Twenty

“Are you sure the Sweet Home is the right place for your friend, Mul?” asked Carlotta Bledsoe. She was a trim woman of thirty with light brown skin and a taste for extremely large spectacles that covered half her face.

Mulheisen was puzzled. “Why not?”

“It's very unusual,” she said. “We've never had a white woman here. Folks tend to take their loved ones to their own people.”

Mulheisen had never given a thought to this aspect of it. The Sweet Home Funeral Parlor was the only private mortuary where he knew the people. His father and Doc Bledsoe had been fishing pals for many years, and Mulheisen had known Carlotta since childhood; it had not occurred to him that there was a racial dimension here. In funeral parlors? But now that the idea had been presented to him, he could see that it was bound to be, given the ornery nature of man, although it still seemed bizarre.

Carlotta's suggestion only gave a momentary check to his scheme, however, which was to move Bonny from the hospital mortuary to a private one. He hoped it would flush Gene Lande out of hiding. The suggested impropriety of placing her in a—what? a “black”? a “non-white”? (even the terminology seemed laughable)—funeral home seemed irrelevant beside the ethical implications of—to be blunt—using her corpse as a decoy.

He thought he'd considered all the arguments—foremost was that if Lande had indeed been the assassin in the Conover and/or the Tupman massacre, almost any action was justified in securing the arrest of such a dangerous man, in the interest of public safety. Beyond that, if Lande weren't dangerous to others, he might be dangerous to himself or in danger of being harmed by others, including the mob.

There was a further, compelling consideration: the hospital was prepared to send the body to the Wayne County Morgue as unclaimed. Legally they couldn't hold it much longer, even if they had the space and the inclination. Mulheisen had spent too much time at the morgue to bear the thought of Bonny on one of its slabs. He was not a sentimental man, but the morgue was not the place for someone he cared about.

He had been thinking about Bonny a lot, naturally, and some of his thoughts had not been comforting. He found he could still not shake his self-assumed lifelong obligation to look after her, starting with that day on the playground in the sixth grade. Well, it wasn't over . . . yet.

No, no, he would not permit Bonny to be removed to the county morgue. He bullied the hospital into releasing the body into his custody, and it was transported to the Sweet Home, Carlotta's misgivings notwithstanding. The hospital would of course inform Lande of the disposition of the body, if he called, and they said they'd try to notify Mulheisen if that happened. The body was not to be embalmed, he told Carlotta, but held in storage until further instructions. Carlotta consented to this.

In the meantime Mulheisen, Jimmy Marshall, and other detectives from the Ninth Precinct ransacked Lande's office, his home, and the golf club but found little of interest. There was no documentation, for instance, on the shipment of computer equipment to Grand Cayman Island. Alicia Bommarito insisted that Lande himself had handled it. “It was personal,” she said, “something to do with the golf-resort deal he was working on.” What that deal was she didn't know; Lande had never discussed it with her.

At Lande's home there was nothing of immediate interest; some personal papers in a filing cabinet might yield something eventually, but Mulheisen was not disposed to take the time now to analyze them. He stood in the Landes’ bedroom, gazing at the inevitable champagne decor. The large bed was unmade; a heavy satin bedspread and some of Lande's soiled clothing lay on the deep pile of the champagne carpet, but otherwise everything was quite neat and orderly. Presumably Lande had not slept here for several days.

It was curiously moving to look upon the intimate personal belongings of a woman whom one has . . . well, loved. Bonny's clothes hung in the closet; shoes were lined up primly, the ones she used frequently, anyway—there were a lot of shoe boxes. With a sigh Mulheisen knelt and went through them all. There were nothing in the boxes but shoes, Bonny's shoes. He rose and looked about. Her toiletries were carefully arranged on the vanity. They looked useless. They were useless now. Throw them away.

On a pale, Scandinavian-style dresser was a photo of Bonny in a bikini, reclining against the windshield of what appeared to be a large cabin cruiser. Dimly visible through the glass of the windshield, peering over the boat's wheel, Lande's goofy mustache bristled behind Bonny's head, his grin glowing in a shaft of light. Bonny looked great, almost as spectacular as in the famous centerfold. From the way she looked—the hairstyle, her face—Mulheisen thought the picture may have been taken as recently as a few months earlier, perhaps when the couple was in the Caymans for Christmas.

