Missing

by Jonathan Valin

  “Who was the cop?”

  “A guy named Art Stiehl. He’s a well-connected, well-liked veteran. Does a lot of undercover work. Got a spotless record, tough as nails, decorated for bravery, devout Catholic. Wife, two kids.”

  “Did you talk to Stiehl?”

  The guy plucked the Scotch from off his knee and took a long drink. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He stared at me over the lip of the glass of booze. “Because I don’t have the guts to get involved in this case. I still don’t, even though Ira got himself killed on account of it. So don’t bother to ask. My answer is no.”

  Given his close connection to Sullivan and Greenleaf, he didn’t have to tell me why he feared involvement in a homosexual solicitation case. The callow son of a bitch flushed with self-disgust anyway.

  “I can’t expose myself in a matter like this,” he said, leaning forward and dropping the glass like a gavel on the coffee table in front of him. “I told Ira that. Guys like Stiehl are untouchable. Everyone goes to bat for them. It’s just the way it is.”

  I doubted that line of thinking had sat well with Ira Sullivan. He’d been a prig, but he’d had guts.

  “What was Mason doing in Stacie’s bar on the night he died?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Connors said. “I just know that Mason told me he was going to arrange a meeting with Stiehl.”

  “To do what?”

  The man shrugged. “Try to talk him out of pressing charges. I don’t know for sure.”

  “He did that for Grandin, huh?” I said, impressed with Mason Greenleaf’s courage. Cops scared the hell out of him. And Stiehl, who had interrogated him in the Grandin case, must have been particularly frightening.

  “That night on the porch, I asked him the same thing: Why bother? The kid had been nothing but trouble to Mason, stealing things from his house, lying to him, abusing his generosity. Why stick your nose out for him?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. I told him to refer the kid to Ira, but he wouldn’t do that, either. In fact he asked me to keep the conversation secret.”

  “Have any idea why?”

  “I guess he just didn’t want to explain Paul Grandin, Jr., to his friends. I mean, he was putting himself out for the kid he’d been accused of abusing. Ira, for one, would have had a hemorrhage. He did have a hemorrhage the other night, when I told him.”

  “You went back to Sullivan’s apartment to talk?” I said.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Someone saw you in the parking lot. A friend of Sullivan’s.”

  “We talked at his office, then talked some more after supper. He was livid about the whole thing. You can imagine how the people at Nine Mile would have reacted. After all the protests that were made on Mason’s behalf and all the friends who had gone to bat for him, it made him look guilty of something, you know?”

  “Maybe he felt guilty,” I said half to myself. Or maybe he just didn’t know how to explain Paul Grandin, Jr., to Cindy Dorn. Losing her was the thing he most feared, according to Terry Mulhane. And whether Greenleaf was involved with the kid or not, the risks he was taking on the boy’s behalf made it look like betrayal.

  “Do you have any idea who Stiehl’s partner was in the Grandin boy’s bust?”

  “Yeah. Ron Sabato. A cop in Vice.”

  After finishing with Connors, I drove straight down Celestial to the Parkway, getting off at Fifth and circling down below the distributor to the dell in which Stacie’s was located. There were just a handful of cars in the lot at that hour of the afternoon. I parked near the door and walked up the flight of stairs to the bar floor.

  The downstairs was virtually empty, save for a few self-starters sitting by themselves in dark corners of the room. I went up to the bar and crooked a finger at Max Carlson. He ambled up slowly, biting at the corner of his lip—as if he had an intuition that this was not going to be a fun visit. Maybe it was the look on my face: I wasn’t disguising my anger.

  “How long did you say you worked here, Max?” I asked him as he got close.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Fifteen years, maybe.”

  “So you pretty well know everybody, right? All the regulars? The old hands?”

  He smiled uncertainly. “Yeah.”

  “How ‘bout the cops, Max? Vice cops? They ever come in here?”

  He took a step back, knocking against a stack of glasses on the ledge behind him, making them ring.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, nodding. “I know all about it, Max.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You better remember pretty quick. Or I’m going beat the shit out of you. Then I’m going to call Vice and tell them that you spilled the beans about Stiehl and Sabato.”

  The fat man’s face went sheet-white. “Oh, Jesus, you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah, I would. Both parts.”

  He came up on tippy-toes, as if he didn’t want to make a noise. “Could we—could we talk about this someplace else.” His eyes darted nervously around the room, from drunk to drunk, as if each one was a potential betrayer.

  “Sure, Max. We can talk about it with the district attorney.”

  “I can’t fucking do that! Those cocksuckers would kill me.” He snatched up a bar towel and scrubbed at the sweat that had popped up on his forehead. “You don’t understand what Stiehl’s like. He hates fags. I mean, he fucking hates ‘em. We’re not even human to him.”

  “Then your best bet is to put him behind bars.”

  The guy’s face started to tremble—very close to tears.

  “Please, Stoner. It don’t work that way. He’s connected, man. Jesus, they covered this thing up, didn’t they?”

  I stared at him. “You’re saying Segal and Taylor knew that Stiehl and Sabato were the two men who’d met with Mason Greenleaf in the bar.”

