Hit on the House (20 page)

“Not yet,” Carmine said, “but we've got a couple of lines on it. We'll find it.”

“I'm sure,” Joe said dryly.

“But, Joe, this is a perfect job for you. It's what you do best, right? Hey, why am I fooling around with these local dopes when the best in the world is right here, talking to me? I'll tell you what. You find the skim, find out who all was in on it—you don't have to do any wet work—and you can take half.”

“Half of what?”

“We don't know, Joe. That's the problem. Only Sid knew how much it was, though we hear rumors. Say it's a million. It had to be a million because Sid isn't going to leave a sweet setup here, even if he's crazy about some chick, for less than a million. Wouldn't you say?”

Joe thought about it. “Who knows? Who's the chick?”

Carmine gave him a long, sad look. “Forget about the chick, Joe. She ain't in it. We talked to her already, and believe me, she's not part of the problem.”

“We are talking about Germaine Kouras?”

Carmine nodded.

“I see,” Joe said. “An accident, I guess.”

“You could say that.”

“Can I talk to her?”

Carmine looked pained. “No, I don't think so, Joe.”

“And she wasn't able to enlighten you beforehand? Yeah. Well, it can happen. It happened in Iowa City. But, to get back to the main point . . . How much would you say Sid—and his friends—had access to?”

“That's hard to say, Joe. It depends over what period of time it went on. Let's face it, we didn't notice anything wrong. So he couldn't have been taking a high percentage, but for how long? We don't know.”

“Do you think he could have taken two million?”

“Yeah.”

“Four million?”

Carmine made a face. “Now, Joe, . . . you're starting to get speculative here—”

“Maybe I'll just take all of it,” Joe said.

“All of it? Who the fuck do you think–”

Service pulled the trigger on the pistol, and the mirror behind Carmine shivered and collapsed onto the counter. Carmine leapt away, staring wildly at Joe.

“Are you crazy?” he gasped.

“You were forgetting to be scared,” Joe said. He had not moved from the alcove steps. He swiveled slightly and pointed the pistol at Carmine's stomach. “Is it two million? Or is it more?”

“It's more,” Carmine said. “Maybe it's four, but we don't know. Honest.”

“I'll take fifty percent,” Joe said, “with a minimum of a mil. But first I want my hundred fifty. Right now.”

“Sure, sure,” Carmine said. He gestured toward his office. “I can give it to you right now.”

Joe smiled and stood up. “You can turn off the water, Carm.” He opened the door and they went into the office. Carmine went to a painting on the wall, a kind of collage of fire engines and numbers and obscure angular shapes, and opened it like a door. He spun the dial of the safe and reached inside.

“Easy,” Joe said. He had slipped up behind Carmine and placed the barrel of the silencer against his head. He reached around him and withdrew the neat little .32-caliber automatic and slipped it into his pocket. Then he pulled out several packets of bank notes and let them
fall onto the carpet. He stepped back and said, “Go ahead, Carm, . . . start counting.”

Carmine knelt and began to count. Joe sat on the arm of one of the teak chairs and watched. Then he studied the sculpture in the corner for a while, whistling “Spring Is Here” in a whispery way. Carmine's phone warbled, and without hesitation Joe picked it up. “Yeah,” he rasped, holding the receiver a foot away.

“New York,” the secretary's voice said, “Mitch.”

“I'm busy, doll,” Joe growled. “Tell him I'll call back in a minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carmine gathered the money up and dumped it on the desk, then collected the remainder from the floor and pushed it back into the safe. Joe stepped close and stuck the little automatic back into the safe, then slapped the safe door shut.

While Carmine put the payoff into a large manila envelope, Joe said, “Do you really think you're clean here?” He waved the pistol around the walls and ceiling.

“Certainly,” Carmine said.

Joe stepped over to the rat-man. It was almost as tall as he. “What do you call this dude?”

“It doesn't have a name. It's a Jabe.”

“A Jabe? What's that?”

“He's some kind of hotshot sculptor,” Carmine said. “My wife got it for me. Don't you like it?”

