Deadman (14 page)

Rossamani was pleased. “I'll pass it on to the Fat Man,” he said. “I'm sure he'll want you to go ahead. How long will it be?”

“I don't know. I damn near did it today, but then I thought I'd
better check it out with you. How much does this old creep here know?”

“Smokey? He don't know nothing, just you're there to check it out, keep an eye on Service. What's your plan?”

“I'll be needing more money. I have to get close to the nurse. She seems to be the key. She watches Service like a hawk.”

Rossamani said he'd call back in a few minutes. Heather told Smokey and picked up a copy of the morning
Standard
and went back to the table. A few minutes later the phone rang and Smokey answered it. He talked for a couple of minutes then hung up and came over to sit down near her.

“You gonna be sticking around?” Smokey reached in his back pocket and hauled out a large trucker's wallet, which was attached to his belt with a thin gold chain. He opened it and counted out three thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills into Heather's large hand.

“Why?”

“I thought maybe we could have dinner,” Smokey said. “You're new in town, probably a little lonely. I'm not a married man, myself.”

Heather almost smiled at him. “You want a date?”

“Why not?” Smokey said. “You got something against older men?”

“Not particularly,” she said. “But I've got a lot of work to do. I need to find out about a nurse.”

“What nurse?”

“Cate Yoder, she works at the hospital.”

“Cateyo?” Smokey grinned, then he looked at Heather for a long moment and something clicked. “So, you'd like to get close to Cateyo?”

“What does that mean?” Heather demanded. She crammed the money into her coat pocket.

“Nothin’. Good lookin’ woman, though, eh?”

“How do you know her? She wouldn't be seen dead in a joint like this.”

“She was one a my nurses when I had a triple bypass a coupla years ago,” Smokey said. “Kinda made you sorry to get well, knowin’ you wouldn't see her anymore.”

“So? What do you know about her?”

“Nothin’,” Smokey said. “Kind of a religious gal. Real sweet. Like a flower in the field.” Smokey snorted, surprised by his own lyricism.

“A flower, hunh?” Heather smiled herself, remembering the woman's fresh loveliness. “Is she married?”

“Married? No, I don't think so.” Smokey shook his head. “I never even heard about her going out much. She never talked about any boyfriend or even flirted with the doctors, like most of them do. She's quiet, religious.”

“That's interesting. She live alone?”

Smokey caught the hopeful tone and said, with a wry look, “I don't know if she lives alone, or what, but I know she ain't like . . . uh, you know.”

“Like what? Like me? You don't know anything about me.” She fixed him with her flat brown eyes.

Smokey didn't back down. “Okay,” he said, “I don't know shit about you. You want a drink?” He stood up.

“Bring me a shot of something,” she said. “Rye, and a beer chaser.” She opened the
Standard
to the classifieds and began to look at rentals. When she saw the cop come in, she felt a sudden thrill, especially when she saw the other man, the plainclothes cop. She continued to peruse the ads, however, and when she felt composed, she stood up and walked out. As she passed the men, she was very conscious of Jacky Lee's eyes. Oh, let him make a move, she thought, just one move. But he didn't and she was outside. She hung around for a while, keeping the sheriff's Blazer in view, and when the two
men finally left, she returned. Smokey was still standing at the end of the bar, looking at what appeared to be a lingerie catalog.

“Who were those guys?” she asked Smokey, leaning over the bar.

“The deputy is Jacky Lee,” Smokey said quietly. “The other one was some kind of dick from Detroit.”

“I thought so,” Heather said. “Mulheisen. I've seen him.”

“That's the name,” Smokey said. “He was asking about Soper. I already told Jacky I never seen the bum, but you know how cops are: Everything's gotta be told again, and again. I sicced him onto Tracy.” He indicated with his head the gaunt man still sitting against the wall, now reading a book and occasionally sipping whiskey from a glass. “Don't worry,” he assured her, “Tracy don't know nothing. He's just an old reporter, trying to drink his way into heaven. They yammered for a while and left.”

“Bring me a shot of what Tracy is drinking,” she said, “and a beer chaser. And when you talk to Rossamani again, tell him about Mulheisen. Also"—she leaned closer, across the angle of the bar—"you talk to Rossie, not the Fat Man.”

Stover gazed at her calmly. “Rossie. Not the Fat Man.”

“Good,” she said. She sipped the whiskey and looked down at the catalog. There were pictures of beautiful women lounging about in see-through garments and a plethora of straps and lace. She put her finger on one of the pictures, a woman in a bustier, garter belt, and hose, but nothing else. “I've got an outfit just like that, only in red,” she said.

“You?” Smokey narrowed his eyes. “I'd love to see it.”

