by Jon Jackson
“I heard something that you ought to know,” Caspar said. “I couldn’t go home without finding you and telling you. That’s why I stuck around so long. I been out for a week. I was beginning to wonder if I would find you.”
“Something you learned inside?”
“Yeah.” Caspar looked around, then leaned closer. “There’s some heavy guys looking for you, Joe. If I found you, they’ll find you. You need to keep your eyes open. They ain’t looking to give you the lottery winnings, or nothing.”
“Who are they?”
“Some kind of heat. Foreign heat. I got a couple of names. One of ‘em’s some kind of Spanish guy—Echeverria.”
3
Sniff
For a change, Mulheisen played some jazz while he read one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories to his mother. He had an idea that she would like Stevenson because the story was not so modern. Her situation was a peculiarly modern, contemporary one, it seemed to him, and so an old story of the nineteenth century, about people cast away on South Sea islands might be better, somehow, less threatening, perhaps more soothing . . . balmy islands . . . balm . . . healing. Of course, it was true that he had, himself, a kind of nostalgic taste for Stevenson.
The music he chose was a collection of Gershwin tunes, played by the cornetist Ruby Braff, accompanied by the guitarist George Barnes. Very mellow, lightly swinging stuff. When he noticed that his mother was nodding, he stopped and helped her to her bed. She was quite docile. But as he tucked her in he was suddenly electrified to see that she was looking at him intently. He started to say something, but stopped when he saw her lips move.
He lowered his head to hear her. She seemed to be singing! It was just a very, very faint sound, with no more than a hint of musicality, a whisper with a lilt.
“It’s very clear,” she sang, “our love is here . . . to stay.”
It was one of the tunes from the CD he’d been playing.
“Not . . . for . . . a year,” he sang along with her, slowly, patiently, whispering too, “but . . . ever . . . and a day . . .”
She stopped, evidently out of breath, and her eyes closed. A very faint but definite smile stretched her withered lips. And then she seemed to fall asleep, her mouth still slightly open. Mulheisen sat by her, on the bed, and held her hand. When he was sure that she was asleep, he got up and went back to his room. His eyes were a little glassy, almost moist.
He called his old friend Jimmy Marshall, now a precinct commander. “Say, Jimbo, how’s it going?” They chatted for a few moments and Mulheisen told him his mother seemed to be improving. He described the singing. Marshall was excited.
“Ruby Braff? I’ll be damned,” Marshall said. “Well, you know Braff, he was one of the last of the real swinging cornets. Very infectious, that kind of what-do-you-call it, joie de vivre. You should play her some Louis.” Marshall was a fellow devotee.
“’Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,’” Mulheisen suggested, “or, ‘Potato Head Blues’?”
“How about ‘I’m Comin’ Virginia’?”
They went on in this vein, discussing music, but finally Mulheisen said, “Who’s investigating the bombing? You know?”
Marshall told him it was the new agency, the Homeland Security people, but there were other groups involved. The Wards Cove police, for instance. And some of the Detroit cops were involved, drafted into it by the Homeland group. Wunney was one of them.
Mulheisen called Wunney. He was willing to discuss the investigation in the most general sort of way, as a courtesy to Mulheisen, because of his mother and because he had been a colleague. But it was clear after a minute or two that he didn’t feel free to provide any details. The case seemed to have stalled.
“I talked to Tucker,” Mulheisen said. “He came out to see me.”
“What for?” Wunney said.
“He seemed to be recruiting,” Mulheisen said. “He suggested you guys needed help.”
“What guys? He’s the liaison with the Homeland Security people, running this Special Task Force, they call it,” Wunney said. “I probably shouldn’t even be discussing him with you, not on the phone, anyway.”
“Oh. Okay,” Mulheisen said. “Well, I turned him down, anyway. It didn’t sound like my kind of thing. I’m retired, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Well, if you’re out and about, stop in and see us sometime, for old times. We’re downtown.” He mentioned an address in an office building just off Cadillac Square.