“It's cute,” Joe said, running his hands about the sculpture. “How much does something like this cost?”

“You could afford it,” Carmine said.

Joe slid his hand up the wicked tail and up the inner thigh, feeling the little bumps of burned steel. There was a hole precisely where the anus should be. “What kind of realist is this Jabe?” Joe wondered out loud. He stuck his forefinger into the hole and felt about, then jerked a tiny little lump of plastic and putty out.

“Hmmm, doesn't look exactly like the sort of thing that would come out of a rat's ass,” Joe said, “but . . .” He carried it over to the bathroom door and tossed it into the commode. Turning back to Carmine,
he began to unscrew the silencer from the revolver and said, “So tell me, Carm, who else do you think was in it with Sid?”

Carmine sat back in his chair and rubbed his smoothly shaven chin, looking at Joe speculatively. “You know, Joe, I believe I have underestimated you. I apologize. We really ought to discuss business. I mean the business, you understand?”

Joe sighed. “I don't think so, Carmine. I like my business. I'm a snoop. I'm curious. And it's fun. Your business—the biz,” he said sarcastically, “doesn't strike me as fun. It's awful. You know what you should do? You know what I'd do if I was running this awful biz?”

Carmine shook his head.

“I'd shut it down. Especially this crack biz. You know what you've got? You've got teenagers standing on corners hawking poison. Actually waving it in the air. Can that be sane, Carm? I mean, think about it. You're already making a fortune out of numbers. The folks have a dream, they consult the dream book, they run down to the corner bar and put a buck or two on a set of numbers that no way in hell might make them a couple of hundred. Is that a bad thing to do? No, that's not bad, Carm. That's a service to the community–feeding the dream. And you've got dozens of these splendid community services—a guy finds out his wife is screwing Jim Bob, he comes to you for a gun, he shoots Jim Bob, and his marriage is saved. What a guy you are! Better than a priest. But selling crack on the corner, Carm, . . . that's just nuts. Why don't you shut it down? It just gets you into trouble, like with Sid. Now who do you think was in it with Sid?”

It was Carmine's turn to sigh. “Joe, you're way out of touch. We don't run the crack. We've managed to get a wedge into it. That's what Sid was doing for us. But the thing is we saw it the same way you saw it. We didn't want it. You're right, it isn't the kind of business we ought to be in. So . . . we let it go. The Colombians, the Bolivians, the Peruvians, the Panamanians . . . they all jumped right in. We let it happen.” He waved a hand sadly.

“You let them?” Joe asked, incredulous.

Carmine grimaced. “It wasn't my decision, but I went along with it. It was decided at a higher council.”

“You let a bunch of South Americans come in and run a biz like that, on your turf? I don't believe it.”

“OK, so we kept a few handles,” Carmine said, “but we didn't have the biz. We figured if it started to look good, we could take it back. Better to let these goofy dick heads take the first heat. But,” he sighed, “it kind of got away from us. It really took off. It wasn't really organized. It was one of those things, like Prohibition. All my life, Joe, I heard from the old ones about how Prohibition opened up the country. They didn't know what was happening at the time, but they fell into it, for Chrisake. You think Capone and the rest of those crazy Sicilians knew what was going to happen? Don't be silly. But once they saw an opening . . . You gotta hand it to them, Joe, they stepped in and made something out of the opportunities.”

Carmine laughed quietly, gazing at his rat-man in the corner. “They were wonderful tough guys, Joe. We're just a bunch of wimps by comparison.” He looked up and his chin stiffened. “That's what these Colombians look like, Joe. They fell into it. They were ready, they were tough, and they didn't give a shit. We let them in and they just took it. And once they had it, once they had this street network, well . . . I'm like you, Joe. It looked like hell to me. The kids, the violence!” Carmine's features contorted in disgust. “They don't have any standards. They're a bunch of savages!”

He sat forward suddenly, clasping his hands. “I saw we had screwed up. I decided to take it back, . . . but quietly. So I put Sid into it. I figured somebody was going to get bonked here, in the early days. Better it was Sid. You understand?”