“I bet you would,” she said. “Maybe I'll show it to you sometime, after dinner.”

Smokey was pleased. She was an interesting woman, he thought, full of surprises. “I wouldn't of thought you'd be into this stuff,” he said, cautiously.

“Oh yes,” Heather said. She tossed down the rest of the whiskey. “I've always been the fern.”

That evening, having showered and groomed herself very carefully, Heather rang the doorbell of Cateyo's house. It was a solid brick house with a tiny front yard surrounded with a wrought-iron fence. It was one of several similar houses on a street just a few blocks from the hospital. The houses were just a few feet apart. They had small porches and steep roofs. They looked to have been built in the thirties, or even earlier, but they were all in good repair. The street was on a hillside, but not steep.

Cateyo was surprised to see her.

“Hi,” Heather said, smiling pleasantly. She gestured at a brick apartment house across the way and up the hill a few houses, saying, “I was just looking at a place over there, but it was already taken. The phone book said you lived close by, so I thought I'd stop. You were so kind to invite me. Was your patient all right? I hope he wasn't too upset.”

“Oh, Paul's okay. I think he might have been a little alarmed, is all. Well, come in. It's cold out there.”

The house was quite nice, pleasantly furnished but with too many religious pictures for Heather's taste. But evidently the kitchen had been recently remodeled; it was quite modern. In the way of such houses there was a front parlor, or living room, which opened through an arch into a dining room, then a swinging door into the kitchen, as one moved from the street side toward the alley. There were two bedrooms, separated by a bathroom. There was also a basement, half of which was given over to a narrow garage with space for a single, preferably small car and which one entered from the alley.

All of this Heather learned in the first half hour, as Cateyo took her on a little tour. Most important, it was soon clear that Cateyo
lived alone, no sign of a man at all and no roommate. She was obviously quite proud of this house, which she had only recently purchased, although she had rented it for some time. She was full of plans to renovate further.

“It's lovely,” Heather enthused. “I love these drapes, and the furniture is just right. You were so right to start your renovation with the kitchen. What's next, the bathroom?”

“I think so,” Cateyo said, “but it's so expensive. The kitchen cost me about a thousand dollars more than I expected.”

Heather stood in the doorway between the bath, with its plastic shower curtain hanging into the old-fashioned tub, and the empty spare bedroom. The sink was a freestanding pedestal model, dating from the thirties. Heather pointed out that it was still quite attractive, with the original ceramic handles. “You ought to keep that,” she said. “You could save quite a bit by doing some of the work yourself. If you get some dumb carpenter in here, he'll want to yank that out first thing. These guys, a lot of the time they aren't really very creative.”

“The guy who did the kitchen was really pretty good,” Cateyo said, defensively.

“Oh, he did a swell job, as far as I can see,” Heather assured her, “but I bet it was you who decided how it should look, who made, you know, the real creative decisions. You can get very nice bathroom cabinets that are pre-built and hang them yourself. It isn't hard, with a little help. I've done it before. I can help you, once I find a place to sleep.” She turned and looked frankly into the empty back bedroom. Cateyo was using it as a temporary storage space. Skis, a tennis racket, an old dresser, and a couple piles of old magazines were all that occupied the little room.

Cateyo watched her and felt a tiny pang of guilt. She had plenty of room, and she had sometimes thought of advertising for a roommate, but then she'd thought she would just wait until another single nurse came in to St. James and, if she liked her, offer the room. And then, lately, she had harbored a little fantasy about Paul. Maybe,
when he got better and was discharged, she could bring him here. This was so remote and the means of effecting it so unclear that she hadn't dared to really think about it.

There was something about Heather, though. She seemed at once big and strong, exuding power . . . but then there was an odd vulnerability, a faint breath of tenderness. Cateyo liked to stand next to her, sensing the older woman's power. It was a curious combination, perhaps only displayed by physically imposing women. Or certain beasts, such as gorillas.

Heather turned back and thrust her ugly hands into her pockets. She had learned early that for some reason people felt easier around her when her hands were in her pockets. She observed the irresolute expression on Cateyo's face: guilt contending with something unknown. Fear? A desire to be left alone?

“Part of the problem with finding a place,” Heather said, “is that I can't stay long. This job with the power company is only for a couple of months, and then I'll be off to the next one. Probably Seattle.”

“You could stay here,” Cateyo said, relieved.

“Are you sure? You don't even have a bed . . .” she gestured at the spare room.

“That's no problem, I'm sure. And the rent would be reasonable. Really, I'm sure you'd be a great help.”

Heather took a man's wallet out of her coat pocket and fingered the thick sheaf of hundred-dollar bills. “How much?” she said.

