“Charley,” she said—I wondered if she was talking in her sleep—“will you go with me to my parents’ on Thanksgiving?”
Without thinking much about it, I patted her on her naked shoulder and said, “Sure.”
10
At about five minutes to eight, I pulled into the parking lot outside my office, switched off the engine, and waited right where I sat. I was all alone, as I might have expected, but there was a steady stream of traffic, most of it headed north to Port Huron. As I hunched over the wheel and burrowed down into my coat against the cold November morning, I surveyed both sides of the street in search of anything out of the ordinary. Turning a little, I spotted a van parked across the street. Not Michigan Bell, but brown and unmarked, completely anonymous. It was the only vehicle parked on the block at this early hour.
I had lain awake some time after Sue fell asleep the night before thinking about what she had said about our visitors from Michigan Bell. I’d decided that maybe she was right. The mayor’s boys must really be worried enough to try something like that. All the time I’d been in Detroit, all the big cases I’d tried, I’d never had anything like it pulled on me—or not to my knowledge, anyway. How can you really be sure about a wiretap? But then, I had to admit that none of those big cases of mine were essentially political. This one involving Mark Conroy most certainly was.
Thinking about all this, I didn’t notice his big Cadillac until it turned into the parking lot. He brought it to a stop near mine. I was surprised to see that there were two people in the front seat of the car. In the passenger seat, beside Conroy, was a middle-aged black man, very dark, very serious, very capable looking. Our eyes met. He didn’t smile, but he gave me a sober nod. Conroy jumped out of the car and headed over to me.
“What is it? Anything the matter?”
“I think we may have trouble.”
He listened as I explained as briefly as I could what had happened yesterday afternoon. He asked just about the same questions that Sue had, but somehow he managed not to tell me how naive I was. Instead, he gave me one of those ironic looks of his and said, “Friend, you’ve been wired. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not listening to us right now.”
“Out here?”
“You notice anything out of the ordinary right now?”
“Yeah, there’s a brown van parked right over—”
He grabbed my arm. “Don’t point!”
Without giving it a direct look, he casually noted the van’s location and turned us away from it.
“Okay,” I said, “what I think is, we ought to go back to your original idea and go over to my apartment to have this talk you wanted to have.”
“How do we know it’s not wired?”
“Got any other suggestions?”
He sighed. “No, but I may come up with some ideas once we get there.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but I told him to follow me over there. Then, as an afterthought, I gave my address just in case we should get separated in traffic.
No need to worry. Conroy stuck to my rear bumper like a tick on a dog. As we moved swiftly into traffic, I looked in the side mirror and saw the brown van start up and try desperately to make a U-turn to follow. The guys on their way to work in Port Huron weren’t giving an inch. The van was marooned, probably for a minute or so. That gave me a chance to hang a left onto a side street with Conroy close behind—then a right and another left, and so on, until I was fairly sure we’d lost the brown van. Then I drove the four or five blocks to my place in a direct route and at a reasonable speed.
When we got to my street, the brown van was there waiting for us. Or—who knows?—it may have been that one exactly like the one near the office had been there all the time. I didn’t see it at first, might not have noticed it at all, because it was parked in a row of cars opposite my building. As I drove past on the way to the parking lot entrance beyond, I turned for a look inside it, but there was nothing to see, no one at all in the front—as I should have expected.
I led Conroy into the lot. He pulled his car into the space beside mine. Conroy and his companion hopped out. Exchanging looks, the two seemed not so much agitated or angry as annoyed.
We stood between the two cars for a moment or two, saying nothing, looking tensely toward the street we’d come from.
“You saw it, of course,” I said.
“Sure I saw it,” said Conroy.
“How’d they get here so fast?”
“They know your address. They must have a whole file on you by now. Or maybe they got it when you gave it to me in front of your office. They’ve got directional receivers, pick up anything.”
“It’s a power move,” said the big black man. “They just harassin’ our ass now.”
I began wondering specifically who “they” were.
“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked. “I could take you over to that diner where we talked before.”
“Too many people there this time of day.”
“Lot of noise, cover up our conversation.”
“Too many ears, too. No, let’s do it here. We’ll see what we can do to mess things up for them.”
My apartment is in one of two identical buildings that share a single parking lot. It’s sort of project housing for the middle class. The same builders did a complex just like it on the other side of town, and that’s where Sue lives. They keep the elevators running, the toilets operational, even liven up the halls a little with the kind of prints and posters found in frame stores. I keep the place fairly clean, but I don’t have much furniture, and what I’ve got is strictly utilitarian. No pictures on the wall, no framed personal photos or mementos of any kind scattered around. Some of that stuff is in boxes in the closet and up against the walls. All in all, even though I’ve been there nearly three years, the place looks like I had just moved in, or was about to move out.
When I unlocked the door and swung it open, I caught the look of sudden consternation on Conroy’s face as he stepped past me and got a view of the interior. He seldom held anything back except the facts. “Just look at this,” he said. “And I thought all lawyers were rich!”
