Hit on the House Page 5

  Mulheisen sighed. “All right, Art. Let me have him . . . and his paperwork.”

  “Detectives got the prelim,” Jellybelly said. He removed Lande's personal-effects envelope from the locker and made Mulheisen sign for it, then led the way down the hall to one of the interrogation rooms. He unlocked it and stood aside. Lande was curled up on the floor, snoring, but he awoke quickly and bounced to his feet. He rubbed his eyes furiously, then immediately launched a tirade, in a rasping voice.

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell time is it? How long I been here? What the hell is this shit? What time is it?”

  Eugene Lande was a short, stocky man with a brushy mustache. He was the sort of man who always looked annoyed, but Mulheisen considered that he was tired and not unreasonably angry. Still, he hardly looked like the sort of man one would expect Bonny to marry. Mulheisen took him down the hall to his office.

  Jimmy looked on, puzzled, as Mulheisen waved Lande into a chair, then opened the personal-effects envelope, and shook out a penknife, a book of matches from Maiolani's Bar and Grill, and a small amount of cash in bills and coins. “This is Eugene Lande,” Mulheisen said to Jimmy. “Big Four.” He uttered the last with a meaningful look.

  Jimmy flipped through the list. All the while Lande continued to complain, demanding to know why he was being held, where was his wife, what time was it. Jimmy found the report. “He was seen by Doug it looks like,” Jimmy said. He handed the report to Mulheisen. It appeared that Lande was meant to be discharged as having no relevance to the investigation, but Detective Doug Joseph had evidently not notified Jellybelly.

  Mulheisen handed the report to Jimmy with a curt nod and went back down the hall to Bonny.

  “Did you find him? Is he all right?” Bonny stood at the railing.

  “Sure, he's all right,” Mulheisen assured her, “but there are a few details. It shouldn't take long. Uh, you say he went out without his wallet?”

  “Yes, I've got it here.” She dug it out of her purse. “I tried to give it to them, but they said to wait, and I've been waiting and waiting and waiting . . .”

  Mulheisen took the wallet and flipped it open. The face on the driver's license looked like the man in his office. Brown hair with a widow's peak; thick, dark eyebrows and a bushy mustache under a slightly bulbous nose; a narrow face. The ears were set close to the head. Height, 66 inches; weight, 148. Age . . . Mulheisen calculated quickly—thirty-six . . . a few years younger than himself and Bonny.

  “How long have you been married to Eugene, Bonny?”

  “Six years. Is anything wrong?”

  Mulheisen looked up and smiled—an attempt at pleasantness that fell into a weedy garden of long teeth. “No. I don't think so.” He was amazed at her appearance. She didn't look twenty years older . . . scarcely ten.

  “You say Eugene went out to the store. What time was this?”

  “It was . . . oh, seven. I had started dinner. Why? What's happened?”

  “Nothing. He was picked up in an area quite a ways from your home.” He glanced at the address on the driver's license, an apartment in Harper Woods. Not really that far from Sid Sedlacek's street in actual miles, but Lande must have driven past an awful lot of grocery stores to get there, even on a Sunday evening, if he was just popping out for a quart of milk. “What was he supposed to be getting?”

  Bonny had to think. “Rosemary,” she said finally. “I needed rosemary for the lamb chops. Mul, what's wrong?”

  Mulheisen tried to calm her. “Now look, Bonny, don't get upset. It's nothing, just a matter of formalities. I'll take care of it. Just sit down, OK? It won't be long.”

  Reluctantly she allowed herself to be led back to the bench. Mulheisen hurried off with the wallet in hand. Lande was silent at last. Jimmy stood next to the door. Mulheisen sat down and flipped open the wallet.

  “ ‘Eugene Preston Lande’,” Mulheisen read. “That you?”

  “Course it's me,” Lande snapped back. “So, she brung it. She still here?”

  “How long have you lived at this address?” Mulheisen asked.

  “About two, three years.” Lande cleared his throat.

  “Occupation?”

  Lande gestured vaguely with his hand. “Computers.”

  “What about them?”

  “I'm in computers.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I work with special computer systems . . . sort of free-lance.”

  “Free-lance what?”

  “It's kinda complicated,” Lande said, rolling his beady eyes as if he despaired of explaining the intricate world of computers to an ignorant cop.

