The Blind Pig Page 5

  “So, this Piers is a farmer, right?” Fatman said.

  “That's right. Anyway, it seems that in those days a doornail was probably the strike plate for the door knocker. So people are always knocking on this plate, or nail. The idea is, if you hit something on the head as often as a doornail gets hit on the head, why then, that thing gets to be dead.”

  Fatman had finished his veal. He looked at Joe's untouched plate. “You're not gonna eat?” he asked. “C'mon, I'm buying.”

  “I ate on the plane,” Joe said. This was a lie. Joe had in fact arrived in Chicago on an Amtrak train from Montana and then cabbed out to O'Hare. He didn't mind that Fatman believed that he had flown in. “You eat it,” he offered.

  Fatman traded plates. “So what are you telling me with this little parable, Joe?”

  “I went over to Detroit once before for you guys,” Joe said. “I went through that door once and that was almost too often.”

  “You made out,” Fatman said. “Sometimes, when there is a knock at the door, it's Opportunity.”

  “Sometimes it's the sheriff. But you're right, Fat. I did make out. Now I don't have to work.”

  “But you love to work,” Fatman pointed out. He snapped his fingers at the waiter and ordered cognac for himself and Joe. “I don't understand this, Joe. You seemed interested. I come all the way over here to Chicago and you talk about doorknobs and farmers. What are you, scared or something?”

  Joe watched a TWA 747 taxi ponderously toward the huge windows of the restaurant. “I'm just a fool,” he said. “I like to travel. And it's always nice to see you, Fatman. Even if you always have harebrained schemes and impossible jobs. The last time I almost got shot. And then, there's a smart cop in your town by the name of Mulheisen, who nearly nabbed me with my hand in the cookie jar. And all this mindless stunting was because your outfit can't keep score in your own ball park. Hell, Fatman, you're the home team. You're supposed to win the home games. But me, I never get my last at bats.”

  Fatman laughed, his voice thick and moist. “I love talking to you, Joe. You got your own language.”

  The drinks came and Fatman said, “Waiter, how about some of that strawberry shortcake now? Lots of whipped cream. Joe?”

  Joe shook his head and inhaled cognac fumes.

  “Money, Joe,” Fatman said. “Lots of it.”

  Joe smiled. His teeth were brilliant. “At last. How much?”

  “Don't know yet. Carmine don't even know.”

  “Ah. Well, thanks for dinner, Fat, even if you did eat it all yourself.” Joe pushed his chair back as if to leave.

  “Siddown,” Fatman said. “It's plenty.”

  “Plenty,” Joe said. “I like that word. I think it's from the Latin plenus, meaning ‘full,’ a sense of bounteousness.”

  Fatman beamed. “See? You got a language all your own, Joe. It's a treat to listen to you.” The waiter brought the shortcake, a spongy little cake about the size and shape of a hockey puck, with racquets-ball-size strawberries on it and a mound of artificial cream that had been sprayed from a pressurized can. Fatman devoured the cake in three gulps. He wiped his lips and continued.

  “Merchandise, Joe. Carmine has a deal with this guy. Young guy, shipping merchandise. Now this kid has come up with a Big Deal. At first Carmine doesn't take him seriously, so the kid says, ‘Okay, I'll go it alone. But if it works out, can I count on you?’ So Carmine says, ‘Okay, keep in touch.’ So, a little later it begins to look like maybe the kid can pull it off, after all. In the meantime there's some complications.”

  “God, I've heard that one before,” Joe said.

  Fatman shrugged. “So Carmine agrees to help the kid out, a little, with the complications.”

  “Only the complications don't get straightened out, they just get more complicated, right?” Joe said.

  Fatman nodded.

  “Is this dope?” Joe asked. “I don't do dope, Fat. Count me out. The people are too freaky.”

  Fatman waved the notion away. “No, no, it's not dope, Joe. This is hard goods. Carmine'll fill you in on it, if you come in. The deal is either a flat fee, or a percentage of the take.”

  “Last time I went for the percentage,” Joe said, “I thought ten percent of twenty million would be two million. Only it turned out to be two hundred thousand.”

  “Joe, those were securities,” Fatman pointed out. “We had to discount them. We sell them to a guy who sells them to a guy. So who makes out? The guy on the end? I don't know. Carmine tells me, ‘Don't get us into no more securities.’ This isn't securities, Joe. This is hardware.”

