The Blind Pig Read online

  “He was shot to death,” Mulheisen said. “On board the Seabitch.”

  Vanni didn't say anything. He just stared at Mulheisen.

  “Mandy's all right,” Mulheisen said. “The boat's kind of a mess. She's on the rocks at Riverfront Park.”

  “Good God,” Vanni said. “What happened?” He leaned forward with his hands in his lap, hidden below the top of the desk. “It was Lenny, wasn't it? I knew it! That stupid ass! Well, Sergeant, say something. How did it all happen?”

  Mulheisen smiled a long, slow smile that showed all his teeth. It was a sad smile. “I'm not sure yet,” he said. “The details don't really matter, I guess. It started a long time ago, with three kids playing in a field. I guess if you get three kids playing together for a long time one of them comes out on top. But that doesn't mean the other kids give up trying to be on top, even if they act like it for years at a time. The top dog goes on acting like the top dog and the bottom dog goes on acting like the bottom dog. But the bottom dog doesn't necessarily think of himself as the bottom dog. Do you know what I mean?” He bared his teeth in another smile, but Vanni didn't react.

  “Well, the kid who is the top dog comes to think of himself as a top dog, always encouraged by his pals. One day, when he's older, he finds himself with a little money and he goes into a small business. Like landscaping, say. He does all right. He buys a couple trucks, hires a couple drivers, even hires his old bottom dog. And he keeps doing all right.

  “By now, he is somebody. Everybody loves him. He plays poker down at the corner saloon and one night he finds himself a better game at a blind pig. He wins a lot. Everybody's hero. One night one of the players at the blind pig invites him to an even bigger game and he wins, at first. Pretty soon, one of his new poker pals tells him that for a small piece of change he can make sure that our hero gets a lucrative road-hauling contract. The deal works out.”

  Mulheisen took out a cigar and clipped it and lit it. “I don't know if this is exactly the ways things went,” he confessed, “but I wouldn't doubt it. The point is, all the way along, our hero pulls his old playmate with him, because he needs the encouragement he gets from the bottom dog.”

  Vanni continued to sit behind the desk, hunched with his hands in his lap. His face was white and drawn.

  “Our hero is rolling in dough,” Mulheisen went on. “He's got a good business, twenty or thirty trucks, making money hand over fist. He's even branching out into other things, like jukeboxes and vending machines. And then he meets a guy—let's call him Lorry—who tells him he knows an easy way our hero can pick up a few bucks if he'll only haul some guns off an air base.”

  Mulheisen looked up through the cigar smoke. Vanni didn't bat an eyelash.

  “By this time, the other playmate came back. She was a big complication. She didn't look like she used to look. Our hero probably knew better, but he couldn't resist bringing her into the game. I'd say that was a mistake.” Mulheisen took another drag on the cigar. It was very quiet in the room.

  “I could go on with this little story, but I guess I don't have to,” Mulheisen said finally. He gazed placidly at Vanni. “You're sitting there quietly enough, but you're scared, aren't you? You don't know whether Lenny spilled his guts before he died, or how much Mandy can tell us. Hell, you don't know anything, do you?” Mulheisen grinned maliciously.

  “I'll let you in on a little secret, Vanni,” Mulheisen said. “I don't know everything. Oh, I know most of it, but not everything. I—”

  “Let's see your cards, Sergeant,” Vanni interrupted.

  Mulheisen laughed—a short and humorless bark. “I like that, Vanni. That's the old poker player talking. You're tired of my bluffing, aren't you? Well, here's my hole card, then, and I'm damned if it isn't an ace: I know where the guns are, Jerry. And they're not in a place that's convenient for you at the moment.”

  Mulheisen turned and looked pointedly out the window, toward the yellow truck parked by the excavation site.

  Vanni stared at him wildly.

