Hit on the House Page 8

  “Gene is just grateful,” Bonny said. “We both are, Mul. I'm sure he doesn't mean anything that would cause—”

  “I ain't talkin’ about no bribe or nothin’. Don't get me wrong, Mul. Hell, I never had to pay a cop for nothin'! But if there's ever anything I could do for ya, . . . you just say the word, and you got Gene Lande in your corner. Get me?”

  Mulheisen smiled. “I know you mean well, and I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful, but there really isn't anything. Maybe if I ever buy a computer, you could give me some advice.”

  “Gene knows everything about computers, Mul,” Bonny said eagerly. “He's a real genius.”

  “Really?” Mulheisen said.

  Lande made a show of modesty, pushing up his lower lip and wagging his head, but he couldn't sustain it. “Well, a lotta guys know computers, . . . but the troot is, most of ‘em, they just know what's in the manual.”

  Mulheisen spread his lips in what might have been a grin, but there was a hint of malice when he said, “But you don't, eh?”

  Lande didn't catch it. “The manual is for the workers,” he replied, “and as a great man once said, ‘Work is for saps.’ “

  “What great man would that be?” Mulheisen asked.

  “Edward G. Robinson . . . Key Largo.”

  “You like gangsters, do you?”

  “Inna movies,” Lande replied.

  “That's where I like them,” Mulheisen said.

  “Gene is nuts about old movies,” Bonny said, but they ignored her.

  “Or in the morgue, eh?” Lande asked. “Like Big Sid?”

  “I had nothing personal against Big Sid Sedlacek,” Mulheisen replied. “Nobody deserves to die like that.”

  “You don't think so? I never heard he was such a good guy,” Lande said.

  “What do you know about it?” Mulheisen asked coldly.

  Lande shrugged. “I seen it on the news. Anyways, he caused me enough trouble.”

  “You? Oh, you mean getting picked up. Yes, well, still . . . On the other hand, I can't say the world isn't better without Big Sid Sedlacek around . . . not that he was the worst. There's plenty others I could do without.”

  “Like who?” Lande wanted to know.

  Mulheisen shrugged. “Oh, I don't know . . . Charlie Evans, Perry Lewis, Tupman, Conover—”

  “Marty Tupman?” Lande asked, interested. “The Snow Man?”

  “You know Tupman?” Mulheisen elevated an eyebrow.

  “Everybody's hearda Frosty Tupman.”

  Mulheisen said, “I don't think anybody actually calls him that. Some reporter just made it up, like most of these gangster nicknames. They got the idea from the movies maybe. It makes these jerks sound colorful. But they aren't colorful, believe me. They're just human dreck.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Bonny said. “But it was awful about Mr. Sedlacek.”

  “Did you know him?” Mulheisen asked, surprised.

  “Naw,” Lande interjected. “I mean, we seen him on the news, that's all. Did you ever get anywheres on who done it?”

  “We're working on it. The current theory is that it was a professional killer.”

  “Aren't they very hard to catch?” Bonny asked.

  “It isn't easy. But there seems to be a lot of commotion in the crime community right now. I have a feeling this killer will surface again, and maybe we'll get a better shot at him next time. These fellows don't retire, you know.”

  “What kind of commotion?” Bonny asked.

  “Well, apparently there was a good deal of money involved, and rumor has it that it hasn't been found. If it's as much money as we hear, it can't be easy to hide.”

  “You'll never find it,” Lande said.

  “You sound rather cynical,” Mulheisen said.

  “I don't know about that. I know about money, though. You see,” Lande looked very canny, “a lotta people think of money as, . . . well, dollars and coins, . . . but it ain't.”

  “Ah,” said Mulheisen. He looked at Lande with interest. He would not have suspected the man of philosophy. “What is money, then?”

  “It's just data,” Lande said. “Information. When you work in computers, you purty soon find out that everything is data. You tell the computer something, the computer does what it's gotta do. You tell a computer this is fifty bucks, the computer says OK. A guy sticks his card in a machine, the machine gives him fifty bucks. Who needs it? I mean, who needs the actual bucks? All you gotta do is get the machine to tell another machine that it's got fifty bucks.” He stopped and crossed his arms with a triumphant look.

