The Car Bomb (The detroit im dying Trilogy, Book 1)

by T. V. LoCicero

  “I can’t tell you right now. It involves some powerful guys in this town who happen to be friends of mine. And I don’t want to say anything until I’ve absolutely nailed it down. Look, you wanted me to take some time off? Take me off tonight’s eleven and maybe tomorrow’s. Don’s in the newsroom. He can sit in for me. I could really use the time to work on this story.”

  Johanson was rolling his eyes and shaking his head as Alice glanced at him again. He said, “No, this is crazy. You’ve got to tell us something.”

  “Look, it’s that car bombing we had last month. Tonight I met with the guy whose family was blown away. And the next time I see him, I may have the whole thing wrapped up with a bow.”

  Alice stared at Johanson who puffed on his pipe.

  Chapter 39

  In the darkness enveloping this carefully-manicured, upper-middle-class residential street, Frank stepped out of the Viper. He had parked under one of the three dead streetlights on this block, and pausing to check out the large, nicely-kept older home in front of him, he made a note to tell the desk there was a story here: even in Sherwood Forrest, one of its few well-to-do and well-connected neighborhoods, this hapless city couldn’t keep the streetlights on.

  As he walked toward the home, his quick scan of the block missed a car parked a hundred yards behind the Viper. In it a man in a black hooded sweatshirt over a black baseball cap sat low behind the wheel and watched Frank proceed up the front walk.

  On the porch Frank rang the bell, and after a short wait, the inside door opened, and the former county prosecutor Prentis Gant appeared at the screen door.

  “Hi, Frank DeFauw, Mr. Gant. We’ve talked in the past.”

  After an awkward pause: “Right. What can I do for you?”

  “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like to come in and talk with you.”

  Gant looked exhausted and uttered an audible sigh. “Frank, it’s 11 o’clock at night, and I’ve retired from public life.”

  “I know that, but I spoke with Anthony Peoples tonight, and he said some things I’d like to check with you.”

  Gant looked past Frank toward the street, then unlocked and opened the screen. “Well, I can give you a few minutes, but I’m sure there’s nothing I can help you with.”

  The man watching from the car down the block saw Frank step into the house. Moving out of the car, the man walked up the street.

  Inside the home, as he ushered Frank through a spotless, well-appointed living room, Gant said, “Let’s sit on the back porch.”

  “Fine.”

  As they moved past a staircase, an Hispanic woman was standing half-way down in a long dressing gown.

  The woman spoke softly with an accent: “What is it, Prent?”

  Gant stopped and looked up. “Ah, Dee, this is Frank DeFauw from TV. Frank, my wife Delores.”

  With a deeply concerned look, she nodded as Frank said, “Hi, Delores. Sorry to bother you at this hour.”

  “No bother.” she said, keeping her gaze on her husband.

  Gant said, “Honey, we’ll only be a few minutes. Are the kids asleep?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why don’t you check on them, and I’ll be up shortly.”

  Delores tried a smile. “Sure.” She nodded again at Frank, turned and moved back up the stairs. The two men continued toward the back of the house and moved on to a large screened-in porch. Gant motioned him to a rattan chair and said, “You spoke with Peoples.”

  As he answered, “Yes, I did,” a cat yowled outside the porch and pawed at the screen. Gant unlocked and opened the door, saying, “C’mon, Sailor.” The black and white shorthair took a nervous look at Frank and moved quickly through the porch and into the house.

  Frank decided he’d better get right to the point. “Yeah, so he told me he worked with you to get evidence for a bribery case against Judge O’Bryan and Sam Dworkin.”

  Sitting in another rattan piece across from Frank, Gant shifted and stared at him for a few seconds. Finally, he said, “All I can tell you about Peoples is what you probably already know. Some months ago he was charged with armed robbery and felony murder. And the charges were later dropped because of a lack of evidence.”

  Frank nodded. “He said because of the bribery case, you were forced to resign and his family was murdered in the car bombing.”

  Gant shook his head and spoke quickly. “I resigned for the reasons I stated at the time. Obviously I know nothing about the car bombing.”

  “Peoples told me he has a videotape of the payoff.”

  Again without hesitation: “I have no knowledge of what Peoples has.”

  “He said your wife has relatives here in the states illegally, and that’s what they used to pressure you.”

  “My wife has no relatives here.”

  He stared hard at Gant. “That’s all you’re gonna say?”

  “That’s all there is to say.” Gant was already on his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t help you any further.”

  Chapter 40

  Outside the Gant home, the man in the black cap and sweatshirt was moving along one side of the yard toward the screened-in back porch. As he peered around a large, thick bush and into the porch, he saw the two men walking back into the house.

  Waiting several seconds, he then moved to the screen door and tried the handle.

  Silently Gant led Frank past the stairway, back through the living room into the front vestibule. He opened the heavy oak door and pushed the screen open. In close quarters he turned and spoke firmly a few inches from Frank’s face. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing with Peoples’s story, Frank, but I would strongly advise you to let law enforcement handle it. You’re playing a dangerous game at the moment, and you’re likely to get somebody hurt.”

