Fear at First Glance

by Dave Balcom

  Fear at First Glance

  By Dave Balcom

  Copyright © 2015

  Smashwords Edition

  License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go on line and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DEDICATION

  To those few classmates without whose dedication class reunions would never provide nostalgic homecomings for the rest of us.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is a work of fiction. Imaginary places are portrayed along with real locations. All characters are imaginary and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. I need to thank Gaylord-based Huron Pines (huronpines.org) a not-for-profit organization dedicated to conserving the forests, lakes, and streams of Northeast Michigan, for the explanation of the phenomenon of Michigan’s marl lakes. If my fiction blurs their obvious expertise in any way the fault is mine and not theirs. I also would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge Judy Bullard of Custom E-book Covers and my editor for their continued mastery of their crafts.

  Prologue

  As the tumultuous ’60s, rife with racial and political unrest, came to a close, Detroit’s nickname “Motor City” was being dubbed “Murder City” in mainstream newspapers and on late-night talk shows.

  The Wayne County District Attorney’s Office, the State Police Investigators Bureau, and the FBI formed a task force to deal with the deadly nature of the times.

  Arthur Javits III was a partner in the offices of Krueger, Javits, Stolp and Associates. KJS and Associates was a three-button firm with an aggressive criminal defense approach. Javits, known as “Mr. Trips” around the office and behind his back, was on a first-name basis with the hard cases who had carried on the infamous traditions of organized crime in Detroit in the decades after the supposed end of the “Purple Gang.” These modern day hoodlums defied categorizing in any racial, ethnic or socio-economic sense. Trafficking in every known vice, the only adjective that applied to all of them was “vicious.”

  One carry-over from the bad old days was a particular Dial-a-Murder approach which had remained a fearful reality. If there was a union chief who needed to disappear, they’d do that without a qualm; if some drug lord wannabe needed to be an example, they were just as happy to splash his remains the length of Woodward Avenue

  What had become known as “The Murder City Task Force” had its eye on middle-aged gang banger Jerry Stahl. Stahl owned a bar at the corner of Michigan and Trumble – right across from then Tiger Stadium. “Home Plate” was generally known around town as a perfect place to cop a Stroh’s and lay a bet on that day’s game or any game.

  Stahl was born to the Stalingal family which had been instrumental during prohibition for making suitable trucks available to the Purple Gang for the purpose of making unregistered trips into Canada. It was also generally known that Jerry Stahl’s father, Armand “Pappy” Stahl, had made his bones as a 12-year-old when a government agent focusing on the driver of one of the Stalingal Family trucks took his eye off the innocent-looking youngster pretending to be asleep in the passenger seat. The dead agent was only the first of Stahl’s victims.

  Now the current Stahl was at the center of the investigation of a string of murders that were originally thought to be racially motivated, but were now, since an undercover officer had infiltrated the Stahl crew, believed to be connected to a serious problem with the handling of the book on the Detroit Tigers’ 1968 World Series victory against the St. Louis Cardinals. The organization people behind the double cross were being eliminated one by one, but each time one of the gang members died, a member of a Black Power group was also being killed in what appeared to be “retaliation.” It was greed, not race behind the murders.

  When the police arrested Stahl in his bar on a June Saturday afternoon with the Yankees in town for a four-game set, Javits was in Ontario fishing for walleyes at a fly-in camp.

  His young assistant had graduated top of his class out of Michigan Law and had sailed through the bar exam, spent his first two years as an associate doing research, and the past five years as Javits’ number one assistant.

  At the time of the arrest, the assistant had his own aide named Melanie Deal. Melanie lived with her husband and two children in Ferndale, a 30-minute commute in those days from the KJS & Associates downtown offices.

  When Jerry Stahl was granted his one phone call, he dialed Javits, but reached the young assistant who raced to the police station to meet his client. He made his presence known to a desk sergeant upon arrival, but it was several hours before he finally willed himself to make enough of a ruckus to gain entrance to the interview room. He had the book-learning to know how to handle this situation, but the dose of reality as he listened to an assistant DA go through the litany of charges facing his client left him wide-eyed and confused. When he heard his client sarcastically respond to each charge with, “As if, right; as if, right; as if, right...” he was hit with the grisly realization that his job was to save a killer.

  Before an arraignment judge, as the litany was repeated by the clerk – murder seven counts; conspiracy to commit... the list went on and on. The young lawyer’s mind was a blur as he heard the prosecution ask for “remand” because of the nature of the audio and video evidence they had and the defendant’s affinity for traveling abroad.

  His “client” nudged him with an elbow as the judge looked at him as if to say, “Well?”

  “Your honor, Mr. Stahl is a lifelong native of this city and state, owns property here – both a business and his home. His connections to this community are many and long-term; there’s no reason to doubt his appearance at trial...”

