At this point he wasn't sure what he was up to, but when he'd shown Helen's picture to various bank personnel and it had been readily identified as the picture of the woman who had purchased money orders for slightly less than three thousand dollars, he felt a tremor of the chase. He wanted to take a longer look. He had long suspected that her presence in Salt Lake City was more than casual. He wondered if she'd made a base for herself here. He didn't bother to go to the local police. It was hardly worth bothering with, at this early stage. Later, he would of course coordinate his investigation with them, but right now it was too tentative.
He was encouraged by his conversation with one woman, an officer at a downtown bank, who had initially interviewed Helen when she sought to purchase a cashier's check with a large amount of cash. She had recognized the photo—Helen was a striking woman, easily remembered—but she had no name to go with the face. “She came in here,” the woman said, “carrying a small suitcase which was evidently full of cash. She didn't know about the three-thousand-dollar limit. She wanted to buy a fifty-thousand-dollar cashier's check—with cash! She said she was in a business where she had to handle a lot of cash. I explained the IRS reporting requirements to her. You know, it used to be that you could buy a cashier's check for less than ten thousand dollars without identifying yourself, but now we have to keep a log for anything three thousand and over. She purchased a check for less from the teller and naturally I was suspicious. I watched her walk right across the street and into another bank. I was sure she was trying to avoid IRS reporting requirements. She didn't look like a smurf, but they aren't supposed to, are they? So I called the FBI. They took the information and said they would pass it on to the proper agency, but they didn't seem particularly interested and I never heard anything more about it. I guess now I should have called the IRS, but I just didn't think about it. Did I do right?”
The woman looked concerned. Mulheisen had identified himself as a policeman, but she had hardly glanced at his identification—that homely, honest face was nearly always accepted at, well, face value. If he'd said he was a plumber, she probably would have pointed to the sink. He supposed she thought he might be a federal agent of some kind. “Oh, no problem,” he assured her. “We're on the case, but since you did report your suspicions. . . . The fact is, she didn't do anything illegal as far as you were concerned, but I think you were right to be suspicious. Did she give any name? I know she didn't have to file a report, but did she give a name to you?”
The woman was sure she hadn't. “But I saw her in the bank again, a few days later, and then again some weeks later. She was no longer lugging that suitcase, but she was toting a very large handbag. I asked the teller when she left and found out she had purchased another cashier's check.”
None of this had taken very long. Mulheisen walked around to a few of the hotels downtown and showed the picture. It wasn't recognized until he got to the Little America, a huge pile just south of the main business district. It seemed she had spent a couple of days there about the time of Joe Service's shooting, in September, some three months earlier. It looked like the hotel for her, suitably large, anonymous, but with some class. But he had another feeling: she wouldn't be happy in a hotel if she had a lot of cash to take care of. And this was another thing that was tentative, but convincing to Mulheisen: he suspected that she had quite a lot of money, in cash.
Nearly a year earlier, it had been widely rumored on the streets of Detroit that her father had skimmed—shoveled, really—somewhere between twenty and forty million dollars off drug dealings, which was why Carmine had ordered him dead. This money had never been recovered, according to street talk reported to Rackets and Conspiracy in the Detroit Police Department, but Mulheisen himself had found the man who had engineered the skimming for Big Sid Sedlacek: a small-time chiseler and wannabe hit man named Eugene Lande.
Mulheisen remembered the scene vividly; how could he forget it? Lande was holding a .45 automatic and it was pointed at Mulheisen. Lande had said, almost offhandedly, that the take had been too much to disperse into the elaborate computer-banking scheme that he had set up. The money just kept rolling in, a scene reminiscent of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, where once the foolish apprentice got the juice flowing he didn't find it so easy to get it to stop. But Lande had managed to lay off all but about fifteen million dollars, he thought. Mulheisen had asked where that money was now. Lande had nodded toward the rear of the building in which they stood.
“You have fifteen million dollars here? In cash?” Mulheisen had asked. Lande wasn't certain how much was there.