The two women laughed, beaming at each other. They both envisioned long winter evenings of companionship, girl talk, woman talk. But with significant differences. For Cateyo, here at last was someone sympathetic, to whom she could talk about Paul. For Heather—she glanced at the old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub, envisioning the rosy, golden girl who would step out of that tub, reaching for a towel—it was an almost impossible dream of access, not only to the girl, but to the target.

11

Antoni

G
ianni Antoni had become Johnny. “ ‘Gianni’ doesn't look so good on a campaign sign anymore,” Johnny explained to Mulheisen as they drove from the Finlen Hotel down the hill to Antoni's home. “Used to be there were so many Italians here in Butte that ‘Gianni’ was a plus—it made you seem more Italian than ‘Bud’ Cocciarella. But now . . . even the Italians aren't very Italian.”

Antoni was looking good. Precisely Mulheisen's age, he looked at least five years younger. Lean, fit, his thick hair steel-gray and stylishly trimmed, his complexion a ruddy tan—he looked like a combination of cowboy and stockbroker. He had now been elected county attorney three straight terms, and many thought he should run for state attorney general, the traditional threshold to political ambition.

By contrast, Mulheisen looked sallow and puffy. “Had a rough night, Mul?” Antoni asked. “Gee, I don't know how you do it. I gave that stuff up long ago. Remember that time we got off the base at Rantoul for the weekend and bought a case of beer that we lost?” He shook his head ruefully. “Boy, were we stupid! Drive out in the Illinois countryside with a couple of babes, lug the beer to the side of a stream, then you get the bright idea to drive back to town for more beer before the case runs out.”

Mulheisen had completely forgotten this incident. It amused him enough to ignore Antoni's gibe about a rough night; Mulheisen had in fact gone to bed early, exhausted by flying and driving around with the indefatigable Jacky Lee. He had read two pages of Bernard DeVoto's introduction to the Lewis and Clark journals before falling deeply asleep. As he recalled the earlier incident, it was Antoni who had insisted that they drive back to Kankakee—which was where they had picked up the girls and the beer in the first place—leaving the girls streamside to “guard” the beer. The real reason behind this goofy plan was that Antoni feared that the girls were prostitutes, would infect them with gonorrhea, and he had no condoms. All the way into town, Mulheisen had argued that they weren't prostitutes, merely shopgirls still in their teens. And the tragic ending: They never found the stream, or the girls, or the beer again. It was worth a laugh now, but Mulheisen had felt very bad about stranding those girls. But it was Antoni's car, and they had to be back on base before nine o'clock.

“I thought you were going into law,” Antoni said. They drove out along Continental Drive, past the Serbian church and on toward a newer part of the city, lying in the shadow of the Divide. These were newer houses, expensive homes of redwood and glass, plenty of heavy timbers and rough-faced stone fireplaces. The country club was here as well. The old mansions on the hill were no longer the desired homes of the executives and wheeler-dealers of the new post-Company Butte. “Didn't you go to Michigan for a while? We kind of lost track there.”

“Oh, I thought about it,” Mulheisen said with a mild sigh. “I was going with this gal, she was a prosecutor. We were going to get married, I'd go to law school while she supported me, and I guess the idea was we'd end up in Portland, or Seattle, or someplace. It didn't work out.”

The flat way he uttered the final statement warned Antoni not to pursue the subject. He just nodded and grunted. “But you like the
cop biz?” he said. “They sure talk you up back there. What's-his-name, McClain, says you're the best they've got. So how come you're still a sergeant? You bust some captain in the nose?”

“I've thought about it,” Mulheisen said, with a humorous lilt to his voice, “but . . . I don't know, I didn't need the rank, and staying a sergeant is the only way you can avoid becoming a paper pusher. I like the beat. Is this your place? Nice crib.”

“Crib!” Antoni snorted. He wheeled the new Lincoln into a driveway already crowded with an enormous four-wheel-drive Dodge pickup with an extended cab and huge, knobby tires, plus a sleek little red Miata and a four-wheel-drive Toyota pickup. There was an attached garage, but it too was filled with a boat on a trailer and another large, but slightly older model sedan. “That's Pat's car,” Antoni said, indicating the Miata, “and the Dodge is my fishing wagon. Suzy and Jeff belong to these other rigs.” Mulheisen correctly deduced that the latter two were Antoni's children.

The house was large and sprawling, on two or three levels. Like its neighbors it was glass and stained cedar with tons of stone and had a low-pitched roof covered with rough, hand-hewn cedar shakes. It was the kind of modern, overequipped house that Mulheisen only ever saw in Hollywood films. Nobody he knew actually lived like this.

