The Blind Pig (18 page)

“Looks lonely,” Joe shouted. “Good place to bury someone, eh?” He winked and pointed to the cabin door with his thumb. DenBoer's face darkened and he looked away.

“Right around here,” DenBoer said a few minutes later, cutting the engine. “I'll come around nightfall, maybe a little later. You get yourself a boat and a bundle of money and wait for me.”

“We're offering a hundred thousand. Period,” Joe said.

“What!” DenBoer's face turned red. An enormous argument began. DenBoer raged about how he had risked his life, how his future depended on this— “You said yourself, I'm blown in this town!” he exclaimed.

“I didn't steal any guns,” Joe said. It was just hard economics, he went on: the guns were almost too hot to handle; it would be a long time before the mob could realize their investment; they would have to invest even more in distribution and bribes, and in transporting the guns. “Fatman told me that he was ready to counsel Carmine against the whole deal,” Joe said.

The argument raged on. In the end DenBoer agreed to settle for $125,000, plus assistance in traveling out of the country. Joe was very agreeable and said he thought that Fatman might see his way to finding DenBoer a place in, say, Brazil, where he might be able to invest in a casino or some other mob-run enterprise. It was a deal.

“One more thing,” Joe said as they ran back across the channel toward Detroit. “We get the girl.”

That just about blew the deal. DenBoer was adamant. He shook his head stubbornly and refused to discuss it. They came straight back for Detroit, near Windmill Point. There was a canal there and DenBoer throttled down as he entered, going past the old Marine Hospital.

“No,” said Joe, “I've been thinking about it, and the girl has to go with the deal. You're going to have your hands full as it is. You'd have to dump her this afternoon, no later, and I can see you're not up to it. We just can't trust you, DenBoer. Besides, she'll be useful to us for a while. No telling what she knows about mob operations in Detroit, and around the country. And then we'll get rid of her quietly and effectively.”

DenBoer wouldn't hear of it. “No way. Mandy goes with me.”

“Ah hah! That's it,” Joe crowed, delighted. “You had some notion of taking her with you. No, DenBoer, it doesn't work that way.” He lowered his voice as DenBoer brought the
Seabitch
alongside a little dock. “It's light now, or I'd take her with me, but I can wait until tonight.”

DenBoer shook his head again stubbornly.

“Well, if you feel that strongly about it,” Joe said, “you can keep her. But there's no deal. I speak for Fatman, and for Carmine. No girl, no deal.”

“What are you going to do with her?” DenBoer asked.

Joe smiled. “Don't worry, it won't be bad. We just want to talk to her. If she plays ball, who knows? Maybe she can work a deal with Carmine.”

DenBoer looked uneasy. Joe stepped out on the little wooden dock.

“See you tonight,” Joe said. “Remember, we want the girl. Alive.”

“You just be there,” DenBoer growled. He began to back the
Seabitch.

Twenty

The car wasn't as far as Mulheisen had anticipated. He drove to a pay telephone and called the Communications Center. They would automatically notify all the bureaus and offices necessary to respond. Then he called ATF. The duty agent said that Phelps was at DenBoer's apartment. Mulheisen asked the agent to notify Phelps. Then he went back to wait on a side street so that he could lead everybody to the scene.

A half-hour later the place was alive with men and vehicles. When he had finished examining the bodies of the three Cubans downstairs, and Morazon upstairs, the medical examiner turned to Mulheisen.

“Now, let's have a look at you,” Dr. Brennan said, stripping off his plastic gloves.

Mulheisen protested that he was all right.

“Stick out your tongue,” Brennan insisted. He checked Mulheisen's pulse, peeled back his eyelids and generally prodded and peered. Finally he said, “Not bad, considering. Go home, take an aspirin and a shot of whiskey, and go to bed.”

Mulheisen looked at him with exasperation. “I'm all right, Doc. Let me be.”

“When's the last time you slept, Mul?”

