The Blind Pig (11 page)

Phelps was another tall one, and slender too, like a movie star, with close-cropped silver-gray hair. He had a hard face but it was a handsome one. He held out his left hand and gestured with the long fingers. Mulheisen took his meaning and dropped his identification folder into the hand. Phelps looked it over carefully, then lowered the .38, tossing the folder back. “Agent-in-charge Phelps,” he
said in his deep voice. “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.”

Mulheisen nodded and got out a cigar. He followed Phelps into Cecil's apartment. He looked around. It was an ordinary modern apartment, no doubt overpriced, with a living room, a tiny kitchenette with breakfast area, and a single bedroom. He gathered from the darkness beyond the picture window that Mandy had a good view of Lake St. Clair.

“You were the guy who called a little while ago,” Phelps said.

“That's right.” Mulheisen looked at him. “I saw you earlier this evening, down at Cadillac Gage.”

“You were there?” Phelps said. “I didn't notice.”

“My precinct,” Mulheisen pointed out. “At least, the derailment area is, and the Vernor tower. Cadillac Gage and the cemetery are in Connors Precinct.”

“That's nice,” Phelps said. “What's your interest in Cecil?”

“Unrelated, Phelps. Has to do with another case, also in my precinct.” Mulheisen had his cigar going by now. “She was supposed to meet me at eight o'clock this evening, but she didn't answer her phone. Actually, I was trying to break the date. But then I got kind of concerned. Especially when a man answered her telephone at two-thirty in the morning and wouldn't let me talk to her. I take it she isn't here?”

“No, she's not here,” Phelps said. Without saying so, his eyes made it clear that he wished that Mulheisen weren't there, either. “How much do you know about this Mandy Cecil?”

“This Mandy Cecil?” Mulheisen said. “Not much. She works for a trucking company and her boss is in a little trouble with the mob right now. I think she might have some information for me about the boss. No big deal, yet. Why is ATF interested in this Mandy Cecil?”

Phelps leaned back in the overstuffed easy chair, stretching his long legs out before him. He had the irritating mannerism of fixing one with his piercing gray eyes. Mulheisen didn't
like that game; he studied his cigar. After a long moment Phelps said, “I suppose you'll be in on District Inspector Weinberg's big briefing this morning?”

“I've been asked to attend,” Mulheisen said.

“No harm in telling you, then,” Phelps said. “Mandy Cecil is an ATF agent.”

“She what!”

Phelps smiled, obviously pleased by Mulheisen's surprise.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “We've had her on Vanni for about three or four months. She didn't tip herself to you? Good.”

“But, why in hell . . . if the ATF is after Vanni, why didn't you come to us, let us in on it? What's the point of all this goddamn secrecy?” Mulheisen was irritated.

“It's our experience that the police are not good at keeping secrets, Sergeant. No offense, I hope.”

“Oh, no offense. Why were you after Vanni?”

“Right to the point, eh?” Phelps said. “Well, I guess there's no harm telling you now, since you know so much already. The answer is guns.”

“Guns,” Mulheisen repeated.

“That's right. Several months ago a hundred M-16s disappeared from Selfridge Air Force Base. We think we know who the actual thief is, an air police sergeant. But we couldn't figure out how the hell he got the guns off the base. Their absence was noticed right away and the barracks were searched, as were all cars leaving the base. It's pretty hard to hide a hundred rifles, but they seemed to just vanish. Then we discovered that a couple of dump trucks had been seen in the vicinity of the base armory. They were hauling sand for a runway construction job. The two trucks were driven by Jerry Vanni and his partner, Leonard DenBoer. Next thing we find out is that this air policeman is a native Detroiter. He lives off base and he sometimes plays pool with a bunch of guys at a blind pig. One of the guys he plays pool with is Jerry Vanni.”

“I'm beginning to get a picture,” Mulheisen said.

“Right. So we still don't have anything on anybody. So we
look around for an underground agent, preferably one with a Detroit background. Bingo! Turns out we've got a woman in San Francisco who was from Detroit, and better yet, she actually knows the target, Vanni. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. Cecil's been on it ever since.”

“Only, lately she's disappeared,” Mulheisen said.

