Deadman

by Jon A. Jackson

  Matty, a slender, slick-looking guy, nodded. He grinned ingratiatingly and apologized for not warning her about Rossamani. Finally she smiled, a thin, grim smile, and unzipped her slacks. She perched on the edge of the desk and said, “Come here.”

  “You know I don't like that,” Matty said.

  “I didn't like what I had to do,” she said. “Now it's your turn, Doggy.”

  Matty dropped to his knees.

  9

  Mul of the West

  If we go to the airport, go through all the rigmarole of checking in, board the plane, fly for ten hours—say, to the Gulf of Mexico, crossing over Cuba, and then out to sea, all the way to England and back across the ocean—and then land where we took off from . . . have we actually been anywhere? Mulheisen pondered this from time to time, usually while flying to some distant city. While in the air force he had flown on SAC refueling flights like the one just described, and he found it difficult to assess: whether he had actually been anywhere other than in an airplane, an experience not much different than if the plane had never taken off, particularly if he flew at night or above an overcast for most of the route. This is what ordinary travel has become.

  Mulheisen mused on this as he took off from the enormous industrial urban area that is Detroit, climbing immediately through a thick overcast and then leveling off, the power easing back, blandly cruising. The flight attendants immediately commenced their flight-long busyness, pulling carts up and down the aisles while Mulheisen tried to ignore the crying children, the never-ending parade of pissers shuffling back and forth to the toilet. Below him there were forests, towns, lakes, ribbons of highway . . . then a very great lake, an inland sea on which tiny freighters dragged tiny wakes. But Mulheisen didn't see any of it, and the aircraft hissed on. “It's always sunny on top,” the pilots used to say, but the window at his side continued to display a cloudscape not more interesting than the television before which you have fallen asleep, the broadcasting day completed.

  The only drama in this video show were the landings. The voices telling him to lock his seat belt, then the aircraft tilting dangerously, then gliding, then surging forward powerfully, jolting down with an enormous roaring and vibration as the engines’ thrust reversed and the flaps went to full and blue lights flashed by and he strained against the strap anxiously, until the power died and they began to taxi. He sat back, relieved but a little guilty about his fear, and he didn't glance around at his fellow passengers, respecting their terror or trying to mask his own terror, which anyway dissipated entirely by the time the plane arrived at the gate. There were at least four of these thrillers: you don't get to Montana nonstop.

  However, there is no such thing as a continental overcast and eventually, somewhere west of the Mississippi River, the clouds dissipated. Now he seemed to be getting somewhere. In America, as you move farther west, the terrain becomes grosser. First enormous plains covered with crops or, in season, snow; few towns, fewer houses, lonely roads; then scars in the earth, vast expanses of erosion and geological litter; and finally forests again and the upthrust of mountains. The landings were hairier now. The aircraft banked like a fighter jet and thundered to shrieking, shuddering halts. On takeoff the aircraft climbed steeply, desperately clawing for altitude. Below him, scrolling through his seat-side screen were immense reaches of piled rocks, and in every valley a tiny silver stream with, usually, a small town at the intersections of valleys.

  The Butte landing is one of the most harrowing, Mulheisen found. He felt he was almost a qualified fighter jock by the time he wrenched his way around the mountains and raced to a belt-straining halt. When he reached the front door, the air was cool and fresh. The airports are small out west, in the lesser cities like Bismarck, Bozeman, and Butte. Often they don't have mobile ramps and you have to deplane onto the windy tarmac. But that in itself is rather nice, at least Mulheisen thought so. He liked to get a good look at the airport activity, the small aircraft, the people driving baggage trucks and handling the fuel. He liked the smell of jet fuel: It reminded him of his youth in the air force.

  In these small airports there is a distinct absence of threat. A person from a city like Detroit feels strangely confident and almost at ease. It is never far to the main reception area, and anyway, there was a man to meet him.

  “Sergeant Mulheiser?” he said. He wore a gabardine uniform, with a lot of gun belt and holster and a kind of cowboy hat. As tall as he was, he wore high-heeled cowboy boots. His face was huge and dimly pitted. He seemed to be smiling, but perhaps not.

  Mulheisen eyed the brass nameplate over the pocket and said, “Zhock?”

  The deputy frowned. “Jacky Lee,” he said, then extended a hand so large and stiff you could never imagine a glove on it, but at least it wasn't a crusher.

  “Just call me Mul.”

