The Blind Pig (3 page)

“What the hell is a sabot?” Mulheisen was not well versed in guns and ballistics. He had never understood the tremendous attraction the subject seemed to have for some of his colleagues. He'd had a .22 rifle as a boy, plinking away at tin cans and muskrats along the St. Clair River. And now he carried a revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, with a shrouded hammer. He went to the firing range when required and he shot average scores.

“The sabot is a plastic vehicle, kind of like the first stage of a rocket, that carries the bullet. It drops away a few inches beyond the barrel of the gun. The thing is, they can load a much more powerful charge that way. This mother starts out at over four thousand feet per second—it's really a .30-06 55 grain load, see? And flat? It drops less than—”

“What the hell's it good for?” Mulheisen asked. “Squirrels?”

“No, it'd go through a squirrel so fast the varmint wouldn't know he'd been hit,” Dennis said. “It'd be a great assassination weapon. No ballistics! See, because of the sabot, the actual bullet doesn't touch the barrel.”

“Oh, great! Just what we need: a better assassination weapon. Look, what is it about guns? What's the big attraction?”

Dennis thought about that for a minute. “They're nice,” he said at last. “They really work, you know? Not like a lot of things, like a car that's supposed to be wonderful but it turns out just to be a gas hog. Except for the real trash on the market, the average gun is a really nice piece of work. They do what they're supposed to do, and they look like what they are. A gun doesn't look like a hair dryer.”

“Some hair dryers look like guns,” Mulheisen commented.

“That's what I mean,” Noell said eagerly. “You realize that the basic form of the revolver hasn't changed in maybe a hundred years?” He hauled out his Colt Python. “Look at this. It's more powerful, it's stronger, but basically it's the
same weapon that Wyatt Earp or General Custer used. About all we've done is improve minor mechanisms, improve the alloys, and beef up the firepower. It's pretty close to the absolute peak of its development.” He caressed the blued steel lovingly. Mulheisen began to understand.

The Python, with its flared ventilated rib, was an elegant thing. It was ugly, too, but it had the immense attractiveness of any tool or artifact that is well designed and properly made. It was, as Noell had put it, one of those tools that has reached the peak of development.

“You and Ol’ Earl are very close,” Mulheisen said.

“Yeah.”

“Ask him about this John Doe that Stanos shot last night.”

“Sure,” Dennis said. He got up from the corner of Mulheisen's desk. “You're wrong about Stanos, Mul. He's all right. He'll make the Big 4 one of these days. That's more than I can say for that rughead, what's his name, Marshall.”

Mulheisen was puzzled. “Why is that?”

“No balls,” Noell said. “Them spearchuckers'll all back down in the crunch.”

Mulheisen was astounded. He knew that Noell's favorite bar was Lindell's AC, a bar where many of the Detroit Lions football players drank. Noell was no great football fan, but he enjoyed the company of men his own size—men who, as he put it, “can give a hurt and take a hurt.” Among these athletes at Lindell's were many black men.

“What about your buddy Clothesline?” Mulheisen asked.

“Hey, Clothesline Harris is something else,” Noell protested. “If all them jungle bunnies out there was like Clothesline, they'd blow us out. I'm telling you, Mul, it's war out there. I'd need more than a Python—maybe a bazooka.”

Mulheisen couldn't take any more. He waved Noell out of the office, reminding him to ask Good Ol’ Earl about the John Doe.

Jensen and Field appeared at the door. They were an inseparable team. Jensen was a square-faced man with a
brush haircut that accented his brutal features. He was excellent at forcing admissions from suspects with his direct, challenging stare and blunt, almost mindless questions that thinly veiled a threatening violence. His very best friend, Bud Field, was a reticent but imaginative man. Together they made one quite good detective.

Mulheisen told them to check out the automobiles parked in the Collins alley neighborhood, on the chance that John Doe had driven to the scene. “Ask the neighbors to help you identify the cars,” he said. “It'll save time.”

He then called Firearms & Ballistics. They said that the .38 carried by John Doe #9-83 had been fired twice and the fragments of slugs recovered from the garage wall were of the same caliber. Having ricocheted off the concrete floor, they weren't in good enough shape for the Bureau to say positively that they had come from that particular gun, but it certainly seemed probable. The pistol itself was a Colt .38 Detective Special, with a snub-nosed barrel. Its serial number was not listed in the published numbers that Colt Arms provided the National Crime Computer System.

Mulheisen didn't like that. It suggested that the gun had been stolen from the factory, perhaps with several other guns, before the serial numbers were recorded. That suggested an organization, namely, the mob.

