“How do you know it was a Mob hit?” asked Flynt.
“A man best known as Jack the Lookout takes a bust for bookmaking and racketeering and then turns up dead on a bus bench with a canary in his mouth? Just a guess on my part.”
“Got any other guesses?”
“I guess I’d start with the license plate number on the back of the picture. I guess I’d find the owner. I guess I’d ask him, ‘Who are the guys in this picture?’”
Flynt rattled the change in his pockets and studied his shoes. “In those days, the plate numbers were on microfilm. They were archived for four years and then went into the dumpster.”
Being as I now had a client, Lily, who’d fronted me ten K, and my best lead had just swirled down the crapper, I said, “C’mon in, it’s just me and the boys tonight. My wife has a surveillance out in Holland.”
The smile that spread across Detective Archer Flynt’s face is the reason executioners have always worn hoods. We moved the cars up to the house. I made him help me lug in the groceries. Rusty met us at the top of the stairs, dancing and wagging his tail.
“Is the dog all right?” asked Flynt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Looks vicious to me.”
“That’s the biggest chocolate lab I’ve ever seen.”
“Mostly hair,” I said. “Leaves it all over the house.”
Ben had a movie running on the VCR. I told him, “Ben, this is Detective Archer Flynt, state police.”
Ben pushed the pause on the remote, walked over, and offered his hand. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said.
Archer took his hand for a quick shake.
“We get you a soda? Cup of coffee?” asked Ben.
“I got a long drive,” said Flynt.
Ben went back to his movie. Flynt looked stunned, unaccustomed as he was to having polite hospitality and me in the same frame. I hung my coat in the hall closet and parked my Colt on the top of the refrigerator.
“Some place we can talk?” asked Flynt.
“I gotta get the ribs on,” I said. I rolled up my sleeves and washed my hands in the kitchen sink. “I cook ’em low and slow. Pull up a seat.”
Flynt grabbed a stool and slid up to the far side of the island counter. “You’re the only lead I’ve got,” he said. Rusty walked up squeaking a ball in his mouth, dropped it at Flynt’s feet, and nudged Flynt’s leg with his nose.
“Go lie down,” I said and showed Rusty my index digit. “Hey Ben, where’s Daniel?” I rinsed out the sink with the sprayer.
“He had a date,” said Ben. “They went up to Greenville to see a movie. He said to save him some ribs.”
“Snooze, you lose,” I said. Rusty sat next to me and leaned his weight into my leg. I closed the sink drain, started the water running, and nudged the dog with my leg. “Go lie down. I’m cooking.”
Rusty slunk off a half dozen steps into the dining room, circled twice, and flopped down to watch me. After adding vinegar to the water, I turned back to unpack the ribs and stared at Flynt until he looked uncomfortable. When he started to fidget, I asked, “Who sent you the picture?”
“I ask the questions,” said Flynt.
With a knife from the silverware drawer, I cut the cellophane on the meat packages and let the ribs slide off the Styrofoam trays into the water running in the sink. “Well, you’ve got a long drive.”
“A concerned citizen,” said Flynt.
“Mark Behler,” I said.
“So what?”
“So I’m not your only source of information,” I said.
“He’s a journalist,” said Flynt. “He can protect his sources.”
“A journalist,” I said, and turned off the water in the sink. “Not a priest.”
“He said the picture was all he had.”
I took a gallon-sized mixing bowl out of the cupboard and set it on the counter. “Where did he get the picture?”
“I didn’t drive out here to talk about Mark Behler.”
“I’ve already told you everything I know,” I said and dumped a pound of dark brown sugar into the mixing bowl. “So, if you don’t want to talk about Mark Behler, you’re wasting your time.”
“How do I know you’ve told me everything?”
I snagged a bottle of Budweiser out of the fridge.
Flynt waved a hand. “I’m on duty.”
“Damn,” I said. “And here I thought we were just smokin’ and jokin’.” I snapped the cap off the beer, poured about a third of the bottle in the bowl with the brown sugar, and watched it foam while I hunted a mixing spoon from the drawer. “My attorney told you about the pictures. I volunteered the rest.”
