorbell and waited a full three mi
nutes, by Jimmy's watch, until someone came. It was a small, dark woman, about thirty years old. She was pretty, or normally she was pretty, Mulheisen felt, but at the moment her eyes had a hollow look, and her face was drawn. With no preliminary she said, “He is dead.” It may have been meant to be a question, but it came out a flat statement.

  Mulheisen figured if a person were going to be that blunt about it, he could respond as bluntly. “Both of them,” he said. “Who are you?”

  She said her name was Helen Sedlacek, daughter of the late Sid. Her mother was unable to see them, she said. She had collapsed. A doctor was coming.

  Miss Sedlacek was clearly enraged, but she was containing herself admirably. She had a story and she told it straightforwardly.

  “We didn't hear anything until we heard the car hit that other car,” she said. “I ran into the living room—Ma and me were in the kitchen, getting some food ready in case Papa wanted something when he got home, and—”

  “Where had your father gone?” Jimmy Marshall interrupted.

  The woman shrugged, her arms crossed under her breasts. She wore a black turtleneck jersey and black jeans. Her face was somber and composed, but her deep-set dark eyes glinted. “We wouldn't know,” she said. “Papa doesn't tell women where he's going. It was business, I guess. Or maybe he went to see his whore.”

  “And who would that be?” Jimmy asked politely, his notebook ready. He glanced at Mulheisen, who moved his head slightly.

  “You ask me?” she spat back. “You damn cops don't know? You watch us all the time, I thought you knew everything.”

  Jimmy did not respond. Finally she said, “Germaine Kouras. She says she's a singer.”

  “What did you see out the window?” Mulheisen asked while Jimmy scribbled in the notebook.

  “I saw Papa's car with the doors open. The trees are in the way. I didn't see Papa or Mickey . . . I thought they might have gone to help the guy who hit the fence. But then I saw somebody lying in the street, and I thought maybe Papa had been hit by the car.”

  “You didn't see Mickey Egan?” Mulheisen asked.

  “No. I started to go out there, but Mama . . . she started to wail. And then Roman came in and told me to take care of her and not to go out.”

  “Who is Roman?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Roman Yakovich,” she replied. “He's a . . . an associate of Papa's.” She was clenching her small fists and pacing a few steps to one side, then another. Suddenly she asked, “Would you like a drink?” The detectives said no, but when she stalked to a liquor cabinet and poured a large shot of something from a dark bottle, Mulheisen called out that just a couple of fingers would be fine. She threw a wry glance over her shoulder, her black hair flying. “It's slivovitz,” she said. “Plum brandy. How about you?” she asked Jimmy.

  “He's driving,” Mulheisen said. When she brought the drinks, he asked, “What else did Roman have to say?”

  She gulped the brandy, then closed her eyes for a second, the muscles of her jaw visibly clenching. After a moment she opened her mouth, and at first she couldn't speak, but finally she said very deliberately, “Ma wanted to know if Papa was dead. Roman just shook his head. Then Ma collapsed.”

  “Where is Yakovich now?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Upstairs, with Ma. Well, what are you going to do about this?”

  Mulheisen ignored this. “Your father was shot. You didn't hear any shots?”

  “No. Just the crash.”

  “You didn't see anybody else on the street? No car driving away? No gunman? Nobody walking?” Mulheisen asked.

  “No, no, no, for the last time, no. If I saw something, don't you think I would tell you?”

  “If you wanted to,” Mulheisen said. He drained off the brandy. He almost gasped but managed to ask, in a whispery voice, “You heard a crash?”

  “Two crashes. The second crash was the car running into the fence. It wasn't so loud.”

  “So you ran to the window, and you saw your father's car with the doors open, but you saw no one.”

  The woman shook her head, a cloud of heavy shoulder-length black hair eclipsing, then exposing, her bone-white face. “I saw Papa's car. At first I thought it was part of the accident. Then I saw the other car in the fence and the car across the street—it was knocked sideways. Then I saw someone in the street.”

  “Someone lying in the street, you mean?” Jimmy said.

  “Yes.”

  “What about Egan?” Mulheisen asked. “He was lying by the driver's door of your father's car. You didn't see him?”

  “No, . . . I don't think so. I don't recall seeing him.”

  “Do you live here?” Mulheisen asked.

  “No. I have a place in Bloomfield Hills,” Helen Sedlacek said. “I come over every Sunday, to help Ma with the food.”

  “Every Sunday?”

  “Just about. Ma insists on cooking every Sunday. Friends and relatives drop in and out all day. Some Sundays quite a few. Not so many today.”

