Hit on the House (19 page)

Mulheisen couldn't figure this out. “How could you have helped, Bonny?”

“Well, I knew Sid. For years. Sid was always very . . . what would you say?” she frowned, trying to think of a word. “Flirty. Friendly, but always on the make. I don't know if Sid ever talked to a woman, other than his mother or his daughter, who he wasn't at least casually trying to make it with. He liked me. We . . . we had a little thing, years ago.”

Oh, dear, Mulheisen thought. “Did Gene know about this?”

“I suppose so.” She closed her eyes for a long moment. “It wasn't anything. It was over long before I met Gene. It wouldn't have bothered him.”

“Is that where Gene went that night, the night Sid was hit?”

Bonny's eyes closed again. She looked tired now, but patient. “Mul, please don't think that Gene was concerned about something that went on between me and Sid, that ended before we even met . . . not that it was ever anything much anyway. But, yes, I think it was Germaine who called him that afternoon and’ shortly afterward Gene went out, I guess on business, probably with Sid.” She looked at him wearily, as if to say, Are you satisfied, stupid?

“Not to get rosemary, then?”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “as he was going out the door, he asked, ‘Need anything from the store?’ And I said, ‘Rosemary.’ “

Mulheisen sat there for a long time, watching her rest. A nurse came by to give her some medication. Lande still didn't return. Mulheisen held Bonny's hand. They didn't talk much, but at one point she said, “Isn't it odd that I should be in love with two such different men? You and Gene? Once upon a time I would have refused to believe it was possible to love two men at once.”

Mulheisen felt torn by this little confession. One part of him rejoiced to think that Bonny loved him, but to be linked in such an intimate way with Gene Lande . . . !

“But it's a lucky thing,” she went on, “now that I'm . . .” She gestured helplessly at her body.

Mulheisen was puzzled and his face betrayed it.

“Oh, I know I've already asked too much of you,” Bonny said, “and you've been so good to us, but I have to ask you to help. If I were able, if I were healthy, I'd just go to Carmine . . .”

“Carmine! Don't tell me you and Carmine—”

“Well, of course,” Bonny said; “I've known Carmine for years. We never had any great relationship, but . . . I know what he likes. He likes to be stroked. Naturally, you have to be prepared to go all the way if you start stroking him, but it wouldn't come to that. I don't think. Anyway, that's out of the question now.”

Mulheisen stared at this woman wonderingly. He thought he had known something about her. Clearly he knew nothing. She lay there dying but plotting how to save her goofy husband. He didn't think he could put anything past her.

Bonny opened her eyes. “I'd kill for Gene if I could, if it would help. You have to help me, Mul.” The eyes fell shut, then flicked open almost immediately. “Don't take him away from me, Mul.”

“I'm not taking him away, Bonny,” he protested. “I have to question him, but—”

“No. He stays with me. Promise me.” She was tense, trying to sit up in the bed, and he was alarmed for her, but she resisted his attempts to calm her, fixing him with her eyes.

“I . . . ah . . .” He spread his hands helplessly. Then he sighed and nodded. “Yeah. All right. I promise.”

Bonny relaxed and smiled. “I knew you would help, Mul. You love me. I love you . . . and Gene.”

“But, Bonny, you have to help me, too. I can't do this in the dark. You've got to find out what he was up to.”

“Don't worry,” she said, calming him, patting his hand. “I'll take care of this. Relax. You worry too much, Mul. You have to take better care of yourself. Anyway, I already saw Carmine. He wouldn't tell me what it was all about, but I got him to promise to leave Gene out of it.”

“What? When did you do this?” Mulheisen was amazed.

“Oh, a while back. I just called him up and went in to see him. I told him all Gene had going with Sid was the golf resort. He bought it. He even kissed me—a friendly kiss—as I left.”

Mulheisen stared at her. She had drifted off. He wasn't sure what to make of this last statement. Had she just dreamed it? Was it something that had happened years ago?

