Hit on the House Page 6

  Mercifully all the squabbling soon began to die down. There was more than enough work for every detective in the city. Buchanan's complaint was still at division level. And Jellybelly, after a few days’ vacation with pay, was back on the night door at the Ninth.

  After a week the case was deader than Sid. They had not found the killer's gun, or even his gloves. Some lucky teenager had found the attaché case. He'd thrown away the foam so he could use the case to carry his schoolbooks. Maki cleared the driver of the car that had almost hit Sid. The medical examiner had nothing interesting to say, except that Big Sid was aptly named, in a genital sense. Frank Zeppanuk, from the Scientific Bureau, offered the marginally enlightening information that powder residues indicated that the gunman had not used standard loads, which suggested what they already believed: the hitter was a pro.

  But, of course, they had the unrecovered personal property of Hal Good. A wallet containing a driver's license, two credit cards, and $179 in currency. Also a nice necktie, which carried a label from Cool Noose, a Chicago shop. In addition, Jensen and Field discovered an interesting vehicle parked in a lot within two blocks of Sedlacek's house. When they contacted the rental agency, they learned it had been rented at Metropolitan Airport on Saturday, the day before the killing. The renter: Harold B. Good. Mr. Good had presented a credit card from Chase Visa but had insisted on paying cash, making a hundred-dollar deposit, which had not been claimed.

  Mulheisen examined the driver's license thoughtfully. It said Good lived in Iowa City, Iowa, on Governor Street. He was thirty years old, and the photograph was that of a pleasant-looking young man who wore photo-gray eyeglasses and had sandy hair. The license was due for renewal in four months. The credit cards were from two banks, First Chicago and Chase, in Wilmington, Delaware. They were issued to Harold B. Good, with a box number in Iowa City.

  “This looks too easy,” Mulheisen told Jimmy Marshall. He was on hold, on a call to the Iowa City police. He was soon proved right. The Iowa City police reported that they had nothing on Harold B. Good, except that he had died more than three years earlier. Mr. Good had committed suicide by ingesting numerous sedatives, presumably because he had begun to experience full-blown symptoms of AIDS. He had died intestate, no known relatives, and the police had not investigated further.

  This information did not depress Mulheisen. On the contrary, he now felt that he had a real lead. He turned over the Chicago credit card and dialed the 800 number on the back, then asked to be connected to the Fraud Division. A pleasant-sounding woman was very interested to hear about Mulheisen's find. She quickly punched up Good's account on her terminal and was able to relay the following: Harold B. Good had a twenty-five-hundred-dollar credit line; he was fully current; he had changed his billing address some three years ago from the Governor Street address to a post-office box. Charges were infrequent but, curiously enough, all were made at businesses in the Detroit area—car-rental agencies.

  The case officer at First Chicago was eager to cooperate. She said Harold Good's employer was listed as Quaker Oats, in nearby Cedar Rapids. She put Mulheisen on hold while she dialed Good's listed home phone number—it was no longer in service. She promised to fax all relevant material to Mulheisen immediately and to put an alert on all future uses of the card, with the notation that the user was not to be stopped or alarmed in any way but that the company should be notified instantly. This was just in case the current user had access to a duplicate card, although the case officer agreed with Mulheisen that it was unlikely to be used again. “Still, you never know,” she said hopefully. “Sometimes these people aren't brain surgeons, and, then, people do occasionally get into a bind, an emergency, where they just have to use the card. We'll keep a special eye on it.”

  The fraud officer at Chase Visa wasn't so cooperative. He insisted on an investigative subpoena before relinquishing any information. “We've been burned on these before, Sergeant Mullhouse,” he said. “An absolute career con man out of Jersey nailed us in court for violation of privacy. So, company rule—gotta have a subpoena.”

  That same afternoon Mulheisen faxed him the subpoena, signed by a judge who didn't even read the request. By the following day Chase's response was back: Harold B. Good had a two-thousand-dollar credit line; he was up-to-date on all payments and fees; he had used the account only five times in the past two years—to rent automobiles in Chicago; Los Angeles; Omaha; Fort Smith, Arkansas; and Dallas. The billing address was the same post-office box as for First Chicago, as was the employer's name and the home phone number.