Mulheisen picked up the photo and stared at it. No doubt about it, Bonny was a beautiful woman. And then in the background he noticed a familiar landscape—the distant shoreline of Ontario. At least it looked like the shoreline he had seen a thousand times—it sure wasn't a tropical setting. He supposed the boat could have been anchored in one of the many little bays of either Peach Island or Harsen's Island. And it was probably taken last summer, evidently a hot day, considering that Bonny was practically falling out of her bathing suit.

Mulheisen took the picture with him.

At Briar Ridge there was no sign of anyone having been near the place in days. There were again some potentially interesting files in the little office, but nothing to grip Mulheisen's attention. He walked out onto the deck. It was a sunny day at last. He looked out over the course. It looked great, but he supposed that the fairway grass was getting a little high. It would need mowing soon.

Back in the precinct by the end of the afternoon, Mulheisen found that there was no further sign of Eugene Lande, and he was considering a full-scale manhunt instead of the cautious effort he had thus far put forth. But he wasn't depressed by any means. He felt confident even if he couldn't say why. He was glad that Buchanan was safely out of the way, with the Big Four engaged in his defense. And he was glad that Bonny was at Sweet Home. There was one setback, however—Sergeant Maki reported that Lande did not and had not owned a boat. Certainly there was no boat registered in his name in the state, no insurance company had insured such a boat, nor could any of the yacht clubs or boat liveries in the Detroit-Windsor area say that he had ever kept a boat. So the picture must have been taken on someone else's boat; not an unlikely conclusion, since someone else had taken the photo. Who the photographer was, however, was not evident. The enlargement had been made from a snapshot, at a photo shop in a mall near the Landes’ home, and paid for by Lande. It had been originally developed at the same shop, from film brought in by Mrs. Lande the preceding September. End of story. Mulheisen abandoned this avenue of investigation—if it weren't Lande's boat, it was not likely he would be hiding on it.

About eight o'clock Mulheisen wrapped up a meeting with his detectives, advising them that if nothing had developed by tomorrow morning, he would push for a full-scale manhunt. He was tempted to stop in at one of his favorite watering holes on the way home, but he drove on. It was a warm night, and it occurred to him that the Tigers would be opening the baseball season in a couple of days. This thought lifted his spirits. Baseball was not, after all, a thing of great consequence, and for this he was grateful. He longed for something of no great consequence to occupy his mind, if only temporarily, something nonetheless quite fine and pleasurable after this long, bitter spring.

The protest signs were gone from the site of the development when he turned down his road. He wondered if this were good or bad, but his mother was not home to enlighten him. She had left a message on the refrigerator, concerning the presence of a cold meat loaf that could be warmed in the microwave, with a PS—“I'm at Eastern Star.” He had just decided on a cold meat loaf sandwich instead and was slathering the thick slice with ketchup when the phone rang. It was Carlotta.

“Your man was here, Mul,” she said, “just a few minutes ago. My, he's a handful, isn't he? He came in here ranting and raving about how I had to release his wife's body to him and I told him, ‘Fine, you get me Mulheisen on the line,’ and I held out the phone to him, but he said he didn't have to go through no police to get his wife. So when I started to dial you myself, he split. I followed him outside, and he jumped into one of those little Japanese pickup trucks and peeled away—I mean, he burned rubber. I didn't get the license number—it was all covered with mud—but the truck had a sign, or a logo, on the door. It was some kind of coat of arms or something—it was all mud splattered, too, so I couldn't see what it was for sure, but I think I saw the word Briar.”

Mulheisen thanked her and apologized for the disturbance, which she verbally waved off, then he immediately called the young pro Eric Smith. He told Mulheisen that he had occasionally used the truck, but several days earlier the head grounds keeper, Dennis McMillan, had come by his apartment to get it—no reason given. He had assumed McMillan needed it for maintenance work at the course.

