La Donna Detroit

by Jon A. Jackson

  When they were out on the pounding lake, Roman said, “Whatta you going to do, Joe?”

  “When we get out a little farther, this guy goes to sleep with the fishes,” Joe said. “I’ll explain it to his friends, somehow. Or not.” His eye fell on the radio that Pollak had used to contact the colonel. He picked it up, stepped back out of the sheltering bridge canopy, and hurled it into the choppy lake.

  21

  Requiem

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s at my place,” Dr. White said. “He’s not well.”

  “Not well? You mean he’s ill?”

  “He was shot,” she explained. “It was a ricochet. He narrowly escaped being murdered.” It appeared that she was convinced by the physical evidence that DiEbola’s story was true. He had told her that he’d discovered that some individuals in his enterprise were engaged in criminal activities. When he tried to put a stop to it, they had tried to kill him. She knew it was more complex than that, she said, but that was essentially the case. She was convinced.

  Mulheisen listened to this with something between amusement and outrage. He insisted on seeing DiEbola. After a brief resistance—“He’s much too weak”—she acquiesced.

  As they walked through the rain she told Mulheisen that Humphrey had, in fact, asked about him.

  “About me?” Mulheisen was surprised. “He knows I’m here?”

  “No, I didn’t tell him you were here. I didn’t want to upset him. But I think he’s been expecting you. Or, not exactly. What he said, several times, was ‘Is Mulheisen here?’ He seems to think that you are after him. That you’re pursuing him.”

  “He’s got that right,” Mulheisen said. “How bad is he?”

  “He’s very close. To death, I mean. I wanted to have him airlifted off the island, to a hospital, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He feels safe here. I think he fears that if he went to a hospital his enemies would soon discover his whereabouts and kill him. Apparently, these gangsters have some kind of ubiquitous network. Nothing escapes them.”

  “What exactly is wrong with him?” Mulheisen asked.

  Dr. White explained that when DiEbola had arrived he was already weakened from loss of blood and shock. The blood loss wasn’t critical, she had determined, and he seemed to perk up once he was made comfortable. But she soon saw that the wound was more serious than it had seemed. He hadn’t been struck by a bullet directly, but only a ricochet fragment. However, it had perforated the abdominal membrane, and although she had cleaned it, there seemed to be a low-grade infection of some sort. The bullet may have picked up a contaminant en route—perhaps it had passed through another’s flesh; she couldn’t tell. She had some experience in these things, having treated many wounds, particularly hunting wounds. They could be benign at first and then, unexpectedly, turn nasty.

  As time went on he would first rally to the point of getting out of bed, being quite cheerful, and then, soon after, lapse back. She had the feeling now, she said, that for one reason or another, he had taken a fatalistic view of his injuries and didn’t believe he could recover. As a consequence, everything seemed to worsen: his fever rose, he was retaining fluids, his systems seemed to be failing. She did not have any fancy equipment; she hadn’t come here to practice medicine, although she saw a few patients. She thought he could be helped—or could have been helped—at any modestly equipped hospital. But he would have none of that.

  “For fear of exposing himself?” Mulheisen asked.

  She stopped in the path. It was very dark. “It’s more than that. I think he’s disappointed,” she said. “In me.”

  Mulheisen didn’t get it. “How could you disappoint him?”

  “Perhaps I’ve gotten it wrong,” she said. “He’s disappointed that he can’t … I don’t know … make amends. He can’t atone.”

  “Atone for what?”

  The doctor shrugged helplessly in the rain. “I really don’t know. He seems to feel some responsibility toward my brother, Arthur, who died tragically when we were youngsters. I’ve tried to argue him out of it,” she said, as they pushed on through the rain, which was now being driven hard by wind. “He persists in feeling that he was to blame.”

  Mulheisen told her he had informed himself about the case. He wondered what role DiEbola could have played in it. She had no idea. It was his imagination, she thought. But they had arrived.

  Mulheisen was grateful to be out of the storm. He asked if DiEbola was alone.

  “I don’t have a nurse, if that’s what you mean,” she said quickly, hanging up their rain gear. “He’s in here.” She showed him into the guest room. The doctor went immediately to the open window. “Who—” she started to say.

  DiEbola opened his eyes. “Leave it open,” he croaked. “I like the air. I like to hear the rain.”

  The doctor hesitated, then lowered the sash until the window was nearly closed.

  DiEbola frowned at the other person in the room, but then he realized who was there. His face took on a look of surprise, then he managed a ghastly grin, his lips curling back on his teeth. He had lost weight, and his features, always quite strong, were more pronounced: the nose more beaky, the forehead looming. Only his lips, normally rather red and sensuous, seemed thinner, almost bloodless.

