The Wizard of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  Lyon felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face Rocco Herbert. “How in hell do you always know where we are?”

  “I’ve got two men following you, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Noticed? They’re about as subtle as the seventh cavalry.”

  “It worked,” Rocco said.

  “You’ve got a feedback from the MVD computer?”

  “On the nose. We ran a match on everyone who signed for thirty-caliber ammo and ran it against the registered motorcyclists.”

  “And you came up with seven hundred names?” Bea asked.

  “Would you believe one? Junior Haney, age twenty-eight, lives in Breeland. Three nolles for theft—auto and a B and E conviction on his record.”

  “Address?”

  “Current as of a month ago.”

  “You bring him in?”

  “You know I wouldn’t make a move without you, Lyon,” Rocco said and laughed.

  “You really think it’s him?” Bea asked.

  “It’s all we have so far,” Rocco replied. “We’ll see what we can turn up when we interview him.”

  4

  It was a black-and-white morning. The leaden sky cast a dull sheen across the road as Rocco accelerated the cruiser toward eighty. He drove effortlessly with one hand, and with the other, switched on the blinking roof light.

  “Are you sure you don’t want the siren?” Lyon grimaced as he clutched his seat belt.

  “If my driving bothers you, why do you come?”

  “I’m a masochist. If you’re in such a hurry, we could have done this last night.”

  “A name appearing on two lists hardly constitutes grounds for an arrest. An interview, a few questions—but there’s no need to dawdle.”

  A passing state police car blinked its lights in recognition of the Murphysville cruiser as the speedometer steadied on eighty.

  Breeland was a factory town twenty miles from Murphysville. They’d checked the large map in Rocco’s office before leaving, and Lyon had scribbled directions to the street that the motor-vehicle department had given as the last known address of Junior Haney.

  As they exited off the Interstate, they crossed a rusting iron bridge spanning a muddy river. Breeland was a depressing town, one of many Connecticut cities formed in the early 1800s that now dotted the landscape between the hills along rivers that once were the source of power for textile plants and knitting mills. Connecticut tinkers no longer walked the land to the west, while knitting and textile mills had moved south years ago. Half the factories had closed; the remaining half manufactured precision tools and gauges. Clapboard houses spotted the hills in stagnant display.

  As Lyon called off directions from his notes, Rocco slowed to a rational speed. When they made the last turn toward 2339 Halliburton Court, they found that the address was contained within a low-cost housing development. The grass between the peeling frame buildings was too high to be neat and not high enough to be termed overgrown. Sullen children stared at the police car with undisguised contempt.

  The doorbell of 2339 was immovable, and Rocco knocked loudly. Dishes clattered inside the apartment and a small child began to wail. Rocco knocked again.

  The young woman who opened the door had been pretty last year. She wore a brief halter and faded denim pants. A wisp of hair curled over her slightly perspiring forehead, and she pushed it back in a nervous gesture. Her eyes dulled as she looked past them toward the police car parked at the curb.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Junior Haney. Is he home?”

  “He’s at work.”

  “I’m Chief Rocco Herbert. I’d like to talk to you. You’re—?”

  “Loyce Haney,” she answered in a low voice as she stepped aside for them to enter. “I told you, Junior’s not here.”

  The front door opened directly into a small living room; a kitchen area was visible to the rear, with an unkempt bedroom beyond that. The plastic-covered furniture had begun to show wear. A petulant baby dressed in a diaper sat in a playpen, half-crying as he looked at them. Dominating the far wall of the room was a large combination color television and stereo set.

  As Rocco and Lyon looked toward the television set, Loyce Haney stepped in front of them as if to block their view of the baroque cabinet.

  “Junior’s got a receipt for the TV. He showed it to me.”

  “Does he have a receipt for the rifle?” Rocco asked.

  “Junior don’t have no gun.”

  “Someone told me he did.”

  “Someone told you wrong. Hey, you’re not Breeland police. That patch on your shoulder says Murphysville. You got no rights here.”

