Hit on the House (21 page)

He left school early and wangled his way into the navy, where once again he got into trouble with authority and was given what he at first called “an early out.” Mulheisen asked Jimmy to check it out and discovered the truth—court-martial, stockade time, and a bad-conduct discharge—which he then coaxed Lande into revealing. What was interesting to Mulheisen was that the navy, then mired in Vietnam, had not bothered to send this troublemaker to the war zone but had simply got rid of him with a fairly lenient court-martial.

But evidently he was a talented tinkerer, and the world of electronics fascinated him. He'd done very well in it. But the absolute star of his existence had appeared in his personal heaven when Bonny burst upon his consciousness like a supernova. From all their conversations it had become apparent to Mulheisen that Bonny Wheeler was probably the only real friend he'd ever had. And she was beautiful. A little wounded, too, and grateful for his assistance. He was very proud of her youthful debut as a centerfold girl; it was evidence that the woman who loved him was beloved by the rest of the world. Curiously he had little real jealousy of other men; indeed, he relished the notion that his wife was desired by others, although he frequently expressed conventional macho attitudes—“No guy better fool with Bon—I'd blow ‘im away.”

All this information was acquired haphazardly, and it took Mulheisen considerable time to digest it, distracted as he was by the center-stage event—Bonny's rapid and shattering decline.

One afternoon while Lande was taking a break, Mulheisen sat at Bonny's bedside, holding her hand. It was not raining for once, but broken clouds rumbled across the sky, intermittently permitting brilliant shafts of sunlight, then darkening everything. Mulheisen was staring at Bonny's ruined face without really seeing it, not thinking about anything at all, when suddenly she gripped his hand tightly.

“What is it?” he asked, aware that something was wrong.

She looked at him, and her sunken eyes lighted up with a glow of alarm. She'd been having trouble speaking because of her distorted palate and jaw, but she struggled to say, “Get Gene. Something is happening.”

Mulheisen raced down the corridor and met Lande running toward him. They turned together and ran back. Lande grabbed Bonny's hand, and Mulheisen stood over him as she said, “This is it, boys.” She caught Mulheisen's eye. “Look after him,” she said.

A few seconds later her eyes became fixed, and Lande dropped his head onto her breast with a sob. Mulheisen didn't see the exact moment when it happened, but after a short time he realized that it was over. He turned away and picked up his raincoat and left the hospital.

M
ulheisen drove home, his mind in a dull, cobwebby state. His mother was not there. He changed into jeans and an old sweater and pulled on rubber boots and a windbreaker. He walked out beyond the weathered barn and let himself through an old, sagging gate. Hands in pockets, he followed the old path through the dried reeds, most of which had been flattened by wind and snow, until he came to the edge of the ship channel. He stood there for a long time, staring down toward Lake Saint Clair shimmering in the distance. He barely noticed the red-winged blackbirds or the ducks that flew here and there. A gaggle of coots evidently decided that he was no threat and continued to work along the edge of the channel, their chalky beaks rhythmically projecting forward and then drawing their dumpy charcoal-gray bodies after them. Mulheisen didn't notice. He was struggling to understand what had just happened. He knew that something serious, something profound had occurred, but what? It didn't make sense.

He was suddenly struck by an appalling recollection—at some early point in Bonny's confinement—he couldn't recall the exact moment—she had embarrassed him with a remark about their shared school days. She'd said something to the effect that he'd always had “character.” He had let it pass at the time, but now that she was dead, it had come back
to haunt him. The fact was a long-repressed sense of guilt had reasserted itself, based on an incident that dated from the very first days of their grade-school careers.

Bonny had just moved to the Saint Clair Flats School District from, he thought, Detroit. He'd been immediately attracted to her, and at the morning recess he had made the incredible social blunder of following her about the playground, teasing her and, finally, holding hands with her. His schoolmates had instantly pounced on this uncharacteristic behavior, and at the noon recess, after he had sat by her in the lunchroom, they had ridiculed him when he came out onto the playground with her. Obviously they had already decided that Bonny was not “in,” and they pointed out to him that she had a hole in her sock. It was true. It was quite visible, a little crescent of naked flesh above the heel of her run-down loafer. Mortified and confused, Mulheisen had instantly repudiated his affection for the new girl and had run away with his pals, abandoning her.

