The Diehard (18 page)

No one had ever heard of him.

“It's a big place, I understand,” Mulheisen said. “I think one of his neighbors is a Carl Joyner, the fellow who started the Black Beaver Lake development.”

“Oh, that sonuvabitch, Joyner,” said a lean farmer through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

“That's right,” Mulheisen said. “A fat man, with white hair.”

“He's a albino,” a ten-year-old boy said.

“He is not,” said a heavy woman with an enormous bosom. “You be quiet, Jabe.”

The lean farmer swallowed his potatoes and said, “You must mean the Bodnar place.”

“That's it,” Mulheisen said. “Clippert is his son-in-law.”

“Is that right?” said another man. “I thought old Axel Bodnar'd sold it.”

“No. Mr. Bodnar died a few years back,” Mulheisen said.

“Is that right?” The man turned to a short, swarthy man who wore a thick black beard and whose pure-blue eyes actually twinkled. “Did you year that, Pat? Old Axel's died.”

“Wal, I'll be damned,” Pat said. He had a surprisingly Southern drawl. He forked a huge chunk of ham into the mouth that was nearly hidden behind the beard.

“You'll have a hell of a time getting there,” said the lean farmer. “You go down here a quarter mile, take a left, go to the third road and take another left. It has a sign that says Blackman Lane. You go up that lane, which probably ain't plowed, till you come to a stone fence and it has a big iron gate. I doubt you'll get
up that drive. You'll have to walk about a quarter mile to the house.”

“Thank you very much,” Mulheisen said.

“You'll know the place,” the farmer said. “There's a name carved into the stone by the gate, says Valhalla.”

“Valhalla?”

“That's what old Axel called it. I think it's a town in the old country, maybe, where his folks come from.”

Twenty-seven

“This guy is something else,” Joe Service said to Wienoshek. They stood in a cold upstairs bedroom. There was no furniture in the room, no curtains on the windows. The floor was hardwood and polished with a thin film of dust on it. Also on the floor was a cardboard box. They had found it in the closet, pulled it out and opened it.

The box was full of money. Negotiable bonds in tidy little stacks, denominations of five thousand and ten thousand dollars, some even larger. It wouldn't be too difficult to convert these bonds into cash.

“I didn't really expect to find it here,” Joe Service said.

“So how come we got here early?” Wienoshek wanted to know. “I thought you wanted to make a search.”

“Just a matter of form, really, Byron. I couldn't come into the house without making absolutely certain that the money wasn't here.

“But who would have thought he'd stash it here? It's not even hidden, really. The guy is a lawyer, smart enough to rip off a whole corporation, smart enough to be the only one of the bunch who isn't going inside . . . I mean, look at it! They're all ready to take
a fall, and he's got the whole bundle. And the feds can't touch him. So why is twenty million sitting in the closet?”

Wienoshek did not answer. He took a sheaf of the bonds from the box. “Man,” he said, softly. “Look. Fifty big ones, right here.”

Service looked down at the big man, squatting over the bonds. He laughed. “That's more right there than he paid you, isn't it?”

Wienoshek flushed. He was embarrassed. “Twenty bills. That's all I got,” he said. “And I would have got only ten, but . . .”

Service smiled. “I know, Byron. But it's payday again.” He squatted down and put the bills back in the box.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Wienoshek said.

“What's the matter?”

“What do you mean, what's the matter? The split!”

“Now?” Service said.

“Now.”

Service looked as if he were considering it. Wienoshek stood up and unbuttoned his overcoat and his suit coat. The handle of the huge .44 Magnum jutted out from the holster. Wienoshek looked directly into Service's eyes. “Now,” he said.

“You're making a mistake, Byron. You're forgetting things.”

“Like what things?” the big man said quietly. Service didn't like the flat, unemotional tone of that voice. He knew he was going to have to do some fast talking. He didn't like standing in an empty room, in a closed-up summer house, miles from anywhere, while a man with a .44 talked like that. There was a whole cold lake just beyond the window where a body could get lost. It looked like a broad, flat field, covered with snow. It stretched several miles to a range of low, pine-covered hills.

“You're forgetting Clippert, for one thing,” Service said. “And you're forgetting my clients.”

“Screw Clippert,” Wienoshek said.

“No. I'd do something about Clippert, if I were you,” Service said. “You'll never really be safe as long as he's around. You ought to know that. You take this money and he'll turn you, for sure, just to save his neck with that gang of loonies who expect him to take care of their money.”

“Maybe,” Wienoshek said.

“Well, I'll tell you what isn't a maybe,” Service said. “My clients. You better think about how you're going to get out of here. You need help. They can get you out of the country. They can help you. A million bucks is a lot of bucks, Byron.”

