Marked for Murder: The Father Koesler Mysteries: fk-10

by William Kienzle

  But dammit, Tully didn’t care. This was part of being a cop: 98 percent going up blind alleys, only once in a while guessing right or getting an unexpected break. And that’s what this afternoon was—a guess. Only time would show whether or not it was an inspired guess.

  The first of the prostitute mutilation murders had taken place two weeks ago on a late Sunday afternoon. The second, one week ago on a late Sunday afternoon. Both murders had occurred in threadbare sections of the city, sections notorious for a thriving prostitution business. But sections where, due largely to the poverty of the area, there was little likelihood of finding either high-class or high-priced women. Both victims had been, for prostitutes, comparatively elderly. And both were white.

  Even with the beefed-up squad Koznicki had given him, this week’s investigation had turned up nothing new or helpful. There had been the usual parade of confessors—people under some weird compulsion to confess to any well-publicized crime. But each had to be checked out, even if only in a cursory manner.

  Then, as a result of publicizing that composite likeness of the perp, a whole bunch of people had turned in their friends, relatives, and enemies—anyone who bore the slightest resemblance to the drawing. Those too had to be checked out. Someplace in that pile there could have been a lucky break. But there wasn’t.

  Adelle and Ruby had looked through police mug shots of killers, with special emphasis on those connected in any way with prostitutes. Nothing. Then, in a move Tully considered unique in the annals of the Detroit Police Department, the women were given the Archdiocese of Detroit Pictorial Directory to study.

  That they identified no one in either collection did not surprise Tully.

  Relatively few victims or witnesses correctly identify a perpetrator from mug shots. The photos, posed and dour, are frequently misleading and rarely up-to-date. Often the victim’s memory plays tricks. And there is always the very real possibility that the individual’s photo simply isn’t there. Maybe it was the perpetrator’s first crime. Maybe he had never been caught and booked. Or maybe the victim or witness was inadvertently shown the wrong book.

  The priests’ Pictorial Directory was another matter. It was Tully’s first venture into what, in effect, were the clerical mug shots of the Archdiocese of Detroit. He had access to the most recent edition, which, having been issued in 1983, was not all that current. There were, by Tully’s count, 958 priests working in the six-county archdiocese. The directory contained 763 photos. Which left 195 priests unrepresented pictorially.

  A quick call to Father Koesler apprised Tully that cooperation with the directory people was not mandatory and some priests declined to have their pictures included. Tully thought this a hell of a way to run either a railroad or a diocese. But there was nothing he could do about it. Whether or not a priest was indeed the murderer, there was a fair chance his picture would not be in the directory. If it were up to criminals whether or not to have their photos in the mug book, obviously they would opt out.

  So here it was, the end of the second week of the investigation. The first week had been virtually wasted under Tully’s hypothesis that the first killing had been an act of retaliation against one of his prime snitches. That initial supposition had collapsed when the second victim turned out to have no connection with him.

  Which brought him to today. And he knew that, realistically, Koznicki could no longer provide the luxury of a supplemented force. This, for all practical purposes, was his last chance for a big push. If he failed today—and he had to admit he well might—he would be pretty much on his own. And the possibility of solving this puzzle would diminish in direct relationship to the number of detectives working on it.

  Thus, over Friday and Saturday, he and his task force had meticulously studied Detroit’s many red-light districts, evaluating the neighborhoods as well as the type of prostitute to be found in each. They’d had to neglect some areas that were only marginally qualified in order to locate the sort of prostitute this perp seemed to be looking for.

  Eventually, they settled on eight hooker areas, the number they had agreed on at the outset that they would be physically able to police with the number of officers and cars at their disposal.

  God, surveillance was dull!

  Mangiapane was driving and talking . . . driving slowly and talking fast. Tully tried to recall the beginning of the story Mangiapane was telling. If Tully could remember how it had started, he might conceivably make sense out of what Mangiapane was now saying.