McMillan was home. “Yeah, the boss drove me by Eric's. I drove the pickup back to the club, and the boss drove me home. I thought we were going to get back to work on the course, but the boss said to hold off for a few more days. Jeez, I don't know how much longer we can wait. We gotta jump on those greens and get after that fairway grass before it goes to hell. The guys on the crew don't mind—they're getting full pay doing nothing—but we gotta do something about the drainage in front of number eight . . . all this rain—”

“Where is the truck usually kept?” Mulheisen interrupted.

“Out to the equipment shed,” McMillan replied. “It's over between five and thirteen. You take the little road that goes down the hill—about a quarter mile down the road from the clubhouse if you're coming up Briar Ridge Drive. There's a little white gate there, says GOLF COURSE, PRIVATE ROAD—you can't hardly see it ‘less you're looking for it.”

Mulheisen thought he could End it, but he didn't recall seeing an equipment shed. Was it visible from the road?

“Oh, no,” McMillan said, “it ain't even visible from the clubhouse. Actually it's more like a lodge or a cabin. It's tucked back along that clump of woods that separates the thirteenth fairway from the fifth. It's a real pretty building, fieldstone and timber. Part of it is a shelter and a snack bar—they sell sandwiches and beer there in the summer. The boss seen one like it in Scotland and had it built a couple years ago. The equipment shed is tacked onto the back end.”

Mulheisen called Jimmy. Yvonne told him, with no attempt to conceal her annoyance, that Jimmy had gone to the store for her, and “couldn't it wait until the morning?” Mulheisen told her it couldn't, she should send Jimmy to Briar Ridge as soon as he returned.

It was already dark when he found the gate, after first driving by it. It was securely locked. There were recent-looking tire tracks going in. Mulheisen clambered over the fence and began to walk down the graveled road. There was a glow in the sky from the distant city, and there were even a few stars. He stumbled on, down a steep rutted and muddy grade. After a few minutes he reached flatter ground, and a moment later he crossed Clabber Creek (or, as he thought, Petty Creek), on a bridge made of timbers and railroad ties. A few paces on, however, he was afraid he'd got lost. But then he realized that he'd been deflected by a path used by golfers in golf carts, and he backtracked to find the road again as it passed behind an elevated tee. He walked on, more cautiously now, wondering if it wouldn't be a lot smarter to just go back to the car and wait for Jimmy. But then he thought he perceived a darker patch in the night.

Must be the lodge, he thought, and stepped off the noisy gravel, turning toward the trees for a few paces. He eased the Smith & Wesson out of its hip grip and stood quietly. It was pitch-black unless you looked directly upward—he could see tiny stars through the budding leaves. A bird was calling oddly, a kind of nasal beenp; he thought it might be a snipe, but he didn't really know. There was no other significant sound, just the distant background static of Yvonne's Greater Detroit Urban Zone. He took three more steps and ran full length into the side of a rough wooden wall. He nearly dropped his gun, stumbling backward until he fell flat on his butt.

Instinctively he felt his nose with his free hand. It wasn't broken, just bumped. His seat was getting wet on the damp earth, however. He scrambled up. At that instant a brilliant light blinded him.

“Mul!” rasped Lande's voice, “what the hell took you so long?”

Lande was holding a heavy-duty flashlight and a sawed-off shotgun. “Just drop the gun there, Mul,” he said. Mulheisen looked at the shotgun for a long second and then bent to place his .38 on the ground. Lande opened a door in the wall and turned on a light switch. “C'mon in,” he invited.

Mulheisen blinked and entered. They were in a kind of cabin filled with a jumble of boxes and tools. An army cot stood against one wall, and against the opposite wall were built some cabinets with a counter bearing an electric cooker with a coffee pot on it. There was a sink filled with dirty dishes. A grocery sack overflowed with empty tins of chili and condensed soup. Against the back wall was a workbench with two vises, well lighted by fluorescent light and a gooseneck lamp. There were many tools—saws, files, drills, and some bladed instruments that were gouges. There were boxes of cartridges and miscellaneous shotgun shells lying about and something that Mulheisen thought was a shot-shell loader.

Lande waved him to a wooden kitchen chair next to a rickety table covered with coffee-cup rings and bread crumbs, a plate with the remains of dried chili on it, and a cup half-filled with cold coffee that reflected the light like the back of a grackle. There was also a nearly full bottle of Jameson whiskey.

