Four

Mulheisen wasn't so sure he'd done his men a favor in wheedling the investigation out of Homicide. Roman Yakovich's statement was unhelpful. He had no trace of powder or nitrates on his hands, indicating that he had probably not fired a gun lately. He had a valid permit to carry the Thermodynamics .357 revolver. Helen Sedlacek's statements supported his story that he had run out of his apartment at the back of the house only after the shootings. He had appeared in the house almost immediately. There was nothing to hold him on.

Detective Sergeant Maki had been to the hospital to interview the young man who had driven into Sid's fence. This fellow knew nothing. All he'd seen was a car drawn up to enter a driveway. This had been no problem to him, but then a man had run out into the street, waving his arms. The kid had swerved to avoid hitting the man and instead had struck the parked Suburban. He couldn't recall a thing after that, not even hitting the fence. He had not regained consciousness until he was in the ambulance. He had heard no shots. He hadn't seen anybody but the man waving his arms, and he couldn't even say for certain where that man had come from, although he naturally assumed that he'd come from the car by the gate. He had a vague impression that the interior lights of that car were on, that doors were open, and it may be that the driver was standing outside his opened door, . . . but he couldn't be sure. Maybe he'd dreamed it.

Sergeant Maki's preliminary report lay on Mulheisen's desk. The kid was almost certainly not a party to the shooting, but Maki was a methodical man who would dig until there was no longer a reason to dig. But as far as Mulheisen was concerned, the kid was already in the clear.

Jimmy Marshall, sitting across the desk, pointed out the importance of the kid's statement that he was quite certain he had not seen any vehicle other than Big Sid's car approaching or preceding him on the block.

Mulheisen agreed. “Sid was running. He was shot in the street. Maybe the killer was in the car with Sid when they drove up. Maybe he pulled a gun. Maybe Sid jumped out and ran. The killer gets out, shoots, and then does this eye-shooting business. But if he was in the car, why would he wait until just that moment to make his move? No, he was on the street, at Sid's gate—a perfect place to wait for his target. Obviously Sid was set up. The killer would probably have a car waiting, perhaps with a driver, on the next block or something, Maybe not. Jensen and Field made a list of every car parked within two blocks, just in case the killer wasn't able to get to his car before the patrol arrived on the scene—which was how quick, do we know?”

Jimmy consulted a sheet on which he had constructed a rough timetable of events. “Sager and Barnes were cruising up Mack, just a few blocks away. They were at the scene within one minute of being called. The Big Four also entered from Mack, a minute or two later.”

“That's quick,” Mulheisen said. “That's a long block. If you only have a minute to run or walk it . . .Well, Jensen is running a check on the computer now for something interesting on the cars. It's a long shot, but . . .” He picked up a sheaf of papers and flipped through them. “Now, here's a half dozen so-called witnesses picked up in the area. None of them saw anything. It looks like Dennis just scooped up anyone he saw walking.” Under his breath he muttered, “Schwachkopf.”

“Beg pardon?” Jimmy said. He was a slender man with a V-shaped face. His eyes itched from Mulheisen's cigars, and he wanted desperately to go to the bathroom and rinse his contact lenses, but he didn't want to say so. “Is that German?”

“NATO Deutsch,” Mulheisen said. He flapped the sheaf of witness reports. “This is what comes of designating the Big Four as detectives.” This was a sore point with Mulheisen. The unit in question consisted of squads of oversize plainclothes officers who cruised around town in big Chryslers with a Thompson submachine gun on prominent display in the front seat. All of the members were at least six feet four inches in height. Mulheisen understood their function as intimidators but resented their status as detectives. In the Ninth Precinct the Big Four was led by Dennis Noell.

Jimmy Marshall riffled through the Big Four's list of pickups. “Nothing familiar here,” he said, “but they got there pretty quick. One of these people ought to have seen something.” He stopped at one page. “Here's a guy named Good. Just a prelim. Did you talk to him?”

