“Joe, we've got to talk about this,” she said.
“Sure. Later. Right now we've got to get the money and get the hell out of Dodge. These guys have had this place staked out for weeks. They're on to you. My guess is that they haven't found the money, or they deliberately didn't bother to look for it, because they knew you'd be back and they wanted to see who else was working this pitch with you. But now we've got a few minutes. That's probably all we've got. So please, baby, let's take what we can take and get. You and I can discuss all the angles later. Okay?”
Helen drew herself up with a deep breath. She was on fire, he could tell, but she knew he was right. He grinned his best grin at her. She looked great. Great eyes, great spirit. “Come on, babe. Let's move it. Where's the dough?”
“Downstairs.” She picked up an electronic remote device, one of two lying on top of the VCR on the shelf next to the television set. Joe followed her down the steps of the basement. At the bottom was a steel door with no visible lock or handle. Helen punched some buttons on the remote device and the door swung open. Inside were several identical heavy canvas shopping bags, all with Safeway logos. They were full of money.
Joe nodded, impressed. “You got it right, babe,” he said. “That's very good. The Safeway thing is a good touch. Now let's get it out of here. We'll take your car.”
They began to carry the bags out to the car, one of them waiting by the trunk till the other came out the door, just to avoid the awkwardness of having to lock the thing each time, so it took them longer than Joe wanted it to. But he spent his waiting time carefully scanning the street. Nothing was happening. No sirens, no cops, no unmarked government cars. He hoped against hope that there wouldn't be a sudden invasion of Tongans, especially, but so far they hadn't appeared. Still, it was making him edgy. The process was taking too long. Beyond that, he didn't trust Helen: he wasn't confident that she wouldn't decide that she could forgo a couple of bags of money, when it was his turn to go fetch, and just drive off and leave him. That moment was coming up. When Helen appeared with another two heavy bags however, he felt fairly confident that she would never be able to drive away without all the money. He dashed past her, into the house.
The colonel and Edna were still quietly languishing at their post, as it were. But when Joe came up with the last two bags, the colonel said, “I think I should tell you—”
Joe cut him short. “Save it. I don't need to hear my rights. Somebody'll be along to let you out before too long, I'm sure. In fact, I'm wondering why they haven't showed up al—” And now it was Joe's turn to stop talking.
Heather Bloom stood in the middle of the living room. She looked a bit rough. Grim, too. She had a gun in one hand and in the other, Helen. She had Helen by her hair and on her knees, looking as if she'd been dragged there. Helen was conscious, at least.
Joe threw the right-hand bag at Heather.
Heather was cool. She kicked Helen aside and ducked the other way as the bag flew past her and crashed against the wall, spilling packets of money. She held the revolver at arm's length, aimed at Joe's chest and pulled the trigger.
Joe ducked, needlessly. Nothing happened. Either the gun was not loaded or the round was defective. Joe flashed out one of the Glocks and straightened up.
“I hate this,” he said. “Getting shot, I mean. Or not getting shot. It's almost as bad. Toss the gun onto the couch, sweetheart. Do it! I'll air your brains out.”
Heather tossed the gun aside. Joe motioned Heather to step back to one side. Helen crawled to him and he helped her up. He handed her the Glock. “Watch her,” he warned.
“What should we do?” Helen asked.
“We don't have to do anything. She can stay here. We're leaving.” Joe picked up the thrown bag, squatting to reload the money that had fallen from it. “Just keep her covered and follow me.”
Heather glared insanely at them, her mouth working. Joe could almost hear her hiss. They backed carefully away toward the door, Helen covering the slavering woman with the Glock held in both hands. They were almost out the door when Heather could no longer restrain herself. She sprang at them like a tiger, arms outstretched.
Helen pulled the trigger. This gun worked. It must have been on automatic fire, because half a clip stopped the woman in midair and the rest sent her tumbling to one side. Joe didn't look back. He trotted down the steps with Helen behind him.