Lande pushed a coffee cup across the table and poured it almost full of whiskey. He stepped back, and holding the shotgun by its pistol grip, he kept his eye on Mulheisen as he took a deep gulp from the bottle.

Mulheisen lifted his cup in toast and drank.

“Took ya long enough,” Lande said. “I wunnered how much longer I was gonna haveta hang out here.” He shook his head with disapproval. “Jeez . . . some detective you are.”

“I've been busy,” Mulheisen said. He rubbed his sore nose and took another sip of whiskey. “I guess I should have known about the shed, but I just didn't think of it.”

“Yeah. You were thinking about shit like taking Bonny to a nigger funeral parlor. What the hell ‘ja do that for? That ain't no place for Bonny!”

“What difference does it make? You didn't want her to go to the morgue, did you? The people at Sweet Home are old friends. I trust them. Anyway, you left her.”

“I thought I could depend on you,” Lande complained. He didn't look well—gaunt, unshaven, his eyes red and glowing madly. Actually his beard didn't look so bad; if it grew out as it seemed intended to, it would go some way toward rendering his mustache more respectable. But his hair was disheveled and much grayer than it had been. Mulheisen wondered if he had dyed it before.

“Dead black people are like dead white people,” Mulheisen said; “you can't do anything to them anymore. What should I have done?”

“Cremation. That's what she wanted. I figgered you knew that. Hell, yer right. Dead is dead.” Lande shrugged. “So, ya figgered out I was here, but ya figgered I could wait until ya had time to deal with me.” He sounded bitter.

“No, . . . I thought you were gone.”

“Gone? Dead, ya mean?”

“No,” Mulheisen said, “to the Cayman Islands.”

“Cayman Islands,” Lande said with disgust. “Yeah . . . that was gonna be it . . . me ‘n’ Bonny lying in the sun. Shit! How'm I gonna go to the Cayman Islands?”

“Why not?”

“Besides never wanting to see the place again without Bon, pro'ly every cop in Michigan is lookin’ fer me. What'm I gonna do, drive there?”

Mulheisen drained his cup and poured himself another dram. “It's not my problem,” he said. “I figured you had a plan.”

“Plan! Sure, I hada plan . . . once't. Me ‘n’ Bon. But now there ain't no reason for a plan.” He choked and stopped, his eyes glittering with tears. He picked up the bottle and chugged from it, the shotgun pointed at the floor. When he regained control, he said, “Sid . . . he was a plan. But,” he flipped his free hand over and back, “ain't no Sid, either. No Sid, no Bonny . . . just ol’ Gene . . . and good ol’ Mul. Say,” he leaned forward raising the shotgun provocatively, “how ‘bout you ‘n’ me go to the islands, Mul? Whataya say?”

Mulheisen just stared him in the eye. Lande blinked and stepped back. “Nanh? Guess not.” He picked up the bottle again and took another drink. “Good stuff,” he said. “I'm ‘onna miss this stuff.”

Mulheisen wondered what that meant. Two or three possibilities loomed in the hazy distance, none of them cheerful. “So, you're taking off . . . is that it?” he asked.

Lande made a raspy noise that could have been a laugh or a snort. “Yanh, I'm takin’ off. Soon's I figure out what to do about you, Mul.”

Mulheisen decided to ignore the remark. He took a careful sip of whiskey and said, “You could go by boat, I guess.”

Lande cocked his head, frowning. “Boat? What boat?”

“That boat you and Bonny used to go out on . . . last summer.”

“Sid's boat, you mean? The Serb-U-Rite? How'm I gonna go in Sid's boat, . . . steal it?”

Mulheisen shrugged. “Just a thought. But how will you get the money out?”

Lande waved a hand contemptuously. He must have been drinking before Mulheisen got there, because he was clearly drunk now. Mulheisen wasn't feeling that sober himself. He watched as Lande tottered over to the workbench and laid the alley sweeper down. He just as quickly picked up a .45 automatic, however, and absently checked that the clip was jammed home. He looked over at Mulheisen and thoughtfully racked the housing back, cocking the pistol. He casually gestured with the gun, saying, “I had a good plan, me ‘n’ Sid ‘n’ Bonny . . . an’ Germaine, a course.” He shook his head ruefully. “That damn Germaine . . . Bonny thought I had the hots for her. Can you believe it? Course, Bon didn't know about the plan! Couldn't really tell her, no way. To her it was just me ‘n’ Sid was gonna buy a golf resort . . . I'd transfer the money . . . no prob.”