Mulheisen sat back and puffed on his cigar. He recollected the image of the dead man and mulled over it for a while. Then he called Identification and made sure that John Doe's fingerprints would be disseminated to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as the FBI. Mulheisen felt that there was something vaguely foreign about John Doe. His clothes, for instance, were all brand new and they weren't worn in a truly casual way, although they were casual clothes. Rather, they were worn in a meticulous way, as if the wearer wasn't really accustomed to that kind of dress. If the man was an alien, he might have come across the Canadian border, which was just the Detroit River. It wasn't difficult to cross without being checked. Mulheisen had gone back and forth
on the Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel many times without being asked anything other than “Where were you born?” For that matter, he had often sailed his little gaff-rigged catboat over to the Ontario side without any interference from authorities. If John Doe had crossed the border, he probably wouldn't have been noticed, but there was always a chance. He dispatched Ayeh, the young, hawk-nosed detective that everyone called Ahab, with a sheaf of post-mortem photographs to show to Bridge and Tunnel Border Patrol officials.

After that, he telephoned the Wayne County medical examiner's office. The autopsy on John Doe was done. The autopsist, Dr. Brennan, said he'd be glad to give Mulheisen a quick read-through of the report, although he hadn't finished it yet. There were some laboratory reports on request, but he doubted that they would be pertinent.

“Go ahead, Doc,” Mulheisen said.

“We have a male Caucasian, five feet six inches in height, weighing a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Subject appears to have been in excellent health and physical condition at time of death. Well-nourished, well-muscled. External examination reveals nothing remarkable except for massive tissue destruction to upper left back and shoulder, with extensive scorching and tattooing and nine penetration wounds, consistent with shotgun-inflicted wound.

“Subject evidently a nonsmoker, judging from the pink and healthy-looking lungs. No evidence of heart disease, or circulatory disease—that's pretty unusual, Mulheisen, even for a thirty-year-old. Liver healthy, too. Stomach indicates a recent, light meal—some green vegetable substance that is evidently lettuce, and some soft white meal that suggests bread, possibly unleavened.”

“Unleavened?” Mulheisen asked.

“Like Syrian bread, maybe,” Dr. Brennan said. “Well, let's go on. Nine lead pellets recovered from the body. One pellet penetrated the heart and several penetrated the lungs.
Bone fragments from the right distal portion of the—”

“Skip that,” Mulheisen said. “We know he was blasted at close range by a 12-gauge. Is there anything unusual about this man, Doc? Anything out of the ordinary? Scars? Tattoos?”

“I was just coming to that, Mul. To tell the truth, I don't believe I've ever examined a body so free of abnormalities or distinguishing marks. No warts, no pimples, no moles, no freckles, no birthmarks, just a few calluses. Not a scar anywhere, including surgical scars and vaccination marks. I was relieved to see that he had a navel, else I'd have thought he was cloned, or hatched.”

“No vaccination? You can't get a passport without a vaccination, can you?”

“I don't think so,” Brennan said. “I'm not sure. Anyway, he couldn't have been in the Army without getting vaccinated.”

“What do you make of it?” Mulheisen asked.

“I'd say he was a health nut, Mul. He was used to plenty of exercise, but not anything like tennis or weight lifting. Maybe a devoted swimmer. Not a runner, though. He didn't have the feet for it.”

“That might help,” Mulheisen said.

“He was bruised and scratched from the pavement when he fell. I checked his teeth. He has every one of his adult teeth, including the wisdom teeth and not a speck of decay, plaque or dental work.”

“So he brushed regularly,” Mulheisen said.

“His skin is tanned, except where he wore very brief trunks. That made me think he was from a southern climate and that he was a swimmer. His hair is dark and would be curly, except that it's cut very short. From his features and coloring, it is my opinion that he is of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin. But that's just a guess, Mul. Maybe his old man or his old lady was from Athens or Ankara.”

“Or Cairo,” Mulheisen said. “Okay, thanks a lot, Doc.
Next time I'm down your way I'll stop for another look at him. Call me when the lab reports come in. In the meantime, of course, you'll hold the body.”

“Sure,” Brennan said, “but not forever. Let me know as soon as it's okay to release him.”

Mulheisen rang his old friend Frank Zeppanuk, at the Scientific Bureau. They weren't well started on their tests yet, but Frank said that John Doe's clothing had no labels at all. The clothing was brand new and had never been laundered. “He had nothing on him,” Frank said. “No rings, no medallions, no St. Christopher medal, not even an extra bullet. Seems like he wasn't very well prepared for an emergency.”