  “Nice try, counselor,” the laconic judge interrupted. “No bail; defendant is to be held until trial; next!”

  The lawyer was still in a daze when he returned to his office. The first person he saw in his office was Melanie Deal and her first words were an acknowledgment of fear, “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “More like a glimpse of hell,” he stammered. “I feel like such an idiot; do you realize who we’re defending?”

  “What? You were with Mr. Stahl, right?”

  “But do you know who he is, really?” And then he proceeded to tell her everything he’d heard, and all he’d thought on his way back to the office. “I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

  For the next eight months, the defense of Jerry Stahl consumed every working moment for Art Javits and his staff at KJS and Associates. And while his assistant hid it from his boss and his co-workers, he spent most nights at home wondering how he could have been so naive as to think that not much, but most if not all, of his life’s work would be spent helping career criminals and psychopaths.

  It was a dark time for him, and it wasn’t any better for Jerry Stahl.

  The government’s case was air tight. The warrants for the phone taps were as perfect as the warrants for the video and granted by a judge based on the investigators’ assertion they had infiltrated the group with an agent who gave eye-witness testimony to Stahl’s activities. They also presented copies of notes Stahl had received from a higher-up ordering the “cover up” killings.

  The Detroit Free Press announced the verdict in a Page 1 headline:

  “Task Force puts end to death spree.”

  It was a dark time for Art Javits as well. Over and over the elder Stahl insisted that the real cause of his son’s conviction had to have be
en a leak by either Javits’ young assistant or his secretary, “that Deal woman.”

  Things were darker for Javits after a grand jury indicted the elder Stahl for conspiracy, and it went black when Pappy too was convicted and sentenced to life. As he was seeing his old client off to prison, Javits heard the old man over and over again – despite Javits’ repeated protests to the contrary – that his assistant, or Deal, or both of them, had turned state’s evidence, undermining Javits’ best efforts.

  “We’ll all sleep better when we know those two are not causing us trouble, and you know it,” the old crook whispered into Javits’ ear as he was being led away.

  Javits was troubled by Stahl’s final comment, and he was thoughtful as he drove to his office. Once there he called an emergency partner’s meeting. As soon as it was over, he called his assistant into his office and informed him that the firm would no longer be needing his services.

  The younger man was dumbfounded. “But, why?”

  “I think you should carefully consider a change of professions and a change of scenery. Maybe move out West or at least up North. Lots of folks are trading Murder City for places like Cadillac, Traverse City, Alpena... who knows, maybe you should give that some consideration...”

  “Did I do something wrong, Art? I had been led to believe I would be up for junior partner this year. Now I’m gone?”

  “I think you should go down to Alice’s office; she’ll explain the severance package the partners approved, and I think you’ll find it satisfactory, even generous, perhaps. But I would like you to go quietly, son. Today.”

  Thirty minutes later the ex-assistant was standing on the sidewalk, watching traffic working north and south on all eight lanes of Woodward Avenue. He looked at his watch and realized he wasn’t accustomed to commuting at the height of the daily rush.

  When he pulled into his garage, he closed the automatic door and sat, listening to the tick, tick, tick of his engine cooling off, and he thought the sound might be his life clock, ticking away the final minutes of his legal career.

  After he had told his wife of the news by handing her the crumpled letters he’d received from Alice the office manager, he was brought out of his shock when she asked, “Did that Stahl character make threats against you or us?”

  The question hit him like a handful of ice water. “What do you mean?”

  “He was taken to prison this morning. I saw it on TV. Mr. Javits was there as they put him and others on a bus. Then you receive the velvet axe?”

  “What’s velvet...?”

  “Did you look at that check?”

  “Not really. I read some of the recap, but I couldn’t focus...”

  “Honey, they gave us half... a... million... dollars!”

  And from that day forward they prepared to move away. They notified their son that he’d be part of finding their new home and his new school, and then they turned to making the house ready for sale while doing careful research on locales and business opportunities in the Northern Lower Peninsula.

  In June, after school was out, they took a vacation that was really a prolonged “site visit” of the prospects he’d uncovered using the phone and the mail. They traveled up I-75 past the “Thumb” and up the eastern coast along Lake Huron. They toured around Alpena, Rogers City, and Cheboygan and on up to the straits and then worked their way down the Lake Michigan coast past Harbor Springs and Petoskey, Charlevoix, and, following U.S. 31 along the coast, down to Traverse City. Each of those “big city” stops involved poking around the smaller towns inland.

  “The east side of the state is just too flat,” he concluded as they sat near the pool at a motel in Traverse City and watched their son joyfully splashing alone. “I like this side of the state better.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Do you have any leads in this area?”

  “I thought we’d check them out tomorrow, and then head back home.”