Mulheisen thought. It was at least a couple of nights ago, but he wasn't sure. At any rate, except for a little tension and irritableness, he didn't feel too bad. “I slept yesterday,” he lied.

“Bullshit,” Brennan said. “You're not a kid anymore, Mul. You can't go all day and all night without serious consequences. If you collapse, you won't be any good to anybody. And even if you don't collapse, your judgment is impaired. You're probably functioning about two-thirds normal right now.”

“I've got a couple things to do first,” Mulheisen said, walking away.

Phelps intercepted him before he got too far. He seemed cheerful. At last he had something to report on the case. Besides the four dead Cubans, three others had been apprehended in Chicago, and the trail into Mexico was still warm. He felt confident now that he would roll up the whole gang.

“What do you think happened here?” Mulheisen asked him.

“It's obvious,” Phelps said. “The Cubans came here to hole up with the guns, some sort of dispute broke out—possibly over the girl—and the survivors split with the guns. One good thing, Cecil must still be alive, or she'd be one of the victims here.”

They walked on a little ways in the bright morning sun, away from the decaying buildings. Mulheisen lit a cigar. When they reached his car, he said, “And how do you figure DenBoer?”

“I don't figure DenBoer,” Phelps replied. “You do.” He glanced at his watch, a fancy digital type. “I have to be downtown in twenty minutes for a conference with the U.S. attorney and the county prosecutor. Care to come along? I'm sure they have lots of questions you could answer. And then at noon I'm flying to Chicago. What I'm saying is, it's up to you to pursue the DenBoer angle; I'm banking on the Cubans
we've already arrested to lead us to the guns.”

Mulheisen begged off on the conference; he knew only too well what a waste of time and emotion it would be. The federal and county prosecutors would both be clamoring for information, demanding to be brought up to date on a case that, in Mulheisen's eyes, at least, was still a jigsaw puzzle with only half of the border pieces assembled. At the same time, the feds would want to take control of the most sensational part of the case and throw the difficult part to the county. The county, naturally, would want to do the same to the feds.

“Well, if you're not going with me,” Phelps said, “at least give me an idea of how you see the situation.”

“In two easy minutes?” Mulheisen said acidly.

Phelps unbent a little. “All right, I understand. Believe me, I do. But I have to have something to throw them.”

Mulheisen sighed and took a drag on his cigar. He leaned against the old Checker and savored the warmth of the sun. “Let's face it, Phelps, we don't have much. You've got no case against Vanni; your undercover agent is missing, and you have no idea whether she is alive or where she could possibly be; Vanni's partner and buddy, DenBoer, is missing and definitely part of the hijack team, maybe even a leader, but we don't know where he is. Vanni has an alibi for the whole period—I checked. Maybe one of the two women are lying, but I don't think so. It's quite possible that Vanni isn't involved at all.”

“Do you believe that?” Phelps asked.

“I don't know,” Mulheisen said truthfully. “The question I ask myself is how much of Vanni is flash, and how much is smoke.”

“And where's the real fire?” Phelps put in.

“Exactly. I've been so blinded by Vanni's flash that I couldn't see DenBoer. That was a big mistake and I take full blame for it. But there's another complication: the mob. I didn't say anything back there, but I'm fairly sure that someone was in DenBoer's apartment ahead of me. I've got an
idea who it was, but I'm not going to say right now, because it doesn't mean that much and I'm not sure it's important. But it's clear that the mob is interested in this operation—they have to be. This is their turf; nobody does anything without their tacit approval, or without knowing that they're going up against the mob.”

Phelps nodded. “That's where the gunman in the garage comes in, eh? And the shoot-up at the Town Pump?”

“Yes,” Mulheisen said. “I naturally assumed that the gunman was there to hit Vanni, but he wasn't. He was there to hit Mandy. Someone knew she was an agent.”

Phelps nodded. “I didn't see it myself,” he admitted.

“As for the shoot-up"—Mulheisen shrugged—"who knows? It may not even have been the same faction of the mob involved. It might be something to do with Vanni's vending business, like I thought at first.”

