Hit on the House (7 page)

Seven

T
he Sunday before his dinner engagement with the Landes, Mulheisen was home alone. He still lived in the house where he'd been born. It was an old farmhouse on a quiet country lane, near the town of St. Clair Flats, some twenty miles from Detroit. It was against regulations not to live in the city, but like many other Detroit policemen he avoided the regulation by maintaining accommodations in the city, actually a kind of crash pad he shared with some other detectives. It frequently came in handy, and the caretaker, a cranky hillbilly from Tennessee named Speed, was adept at parrying departmental phone calls.

Mulheisen had lived at the apartment for a year or so, but he had eventually found that his colleagues had uses for the apartment that interfered with his peace and quiet, to say nothing of his own amours. There were only two bedrooms and that wasn't always enough. He found himself spending weekends at the old homestead, where his mother still lived. Soon he was leaving his laundry and then keeping a few books and records there. His mother said she was glad of the company, but they saw little of each other. She was active in Eastern Star and was an avid bird-watcher besides. Finally he had just moved back in.

On this weekend Cora Mulheisen was off on an Audubon jaunt. He was pretty sure she had said they were going to Point Pelee, Ontario, in the hope of catching the early migration. He was engrossed in a book
about General Hull, who had surrendered the fort at Detroit to the British in 1812 without a shot being fired. But somehow Mulheisen's mind wandered, and he found himself thinking about Bonny Wheeler.

He sat in an old easy chair by the window of his room, looking out across the field toward the St. Clair River channel. The ice had gone out some days earlier, and there were a couple of Great Lakes ships passing, one of them displaying the black bear of Algoma Steel on its funnel.

He wondered if he still had a special picture of Bonny Wheeler. He smiled. Surely it was still around somewhere, although he hadn't looked at it in twenty years. He looked in the closet for a couple of old boxes filled with his old stuff. Then he remembered that when he'd gone into the air force, his mother had made him move it all up to the attic. The idea of poking around in a dusty attic wasn't appealing. To heck with it, he decided.

He went downstairs and sliced thick slabs off a cold roast beef and made a sandwich on rye bread with thin slices of onion, slathered it with Dijon mustard, and added some Canadian Black Diamond cheddar. He put too much salt on the beef for a man of his age and weight, but it tasted delicious with the fresh coffee he drank as he reread the Sunday sports section. Spring training had begun, and the Tigers’ management was trumpeting a thirty-seven-year-old ex-National League third baseman, whom they'd picked up on waivers and was going to help them win the pennant—clearly a smoke screen for the fact that they had almost no front line pitching. Then he said, “Aw, what the hell,” and went up to the attic.

There were a lot of interesting things up there, and he was amused to see that it was all neatly stacked and dusted. In one corner was his stuff: hockey skates and sticks, weathered duck decoys, fishing rods, a stick-and-paper model of a B-17 bomber, and an old aquarium. And many boxes. He looked into one and found it was full of school textbooks. After a few minutes he found what he was looking for in another box. He took the tattered magazine over to the light and opened it to the centerfold. Bonny Wheeler sprawled in all her glory.

In the article that accompanied the photo spread, she was referred to as Connie Ryder, from Windsor, Ontario. She named her favorite
band—the Beatles—and said she enjoyed skiing and popcorn and playing with her kid brother. She said she was excited about her upcoming screen test. Mulheisen knew Bonny had never had a brother, and he wondered if she'd actually had a screen test; he wondered what, in fact, was a screen test.

The issue of the magazine had come out just a few months after Mulheisen had enlisted in the air force. He'd been stunned by the picture, and he'd excitedly told the other guys in his first outfit that he knew the girl. He was able to provide enough factual-sounding material about the real Connie Ryder for the guys to believe him, and she had quickly become the favorite pinup of the Thirtieth Air Division, NORAD. This centerfold was all over the base. Looking at it now, he tried to recall even one of the fantasies he'd had about Bonny. But they were too deeply buried in the sediment of the past. He seemed to recall that he had grown tired of the picture and had deliberately (he thought) forgotten her.

