Dead Folks

by Jon A. Jackson

  But first he had to have his money.

  He slipped out of bed without waking Cateyo. It was still well before dawn. He sat down and wrote out a brief instruction sheet for Cateyo on the motel stationery. Essentially, it bade her to drive home, see to her affairs, go back to work if she wanted, tell the cops anything except that he was in Salt Lake City, find out what she could about AIDS houses, and stand by the phone until he called. He dropped a couple of five-hundred-dollar bills on the note and then he was out the door and gone.

  Within a half hour he parked the Cadillac in the alley behind the house that Helen had rented, on Main Street. There was a garage—locked, of course—and a high wooden fence with a locked gate. Joe stood on the fender of the Cadillac to get a foot on the top of the fence, then he hopped over. In the small back yard an old, unkempt fruit tree of some kind took up one corner. Dawn was efflorescing on the tops of the mountains to the west, he noticed, the light spilling over the formidable Wasatch Range to the east. It was a cold, still morning in the city but with a sagey whiff of the range in the air, nonetheless. He approached the back door and gave the handle a tentative tug, then leaned closer to peer through the dirty pane of a storm door. Within was a small, glassed porch that was being used for at least temporary storage. Several cardboard boxes, empty, were stacked in the usual treelike way, half-tucked into one another. He recognized the boxes. They had once held Jack Daniel's whiskey and Smirnoff vodka. They had also held a few million dollars.

  Joe was happy to see these boxes. He opened out a blade of a small pocketknife and a few seconds later was inside the back porch. The lock on the house door, he noticed, was new. In fact, there were two new locks. He was gazing at them thoughtfully, arms crossed, his right forefinger stroking his lip, when he heard the hinges of the storm door creak ever so slightly and a voice said, “Good morning.”

  Joe turned around slowly and carefully. The man was about fifty, he thought. Slim, average height. He had clear blue eyes. A nice-looking fellow, wearing khaki pants and an old air force flight jacket that had a name patch on the breast that read, “Col. Vernon Tucker, USAF.” He wasn't wearing a hat, but his hair was the thick, steel-wool type, and Joe had a notion that it kept his head warm enough. He was holding a gun in his right hand, Joe noticed.

  “Now let me guess,” Joe said, not uncrossing his arms but shifting his forefinger to his chin, “that's a Colt Mark IV, Government Model .45 automatic. Right?”

  “Series ‘70,” the man said, nodding. He gazed confidently at Joe. “I was wondering which of you would be back first,” he said.

  “Which of which?” Joe said.

  “C'mon.” The man nodded toward the yard. “We can talk about it where it's warm. I've got some coffee brewing.”

  “Sounds good,” Joe said. “Lead on, partner.”

  8

  Home Bodies

  By the time he got to Detroit, Mulheisen had decided what to do. He explained it to Lieutenant Jimmy Marshall, now his superior but formerly his protégé, as they drove into the city from the airport. He was uncertain about how to conduct himself with Lieutenant Marshall, but he knew that it would all work out. In any formal situation Jimmy must lead, or be seen to lead, and Mulheisen would be the veteran who stood in the background and offered advice and support. In any informal situation it wouldn't matter. They had never stood on much ceremony with each other, not for years, anyway. But the way Mulheisen couched his plans now was more in the way of “Here's the way it looks to me, Jim—what do you think?” And Jimmy listened attentively, serious as always, with his dark-rimmed glasses and his widow's peak, unconsciously brushing his fine thick mustache from time to time. And then he agreed, naturally.

  They would contact the Salt Lake City police, not formally, but through some detectives that they both knew, and get a casual monitor put on the house on Main Street. This was probably the best they could get, a drive-by obvservation once or twice a shift. They would send out a bulletin on Joseph Humann, a.k.a. Joe Service, including prints and as good an artist's rendering as Mulheisen could evoke, with a request that Mr. Humann be detained for questioning, if possible. They would have to be careful here, since there was no hope of obtaining an arrest warrant, but just about anyone can be held a few hours for questioning in the matter of a serious crime; even processing a traffic ticket can take hours, when necessary. In this case the serious crime was arson. If they got lucky, some Salt Lake cop might spot Joe Service, and within a few hours Mulheisen could be there.