“Yeah. Now she's disappeared and we still don't have anything on Jerry Vanni. We were thinking of pulling her off pretty soon, if something didn't happen. Maybe something's happened.”

“You figure it has anything to do with this Cadillac Gage operation?” Mulheisen asked.

“Vanni? No. This sort of operation is far beyond him,” Phelps said, waving his hand dismissively. “No, we were thinking of a group of Cubans that I believe you met the other night with Miss Cecil.”

“You know about that?”

“I know a lot that you don't, Mulheisen,” Phelps said. “She mentioned it the last time she called in.”

“Where was she supposed to be tonight?”

“Don't know,” Phelps said. “I assume she was meeting with the Cubans again. At this juncture, since she hasn't returned, I'm prepared to go on the assumption that the Cubans have learned of her ATF affiliation and have acted accordingly.”

Mulheisen didn't like the sound of that. “What have you got on the Cubans?” he asked.

“We've got a full file on the three major figures: Angel DeJesus, Francisco Morazon and the Bolivian, Heitor Casa-bianco. We've got identifications and some information on the others, but they're not so important.”

Mulheisen thought back to the smoky poker room at Brandywine's. The bright-shirted Cubans sitting around the table with beers in hand, cigarillos dangling from mustached lips, their hair combed elaborately, and talking cheerfully of revolution. They looked like movie Mexicans. Surely murder and hijacking were not games for romantic poseurs.

“I know what you're thinking"—Phelps’ deep voice cut in—"but they're a serious group of men. And they have the skills. Morazon was a railroad engineer, you know. Do you know how he escaped?”

“Something about rowing a dinghy to Florida,” Mulheisen said.

“Oh, that. Well, the point is, Castro brought in a bunch of Russian railroad technicians to help the Cubans. The Russians were all diesel men, they'd never worked on steam engines before. Morazon took them on a little tour, then when he'd got up a good head of steam he came roaring back into the roundhouse at full speed—only, he bailed out. The Russians were all killed and the roundhouse was nearly destroyed, along with many of Cuba's remaining steam engines. Sound familiar?”

“Vaguely,” Mulheisen said. “I'm surprised the CIA didn't give him a medal.”

“The Russians just replaced all the steamers with diesel,” Phelps said. “It didn't help the cause that much. Anyway, Morazon's a devout Marxist. He wasn't against communism, just Castro and his Russians.”

“Sounds like a brave man,” Mulheisen said.

“He's a bold man, and a desperate one. He and DeJesus are fully capable of pulling off this thing, with a little help. Hell, when DeJesus left Havana with his MIG, he buzzed Castro's office!” Phelps laughed. “We like to think of them as harmless, ignorant peons, but they've got skills, guts and desire. And unless I'm dead wrong, they also have about a million dollars’ worth of Stoner rifles and ammo. Enough for a small army.”

“And they may have Mandy as well,” Mulheisen said softly.

“Could be,” Phelps agreed. “Though I reckon they've dumped her by now, if they're on to her.”

Mulheisen thought he'd never heard such a cold-blooded statement in his life.

“Of course, there's an alternative,” Phelps added. “She
could have turned. It's happened before, though usually in drugs, where there's a lot of ready cash involved. Sometimes, though, the agent starts to identify with his or her quarry. They get too close to them.”

“Who is Mandy close to here?” Mulheisen asked. “The Cubans? Or Vanni?”

“Not Vanni,” Phelps said. “Vanni's just a two-bit hustler, as far as I can tell. But the Cubans have a Cause. That's what makes them interesting. Impassioned men with a Cause.” Phelps said it with consummate cynicism.

“And Vanni doesn't come into it?” Mulheisen said.

“Not as far as I know,” Phelps said. “Oh, Cecil met the Cubans through him. They met at a blind pig. She didn't take them seriously—not seriously enough. She worked on the premise that the Cubans were trying to buy some guns, maybe some of those M-16s, from Vanni. But so far, she hadn't turned up anything definite along those lines.

“One of the Cubans, however, took a shine to her. DeJesus. He thinks he's God's gift to women, according to Cecil. She strung him along at our suggestion, hoping to penetrate their group. Sort of a spin-off from the Vanni investigation. It sometimes works that way.”