  Joe Service was pensive. “Hardware,” he said at last. “I like the sound of that. It has a solid, sturdy, no-nonsense ring to it, like bullion. What kind of hardware, though? Cars? TVs? Guns? Diapers? There's all kinds of hardware, Fat. I heard about some guys out West who stole ten miles of pure copper wire, just stripped it off the power pylons.”

  “Where was this?” Fatman asked.

  “Nowhere you know,” Joe answered shortly. “Well, what's the deal?”

  “Carmine says, you come to Detroit. He'll fill you in on the whole deal.”

  “Tell you the truth, Fatman, it sounds terrible. Sounds like you all have shit in your pants and you're all standing around grinning, waiting for the man to arrive with the toilet paper. What did this kid do, for Christ's sake?”

  Fatman sipped his cognac. He got out a cigar and examined it closely, then looked all around him, turning his head with some difficulty on the short fat neck. There were two couples seated directly behind them, very solid middle-class people. Fatman sighed and tucked the cigar back in his coat.

  “The kid hasn't done it yet,” he said. “It's kind of complicated.”

  Joe groaned softly.

  “There was a hit involved, but it got screwed up.”

  “A hit!” Joe leaned forward, very serious now. “Forget it,” he said, almost hissing. “I am not a hit man, Fat. You know better than to tell me this crap.”

  Fatman held up chubby placating hands. “I know, I know. Nobody's asking you to hit anybody, Joe. It's just that a hit was scheduled, but it got botched. Carmine thought you ought to know.”

  “Why?” Joe Service was suspicious.

  “It was somebody you maybe knew. A good man, one of the best, but he went down. Amazing deal. Some cops blasted him.”

  “Cops?” Joe said. “Working cops? You mean street cops took down the man? Who was it?”

  “Sid,” Fatman said.

  Joe couldn't believe it. “Street cops took Sidney? Bullshit. Somebody must have turned him.”

  Fatman spread his hands. “I don't know, Joe. It looks straight. Sid was setting up and a neighbor lady spotted him, calls the cops. The cops come, Sid tries to walk, and the cops cut him in half with a shotgun.”

  Fatman had never seen Service look so strange. First he looked bleak, then he looked mean. Finally, he seemed to get hold of himself. “Sidney,” he said under his breath, “I never would have believed it. Who are these cops?”

  “Nobody,” Fatman said. “Like you say, just working stiffs. They didn't know him from Adam, still don't. Just one of those deals. I guess Sid took a shot at one of the cops and didn't know the other one was behind him.”

  Joe sat back. “I don't believe that. Sidney wouldn't go down for street cops. It's not in the book. Somebody must have set him.”

  “Who could set him?” Fatman said.

  “How about this guy, this kid?”

  “No reason for it,” Fatman said.

  “Well, this is bad,” Joe said. “Somebody could get Dun-loped over this.”

  “Dunlop-ed?” Fatman said.

  “Uniroyal-ed. B.F. Goodrich-ed,” Joe said.

  “You mean, like ‘run over,’ “ Fatman said.

  “I left out Michelin-ed,” Joe said.

  “Well, if you feel that way, forget it,” Fatman said. “Carmine doesn't want you around if you're looking for blood.”

  “
Don't tell me what to do, Fatman,” Joe said mildly. “You did this on purpose, anyway, just to get me interested.”

  “Are you implying that we set Sid up?” Fatman was aghast.

  “No, I don't mean that. Never mind. What kind of deal did Carmine have in mind?”

  “About a hundred, Joe,” Fatman said. “Maybe more if you work it right.”

  Joe smiled and doffed an imaginary cap. “Joe Service, at yo’ service,” he said.

  “So you'll come? Fine.”

  “I'll come, if only to see what happened to Sid.”

  “What's Sid to you?” Fatman asked.

  “None of your business,” Joe said. “We were friends, that's all. We went to school together, you might say.”

  “And what school was that?” Fatman asked.

  “Smith and Wesson,” Joe said.

  Fatman laughed. “I love it.” He hauled out the cigar again, and with a defiant look at the ladies at the next table, he bit off the end and lit up. Billows of rich blue smoke went up. There was some discreet coughing from the other table.