After school, lying in the still-sweet old hay in the barn, little Mul moped over the humiliations of the day. He was struck by two things—the quiet, brave way in which Bonny had endured her humiliation, withdrawing to a remote corner of the playground alone, and the fact that he knew exactly what his parents would think of his behavior.

The next day, and on every possible occasion in the years they spent together in public school, Mulheisen defended and promoted Bonny. He encouraged other girls to befriend her; he nominated her for class president in high school; he had even bribed a buddy to ask her to the prom. All of this had seemed necessary because despite the fact that Bonny was very attractive physically, she was never popular with the other kids. This had always been inexplicable to Mulheisen, although he himself never sought any relationship with her more intimate than a kind of casual friendliness. And now he saw that he had spent the rest of his—or her—life regretting and paying for that single act of repudiation on the sixth-grade playground.

The fresh breeze brought tears to his eyes. He blinked and looked about him. Green shoots were emerging between the dried stalks of the reeds. The coots—even he knew they weren't ducks—looked comical as they bobbed and turned, constantly looking for food and picking up
shreds of grass for their nests, but Mulheisen didn't register their behavior. Rather, he was appalled by their industry. What was the point of coots in this universe? Why would there be these mindless coots but no Bonny? For that matter, what was the point of himself? Of cops? He could taste the bitterness at the back of his palate. Out on the lake a large ship was angling toward the channel. He drew himself up with a groaning sigh—there sure as hell was no reason for crooks.

Eighteen

T
he way Billy Conover saw it was a guy might not be some kind of hunk, but if a guy had enough clout (a word he liked—it had a nice solid sound), the hot-looking women had to go to bed with him anyway. So he loved the drug biz. He'd been in the loan biz, and that was all right (he kept a finger in that pie), but it didn't bring the women in, and Billy really dug women. The drug biz brought him women who ordinarily wouldn't have talked to him. The problem, aside from an uncharming personality, was that Billy also liked to eat, which tended to make a chunk out of a hunk. But Billy had never been a hunk anyway. He was about six feet tall and had one of those unfortunate shapes—small head, narrow shoulders, swelling belly, and very wide hips and ass—cruel Sid Sedlacek used to say Billy looked like an ice cream cone that landed on its head.

Lately Billy had fallen in love with Mexican food. He was introduced to it by his friend Ray Echeverria, who although a Basque by origin, had become enamored of Spanish-American cuisine. Billy was particularly fond of seviche. Echeverria took him to a little Mexican place down on Cass Avenue that made a great seviche. Tonight they'd had the seviche and a terrific
chili verde con carne,
in this case pork, washed down with a considerable amount of
cerveza
. At a few minutes after ten Billy and Ray—a wonderfully slim and elegant man in middle age, for all his gourmandizing—had strolled out, arms about two incredibly lush young women and accompanied by a couple of lesser-ranking
pals from the biz, all of whom agreed that Casa Pablo's had the greatest seviche in the world.

It was raining, of course. Billy cursed and ordered one of the heavies, a hood named Gus, to go get the car. At that point a little guy in a raincoat passed by, wearing shades, of all things, and a sailor's rain hat. He had his hands in his pockets, and he suddenly turned back and swung up his right hand, through a reach-through pocket, the raincoat swinging open to reveal a gun of some sort. The little man took a stance, bracing himself and holding the top of the gun down with his gloved left hand. It was now clear from the large bore of the barrel that the man was holding a shotgun. He pulled the trigger.

It was a firestorm. Five of the group were standing in a kind of alcove that formed the entrance to Casa Pablo's. In the rolling thunder of the five blasts, Conover was the first to fly. Two tremendous blows struck him in the chest and lifted him off his feet. He struck the girls and Echeverria like a giant bowling ball, and his movement might have saved some of their lives, though not Echeverria's.

The shooter struggled for a moment, extricating his right hand from his raincoat pocket. Gus, who had started to jog down the street after the car, turned back, gun in hand, and got off two shots with a .357 Colt. One of the shots may have hit the shooter, for he seemed to stagger momentarily, but then the left gun came up, and the man stood like a rock, bracing himself with his right hand on the top of the gun while it crashed away and blew Gus into the street. The gunner swiveled and blasted the remaining bodyguard, who had struggled to his hands and knees in the alcove, then emptied the chamber into Billy and Ray.