  Bonny and Mulheisen looked at each other. She said, “But Gene, honey, you have to have fifty dollars at some point, don't you?”

  “Nanh. Oh, somewhere, sometime, there's gotta be fifty bucks, but the machine don't care. Anyways, you wouldn't understand.” He turned to Mulheisen. “So you think the guy, the hitman'll be back?”

  Mulheisen shrugged. “My old partner used to say, ‘The world is round.’ He meant that even if you didn't catch the guy, the criminal, this time . . . just wait awhile. He'll be back.”

  Lande pondered this, then nodded. “It's a wonder someone hasn't already tooken out Tupman and Conover,” he said. “Conover's a loan shark, a guy with a heart a stone. Now they say he's moved into coke. Slime like that don't deserve to live.” He seemed genuinely angry.

  Mulheisen shrugged. “So don't borrow any money from him.”

  Lande snorted. “Not me! I'm doing fine. I drive a Cadillac. I don't need no loan shark. Right, Bon?”

  Bonny was quick to agree. “Gene's doing great! You ought to see our place, Mul. Why don't you come over for a drink?”

  “Hey, yeah, come on,” Lande said. “Y'oughta see how Bon's got it all fixed up. She could be a internal decorator, you know. Except she ain't a fag. But y'oughta see it. Come on, it's on'y a twenny-minute drive.”

  “I just can't do it,” Mulheisen said, looking at his watch. “I've got so much on my desk now, . . . and I've got a precinct commander who is just waiting for me to screw up.”

  “Wno?” Lande asked. “You mean that big ape who picked me up? What's his name?”

  “No, you're thinking of Dennis Noell, the Big Four honcho. Buck Buchanan is about as different as you could imagine. He's a self-important little twerp . . .” Mulheisen faltered, aware suddenly that Lande's stature was identical with Buchanan's, but he quickly saw that Lande wouldn't even notice the remark, and he went on, “. . . but ounce for ounce he's more dangerous to law enforcement than a six-pack of Tupmans and Conovers.”

  Amazingly, Lande nodded his head in agreement. “I know the type,” he said. “Some a these little jerks, they got what they call a little-man complex, you know what I mean? They gotta comp—ah, what's that word, Bon? You know, comp-something?”

  Bonny hadn't been listening. She was staring into space, thinking about something else. Jarred, she said, “What?” Then, “Mul, you have to come over.”

  Mulheisen begged off. He had to be in court early. They seemed genuinely anxious for him to come over, but they eventually gave it up. They talked for another quarter hour, and finally Mulheisen was free of them, though not before he'd agreed to keep in touch. Privately he hoped never to see them again. But, after all, he thought as he drove home, it hadn't been all that bad an evening. The food was fine, Lande's habits notwithstanding, and Bonny was quite wonderful to look at. He felt sorry she had such a boor for a husband, but she was obviously devoted to him. When you came right down to it, it didn't look like such a bad deal for either of them. A lot of people would trade places with either one, especially with Gene, he thought. He wasn't among them, however.

  Eight

  It was raining steadily, and it was cold, the ceiling pressing right down on the housetops. It was early afternoon but as dark as dusk, and Mulheisen stood on a concrete slab nervously ringing the Landes’ doorbell. A good day for ducks, he thought, remembering one of his father's favorite sayings. Or to stay home, and he almost hope
d he could detect symptoms of a cold or the flu.

  The weather was reason enough to be uncomfortable, but he was uneasier still about this interview. Bonny had called the previous afternoon, the day after the dinner, and asked him to come by. She seemed near tears but wouldn't explain herself. She said it was serious. Mulheisen hoped to hell it didn't involve himself personally, but he hadn't been able to get a clear angle on what it was all about. He'd decided to treat it as a straightforward official visit, to complete the witness report on Lande. But he knew there were elements of emotional entanglement here—if he were being honest, he'd have to say it was sex that was making him so ill at ease.