“A lot of money?” Mulheisen asked simply, raising a brow.

“Oh, yes,” Lande said with surprising disgust, “a lot of money . . . too damn much money . . . no end to that damn money . . . sixty-seven million buckaroos, in fact.”

Mulheisen was stunned. “So much? Where did it come from?”

Lande shrugged. “Drugs. Sid ‘n’ Frosty ‘n’ Billy.”

“But I mean, how did they get it?”

Lande clearly didn't share Mulheisen's incredulity. “Maybe you ain't heard—there's a hell of a lotta money in drugs. More than even the mob realized, I guess. Sid tol’ me once't he was just amazed when he found out what the biz was worth.”

“Well, sure, there's a lot of money,” Mulheisen said, “but how could you rip off that much without getting caught?”

“You better ask Sid,” Lande said, “speakin’ of gettin’ caught. Him ‘n’ Frosty, they figured out that the territories was worth somethin’ to the South Americans, sorta like franchises. Only they didn’ realize how much at first, . . . which I guess is how come it took Carmine so long to tumble to what they was doin’. You sell a franchise—well, lease is more like it—to the Latinos for a neighborhood for say fifty thousand dollars a month, an’ you skim maybe ten percent. But then a rival group comes along and offers you a hundred thousand dollars. An’ you take it, but you don't tell Carmine. That's the way Sid tol’ it to me, anyways.

“So here's all this money. It just comes pilin’ in; you can't turn off the faucet, or somebody'll tumble to the deal, but you gotta get rid of the cash. Cash smells. It attracks rats. So you got Billy, he's layin’ the take out in loans . . . phony loans, so Carmine wouldn't wise up, . . . but even that ain't enough. Which is why they come to me.”

“Ah, yes,” Mulheisen said, relieved to have diverted Lande's attention, no matter how briefly, from the problem of his own disposal. “They would come to you, the computer genius. I'm sure you concocted something suitably brilliant.”

Any irony intended was lost on Lande. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It took me a little while, but I figured it out. At first I had some notion of gettin’ into the banks, you know, crackin’ their systems. But then I figured—what the hell, that's not the problem. We already had a bank- some guy who was into Billy for a lot . . . Billy was running loan money through him. An’ we already got the money, too much money . . . The problem is how to get rid of it, lay it off. So I just decided to deposit it.”

“Deposit it? You can't deposit that kind of money in a bank. The feds would be all over you. What is it, any deposit of more than ten thousand dollars has to be reported to the IRS?”

“That's why I deposited it in thousands of accounts . . . a little more than seven thousand, at about ninety-five hundred dollars per.” He cocked his head as if calculating, then nodded. “Yanh, that's about it, in round numbers. Course, I hada make up a lotta names, lotta payments to innavidjuls. The computer did that. I just plugged in about two dozen last names, middle names, and first names—got ‘em oudda the phone book. The computer scrambled up all the possibilities—you can get eight thousand different names oudda twenny names from the phone book if you use a middle name and the last name doesn't sound too weird as a first name. You know—Jackson Lewis Arthur or Henry David John or Allen Martin James.” He grinned with the pleasure of his genius.

“I had the golf course, a legal corporation, and we had the development company. We could make payments to all these people, and they could make payments to us. The computer does it all. I tried to get them to buy a bank, a savings and loan really, and put Billy's tame banker in there. But Sid thought that was too complicated. So we used the one we had. I just tapped into their mainframe. But you gotta go to the bank once in a while with a bag of money—Billy had the tame banker, so he carried the bag—but it was all paid right back out, wasn't hardly there. The other bank people would never even see it. They never even knew we existed. The computer takes care of it, makes the transfer, then sweeps the tracks behind it. Trouble is there was always this money, this hard cash, comin’ in,” Lande complained. “An’ we couldn't turn it off ‘cause it'd blow the plan. Which I guess it must've, once Sid went down.”

