The Diehard

by Jon A. Jackson

  “Names are beginning to bore me,” Mr. Gordon said. “What else are you interested in?”

  “I'm much more interested in money,” Mr. Service said.

  Mr. Gordon shrugged. “So is everybody.”

  “Especially twenty million bucks,” Service said.

  “Twenty million? Like you say, it's interesting.”

  “Yes,” Service said. “Twenty million. You know what I do for a living, Mr. Gordon? I'm a finder. Somebody wants to find something, or somebody, they come to me. I'm good at it. Usually, I get a flat fee. I don't mind telling you that my fee is higher than the fee paid to any other man in my profession. But sometimes I work on commission. Especially if I'm looking for lots of money. Then I have a sliding scale.”

  “Sounds like interesting work,” Mr. Gordon said.

  “Interesting? Hah! You're damn right it's interesting. It may not look like it, Mr. Gordon, but I'm on a case right this minute.” He laughed. “That's right! Even as I sit here in this lovely Florida sun, drinking vodka.”

  Mr. Gordon was restless again. He was also baffled. Was this the Heat, or wasn't it? He drank deeply from his glass of gin.

  “Am I boring you again, Mr. Gordon?”

  Mr. Gordon did not look at him. He looked across the pool at two blue-haired ladies in bikinis. They didn't look too bad, for sixty-year-olds. Their flesh was still fairly smooth and firm. They didn't look young, but many women in their forties would like to look like that, Mr. Gordon thought. He tried to imagine his old mother in a swimsuit, then pushed the notion out of his mind, embarrassed.

  “I wonder how they do it?” he said.

  “What? Who?” Mr. Service looked where Mr. Gordon was looking. “Oh, them. Good living. Tennis, masseuses, cosmetic surgery . . .”

  “I'm sorry,” Mr. Gordon said. “What were you saying?”

  Service laughed and shook his head. “You're too much, Mr. Gordon. Here I am talking about twenty million and you're looking at a couple of old bats in bikinis.”

  Mr. Gordon turned and looked at Service. “All right, Service, let's drop the comedy routine. What's your story?”

  “Twenty million. Actually, ten percent. That's my fee this time. So I'm really only talking about two million. Fifty-fifty. A million apiece.”

  Mr. Gordon frowned. “You're coming in about one-by,” he said.

  “One-by?”

  “That's radio talk,” Mr. Gordon said. “If you're not receiving a transmission very well, you say it's one-by. Or maybe two-by. If you're hearing it loud and clear, you say it's five-by.”

  “Fascinating,” Service said. “I'll give it to you loud and clear, then. I'm talking about a man in Detroit, name is Clippert. Is that five-by?”

  Mr. Gordon nodded slightly. “Name's familiar.”

  “Yes, the Flying Clipper,” Service said. “Something like twenty million Mr. Clippert has, or had. In cash. Or maybe it's in negotiable bonds. We're not sure.”

  “We?” Mr. Gordon said.

  “My clients and I.”

  “Who are your clients?” Mr. Gordon wanted to know.

  “At last,” Service smiled, “some interest. But who my clients are is no immediate concern of yours. Not yet. But I will say that Mr. Clippert is not one of them. Mr. Gordon, my clients are not nice people. Of course, Mr. Clippert isn't so nice himself. Anyway, we figure that the Flying Clipper doesn't really own that twenty million. That twenty million is up for grabs, Mr. Gordon. And that's where I come in. I may be short, but you ought to see me on a jump ball. And I figure you're probably good in the jump circle too.”

  Mr. Gordon sat back in his lounge chair. He signaled the waiter for another double gin. “I don't know anything about basketball,” he said, “or any twenty million.”

  Joe Service sighed. “All right, here it is. Five-by. About a week ago, somebody—just a couple of snatch-and-grab artists—broke into Mr. Clippert's house. Now maybe they were just after a couple of color televisions. But they didn't take any color televisions. I don't know what they did take. But I do know that Clippert had twenty million. The boys who broke in left the TV's. They also left a dead woman. Or, to be more exact, they left a woman for dead, only she didn't die right away.”