In the silence that followed, the gunner calmly delved into a pocket and reloaded one of the guns, the other swinging by his side from its leather strap. Then he stepped among the bodies and carefully blew Billy Conover's and Ray Echeverria's heads into indescribable mush with two shots apiece. He then tucked the two dangling guns back into his raincoat and walked quickly down Cass, buttoning the coat as he went.

Afterward a cab driver who had just pulled up when he saw the party leaving the restaurant, hoping for a fare, described the whole
process as instantaneous. Bodies had been flattened like ripe wheat in a hailstorm, he said. The killer had used a shotgun, all right, but it looked more like a long pistol. The barrel had been sawed off, as well as the long part of the stock. It must have been an automatic, he said, “'cause the fire poured outta that cannon like shit through a tin horn.”

Conover and Echeverria had each received more than a dozen .30-caliber pellets in their chests and twice as many in the head. The pellets had blown up the two men's hearts, but they hadn't the penetrative power of a rifled bullet, and that had saved the lives of the two young women, lying beneath the two men. They had received some serious wounds to their legs, however. Gus and the other hood were simply shot to pieces. Whether Gus had winged the killer was unclear, since witnesses reported him walking easily as he left the scene.

The case belonged to the Thirteenth Precinct, but Laddy McClain declared it a gangland slaying, probably related to the killings of Tupman and Sedlacek. Mulheisen was called at home, where he had gone that afternoon after the death of Bonny Lande. By the time he arrived downtown at the scene, McClain was telling a television reporter that it appeared there was a gang war in progress. Neither Mulheisen nor Andy Deane took that view, but they didn't say so to the reporters. All three crimes had involved different modes of killing.

Dennis Noell of the Big Four had arrived. A very pretty young black woman standing before a camera, shielding her helmet of hair from the rain with something that looked like a pizza take-out box, managed to snag this big, handsome detective and asked, “What kind of weapon could inflict this incredible carnage, Sergeant Noell?”

“Easy,” said Noell with great relish; “it had to be an alley sweeper. Well, that's a sawed-off twelve-gauge automatic shotgun, loaded with double-ought cartridges, ma'am. You could take out a platoon with a couple of them.” He went on to describe the victims as “just a buncha dope dealers and whores. Looks to me like some good citizen has done us all a favor.”

Mulheisen watched this with disgust, then signaled to Jimmy Marshall. They got into Mulheisen's Checker and sat there in the flickering glow of emergency-vehicle lights. It was raining steadily and dawn was many hours away. Mulheisen lighted a cigar and puffed it
while Jimmy sat silently, waiting. A thought popped into Mulheisen's mind—who exactly had he mentioned to Lande, all those weeks ago at the restaurant, as people whom he could do without? He wasn't sure, but he thought it included Frosty Tupman and Billy Conover. And hadn't he mentioned something about Captain Buchanan?

“I think we've got a problem, Jim,” he said.

“You mean Dennis?”

“Dennis? Well, yes, . . . Dennis.” Mulheisen tapped on the steering wheel for a minute, watching the bodies being removed. There wasn't much of a crowd, and the television people had gone. Mulheisen sighed and said, “Not just Dennis. You heard what the cabby said.”

“One man? A little guy?”

“That's the one.”

“Must have been Little David,” Jimmy said.

“Bonny died this afternoon,” Mulheisen said.

“I know . . . I called the hospital. They said you'd gone.”

“Did you talk to Lande? No? Well, there was no reason for you to. I wonder where he is right now.”

“I guess we better go look,” Jimmy said.

“Yes, we better go look.”

On the way back to the Ninth Precinct, Mulheisen pondered aloud—“To what extent can we, or should we, contain the suspicions we have about Lande?”

Marshall considered and replied, “We really don't have any more on him than we had before, Mul. It's all speculation. If you're thinking about a warrant, I don't know if a judge would listen.”

Mulheisen agreed. From the precinct he called all the numbers he had for Lande, including the hospital, but drew nothing but blanks. The hospital was very interested because Lande had left not long after Mulheisen, without leaving any instructions for the disposition of Bonny's remains. They were holding the body in their morgue. Mulheisen promised to contact them as soon as he learned anything.