  “For what?” Jimmy asked. “You mean to question him?”

  “Hunh? No, no,” Mulheisen said vaguely, although that had been the idea, but now he realized that questioning Joe Service wasn't likely to be very productive. He had visited the man in St. James Hospital, in Butte, when he was recovering from gunshot wounds to the head. He'd been awake, seemingly alert, but not talking, not responding. Nonetheless, Mulheisen had felt that Service heard what he was saying, that he understood. Service, he believed, was a remarkably devious, cunning man with a formidable mind. Questioning him, even if you could do it without a lawyer present, was pointless. “I was thinking more of a tail,” Mulheisen said, “try to get a line on where he's going, who he sees.”

  “And you would be the tail?” Marshall said. “Somebody he knows by sight, somebody who doesn't know the turf?”

  “We're not going to get a Salt Lake sleuth,” Mulheisen pointed out, “and anyway, I've been there. Also, though you might not know it, I'm a pretty good tail.” This last statement was true. Jimmy Marshall didn't know it, but he believed it. The fact was, he revered Mulheisen and believed him eminently masterful in the trade. He shrugged a careless agreement.

  Mulheisen went on: they could go over the forensic data on the killing of Carmine and any other cases where they suspected that Joe Service might have had a hand. They could also review all the material they had on Helen Sedlacek. In fact, Helen was a key element here. Mulheisen believed that once released from jail in Butte, she would go to one of two places: Salt Lake City, where he was confident he had found her base, or Detroit. He was relying on Sheriff's Deputy Jacky Lee to discover and inform him of the destination. He explained to Jimmy his theory about the missing drug-scam money.

  At this point they were nearly back in the city from the Detroit Metropolitan airport and Lieutenant Marshall broke into Mulheisen's reprise of ideas he had conjured during his flight, with, “You know, Mul, we've got a hell of a lot of murders unsolved in the Ninth, especially since you've been gone.”

  “I've only been gone a few days, Jim. Anyway, these are Detroit murders, Ninth Precinct murders.”

  “Old murders, Mul. We can't be fooling around with murders once they get to a certain age. We'd never keep up. You know, and I know, if a murder isn't cracked in the first few days it probably won't be cracked—or at least, the odds go down quickly.”

  This was the new lieutenant talking, Mulheisen saw, but he also saw that it was patiently, politely, and prudently said. He sighed. “Yeah, you're right, Jim.” He rode quietly for a few minutes, gazing at but not really seeing the old familiar mess and jumble of Detroit. It was not a very attractive city, but he didn't think of it that way. It was his city, the city he knew, the very basis of his notion of what a city was. He probably wouldn't say he loved it, if asked, but there was no doubt that he did care for the battered town and was even proud of it in parts. He admired its hard-nosed spirit, its cranky, half-cynical self-derision and humor. And anyway, it was what he was used to. He had come to resent the knowing look on Montanan's faces when he said he was from Detroit. What were they so proud of? The land? It was pretty, sure, but they hadn't made it so—quite the reverse, from what he'd seen. But Detroit was the product of three centuries of endeavor by people of many cultures and races. You might not like its current condition, but you couldn't ignore the history behind it.

  By the time they reached the John C. Lodge Freeway interchange, he said, gently, “Still, when you have fresh evidence
. . . when it appears that a little effort might break an old case open . . . I think you've got to go for it, Jim.”

  Marshall glanced over at him and smiled, all the while driving quickly and masterfully changing lanes (a good Detroit driver, in a city of good fast drivers—drivers in Montana were awful) and said, “Sure, Mul. I don't mean we can ignore it. It's just that we have to keep things in perspective. And this is a mob case.”

  That was important, they both agreed with a glance. It was one thing when a citizen flipped and murdered, another when it was the work of an organization that was dedicated to crime, determined to thwart and subvert law and order. Mob cases were properly the business of Rackets and Conspiracy, as well as Homicide, but any precinct detective knew that they were more significant than casual murder, as it were. Marshall made a further concession when he asked when Helen Sedlacek would be released.