“Hey!” he yelled. Two hulking Tongans were at the open trunk. Joe handed one bag of money to Helen and yanked out the other Glock with his free hand. He didn't fire when the Tongans hoisted their hands and backed away. “Get in the car, honey,” he said to Helen. He tossed the other bags in the trunk and slammed it. Then scrambled in beside her. “Drive!”
At the end of the block he ordered her to turn right, then into the alley. He told her to pull up by his stolen vehicle.
“Joe, what the hell—” she said.
“Gotta get my toothbrush,” Joe said. He hopped out, snatched his bag out of the car and jumped back in. He turned to her with a grin. “Also, my medicine. Okay, let's go.”
They were at least six blocks away before Mulheisen arrived.
15
Out of Sight
Mulheisen was beginning to see this as a constant replay, a tape loop. Casting back over the years he could recall several occasions on which he had arrived at a scene with high anticipation, almost triumphant, only to find that Joe Service had been there before him and had gone, usually taking all the goodies and leaving a mess. A mess that Mulheisen had to clean up. Mulheisen was getting sick of it.
In this case he found the bullet-riddled body of Heather Bloom, tangled in a corner of the living room in a great lake of her own blood, and two enraged federal agents shackled to a waste pipe in the kitchen. If these two had been docile and quiet with Joe Service, they were not inclined to be so toward their rescuer. Fortunately, Mulheisen had come to the scene with two Salt Lake City detectives and two uniformed cops. The blue men were able to release the two agents and then dutifully headed next door to release the third.
The colonel and Edna were remarkably unforthcoming when Mulheisen and the two detectives began to question them about the events. What they wanted, it seemed, was for the cops to get out of their way so that they could pursue Joe Service and his accomplice. They seemed to think that they were in charge of the situation, rather than victims or people to be questioned. The colonel would only identify himself and Edna as federal agents and demand to use the phone.
Detective Sergeant Getulio of the Salt Lake City police was a quiet, dark man, an inch under six feet. He was a man after Mulheisen's mold. No nonsense, just a lot of sense. He listened to the colonel's raging for a while and tolerated the noncooperation for a while, then ordered the two taken to headquarters in separate cars and held separately in interrogation rooms until he and his partner, Sergeant Mabern, could talk to them. He exchanged a knowing glance with Mulheisen, who simply nodded: after the two had cooled down a bit and were given a chance to figure out their priorities, they would be able to provide some information. But for now they would be held incommunicado.
This situation changed abruptly when the third agent was brought in. His name was Adam Zazc, a Butte lad as it turned out, and he was much more cooperative. He readily identified himself as an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He said he was working on a joint task force with the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. The leader of their group was the colonel, who was a fairly high-ranking DEA agent, Zazc explained, and Edna Swarthout, another DEA agent, was second in command. They had staked out the Helen Sedlacek house after they had been alerted by the FBI that she had been smurfing big money in the Salt Lake City area. This was all part of a project the colonel himself had helped initiate nationally, the idea being to hit the drug traffic where it would hurt the most, in the pocketbook. The plan was to seize the large amounts of money that smurfs typically possessed and hold it until its provenance could be
verified—which, of course, could not be done. The drug lords did not protest—how could they?—and the money was simply confiscated and turned over to the U.S. Treasury. Their policy was not to imprison the smurfs; they were charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act's reporting requirements and released on bail, usually never to be seen again. Sometimes, Zazc said, they worked the “cormorant deal,” a reference to a technique of certain Asian fishermen, who used cormorants with a tethered neck ring to catch fish. The smurf was turned and released to get more money and enlist more smurfs, who were then taken in by the agents. That was why they had not arrested Helen earlier.
About the dead woman, Heather, neither he nor the colonel and Edna had anything to say. They had never seen her before.
Mulheisen had seen her before, albeit in a picture taken from above the earth's atmosphere. She was a mess now, having been ripped apart by no less than ten 9mm bullets, which seemed to have been doctored to create maximum damage. He didn't know her, except as someone who had imposed on the innocent, naive Cate Yoder, in order to get close to Joe Service. And then on Grace Garland, in order to escape. That she had not simply disappeared but had continued in pursuit of Joe Service was interesting to Mulheisen. Obviously, she had still been on the contract and had intended to fulfill it. It meant that the mob had not forgiven Joe, that they had not given up on revenge for the death of Carmine. As for Heather, he supposed that now they might actually find out something about her in the files, but it was too late. He would probably never learn anything significant about her. He couldn't even tell what she had really looked like: the bullets had smashed her face and body horribly.
