He hung up and made two more calls, with much the same results. “Okay,” he said to himself, when he was finished, “that’s that.” He grabbed a jacket out of an old wooden wardrobe he’d dragged in, and went out. He took a dark Ford out of the garage and drove out the gate. Fifteen minutes later, he picked up Joe Service. Humphrey went over the plan again, while he drove to the medical offices.
“Leave the computers to me. Like most of these guys, he’s got two sets of files, some of it on the computers and some of it still in the usual paper-folder files. You take care of the folders.”
“Couldn’t you just crack into the computers? What do they call it, ‘hack’ in?” Joe said. “Why do you have to be along at all?”
“I awreddy did,” Humphrey said, “but they got some crypto code, which I didn’t know about. The key will be in the office. Anyway, I thought you’d like company.”
Joe Service smiled. He felt quite easy, if not exactly relaxed, but he could see that Humphrey was tense and excited. “Been a long time, eh Slim?” he teased.
Humphrey scowled, but then he laughed. “Yah, like the old days. If bein’ the boss was more like this, I wouldn’t be quittin’. Instead, it’s all meetin’s, that kinda crap. Guy needs to get out once in a while, get his hands dirty.”
Joe wanted to warn him that it wasn’t just a lark. That kind of thinking almost always led to trouble. It would be stupid to get caught doing a simple break-in: the consequences could be out of all proportion to the act. Nixon’s guys had learned that the hard way. But what could he say?
Dr. Schwartz’s offices were typical, in a low brick building with its own parking lot. Humphrey did not park there, but in the much larger lot at Bon Secours hospital, a block away. They casually strolled across the way to Schwartz’s offices. The entry was lit, in a kind of sheltered walkway. There was no guard, but there would be an alarm system. There was no money on the premises, not much to attract burglars, and there were frequent patrols.
Humphrey had taken sensible precautions: he knew how the system worked. Doctors often worked late, or had to return to meet a patient, look something up. And Humphrey had a key. He didn’t say how he’d gotten it and Joe didn’t ask. They simply strolled up, unlocked, and entered. Humphrey punched the requisite numbers into the alarm system, and they went to work.
It was time-consuming, but they did not hurry. Joe found Angelo’s records and then Humphrey’s. He went to the secretary’s desk, located the appropriate forms, where possible, and retyped them. They made little sense to him, mostly numbers, so he made sure that he got them exactly right. The various signatures—there were only a couple—were a little tricky, but he thought that because they were largely hasty scribbles, his duplications would stand up. Where the forms were not available, as with lab reports, he made do with carefully replacing the name tags with labels that were in the secretary’s desk and typing in the new name.
While Joe did this, Humphrey attacked the computer files. He soon located the access codes and he knew the technique, but it was more time-consuming than he had reckoned. They were both deeply engaged in the process when the phone rang.
Joe looked across at Humphrey. “The alarm company?” he asked. The phone rang again.
Humphrey considered. “It must be,” he said. “Answer it.”
“You,” Joe said.
The phone rang a third time.
“No, you,” Humphrey said.
Joe picked up the phone. “Hi,” he said. “Who? Yes, this is Dr. Schwartz. No, I’m not on call. I’m just doing a little work. What is it? Who? Are you a patient? The who? No, you’ll have to call Dr…. Well, who’s on call? Me? You’re sure? Well, wait a minute. Give me your number. Where are you? I’ll call you right back.”
He hung up and looked at Humphrey, a look somewhere between disbelief and bafflement. “Can you believe it? Schwartz is on call. He’s got a patient on his way to Bon Secours with a heart attack. They tried his home, but no answer.” He glanced at the wall clock: it was after midnight.
“Find his pager number,” Humphrey snapped.
“Right.”
They both hunted around frantically, looking at rosters, Rolodexes, until Joe found it on a list taped to the side of the secretary’s phone. He dialed the number. It was not a pager, but a cellular phone. “Dr. Schwartz!” he said. “You’ve got an emergency. Heart attack—Mr. Cowan. He’s on his way to Bon Secours.” He slammed down the phone.
