Deadman

by Jon A. Jackson

  Mulheisen found the gate where the next Butte-bound flight boarded and showed his identification. A helpful young woman from Delta Airlines checked the passenger list and found no “Helen Sedlacek” or any similar name. The plane hadn't boarded yet. Mulheisen cruised the other gates without success. He didn't see her in any of the little shops or snack bars, either. So, he had missed her, this time.

  For several minutes he wandered about, wondering if he should interrupt his flight to make a more protracted search, perhaps with airport authorities. But he realized that it would take too much time, and anyway, he didn't have a warrant. Indeed, he had no grounds whatsoever for detaining her if she were unwilling to be interviewed. She was a suspect, that was all.

  On the plane east, he pondered the situation and decided that she was probably not just passing through Salt Lake. That would be a mere coincidence. If a person were starting out from any place in the United States, the chances that they would pass through Salt Lake City and have to change planes there were not high. Not remote by any means, but not high. On the other hand, if she were staying in the area, she would be bound to travel in and out of a handful of gates that served an enormous region. It seemed to him that the odds were quite good that she was in the area. The question was, how long would she remain?

  Jimmy Marshall was at Detroit Metropolitan to pick him up. When they got past the preliminary foolishness—"Where'd you leave your horse?"—Mulheisen explained his notion about watching for Helen at Salt Lake City. Marshall thought it was a total waste of time. The region served by that airport was larger than Europe. If Helen Sedlacek were using a different name, it would be a matter of physically monitoring the gateways. Jimmy Marshall couldn't imagine that the Salt Lake City police, or any other agency, had the personnel to spare on this scale to aid the Detroit police, particularly since they had no arrest warrant.

  “Not yet, anyway,” Mulheisen said. He explained about the shotguns Jacky had retrieved from the cabin on Garland Butte. Mulheisen had brought the guns back with him, along with ample latent fingerprints from the house, which could be compared with known prints of Helen Sedlacek and the prints found in Iowa City. As for Joe Service, he had no prints on record, as far as they knew. But if Joe Humann was Joe Service, he would now.

  If there was any kind of forensic evidence linking Helen to any felony, Mulheisen felt that the airlines—there were only a handful—could be pressured into at least a computer monitor of their reservations system, a kind of flag on the name “Helen Sedlacek,” maybe even any “Helen S——” flying into or out of Salt Lake City. When people used a false name, they didn't usually falsify it much, especially amateurs. “Let's find out what Helen's mother's maiden name was,” he suggested. “Also, wasn't she married once? I seem to remember something about that. What was her married name? It doesn't seem likely—I suppose divorced women don't like to use the name of a man they rejected, or who rejected them—but a running woman may be desperate enough.”

  Back at the precinct—more greetings of “Where's your boots, podner?"—the file revealed that Helen had been married before, but the name wasn't indicated. A check at the Wayne County records produced a birth certificate and Oakland County found a marriage license. She was born to Mary Kaparich and Sidami Sedlacjich. She had been licensed to marry Ara Koldanian.

  Mulheisen was intrigued. A Serb marries an Armenian? It seemed unusual. There were a lot of Armenians in the Detroit area, mostly on the west side, he thought—Dearborn, the downriver communities. They were hardworking, enterprising people, in his experience. Like the Serbs, they were Eastern Orthodox, but he assumed there were significant differences in the two churches. Marshall agreed to run the two names past the airlines and also to set up an interview with Koldanian: He might have something useful to tell them about Helen.

  There was also about two weeks of phone calls to return and reports to be updated, developments on old cases to review, and . . . About five o'clock, he looked up to see Jimmy leaning against the doorjamb, smiling wryly.

  “So, Mul,” Jimmy said, “you ready to move to Montana?”

  Mulheisen shook his head. He was tired and ready to go home. “It's all right,” he said. “It's fine. I liked Butte. It's kind of a cranky, interesting old industrial town. But to live there or work there? Nah. Everything's so open, you're so exposed to the elements. I don't think so. It'd be colder than a brass jockstrap in the winter, I bet. Also, the newspaper is a pretty decent rag, but it doesn't cover the Tigers much, and it's hard to get good cigars. Nice country, though.”

