I wagged a finger at him. “You’re still mad.”
“Art,” he said. “Come on. You act like I’d burn your ass the first chance I got.” He opened a drawer, took out an evidence bag with my pistol in it, and set it on the desk. “Count the bullets, the magazines, and sign the receipt. They shot two rounds for comparison.”
I took the pistol out of the bag and then thumbed the bullets out of the magazines onto his desk. “Three magazines,” I said. “Just right.”
“What is this, the third time? You know, the examiner has to have your lands and grooves committed to memory by now. Sooner or later, he’s going to find one of your strays.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “I change the barrel, firing pin, extractor, and ejector and dress up the bolt face every time I get it back from the examiner.”
“See?” asked Van Huis. “You got an attitude problem. You always act like someone is out to screw you.”
“I’d hire a shrink if I wasn’t already spending all my money on attorneys.”
“My heart pumps peanut butter for you,” said Van Huis. He opened his top desk drawer and skidded a book of raffle tickets across the desk to me. “You got a big lawn, don’t you? My church is raffling a new John Deere lawn tractor. Tickets are a buck apiece, six for five dollars.”
“I only buy these things because if I win it’ll piss you off.”
“You win, I’ll mow your lawn the first time myself,” said Van Huis.
Anybody but Van Huis, and I’d have made ’em put it in writing.
• • •
Marg and Lily Vincenti stifled their laughter when I breezed in the door. Lily wore sunglasses and the suit I’d seen at the TV station. Her eye was no longer bandaged. She’d parked her luggage—a suitcase and a two-suiter—on the floor near her feet.
“I miss something good?” I asked.
“No,” said Marg, color rising in her face. She’d done her hair up for the day and wore a floral blouse over a pleated skirt, casual attire for Marg.
“Flying out today?” I asked.
“Four o’clock,” said Lily, “but I had to check out of my room.”
“Some pressing reason you have to be back?”
“I have a business to run,” said Lily. She stood up.
I handed her the picture Jack Vincent Jr. had given me of his father wearing his state police uniform. Taken before his eye injury, it nonetheless left little room for doubt. “Is that your dad?”
Lily studied the photo, her mouth fell wide, and she crumpled onto the sofa. “Oh my God!”
“Your father’s name was Jack Vincent,” I said, “not John Vincenti. He’s buried at Roseland Park Cemetery, just north of Detroit on Woodward Avenue.”
Lily turned up her face to ask, “He was a policeman?”
“He was when the picture was taken,” I said. “He retired after he injured an eye in a car crash.”
“Where did you get this picture?”
I smiled and said, “From your brother. He said he’d like to meet you.”
Lily catapulted off the sofa with a shriek and threw her arms around my neck. Marg abandoned her chair and made it a huddle-hug with her arms around both of us.
“Where is he?” asked Lily.
“In Detroit,” I said. “He’s a police lieutenant.”
“Oh, fantastic! How’d you find out?”
I reached around Marg and Lily and patted. “Let’s all sit down. This is a little complicated,” I said. “I still don’t have all the answers.”
Lily flopped back onto the sofa like the strings to her legs had been cut. Marg mentioned coffee and headed for the investigator’s room. Lily pulled off her sunglasses and dug tissue out of her purse. Her left eye still looked like a road map, but some white space had opened between the red lines.
When she finished wiping up, I gave her my card with Jack Vincent Jr.’s address and telephone number written on the back.
Marg walked back into the room with coffee—mine black, Lily’s with cream. “What’s his name?” asked Lily.
“Jack Vincent Jr.,” I said.
Lily slipped her glasses back on to take the cup—the picture and card gripped so tightly in her left hand that they quivered. “Thank you,” she said to Marg and turned back to me. “Does he know what happened?”
“No, your father and his mother were divorced when he was five. He never really knew your father, and he’s still kind of angry about the divorce.”
“Did my father abandon him, too?” Lily’s voice tightened to a squeak.
“Policemen get divorced,” said Marg. “Marriage and police work can be like oil and water. That’s just an unfortunate fact of life.”
Lily set her coffee and glasses on the corner of Marg’s desk and started working the tissue on her eyes again.
“Looks to me like your father sent you and your mother to visit her parents so you’d be safe. He probably knew he was in danger,” I said.
“Why did my father change his name?” asked Lily. “Why did they tell us he disappeared?”
“If this was simple,” I said, “it wouldn’t have taken thirty years to unravel. I hope you can help me with the rest.”
“I don’t see how.” Lily slipped her glasses back on.
“Where were your parents married? There’s no record of their marriage in Detroit.”
“My parents were married in Okinawa.”
“Does your mother read English?”
Lily answered with a shake of her head, thought for a moment, and said, “Why would my father conceal his real name?”
“Same reason he used a Laundromat as his home address.”
“You know something that you’re not telling me.”
“I suspect something I can’t verify yet,” I said. “I have a meeting with a state police detective this morning, and I’m going to need the picture I gave you.”
“You suspect what?” Lily picked up her coffee, studying me from the dark safety of her glasses, and took a cautious sip.
