Seventeen

“Poor little Byron,” Frances Wienoshek said, “nothing ever seems to go quite right for him. What trouble is he in now?” Mrs. Wienoshek was a tall and bosomy woman with a pretty face that had crumbled at the edges, softened by time and facial powder. She seemed in good health although she claimed to be much weakened by a gall bladder operation two months earlier. Unlike many of her fellow residents at the Anchorage, who were in bathrobes and watching “Dad's Army” on CBC, Mrs. Wienoshek was fully dressed in a skirt and cardigan sweater and her thick gray hair was carefully done up in coiled braids. She was reading a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots.

“I don't know that he's in any trouble,” Mulheisen said, “although he seems to have left his job without notice and failed to return his cab to the company.”

“Oh dear. That sounds a bother. I suppose he's drinking again. The holidays are such a trial for Byron. He is by nature a convivial man. But I must say I never fancied his cabdriving. I think he ought to return to University. He took some night courses at Wayne State, you know, and did very well, especially in Literature.” She spoke with a trace of a British accent.

“Well, I'd like to talk to him,” Mulheisen said. “You must have heard from him.”

Mrs. Wienoshek looked very sad. “I'm afraid I haven't, Mr. Mulheisen. Not for several days. But I expect I shall, for we always have Christmas together. But why do you want to talk to him? Is it about the taxicab?”

“No, it's about a friend of his.”

“Which friend?” she asked.

“That's just it,” Mulheisen said, “we don't know the man's name. The man was found dead in Detroit and, so far, all we have found out about him is that he may have been an acquaintance of your son. Were you familiar with any of your son's friends?”

Mrs. Wienoshek held the book in her lap with a finger in it to mark her place. She pondered. “Byron hadn't many close friends,” she said. “He was always rather quiet and retiring—except when he'd been drinking. The only one I've met in recent years is Elroy. He was an old friend of Byron's from the Air Force. I think Byron felt rather sorry for him. He wasn't really the sort of friend one would expect Byron to have. You see, Byron has led a rather checkered career, I suppose, but deep down he's a sensitive, retiring sort. Perhaps he doesn't look it, but he is really quite cultured. We used to go to the opera.”

“What about this Elroy?” Mulheisen asked.

“Now, Elroy is a pleasant young chap,” Mrs. Wienoshek said, “but he is one of those lads who are always down and out. Not exactly a ne'er-do-well, not exactly, but hardly of Byron's caliber.”

“I see,” Mulheisen said. “Did you ever hear his last name?”

“Oh yes. It's Elroy Carver. He is just a little fellow, not a big husky chap like Byron.”

“About how tall would you say Elroy was?”

“Was?”

Mulheisen nodded. “Was.”

“Oh dear.” Mrs. Wienoshek's soft face went into mourning. “I do hope poor Elroy hasn't had an accident. Byron will be so upset. He was fond of Elroy. Poor Elroy always looked up to Byron, of course, rather as an older brother.”

“I understand,” Mulheisen said. “Could you give me a complete description of Carver?”

“He's such a dear little lad. I shouldn't put him at more than five feet five inches, and not more than nine or ten stone.”

“Nine or ten stone? Is that his weight?”

She smiled benignly. “So sorry, it's what you would call a hundred twenty-five pounds, perhaps. He has dark hair, a narrow head, and a rather furtive expression, I'm afraid. He does not have good teeth. Byron has lovely teeth.”

In the next hour, Mulheisen learned that Frances Wienoshek had been born and raised in Sussex, where she had met and married a visiting Canadian businessman. Shortly after they returned to Nova Scotia, her husband had died. Subsequently she had remarried, to Albert S. Wienoshek, a Toronto mechanic. They had emigrated to Detroit, where Wienoshek worked in the factories and their only son was born. When her second husband died, Mrs. Wienoshek moved back to Canada, but evidently Byron had preferred to be an American.

Among other things, she told Mulheisen that Byron had been in the U.S. Air Force for some fourteen years. “He got into a spot of trouble,” she said. “He would never tell me what it was, but I expect that drinking was involved. He always drank too much. He was never violent, however. His father drank a bit, but he was a lovely man.”

Mulheisen got away, finally, after receiving assurances from Mrs. Wienoshek that if she heard from her son she would contact Mulheisen immediately. He went back to the St. Martin Hotel where he spent another half-hour mollifying an annoyed Windsor police sergeant who said things like, “You Yanks think you can just go barging around. . . .”

It was ten o'clock before Mulheisen got through the tunnel to Detroit. McClain was still hanging around the Homicide office and he had a complete print-out from the computer on John Byron Wienoshek, including his military record. He left Mulheisen to read it and went to put in a similar request on Elroy Carver.

John Byron Wienoshek had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1951. He had served as a gunner in SAC bombers, had been awarded unit citations in Korea, and then was retrained in 1957, when turret gunners became obsolete. He was trained to be a radio mechanic in AACS. There was a list of bases where he had served. There was also an increasing incidence of demotions and disciplinary action. Evidently, he had not gotten along too well in AACS. Drinking, perhaps.

Mulheisen was intrigued, since he had been in AACS himself, as a control-tower operator. He had always liked AACS, but there was no doubt that it was a hard drinking outfit. Mulheisen used to think it was the result of the pressure of air-traffic control work.