  Mulheisen belonged to a generation of males who believed sexiness was positive. Specifically, Mulheisen and his coevals believed that women, in particular, aspired to sexiness. The icon of this sexy generation was Marilyn Monroe. Her male counterpart was Marlon Brando. According to contemporary feminist theory, however, as Mulheisen understood it, through Marilyn all women were exploited for their presumed sexual qualities. He understood that more than one generation of American males had been brought up to believe the best thing about a woman was her sexiness and, by extension, her availability. Evidently this was what the debate about “sex objects” was all about. It was not clear whether Brando was similarly exploited or whether men were thereby insulted. That notion never came up. Mulheisen was a sensible man: he doubted that very many women seriously compared themselves with Marilyn any more than very many men really aspired to be like Brando. But it was nice to have a common ground on which one could identify to some degree with Marilyn Monroe or Marlon Brando. It was more fun than identifying with, say, the queen of England or Senator Everett Dirksen.

  As much as Mulheisen agreed with the feminists that such stereotyping was essentially negative, he couldn't shake his upbringing entirely. He still felt that Marilyn Monroe was a hell of a fine-looking woman. Basically a pragmatic man, he sometimes felt like an aesthetic moron: breasts and buttocks were attractive—why? He didn't think somebody had just made it up. He felt there had to be a natural attraction, and if so, why should he fight it? And because of these visible emblems of sexuality, he had for a long time nourished a lust for Bonny Wheeler.

  Having looked at the old centerfold and thereby reassured himself that he no longer harbored such callow notions toward her, he felt he ought to be able to encounter her without any undue intrusion of sexual attraction. At dinner she had been very attractive, even sexy, and she hadn't made him feel at all uneasy. In fact, it was only her husband's boorish remarks that had unsettled him.

  So why was he nervous ringing her doorbell? Was it just that he was alone and he knew she was alone? He was conscious of a suppressed excitement.

  He had left Jimmy Marshall to review the list of passengers who had flown into Detroit prior to Hal Good's rental of the car at Metropolitan Airport. The idea was to find the few, if any, who had booked through from Iowa City. There was a chance that Good had used his real name.

  Mulheisen would have preferred to interview Bonny with Jimmy present, but she had asked him to come alone. He was anxious to avoid any false impressions, for instance that Lande was being given special treatment as a witness because of a relationship between Mulheisen and the man's wife. So he hadn't told Jimmy where he was going. With any luck nothing would come of it, and the whole thing would be forgotten.

  He had driven out to the Landes’ condominium, located in a cul-de-sac off Kelly Road. It was a duplex and looked moderately expensive. The cars parked on the street were in the Buick and Chrysler range, and quite new, with a sprinkling of Saabs and BMWs.

  He had an irrational desire to be holding something, bringing something, a gift, flowers, candy. He had worn his best jacket, a very fine camel hair, and he had donned cashmere socks. Why? Just because cashmere socks always made him feel good? He didn't know and refused to think about it.

  Bonny opened the door. She wore a simple chino skirt, a faintly pink-striped oxford cloth shirt with a button-down collar, and plain white Topsiders. She looked astonishingly youthful. Her curly blond hair was brushed out, and she wore the kind of makeup that made a woman appear not to be wearing makeup. The effect was charmingly innocent. She looked smaller, somehow. It was the schoolgirl outfit, Mulheisen decided. He was relieved. Nevertheless the shirt was nicely filled out, and the front was unbuttoned enticingly low, revealing a glimpse of a lacy brassiere.

  “Mul, come in! Here, let me have that wet coat. Gee, imagine you in a hat.” She took his things and hung them on a chrome stand in the foyer.

  Mulheisen mumbled something about his hair getting thin and followed her into the living room. It was a pale champagne room-champagne shag carpet, champagne finish to the silk upholstery of the couch and chairs, pale blond coffee table. On a day this bleak it wasn't a charming place; perhaps on sultry days its coolness was soothing.

  “Very nice,” Mulheisen said.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  Mulheisen followed her into the tiny kitchen. It was modern and shiny. Fans hung from a chrome and wood rack over the range, exposing their brightly scoured bottoms. Expensive-looking knife handles projected from a heavy wooden block on the tiled counter, and a fancy hardwood cutting board was scarred with real cuts.

