The Diehard (15 page)

“No way,” Dunn said, putting his hands flat on the desk.

“I'm not asking for a transcript, or for evidence that would be introduced in court. I won't even say anything about it to the prosecutor, if you don't want me to. I just want to get a line on Wienoshek. I can always say it came from a confidential informer. We've got a warrant on Wienoshek for the murder of John Doe—that's because we still don't have a definite identification of the body that we think is Elroy Carver. Just a little help, if it's available. And anything else you want from us, name it.”

Piquette spoke up. “That's an interesting suggestion. Of course, under the circumstances, it's irrelevant because we have no such information. Nor could we promise to provide it if we had it. But it might be possible to make enquiries along these lines, just to see what develops.”

Mulheisen privately marveled at the ambiguity of the statement.

“And what's to be done about this so-called private investigator?” Dunn asked.

“What can be done?” Mulheisen replied. “As far as I know he's done nothing illegal. The Mob has the right to hire a private eye, if they want. The way I look at it, he's probably trying to trace the shadowy twenty million dollars. The odds are with him, at that.”

“Really?” Piquette said. “Why do you think so?”

“He has special sources of underground information,” Mulheisen said. “He probably has unlimited funds for his search. In a way, I have to admire his position, as a detective. But most importantly, he is more interested in the money than I am. I want Wienoshek, and then, if it works out that way, I want Clippert. The money is least important to me.”

“I see,” Piquette said. “Also, this private investigator doesn't have to worry about jurisdiction, for instance, and he needn't be
bothered by Supreme Court decisions on methods of interrogation.”

Mulheisen agreed.

Dunn stared at Mulheisen for a moment, then turned back to the window. Over his shoulder he said, “We'll let you know if anything develops, Sergeant. Thank you for coming down.” Then, more to himself than anyone else, he said, “God, this snow! It just keeps coming down.”

Mulheisen wished everyone a Merry Christmas and left. He came out of the Federal Building and saw how much snow had fallen in just the hour or so he had spent upstairs. Traffic was a hopeless snarl. He walked down Fort Street to Marvin's Pipe and Tobacco Shop.

He was pleased to find the proprietor, Marvin Berg, behind the counter. Marvin Berg was an enormous man. He weighed over three hundred pounds. He had a great, amorphous, sad face with sagging eyelids and sagging lower lip.

“Fang,” he said slowly, coughing with a gentle liquid sound, “how nice to see you on this joyous occasion. I have your cigars.”

The aisle behind the counter was barely wide enough to permit Berg to squeeze along it, his body brushing both sides. He forced himself down the aisle and into the back room.

Mulheisen saw that Marvin had a new girl working there. This one was small and had dark hair cut as short as boys’ used to be. She had a wicked look. Mulheisen supposed that she would last no longer than most of Berg's girls did. That was due, as Berg himself confessed, to his gross suggestions and lewd behavior. “Hardly any girl is sufficiently depraved these days,” he would complain, “to accept as a lover such a burden as myself. Not that I would dream of mounting the creature. Oh, no indeed, Fang. I have developed a peculiar variety of activities, some of which might even astonish such a one as yourself.”

The new girl looked at Mulheisen with a malicious grin. “Are you a friend of his?”

“More or less,” Mulheisen said.

“Another pervert, hunh? You look it. What'd he call you, Fang? What kind of name is that?”

“The better to eat you with, my dear,” Mulheisen said.

“I knew it,” she said triumphantly. “Oh well, what's a little scum between friends?”

Marvin came squeezing back, carrying two boxes of cigars. “This is Becky,” he coughed. “She is easily the nastiest bitch I have ever come across, Fang. But she is complaisant. Now, these are fifty dollars apiece, dear boy, but I shall let you have them for only thirty-seven fifty. They are genuine Havana.”

“Put them on the bill,” Mulheisen said.

“Of course.” Marvin shifted toward the girl. “Becky, this is Sergeant Mulheisen. He is not precisely a nice man, but I maintain a modest account for him. Please add seventy-five dollars to it. And bring us two of the Dunhill Corona Coronas.”

