Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

He told her he would see what he could do.

  She was still in her chair in front of the big window when Celia Muir left. Jan offered to fix her a bed in the guest room.

  “No, I think I’ll stay here at my post.”

  She was still there when the sun came up in the morning.

  80

  Frank McMasters wanted to finish the half-built garage next to his house, park the Regal inside, cut it up, and scatter the pieces where nobody would find them.

  But Lucky Fry saw dollar signs.

  Dorothy Wilson, his surrogate mother back in Detroit, received one of the first calls he made from Alanson. She’d fallen asleep in front of the television when the phone stirred her from the couch.

  “Hi,” John said. “I think I’ve done it again. In fact, I know I have.”

  “Done what?” she asked.

  “Killed a man. With a baseball bat.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he didn’t pay Dawn.”

  Before Dot could question him further, John offered her the car. Did she want an ’84 Buick Regal for only a hundred dollars? Johnnie Carl, she thought, you ought to know better than to offer me what has to be a stolen automobile.

  He told her he loved her, then hung up.

  “John, you gotta get that goddamn car out of here,” Frank said.

  John remained convinced he could fence the Buick in the Motor City, where it would be dismantled in a chop shop. He and Dawn, John decided, were driving back to Detroit. Then after Frank got off work, he and Cheryl could drive to pick them up.

  Before leaving, John wanted to destroy Al’s identification, which he’d found in a wallet in the glove compartment. Everyone in Frank’s house already had seen the name.

  “Frank, until I went through the guy’s wallet he had me fooled too,” John said.

  After Frank left for work, John told Dawn to go to the bedroom and bring in Al’s papers. Cheryl fed them into their wood-burning stove in the living room. Dawn lit a roll of newspaper.

  “Add more paper,” John said. “Make sure it’s all burned.”

  He held back Al’s Mobil credit card. He’d already used it to gas the car up in Flint.

  After another sleepless night, Jan Canty decided she would enlist the help of the media. Early Monday morning she phoned the influential news department of WJR-AM, the station located in the Golden Tower of the Fisher Building. Maybe reporters would be receptive to helping a fellow tenant.

  Jan heard the first news report in her Thunderbird on her way to the Fisher Building. She’d decided work was the only thing that might take her mind off Al.

  Few residents of the Morrell Apartments listened to WJR, but John Fry and Dawn Spens were well known by many of the tenants in the three-story building on Morrell and Toledo streets. So was the black Buick and the man they knew as The Doc.

  John Bumstead was one of the first people to spot the couple as they pulled up to the building shortly after noon. Bumstead had gone to the Morrell Apartments to see Keith Bjerke, who had moved into an apartment there.

  Fry hit the brakes when he saw Bumstead on the sidewalk. He spit several obscenities at his former neighbor. Fry demanded to know why Bumstead hadn’t told him when he called from northern Michigan the day before that police cars were spotted on Casper on Sunday.

  Tammy Becker was looking out the window of her friend Cecelia Ramirez’s apartment when she spotted the Buick parked across from the building. A few minutes later she went out the front door. Dawn was sitting on the concrete steps in front. Then Fry approached her from the direction of the car. He wanted Tammy to follow him in her car so he could drop the Buick off somewhere.

  “Where’s Al?” she asked.

  “Things have backfired,” John said.

  Tammy told him she didn’t want to get involved.

  “Tammy, it’s very important that I get rid of this car.”

  John was looking for a neighborhood car thief. He offered to fill up her tank with gas. John pulled a gasoline card from his pocket. She saw the name Alan Canty.

  “John, I don’t want to know any more,” she said.

  She turned to go back into the apartment building, but John grabbed her arm, repeating again that he had to dump the Buick. Then he explained why.

  “Al didn’t bring what he was supposed to,” he said. “He finally stuck up for his rights.”

  The Doc stuck out his arm, John said, and he “went to town” on him with a baseball bat.

  “Al’s history,” John said. “The body will never be found. It’s scattered in five different states.”

  Tammy refused to help again, but before she scurried into the building, John told her she was the only person he’d told about the killing.