  “Of course they did. They practically told me what to say and how to say it.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him—at least, I didn’t want to. Because if Segal and Taylor had known, then there was a good chance that Jack McCain had known, too—and sat for it. “What really happened that night?”

  He shook his head.

  I hooked my hand through the shoulder strap of his apron and jerked his face close to mine. “What happened?”

  “It was sort of like what you heard,” he said, his face trembling with fear. “I mean, the two of them met with him—the old one and Stiehl. Except it was Stiehl who got all worked up and started shouting.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “The guy left. Like I said.”

  “Drunk?”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, a little. I mean, he wasn’t falling down.”

  “And then?”

  He balked, and I practically jerked him over the bar. One of the waiters was watching us. He got alarmed and shouted, “Should I call the cops, Max?”

  “Yeah,” I said to him. “Call the cops.”

  “No!” Carlson shouted. “No, it’s all right, Sam.”

  I let go of his apron and he straightened up, smiling at the waiter and the rest of the customers in the bar. “It’s all right, everybody. It’s fine. Just a little misunderstanding about some money.”

  The waiter snorted with disgust and went back to polishing one of the tables.

  Swallowing hard, Max turned back to me. “Stiehl followed him out the door. Out into the lot. I don’t know what happened outside. He come back in a few minutes later. The two of them had another round, then left.”

  “What about Greenleaf? Did he come back in?”

  Carlson shook his head. “I never saw him again.”

  30

  THE RAIN was falling again, thick and gray, as I walked up the Fifth Street hill, following Mason Greenleaf’s track to the Washington Hotel. He’d had to drag himself up that damn hill, after Stiehl was finished. It had made him look drunk, the beating. Made him weave like a featherw
eight, according to the clerk.

  The rain made a drumming sound on the hotel arcade that echoed down the hallway to the front desk. The old man, Pat, was sitting behind the caged-in counter, thumbing through a tattered TV Guide.

  “You remember me?” I said to him.

  He nodded. “He ain’t here right now,” he said, referring to the stout desk clerk. “Run out to get him a snack of dinner.”

  “You’ll do, Pat.”

  He laughed. “What did you have in mind?”

  I reached into my wallet and pulled out four twenties, laying them down one by one on the counter in front of him like I was dealing solitaire. The old man licked his lips.

  “The guy that checked in and killed himself—what did he look like?”

  “Drunk.”

  “Just drunk?”

  “Beat up some.”

  “How beat up?”

  “Had him a red forehead, a shiner, and a swollen jaw. You couldn’t see it real good, till he turned into the light. But I seen it. He could hardly talk ‘cause of it. Made him sound stupid.”

  “What did he say to you when he came in?”

  The old man shrugged. “Wanted a room, up top. Said he was tired.”

  “Did he say anything about the beating?”

  Pat shook his head. “Just that he was tired and didn’t know if he could sleep. Asked me could I get him some booze to help him sleep. I told him in a place like this, you can get just about anything for the right price.”

  “You got him the bottle?”

  He nodded. “Brought it up to his room.”

  “When was this?”

  “Real late. Past two. I knocked on the door and he says, ‘Come in.’ I come in. He was lying on the bed, staring out the window. There was a tin of pills on the nightstand. I says, ‘I wouldn’t be taking no pills, if’n you plan to be drinking.’ But he says not to worry. He’ll be all right.”

  I didn’t believe him—about the last part, the warning. But the rest of it sounded reasonable, if that was the word.

  “Did you tell this to the cops?”

  “Didn’t talk to ‘em. Lester did.”

  “He’s the clerk?”

  Pat nodded. “I tried to talk to them, but they wasn’t much interested in me. Who’s gonna listen to an old drunk like me?”

  It was a point a defense attorney might make, too. I picked up the twenties and handed them to him. He folded the money up and stuck it in the pocket of his checked shirt.

  ******

  I called Mulhane’s office from a pay phone on Fifth. It was almost seven by then, and the office was closed. I got his home phone from information and dialed it. A woman answered. I told her who I was, and she called out: “Doctor, it’s for you. One Harold Stoner.”

  “Hey, Stoner,” Mulhane said, coming on a different line. I heard his wife hang up with a click. “I’ve been hoping you would call. In fact, I left a couple of messages on your machine. We’ve got to talk.”

  “About the autopsy report?”

  “Yeah. Someone did a real slipshod job. I mean, it’s almost criminal.”

  That was the correct word.

  “If you got a few minutes, why don’t you stop over, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Mulhane’s house was on Interview in the gaslight section of Clifton—a respectable red brick colonial in a neighborhood of proper red brick colonials. The rain was still falling as I pulled up out front. I parked in his driveway and dashed under a dripping elm tree, across the lawn to the stoop. He was waiting at the door with the autopsy report in his hand and a pair of reading glasses propped, like sunglasses, above his forehead.

  “Come in out of the rain,” he said cheerily.

  Behind him, a pretty brunette woman smiled a quick hello, as she rounded a newel post and headed up to the second floor.

  “That was my wife,” Mulhane said, smiling after her. “Tactfully leaving us alone, I think.”