“I take it that these revolutionaries have vamoosed,” Mulheisen said.

Phelps nodded. “I admit I didn't connect them with the hijack at first, but as soon as it began to look like Cecil was missing I had every one of them checked out. Result: there isn't a one of them available in Detroit and all their friends and relatives are saying nothing. If that doesn't confirm that they're involved, I don't know what does.”

Mulheisen agreed. “So you don't have any leads right now?” he asked.

“I wouldn't say that,” Phelps insisted, sounding defensive. “Thanks to Cecil we've got a good list of everybody involved and we've got a substantial list of places that have to be checked. We'll get them, don't you worry. They may have pulled this just as slick as greased glass, but there's too many
of them. No discipline in the world can hold that big a gang together.”

“A pretty ruthless bunch, if it was them,” Mulheisen said. “I went to Vernor tower. There wasn't any reason to gun those men down.”

“Yeah, same with the poor bastards in the boxcar,” Phelps said. “Well, the
Free Press
has already received a statement—bogus, I believe—from a left-wing group calling itself the ‘Black American Red Army,’ and claiming credit for the raid.”

“ ‘The Black American Red Army'! That's pretty absurd, isn't it?”

“A dozen of them spring up every day. You have to take them seriously, no matter how childish they sound. The Symbionese Liberation Army sounded pretty childish until they got hold of some automatic rifles. That's what I don't like about this. All those guns floating around.” Phelps shook his head. “In this case, however, we think the Cubans faked this claim to put us off the scent until they can get the guns out of the country. In a way, I wouldn't mind letting them take them. It's better than having them on the street. All I'm hoping is that they didn't tumble to Cecil's cover and put her out of circulation.”

Mulheisen felt very gloomy. He was tired, exhausted even. He didn't like to think about Mandy Cecil lying in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in her head. But the longer she stayed gone, the worse it looked for her.

“What are you going to do about Vanni?” he asked Phelps.

“Nothing. What can we do? We don't have a case against him, as far as I know. And if we don't get Cecil back we sure as hell won't have any case. We're pretty sure he was involved with that air police sergeant, but we have nothing concrete on him. Naturally, we wanted to know his movements tonight, and that's originally why I tried to contact Cecil, thinking she'd know that, at least.”

Mulheisen told him about the B & E at Vanni's. “He said he had a date and I had no reason to question him,” Mulheisen
concluded, “but I'll get on him again, tomorrow—or today.”

“It sounds like he's in some kind of jam with the mob,” Phelps said finally. “We don't know what it is, and neither did Cecil. The burglar was probably one of theirs. Kind of odd, though, coming just at this time.”

Mulheisen had to agree with that. He asked Phelps about DenBoer.

Phelps scratched his chin thoughtfully. “We're not sure how much Vanni confided in DenBoer.” Mulheisen noticed that Phelps had a habit of saying “we” when he was uncertain, but “I” when he was on firmer ground.

“We think DenBoer is just a spear carrier for Vanni,” Phelps went on. “He's obviously deeply involved in whatever Vanni is up to, but we're not even certain what that is.”

Mulheisen said he would check out DenBoer as soon as he could get to it, this morning. “I've been wanting to talk to him, anyway, about these other matters,” he said, “but he never seems to be around. What time have you got?”

Phelps looked at his watch. It was after four. “I think I'll make some coffee,” he said, “and settle down here to wait for Cecil. Not much point in sleeping. Inspector Weinberg has his big show scheduled for nine. Maybe there's a good movie on the Late Show.”

Mulheisen said he'd stay for a cup of coffee. He told Phelps that he figured he'd go over to Vanni's office first thing. “They probably open pretty early,” he said. “I'll talk to Vanni and DenBoer.”

Phelps thought that was a good idea. He made it clear to Mulheisen, however, that this was an ATF operation now, and anything Mulheisen found out must be relayed to ATF immediately. Mulheisen didn't complain. He was still trying to deal with the image of a beautiful redhead lying in a ditch.