  “I can call the locals if you want, Mrs. Haney.”

  She shrugged, sank back on the couch and lit a cigarette. Lyon wondered how long she could have been married. Two years, three at the most; she couldn’t be much over twenty. Behind her tired eyes he saw the girl she might have been two years ago. A girl riding behind Junior on his motorcycle, her arms around his waist, an overt sensuality about her, filled with the dreams of the times, until she offered Junior the poor girl’s dowry—his child.

  “Junior’s been clean for months,” she said. “He’s been working regular at the station.”

  “What station?”

  “The Exxon on Cumberland Street.”

  “He’s there now?”

  “Since seven this morning.”

  “He took his cycle to work?”

  “Only way to get there; it’s five miles from here.”

  “The TV set new?”

  “I told you. He has a receipt for it. The store even delivered it here themselves, adjusted the color and everything.”

  “On a charge account?”

  “It’s all paid for. We got the receipt.”

  “When?”

  “The other day. It’s brand new.”

  “A thousand dollars?”

  “Twelve hundred.”

  “He must be working a lot of overtime.”

  “He came into some money.”

  “Where’s the rifle?”

  “I told you. No gun.”

  “Where was he the day before yesterday?”

  “At work. I’m not going to answer any more questions.” She crushed her cigarette out in a souvenir ash tray and crossed to the playpen, where she picked up the baby and held it tightly against her breasts. “Go away. Just go away and leave me alone. Junior didn’t do nothing. He told me he didn’t.”

  Loyce Haney rocked back and forth, clutching the baby as though her maternity were a protective mantle.

  “All right, Mrs. Haney,” Rocco said softly. “Thank you for your time.” He turned and strode from the apartment. Lyon stood in the center of the room for a moment, and as he looked at the tired young woman before her large television, he wished for her sake that it wasn’t Junior. He turned and followed Rocco to the car.

  They pulled onto the gas-station apron on Cumberland Street to find an El Dorado at the pumps. Its driver honked impatiently for service. Then with a screech of tires the El Dorado pulled away from the station.

  The service-bay doors were open, a Chevy was on the grease rack, and the door to the office was unlocked. No attendants were visible.

  “Anybody home?” Rocco called as he walked through the empty station.

  “The phone,” Lyon said as he indicated the wall pay-telephone.

  “She called him.”

  “We should have expected that.”

  “It still doesn’t prove he’s our man, although I’d bet a thousand to one that the money for the TV didn’t come from working here.”

  “We trace him to his home, his wife calls ahead, and he takes off with the money from his job,” Lyon said as he shut the empty cash-register drawer. “Seems to me he was in a hurry.”

  “Too much of a hurry to take his colors. That’s a real hurry.”

  “His what?” Lyon asked.

  “His colors,” Rocco said as he held up a leather
jacket that hung on a nail in the corner of the small office. Krauts M.C. was emblazoned on the back of the jacket.

  Captain Sean Murdock of the Breeland Police Department was short and squat, with a round face laced with red lines, and mean as hell. He pointed a fat forefinger at two chairs in his small office and scowled across the desk at his visitors.

  “Who the hell is Captain Norbert of the state police?” he snapped.

  “My brother-in-law,” Rocco replied. “Why?”

  “We put out the APB on Junior Haney, like you asked, and five minutes later I get a call from state police barracks, from this joker Norbert. He wants to know what in hell you’re doing out of your jurisdiction, and for me to tell you to get the hell home.”

  “A continuing family squabble,” Rocco said.

  “That’s your problem. Now, what’s this crap about Haney and the Llewyn murder?”

  “Suspicion only.”

  “Tell me a little B and E, tell me suspicion of rape or a little mugging, but Haney and murder—political murder—that’s shit.”

  “Perhaps for hire,” Lyon suggested.

  Murdock glared and then leaned back in his creaking swivel chair. “Maybe. Junior could be hired to bludgeon his grandmother if it paid more than a sawbuck. What do you have on him?”

