Deadman (20 page)

They did have a memorable conversation on the evening that Mulheisen came home from Montana. He got home about six. He was surprised to find her there. He had gotten used to not seeing her, to communicating on the refrigerator. She had just come back herself a few hours earlier, from the Gulf Coast. She had been following the
migration of cranes. She was delighted to hear that he'd been to Montana. Butte, she said, wasn't far from Red Rocks Lake, where the trumpeter swans were. If he went back, he ought to take a run down there and also check out the possibility of wolves on the Idaho-Utah border.

She observed that he looked tired, but also refreshed. He did feel refreshed, he said. It had been nice to get away. She watched him with interest and then said that he ought to get away more often, maybe permanently.

He'd been thinking about that, he told her. He had been wondering if he ought not to make a change. But . . . it was hard.

Usually for the good, though, was his mother's observation. Then, apparently lapsing into a reflective mood, she said that she had experienced three or four major changes in her life, and every time she had been afraid, fearful that the change was not going to be for the best. Marriage was one of those times. Giving birth was another. In a conventional way, of course, one was supposed to think of these changes as positive, but when it was happening to you it didn't always seem that way.

The biggest change, she supposed, came when his father died. But that too had turned out to be liberating. And then discovering the birds—that was a real liberation.

She was thrilled to discover birds . . . and also shocked. Having lived for a good long time, she had not been prepared to find that she knew nothing about the hundreds of beautiful, colorful, even spectacular birds that just ordinarily surrounded her. She didn't know how this could have happened. One day she had been aware, if she had been asked, that there were sparrows, robins, chickens, ducks, and maybe eagles. Within another day or two she had discovered a rose-breasted grosbeak (an incredibly gorgeous bird, not imported, but sitting in the plum tree in her own yard), then a yellow chat, several warblers, and a golden-crowned kinglet, a green heron. Most important, she realized that her life had always been surrounded by creatures
of surpassing beauty, elegance, and mystery. It still shocked her to think that these fabulous beings had been invisible to her, simply because of ignorance and an inability to see.

All it had taken was a single walk around her own yard and down to the St. Clair River with a woman she had known for many years, a fellow past matron of the Eastern Star, who happened to be a birdwatcher. From that had come an incredible sequence of discovery, enchantment, and finally devotion to the causes of the environment and ecology.

She was silent for a good long time, evidently reflecting on this remarkable transformation. Suddenly, she said, “Not all changes are liberating, of course. I never told you—we thought it was better not to—that I had a child long before you. She didn't live very long, just a few days. Her name was Mary, after my mother. After that, things were"—she hesitated—"difficult between your father and me. But, we got over it and ten years later you were born.” She smiled.

Mulheisen was thunderstruck. A sister he had never known about? Years of his parents looking at one another in a special way, of saying things in a special tone, and he was not privy to it! He would be unable now to recollect some of these moments, to reconstruct the situation. His father was gone, his mother would be gone before too much longer, and only now he was learning that there was a whole aspect of life in the house where he had grown up to which he had no access. He wanted to ask a million questions, but as he looked at his mother she just shook her head. “Don't spend even a minute thinking about it,” she said. “Your father and I were stupid enough to let it bother us for years, until you came along. It was a waste of time. We never figured it out.”

There was, of course, yet another change awaiting her, she said. This would be the big one. She had every reason to hope that it would be as liberating and exciting as the changes that had gone before.

16

Vetch

“T
hese people have no culture,” Victor Echeverria explained to his associate Hernan as they drove to a meeting with Humphrey. It was an evening meeting, at Humphrey's home in Grosse Pointe, not at the Krispee Chips factory.

“The Italians?” Hernan asked. It was Echeverria's Mercedes, but Hernan drove. He liked to drive nice cars, and Echeverria wanted to indulge him. They drove out along Jefferson Avenue and then turned down toward the lake.

“The Fat Man isn't Italian,” Echeverria retorted scornfully, “not really. He is Norte . . . a Yank. The Italians have culture, certainly—cathedrals, the great artists, music—but these pigs, they have been in Detroit too long. Their culture is Cadillac culture.” He laughed, they both laughed.