I suspected that Jack Vincent had been working undercover or as a paid informant. When he turned up dead, they quietly buried the body but left his cover identity twisting in the silent currents of criminal prosecutions that followed his arrest for bookmaking and racketeering. Dead, Jack Vincent was a law-enforcement embarrassment. Missing, John Vincenti threatened to be a witness. True, the Mob had sanctioned the hit, but only the guys who killed Vincenti knew for sure. The cops, who had a picture, probably scooped them and kept them quiet.
“It’s not fair to you for me to guess,” I said.
The telephone rang. Marg said it was for me. I picked up the telephone in my office and heard Manny ask, “Do you know where the money is?”
“Manny,” I said. “You need some new material. This shit’s getting old.”
Someone took the line from Manny. A male voice said, “I am Shamil Khan. I have the traitor you call Manny. If you do not give me the money, I will kill him.”
“Do the comedy business a favor and whack him out.” I banged down the phone.
The telephone rang again. I picked it up.
“This is Shamil Khan.”
“Damn,” I said. “I was hoping for a telemarketer.”
“Do you want to hear this man die?”
“Okay,” I said. “But get on with it. I got shit to do.”
“This traitor informed to you about your woman.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “I don’t owe him shit. If you kill him, it’ll save me the trouble. I’m keeping the money.”
I hung up and dialed Matty Svenson on my cell phone. Matty picked up at the same time that my telephone rang. I left it for Marg and asked Matty, “You looking for Shamil Khan?” I shuffled Matty’s card, listing the arranged meeting location, out of my wallet. “I think he’s in town.”
“It’s for you,” said Marg. “The guy sounds frantic.”
I laid the cell phone on the desk with the line open and picked up my office phone. Mann
y said, “Thank you for being honest with my comrade. We have discussed this matter. If you will give us half the money, we will not trouble you further.”
“That’s a shame,” I said. “I was looking forward to plugging you both.”
“That is not a productive thing to say,” said Manny.
“No conflict, no drama,” I said. “No drama, no comedy. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“This is not comedy.”
“Cascade Wing Shooter’s rod and gun club, six o’clock,” I said. “Six-o-one, I’m gone.”
“This is too late,” said Manny.
“I have a business to run, and I have to go get the money.”
“This is too public.”
“And they’ll all have shotguns. Isn’t that sweet? How funny is Nine-Eleven now?”
“Where is this place?”
“It’s in the phone book. Look it up.”
Shamil took the line. “We will meet in the parking lot of your office in half an hour.”
“The money is two hours away. Meet me where and when I told you, or the meeting is off.”
“We will meet you in the parking lot of this rod and gun club,” said Shamil.
“I’ll be on the firing line busting birds. Don’t wear a big checkered hanky, and you may want to avoid any loud chitchat about jihad.” I slammed down the handset and picked up my cell phone. “It’s on,” I said. “And they’re in town. They wanted to meet in half an hour.”
“Who?” asked Matty.
“At least Shamil Khan and Manny,” I said. “But he wouldn’t have agreed to the meet at Wing Shooter’s if he didn’t have some backup.”
“I want you to stay out of sight until this is over.”
“I have to meet Archer Flynt from the state police,” I said and looked at my watch, “in twenty-five minutes. Two o’clock, I have a powwow with a potential client.”
“If they’re in town, they could be watching you.”
“If I lay low, they’ll know it’s a setup. I told them the money was two hours away. They aren’t going to bother me until they think I have the money.”
“Where are you meeting Archer Flynt?” asked Matty.
“Beltline Bar.”
“What are you driving?”
“My Buick.”
“I’m going to put a GPS tag on your car,” said Matty.
“You mean I don’t have one already?”
Matty hung up. I rescued my Detonics from the evidence bag, oiled the rails, loaded it, and slid it on my left hip with a big brown rubber band around the grip to keep the pistol from sliding down my pants. The two spare magazines went into my left-hand front pocket.
I walked back out into the front office and Marg asked, “What was that about?”
“I have to meet Archer Flynt in a few minutes. It’s about Lily’s case.”
“I rescheduled my flight,” said Lily. “And I left”—her voice broke—“a message on my brother’s answering machine. Marg and I are going to wait for him to call.”
“He’s working days,” I said. “You probably have time to get some lunch. I need to have the picture of your father for my meeting with the state police. I’ll find out why your father changed his name.”
Lily’s hand shook as she handed me the photo. Then, she launched from the sofa and hung herself around my neck again.
• • •
I got to the Beltline Bar stylishly late. Archer Flynt already had a table and a scowl when I walked in the door. He’d forgone his usual dime-store polyester suit for a charcoal sports coat and a night-watch plaid tie. He wasn’t as happy about the photo as Lily had been. I didn’t get a hug.
“What’s with the Tijuana taxi you were driving in Detroit?”
“Midlife crisis,” I said. “You were following me?”
“Staked out Jack Jr. to see if you’d show up. What did you tell him?”
“I told him he had a sister.”
“That’s it?”
I nodded and took back the picture.
“What about Lily Vincenti?”
“I told her she had a brother and that her father was a cop, not some asshole racketeer.”
“Nothing else?”