  “Not much,” Rocco said. “We traced everyone who was a registered motorcyclist and who purchased thirty-caliber ammo in the last week. It fits Junior. An hour ago we interviewed Loyce Haney. When we went to see Junior—”

  “He’d skipped.”

  “Right. Of course he doesn’t know why we want to talk to him.”

  “Knowing Junior, he’s probably done something, and cops nosing around is all he needs to hear.”

  “You sound like you know him well,” Lyon said.

  Murdock squinted ominously. “Junior’s twenty-eight. He’s been known to this department since he was twelve. One of our more outstanding citizens. Started by stealing bicycles, advanced to cars—you name it. His sheet doesn’t show half of what we’ve brought him in for.”

  “Political murder is slightly different than ripping off a Thunderbird.”

  Murdock’s eyes glinted at them as he pulled a long cigar from a center desk drawer and lit it with a kitchen match. “Depends,” he said in a noncommittal voice.

  “You don’t mean that,” Rocco said.

  Murdock’s cigar went out and he lit it again, flipping the match toward an overflowing wastebasket. “’Course not, Chief Herbert. I don’t believe half I say and hardly anything I hear. Now, as far as politics and Junior are concerned—he can hardly read. Not that that stops some of them over in the state capitol. For money now … maybe.”

  “Would he kill?” Lyon asked.

  Murdock contemplated the spiraling cloud of cigar smoke and made a lazy gesture with a finger through a smoke ring. “Well now, if I was in a position to want to eliminate someone … Junior would be available for a price.”

  “You think he’s done it before?”

  Murdock wrinkled his nose at Lyon. “If he’d done it before he wouldn’t be here. I would have seen to that. I just said he would be available if approached.”

  “What about pulling a Lee Oswald?” Rocco asked.

  “Junior’s not nuts. He’s what your do-gooders like Llewyn would have called underprivileged. Translated to ordinary English, he’s hungry as hell for what he can get.”

  The phone rang. Murdock closed a pudgy fist over the receiver and picked it up. He mumbled twice and slammed it back on the cradle. “A unit has located Junior’s bike outside the Krauts’ clubhouse.”

  “Junior?” Rocco asked.

  Murdock stood up. “Hell, how would I know? I wouldn’t let two of my men go into that place alone. That’d be like feeding them to the sharks. Come on, I’m taking a double backup crew down there to raid the joint.”

  The Krauts’ M.C. clubhouse was located on Route 92 on the outskirts of Breeland. Three years earlier the peeling frame building had been an inn, with rooms for rent upstairs, and a small bar and grill on the first floor. The property had been condemned for a highway widening and was slated for destruction later in the year. In the interim, the Krauts had taken occupancy. Its windows were mostly shuttered, and a half dozen Harleys were neatly aligned in the overgrown parking lot.

  Seven police cars with twice as many uniformed officers had formed a circle around the building. Murdock stood with a bullhorn near the wooden steps leading to the front door as Rocco swerved his cruiser to a stop near the side of the building.

  “This is Captain Murdock. We’re coming in and don’t want trouble. All you in there, against the wall and take the position. I’m coming in on five. One …”

  “I have the feeling they’ve been through this before,” Lyon said.

  “I hope they don’t decide to relocate to Murphysville,” Rocco replied.

  “… five. All right, here we come.” Murdock, followed by several uniformed officers, clumped up the remaining steps and with a shattering kick opened the front door.

  The splotched wooden bar was cluttered with empty beer cans. A man was stretched out on a cot in a far corner, and three other Krauts were playing pool on an ancient table. The police officers milled around the room as a pool player glanced uninterestedly in their direction and then back to the table to take his shot.

  “I told you, against the wall,” Murdock said to the pool player. “You hear me, Wiff?”

  “I heard you, Captain. Get off our backs. We haven’t done nothing. We got rights, you know.”

  Murdock stood directly in front of the club’s leader, providing a sharp contrast to the tall, heavy-set man in the cut-off sweat shirt. “You shouldn’t talk like that to the establishment, Wiff. It’s not nice.”