  “Mr. Antoni said he's sorry, but . . .” He pronounced it “An-TONY," just as Mulheisen always did. Antoni was deeply involved in a drug case, it seemed. However, he would pick up Mulheisen from his hotel that evening, for dinner.

  “You want a drink?” Jacky said.

  “Absolutely,” Mulheisen said. He'd had more than a couple in the four-stop route from Detroit, but that last landing had erased all the ease that the previous drinks had provided.

  Jacky Lee was not a man to waste money on the airport bar. They drove toward the town, which Mulheisen could see in the distance, perched up the hillside. On one side was an enormous craggy range of mountains, so close you could lean on them. Mulheisen was strangely pleased to hear Jacky refer to these mountains, with a slight gesture of the hand, as “the Continental Divide.” What a powerful notion was hidden in that offhand gesture, Mulheisen thought. In front of them, only partially obscured by the ugly panoply of chain-restaurant and auto-dealership signs, was a huge, raw hill—larger than any mountain in Michigan—that was covered with buildings, except for a scattering of scabrous bare patches. On the airliner's approach, Mulheisen had seen the immense crater filled with water that was the remnant of years of pit mining. It was bizarre. An industrial lake on the very edge of a city, scooped out of a mountain. This was Butte.

  Jacky stopped at a little bar that had a faux A-frame portico. They sat down to shots of whiskey with beer chasers. Mulheisen was pleased to find that they had Stroh's beer.

  “I was the one who found him,” Jacky said.

  “Uh-huh,” Mulheisen said. “He must have been a mess.”

  “He was. We didn't think he'd live. Hell, I didn't even think he was alive.”

  Mulheisen instantly perceived they were talking about someone other than the mob killer Gianni Antoni had called him about. But he just sipped his whiskey and looked out the window at the amazing mountains. There was some kind of superhighway issuing from the mountains. He could make out large trucks creeping up and down. Everything seemed about ten miles away. “What's up there?” he asked, indicating an enormous white object on the very ridge of the Divide, overlooking the valley.

  “Statue,” Jacky said. “Our Lady of the Rockies. It's lit at night. Those trucks are coming down from Homestake Pass. There's another pass to the north . . . Elk Park.”

  “The pass,” Mulheisen echoed, marveling to himself. Just imagine being able to offhandedly say “up on the pass,” or “over the pass.” It didn't mean much to these people, of course, but to a Detroit boy it had a magical twang.

  “Doin’ all right now, though,” Jacky said.

  “Uh-huh,” Mulheisen said. “What does he say?”

  “Nothing,” Jacky said.

  Mulheisen liked the way Lee said that. He understood that the man, whoever he was, whomever Lee was talking about, had not said anything, as opposed to having said something that turned out to be inconsequential.

  “What about Helen Sedlacek?” Mulheisen said.

  “Oh, her. Well, she was living down to Tinstar,” Jacky said, “and now she's gone. No sign of her. Her boyfriend, Humann, there's no sign of him.”

  “No sign,
eh?” Mulheisen said. “Well, who are we talking about, then?”

  “Deadman,” Jacky said.

  “A dead man, sure,” Mulheisen said. “But I thought you made an identification? Through the FBI?”

  “Oh, that guy,” Jacky said. He actually lifted his eyebrows and widened his eyes to register that he understood that they had been talking at cross-purposes. “Soper, or whatever. You know him?”

  “I know of him,” Mulheisen said. He took a long draught of beer. He felt a little better. “Not a loss to the community. Goes by the name of Mario, usually. I picked him up once on a muscle charge. He pulled some time back east. New York,” he clarified, realizing that to this lawman, Detroit was also back east. He drank the rest of his shot. It was bourbon. “But you were talking about someone else.”

  “Yeah, sure. I thought you were here to identify Deadman.”

  “Dead men?”

  “Deadman,” Jacky said. “The guy I found on the road.”

  Mulheisen didn't get it. Jacky explained.

  “Carmine Deadman?” Mulheisen said. “Well, it's obvious. Carmine was the mob boss who was hit in Detroit last spring. Your ‘deadman’ was probably involved. Whoever hit him—Soper?—was just putting out a notice, that this ‘deadman’ was in repayment for Carmine. His name isn't Carmine Deadman.”

  “I didn't think it was,” Jacky said defensively, “but I had to call him something.”

