Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (37 page)

“I'll take a bow later, if it's all right with you. You, uh, you want a piece of this, maybe?”

“Thought you'd never ask. Hell, I'd like nothing better than to find dirty hands on an MBI guy. Tell you what. In this deal, the Michigan State Police is at your service. You just let me know, and we'll, like, charge over the hill to the sound of bugles, flags streaming.”

F
ORTUNATELY, IT
was a weekend. Everything was under control at Norwegian Wood, and my corporate client didn't expect progress on his applicants till Monday. So I had plenty of time for real excitement: following Donald Boltz around.

He worked at the MBI substation in Adrian. He lived in a swanky lakefront condo near there. He drove thirty-plus Gs worth of loaded Audi 5000. I literally took up residence in my Mustang. I lived on drive-through Wendy's and Macs, washed up in gas station johns, slept stiff and cramped across the bucket seats, and tailed Boltz real smooth, real careful.

Problem was, he didn't go anywhere, or do anything, suspicious.

By Sunday evening I was a wrinkle-clothed, sore-muscled, aromatic, exhausted mess. And for it I had to show exactly nothing. And though he'd gotten in his car in the late afternoon and set off northeast, in the general direction of Detroit, my initially rising excitement dimmed considerably when he ended up at the K-Mart in Westland. K-Mart, for God's sake.

He knew what I looked like, so I hung way back from him in the crowded store as he strolled back to the men's clothes area and began browsing. I kept several rows of clothes between us, engaged with him in a long-distance, surreptitious dance of surveillance, while he leafed in a casual, almost bored fashion through racks of trousers and shirts and jackets. Suddenly—a little
too
suddenly, considering how lackadaisical he'd been operating till then—he selected a snappy green blazer and a pair of green-checked slacks and walked swiftly to a pair of freestanding dressing closets. The one on the left was closed and occupied; the other one was open, and he locked himself inside.

Crowds swirled around me. Muzak blared from loudspeakers, interrupted by an announcer pitching blue-light specials. Moms herded gaggles of kids. Teenage girls in cutoffs and tank tops floated along in a daze of nubile youth. I watched the closets for what seemed like a long time. Then the door on the left opened and a man stepped out. Tall, gray-haired, hump-shouldered, dressed casually in civilian clothes. Carl Harran, chief of police, City of Frederick.

He looked around quickly, then walked away into the crowd while I stared at him, frozen.

After a minute, the right-hand door opened and Donald Boltz came out. His hands were empty except for a business-sized envelope, which he tucked into his inside jacket pocket as he strutted toward the front of the store and away.

The single pay phone at the entrance to the store was being used by a skinny teenage kid in a whacked-off T-shirt and jogging shorts, grinning and whispering into the receiver as he leaned against the glass wall. I took the receiver away from him with one hand, handed him a quarter with the other, growled, “Call her back in a minute,” then broke the connection and began to dial as he stared incredulously at me. The phone rang in my ear as the kid started to say something, but one look from me stifled him. Finally the ringing stopped and Marybeth said, “Hello?”

Thank God.

W
E SLOGGED
ankle-deep up the steep incline of an enormous sand mountain. Beyond us sprawled the dunes and rubble piles and the cratered landscape of the abandoned sand and gravel quarry. The rusted snout of a huge crane reached high into the black sky. A couple of tin buildings, roofs sagging, stood sentry at opposite ends of the flat, sandy yard far, far below us. There was no one there. We stopped at the bluff and steppped back, panting from the exertion, Dick Dennehy most of all.

Jerry Mooney, Dennehy's squat, short, bull-shouldered partner (the term “brick outhouse” was coined with him in mind), adjusted the strap of his walkie-talkie, checked his watch, and said in a hoarse whisper, “Ten minutes to three. Ten minutes to three A.M
., on the Fourth of July. Jesus Christ.” He looked at me in the darkness. “Your theory better hold up, Perkins.”

I retorted, “All I know is, Marybeth told me that Boltz told her to meet him here tonight. Something real fishy's going on, believe me. Anyhow, if I'm right, for you state police guys it'll be a dream come true. You'll catch an MBI guy engaged in a criminal act.”

“He's right, Jerry,” Dennehy said.

“Don't worry,” I added. “If this works out, I don't want any credit for it, hear? It's your collar.”

“
Our
collar?” Dennehy snorted. “Hear that, Jer?”

“I heard that. Hee-hee.
Our
collar. Right.”

Dennehy checked the time. “Everybody in place?”

“Oughtta be,” Mooney answered. He slogged through the sand to the bluff, peered over, and said tensely, “Whoa. Here she comes.”

Dennehy and I crawled to the bluff, flanking Mooney, and looked down. Marybeth's light-blue Escort sedan, lights off, rolled down the narrow, weedy, sandy lane from our right and parked next to one of the tin buildings.

Jerry Mooney whispered into his walkie-talkie. Dennehy kept his eyes on the woman, who wore a light poplin raincoat, as she got out of the Escort and stood alongside it, and got out his gleaming Colt Python. My heart was thumping as I pulled my .45 automatic from the waistband against my spine and cocked it. There was no need to work the action; I carried a live round under the hammer.

The woman leaned against the door of the Escort, face indistinct in the half moonlight, layered brown hair flowing down to her shoulders. An engine hummed from our right, and a black Mercury sedan approached the tin building and stopped near the Escort. Its engine kept running as the driver's door opened and a man got out.

The moonlight caught the man's features and I said, “That's not Boltz! It's Harran!”

Chief Carl Harran wheeled, raised a .38 revolver over the roof of the Mercury, and shot the woman five times. The flares from the snout of the revolver flashed well in advance of the boom of the shots. The woman went down.