Twelve

By 6
A.M.
, Phelps was making another pot of coffee and Channel 50 was showing
Jubal,
the fifth in its Glenn Ford Festival of Films. Mulheisen couldn't take it anymore, and left. He drove over to Gratiot and Eight Mile and found an all-night restaurant sandwiched between a paint store and a jewelry store. The café had a long counter and a tall, loosely filled blimp of a cook in white shirt and pants with a paper hat on his head. The scene reminded Mulheisen vaguely of Hopper's famous painting, “Nighthawks.”

He ordered ham and eggs and read the morning
Free Press,
while construction workers and truck drivers piled in and out of the little café. Nearly every customer excitedly discussed the Cadillac Gage caper. Their attitudes ranged from frank admiration for the way it had been executed to anxiety about the potential increase of guns on the street.

“Man, it don't bother me,” one burly fellow in a watch cap declared. “They come around to my house, I'll blow the bastards away.”

“He will, too,” said the man's smaller companion. “Frank's got more guns . . . whatta you got, Frank? About a dozen?”

“I got the 30-06,” Frank said, ticking items off on his thick fingers, “I got the .270, I got the little popgun for the old lady—that's a .32 automatic—I got the Hi-Standard .22 “Sharp-shooter,” I got the .357 magnum Ruger, I got. . . .”

Mulheisen couldn't stand any more. He called for another coffee and moved to a booth. But in the next booth another customer was saying, “I never even heard of a Stoner rifle. I wish I had one. It sounds like a great little gun.”

The man's companion exclaimed, “What the hell you want with a machine gun, for Christ's sake? They're illegal.”

“Well, if the niggers got ‘em, I don't see why . . .”

“What the hell you talking about? What niggers?”

“It says right here,” the man told his companion, “the ‘Black American Red Army’ took the rifles and killed all those guys. That's niggers, ain't it?”

There was a silence from the booth, then the companion said wearily, “Howard, you're dumb.” Nothing else was said. A little later a wiry man with red hair left the booth with another, stocky man in a leather jacket. Mulheisen couldn't decide which one was Howard.

It was daylight now. He decided to check on Vanni. He drove down Eight Mile Road to a spot about a block from the trucking company. The gates of the high cyclone fence were open and the last of the dump trucks were rolling ponderously out, trailers bumping emptily behind them. In the yard near the office a man was operating a front loader. He was collecting dirt from a pile next to the excavation for the new building and dumping it into a truck and trailer that stood by.

Mulheisen drove into the yard and parked next to Vanni's shiny new Oldsmobile. He was about to go into the little wooden shack when he realized that the man operating the front loader was Vanni. Mulheisen stopped and watched. The dirt was piled quite high in the truck and trailer now. Vanni backed off in the front loader and lowered the bucket to the ground, then cut the engine. He jumped down and noticed Mulheisen for the first time.

“Hi,” he called. He was wearing slacks and a dress shirt, with an old poplin jacket. He looked very boyish and handsome, like a photo magazine's idea of an aggressive young executive.

“Like to keep my hand in,” he said to Mulheisen. He seemed in good spirits. “C'mon inside, I got the coffee pot going.”

“Looks like you're overloaded,” Mulheisen said, indicating the dirt heaped over the top of the truck and trailer.

Vanni looked back. “Maybe. But I know a place to dump where I don't have to pass over any scales to get there.”

They went inside. The coffee was hot but weak. “Sorry about that,” Vanni said. “That's usually Mandy's job.”

“Where is Mandy?” Mulheisen asked.

“Got me,” Vanni said. He flopped down behind his desk and put his feet up. “She's probably still in bed.” He glanced at his watch. It was only seven-thirty. “She never gets here before eight-thirty, nine. Why should she? Nothing starts happening until then.”

“Why are you here so early?” Mulheisen asked.

“They start these construction jobs early,” Vanni said. “I get the boys on the road.”

“Where's DenBoer? Doesn't he come in early?”

Vanni frowned. “Yeah, he's usually here. I don't know where the hell he is. Well, what can I do for you, Sergeant?”

“Did Cecil give any indication of where she was going when she left work yesterday?” Mulheisen asked.

“No,” Vanni said. “She left about the same time as Leonard. About four-thirty. Why?”

Mulheisen ignored the question. “How about DenBoer? Where was he off to?”

“That I know,” Vanni said. “He was taking one of the trucks down to a garage, to have the differentials checked.”