“Let’s git,” Joe said. “I’m done. If he sees the lights when he drives by …”
“I’m almost done,” Humphrey said. He stared at the screen before him, pecking out numbers while Joe restored the files to the cabinets. “That’ll do it, I just gotta log off.”
A minute later they were outside. An ambulance whizzed by as they strolled to the car.
“You know what I forgot?” Joe asked as they got in. “I didn’t call that number back, to tell them I was on my way.”
“It won’t matter,” Humphrey said. He started the car. “It’s an emergency. He’ll be there. Somebody called, he came. Nobody’ll even remember.”
“The alarm company will have an entry on their log,” Joe said. “The alarm was logged off and back on, such and such a date.”
“Nobody’ll notice. Why should they?”
“I hope you’re right,” Joe said. He relaxed, then added, almost to himself, “There’s always some little thing. Well, what’s next, the dentist?”
Humphrey pulled an envelope out of the glove compartment. He tossed it on Joe’s lap. “X-rays,” he said. “Full set. Just pop ’em in my file and take the others. I already took care of Angelo’s.”
13
Lucani
Dinah Schwind was wishing that while they had Joe Service in the hospital, they had thought to implant a locator beacon in his ass. She hadn’t seen him in days, nor heard from him. She was kicking around in Detroit, visiting various federal agencies, police, just killing time and trying to convince the Colonel, who was in Washington and calling every day, that everything was fine. She had no such confidence. Beyond that, she missed Joe.
Two events tightened her tension. The first was a slaying in Pontiac, a city north of Detroit that doesn’t like to think of itself as a suburb, because it had a fairly long separate history. The deceased was a well-known Detroit hood named Kenneth Malateste. He’d been shot in the head in a municipal parking garage. The woman who ran the booth at the entrance told the police that there had been two other men in the car with Malateste, but she hadn’t paid much attention to them.
The car had been left, with Malateste lying on the front seat, slumped over. It had been there for several hours before someone noticed that there was blood on the windshield. Obviously, he’d been shot by someone in the back seat. No robbery; his identification and money were left on him. The doors were locked. Of no particular interest to Schwind, when she read the report, was that Malateste had a couple of cigars in his suit-coat pocket, in a plastic bag of the pressure-fastener sort. She was interested, however, in the fact that the victim was considered to be a key enforcer for Humphrey DiEbola, in recent times the administrator of the mob’s protection racket.
Two days later, another body was found, another known associate of DiEbola’s. This was Wallace Leonardo, a tough waste-removal contractor, popularly called Nardo. He’d been found by some kids playing around a flooded quarry in Lapeer County, north of Detroit. He had been pretty badly battered. The coroner thought his fatal wounds had been inflicted either in falling or by the skull being crushed with rocks. In addition, his abdominal cavity had been cut open and filled with rocks, presumably an attempt to keep the body submerged, but that hadn’t sufficed. He had not been robbed. His personal effects were still in his pockets, including a couple of cigars.
Schwind could no longer ignore Joe’s failure to report. Colonel Tucker flew into Detroit to confer, along with two other agents from other federal agencies. Counting Schwind and one other man, they constitut
ed the ad hoc group that Schwind had described to Joe. Besides the Colonel and Schwind, the members were Bernie Acker, Dexter Collins, and Edna Swarthout. They had all worked with the colonel in one group or another. They were united in their impatience with bureaucratic bungling and corruption, coupled with a bold willingness to take direct action. Edna Swarthout, who had been with the colonel in his encounter with Joe and Helen in Salt Lake City, had not been able to make the meeting.
They were staying at a hotel in Southfield, in the northwest Detroit metropolitan zone. They conferred in the colonel’s room. “Do you think this is Joe’s work?” the colonel asked.