Joe nodded. “But Sid went over, is that it?”

“That's the way it looks. Maybe he was playing both sides, I don't know. But we couldn't go on with Sid.”

Joe considered all this in silence, then said, “Icing Sid wasn't enough, though. Fat told me you thought Tupman and Conover were in it, but you didn't do the job on Tupman. Who did? The Colombians?”

“They didn't have any reason to as far as I know,” Carmine said. “We don't know who did it. Maybe it was them. Conover? Well, he's
walking a tight line, but he seems all right. I think you should talk to him. Who else? To be honest, Joe, I don't know. That's why we need you. We had a long, hard talk with Roman Yak, Sid's old hand. We were a little rough, but the Yak held up. Roman wasn't in on it, he didn't know anything. He was just a spear carrier.”

“What about this Lande?” Joe asked.

“Lande? What Lande? You mean Gene Lande? What about him?” Carmine seemed genuinely surprised.

“His name is in Hal's book, next to Sid. He even drew a little box around it, like a guy draws when he's talking on the phone . . . He writes the name down, he draws a box, he doodles a star in each corner–”

“This is a chump, a nobody,” Carmine said, a disbelieving smile on his face. “You know who he is? He's one of those guys who likes to hang around the edges, you know? He likes to pretend he's a big criminal, public enemy number seventeen or something. He got into trouble with us years ago . . . gambling, or was it a loan? I can't remember. Sid leaned on him, straightened him up. The guy was into electronics, I think. Sid gave him a little business. His wife was an old punch of Sid's. You know Sid—well, you didn't know him that well—but he always had a bunch of ex-girlfriends, and he was the kind of guy he'd try to do something for them. He fixed this chick up with this Lande and Lande began to do a little work for us from time to time. Nothing big or even crooked, really, but he'd do it for next to nothing.”

“I think I should talk to him,” Joe said.

“I already talked to him. And his old lady.” He snorted a laugh. “Hah. She called me up one day, says it's about Sid and her old man. So I tell her to come in, we could talk—I knew her from old times. Soon as she hangs up I send Fat to get this Lande. She comes in here, throwing her tits and ass around, whining about her poor li'l Gene—I had to laugh. Turns out she's scared shitless because Lande had been working on some kind of golf-resort development with Sid, and she was afraid I'd get the wrong idea. I gave her a pat on the ass and a big kiss, just to make sure her lipstick is smeared, and I waltz her out of the office. Lande's out in the office, see, waiting. She doesn't see him, but I make sure that he gets his eyes full. Christ, you should have seen his face when Fat brought him in.” Carmine laughed loudly. “He didn't know if he was
mad or scared. I threw a good scare into him, and I let him know he couldn't pull any shit. He's nothing.”

“Well, I'd better check him out,” Joe said.

“Sure, you be the judge. And listen, Joe, I'm serious about the biz. What you say makes sense to me. I think we're on the same wavelength. We've got to overhaul this operation. We've gone stale. Relying too much on muscle, not enough on brains. We've got to take back the street. You could figure very large with us.”

Joe shook his head. “No, Carm. I'm too young. To go down, that is. Because that's what I see—you guys are going down.” He looked almost sad. “I can't afford to get involved with an outfit like this. A year from now, maybe two . . . you're gone. It's going to go down, Carm, believe me.”

Joe picked up the manila envelope and tucked it under his arm. “Thanks for this, Carm. I'll let you know on the other as soon as something comes up.”

As soon as he'd left, Carmine buzzed his secretary and said, “Get someone in here to fix the bathroom.”

“What's wrong with the bathroom?” she wanted to know.

“Get someone,” he snapped. “And get Mitch on the phone.”

A minute later the phone warbled. “Mitch,” she said. “The plumber's on his way.”

“Get a carpenter,” Carmine replied. “Hello, Mitch? Hey, put that business on hold. I think I'm onto something. I was just talking to Service, he's got some ideas. But I'm gonna need a hitter before it's all over. Top of the line. Price is no limit. I'll let you know.”