“Now you know the truth.”
He grabbed the big man and pulled him over.
“You haven’t met LeMoyne yet.” The way Conroy said it, he made it sound like it was my fault.
The man’s name was LeMoyne Tolliver. He gave me a strong handshake, murmured something friendly, but withheld anything like a smile.
“I trust him,” said Conroy. “You can, too.”
Then without asking permission, or explaining what he was up to, he embarked on a tour of the place. I followed him.
“Is that your only phone in the living room there?” he whispered from the bedroom.
I nodded and followed him into the living room and watched, astonished, as he tore the telephone apart. He looked it over and tossed it aside.
He continued on his way, looking into the spare bedroom, and then he went on to the bathroom. It took only a moment to turn on the shower full blast and both faucets in the sink. Returning to the living room, he switched on the TV set and turned up the volume—the last half hour of the Today show. And, beckoning to both of us, he led the way into the kitchen.
“You got a radio in here?”
“Sure.”
“Turn it on.” He looked around. “What about the dishwasher?”
“What about it?”
“If it works, turn it on.”
“But it’s not full.”
“Turn it on.”
So I got down the detergent, shook it into the little chamber, did the settings, and threw the switch.
“Now, LeMoyne,” he said, “if you’ll just turn on the water there in the sink, we can sit right down at the kitchen table and get this meeting under way.”
While Tolliver was occupied at the kitchen sink, I stole a look out the back window as Conroy had done a moment before. I saw that the brown van had move
d to the rear of the parking lot, and that it now had mounted on top a small dish antenna that was pointed straight up at us. The van was idling, great wisps of exhaust smoke bubbling out the rear, probably to keep them warm inside; or maybe they needed the motor running to power all the electrical equipment—what did I know? But what with the Today show coming in from the living room, WDET’s morning program blasting in over the radio, and all that sound of running water coming in from the bathroom and kitchen, I decided they would have a hard time hearing anything that was said.
Conroy beckoned me over to the kitchen table; I took my place. With all three of us seated, the conference began.
“Now, Sloan,” he began quietly, “I’m going to go back to the beginning on this. Some of it you’ll have heard before, but some of the details might interest you.”
“Details are what I’m after.”
“I’ll do what I can.” He frowned, looked up at a spot in the kitchen where the wall met the ceiling, and began to tell his story in little more than a whisper. I had to strain forward to hear.
“When I was appointed Deputy Chief of Police, nobody was more surprised than I was. Oh, I was in line for it. I had the best record of the other possible candidates, but I wasn’t political, wasn’t in the mayor’s pocket the way the other two were. On the other hand, I’d never been in on any investigation that targeted the mayor. Of course I hadn’t. Things like that weren’t even thought of four years ago. What I didn’t realize when I got the nod was just how bad things had gotten under the chief and his old deputy. Four years ago you could hardly say that Detroit had a police department at all. It seemed like everyone was on the take. Internal Affairs was as corrupt as any other squad. I guess things were so bad that even the mayor knew that someone had to do something. He decided I was that someone. No doubt about it. I was his choice.
“What I hadn’t realized was the extent that all crime in the city was drug related. Sixty, maybe seventy-five percent of the burglaries and stickups were addicts raising money to feed their crack habit. Something like half the murders were drug burns or territorial disputes. It seemed to me that if we could put a lid on the drug trade, we’d have everything else under control. That’s when I brought the Mouse into the picture. I created a drug task force and made him commander, reporting directly to me. We’d worked together since our days on the TAC Squad, and I trusted him—then. And if our own little war on drugs didn’t get off to a great start, we didn’t blame each other. We blamed the system. We were undercut, undermanned, but most important of all, we were underfinanced.”
Conroy went on to explain that nothing much could be done about the situation until the Mouse came up with a satchel containing a hundred thousand dollars from the evidence room. A dealer, not much more than a kid, had been successfully prosecuted at Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. The cash taken at the time of his arrest was presented in evidence, along with the bags of cocaine the undercover cop had sold him, a small transaction by local standards—the dealer was a newcomer in the trade. The Mouse had his eye on that bag of money. He hovered over it as protectively as a vulture over a dying man. He kept it within sight as it was walked back to 1300 Beaubien under guard. ‘And the moment it was returned to the evidence room, before it could be made to disappear, he presented the requisition that Mark Conroy had written out, and walked upstairs with the booty.
That was the beginning of what became known as the W-91 Fund. From it, they paid informers. Informers, as Conroy had told me once before, came high—but they proved productive. Arrests were made. Dealers were brought to trial and convicted. More buy-money was added to the fund. But just about all those who were taken down were beginners or small-time operators, those out of the loop, with no big daddies to protect them. Nevertheless, each new conviction yielded more money for the W-91 Fund. It wasn’t long before it started to add up. To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, a hundred thousand here and a couple of hundred thousand there, and pretty soon you’re into some real money.
At this point, I interrupted Mark Conroy. He’d promised details, but I hadn’t gotten enough of them. One, in particular, interested me.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ve got a question.”
