Dead Bang Read online

“I’ll be back,” he said, but missed the chance—by inflection—to make it a joke. He left.

  I stole glances at the monitor until I saw Van Huis step into the elevator. “Restroom?” I said, as I stood, leaving the magazine open on the chair as if to save my place.

  “Down the hall on the left.”

  Down the hall and on the right, I took the stairwell. The doors from the stairwell to individual floors turned out to be locked. I ended up stepping out into a lime-green basement hallway. Exit signs led me to the garage below the federal building. I waded through government sedans to a door that opened into the parking ramp beneath the city/county building. The city/county ramp dipped under the bank building and led to a set of double-glass doors opening into a small shopping mall with an exit to Crescent Street. I crossed Crescent Street, entered the Waters Building, and hustled to Pete Finney’s office.

  “Art Hardin for Pete Finney,” I said to the slim twenty-something siren posted at the reception desk.

  “Mr. Finney is with a client,” she said. The placard on her desk read CELESTE. With raven hair and burnished umber skin, she made a fantastic Celeste. The flap front of her red-wool suit jacket fastened at the shoulder with a single gold straight pin.

  “Could you at least let him know I’m here, Celeste?”

  “Marianne,” she said. “Celeste is at lunch.” She flipped her hair with her hand. “I’ve seen you on the news.” She wrote “Art Hardin” in floral swirls on a yellow sticky-note. “Mr. Finney doesn’t like to be disturbed, but I can put this note on his door and he’ll see it when he comes out.” She smiled.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  She rose from the desk and revealed a flash of ruffled white blouse under the jacket that didn’t quite meet her pleated skirt. Her long black hair swayed in counterpoint to her hips under her just-to-the-knee skirt. I wondered if I looked like I was eating ice cream again.

  The oak paneling in Finney’s outer office made his furniture look cheap—which it was. I’d helped him rescue it from a South Division mission store. I settled into the corner of a black vinyl settee and sorted a battered copy of Popular Mechanics from magazines piled on a glass-topped coffee table.

  Halfway through an article about scramjet airliners that skipped across the atmosphere, I heard Pete’s voice summon me from the hallway.

  “Arthur,” he said, discarding the “r” and pronouncing it “author.” He held the door and motioned me into his office. Coatless, he wore red suspenders over a blue cotton shirt, loose at the neck, with the cuffs turned up. “I have just a moment.”

  I hustled past Marianne and answered her smile with a nod as I passed. “I have at least two police agencies scouring the planet for me.”

  “Who?” asked Finney.

  “Archer Flynt from the attorney general’s office and Van Huis from Kentwood.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Shot some crazy woman at lunch yesterday and ran away from a home-invasion robbery last night.”

  “And that’s it?” asked Finney, looking up from a file open in his hands.

  “Recently,” I said.

  Pete followed me into his office and pulled the door shut after us. “I talked to the prosecutor this morning. He’s of the mind to settle the matter without charges as long as you surrender your weapon and your concealed carry permit.”

  “Not happening.”

  “So the answer is no?”

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  “My investigator works without a pistol,” said Pete.

  “You’re on your third investigator,” I said. “And every time the shit hits the fan, you call me.”

  Pete rolled down his cuffs and cinched up his tie. “I have a motion in fifteen minutes. I’ll tell the prosecutor that you have refused his offer. If he asks where you are, I shall have to tell him.” Pete peeled his suit coat off the back of his chair. “If the authorities turn up before I get back,” said Finney as he shrugged into his jacket, “not one word.”

  “Maybe I can talk them out of it,” I said.

  “Please do,” said Pete. “I have my eye on a Boxster. Thought I would trade the Miata.”

  “Mum’s the word.”

  “Spirits are in the cabinet,” said Pete as he slipped his file into the half-bushel black satchel he used as a briefcase. “Don’t muddle about the things on the desk.” He left.

  In the cabinet, I found a small fridge and a wet bar. Pete had a very nice bourbon and a single-malt scotch. The fridge housed imported beer and orange soda. I went with the soda, kicked off my boots, and stretched out on his sofa. This one was leather.