  “Mul!” he rasped. For an instant he seemed frightened. Perhaps a pang? But then he relaxed. “It’s you,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d make it.” His voice was little more than a croak. “In time for the wake,” he added.

  Mulheisen looked to Dr. White. “We’d better get him out of here,” he said.

  “No,” DiEbola said. He shook his head slightly, as if it hurt to move. “I’ll stay right here. It won’t be long.”

  Mulheisen ignored him. He started for the door, but stopped when DiEbola called to him.

  “Mul,” DiEbola croaked, “come and sit down. I got a lot to tell you.” He waved feebly at Dr. White. “Wait outside,” he said.

  Mulheisen caught her by the arm. “Get on to the hospital,” he said quietly. “I’m sure you know the procedure. I need to talk to him.” Then he went to the bedside and pulled up a chair.

  “Dumbest things happen,” DiEbola said. “I never dreamed a place like this.” He waved a thin hand weakly. “The jumping-off place. I need a token, it looks like, to cross over. You got a token, Mul? A dime?” He turned his palm up.

  Mulheisen fumbled in his pocket for a coin. He placed a nickel in DiEbola’s hand. “Sure, Humphrey, but what brings you here? I’d have thought you’d retire in Vegas, or maybe Rio. Not out in the woods, on the Lakes.”

  “Me too,” DiEbola said. “Never saw myself croaking in the woods. I wanted to see Ivy, talk about old times. You get my age, Mul, everybody you knew is gone.”

  “Especially in your trade,” Mulheisen said mildly. “You made a lot of them disappear, yourself. So, what was all that business in the bunker?”

  “The bunker?” DiEbola seemed confused. Or maybe exhausted. He was silent for a while, eyes closed. When he replied, finally, it wasn’t clear at first what bunker he was talking about. “Shou’n’t have gone into the bunker,” he said. “Funny,” he went on, after a long moment, “Carmie went down there too, but Carmie never let it bug him.”

  “Carmie?” Mulheisen said. “Carmine? What did Carmine do?”

  “He went in the hole,” DiEbola said. “Shou’n’t have done it.”

  Dr. White came in and whispered to Mulheisen. “I’ll have to go down to the village. The phone’s out.”

  “I’ll go,” Mulheisen said, getting up.

  “No, you stay,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  When she was gone, DiEbola said, “Good. We can talk.” His face took on a crafty look. “We went in Porky’s fort, Mul.”

  “Yes?” Mulheisen was beginning to get the drift. “You and Carmine? What happened?”

  “Porky caught us. He’d a killed us,” DiEbola whispered. “Wasn’t my fault, I swear. We left him there. We covered him up. Nob
ody ever knew.”

  Mulheisen nodded. They sat silently, listening to the wind howl and buffet the house, the rain pelting against the window. Mulheisen sniffed. It smelled funny in here. He supposed it was the medicine, perhaps the infection. But it smelled like cordite, overladen with a damp mustiness. Maybe it was sulfur, he mused: the Devil come to get his favorite.

  “But it bothered you,” he prompted DiEbola.

  “Not Carmie,” DiEbola said. “He never gave it a thought. Never mentioned it again. I almost forgot. I been dreaming about it, though. I kept seeing him.”

  “The Boogey Man,” Mulheisen said, quietly.

  “You know about him,” DiEbola said. He seemed comforted to know that Mulheisen understood.

  “Oh yes,” Mulheisen said.

  “I thought I forgot,” DiEbola said. “But then he showed up. We didn’t do anything so bad, did we? He’d a killed us. Not my fault.”

  Mulheisen said, “Nobody ever blamed you for that.”

  “That’s how it works,” DiEbola said. “Luck and hard work, nobody can pin nothin’ on you. Cover him up. Covered everything, after that. Ever’ candy bar, ever’ muscled buck.” He paused. The effort was too much. When he could speak again, he said: “You know what, Mul? It gets to be too much. You can’t hide all them bodies.”

  “Why did you come here?” Mulheisen asked. “What does this have to do with Ivy?”

  “I owed her, Mul.”

  Mulheisen considered that. Then he said, “What did you owe her? What could you do for her? Remind her of a tragedy she got over fifty years ago? No, Humphrey. You came for yourself.”

  Humphrey tried to nod, but it was too hard. “Sure,” he said. “I thought I could explain it to her. She’d understand.”

  “Maybe she’d forgive you,” Mulheisen suggested.

