The Blind Pig Read online

  “Kill you?” Mulheisen said. Somehow, it didn't seem likely.

  Noell ignored him. “Now you take this creep I busted yesterday—”

  Mulheisen winced, thinking that Noell gave new significance to the verb “busted” that went beyond the notion of mere arrest.

  “—this Jackson. Calvin ‘Speedball’ Jackson. I been after this crud for years. You know how old he is? Eighteen. He's been stealing, dealing, trashing, since he was ten. But some-how, I remembered that Speedball turned eighteen this week. Don't ask me how I remembered; it's funny how things stick in your mind.

  “So we're out cruising and everything's dead, so I says to Clay, ‘Hey, it's Speedball's time. Let's go get him.’ ‘No warrant,’ Clay says. ‘We'll use the ol’ Tennessee Search Warrant,’ I says.

  “Speedball's got him a nice little shack over on McClellan, the wages of smack. So I send Clay around to the back and I go up on the porch. Knock, knock, knock, real hard. No answer. Then Clay yells, ‘C'mon in!’ So I go in. Only the door is locked, so I had to open it with my shoe. Whaddaya think? The asshole's got his old lady sittin’ right in front of the door and the door is all busted up on top of her! Ha, ha! What the hell was he thinking about? She supposed to be a decoy or something? I don't know.

  “Anyway, this chick is all crying and everything, but I don't say shit to her. I go straight for the bathroom, but Speedball ain't there. I go into the bedroom and jerk the bed away and, sure as shit, Speedball is under the bed. He's shaking so bad I can't get him to stand still while I'm searching him, so I had to pacify him a little.”

  “You read him his rights, I suppose,” Mulheisen said.

  “Speedball knows his rights, don't worry about that,” Dennis said.

  “What did you find?”

  “The guy's a walking pharmacy,” Noell said. “You wouldn't believe it. I told him when I shut the door on him, ‘This is it, Calvin. You ain't a juve no more. You're a keeper now.’ “

  Mulheisen wondered. If Calvin “Speedball” Jackson could afford a lawyer, or even if he got a public defender who wasn't hopelessly servile toward the court, the prosecutor wouldn't stand a chance. Illegal entry, no search warrant, violation of civil rights . . . Something seemed very wrong to Mulheisen. How was it that the department—to say nothing of Buchanan—could tolerate the Big 4 but threw up their hands in dismay on something like Patrolman Vaughan's alleged brutality? He supposed it was a matter of publicity and politics. For the benefit of the “bleeding hearts,” the department would pillory Vaughan; for the “get tough with crime” crowd, they could proudly trot out the Big 4.

  Mulheisen told Dennis that he didn't think that Speedball was a keeper yet.

  The Menace shrugged. “He's in the system,” he said. “The thing is, the courts won't put these bastards away, but if you beat on them enough, they hurt. You gotta whack ‘em, Mul. Nothing else gets through their thick skulls.”

  “Dennis, Speedball will forget about you the minute his wounds heal. He's not a genius. What's he going to do, go to night school for a degree in pharmacy and join Rexall?”

  “He'll get a nice vacation at Milan or Jackson before long,” Noell said. “Maybe he'll learn a trade. Which reminds me: guess who I saw on the street yesterday? Good Ol’ Earl.”

  “Good Ol’ Earl?”

  “You don't remember Ol’ Earl? I sent him down six years ago. It was a gun deal. He was peddling some of that stuff they took in the Light Guard Armory raid.”

  Mulheisen shook his head. He was amazed by Noell's prodigious memory for the faces and records of criminals.

  “He looked terrible,” Dennis said. “All fat and squishy, like a slug. I chatted with him. He's staying at the Tuttle.”

  “Did you lean on him?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Lean on OF Earl? I wouldn't lean on Earl. He's a hell of a good guy. Seemed awful glad to see me. Quite a gunsmith, Earl is. Not much chance to practice his trade for the last few years, though. But I guess he'll get back into it quick enough. Take him a while to catch up with the new stuff. I was telling him about this new cartridge Remington's got, the ‘Accelerator.’ It's a sabot.”