“Let's do it!” Mooney shouted into the walkie-talkie. As the three of us charged over the bluff and down the sandy slope, a siren wailed to our right, and two state police cars roared up the lane toward the chief, headlights illuminating him as he jerked his head around wildly. From our left, another police car swerved on the sandy lane toward him, cutting off that escape route. He hurled his empty revolver away and ran diagonally to our right. I skidded to a halt, dropped to a crouch, and fired three times. Even in the hands of a marksman, which I am not, the .45 auto is ineffective at that range, but the plumes of sand from the heavy slugs bursting around him were convincing, and he skidded to a halt and sprawled into the weedy sand. The cars stopped, the doors flung open, and the policemen converged on him, weapons extended warily.

Breathing hard, I dropped my gun hand to my side and walked over to the Escort. Up this close, the woman looked little like Marybeth. She was on her feet, the bullet-riddled raincoat open, showing the heavy pleated armored vest. I grinned at her and she grinned back and gave me the thumb's up. Behind me, a woman's voice called, “Ben?” and I turned and Marybeth Perkins, who'd been in the back of one of the state police cars, waved and ran into my arms so hard she nearly knocked me down. I held her and she held me and we said nothing, but when she finally stepped back, my cheeks were wet from her tears.

Dick Dennehy came up to us as Jerry Mooney directed the loading of the chief into one of the cars by the other officers. “Harran's singing like a bird,” he told us grimly. “Boltz sold Marybeth out to Harran as an informant in return for ten big ones. Jerry 'n' I are going to pick Boltz up now. Fun,
fun!
Wanna come along?”

“I do,” Marybeth said.

I checked my watch. “Not me, thanks. I got a date.”

“At four in the morning?” Dick demanded.

“Fishing,” I grinned. “See y'all.”

I
T WAS FIVE
after six and the sky was brightening fast when I arrived at the landing on Stapfer Lake. Bill's green seventeen-footer with its Chrysler outboard bobbed in the water at the end of the landing. His blue Ford Econoline van dragging the empty trailer was parked in a V on the gravel lot. Bill Perkins himself sat patiently on the rear bumper of the van, wearing a narrow-brimmed canvas hat, chambray shirt, dark blue slacks, and knee-length rubber boots. He looked at me calmly as I walked up to him. “You're late,” he said.

“Sorry.”

He rose and we walked down to his boat. It was fully equipped with two sets of tackle, a full bait buckle, nets and anchors, and extra gas and oil, and all the rest. Good old thorough Bill. As he made ready to cast off the boat, I said, “Reckon Uncle Dan's not coming, huh?”

“Reckon not.”

I climbed clumsily into the boat. “One of these days, Bill.”

He gripped the transom, dug his boots into the wet sand, shoved the boat out into the water, and climbed nimbly in. “Yeah, bro. One of these fine days.”

We fished all day, didn't catch much, and talked about cars, tools, baseball, and the old neighborhood. Back at his house, we devoured Marybeth's terrific steak dinner, and I got home early. I don't know if she ever told Bill the Harran/Boltz story or not. I've never asked. It's none of my business.

He didn't look
much like the law. In his grubby sweatsuit and sneakers he looked more like a Class C high school coach during a losing season. Snoring softly, feet on his cluttered desk, a Detroit Tigers baseball cap tipped forward over his eyes—Norman Rockwell would have loved it. I rapped on the desk.

“Sheriff LeClair? I'm Sergeant Garcia. Lupe Garcia.”

One eye blinked open, briefly. “They're not here.”

“I haven't told you what I want yet.” I eased cautiously down on a battered office chair upholstered in argyle blanket, wondering why I'd bothered to wear my good suit.

“Algoma's a small town.… Garcia, is it? I found a note when I came in this morning said a guy from the Organized Crime Task Force was flying up from Detroit to see me. I take it you're him. I also take it you're here about Roland Costa and his son, since the only thing anybody from Motown wants to talk to me about is them. If I need help on a hot car or a runaway, nobody gives me the time of day. Anyway, they're not here. They were in town a couple of weeks ago to bury Charlie, I haven't seen 'em since.”

“I'm not surprised. Neither has anyone else.”

He tipped his baseball cap back and looked at me for the first time. We were of an age, but he had more miles on him. A lot more. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked exhausted.

“Are you saying they've disappeared?”

“They had Charlie brought to Algoma for the funeral,” I said, “and that's the last time anybody saw them.”

“So they've disappeared,” he shrugged. “That's not uncommon for people in their line of work, is it?”

“Did you see them when they were here?”

“Difficult to miss 'em. They were driving a Lincoln limo that must've been a block long. We don't see many cars like that up here in the boondocks.”

“Was a woman traveling with them?”

“No woman. Just Roland Costa and Rol Junior. They had a room at the Dewdrop Inn the day of the funeral, and they were alone. Why?”

“Charlie Costa had a girlfriend, Cindy Kessel. She's been talking to the DA's office about buying immunity for herself with information about Charlie's operations. She's missing, too.”

He grunted, massaging his stubbled face with work-roughened paws. I noticed the single gold strand around his right wrist. “Look, I'm afraid I'm not really awake yet,” he said. “A little retarded kid wandered away from Camp Algoma yesterday. Found her at sunup this morning, in good shape considering, but I haven't been to bed, and I've gotta wait on a call from the National Guard commander to tell him we won't need any troops for the search. Tell you what, why don't you grab breakfast across the street at Tubby's, and I'll be along as soon as I can.”

“If they stayed at a local motel, I could …”

“Look, Garcia, this isn't Detroit. This is my town. I said they're not here and they're not. Now maybe we can get a line on 'em, but you're a stranger here, so nobody's gonna tell you squat and they might just forget what they do know. So get yourself a cuppa coffee and wait for me, okay? Please?”