  “If it gets back,” he said, “I’ll know it was you.”

  Later, Cecelia Ramirez also talked with John and Dawn outside.

  “Where’s The Doc?” she asked.

  Fry smirked. Dawn was still sitting on the steps, her limbs shaking.

  “Would you believe that The Doc started drinking and got brave and stood up to John?” Dawn said. “He even pushed John.”

  A short while later John and Dawn showed up at the apartment door of a thirty-three-yearold ex-convict named Gary Neil, asking to use his phone. Neil had many dealings with Fry over the summer. He’d also heard several days before the killing about John’s plans to score a large amount of money from The Doc.

  “What happened to your move?” Neil asked.

  “It backfired.”

  “What happened to The Doc?”

  “He pushed me over the edge.”

  John said that Al had shown up “with only sixty-six dollars.” He said Al told them he was through with them and he was “going to straighten his life out.” Then Al threw up his fists, Fry said.

  “The body is in five different states,” he added. “I just got back from Ohio.”

  John wanted to know if Neil could help him sell the black Buick. He’d split the money. Neil asked him if he had a title. John said he didn’t.

  “John, I can’t sell a car without the fucking title.”

  Dawn, meanwhile, was on the telephone. Neil noticed she was crying as she talked.

  “You’d better watch Dawn,” Neil told John. “She’s going to crack.”

  “After all she’s been through I don’t have to worry about her,” Fry said. “She won’t crack, man. I’d put my life in her hands.”

  Gary Neil’s girlfriend, Consuelo Flores, overheard Dawn’s conversation. Dawn called her mother in Windsor and told her she’d almost been raped and had to leave Detroit—for California or Florida, perhaps. She warned her mother not to tell anyone she’d called. She needed as much money as possible.

  A few minutes later, outside the apartment building, Tammy Becker’s boyfriend, Steve Kovach, was just leaving in his girlfriend’s car when John Fry ran up and asked for a ride. Kovach knew John had been hassling Tammy that afternoon. He decided to give John a lift to get him away from his girlfriend. Dawn got in his car and John told him to follow the Buick.

  John parked the Buick two miles away on a main street near I-75. Kovach was nearly out of gas. Fry offered to fill his tank, pulling out a Mobil credit card. Kovach saw the name on the plastic and told him to forget it. He’d take his chances on the fumes.

  As they drove back to the Morrell Apartments, he heard John tell Dawn, “If we can’t sell the car, we’re going to have to burn it.”

  By late afternoon, the word about The Doc’s fate had spread through the entire apartment building. But two days earlier Keith Bjerke already had hints Al was in trouble. On Saturday, before the killing, he was on his way to the showers located in the basement of the building when Gary Neil yelled from his secondfloor apartment, “Hey, watch the papers. The Doc is in big shit.”

  By early evening, the Buick was parked in front of the Morrell Apartments again. When BJ saw the car, he approached his old neighbor, who was sitting with Dawn on the front steps.
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br />   “Well, where’s The Doc?” he asked sarcastically.

  “On an extended vacation,” John said. Then Lucky laughed.

  Gladys Canty’s influence was already being felt by the time the afternoon shift reported at the Thirteenth Precinct. Sergeant Carl Robinson was already up to his neck in other work as he took a seat next to the broken air conditioner. He was pulling off his tie when he saw a familiar six-footer with a linebacker’s build walk into the detective bureau. Greg Osowski was wearing his trademark shit-eating grin.

  “Goddamn, look at this missing,” Robinson told the seventeen-year veteran. “I’m gettin’ bugged by cases. I’m gettin’ bugged by the phone. Now I’m getting bugged by the commander.”

  Osowski waited for the punch line.

  “Greg, if I get calls, will you help out and take them.”

  He’d take more than that. Osowski snatched the missing report from Robinson’s desk. Fifteen years in the Thirteenth Precinct, two years in Morality, and he still was a sucker for a case. He hadn’t worn a uniform in thirteen years, but he remained the only cop in the investigations section with the bottom rank of police officer. He’d broken in half the guys in the detective bureau.