  Five

  Late in the afternoon, Mulheisen sat in Sergeant Maki's cubicle discussing Mutt and Jeff. Maki was a tall, rawboned man with a dour expression. He had a reputation for being tough on suspects. He didn't say much to a suspect, but one thing that enraged him was the suspect's asking him a question. When that happened, the suspect often got a kick in the shins, or worse. Maki's third wife was divorcing him because he wouldn't talk to her, but Maki didn't care. He had Mutt and Jeff now.

  Maki was “married” to Mutt and Jeff, whose supermarket armed robberies stretched back nearly three years. Most of the robberies had taken place in the 9th Precinct; in some cases Mutt and Jeff had robbed the same market on more than one occasion. The robbers were a tall, lanky black man and a short, stocky black man—hence the sobriquet, awarded to them early on by the press. The robbers wore “stingy brim” hats under which were rolled-up nylon stockings that could be quickly pulled down as masks when the proper moment arrived.

  Mutt and Jeff carried automatic pistols, but they had never fired them during a robbery. Not all of the Mutt-and-Jeff robberies had actually been committed by the “real” Mutt and Jeff. They had numerous imitators, most of whom had been caught. Some people believed that the original Mutt and Jeff had been caught as well, perhaps for an unrelated job, and were now in jail, quietly waiting to get out and dig up their buried thousands. Maki did not believe this.

  Maki showed Mulheisen a graph he had drawn. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Mulheisen didn't know what to think. “It's just a lot of dots and lines,” he said.

  “It's a ‘Pattern of Criminal Activity Graph,’ “ Maki said. “I was reading a book by this psychologist. He says crooks act out of compulsive behavior patterns. They don't even realize they're doing things a certain way, or why. The trick for the detective is to chart as many factors as you can from a series of crimes. Then you make a graph. A pattern should appear. Sometimes you can predict when and where the criminal will hit next.”

  “What factors have you noticed?” Mulheisen asked.

  “One: almost every robbery is Friday night, just at closing time; two: both robbers carry large automatic pistols, probably .45s; three: nobody has ever been hurt; four: the robbers speak very little, but give explicit instructions; five: they don't swear or shout; six: every time they come to separate check-outs at about the same time, with more or less the same items in their grocery carts.”

  “I didn't know that,” Mulheisen said. “What's in the carts?”

  “Corn meal, dried beans, smoked ham hocks, ketchup, vinegar, Mexican hot sauce and Stroh's beer.”

  “Then all you have to do is stake out the hot sauce shelf every Friday night,” Mulheisen said, “and bust every middle-aged black male wearing a stingy brim hat who picks up a jar of Salsa Brava.”

  Mulheisen was saved from Maki's retort by the desk officer, who said he was wanted on the telephone. He took the call in his office. It was Jimmy Marshall.

  “I found him!”

  “Who?” Mulheisen asked.

  “John Doe. At the Gratiot Health Spa. It's a little gym and swimming pool outfit on Gratiot, between Harper and Van Dyke. He was in here twice this past week. He worked out on the horse, ran a little, sat in the sauna, then finished off with a long swim. The proprietor never saw him before.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Marshall said smugly. “He signed the register—Tom Brown, 23 Elm Street, Oshkosh, Wisconsin.”

  “Tom Brown,” Mulheisen said. “Interesting name. Are you sure it wasn't Bill White? Or Vida Blue?”

  Marshall's elation subsided audibly. “Pretty common name, hunh?”

  “It's not his name,” Mulheisen said, “but if you want, you can check with the Oshkosh police. Maybe they could take a run out to Elm Street for you. Well, don't let it get you down, kid. You did good. Now, what else should you do?”

  Marshall was silent, so Mulheisen went on, “Find out how he was dressed. Did he speak with an accent? Did he talk to any of the regular customers? Did he come there in a car? Is there a parking lot with an attendant? Is there a cab stand nearby? Did he get off a bus? Maybe he walked. If so, he probably didn't walk from too far. Check nearby hotels. Check nearby restaurants, especially health-food restaurants and stores.”

  “Right! I'm on my way,” Marshall said. “Oh, wait a minute.” He sounded troubled.

  “What's the problem?”

  “I have to pick up Yvonne, my wife, at six.”

  “Go pick her up, then. Jensen and Field can handle this.”

  “But I could just take her home and then I could get back out here,” Marshall said.