“What about the dollar bill and the key?” Mulheisen asked.

“Oh, that. The key's a common one, no identifying marks. As for the dollar bill, if you can identify it, it's yours.”

“Thanks, but what can you buy with a dollar these days?”

“A shot and a beer, some places,” Frank said.

“Well, John Doe must have thought he needed it,” Mulheisen said, “or he wouldn't have carried it.”

He hung up and sat back, staring through the slats of the Venetian blinds on the cubicle's window. He puffed his cigar and watched the traffic rolling by on Chalmers Avenue. He smiled, or grimaced. For a grounder, the case was awfully interesting.

Three

Before he left to interview Vanni, Mulheisen made one last telephone call to Andy Deane at the Racket Conspiracy Bureau. He gave Deane a full rundown on the man in the alley and asked, “What does it sound like to you, Andy?”

“Sounds like a mob hit man, all right,” Deane said. “Kind of unusual for one of those guys to get caught like that. Could have been a fluke, though, being seen by the neighbor lady. Yeah, he could be a hit man—or was. Or he might have had another reason to be there.”

“Like what?” Mulheisen asked.

“Maybe he was just delivering the gun,” Deane said.

“To Vanni?”

“Why not? Maybe Vanni's a hit man. I never heard of him, but that doesn't mean he isn't.”

Mulheisen found that an interesting notion. He told Deane that he would send him a post-mortem photograph of the dead man to check against his files, and he asked Deane to run a check on Vanni for possible mob connections.

Jimmy Marshall stopped by just as Mulheisen was struggling into his coat. He asked Mulheisen if there was anything he could do to help on the investigation. “I'm off for a couple
days,” he explained. Mulheisen considered it. He could see that Marshall was young and eager, probably ambitious. It wasn't unusual for a young patrolman to volunteer for extra work. It wasn't exactly “brown nosing” Mulheisen couldn't stand that. But he and Marshall both knew that if the younger man was going to rise in the force, he was going to need a “rabbi,” an older man who would act as a sort of sponsor. This would be especially true for a black man. Mulheisen thought wryly that his sponsorship would not endear Marshall to Buchanan. But perhaps he could help the kid.

Mulheisen told Jimmy about the medical examiner's theory that the dead man had been an athlete, possibly a swimmer. He suggested that Marshall take one of the postmortem photos and go to all the East Side gyms, YMCAs, athletic clubs—any place that had a swimming pool. Possibly, if John Doe had been in town for more than a day, he might have gone swimming.

Marshall practically ran out of the office.

Mulheisen got his four-year-old Checker out of the parking lot and drove out to Eight Mile Road. For much of its length, Eight Mile Road is the Detroit city limits. The Vanni Trucking Company was barely in the municipal jurisdiction, near Gratiot Avenue. It was a small wooden building on a large graveled lot, surrounded by a ten-foot cyclone fence. In the front of the lot there was a dormant excavation with a bulldozer parked in it and a large yellow front loader sitting idle by a pile of dirt.

A couple of automobiles were parked in front of the office building, and off to one side there were several automobiles and pickup trucks—evidently belonging to the drivers of the Vanni trucks. None of the trucks remained in the lot; they were all out on the job, Mulheisen supposed.

Mulheisen went into the little building and found himself in a single room divided by a low railing, so that there was a kind of lobby, beyond which were two desks—a large one for Vanni and a smaller one for Mandy Cecil. The lobby was
obviously a place for the drivers to mill around and drink coffee from a big urn. Like the rest of the office, it was in imminent danger of being overrun by boxes of office supplies and filing cabinets. Clearly, the Vanni Trucking Company was a business that was rapidly outgrowing its quarters.

Vanni was on the telephone when Mulheisen entered, arguing volubly with someone about “down time” and “fleet prices.” Mulheisen didn't mind; it gave him an opportunity to appreciate Mandy Cecil. He decided that raincoats were terrible things, although last night he had considered hers rather fetching. This morning she was wearing a one-piece jumper/slacks outfit in soft, form-fitting wool, with a long-sleeved blouse that had ruffles in the front and buttoned all the way up to the neck. It sounds prim and demure but it had an opposite effect. The form it fitted was worth fitting.

Mandy Cecil was one of those women who give an impression of greater physical stature than they actually possess. She appeared to be tall and statuesque, but closer inspection revealed a somewhat busty, slender woman of average height. The main attraction was the fiery red hair that accented the fine ivory complexion of her lovely face.