  “What the hell is a sabot?” Mulheisen was not well versed in guns and ballistics. He had never understood the tremendous attraction the subject seemed to have for some of his colleagues. He'd had a .22 rifle as a boy, plinking away at tin cans and muskrats along the St. Clair River. And now he carried a revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, with a shrouded hammer. He went to the firing range when required and he shot average scores.

  “The sabot is a plastic vehicle, kind of like the first stage of a rocket, that carries the bullet. It drops away a few inches beyond the barrel of the gun. The thing is, they can load a much more powerful charge that way. This mother starts out at over four thousand feet per second—it's really a .30-06 55 grain load, see? And flat? It drops less than—”

  “What the hell's it good for?” Mulheisen asked. “Squirrels?”

  “No, it'd go through a squirrel so fast the varmint wouldn't know he'd been hit,” Dennis said. “It'd be a great assassination weapon. No ballistics! See, because of the sabot, the actual bullet doesn't touch the barrel.”

  “Oh, great! Just what we need: a better assassination weapon. Look, what is it about guns? What's the big attraction?”

  Dennis thought about that for a minute. “They're nice,” he said at last. “They really work, you know? Not like a lot of things, like a car that's supposed to be wonderful but it turns out just to be a gas hog. Except for the real trash on the market, the average gun is a really nice piece of work. They do what they're supposed to do, and they look like what they are. A gun doesn't look like a hair dryer.”

  “Some hair dryers look like guns,” Mulheisen commented.

  “That's what I mean,” Noell said eagerly. “You realize that the basic form of the revolver hasn't changed in maybe a hundred years?” He hauled out his Colt Python. “Look at this. It's more powerful, it's stronger, but basically it's the same weapon that Wyatt Earp or General Custer used. About all we've done is improve minor mechanisms, improve the alloys, and beef up the firepower. It's pretty close to the absolute peak of its development.” He caressed the blued steel lovingly. Mulheisen began to understand.

  The Python, with its flared ventilated rib, was an elegant thing. It was ugly, too, but it had the immense attractiveness of any tool or artifact that is well designed and properly made. It was, as Noell had put it, one of those tools that has reached the peak of development.

  “You and Ol’ Earl are very close,” Mulheisen said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ask him about this John Doe that Stanos shot last night.”

  “Sure,” Dennis said. He got up from the corner of Mulheisen's desk. “You're wrong about Stanos, Mul. He's all right. He'll make the Big 4 one of these days. That's more than I can say for that rughead, what's his name, Marshall.”

  Mulheisen was puzzled. “Why is that?”

  “No balls,” Noell said. “Them spearchuckers'll all back down in the crunch.”

  Mulheisen was astounded. He knew that Noell's favorite bar was Lindell's AC, a bar where many of the Detroit Lions football players drank. Noell was no great football fan, but he enjoyed the company of men his own size—men who, as he put it, “can give a hurt and take a hurt.” Among these athletes at Lindell's were many black men.

  “What about your buddy Clothesline?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Hey, Clothesline Harris is something else,” Noell protested. “If all them jungle bunnies out there was like Clothesline, they'd blow us out. I'm telling you, Mul, it's war out there. I'd need more than a Python—maybe a bazooka.”

  Mulheisen couldn't take any more. He waved Noell out of the office, reminding him to ask Good Ol’ Earl about the John Doe.

  Jensen and Field appeared at the door. They were an inseparable team. Jensen was a square-faced man with a brush haircut that accented his brutal features. He was excellent at forcing
admissions from suspects with his direct, challenging stare and blunt, almost mindless questions that thinly veiled a threatening violence. His very best friend, Bud Field, was a reticent but imaginative man. Together they made one quite good detective.

  Mulheisen told them to check out the automobiles parked in the Collins alley neighborhood, on the chance that John Doe had driven to the scene. “Ask the neighbors to help you identify the cars,” he said. “It'll save time.”

  He then called Firearms & Ballistics. They said that the .38 carried by John Doe #9-83 had been fired twice and the fragments of slugs recovered from the garage wall were of the same caliber. Having ricocheted off the concrete floor, they weren't in good enough shape for the Bureau to say positively that they had come from that particular gun, but it certainly seemed probable. The pistol itself was a Colt .38 Detective Special, with a snub-nosed barrel. Its serial number was not listed in the published numbers that Colt Arms provided the National Crime Computer System.

