This discussion became rather complex and confused, but Helen finally asked: What were the major problems facing them (she was thinking in terms of “us” by now) today?
“A major problem,” he said, promptly, “is Mulheisen.”
“Sergeant Mulheisen?” she said. “A precinct detective? That’s a major problem?”
“Mulheisen is poking around in the Hoffa business,” Humphrey said.
Helen was interested. “You were involved with Hoffa? With his disappearance?”
“You don’t want to know,” Humphrey told her. “It’s all history. I knew Hoffa. I know what happened.”
“What happened?”
“It’s too complicated,” Humphrey told her. He’d liked Hoffa, thought he was a good man, but excitable. Not easy to work with. Humphrey was vague. There had been a misunderstanding. An accident. It was nothing, but it wouldn’t do for a guy like Mulheisen to dig too deep. It could bring the whole thing down, especially right now, when the FBI had brought a huge case against several guys who used to be major players in the Detroit business. Humphrey didn’t think that case could touch him, but the Hoffa case surely could.
“The man’s trouble,” Humphrey said.
“Hoffa?”
“Mulheisen. He doesn’t let go. He’s one of those guys,” Humphrey said, “they don’t seem to be a problem. Like you say, you didn’t think he was much help with your old man’s case, but then he found out just about everything there was to know. The thing is, he doesn’t give up. You think you’ve put him off the scent, you don’t hear anything from him for ages, and then, there he is. He’s been picking up a little something here, something there. And then, one day, he’s standing at your front door, that weird smile on his face. I hate to see him coming. That face. It’s so … so flat.”
Helen didn’t understand what he meant.
“Not physically flat,” Humphrey said, “it’s that flat, open expression. He seems simple. You think he don’t know anything, but maybe he knows almost everything. Believe me, it’s a big mistake to underrate Mulheisen.”
“So? What are you going to do?”
He outlined a plan. It seemed overly elaborate to Helen. A Rube Goldberg device to catch a mouse. But Humphrey was serious. He wanted to set up a foundation, a phony historical research project. They’d hire a young graduate student, something like that, who would keep tabs on Mulheisen’s activities in the guise of doing historical research. Only the kid doing the research wouldn’t know what the research was really about, what it would be used for. From time to time they could feed Mulheisen a little info, through the researcher and some other outlets; kind of steer him in the direction they wanted him to go, keep him busy, running down old trails.
Helen thought it sounded dangerous and expensive. Humphrey was excited about the plan, however. He wanted Helen to set it up and run it. She had some expertise in things like that. She agreed to do it. It was something to do. But she couldn’t shake her misgivings.
The other thing Humphrey wanted was for her to get acquainted with the business, at least the legitimate side of it. She could do that. If she didn’t want to get into the other stuff, well, that was up to her. They’d see about that down the road. But anything she could do with the legitimate stuff would be a big help. Humphrey said he was getting to the retirement stage. He wasn’t interested in all the detail work anymore. He didn’t have the mind for it, these days, everything was so much more complex, and he had lost the old drive.
At one point, he said, he’d considered bringing Pepe into the business, but then the young man had taken off. Gone back to Mexico, apparently. It was a disappointment. Pepe was a smart young fellow, a lot more to him than he’d looked. But what can you do? Young men, they have other ideas. Well, more power to him.
Helen was sorry he’d gone, too, but she didn’t say anything. She kept waiting for Humphrey to say something about the money, about Joe, but he didn’t bring it up. Instead, he talked about how she had to start finding herself some allies, people who weren’t necessarily his guys. “Not just anybody, of course,” he said. “I know you’re tight with Itchy, he likes you. That’s good. But I don’t want you getting cozy with guys who might not be friendly toward me, or who’d be thinking they’d be stepping into my shoes—my shoes are going to be empty before you know it. No, don’t give me any bullshit about how young and vital I am. I mean it. You gotta be thinking about yourself. About how you would run things. You’ll need some strong-arms around you, but guys you can trust. That’s my problem now. Thanks to age and the FBI, and Mulheisen, most of my old guys are gone. That’s why I’m talking to you.”
