Man with an Axe (22 page)

“I never knew Grootka was a deer hunter,” I said.

“I don't know that he ever shot a deer,” Books said, “but he'd bring back some sausages, every year.”

“What do you think's up there?”

Books shook his head dolefully. “I don't know,” he said.

“Well, we better get started.”

He sighed. “I'll put on a tape. You still got that Kinanda?”

15

Outtake

I
think his name was Fred Miner, but in the way of things, in a small town, or maybe it was in the can—he'd spent some time in Jacktown, courtesy of some people who wanted him to serve it for them, and were willing to pay—folks called him Major. Not Fred Major. Major Fred, I guess. If you didn't know him too well, as with Kinanda, you could call him Fred. If you were a pal, you called him Maje.

He'd spent more years at Jackson than he'd planned. There was some violence, and he wasn't protected. So he spent the time and came out and got his payoff, and retired to fish and hunt and support himself. But in one of those crappy little ironies of life, he'd found himself going blind. He could still fly-fish, after a fashion, on the Manistee and the Au Sable—"Sort of like night fishing, you know?” He laughed. A low, rumbling laugh.

He had a round, grizzled head with a curly beard and he wore a wool cap indoors and out, along with a red-and-black-check wool hunting shirt that had the sleeves rolled up to reveal long johns. He wore wool military pants and felt-lined rubber and leather boots. His eyebrows had gotten shaggy and he hid behind them, it looked like.

When Books and I showed up it was quite late. But he said he'd just been sitting in the dark, listening to the radio, to the hockey game. The Red Wings were beating the Blues. So we had something to talk about. I fumbled through my introduction until finally he said, “You're Mul.”

“That's right.”

“And you.” He turned to Meldrim. “You'd be Books. C'mon in. Grootka said you'd be along, one of these days. It's taken you a while.” He turned on some lights. He had a small shop with a couple of refrigerated meat counters, not presently showing a lot of goods and all of it wrapped and put down for the night, of course. “You'll want some of my venison sausage. I'll give you some to take with you, but I just cooked some up a while ago.”

He led the way into a very messy bachelor apartment in the back. That's where he'd been sitting, in a chair surrounded with duck decoys, carving gear, shotguns, implements like that. He'd been carving a decoy head. It was unpainted, so I had no idea what it was supposed to be. There was a smell of sausage in the air, all right. He turned the burner on under a skillet and began to warm up the remains of a thick sausage or two, which he had sliced into discs. He sawed off a couple of large chunks of home-baked bread—"Neighbor lady bakes it,” he said. “It's just farm bread, but good.” He slapped some sausage onto the bread and shoved the plates at us. The wine was jug wine in jelly glasses. It was delicious.

“I guess you come to get Grootka's package,” he said.

“That's right,” I said, glancing at Books. He smiled slightly and gave his head a tiny shake, as if to marvel at my luck.

Fred found his key ring and a big dry-cell lantern. He pulled on his hunting coat and led us through the shop and out the back. “I want you to know that I never opened that box,” he told us as he showed the light for us to follow, “and I know that Grootka never
did. I don't know what's in it and I don't want to know. I'd appreciate it if you could just take it with you and whatever happens from there, let it happen there.”

He led us along a path that went back along a creek, which we had to cross on a mossy two-by-twelve plank, and into a little thicket, which shortly gave way to a clearing. While he unlocked a padlock on a rough wooden shed door, I told him I'd do what I could, but I couldn't promise anything.

“Grootka brought it by one afternoon and asked me if I could keep it for him. It was all wrapped up, already, but he got me to wrap the box again and put it in another box. ‘Just for safekeeping,’ he told me. He said you'd be along and to tell you everything I knew about it.”

He opened the door and turned on a light as we followed him in. The interior of the shed belied its rustic exterior. It was really a well-made place, with thick, obviously superinsulated walls and a concrete floor with a drain. Sinks, good lighting, and lots of counter space, heavy chopping-block counters, with knives and saws and cleavers ranged against the back wall. A Dewalt bandsaw, a slicer, a grinder—all these and more modern power tools and appliances were available and obviously in regular use. And beyond this work area, the heavy doors of two walk-in coolers. Fred explained that many of his customers brought in animals that needed to be processed in privacy. “A farmer raises more than beef, you know,” he said, “and sometimes the critters aren't tame. They have to be processed out of season. They make good sausage.”