Not long after Lande returned, sucking his teeth and saying with false cheer, “Hey, babe! I'm back. Shift break! Oops, she asleep?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Thanks for lookin’ after my girl, Mul! Ain't she great? She looks great, don't she?”

Sixteen

A
t nine-thirty in the morning a long, deep-brown Cadillac rolled sedately down a side street on Detroit's East Side. It had tinted windows so that gawkers couldn't look inside, and it cruised so carefully because there were cars parked on both sides of the street, leaving only a single lane for traffic. It wasn't a very nice neighborhood, although it had once been respectable. The houses were large, four-plexes, some of them substantial brick homes with large porches upstairs and down. But now they were in poor repair, the miniature yards stamped bare of grass, the wrought iron fences bent or flattened, gates hanging awry if not absent, and plywood nailed over many of the large window frames.

About midway down this block, which was nearly an eighth of a mile long, there was a factory where potato chips and allied products were made. This wasn't unusual; there are many such industrial enclaves in Detroit, left over from an earlier period, when zoning laws didn't always keep pace with the city's development. The original factory had been built in the twenties, when this was still an outskirt of the city, and then the housing had flooded in around it. That factory had made machine tools. Krispee Chips was a fairly modern plant, having replaced the original structure with a long, low building whose construction had necessitated the destruction of some of the surrounding houses. The Krispee Chips Company had purchased several of the houses on either side and refurbished them, so that they now stood in
marked contrast to their neighbors, and fenced in the whole complex with a high cyclone fence that had angled barriers on the top with strands of barbed wire. The houses were ostensibly used for additional office space, but the neighbors knew that there were also many people living there, mostly young men who spoke a foreign language and liked to kick a soccer ball around the little recreation yard.

The front gate to the complex was manned by uniformed guards who wore side arms, and you could see shotguns in a rack inside the little gatehouse. This morning the guard waved the deep-brown limousine through with a kind of salute, and it pulled up by the canopied side door of the factory offices. A burly man hopped out on the passenger side and opened the back door. A small, slender man got out and walked briskly through a door that was held open for him by another armed guard. He passed through the carpeted outer offices, with their array of pastel-colored desks and video-display terminals, at each one of which sat a pretty young woman. He greeted some of the women by name and with a smile and a wave of his hand, and each one smiled gaily back and called him boss. At his secretary's office he stopped briefly to say, “Get me Mitch in New York.” Then he disappeared through the door and into his inner sanctum.

This was a large office with thick carpeting and a half dozen very colorful and dramatic paintings on the walls. There was a striking man-size metal sculpture in one corner, of a ratlike creature wearing a fedora and a loose suit jacket, beneath which was slung a double-barreled shotgun. The rat-man had an eerie grin, at once lewd, humorous, and malicious. The boss smiled involuntarily when he saw it. But then his smile faded, and he snatched up the warbling telephone and settled himself primly in a large teak and fabric chair behind the enormous desk.

“Mitch? Carmine. I'm getting nowhere. Yes? I had a man on it, but evidently he didn't find out anything.” Silence. Then, “Joe Service. Yeah, I know he's supposed to be good, but he wasn't good this time. So I need a few guys. As many as you think we'll need. We're going to just have to go out and beat the bushes.” A dry laugh. “Let me know how many you can send and how we'll meet. Talk to you.”

He hung up and punched a button. “Candy, doll, get me Fat.” He
puttered about the desk for a minute and then snatched up the telephone when it warbled.

“Fat? Did you take care of what's his name, Service? He did, eh? Well that's too bad. He knows how these things . . . Fat, don't take his part . . . He knows . . . He has to learn. Sure, he's good, they're all good . . . until they don't deliver. You don't deliver, you don't collect, Fat. No more screwups. This whole thing is one long screwup. I won't have it. No, no, no, listen to me. Let the bastard bitch. He's made plenty off me. Once in awhile he has to take the dirty end of the stick.” He paused, listened for a long moment, then said, “No. He's a wise ass. I put up with it in the past because he got the job done and he was amusing, but after a while, Fat, you get tired of his snotty remarks. If he won't listen to reason, then . . .” There was a pregnant pause, and he continued. “That's right, Fat. Nobody lives forever. All right, that's settled. Now listen—I've just been talking to Mitch. He's sending over some heat. It's time to quit playing patty-cake. Maybe one or two of them can take care of Mr. Service while they're at it. I'll let you know when I hear from Mitch.”