“Fifteen mil is an awful lotta cash,” Lande had told him, “even if it's all in fifties and hunnerds, which it was, ‘cause you can't be screwin’ aroun’ with twennies and that little crap. Lessee.” He'd done a quick calculation in his head. “If it's all hunnerds, that'd be a hunnerd fifty thousand bills, or somethin’ like that. Now, if they was all new bills—you know, in little tight bun'les like the mint issues—you could prolly cram that much cash inna half dozen cardboard boxes, say like they put whiskey bottles in. But what I had was a couple dozen boxes, ‘cause the money was used. . . . It's thicker.” He went on to say that he had dumped some of the money—a fantastic tale of leaving it on the doorsteps of orphanages and missions for the homeless—but he still had a lot left. He thought he had perhaps got rid of another five or six million, he wasn't sure.
At the time Mulheisen had been skeptical of this tale (he hadn't heard anything about orphanages finding boxes of free money on their doorsteps). Besides, he was distracted, what with the wavering .45 in Lande's hand. Well, Lande had been drunk, and quite crazed. Ultimately, he had put the .45 into his own mouth and ended it. Afterward, Mulheisen had found a dozen or so boxes in the back, stuffed with old newspapers. At the time little attention was paid to this factor, but Mulheisen had reasoned that no one fills a cardboard box with newspaper, unless perhaps he wishes someone else (Lande, presumably) to think that the boxes were still full of what they were supposed to be full of—money. So perhaps there was something to Lande's story. Perhaps someone had elfed off with a few million. But it was all so speculative, so insubstantial that it hadn't seemed worth pursuing, not with the press of other events.
But Mulheisen hadn't forgotten. He had speculated that Joe Service might have taken the money and that it probably amounted to something in the neighborhood of ten million, or so. Too much money to be carrying around, if Helen had, in turn, taken it from Joe's place. And surely she would have taken the money. When the mob hit man Mario Soper had shown up at Joe's place, she must reasonably have believed that Joe was dead and the mob hot on her trail. She would flee and she would certainly take with her a portable fortune. And if she had it with her, well, it was portable but not comfortably portable; it wasn't something you would want to leave in the car while you went shopping or caught a movie. And if you checked into a hotel it wasn't something you could just have the bellboy bring up to the room: “Uh, boy! Do you have a dolly, a cart? I have several boxes here. Be careful! They're full of money!”
The desk man at the Little America hotel remembered Helen very well and he thrilled Mulheisen by checking their records to discover that she had used the name Helena Kaparich. This was Helen's mother's maiden name, a name by which Mulheisen had tracked her movements earlier. He kicked himself for not having remembered that. A phone call to the power company was in order.
The woman in the credit accounts department at Utah Power and Light was very cooperative, once she had received Mulheisen's PIN number—an identification number that verified that he was a police officer. Helena Kaparich had opened an account for electrical power at a single dwelling on Main Street in September. Her account was up to date. She was not the home owner, but the property was managed by a real estate firm in downtown Salt Lake City.
By now he had very little time if he still wanted to make his plane connection to Detroit, but Mulheisen didn't hesitate. The realtor was located in the Zion National B
ank building, just a few blocks from the hotel. There the woman running the office recognized the photograph as that of a “Mrs. Helena Kaparich,” who had leased the house on Main Street.
He walked out of the large, new building in which the realtor's office was located and stood on the corner. Salt Lake is one of those few cities with sensibly laid-out streets: 300 South, 700 East, and so on. From where he stood he figured the address was perhaps a mile or more south of the business district, on one of the few named streets, Main Street. Too far to walk, if he wanted to make his flight, but possibly a cab could take him by there quickly and still get him to the airport on time.