  Frank moved past Gant and out the door. “Thanks for the advice, Mr. Gant. You change your mind, just give me a call.”

  Gant said nothing, and Frank moved down the front walk.

  Chapter 41

  Parting the curtains at a second-floor bedroom window, Delores Gant looked outside. She watched Frank as he walked to his little roadster and got in. Once the car began to drive away, the woman moved back to a four-year-old boy sitting up in bed. She gave him a warm hug and kiss.

  Then a sharp crack came from somewhere below in the house. The woman froze with a stricken look, then laid the child down and said “Mamma will be right back.”

  Leaving the room, she grabbed the railing in the hall at the top of the stairs and called, “Prent?”

  Descending the stairs, she stopped again near the bottom. “Prent!”

  Now she moved down the last two steps and walked cautiously through a dining room to the double doors that led to the screened-in porch. “Darling, where are you?”

  When she reached the doorway and looked in she uttered a forlorn wail. Her husband was sprawled face down on the porch floor. A pool of blood was already forming from a wound in his temple. A pistol she had never seen before was nestled in his right hand.

  Chapter 42

  The morning sun was still low in the east, glinting in his eyes as he stood at a front window watching the two men get into a black Chevy sedan parked on the circular drive in front of the house.

  “Mutt and Jeff,” he muttered and went looking for Marci.

  He found her looking remarkably good in a white dressing gown that showed off her tan, her sun-streaked hair up in a way he had always found fetching, sitting with a mug of coffee at the glass-top table on the deck and gazing at the lake.

  In his slacks and golf shirt, he stepped from the house onto the deck, and she turned to him and asked softly, “What did they want?”

  He sat at the table. “The cops? They wanted to talk to me about the ex-prosecutor Prentis Gant.”

  “Why you?”

  “He was found dead last night, and they think I was the last person to see him alive.”

  “My god, Frank. What happened?”

  He was staring off
but turned his gaze back to her. She still had the lightest hazel eyes he’d ever seen, and they always seemed even lighter when she was surprised. “After I left his home about 11 o’clock last night, they say he put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.”

  “Jesus, Mary, Joseph.”

  “So they wanted to know what we talked about and whether he seemed suicidal.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Not much. I said what we talked about was strictly business and confidential. And that he did not seem depressed.”

  There were times, he knew, when Marci clearly did not want to know what her husband knew, but this was not one of them. “What do you think happened?”

  “I think he may have been murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  He said nothing and again turned his gaze away.

  “Why? By whom?”

  He still said nothing, but he knew this would not work with his wife.

  “Frank!”

  Still not looking at her Frank said, “Perhaps by our friend Judge Billy.”

  When he turned back to her, she looked as if she had failed to comprehend his words. “Frank, that’s...crazy. How could you even think Billy would be capable of murder?”

  He gave her a dead-on look and said, “Hey, you said a while back that he was perfectly capable of taking a bribe. And Prentis Gant may have had proof that Billy was doing just that.”

  When her look showed that she had begun to comprehend, he added, “That’s what we were talking about last night.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “Gant? He wouldn’t say anything. But there may have been three other murders connected to this as well. Remember that car bombing last month?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “Well...”

  “Frank, taking a bribe is one thing, but murder? I don’t believe for a minute that Billy could do anything like that.”

  He got up and walked away from the table toward the house. “Well, I’ll offer your vote of confidence the next time I see him.”

  As he was about to step through the door to the kitchen, she stopped him. “Frank, I need to tell you something.”

  Not liking the tone or the feel of this, he turned and stared at his wife. “What is it?”

  “I’ve asked my attorney to file.”

  Suddenly short of breath, as if slugged in the gut, he continued to stare. Finally, he said, “Marci, please don’t do this right now.”

  “I’m sorry, Frank. I just can’t take it anymore. I hope we can do this in a way that’s fair and friendly. That’s certainly my intention.”

  He nodded and looked at the lake. “Right, fair and friendly.” His breathing still felt labored, and he tried to keep it silent. Don’t show her what you’re feeling, he thought. But then, he wondered, what the hell was he feeling?

  Was this actually the golden chance he’d been waiting for to grab a new life with Sherie? But then what did “Please don’t do this right now” mean? Was it just that the moment was inconvenient? That there were too many distractions in his life right now to give their marriage a serious look? Was he just too damn busy? Of course, that was nonsense, and he was being a bloody fool.

  He suddenly felt flushed with a desperate, hopeless ache and felt a powerful urge to go to her right now, get on his knees and, ready to make any damn promise she might extract, beg her forgiveness. But when he finally glanced her way, she had turned her back to him. As if to say, “I don’t give a jot what you’re feeling or thinking. It’s over and done.”

  Chapter 43

  In the news studio at Channel 5, a large, computer-generated globe spun on a screen behind the news desk where Frank and Mary waited for the stage manager’s pointed finger. When it came, he began:

  “In news from around the nation and around the world: Today in Washington, day one of the first official Russian-American summit, President George Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin met and agreed in principle to major reductions in nuclear weapons.”

  In the hallway outside the studio, on a cabinet that also held a coffee urn, a TV set showed Bush and Yeltsin smiling broadly and shaking hands as Frank’s voice-over continued: “Yeltsin consented to an end of the concept of parity in the number of strategic arms...”