Mulheisen took a drive downtown the next day. He’d arranged for another nurse to be on hand, in case he was late getting back. His mother seemed livelier, but if he’d expected her to wake up talking he was disappointed. He hadn’t exactly expected that, but she seemed more aware of her surroundings, at least. He wasn’t sure he wanted to leave her alone at this critical juncture, but he was intrigued about the task force. He thought he could get away for a few hours.
The task force had taken a number of offices in one of those old buildings that Detroit seemed overstocked with these days. They looked pretty busy, with lots of computers, copiers, telephones, and secretaries. Wunney wasn’t surprised to see him.
“Let’s go for a walk, Mul,” he said.
They strolled a block to a small bar on the square. Mulheisen remembered it as being called Johnny’s, but now it belonged to some chain. Franchise bars—what a concept, Mulheisen thought. It seemed a little bright and clean for a Detroit tavern, but he wasn’t interested in booze these days. He opted for coffee, as did Wunney. The coffee was very good, as it should be, costing what one used to pay for a shot of Jack Daniels.
“What do you know about Colonel Tucker?” Wunney asked.
Mulheisen smiled. “I was going to ask you that. I don’t know anything about him.”
“I don’t know much,” Wunney said. “Seems like a capable guy, in a way. Except I can never figure out what the fuck he does. Mysterious, you know? These spooks cultivate that style. They must think it adds to their image. They’re into very deep stuff, doncha know? And on a very high level, the highest. But are they? Maybe they don’t know shit—how could you tell? I guess he was CIA at one time.”
Mulheisen said that when he’d first met the man, out in Salt Lake City, on a case involving money laundering, Tucker had been running an agency, or at least an operation, that was fronted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
“The INS is very big these days,” Wunney said. “It’s all under the umbrella of the Homeland guys. I’m detached to Homeland, for this task force. The pay is great! I think I’m supposed to be their link to the DPD. I provide them with Detroit info.”
“Tucker mentioned Joe Service,” Mulheisen said. “The name mean anything to you?”
“Not offhand,” Wunney said. Then he added, “Oh, wasn’t he a mob guy? He had something to do with Carmine and the Fat Man, but that’s a few years back. You remember Andy Deane, Rackets and Conspiracy? Andy got it in his head that Service whacked Carmine.”
“Yeah, Andy ran it down to me,” Mulheisen said. “I couldn’t quite see it. I thought it was the daughter, Helen, Big Sid’s kid. The angle was that Carmine had Sid zipped, for skimming on some dope deal. There was a connection between the daughter and Service, which I guess is why Andy figured it must have been Service who did the job. The funny thing is, the reason I was in Salt Lake in the first place—when I met Tucker—was because I had a lead on the daughter. She was smurfing cash there, or that was the lead. You know, laundering dope money. I figured that would be Sid’s money, the skim from Carmine. The word was the Fat Man, as Carmine’s successor, was after her.”
Wunney snorted. “Humphrey wasn’t exactly the revenge type.”
Mulheisen nodded. “More likely he just wanted to recover the skim. Anyway, the short of it is Helen winds up back in Humphrey’s good graces. So much for revenge. It looked like Joe Service had engineered all this—recovered the money, made amends with Humphrey. That’s the kind of stuff Service did. He made a career
out of finding things for the mob, like who took their money, and where they were now. That doesn’t mean he didn’t pop Carmine, it just seems unlikely.”
Wunney was interested. He knew pieces and bits of this tale, picked up here and there. “Okay, I think I see it,” he said, “kinda.” He didn’t seem convinced.
Mulheisen shrugged. “Who knows? My impression is that Joe Service is perfectly capable of yanking the plug on anyone, but that was evidently not his real function in the mob. I never heard that he had any beef with Carmine, but he was pretty tight with Humphrey. Who knows? Maybe Humphrey had him hit Carmine. I had him in my hands once. But he was that close”—he snapped his fingers—“to being popped by that little weasel Itchy. Remember him?”
Wunney remembered Ezio “Itchy” Spinodi. A gunman who had taken a fall for Carmine or one of the other big boys many years ago. “Why would Itchy be after Service, if he was so tight with the Fat Man?” he wanted to know.
