The Diehard (2 page)

Two

There was a note on the refrigerator door: “Honey. Gone to Stony Point. Sorry. You have to get your own breakfast. Ma.”

Mulheisen stood in his undershorts staring at the note stupidly. He scratched his thinning sandy hair and then seemed to understand. He was annoyed. What the hell was Stony Point? he wondered. Birds. Bird watching.

“You're cracking up, Ma,” he said aloud.

He put on a kettle of water to boil, then ground a handful of coffee beans in the electric grinder. He put the ground coffee in a paper filter and set that in its holder on the coffee jug.

If his mother had been there she would have made him coddled eggs, perhaps. Instead, Mulheisen rummaged in the refrigerator for something immediate. The refrigerator was crammed full of food. He opened a beer and sipped, to take off the taste of last night's whiskey and cigars. He found a casserole dish with leftover macaroni and cheese. He dipped his fingers in and broke off a hunk and chewed it. He took two more hunks while standing before the open door. Finally, he took the dish out of the refrigerator and set it on the table.

The water boiled. He poured it over the coffee. While it
dripped through he ate more macaroni with his fingers. He drank the beer.

The
Free Press
headline said, “Collusion In Russ Grain Deal.” Mulheisen turned to the sports section and read about the hockey game. The Red Wings had lost on a last-minute goal by the Islanders. Mulheisen was depressed. He couldn't bear what had happened to the Red Wings in the last few years. The whole league had gone to hell. It really depressed him.

He drank coffee and ate the rest of the macaroni. He read the comic section, glanced at the editorials, scanned the news generally. “Shooting on East Side” caught his eye. A bar shootout, but not in his precinct. He didn't finish the article.

“Three More Indicted In Massive Computer Fraud” did not interest him. He stumped up the stairs to dress. Through the bay window of his room he could see the Detroit River. Two ships were downbound, running for the St. Lawrence Seaway, trying to beat the ice that was closing the shipping season. Mulheisen thought they might make it to Cleveland, maybe even Buffalo. Ice was already clogging the channel here. One of the freighters had a red hand painted on the funnel.

Mulheisen put on brown slacks, a light-brown shirt and a dark tie. He didn't like to be stodgy, but he hated to be stylish. Before he put on his beige cashmere coat he slipped a Smith and Wesson .38 Airweight Chief’s Special into the back of his belt.

He was a well-built man, nearly forty. He was just under six feet and had a small but noticeable bulge at his waist. He had a high forehead and his eyes were set so deeply that it was not easy to see that they were pale blue. His most notable feature, however, was his teeth. They were long teeth, slightly bucked, and they were distinctly separate. For this reason the street people called him “Fang.” It was “Sergeant Fang.”

He was late, as usual. He should have been at the precinct already and the precinct was twenty miles away. He wasn't supposed to live outside the city limits of Detroit, but like many other cops he circumvented the rule by maintaining a phony address in town. It cost him fifteen dollars a month.

The telephone rang just as he was going out the back door. It was Inspector McClain, from Homicide.

“Glad I caught you, Mul. I got one in your precinct.”

“Where?”

“I forget the address. It's just off Agnes on Seneca. You'll see the house.”

“Indian Village?” Mulheisen asked.

“Right. And your asshole inspector is down here, Buchanan, getting in everybody's way. Get on down here. I think this could be a big one.”

Three

The skinny man walked quickly through the house. He picked up a portable color television, an expensive vase, an original painting off the wall. He took everything back to the kitchen and stacked it by the door to the garage. The bath water was still running.

He went to a small desk in the study and tried the drawers. Locked. With a light metal bar he carefully pried the drawers open. There was some cash. He put it in his pockets without counting it. He riffled through the other papers and then tossed them back into the drawer. He looked around for a safe. Then he remembered—upstairs.

He was halfway up the stairs when the water stopped. It was very silent in the house. He crouched on the staircase and listened. She must be just lying there in the bath, he thought. After a long time there were some splashing sounds. He went up the stairs, past the bathroom door which was open just a crack. He went on into an all-white bedroom.