  “You bastard!” Vanni shouted. He kicked the desk forward, away from himself. It was this that saved Mulheisen's life. The desk slammed into Mulheisen's chair, tipping it backward and spilling Mulheisen onto the floor. Two roaring shots from Vanni's .45 automatic blasted across the desk top and smashed the top of the chair to kindling. But Mulheisen wasn't there.

  Mulheisen lay in a tangle on the floor, fighting with his raincoat to get at his .38. Marshall had dived behind a filing cabinet. Vanni leaped to the top of the desk, then vaulted across the tiny room. He kicked viciously at Marshall's gun hand, sending the service revolver flying. Then he smashed a broad shoulder into the rear door of the office and ran out into the floodlit yard.

  Dennis the Menace had just locked the Stoner rifle away in the trunk of the Flyer when he heard the shots. He immediately fumbled with the keys to unlock it again.

  Stanos set off across the yard on a run, pistol out. He saw Vanni racing for the truck parked near the excavation and yelled “Halt!”

  Vanni stopped, pivoted and aimed the .45 at arm's length. A single shot took Stanos's right leg out from under him. Stanos rolled to the cover of the squad car as Vanni ran on.

  Vanni leaped into the big International and turned on the key. The engine roared to life. Several bullets smacked into the sides of the box and the cab. Vanni could see a figure running to one side and he blasted a couple of shots in that direction, then threw the truck into gear. It was pointed toward the rear of the lot and that was the direction he wanted to go—the Big 4 Flyer was blocking the front gate.

  The truck moved slowly at first, but began to pick up speed as it lumbered past the ranks of parked trucks, down the side lane.

  Beyond the yard, on the other side of the tall cyclone fence that surrounded it, lay an open field. Vanni saw it was his only chance.

  Through the side mirror, Vanni saw Marshall running after him. He laughed excitedly and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The truck was going forty-five miles per hour when it hit the fence. The fence bowed and sagged outward. The huge truck's front tires mounted halfway up the fence with a mighty clanging of the box and the trailer. Sand and guns flew in all directions. Then the inertia of the truck pushed it onward and the fence slammed flat. The truck lumbered on in the clear.

  Vanni cranked the wheel hard to the left and made his run, still standing on the gas pedal. He had several hundred feet to go to the first of several dark side streets that beckoned to him as a hole would to a fox. In the mirror, he could see Mulheisen and Marshall firing at the fleeing truck, but their bullets whacked harmlessly into the thick steel sides and he was leaving them behind.

  “By God!” he exulted. “I did it!” He shifted to a higher gear.

  Then he saw the Flyer. It came flashing up the side street and slewed to a stop, sideways, blocking the street. The Big 4 piled out on all sides.

  Vanni headed the powerful rig directly at the Chrysler. A shotgun burst from one of the Big 4 took out the windshield of the truck, momentarily blinding Vanni, but then he thrust the .45 through the jagged opening, and with blood streaming down his face where fragments of glass had struck, he emptied the magazine.

  Dennis the Menace stood to one side of the Flyer with the Stoner rifle at his shoulder. He pulled the trigger and a spew of flame swept the cab of the oncoming truck. The truck smashed into the Chrysler and slammed it to one side, nearly hitting one of the Big 4, who was firing the Sten gun. The juggernaut ran on across the street and smacked into the brick wall of a paint factory, crumpling in the wall. Then the truck's engine died and everything was silent.

  Stoner rifles lay everywhere, pitched from their ruptured crates. Mulheisen panted up to the sand-strewn scene and yanked the cab door open. Jerry Vanni toppled sideways out of the cab in a torrent of blood, his head a pulpy, shattered mess.

  Noell looked around him, taking stock. His men were all safe. They still stood in defensive postures, Sten gun and Tommy gun raised and aimed. Then th
ey let the gun barrels drop slowly. Noell reversed the clip on the Stoner and jammed it home. He stepped up to Mulheisen, who stood looking down at the ruined face of Jerry Vanni.

  Mulheisen turned away. “Call for a wagon,” he said to Dennis. “Possible fatal.”