  • • •

  Pete Finney clattered through his office door, shambled over to his desk, and dropped his satchel on the floor with a thud. Loosening his tie, he said, “Detective Van Huis and Detective Flynt are in the hallway.” He made it sound like, “Boil the water before you drink it.”

  I swung my feet down to the floor and wiped the fog out of my eyes with the heels of my hands. Pete slipped out of his suit coat, draped it over the back of his chair, and asked, “Are you wearing your pistol?”

  “No, sir, I am not,” I said. “They have enough of my hardware.” I took off my jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. “You can tell ‘em to come in.”

  Finney climbed into his chair and scooted up to his desk. “Not just yet, Arthur. I told them we needed a few minutes to confer.”

  “They went for that?”

  “They don’t have a warrant,” said Finney.

  I took the straight-back chair across from Finney. “They hounded me out of my office and camped out at my house.”

  “They want you to say something that will establish probable cause for them to seek a warrant.”

  “We covered it all yesterday.”

  “This doesn’t concern the shooting at the restaurant,” said Finney. “The prosecutor has elected not to pursue charges at this time.”

  “What brought that on?” I asked.

  “The Shatner woman killed her mother and left a note,” said Finney.

  “Heard that on the radio on the way to work.”

  “The man she shot at the restaurant was a bank fraud investigator. The pregnant woman was his daughter. She worked at the restaurant. Her father had an office in the bank across the parking lot. He visited her at lunchtime just about every day. The Shatner woman’s note named them as targets and promised that she would keep killing people until the police stopped her.”

  “What put the burr under her saddle?”

  Finney flopped a yellow pad on the desk and uncapped his fountain pen. “We have a more pressing matter. Tell me about John Vincenti.”

  “Name’s familiar, but nothing comes to mind.”

  Finney rolled his eyes up from the pad. “Jack the Lookout Vincenti?”

  “That John Vincenti?”

  “Exactly,” said Finney.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “The police are in the hallway, Arthur.” He raised his head. “They are quite serious.”

  “That son of a bitch!”

  “Vincenti?”

  “Mark Behler, Channel Six,” I said. “He was picking at that old sore when we had lunch, right before the lady went nuts and shot up the place.”

  Finney folded his hands on the desk. “Then we need to talk about John Vincenti.”

  John Vincenti, bookmaker and sometimes Teamster organizer, had taken two in the ticker and one in the mouth with a canary chaser. “Last time I saw him, he looked real dead,” I said.

  Finney rocked bolt-upright in his chair. His face drained of expression, leaving the ice-cube countenance he used on his what-kind-of-a-deal-can-you-get-me? clients.

  “This is thirty years ago,” I said.

  “Arthur, you know as well as I do that there is no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  Pete’s face thawed a little. “Do you know who killed Joh
n Vincenti?”

  “No,” I said. “Couple of guys drove up and dropped his dead body in the middle of a surveillance I was on. I just took some pictures.”

  “So you called the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  Pete poised his pen over his yellow pad. “Which department?”

  “The City of Hamtramck and the City of Detroit.”

  Pete made a note. Without looking up he said, “Flynt and Van Huis are in the hallway with a photo of two men supporting John Vincenti between them. Your fingerprint is on the photo.”

  “I handled the photographs,” I said with a nod, trying for the ring of sweet innocence.

  Pete looked up and dropped his pen on the pad. “What is the part you are not telling me?”

  “I knew who it was.”

  “And?” asked Pete.

  “I called my detail commander. He said it was a local law-enforcement matter—told me to break off and do the surveillance after the locals had tidied up.”

  Pete wrinkled his forehead. “What is a detail commander?”

  “I was still working for Uncle Sam.”

  “And so?”

  “And so I signed a piece of paper that said I would keep my mouth shut for fifty years, or they could lock me up at Fort Leavenworth, without a trial.”