“Never heard of him,” Mulheisen said. He looked at the sheet. “It doesn't say he was discharged. No statement. Check it out, Jimmy.” He quickly sifted the remaining reports. “Nah. Not even Dennis the Menace would let a professional killer slip through his paws. These guys—and one woman, who was walking her dog, for crying out loud—they look legit. They saw nothing . . . but each other. Anyway, we've got their addresses.” He paused again at the report on Hal Good. “Good's the one who's staying at a motel, out on Eight Mile? Doesn't say what he was doing in the neighborhood. Taking a walk.’ “

“If you want, I can ask Stanos about it,” Jimmy said. Stanos was the Big Four driver and Jimmy's former patrol partner. It was a curious relationship; the two men had nothing in common but a few months of sharing a squad car. But on one evening, responding to a man-with-a-gun call, Stanos had shot down the man just as the man was about to shoot Jimmy. It was not something Marshall would ever forget.

Mulheisen nodded. “Look into it. Where is Dennis, anyhow? He should have followed this up. Maybe he's talking to the guy right now. What you and I need to concentrate on is the mob end of this. I've got to talk to Andy, down at Racket-Conspiracy, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow. What time is it, anyway?”

“It is tomorrow,” Jimmy said. “Nearly three.”

Mulheisen sighed and got up. “Make a note to find out from Sid's girlfriend if he was over there this evening and what time and who was with him. It would be nice to know where he'd been just before he almost got home. And Roman, he said something that seems odd to me.”

“What's that?”

“It doesn't sound like much, but he said all the doors of the car were open when he came down the drive toward it. He saw the bodies and he retreated to the house.”

“You mean why didn't he go to his boss or at least go check out the street?”

“No. I think he understood the situation immediately. No way he was going out there. But he said all the doors were open. Then he corrected himself. Only the right front door was not open. Now that suggests—”

“There was a third man in the car,” Jimmy said. “The killer wasn't on the street. He was in the car.”

Mulheisen shook his head. “I don't see it. If he's in the car, even if for some reason he wants to do it at the gate, why let Egan out, or Sid? Why not shoot them both, Egan from behind, before they get out? Egan actually had his gun half out of his holster when he fell, you know.”

“Well, you've always said that these hoods aren't as smart as people seem to think,” Jimmy observed.

“That's true,” Mulheisen said, “but contract killers can be different. I don't think you've had any experience with hired killers, have you? They're not necessarily Mensa members, but at least a few have the sense not to associate full-time with the mob, which argues a certain intelligence. It wouldn't pay to underestimate them. What this guy was up to we may never know, but it looks like something went wrong. It's too soon to speculate.”

“We should have brought the broad in,” Jimmy said. “She's not telling us everything. She had to have seen something.”

“She's not a broad,” Mulheisen said. “And anyway, we can always talk to her tomorrow. Let's finish this up and get out of here. Let me get some coffee first,” he said. As he went out the door, Jimmy followed and locked it behind him before nipping down the hall in the opposite direction.

Out in the reception area there was little going on. An officer stood listening to a heavyset black woman, who was bending his ear about “bad boys.” Otherwise there was just a white woman sitting on a bench beyond the railings, dozing as she waited for someone. Mulheisen glanced at her. She looked rather attractive, although with her head down it was hard to tell. He went on behind the desk to the squad room. Detectives Jensen and Field were hanging around a computer terminal. They looked up and shook their heads, simultaneously, as they did most things.

“What about the grounds search?” Mulheisen asked, draining a cup of sludgelike coffee from the urn.

“Ayeh's on it,” Jensen said.

Mulheisen sighed and went out. As he passed the reception area, he took another look at the white woman. She lifted her head wearily. She was very attractive, he noted. She appeared to be in her early thirties and was well dressed in a modest, middle-class style. But her bearing was different from that of most people one saw in precinct lobbies—rather prim, but in a disciplined, acquired manner, as if she were a professional model, perhaps. She wore a new raincoat, which almost managed to conceal her figure. A bright kerchief was folded in her clenched fingers. A mass of champagne-blond hair surrounded a soft, pretty face, which was drawn with concern. She had nice legs, Mulheisen noticed.

She looked familiar, but not in any usual sense, not as if she were a woman he had seen any time in the past few days or weeks. He was sure he would have remembered her face if he had seen it before. Rather, he felt a kind of visceral lurch, as of something recollected from years before. It wasn't a pleasant feeling somehow, and he repressed it, walking on with only a faint nod in the woman's direction, as if he were embarrassed.

