Bishop as Pawn (29 page)

“Whatever. The bottom line is we’ve got nothing from the street.”

Tully thought for a moment, then, with deliberation, said, “I’ve got one large marker out. Maybe this is the time to call it in.” He glanced briefly at his two sergeants. “You guys follow these leads we talked about. If there’s anything on the street, I think I’ll know before today’s over.”

With that, Tully bundled up against a very cold January and hit the bricks.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Tully would walk the short blocks from Police Headquarters to the Millender Center, on Jefferson across from the Renaissance Center. The Millender was a combination business and residence structure—and posh. RenCen partially blocked what otherwise would have been an impressive view of the river.

As he leaned into the strong wind coming off the water, Tully pondered what he was about to do.

It had been a great many years since he had talked at any length with Tony Wayne. Not since the death of Tony’s only son some … could it be that long?… twenty-five years ago.

Tully, then on the force only a couple of years, had been one of a battery of uniformed officers responding to a shooting. It was not Tully’s first exposure to a murder scene. But it was his first experience with a massacre.

He would never forget it.

It happened at the close of the sixties, a time of great unrest in Detroit and in the nation. A white mayor was trying to maintain a tight cork on a surge of civil unrest. The city was trying to recover from one of its most destructive riots. Forces contended for control of organized and random crime. And it probably didn’t help that the first waves of the Second Vatican Council were beginning to engulf the world’s Catholics.

In Detroit, two powerful men contended for the title of Number One Crime Boss. And should Mafia domination falter—as indeed it eventually did—one of these local crime organizations would reign supreme.

In one corner was Malcolm Ali, a.k.a. the Kingfish. Black, in his early thirties, the Kingfish and his gang held a tight rein on crime within the boundaries of the then confined black ghetto. By no means content with, in effect, overseeing a reservation, the Kingfish’s appetite drove him toward dominance of the city—with the suburbs in the offing.

Blocking him, and ever jealous of his territory, was Anthony Wayne. Only a close few were allowed to use his nickname: Mad Anthony. The original General Anthony Wayne had a colorful career as an officer in the Continental Army fighting first the British, then the Native Americans. Detroit still holds a fort named for him. And, of course, Detroit is part of Wayne County.

Tony Wayne was by no means as impetuous and hotheaded as his namesake. But it was only natural that one so ambitious and, at least by his lights, so successful, who lived in this region and whose name was Anthony Wayne, would take on the famous general’s nickname. And, as has been observed, only a precious few could use the name with impunity.

It was a matter of territory.

It was anyone’s guess whose terrain was more lucrative. It was evident whose was larger. Mad Anthony controlled much of the organizational crime in close to half of Detroit proper as well as in a good part of the suburbs. The Kingfish made do with what was left. Given the nature of these beasts, it was inevitable that they would find themselves on a collision course.

From time to time the “soldiers” of these crime families clashed, always bloodily. Of the two, Tony Wayne was more receptive to peaceful overtures.

And so it was, on a pleasant day in May of 1969, that a tentative probe for peace was scheduled in an unpretentious Coney Island eatery near the Farmers Market on the eastern outskirts of downtown Detroit. The parley was to consist of ten of the top soldiers, five from each family. Among the representatives of Tony Wayne was his only son, Freddy. Elaborate precautions were taken to ensure that none of the participants was armed. Neither food nor drink was served. The restaurant announced it would be closed that night. Participants sat on opposite sides of a long buffet, composed of several small tables pushed together.

Tony Wayne’s group took the floor for the first presentation. Freddy opened with the preamble to their initial offer.

Imperceptibly, the Kingfish group began to slide their chairs back from the table. Since it was his territory, the Kingfish knew of something Wayne’s group had not discovered in their search of the premises—a concealed trapdoor dating back to prohibition days. It had remained unused since that time. Now the sound of scraping chairs masked its use.

As young Freddy Wayne read the documents he assumed would be the basis for their discussion, beneath the table a portion of what seemed to be a solid wooden floor was moving.

The next few seconds had been carefully and repeatedly rehearsed.

The trapdoor flew open. The buffet tables were upended as three men carrying automatic weapons erupted from the basement.

Chairs were overturned as the Wayne group sprang to its feet and stampeded toward the back wall. Several instinctively reached for the weapons that had been taken from them.

The shooting seemed as if it would go on forever.

The bodies of the victims jerked in a macabre dance of death. Some extended their arms and hands as if these ineffective extremities could ward off the bullets that tore through flesh and bone.

In seconds the slaughter was over.

Kingfish’s men advanced cautiously. Each of the victims was checked to make certain none lived. All were beyond death. The victors stayed only long enough to congratulate each other.

Proprietors of neighboring businesses, after waiting to make sure the shooting was over, called the police.

Among those first at the scene was Patrolman Alonzo Tully. He alone was able to identify those of the victims who still had a face left. And he could guess the identity of the others. Even in those early days, Zoo Tully lived for his work: He had memorized the names and faces of the mug shots of both the Kingfish’s and Mad Anthony’s gangs.

Tully had never before seen such carnage. However, it was the attitude of several of his fellow officers that surprised him. Once the identities of the corpses had been tentatively established, several of the officers treated the event as if it were a cause for celebration.

Five hoods wasted. Five men the cops would no longer be bothered with. Five reasons to make merry. Tully noted a sergeant using his nightstick to stir the brains of one victim. There seemed little if any respect being paid to this crime scene—or to the victims of this crime. And Tully well knew the prime importance of preserving intact the scene of the crime as the one and only inerrant clue.