  “What about the women?” Marshall wanted to know. “What'd you think of those cowgirls?”

  “Cowgirls?” Mulheisen laughed. “I'll tell you one thing, though, it seems like those women are a lot freer than around here. They're ready to jump out of their clothes at the drop of a hat.” He recounted the incident at Antoni's sauna and Sally McIntyre's cheerful shucking of her jeans at the hot springs. Marshall was deeply impressed.

  Sometimes when Mulheisen looked at his mother, he just about didn't recognize her. It seemed to him that she had once been older, fatter, bulkier. She wore flowery dresses once upon a time. She had a bosom once. The name Cora didn't seem odd, in those times; it seemed normal among her friends, Hazel and Grace and Mabel.

  He had been only a little boy, of course. His father was still alive, still going off to work every day in his brown or blue or gray suit, wearing a fedora and an overcoat. A pleasant man, he wore wire-rimmed glasses and smelled faintly of Old Spice aftershave lotion. He was the half of the salt-and-pepper shaker set that had disappeared. A grandma-and-grandpa set. He would be salt, maybe. His mother would be pepper, though evidently not a very hot pepper, just darker than salt.

  She was thicker then, and not only did she wear a flowered housedress but even, and always, an apron. Her hair was longer then, but already gray, in a bun on the back of her head, and she wore wire-rimmed glasses, too. She smelled of talc and a perfume that he believed was called White Shoulders, though perhaps it was just lilac water.

  In the intervening years, his mother had become younger while undeniably getting older. Her face was more lined, but she had become leaner, tanned, her bosom had disappeared, and her hair was quite short and a more steely gray. She wore contact lenses most of the time, but when she wore glasses, they were one of several pairs in Italian frames and never, never wire-rimmed. It appeared that she spent quite a nice sum on sunglasses. She wore slacks, bulky sweaters, boots (usually colorful rubber ones, or sturdy hiking ones), running shoes, a startling variety of stylish but clearly sturdy and protective jackets, anoraks, and parkas. She seemed to have a lot of gear: bicycles, binoculars, helmets, special gloves, backpacks, cameras. And she talked knowledgeably and interestedly about all of it.

  How all this had happened, Mulheisen didn't know. It had been gradual. Her round face had leaned into this finely wrinkled but leathery one so slowly that he hadn't noticed how. For one thing he didn't see a lot of her, generally speaking. For days, even weeks, their only communication was via notices attached to the refrigerator with magnets. Even these magnets had changed; where once they were bunnies and ducks, now they were embossed with old railway emblems, or the logos of environmentalist organizations.

  They did have a memorable conversation on the evening that Mulheisen came home from Montana. He got home about six. He was surprised to find her there. He had gotten used to not seeing her, to communicating on the refrigerator. She had just come back herself a few hours earlier, from the Gulf Coast. She had been following the migration of cranes. She was delighted to hear that he'd been to Montana. Butte, she said, wasn't far from Red Rocks Lake, where the trumpeter swans were. If he went back, he ought to take a run down there and also check out the possibility of wolves on the Idaho-Utah border.

  She observed that he looked tired, but also refreshed. He did feel refreshed, he said. It had been nice to get away. She watched him with interest and then said that he ought to get away more oft
en, maybe permanently.

  He'd been thinking about that, he told her. He had been wondering if he ought not to make a change. But . . . it was hard.

  Usually for the good, though, was his mother's observation. Then, apparently lapsing into a reflective mood, she said that she had experienced three or four major changes in her life, and every time she had been afraid, fearful that the change was not going to be for the best. Marriage was one of those times. Giving birth was another. In a conventional way, of course, one was supposed to think of these changes as positive, but when it was happening to you it didn't always seem that way.

  The biggest change, she supposed, came when his father died. But that too had turned out to be liberating. And then discovering the birds—that was a real liberation.

