Bishop as Pawn (30 page)

So, after Kingfish’s trial and conviction but well before his execution, Mad Anthony arranged a clandestine meeting with Tully. In an emotionless tone, Wayne thanked Tully. Wayne laconically declared himself in debt to Tully. Mad Anthony owed Zoo Tully one—one very big favor.

Wisely, Tully had not cashed in his premium, then or thereafter.

But now Tully was walking the streets of Detroit, intent on finding out if the debt was still on the counter and collectible.

CHAPTER

TWENTY - ONE

The office-and-business directory listed Metro Development on the second floor.

The title did nothing to explain what sort of business Metro Development was. It wasn’t supposed to; Metro Development did whatever Mad Anthony Wayne wanted it to do. And the business it did change, sometimes by the hour.

The attractive receptionist smiled when Lieutenant Tully asked to see Mr. Wayne. The smile said, Thank you for dropping by but you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing Tony Wayne.

Tully returned the smile and showed the receptionist his badge. That helped. Tully gave his name, rank, and position in the Homicide Division. That helped more. Still, no entree, merely a phone check with someone with more clout. Tully was invited, sweetly, to take a seat and someone would be here shortly.

Ten minutes later, a man who did not fit the adverb “shortly” appeared. He was one of the largest men Tully had ever seen.

“Come this way, please.”

It can speak—and politely—Tully noted.

Even though he was quite good at this sort of thing, Tully would have had trouble retracing their route. As near as he could make out, the journey through the Millender Center, from office to residential suite, was a series of going down to go up and vice versa.

Finally, they were in the luxury suite of Tony Wayne. Due mostly to the back-lighting from the windows, Tully did not immediately recognize the figure behind the king-size desk—until the figure stood and stepped forward.

In the past twenty-five years, Tully had seen Wayne’s photo likeness in newspapers, magazines, and on television with irregular frequency. He had seen the mobster fleetingly in person a few times. But this was the first time in all these years that Tully had the opportunity to study the man.

Mad Anthony seemed shorter than Tully had remembered him. Wayne stood about five-feet-seven or -eight. His salt-and-pepper hair was wavy and tight to his scalp. He was trim and moved smoothly. His complexion, just as Tully remembered it, was swarthy. Whether that was its natural shade or the result of overexposure to the sun, Tully could not say.

Most interesting was Wayne’s expression. It was totally ambiguous. Was Wayne happy to receive his visitor, or was he about to explode with mad fury?

The gigantic guard stood just inside the door, almost leaning against it in an at-ease stance.

Wayne stopped several feet short of Tully. “It’s
Lieutenant
Tully now, isn’t it?”

“The department would be embarrassed if I was still a patrolman.”

There was that enigmatic look again. Did Wayne see the humor in Tully’s statement?

“Come, sit down.” Wayne gestured toward a padded straight-back chair in front of the desk. Tully seated himself, and Wayne returned to his high-back chair. “It’s been a long while.…” Wayne paused. “Twenty-five years.”

Tully nodded. “Twenty-five years. You remember?”

“Like it was yesterday. Even now there’s an emptiness in my heart. Freddie was a good boy.” Wayne pinched the bridge of his nose. To forestall a tear?

Yes, a good boy
, thought Tully. If his son had lived, Mad Anthony probably would be considering retirement so that Freddie could take over “the business.”

“I remember too,” Wayne said, “you performed a service for me then.”

“It wasn’t that much,” Tully stated in all honesty. “I did my job.”

“True. But we didn’t expect it. Hell, we thought the cops’d be glad to get rid of us.” Was there a hint of emotion on his face? “You almost make a guy respect the law.” He gazed at Tully thoughtfully. “Anyway, you treated Freddie with dignity … like a person who’d been wronged. I don’t forget that.”

“That’s why I’ve come.”

“I thought as much.”

Tully shifted in his chair and inched forward. “Twenty-five years ago you offered me a favor.”

Wayne waved his hand. “It’s been an uncashed check all these years. Is this the time?”

“You know of the murder of the Mexican bishop?”

“He was a fool.”

“A fool?”

“All that money … there for the taking.”

“You knew?”

“Hell, everyone knew. It was just a matter of time.”

“The street’s hard to read. Something seems to be going on, but we can’t break the silence.”

Was that amusement ever so briefly on Wayne’s face? “What do you think?”

“My best guess would be … it’s not a heavyweight. That wasn’t enough bread for anybody to risk his reputation and a lucky collar. It just wasn’t enough.

“On the other hand, it wasn’t a drifter or a street punk. A guy like that would get coughed up. We’ve got some pretty reliable snitches, but they’re not talking. They’d give the guy to us if he meant nothing to anybody.”

“So …”

“So I figure somebody important is protecting the guy.”

Wayne leaned forward. “You have an excellent suspect under arrest.”

“The priest? Maybe. But I’ve got a feeling.”

“And you want the guy from the street.”

Tully nodded.

“This will clear the table for us,”

Again Tully nodded.

“You’re sure you want to spend your marker on this?” It was obvious he thought that Tully was wasting a valuable coupon.

“Yes,” Tully said firmly.

Wayne nodded curtly. “By tomorrow morning.”

“You’ll contact me?”

“Yes.” Wayne stood. Tully, taking the cue, also stood.

“Albert will show you out.”