  Bonny chattered away as she measured ground coffee into a Mr. Coffee coffee maker. “Isn't this rain the pits? . . . I always think Maxwell House is best, don't you? . . . Do you like croissants?” She pronounced the word “cross-ants.” She got out two bone china cups and saucers, poured the cream into the matching creamer, and set out the sugar. She had jam in a lovely little pot, and she put everything on a tray and carried it into the living room.

  The television was on, showing a soap opera. It was a large set, and the sound was turned low. She seemed not to notice until Mulheisen looked at it. She picked up the remote control from the glass-topped coffee table and shut the machine off.

  Mulheisen sat across the room in one of the matching chairs and drank from the little cup. It was not very good but better than precinct coffee. He refused a croissant.

  He was puzzled by her seeming lightheartedness. Perhaps she was diffident. He decided to break the ice by attending to his own business—the report on Lande. It wasn't complete, he said. He took out his notebook. “I have to ask some questions,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Nothing serious; routine, in fact. We're trying to clear off this case, you understand. The one Gene was picked up on. Mainly what I want to do is verify Gene's statement. According to my notes, he went out about seven. Is that right?”

  Bonny frowned, thinking. “It's hard to be sure. I think it was earlier. It was still light out.”

  Mulheisen frowned. “Well, Bonny, it seemed to be quite clear when I talked to you and Gene that night. He went out about seven—you were making dinner, and he went out. Why?”

  “Why did he go out?” Bonny looked blank. Then her eyes grew misty, and her face began to dissolve. She had looked bright and lovely, fully ten years younger, but now she looked her age, at least. “He . . . ah . . . I don't . . .” Her voice faded to a whisper.

  Mulheisen picked up his coffee cup from the table and took a long drink, watching her over the rim. His heart went out to her, despite himself. She was in trouble.

  “What is it, Bonny?” he asked gently.

  She took a deep breath. “This is why I called you,” she said. “He got a call, about five. He said he had to go out for a little bit.”

  “Who called?”

  “I don't know. I mean . . . it was a woman. She called earlier, twice. Before Gene got home.”

  “What did she say?” Mulheisen prompted.

  “She wouldn't say. When I said Gene wasn't home, she just hung up.” Bonny mustered a look of bravery and offered, “I've talked to her before. I mean, she's called on other occasions.”

  “Do you have any idea who she is?”

  Bonny gazed off to one side. She looked worn now, and to Mulheisen it seemed
that her fresh complexion had grown sallow.

  “I think I know who she is,” she said. “I think she's a woman I met at a party once. Her name is Germaine something. She's a singer, I think. I know what she is. She's one of those women.”

  A dull silence crept upon the room. It wasn't a full silence—Mulheisen could see the rain falling steadily beyond the champagne curtains, and he could faintly hear the swish of automobile tires on the street, the ticking of a clock, the cycling of the refrigerator. There were words that needed to be spoken, but neither of them wanted to speak. He stared into his empty cup. Bonny noticed and gratefully got up and went into the kitchen for more coffee. When she didn't return, Mulheisen followed her.

  She was leaning against the counter, her hands pressed down on the tiled countertop. Her back was to him, and he could see that her curly blond head was shaking. The kitchen window looked out onto an alley, and beyond it was a hedge; beyond that, the side of a house. The rain and the darkness made it quite awful.

  “Bonny,” he said softly and laid a hand on her shoulder. She turned to him automatically and buried her face in his chest. Quite naturally he put his arms about her trembling shoulders and patted her back comfortingly. She shook convulsively, soaking his shirt with tears.

  After a while he grew impatient with her grief, despite his sympathy. But he didn't push her away. She was warm in his arms. She extended her arms under his jacket, around his back. She hugged him tightly. He quickly became aware of the pressure of her breasts. They seemed large and firmly resilient. He couldn't help envisioning the centerfold. Inevitably he was aroused.

  Embarrassed, he attempted to extricate himself, but Bonny's arms were clinched tightly, and her face was buried in his chest. He had dreaded just this, of course; but on the other hand, he had fantasized something like it for some twenty years. The intervening time had greatly eased the intensity of that fantasy, but it was still there.