“How about this?” Phelps suggested. “The mob agrees to take out Cecil, to help Vanni, or DenBoer, or the Cubans. Who knows? The attempt fails, because of the fortuitous appearance of the patrolmen. Another attempt is laid on, for the Town Pump—the point is, the mob has to do it in the presence of Vanni, to make it look like he's the real target.”

Mulheisen made a face. “I don't know about that last part. Maybe you're right. Chances are we'll never know. The point is, I feel I have to get after DenBoer. I can't help thinking that where he is, Cecil will be found. As for the guns, frankly I couldn't care less right now. I hope they're found, if only to keep them out of the hands of the nuts roaming these streets.”

Phelps clapped him on the shoulder. “Go to it, Mul.” He glanced at his watch again. “I've got to run.” And he actually ran.

Mulheisen didn't even have a chance to ask him how the Great Blind-Pig Raid had turned out.

Most of the fish caught in the nets of the raid had been set free or sent to court by the time Mulheisen arrived at the precinct. As usual, there was a great pile of memos waiting
for him, demanding that he call several different people immediately. The one on top was from Andy Deane, so he called him first.

“I been trying to get hold of you for days, Mul,” Deane complained. “What have you been doing, goofing off?”

“Something like that,” Mulheisen said. “In the last twenty-four hours I've found five corpses.”

“I heard about that,” Deane said. “That fellow at the Tuttle is an old acquaintance of mine. I took my pictures of Maio and Panella over there this morning and showed them to the day man. Guess what? The guy who was supposed to be the Shoe's lawyer? It was Maio. Positive identification.”

“Odd that they'd show their hand like that, isn't it?” Mulheisen asked.

“Not so very,” Andy Deane said. “These guys are enforcers. They want it known that they bumped the Shoe. It keeps everybody on the Street loose. They're so arrogant, Mul! Apparently, Lorry had been shooting off his mouth—something about a big gun deal.”

“But that's kind of Lorry's trademark, isn't it? He talks big, everybody discounts what he says, but when they want a gun they remember and go back to him, just in case he isn't all talk. Isn't that the way it works?”

“Exactly, Mul. It was a regular routine with Lorry. But there's times when the big boys don't want anybody flapping their jaws about anything. I'm afraid Lorry didn't realize how big a deal he was gassing about.”

“There's another angle,” Mulheisen said. “Lorry was the connection between the mob and the hijackers. He armed them. If the mob brought Maio and Panella into town for Vanni's sake, they might have figured to make good use of them as insurance, and eliminate a useful but expendable guy like Lorry.”

Deane said that sounded likely. “Do you think they could have done that shooting over at the warehouse?” he asked.

Mulheisen didn't think so. “That bayonet in Morazon's neck doesn't sound like a couple of mob soldiers to me.”

Deane agreed. He was intensifying his search for the two killers, he said, and he'd let Mulheisen know what developed.

The next memo on the pile was from Leonard DenBoer's mother. Mulheisen dialed the number, and it was answered before it completed its first ring.

“I talked to my husband last night. Mr. Mulheisen, about what you said yesterday. He's very worried. But he reminded me of one other place that Junior might be. Junior and Jerry bought a boat together, you know, and they both spend an awful lot of time on it. Last summer there were several nights when he didn't come home and he told me that he and Jerry had slept on the boat.”

“Where do they keep the boat, Mrs. DenBoer?”

“Lofgren's. It's just at the foot of Fairview.”

Thirty seconds later Mulheisen had Carl Lofgren on the phone.

“That's funny, Sergeant,” Lofgren said, “there was a fellow in here asking about the
Seabitch
,
just a half-hour ago. Like I told him, Lenny or Jerry one took it out yesterday and they haven't been back in.”

“Was he alone?” Mulheisen asked.

“The guy who was asking? Yeah,” Lofgren said.

“No, Lenny.”

“I didn't see her leave,” Lofgren said.