He and Jimmy drove separately to Lande's apartment and the Doc Byte office, then met at the Briar Ridge Golf and Country Club. Neither had seen any sign of Lande. The parking lot of the golf course was empty, and there was a soggy, handwritten sign taped over the sign at
the gate that said “Closed until further notice.” Another sign was taped to the door of the pro shop, saying essentially the same thing but advising vendors and delivery people to contact Eric Smith in case of emergency and giving a Detroit phone number. It was 3:00
A.M
. before Mulheisen was able to get the young pro on the phone. He had just rolled in from a date, he said, and he hadn't seen Lande in several days. He was sorry to hear that Mrs. Lande had passed away. He guessed that the course would remain closed for the time being, but he expected he'd hear from Lande soon, and he'd sure let him know that Mulheisen wanted to see him.

“There's nothing much going on out there anyway,” Smith said. “The membership list is just about nil, and Gene told the grounds crew to take a holiday for the time being. To tell you the truth, Sergeant, I don't know if he's ever going to reopen. He was pretty down when I saw him. He was talking about taking a vacation with his wife, to the islands, to recuperate. I didn't realize she was that bad off.”

Mulheisen sent Jimmy home for a few hours with instructions to be at Doc Byte when it opened, to talk to Alicia Bommarito and to check on the shipment. Jimmy was to call Mulheisen at Laddy McClain's office as soon as he found out anything. Then Mulheisen took himself to the cot in the squad room for a couple hours’ sleep. It was a sleep troubled by dreams of coots and ducks and the banging of shotguns.

B
y eight o'clock he was in McClain's office downtown. McClain was not in a great mood, having slept little and now furious at the sight of Dennis Noell on television. Mulheisen had never known McClain had a television in his office; it must have been buried under the piles of reports and old newspapers.

“Look at this idiot,” McClain said, wielding a remote device. “One of the guys taped it earlier.” He punched a button and the screen got furry. When the tape started again a very pretty blonde was saying, “Now we're going to show you some pictures that the kids probably shouldn't see. We're going to Gina Woodridge on Cass Avenue.” Then the black woman came on, the camera angle somehow excluding the
pizza box as she gestured at the ambulances and the body bags. Shortly they cut to the interview that Mulheisen had partially witnessed. The reporter was looking up at the incredibly handsome Noell. His voice was deep, and he sounded remarkably articulate as he described an “alley sweeper” and even demonstrated how to saw off the barrel on a Remington shotgun. The interviewer was wonderfully sexy, standing up under Noell's great shoulders, looking up at him with delight. She said, “They call you Dennis the Menace, don't they?” And Noell replied frankly, “I'm not the real Dennis the Menace.”

“Can you believe it?” McClain said. “Describing an alley sweeper! ‘I'm not the real Dennis the Menace.’ What is he, arming the home guard?”

“Dennis believes very strongly in the right to keep and bear arms,” Mulheisen said.

“I'd like to tear off his arms and beat him over the head with them,” McClain snarled. “This is real bad stuff, Mul. I just hope it doesn't make it onto the evening news. Some cluck is going to think the cops say it's all right to sweep the streets of drug peddlers, like our shooter did last night.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Mulheisen said. “I was a little disturbed about what you were telling the reporters.”

“Me?” McClain was indignant. “I didn't say anything.”

“You said it was a gangland slaying,” Mulheisen reminded him, “and you linked it to the Big Sid and Tupman cases. I'm not so sure of that. In fact, it looks pretty clear that we've nailed down the guy who killed Sid.”

“This Iowa guy? I saw your report on that. But so what? So they took him out, too. It's still mob stuff, right?”

“Maybe,” Mulheisen said, “maybe not. Now I'm on to this guy Lande, who was originally picked up near the Sid killing. Little bits of information keep popping up that link him to all of these guys, but nothing really strong enough. The thing is he's not a mob guy.”

McClain obviously knew nothing about Lande and was curious about Mulheisen's take on the man. Mulheisen filled him in as much as he felt he could, making only vague references to the part Bonny had played in his investigation. He said he'd talked extensively to
Lande and had become convinced that the man was at least peripherally involved. The point he wanted to press, however, was that now would be a good time to tell the press that they had essentially solved the Sedlacek case. It might help to ease media pressure, and it could conceivably be used to separate this spate of slaughters in the public mind, to mitigate the effect of Dennis's sensational revelations about alley sweepers, for instance.

McClain nodded. It sounded good to him. “But what about this Lande?” he asked.

“He's disappeared,” Mulheisen confessed. “His wife died yesterday. Maybe he's just gone on a bender or something, I don't know, but I can't find him. I know he had developed some kind of attitude about the mob . . . holds them responsible in some strange way for his wife's troubles . . . It would take a better psychologist than me to sort it out.”