He opened a jewelry chest and picked out its contents, stuffing his pants pockets. He quietly slid her dresser drawers open and looked through each drawer, running his gloved hands through the silky underthings.

The splashing continued.

Near the window, next to the unmade bed with its white blankets rumpled, there was a desk. He sat down and carefully looked through the papers. Most of them were letters from friends. There were a few from the Detroit Bank and Trust. He tossed it all aside.

The safe was set in the wall, behind a clock. He set the clock down and tried the safe. The splashing stopped. He listened, hand poised at the safe's dial. Then the water started running again. The bath must have cooled, he thought. He turned the dial again. In a few minutes the safe was open. He took out all the cash and put it in his pockets. There wasn't that much.

He took a pistol out of his pocket and walked out of the big bedroom into the hall. By the bathroom door he stopped and leaned closer, peering through the tiny crack. He stared at the naked shoulders of the woman in the bath. He began to breathe harder and felt a stiffening in his crotch. Without thinking he put a gloved hand on the door and it opened an inch wider.

Jane Clippert's eyes were half-closed in sybaritic pleasure. She stretched out her arms and splashed more foamy water onto her breasts. Then she looked up and saw the man. Her mouth fell open and they stared into each other's eyes. Then he dropped his gaze back to her naked breasts and she yelled.

At first the man stepped backward, then he pushed the door open and came into the steamy bathroom. He raised a hand to his lips, as if to caution silence. It was the hand that held the pistol.

This time, seeing the gun, Jane screamed. At that the man rushed to the tub and grappled with the woman who had half risen. “Be quiet!” he yelled. He struggled with her.

But she was bigger than he was, and stronger. She slipped on the bottom of the tub and fell back into the water, pulling the man with her. He floundered in the hot, soapy water. They were both yelling. And then he momentarily regained his balance, long enough to strike her on the head with the pistol barrel.

She slid down into a cloud of suds. The man struck at her head again. When the hot water reached her mouth she spluttered and fought back from confusion and shock, struggling to rise. The man was on his knees in the water, between her legs. A wet, gloved hand pushed her face down into the water.

Jane looked up between the gloved fingers and saw a narrow face that needed a shave. He knelt between her thighs, pushing, and she thought, Rape. He wants to rape me. The man's face was contorted and his mouth opened and closed. He was talking, yelling, but she could hear nothing. Her head roared and pain ballooned. He raised the pistol again and struck at her.

He's afraid, she thought. But he's hurting me. A terrible fear grew in her that the blows were doing something bad to her head, spreading numbness and weakness. She blocked a blow with her forearm. The pistol fell on her stomach and then disappeared into the soapy water. Her forearm was numb.

With both hands he forced her down into the water, pushing on her head. Once again water rushed into her mouth and nose. She coughed and threw his hands off. She sat up. She grabbed instinctively at him for balance and he fell forward on top of her.

“Goddamn!” he yelled. He thrashed wildly at the woman. She clawed at him and wrapped her long legs powerfully about his hips. With a great effort she managed to roll over so that now she was on top, straddling him. He lay on his back, fully clothed in the hot water. Her right forearm was across his neck and he was strangling. When he tried to breathe he only took in water.

He felt the pistol under his hip. He seized it by the barrel and lashed out. The butt struck the side of the tub with a
bong.
The woman grabbed his gun hand and held it. With his free hand he punched at her and hit her full on the nose.

Then her weight was gone from him. He sat up in the tub, choking and coughing, rubbing at his stinging eyes. When he could see he looked wildly about him.

Jane Clippert crawled away toward the bedroom on all fours. Through blinking, burning eyes the man stared after her. She lumbered out of the bathroom like a wounded bear. Blood and soap bubbles ran down her wet back. Her breasts hung down between her arms and swayed as she crawled. Blond hair hung bedraggled and bloody. Her naked buttocks disappeared through the door.

The man slipped on the tub bottom in his shoes and scrambled out. His feet squished in the shoes. He grabbed a towel and mopped his face. He flung the towel away and went after the woman.