  Oh, yes; now he remembered. Mangiapane had gone to lunch in Greektown, where he’d bumped into Wolford and Hughes, two officers assigned to the Thirteenth Precinct. Over lunch, they talked shop, as usual. Mangiapane, with a multitude of his characteristic asides and digressions, was recounting a story the two detectives had told him.

  “So,” Mangiapane was saying, “they’re figuring to get off their shift early, when this call comes in from this convent, the Home Visitors of Mary—great bunch of gals, do a lot of real great work—anyway, this nun calls the precinct and gets Hughes. She says there’s a guy over there whose car has been swiped, and would the police send somebody over to help him.

  “Well, Hughes figures this will be a great way to end the day a little early: Him and Wolford can run over to Arden Park, get the info and scoot on home.

  “So they get there and there’s this little guy—balding, glasses, third-rate moustache, paunchy, and very, very nervous. Somebody, he says, took his car. So the guys talk to him and one question leads to another. They ask how come he parked on this street. There ain’t no businesses, all residential. Of course, there’s always the chance he went into the Cathedral rectory . . . you know, Zoo, Blessed Sacrament Cathedral is just a block away, between Belmont and Boston on Woodward.”

  Tully of course knew the area. But he couldn’t have come up with the name of the church. All he knew about churches was that there were a lot of them on Woodward and yes, he guessed some of them might be cathedrals. He would quickly defer to Mangiapane, who, as a very practicing Catholic, would know the name and location of the Catholic cathedral.

  “But,” Mangiapane continued, “there is a driveway off Arden Park for the Cathedral rectory. Visitors always park in that driveway. It’s an obvious parking area and it’s lots safer than parking on the street. So it was a logical question: Why did he park on that street?

  “Well, he hems and haws for a while. Then he says he’s an architect and he got out of his car so he could study the large, nice-lookin’ buildings in that area . . . sort of on the spur of the moment, you know?”

  Tully snorted.

  “Right.” Mangiapane agreed with the nonarticulate utterance. “So Hughes asks the guy for his ID. The guy hems and haws some more. Then he tells them he was robbed. And they say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting: You call us over here claiming somebody stole your wheels. Now you tell us that not only did somebody take your car but, oh, yeah, while I think of it, they also robbed me.

  “‘Just when did they do that, sir? You were walkin’ up and down the street and—what was it: one or two guys?’

  “The guy says, ‘Two ... it was two.’

  “Wolford says, ‘So, two guys take your wallet, your ID. And then they say, “Okay, while we’re at it, I guess we’ll take your wheels too”—that about it?’

  “And the guy says, ‘Yeah, that’s about it.’”

  “Okay.” Tully was slumped in the passenger seat with his shapeless Irish tweed pulled low on his head. “What happened was this: The guy picks up a hooker on Woodward. She asks him what he wants. He says a blow job will be fine. She tells him to pull into a private driveway on Arden Park. He does. She says she’s not gonna service him till she sees some green. He takes out his wallet and right then two of her friends come out of the bushes. They’re armed. They force him out of his car. They take off with the wallet, the car, and the hooker.

  “The driveway happens to be next to the convent. So he goes in there, tells the nuns somebody
just stole his car—without bothering to mention the rest of the scenario—and asks to use their phone. And the rest is history . . . right?”

  Mangiapane thumped the steering wheel. “You got it, Zoo, you got it! And while the guy is telling his story to Hughes and Wolford, these nuns start cracking up and leave the room . . . ’cause they know where the guy is heading and what really happened.”

  “Keep at least one hand on the wheel, okay, Mangiapane?” It was ethnic, Tully thought, and he didn’t usually sink to ethnic observations. But maybe there was some truth to it: that if you were to cut off an Italian’s hands, he’d be struck dumb.

  It certainly seemed true of Mangiapane. The gestures added zest to his storytelling. Tully couldn’t conceive of Mangiapane’s narrating anything about which he felt deeply without directing the movement, much as an orchestra leader would do. And, in fact, Mangiapane didn’t actually need even one hand on the steering wheel. The guy was so big he could guide the car by pressing his thigh against the wheel . . . especially at the snail’s pace at which they were now traveling.

