• • •
I took Woodward Avenue north. Approaching Twelve Mile Road, the five-story gray stone monument of the National Shrine of the Little Flower loomed above the strip malls and car dealers that line the street. Christ on the cross, depicted in thirty feet of stone relief, gazed across Woodward into the Roseland Park Cemetery.
Roseland Park spread over a few hundred acres of what had become very expensive suburban real estate. I stopped at the office, signed the guest register, and learned that Jack Vincent had been laid to his eternal rest north of the Spanish American War vets and east of the VFW plot.
Among all the upright granite, Corporal Jack Vincent’s marker was the flat brass plaque provided by the Veteran’s Administration. I checked my pocket notebook: Jack Vincent and John Vincenti had been born on the same day; ditto on checking out.
The shadows had stretched to stripes, and I was alone. I said, “Found ya, you old bastard. Guess they had to plant your ass to keep you from wandering around.”
The dead keep their secrets. There’s only so much room on a grave marker. This one offered a single tidbit: “Beloved Son.”
“Guess they didn’t have room for the whole message, did they, sport?”
I harbored little doubt that Jack Vincent, retired state policeman, had, in fact, been John Vincenti, a mid-level Mob associate. But in the days when John Vincenti got it, the Mob would never have killed a policeman. They would have whacked everybody stupid enough to have entrusted him.
Franky called Jack the Lookout a “rat,” an informant. Hence the bullet in his mouth, followed by the dead canary. But the murder had been expeditious, which reflects a certain amount of respect for the victim. And Vincenti couldn’t have risen to the position he had without breaking a few eggs himself.
On the other hand, only the government could make a dead Jack the Lookout disappear so that Jack Vincent could be quietly interred next to his family. But Jack Vincent had laid down his tin and could have gone to work for the Mob without changing his name. And here comes Archer Flynt—busy as a cat in a sandbox.
“I came to apologize,” I said. “I didn’t have any right to turn my back when I found your body. I lied to the police. My boss told me to do it, but I was glad of it. I was young, horny, and my wife had invited me to hurry home. I’ve never admitted that to anyone. I did think about it. Maybe that’s the reason I didn’t want to tell the story to Mark Behler. The truth is, I hadn’t exactly covered myself in glory.
“You’ve used a lot of women and discarded them like toilet paper. And now your daughter has come to me and paid me a lot of money to finish the abuse you started. I am not going to do it.”
I bent over and tidied up a couple of weeds at the edge of Vincent’s marker. “What is it Marc Antony said of Gaius Julius Caesar? Something like, ‘The good that men do is oft interred with the bones, whilst the evil lives long after.’ We’re going to do it the other way, just for you, Sport. You’re going to be a hero. You bastard.”
• • •
Give or take a few, it’s a hundred and forty miles from Detroit to our place on the lake. I had to stop for coffee in Lansing. By the time I pulled into the yard, the moon teetered on the edge of the big dipper.
Daniel bolted out the door with the dog hard on his heels. The boys had fixed the screen in the storm door. “Oh, wow!” he said. “Is that my car?”
Ben, barely a step behind, asked, “Can we get that in black cherry?”
Rusty snorted and bounded around my legs. I fended him off the Camaro. “Wait till you see it in the sunlight,” I said. “We’ve got to get a new steering column and lockset. For now, you’ll have to start it with the screwdriver I left on the passenger seat. Call around in the morning.”
The boys hauled the luggage in and took the car out to turn some heads in Belding and Greenville. Wendy met me at the top of the stairs. I still had a step to go when she threw her arms around me. She didn’t say anything.
“See, I made it,” I said. Wendy said nothing. I kissed her on the temple and rubbed her back. I wanted to ask where Karen was—I’d fantasized about wringing her rubber-chicken neck for most of the drive up from Detroit. I went with, “How’s Karen?”