  She was thrilled to discover birds . . . and also shocked. Having lived for a good long time, she had not been prepared to find that she knew nothing about the hundreds of beautiful, colorful, even spectacular birds that just ordinarily surrounded her. She didn't know how this could have happened. One day she had been aware, if she had been asked, that there were sparrows, robins, chickens, ducks, and maybe eagles. Within another day or two she had discovered a rose-breasted grosbeak (an incredibly gorgeous bird, not imported, but sitting in the plum tree in her own yard), then a yellow chat, several warblers, and a golden-crowned kinglet, a green heron. Most important, she realized that her life had always been surrounded by creatures of surpassing beauty, elegance, and mystery. It still shocked her to think that these fabulous beings had been invisible to her, simply because of ignorance and an inability to see.

  All it had taken was a single walk around her own yard and down to the St. Clair River with a woman she had known for many years, a fellow past matron of the Eastern Star, who happened to be a birdwatcher. From that had come an incredible sequence of discovery, enchantment, and finally devotion to the causes of the environment and ecology.

  She was silent for a good long time, evidently reflecting on this remarkable transformation. Suddenly, she said, “Not all changes are liberating, of course. I never told you—we thought it was better not to—that I had a child long before you. She didn't live very long, just a few days. Her name was Mary, after my mother. After that, things were"—she hesitated—"difficult between your father and me. But, we got over it and ten years later you were born.” She smiled.

  Mulheisen was thunderstruck. A sister he had never known about? Years of his parents looking at one another in a special way, of saying things in a special tone, and he was not privy to it! He would be unable now to recollect some of these moments, to reconstruct the situation. His father was gone, his mother would be gone before too much longer, and only now he was learning that there was a whole aspect of life in the house where he had grown up to which he had no access. He wanted to ask a million questions, but as he looked at his mother she just shook her head. “Don't spend even a minute thinking about it,” she said. “Your father and I were stupid enough to let it bother us for years, until you came along. It was a waste of time. We never figured it out.”

  There was, of course, yet another change awaiting her, she said. This would be the big one. She had every reason to hope that it would be as liberating and exciting as the changes that had gone before.

  16

  Vetch

  “These people have no culture,” Victor Echeverria explained to his associate Hernan as they drove to a meeting with Humphrey. It was an evening meeting, at Humphrey's home in Grosse Pointe, not at the Krispee Chips factory.

  “The Italians?” Hernan asked. It was Echeverria's Mercedes, but Hernan drove. He liked to drive nice cars, and Echeverria wanted to indulge him. They drove out along Jefferson Avenue and then turned down toward the lake.

  “The Fat Man isn't Italian,” Echeverria retorted scornfully, “not really. He is Norte . . . a Yank. The Italians have culture, certainly—cathedrals, the great artists, music—but these pigs, they have been in Detroit too long. Their culture is Cadillac culture.” He laughed, they both laughed.

  “Now he wants to be called Humphrey, or Mr. DiEbola,” Echeverria went on. They crawled along a quiet street, the bare limbs of the oaks and maples rattling in the wind off Lake St. Clair, which was not visible beyond the walls and gates of these exclusive estates. They were looking for Humphrey's gatehouse. “I will call him Diablo, the devil.” He appreciated Hernan's low chuckle.

  The gate man did not wear a uniform. Humphrey didn't like uniforms. This man was young and athletic. He wore dark slacks, a dark and warm jacket, and a baseball-type hat. A holstered automatic was strapped to his hip, and he carried a cordless telephone and a clipboard. The visitors sensed rather than saw at least two other men nearby, who presumably were more heavily armed. The gate man checked their names against the clipboard and repeated the names into the telephone. He told them to drive on, but warned that they must stay on the main drive and not stop.

  “To the Fat Man we are all Mexicans,” Echeverria remarked as they rolled slowly along. It was at least a half minute to the well-lit front door of the house. Before they reached it, Echeverria insisted that Hernan stop.

  “He told us not to stop,” Hernan said nervously, but he stopped.

  “Fuck El Gordo,” Echeverria said. He got out and unzipped his pants. He pissed calmly while staring up at the ragged clouds that scudded off the lake, hauntingly lit by the half moon. He zipped up quickly when he heard what sounded like a small herd of ponies galloping, and he jumped back into the car. Three huge dogs arrived seconds later and placed their monstrous paws on the rolled-up windows of the Mercedes. They barked loudly, their foot-long tongues lolling out. They were Dobermans.