  Tully plucked the radio mike from beneath the dashboard and began checking with the other units spread throughout the predetermined red-light districts. Nothing. Not a nibble. And it was beginning to get late. Another hour and they would be out of the time frame in which the perp had operated on the previous Sundays.

  “No luck, eh?”

  Tully shook his head. Mangiapane, eyes alternately on the road and scanning the neighborhood, didn’t catch Tully’s response. No matter, the question had been rhetorical.

  “Think we’ll get home in time to see some of the Pro Bowl?” Mangiapane asked.

  “Where they playin’?”

  “Hawaii.”

  “They’re about six hours behind us, aren’t they?”

  “About.”

  “And the damn game goes on forever.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Yeah, I’d say we’ll either get to see the last quarter or the late movie.”

  Mangiapane laughed, somewhat more heartily than was called for. He wasn’t quite conscious of the fact that he was trying to ingratiate himself with Tully.

  “Speaking of movies,” Mangiapane was off again on one of his vignettes, “. . . you know that movie they’re filming in town now?”

  “Uh-huh.” Everybody was painfully aware of the movie now being filmed in Detroit. The local news media, ordinarily extremely professional, lost measurable cool when it came to those rare instances when Hollywood invaded Detroit.

  “Did you know that Lieutenant Horan was in charge of the squad assigned to the film crew?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I got this story from Hughes at lunch. He’s a friend of one of the guys on that squad. And he was talkin’ about the filming the other night. It was about ten o’clock. They got those whatchamacallits—klieg lights?—whatever, and they’re gonna shoot right outside the Book Cadillac on Washington Boulevard.

  “Anyway, they get all set up and ready to go when all of a sudden this car comes crashing through the barricades and plows into the set. Damn lucky thing nobody got hurt. Drunk driver.”

  “I read about it.”

  “Yeah, Zoo, and they had it on TV that night, too. But there was more to it than that. When they were setting up that shot, the director of the movie . . . uh . . . what’s his name?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s a major-league jerk.”

  “You heard this story before?”

  “No, but I heard about that guy.”

  “Right. Well, the jerk has five, six marked cars come screechin’ up to the hotel every which way. Some are parked facin’ north, some south, some south-by-southwest, some east. So Lieutenant Horan, tryin’ to be helpful, comes up to the director and tells him, ‘You know, the police never park like that.’

  “So, the jerk says, ‘Get off my back, willya? This is Show Biz. This is the way the customers are used to seein’ dungs. I’ll direct the movie and you be a cop, okay?’

  “Well, it’s all the lieutenant can do to keep from kickin’ the guy right where the sun never shines. Then this drunk comes plowin’ through everything. And of course nobody can respond because everybody’s radiator is kissin’ everybody else’s radiator.

  “So then Horan comes back to the jerk and says, ‘See why the cops never park that way?’“

  They chuckled.

  “Anyway,” Mangiapane continued, “the Lieutenant got the last laugh. By the time they got everything untangled, it was too late for the shoot. So they wasted all that time and money.”

  “Nice when the good guys win one.” Tully again reached for the mike.

  If Mangiapane had been alert, he would have noticed a slight tremor in Tully’s hand. It was getting late and Tully was getting anxious.

  He checked with the other units. All present and accounted for. No one had sighted anything out of the ordinary.

  “Gettin’ late, ain’t it?” Mangiapane noted.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There was one more.”

  “One more what?”

  “Story. It happened to Wolford.”

  “That must’ve been some lunch you guys had.”

  “It was.”

  “Did you eat anything?”

  “Sure, Zoo.”

  “Sounds like all you did was talk.”

  “No, no . . . we had, let’s see . . .”

  “Never mind. What was Wolford’s story?”