  Mulheisen agreed. “It was as good a name to give an unidentified man as any. Rather droll, in fact.”

  Jacky didn't like that word, “droll.” He knew it meant “funny,” more or less, but it was too fancy. “I wasn't trying to be droll,” he said.

  Mulheisen looked at the man carefully, waiting until Jacky turned to face him. “Can we take a step back here, Jacky?” he said. “I'm not some big-city cop out here to make you look like a hick. I'm here because I was told that you had discovered the body of a well-known mob hit man, a fellow named Soper, who was known to associate with the late mob boss Carmine. It's my task, when I'm on my own turf, to find out who killed Carmine. That's all I want. I'm very pleased, however, to learn that in addition to Soper, you've turned up some evidence on a young woman named Helen Sedlacek, whose late father was an associate of Carmine's. We happen to believe that Carmine had Helen's father killed. We also know that Helen disappeared from Detroit the same day that Carmine died. So, we make connections. Now the connections have landed me on your turf. I'm happy to be here, happy to be of assistance, but I assure you that I fully understand that it's your turf. Okay?”

  Jacky almost smiled. “Sure,” he said. “You want to go see Deadman? Maybe he's part of it.”

  “Oh, I'd be happy to see him,” Mulheisen said, “but I doubt that I'd recognize him. It occurred to me, just now, that it might be a character we know as Joe Service. We don't know much about Service, but apparently he is, or was, some kind of contractor with the mob, for the late Carmine, in fact. He wasn't known to be a hit man, but more of an in-house investigator, a kind of troubleshooter. Helen Sedlacek was seen in the company of Service in the days before she disappeared. The trouble is, I don't have anything on Service. No pictures, no prints. I think I may have seen him, once or twice, but I didn't remark him at the time and . . . well, you get the picture, I'm sure.”

  Jacky understood. Like Mulheisen, he had simply noted with suspicion that it wasn't often that two strangers end up dead, or near dead, in one sparsely populated county. Not in Montana, anyway. All Mulheisen could say about Service was that he was below average height, about thirty years old or a little less, athletic build, good-looking, with dark hair. That wasn't nearly enough, although it certainly matched with Carmine Deadman, and Joseph Humann.

  Back in the car and driving uptown, Jacky said that he had tried to link his “Deadman” with the missing Joseph Humann, Helen Sedlacek's associate in Tinstar. A couple of people from Tinstar had been brought in to see the recovering victim, but his face was so bandaged and contorted that they hadn't been able to say if the man was the one they knew as Humann. They had taken many latent fingerprints from Humann's home, but the word wasn't back on the comparison with the victim, as yet.

  “You had lunch?” Jacky asked. “No? Well, I'll take you for a quick tour and we can get a bite, kind of give you a feel for the place. It's gotta be a little strange, just flying in like this.”

  This was agreeable to Mulheisen. He sat back to absorb what he could, in the hope that he could make some sense of a new town. He had chauffeured visiting cops around Detroit, and he'd always been curious about their impressions. It was normally bewilderment at the sprawling city. Butte, however, was clearly more compact, more digestible.

  Mulheisen had occasionally contemplated leaving Detroit. It isn't always easy to love the place. As a student of the history of that strategic straits, he knew that successive Indian nations had considered it important enough to gather there from time to time, but none had ever chosen to stay. Only the European invaders and then the Americans had stayed and built, but there was a persistent tendency for flight even among them. Indeed, the city was experiencing a dramatic ten-year hegira.

  Sometimes it seemed to Mulheisen that everyone he knew had left Detroit. There were Detroit people all over the country. A few years earlier, in fact, he had considered moving to Oregon. But he had always abandoned these notions because the pull of the local milieu was too strong, and anyway, the idea of learning a whole new place seemed too daunting.

  Driving uptown with Jacky Lee, he experienced the difficulty intensely. There is almost nothing of Detroit in a place like Butte, Montana. The mountains, the air, the vistas—it was overwhelming. There was, however, a certain resemblance. Like Detroit, Butte is an industrial city in a process of decay and change. In a perverse way, Mulheisen warmed to these empty brick buildings, the littered streets of dilapidated neighborhoods, boarded-up hotels, and weedy lots where a house had been demolished, the rearing silent hoist frames and rusting tin roofs of mines. These mountains were exciting, but they were also alien and unnerving; urban decay and even the brutal, grotesque disfiguration of the hillside by the mines seemed familiar and friendly.