He never saw Joe Service standing across the street. He took the cab and within a few minutes they had pulled up in front of the house that Mrs. Helena Kaparich had leased, with an option to buy. The cab stood outside the stucco bungalow and Mulheisen got out and walked up to the house. He rang the bell, but he knew before ringing it that no one was home. He glanced about the neighborhood. He loved it. It was a house a Detroit girl could like. The house was small and discreet and had a style that had been prevalent in the Midwest for nearly a century. A house like this one could be found on the same streets of Detroit where Helen had grown up. He knew the floor plan just by looking at it: front living room, a bedroom on the side, a dining room, a kitchen in the rear, the bathroom off a little hall between the front room and the kitchen, and upstairs there would be two bedrooms with a bathroom between them. He would bet on it. And he was right.
There would be a basement, probably. A laundry room, a furnace, perhaps a room converted into a den or family room. . . . The money would be there, he guessed. But what to do now? Go to the Salt Lake City police? Get them to watch the place? Try to get a search warrant? He wasn't sure. He doubted that the local police, although inclined to be helpful, would be able to spare any men for a close watch. They might be able to keep a rolling surveillance, advising patrols to eyeball the place in passing. A warrant, though . . . he doubted it. Unless he could come up with something else.
“What time is it?” he asked the cab driver. Mulheisen could never seem to keep a timepiece—even fine watches went dead on his wrist. He had a half hour till flight time. “Airport,” he told the driver.
Joe Service had been unable to find a cab in time, but he was energized. He set off down Main Street, walking as fast as he could. He was able to keep the cab in sight for some ways, but eventually it was lost to his view, though not having turned off, evidently. He stopped, finally, and turned back. He felt exhilarated. Who knew what Mulheisen was up to? But he felt that he knew his man. Mulheisen was on to something. Mulheisen wouldn't just be driving around the town looking at the sights. But now he'd lost him. Still, he knew where Mulheisen had been and he knew the number of the cab. He could find out what Mulheisen had been up to by backtracking.
He walked to the Market Street Grill and Oyster Bar, where he was supposed to meet Cateyo. She wasn't around. He ordered a bowl of clam chowder and it tasted tremendous. None of the waiters and waitresses could remember seeing Cateyo, but they had just changed shifts and it had been at least two hours since she could have first come in. Where would she have gone? He walked out into the cold afternoon—it was only four o'clock, but it was already getting dark—and headed over to Main, just looking around, wondering what had happened to Cateyo. He felt tired, exhausted, in fact. He wasn't used to all this walking. He soon found himself simply standing on the street, getting cold, pondering, when he noticed the huge Zion National Bank building, from which he'd seen Mulheisen exit. There was something about this bank. It nagged at him. He'd had the same feeling when he'd first seen it, but then he'd ignored it when Mulheisen came out. What could it be?
It was a sensation with which he was becoming familiar. It had something to do with his perforated memory. There was something about the bank that had to do with him and as he had learned, it didn't do to push his memory. It would come to him if he just let it. He walked across the street and entered the bank. It was even more familiar now. He had been here before. But what had he done? Well, what did people do at a bank? They deposited money, they withdrew money, they applied for loans, they bought cashier's checks. . . . He recalled that Helen had sent a cashier's check from this bank, according to Cateyo, to pay for his medical bills. That must be it. That was probably why Mulheisen had come here. He was on the trail of Helen. But there was something unsatisfactory about this explanation and then he realized that he had missed a turning somewhere. He was not on the same track as the one which had brought him in here. Mulheisen's pursuit of Helen was not why this bank had seemed familiar to him. And then it simply appeared in his mind: he had an account here. In fact, the rental car from Avarris was billing this account. He smiled delightedly. One minute he didn't remember and the next minute the hole was filled in as if it had never existed. No bells, no whistles, no bright lights . . . just another piece of the memory back.
In his travels about the West he had often stashed money in accounts, for emergency purposes. But under what name? Well, Avarris was billing Joseph Humann. He went to a cashier and said, “Hi. I'm just in town for the night and I realized that I need some cash, but I forgot my account number. Is there any way I can do this?”
The woman behind the counter was young and pretty. She looked at the handsome, if somewhat drawn young man standing before her and smiled. “Sure,” she said. “What's the name?”
“Joseph Humann.”