  “Does that have anything to do with the death of John Vincenti?” asked Pete.

  “No,” I said.

  Pete rocked back in his chair. “So you gave your name to the police?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why?” asked Pete studying his pad.

  “I couldn’t tell them I was watching a dead-drop mailbox.”

  “A what?”

  “See,” I said. “That’s the deal. Cops ask questions like that. So, I called the Hamtramck Police and told them there was a drunk passed out on the bus bench on Dunn Road.” I felt myself shrug. “The buses don’t run after six at night and the air was pretty chilly.”

  “Do you remember the name you used?”

  “Jesus Christ, Pete,” I said. “No, I didn’t give a name. It was, like, anonymous. Like when you don’t give ‘em a name, Pete. Same, like, when I dropped off the photos. Anonymous.”

  “You should have given them your name,” said Pete.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You said you called the Detroit Police,” said Pete.

  “Yes, I did. And no, I didn’t give them my name.”

  “Why did you call the Detroit Police?”

  “Very long story.”

  Pete glanced at the door. “Perhaps, just the salient points.”

  “Hamtramck cops showed up and dragged the body across Dunn Road to the bus bench on the Detroit side.”

  Pete gave me the big-eyes-and-blank-face stare he uses in place of yelling, “Bullshit, sailor!” Finally he said, “They did what?”

  “They dragged the body across the street and parked it on the bus bench.”

  “Rubbish!”

  I planted my left palm on his desk and raised my right palm over my head. “I was there, counselor.”

  “Why on earth would they do that?” asked Pete, his face still undecided.

  “Pete,” I said, “it’s like Dunn Road is the border between Hamtramck and Detroit. It was dark. And this is just a guess, but, you know, if they left the body on the Detroit side, it wasn’t their problem anymore.”

  Pete rested his bearded chin in his hand and said, “So you sent the pictures to the Detroit Police?”

  “No.”

  “I can hardly wait,” said Pete.

  “Well, I told the Detroit cops the same story I told Hamtramck.”

  “And I suppose they came and dragged the body back across the street to Hamtramck.”

  “Wasn’t a ‘they,’” I said. “Just one guy. Like, maybe, the patrol sergeant, something like that.”

  Pete closed his eyes. I could see his eyeballs moving around as if searching for notes written on the inside of his lids. After a moment, he inhaled sharply, opened his eyes, and asked, “What do the numbers and letters written on the back of the photograph mean?”

  “That’s the license plate number of the car that dropped off the body.”

  “Rubbish!”

  I shook my head.

  “One last question?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “To whom were the photographs given?”

  “I left them with the desk sergeant in Hamtramck,” I said. “He said the detective was Helen, Harriet, something like that. It was thirty years ago. I don’t recall the last name—probably come to me if I don’t think about it.”

  “A Helen or Harriet at the Hamtramck Police?”

  “Yes.”

  Finney slipped his notepad into the top drawer of his desk. “I think we are ready for the detectives,” he said. “Keep your answers to ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ I will do the explaining. And do not wander into the part about dragging the body across the street.”

  “I didn’t want to tell the story at all,” I said. “Mark Behler is the one stirring up the stink on this one.”

  “And how much did you tell Mark Behler?”

  “Stonewalled him—except about the nickname, Jack the Lookout, but he already knew that.”

  Pete rubbed his palms together on the way to the door. He swung the door wide and said, “Gentlemen, please come in.”

  Van Huis and Flynt swooped through the door, their overcoats on the flap and fly like the capes of comic book heroes. Van Huis’s face glowed red over tight jaws. Flynt played a game face and insisted on patting me down.

  “Where are your shoes?” he asked.

  “By the sofa,” I said.

  They declined to sit down. Flynt searched my boots. Van Huis produced a pocket-sized tape recorder and played Mark Behler’s tape.

  “Look,” said Flynt. “Cooperate with us on this matter, and things may work out a lot better than you think. We can tell the judge how much you helped.”

  I looked at Finney.