“What did the guy look like?” Mulheisen asked.

“A little guy, dark hair. Nice-looking fella,” Lofgren said.

“Damn!” Mulheisen threw down the telephone.

Twenty minutes later he was down at the marina. Lofgren showed him the empty boatwell. But what interested Mulheisen more was a gray late-model Ford parked in the lot. He was pretty sure it was Mandy Cecil's car.

Mulheisen called the precinct and asked for Jensen and Field. Then he called the harbormaster and asked for a boat to pick him up at the Lofgren marina. The harbor master wanted some kind of authorization; Mulheisen referred them to McClain at Homicide. Apparently, that worked, for the police launch arrived shortly after Jensen and Field did.

Mulheisen explained the situation to the two inseparable detectives, told them to get statements from Lofgren and his helper, notify the various bureaus, especially the Scientific Bureau, and otherwise comb the car for evidence. He didn't mention that he had already been through the vehicle, without success.

The launch commander was a Lieutenant Morigeau, a twenty-year veteran who had spent half of his years in the Mounted Bureau, on Belle Isle. His transfer to the harbor master had been simple, since that bureau was on Belle Isle, too. Mulheisen explained that he was looking for a private pleasure craft. Lofgren had provided an excellent description of the boat. He also explained that DenBoer should be considered extremely dangerous.

“I have a feeling he's still in the area,” Mulheisen said. “He can't have taken the guns with him and I just can't believe that he used the boat merely to flee the country.”

Morigeau ordered the boat under way. He lit a pipe and shouted to Mulheisen over the roar of the engine, “Not many pleasure boats out this time of year! I saw one on my way up, sort of like the one you describe, but it's gone now!” He and Mulheisen scanned the river. There was plenty of heavy ship traffic, but, as Morigeau had said, almost no pleasure craft on the busy waterway.

They swung out into the Fleming Channel and coasted down between Belle Isle and the Canada shore. Whenever they saw a power boat even remotely resembling the
Seabitch
,
they put on the power and ran it down. But they had no luck. Of the many bars and restaurants that catered to river traffic, only a few of them were still open, and none of those had the
Seabitch
moored in their wells. They ran all the way down to the Fighting Island Channel and beyond, to the Livingstone Channel, but the task began to seem more and more futile.

“There's just too many places he could moor,” Lieutenant Morigeau said. “Hell, he could be out in Lake Erie, just sitting and fishing behind some little island.” Morigeau saw
the momentary gleam in Mulheisen's eye and hastened to dampen any hopes: “It would be a season-long job, Mul.”

They turned north again, around the southern tip of Grosse Ile and running up the Trenton Channel, spot-checking in the many little marinas there. At the Humbug Marina they saw a boat identical with the
Seabitch
,
but a couple of diehard sailors setting out in a 24-foot Sea Ray were hailed and they vouched for the craft.

Disconsolate, Mulheisen urged the lieutenant to run back upstream. He felt that it was more likely that DenBoer would stay in the upriver area, where he was probably more familiar with the islands and harbors. Even running at high speed it was a long trek. It was getting toward nightfall as they approached Belle Isle again.

“Let's try some of those bars on the Canadian side,” Mulheisen suggested.

Morigeau made a face. “Out of our jurisdiction,” he said.

“I'm just making inquiries,” Mulheisen pointed out.

“You may be in civvies,” Morigeau said, “but this boat isn't.”

But Mulheisen persisted, and just as darkness fell, Morigeau pulled into a pier near Peche Island, where the welcoming neon sign of a bar blinked like a beacon.

The bar man looked at Mulheisen skeptically. It wasn't often that someone in a sports jacket and a tie, with a dirty collar and two days’ growth of beard, got off a police launch there. Mulheisen's hair was unruly from the wind and his face felt burned and chapped. He ordered a double Black Jack Ditch and had to explain to the bartender what it was.

There was hardly anyone in the bar, and the bartender came and talked to him, complaining about business. Mulheisen asked about DenBoer and gave a description.