The girl brought the Dunhills, saying, “Jesus, you really are a couple of faggots, sucking on these dildos.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Marvin said. He carefully clipped the ends from the cigars and the two men lit up. “Merry Christmas, Mul,” Marvin said.

“What do you hear about a short, dark type who does a little investigating for the Mob?” Mulheisen asked.

Marvin sighed. “I thought you would never ask, dear boy. Round about, the conversation is all about this mighty mite. My friend Morrie the Shoe tells me that the little fellow is a Star.” Marvin shook his great head solemnly. “It appears that he is an important person. He appears to be named Joe Service. He is no longer in town. They say he has taken the sun.”

“You mean he found what he was looking for?”

“Perhaps,” Marvin said. “Or maybe he simply tired of this wretched weather. At any rate, he is supposed to have left for sunnier climes. He is very good, they tell me.”

“Don't they always say that?”

“Yes, they always do.”

“What is he looking for?” Mulheisen asked.

“Money,” Marvin said. “And that is the extent of my knowledge. Of course, if I hear anything . . . but now I believe I shall close my tiny shop. I am contemplating taking this scabrous slut to dinner. Perhaps you would like to join us?”

“No. I've got a date,” Mulheisen said. “Nice meeting you, Becky.” He waved. She gestured with an upthrust middle finger.

The streets were dark and snowy. Despite the mounted cop's recognition of him, Mulheisen had gotten a parking ticket. It took him most of an hour to get to Lou's house in Grosse Pointe. The snow swirled across Lake St. Clair, drifting already in the long driveway. Lou did not keep him waiting long.

She brought a large leather handbag. In Mulheisen's car she surprised him by saying, “I brought along some clean underwear. It occurred to me that we might get stuck in this storm. Today's smart young woman is always prepared.”

“Sounds like the Boy Scouts,” Mulheisen said.

“Oh, I'm better than a Boy Scout,” she said. “Anyway, tell me about your proposition.”

“Which proposition? The one I got, or the one I made?”

“Both,” she said, “but start with the first one.”

As they drove out on the long curve around the dark lake, Mulheisen told her first about Shirley Carpenter, and then Marvin Berg's new girl.

“I can certainly understand Shirley,” Lou said, “though it seems a rather masculine thing for her to do, in a way.”

“Well, then, what about Marvin's Becky?” he asked.

“Oh, she sounds merely venal.”

When they got to the house, Lou walked around looking at everything while Mulheisen got some steaks out and mixed a couple of drinks.

“Where's your Christmas tree?” she asked, when they sat in the living room.

“Don't have one. Mother usually puts one up, but it's too much bother for me. When I got out of the service I had an apartment for a few years, on the near East Side. Every Christmas, Mother would come over and put up a Christmas tree for me. She loved to do it. But she quit, finally, when she discovered that I had left the tree standing until April, at which time it fell over of its own accord. By then all the needles had fallen off and the decorations hung on the bare branches, sort of like baubles on a naked chicken.”

They laughed. Mulheisen told her to make herself at home. He was going to take a shower. After that, he would prepare the feast.

“Which is?” she asked.

“Steak and hot potato salad from a can.”

“Ugh.”

“I could cook some frozen asparagus,” he suggested.

When he came down from the shower, dressed comfortably now in slacks and a sweater, he was glad to see that she had not attempted to do anything in the kitchen.

Over dinner, she said, “The steak is good. And the asparagus isn't too limp. Do I have to eat the beans?”

“I'll let you off on the beans if you cook breakfast,” he said.

Lou raised an eyebrow at him. “And how do we fill the hours between now and then?” she asked.

“I had something in mind.”

“I have a feeling that it's something carnal,” she said.

“Well, that too, of course.” He got up and peered out the dark kitchen windows at the snow that was blowing thickly against the house. “Looks like a sure-enough blizzard,” he said. “If it keeps up we may not get out tomorrow. Which will give us time.”

“For what?” she asked.

“To put together my puzzle. It's a thousand-piece picture puzzle of the Grand Canal, in Venice. From the Turner painting. I always used to do one at Christmas, when I was a boy.”