Mulheisen shook his head. “These guys live complicated lives. It looked to me like the national mob wanted Service dead. They must have figured he had to be at least too deep into Carmine’s death to walk, even if he didn’t actually pull the trigger. Humphrey either couldn’t protect him, or didn’t want to, at the time. There was an earlier hit attempt that almost succeeded. Service was recovering from that when I found him and headed off Itchy, but he had a serious relapse, a kind of stroke. I stashed him in a hospital, in Denver, thinking when he came out of his coma we could get together, maybe iron out some of the wrinkles. But they let the guy walk on me.”
The two old detectives chewed on this one for a while, decrying the laxity of hospital security, sheriff’s deputies. Finally Mulheisen said, “Tucker mentioned Service to me when he visited. In connection with the bombing. Joe Service the mad bomber? I don’t think so, even if some kind of connection could be made out. Maybe it goes back to the deal in Salt Lake. Tucker and his guys were about to grab Helen. Service waltzed in and sprang her. He left Tucker handcuffed to a water pipe in the kitchen. A guy like Tucker isn’t going to forget that insult to his dignity. Somewhere down the line he’s going to find a jacket for Joe Service, don’t you know?”
Wunney grunted, his version of a laugh. “Oh, yeah. Well, we were passed a thing about Service. An intercept, a phone call to some guy in Florida. This guy talked to Service about some Muslim group. It didn’t make much sense to me. I didn’t see a connection, except that someone else said the group might have a tie-in with the bombing, possibly.”
“Might have a tie-in? That’s the level you’re working on?” Mulheisen shook his head. “Tucker kind of waved the Muslim angle off. He hinted at some local militia-type group.”
“Well, if there’s no Muslim angle,” Wunney pointed out, “what’s the connection with Service?” He almost managed to convey an expression of derisory disbelief, but he wasn’t capable of that kind of facial mobility.
Mulheisen managed a complementary expression, suggesting that it was all nonsense. But he asked, “Isn’t that the way they do it? One Muslim is the same as any other, any connection becomes a universal coupling—it’ll work in any context. So who was the guy in Florida?”
“Ah, I don’t know . . .” Wunney gazed at Mulheisen for a long moment through slightly narrowed eyes. Then he said, “You know him. Big Sid’s old hench, the Yak.”
“Yakovich?” Mulheisen smiled, his long teeth bared in the expression that had given rise to his street nickname, Fang. “One thing I know about the Yak, he’s no Muslim.”
“No, he’s no Muslim, but he was in conversation with Service and Helen Sid, the daughter, about some Muslim group in Brooklyn. The conversation was so vague, it was hard to get a take on it. It sounded like the Muslims had something that Helen Sid wanted. Maybe it was just info. I couldn’t get anywhere with it. The FBI was in on it. They thought it was a dope deal, but evidently that didn’t turn out.”
“Who are these Muslims?” Mulheisen asked.
Wunney offered a nominal grin. “Albanians. They seemed to have some connection with Kosovar refugees.”
Mulheisen was baffled. The idea of Helen Sedlacek, Joe Service, and Roman Yakovich involved in a dope deal with Muslims was too much for him.
“Where does the bombing come in?” he asked.
Wunney shrugged. “Muslims, Detroit mobsters. That’s about it. Like you say, it’s a universal joint, turns in any direction.”
“Makes my head spin,” Mulheisen said. “So, what about this militia group?”
“Mul? You in or out?”
“I don’t know,” Mulheisen said. “I have an interest, that’s all. Don’t tell me anything that’ll get you in trouble. Not that I’d say anything, of course.”
Wunney sighed. “Okay. All’s it is’s a joker named Luck, lives upstate, he’s got visions of black helicopters, New World Order, ZOG—that’s the Zionist Occupational Government—hates environmentalists, liberals, cops, any kind of government it looks like, dog-catchers, game wardens, you name it. Rumored to have been in Wards Cove at the wrong time. Access to explosives. Blah, blah, blah.”
Mulheisen nodded. “You talk to him?”
“Oh, yeah. Nothing. He was off fishing, he says. He’s got alibis . . . from guys who need alibis.”
“What about the vehicle that was used? The explosive?”
“Vehicle was stolen in Detroit, no connection with Luck. Explosive was military, U.S., stolen. No Luck.” He almost chuckled, a kind of choking sound. “That’s what some of the boys call the case: No Luck.”
