The Blind Pig (20 page)

Stoner rifles lay everywhere, pitched from their ruptured crates. Mulheisen panted up to the sand-strewn scene and yanked the cab door open. Jerry Vanni toppled sideways out of the cab in a torrent of blood, his head a pulpy, shattered mess.

Noell looked around him, taking stock. His men were all safe. They still stood in defensive postures, Sten gun and Tommy gun raised and aimed. Then they let the gun barrels drop slowly. Noell reversed the clip on the Stoner and jammed it home. He stepped up to Mulheisen, who stood looking down at the ruined face of Jerry Vanni.

Mulheisen turned away. “Call for a wagon,” he said to Dennis. “Possible fatal.”

Andy Deane was explaining on the telephone how he'd nabbed Maio and Panella. He'd picked them up at a riverfront bar, preparing to leave Detroit in a boat. “I got the idea from you, Mul,” he said. “DenBoer had the right idea. I wouldn't be surprised if the mob got the idea from DenBoer, too.” He went on to say that the two thugs were very uncooperative, but he had the night clerk from the Tuttle for a witness, he had the slugs from Lorry the Shoe, and the gunmen had been stupid enough not to get rid of their weapons. “I guess they figured, since they weren't going through an airport check, or across the regular border area, they might as well take the guns along.”

“Maybe they planned to dump them in the river,” Mulheisen suggested. He thanked Deane for his help and hung up.

Then he had to go in and see Buchanan. Stanos was up for a medal and a promotion, but not Marshall. Mulheisen pointed out that just because Marshall hadn't been shot, that wasn't a reason not to give him a citation for bravery. Buchanan hemmed and hawed, muttering something about blacks having to make their own way, but finally he gave in.

Mulheisen broke the good news to Marshall in his cubicle a few minutes later.

“There's so many loose ends,” Marshall said, talking about the case. “I never knew it was like this.”

“Well, we try to clean up as many of them as we can,” Mulheisen said, “but it's generally like this. You just have to face the fact that you never know everything about a case. There's a lot we'll never know, but at least we got the guns back. For instance, we'll never know if DenBoer meant to split with the money or not. Of course, Vanni would still have the guns and he might be able to work some kind of deal with the mob, since he's going to still be around. Maybe they'd be willing to play ball with him because he'd still be useful to them. But he was in way over his head and he didn't realize it. Those guys are just too slick for him. Like DenBoer, he had his head in the clouds, dreaming about fancy capers and wheeling and dealing with the big shots. As it stands, you notice, except for the the two gunsels, we don't have anything on the mob.”

Marshall listened avidly, nodding in admiration at Mulheisen's explanations. “How did you know the guns were in the truck, though, Sarge?” he asked.

Mulheisen smiled ruefully. “I should have known long before. When I stopped to see Vanni the other morning he was loading sand into the truck. The sand was piled way over the top of the trailer and the truck box. But there wasn't all that much gone from the excavation pile. I didn't pay much attention to it, unfortunately. But later I realized that the perfect place to hide a truck is among a bunch of other trucks.”

He took a long, comfortable drag on his cigar and contemplated the smoke. “And now we're back to our original mystery,” he said.

“What's that?” Marshall asked.

“Who was the dead man in the alley?”

They sat and thought about that for a minute, and the telephone rang. It was the medical examiner's office, Dr. Brennan. Before Brennan could say anything, Mulheisen said, “you can let that John Doe go, now, Doc. The case is
wrapped. Go ahead and chop him up, or whatever you do.”

“I'm glad to hear that, Mul,” Brennan said. “I was just calling to say that I'm afraid we kind of screwed up. One of the assistants here signed the body out first thing this morning.”

“Oh? Who to?”

“Friend of the deceased. He came in early and claimed the body. Identified him and everything, all proper and orderly. I didn't see the papers on it until after lunch. Sorry.”

“What did this ‘friend’ look like?” Mulheisen asked. He listened attentively to Brennan, nodding thoughtfully to himself. When Brennan finished, Mulheisen hung up and said to Jimmy Marshall, “You can tell your buddy Stanos, when you visit him in the hospital, that we now know who he blasted. His name was Sidney Carton.”

“Sidney Carton?” Marshall repeated. “That sounds kind of familiar. Who was Sidney Carton?”

Mulheisen got up and put on his coat. “Think about it for a minute,” he said. “He was a man who had a good friend. In this case, the friend was named Joe Service.” He walked out.

Maki stopped him in the hall and asked if he wanted to stop for a beer.

“No,” Mulheisen told him. “I've got to see a witness.”