  Andy Deane was explaining on the telephone how he'd nabbed Maio and Panella. He'd picked them up at a riverfront bar, preparing to leave Detroit in a boat. “I got the idea from you, Mul,” he said. “DenBoer had the right idea. I wouldn't be surprised if the mob got the idea from DenBoer, too.” He went on to say that the two thugs were very uncooperative, but he had the night clerk from the Tuttle for a witness, he had the slugs from Lorry the Shoe, and the gunmen had been stupid enough not to get rid of their weapons. “I guess they figured, since they weren't going through an airport check, or across the regular border area, they might as well take the guns along.”

  “Maybe they planned to dump them in the river,” Mulheisen suggested. He thanked Deane for his help and hung up.

  Then he had to go in and see Buchanan. Stanos was up for a medal and a promotion, but not Marshall. Mulheisen pointed out that just because Marshall hadn't been shot, that wasn't a reason not to give him a citation for bravery. Buchanan hemmed and hawed, muttering something about blacks having to make their own way, but finally he gave in.

  Mulheisen broke the good news to Marshall in his cubicle a few minutes later.

  “There's so many loose ends,” Marshall said, talking about the case. “I never knew it was like this.”

  “Well, we try to clean up as many of them as we can,” Mulheisen said, “but it's generally like this. You just have to face the fact that you never know everything about a case. There's a lot we'll never know, but at least we got the guns back. For instance, we'll never know if DenBoer meant to split with the money or not. Of course, Vanni would still have the guns and he might be able to work some kind of deal with the mob, since he's going to still be around. Maybe they'd be willing to play ball with him because he'd still be useful to them. But he was in way over his head and he didn't realize it. Those guys are just too slick for him. Like DenBoer, he had his head in the clouds, dreaming about fancy capers and wheeling and dealing with the big shots. As it stands, you notice, except for the the two gunsels, we don't have anything on the mob.”

  Marshall listened avidly, nodding in admiration at Mulheisen's explanations. “How did you know the guns were in the truck, though, Sarge?” he asked.

  Mulheisen smiled ruefully. “I should have known long before. When I stopped to see Vanni the other morning he was loading sand into the truck. The sand was piled way over the top of the trailer and the truck box. But there wasn't all that much gone from the excavation pile. I didn't pay much attention to it, unfortunately. But later I realized that the perfect place to hide a truck is among a bunch of other trucks.”

  He took a long, comfortable drag on his cigar and contemplated the smoke. “And now we're back to our original mystery,” he said.

  “What's that?” Marshall asked.

  “Who was the dead man in the alley?”

  They sat and thought about that for a minute, and the telephone rang. It was the medical examiner's office, Dr. Brennan. Before Brennan could say anything, Mulheisen said, “you can let that John Doe go, now, Doc. The case is wrapped. Go ahead and chop him up, or whatever you do.”

  “I'm glad to hear that, Mul,” Brennan said. “I was just calling to say that I'm afraid we kind of screwed up. One of the assistants here signed the body out first thing this morning.”

  “Oh? Who to?”

  “Friend of the deceased. He came in early and claimed the body. Identified him and everything, all proper and orderly. I didn't see the papers on it until after lunch. Sorry.”

  “What did this ‘friend’ look like?” Mulheisen asked. He listened attentively to Brennan, nodding thoughtfully to himself. When Brennan finished, Mulheisen hung up and said to Jimmy Marshall, “You can tell your buddy Stanos, when you visit him in the hospital, that we now know who he blasted. His name was Sidney Carton.”

  “Sidney Carton?” Marshall repeated. “That sounds kind of familiar. Who was Sidney Carton?”

  Mulheisen got up and put on his coat. “Think about it for a minute,” he said. “He was a man who had a good friend. In this case, the friend was named Joe Service.” He walked out.

  Maki stopped him in the hall and asked if he wanted to stop for a beer.

  “No,” Mulheisen told him. “I've got to see a witness.”