“The only strong arms I want about me are yours, big boy,” she said, playfully. She leaped onto his lap, throwing her arms about him.
Humphrey was delighted. He loved the close feel of her. It aroused him. He made some tentative squeezes. She allowed it, a little. It was amazing, he thought, how she knew just how much intimacy to permit before she stopped him, subtly, with a kind of stiffening or drawing away. Just enough, not too much. In truth, he was grateful. It was the way he saw it. The thought of actually being intimate, really intimate, with her was scary to him. He wanted it, he knew he did, but he couldn’t give in to it. He had other plans.
Helen, for her part, was simply doing what came naturally. She loved to tease him, even to the edge of sex. But she was thinking about Joe. She was certain that Humphrey was thinking of Joe, as well, but neither of them could mention his name. “And what are you going to be doing while I’m learning to be HatchetHellion or HotchaHelen?” she asked impertinently.
“Puss. Puss,” he urged. “Me? I’ll still be running things, don’t worry. But I’m gonna step back, as much as I can. I want you out there in the forefront, where the others can see you running the show. I’m like the old spider in the web. I’m thinking what I need is a kind of hidey-hole, a nerve center, where I can keep tabs on what’s stepping on the wires, who’s rattling the cage.”
“You’ve got that,” she said, referring to his security devices.
“That’s nothing,” he said. “That’s sort of what gave me the idea, though. I got thinking, my sensors just go out to the gate. I gotta have real communications that go out to the whole …” He paused, searching for the right word.
“The whole kingdom,” she said.
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
* * *
He started building his web almost immediately. Sending her out to learn about the business, he immersed himself in a building project.
Humphrey wanted to construct the command post right at the house. Why, in this electronic age, was he driving all the way into Detroit, practically downtown, to Krispee Chips? Of course, he’d still go out and check his traps, he said, but in the future he’d keep tabs on things from his new office. It was being built in the basement. A nice little suite, practically an apartment, with the most up-to-date, powerful computers, a place to lie down, take a nap when he got tired. He was amazingly enthusiastic about it. The builders were there for weeks, putting everything in.
Once or twice a week, Humphrey would drive into town to take care of business. Helen usually went with him, but she didn’t often stick very closely. She was busy with her projects. Besides the historical foundation she was learning about the potato chip business, reorganizing that office. Another project was the cigar business.
She had done a lot of research. Apparently, Detroit had once been a big cigar-manufacturing center. That had faded after World War Two. The phony cigar business was one thing, but she considered it paltry, more a lark than anything else. She didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t manufacture real, legitimate cigars in Detroit. They had the facilities. She was looking into that.
Sometimes she and Humphrey would go together to Strom Davidson’s operation. She would look at the books, talk to the people, especially the girls working in the loft and the people making the labels. Humphrey would wander off with Strom, for
which Helen was grateful. She found him abrasive and difficult. In the new operation, if she got it going, there wouldn’t be any room for Strom Davidson.
One of the women, the one Strom had been raging at when Helen first visited the operation, was particularly interesting. Her name was Berta and it was her brother, Ramón, who had designed the LaDonna label. He was not well, and she was concerned about him. He needed to be in a clinic, but they had no health insurance. A business like illegal relabeling did not provide workers with benefits.
Berta was a very capable woman. Besides caring for her brother, she had two children at home, being looked after by her younger sister and her aunt. Berta often worked sixteen-hour days— ten hours packing cigars, then another four to six hours as a waitress at a Mexican restaurant in Dearborn. She herself was Cuban and had left the island with her mother more than ten years ago. The Cuban government had let them emigrate when it was confirmed that Berta’s father had died in Miami. He had been a Castro supporter, a revolutionary, but the postrevolutionary executions had soon turned him into a disillusioned expatriate. Berta’s uncle Jorge had fled Cuba with her father, but eventually made his way to Detroit, where he landed a fine job on Ford’s assembly line. He had brought Berta and her family here. But then he died. Her mother died. Berta’s husband ran away.
