Deadman (6 page)

“What is this, food poisoning?” Humphrey asked with horror. In his mind nothing could be more evil than food poisoning. If you couldn't trust your food, what could you trust?

“Bad milk,” Peter said. “I'm sure it was the milk. The kids was throwin’ up, the old lady was throwin’ up, I was heavin’ my guts—an’ all I did was put a little in my coffee! The kids had it in their Froot Loops! It coulda killed ‘em!”

“What did you do with the milk?” Humphrey wanted to know.

“The old lady threw it out,” Peter said. “I was mad as hell, I was gonna sue the dairy, the store, everybody. But she's that way, she poured it down the drain before anyone used any more of it. Hell, the fuckin’ cat threw up and shit all over the house!”

This was ominous. Humphrey called on the widow of Carlo, the bodyguard. Had Carlo been ill that morning? No, she said, but maybe he was a little sleepier than usual. She had been sleepy too, even though they'd had coffee together, as usual. She'd gone back to bed, which she never did.

Humphrey visited Carmine's widow, the beauteous art collector Annamaria. She said she had noticed that Carlo seemed a bit slow when he came by with Guiliano that morning. When Carmine asked why Guiliano was driving, Carlo had just yawned and said he didn't know. Carmine was annoyed but that was all.

Humphrey didn't find out any more than that, but it was enough. Someone had been diabolically clever, he saw. A faithful, competent driver is sick; a bodyguard is a bit slow; not enough to raise the alarm, but enough to lower the defenses and increase the odds for a successful hit. A very daring and flamboyant hit, practically on the boss's threshold.

So, a clever killer and at least one accomplice to drive. A small person. A very smart person, bold and ruthless. If you knew Joe Service at all, you knew he was small, very clever, bold, and ruthless. When Humphrey didn't hear from Joe Service in the next few days, he was forced to make a reluctant connection.

This information had to be passed to the rest of the leadership around the country. It was a little sticky at first. But Humphrey was able subtly to communicate the idea that it was the fault of Carmine, who had evidently alienated Joe Service and then enlisted him in some unknown enterprise—Humphrey hadn't known a thing about it, or so he said. Mitch, from New York, was helpful. He reported that Carmine had asked for a hitter to take out Service just a week or so before Service had done the number on Carmine. Then Carmine had put the hitter on hold. Now, if Humphrey liked, Mitch would gladly supply the hitter. Humphrey liked. He had liked Joe too, once, but that was once. A guy who would poison food . . . who would have thought?

Mitch's hitter he didn't like, not even for a minute. He was a prick. He called himself Mario Soper. Self-important—you couldn't tell him anything—and he didn't talk. He just sat and looked at you with dull eyes and a slack mouth, like he wanted to pull the trigger on you, too. Maybe he thought that was a good tactic; it kept everybody
on their toes. But Humphrey thought it was bullshit. Now, Joe, he was arrogant too, in his way, but he was funny, he was human. This turd . . . Humphrey couldn't stand him. He was perversely pleased when the jerk didn't find anything. Everybody in Detroit was glad when the prick left after a few days. He'd managed to piss everybody off.

And then, of course, just when everything was settling down and business was back to normal, Humphrey's least favorite cop, Mulheisen from the Ninth, started nosing around.

Mulheisen didn't look so tough at first glance. He wasn't a big man, but big enough. He might be known on the street as “Sergeant Fang,” but he really wasn't unattractive; many women liked him, some of them quite a bit. His friends didn't just like him, they were devoted to him. But he had enemies and they loathed him. It didn't seem to bother Mulheisen, one way or the other. He wasn't one of those men who cares what others think of him.

One afternoon, not long after Carmine's death, Mulheisen had dropped into Humphrey's office at Krispee Chips, accompanied by his young assistant, Jimmy Marshall. Tall, dark brown, sometimes wearing glasses, sometimes wearing contact lenses, Sgt. Marshall was in some ways more menacing than Mulheisen. As Marshall had gotten older (he was about thirty), he had filled out a little, he looked stronger, and he was. He cultivated a kind of Malcolm X clean-cut look, complete with enigmatic smiles. He could make one believe he was looking right through one and didn't like what he saw.

Mulheisen gazed about the office and said, “I see you've still got Carmine's rat. Mind if I smoke?”

“Go right ahead, Mul. The rat belongs to Carmine's wife, but she hasn't come for it. Sit down, sit down. Can I get you a drink? Anything?”