  “Didn't die?” Mr. Gordon was intensely interested. He looked very thoughtful. Then he said, “So what?”

  “She lived long enough to walk next door. There's a chance she might have said something before she died. The cops won't say.”

  “It doesn't matter,” Mr. Gordon said firmly.

  “Possibly not. What matters is twenty million. I want to know where it is. I mean to find out. Now if those boys took it . . . well, actually, only one of them is still alive. If he's got it, the money, we're willing to let him keep a whole million of it for himself. He'll be a millionaire. And he won't have to worry about what the woman said to the cops. We'll help this enterprising lad out of the country, if that's what he wants. We think he's an amateur, see? We think that, left to his own devices, the cops will get him. There's all kinds of cops on this case. Not just Detroit cops. So far, none of the federal agencies seem to have tumbled to the idea that the amateurs may have gotten the money. But they will.

  “So, we make an offer. If our hero wants to play ball, he can have a carefree million. If he wants to take the ball and go home, he's dead. But we don't want to kill him, understand—we want to help. Hell, a guy this enterprising might even find employment with my clients. A million dollars could buy a man's way into a casino setup, say in Brazil. And then, he'd have more than a million.”

  At this point, Joe Service leaned forward, and with his face close to Mr. Gordon's said, “Is that five-by, Gordon?”

  Mr. Gordon surprised Service. He screwed his face up in disgust and said, “Five-by-five. I've been shafted.”

  “What?”

  “Look, Service, or whatever your name is, you're not a bottle, are you?”

  “A what?”

  “A cop.”

  “For Christ's sake,” Service said.

  “All right, all right,” Mr. Gordon said. “I'm just telling you that I didn't know anything about any twenty million. What I know about is much less. Much, much less.”

  Joe Service looked at the pitted face, the big body, the blunt-fingered hands. Finally, he said, “I see.”

  “So I can't help you,” Mr. Gordon said. “Sorry. I wish to hell I could. At the prices they charge here, I'm not going to be here for long.”

  Service was silent. “I'll have to think about that,” he said at last. “You might be able to help, after all.” He got up. “I'll let you know. See you around, Lord Byron.”

  Mr. Gordon watched him walk rapidly away. He picked up his double gin and tonic.

  Twenty-one

  On his way downtown to lunch with Shirley Carpenter, Mulheisen stopped by Headquarters. He gave McClain a complete briefing on events since the evening before.

  “Despite the Clipper's denials,” Mulheisen said, “we have definitely tied him to Wienoshek. This other story about the auto accident is pure bullshit. But that's all right. In fact, it's fine. Better than a confession, as far as I'm concerned.”

  “How so?” McClain asked.

  “Confessions aren't worth a hell of a lot in court, these days,” Mulheisen said. “You know that. But here I've got a signed and attested statement that will show him to be a liar.”

  “Not really,” McClain said. “You can't prove that he didn't have an accident, can you? Or that he didn't give somebody fifty dollars to forget about it. I think a jury would believe that part at least.”

  “Yes, but I think we'll be able to prove that Wienoshek was the burglar at Jasper Lake, and that the real reason that Clippert recognized the burglar was because he had once defended him in a court-martial. Then that story about the accident will look like what it is—a clumsy lie. That will be hard for anyone, even Homer Ferman, to overcome. Especially if we can then turn around and show that Wienoshek was involved in the second so-called
burglary and the murder of Mrs. Clippert.”

  McClain agreed. “Maybe we should pick up Clippert,” he said. “Do we have enough to hold him on?”

  “I like him dangling, better,” Mulheisen said. “He knows now that we definitely suspect him, but he doesn't know how close to the truth we are. If we pick him up and arraign him, then discovery rules are in effect and he learns what we know. And what could the prosecutor bring? A conspiracy charge? The prosecutor won't like that. No, I like him free, and nervous, and ignorant. He could lead us to Wienoshek, even, or to the money.”

  “You know,” McClain said, “that's another funny thing—”

  “I know,” Mulheisen interrupted. “You're wondering why we haven't heard anything from the Feds lately. I'm wondering too. But I think that after last night's break-in that we will hear from them.”