Seventeen

B
onny looked dreadful. There was no other way to put it. The course of her disease was so rapid that even the doctors were surprised. Mulheisen and Lande were stunned. Neither had been prepared for this. It was like a stop-action film of an apple rotting. Not only was she markedly changed each day, but it began to seem to the two men that they could see almost hourly changes. The chief doctor, a youngish man, was himself a little shaken, and he did his best to ease the situation for them with explanations. Bonny needed no discussion; she was all too aware of what was happening to her. Obviously the disease had been much further advanced than the original assessment had indicated. It was in the lymph system and out of any prayer of control—the young doctor called it wildfire.

Bonny's skin was frankly yellow now, and ghastly lumps distorted her jaw and cheekbones. Mulheisen quickly learned not to see these hideous distortions in order to actually see her. When he returned to her room from having slept himself or after attending to some business, he was relieved if he found her asleep, as she often was. It made it easier to approach her, to accept what had happened in just the few hours he'd been gone. Painkilling drugs were no longer very effective, and they had begun to provide her with cannabis and hefty “cocktails”—pure grain alcohol in a blend of fruit juices. She was always a little high, if not drunk. And she was curiously cheerful, though often her grotesque face was swept by a visible curtain of pain, reminding Mulheisen of the wind
blowing across the reeds that he often watched from his bedroom window, looking toward the river.

He would not have thought that mere physical transformation would make such a difference. It seemed a mockery of his firmly held belief that his affection for Bonny was not simply lust for her body. That body no longer existed and, in any case, had not been the glorious body of youth for some time (though it was undoubtedly still very attractive less than two weeks before).

They often passed hours together, saying nothing. If Lande weren't present, Mulheisen would sit by her bed, holding her listless hand, which was like parchment—there was no warmth in it. She lay there, seemingly oblivious to his presence, eyes shut or staring at the ceiling, occasionally sipping at her cocktail. She was drifting away, her mind focused on some other place. Once in a while she would turn slowly to look at him and, after a moment, would seem to recognize him. She would smile and say, “Why, hello, Mul,” which she had already said a half hour before. Sometimes, in clearer moments, she would hold her skeletal hand before her face, as if to shield him from the horror of her deformity.

Mulheisen knew he should be talking to Lande, questioning him about Big Sid and Carmine. But he'd promised Bonny, and she was all that mattered now. Early on she had given him a few tidbits that she'd wormed out of Lande, but they weren't very specific. Sid had asked Gene for some help with a money deal. They were all going to make a lot of money, Gene had told her, and they would go to live in the Bahamas, at the golf resort. They'd lie on the beach all day and drink large, frosty drinks made from exotic fruits. They were still going to do it, Gene would tell her. As soon as she got well enough to travel, they'd get away. There was some kind of miracle cure the doctors “down there” had—the American Medical Association wouldn't let it be used, he told her, because they wouldn't have any business, and the big drug companies were in on it. Bonny didn't pay any attention to any of this, although she told Mulheisen that it would be nice to get away from all the cold and rain.

Mulheisen was spending almost all his time at the hospital, and so was Lande, of course. Mulheisen watched Lande and Bonny. They
would all sit together in the little room, occasionally taking a break but really not talking much. Lande talked about “gawf” and his inventions, about plans to build a new golf course somewhere “in the islands.” He was going to teach Mulheisen how to golf.

Once in a while Mulheisen would take a few hours to take care of business at the precinct and to catch up on other work, but not for long. He asked Andy Deane to make a serious effort to find Germaine Kouras. Nothing had come up yet, but Andy was now convinced that Kouras had not left the country after all. But nobody had seen her. She'd simply disappeared. The pressure on the street had eased apparently. The muscle stuff, anyway, according to Andy. But somebody was looking—that was the new word—some slick guy from the West was asking a lot of questions.