  The postal inspector's office in Iowa City reported that a Harold B. Good had rented the box and paid the rent regularly. Apparently he picked up his credit card statements promptly; no mail was in the box at present.

  Mulheisen agreed with Jimmy that Good was the man they wanted. “Nobody goes to this much trouble to conceal his identity unless he's a professional criminal. He probably lives in or around Iowa City, but obviously he travels. What's in Fort Smith, I wonder? Any word on the prints?”

  There had been a few smudged fingerprints on the cards in the wallet and in the rental car. Jimmy had sent them to the FBI, but the only response had been “will try further processes.” Jimmy said he'd heard that the FBI was experimenting with a new computer-simulated system, in which they took the prime characteristics of the partial prints and tried to create a more complete version. Nobody knew if it really worked, but it was worth a try.

  They checked the airlines for an arrival of Harold B. Good on the Saturday preceding the killing. No luck. Nothing for the preceding days, either. Mulheisen decided that Hal, as he had begun to call him, must have traveled under some other name. Perhaps he had paid cash. One thing they did learn, however: Henry J. Fogarty had presumably flown to Chicago early Monday morning—quite a trick, inasmuch as he was sleeping it off in the Ninth Precinct's holding pen.

  There was the name of a motel on the sparsely filled in preliminary-interrogation form: the Windswept, on Eight Mile Road. Mulheisen and Jimmy drove out there. By now they had an eight-by-ten blowup of Hal's driver's license photo. The register at the Windswept indicated that a Harold Good had stayed there Saturday night, but he had checked out Sunday morning, and the room had been cleaned. The clerk said the picture vaguely resembled Hal, except that he didn't wear glasses and maybe his hair was a little darker. Hal was friendly, she said, even a little flirtatious—which seemed reasonable, given that the clerk was quite attractive. In response to Mulheisen's suggestion, she adamantly rejected any notion that Hal might be gay. They looked at the room but could find nothing, nonetheless Mulheisen called in the Scientific Bureau to do a full-scale sweep. That turned up a couple more smudged prints, possibly Hal's, on the flush lever of the toilet. They were sent on to the FBI, which still hadn't come up with anything.

  And that was that.

  Andy Deane, of Racket-Conspiracy, had big ears on the street. Those ears’ tongues said that Big Sid had been popped by a heavy hitter from the West. The tale was that Sid had been skimming the numbers and the flesh forever, presumably without complaint from his masters, but lately he'd gotten into entirely new venues—not content to razor off the fat, he was now (or had been) hacking off whole steaks. The commodities specifically were coke and crack, said the tongues, which commodities Carmine had expressly forbidden to his minions. Further, Big Sid had been making fluttering noises, like a bird expecting to migrate, most likely to some warmer climate, where the business didn't have a branch office.

  “Do you believe this dreck?” Mulheisen asked Andy.

  Deane, a large man with red hair, a freckle on every centimeter of his body, and doll-like blue eyes, laughed. “It's one of those accepted fictions, Mul. A few years back Carmine was supposed to have promised his dear old mom, or maybe it was his new dolly, or maybe it was his beloved daughter, Ann-Mary, who'd had a brush with the law for possession of grass, that the business was gonna get out of the dope business. That's the line. For generations Carmine a
nd his pals controlled heroin, grass, meth, coke, . . . but this new stuff, especially crack, was evil. Carmine wasn't having it. He said. And, in a sense, it's true. Those aren't mob boys standing on the street corner waving baggies of coke and touting cat's-eyes crystals. The business is ostensibly run by the Colombians and the kids. But Carmine has got his wienie in there, too, no doubt about it. It just isn't so visible.”

  “And how did Sid fit into this?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Carmine warned all these second-echelon goons off,” Andy said, “whether out of piety or to make his piece bigger, especially including Sid.” According to Andy, Sedlacek had got into trouble with Carmine years earlier for trimming too close to the bone. Bones, in fact, were broken. Sid had almost eaten the Colt then, Andy said, and it had taken him a long time and a lot of hard, unpleasant labor to work himself back into a position of uneasy trust—loan-sharking, auto parts, and jukebox marketing, not cushy work.