But, oh, what a body! All the guys had marveled—“Could this be real?” Could there really be breasts like that, so round, so firm, so perfectly projected? Were there legs so long and so magnificently tapered? A waist so tiny? Surely not. It must be the product of a photographer's craft, although the lush perfection of the buttocks and the monumental breasts seemed more the work of a cartoonist. Not that Bonny wasn't a terrific-looking woman. That had long been bountifully evident, although she hadn't been particularly popular in high school. He thought it had something to do with her downbeat personality, but she hadn't really bloomed yet either. Until the magazine had shocked him, Mulheisen had not imagined that she looked quite like this. And perhaps, after all, she didn't.

He felt unaccountably sad, looking at the picture. It didn't affect him at all as he'd expected. It was hardly erotic. He wondered if he was getting old. Hell, he was only forty. But it was more than that, he knew. The picture implied a way of looking at women that he no longer endorsed. All the pictures of the women in this magazine had a foolish innocence about them, despite an implied depravity. The girls, as they were invariably called, Bonny among them, grinned and postured in artificial, ludicrous ways that had nothing to do with decadence. They
looked altogether too healthy and too wholesome for sin. Mulheisen considered that the sadness he felt had something to do with an embarrassment for the indignity of the posturing, as if a matronly housewife had been found playing with dolls.

He stuffed the magazine back into the box and put it away where his mother had stored it. Then he went gratefully back to General Hull and the fall of Detroit.

“W
hat I wanta know is how come inna eyes?” Lande asked. His wife squirmed and looked bleakly down at her gnocchi.

Mulheisen sipped Chianti. He shrugged and took a bite of lasagna. This little restaurant was not even locally famous, but the food was good. It was the kind of place that made one realize what food should taste like before it deserved to be dubbed gourmet.

“I mean, is it s'posed to mean something? Some kinda warning? ‘Don't be too nosy’ or something?” Lande persisted.

“He used a .22,” Mulheisen said. “Sometimes a .22 doesn't penetrate . . . it doesn't always kill. I think he was just making sure they were dead, and he figured a bullet had a natural route to the brain through the eye socket.”

Bonny lowered her fork and held her napkin to her mouth. She looked at Mulheisen with disappointment.

“I'm sorry,” Mulheisen said. He reached across the table and touched her arm. “Are you all right?”

She smiled bravely. “I'm all right. But I think I will excuse myself for a moment.”

“Of course.” Mulheisen stood as she got up and walked away. Lande looked up with surprise.

“Now what?” he asked. “Jeez, I never seen such a broad for a squeegee stomach.”

“A what?” Mulheisen said.

“You know, squeegee tummy . . . like she's alla time wantin’ to puke. She ain't herself lately.”

“Queasy?” Mulheisen offered.

“Whatever. Say, since she's gone . . .” He leaned an elbow on the table and casually gestured with his sauce-stained fork, “I thought I oughta ast . . . you two didn't have a thing . . . when you was kids, I mean?”

Mulheisen looked at him with amazement. “You're kidding!” But then he raised a single brow and said, “If we did, would I tell you?”

Lande grinned. “Ha, ha! Hey, it's OK! I can han'le it. It don't mean nothin’ to me, but I didn't wanta maybe make a joke or something and find out it ain't funny.” He resumed eating his spaghetti.

“See, I know all about Bonny,” Lande said, slurping up strands of spaghetti and chewing vigorously. “The centerfold and everything. It don't bother me. She's a hell of a wooman, right? I like that. I like a wooman who looks good to other guys. I mean, she better not cheat on me . . . I'd kill her! Uh-oh, I didn't mean that. I forgot the comp'ny I'm in. But I'd beat the living shit oudda her.”

He said it as a matter of course, not viciously or jesting. Mulheisen took him at his word. He sipped Chianti and tried to look patient.

“One thing you gotta admit,” Lande went on, “Bonny looks like a million bucks, but she ain't no genius, if you know what I mean. She thinks with her ass.”

“That'll do,” Mulheisen said quietly.