  The thirty-nine-yearold once asked a superior why he was never promoted. He responded, “Somebody’s got to take the blame when things go wrong. Shit always rolls downhill.”

  Osowski phoned Jan Canty. She detailed her husband’s predictable nature.

  “Sounds like the perfect husband,” he later told another investigator.

  By 8 P.M., Osowski decided he’d better start at the beginning. Twenty minutes later he was shooting the breeze with a couple of security guards at the Fisher Building.

  “He’s a strange one,” said one. “The man worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, every day.”

  After an elevator ride, Osowski found himself standing in the middle of Al Canty’s office in the Detroit Guidance Center. He saw the red Mustang on the wall and the wood cube with the brass ball. He looked up at the African sculptures, their distorted faces peering at him from the bookshelf. It was only a vibe, but he had learned to trust his instincts.

  “What did you mean by a strange one?” he asked the security guard when he returned to the Fisher arcade.

  “He’s a sexicle.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “He had a second office in here years ago and a lot of gorgeous young girls coming and going.”

  A few minutes later, Osowski stood looking out on the open vista from the tenth floor of the Fisher parking structure where Al Canty kept his car. Overworked. Young girls. Where, he thought, does a guy like that go to party after a long day?

  From his high post on a hot night, he eyed Second Avenue stretching south, directly into the heart of the Cass Corridor.

  Frank McMasters didn’t know how much longer he could stand the waiting. It was well past 8 P.M., and John Fry and Dawn Spens were late. Frank and Cheryl Krizanovic were sitting in his Dodge Aspen at the predetermined corner on the south side. Frank was surprised when the black Buick pulled up next to him.

  “Hey,” he said to John. “I thought you were gonna get rid of that damn thing.”

  “I’ve got to talk to a couple of people first and then we’ll get rid of it, then get the hell out of here.”

  Frank struggled to keep up as John steered the Buick recklessly through the streets of Detroit. He sped, blew stop signs, and cut corners through gas stations at lights. He stopped at a house, went inside, then came out saying the fence didn’t want the car.

  Then they drove to the Morrell Apartments, where John met Gary Neil. Dawn got into Frank’s Aspen. Neil and a friend were in another car. Now there were two cars chasing the Buick to another location where another unsuccessful attempt was made to unload the Buick.

  By 11 P.M. Frank was fed up. Cheryl had spent the entire evening swaying back and forth in the passenger’s seat. John came up with another plan as the three cars sat idling on the street.

  “Frank, we’re gonna strip it, then burn it. Go get a gallon of gasoline.”

  Frank drove to a nearby twenty-four-hour gas station. The two other cars were right behind him. While Dawn paid for the can of gasoline, Fry, Neil, and the third man began fumbling with the Buick, their hands shaking as they tried to unlock the wire wheel covers. The spare tire and jack were put in Frank’s trunk.

  Next, they wanted to take the Buick to a remote location to pull all four tires and the radio. Lucky Fry was going to get every dollar he could out of Al Canty’s car. That’s when Frank drew the line.

  “Fuck this, John, I’m leaving. I can’t take this pressure. I don’t want these junkies around me. I’m leaving.”

  “No, we’re just going to get these tires—”

  “No, we’re not going to get the goddamn tires. We’re gonna get rid of this goddamn car.”

  Neil and the other junkie disappeared into the night with the wheel covers. Frank followed John, who was driving the Buick, to a remote section of Federal Street across from a warehouse. John parked the car in a vacant field near a stretch of railroad tracks. John fumbled with the license plate, trying to turn the fasteners without a screwdriver. Frank grabbed it with two hands and ripped it off.

  Then John doused the car with gas. He started limping. He complained of an old abscess that was acting up on his leg, then asked Frank to torch the car. Frank lit the rag, threw it on the Regal, and ran. About five seconds passed before the flames met the fumes.

  They sped off as the flames lit up the desolate area. Frank was relieved. He no longer had to worry about fingerprints.