“I could guess the rest,” I said. “But I don’t get paid for guesses.”
“Can you leave it there?”
The waitress walked up to the table and dropped menus in front of us. Flynt said, “We’ll have another party when the Rotary Club lets out.”
“Coffee and a glass of water,” I said.
Flynt said, “Make mine decaf.” The waitress swished off, trailing the scent of some floral perfume.
“I left it on the street thirty years ago,” I said. “I dropped the photos on the Hamtramck Police and walked away.”
“Do you have the negatives?”
“Uncle Sam had them,” I said. “They were in my surveillance file. Probably shredded years ago.”
The waitress brought out drinks and another place setting.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Black,” we said in unison. She left.
“There’s one thing that bothers me,” I said.
“Learn to live with it,” said Flynt. “And put that picture in your pocket.”
Ryan Kope—City of Wyoming chief of police and law-enforcement troll under my gruff-billy-goat-PI bridge—walked in wearing a blue pinstriped suit that cost more than my son’s college books for the past two semesters put together. He pulled up a chair. “What’s this about?” he asked.
“Lunch,” I said. “Remember, you invited me. I’m going to get the Belt-line Bar’s world famous wet burrito.”
“They invented it here thirty years ago,” said Kope. “Elegant, tasty, and if you come to Wyoming and fail to have one, you need to schedule another trip.”
“Speaking of thirty-year-old bullshit,” said Flynt, “I want the rest of the pictures.”
Kope shot me a glance and then asked Flynt, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your cousin, Helen Kopinski,” said Flynt. “Kope, Kopinski—it wasn’t rocket science.”
I sipped my coffee and found it much too hot.
“We already talked about that,” said Kope.
“And you lied to me,” said Flynt, the mercury rising to his cheeks. “When your cousin died, you found the pictures when you went through her personal papers.”
“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” said Kope. “We can access information to clear cases that have festered for years. I’m a police officer. I was doing my job.”
“Maybe, up until you found out Hardin’s prints were on the photo. After that, I think it got personal.”
“Not at all,” said Kope, his face as smug as a cat burping bird feathers.
“That when you deputized Mark Behler?” asked Flynt.
“Sometimes you have to enlist the help of the media for tough cases,” said Kope.
“This is a thirty-year-old Mob rubout that was dealt down for witness cooperation,” said Flynt.
“I’d like to see that paperwork,” said Kope. “And if Hardin had anything to do with it, he shouldn’t have a dick license.”
“You’re going to see an indictment for malfeasance in office,” said Flynt.
“You’ll never make that stick,” said Kope.
I spooned some ice from my water glass into my coffee.
“All I have to do is make the charge,” said Flynt. “By the time it doesn’t stick, the election will be over.”
“You two make a good pair,” said Kope. “What’s Hardin got on you?”
“Hardin’s never lied to me,” said Flynt. “When he took those pictures, he was acting in an official capacity. You wouldn’t have found them if he hadn’t acted in good faith.”
“Maybe I’ll run for governor,” said Kope, jostling the table as he got to his feet. “Then I’ll be your boss.”
“Don’t put the attorney general’s staff on your mailing list,” said Flynt
. “It’ll remind them that you were on the short list of things to do.” He shook a finger. “You tell Mark Behler I want a statement.”
“I don’t know where he’s at,” said Kope. “You want to talk to him, you find him.”
“I get the rest of the pictures by Friday, or Monday I serve the papers when I come to search your office,” said Flynt.
Kope stormed out of the restaurant, knocking empty chairs aside as he went.
“They traded down a police homicide?” I asked.
“Vincent hadn’t been a cop for years. He was a paid federal informant,” said Flynt.
“Why the name change?” I asked.
Flynt gave me the large eyes and blank face that translates, Nobody’s that stupid!
“J. Vincent, J. Vincenti,” I said, “Close together enough to cash the checks and far enough apart to be a cover identity.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Flynt, studying the swirl he made stirring his coffee.
“Here’s another guess,” I said. “Jack Vincent stayed under too long. His reports got shorter, then spotty and sympathetic to the people he was investigating, then nonexistent. He joined the other side. He became Jack the Lookout and even married a woman as John Vincenti. He didn’t get religion until he got arrested, and his mug shot turned up on the front page of the newspaper.”
Flynt looked up from his coffee and said, “I’m having the wet burrito.”
30
“YES, I’M SURE IT WAS MARK BEHLER,” said Leonard Stanton. “He was standing by my desk and ran when he saw me. When I got to the desk, I found the drawer smashed open and the gun missing.”
“Sounds like a police matter to me,” I said and parked my backside on some canvas bags stacked next to Leonard’s temporary security desk.
Leonard rocked back his chair and stacked his brogans on the corner of his desk. “Behler has a five-year contract.”
“Contracts aside, we’re talking a public-safety issue.”
“The gun was a paperweight, an old Ivor Johnson top-break .38. The cylinder was out of time, and the firing pin hits the edge of the casing instead of the primer. I never let the guards carry it.”
“What the hell is up with Behler?”
“It’s been all over the news,” said Leonard. “Where have you been?”
Dead Bang Page 30