Sergeant Getulio said it was typical of certain gang slayings: the bullets were intended to send a big message to the other gangs. “Tongan Crips,” was Getulio's terse assessment. Mulheisen had never heard of this gang. Getulio explained it as a type of the familiar Bloods and Crips gangs of South Central Los Angeles, which had spread to many other parts of the country. He aroused Mulheisen's interest by saying that, until recently, the late Clarence Woods, a.k.a. Cap'n Lite, had been associated with this gang. This man Mulheisen was familiar with.
By now the area was crawling with cops, ambulances, and forensic crews. Before long an officer reported the presence of a stolen car in the alley. It was impounded and searched carefully for prints and so forth. Shortly, a uniformed man returned with the information that Joe Service had been seen at a used-car dealership across the street. Mulheisen went over there. He talked to Bob Tyler and the secretary, both of whom gave interesting descriptions of Service wearing a wool cap and a ski jacket and sporting a beard.
“He came in here talkin’ about sellin’ a bunch of cars,” Tyler said. “I humored him, at first, but then it began to sound like some kind of crooked deal. I didn't want no part of that, so I sent him packin’. Didn't I, honey?” he said to the secretary. She nodded with a disapproving grimace.
“He just ran out of here,” she added. “And then, maybe twenty minutes later, or a half hour, we heard shooting and him and a small woman came running out of the house"—she pointed at Helen's house—"carrying tote bags and waving guns—just like Bonnie and Clyde. They jumped in a car—”
“A bran’ new Pontiac Ciero, maroon,” interrupted Tyler. “And whap, they were gone!”
Later, at the police station, a somewhat more cooperative Colonel Vernon Tucker, USAF (retired), and his assistant, Edna Swarthout, provided excellent descriptions of both Service and Sedlacek. Mulheisen's disappointment at not catching them at the scene was now complete, but he was not discouraged. They were in Salt Lake City, he was confident, and the nature of the place made of it a kind of trap. Unlike the large Eastern cities or the coastal cities of the West, Salt Lake did not have a lot of exit routes, at least not for a couple of outlaws on the run like Service and Sedlacek. They were unlikely to be familiar with canyon roads, back roads, that sort of thing. But one could never be certain, especially about Service, a man who had in the past always shown a remarkable ability to elude identification, not to mention apprehension.
Service was a bold man, Mulheisen felt, even flamboyant. Helen had proven herself to be nearly as brazen in her actions: an apt pupil, evidently. It was crucial to close off the airport, the train and bus stations, and especially the interstate highway system and the trunk roads. This could be done relatively easily in this valley, but Mulheisen was interested to hear Colonel Tucker's account of how Service had eluded the task force's elaborate tracking system. The flaw there had been, of course, that a premise of the system had been that the target was unaware that he was being tracked. This would clearly not apply here. Joe Service would certainly be aware that, given the noisiness of his departure from the house on Main Street, the police would be watching very closely for any suspicious movements.
It was true, however, that a roadblock was not exactly what is depicted in popular movies. In this case it would amount to little more than some diversions or detours that had been erected in the areas around the Main Street house and already abandoned. They were not exactly legal. Nobody was actually stopped, but they were slowed down enough that the police were able to see who was inside. Police officers were also monitoring the entrances and exits of the freeway system, and an “ATL” or “attempt to locate” notice had gone to all units. Beyond that, three units had been designated as a search team, and they were currently responding to any sightings or suggestions.
No, an actual blockade wasn't possible. It interfered too much with traffic. And police personnel were hardly adequate to a long-term watch on the various train, bus, and airline terminals. If Service and Sedlacek could lie low for a few days, the chances were good that they could simply drive away. The question was, did they have a place to hide?