“So is twenty million.”

“Twenty million is nothing if you're in the can for life. Or if you've been knocked on the head. Think about it, Byron.”

“I'm thinking about twenty million, Joe,” he said softly.

Service shook his head with concern. “Don't think that way, Byron. Don't. My clients don't want to hit you. I think they'd like you. You'd like them. I mean it when I say they want to help you. But if you help yourself . . .” He spread his hands and smiled sadly.

“You see,” he went on, “they aren't like the cops. They don't have areas of jurisdiction. They go anywhere. And they will, for a load like this, to say nothing of the bad precedent it would set if they let you get away with it. See, they don't have heavy case loads, like the cops. They aren't like the cops at all. They'll come for you wherever you go, no matter how long it takes . . . and they won't read your Miranda rights to you when they knock on your door that dark day.”

Wienoshek smiled. “Who'll they send? You?”

Service shrugged. “Maybe. I'm their best. I'm better than you. That's a fact. A simple, unavoidable fact.”

Wienoshek didn't seem impressed. “If you're still alive, you mean,” he said. He stood very still, watching Service and waiting.

“Look at the way you messed up the job on Clippert's old lady. Was that good?”

“I didn't do that,” Wienoshek said. “Elroy did that. I made a mistake there. I sent him in, instead of doing it myself. If I did it, it's just a nice clean accident in a bathtub.”

“But why?” Service said. “Why did she have to have an accident?”

“I don't ask why,” Wienoshek said. “It's not my business why. I just figured it was the insurance.”

“The insurance? Ha hahahahahaha. Are you kidding? There's twenty million at stake and you think he wants his wife's insurance? Hell, she was worth more alive. She would have inherited
much more than a million in another year. Just a few months, really.”

“I don't know anything about that,” Wienoshek said. He looked puzzled. “So, you tell me why, then.”

Service's mind raced. Why, indeed? he thought. The trouble was, despite some private research he did not know much about Clippert, he did not know the man's mind. The answer could be as simple as a girl friend, or as stupid as wanting the insurance money now, instead of waiting for an inheritance with a wife he may have hated. For all Joe Service knew, Clippert was insane, a raving maniac. Could be. Or maybe he wanted to split for Brazil and didn't want to take her, or leave her to talk.

It could be very complex, he realized. Perhaps a combination of all these things. Or maybe it was as obvious as twenty million dollars.

“So what's the answer, smart boy?” Wienoshek said.

Service smiled. “It's obvious,” he said. “Twenty million.”

“What? That don't make sense.”

“Think about it, Byron. Clippert's no dummy. Now why is this money sitting in a closet in a summer house? Why did Clippert want you boys to fake a burglary?”

Wienoshek shook his head. “I don't know.”

“And you, you're going to take the money and run.” Service seemed amused. “You wouldn't get back to the goddamn highway. You couldn't even get the car out of that ditch you stuck it in.”

“Knock it off, big mouth,” Wienoshek said, “or I may have to let a little air into you.” He gestured toward the .44.

“All right, I'll spell it out for you,” Service said. “First of all, Clippert didn't have the money. I'll bet he doesn't know that it's here. And second of all, he wanted everybody, or at least a certain group of people—his Fidelity Funding buddies—to think that he didn't have the money anymore.”

Wienoshek couldn't follow that. “What are you talking about?” he said. “Is this some kind of trick?” He actually rested his hand on the handle of the gun.

“No trick. Look, these people at Fidelity Funding, they knock off twenty of the best, but they do it a little at a time. What's it going to be, in cash? Maybe some of it, a little of it. But most of
it is payments from other corporations, and it has to go into Fidelity Funding's accounts. A paper transaction. And then another paper transaction transfers it into other, hidden accounts. That's all right, for a while, but eventually somebody has to collect this dough.

“The people want to get paid off for their hard work. So they get themselves a bagman. A wise guy who can convert these accounts into cash, who will go and get the money—or what is approximately the same thing, bearer bonds. They want a trusty fellow like Clippert to carry that bag, somebody they can trust. They might even have already had some payoffs, for all I know. There might not even be twenty million here, though it looks like enough to be.” He glanced down at the box.

Service went on, spreading out his explanation, his story, for his dangerous companion.

“Clippert could have put the bonds into numerous deposit boxes, all over the country. If a guy did that carefully enough, he could probably cover his tracks. But a deposit box can be red-tagged. There's always the chance. The feds might get some of it. But that's kind of a clumsy operation for Clippert, and anyway, if he does that the money is no more readily available than it was before. No, it's just as well to get it all and stash it.

“Then along comes Mrs. Clippert. One day, maybe she's looking in the basement for her golf clubs, she comes across a cardboard box full of bearer bonds. If she has any brains at all, and I imagine she did, she knows exactly what it means. And she's appalled to discover that her beloved hubby is a thief. So what does she do?”