“No,” Mulheisen said, lighting up a No. 4 La Regenta. “Well, coffee. Do you do good coffee, Fat?”

Humphrey lurched forward, his great belly pressing against the
desk, to poke at a teak name board on which was mounted what looked like, but surely wasn't, a solid gold plate. It was engraved,
MR. DIEBOLA.
“Call me Humphrey, Mul,” he said.

Mulheisen's pale brows shot up. “Humphrey? You mean like Hubert H.? Or would it be the old Smollett character, Humphry Clinker?”

“Smollett?” Humphrey was surprised and pleased by this reference. As a teenager he had struggled through Smollett's strange eighteenth-century novel about an amiable and competent servant of a country squire, hoping in some sympathetically magic way that it would help to inform him about who he was. It hadn't, but he had found it amusing. He had never told anyone, of course, that he had read such arcane stuff, just as he had never let it out that he had read Jane Austen. But it was curiously gratifying to know that Mulheisen knew about Humphry Clinker.

Humphrey punched a button and told Miss Gardino to please bring in a tray of coffee. Then he heaved himself to his feet and made his way with swinging arms to a handsome cabinet, from which he extracted an old bottle of calvados. He wheezed his way back and set it on the edge of the desk just as Miss Gardino arrived with a chromed vacuum carafe of coffee, accompanied by a bone china creamer and sugar bowl to match the three cups and saucers. She poured. They all declined cream and sugar, so she left. Humphrey poured calvados into three tiny flutelike shot glasses. He carried his own coffee and calvados behind the desk and the two men helped themselves.

Mulheisen sipped the calvados with pleasure and drank the coffee. He cocked his head slightly and said, “Very good. Colombian?”

“Sumatra Blue Lintong,” said Humphrey.

“So, Humphrey,” Mulheisen said, “life is good? You're the king of the castle now. I imagine it's rather like Harry Truman found after the old man died—a lot more trouble than pleasure, eh?”

Humphrey smiled benignly, nodding his head in seeming assent. “What can I do for you, Mulheisen?” he asked. “How can I help you?” He spread his pudgy hands.

“I don't know if you can help me,” Mulheisen said. “I guess you don't know who killed Carmine? I didn't think so. I just thought I'd drop by for a visit, see how you were getting along and to ask if you knew anything about Helen Sedlacek.”

“Big Sid's girl? No. What should I know? We aren't very close. Although she used to like me. But when her dad died . . . well, she was a little angry. Grief, I guess, or shock. I could understand that. By the way, Mul, you did a fine job tracking down Sid's killer. I'm sure you will find Carmine's killer, as well. If I hear of anything that would help, I'll sure . . .”

“She's disappeared,” Mulheisen said. “Sold out her business and left, not a word to anyone.”

Humphrey was surprised. Big Sid's beautiful and fiery daughter was a successful businesswoman who ran some kind of consultant firm in Southfield. She had been outspoken about her father's death, recklessly blaming Carmine. Some said she was cooperating with the police. Well, of course, it had been a hit. The whole world could see it was a professional hit. Humphrey had hired the hitter himself, a man named Hal Good. But it wasn't as if Helen hadn't grown up knowing her father was a big man in the mob. There is a kind of discipline expected in these circumstances. But Helen, this crazy little girl—Humphrey remembered her as tiny and lively, a kind of black-haired Tinker Bell—she couldn't shut her mouth.

On Humphrey's advice Carmine had ignored her. So now she had sold out her partnership in her firm and had disappeared. This was not good.

“Just like that?” he said to Mulheisen.

Mulheisen shrugged. “Packed up and moved, bag and baggage,” he said, “except that she didn't really move. She put everything in storage. Her mother hasn't heard from her, her friends have
no idea where she went. They say she had a new boyfriend, but none of them met him, and she didn't mention a name. So . . . I just thought, since her dad used to work for you, you might have some idea. No?”

“Mul, if I could help . . .” Humphrey spread his arms and his hands helplessly. “I'll certainly ask around, and if I hear anything . . .”

“I know,” Mulheisen said, standing. “Thanks for the coffee, Fat . . . er, Humphrey. You know, Humphrey suits you. I like it. And thanks for the calvados.”

They had not cleared the lobby of Krispee Chips before Humphrey was on the phone to Rossie. “Get me the Yak,” he said.