  The captain’s fist slammed into Wiff’s solar plexus and knocked him back against the pool table. “Put ’em against the wall and see if they’re clean,” a police sergeant bellowed.

  Wiff waved his pool cue toward Murdock. “I told you, Murdock. Lay off!”

  “You want a trip downtown, Wiff?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I ought to bust your goddamn head.”

  “Come on, Fatso.”

  “Where’s Junior Haney?”

  “Don’t know the gentleman.”

  “Take him,” Murdock said to the waiting officers.

  Six men hung back for a moment and then began to move in a tight semicircle toward Wiff. Wiff backed against the wall, the pool cue held to his front like a protecting lance.

  “Take him now!” the sergeant yelled as they closed in on Wiff.

  “Wait a goddamn minute,” Rocco’s voice echoed through the room and froze everyone. “He’s mine.” The chief moved through the attacking officers until he stood before Wiff with the tip of the pool cue an inch from his chest. “Take it easy, son,” Rocco said in an even voice. “You and I are going to talk for a few minutes.”

  “Off you, pig.”

  “Now, now.” Rocco’s mammoth hand closed over the pool cue, wrenched it effortlessly from Wiff’s hand, and then snapped it in two. The two pieces fell to the floor with a clatter that sounded across the quiet room. Rocco stepped forward, placed both hands on Wiff’s shoulders and turned him against the wall. He quickly and efficiently searched the leader of the bike gang, then turned Wiff back to face him. “Now, sit down,” he said quietly.

  Wiff backed toward a folding chair and plunked into it. He crossed his legs and glared up at Rocco. “All right, big mother fucker, what do you want?”

  “I want to know where Junior Haney is, and I want to know right now.”

  “You may be a big bastard, but la ti da.”

  “You’ll make me angry,” Rocco replied evenly.

  “The Krauts protect their own.”

  “You take the club up to Cape Cod a couple of times a summer, don’t you?”

  “So?”

  “I’d like to know how you’re going to get there without going through
Murphysville. By way of Boston, maybe. It’s only a hundred or so miles out of the way.”

  “You can’t stop us.”

  “You know, I’m not even going to answer that.”

  “We got a right to go through Murphysville.”

  “Do you have any idea how many traffic violations I can stick on your club if I put my mind to it?”

  “Junior’s not here.”

  “His bike’s outside.”

  “He came by earlier and wanted to sell it. Fizz bought it for a couple of yards.”

  “I’d call that a distress sale. That bike looks almost new.”

  “It is; he just bought it.”

  “Four thousand new?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And yet he sold it for a couple of hundred?”

  “He said he was hot. Had to get out of town.”

  “How’d he leave?”

  “Thumbed it.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Maybe half an hour.”

  “We’ll pick him up,” Murdock said. “He won’t get far.”

  Rocco drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as they waited in the parking lot outside the Krauts’ clubhouse. The Breeland police drove from the lot and headed in various directions as the Krauts moved insolently from the building and began to start their Harleys.

  Conformity against conformity, Lyon thought. The departing Krauts seemed alike: German helments, leather jackets, or shirts cut off at the shoulder. Massive and sullen men, they roared from the lot with a scream of rubber and turned onto the highway in a single file that headed toward a lemming-like destruction.

  “Suppose we ought to go home,” Rocco said. “I can check the school crossing guards.”

  “School’s out. I think we ought to check on Loyce Haney again.”

  “Crud like Junior won’t bother about his wife and child. He’s off like a big-assed bird.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Rocco looked at Lyon and nodded. He threw the car into gear.

  As they stopped at the apartment on Halliburton Court, Lyon saw a curtain flutter at the window. Rocco knocked again and again; no answer. He increased the pressure of his pounding until he shook the wood of the door.

  “Wait,” Lyon said and put his hand over Rocco’s fist. “Mrs. Haney, it’s Lyon Wentworth. We must talk to you. I can’t tell you how important it is. It’s a question of Junior’s safety.”