Lou came to stand by him at the window, looking out into the snow that tumbled into the light from the window. She smiled into the darkness.

Twenty-three

Early one morning in June, 1805, in ville d'Etroit, the “village by the strait,” a hostler rose early to hitch up a team of horses. He was to take a wagon out to the prosperous farm of the Campau family. While he worked in the stable he smoked his clay pipe. Absent-mindedly he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went on his way. Every single building in the village burned to the ground, except for St. Anne's church. Miraculously, only two persons were injured.

The disconsolate former Detroiters camped on the plain just south of the gutted village. They were found there a couple of days later by the newly appointed governor of the Michigan Territory. The territory included Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota, and had just been created. With the new governor was Augustus Woodward, who had just been appointed a judge of the territory by his friend President Thomas Jefferson.

Judge Woodward was not at all dismayed to discover that the capital of the new territory no longer existed. “I just happen to have in my saddle bags here a complete plan for a new town.” It was actually the plan for Washington, D.C., as designed by the French-American engineer and architect Major Pierre Charles l'Enfant. It was basically a radial plan, with broad thoroughfares
emanating outward from a central hub. Judge Woodward adapted the plan to the new Detroit. The fledgling town had amazingly wide boulevards and avenues, named after Jefferson, after the early founder of Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, or for Grand River. Other streets were named for early settlers like Joseph Campau. But the main avenue, which remains the main street of Detroit, was called by its designer Woodward Avenue.

Apparently some of the citizens objected. But the judge responded with the interesting explanation that the avenue was not, after all, named for himself. “The street goes north, toward the forest, to the woods. Hence, Wood-ward.”

On this morning of Christmas Eve, a semitrailer truck was jackknifed across Woodward Avenue, just north of Grand Boulevard. The truck blocked five of the six traffic lanes. But there was no traffic on Woodward Avenue this morning. The truck was abandoned and snow had drifted well over the tops of the wheels. All night long the snow had fallen heavily and continued to fall. It was driven by gale-force winds between the dark and quiet office buildings.

Like the fire of 1805, the Christmas Blizzard had a purifying effect on the city. The raw rubble of urban renewal was blanketed in white, the deep scars of the expressway system that lay over Judge Woodward's radial plan like a plastic overlay on a field map were softened and filled, the sky was not yellow and red with industrial pollution, the atmosphere above Woodward Avenue itself did not shimmer with automobile exhaust. Most importantly, crime had nearly vanished in Detroit. The city had changed its infamous ways overnight.

Detroit is Murder City. After the riots of 1967, the sale of handguns greatly increased, and with that came an increase in monthly killings, so that as many as eighty-nine have died in a single month. In a single precinct there have been as many as thirteen killings in a weekend. In the Orient, we like to say, life is cheap. But not cheaper than in Detroit.

But on this Christmas Eve, when the city should have been thronged with shoppers and shoplifters, office-party drunks and drunk-rollers, with thieves and bonus-flush victims, Santa Clauses
and maniacs . . . the city was practically empty. There was no one to rob or be robbed, no one to kill or be killed.

Not a single murder was recorded for eighteen hours. Then an auto worker named Wiley Hatton shot his wife in their East-side home because she had failed to lay in a sufficient supply of whiskey against the coming of the Christmas Blizzard. Mr. Hatton called the police himself and then had to wait more than an hour and a half for them to get to his house.

The great office buildings downtown were virtually empty. The hotels were full and likely to remain so. The only cars on the streets were stuck there. No one came to relieve the caretaker staff at the General Motors Building. The Henry Ford Hospital was accepting patients, but discharging none. There were fires and the fire department battled their way to them, not always in time. Policemen delivered babies, used helicopters to rush heart-attack cases to the hospital, and not always successfully in either case.

The whorehouse/motels had an unprecedented number of all-nighters. Robbers stayed home. The stores stayed closed. Concerts were canceled. Many people were hungry and cold. Some died. Linemen froze their fingers and feet repairing power and telephone lines.

The temperature dropped to zero, the wind grew to thirty knots, then thirty-five.