Jimmy had reopened the office and sat waiting. Mulheisen slumped down behind the desk. He started to say something but couldn't remember what it was. He thought about the woman. She was familiar. It seemed to him now that she was familiar in the way public personages seem familiar: you don't know them, but you've seen their faces so often—on television, on magazine covers—that you know their features better than you know those of your Aunt Polly, who moved to Cleveland ten years ago. No doubt that accounts for the notorious hesitancy of the rube who spots a famous movie star in a restaurant: “Hey, didn't you used to be . . .”

He got up and went to the door and peeked down the hall. There was no one there, just a line of chairs with a shiny stripe of grease on the wall above them, where the heads of suspects and witnesses had rested. The reception area itself was not visible from this vantage.

“What is it?” Jimmy asked.

“Nothing. I'll be right back.” Mulheisen walked back down the hall and looked around the corner.

The woman looked directly at him, then her face lighted up. “Mul!”

Mulheisen still didn't recognize her. She got up and walked toward him. The raincoat flowed open, and he noticed right away that it had, indeed, concealed a good deal.

“Oh, Mul,” she said, coming right to him, “I'm so glad to see you.” She was glad, too. Her eyes shone.

“Uh; yeah, good to see you, too,” he said. “Is it . . . is there something . . . ?” She was a little older than he'd thought. Maybe thirty-five, possibly even his own age. But she wore it a lot better than he did. He knew he knew her, he just couldn't place her. But there was that little kick in the gut again.

“It's my husband, Eugene,” she said.

“Unh-hunh. What's the problem?” The woman was fairly beaming at him, though a shadow of concern still played across her face.

“Do you work here?” she asked. She looked uncertainly from him to the desk sergeant, who was looking on.

“This is Mrs. Lande, Mul,” the desk man called across. “She's been waiting for her husband since . . .”–he glanced up at the electric clock over the door—”. . . about nine o'clock.”

“Nine o'clock!” Mulheisen raised a hand to forestall the woman, walking aside with the desk man. “What's the deal, Larry?”

“Lande was one of the witnesses on that, uh, accident,” the sergeant said in a low voice. They had their backs to the woman, who waited beyond the railing.

“Where is he now?” Mulheisen asked. He was still racking his brain, trying to figure out if he knew any Mrs. Lande. He couldn't think of any and wondered how in hell he could forget a face and a body like hers.

The sergeant shrugged. “I just came on shift at midnight. Barnes said he was . . .” He nodded toward the detectives’ rooms.

Mulheisen turned back to the woman. “Mrs. Lande, I understand your—”

“Mul! You don't recognize me, do you?” She looked disappointed. “It's Bonny. Bonny Wheeler.” She smiled at him plaintively.

He recognized her instantly, painting a teenage face over the one before him. It wasn't remarkably different, except that it hadn't been so poised twenty years ago, so well made up, so . . . glamorous. Bonny Wheeler's hair had been a darkish blonde, not champagne. But then she'd had that same plaintive look of helplessness, a maddening self-deprecation that had undermined her beauty. Mulheisen had hated that look. It evoked unworthy feelings, a kind of unjustified annoyance, even anger. He found himself wanting to admonish the girl, even scold her, for so idiotically denying her beauty.

Bonny Wheeler had made boys think bad things. No doubt it wasn't her fault, but there it was. She confused men. She seemed at once alluring and debased. There was an underlying innocence overlaid with an aroma of sensual experience. Bonny Wheeler had caused a lot of anguish to more men and boys than just Mulheisen.

“Bonny,” he said softly. “I'm sorry, Bonny, I . . . I just didn't . . . It's the context . . .” He gestured around them at the grubby precinct house with its atmosphere of daily misery and criminality. “So, it's your husband, eh? What's his name again?”

“Eugene. Oh, don't apologize, Mul. I understand.” She had the same old soft, yielding voice, always too apologetic. “It's all some sort of mistake. Eugene called me and said they were holding him for identification. Why, he couldn't figure out. He went out without his wallet, just to get me some things from the store. And then somehow he was stopped by the police. I brought his wallet down, but they haven't released him. I don't know what's going on.”