  Mulheisen didn't like that. It suggested that the gun had been stolen from the factory, perhaps with several other guns, before the serial numbers were recorded. That suggested an organization, namely, the mob.

  Mulheisen sat back and puffed on his cigar. He recollected the image of the dead man and mulled over it for a while. Then he called Identification and made sure that John Doe's fingerprints would be disseminated to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as the FBI. Mulheisen felt that there was something vaguely foreign about John Doe. His clothes, for instance, were all brand new and they weren't worn in a truly casual way, although they were casual clothes. Rather, they were worn in a meticulous way, as if the wearer wasn't really accustomed to that kind of dress. If the man was an alien, he might have come across the Canadian border, which was just the Detroit River. It wasn't difficult to cross without being checked. Mulheisen had gone back and forth on the Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel many times without being asked anything other than “Where were you born?” For that matter, he had often sailed his little gaff-rigged catboat over to the Ontario side without any interference from authorities. If John Doe had crossed the border, he probably wouldn't have been noticed, but there was always a chance. He dispatched Ayeh, the young, hawk-nosed detective that everyone called Ahab, with a sheaf of post-mortem photographs to show to Bridge and Tunnel Border Patrol officials.

  After that, he telephoned the Wayne County medical examiner's office. The autopsy on John Doe was done. The autopsist, Dr. Brennan, said he'd be glad to give Mulheisen a quick read-through of the report, although he hadn't finished it yet. There were some laboratory reports on request, but he doubted that they would be pertinent.

  “Go ahead, Doc,” Mulheisen said.

  “We have a male Caucasian, five feet six inches in height, weighing a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Subject appears to have been in excellent health and physical condition at time of death. Well-nourished, well-muscled. External examination reveals nothing remarkable except for massive tissue destruction to upper left back and shoulder, with extensive scorching and tattooing and nine penetration wounds, consistent with shotgun-inflicted wound.

  “Subject evidently a nonsmoker, judging from the pink and healthy-looking lungs. No evidence of heart disease, or circulatory disease—that's pretty unusual, Mulheisen, even for a thirty-year-old. Liver healthy, too. Stomach indicates a recent, light meal—some green vegetable substance that is evidently lettuce, and some soft white meal that suggests bread, possibly unleavened.”

  “Unleavened?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Like Syrian bread, maybe,” Dr. Brennan said. “Well, let's go on. Nine lead pellets recovered from the body. One pellet penetrated the heart and several penetrated the lungs. Bone fragments from the right distal portion of the—”

  “Skip that,” Mulheisen said. “We know he was blasted at close range by a 12-gauge. Is there anything unusual about this man, Doc? Anything out of the ordinary? Scars? Tattoos?”

  “I was just coming to that, Mul. To tell the truth, I don't believe I've ever examined a body so free of abnormalities or distinguishing marks. No warts, no pimples, no moles, no freckles, no birthmarks, just a few calluses. Not a scar anywhere, including surgical scars and vaccination marks. I was relieved to see that he had a navel, else I'd have thought he was cloned, or hatched.”

  “No vaccination? You can't get a passport without a vaccination, can you?”

  “I don't think so,” Brennan said. “I'm not sure. Anyway, he couldn't have been in the Army without getting vaccinated.”

  “What do you make of it?” Mulheisen asked.

  “I'd say he was a health nut, Mul. He was used to plenty of exercise, but not anything like tennis or weight lifting. Maybe a devoted swimmer. Not a runner, though. He didn't have the feet for it.”

  “That might help,” Mulheisen said.

  “He was bruised and scratched from the pavement when he fell. I checked his teeth. He has every one of his adult teeth, including the wisdom teeth and not a speck of decay, plaque or dental work.”

  “So he brushed regularly,” Mulheisen said.

  “His skin is tanned, except where he wore very brief trunks. That made me think he was from a southern climate and that he was a swimmer. His hair is dark and would be curly, except that it's cut very short. From his features and coloring, it is my opinion that he is of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin. But that's just a guess, Mul. Maybe his old man or his old lady was from Athens or Ankara.”

  “Or Cairo,” Mulheisen said. “Okay, thanks a lot, Doc. Next time I'm down your way I'll stop for another look at him. Call me when the lab reports come in. In the meantime, of course, you'll hold the body.”