“You tell me,” Wienoshek said.

“She takes the money herself, and hides it.”

“Why?”

“She's scared of what it means. She's worried for her husband, and she's angry with him for not telling her what he was doing.”

“Maybe she's a thief herself,” Wienoshek said.

“Maybe. The important thing is she did take the money. And she brought it up here. But she obviously didn't tell him where she hid it, or it wouldn't be sitting here, I can guarantee that.

“Then, she tells him that she knows and that she took the money. From the little that I've found out about her, she probably
tried to get him to come clean. Turn state's evidence and cop a plea.”

“Hell,” Wienoshek said, “I wonder when she did it?”

“Why?” Service said.

“Me and Elroy cracked this joint ourselves, back in September, only Clippert nailed us. The money could have been here then.”

“Clippert caught the two of you, at it?”

Wienoshek explained the whole thing to him. Clippert had been amused at catching them, and when he recognized Wienoshek he had let them go. But not before checking their identification to make sure that he knew where they would be, and who exactly they were, in case of any future trouble.

“He had some broad in the car,” Wienoshek said, “and I don't think it was his wife. Some chick he brought up here to bang for a weekend.”

“That must have been before his old lady ripped him off,” Service mused, “or he'd have been looking for the stuff and would easily have found it. When did he contact you?”

“About six weeks ago.”

“That's when it was then. I guess she found the stuff, threw it in the trunk of the car and buzzed up here in a couple hours, stashed it, and got back to town before he knew she was gone. He wouldn't have guessed that she'd taken it so far away.”

Wienoshek nodded. “Makes sense, I guess. But why did he want to fake the burglary?”

“The burglary is a clever idea,” Service said. “Just consider: it provides the cops with a reason for the killing, in case they don't buy the suicide bit. Not only that, Clippert is in a position to tell the Fidelity Funding boys that the money is gone. Probably he could blame it on the Mob. And he doesn't have to worry about the Mob trying to score the stuff, either, because they'll think it's gone, too. In fact, they sort of half believed it.”

Service was beginning to believe the story himself. It was very likely, he thought. Best of all, Wienoshek clearly believed it. Service was glad to see him relax. He hated these kinds of hassles with partners.

“One thing, though,” Wienoshek said, “he couldn't have a burglary and an accident, could he? What's the point of all that?”

“It gives him an extra option,” Service reasoned. “For the last six weeks he's been looking all over hell for the money, and not finding it. I bet he was giving the old lady hell about it, too. Finally, he just decided to do her. He'd be rid of her pressure, and he'd be free to look for the dough. If I were him, I'd have figured that she put it in a safety-deposit box. After she's dead he can settle her affairs and then it's likely that he'd find her safety-deposit box.

“What was the deal,” he asked Wienoshek, “was he supposed to call you before he came back to town and find out what the lay of the land was?”

“Yeah,” Wienoshek said, “how did you know?”

“It seems reasonable. If you guys go in and get her, and everything goes right, he can come back to town and discover that she's had a terrible accident, but not before he carefully picks up all the stuff you guys were supposed to rob and puts it back in its place. But, if things go wrong, and you're caught, he is still in good shape. It's just a little option play, for him. Hell, even if things go well he could still use the burglary option, if it suited his purposes.”

“I can see that,” Wienoshek said. “Yeah, that's it.”

“Sure it is,” Service said. “I know if you had given it a little thought, Byron, you would have come up with it yourself. But I can see your point of view, too—do the job and get out. Don't get involved in complications.”

Wienoshek was mollified. “I like things to be simple,” he said.

“It's the best way,” Service agreed.

“So now what?” Wienoshek asked.

“So now we deal with Clippert,” Service said. “That's your job. He's your problem. Then we get you out of the state, get you safe. I take the stuff to Detroit and make my deal with my clients. I get the payoff, and I pay you off.”

Wienoshek didn't like that, Service could tell.

“It has to be that way, Byron. Clippert will be here anytime now. We don't have time to sit down and make a count and then split the dough. Besides, my clients won't like that. You have to trust me. I'm getting ten percent. My clients won't burn me. And you get half of my cut.”

“I got a better idea,” Wienoshek said.

Service sighed. “All right, let's hear it.”

“We just cool it. Clippert comes, we'll both take him off. Then we can sit down and talk.”

Service was resigned. He was about to agree, when there was a noise at the door. It was Clippert.

Service knew it must be Clippert, even though his back was to the doorway and the open door itself screened him from Clippert's view, because Wienoshek's mouth fell open and he raised his hands with fingers spread wide, as if to ward off something terrible.