  Normally there for the stagehands waiting for those studio doors to open, the coffee and TV were now being used by two strangers, one tall, white and heavyset, the other short, black and trim. Both dressed in suits and ties, the big guy was rumpled, the small one a bit of a dandy.

  “Bush and Yeltsin agreed that by 2003 the U.S. would have 3500 warheads and the Russians 3000. At present both countries have about 10,000 warheads. Mary?”

  On the TV a 2-shot turned into a close up of Mary’s frigid smile. “Frank, also today, Caspar Weinberger, who served as Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, was indicted in the Iran Contra case...”

  In her office, Alice Whitney kept her eyes on the center set of her three built-into-the-wall TVs but told news director, “We all know he can be a pain, but you need to talk to her about the vitriol. It’s just becoming way too apparent.”

  Johanson puffed on his pipe. “I’ll talk to both of them.”

  Mary continued: “...Prosecutors investigating the arms scandal charged that Weinberger had committed perjury in Congressional testimony and that he had obstructed justice. Weinberger claims he refused to plead guilty to a lesser offense and called his indictment a ‘moral and legal outrage.’”

  The two strangers were still watching the set outside the studio as Frank said: “And finally, last week, you’ll remember, Vice-President Dan Quayle stood up for traditional family values. Well, yesterday Mr. Quayle advised a contestant at this spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey, to add an ‘e’ to the spelling of ‘potato.’”

  As the dandy looked at his watch, Frank added: “Perhaps, Mr. Vice-President, you might consider getting yourself some traditional education.”

  Chapter 44

  As the studio doors swung open Mary stalked out first and smiled reflexively at the two strangers waiting a few feet away. Walking out behind her, Frank spotted them quickly.

  “Well, if it ain’t Mutt and Jeff. Hey, fellas, how’s the detective business?”

  The dandy smirked. “Busy, Frank, but we need to do a little follow up on some of the things you told us yesterday. Would you have a few minutes for us?”

  “Sure, no problem. How about my office.”

  As they walked, no one spoke, and Frank tried to remember their names. The big one in the same wrinkled black suit as yesterday was Hal something. The small black guy, spotless in beige with a gold stick pin and cufflinks, had a strange first one. Fontaine.

  In his office he grabbed a stack of files off the couch and piled them on his cluttered desk. The two detectives used the couch. He sat behind his desk and asked, “So what can I do for you, guys? It’s Hal and Fontaine, right?”

  Fontaine had done most of the talking yesterday, and it started that way again. “Right. You’ve got a good memory.”

  “No, I’ve got a great memory. Cursed with it, really.”

  “So, Frank, we wanted to follow up on a couple things you talked about yesterday.”

  As Frank was nodding, the big guy finally opened his mouth: “And a couple a things you wouldn’t talk about.”

  Fontaine shot a quick glance at his partner. “Yeah, that too. Now first of all, a couple of little things. You said you had met Mrs. Gant on the stairway, and she went back upstairs, presumably to take care of their children. Did you ever see or hear anything from her other than that one time?”

  “No, I told you that yesterday.”

  “Right. Did you hear any sounds in the house, upstairs or down, while you were there talking to Gant?”

  “Sounds?”

  “Yeah, like floors creaking, doors opening or closing, anything at all?”

  He thought for a few seconds. “No, I don’t think so. But
I was just concentrating on what he was saying.”

  “And what about when the cat came into the house?”

  “The cat?”

  “Yes, what about when Gant let the cat in the porch door. You said the front door was locked while you were there, because when you left, Gant unlocked the front door to let you out.”

  “Right, that’s what I said.”

  Fontaine leaned forward a bit on the couch. “So when Gant let the cat in the screened porch at the back of the house, did he unlock the door?”

  “Well, I told you yesterday I thought he did, but he opened it quickly and I was a little distracted by what we were talking about, so I couldn’t be sure. And to anticipate your next question, no, I simply can’t remember seeing him lock it after the cat came in. He may have, and I may have seen it, but right now I have no image of that in my head. Sorry. I mean, I remember he called the cat ‘Sailor,’ and it was a smallish black and white with short hair. Maybe I was paying too much attention to the cat to notice what he did with the lock.”

  Fontaine nodded his little head. “Okay. Now you told us yesterday that Mr. Gant did not appear depressed to you. On what exactly did you base that assessment?”

  “That assessment. Well, I guess, because, while he was subdued, he was not, as the shrinks like to say, without affect. He seemed warm and affectionate in the brief exchange with his wife. He was direct and focused in his comments to me. He wasn’t vague or foggy. He just didn’t seem depressed. As I told you, I wasn’t there that long, maybe not even 10 minutes. I guess the one who could really tell you about him is his wife.”

  Fontaine raised his chin in a half-nod, then sits back on the couch. As if on cue, Hal spoke from his slouch. “So you say you were a little distracted by what you and Gant were talking about. Tell us again what that was.”

  Frank got up from the desk to move around his messy office. “I can’t tell you again, because I never told you in the first place. As I said yesterday, we were talking business, and I consider it confidential.”