The woman took the spelling and typed it into a computer terminal. “Mr. Joseph Humann? Tinstar, Montana?”
Joe nodded.
“Do you have any identification?”
Joe did. He pulled out his wallet and handed over his legitimate Joseph Humann driver's license from the state of Montana. It had his picture on it and everything. She squinted at it and said, “You didn't have the beard when this was taken.”
Joe shrugged and smiled. “Yeah, I know. What do you think? Should I shave it? I never really had a beard before.”
“No, it looks . . . interesting. It makes you look older, more distinguished.”
Joe laughed. “Now I'm definitely going to shave it.”
She laughed too and said, “You want to make a withdrawal?”
“How much is the total?” Joe asked.
She wrote down a number from the screen and passed the piece of paper across to him. $10,672.34. Joe frowned. “Isn't this an interest-drawing account?” he asked.
“It's a checking account, but it does draw interest. Not as much as a savings account, or a money market account. It's three percent, but all checking services are free, including checks and—”
“I guess I'll close this out,” Joe said, “or, no . . . just let me have, mmm, nine thousand. You have five-hundreds? Good. Mostly five-hundreds then and the rest in hundreds and a few twenties.”
A minute later he was on the street and hailed down the first City Cab he saw. “Hey,” he said sticking his head in the door, “can you get hold of number forty-seven for me? I think I may have lost something in the back seat.”
“Number forty-seven?” the driver said. “Hunh.” He picked up his mike and asked the dispatcher for the whereabouts of number forty-seven. The dispatcher said forty-seven was on his way back from the airport with a passenger, going to the Red Lion Hotel. Joe hopped in the cab and said “Take me there.” When he got out he laid a twenty on the startled driver and told him to keep the change. Five minutes later number forty-seven showed up in the semicircular drive of the Red Lion. The driver discharged a man and a woman and Joe approached him as soon as he was free.
“You just take a guy to the airport?” he asked. “Big guy, kind of long teeth. Friendly guy?”
The driver, a skinny kid with long lank hair and a scraggly little chin beard, eyed Joe warily. “What's a matter?” he said. “You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?” Joe said. “Did you take him to the airport?”
“So what?”
“
So he called me from the airport,” Joe said. “Come on.” He got into the back of the cab. The driver got in.
“What's this?” the driver said, looking at the twenty that Joe had placed in his hand.
“My friend forgot to get the address of the place you took him. What was it, out on Main?”
“Yeah. Main. He never told me the address,” the driver said. “He just told me to drive and then he told me to pull over and he got out and rung the bell, but nobody was home. Then we went to the airport.”
“Right,” Joe said. “Take me to the house and there's another twenty for you. I have to get the exact address.”
The driver looked at him in the mirror, then shrugged and drove away. Five minutes later he pulled up at the house. Joe looked at the house from the car. “This is the right house?” Joe said.
“Sure. We stopped and he walked up there and rung the bell and then he come back and he said ‘Take me to the airport.”’
“He didn't go in the house?” Joe said.
The driver looked at Joe in the mirror. “No. He didn't get no answer when he rung the bell. He didn't go in. Nobody came out of the house. Nobody came by. . . . You are a cop, ain ‘choo?”
Joe handed the man the other twenty and sat back in the seat. “No. I'm not a cop. Take me to . . .” He thought for a second. “Zion Bank.” He glanced back as they drove away and tried to imagine what Mulheisen had seen here. He had an odd feeling.
The cab let him out at the bank. This was where he had seen Mulheisen in town, and then Mulheisen had taken the cab down Main Street. Joe wondered what else was in this building, what Mulheisen might have found here. He looked at the listing of offices and saw that one of them was a realtor. Finally it penetrated Joe's mind. He almost didn't need to go to the realtor. But when he got there and asked if they had something for sale on South Main, oh, say, between Fifteenth and Twentieth, the woman showed him a couple of properties and mentioned that she had a place currently under lease, with an option to buy, but she had a feeling that the lady who had the lease would probably buy. Joe felt exultation.
Dead Folks Page 9