A couple of times Lande asked Mulheisen if he'd mind staying with Bonny while he took off for an hour or two to “do some business.” Mulheisen readily agreed, but before he would let Lande go, he would excuse himself. “I'd better call in and let the precinct know I'll be here for a while . . .”—and Jimmy Marshall would then follow Lande. Jimmy said Lande went to his office and then to the golf course but never spent more than a half hour at each place, and then he would return to the hospital.

One day a young man appeared at the door to Bonny's room, looking for Lande. Mulheisen thought the man looked familiar, but he couldn't place him. The fellow, who did not identify himself, said he was a friend of Lande's and he'd call him later. Mulheisen just nodded and turned back to Bonny, who hadn't noticed the intrusion.

Mulheisen was finding it difficult to focus. His mother, who saw even less of him than usual, sensed that something was amiss, but she was busy with her own struggles with the dastardly developer. Mulheisen didn't notice. Nothing seemed important to him but the struggle going on at Bon Secours Hospital. He was losing somebody whom he had never possessed. He had discovered a love at the moment it was being taken from him.

Lande was grateful for Mulheisen's company. It was annoying to Mulheisen, however, that Lande seemed to believe that Mulheisen's presence was as much on his behalf as on Bonny's. As for Bonny, she
was glad they were both there. “My boys,” she'd say with a sly smile when she awoke and caught sight of them sitting dully; reading, or quietly talking—almost all the talk coming from Lande, who reminisced about past triumphs or complained about those who had swindled him in some ancient deal. They would immediately race to her side, the first one there seizing hold of the hand that was not enmeshed in tubes and wires. But they were thoughtful of one another, too, bringing sandwiches or magazines or even little nips of whiskey to the one who had stayed while the other took a break.

In this way, almost against his will, Mulheisen began to acquire a certain understanding of Eugene Lande. Day after day the two men sat in the little room, looking at Bonny, who was practically disappearing before their eyes. When she began to be mostly comatose, they listlessly perused magazines (neither of them could bear television, and Bonny couldn't stand its banalities), so inevitably Lande would begin to talk. Naturally he chose his own life as his subject. Mulheisen didn't pay close attention, but snatches of this sotto voce reminiscence seeped through his indifference.

“I don't remember a thing before I was twelve, . . . not a thing, but I been told things . . . My mother was a waitress . . . My dad was a bomber pilot in the Korean War . . . I don't remember my folks . . . I think we lived in Texas for a while . . . Uncle Ernie and Aunt June were my real folks . . . We lived on the East Side. They used to lock me in when they went to meetings . . . I think they were Communists . . . Yeah, they were Communist spies; they went to spy meetings alia time . . . When I first come to Detroit, they put me in that front bedroom, upstairs . . . I was thrilled—you could hear the paperboys goin’ up and down the street, yellin’ . . . They yelled”—a hoarse whisper—
” ‘preee press pay-per!
’. . . kind of a little jag on ‘pay-per'—you come up on the last part of it—'pay-per’ . . . I thought it was the
Pree Press
for a long time . . . Just sat in the room and listened to the radio and the clock tickin’ . . . I took the clock apart about a dozen times, then I started on the radio, but I musta lost a part; I couldn't get it to work . . . Uncle Ernie was pissed, but they never hit me. They were never really mean, but they wouldn't let me out . . . They musta been ‘fraid I'd snoop and find their Commie stuff, maybe turn ‘em in . . . I wouldn'ta turned ‘em
in . . . That's the worst thing you can do, in my book, is squeal, to letcher pals down . . . He got me a new radio, but it didn't have the range of the old Philco; it couldn't get New Orleans or Denver . . . They were gone when I come back from the navy . . . They never wrote once . . . I couldn't read very well, but I had some
Popular Mechanics;
I read them a lot . . . School was no good; the big kids allus picked on you . . . I joined the Barons first, but they ratted on me; they left me to get caught by the cops when we hit this one K Mart . . . The Baggies was a nigger gang; they wore baggy pants . . . They let me in; well, they let in a coupla white kids; they were tough . . . The leader was called Hitler; he was a weight lifter, had a body you couldn’ believe, . . . but they run off, and I got caught by the cops . . . Well, they were good guys, but they was scared . . . In the navy I was a cook, never left the country, never even left dry land, stationed all the time at Great Lakes, near Chicago . . . I met this guy, Derek, from Detroit, too . . . We come home on leave together, but I didn’ have nobody to see; Uncle Ernie and Aunt June were gone, no forwarding address—the Commies sent them underground—and the guys from the Baggies were either all in jail or they were in the army, in Vietnam, all over the place . . . Me and Derek hitchhiked out West, but we got separated in Salt Lake City ... He went into this giant drugstore, to cop some pills, an’ after a while I went in to find him, and I guess he must of come out the other door and couldn’ find me . . . It was nuts . . . I never went back to the navy; well, I went back, but they give me an early out, . . . but Derek's old man, in Detroit, he run a ‘lectronics store; he give me a job . . . Derek never showed up, never saw him again . . . I met Tony Luke, great guy; we did a little you know in ‘lectronic parts, nothing heavy . . . Sid, well, Sid was just a good frien’, one a my best buddies; he threw a little business my way, took me to Las Vegas, interduced me to Bonny . . . I did his daughter's office computers. She's a brain, very smart broad . . . tough, too; I wouldn't wanta cross her . . . I just picked it up, the ‘lectronics . . . I was always real good at that kinda stuff . . . Started gawfin’ with Uncle Ernie, it was the on'y thing we ever did together . . . He wasn't a real good gawfer, but he was a good teacher, very strict, made you stand just this way, hold your clubs like this, not like that, like this, ‘you little dummy’ . . . an’ purty soon I could outshoot him an’ he quit—” He
laughed raucously, waking up Bonny. “Sorry, sorry, hon, there, there, there . . .”