  “Probably tomorrow,” Mulheisen said. Then, his concession: “How many murders?”

  Marshall shrugged. “I'm not sure. Five?”

  “Five's not bad,” Mulheisen said. “Any interesting ones?”

  “That's five this week,” Marshall said. “Mostly gang stuff—a kid noticed another kid wearing the wrong colors, so he shot him, that kind of crap—plus a lady tried to rob a supermarket and three different folks shot her. She had a fake gun, it turned out, but they didn't. Actually, that's not rated a murder, at this point, but Ayeh heard that one of the people who shot her was screwin’ her old man.” Ayeh, otherwise known as Ahab, was a still young and dashing detective on the Ninth.

  This seemed interesting indeed to Mulheisen. The possibilities instantly bloomed in his policeman's mind. Had the dead woman been set up? Was it the husband? The mistress? What about the other two people, were they part of it? Was there a way one could find out? He cocked a pale eyebrow at Marshall, who didn't return the glance, but as if reading Mul's mind, said, “Ayeh and Maki are checking out all of the shooters.”

  “And the fake gun,” Mulheisen said.

  “That too. So, Mul . . . any more naked cowgirls?” Marshall changed the topic. The reference was to an earlier visit to Montana, from which Mulheisen had returned to report that he'd seen a naked teenager in her father's sauna as well as a naked ditch rider in Joseph Humann's hot springs. He was happy to report that this time he had, in fact, seen Helen Sedlacek naked, in that same hot springs.

  “Really?” Jimmy said. “What does she look like?”

  “She looks like a boy,” Mulheisen said. This sprightly topic engrossed the two men until they reached the precinct, although Mulheisen's thoughts kept straying to Sally McIntyre, the ditch rider. He felt he had to call her soon.

  It was nearly eight o'clock and Detroit was glittering with Christmas lights. It was cold and damp, quite unlike the brisk, dry cold of the West. A thin, sharp snow was seeping down out of a brownish mist, almost rain or sleet, but not quite. Just walking from the parking lot Mulheisen could feel it soaking into his bones, despite his warm and dry clothing. But at least the temperature was low enough to prevent icing. He looked through the latest reports briefly, with Jimmy, including the one on the woman who had fatally presented a false weapon in a public place in Detroit. It was intriguing and he caught himself on the verge of instructing Jimmy on how to proceed, but he kept his own counsel.

  Soon enough he said good night to everyone and fled for home, but not before he had to endure a number of handshakes and hellos from colleagues who invariably addressed him as “Fuckin’ Mulheisen.” He was surprised and annoyed the first few times, until Jimmy Marshall pointed out that the notice on his office door had been further amended, either by the wit who had posted it initially or by some subsequent jokester. It now read:

  Of this I am certain, that we are not here for a good time.

  — L. Wittgenstein

  Well, not all the time, anyway.

  — Fuckin Mulheisen

  Fang, you mean!

  Jimmy had looked at him expectantly, hoping that Mulheisen would enlighten him as to the true meaning of that “F.” But Mul only laughed and added in his Tombo razor point the letter “A,” following “Fuckin’.” “Fang,” of course, was the old street moniker that had long been attached to Mulheisen, apparently in reference to his rather long teeth, though also perhaps in recognition of his tenacious bite. It was an epithet that Mulheisen had never acknowledged.

  Driving his solid old Checker through the holiday traffic out of Detroit toward his home in St. Clair Flats, Mulheisen mused for the first leg on the fact that to his colleagues, the joke aside, it appeared that he was still considered the boss of the detectives, although everyone seemed equally to concede that Jimmy Marshall was the nominal boss. But the comments made and questions asked, after those about the naked ladies of Montana, were the expected ones about their own cases, seeking his advice and guidance. He saw that it was incumbent on him to make clear that Lieutenant Marshall was the boss. This was fine with him. He knew, however, that he would continue to be the éminence grise, as it were.