A city the size of Detroit can take only so much shutting down before it collapses. The collapse began immediately, but was still not significant. If the snow and wind would let up by Christmas Day, everything would be all right. Even two more days would not be cataclysmic, although food supplies would dwindle, especially the milk supply. People would then have to get out, into the blizzard. Supplies would have to be brought in, somehow. But for now, the population could sit quietly inside.

The weather prognosis was promising. A strong high-pressure system was moving inexorably from the west. Already it was clearing in Minneapolis, where the sky was a brilliant blue and the temperature was a brittle –15° F.

At the U.S. Weather Bureau at Metropolitan Airport, the main concern was that the blizzard—which they referred to as a low-pressure system—would not be able to continue its normal
eastward course. It was now centered just northwest of Detroit. But there was a ridge of high pressure lying along a line from Quebec to Kentucky. If the ridge did not move, the blizzard would not move. The low-pressure system would stick, it would probably deepen, winds would increase, there would be warmer, moister air coming up from the Mississippi Valley to feed the system . . . oh, what a blizzard they would have then!

The problem was, the weather bureau was not getting sufficient information about the upper air movements. Most air traffic in the Midwest—the main source of upper air information—had stopped. Only the transcontinental flights were operating, cruising at sunny altitudes high above the storm-stricken Midwest. Businessmen en route to New York from Los Angeles sipped their whiskies and gazed down on the beautiful golden billows below. Bored SAC bomber crews calculated the precise but invisible spot in the sky where they would rendezvous with bored refueling tanker crews; they ate stale sandwiches and wrote letters to girls in Falfurrias, Texas.

Mulheisen woke up to the storm with a tousled blond head on his arm. A little later, he made a token effort to get his car out of the driveway, but it was futile. Even if he got to the lane that was as full of snow as the drive. And if he got to the highway, would that be plowed? He abandoned his snow shovel just as Lou called to him from the kitchen door. It was Lieutenant Johnson.

“Might as well stay home, Mul,” Johnson said. “I had to hitch a ride with a plow, myself, to get in. Thank God there's nothing much going on, just emergency calls.”

“Who's there?"Mulheisen asked.

“Well, Jensen and Field,” Johnson said. “Which reminds me, Jensen wants to talk to you. Oh yeah, I called Ahab off on that Clippert stakeout last night. I didn't have anyone to relieve him. He barely got home as it was.”

“What?”

“Don't get excited, Mul. Believe me, Clippert isn't going anywhere in this weather.”

“All right, all right,” Mulheisen said, “but if it starts to break, get someone over there right away.”

“If I can spare anyone,” Johnson said. “Here's Jensen.”

Peter Jensen came on the line. “Mulheisen? Me and Field checked out the airports and ticket offices on those two guys, yesterday.”

The line was silent. Mulheisen waited, then sighed. Why was it so difficult to get information out of Jensen? Finally, Mulheisen said, “That's good, Jensen. What did you find out?”

“Wienoshek flew out of Metro Airport on the eighteenth, the noon flight on Delta. Nonstop to Miami. The seat was originally reserved for an earlier flight in the name of Elroy Carver.”

Silence.

“That's very good work,” Mulheisen said. “Is there anything else?”

“Yeah.” There was another brief silence, then Jensen cleared his throat and went on. “The girl from Delta's ticket office down-town identified Carver's picture as the man who bought the ticket.”

There was a voice in the background, then Jensen said, “Uh, Bud wants to talk to you, Mulheisen. Here.”

The calm precise voice of Bud Field came on the line. “Hello, Mul? I did the downtown work. The Delta girl was very cooperative, very helpful. She said Carver seemed nervous and in a hurry. She sold him a ten o'clock ticket even though it seemed unlikely that he would make the flight in time. He flashed a big roll of bills. He was wearing an overcoat that was too large for him, she says, and he was carrying an airline bag. She said he took a cab just outside the office, but she didn't see what company it was.”

“I guess Carver didn't make his flight,” Mulheisen said.

“No, he didn't,” Field said. “Airport personnel definitely identified Wienoshek as the man who used the ticket. Not only that, the desk man out there tore off the top part of the ticket and kept it, as usual. Jensen picked it up. I was thinking there's a good chance we might get prints of both Wienoshek and Carver from the ticket. Also, it is definitely the same ticket the girl sold to Carver, the same number, her handwriting.”