  Mulheisen bared his teeth. “Try.”

  Lande shrugged his shoulders. They were broad and thick, as if he worked out with weights. “It's like . . . a guy has problems with his program—maybe for his business—he comes to Doc Byte—”

  “Doc Byte?” Jimmy said with a near laugh.

  “That's me,” Lande said almost cheerfully, proudly. “Anyways, he comes to Doc Byte, and I check it out, and when I find the bug, I either fix it—if it ain't too big a bug, right?—or I work with the people he got the system from, and they maybe replace it, or, well . . . it just goes on and on like that. I mean, there's a million things can go wrong . . . maybe I make a new system for him, or . . .” He stopped, looking questioningly at Mulheisen, then at Jimmy. “It's real technical . . . I could go through some of it for you.”

  Mulheisen made a sour face. “I get the picture,” he said unconvincingly. “You do this out of your home, or what?”

  “Out of my home? Well, I guess you could, but I got an office. Doc Byte. It's on Nine Mile, in Warren. There's a card there, in the wallet. Go ahead, take one.”

  “Your wife brought this wallet in,” Mulheisen said. “She says you went out this evening—yesterday evening—to the store. Is that right?”

  Lande nodded.

  “What time?”

  “What time? I don't know. It musta been about seven.”

  “Why did you go out?”

  “I went to the store. I forget what for. I been here for so long! It was some kinda spice she wanted. Rosemary. That's it! What is all this, anyways?”

  “You went a long way for rosemary,” Mulheisen said.

  “So what?”

  Mulheisen looked at the arrest report. “Where were you when the officer stopped you?”

  “Where was I? I was on Kercheval.”

  “Where on Kercheval?”

  “A couple blocks from Alter.”

  “Were you driving?”

  “I was walking. Whataya think? An’ this big ape comes along and says, ‘Git in,’ meanin’ his squad car. So what the fuck, I'm a law-bidin’ citizen, I says, ‘What the fuck is this?’ And the big ape says, ‘Just git the fuck in.’ So what am I? I git in. They bring me here, and the next thing I know they leave me in this fuckin’ office, and now I'm talkin’ a you. OK?”

  He was getting worked up. “Relax,” Mulheisen said. “What was the arresting officer's name?”

  “I don't know the guy's name. He was huge. Mean fucker.”

  “Do you want to file a complaint?” Mulheisen asked casually.

  “I ain't complaining,” Lande responded quickly.

  “You have a right to complain,” Mulheisen said.

  “I ain't complaining.”

  “Was the arresting officer Noell?”

  “How should I know. I didn’ ast.”

  “All officers wear name tags, or if it was a plainclothes detective, he should have shown you his identification.”

  “He was plainclothes, but he had a ‘Flyer,’ “ Lande said, referring to the wings painted on the sides of the Big Four's cruisers, “he didn’ haveta tell me he was a cop. I never seen no ID.”

  Mulheisen sighed. He examined the report, the effects, the wallet for a long minute. Finally he said, “You went a long way for rosemary.”

  “I was lost,” Lande said.

  Many Detroit streets, perh
aps especially on the east side of town, were confusing. They ran at angles to the basic grid-and-belt system, and some of them changed names, such as Cadieux's becoming Morang and leading into Moross. It had to do with the old boundary lines of the French settlers’ farms, Mulheisen knew. But Detroiters never got lost—or, more to the point, they never admitted being lost.

  “I thought there was a dago store, some kinda deli, around there. I parked and walked, but I couldn’ find it. Then the flyer come along—”

  “Where did you park?”

  “In a rest'rant parkin’ lot. On Kercheval.”

  “What restaurant?”

  “I don’ know. I never paid no attention. Hey, come on . . . what the fuck? Do I gotta call my lawyer, or what?”

  Mulheisen was suddenly tired of this pointless sparring. Obviously Lande had nothing to do with this investigation. And if it turned out, by chance, that he did, he knew where to find him.

  “Did the officer question you at all?” he asked.

  “Some bird did. He ast me about what you ast me. He ast me if I seen a accident.”

  “Did you?”

  “I didn’ see nothin’. What is it? A hit ‘n’ run?”

  Mulheisen shrugged. “If you didn't see it . . .” He replaced the driver's license in the wallet and pushed it across the desk with the other things. “You want to check this stuff? See if it's all there?”