  Finney said, “Frankly, gentlemen, unless you have more tape than you have played for us, you simply haven’t a case. Mr. Hardin conveyed information that was, as he said, available from public sources and probably common knowledge in Detroit in those days.” He smiled. “Thirty years ago.”

  Flynt’s hand shot to the breast pocket of his suit coat. He produced a clear plastic evidence bag and smacked it on the desk. It contained the photo I’d taken of the two men carrying Jack the Lookout Vincenti to the bus bench. The picture had not faded and framed a thumbprint that had been dusted white.

  “Maybe Mr. Hardin would like to explain how his fingerprints got on this picture.” He bent at the waist and pushed his face in front of mine. “Like to keep a little trophy, do you?”

  I backed my head up as far as I could. “Whoa,” I said. Flynt’s breath would have poleaxed an ox at ten paces. “What did you eat for lunch?”

  Finney turned the bag and photo over. “I think that you will find that the handwriting on the back of the photograph is Mr. Hardin’s as well.”

  Flynt snapped his head to look at Finney and then straightened up. “Wha-what?”

  “Yes, I believe this is a license number. The license number of a vehicle involved in the matter you are investigating.”

  “Oh,” said Flynt.

  “Yes,” said Finney. “This is one of several photos Mr. Hardin provided the Hamtramck Police.” He grinned. “Do you have the rest?”

  Van Huis fixed his hot glower on Flynt.

  “Who did you give the pictures to?” asked Flynt.

  “Mr. Hardin cannot be precise due to the intervening thirty years but recalls the detective’s first name to be Helen or Harriet.”

  Flynt produced his pocket notepad. “I’ll look into that,” he said, his face beginning to glow red.

  “Tell me, Detective Flynt,” said Finney, sounding casual, “do you often use a journalist as a stalking horse in your investigations?”

  Flynt left a card.r />
  • • •

  The elevator door opened, and I walked straight into Detective Van Huis’s pointed finger. He said, “You played me.”

  “Archer Flynt played you,” I said.

  “Flynt’s a good cop. You’re a smart ass.”

  “Jerry, I did everything I said I was going to do. You left your office. The desk sergeant expected you back, but you told me you’d be gone until after the weekend. I left a card.”

  Van Huis jerked the card out of his shirt pocket and flicked it at me. “Cute!”

  I pinched the card from the floor and had to put my hand on the elevator door to keep it from sliding closed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me my pistol isn’t ready to pick up,” I said as I stepped into the lobby.

  “State police still have it. They’re shooting it for ballistic tests today.”

  “So everything I told you was true, and everything you told me was a lie—and you’re pissed?”

  “It’s not lying,” said Van Huis. “It’s a permissible deception.”

  “Ah!” I said. “Technique.” I started toward the door.

  “Don’t get smug, Hardin.” Van Huis took a couple of quick strides to catch up and fell in step. “So what did you do, sit in the parking lot till I left?”

  “In the bank parking lot on the corner there on Breton.”

  Van Huis shook his head. “Hardin. Honest to God.” He laughed, and we took a couple of steps in silence. Van Huis shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “You have any idea how much time I wasted looking for your sorry ass?”

  “How’d you get involved in this, anyway?”

  “Your office is in our jurisdiction,” said Van Huis. “Flynt touched base with us, the chief mentioned the Behler tape, and here I am chasing my tail.”

  “You were at the FBI.”

  Van Huis stopped. I turned to look at him and said, “I was in the chair behind the door at the FBI. You didn’t tell the agent who you were looking for. If you’d have come all the way in the door, all I could have said was, ‘Gee, I thought you were out of town.’”

  Van Huis’s face deflated until his cheeks drooped.

  “Come on, Jerry,” I said. “You were walking on my heels all morning. I never thought you’d look for me at the Federal Building.”

  We started for the door again. “Ryan Kope, over at Wyoming PD, had a copy of the state police bulletin on you,” said Van Huis. “He called me after your little chat on the telephone. Said you asked about someone they’d turned over to the FBI.”