“What were you doing on the street the night you took the pictures?”
“Working.”
“For whom?”
“Uncle Sam.” I stirred the sugar and beer together, but I could feel grit with the spoon so I added a little more beer. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“It’s thirty years ago!”
“Great,” I said. I added a bottle of Open Pit Hickory Smoked Barbecue Sauce to the bowl and stirred. “Then you give me a rundown on the Michigan State Police Red Squad activities.”
“You know I can’t talk about that,” said Flynt.
“Grease for the goose,” I said. “You can’t tell me that thirty years ago the state police ran surveillance against political dissidents. I can’t tell you that I was a gofer-level agent running a shit surveillance.”
“The Red Squad had nothing to do with the death of Jack Vincent.”
“Vincenti?” I said.
Flynt nodded and waved a hand. “Right,” he said.
I retrieved my roaster pan from beneath the counter and took my time lining it with aluminum foil, leaving six to eight inches to hang over the sides.
Finally, Flynt said, “Smells fantastic.”
“Who’s Jack Vincent?”
“Vincenti,” said Flynt. “Jack the Lookout.” He started working the pockets of his jacket. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Knock yourself out,” I said and slid him a glass ashtray from the stack next to the toaster on the back bar.
Flynt shook a Camel out of a pack he found in the side pocket of his rumpled suit jacket and tamped it down on the counter. I slid what remained of the beer across the counter. Flynt shook his head.
“What are you,” I said, “six-four, two-twenty?”
Flynt shrugged.
“You got half a beer there. A man your size is not going to blow a good score.”
I fished another beer out of the fridge and took a slug. “Got to finish the six pack before my wife gets back.”
Flynt hammered his smoke one more time before lighting it up. I poured barbecue sauce from the bowl into the roaster pan, about half an inch covering the bottom, and parked the roaster pan next to the sink. Without looking back at Flynt I said, “Thirty years ago fingerprints weren’t on computer?”
“No computers,” said Flynt. I heard him tip up his beer.
“If you’d run the fingerprint and come up with my name,” I said, “you never would have told Mark Behler.” I eased the pork ribs into the roast pan and poured more sauce over them.
“So?”
“Behler knew,” I said and rinsed the rack of beef ribs.
“Uh-huh?”
I rested the beef ribs on top of the pork and poured over the rest of the sauce. “You think Mark Behler knows how to raise a fingerprint from a photo and get an ID from the feds in Virginia?”
“A cop in the mix?”
Pulling up edges of the foil, I folded them together and rolled them down into a tight seal over the ribs. “Has to be.” I popped the lid onto the roaster pan.
“Who?”
“I know who I suspect,” I said and slid the roaster pan into the oven.
“Narrow it down for me,” said Flynt.
I set the oven to bake, cranked three hundred degrees on the dial, and set the timer for two hours. “Late dinner tonight.”<
br />
“Who do you think?” asked Flynt.
I took a slug of my beer and watched Flynt take a last toke on his cigarette and grind the butt into the ashtray. “Don’t see as it makes a difference,” I said. “All you have to do is ask the feds who ran the fingerprint.”
“I like to give people a chance to lie first,” said Flynt. “If I get the truth, great. If I catch them in a lie, then the possibility of criminal charges helps focus their attention.”
“This is not an accusation.”
“Information,” said Flynt. He drained his beer in a gulp.
“Chief Kope in Wyoming,” I said.
Flynt closed his eyes and hung his head.
“Kope and Mark Behler are both members of the Suburban Rotary. Behler brags about his police sources. Kope would like nothing better than to stretch my hide.”
“Kope would come straight at you,” said Flynt. He raised his head to look at me. “He’s not bashful.”
“Kope’s running for mayor in the fall. Maybe friends in the media would be helpful.”
“Left field,” said Flynt.
“Way busier than right field,” I said.