“Now he wants to be called Humphrey, or Mr. DiEbola,” Echeverria went on. They crawled along a quiet street, the bare limbs of the oaks and maples rattling in the wind off Lake St. Clair, which was not visible beyond the walls and gates of these exclusive estates. They were looking for Humphrey's gatehouse. “I will call him Diablo, the devil.” He appreciated Hernan's low chuckle.

The gate man did not wear a uniform. Humphrey didn't like uniforms. This man was young and athletic. He wore dark slacks, a dark and warm jacket, and a baseball-type hat. A holstered automatic was strapped to his hip, and he carried a cordless telephone and a clipboard. The visitors sensed rather than saw at least two other men nearby, who presumably were more heavily armed. The gate man checked their names against the clipboard and repeated the names into the telephone. He told them to drive on, but warned that they must stay on the main drive and not stop.

“To the Fat Man we are all Mexicans,” Echeverria remarked as they rolled slowly along. It was at least a half minute to the well-lit front door of the house. Before they reached it, Echeverria insisted that Hernan stop.

“He told us not to stop,” Hernan said nervously, but he stopped.

“Fuck El Gordo,” Echeverria said. He got out and unzipped his pants. He pissed calmly while staring up at the ragged clouds that scudded off the lake, hauntingly lit by the half moon. He zipped up quickly when he heard what sounded like a small herd of ponies galloping, and he jumped back into the car. Three huge dogs arrived seconds later and placed their monstrous paws on the rolled-up windows of the Mercedes. They barked loudly, their foot-long tongues lolling out. They were Dobermans.

“Get away!” Echeverria shrieked at them, wincing at the scratching of the dogs’ claws on the metal of the car. Someone came running and called the dogs off as Hernan pulled away. At the door there was no sign of the dogs, and another darkly appareled young man, armed with a shotgun on a sling, stepped forward from the lighted portico and opened the car door to let Echeverria out. The young man made no mention of the dogs or of their stopping. Echeverria walked quickly into the house. A pretty young girl in a conventional maid's costume led them along a carpeted hallway lined
with finely upholstered chairs, a silk-clad couch that appeared to be Renaissance Italian, past a small, graceful table on which there was an intricate old bronze statue of intertwined figures, a man and a dragon-like snake. She stopped at a large door and knocked once, then opened the door. She closed it behind them.

Humphrey DiEbola sat on a high teak and leather chair, almost a bar stool, one elbow on a marble-topped bar. He wore a navy blue jumpsuit and slippers, and he was eating from a bowl with a plate of Italian bread at hand.

“Vetch!” he cried out, beckoning to them. “Come in! Come in! So nice to have you here. Have some menudo. You like menudo? Sure you do. Everyone likes menudo.”

“No, thank you,” Echeverria assured him. He turned to his companion. “Mr. Diablo, this is my associate, Mr. Ghittes.”

“Mr. Ghittes,” Humphrey acknowledged. “Have some menudo. You guys like menudo. You must. My chef is a genius with menudo, but this recipe I got from a guy upstate, from Traverse City. The poet Harrington. He's very famous.” The name meant nothing to Echeverria. “I never heard of him neither, till I met him at a party,” Humphrey admitted, “but he sure knows menudo. ‘The holy Mayan menudo,’ he calls it. You don't want some? No? Too bad. Your loss.” He mopped up the remainder of the stew with a hunk of bread and devoured it, then mopped his chin and slid off the stool. “Well, let me get you a drink. Whattayou have? We got everything. Marco!” he bellowed and a young man instantly appeared. “Get these fellas what they want to drink.”

The room was large with French doors that looked out onto a terrace and beyond a broad dark lawn to the tumbled waters of the lake, gleaming under the moon. A fire burned in a marble-framed fireplace. DiEbola sat down heavily on a large couch. Marco brought him a large glass of carbonated water with ice and a twist of lemon. He brought the others whiskey. When the weather had been disposed of
and the compliments on the beauty of the house given and accepted, Humphrey said, “Ghittes? You must be the son of Hector Ghittes, out of Cali?”