Mandy Cecil smiled pleasantly at Mulheisen and continued to type. Vanni waved and continued to talk on the telephone. Mulheisen was content to sit and watch Mandy Cecil.

When he had finished his telephone conversation, Vanni came through the little gate in the railing and shook Mulheisen's hand. He led Mulheisen outside, where, he said with a nod in Cecil's direction, “We can be more private.”

“You need a bigger office,” Mulheisen said.

“We're building one,” Vanni said, gesturing toward the excavation. “It'll be about four times the size of our present quarters, all stone and glass.” He turned and waved a hand at several vacant lots that lay behind and to one side of the fenced-in area. “And I've bought some space there, so I can park more trucks, when I get them.”

Mulheisen nodded at the idle excavation equipment. “What's holding things up?” he asked.

“The usual,” Vanni said, “getting the financing, arguing with the architect and the contractor, and not enough time. But we'll get at it before long.”

“You seem to be doing all right,” Mulheisen said.

“Not bad,” Vanni said with obvious pride. “I don't like to brag, but not many guys my age have come this far. And seven years ago I didn't even know how to drive a truck. Do I look like a truck driver?”

Mulheisen had to admit that Vanni did not. He was a tall, slender man with heavy black hair and a stylishly drooping mustache. It gave him a dashing look that went well with his strong, straight nose and flashing white teeth. Vanni dressed well. He wore a turtleneck sweater under a blue-and-white hound's-tooth jacket. His trousers were modestly flared and his shoes looked like $100 Italian.

Jerry Vanni was clean. He was so well shaved and scrubbed that he exuded an air of expensive soap and lotion. If Mulheisen had had to guess the man's occupation, he might have said “television producer.”

“I rarely drive a truck anymore,” Vanni said. “Only when a driver is sick and I can't get a relief man. I've got twenty-two double-tandem gravel trains now. We're hauling on that new interstate highway, plus I'm finishing up a runway contract at Selfridge Air Base.”

“You did all this in seven years?” Mulheisen asked.

“It's not that fabulous,” Vanni admitted. “The overhead is out of sight—you wouldn't believe what just one of those trucks costs, and fuel and maintenance are sky-high. They burn gas like a goddamn 747. But I take very little out of the business. Well, I bought a little cabin cruiser—Lenny and I went halves on it—but I still live in my parents’ home, for instance.”

“Your parents still live there, on Collins? I thought you said you lived alone?” Mulheisen asked.

“My parents died seven years ago,” Vanni said. “A head-on
collision. They left me the house and some insurance money.”

“Was your father in trucking?” Mulheisen asked.

“Oh, no. He worked at Dodge Main, in Hamtramck. Worked on the assembly line for almost thirty years.”

“So how did you get into trucking?”

“After the folks died I dropped out of Michigan State and just sort of moped around,” Vanni said. “Then a neighbor of mine got on my case, said I ought to get busy. He got me a job with a landscaper in Grosse Pointe. I had some money, so I bought an old dump truck and started hauling peat moss for the landscaper. Then I put in a bid for a city street job, hauling sand, and I got it. Next thing I know, I've bought a half a dozen used trucks and I've got some employees. Before you know it” —he gestured around him—"here I am. Lately I've been branching out into other things.”

“Like what?” Mulheisen asked. He had lit up a fresh cigar and was perfectly happy to lean against Vanni's car on this sunny, crisp October morning and listen to tales of success.

“Last spring I won a jukebox in a poker game,” Vanni said. “No kidding. This guy puts up a jukebox and I lay down three jacks. He had the jukebox in the Eastgate Lounge, over on Seven Mile. So I go in to check the machine out—you know, it's like a joke or something, right? Only the box is full of money! So I say to myself, Wait a minute, big fella! I start checking out the details of the business and I see right away that it's a license to coin money. So I bought some more machines, plus some cigarette machines. I've been living in this area all my life, everybody knows me, I get along. So pretty soon a lot of the bars around here put my machines in. But it takes up a lot of time. That's why I set up a new business: Vanni Vending. My buddy—you met him last night—Lenny DenBoer, he's going to run it. And Mandy, she's the secretary-treasurer.”

“You've known her for a long time?” Mulheisen asked.

“Ever since she was a skinny little hillbilly kid. Her and me and Lenny used to play in the fields down on Mack and
Conners, where that shopping center and everything is now. I never thought she'd grow up to look like that, believe me. She was skinny, and tough! Outrun most boys and beat the hell out of them if they caught her. She had a Kentucky accent you wouldn't believe.”