“Very good, Field,” Mulheisen said. “So, he went to Miami. Did you get out a bulletin to Miami?”

“Right. And also to the FBI.”

“Wonderful. What about the cab? Did the lab do a job on it?”

“They did. Frank told me that he is pretty sure that he can
prove that Carver was in the cab. He said he would send a full report on fingerprints, hair, a saliva test on some cigarette butts, and also some dirt samples that he hopes to match with the dirt found in Mrs. Clippert's bathtub. Of course, Frank isn't working today, and probably won't be in for a couple days.”

“No hurry,” Mulheisen said. He was delighted.

“Oh yeah,” Field said, “there's a pathology report here, too. Some bright boy over there compared x-rays from Carver's military record with x-rays of the corpse, and he says they can prove through old bone fractures that the body is Carver.”

“Well, that's it, then. All we have to do is find Wienoshek,” Mulheisen said.

“That may not be so easy,” Field said. “The trail is kind of cold.”

“Don't worry,” Mulheisen said, “that boy is down the tubes. I'm going to have him.” He told Field that he would be at home, naturally, if he was needed, and hung up.

“You look very pleased with yourself,” Lou said, “like an owl with a mouse's tail in its mouth.”

“And you look great, even if that bathrobe is too big for you,” he said. He came up behind her at the stove, where she was frying bacon, and slid his arms around her. She turned her head and kissed him lightly. He ran his hand into a fold of the robe and found her breast.

“Oh, your hand is cold!” But she arched her back against his chest. “Stop it, now. I'm cooking.”

“I'm starving,” Mulheisen said. “You look great, the bacon smells great. I feel like an old married man.”

“Don't presume on such a short acquaintance,” she said. “You move too fast.”

“That's what Laddy McClain tells me,” he said, “but I'm also quite patient.”

He sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and talked to her while she fried the eggs. He told her about Jensen and Field. “Together they make one very good detective,” he said. “Jensen is methodical, tireless and tough. Field is intelligent and imaginative. Apart, they're just average. They work for each other, I think, to help each other.”

Lou brought the eggs and bacon to the table. “That's sweet,” she said. “Are they married?”

“I don't know,” Mulheisen said. “I've never heard them mention wives.”

“Didn't you ever ask? Aren't you curious?”

Mulheisen laughed. “They're married to each other. Anyway, that's the sort of question a woman asks.”

“Ugh, what a sexist pig you are. Don't you think a woman would be a good detective?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I never thought about it. I mean, we have women detectives, but they aren't really detectives, somehow. They work on muggers and rapists, that sort of thing, and they help question female suspects, do personal searches and so forth.”

“You mean they do specialized kinds of work,” Lou said. “They're categorized. You don't see them pulling a routine shift like any other detective. A social worker might be a man or a woman, it doesn't make any difference. But a detective is a man, and then there are
women
detectives who do special things.”

“Something like that,” he said, forking bacon and eggs into his mouth.

“I think a woman would make a very good detective,” Lou said.

“Maybe.”

“I imagine that we women are very interested in personal things, in the nature of relationships. It seems to me that apart from economic pressures and social conditions, it is human relationships that are at the source of problems that develop into crimes.”

“Sounds like a theory,” Mulheisen said. He sipped his coffee. “But I agree with you. I believe that.”

“And then, of course,” she went on, “there's all that stuff about women's intuition. I imagine that good detectives are intuitive as well.”

“Intuitive or imaginative,” Mulheisen said, “I'm not sure how you would define it, if you had to. But now that we're talking about intuition and human relationships, what do you think it may have
been in Arthur Clippert's relationship with his wife that led him to kill her?”

“I'm not sure that he did,” Lou said.

“But if he did? If he arranged to have her killed?”

Lou ate for a moment and chewed, then drank some coffee. “Jane had one quality,” she said, “that could have gotten to Arthur. She was proud. If she was in danger of losing Arthur, I don't think her pride would permit it. I think she would do almost anything to hold on to him.”