Mulheisen tried to take all this in, but he couldn't quite get it. It would be something for Jimmy, or the Business Bureau to unravel. What he wanted to know was “Where is the money now?”

“Some of it's in the little accounts,” Lande said, “most of it . . . over forty mil. Some of it's already gone to the Cayman bank for the resort account. An’ then I got about fifteen mil in cash. It just kept pilin’ up . . . What a pain in the ass hard cash is. I can't wait till we go to straight ‘lectronic money.”

“Where?”

“Hunh? The cash?” Lande nodded toward the rear of the building.

“You have fifteen million dollars here? In cash?”

“Not izzackly. Fifteen mil is an awful lotta cash, even if it's all in fifties and hunnerds, which it was, ‘cause you can't be screwin’ aroun’ with twennies and that little crap. Lessee. If it's all hunnerds, that'd be a hunnerd fifty thousand bills, but ack'shly, with fifties included, you end up with about two-hunnerd thousand bills, or somethin’ like that. Now, if they was all new bills—you know, in little tight bun'les like the mint issues—you could prolly cram that much cash inna half-dozen cardboard boxes, say like they put whiskey bottles in. But what I had was a couple dozen boxes, ‘cause the money was used . . . It's thicker.”

“Had?” Mulheisen asked.

“Yanh. It's in boxes, in the shed.”

“In the shipment,” Mulheisen said.

“What shipment?” Lande said.

“To the Cayman Islands. The computers.”

“Computers? Oh, no. I mean, yahn, the computers are in the shed, but they're just computers . . . Course, they do have the program on the disk drives, that runs the show. You mean try to stuff the money into the computers, into the consoles or the drive cases? How you gonna do that? There ain't enough room. I mean, that's stupid. Nanh, I just put the extra cash in some old whiskey cartons. I was thinkin’ about gettin’ rid of it—dump it in the river, burn it, maybe—but then I got a idea.”

“A bright idea,” Mulheisen prompted.

“Sure. Whataya think? I'm ‘onna git a dumb idea? No, I packed it all up—well, all but about five mil, which I figgered I could use for expenses—an’ I give it to charity . . . orphanages, neighborhood projecks, drug clinics, that sorta thing.”

“You gave ten million dollars to charity? How?”

“Mostly I drove aroun’ at night,” Lande said. “I remembered seein’ on TV how these orphanages are allus gettin’ babies dropped off at their doorstep in the night, in a cardboard box. An’ I didn’ have nothin’ to do—waitin’ fer you—so I packed the stuff up and trucked it aroun’ town. Jus’ leave the box on the doorstep like other boxes. I wrapped the shit in old newspapers and old clothes—so it's not too obvious, see. People leave boxes at these places with all kinds a junk, y'know.”

“I haven't heard anything about orphanages finding boxes of money on their doorsteps,” Mulheisen said skeptically.

“You will. An’ if not . . . then, not. Somma the places I dropped it didn't look too cool . . . I prack'ly threw the box oudda the window and split. I got ridda maybe five, six mil that way. Anyways, who cares? It was drivin’ me crazy, all that damn cash, but I ain't worryin’ about it no more. Yer here.”

Mulheisen didn't like the way this sounded, especially with the gun waving around as he said it. He felt he had to say something, anything, to keep this wired-up little maniac from going off half-cocked. “You know,” he said, “I promised Bonny I'd look after you.”

Lande's jaw dropped open. “You what? When?”

“In the hospital one day, when you were out. She said, ‘Promise me you'll look out for Gene.’ Didn't you hear her last words? ‘Look out for him?’ She was just reminding me.”

“She said that?” Gene's eyes filled with tears. “An’ you promised?”

Mulheisen shrugged. “I felt I had to.”

Lande sobbed, a ragged noise that he broke off. “Oh, God . . . this gets harder ‘n’ harder.” He fought for control, his face swept by tortured emotions. He grimaced and twisted his neck. His face seemed to grow larger, distorted, then subsided and shrank. For a moment Mulheisen was reminded of the distortions of Bonny's poor face in the terminal stages.