She was crouched against the foot of the big white bed, a white
telephone in her hand. It was the kind of telephone that has punch buttons in the receiver. Slowly she punched out a number.

“Stop!” yelled the man. She looked up, open-mouthed.

He fired the gun. Something hit her in the shoulder and she dropped the telephone. He fired again. And again. He stood in the doorway, not ten feet from the woman, and blasted away at her. Six shots. But only two of them hit her. The air was acrid and the room seemed to ring with sound of the pistol shots.

Jane Clippert lay sideways against the foot of the bed, trying to think what was happening. She looked down at her body. There was so much blood that she couldn't see any specific wounds, but there was pain in her right side and in her shoulder and she could hardly lift her right forearm. She looked up at the man in the doorway who was gawking at her. He was soaked, dripping, his pockets bulging, a smoking pistol in his hand. Then he ran away, down the stairs, his shoes squishing as he went.

She picked up the telephone and began to punch out the number again.

In the kitchen the man stumbled over the piled-up appliances and fell. He got up slowly, exhausted. He realized that he couldn't leave yet. Above him, on the wall, was a wooden rack containing a set of French cutlery. He fumbled in the rack with his wet gloves, then knocked it off the wall and shook out a long carving knife.

Something wrong with this phone, Jane thought. It was making a kind of siren noise. She pressed the disconnecting button and got a new dial tone. She punched out the number again.

The man was back. She could see that there was quite a lot of blood on him. He held the gun in his left hand and something else in his right. Then she saw what it was. She dropped the telephone to the floor and tried to rise. She fell back, onto the bed.

“Arthur Clippert and Associates, Attorneys,” said a woman's voice. “Hello. Hello? May I help you?”

The line went dead.

When she came to she was still on the bed, on her back. The man was gone. And then she saw the knife. Or rather, she saw the handle of the knife. It was sticking out of her chest. It was very hard to breathe. She heard a slight whistling sound and felt a small, dead weight in the center of her chest.

She tried to lift her hand to the knife but she couldn't seem to reach it. She quit trying. Somehow she was able to roll sideways off the bed, onto her knees. It took all her strength to rise to her feet. She took a few steps toward the telephone but when she tried to bend down she knew that it would be impossible. It was easier to stay erect, to walk. So she walked. She wavered and tottered, supporting herself with a hand against the white wall, trailing bloody handprints.

Down the stairs, one at a time. It seemed to take hours. At the bottom she turned toward the front door and with great effort turned the knob until the door swung open. She stepped outside, onto the porch.

She knew it must be cold, but she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel much, except the dead weight in her chest and a pounding in her head. She couldn't see clearly.

Very strange, she said to herself, look at me. Walking down Seneca in broad daylight and stark naked. Bad girl. She wondered if the old man who had been shoveling snow could see her, but apparently he had gone.

She felt drunk and delirious. She staggered, putting a foot carefully before her, then lurching her weight after it. She stopped and squinted at the bright Christmas display on her snow-filled lawn. The carolers were knee-deep in snow. They looked over her head, ignoring her nakedness, singing away in total silence with their mouths in O's.

The snow was deep enough that she was able to scoop up a handful by barely stooping. She brought it to her mouth but could not taste its cold wetness.

She stumbled along the sidewalk to the house next door. The Mercer's house. The walk had not been shoveled yet but the little porch had been swept off and someone had sprinkled salt on it. She could feel nothing underfoot, but knew in a distant way the coldness of the concrete and the graininess of the unmelted pieces of salt.

Edna Mercer was out in the small greenhouse attached to the rear of the house. It was her favorite place, especially in winter. She moved about in the heavy warm air, picking dead leaves off plants
and squirting the plants with distilled water from a spray bottle. She barely heard the distant chime of the doorbell.

Now why doesn't Martha get that? she wondered. The bell chimed again and again, as if someone were leaning against it. Then Mrs. Mercer remembered. Today was Martha's day off. It was too early for Henry to come down and answer the door. He would still be in the upstairs bathroom. It took the poor man hours each morning, sitting on the stool, to accomplish his business.

So she went off to answer the doorbell herself, grumbling amiably.