The young man admitted that he was the son of the man who was, if not the absolute czar or generalissimo of cocaine in Colombia, then at least a principal member of the inner circle. In these days it was hard to keep track of who was currently on top. But Ghittes senior had been at the top, among the chiefs, for a very long time.

“My regards to your father,” Humphrey said. “We have been good friends and we have done business, with pleasure.”

“My father sends his compliments,” young Ghittes responded. “He will be pleased to hear your regards and my report that you are looking well and in good health.”

“Thank you,” Humphrey responded. “I am feeling very well.”

“You have lost weight,” Echeverria said.

It was true. Humphrey had lost as much as fifty pounds in the six months or so since he had ascended to power. Perhaps it was worry or the stress of holding together the organization, but he didn't admit it to his young guests. Humphrey privately attributed it to habanero salsa. He said he was working hard but he felt good, and he was getting regular exercise, long walks along the lake, and his diet was good and regular. “But,” he said to Ghittes, “I'll never be as dashing as you, my young friend. You must keep the señoritas dancing at a furious pace!”

Echeverria was clearly impatient with this focus on Ghittes. He was a tall, slender man, hardly older than Ghittes, with handsome features and a very assured manner. “We have come to talk about business, Diablo,” he said.

“I was sorry to hear about your brother,” Humphrey said. “Ray Echeverria was a valued friend. I was pleased to hear that his assassin was himself killed.”

“My brother was killed by a man in your employ,” Echeverria pointed out, sniffing and raising his chin pointedly.

“Technically,” Humphrey conceded, his fat hand tipping back and forth. “This man, Lande, was crazy. He had lost his wife to cancer. These killings he undertook in the madness of his grief. They had nothing to do with us. Many others, our own people, were slain. Your brother was unfortunately caught in the crossfire. I am deeply sorry for this, and I hope it doesn't strain our friendship. Ray Echeverria was avenged by one of our people, as you know.”

Echeverria wasn't buying this. “This man who killed the cur Lande—where is he? Joe Service is his name? He was actually commissioned to kill this, this loco?”

“Yes, it was Joe Service. No, he wasn't commissioned to kill Lande. We wanted Lande alive,” Humphrey conceded, “but the man was crazy, as I say, and wouldn't have it any other way. Joe was forced to kill him.”

Echeverria looked angry. He drank his whiskey too fast, almost choked and then said, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Have one of these excellent cigars,” Humphrey said. He leaned forward with an effort and flipped open the lid of a silver humidor.

Both the young men took a cigar and busied themselves with clipping and lighting them. When the puffing had settled and the drinks were replenished, young Ghittes said, mildly, “We have heard that the policeman, this Mulheisen—they call him Sergeant Fang"—he laughed—"was the one who actually killed Señor Lande, although the police called it suicide, of course. No?”

Humphrey shook his head. “It was Joe Service. Mulheisen was the one who found Lande's body. They called it suicide, but nobody believes that.”

“And did he also find our money?” Echeverria asked.

“Your money?” Humphrey raised his thick eyebrows comically. “I didn't hear that you lost any money, Vetch. Anyway, the police didn't find any money.”

“Not me personally,” Echeverria said. “And I'm not concerned
with the money that Señor Sedlacek and Señor Lande and their friends stole from you. But did you know that Señor Lande was also handling money for Señor Ghittes? Yes, it is true. My brother Ray was impressed with Señor Lande's ability to—how shall we say?—
recycle
money. He had given him . . .” He delved in the pocket of his splendidly tailored blue silk suit coat and withdrew a piece of paper that he extended toward Humphrey. “This.”

Humphrey lunged forward and took the paper, unfolded it and read, “To Eugene Lande—$5,342,265.00.” It was dated and signed by Ray Echeverria and countersigned by Eugene Lande. Humphrey flipped it back onto the coffee table. “So what? He gave some money to Lande . . . I guess,” he added pointedly. “He didn't give any money to Carmine, or me.”