It was a long sad tale, but Berta wasn’t one of those who liked to spin it out in detail. “He died,” she said. “She died.” No explanation unless asked, and then only if she knew you well. The husband: “Ran away.”
Berta didn’t seem crushed. While she wasn’t delighted with her situation, she was not overwhelmed, not yet. The other women looked up to her, she was their leader. She didn’t mind Strom Davidson, she said to Helen. She was being circumspect, of course, but Helen could see she was not intimidated by the boss. She confided that some of the younger, prettier women were the sexual prey of Davidson and he sometimes made a pass at her, but—she made an obscure gesture with her fingers, a scissors movement—“He knows he will not get me.”
None of this really shocked Helen, but it disgusted her. She determined to put an end to it. She was also curious how she could go about getting into legitimate cigar making. Her new friend Berta was skeptical. Berta knew something about the business. “In Cuba, it is a matter of pride, of passion!” she declared. “You must grow the tobacco. You must have people who know how to pick it, cure it, age it. And buyers to find the tobacco you don’t grow—binder leaf, wrapper leaf. It doesn’t all grow in the same place. There is much involved and you must not rush this process. The big tobacco companies came to Cuba before and after the revolution, you know. They would make everyone rich. Lots of employment, big factories. But the Cubans could not see it that way. We preferred the old ways.”
It was all very interesting, but not to the point. The problem was that because of the embargo on Cuban goods, the only tobacco that Helen would be able to obtain, if she wanted to seriously go into manufacture, was non-Cuban—Dominican, Mexican, Honduran, whatever. And what could she offer if she were able to get good tobacco? Berta could easily find her some cigar rollers, women who had been expert at this trade in the Caribbean and elsewhere, living right here in Detroit, but so what? There were already too many makers of cigars. Another brand would just be lost in the welter, especially one made in Detroit. Who would buy it? You could not make cigars cheaply enough in Detroit to sell them at a competitive price.
On the other hand … Berta had a cousin who rolled for a Canadian maker, in Toronto. That guy put out some very respectable cigars. They were about as Cuban as a cigar could be if it wasn’t made in Cuba. The tobacco came from Cuba, the rollers were Cuban expatriates. The Canadian maker, Harold Jespersen, was from a Danish family that had been in the tobacco business in Copenhagen for generations, before relocating to Canada. Berta wondered if it was possible to buy cigars wholesale from Jespersen. The U.S. Customs wouldn’t consider those Cuban cigars, would they? They could then be relabeled in Detroit, perhaps sold to a limited clientele. It wasn’t what Helen had in mind, she knew, but it might be a start.
Helen would find out. In the meantime, she would do something about Strom Davidson. She went to look for him one afternoon, after a conversation with Berta. She had thought that he was with Humphrey, but he was not. He was perched on the edge of his desk, with his back to the door, when she walked in.
He swiveled his head, and when he saw who it was, he swore. “For godssake, don’t you ever fuckin’ knock?” He straightened up, adjusted his clothing, and then the secretary stood up, looking rather disheveled. She was beet red as she went by Helen without a word and disappeared into the bathroom.
Helen didn’t comment on the scene. “Where’s Humphrey?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Davidson said. “Down in the warehouse, somewhere. What can I do for ya, honey? Or maybe you could do something for me.” He glanced down meaningfully at his crotch.
“You can do something for yourself,” she said. “Leave these women alone.”
Strom’s eyebrows shot up. “Leave them alone? Oh, dear! Is some little bitch complaining? She’s not getting enough?”
Helen drew a deep breath. She was very conscious of how small she was next to this tall, rangy man. He was old enough to be her father, but he was a bastard. She was not afraid of him. She spoke calmly. “Leave them alone, Strom. I mean it. You’ve got a nice little racket here. If you want to keep it, concentrate on doing the job right. No more yelling, no more threatening, no more abuse. I don’t want to hear one word of complaint or it’s gold-watch time.”
Strom’s face darkened and he leaned over her. “Who in the fuck do you think you are, you dried-up little twat? I’ve been in this business for fifty fuckin’ years. You’re gonna come in here and tell me how to run my shop?” He leaned his face down and expelled a cigarish “Hah!” into hers.