Lande sagged against the workbench, the .45 wavering toward Mulheisen, then away. “Just a coupla months ago,” he said, his voice surging, then waning, then surging again, “everythin’ was lookin’ great. Fin'ly. I hada great deal goin’ with Sid, me ‘n’ Bon was great . . .” He fought down a deep, welling sob. “ ‘N’ then they hada go ‘n’ hit Sid. ‘N’ everythin’ turned to shit. Not right off . . . It still looked like it could fly. But Frosty started buggin’ me, an’ Billy . . . Carmine gets on my case, . . . an’ then I met you. Bonny wanted us to be frien's. I thought we could be frien's . . . We was frien's in the hospital, weren't we?” He was pleading. “I tol’ you shit in the hospital I never tol’ nobody, not even-Bon. I wanted to do something for you.”

“Do me a favor? You mean Tupman and Conover? That was a favor to me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Lande nodded his head repeatedly, as if to convince himself.

“That wasn't a favor to me,” Mulheisen said, his face cruel. “You had to take them down. They knew you had the money. They were under pressure from Carmine. If you didn't get them, they'd get you now that you didn't have Sid to protect you. Why, for all I know, Sid was planning to get rid of all of you, clean house . . . Wasn't Hal his friend, his good buddy? He sure hung around a lot, for a hired killer.”

“Hal?” Lande was puzzled momentarily, then his eyes grew wide. “You mean the guy at the gate? The one who popped Sid ‘n’ Mickey?” Lande stared, then shook his head. “No, no. He wasn't a friend of Sid's. I was Sid's pal. I seen the guy pop Sid . . . I seen him in the lockup, later! I hada get the hell oudda there. Those guys, they got secret ways a doin’ ya. I wasn't sure if he seen me.”

Mulheisen sensed he had stumbled onto something. He had to go with it. “Sure, Hal took Sid down. He was probably supposed to take you down, too, but you hid, and he didn't see you. Then you ran, only the Big Four swept you up. So Sid never told you about Hal? Didn't he tell you he was putting a contract out on Tupman and Conover? No. He wouldn't, even though you were his bosom buddy—because he'd also put a contract on you. You must have known it—maybe not consciously, maybe it was too hard to take—but you knew you had to take down Frosty and Billy. Without Sid to keep them off, they'd want the money, all of it. That's the way it went, isn't it? You were betrayed by your pal, Sid, as usual. Everything was going to hell in a hand basket—Sid gone, Bonny gone. You're left with all the work, left with all the money, too, of course, and left with Tupman and Conover and Carmine breathing down your neck.”

“Carmine,” Lande said bitterly, “I should of blasted him and that fuckin’ Fat Man. You know what they did? Lissena this, this is how they jerk ya ‘roun’. Carmine calls me in . . . ack'shly, the Fat Man comes to get me one day with a coupla goons. ‘Carmine wants to talk to ya.^; We go down there, to the potato chip fact'ry, an’ we wait. After a while the door opens to Carmine's office, and Bonny comes out with Carmine, only he steers her out the side door, so she don't see me waitin’ with the Fat Man. Her hair is mussed up an’ her lipstick's smeared. I don't know what Carmine thinks I'll think . . . Maybe I'm s'posed ta think Bonny's puttin’ out for him. Maybe he just wants to show me that he can get to me through Bonny . . . I don't know. But I know Bonny. She wouldn't put out for Carmine.

“Anyways, he gets me in the office. He don't say nothin’ about Bon, like she was never there, but we both know, y'know. All he talks about is Sid ‘n’ Frosty ‘n’ Billy. He says I should wise up. He knows all about Sid ‘n’ Frosty ‘n’ Billy ‘n’ me. He wants his money back. He's talkin’ about ten mil. I hada laugh, but not out loud. He didn’ know nothin’. I knew he didn’, but I wasn't sure about Frosty ‘n’ Billy. They might spill it. An’ I hada perteck Bon.”

“So what did you tell Carmine?”

“I tol’ him I didn’ know nothin’ about Sid's deal with Frosty ‘n’ Billy. I didn’ even know them. Which I don't, hardly—I didn’ do any business with them, Sid hanneled that. I tol’ Carmine what he already must've knew—I hada deal with Sid to build this golf resort in the islands. Ever'body knew about that. An’ I bitched about now I was stuck with it, what with Sid gone, an’ I was gonna haveta either bail out or get some new backers. Hell, I ast him to come in with me!” Lande laughed. “He said he'd think about it.”