Wendy recited her list to my chest with her eyes closed. “She has a kidney infection. They had to put her under to get the tape off her face. They gave her a shot to keep her calm. She’s asleep now. Matty is coming back to talk to her tomorrow.”
“She brought this on herself,” I said.
Wendy straightened up, pushed away with her hands, and chopped out with her finger, “Don’t you start. She feels terrible.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s let her rest.”
“Out on the porch,” said Wendy, pointing the finger now. “I don’t want her to hear us. I’ll be out in a minute.”
The moon cast a silver causeway across the lake that beckoned widest at our dock. Fireflies blinked traces of light over the lawn. Wendy brought coffee for me and a tea for herself out to the table. Rusty crumpled into a pile at our feet.
“Karen had the money in the trunk of her car,” said Wendy. She sipped her tea. I looked out over the lake and watched martins swooping to harvest mosquitoes. “When she went back to the kitchen, she piled money into the washer and put her laundry on top of it. After the tub filled, she clicked off the timer. Manny and his friends shot up the washer with the rest of the kitchen. The water leaked all over the floor. I guess nobody wanted to stand in the mess to really search the machine.”
“I never should have let her play with the money,” I said.
Wendy said, “Honey, they destroyed everything she owned. She didn’t know who Manny was or what he was doing.”
“Maybe that’s what bothers me most,” I said. Wendy stirred her tea. “Where’s the money now?”
“Matty took it,” said Wendy. “Karen told her everything. How much trouble is this going to be for Karen?”
“Could be a lot,” I said. “She concealed evidence.”
“She wasn’t trying to help Manny.”
I had a mouthful of coffee and had to stifle a laugh so it didn’t shoot out my nose.
“Okay,” said Wendy. “She was trying to help herself.”
I wiped my mouth and nose with my hand. “How much money did they get out of the trunk?” Wendy gave me a tissue.
“Matty made two trips,” said Wendy. “But the money was soaked in water.”
“Good,” I said. “The FBI crime scene crew released Karen’s car without a search, and the Khans held her for several days.”
“What’s one thing have to do with the other?”
“The FBI doesn’t like bad press. A sharp journalist could stretch it all out to, if the FBI had searched Karen’s car, there wouldn’t have been a reason for the Khans to kidnap her.”
“You think?” asked Wendy, smiling for the first time since I walked into the house.
“I hope,” I said. “Anyway, she has information that may be of more value to the FBI than a prosecution.”
“You’re still angry,” said Wendy, knocking a cigarette out of her pack.
“I found money in the dryer,” I said, and lit Wendy’s smoke.
“Karen said it must have stuck to her laundry.” Wendy took a deep drag and exhaled. “Matty took that, too, and searched the rest of her stuff.”
“She had our son driving the car with the money in it!”
“I don’t think she thought of it like that—”
“I’m at a complete loss as to how Karen thinks.”
“I’m angry about that too,” said Wendy. “But we can’t just throw her out on the street.”
“You were ready to toss her out for walking around half-dressed.”
“Yeah, you didn’t mind that,” said Wendy, her eyes narrow.
My eyes fell shut. I couldn’t stand the smug “gotcha” look on Wendy’s face. I said, “My mother had this glass swan—”
“And you were five years old. And you broke i
t. And she still nags about it. So what?”
“So, if I had just looked at it and not picked it up, I could have saved myself a half century of bitching.”
“Sorry,” said Wendy. She ground out half a cigarette in the ashtray, walked around to me, gripped my upper arm with both hands, and gave me a peck on the cheek. Pulling on my arm she added, “C’mon, we need some rest. We can think about this tonight and discuss it tomorrow.”
I stood and draped an arm around Wendy’s shoulder. “I think we need to get something straight between us tonight.”
“Promises, promises,” said Wendy.
“You’ll be asleep before I get out of the shower.”
• • •
By ten o’clock, Marg Ladin, my secretary, had panicked and dialed the house. Ben slogged down the hall and knocked on the bedroom door. I stumbled up the hallway to the kitchen to take the call. She said, “Lily Vincenti will be here at eleven. Do we have anything, or do I hand her back the check?”