  “I guess he didn't learn,” Mulheisen said.

  “These guys aren't good students,” Deane agreed. “It must have been humiliating for him. But he made it back, . . . and as soon as he did, it looks like he started trimming again. But this time he must have taken some big slabs.”

  “How big?”

  “Five mil? Ten? Those are the figures I hear.”

  “So where is it?” Mul wondered.

  “That's the question,” Andy said. “It's still out there, they say. Carmine's still on the prod. They say. It's probably all bullshit.”

  None of this was any concern of Mulheisen's. This was Andy Deane's beat. Mulheisen was just as happy to think Sedlacek's murder was a hit. Hal would not be easy to find, but he would no doubt turn up again, down the road. As his old mentor, Grootka, used to say, “The world is round.” Being a hit, an internal matter, so to speak, the pressure was off. The press wasn't concerned, especially, when the business bopped its own. There was a lot more pressure when bystanders or honest Johns got knocked. The Sedlacek case was not looking like a boost for anyone's career.

  * * *

  About a week after these events, there came a message for Mulheisen at the precinct from Mrs. Lande. He sat and looked at the note with misgivings for some time, then reluctantly called the number.

  Bonny was pleased to hear from him. “You were so nice, Mul,” she said, “that Gene and I both thought we just had to thank you. We want you to come to dinner.”

  Mulheisen was caught off guard, but he quickly begged off. He thanked her but claimed it wasn't ethical to engage in social contacts with a witness in an ongoing investigation. Bonny was immediately apologetic and sounded embarrassed. She wouldn't have him think for a moment that there was anything irregular about the invitation. But they did want to thank him. If he couldn't come, well, . . . she was sorry.

  The following day Lande himself called. He just wanted to assure Mulheisen, he said, that there was nothing “funny” about the invitation. “Just a friendly, you know, kind of thing,” he said. “Hey, no offense, buddy. But it'd be a great favor to Bonny, you know. Bonny don't have no real friends around here, and I guess you guys used to go to school together and all. I mean, I thought you figured out that I didn't have nothing to do with that Sedlacek shit, anyways. Right? I mean, nobody could say nothing about having dinner for Chrisake, could they? It'd be a great thing for Bonny.”

  He went on and on in that vein until Mulheisen began to feel like a jerk for denying his old school friend a chance to be properly grateful. But what did it was when Lande finally said sourly, “Bonny told me you wouldn't come. I guess your old man was the water Commish, or something . . . not on our level.”

  Mulheisen couldn't bear for Bonny to believe he was snubbing her and her husband. He agreed to meet them on neutral grounds, so to speak, at a restaurant in St. Clair Shores, and he insisted on paying for his own dinner. He claimed it was departmental policy. That was agreeable.

  Six

  Joe Service said, “I'm not interested, Fat. I made up my mind last time—I'll never go back to Detroit.”

  The Fat Man just chuckled. “Whata thing to say, Joe. Sounds like some kinda pop song.”

  “I mean it, Fat,” Joe said. They were standing in the Cannon Terminal, in Reno. Joe was feeding nickels into the slot machines, and to his annoyance he kept winning. He didn't hit the jackpot, but there would be a little shower of nickels, and he just couldn't get rid of them. “Nothing but bad news in Detroit,” he said, punching in nickels. His refusal had to do with a series of bad experiences in Detroit, many of which were concerned with a policeman named Mulheisen. But Joe didn't mention Mulheisen. He preferred to chide the Fat Man about his organization's incompetence and inability to deal with their own people. The situation the Fat Man had just mentioned sounded like the same old tune. Joe Service was no fan of the Motown sound. “Guess I'll sit this dance out,” Joe said.

  “Too bad,” the Fat Man said nonchalantly. “Lotta money involved.”

  “Well, I knew there would be a lot of money,” Joe said, “otherwise you wouldn't have flown all the way out here. Damn!” Three grapes showed in the slot machine window, and another disgusting pile of nickels slithered into the tray just as Joe had stuffed in the last of the previous nickels. He moved to another machine and quickly began to load it up.