Helen could hardly avoid reacting. But she didn’t show any anger. Instead, she smiled. “I’m running this show,” she said calmly. “I hope you weren’t expecting fair. Fair ain’t in it, is it, you stupid prick? No, don’t raise your hand, Strom. Think. Think for a minute. How do I come off talking to you like this? Think! I’m not just some little twat. I can talk to you like this.” She fixed him with her deep-set eyes, suddenly gleaming like coal about ready to burst into flame.
She could see it was sinking in. He was thinking. This was a woman who had blasted Carmine to shreds with a shotgun. And got away with it. She might not be aiming a Model 70 at him, but she had muscle behind her. She’s doing all the talking, but there’s heavy muscle here. He wasn’t buying it without checking the label, however. He knew better than that. He stalked out, looking for Humphrey. Helen decided not to make the secretary hang out in the john any longer. She went out to the car.
Two of the guys were lounging there, smoking cigarettes. They straightened up when she approached. “Hi, boss lady,” they said, almost in unison. They had taken to calling her that lately. She knew Humphrey had put them up to it. They were nice-looking young men, handsome even, in their early twenties. They had the dark looks of Italian men, with beautiful white teeth and flirty manners.
She smiled at the one called Mike. He had a vague European accent, not much. “How’s it going, guys?” she said. It was going well, they said, pleased with the attention. “Listen,” she said, “if that big old fart comes roaring out here, you know the one I mean?”
“Mr. Davidson?” Mike said, looking concerned. His hand went immediately to his suit jacket, to the bulge. “He bothering you, Miz Helen?”
“Not as much as he thinks,” she said, with a smile. “I told him you guys wouldn’t stand for it.”
“We wouldn’t!” Mike declared. They looked eager, staring at the door of the factory. Mike unbuttoned his suit coat and stood with his feet apart, balanced, his arms slightly bent.
She put her hand on Mike’s arm. He flexed his bicep underneath it, his teeth gleaming. “I knew I could count on you.” She looked him
in the eye.
“You can count on us,” his friend Alessandro said. “Why don’t you sit in the car? We’ll be here.” He opened the door.
“Thanks,” she said, and got in to wait.
But Strom Davidson didn’t come out. He was down in the basement. He waited impatiently while Humphrey finished up his conversation with Mongelo.
Mongelo had lost quite a bit of weight. He was wearing some old clothes of Humphrey’s, that Humphrey had kept when he was losing the pounds. He had also lost a lot of his anger. The first few times Humphrey had come calling Mongelo had raged. Then Humphrey would haul out the butt plug. He kept it in a leather bag.
“You know what Action looked like when they found him?” he asked. “He was a fucking fat bag of pus. He’d been hanging for a week. His face and arms and legs were swollen up like balloons, filled with old blood and shit. There was a lot of him in a puddle on the floor below him.”
Mongelo was frankly scared. He had calmed himself and learned to relax and enjoy his confinement. Humphrey got nicer— or less brutal, which was the same thing. Never a devotee of exercise, Mongelo got out daily for a little workout with a treadmill Humphrey had ordered in for him, while a woman cleaned the cell. He watched a lot of television, especially an enormous supply of erotic videos that the boys replenished regularly. He devoured the food they brought, and although he couldn’t say that he loved the peppery cuisine, he was more than a little proud of the way he was looking.
But the main thing that soothed his fury was the way the boss was talking to him, lately. Once Mongelo had adjusted to things, Humphrey had even apologized for the rude way they had kidnapped him and for the confinement. At first, that had made him wary. He still wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to be whacked. Today, however, the approach was different. The boss was confiding. “Monge,” Humphrey said, after he’d sent the boys back out to the car, “I gotta talk to you. We got a huge problem, and only you can help. You heard about the guys,” he said, mentioning three or four names of their acquaintance who were undergoing trial for racketeering. “The FBI has got them by the balls,” he said.
La Donna Detroit Page 10