“And you haven't seen or heard from him since?” Mulheisen asked.

“That's right,” Vanni said. “Why should I? I'm not his keeper. What is this? Is Lenny missing?”

“I don't know,” Mulheisen said. “But I'd like to see him as soon as possible. I've got to get going now, but I'll be back at the precinct by noon, I think. How about if you and DenBoer drop by this afternoon and chat? And bring Mandy, too, if she shows.”

“I guess you're pretty busy with this Cadillac Gage thing, eh?” Vanni said. “I read about it in the paper. Pretty far out! What'd they get, a thousand guns or something like that?”

Mulheisen watched Vanni closely but could detect no special interest. “It was a pretty slick operation,” he said.

“I'll say. Like a goddamn commando strike! You have any idea yet who did it?”

“Not so far,” Mulheisen said. “Well, I'll see you this afternoon, then?”

“Okay, Mulheisen. But let this be the last of it, all right? I'm a businessman. I've got work to do.”

Mulheisen stood up and set his coffee cup down on Vanni's desk. “It's not my garage that's broken into, Vanni. It's not my jukebox that's shot up. You come and see me.”

He left without waiting for a reply.

“We feel that we now know all the significant aspects of yesterday's events in Precincts Nine and Fifteen,” said Ike Weinberg, the district inspector. He was speaking to some seventy men who had gathered in a conference room at police headquarters. These men represented nearly every bureau of the police department, plus representatives from the health department, the medical examiner's office and public utilities. The mayor was present, and, of course, the police commissioner. Mulheisen was there, too, nearly asleep in a theater-type seat next to McClain of Homicide and Deane of Racket Conspiracy. Phelps sat up front on the little stage, next to some display boards that were covered with organizational charts and a blowup of the area served by the Detroit Terminal Railway.

Before the meeting started, the mayor had stopped to shake hands with Mulheisen and had inquired about his
mother. Inspector Buchanan, standing nearby, had watched this exchange with interest. The mayor did not speak to Buchanan.

Weinberg continued: “At first we did not connect the derailment with the Cadillac Gage hijacking, but with the killing of the signalmen and the security officer at Vernor tower, we began to understand that all three events were part of a coordinated plan. Here is how we reconstruct the sequence of events.” Weinberg turned to the display boards. “Apparently, at about 1645, yesterday, the crew of train 1013 prepared to take a break. They were then located right here.” He pointed with a sort of conductor's baton to a section of track near Vernor tower. “The crew included Engineer T. Hanson, Fireman L. Ruybal, and two brakemen, K. Briggs and K. Bangert. The very moment they left the train, which, besides the locomotive, included two empty boxcars and a dozen loaded auto-carrier cars, Hanson and his crew were intercepted by gunmen who forced them into the empty boxcar located just behind the locomotive.

“At about 1700, the hijackers took possession of train 1013,” Weinberg went on. “This was precisely coordinated with an attack on Vernor tower by another group of gunmen. Obviously, the attackers knew that the railway security officer, an eighteen-year veteran named Raymond Carver, was due at the tower at 1700. When he unlocked the tower door, the attackers appeared and took him at gunpoint up to the control deck, where he and the two signalmen, M. Crawford and C. Kinder, were shot and killed. The gunmen then operated the electronic switch system, clearing the track for 1013 to proceed on track number three. All other tracks were closed.

“At 1705, train 1013 was under way and at 1712, it arrived at the locked rear gate of Cadillac Gage. This required entering a small spur off track number three. The switch is a manual one. The gatekeeper at Cadillac Gage, a long-time employee of Silver Security, named John Keester—”

“Ike,” interrupted the police commissioner, “do we have to keep hearing these names?”

“No, no,” the mayor said, “I want to hear them, John. These were brave men who died in the line of duty and I think the City of Detroit owes them a debt of gratitude and condolences to their loved ones.”

“Well, this is what I'm going to release to the press, sir,” Weinberg said to the commissioner, “and, naturally, they want all the names. As it is, I'm leaving out the ages of the victims. I didn't think you'd want that.”

“Very well,” the commissioner said, “go ahead.”