He replaced the receiver and sat at his desk for a long moment, looking about him. He caught the metallic eye of the rat-man, aimed right at him. He wondered how the sculptor had done that. The eyes were so weird. There was no eye there, really, just built-up ridges with a hole in the center, but they seemed to glow, sometimes red, sometimes yellow. It was something that came of burning the metal, he supposed. He liked the pin-striped pants and the narrow shoes and, especially, the writhing tail and the way the rat-man held the shotgun out, almost shyly, as if offering you a little death.

Carmine smiled at the sculpture and stood up. He smoothed his silk suit jacket and pants, then looked at his small, soft hands, excellently manicured. They weren't in the least soiled, but he felt a vague need to wash them. He walked across the office and opened the door to his luxurious bath and lavatory and stopped cold.

Joe Service was sitting on Carmine's expensive Swedish commode, fully dressed, pointing a revolver that had a large, ugly protuberance on the barrel.

Carmine started to slam the door, but Joe was there like a panther,
his hand holding the door open. “Come on in, Carmine,” he said, gesturing with the pistol. He closed the door behind them. The room was large with a carpeted floor and a tiled alcove that the putative bather approached via three polished teak steps that led to a teak deck in which was sunk a seven-foot-long oval tub that was made out of some kind of marblelike black substance with gold veins running through it. The bath and shower fixtures were gold, too, or looked like gold, and there was a switch for a device that jetted water into the tub through hidden ports. There was a shower head but no curtain or screen to prevent water from splashing all over. Joe had spent some time that morning trying to figure out just how it worked, but he'd given up.

Joe turned on the water in one of the sinks on the counter, which was also made of the gold-veined black-marble stuff. “Go ahead, wash your hands,” he said. He sat down on the uppermost step of the bath alcove and watched while Carmine soaped his hands and rinsed them. They watched each other in the huge mirror. “Clean now?” Joe asked, tossing Carmine a fluffy lilac-colored towel that was warm from hanging on a chrome frame through which hot water ran. “Just leave the water running, Carm.”

Carmine dried his hands and tossed the towel onto the floor. Someone would pick it up, Joe realized, and then he knew that someone would also mop up and vacuum up if the shower water splashed too much. The idea was satisfying to him.

“You owe me money,” Joe said. “Let's have it.”

Carmine laughed. He was a handsome man, about Joe's height though slighter in build and twenty-five years older. He had steel-gray hair and a narrow face.

“Joe, you made a big mistake,” Carmine said. His voice was soft but with a slight rasp, like a banana with a welding rod imbedded in it. “You found the man, but it didn't help us.”

“So I heard,” Joe said. “It sounded to me like the Fat Man wanted to plead my case, but you wouldn't hear it. I guess I did make a mistake, a couple of them.” He didn't sound contrite. “Mistake number one: I took another job from you. And I didn't get paid up front, that's number two. But, I'm young, Carmine, and I'm bound to make a few mistakes. I imagine you made some when you were young. If a man's
lucky and he's good, he can probably get away with a few screwups—when he's young. But when you get old, like you, Carmine, mistakes start to pile up and-
pow!
-you're gone!” Joe grinned to see Carmine flinch at the plosive word.

“Joe, you don't have a chance,” said the banana voice, “especially if you screw up now.” Carmine had recovered his poise. “You can run but you can't hide. The old boxer said that—Joe Louis. But everybody knows . . . you can't hide from us. We are everywhere.” Carmine smiled.