“All right, what is it?”
“That safe where you kept the money—where did you get it?”
“That’s an interesting point,” said Conroy. “The Mouse and I needed one in a hurry when we grabbed that first hundred thousand, so we got it from the property room. They had three of them down there. I took the one that looked like it was the strongest.”
“Did you change the combination?”
“That was beyond me—and beyond the Mouse at the time. But as we added money to that first grab, it occurred to me that if we got that from the property room, they probably had the combination on file down there someplace.”
“Good thinking,” I said dryly.
“I’m not as dumb as I look. Anyway, I had a salesman come around, and I bought a good, strong, new Mosler safe. But the funny thing was, that was when the powers-that-be got interested in our little project. The chief came around making inquiries. I told him that the Mouse was keeping records of payouts and pay-ins in code. He seemed satisfied and gave me a slap on the back and told me to keep up the good work. Then one of the bright young attorneys from the mayor’s office dropped by and asked to be briefed on the W-91 Fund. So I did. Then the attorneys wondered if a little publicity might not help things along. He wanted to send someone from the public information office over—maybe a reporter or two. I told him that was the last thing in the world I would want. By the way, Sloan, you might be interested to know that the young attorney left the mayor’s office not long afterward and became an assistant prosecutor. Benjamin Timothy is his name.”
“Uh-huh—the guy who’s now trying the case against you.”
“That’s the one.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe two years ago,” said Conroy, “maybe a little more. By that time, it had become pretty apparent that the reason we weren’t making any real dent in the drug traffic was because the big guys, the major traffickers who bought direct from the cartels in Latin America, had the protection of the mayor. They paid for it. He got a generous cut. He was a working partner in the entire enterprise.”
“Just how did it become apparent?” I was offering him a challenge. He’d never really been specific about any of this. “There’ve been rumors about the mayor for years but no prosecutions. Even the Federal government has kept hands off.”
“Okay, I can give you a very specific instance of the mayor’s protection of one of the major players. We had an airtight case against Big Boy Duckett. You remember? About a year and a half ago?”
“I remember the case from the newspapers, but not the details.”
“All right, this is how it went. Duckett was trying something new—bringing it in from Canada. The word was out in Toronto that we were paying big bucks for hard information. And some Lebanese who was probably a small trafficker himself gave us the word that there was a metric ton of cocaine coming down the St. Lawrence Seaway on a Panamanian freighter—a metric ton!—final destination, Detroit. Maybe he was jealous none of it was coming to him. He had all the right stuff—where it was docking and when, and how the contraband was disguised, everything. We worked very closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on this. We had to. And if you think it was easy getting the Mounties to cooperate, well, it wasn’t. But in the end, they not only monitored the off-loading of the contraband in Toronto, they trailed the truck that hauled it west all the way to their side of the Detroit-Windsor Bridge. We picked it up on our side and followed it to a warehouse on the near East Side, down by the river, only about a mile from Manoogian Mansion, by the way. We were there waiting for it. As soon as the truck pulled in, we went after it. There was a small army waiting for us. They resisted. Shots were exchanged, maybe a few hundred rounds, total. Probably the biggest firefight in the history o
f the Detroit Police Department. We lost one man killed and two wounded, one bad enough he left the department on disability. But we got Big Boy’s pistol in hand, and a metric ton of evidence against him.
“Airtight case, right? Not when it came to trial. It wasn’t that Duckett had such a sharp defense lawyer. The prosecution was just completely inept—purposely, by intention. They were told to lose the case, and they did. The mayor looked after his boy.”
“Something about the search warrant, as I recall,” I put in. “Or that’s how I remember it.”
“Tennis rules! The guy who signed off on the paper was the guy who tried the case. You know who that was? Benjamin Timothy, just six months off the mayor’s staff.”
“Maybe he just isn’t a good trial lawyer. Lots of prosecutors lose cases.” That sounded pretty weak to me, even as I said it.
“He looked pretty good up there in the preliminary hearing. I think you’ll find him plenty tough.”
I sighed. “You’re probably right. I hope it never comes to trial.”
“How can that be arranged?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “It can’t,” I said. “Look, I’m hoping for a miracle or something close to it. You’re the only one who could help yourself, and as long as you’re on suspension, you’re in no position to do that.”
“Explain.”
“All right, I don’t want to sound too pessimistic, but it seems to me that with all the pressure on you from the mayor—and I’ll concede that it looks like that’s where it’s coming from—the only way you’re going to relieve that pressure is by putting greater pressure on the mayor.”
At that, Conroy and LeMoyne Tolliver exchanged looks that could only be described as conspiratorial.
“LeMoyne and I were thinking along those same lines. We’re putting something together that we want to run past you.”
“Go ahead, by all means.”
“Okay, but more background first. After Duckett walked out of court a free man and retired to the Bahamas, it was clear that if we were to make any real impact on drugs and through that on crime in general, we would have to find some way to get at the mayor. He was the disease. The rest, all the rest, were just symptoms.”
The Judgment Page 18