Dinah did not think so. She was emphatic. “If you’re suggesting that Joe is initiating a campaign, no way,” she said. “I never mentioned these men to him, and he’s not an enthusiastic killer. I’ve talked to the police investigators in both cases. These appear to be unrelated killings, by different assailants. The techniques are different. What links them is the relationship to DiEbola and the closeness of events in time. This is either more evidence of the diffusion of criminal hegemony in the Detroit area—a natural consequence of the decline of mob power—or it may be a kind of weeding-out process instigated by DiEbola himself. Neither of these men were considered very staunch allies of DiEbola’s, but neither were particular enemies, as far as anyone knows.”
“What does Joe say about it?” the colonel wanted to know. Schwind was unable to say. She hadn’t heard from Joe. “Well, we better find him,” the colonel said.
“Any ideas?” she asked.
“I’d keep an eye on the woman,” the colonel said. “He came looking for her in Salt Lake. He must be in communication with her here.”
Schwind saw his point. She had been observing local events, but that had not extended to physical surveillance; she was contacting police and other investigative organizations, trying to get a clearer picture of general activity.
They were only a small group, and their activities had to be carried out while ostensibly on other missions. Schwind’s presence in Detroit, for instance, was being attributed to a larger investigation of organized crime.
The colonel saw the problem even as he spoke of it. “I’ll get you some help,” he said. “I’m supposed to be liaising with the INS here. I’ll clear it with the director.”
Two days later, after tailing Helen to the cigar factory, Schwind was sitting in a surveillance van with a couple of INS agents, parked down the block, when she saw Joe Service enter the building. She wondered what Joe saw in this skinny little woman with too much hair, with that ridiculous silver streak. Some men might find Helen attractive, she supposed, but in her eyes the woman was superficial, affected, pretty but insignificant.
Joe and Helen came out together and took her car to the Renaissance Center hotel. They went up the elevator together. Presumably, one of them had booked a room. They stayed there for more than an hour, then returned to the cigar factory, where Joe got into his car. They followed him in the van to Saint Clair Shores—at first Schwind thought he was going to DiEbola’s, but he didn’t stop in Grosse Pointe—where he pulled into a parking lot at a marina and entered a restaurant. Schwind went inside.
Joe was waiting for her. He had reserved a table. They sat, looking out over the boats at the lake. He was pleasant and friendly, apologetic for not calling her. “I kinda figured you’d be around,” he offered. He had noticed the van when they were coming out Jefferson Avenue. Schwind found it difficult to be annoyed.
When she asked him about the killings he readily volunteered the information they sought. “Humphrey’s up to something,” he said. “Malateste and Nardo were hit by rivals. I think Humphrey tipped the killers. I don’t know what he had against the two. Maybe incompetence, but now he’s got a couple of new allies, only they aren’t traditional mob guys. Maybe that’s his plan, to broaden his base. The thing is, you’d think that it would weaken his support among the traditional guys, but the feeling seems to be that it was another guy, Soteri, who screwed up. Soteri talks a lot. He was telling everybody in town that Kenny and Nardo were screwups, that they couldn’t run their own show. I don’t know where he got his poop. Maybe Humphrey put him up to it.”
Schwind knew who Soteri was, a dealer in stolen cars. She wondered what advantage DiEbola could get from this.
“Malateste was a protégé of Rossamani’s, who was one of Carmine’s boys,” Joe said. “Rossamani was involved in some kind of action behind Humphrey’s back, with your buddy Echeverria. He got his when my cabin blew up. Maybe Malateste was thinking of making a move on Humphrey, I don’t know. Nardo? He was an all right guy, maybe a little old-fashioned. I heard that his operation was under pressure from outsiders. Maybe they bumped him. Maybe Humphrey sold the franchise. Who knows? Humphrey is very deep.”
Schwind digested this. She was very pleased with Joe. He was giving them great stuff, she felt. “What’s next?” she asked.
Joe had a theory. “I think Soteri’s in trouble. The mob guys don’t like him. Things are changing around here. A lot of incompetent people are getting weeded out. It looks like Humphrey is building a leaner, more effective mob.”
“Who else?”