“Now, where was I?” Weinberg looked at his papers. “Oh, yes . . . the gatekeeper—Keester—was presented with a bill of lading, possibly, or else he was threatened with a weapon. At any rate, he opened the gate. There is no evidence of a struggle, nor did he make any attempt to signal for help.”

“Is there any chance that this Keester was collaborating with the hijackers?” the commissioner asked.

“Well, since he was murdered by the hijackers, it doesn't look likely,” Weinberg said, “but, of course, sir, that is a possibility we did not ignore. But Keester seems to have been a very stable, circumspect employee of Silver Security. He'd been with them for twelve years. He was happily married and had seven children—”

“Possibly he needed money,” the commissioner said, “with seven kids.”

There was dutiful laughter throughout the conference room. The commissioner smiled complacently. Even the mayor smiled.

“Possibly,” Weinberg said, “but he worked another job as well. He was a night guard at a liquor store on Dexter Boulevard. So we think he was able to support his large family, all right. Shall I go on?”

The commissioner nodded and Weinberg continued. Mulheisen drowsed. It was warm and close in the conference room, and the heat had caused him to dream about summer.
He dreamed that he was repainting the hull of his catboat, a gaff-rigged nineteen-footer. The sun was warm, but occasionally a cool whiff from the river would chill him. He woke up, feeling gritty-eyed and foul-mouthed. There was a bead of sweat under his chin. He groaned softly. McClain looked at him and grunted, apparently in commiseration. “You look like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag,” McClain whispered. Mulheisen nodded weakly.

“Once the guard was safely stowed in the boxcar, along with the train crew, another man in uniform took Keester's place in the guard shack, at least for a few minutes while the train entered the Cadillac Gage rear yard and coupled onto a loaded boxcar that was sitting next to the loading dock. In this boxcar there were twenty-four hundred Stoner rifles, of the type designated the Stoner 63 Weapons System, along with five hundred thousand rounds of ammunition for the weapons.” He went on to explain just what the Stoner 63 Weapons System was, and estimated the value of the shipment in excess of $2.5 million. During this portion of the briefing, ATF Agent Phelps stood and pointed out salient aspects of the Stoner 63 on a large chart illustrating the weapon in a cutaway drawing.

Weinberg now described how the boxcar had been moved to Gethsemane Cemetery, next to the City Airport, and unloaded into at least one truck, probably a semi-tractor trailer. As yet, no witnesses had come forward to describe the truck, and it was uncertain how the hijackers had dispersed from that point, unless it was in the phantom truck itself.

“The boxcar was uncoupled and left in the cemetery,” Weinberg said, “and train 1013 was put into reverse, the throttle locked into a ‘full’ position, and the train abandoned by the hijackers. We presume that the hijackers who operated the train escaped with the rest in the semi. We also believe that the act of sending the unattended train back down the tracks at high speed, with the tragic result of the derailment that killed five men, was a vicious, callous,
premeditated act of murder for the casual purpose of diverting police attention from the robbery.

“Ordinarily a runaway train can be stopped by automatic braking devices. In this case, however, since the hijackers were still in control of Vernor tower, the train was not stopped. The train hit the Chrysler loading yards at full speed, with the tragic results that we all know. All of the men in the boxcar were killed outright. It was, as I am sure you all appreciate, a particularly brutal and callous act on the part of the hijackers.”

At a signal, Phelps rose and addressed the audience. “I have established to my satisfaction the identity of the hijackers,” he said. Everyone sat up, except Mulheisen.

“A few months ago an undercover Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent established contact with a group of Cuban displaced persons, all young men who had lived here in Detroit for some time. These men were part of a South American-organized conspiracy to invade and overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba. They were attempting to purchase guns here in the United States. The agent was to be part of the undercover gun deal, but the agent was never taken fully into the confidence of the conspirators. As of yesterday, the agent has disappeared, and so have the Cubans. For obvious reasons, I don't believe that it would be politic to disclose the name of the agent at this time.”

“That's the understatement of the week,” McClain muttered to Mulheisen. A chill spread over Mulheisen as he realized that what McClain said was true: just the bare statement by Phelps had seriously endangered Mandy Cecil's life. Whom else could the conspirators suspect, when they came to read Phelps's statement in the newspapers? Mulheisen shook his head in disbelief.