  Lande checked through the wallet quickly, counted his money, and slipped the other items into his pockets. “It's all there.” He stood up.

  “One minute.” Mulheisen pushed the property-inventory form across, along with a ballpoint pen. “Sign this.”

  Lande looked at the paper suspiciously. “What's this? I ain't signin’ nothin’.”

  “It's just a release form. It says all your personal property has been returned, that's all. Go ahead, read it.” Mulheisen pointed to the form.

  “I can see that,” Lande said, picking up the paper gingerly. He held it before him, eyeing it warily. “You're sure that's all it is?”

  “Well, you can read, can't you?” Mulheisen said, irritably. “Here,” he handed Lande the pen, “sign by that X.”

  “X? I don't need no X. I can sign my own name.” Lande bent to the desk and signed his name with a large, stylish script, writing carefully. When he finished he handed the pen back to Mulheisen. “That it?”

  Mulheisen picked up the form. “Good enough for the Declaration of Independence.” He showed the form to Jimmy Marshall. “Now that's what I call a John Hancock.”

  Lande frowned. “What's wrong with it?”

  “Nothing,” Mulheisen said, wearily. “You're free to go. Jimmy, show Mr. Lande out.” Mulheisen felt a sudden diffidence about encountering Bonny again.

  When Jimmy returned, he said, “What a touchy fart.”

  “I'm just glad to get him out of here without a signed complaint,” Mulheisen said.

  “Weirdo,” Jimmy said. “Computer freaks! They talk like illiterates, some of them. You hear that? Sounded like a cross between a Valley girl and a pimp.”

  “You think he was lying?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Oh, he was lying all right,” Jimmy said, “but what about? Went to get some rosemary? Probably slipped out to see his girlfriend. Who knows? These computer freaks don't speak the same language, Mul. All they know is bauds and bytes. They think in numbers. Nowadays if you don't know computers, you're the illiterate one.”

  Mulheisen didn't want to get into that. He knew Jimmy was up on computers. Himself, he didn't know a baud from a byte. “Did you see the wife?” he asked.

  Jimmy smiled and nodded.

  “She say anything?” Mul asked.

  “Not to me. She let out a wail and fell on the little drip's neck like he was Warren Beatty. Maybe he is. Women are funny. Now you take my wife—”

  “Thanks,” Mulheisen said, “but no thanks.” He had a vision of the large, splendid Yvonne in her African robes and glittering bangles. An admirable person, but not one of Mulheisen's favorites, nor was he one of hers. She wouldn't thank him for Jimmy's late hours. “See you in a few hours,” he said and left.

  Five

  It was midmorning before Mulheisen was alerted to the abscondence of Hal Good. A great hullabaloo ensued, and the unfortunate brunt of it was borne by Officer Lovabella. He it was who had allowed Hal Good to take the position of Henry J. Fogarty, structural-steel salesman from Youngstown, Ohio. The clamor was for Jellybelly to be severely disciplined, if not dismissed from the force.

  Mulheisen took a different view. Although it did not come up in the foofaraw following the discovery of Fogarty in the holding pen, Mulheisen could not ignore the fact that he himself had looked in on Fogarty's inert form and when told that it was Good, had not raised any questions. Worse, just moments earlier he had read the interrogation report, which had not suggested that the subject was in any way inebriated and certainly not practically comatose. At any rate, Mulheisen's curiosity ought to have been piqued at seeing Good still present at 3:00 A.M. But he'd had Lande—and Bonny—on his mind. Mercifully, Lovabella did not reveal Mulheisen's appearance in the booking room. Therefore, Mulheisen defended Jellybelly by charging that Noell had mishandled Lande. (He did not find it necessary, of course, to mention that Jellybelly had forgotten Lande's whereabouts for several hours.)

  Since when, Mulheisen demanded, does a detective bring in a suspect and then not follow through on the investigation, or having found no cause to detain the suspect/witness, fail to discharge that person from custody? Both Lande and Good, he pointed out, had been the responsibility of Dennis Noell, who had seen fit to pick them up in the vicinity of the Sedlacek murder scene, and yet Detective Noell had not followed through with the investigation. The report of Officer Doug Joseph (one of Noell's crew) on Lande was slipshod and incomplete, and of course there had been no questioning whatever of Good, whose subsequent behavior seemed to indicate that he might be a very important actor, indeed, in the Sedlacek scenario. This, Mulheisen declared, is what comes of elevating cruising squads to detective status.