  “Don't you wanta know how much, Joe?” The Fat Man was disappointed at Joe's lack of enthusiasm.

  “Sure. Why not?” Joe continued to punch nickels and crank the handle. “No, . . . let me guess. Five big ones. Maybe seven. That about right?”

  “Five big what?” the Fat Man asked.

  Joe stopped what he was doing and looked at his massive companion. “There was something in the way you said that,” Joe said. The Fat Man's face was smooth and shiny, revealing nothing. Joe pulled the handle.

  Clang-clang-clang . . . three bells rolled up, and the jackpot bell clamored. Nickels were shooting out of the machine and onto the floor. Joe stared at the machine in horror. He threw up his hands, then grabbed the Fat Man by the arm and led him away.

  “You ain't gonna leave all them—”

  “Forget it, Fat!” They walked off down the concourse, leaving a circle of astounded travelers glancing from the puddle of nickels to the departing men, one of them obese and the other small and jaunty. A child laughed and fell to his knees, picking up the coins and letting them run through his fingers. Other travelers squatted to seize handfuls.

  Joe and Fat stopped at a newsstand and stared at piles of magazines and newspapers. “Who is this Hal, anyway?” Joe asked.

  “Just a mechanic. We use him off and on the last coupla years.”

  “What does he look like?” Joe picked up a copy of Time and flipped through it, not even seeing it.

  “About five ten, brown hair,” the Fat Man said. “He looks real ordinary, Joe. A little older than you, thirty maybe. Not a snappy dresser like you, but neat, . . . ordinary. He don't have your build—he's kinda skinny.” The Fat Man was well aware that Service valued his athletic conditioning.

  Joe frowned. “He doesn't have a mustache or anything? Glasses? Nanh? Teeth. He have kind of little, separate teeth?”

  “Separate teeth? What does that mean, Joe?” The Fat Man snorted.

  Joe tossed the magazine back on the pile and held his hands up before his mouth, moving the fingers against the thumbs to simulate a munching action. “You know, little teeth . . . little square teeth that have tiny spaces . . . like those little ears of corn, little white kernels . . . no, hunh?” Joe shrugged. “For a moment there I was thinking of a guy I knew in high school. Well, of course, Hal isn't him, but for some reason I got this flash . . . Where did this Hal come from, anyway?”

  They walked on. “Oscar sent him to us. We needed somebody fresh. This was two, three years ago. Oscar said he was OK. Now Oscar says he never even saw the guy; he was just passing on something he heard from Mitch, in New York. Mitch says he thought the guy's name was Julius and he was from Florida. Mitch says he never he
ard of no Hal.” The Fat Man shrugged and muttered something that sounded to Joe like fuzzuguvuh maybe. Joe had no idea what that was supposed to mean—his Italian was weak; he'd been born Surface, but his father had changed the name to Service.

  They had come to a saloon, or a casino, a kind of drinking-and-slot-machine place. The Fat Man waved Joe in. They sat at a table amid the pinging of electronic gambling devices and the jangling of slots. The Fat Man had a glass of red wine. Joe wouldn't have anything.

  The Fat Man had set a leather briefcase on a chair next to him. Now he opened it and fished out a manila envelope, which he passed to Joe. “Carmine said to give you this. It seems we still owed you fifty from the last time.” He looked away and sipped his wine.

  Joe Service didn't touch the envelope. He hooded his lids and said evenly, “It wasn't fifty, Fat. It was more like a full Benjy.”

  “You still talking about them bearer bonds, Joe?” The Fat Man shook his head in disbelief. “I told you about them. With the discount and the commissions it didn't come to anymore'n I paid. You agreed on this, Joe.”

  Joe pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are giving me a huge headache, Fat.” His voice was tense and it began to rise. “We always have to go through this . . . this utter fucking crap!” He leapt to his feet and rapidly walked away. The Fat Man remained seated. He stared at his wine; then reached out and picked it up. He sipped it, rolling it around his palate and smacking his lips as if it were some incredible vintage instead of California jug wine. He didn't touch the envelope.