Body Count

15

This was where it had all started. The cataclysm known as the Detroit Riot of 1967 began in a building just a few doors north of St. Agnes Catholic Church.

At that time, Zoo Tully had lived in this neighborhood. He recalled the event very clearly. He remembered how the police had reacted to the rioting. Some were able to relate and more were incapable of relating to the black community that inhabited the fringes of the New Center area, which encompassed the golden-domed Fisher Building and General Motors headquarters, as well as bordering on Harper Hospital and the Cultural Center. That experience had cemented his resolve to join the police force and make a difference.

Now Zoo Tully and Phil Mangiapane were standing on the sidewalk outside St. Agnes Church on Twelfth Street, now better known as Rosa Parks Boulevard.

The street was all but deserted. But Tully could well imagine what it had been like when, a little more than a week ago, a riotous situation had occurred right here. Though much less far-reaching than the, ’67 conflagration, still it had been a riotous scene nonetheless.

“This is where the guy was standing, Zoo … right here.” Mangiapane indicated the spot. He had done yeoman’s work in catching up with the department’s investigation to date. And coming off the time spent looking for Father Keating, there was a lot of catching up to be done.

“The church was packed,” Mangiapane continued. “Of course there isn’t a hell of a lot of room in there. So the crowd spilled out down the steps and onto the sidewalk here. It was sort of a semicircle with the biggest part of the crowd right here-right in front of the center doors. They had a loudspeaker rigged so the crowd could hear what was going on inside. It was in the middle of all this that Salden bought it.”

Tully was struggling to pay attention. He had decided to start from scratch with his investigation of the killing of Harold Salden, religion writer for the Detroit News. Familiarizing himself with work already accomplished by Homicide detectives would provide him with a shortcut. Mangiapane and several other members of Tully’s squad had absorbed all they could of the progress of the investigation so far. If anything, the officers were a bit surprised that Tully was not already far ahead of them, but then they marveled too that he was not putting in his usual twelve to sixteen hour days.

The reason Tully had not been devoting himself as usual was the same reason he was having difficulty concentrating on Mangiapane’s briefing: trouble at home.

Neither Tully nor Alice normally bothered reading Lacy DeVere’s column. But when a co-worker had twitted her on the subject, Alice had checked the column and read the item linking Tully with Pat Lennon.

She was not amused.

Initially, Tully couldn’t blame Alice. It was a shot out of the blue and it had hit her hard. He agreed that she deserved an explanation. So he had explained-or tried to. He and Lennon had worked on the same case; he to solve a killing, she to write what proved to be an exclusive story. Their parallel efforts had thrown them together. Probably they had been seen together. But, nothing had happened. Where DeVere had come up with that outrageous tidbit was anybody’s guess. Nonetheless, it was pure fantasy. Under ordinary circumstances he would have mentioned it to Alice as part of their normal everyday conversation pertaining to what each was doing at work. But Alice had been so ill at the time that normal conversation had become a rarity. And since there had been nothing to it, after Alice had recovered it had simply slipped his mind.

All of which was true, but not totally believably true. Their relationship was scarred by Alice’s lingering doubt and Tully’s impatience with that doubt.

At long last, Alice said that she believed him. But it didn’t take a psychic to detect the incredulity.

The situation was affecting his work, and that was intolerable. His work came first. That was a given. He was growing angry with Alice’s suspicions. It was blossoming into a full-blown dilemma for him.

He put extra effort into absorbing what Mangiapane was telling him, “What was the beef again?” he asked. “The meeting was …?”

This would be the second time Mangiapane explained the reason for the meeting. He was becoming concerned. “See, Zoo, this priest, the pastor of St. Agnes, announced the Sunday before that he was leaving the priesthood to get married.”

“Sounds simple enough. Why the problem?”

“The people who go to church here got really upset. For one thing, there’s a pretty good chance that the archdiocese can’t or won’t send a replacement. Which means they’d probably close the parish. See, they’re running out of priests. And the ones they got don’t want to take a core-city parish. So the parishioners called the meeting. But then a whole bunch of outsiders showed up, and that’s when the trouble started.”

“Outsiders?”

“Some of them belong to an organization that wants priests to be able to get married, and the rest are real conservative right-wingers.”

The Catholic Church! Tully couldn’t seem to get away from it. If this continued, one of these day she would probably become a Catholic by default. “With a crowd like that, weren’t there any cops here?”

“Yeah. They even beefed up the personnel when things started getting nasty. But all the action was inside the church. Those two groups got here early, so they were pretty much all inside. The people outside, on the street, were mostly parishioners who got here late, and some gawkers who were attracted by the loudspeakers and the crowd. Salden got here just about on time but everything was jammed. I guess he was trying to get in when he got it.”

“Trying? Maybe that’s what happened: He pushed some hopheaded trigger-happy dude. It doesn’t take much anymore.”