One of the first things to occur to Mulheisen was that Helen Sedlacek must have arrived in Salt Lake City on Humphrey DiEbola's private jet. A quick call to the airport revealed that this jet had departed Salt Lake City almost immediately after refueling on its arrival. The flight plan was filed for Detroit, with no scheduled stops enroute. Mulheisen was certain that the departure time did not allow for Service and Sedlacek to have been aboard. Nonetheless, he called Detroit and was able to get Jimmy Marshall to dispatch someone to monitor the plane's arrival.
By now the colonel had come fully on board the search operation and after a slight scuffle for control of the operation he submitted to the Salt Lake City officials who put Detective Sergeant Getulio in charge. Getulio was wholly in favor of Mulheisen being the de facto boss, an informal position that Mulheisen tended to favor. “That way,” Mulheisen joked, “when it blows up in our faces, yours is the one that gets covered with pie.” Getulio smiled wanly at this.
All the hotels and motels in the town and the outlying districts, including the posh ski resorts at Alta, Snowbird, and the like, were notified and given complete descriptions, including the automobile that Helen had rented. Unless they had managed to get clear somehow, or had access to a hidey-hole, it seemed unlikely that the two could evade capture. But the next twenty-four hours would probably tell the tale.
One of the nice things about money, Joe explained to Helen, was that it enhanced one's versatility. For instance, you didn't have to drive around town in a car that every cop in town was looking for. You could simply go to a used-car lot and buy, say, a fairly late-model, reliable Ford Explorer with four-wheel drive; something in dark green, perhaps, that didn't begin to resemble a maroon Pontiac Ciero.
“Or,” Helen pointed out with a little smile, “you could go to the long-term parking lot at the airport and pay the bill on your own yellow Toyota pickup.”
Joe gazed at her with admiration. They were sitting in his “club,” the Market Street Grill, having a celebratory cocktail. All thought of a blond Cateyo had long since fled from his mind. When it came to actually doing something with somebody, he thought, you couldn't beat someone who could actually do something, who didn't need to have the world explained to her.
“I bought that truck for you,” he said, “but I never got a chance to give it to you.”
“It got to me,” Helen said. She didn't go into it. She wasn't sure how much he knew about what had happened after he'd been shot. The man who had shot Joe had driven the truck to the cabin and there Helen had shot him—dead. She didn't want to talk about it. “It's a great truck,” she said, brightly.
“It's very handy, just now,” Joe said.
There was an element of risk in driving to the airport, but not much, since they weren't going into the terminal. They had no problem recovering the truck. There were cops aplenty at the airport, besides the Airport Authority police, but they were busy on the concourses. The truck had an extended cab, which was big enough to take the money bags. They left the Pontiac in the long-term lot—which was a very good place for it, likely to encourage the police, when they found it, to think that they had escaped by air—and drove back into town.
En route, Joe explained that he had to take care of a few details. It was getting late, but he hoped that at least a couple of them could be achieved. They wouldn't be leaving town for a couple of nights, so some tasks could wait until tomorrow, but first they had to find a place to stay. This, Joe thought, could be dicey. There were a lot of motels in the Salt Lake area and the odds were fair that the police department hadn't contacted all of them, but then, you wouldn't know until you tried. Joe didn't like the odds. But it was still early. He decided to take care of a little business first.
Helen was the better dressed of them, wearing an elegant dark pantsuit that wasn't too mussed by the scuffle at the house. Joe got her to put her hair up under a fetching wool beret that would hide the all-too-memorable silver streak in her thick locks. She donned dark glasses and appeared at the funeral home that Joe had called earlier. She sadly explained the need to obtain the remains of her dearly departed uncle, Clarence Woods, from the Medical Examiner's office. The funeral home was happy to assist. They seemed a little surprised to see her, since they had talked to a man, but she explained that her brother was busy trying to secure a transit permit for the body. The funeral director pointed out that if the body were cremated they would have little difficulty in carrying a box of ashes. Why bother with the permit? This seemed an ideal solution to Helen and she agreed to it. The funeral home would pick up the body and perform the cremation, and they could come back for the ashes as early as tomorrow afternoon.
Dead Folks Page 22