  “Well, is there anything you need?” McClain asked.

  “If you're going to be seeing the prosecutor, ask him if we can't have a couple of warrants ready on Clippert and Wienoshek. We won't use them until we have to.”

  Mulheisen got to Schweizer's before Shirley Carpenter. She was only a couple minutes late. She was not at all what Mulheisen had expected. He had expected a young sexpot.

  Mulheisen figured this woman to be thirty-five. She had divorcee written all over her. It's an air of diffidence and confidence, undercut by an edge of anxiety.

  She was not pretty. Five foot six and too thin. She did not have an attractive figure, except for long and handsome legs. She was a bit high-waisted. That was the point. Physically, she just missed in almost every category that convention has decreed as attractive. Her face was a bit too round for a thin girl, her nose a bit too large and blunt, her eyes just a mite small. Her hair was just too blond and too overdone at the hairdresser's. Her breasts were just too small and her hips not quite wide enough, nor slender enough to provide the willowy look of a fashion model.

  Nonetheless, she was very appealing. It was something to do with a candid manner and a good, quick smile.

  Over her Dieter's Special (something that Mulheisen couldn't fathom) she explained that her maiden name was Walton. “Well, not actually,” she amended. “It should be Gombrowicz, but my father is a used-car dealer and he claimed that he had so much trouble getting the name spelled right on title transfers that he had to have it changed.”

  “But Walton?” Mulheisen said.

  “He used to have a sales lot across the street from the Walton Hotel on Dequindre. He always liked the name. Anyway, my first husband's name was Carpenter, so I kept that, so as not to confuse our son.”

  “Your first husband?” Mulheisen said.

  She smiled. “I expect to marry again, Sergeant.”

  “To Arthur Clippert?”

  “Why not? It may sound like the old familiar secretary's folly to you—sometimes it seemed that way to me—but now that Arthur is . . . no longer married . . .”

  Mulheisen had a sinking feeling. He was sympathetic toward the woman, but it still seemed to him like the old familiar secretary's folly. He couldn't see Clippert marrying this woman. Not when he could have his pick of the likes of Lou Spencer. Or did he have his pick? Lou had seen through Clippert readily enough.

  Shirley Carpenter went on to talk of her twelve-year-old son, Scott. Yes, they had named him after the astronaut.

  Lunch was over before Mulheisen could do little more than get a fair impression of the woman's character. “Would you like to go somewhere else, have a drink?” he suggested.

  “I've got to get back to the office,” she said.

  “No, you don't,” he said. “It is within my power to arrest you. Besides, Clippert knows where you are.”

  “Perhaps my apartment would be more comfortable than the precinct house,” she said. “It isn't far.”

  She had a twelfth-floor apartment in the Seaforth Tower. It was a modern, high-rise building that stood where once there had been thousands of hovels and tenements, the old “Happy Valley” of Hastings Avenue. The urban planners had relocated the slum to less valuable real estate around the city, and erected themselves some lucrative and luxurious housing with a view of the river and Canada, and called it Lafayette Plaisance.

  Shirley Carpenter drew back the draperies, and through the full-length glass wall Mulheisen could see the snow falling on Detroit, on the river and on Canada.

  “I know what you're thinking,” she said. “This, on a secretary's salary. But I'm paid quite well, my ex-husband is a foreman at the Rouge plant and pays his alimony and child support promptly—and Art takes care of the rest.”

  “It's nothing to me,” Mulheisen said. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all. Art always smokes his pipe. I like it. What would you like to drink? I think I'll have Scotch, myself.”

  Mulheisen accepted a generous glass of bourbon and water. He lit a cigar and got down to the basic questions. About Jasper Lake: did she go there often? Answer: more than once. What about on the night of the burglary? Yes. Did she see the burglars? Yes. One was tall and one was short, that's all she could say for sure. They had passed by the car where she sat, but it was dark. She didn't think they saw her, nor did she think she could identify them.

  Did Mr. Clippert say anything to her about what had happened? Yes, but only, it seemed, what Clippert had told Mulheisen.