  They arrived back in Royal Oak the evening of the final Friday of June, full of ideas and optimism for the first time in months. The next morning the mailman brought all the mail that had been held for the past two weeks, and the former lawyer set to the task of sorting it.

  He put what he considered “junk” in one box; bills in a different pile, and “important” mail in another. There was a personal letter to the boy in a school girl scrawl, and to his eye it looked to be an invitation. There were several greeting-card sized envelopes that were addressed to his wife, and he set those aside for her. And there was a letter in a familiar handwriting addressed to him.

  He opened the letter, and found two pages of plain white copy paper. The top page started simply with the date. At the bottom of the second page he found, “Melanie.”

  He found the letter difficult to decipher. It was obviously written in haste by someone who normally composed at a typewriter, leaving penmanship that often requires it to be revisited before it became unreadable even to the author.

  June 11, 1972

  Paul,

  I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I have to share this with someone, and I’m hoping it’ll make some sense to you.

  I don’t know if you know that the same day you left KJS, I was terminated in what was described as a “staff restructuring and downsizing decision.” I was given two months severance and a personal letter of recommendation from Arthur Javits.

  It took me almost a week to find another position, with Edgar and Sons just down the street. They were tickled to have me, and I’ve found their work in real estate and probate law much less stressful than criminal work, and, believe it or not, fascinating in several unexpected ways.

  That’s not why I’m writing.

  Lately, I’ve been getting the strangest feeling that my family and I are being followed when we are not at home. It’s not like I’m seeing the same person too often or anything like that, it’s just a feeling that someone on the street or another vehicle is paying strict attention to me.

  Then this morning, I was backing out of the driveway and who do I see sitting in a car across the street but that young tough they called, ‘Blakey,’ who was part of that strategy meeting we were in just before we were fired.

  I have no idea where he belongs, but it’s certainly not on my street in Ferndale. He turned away when I noticed him, but I’m positive he was there. I drove away like nothing had happened, but I went around the block and when I came back that car was gone. When I finished my shopping, I came home and there was no one out there, but then when I went inside I had the overwhelming feeling that somebody had been in my house.

  When John and the kids came home, I made John look all over the house for any sign of an intruder. He made fun of me as you might expect, but I think something’s wrong, and I wanted you to know about it. Is there something I should know?

  Please call me when you receive this.

  Thanks. Looking forward to hearing from you,

  Melanie.

  He looked up the Deal home phone number in his Day Timer, and dialed it. The phone started to ring only to go into a high pitched warble. He hung up, and rechecked the number.

  He tried again, and once again the phone started to ring, then he heard the “wha-wha” sound of a lost connection.

  He dialed the operator and asked for assistance. He gave the operator the number and she dialed it, and once again the phone went into the warble, and the operator disconnected from it. “Sir? That number has been disconnected.”

  “Is there a new number attached to it?”

  “I’ll check, sir.”

  After more than a few minutes, he heard his call transferred and another voice answered, “May I ask who is calling?”

  He identified himself, and said, “I’m trying to contact Melanie Deal, and I’ve used this number in the past, now I’m told that it’s not the right number. I asked the operator to find out if there was a new number for the Deal family...”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m the supervisor on this section, and it falls to m
e to tell you that the phone was taken out of order by an explosion and fire on June 11.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Yes, sir. You didn’t see anything about it on the news? It was a topic of a lot of coverage...”

  “We’ve been away, traveling...”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  He hung up the phone and sat silently for what seemed like hours, the Melanie Deal letter dangling from his left hand. His eyes focused on some place no one could see as the unasked questions and the unspoken reasons fell into place for him.

  He went to find his wife, to tell her he had decided on their future, and to urge her to start packing...

  CHAPTER 1

  It had been a quiet summer in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon in the wake of our ordeal in Missouri. While we had been trying to help schoolmates from my youth, my wife, Jan, had been kidnapped, drugged, and held captive for a week before being rescued by the local sheriff in a dramatic encounter.

  While all of the physical wounds had healed, most days found my bride quiet and pensive for some period. She wasn’t quite moping, but as I tried to observe her without her knowing, I thought she looked like she was inside herself, processing some continuous loop of memory.

  I had some concerns, but when I brought them up to my doctor during an annual wellness checkup, he gave me a look and then scoffed at my concern: “She’s just coping, pal. What did you expect, some Teflon-like brain that could just be wiped dry and your woman would be unchanged by everything that happened to her down there?”

  Just the same, I kept a close eye on her as July and August rolled out and the sumac turned burnt orange heralding summer’s annual retreat to autumn on the mountain.

  We had been up in the mountains taking advantage of the best brook trout fishing I’d ever known in this country, and we were driving back to our home in the foothills overlooking the Columbia Basin when out of the corner of my eye I saw her come to a conclusion.