  “Sure,” Brennan said, “but not forever. Let me know as soon as it's okay to release him.”

  Mulheisen rang his old friend Frank Zeppanuk, at the Scientific Bureau. They weren't well started on their tests yet, but Frank said that John Doe's clothing had no labels at all. The clothing was brand new and had never been laundered. “He had nothing on him,” Frank said. “No rings, no medallions, no St. Christopher medal, not even an extra bullet. Seems like he wasn't very well prepared for an emergency.”

  “What about the dollar bill and the key?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Oh, that. The key's a common one, no identifying marks. As for the dollar bill, if you can identify it, it's yours.”

  “Thanks, but what can you buy with a dollar these days?”

  “A shot and a beer, some places,” Frank said.

  “Well, John Doe must have thought he needed it,” Mulheisen said, “or he wouldn't have carried it.”

  He hung up and sat back, staring through the slats of the Venetian blinds on the cubicle's window. He puffed his cigar and watched the traffic rolling by on Chalmers Avenue. He smiled, or grimaced. For a grounder, the case was awfully interesting.

  Three

  Before he left to interview Vanni, Mulheisen made one last telephone call to Andy Deane at the Racket Conspiracy Bureau. He gave Deane a full rundown on the man in the alley and asked, “What does it sound like to you, Andy?”

  “Sounds like a mob hit man, all right,” Deane said. “Kind of unusual for one of those guys to get caught like that. Could have been a fluke, though, being seen by the neighbor lady. Yeah, he could be a hit man—or was. Or he might have had another reason to be there.”

  “Like what?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Maybe he was just delivering the gun,” Deane said.

  “To Vanni?”

  “Why not? Maybe Vanni's a hit man. I never heard of him, but that doesn't mean he isn't.”

  Mulheisen found that an interesting notion. He told Deane that he would send him a post-mortem photograph of the dead man to check against his files, and he asked Deane to run a check on Vanni for possible mob connections.

  Jimmy Marshall stopped by just as Mulheisen was struggling into his coat. He asked Mulheisen if there was anything he could do to help on the investigation. �
�I'm off for a couple days,” he explained. Mulheisen considered it. He could see that Marshall was young and eager, probably ambitious. It wasn't unusual for a young patrolman to volunteer for extra work. It wasn't exactly “brown nosing” Mulheisen couldn't stand that. But he and Marshall both knew that if the younger man was going to rise in the force, he was going to need a “rabbi,” an older man who would act as a sort of sponsor. This would be especially true for a black man. Mulheisen thought wryly that his sponsorship would not endear Marshall to Buchanan. But perhaps he could help the kid.

  Mulheisen told Jimmy about the medical examiner's theory that the dead man had been an athlete, possibly a swimmer. He suggested that Marshall take one of the postmortem photos and go to all the East Side gyms, YMCAs, athletic clubs—any place that had a swimming pool. Possibly, if John Doe had been in town for more than a day, he might have gone swimming.

  Marshall practically ran out of the office.

  Mulheisen got his four-year-old Checker out of the parking lot and drove out to Eight Mile Road. For much of its length, Eight Mile Road is the Detroit city limits. The Vanni Trucking Company was barely in the municipal jurisdiction, near Gratiot Avenue. It was a small wooden building on a large graveled lot, surrounded by a ten-foot cyclone fence. In the front of the lot there was a dormant excavation with a bulldozer parked in it and a large yellow front loader sitting idle by a pile of dirt.

  A couple of automobiles were parked in front of the office building, and off to one side there were several automobiles and pickup trucks—evidently belonging to the drivers of the Vanni trucks. None of the trucks remained in the lot; they were all out on the job, Mulheisen supposed.

  Mulheisen went into the little building and found himself in a single room divided by a low railing, so that there was a kind of lobby, beyond which were two desks—a large one for Vanni and a smaller one for Mandy Cecil. The lobby was obviously a place for the drivers to mill around and drink coffee from a big urn. Like the rest of the office, it was in imminent danger of being overrun by boxes of office supplies and filing cabinets. Clearly, the Vanni Trucking Company was a business that was rapidly outgrowing its quarters.