Ben nodded sideways toward the lake, and I looked out to see Matty, Agent Azzara, and Karen on the deck. Clad only in my boxer shorts, I retreated to the bathroom and shut the phone cord in the door. “I made some progress on the case.”
“You just wake up?” asked Marg, sounding snippy.
“Yeah,” I said.
Someone pecked on the door.
“I’ll be out in a second,” I said.
“I doubt that,” said Marg.
The knock on the door became urgent and rapid.
“Not you,” I said into the telephone. “Hang on.”
I opened the door a crack and peeked out. Matty peeked back. She mouthed the words, “Your line is tapped.”
“State police?”
Matty kept her eyes riveted on mine and shook her head slowly.
I eased the door closed. “I can’t talk right now.”
“I’ll stall until you get here,” said Marg.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and marched the telephone back to the kitchen. Holding the towel in place left me only one hand to operate, but I got the coffee on before retreating to the bedroom.
Wendy lay peacefully asleep. I gathered an armload of clothes and tiptoed out of the room. After a shower, I pulled on khaki slacks, a pullover white knit shirt, and a new blue sports coat with brass buttons. I thought the jacket made me look like a drum major, but Wendy had picked it out, so I didn’t complain.
Karen limped in from the deck while I poured a cup of coffee. She wore a cardigan sweater over a housecoat. From below her nose, her face looked like the bastard child of Mr. Scrape and Ms. Bruise. With tears in her eyes, she clamped a hug on me and hung on as though she would drown if she let go. Matty and Agent Azzara followed Karen in from the deck.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I was so stupid.”
“Well,” I said, “it was a lot of money.”
“No! Not for mon-ney,” she said, dragging the “-ney” part out to a whine. “I wanted to hurt him back. Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Karen,” I said. “I’m disappointed. You lied to us and put my son in danger.”
Karen hopped on her toes, gripping and bumping her head on my shoulder as she whimpered, “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!”
I put my arms around her and rubbed her back. “Okay, okay, okay,” I said.
I looked at Matty. Matty closed her eyes and exhaled a sigh as she nodded.
“You have to help the authorities,” I said. “All delusions and illusions aside, you’re the one you hurt the most. Wendy and I aren’t such fair-weather friends that we’d abandon you at a time like this.”
I felt Wendy’s hand on my back. She kissed me on the cheek, peeled Karen loose, and walked her to the bathroom. When the door closed, I asked Matty, “She know anything helpful?”
“She heard a lot of stuff,” said Agent Azzara. “She doesn’t know what it meant.”
“Hell,” said Matty, “we can only guess at most of it.”
“So who has my phone tapped?”
“We found a tap at the phone company,” said Agent Azzara, “but no warrant. We left it in place to find out who picked up the cassettes.”
“An employee?” I asked.
“Probably not the soda vendor,” said Agent Azzara.
“How long do I have to put up with this?”
“We want to follow the lead as far as it goes,” said Matty.
“I still have a business to run,” I said.
“Keep your cell phone turned on,” said Matty. “We have some roving surveillance in the area.”
“Mugs are in the cupboard,” I said and sipped my coffee.
I took my Colt off the top of the refrigerator and oiled the rails while Matty and Karen went back out to the deck. Agent Azzara poured himself a java.
“You in trouble?” I asked.
Agent Azzara laughed. “Yes. The records I gave you were considered classified. On the other hand, the arrests we made and the evidence we recovered impressed Washington. Disciplining me could be embarrassing. I’m considering a job as an analyst.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why?” asked Azzara. “It pays better, and I have a family.”
When I’d topped off my magazines, I headed out the door.
Daniel stood hosing dust off his car and making a mess of the drive. “You make any calls yet?” I asked.
“Harrison’s said they’d call back when they found the parts,” said Daniel. “They figured late today or maybe tomorrow.”