  Did Mr. Clippert coach her on what to say if she were asked? No. He trusted her to keep her own counsel; it was in her interests.

  She told Mulheisen that she was convinced that Arthur Clippert was innocent in the Fidelity Funding affair. As for the murder, there was simply no question of his innocence.

  “Surely you must have known something about the Fidelity Funding business,” Mulheisen said.

  “I've been all through that with the Michigan State Insurance Commission, with the U.S. Attorney, with the FBI, with the Securities Exchange Commission, the grand jury . . . Art had nothing to do with it. I'm sure he knew nothing about it until it appeared in the newspapers.”

  She sat across the living room from Mulheisen in a large furry yellow chair. She had taken her shoes off and had her feet tucked up under her. She wore a short skirt and Mulheisen once again admired her nice legs.

  The phone rang.

  “Yes,” she said. “He's here now. We're just talking. Of course . . . it's all right, I don't mind . . . yes . . . mmmhmmm . . . yes. Sure. Later.” She hung up. She didn't have to tell Mulheisen who it was. He didn't ask.

  By this time they were both on their third drink and Mulheisen felt mellow. He gazed out the big windows as she talked quietly. The snow fell and fell. The room was darkened by the heavy overcast. There were no lights on in the room. Mulheisen liked it that way. It suited his mood. He sat silently, watching the traffic crawl along Jefferson Avenue. He drew on his cigar and sipped at the whiskey. After she hung up they sat in silence for a long time, watching the snow.

  She got up and plugged in the lights of the Christmas tree in the corner. All the lights were blue and winked on and off on some thermal principle. She poured more whiskey in both their drinks and sat down again in the yellow chair.

  After a while, Mulheisen said, “I've heard everything I want to hear from you, Shirley, for now at least. And I believe you. That is, I think you believe what you are saying. I can't tell you what I think about these things, but I'd like to know what you think. I want to ask you some personal questions. You don't have to answer.”

  “I don't mind,” she said.

  “What do you think of Arthur Clippert?”

  “Arthur Clippert is a fine man,” she said, “a brilliant man. I believe in him. I trust him.”

  “But . . . I don't get it,” Mulheisen said. “You said yourself, something about a secretary's dream. Even if he's not a criminal, if he has done nothing against the law . . . look at all this. He set you up here long before his wife died. I suppose he said all kinds of things to you, talked of getting a divorce . . .”

  “Yes, w
e talked about that. Not as much as I would have liked. He meant it though, I'm sure. We didn't set a specific date. We knew it would happen, in its own time.”

  “All right. That's it,” Mulheisen said. “You chose to believe him. That's okay, but finally, let's face it, you're no dumb kid . . . ah hell, maybe I'm out of line.” He took a drink.

  She was calm. “Yes, you are out of line, but I don't mind. What you think doesn't matter. It won't change things. It is a dream. It is folly. I know that. But I am thirty-five. I have a son who is almost a teen-ager. I know I'm not beautiful.”

  “You have nice legs,” Mulheisen smiled.

  “They are my best feature,” she said. She smiled. “But what I'm saying is that I have to go with this dream. It's not my last chance, but it's my last best chance. And when it comes down to it, I feel I can make it happen.”

  “You have a lot of confidence,” Mulheisen said.

  “I know I'm not beautiful and I didn't go to finishing school in Switzerland. I don't have Jane's looks, her money, her style, her leisure. But I'm a woman. A damn good woman, too. Of that I'm confident. Enough men have told me so.”

  Mulheisen didn't quite understand. “Told you what?” he asked stupidly. It was the whiskey.

  Shirley Carpenter stood up. She faced him with the window behind her, hands on hips. “I'm a hell of a lay,” she said, “I might be the best lay in this town.”

  Mulheisen stood up. He set his glass on the coffee table. He looked at her across the darkened room. Her expression, the way she held herself, told him that she meant what she said. She had pride and he thought she was brave. He was moved.

  “I don't mind showing you,” she said.

  He knew she was serious and that it wasn't an idle proposition, nor a cynical one. She wasn't doing this for Arthur or for him. She meant to show him how good she was. He thought she might be very good indeed.