A pretty blond woman dashed into the sunken living room to greet them, toting on her hip a hefty two- or three-year-old boy with curly blond locks. Mulheisen thought she might be in her late thirties, but the kid gave him pause. She could easily be a sun-dried twenty-eight. But, no, she was Johnny's one and only wife, Pat, the one he'd babbled incessantly about in the air force (and perhaps the hidden reason they'd driven off and left the two girls by the stream with the beer).

“Hi, Mul!” Pat yelled. She jammed the kid into his daddy's arms and surprised Mulheisen with a big hug. “I've talked to you on the phone and I've heard all about you for years. It's ‘as Mul used to say’ and ‘Mul always says,’ around here, you know.”

Mulheisen didn't know how to respond to this. She was a real armful and he held her awkwardly. He almost blushed. A very tall, very robust young man entered, looking a lot like a giant version of his father, complete with a five o'clock shadow and the stiff but black hair. He was in some kind of hunting outfit, all boots and canvas with cartridge loops and many, many pockets. “Hey, Mul,” he roared, “good to finally meet ya. You gonna be around for a while?” He grabbed Mulheisen's hand in his powerful paw and wrung it for a second, then threw it back. “I'd like to stay and talk, or rather, hear all yours and Dad's stories, but I'm driving over to Ekalaka for the antelope. I'll be back in a couple days. Hey, Dad, I'm taking the Winchester and the H & H, okay?”

Johnny grinned and proudly slammed his huge son's back. “Jeff!” he bellowed, as if introducing a prize bull to an arena. “He's a lotta kid, eh, Mul? Get outta here. Drive safely and no drinking and driving! Hey! Is your fishing gear in your rig? Get it out! Me and Mul are gonna float the Big Hole tomorrow! Mul can use your stuff, okay?”

“Great!” the kid hollered back over his disappearing shoulder. “I'll throw my stuff in your wagon!” And he was gone.

Mulheisen stood foolishly, trying not to nurse his damaged hand. “Quite a kid,” he managed to say.

“You said it,” Johnny agreed. “Hey, everybody, let's have a drink and celebrate the arrival in Butte-America of the great Mulheisen!”

Pat seemed enthusiastic, and shortly they were all equipped with glasses full of gin or bourbon. Soon they were joined by a pretty, long-legged sixteen-year-old: Suzy, long black hair and blazing blue eyes, at least six feet tall and clearly not through growing. She was bedecked in an array of sports clothing—spandex, knee socks, running shoes, sweater, jacket, shorts—the exuberant profusion of it all leading Mulheisen to think that she had just come from a combined field hockey/soccer/basketball/track meet. Like the rest of the family (except the shy little Cal, who hid his thumb in his mouth and looked
at Mulheisen only over a furtive shoulder), Suzy was a yeller and a grinner, a slapper of backs and a kisser of moms, dads, and even Mul.

Mulheisen shrank from her approach, but there was no escape. She hugged him furiously and kissed his cheek. Her face was red from the wind and the sun but fresh and cold, and her tangled hair smelled of windblown sage. She'd been out running. Just running. Felt like running, that's all. She ran to the kitchen and came back with a cold diet Coke and guzzled it down in two long, gasping guzzles.

Contact with these people could be exhausting, Mulheisen thought. He tried to remember Johnny (Gianni) as a pell-mell airman, but couldn't. Not an eager beaver in those days. Something had happened to him. Pat, he supposed. Yes, that must be it. She flashed back and forth to the kitchen, the dining room, upstairs, back to the living room to gulp at her gin and tonic, pick up the kid, hug him, put him down, flash away to the kitchen.

Mulheisen and Johnny took the obligatory stroll around the grounds. There was, as even the poorest Butteant enjoyed, a magnificent view to just about all quadrants, though the view of the Hill might not appeal to some, with its bald patches and lonely looking mine hoists—gallows frames, Mul had heard someone in an uptown tavern call them. But it all looked grand to Mulheisen. They looked over at the country club, and Mulheisen assured Johnny that he wasn't interested in a quick nine. They wandered out to Johnny's wagon, the beefy Dodge pickup that was loaded with fishing gear. Johnny assured him that they would float the Big Hole River tomorrow.

“Is it . . . ah, white water?” Mulheisen asked.

“Nah. Well, not really. A few rocks, here and there. Water's low this time of year. If it's like this, and it should be"—Johnny gestured at the sun setting in a blaze of red and gold beyond the western peaks—"it'll be great. Something'll be hatching. You do much fly-fishing back in Michigan?”

“Not really,” Mulheisen said.