“That was the old mob,” Joe said. “I wonder if it was ever true. Well, it may still be true for most of the guys you deal with, Carmine. It was certainly true for Hal Good. But he had Joe Service on his case. And you don't know where I live, Carm. It's a big country. You could never find me. I'm not Hal, and you won't have me to look for me. But I know where you live, Carmine, and the Fat Man, and all the rest of you miserable pricks. At worst, I figure I'm losing some business, and as it happens, it's the kind of business I can do without. But what the hell, Carm, . . . you want to talk, we can talk. This doesn't have to be the end. Just give me what you owe me, and I'll get out of your hair. And . . . I promise never to bug you again.” His smile had the effect of erasing Carmine's.

“You didn't do the job, Joe,” Carmine said stubbornly. “I still don't know where the money is, and they're still blowing my guys away out there like it was Beirut or something.”

“Hal didn't have your money, Carm, and who knows why they're blowing your boys away? It's not my business. You contracted for me to find Hal Good. I found him. Unfortunately, he and I didn't get a chance to chat—he wouldn't have it any other way. But I had a good look around, and the money wasn't there. While we're on the subject, let me point out to you that the contract was for me to find Hal. I know you planned to pop him, but that would cost you more. I guess you would have called Mitch for that. What does it cost? A hundred? No? Fifty? Maybe an easy shot like Hal would go for a measly twenty-five.” Joe shrugged. “As I've always told Fat, I'm not in the fatality line. I'm pro-life, Carm. But I will do it . . . when it seems necessary. Now I have this Hal on my conscience . . .” He shook his head with genuine rue.
“You'll have to pay extra for that. Let's say another fifty. The contract was for a hundred and a half. You gave me an advance—which was really just what you owed me from the last time—so if we figure that soaping Hal is worth another fifty, that's a hundred fifty you still owe. Now, if you can give me that, I'll make like the little dot on the screen when you turn off the TV.”

Carmine laughed despite himself. “Can we talk?” he asked.

“Sure. Just move your lips and your tongue,” Joe said.

“I mean . . .” Carmine gestured toward his office.

“No. It's better in here,” Joe said. “I can run the tap, and it gives us some cover from the bugs.”

“My office isn't bugged,” Carmine protested.

“You wouldn't know,” Joe replied. “Have you had it swept lately? No? Well, as you can see, anybody can get in here. I just walked in here this morning, nothing to it. That's the kind of help you've got, Carm. It's also why I don't want to screw around with you guys anymore. I knew better than to come back to Detroit, and yet maybe it was my soft heart, I let Fat talk me into it. But no more.”

“No, wait a minute, Joe, you've got a point. I like what you're saying. We've been getting a little soft. You're right. I need to talk to you. You could help us out. There would be a lot of money in it for you. A lot.”

Joe sighed. “Go on. Let's hear what it is this time.”

“This is how we got screwed up in the first place,” Carmine said, “with Sid. He burned us once, a while back, and we stepped on his fingers, but we took him back into the fold. Then he did the same thing again, which is when we called in Hal, who—before you say anything, Joe—always did good work for us in the past.”

“Hal was in it with Sid,” Joe said.

Carmine eyed him carefully. “How do you know this?”

Joe fished out the telephone book he'd taken from the Iowa City house. “Hal's,” Joe said. “There's lots of numbers for Sid in here-home, office, certain bars, certain women. They were close. It was coke, right? Sid was skimming, or is the word dipping? Scooping? And he was going to take a hike, right? The thing is, Hal was in it, too. Maybe a bunch of others. Tupman, for instance.”

“This is interesting,” Carmine said. “How do you figure it? Was there anything else?”

“I didn't really apply my mind to it,” Joe said. “It's not my business. No, he didn't leave a detailed plan or anything, but there are a lot of interesting little names and numbers in here. I'll throw the book in for free when you pay up.”

“Yeah, sure,” Carmine say, nodding. “We'll get to that, . . . but why did Hal pop Sid if they were in it together?”

“The minute you gave him the contract you showed you were on to Sid. But were you on to Hal? He couldn't take the chance, he had to take Sid down. And . . . he probably figured if he cooled it, kept his mouth shut, he might still have a chance to cop the skim. Did you recover any of it?”