“How long has she been working for you?”

“Not long. I lost track of her in high school. I went to Servite and she went to Southeastern. Then I think she got married or something. Then I guess, like she said last night, she was in the Army, for Christ's sake! Anyway, I bumped into her about three months ago. She was looking for a job. I had a secretary, but I let her go and hired Mandy. Believe me, the other gal was nothing compared to Mandy. Actually, Mandy's too smart to be a secretary. That's why I put her into the vending operation, as an officer.”

“This vending business is interesting,” Mulheisen said thoughtfully, “in the context of the shooting last night.”

“How so?” Vanni said.

“I understand that operations like this have been infiltrated by the mob,” Mulheisen said.

“I don't know about that,” Vanni said. “The Teamsters Union has put some pressure on. But so far I'm not big enough for them to bother with. Maybe if the business expands, I might have to deal with them.”

“What kind of pressure?” Mulheisen asked.

“There's this guy from the Teamsters, or says he's from the Teamsters. I'm not sure. His name is Sonny something or other—I forget his last name. I see him at Forest Lanes, once in a while. He was bugging me a couple weeks ago about joining the union. I thought he was kidding. I laughed at him and he got pissed.”

“Sonny DeCrosta,” Mulheisen said. “He's got some kind of mob connection, but I don't know what it is. I don't know anything about this Teamsters routine. But what's this about a union? Don't you already have a union?”

“Sure, for my drivers,” Vanni said. “No, this DeCrosta guy was talking about a vendors’ union.”

“Vending machines need a union?”

“The Teamsters have organized vending-machine operators,” Vanni said. “But the way I look at it, I'm not an employee, I'm an owner. And Len and Mandy are officers of the company. Take, for instance, the trucking company: me and Lenny and Mandy don't belong to the drivers’ union, do we? Ah, it's just another shakedown, if you ask me. My dad was a union man all his life; I'm not against unions. But this, this is just a racket. The trouble is, the vendor is vulnerable, if you know what I mean. You can't be everywhere at once, can you? I've heard these guys, if you don't join the union, they go around and screw up your machines. They fill them up with slugs, or break them somehow. But I haven't had any trouble so far.”

Mulheisen made a mental note to discuss this with Andy Deane, at Racket Conspiracy. “I'm still trying to figure an angle on this gunman, Vanni. Maybe DeCrosta is involved. I'll check it out. Now, what about DenBoer?”

“I don't know anything about any gunman, Sergeant,” Vanni said crossly. “As for Lenny, he's my oldest friend. He's been working for me for years and now I've just made him executive vice president of the vending company. I don't see any connection between him and last night's incident. You keep saying ‘gunman,’ but as far as I can see, the guy was just a thief who broke into my garage.”

“I'm not accusing anybody of anything,” Mulheisen pointed out calmly. “But the fact is, that guy was no ordinary burglar. He had a gun and I think he meant to use it. We turned up no evidence that the man tampered with anything in the garage, yet he was in there for at least ten minutes. He could have loaded up your van and driven away in that time. Instead, he just stands around. What was he waiting for? I'd say he was waiting for you. But you say you've never seen him before. And a half-hour later you show up with DenBoer and Miss Cecil. I don't think it's unnatural for me to wonder if there's a connection between this gunman and DenBoer.”

“You'll have to ask DenBoer that,” Vanni said.

“I will,” Mulheisen promised. “Where is he?”

“He's out checking a project for me,” Vanni said, smiling strangely. Then he frowned. “There is one thing . . .”

“What's that?” Mulheisen asked.

“Well, when Lenny came into the company, just as a matter of course we got this ‘key man’ insurance policy. It insures each of the officers for fifty thousand dollars, but the company is the beneficiary. It's part of our regular group insurance. I can't see anyone knocking off me, or Len, just so the company is fifty thousand dollars richer.”

“Are you the sole owner of the two companies, or is it a public corporation?”

“The trucking company and the vending company are both wholly owned subsidiaries of a holding company called Vanni Services, Incorporated. I own most of the stock, but Lenny has some and so does Mandy. I see what you're driving at, Mulheisen, but if I die that doesn't necessarily improve Lenny's position. In my will I've left my stock to various relatives, some to Lenny and some to Mandy. But I don't think he'd be in a position to take over the company. Anyway, why are we talking like this! It's ridiculous. Lenny's my best friend.”

Mulheisen agreed that DenBoer didn't seem to have much of a motive for hiring a killer. “There isn't anyone you know of, then, who would want to kill you? You said something about jealous husbands last night.”