“No? Too bad. There's some great trout streams, famous ones, back there—the Au Sable, the Manistee, the Boardman . . .”

“I've heard of them,” Mulheisen lied. Well, he had sort of heard of the Manistee, but he wasn't sure in what context. Hadn't some guy killed half a dozen of his neighbors up there and stashed them in his freezer? Something like that. Or it could have been the town of Manistee, or was it Manistique, in the Upper Peninsula? He couldn't remember. “I live on the St. Clair,” he offered hopefully. “Some of the guys go out for sturgeon, I think, and there's some kind of carp that spawn there. But I haven't really done much fly-fishing.”

Johnny seemed shocked. He hauled out an aluminum tube and shook out two wispy sections that fit together to make a nine-foot whip, or so it looked to Mulheisen. It had a cork handle and tapered to a mere twig point. It was extremely flexible. It seemed to float in the hand, so light he could hardly hang on to it. Johnny quickly attached a reel and strung a tawny plastic line through the metal loops on the rod. They stepped away from the garage onto about three acres of well-mown grass, still as green as June, despite October frosts. With a few quick gestures Johnny had fifty feet or more of the line looping gracefully through the evening air; then he stopped his forward gesture, and another fifty feet or so went shooting out, and the line flew straight as a bluejay, then settled gently to the grass.

“Here, you try it,” Johnny said, reeling up most of the line and handing the rod to Mulheisen. “Remember, you're not casting a lure on the end of a spinning line, but casting the fly line itself, letting it release . . . yes, that's it, don't let it drop behind you, give it more power as you move it forward, just like a whip, sort of, that's it, that's it, now let it go for—well, we'll practice more tomorrow. Sounds like dinner's ready.”

This last was delivered as the line coiled around Mulheisen's head and then flopped and folded about him. It didn't tangle much and was fairly easily reeled up. They went in to dinner, a terrific roast loin of pork with lovely browned onions and carrots and turnips, with
smooth, hot whipped potatoes and incredible gravy. The dinner rolls were freshly baked, and the green beans were fresh and very green and very tender, steamed with lemon butter. It was delicious.

Then everything was hurled into the dishwasher and forgotten. Suzy sprinted off to do homework; she had an A average and was planning to graduate early from Immaculate Conception and take a scholarship to Brown or Stanford, she couldn't decide which. Track scholarship on top of an academic one. Hurdles. Pole vault. High jump. Soccer, too. Probably ecology, maybe the law (later).

“Environmental law,” her dad said firmly. “It's big and getting bigger. It'll probably be the biggest thing ever, down the road.”

They drank coffee and sipped cognac—very old cognac, specially imported, not available in the Montana state liquor stores. Pat took the kid up for a bath, and Mulheisen and Johnny trotted off to the den, an incredibly expensive-looking room in the lookout basement, with its own view of the mountains and the masses of stars through a sliding glass door. The walls were clad in some kind of oiled teak, or zebrawood . . . it didn't look to Mulheisen like something that occurred naturally in large enough quantities to be milled and screwed with brass screws to the walls of a basement—knife handles, sure, or gunstocks, maybe, but not planks.

There was also about $10,000 worth of electronics stuck into the walls, but Johnny didn't seem interested in music or movies or whatever it provided. He wanted to talk about the Northern Tier Crime Task Force.

“Could be the biggest thing ever, out here, Mul,” he said. He actually lowered his voice, perhaps due to the hour and the impending bedtime of little Cal, who was brought down in footed jammies to be kissed by all, even Mul, who brought a tremble but not a yelp to the brave lad's lip. “And you could be big in it,” Johnny concluded, as if there had been no interruption.

“Me? I live in Detroit,” Mulheisen said. “I'm seventeen hundred miles from here, Johnny.”

“Not-nee-more, Mul. Not with computers. An nennyway"—the brandy seemed to be having an eliding effect, Mulheisen noticed—"why are you'n Detroit? Be here! Be the chief investigator! The big cheese. Chief Inspector Mulheisen! Captain! Hell, Admiral . . . Field Marshal Mulheisen!” He laughed. They both laughed. And Johnny poured them some special calvados from a collection of calvadoses he had gathered in France a couple of years ago.

“Investigate what?” Mulheisen said.

Johnny squinted and smiled as broadly as he could, his teeth protruding comically, and said, “The New East Asia Co-Prosperity . . .” He held the “eee” sound until Mulheisen began to sibilate a conclusive “Sssphee—,” then interrupted him to end with a violently ejected “FEAR!” He laughed. “Not to be racist, Mul, but it's the Chinese Mafia. That's the big number these days. Everybody's afraid that when the Reds take over Hong Kong, the big Asian crime money is coming here.”