  “Fine.” Mulheisen hung up.

  Detective Ayeh came into the cubicle and tossed his remaining post-mortem photographs of “Tom Brown” on Mulheisen's desk. “Nothing,” Ayeh said. “Went to the Bridge, the Tunnel, talked to the bus company that runs the Windsor bus. Nobody knows him.”

  “Oh, well,” Mulheisen said. “Lieutenant Johns was looking for you. Something about a whore that a cop hassled last night.”

  Ayeh groaned. “Another one of Buchanan's paranoia patrols.”

  Mulheisen went back down the hallway to Maki's cubicle. He passed a patrolman who was scolding a couple of worried-looking kids—something about broken windows. “Hang ‘em, Larry,” Mulheisen said in passing.

  Maki looked up as Mulheisen entered. “The problem is to isolate the compulsive factor, or factors,” he said. “Now all these are factors, but which ones are compulsive?”

  “Does this system work when you have two crooks?” Mulheisen asked.

  “A complicating factor in itself,” Maki agreed.

  “Do you suppose that Mutt and Jeff know that you're on their case?” Mulheisen wondered.

  “Oh, they know it, all right,” Maki said. “Senkbeil of the News wrote me up a while back.”

  “I wonder if it's as comforting to them as it is to you?” Mulheisen said. “Never mind. Let's grab some dinner at Cardinale's and hit the hockey game tonight.”

  Maki thought that sounded all right. He shuffled up his papers and graphs and stuck them in the desk. Mulheisen left word at the front desk that if Marshall called he would be at Cardinale's until seven-thirty.

  Mulheisen and Maki devoured the lovely lasagna and drank Cardinale's red wine out of coffee cups. Nobody called. The two of them drove out Grand River Avenue to Olympia in Mulheisen's Checker. The parking-lot attendant greeted Mulheisen as “Fang,” and cheerfully accepted a cigar as a tip.

  The two detectives bought containers of Stroh's beer and stood in the ramp near the Montreal Canadiens’ bench, talking to a uniformed cop and occasionally shouting encouragement to the beleaguered Red Wings. It was Mulheisen's favorite spot for watching hockey. The din was terrific. The skates made a sound like a knife being sharpened on a stone; the players screamed for passes and crashed headlong i
nto the boards. Those on the bench kept up a constant barrage of insults directed toward the opposing team.

  Mulheisen felt exhilarated.

  Six

  It would be a famous night in the history of the Town Pump. Afterwards, Pump regulars would refer to the past in terms of whether so-and-so got married, won the Irish Sweepstakes or died before or after “the night the gunmen shot up the Pump.”

  The Town Pump was a fine specimen of a vanishing institution: the neighborhood bar. A bulwark of the ethnic neighborhoods, it is almost gone now.

  The Town Pump in no way resembled a cocktail lounge. It was well lighted. It used to be a grocery store. In the display bays on either side of the doorway cardboard standup advertisements proclaimed the virtue of Stroh's beer.

  The bar was oak and ornate, with a massive back bar, featuring a huge beveled glass mirror and fake pillars. On the back bar were stacks of clean glasses, many bottles of whiskey, and large jars of hard-boiled eggs pickled in beet juice. A sign on one of the jars said, “Boneless Chicken Dinner—l0¢.” There was also a jar of pickled kielbasa. Besides these viands, the proprietor, Dick VanLerberghe, had a grill on which he made what his customers called the world's best cheeseburger.

  The mirror on the back bar was nearly obscured by comic signs that Dick and “the little woman” had collected on vacation trips in their camper.

  Everybody's favorite sign was the one posted above the cash register:

  SA VILLE DER DAGO

  A TOUSSIN BUSSIS INARO

  NOJO DEMER TRUX

  SUMMIT COUSIN SUMMIT DUX

  Strangers were encóuraged to decipher this cryptic message. The regulars howled with delight at attempts to read the sign phonetically, or as if it were a kind of Pan-European language. At last, for the fee of a beer, a regular would consent to translate loudly: “Say, Villy, der dey go. A t'ousand busses in a row. No, Joe, dem are trucks. Some mit cows and some mit ducks.” The recital was always followed by a good deal of cheerful chuckling, and often Dick would give the newcomer a scrap of paper and a pencil so he could copy this hilarious message.