  Humphrey smiled. “She’s wacko, Mul. She don’t know from shit.”

  “No. She’s a good woman,” Mulheisen said.

  “Sure.” Humphrey didn’t want to argue. “S’all my fault. You can’t blame nobody but me, Mul. The girl didn’t have nothing to do with it. Helen. She ain’t done nothing wrong. I kept her out of the bad stuff. She liked playing at La Donna, but it wasn’t happening.

  “Ivy … she don’t know nothing about me. I found her on the Internet! Accident! Fooling around one night, just ‘surfing,’ and I found this site up in the bush. Dr. Ivy White. I started E-mailing her. Her ma got cancer and she said she was coming down here, I figured it was a sign. I’d close up shop and come over. She didn’t exactly welcome me, but she didn’t say don’t come. Thought I could make it up to her. Dumb idea. You got that coin?”

  “I gave you the coin.”

  DiEbola lifted his hand, saw the nickel. “Fuckin’ nickel? That enough?”

  “It’s enough,” Mulheisen said. DiEbola’s fist closed on it, then he closed his eyes. “Need this for the ferryman,” he said.

  “We have to get you out of here,” Mulheisen said. “Dr. White is getting a Mercy Flight helicopter in. You don’t have to just lie here and die.”

  “I don’t? Looks like it to me,” Humphrey said. “It’s just like in Mac, you know.”

  “Mac?”

  “Machiavelli. The Prince. His Prince, Borgia, didn’t know when to quit. Not me. Hurts though.”

  DiEbola struggled to sit up, but he groaned and fell back. Dr. White returned. Mulheisen went into the hall to talk to her. She said the hospital would try to get the chopper out here, but it didn’t look good. The weather was really kicking up. The RCMP would send a boat, for all the good that would do.

  While she tended to DiEbola, Mulheisen stepped outside for some fresh air. Up here on the bluff, the wind roared, thrashing the limbs of the pines furiously. The rain pelted, paused, then came at you from another direction. Mulheisen retreated to the house.

  The doctor had given DiEbola an injection of something, to ease his pain. He was breathing more calmly than he had been. He lay with his eyes closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. Mulheisen beckoned Dr. White out of the room.

  “How long can he last?” he asked.

  Dr. White said she thought he was pretty close to the end. But one couldn’t tell. She’d had patients worse than DiEbola hold out for days. But he didn’t seem to want to hold out. She thought he’d be dead before the chopper or anybody else got there. They heard a noise; he was calling.

  “Sit down, Mul,” DiEbola said. He waved his clenched fist at the chair, pointing with a bony finger. Mulheisen sat down. Dr. White fussed about the I.V. “Leave it, Ivy,” DiEbola said. She sighed and retreated to a chair on the other side of the room.

  “Mul, talk to me. What’s goin’ on in town?”

  “Nothing’s going on, Humphrey. Town’s quiet, now that you’re gone.”

  “Tell me a story,” DiEbola demanded.

  “I don’t know any stories,” Mulheisen said. He stared at the dying man impassively.

  “Sure you do,” DiEbola said. His eyelids lifted. He gazed at Mulheisen. “Never know what you’re thinkin’.” After a moment, he begged, “A story. Some of those cop stories.”

  Mulheisen thought for a moment, then hitched closer. “I heard this funny story. First murder in Detroit.” He related the whole tale of Le Pesant. Humphrey seemed to enjoy it. He smiled, even tried to laugh.

  Suddenly his eyes opened wide. They looked bright. “You know what? That was me. I covered the body, then I raised it up.”

  Mulheisen stared at him.

  “I was Porky,” DiEbola said. He shifted his head, wondering. “I wish I knew.”

  He lay back and that was it. Mulheisen stared down at the body. One minute it was a man, alive, thinking. The next, nothing.

  Dr. White came to the bedside. She lifted an eyelid, felt his pulse, then laid his hands on his breast. She looked over at Mulheisen and said, “He was an impressive man, but so strange.”

  “You don’t know how strange,” Mulheisen said.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “I can hardly remember Arthur, my brother. I haven’t even looked at a picture of him in years. He’s always been this kind of brutish figure to me. He wasn’t nice. But when I think of him, he’s always fifteen, but somehow older than me. He was like that for Bert, too,” she said. Then she sighed and smoothed back the hair on the brow of the corpse. “Poor man,” she said.

  Mulheisen nodded, as if in agreement. Privately, he thought, Not like Le Pesant, after all. Not a real chief, willing to assume a burden for his people. Just a shrunken fat man who didn’t survive the storm.