Now, from the release of tension, having found a friendly and sympathetic face among all the unyielding ones she had encountered, Bonny was on the verge of tears. Mulheisen came around the railing and led her back to her seat.

“Sergeant,” he called, “bring Mrs. Lande some coffee. Not that old stuff; make some fresh. Listen, Bonny, you just sit here, and I'll go see what the problem is.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mul. You're so sweet, so kind,” she murmured—too grateful, as ever. He hurried away.

Jensen and Field didn't know anything about Lande. Maki and Ayeh had gone, as had the Big Four. The blue men knew nothing about it. Jellybelly was busy with paperwork, but he responded promptly to Mulheisen's inquiries. He only had one man in the bull pen, a snoring drunk lying on the bench.

“That's Good,” Jellybelly told Mulheisen. “I sent the rest downtown so we could clean the joint out a little bit. We got a blind-pig raid going down.” He glanced at the clock. “They oughta be in here in about a half hour, forty-five minutes.”

“That's Good?” Mulheisen said. “Where's Lande? Back in the lockup?”

Jellybelly paged through his cards until he found Lande's. He wrinkled his brow, staring at it. “Now where did I . . . he's . . . where in the hell did I put that . . . ?” Suddenly he clapped a hand to his forehead. “Holy shit! I forgot all about that little prick! He was makin’ so much noise, Mul, I hada stick him in one a the ‘terrogation rooms.”

Mulheisen sighed. “All right, Art. Let me have him . . . and his paperwork.”

“Detectives got the prelim,” Jellybelly said. He removed Lande's personal-effects envelope from the locker and made Mulheisen sign for it, then led the way down the hall to one of the interrogation rooms. He unlocked it and stood aside. Lande was curled up on the floor, snoring, but he awoke quickly and bounced to his feet. He rubbed his eyes furiously, then immediately launched a tirade, in a rasping voice.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell time is it? How long I been here? What the hell is this shit? What time is it?”

Eugene Lande was a short, stocky man with a brushy mustache. He was the sort of man who always looked annoyed, but Mulheisen considered that he was tired and not unreasonably angry. Still, he hardly looked like the sort of man one would expect Bonny to marry. Mulheisen took him down the hall to his office.

Jimmy looked on, puzzled, as Mulheisen waved Lande into a chair, then opened the personal-effects envelope, and shook out a penknife, a book of matches from Maiolani's Bar and Grill, and a small amount of cash in bills and coins. “This is Eugene Lande,” Mulheisen said to Jimmy. “Big Four.” He uttered the last with a meaningful look.

Jimmy flipped through the list. All the while Lande continued to complain, demanding to know why he was being held, where was his wife, what time was it. Jimmy found the report. “He was seen by Doug it looks like,” Jimmy said. He handed the report to Mulheisen. It appeared that Lande was meant to be discharged as having no relevance to the investigation, but Detective Doug Joseph had evidently not notified Jellybelly.

Mulheisen handed the report to Jimmy with a curt nod and went back down the hall to Bonny.

“Did you find him? Is he all right?” Bonny stood at the railing.

“Sure, he's all right,” Mulheisen assured her, “but there are a few details. It shouldn't take long. Uh, you say he went out without his wallet?”

“Yes, I've got it here.” She dug it out of her purse. “I tried to give it to them, but they said to wait, and I've been waiting and waiting and waiting . . .”

Mulheisen took the wallet and flipped it open. The face on the driver's license looked like the man in his office. Brown hair with a widow's peak; thick, dark eyebrows and a bushy mustache under a slightly bulbous nose; a narrow face. The ears were set close to the head. Height, 66 inches; weight, 148. Age . . . Mulheisen calculated quickly—thirty-six . . . a few years younger than himself and Bonny.

“How long have you been married to Eugene, Bonny?”

“Six years. Is anything wrong?”

Mulheisen looked up and smiled—an attempt at pleasantness that fell into a weedy garden of long teeth. “No. I don't think so.” He was amazed at her appearance. She didn't look twenty years older . . . scarcely ten.