  I shook a little rain from my coat sleeve and stepped into the hall. Immediately on the left, a portal opened on a large study lined with bookshelves. There was a crowded desk on the far wall, a sunken conversation pit in the center of the room, and a baby grand piano near the door. Mulhane waved me through, then closed a pair of sliding doors behind us. He walked me over to the conversation pit. Sitting down on the couch, he reached out and directed a standing spot so that its beam was focused brightly on the pages of the report.

  “Forensic medicine is an art unto itself,” he said, paging through it until he found a color frontal photograph of Mason Greenleaf’s corpse stretched out on a steel examination table. As I sat down beside him, he held the picture up in the beam of light. “If you take a look at this, you’ll see Mason definitely died of asphyxia, probably due to the inhalation of vomitus—like the coroner’s report says. The blue lips, the hemorrhaging of the eyes, those are classic indications.”

  Even in a photograph Mason Greenleaf’s dead body was a gruesome sight.

  “It’s what the coroner didn’t note that troubles me,” Mulhane said.

  Flipping down his reading glasses, he plucked a magnifying glass from an end table and held it over Mason Greenleaf’s swollen face. “Take a look at the area around the left side of Mason’s head. You see that large purplish contusion and swelling beginning at the corner of his mouth, extending up past the eye to the forehead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a goddamn blunt instrument blow, if I’ve ever seen one. And a helluva shot, too. I mean, they picked him up twelve hours after he died—you can see the lividity at the back of his arms. But the left half of his face is still puffed up and red. Which means there was considerable hemorrhaging in the soft tissue, maybe even a broken cheekbone. All this crap about him falling down or running into something is crap. I mean, it looks like somebody hit him with a baseball bat. That’s the kind of force we’re talking about.”

  He dropped the magnifying glass on the couch and leaned back against the cushions. “Somebody worked him over. I don’t think there’s any other reasonable conclusion.”

  “Are you willing to testify to that?”

  Mulhane turned his head slowly toward me, peering over the tops of his reading glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I believe you. I believe Mason was worked over. I think I know who did it, too.”

  “Who?” Mulhane said breathlessly.

  “A cop named Art Stiehl.”

  His face flushed with anger. “A cop did this?”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Why? Why the hell would he beat up Mason? I mean, Mason was harmless, for chrissake. Mason never hurt anyone.”

  “I don’t know why exactly. I just know this particular cop doesn’t like gays.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Mulhane said. “We’ve got to do something about this. We have to talk to the district attorney. I mean, I have friends—”

  “We’ve got to make a case first. This man is well protected. In fact, certain cops may already be covering up for him.”

  Mulhane threw a hand to his head, passing it heavily through his hair as if he were trying to hold his top on. “Jesus, I’ve read things like this. Seen them on TV. Are you actually telling me that the cops are covering up a case of brutality?”

  “It’s possible. Maybe probable. Is there any way to tell how much bleeding would have resulted from Greenleaf’s wounds?”

  “Not really. There are some lacerations around the nostril, mouth, and the corner of the eye. But it looks like most of the bleeding was internal. Why?”

  “I found some bloodstains the cops missed in the backseat of Mason’s car. There wasn’t a great deal of it, but enough to be sampled.”

  “They could possibly result from this kind of wound.”

  “‘Possibly’ won’t do it. This is important, doc. Are these photographs proof positive that Mason was deliberately mugged or beaten up?”

  He sighed. “Proof, no. I mean, if they were proof positive,
even the county coroner couldn’t have missed the finding. What we got is a strong likelihood. And I will testify to that—and get colleagues to testify to it.”

  But likelihoods, even strong ones, weren’t going to get a grand jury to indict a respected cop. Not in this town.

  “What we need is a witness who will testify to the beating,” I said, just saying it outright.

  “But if the cops are covering up . . .”

  “Maybe they’re not all covering up.” I glanced around the room. “Is there a phone in here?”

  “On the desk.”

  I went over to the desk and dialed the CPD and asked to be transferred to Vice. “Ron Sabato,” I said when a duty sergeant picked up.

  There was a momentary pause, and then Sabato came on the line. “This is Sergeant Sabato.”

  “Ron, this is Harry Stoner.”

  “Yeah, Harry,” he said in a friendly voice. “Did you get the autopsy report?”

  “Picked it up last night.”

  “So what more can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to buy you a drink, Ron. You’re a Scotch man, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “How the hell did you know that?”

  “The bartender at Stacie’s told me. You know, you put away a lot of Scotch that night when Mason Greenleaf killed himself.”

  There was a dead silence on the other end.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, sounding like a completely different man.

  “Sure you do, Ron. You and Art. I’ll be in Arnold’s in about half an hour, you want to talk it over. You don’t show up, I’m going to the DA and the FBI.”

  I hung up before he could answer.

  Mulhane stared at me uneasily from where he was still sitting on the couch. “This is dangerous. Shouldn’t we call the FBI?”

  I glanced at my watch, which was showing a quarter of eight. “I’d like to make a case first. Unless I can find someone who will testify about the beating, this won’t fly.”

  “What makes you think Sabato will talk to you?”

  “I’m not sure that he will. But we’ve got to start somewhere.”