The uniformed detachment was closely followed by several homicide detectives. Outstanding among them was the stereotypical larger-than-life Sergeant Walt Koznicki. His fame in the department had little to do with size or strength. More impressive was his meteoric advancement. He had been scarcely out of his rookie phase when he was tapped for the prestigious Homicide Division. After nine years, his record for solving cases was storied.

It took Koznicki only a few minutes to assess this situation.

It was a gangland slaying of a rival gang. And the crime scene was being trivialized by some cops who were celebrating the destruction of enemy forces. Forgotten was the responsibility for solving a crime. This was not a legal execution; it was mass murder. The police officer’s duty was to determine who had done it, find proof, and make the arrest.

Instead, these officers had by and large contaminated the crime scene.

This execution was a professional job that had been done by the numbers. There would be precious few clues left behind, and most of them, Koznicki expected, had been obliterated or tainted by the careless and sloppy approach now evident.

Koznicki, somewhat out of character, blistered the police who had responded to this call. A thoroughly embarrassed silence supplanted the former festive scene.

It was then that Koznicki discovered Alonzo Tully.

It was not Tully’s place to reprimand superior officers for their unprofessional conduct. But, quietly, he had been surveying this for what it was, the scene of a crime.

Carefully steering clear of the blood and gore, he had uncovered something. He called Sergeant Koznicki over and showed what he’d found.

Freddy Wayne had sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the head. He was undoubtedly dead before he hit the floor. His body was in a curious position, arms and hands flexed as if holding something. But only a scrap of paper remained clutched between thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Scattered about were several sheets of paper, the top sheet missing its lower corner. Tully explained his theory: These must have been what Wayne had been holding when he was shot.

Evidently one of the killers had ripped the papers out of Wayne’s hand and then discarded them. If Tully had not recovered them, they would have been saturated by the conglomerate blood that spread across the floor.

With great care, so as not to destroy any latent prints, Tully and Koznicki studied the sheets of paper. Clearly, the whole constituted a position statement, an overture toward peace on the part of the Tony Wayne faction.

Whoever had ripped the papers from Freddy’s hands must have glanced through them and, finding nothing of consequence, discarded them. That was a mistake. And if the killer’s prints could be found, it would be a mistake compounded.

Koznicki gingerly handed the papers to one of the police technicians who had just arrived. To aid the techs in a projected search for identities, Tully enumerated at least fifteen of the Kingfish’s top hoods. Both Tully and Koznicki simply assumed that these killers belonged to the Kingfish gang.

For Koznicki and Tully, it was respect at first sight.

Tully wanted to follow this investigation through, and he was invited in by Koznicki.

It proved to be one of those cases when everything worked in favor of the good guys. On the sheets of paper that had been cast aside, three sets of prints were found: those of Fred Wayne, his secretary, and Juahn Carter, the Kingfish’s right-hand man.

Carter was easily located and picked up. No credible way could he explain away those prints.

Sergeant Koznicki, with Alonzo Tully sitting in, explained with seeming concern Carter’s options. He could remain silent and take the fall. In which case he would most certainly be convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. In which case, additionally, Mad Anthony most assuredly would put out a contract for his son’s killer. The life sentence would thus be considerably abbreviated—by execution.

Or he could cooperate with the police and implicate everyone who had participated in this massacre, including the one who masterminded it—the Kingfish. No deal without the Kingfish.

At that point, Koznicki left the room so that Tully, with the same degree of consideration that Koznicki had shown, could explain, in as many ways as possible, these options, over and over again.

It required many and assorted explanations to get through to Carter the value of fingering the Kingfish. Carter was only too aware of the Kingfish’s talent for torture before execution. In comparison, prison seemed a downright pleasant choice. Tully reminded Carter that Mad Anthony’s men would be waiting in Jackson—and there was little the authorities could do about that.

On the other hand, for his cooperation with the police and the prosecuting attorney’s office, a deal might be worked out whereby Carter could vanish from the scene and surface elsewhere to live to a ripe old age in peace and freedom.

Understandably, Carter’s confidence in the law’s ability to protect him needed much reinforcement. The very name of the Kingfish was enough to send shudders up and down Carter’s spine.

Finally, with the encouragement of a near-exhausted Patrolman Tully, Carter saw the wisdom of the police offer. Carter sang beautifully, giving the prosecutor’s office seven convictions of first degree murder. The Kingfish himself was the eighth.

The conclusion to this affair:

Malcolm Ali, a.k.a. the Kingfish, was sentenced to life without parole. He lived in relative peace in Jackson Prison for almost a year. That lull led the authorities to believe that the Kingfish might live many more years in captivity. As a result, they relaxed their guard … and the Kingfish was found eviscerated with a homemade knife.

In much the same way, nine years prior, that Walt Koznicki had been inducted into the elite Homicide Division, Koznicki now became rabbi for Alonzo Tully, who promptly became “Zoo” to his fellow detectives.

Tony Wayne exacted revenge for his son’s murder. And, gathering power steadily, Mad Anthony waited for what he foresaw as the Taming of the Mafia. Eventually he became Numero Uno of metropolitan Detroit’s crime arena.

Finally, although Tony Wayne well knew who had murdered his son, he was appreciative to the young officer who had pursued the investigation so professionally instead of writing it off, thankful that the gangs were wiping each other out.

In effect, Tully had inadvertently set up the Kingfish by getting him convicted. In any event, Wayne would have gotten the Kingfish; it was just made easier when the law put him in a cage. Two reasons for feeling obligated to Alonzo Tully.