“You say Eugene went out to the store. What time was this?”

“It was . . . oh, seven. I had started dinner. Why? What's happened?”

“Nothing. He was picked up in an area quite a ways from your home.” He glanced at the address on the driver's license, an apartment in Harper Woods. Not really that far from Sid Sedlacek's street in actual miles, but Lande must have driven past an awful lot of grocery stores to get there, even on a Sunday evening, if he was just popping out for a quart of milk. “What was he supposed to be getting?”

Bonny had to think. “Rosemary,” she said finally. “I needed rosemary for the lamb chops. Mul, what's wrong?”

Mulheisen tried to calm her. “Now look, Bonny, don't get upset. It's nothing, just a matter of formalities. I'll take care of it. Just sit down, OK? It won't be long.”

Reluctantly she allowed herself to be led back to the bench. Mulheisen hurried off with the wallet in hand. Lande was silent at last. Jimmy stood next to the door. Mulheisen sat down and flipped open the wallet.

“ ‘Eugene Preston Lande’,” Mulheisen read. “That you?”

“Course it's me,” Lande snapped back. “So, she brung it. She still here?”

“How long have you lived at this address?” Mulheisen asked.

“About two, three years.” Lande cleared his throat.

“Occupation?”

Lande gestured vaguely with his hand. “Computers.”

“What about them?”

“I'm in computers.”

“What does that mean?”

“I work with special computer systems . . . sort of free-lance.”

“Free-lance what?”

“It's kinda complicated,” Lande said, rolling his beady eyes as if he despaired of explaining the intricate world of computers to an ignorant cop.

Mulheisen bared his teeth. “Try.”

Lande shrugged his shoulders. They were broad and thick, as if he worked out with weights. “It's like . . . a guy has problems with his program—maybe for his business—he comes to Doc Byte—”

“Doc Byte?” Jimmy said with a near laugh.

“That's me,” Lande said almost cheerfully, proudly. “Anyways, he comes to Doc Byte, and I check it out, and when I find the bug, I either fix it—if it ain't too big a bug, right?—or I work with the people he got the system from, and they maybe replace it, or, well . . . it just goes on and on like that. I mean, there's a million things can go wrong . . . maybe I make a new system for him, or . . .” He stopped, looking questioningly at Mulheisen, then at Jimmy. “It's real technical . . . I could go through some of it for you.”

Mulheisen made a sour face. “I get the picture,” he said unconvincingly. “You do this out of your home, or what?”

“Out of my home? Well, I guess you could, but I got an office. Doc Byte. It's on Nine Mile, in Warren. There's a card there, in the wallet. Go ahead, take one.”

“Your wife brought this wallet in,” Mulheisen said. “She says you went out this evening—yesterday evening—to the store. Is that right?”

Lande nodded.

“What time?”

“What time? I don't know. It musta been about seven.”

“Why did you go out?”

“I went to the store. I forget what for. I been here for so long! It was some kinda spice she wanted. Rosemary. That's it! What is all this, anyways?”

“You went a long way for rosemary,” Mulheisen said.

“So what?”

Mulheisen looked at the arrest report. “Where were you when the officer stopped you?”

“Where was I? I was on Kercheval.”

“Where on Kercheval?”

“A couple blocks from Alter.”

“Were you driving?”

“I was walking. Whataya think? An’ this big ape comes along and says, ‘Git in,’ meanin’ his squad car. So what the fuck, I'm a law-bidin’ citizen, I says, ‘What the fuck is this?’ And the big ape says, ‘Just git the fuck in.’ So what am I? I git in. They bring me here, and the next thing I know they leave me in this fuckin’ office, and now I'm talkin’ a you. OK?”

He was getting worked up. “Relax,” Mulheisen said. “What was the arresting officer's name?”

“I don't know the guy's name. He was huge. Mean fucker.”

“Do you want to file a complaint?” Mulheisen asked casually.

“I ain't complaining,” Lande responded quickly.

“You have a right to complain,” Mulheisen said.

“I ain't complaining.”

“Was the arresting officer Noell?”

“How should I know. I didn’ ast.”

“All officers wear name tags, or if it was a plainclothes detective, he should have shown you his identification.”