  No one had any money for gas or food for the five-hour trip back to Alanson. John and Dawn had spent their money on a bottle of Somas—muscle relaxants to soothe their nerves. They stopped at a local restaurant and waited while Dawn turned a trick on Vernor Highway.

  By the time they reached Pontiac, thirty minutes north of Detroit, Frank had a headache that pounded every time the car hit an expansion joint. He asked John to take the wheel and took him up on his offer for one of the Somas. John and Dawn already had swallowed a handful.

  Frank began questioning Fry again about the murder. Frank knew he was totally involved now, and he demanded that John tell him everything. Earlier, John had told him that the fatal argument with Al was over the psychologist supplying her drugs.

  The Aspen rolled north on I-75, while John unfolded a different story as Frank pressured him. John said the plan was to get Al to pay him ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars to leave Dawn alone—the same move they had pulled over a year ago. This time, however, John was to leave Detroit entirely and relocate in California. John also had added a twist to the deal, the kind Frank considered characteristic of his scheming personality.

  It went like this: Dawn put in the request for the money. John, meanwhile, pretended to take Al into his confidence. John then told Al privately that he had Dawn believing that once they got the money, they would both flee to California, leaving Al with nothing. But that was a smoke screen, he told the psychologist. John told Al that what he really planned was to take the money for himself and leave Dawn behind for him. That way the money could be transferred through Dawn without alerting her to John’s departure.

  God only knows, Frank thought later, what Lucky Fry actually would have done if he had received that money.

  Al Canty, however, failed to show with the cash on Saturday night. As Dawn ran into the bathroom to throw up, he and John began arguing about it. Words were exchanged and Fry demanded to know why the deal no longer stood.

  “Fuck you,” Al said. “I don’t have to justify anything I do to you.”

  Then Al pushed him. Frank McMasters already knew what happened when someone touched Lucky Fry. He’d seen the man before with a baseball bat in his hands.

  No, it probably wasn’t premeditated murder, Frank thought. But he doubted there was a lawyer in Detroit who could explain Lucky Fry to a jury. He just hoped John had kept
his mouth shut.

  “The guy can’t be traced to me,” John had already assured him. “And Frank, I haven’t said a thing to anybody.”

  Around midnight, Greg Osowski pulled up to the three hookers standing on Temple just east of Cass. The old cop rule still applied: Treat a whore like a lady and a lady like a whore.

  “Yeah,” said one. “There’s a girl named Dawn who has a good trick with a Buick. She used to live on Second and Charlotte.”

  Back at the precinct Osowski took a call from Ray Danford. Ray had been worried since he had heard from Jan. He had to tell somebody, but it wasn’t going to be Al’s wife. Osowski listened as Ray told him about their lunches.

  “I think the name is Spens,” he said.

  “Dawn Spens?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  At 1:30 A.M. the precinct computer produced a rap sheet and an address—645 Charlotte. A few minutes later Osowski sat in an idling unmarked car, looking at a vacant lot. Across the street he saw the Homewood Manor. He recognized the girl sitting out on the steps.

  For years Osowski had nurtured a select group of snitches, many of them whores. They were always looking for breaks the next time they found themselves in the Thirteenth lockup. Sometimes the cop wondered whether it was worth all the favors he handed out. He decided he’d walk across to the Homewood and find out from the girl Suzy Q.

  “Yeah, Dawn,” she said. “She hangs with a guy named Lucky.”

  “I need more than that, come on.”

  She blinked her eyes. Thirty minutes later she called him at the station.

  “Greg, it’s Fry,” she said. “I think the name is Lucky Fry.”

  The Dodge Aspen blew by the state police car as it lurked in the median near Bay City. When John Fry saw the flasher in his rear-view mirror he remembered what Frank had said about the faulty speedometer.

  “Frank, Frank,” he shouted. “Drive! Take the wheel, man! I don’t have a driver’s license and I just killed a motherfucker.”

  “No, man.” Frank was drowsy from the Soma.

  “Fuck this, you will!”

  The car swerved as John kept his foot on the pedal, and the two of them switched places. Fifteen minutes later the trooper handed Frank the speeding ticket. The cop was cordial and unsuspicious.