The endless droning half-whispered narrative only began to suggest the intense rage that drove the man, Mulheisen realized. He became interested despite himself and his pledge to Bonny and started to ask an occasional not too pointed question. Thus, he learned that Lande could vaguely remember his mother, as a waitress, but that most of the information about his parents had come from his mother's much older brother and his wife, to whom Lande was sent at age twelve, “just to visit,” in Detroit. The mother disappeared. The aunt and uncle were good people, though rather strict. The idea of them as Communist agents seemed to be sheer fantasy, but one that Lande clung to. He did not, in fact, have any secure, first-person memories of his life before age twelve—“Just about a total blank, Mul.” He thought he had lived in Cincinnati because he could remember being taken to some Reds games by, he thought, a relatively benign foster “keeper”—he couldn't bring himself to refer to them as parents.

The aunt and uncle were much older than his mother, he thought. Uncle Ernie worked at “the Dodge,” and Aunt June was a bookkeeper for a man who owned a small string of garages. It was true that they often went to meetings, and the boy was locked in the house, in his room, but Mulheisen got the impression that maybe it wasn't every night, and maybe it hadn't happened throughout the boy's youth. For one thing, there was the gang period. Obviously, Lande was out running the streets by then. The couple was not otherwise unkind to him. They didn't beat him; they didn't starve him or deprive him of good clothes. They just didn't pay much attention to him, and they clearly didn't love him. Lande appeared to have no feelings for them, pro or con, although it was their name that he used. (Jimmy Marshall's casual research revealed an Ernest and June Lande, formerly of Detroit, now living in retirement in Scottsdale, Arizona.)

School was a different matter. Lande hated school and hated the whole idea of education, still. He had a withering contempt for people who had to be taught things; he himself had just learned everything “by paying attention and finding out.” Inevitably he'd been a victim of bullies, and he argued with his teachers. He didn't make friends. A gang
recruited him to help them shoplift—he was sent in to cause a diversion while they stole things—and they casually abandoned him when he was caught. This was still a source of bitterness. Lande had longed for and relished his inclusion in these groups, and their callous betrayals still hurt. He was, nonetheless, as Mulheisen could see, attracted to the crime community while simultaneously furious with it.