  “Yeah, well, he was in Wink’s Chevy body shop. Had to get a headlight for his car. The manager’s a friend of his. So while he’s waiting, this lady comes in to pick up her car after repairs. But she tells the manager her radio won’t work. Which is news to the manager ’cause there was nothin’ wrong with her radio in the first place. But he gets one of the guys to go out to her car with her. They’re all tryin’ to figure out what went wrong with the radio. Then, as she and the mechanic are goin’ out the door, she says, ‘. . . at least I think there’s something wrong with my radio: I can’t turn it on . . . maybe that’s because I never turned it off.’

  “Can you imagine that, Zoo? She never turned her radio off! The damn thing was on when she bought it and she never turned the goddam thing off!”

  Even though he did not feel like it, Tully smiled, picturing the scene. “What that lady needed was three minutes of silence.” He massaged his brow. A headache was building. “And that’s what we need too, Mangiapane. I got some thinkin’ to do.”

  “Sure thing, Zoo.”

  And so, in silence, they continued to drive the familiar streets: Montcalm, St. Antoine, Adams, Brush, Columbia, Beaubien, Elizabeth—over and over, changing only the order.

  The area was only a few blocks from headquarters. Not much was going on in that neighborhood. They passed a warehouse, storage tanks, some boarded-up structures, a few buildings still occupied—although one wondered by whom—and a couple of residences that were being used almost exclusively by prostitutes.

  It might not have been much of an area but, unless Tully was badly mistaken, it contained just what the perp would be stalking.

  Not many women worked these streets, nor was there much of a selection. But one thing you were quite certain to find in an area like this was that rarity—an older prostitute. And here the prostitutes came in both black and white. Low-profile, elderly white prostitutes. Little chance of any intervention from either a pimp or a hooker’s buddy. Just the right kind of place.

  Tully’s stomach growled. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe he needed a good meal. He thought of Alice, a nice blaze in the fireplace, the football game on TV, the aroma of good food on the stove. Who needed this shit, anyway?

  “Bingo.”

  It was the way Mangiapane said it. Unlike the way he said almost everything, this held almost a tone of reverence. The sort of tone a dedicated angler might use after waiting hours and finally getting a bite from the very fish he’d been after.

  Instantly, the queasy feeling
left Tully’s stomach. His every sense tingled.

  He glanced at Mangiapane, who was studying the rearview mirror. Tully would not turn and look. He did not need to. In his mind’s eye he could see the black Ford Escort to the rear of their unmarked Pontiac.

  Almost as if he could be heard by their quarry, Tully spoke just above a whisper. “Can you make the guy?”

  Mangiapane hesitated. “Not quite. He ought to get his windows cleaned once in a while. From here, looks like a white guy and looks like he’s wearing black. Seems like it, anyway.”

  Tully almost prayed, he wanted this guy so badly. He yearned to take the wheel so there wouldn’t be any mistakes. But he would place his trust in Mangiapane. He had decided that at the outset when he’d told him to drive.

  “He looks like he’s lookin’ for someplace, Zoo. He’s drivin’ real slow, practically stops at every street sign.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what we’re doin’ too. Right now, we’re lookin’ for some way to get on the Fisher Freeway from here. So cut east when we get to the Fisher and go parallel with it for a few blocks, then cut back in.”

  “Okay, Zoo. I think he turned in. Yeah, goin’ east on either Elizabeth or Columbia ... I can’t tell from here.”

  “If I’m right, he’s only gonna go a block or two. Make it four blocks east, then go south. We oughta be able to spot his car from there.”

  Tully had to admit he couldn’t have done it better himself. Mangiapane paced the maneuver perfectly.

  Now they were headed south. On any one of these streets, any moment now, they should see—“There it is, Mangiapane, the black Escort. Let’s go!”

  No one was in the car. And there was only one building he could have entered—an old rundown apartment house converted from a stately ancient residence.

  Mangiapane crossed to the wrong side of the street and pulled up directly in front of and facing the Escort. As the two officers sprang from their car, each drew his .38 service revolver. Mangiapane, exiting from the driver’s side, was closer to the building. He paused a moment so Tully could precede him.

  Just inside the door, Tully hesitated. He cocked an ear to pick up some sound that would give him a key to the next direction.