  Mulheisen had been to just about all of the major cities in the country, but only on business. Most often it was a quick in and out to pick up an extradited prisoner. The airport, the ride to the city or county police headquarters, the motel, a dinner with an officer or two whom he'd met on similar assignments in Detroit, or at a conference—often with an old friend or acquaintance from Detroit who was now living in San Francisco or Houston or Atlanta. The next morning he'd pick up the prisoner and get back on the plane. San Francisco looked nice; so did Reno. One of his best friends lived near Reno now and was always after Mul to relocate. Mulheisen liked to visit, but the prospect of actually leaving the grungy environs of Detroit, the great steamy, swampy, brutally cold and dank stinking morass of lovely forested and broad-avenued riverside Detroit, for some new and not quite right town where people lacked an edge to their conversation . . . Aw, to hell with it, he would inevitably say.

  However, Butte looked okay. It was as awful as he could wish and at the same time pretty grand. He especially liked the people. Jacky Lee's taciturnity notwithstanding, everybody here seemed to be friendly and cheerful. They were walking from the parking lot to the Finlen Hotel, and a passerby looked up and met Mulheisen's eye and said, “Hi ya, pardner.” Mulheisen was startled. He looked to Jacky Lee, but Jacky said he didn't know the guy. You don't make eye contact on the streets of Detroit; it invites an unwelcome intimacy, such as a gun alongside the head and ungentle hands tearing at one's clothing. The old guy probably mistook me for someone else, Mulheisen thought. But a few minutes later, as they walked over to the M & M saloon, a young fellow came out of Gamer's Restaurant, stopped to pick his teeth (everybody in Butte picked their teeth, he soon realized), and nodded to Mulheisen. “Howdy,” he said. In the great swirling mass of men and women in the M & M saloon, playing keno, drinking
beer, eating lunch, several people nodded at him and said hello with a smile. He had no idea what the hell this meant, but it was pleasant, if a little unsettling.

  For lunch Jacky Lee had driven him out to the perimeter road, Continental Drive, to a little pasty joint that didn't appear to have a name. It wasn't much of a joint. It reminded Mulheisen of some soul food places in Detroit: not more than a halfhearted attempt at decor, a simple counter with vinyl-covered stools, a couple of Formica-topped tables with mismatched chairs, some kind of ersatz wall covering that was supposed to resemble wood paneling but didn't come close. Clean though. And the pasties were delicious. They were served very simply: a single large pastry stuffed with meat and potatoes lying like a steaming brown island in a lake of brown gravy on a plate. You could get a side order of coleslaw in a Styrofoam container.

  The pastry was not delicate. It had to be strong enough to contain the meat and potatoes. Mulheisen liked it very much and asked the young woman in a full apron who had brought the plates out from the kitchen just what the ingredients were.

  “Oh, beef, potatoes, onions, sometimes carrots—depends on who is cooking.”

  “Ground beef?” Mulheisen asked.

  Her eyes widened in horror. “Ground beef! Good lord! Flank steak.” She disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Not far from the pasty place, Mulheisen noticed a church with three somewhat Oriental, or Russian-looking domes. Jacky identified it as Holy Trinity, a Serbian Orthodox church. “The priest there is from Detroit,” he added.

  “From Detroit? You're kidding.”

  But he wasn't and when they stopped, the young priest was delighted to see them. This was his first parish, he told them, and he'd been amazed to find such a large, flourishing congregation way out west. The church was very beautiful, standing below the towering ridge of the Continental Divide. They chatted about the Tigers for a few minutes, and then Mulheisen asked if a young woman from Detroit, Helen Sedlacek, had been to visit. No one of that name had appeared, the priest said, it didn't even sound like a Serbian name, but when Mulheisen described Helen, he quickly recollected a young, dark-haired woman who had wandered in one afternoon, earlier in the summer. Very attractive, about thirty, with a silver streak in her hair. He knew nothing about her, he said, and he was sure that she hadn't talked to his wife or he would have heard about it, but he would ask around. He hadn't seen her again. He was sure that she hadn't given the name Sedlacek, however. He had assumed she was a tourist—"People drive along the highway there,” he said, pointing up at the road coming down from Elk Park, “and they see the church. If they're Orthodox, they recognize what it is, right away, and they stop by. They're always surprised by the size of the community, and sometimes they find familiar names among the congregation, or even distant relations. I did.”