  “Get away!” Echeverria shrieked at them, wincing at the scratching of the dogs’ claws on the metal of the car. Someone came running and called the dogs off as Hernan pulled away. At the door there was no sign of the dogs, and another darkly appareled young man, armed with a shotgun on a sling, stepped forward from the lighted portico and opened the car door to let Echeverria out. The young man made no mention of the dogs or of their stopping. Echeverria walked quickly into the house. A pretty young girl in a conventional maid's costume led them along a carpeted hallway lined with finely upholstered chairs, a silk-clad couch that appeared to be Renaissance Italian, past a small, graceful table on which there was an intricate old bronze statue of intertwined figures, a man and a dragon-like snake. She stopped at a large door and knocked once, then opened the door. She closed it behind them.

  Humphrey DiEbola sat on a high teak and leather chair, almost a bar stool, one elbow on a marble-topped bar. He wore a navy blue jumpsuit and slippers, and he was eating from a bowl with a plate of Italian bread at hand.

  “Vetch!” he cried out, beckoning to them. “Come in! Come in! So nice to have you here. Have some menudo. You like menudo? Sure you do. Everyone likes menudo.”

  “No, thank you,” Echeverria assured him. He turned to his companion. “Mr. Diablo, this is my associate, Mr. Ghittes.”

  “Mr. Ghittes,” Humphrey acknowledged. “Have some menudo. You guys like menudo. You must. My chef is a genius with menudo, but this recipe I got from a guy upstate, from Traverse City. The poet Harrington. He's very famous.” The name meant nothing to Echeverria. “I never heard of him neither, till I met him at a party,” Humphrey admitted, “but he sure knows menudo. ‘The holy Mayan menudo,’ he calls it. You don't want some? No? Too bad. Your loss.” He mopped up the remainder of the stew with a hunk of bread and devoured it, then mopped his chin and slid off the stool. “Well, let me get you a drink. Whattayou have? We got everything. Marco!” he bellowed and a young man instantly appeared. “Get these fellas what they want to drink.”

  The room was large with French doors that looked out onto a terrace and beyond a broad dark lawn to the tumbled waters of the lake, gleaming under the moon. A fire burned in a marble-framed fireplace. DiEbola sat down heavily on a large couch. Marco brought him a large glass of carbonated water with ice
and a twist of lemon. He brought the others whiskey. When the weather had been disposed of and the compliments on the beauty of the house given and accepted, Humphrey said, “Ghittes? You must be the son of Hector Ghittes, out of Cali?”

  The young man admitted that he was the son of the man who was, if not the absolute czar or generalissimo of cocaine in Colombia, then at least a principal member of the inner circle. In these days it was hard to keep track of who was currently on top. But Ghittes senior had been at the top, among the chiefs, for a very long time.

  “My regards to your father,” Humphrey said. “We have been good friends and we have done business, with pleasure.”

  “My father sends his compliments,” young Ghittes responded. “He will be pleased to hear your regards and my report that you are looking well and in good health.”

  “Thank you,” Humphrey responded. “I am feeling very well.”

  “You have lost weight,” Echeverria said.

  It was true. Humphrey had lost as much as fifty pounds in the six months or so since he had ascended to power. Perhaps it was worry or the stress of holding together the organization, but he didn't admit it to his young guests. Humphrey privately attributed it to habanero salsa. He said he was working hard but he felt good, and he was getting regular exercise, long walks along the lake, and his diet was good and regular. “But,” he said to Ghittes, “I'll never be as dashing as you, my young friend. You must keep the señoritas dancing at a furious pace!”

  Echeverria was clearly impatient with this focus on Ghittes. He was a tall, slender man, hardly older than Ghittes, with handsome features and a very assured manner. “We have come to talk about business, Diablo,” he said.

  “I was sorry to hear about your brother,” Humphrey said. “Ray Echeverria was a valued friend. I was pleased to hear that his assassin was himself killed.”