  Mulheisen's complaint did not play as well as he had hoped. The precinct commander of the Ninth, Buck Buchanan, an unctuous dandy, was a sworn life's enemy of Mulheisen's. He believed, correctly, that Mulheisen despised him, that he ridiculed him, that he was insubordinate, and that he had usurped the affection and the loyalty of the men of the Ninth. It particularly bothered him that Mulheisen had successfully avoided taking the lieutenants’ exam for several years now. Buchanan believed that Mulheisen had been able to do this, and to take other irregular actions, because he had political influence at a very high level, through his long-deceased father. Mulheisen, Sr., had been the water commissioner for some thirty years, not an influential post, but he had been well regarded in the Democratic party and by the United Auto Workers, so maybe he'd had some political punch. None of it had devolved upon his son, however, but Buchanan did not believe that. It was Buchanan's further erroneous belief that the reason Mulheisen did not take the lieutenants’ exam was he would flunk it. In fact, Mulheisen avoided the exam because he knew it would inevitably advance him into an administrative position, whereas he much preferred to be a working detective. Also, he didn't need the money. This kind of reasoning would never penetrate the seal-like head of Buchanan.

  But now it appeared that Buchanan might have a chance to force Mulheisen to take the exam, which if he failed would ultimately get him out of the force and if he passed would at least get him out of the Ninth. Buchanan sent a memo to the district inspector of eastern detectives, noting that Mulheisen was officially the detective in charge of the botched Sedlacek investigation, regardless of the performance of his subordinates and fellow detectives. The investigation was his responsibility, not theirs, Buchanan insisted. The district inspector of eastern detectives could hardly ignore this memo, although he personally believed that Mulheisen ought to be allowed to do just about whatever he pleased. He didn't feel compelled, however, to
act rapidly on the matter. In due time it would be passed along to the deputy chief of detectives, also an admirer of Mulheisen's. Some day it might even reach the office of the chief—whoever that might be (the present chief was under indictment). Maybe when the deputy was promoted, he might take the file along. Maybe not.

  There was unpleasantness also with the honcho of the Big Four. Normally Dennis Noell and Mulheisen got along, mainly by avoiding each other. But now Noell jumped into the fray with both feet (or was pushed by Buchanan). He claimed to have had nothing to do with the mix-up. Oh, sure, he'd picked up both Lande and Good, but he had promptly turned them over to the doorman, to be held for Mulheisen and his crew. In fact, he had tried to get Mulheisen to interview one of the witnesses at the scene, but Mulheisen couldn't be bothered. (“Which one?” Mulheisen asked; Noell wasn't sure. “Where were these men picked up?” Mulheisen inquired; there was no indication, and no one could sort it out.)

  Stanos, the Big Four driver and ex-mate of Jimmy Marshall, told Jimmy that they had picked up “half a dozen” guys that night in the space of an hour, one of them actually, if barely, on the street where Sedlacek had been gunned down. “Dennis was just snatchin’ ‘em right and left,” Stanos said with a grin. “He calls it the Bubba Smith method—you grab everybody in the backfield and sort ‘em out later.” Like the rest of the crew he couldn't say who was picked up where, but if push came to shove, he wouldn't say anything to hurt Dennis. He was tired of driving the cruiser and wearing blue (they had to have a blue driver because one whole Big Four crew had been gunned down, though not killed, when they stormed a dope den, and the defendants in the court case had walked by claiming they had no idea who these big bruisers were, in civilian clothes, attacking them with ax handles and shotguns—they had shot in self-defense). Stanos wanted an ax handle, or maybe even the tommy gun.

  Finally Mulheisen countered that he had never had an opportunity to see Good, and Lande had similarly been misplaced. Noell should have seen to it that a detective—some detective, even one of his own—had interviewed this most suspicious of witnesses. But beyond that he managed to smooth the ruffled feathers by noting that the real culprit was the outmoded system of identifying and holding and dispersing witnesses and suspects. Most metropolitan police forces were adopting a bracelet system, he noted, similar to that used in hospitals (to identify babies and surgical patients and to prevent the dispensing of medication to the wrong person). The bracelet system would prevent prisoners from impersonating one another.