Joe told her about Mongelo’s disappearance. “Word is, he was run off,” Joe said, “several weeks ago. He hasn’t been seen. But they say that he was an old friend of Humphrey’s, they were kids together. The word is, he got paid off and told to retire. Rumor says he went to the Bahamas, or maybe even farther.”
“Another step toward the New Look?” Schwind offered.
“Trimming the fat,” Joe said. “I guess Humphrey is remaking his organization in his own image. You might want to keep an eye on Soteri. They say he’s making a move on some rivals.” He gave her an address on Shoemaker.
Schwind, grateful as she was, still naturally wanted to know his sources. Joe said he’d gotten some of it from just talking to Humphrey; other pieces had come from conversations with a variety of old Detroit hands. None of it was ironclad, just speculation, but it sounded plausible. When you saw Arab gangs operating Malateste’s business without retaliation by DiEbola, or the Armenian prospering in the suburbs, you had to conclude that the rumors were valid. But who knows? Maybe Humphrey was biding his time. Maybe he’d crack down.
“How are you getting along with Helen?” Schwind asked.
“All right,” Joe said. She couldn’t tell if he had been aware that he’d been followed to the Renaissance. “Helen’s okay.”
“What’s her role in all this?”
“She’s Humphrey’s new pal,” he said. “Well, he’s known her since she was a kid. He relies on her to take care of the legitimate side. She’s pretty capable, you know.”
“Just the legitimate side?” Schwind said.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “What are you doing for dinner?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Do you like Arab food?” he asked. “I heard about a place in Dearborn.”
“I’d be delighted. I’m sure the colonel would like to join us, and a couple of other guys. It’d be a good opportunity for you to meet the Lucani.”
Joe raised an eyebrow.
“That’s what we call ourselves,” Schwind explained. “It’s from Lucania, a province in Italy. DiEbola is supposedly from there.”
“It’s a date,” Joe said.
Dinner was great, if you like tabbouleh and that sort of thing. The colonel was very affable, as were Acker and Collins. The colonel was congratulatory about Joe’s progress. He made no direct reference to their encounter in Salt Lake City, when Joe had thwarted an operation aimed at breaking up Helen’s attempts to smurf the cash that she and Joe had taken, but he asked after “the lovely Miss Sedlacek.”
Joe took this opportunity to say that he would have no part in any operation that targeted Helen. The colonel was quick to allay his fears. “We have no interest in Helen Sedlacek,” he said. “You have my word on that.”
Joe noticed that Schwind looked ste
adfastly at her plate.
They were eating some kind of spicy goat stew when the colonel got a call on his cell phone. There had been a shoot-out on Shoemaker. Aldo Soteri was dead. There were some federal agents on the scene. The colonel suggested they all take a run across town. Joe didn’t think that was such a good idea. It wouldn’t be good for him to be seen in their company. The Lucani conceded the point.
Sometime earlier, at about the moment the Lucani were sampling the tabbouleh, Humphrey was at the cigar factory. He’d asked Strom to meet him there.
They met at the loading dock. Strom was alone, as was Humphrey.
“Where’s your boys?” Strom asked.
“They had work to do,” Humphrey said. It was dark, just a few minimal lights. The parking lot and loading area were empty. “Don’t you have a watchman?” Humphrey asked.
“Don’t need one,” Strom said. “This ain’t a great neighborhood to be out in at night, and the guys who make it not such a great neighborhood know who runs this biz. They don’t fuck with us. Besides, you got your boy downstairs, watching Mongelo. If anybody tries to break in, he can tend to it.”
“That’s not why he’s here,” Humphrey pointed out, “but never mind. Let’s go see Monge. You got a piece?”
“Sure,” Strom said. He patted his breast.
They went down to the basement. The guard was a young fellow from the potato chip factory. He didn’t speak English. He was sitting outside the cage, watching a porno movie through the bars, with Mongelo. He jumped up when they approached. Humphrey’s Italian was poor, but he managed to convey to the young man that he was relieved, he could go.
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