Tully followed the giant out the door. There was no conversation. There was no intimation of any conversation.

Had he been asked, Tully would have guessed the bodyguard’s name to be Tiny. But …
Albert?
Not even Big Al?

The journey back to the outside world was as confusing as the trek in. However Wayne had managed it, it was a damned clever maze.

As he left the Millender, Tully glanced at the directory. Whatever business Metro Development was in, Tully knew of one product. It would be whoever the street delivered to the police tomorrow through the good offices of Metro Development.

Tully felt satisfied with his transaction. But deep down he wondered if he might have squandered a most valuable marker, as Wayne had implied.

Whatever. The die was cast. More than likely he would soon slap cuffs on the killer of Bishop Diego.

CHAPTER

TWENTY - TWO

Tuesday was drawing to a close. A fatigued Father Koesler drove over to Ste. Anne’s for the vigil service for Bishop Diego. The funeral, or Mass of Resurrection, would be held tomorrow morning. The vigil, as well as the Mass, essentially was a prayerful expression of faith in a life after death in the heaven promised by Jesus Christ.

The church was fully lighted. It had been a long time since the old structure had held so large a congregation. Special police detachments were handling crowd control. Officers were stationed throughout the church for security purposes.

Also in the church, making a nuisance of itself, was the camera crew from Los Angeles. In an unguarded moment, Father McCauley had signed a document giving permission for the filming on parish property.

Near the sanctuary, before the altar, Bishop Diego’s coffin lay on a bier. The corpse was dressed in Mass vestments. The vestments were white, as was the miter on the bishop’s head.

Ste. Anne’s might have passed for a ski lodge housing an extremely affable group. The crowd, largely Hispanic, moved about the church in serpentine fashion, people greeting long-lost friends and friends they’d shopped with this morning. There was even a mariachi band playing in what used to be known as the organ loft.

The only activity that might be termed “orderly” was the double line that stretched from the sanctuary to the front doors. The lines were for people who wanted to “pay their respects” at the bier.

A generous supply of clergymen was in attendance. Most of them joined the viewing lines and, after a moment at the casket, gathered in the gospel side of the sanctuary. It was not a section reserved for priests; the first two or three had probably wandered over there and the precedent was set.

Two more priests arrived at the casket. They peered in, vacuuming every detail from the supershined black shoes to the bejeweled miter.

“Looks pretty good, doesn’t he?” said Father Henry Dorr.

“For a dead guy, yeah,” Father Frank Dempsey replied.

“Don’t be funny.” Dorr bent from the waist and studied the right side of the corpse, particularly about the neck. “Look here. They said he got whacked on the back of the head. It must’ve been some blow to kill the guy. But I can’t see anything.”

Dempsey, following Dorr’s observations, also bent down to see if he could find the indent. “No. I guess they must’ve patched it up somehow. I don’t know how they do that. Like Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘Progress is our most important product.’”

“That was about General Electric, not mortuary science.”

“That reminds me …” Dempsey straightened up and leaned over the body, studying Diego’s bishop’s ring. “… did you hear about the couple who got a marriage license and went to a judge to get married?” He didn’t wait for a response. “The judge looks at the license and says to the groom, ‘Are you John A. Brown?’ And the groom says, ‘No. My name’s John B. Brown.’

“The judge says, ‘Take this back to the clerk and have him correct it.’

“So the couple comes back, and the judge looks at the license again, and says to the bride, ‘Are you Mary B. Smith?’ And she says, ‘No. I’m Mary C. Smith.’

“So the judge sends them back again for a correction. Then, they appear again before the judge. The license is correct now. But, for the first time, the judge notices a small boy standing between the bride and the groom.

“‘Who is this young lad?’ the judge asks. The groom says, ‘That’s our son, judge.’ And the judge says, ‘I hate to tell you this, but he’s a technical bastard.’

“And the groom says, ‘That’s a funny thing, judge. That’s what the clerk just said about you.’”

“Very funny,” Dorr said, “but what’s the point?”

“Your remark about Reagan and the product he used to peddle. You’re being a technical bastard.”

“This is a church!”

“Perfectly good Anglo-Saxon word.”

What with the hubbub in the church, no one else could make out what the two were saying. But, hey, they were priests. And they were paying special attention to the dead bishop’s neck and to his ring. There must be something going on.

The interest was passed from person to person so that from that time on each of the faithful who reached the casket bent double to see—God knew what—at the back of Diego’s head. The procedure slowed the line considerably.

Dorr and Dempsey moved on to join the other priests.

“Hi, Bob,” Dorr greeted Father Koesler, who had already been through the viewing line. “Good crowd.”

“Numerically, I’ll give you,” Dempsey said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dorr asked.

“Well, look at who’s here.” Dempsey’s gesture encompassed everyone in the church. “You see any of Diego’s fancy friends? Any of the money people?” The question became rhetorical. The church was filled with blue-collar Hispanics.

“So? All the better for the bishop. The common people are represented,” Dorr said.

“Not all the common people,” Dempsey corrected. “See any of the Hispanic leaders? These people here are the ones who didn’t have a clue to what Diego was doing. These are the people who were just happy one of their own became a bishop to take special care of them. They rejoiced when he came here. They never saw him except may be at a confirmation or a parish festival. They heard he gave money to the deserving poor. They didn’t know he didn’t give a damn about them.”