  Long before he approached the still somewhat rural lane off which stood the house in which he had been born, his mind had turned to Sally McIntyre again. He had to talk to her, he had to know what she was thinking. That is, he needed to know if she was thinking about him. He was alarmed by this feeling. He couldn't recall ever feeling this way before. And when he considered the situation as rationally as he could, he had to figuratively shake his head. A woman in her thirties? Living in an underinsulated trailer house on the side of a sage-dotted range hill with two young kids? What was he thinking about? Well, he knew what he was thinking about: red hair and soft breasts, a hard, lean belly and welcoming thighs. But also sweet lips and an easy laugh, the kind of mind that is serious and thoughtful but also eager to find the humor in every situation.

  He found the humor here, himself. He also found himself hoping simultaneously that his mother would be home and that she would not be there to interfere with his call. It was already ten o'clock, which would make it . . . ah, only eight o'clock in Montana. That was not too late to call.

  The house was dark and not very warm. His mother never kept the thermostat very high, but clearly she had turned it down even more. It was set at fifty-five degrees. The note on the refrigerator door, pinned with a magnet that carried an Audubon Society emblem, was dated a couple of days earlier. It read:

  Dear Mul,

  Sorry to miss you for Xmas. Your present is on the dining room table. I decided not to put up a tree. It seemed so pointless. I'll be back after New Year's. I asked Mrs. Munger to look in and water the plants, poor things. I hope they survive. I'm afraid there is nothing to eat, although there is plenty in the freezer.

  —Ma

  P.S. I'm in the Galapagos. If it is absolutely necessary to reach me (heaven forbid!), please call Mrs. Munger, who has all the important numbers and dates and locations (too many to write down!).

  There was also a Christmas card, depicting many colorful birds on and around a snow-laden fir tree; it was inscribed, “Merry Christmas, son” and signed “Ma.” Mulheisen sighed, realizing that he had not gotten her a Christmas present. He hadn't even thought of it. What could one buy an eighty-year-old woman who seemed to be getting younger? Something in Spandex? New binoculars? Certainly not jewelry. Gore-Tex hiking boots?

  He put the water on to boil and ground Mocha Java beans for coffee. He looked in the freezer. There was a plastic-wrapped meat loaf, which he gratefully popped into the microwave. He turned up the heat and put on a CD of Steven Isserlis playing Boccherini cello pieces. He wandered through the house, sipping coffee and touching things, sitting in different chairs, listening to the winding cello. The wind had picked up and the near sleet had changed into a definite snow that blew about the house. He suddenly felt that he was home. He had been looking at the city and even the house with the eyes of a stranger, although he had not been gone long. He was surprised. Evidently, he had very readily slipped into a Montanan, or at least a W
estern, outlook. He attributed it to a kind of affinity for the Western landscape. The wind buffeting the house recalled a similar wind shaking Sally's mobile home. A second thought: he had slipped into Sally. Maybe that had disoriented him.

  She answered on the first ring and he had an image of her sitting next to the phone at the Formica kitchen table. She sounded great, clearly happy to hear from him. She spoke rather quietly, guardedly; Mulheisen supposed the kids had just gone to bed and were not, perhaps, quite securely asleep.

  “I wasn't sure you'd call,” she said. “After that . . . mmm, after the way I, ah, evicted you. I'm sorry about that.”

  “Oh no,” Mul assured her. “What could you do? The bus was coming.”

  “So were you.” She laughed quietly. “Sorry, Mul. Maybe, next time . . . “

  Nothing she could have said would have pleased him more. “Yeah, next time,” he readily agreed. “So . . . how are the kids? No harm done?”

  “I don't think so, although Jennifer asked me if you were my boyfriend.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Oh, I just kind of put her off. I told her it was all I could do to look after her and Jason, much less a boyfriend. I think she likes you. But Jason . . . well, Jason seems a little troubled. But that's natural,” she hastened to add. “I've gone out with a few guys, very few, since I ran their father off, but none of them ever came here. I mean, they came here, to pick me up, but they didn't stay . . . I mean.”