Flynt let himself out. On the steps down to the door, he said, “I don’t want to stumble over you in the Vincenti case anymore. Stay available.”
“How about Jack Vincent?”
Flynt hesitated on a step but didn’t turn around. He said, “Knock yourself out.” He took the rest of the stairs and eased the door shut behind him.
In my pocket notepad I wrote, “Jack Vincent?”
• • •
Rusty made one woof, which usually means there’s a critter in the yard. He generally doesn’t bark at people. I looked out the window. On the road, a small car crept along with someone shining a flashlight on the mailboxes. I watched. Rusty ran down to the door, danced on the tile floor, and stared at the door handle.
Ben stood up from his chair. “What?”
“Some poor bastard looking for an address,” I said. “Why don’t you put the dog out on his chain?”
Ben let the dog out. The motion sensor set off the yard lights, and I could no longer see the road, so I found the oven mitts and rescued the ribs.
I measured half a cup of honey into my mixing bowl and added an equal amount of hickory-smoked barbecue sauce from the bottle. After lining a couple of cookie sheets with aluminum foil I gently laid out a rack of ribs on each.
The glaze seemed a little thick, so I added a little more sauce from the bottle and brushed the glaze onto the ribs. I cranked the oven to broil and popped in the ribs.
Ben clicked off the TV and set the table.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Hungry!”
The dog started working on the screen door. “He may be psychic,” I said.
“Maybe he just hears us setting the table,” said Ben.
The house smelled like a Georgia smokehouse restaurant. I turned on the vent fan so the broiler wouldn’t set off the smoke alarm and let the dog in. He took the stairs in two bounds. The lights in the yard went out. I washed my hands while the dog made laps around the table. The ribs had browned up nicely. Waiting for them to pick up a little char, it was all I could do not to dance around the table with the dog.
“Uncle!” I said. “Time to eat!” I shut down the oven and eased the ribs onto a platter. As I set them on the table, Rusty woofed once and took several steps toward the front door, stiff legged, like he was walking on stilts.
I hustled down the hall to Ben’s bedroom and closed the door so I could survey the yard from the dark room and not be backlit. The car that had been checking mailboxes eased up my drive with its lights off. It stopped. A man in a long, dark coat stepped from the passenger door. The car’s interior lights revealed only the driver remaining in the vehicle. The driver wore a full and very black beard. The passenger, the man now in the yard, wore a bushy black moustache.
As the man approached, the yard lights came on, and he ran toward the house clutching a white envelope to his chest. At the lilac bushes along the inside circle of the drive, he crouched and studied the house.
I hotfooted it to the kitchen and snatched the Colt off the top of the fridge. Rusty stood at the door, shaking and whining.
“Jesus,” said Ben, his face serious as a stone effigy. “What?”
“Car in the drive and a guy sneaking up on the house,” I said as I eased down the stairs. “Turn off the power to the yard lights.”
Ben hit the switch at the top of the stairs. The yard went dark. I switched the pistol to my left hand and rested my right on the door handle. Rusty danced in stiff steps and watched my right hand. I heard running steps approach the house on the gravel drive. When the first step hit the porch, I opened the door.
Rusty launched and exploded though the screening in the storm door. I used the door handle. The man on the porch took all eighty pounds of Rusty in the chest, dropped his envelope, and went down, making that “Yiee, Yiee” scream I’d first heard from Manny.
He scrambled for his feet and had taken about three steps before I put a round into the mulch under the front shrubs. Ben flipped the yard lights on.
“The next one drills your head!” I said.
The man raised his hands over his head but kept walking. “I have no gun,” he said, making it sound like “new gawn.” “You cannot shoot if I am walking away.”
“Wrong,” I said. “The cops can’t. With a property owner, it’s different.”
He stopped and turned around. I’d seen his face among the photos in Matty’s “just pictures.” If he was older than my Daniel, it wasn’t by much.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, hoping for an answer that would let me lower the Colt and tell him to go home.
He smiled and yelled “Allah Akbar!”