“How much?”
“Said it depends. It’ll be more if they have to paint the column to match.”
“Tell ’em to paint it anyway,” I said. “There’s no reason to put scraped up parts on.”
“Will the insurance company cover it?”
“We can’t make a claim,” I said. “There’s no police report. The only reason they didn’t impound the car as evidence is that they didn’t arrest the guy who stole it and did the paint job.”
“He just got away with it?”
“I wouldn’t say that. He worked on it all night, and the supplies cost more than the bail would have been.”
“But we have to fix the steering column.”
“Cheaper than all the trips to Detroit to testify, and you have your car back.”
“Hey, Pop,” said Ben, “watch this.” He tossed a ball in the air and nailed it with a fat, red, plastic bat. Rusty rocketed after it and had it on the second bound. I’d never seen a Wiffle ball sail that far or heard one make that musical “ping” when it was hit.
“Cool,” I said, as I walked up. Rusty galloped up and dropped the ball at Ben’s feet. Ben had covered the Wiffle ball with a multicolored skin of rubber bands.
Ben picked up the ball. “Sails like crazy,” he said and belted it down the lawn. The dog sucked in a foot of tongue and bolted after it.
“Where’d you get the rubber bands?”
“Found ’em in the laundry room basket when I burned the trash yesterday.”
Rusty shit rubber bands for a week.
29
I FOUND MARG CHATTING with a bookkeeping client when I walked into the office. Lily Vincenti had not arrived. Marg pushed a short stack of telephone messages across the desk to me as I walked by.
At my desk, I thumbed through them. Lily would be at least a half hour late. Detective Van Huis would be in his office until noon: come and get your pistol. Detective Archer Flynt: urgent that you be at the Beltline Bar today by 12:30. The last message had festered for a day: call Leonard Stanton at the Channel Five security office. He’d left the number.
I dialed up Leonard.
He said, “Security.” I recognized his voice.
“Hey, Sarge, Art Hardin,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Not on TV,” I said. “I still owe my attorney for handling the trouble my last appearance caused.”
“Maybe we can help you with the t
ab. I have a job for you, but I don’t want to discuss it on the telephone.”
“Can you give me a thumbnail sketch?”
“You can always say no in person,” said Leonard.
“Two o’clockish all right?”
“I’ll be at the security desk.”
“See you then.”
I hung up and dialed Van Huis on his inside line. “You really have my Detonics or are you looking to arrest me again?”
“Come and confess to something,” said Van Huis. “I’ll see what I can do. I’m out of here at noon.”
“I think I heard this story before.”
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” said Van Huis. “Your pistol’s in my desk until noon. After that it goes back to property, and you’ll need a lawyer and a friendly judge to get it back.”
“I’m on my way.”
Van Huis said, “Don’t stop at the bank.” He hung up.
I checked my watch. Twenty minutes. I hustled down to Kentwood Police Department. They’d moved into their new building, the old one having been so cramped they had to take turns breathing. The desk sergeant told me to follow him.
After twenty-three years on the police force, Detective Gerald Van Huis had finally scored a real office. His old name placard looked shabby parked atop a brand-new Steelcase desk. The rest of his duffle filled the cartons stacked by the coatrack.
“Hey Jerry,” I said, “you got a door and everything.”
Van Huis, in his shirt sleeves with his tie loose, flopped a printed form on the desk and said, “A lot of the guys wanted me to thank you.”
“I do something right?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “You took your last jug-fuck down to Detroit. We all got home for dinner.” He slapped a ballpoint pen on the form. “Ten minutes, I got to walk over to the district court.”
I picked up the pen.
“Detroit’s a big town,” said Van Huis. “Lots of opportunity. I got a whole list of guys that said they’d help you pack up your office.”
“You’re all heart,” I said and pushed the form back to him. “This is a Voluntary Firearms Destruction form.”
“Fancy that,” said Van Huis. “You know, I’m just not organized in my new office yet.”
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