Lande's head came up sharply. He caught the tone in which it was said. He looked warily at Mulheisen, then nodded. “I just mean that she's, uh . . .”He struggled to find a word, waving his fork in desperation, tiny droplets of tomato sauce spotting the linen. Mulheisen drew back but said nothing.

“Gub—golly-something,” Lande floundered.

“Gullible?”

“Is that like she believes everything she hears? It is? I thought so. I mean, I don't blame her if she got kinda screwed up. It ain't really her fault, right? Because she's so gubbil—gubbible.”

Mulheisen frowned. “I'm not familiar with Bonny's history,” he said.

“Well, sure you are. I mean, you seen the foldout, right? Every little jack-off in the country seen that. But I guess you mean after. Yeah, well, she kinda kicked around. I met her in Vegas myself. She was a
whatchacallit, a hostess. Nothin’ dirty. Well, pro'ly not a real, you know, professional. She just passed out drinks. But that's all over, see. That's what I'm driving at.”

“I get it.” Mulheisen picked at his salad. He sipped Chianti.

“Jeez, this is shit,” Lande said abruptly and pushed the remains of the spaghetti away. He wiped most of the sauce off his bushy mustache, then shook out a cigarette and lit it.

Bonny returned looking better. Perhaps under the influence of her husband's remarks, Mulheisen couldn't help noticing how good she looked. She wore a silk flower-print wrap dress with a plunging neckline. The cleavage was deep, and Mulheisen unconsciously took a deep breath.

She immediately began to apologize, but neither man paid any attention to what she said, and she stopped in mid-apology. “Well,” she continued brightly, “isn't this nice! We're so glad you could come, Mul. Gene and I owe so much to you.” She looked pointedly at her husband.

“Right,” Lande responded, puffing on his cigarette while Bonny picked at some manicotti that had grown cold. “You sure saved my tookis, Mul. I mighta been in that room till morning, or else they'da pro'ly thrown me back in with the jigs. Christ, what with all the pukin’ and pissin’ I don't know if I coulda taken that.”

Bonny sighed and pushed her food away.

“I'm sorry you were inconvenienced,” Mulheisen said.

“I'd like to pay you back,” Lande said.

“Pay us back! You were the one who was put out. I apologize, Lande. It doesn't happen often, but there's no excuse for it. Anyway, I hope I made it clear—”

“I know, I know.” Lande made calming gestures. “You cops are allus making a big show oudda how straight you are. But I got a feeling if you wasn't there and if Bonny didn't know you, I'da been gagging on my grub for a week. Mosta these cops, they just wanta cover their ass. I'm glad Bonny turned out to know a real big shot for once.”

“Gene is just grateful,” Bonny said. “We both are, Mul. I'm sure he doesn't mean anything that would cause—”

“I ain't talkin’ about no bribe or nothin’. Don't get me wrong, Mul. Hell, I never had to pay a cop for nothin'! But if there's ever
anything I could do for ya, . . . you just say the word, and you got Gene Lande in your corner. Get me?”

Mulheisen smiled. “I know you mean well, and I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful, but there really isn't anything. Maybe if I ever buy a computer, you could give me some advice.”

“Gene knows everything about computers, Mul,” Bonny said eagerly. “He's a real genius.”

“Really?” Mulheisen said.

Lande made a show of modesty, pushing up his lower lip and wagging his head, but he couldn't sustain it. “Well, a lotta guys know computers, . . . but the troot is, most of ‘em, they just know what's in the manual.”

Mulheisen spread his lips in what might have been a grin, but there was a hint of malice when he said, “But you don't, eh?”

Lande didn't catch it. “The manual is for the workers,” he replied, “and as a great man once said, ‘Work is for saps.’ “

“What great man would that be?” Mulheisen asked.

“Edward G. Robinson . . .
Key Largo
.”

“You like gangsters, do you?”

“Inna movies,” Lande replied.

“That's where I like them,” Mulheisen said.

“Gene is nuts about old movies,” Bonny said, but they ignored her.