They did indeed. Or rather, Major Miner made good sausage. But I was interested in whether Grootka had actually said I would be around, and when he'd said it. The Maje cleared that up. Grootka had brought the box to him to be stored indefinitely on August 10, 1975. He had paid a year's storage in advance, but the Maje couldn't
remember how much that was. The last time he'd been by, about five years ago, he had paid a thousand dollars, which the Maje had accepted as sufficient payment for “eternity.”

“I got the feeling he didn't expect to be coming back,” the Maje said. “He looked about the same to me, but I figgered he knew best. Anyways, the first time he mentioned your name was about 1980, somewhere in there. He said you'd be coming for the box and to just give it to ya. So here it is.”

He had unstacked some other boxes in the cooler, all of them, like this one, sealed containers of supplies like plastic wrap. This one was about the size of a liquor carton. It was neatly wrapped in clear plastic, heat-sealed by the Maje's device. I'm not good at this, but I estimated it to weigh about ten or fifteen pounds.

The Maje insisted that we take a box just as large, filled with frozen sausage. He had a lot of it, he said, gesturing at the three deer carcasses still hanging in the cooler, waiting their turn to be made into breakfast. We put them in the trunk of the Checker and drove away. It took ten minutes or more to find a lonely country road. In the light of the headlamps, I cut open the plastic and opened the box, with Books looking on.

Perched on top, just beneath some newspapers from 1975, was the revolver. “Yes,” I said, relieved. Grootka had not let me down. It was a Harrington & Richardson .32. It was wrapped in ordinary kitchen plastic wrap, and I'm sure that the fingerprints of Humphrey DiEbola were undisturbed. The technology these days is so much better than in Grootka's day, that Forensics shouldn't have too much trouble making a positive identification.

I was a little curious, however. Was this the gun that Grootka had given to Jacobsen? I thought it might be. If so, it suggested a scenario in which DiEbola had obtained the gun from Jacobsen, either by force or plan. It didn't make any difference; the crucial thing was that the gun carried DiEbola's prints. Of course, without

Jacobsen's corpse, without the fatal bullet, none of this meant much. But DiEbola would know the importance of this gun, and he had shown that he knew.

I delved down into the package to see what other goodies Grootka had provided—blood-soaked clothing, no doubt. I could see a stained shirt. I peeled it back.

Janney Jacobsen's cloudy blue eyes stared up at me.

W
e had discussed it from every angle as we drove through the night. Neither of us had slept, although Books may have nodded. But now he was sitting as silently as I in the morning traffic jam north of Detroit. An accident had cars backed up beyond Sashabaw Road. I turned on the radio.

Books had grumbled, finally, “If you're gonna chop folks’ heads off, seems like you'd chop the important heads.” He thought that Grootka should have preserved Hoffa's head. But I pointed out that Grootka was not interested in Hoffa. Grootka knew that the telltale bullet was in Jacobsen's head. He'd have preferred to preserve Jacobsen's body, no doubt, but that wasn't feasible. He'd had no idea how soon the Mob cleanup squad would arrive, but arrive they would. He'd taken what he could take.

“Trouble with you cops,” Books said, “is all you think about is the forensics. You got no respect for the human side.”

“Pha-roah, you mean?”

“All right, make fun.” He fell silent then.

But we both perked up when the newscaster informed us: “Detroit organized-crime figure Humphrey DiEbola was slain last night. Security personnel at his Grosse Pointe estate reported that an unknown assailant apparently shot and killed the elusive Mobster as he walked on the grounds. Details are sketchy, but a body was removed to the Wayne County morgue this morning. Speculation
has already begun about who will succeed DiEbola, who many have credited with vastly improving the scope and profitability of organized-crime activity in the Detroit area following the assassination of his predecessor, Carmine Busoni, some three years ago. The FBI is noncommittal on that score, but they do not rule out the possibility that DiEbola was removed by disaffected loyalists of the Busoni faction. More on this story as it develops.”

The traffic began to move. Books said, “I wonder if they
would
tolerate a woman don?” He had read my mind.