“Ah, well.” Mulheisen grimaced. “And if I go talk to him it won’t go over too well—if I’m not in. Hmmmm. Any connection to Service?”
“The only connection that I know of is Service’s name turned up on this guy’s Web site,” Wunney said.
“Terrorists have Web sites?”
“Of course they do, Mul. Where have you been? Anyway, all’s he said about Service was that Service was a fed, an agent. It was supposed to be a word to the faithful to avoid him. But, as Tucker said, they say that about anyone, sometimes it’s just a cover, disinformation.” He paused, then asked, “So? You in?”
“I’ll let you know,” Mulheisen said. “What’s this guy’s full name?”
“Martin Parvis Luck,” Wunney said, “but he goes by just the initials, M.P. He lives upstate, a little town called Queensleap.”
It was such a muddle, Mulheisen thought, as he drove home along Lake St. Clair. Too many different services and factions, running around like the Keystone Kops, waving billy clubs and tumbling all over one another. And anyway, he was not a man obsessed with justice, not a revenger; he was with the late Humphrey DiEbola on that issue. So what, he asked himself, was he? An old dog, addicted to old tricks? Why had he ever gotten into this game? He had an orderly mind. He liked to know as much as he could. Puzzles attracted him; he liked to see a pattern. He was also patient. He felt that many puzzles, over time, simply resolved themselves.
He sometimes thought that up close, in the turbulence of the present, things were clouded. But with the passage of time, as in a river, the silt fell away. The opaque became translucent, if not transparent. One came to understand, more or less, how something happened, or could have happened, who was involved, what was behind the issue once so mysterious and later so evident.
There was no denying that there was a personal element here, but he refused to feel compulsive about this. It would resolve itself without him, he was sure.
His mother was old. She would die soon. He felt fairly coldblooded about it. It made him sad, but beyond that he couldn’t see that there was anything compelling about this mystery. He would die too. Perhaps before his mother. If it could be avoided, of course, one would avoid it. But death would come, willy-nilly.
In the long run the great trivial purpose of maximum entropy will prevail, he said to himself, quoting Norbert Wiener, the great mathematician, a statement that had sometimes soothed his mind, got him through the night. It didn�
�t particularly soothe him at the moment.
Did that mean he didn’t love his mother? Oh, no. All he wanted to do at the moment was take care of her, see her returned to at least a semblance of her old self. He’d like to go on a bird walk with her, have her point out the rose-breasted grosbeak. That wasn’t much to ask, he thought. That, and build his little study.
The sun was very bright on the lake. Unconsciously, he whistled that Gershwin tune under his breath, “Love Is Here to Stay.”
For the next few days he was busy taking his mother to the doctor for new tests. They were thrilled with her progress. She wasn’t just singing, she was clearly becoming aware. This wasn’t unmitigated joy. She was alarmed. Mulheisen could only imagine what was racing through her mind: What has happened to me? Am I all right? Why is Mul here? Am I dying?
It was too much for her. She lapsed into long periods of sleep. The doctors said that was good. They were excited that she had not experienced the classic symptoms of a stroke, of permanent aphasia. She wasn’t incapable of speech. Of course, she hadn’t had a stroke. She’d had a tremendous shock. As they explained it, her systems had not shut down, thankfully, but they had provided something like buffers, or filters, an inner sanctum where she could recover without further input. Now these buffers were dissolving, allowing her more sensory input . . . and output. No doubt, there was more to it, medically speaking, but as an explanation it sufficed for Mulheisen.
Unfortunately, as he saw it, this recovery prompted the renewed attention of Colonel Tucker and his minions. They were eager to talk to Cora Mulheisen, to learn what she might have observed just prior to the explosion. At present she wasn’t up to that. She couldn’t recall the explosion at all. She didn’t even remember going to Wards Cove. Indeed, it was difficult to know what she did remember or think, because although she could now speak hesitantly, inquire about a few simple things, she was not capable of anything like an extended conversation on topics more complex than what was for lunch, how soon would it be ready, whether it was a nice day, warm out or cold. But just in the course of a day it seemed that her perceptions and her ability to converse improved.