In 1960 Wienoshek had received a summary court-martial on a charge of destruction of government property. Result: one month in the stockade and loss of rank. Probably wrecked the jeep, Mulheisen thought.

In 1962, back up to the rank of technical sergeant, Wienoshek was given a special court-martial on the more serious charge of attempted burglary. Here Wienoshek seemed to have done better, for he was found innocent. But he continued to have trouble. In 1965 he was in Vietnam, where civilian charges were brought against him for malicious destruction of property and felonious assault. It sounded like an attempted armed robbery to Mulheisen. The Air Force had agreed to court-martial Wienoshek, so civilian charges were dropped. Wienoshek was sent back to the States where he was given another special court-martial and dishonorably discharged.

Wienoshek had not prospered in civilian life. Almost every year since his discharge he had been picked up on one minor charge or another, nothing amounting to more than a misdemeanor, however, and all of them apparently related to drunkenness. But in 1970 he was charged with grand larceny in the disappearance of a valuable painting from the Detroit Institute of the Arts, where Wienoshek had been employed as a custodian. But then the charges were dropped. The report told the story. In exchange for dropping charges against Wienoshek, the painting was returned unharmed. He was allowed to leave his position without prejudice.

Since that time, Wienoshek had been employed by almost every cab company in Detroit and Windsor. There were no more arrests, just an occasional ticket of the sort that all cabdrivers get. Mulheisen couldn't believe that Wienoshek had gone on the wagon, not to hear the Dixieland cab dispatcher talk. It seemed more likely that Wienoshek had been able to occupy himself with other things. Perhaps a lucrative sideline like casual burglary. Once in a while, you drive a man and his wife to the airport, and on the way you learn that nobody will be home for several days.

McClain returned with the print-out on Elroy Carver. Mulheisen groaned. “I'm starving,” he said. “I have to have something to eat before I can go on.”

“Me too,” McClain said. “Let's go downtown to the Coneys. Take the file with us.”

Mulheisen had four hot dogs with onions and drenched with heavy chili. He drank two beers. It was reviving. He was able to focus his eyes again, though he knew he would have gas in the night.

They sat at a Formica-top table in the brightly lit Coney Islands and read the reports. There wasn't a lot on Elroy Terrence Carver. He too had served in the Air Force. It became quickly apparent, once one knew where to look, that Carver and Wienoshek must have met at Lockbourne Air Force Base, in Ohio, where both were stationed from 1959 to 1961. Carver had been given a bad conduct discharge from the service in 1963, for mail theft. He had worked in the base post office. He served three years in Leavenworth.

Afterward he returned to his hometown, Detroit, and was arrested several times on vagrancy charges, then a possession of stolen property charge (sentence suspended), a trespassing charge (eight days in the Detroit House of Correction), a breaking and entering charge (dismissed), and in 1972, burglary. He spent two years in the Milan Correctional Institute for that. Back out, there were parole violations that led to another two years. He had been released in June of this year and there was no further record.

“We still have no proof that the corpse is Carver,” McClain said.

“He should have a complete medical file from the military,” Mulheisen said. “Let's get that to the pathologists and the lab boys. There may be a way to positively identify him . . . blood type, maybe an x-ray of a broken arm, something. I didn't think there was much point in asking Mrs. Wienoshek or Deavons to look at the body.”

“No,” McClain agreed. “The lab is our best chance.”

The big man rubbed his hands together and looked cheerful. “Looks like we're getting closer, Mul. This is good work.”

“We could be farther than you think,” Mulheisen said. “I have a feeling that Arthur Clippert's military record will show that he knew Wienoshek or Carver during his Air Force tour. I've got that record on file, part of the insurance investigation that Scotchman gave me. It's out at the precinct. I'll check it out on the way home.”

“You might have something, Mul. These two birds seem kind of odd to me, though.”

“What's odd? Just a couple of boys gone bad.”

“Sure, only I can't see Carver killing anybody. Wienoshek, maybe. He has a pretty violent history.”

“And so far, everything we have says it was Carver in the house, not Wienoshek. I see what you mean. Of course, then, somebody did a hell of a thorough job on Carver.” Mulheisen sipped at his beer and leaned back in the chair. “It suggests no premeditation in the Clippert murder. It was just incidental to the burglary, after all.”

“Carver was in there, all right,” McClain said, “assuming that he's who the corpse was. It looks like she almost put him down.”

Mulheisen nodded. “From everything I've heard about Wienoshek, he sounds like a different caliber man than Carver. A boozer, but evidently he could hold it most of the time. And people seemed to like him. Carver, they hardly noticed.”

“What about this other guy who's showing up ahead of you all over town?” McClain said. “Who the hell is that?”

“If he's doing what I'm doing,” Mulheisen said, “he must be a detective. A PI.”

“Who's the client?” McClain said.

“Clippert? The Mob?”

“The Mob?”

“Sure. Maybe our boys did snatch something at Clippert's house. Like money. Big money.”

Mulheisen looked at the clock on the wall. It was after one. He was dead tired. He wasn't going to see the Flying Clipper tonight, that was for sure. The prospect of the long drive out to St. Clair Flats was discouraging, but he had to go out to the east side anyway, to get Clippert's records from the precinct.