“Señor Lande's operation was, shall we say, sanctioned by Carmine. We received only one million of these dollars in our account in Panama, in Colombian pesos,” Echeverria said. “Four million—and change, as you say—is still owing to us. We like to be fair. We will ignore the ‘change.’ “

Humphrey laughed, a thick, gurgly laugh. “That's good of you, Vetch, but I don't know anything about your money. You made a deal with Lande. If Carmine okayed it, I never heard anything about it. And now Carmine is dead. We aren't in business with you. Maybe in the future, who knows?” The eyebrows bobbled.

“The police did not recover this money,” Echeverria said severely. “Your man, Joe Service, got this money.”

“Don't know a damn thing about it,” Humphrey said.

A long silence settled on the room. The wind buffeted the French doors, the fire crackled. Echeverria stared intently at Humphrey, who stared blandly back. Finally, Humphrey said, “Maybe you should talk to Joe about this.”

“Where is he?”

Humphrey thought about the woman Heather. Rossamani had talked to Smokey Stover a few days earlier. Smokey had said that
Heather was making progress, but there was no indication of when the job would be done. At the time, of course, Humphrey had known nothing about any money that Lande had taken from Ghittes. Carmine had led him to believe that Big Sid had accomplished his skim, and the money had been shifted to the Cayman Islands. They had made inquiries but had concluded that the money had simply gone. For a while they had tried to recover it, or Joe had tried to recover it, but nothing had come of that. Personally, he had supposed that Joe might have found some of it, but how would they ever know how much it was? He had concluded that the task at hand was to find Joe, try to recover whatever he had absconded with, and close the case with Joe's death. He still had hopes in this direction, but lately his focus had been on little Helen. Now she might have the money, but he was damned if he wanted a bunch of Colombians poking around in the bushes while he dealt with her. He had never heard anything about Lande washing money for the Colombians, but he supposed it was so.

“We've got someone on Joe's trail,” he said, “and it looks promising, but . . .”

“Where is he?” Echeverria demanded.

“I can't tell you, right now. We've got a good lead on him.”

“Who is on the job? What is his name?”

Somehow, Humphrey couldn't bring himself to say it was a woman. These awful macho Colombians—well, Echeverria was a Basque, but that was worse, perhaps—would be incredulous, horribly mocking. He wished he had never heard of Heather. This is what happened when the empire failed, he thought. He wished he had Rossie here, to kick in the ass for hiring Heather.

“I'll tell you what,” he said. “Things are in a delicate state. I'm not gonna fuck it up just for your lousy four million—which I never heard of till this minute, and which it ain't my responsibility anyway—but I can see that you got a stake in finding Joe.” Humphrey was thinking fast. He didn't give a rat fuck about the Colombians, but
who knew when he might have to do business with them? It wouldn't do to simply ignore their claims, and they might prove useful, yet. “How ‘bout I get back to you in a coupla days?”

This was hardly agreeable to Echeverria, but there was nothing he could do. At least the mob hadn't simply thumbed their noses at him. He put up a lot of bluster and heaped some more contumely on Humphrey's head—"Diablo” he persisted in calling him—but ultimately he backed off . . . for a week. The two men left under outwardly amicable terms.

These discussions were very much in Humphrey's mind when Helen Sedlacek called two nights later.

“Unca Umby!” she squealed, and he couldn't suppress a flood of joy in his heart.

“You little scamp,” he said, laughing, “where have you been? You're driving your mama—and me!—crazy.”

“Oh, Unca Umby, I'm so sorry. I am crazy. It's been a crazy, crazy time. But I'm so sorry. I want to make it up to you.”

“Then come home,” he said, promptly. “Come home right now. Your mama needs you. She isn't well.”

“What's wrong? Is she sick? What's wrong with her? Is she in the hospital?”

“Noooo, no, no, no. She's not that ill. She's not in the hospital. I shouldn't have said such a thing.” He waved at Marco and gestured toward his glass. He was sitting on the couch in the same room where he had entertained Echeverria and Ghittes. Marco poured more Perrier into Humphrey's glass. “Her health is not good, but she gets around. Roman tells me she spends too much time in bed, though. You've got to come home, get her up and cooking. Come for Thanksgiving. We'll have a big feast. You come to my house.”

“Mama will never come to your house,” Helen said. Her voice
was very calm now, more businesslike. “But maybe I will come home for Thanksgiving . . . if things work out.”