“What?” I said.
A steady thud, thud, thud from the drive reawakened a thirty-five-year-old nightmare, an AKR firing from the darkness. The young man spun crazily and hit the ground.
I swung the Colt up as I turned, and put three quick double taps on the muzzle flashes. The firing from the car stopped and the vehicle started rolling backwards down the drive, almost casually. I punched the magazine release with my thumb and snapped in a fresh custom eight-round magazine.
Holding the sight picture, I waited. The car backed out of my drive, across the road, and mowed down my mailbox before coming to rest against a tree. I thumbed up the safety and turned to my right to see what the “Yiee, Yiee, Yiee” screaming was about. The man in the drive had pushed himself up to his knees, jerking and wagging his head frantically to escape Rusty, who did yeoman’s service at licking his face.
Ben came out the door and picked up the envelope from the porch. “They shot the VCR out of the entertainment center,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“Gimme a hand,” I said and holstered my weapon. I patted the man down and pulled back a bloody hand. We hauled him into the kitchen and piled him onto a chair. He’d been hit in the side and the leg.
Ben dialed 911.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The man spat in my face.
I stepped back and rubbed my face on the sleeve of my shirt. Ben hung up the telephone and said, “Dad!”
I looked. The color had drained from Ben’s face. He showed me Wendy’s butterfly pendant and the white envelope. I said, “Jesus Christ, they’ve got your mother!”
19
THE STATE POLICE SCREAMED onto the scene and found a man with an AKR in his lap and a bullet in his head parked atop my flattened mailbox in a rented Toyota. They also found a young man bound and bleeding all over the tile floor of my dining room—and me covered in his blood.
Officer Lowell possessed the sad, hard eyes a man earns after three decades of wearing a badge and a blue uniform. They played over me with cautious doubt while I explained what had happened. “Why did you tie his hands and ankles?”
“Only way I could get a tourniquet on his l
eg,” I said.
“Please help me,” said the young man on the floor. “My name is Bani Patel. I came to the door to ask for directions, and this man shot me for nothing.” He thought for a moment and added, “Because of my skin is dark, he shot me and shot at my brother to frighten him away for trying to help me.”
“Your brother was driving a Toyota?”
“Yes, we rented at the airport. To drive for a visit.”
Ben opened the door for the ambulance crew and directed them up the stairs.
“Mr. Hardin’s son has an envelope with his mother’s jewelry in it,” said Officer Lowell. “He says you brought it.”
“I know nothing of such things,” said the man on the floor. “We were going to the casino in Mt. Pleasant and became lost.”
The med-tech—late twenties, goatee, and a ponytail—knelt next to the man on the floor and removed the kitchen stool I used to elevate his legs. After examining the leg and chest wounds, he said, “We need the gurney.” He lifted the man by the shoulders and said, “Sit up.”
“What are you doing?” asked Officer Lowell.
“I have to untie his hands,” said the med-tech. “I can’t tend to his wounds with him trussed up like an animal.”
“Don’t do that,” said Officer Lowell—too late.
With his hands free Bani Patel snatched Officer Lowell’s revolver and shot the med-tech in the chest. My kitchen window shattered. Officer Lowell clapped his left hand on the cylinder of the revolver and cracked Bani Patel on the elbow with his night stick.
Bani gave up the gun with a shriek.
The med-tech lurched to his feet, stepping backwards and clutching his chest. He looked at his hands and said, “Oh my God!” He hurried for the door. His partner helped him down the stairs.
Officer Lowell holstered his weapon and shoved Bani over. Rolling him face down, the officer pinned Bani to the floor with a knee on his neck and chopped handcuffs onto his wrists. The ambulance roared out of the drive, lights rolling and siren screaming.
“It’s going to take forty-five minutes to an hour to get another bus out here,” said Officer Lowell, as he stood. “I have to call this in.” He looked at me, his eyes now wide and his face pale. He squeezed his left hand with his right and looked at the floor. “I need a statement from you and your son.”
Dead Bang Page 17