“He was plainclothes, but he had a ‘Flyer,’ “ Lande said, referring to the wings painted on the sides of the Big Four's cruisers, “he didn’ haveta tell me he was a cop. I never seen no ID.”

Mulheisen sighed. He examined the report, the effects, the wallet for a long minute. Finally he said, “You went a long way for rosemary.”

“I was lost,” Lande said.

Many Detroit streets, perhaps especially on the east side of town, were confusing. They ran at angles to the basic grid-and-belt system, and some of them changed names, such as Cadieux's becoming Morang and leading into Moross. It had to do with the old boundary lines of the French settlers’ farms, Mulheisen knew. But Detroiters never got lost—or, more to the point, they never admitted being lost.

“I thought there was a dago store, some kinda deli, around there. I parked and walked, but I couldn’ find it. Then the flyer come along—”

“Where did you park?”

“In a rest'rant parkin’ lot. On Kercheval.”

“What restaurant?”

“I don’ know. I never paid no attention. Hey, come on . . . what the fuck? Do I gotta call my lawyer, or what?”

Mulheisen was suddenly tired of this pointless sparring. Obviously Lande had nothing to do with this investigation. And if it turned out, by chance, that he did, he knew where to find him.

“Did the officer question you at all?” he asked.

“Some bird did. He ast me about what you ast me. He ast me if I seen a accident.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’ see nothin’. What is it? A hit ‘n’ run?”

Mulheisen shrugged. “If you didn't see it . . .” He replaced the driver's license in the wallet and pushed it across the desk with the other things. “You want to check this stuff? See if it's all there?”

Lande checked through the wallet quickly, counted his money, and slipped the other items into his pockets. “It's all there.” He stood up.

“One minute.” Mulheisen pushed the property-inventory form across, along with a ballpoint pen. “Sign this.”

Lande looked at the paper suspiciously. “What's this? I ain't signin’ nothin’.”

“It's just a release form. It says all your personal property has been returned, that's all. Go ahead, read it.” Mulheisen pointed to the form.

“I can see that,” Lande said, picking up the paper gingerly. He held it before him, eyeing it warily. “You're sure that's all it is?”

“Well, you can read, can't you?” Mulheisen said, irritably. “Here,” he handed Lande the pen, “sign by that X.”

“X? I don't need no X. I can sign my own name.” Lande bent to the desk and signed his name with a large, stylish script, writing carefully. When he finished he handed the pen back to Mulheisen. “That it?”

Mulheisen picked up the form. “Good enough for the Declaration of Independence.” He showed the form to Jimmy Marshall. “Now that's what I call a John Hancock.”

Lande frowned. “What's wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” Mulheisen said, wearily. “You're free to go. Jimmy, show Mr. Lande out.” Mulheisen felt a sudden diffidence about encountering Bonny again.

When Jimmy returned, he said, “What a touchy fart.”

“I'm just glad to get him out of here without a signed complaint,” Mulheisen said.

“Weirdo,” Jimmy said. “Computer freaks! They talk like illiterates, some of them. You hear that? Sounded like a cross between a Valley girl and a pimp.”

“You think he was lying?” Mulheisen asked.

“Oh, he was lying all right,” Jimmy said, “but what about? Went to get some rosemary? Probably slipped out to see his girlfriend. Who knows? These computer freaks don't speak the same language, Mul. All they know is bauds and bytes. They think in numbers. Nowadays if you don't know computers, you're the illiterate one.”

Mulheisen didn't want to get into that. He knew Jimmy was up on computers. Himself, he didn't know a baud from a byte. “Did you see the wife?” he asked.

Jimmy smiled and nodded.

“She say anything?” Mul asked.

“Not to me. She let out a wail and fell on the little drip's neck like he was Warren Beatty. Maybe he is. Women are funny. Now you take my wife—”

“Thanks,” Mulheisen said, “but no thanks.” He had a vision of the large, splendid Yvonne in her African robes and glittering bangles. An admirable person, but not one of Mulheisen's favorites, nor was he one of hers. She wouldn't thank him for Jimmy's late hours. “See you in a few hours,” he said and left.