  “How many?” Mulheisen asked.

  “I don't know . . . a dozen maybe.”

  “A dozen people drop by,” Mulheisen said. “What do they do?”

  “They eat, they talk, they watch television, and of course, with the situation in Serbia, they argue about politics. The kids play, mostly downstairs.”

  “The situation in Serbia?” Jimmy Marshall said.

  “The war. We're all Serbs.”

  “Was your father involved in politics?” Mulheisen asked.

  “No. Well, all Serbs are interested in politics.” She sighed. “Too much. But this had nothing to do with politics.”

  “No?”

  “No. You know what it's all about. Not politics.”

  Mulheisen considered this, then looked at the woman more closely. She was about five feet tall but looked taller on account of the way she carried herself. She was really very pretty, he decided. She was compact and athletic looking, a trim figure.

  “So every Sunday you come and help your Ma put on a spread for the folks,” Mulheisen said. “Are you married?”

  “He's dead,” she replied, “a long time ago.”

  “Mmmm. What kinds of things do you cook? Canapés? Cookies? Little wieners on a toothpick? What?”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. “What kind of food is that? No, no. Liver dumplings, pierogi, klenedljine od sliv-plum dumplings. You don't know any of this food,” she said with a mixed air of contempt and pity. “It's Serbian. And then there is sarma-that's minced ham and pork with onions and garlic and rice, wrapped in cabbage leaves—and there is walnut povitica . . . oh, lots of things. It's a lot of work. Ma actually starts cooking on Saturday night.”

  Mulheisen was intrigued. He would have loved to sample some of these exotic-sounding dumplings—surely there were some leftovers—but there was no way to suggest it, given the circumstances. He sighed. “Was there anything unusual about the guests today?” he asked. “Any strangers? No? What time did they all leave?”

  “They were all gone by six, as usual,” she said. “This wasn't a Serb thing.” She stared at Mulheisen. Then, her voice harsh with bitterness, she said, “You aren't going to do a damn thing, are you? You know who did it. But you don't care. Just a bunch of thugs killing each other off. ‘Good riddance,’ you say.”

  “I have no idea who did this,” Mulheisen said, “but I expect to find out. Who do you think did it?”

  She looked at him with palpable disbelief. “It was Carmine,” she cried. “Who else? Not Carmine personally, but one of his hired killers. But they're too big for you, aren't they? You don't mess with the big boys, do you?” She was working herself up to a real blowout, Mulheisen thought, perhaps as a vent for her grief.

  “Why would Carmine want to do this?” he asked reasonably. “Was Sid on the outs with Carmine?” She didn't answer. “The last I heard they were good buddies, friendly business associates. Not so?”

  She glared at him. Mulheisen sighed. “Look, Miss Sedlacek, I'm
not real current on organized crime . . . this, this Mafia dance. I'm just a precinct detective, but I'll be working with the Racket and Conspiracy Squad on this. If you have anything that could help us, why don't you tell me? I can't just go and bust Carmine, or any other citizen, because you say he hired a killer.”

  “But you know all about him,” she burst out. “You watch him and the rest of us all the time! You know everything about us, you . . .” Suddenly she was incapable of speech. Her throat seemed to lock and her eyes blazed. She stepped forward and punched Mulheisen right in the chest, just where the abdomen meets the rib cage. Her tiny fist was like a rock, and Mulheisen reeled, staggering backward, gasping for breath.

  Jimmy Marshall pounced. He whipped the woman's arms behind her back, and before Mulheisen had recovered, Jimmy had her cuffed and was holding her by the hair with her hands yanked up between her shoulder blades. Her neck was long, and her throat pulsed, her breasts thrust forward, heaving.

  “Whoo!” Mulheisen wheezed, leaning against the wall with an outstretched arm. He looked over his shoulder at the little woman who stood firmly but belligerently in Jimmy's grasp, her legs set apart, her chin thrust out. “Hang onto her, Jimmy,” he warned hoarsely. “I'm going upstairs.”

  It was a dodge, to get out of the room so that he could lean against a wall and knead his thorax and indulge the pain out of sight of its inflicter and his young assistant. When he felt better, he climbed the stairs. By now the doctor had arrived and given Mrs. Sedlacek a sedative. She was a dumpy, gray-looking lady, tucked up in a large bed with a satin comforter. She was sound asleep, snoring slightly. Roman Yakovich sat in a chair by the door, watching her stolidly. He looked hewn out of granite himself. He stood to greet Mulheisen.