“Why didn't you go after Carmine?” Mulheisen asked.

“Go after Carmine? Are you nuts? Well, maybe I shoulda . . . but how? You can't get close to them big shots. An’ if you did, you'd have the whole mob after ya. Frosty ‘n’ Billy, they don't give a shit. You even said so in the rest'raunt that night. It'd be better for ever'body, you said. I could do you a favor, an’ then we'd be frien's. Bonny liked you. I didn’ even mind. Anybody else, even Carmine, I'd a popped him. But I could tell you really liked Bon . . . not just after her ass. It was better for ever'body, Mul.”

The maelstrom of this mind was too much for Mulheisen. He didn't think there was any way of combing out this snarl of lies and hatreds, of fears and rages and self-deceit. Lande had provided himself with plenty of justifications for killing; if one didn't fly, he'd just put up another. Mulheisen supposed that simple rage and fear at the collapse of his wonderful plans, especially in terms of Bonny's illness and subsequent death, had been enough. He sighed and looked into his cup, then drained it. He poured himself another and held out the bottle to Lande. Lande came forward and took it, still holding the .45 at the ready.

“You see, Mul,” he said, putting the bottle down after a long draft, “I'm yer pal. It's funny, eh? You lookin’ out fer me an’ me lookin’ out fer you! That's what frien's are!”

Mulheisen sat back and stared, then he began to laugh—not a great, mirthful laugh but more of a quiet, rueful laugh. “What a life,” he said.

Lande laughed, too, but it got out of control and ended in a sob. “You got that right, Mul. What a fuckin’ life. An’ without Bon it ain't worth shit. Am I right? Hunh? Am I? Who needs it? C'mon Mul, one last drink, right?” He held up the bottle, toasting them.

Mulheisen lifted the cup. Why not, he thought. Could be the last one. He started to put it down but decided to drain it. He was reminded of something his father used to say, a kind of poem, or was it a song?—“When it seems life's joy is up, drain the sweetness from the cup.” Or something like that. He wasn't sure he'd got it right. He set the cup down.

Lande drank and set the bottle on the table. His eyes glittered. “I never knew no one like her, Mul. D'jou? She was beautiful, wan't she? I mean, she was really a fine wooman. Right? She wan't no hooer, not really. An’ she loved me.” He gestured with the gun, soliciting a response. “Right? Am I right?”

“She was fine, Gene,” Mulheisen said. “She was beautiful. She was a good woman. The best. And she loved you.”

Lande nodded furiously. “Right, right, right. Damn right! You know what, Mul? She was the on'y one who ever loved Eugene Lande. You know that?”

Mulheisen nodded, watching.

Eyes blazing, Lande raised the gun and said, “Good-bye, Mul. You were a good man.” Then he stuck the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. His face seemed to explode, and the back of his head flew, spattering brains and blood against the wall behind him.

Mulheisen leapt to his feet, his mouth open in shock. Lande's body sprawled against the wall. For a moment he couldn't register what had happened. He rubbed his forehead, dazed. Then he picked up the bottle and walked outside. In the light from the doorway he leaned against a tree with an outstretched hand and gulped the fresh air. He staggered off a ways and found he had a tremendous urge to piss. He unzipped and pissed into the dark grass. Then he drank from the bottle. He zipped up and drank again. The bottle was empty. He reared back and hurled it up into the night, at the tiny, blurry stars. It rattled off some tree limbs, then fell to the soft earth with a thump. The bird he'd heard earlier was making the same weird beenp. Mulheisen noticed his .38 lying on the ground. He picked it up and holstered it, then went into the shed. The boxes of computers were there, stacked neatly. There were also a half-dozen boxes bearing well-known liquor labels and closed up in the familiar flap-over-flap tuck that people use when packing, say, books for moving. Mulheisen opened one. It was full of old newspapers. He opened the rest. They were all full of newspapers. He was tired. He sat down on the open tailgate of the little pickup truck and waited for Jimmy.