Roman Yakovich had been a lifelong associate of the late Sid Sedlacek. He still lived in an apartment in the garage behind Sedlacek's home, looking after Mrs. Sid, as he called her. He was a good man, Humphrey knew. He had him brought in, and from him he learned that Helen had been visited by Joe Service just a couple of weeks before she had disappeared.

“I didden think nothin’ of it,” the Yak said. “They played racquetball in Sid's gym, in the basement.”

“Did he come around again?” Humphrey asked.

“I didden see him,” the Yak said. “Joe's a good guy. Liddle Helen was mad at him, at first—she thought he was one of Carmine's boys—but then she seemed to think he was all right.”

“Well, don't worry about it, old friend,” Humphrey said, patting the burly Yak on his shoulder. “But if you hear anything . . . By the way, how does Mrs. Sid take this? She must be going crazy. She loved that girl.”

The Yak shook his head grimly. “It ain't right, Mr. DiEbola. First Sid . . . dies . . . which she almost died herself from grief. Then Liddle Helen just runs off.”

“Kids,” Humphrey said, despairingly, “they break our hearts.” He, of course, had no children. He had never married. He hadn't been interested in the opposite sex since he was about seventeen. He was quite comfortable about this by now. He had a benign if obscured view of women: He didn't really see them, in a way, but they seemed to be all right. Still, he had seen Helen since she was a baby—he had gone to her christening, in fact—so he didn't think of her the way he thought of women. She was more like a niece, a favorite niece. She used to bounce on his knee and make him give her horsey-back rides. She used to call him Uncle Umberto—"Unca Umby,” at first. He had seen her grow up and become considerably less interested in him, but he hadn't minded. They were still pals, at least up until the time that her father was killed. In fact, she had called him a few weeks after, tearful and outraged. He had tried to console her, but it was impossible. She wanted him to do something about Carmine.

“What can I do, honey?” he'd said. “It's the way things are. Your daddy knew that.”

No, no, she insisted, it wasn't the way things were. He must know that. He must do something about Carmine.

“You can do something,” he'd said, quietly. He had surprised himself by saying it and he didn't really know what he meant by it, but perhaps Helen had known.

Humphrey suppressed this thought now, this whole conversation. He hadn't really said any such thing to her, he decided. But now Helen had done something, he knew it in his bones. Helen and Joe. It bothered him that Helen would make herself so . . . well, how could you put it? So like a man. It wasn't right and it bothered him.

“Is Mrs. Sid all right for money?” he asked the Yak.

“Oh, sure,” the Yak said. “We got the household account. There's plenty. Sid allus had plentya money.”

“That's good, that's good,” Humphrey said, “but if you need anything, don't forget who to call.”

This information too went to the councils, and soon the loathsome Mario was back in town. He poked around and this time he got poked around, by the Yak. Roman had caught him nosing around the house, actually in the house. For this he got some loose teeth and some deep bruises. But no hard feelings, he just took off and business went back to normal.

And then one day in October, Humphrey's inside man in the police department called: Mario Soper had been identified in Montana. He'd been found, shot to death, in an irrigation ditch. Mulheisen was investigating.

Not long after, the Yak called. He was not eager to talk about the family, but he trusted Humphrey. Mrs. Sid had received a postcard. All it said was, “Ma, I'm so sorry I haven't written. It wasn't possible. I'm all right. I'm fine. I'm very happy. But I can't bear for you to be unhappy. Are you all right? I'll contact you again, soon. Love, Nelly.”

“Nelly?” Humphrey said.

“Mrs. Sid allus called her Nelly,” the Yak explained.

“Oh yeah.” Humphrey remembered. “So what's the return address?”

“Liddle Helen didn't put no return address,” the Yak said. “It's got a pitcher of the Holy Mother, standin’ on a mountain. It says it's Our Lady of the Rockies, Butte, Montana.” He pronounced it “Butt-tee.”

“Butt-tee?” Humphrey got him to spell it. “And it's postmarked when?” The Yak didn't know about postmarks, but Humphrey told him about the little circle stamped on the card. When the Yak finally figured out that it had been mailed in Montana on September 5, Humphrey wanted to know how it had taken so long to get to Detroit, and why was he telling him about it in October?

“I didden see it,” Roman said. “Mrs. Sid had it under her pillow. I don't know how come she didden tell me about it. So, I don't know, maybe I shouldden even of told you.”

“No, no, you should tell me,” Humphrey said. “You should always tell me.”