Mangiapane shook his head. “Six rounds, all in Salden. The two people who got wounded were hit by slugs that went through him. I suppose it could have been spur-of-the-moment, but it looks premeditated. Some of the people around him said he was just part of the crowd trying to get as close as he could. But he wasn’t physical about it at all.”

“Okay. I like it better that way. Let’s say he was the intended victim. Then, why?”

“Up for grabs, Zoo.” Mangiapane consulted his notepad. “No problem that anybody could uncover with his wife. They were close. She broke down when she was informed. She’s in St. John’s Hospital now, recovering.”

“Hmmm. No girlfriend?”

“Not that we can find.”

“Who’d want to shoot a reporter? Talk about killing the messenger! And a religion writer at that. Who gets mad at religion writers?”

“The people who were here for that meeting were pretty worked up, Zoo.”

Tully considered that for a moment. “Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? Any kind of make on the perp?”

Mangiapane smiled. “Everybody went to the bathroom.”

Tully smiled, but more grimly. Either because they were afraid or did not want to become involved, lots of witnesses routinely offered unlikely excuses for seeing, hearing, and saying nothing. It was as if, at the crucial moment, the witness insisted he or she was somewhere-anywhere-else. The bathroom would do.

“The few who would talk had pretty contradictory stories. It was a man. It was a woman. He was tall. She was small. About the only points of agreement were that the perp was adult, with a long black coat that could easily conceal the weapon, and a dark hat pulled low over the face.”

Tully rubbed his chin. “Sounds like the perp came to do business. Somebody who didn’t plan on shooting wouldn’t have covered up so completely. No reason to unless you know beforehand that you’re going to off somebody.”

Mangiapane nodded agreement. “As soon as the shooting started, everybody out here on the street hit the deck. The people inside could hear the shots, but they weren’t sure right off what it was. Then within seconds everybody knew what had happened, and-pandemonium. In that time, the perp faded away. It was dark-no moon-and the streetlights here are few and far between. Besides, most of ’em weren’t working.”

“As usual,” Tully commented.

“Right. So when the dust settled, everybody out here got up except three-two wounded and one dead.”

“A make on the weapon?”

Mangiapane glanced again at his notes. “MP5-KA4.” He was impressed.

So was Tully. A nine-millimeter machine pistol, he reflected. Able to be adjusted to fire either semiautomatically, as a full automatic, or in bursts of three rounds. A very powerful weapon.

“There seemed to be some agreement,” Mangiapane said, “that the shooting was bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam. So he probably geared it to fire in three-round bursts. They were fully jacketed, military style bullets.”

No wonder a couple of others got it, Tully thought. Bullets like that don’t deform when they hit, so they tend to go through things-people. Probably had to buy both pistol and bullets somewhere out on the street. That might prove to be a break, out on the street where so many breaks originate. Follow the gun. Trace it, and when you find the last guy who sold it, you find the perp.

Tully verbalized his thoughts. “Probably bought from one of our gunrunners. On the street, at any rate. Manj, see if any of our guys are out there looking for whoever sold it. If they’re not on the street, get ’em looking. Get some uniforms on it. Call in some markers. This is the best lead we’ve got so far.”

“Okay, Zoo. Where you gonna be, just in case?”

“For starters, I think I’ll go down to the News. See if I can pick up something from the paper.”

Tully easily could have swung onto the Lodge and sped his return downtown. But he wanted a few minutes to himself for thinking. So he turned down the one-way Fourteenth Street. In any case, when possible he preferred traveling the streets of his city rather than the freeways. State Police patrolled the expressways quite adequately. The streets were his, and he knew them like he knew his own body.

Damn that DeVere broad! His life had been in such a comfortable rut. Alice was well and their life together very satisfying. Work, as usual, was challenging and fulfilling. Since these were the only two areas of his existence that mattered to him, all was well. Until that bitch dredged up that nonexistent affair between him and Pat Lennon.

To be honest, Pat had entered his life at a time when he was in a state of depression. Alice had been suffering from a prolonged and indeterminate illness. In effect, he had found her depression infectious. For the first time in their relationship, he’d found it painful to go home to her. Enter Pat Lennon.

Their paths had crossed in a singles bar. Not technically, but in reality each had cheated in going to that bar. Technically, neither was married. But both Tully and Lennon had “life companions.” Except that Tully’s was ill and Lennon’s had needlessly abandoned her at a critical time.

In truth, something very probably would have happened had Pat not been the morally stronger of the two. Not that she would have shied from an affair with him had there been no extenuating factors. Pat had sensed that he was committed to Alice but that he was physically hungry-not for just anyone, but the “right” woman. And she had refused to compromise his situation.

While that may have been commendable, now, thanks to DeVere, they had the name without the game.

And damn Alice too, while he was at it! Why in hell didn’t she have more faith in him? He had never been unfaithful to her. The only time he’d even come close was with Lennon. But the fact remained, he had not strayed.

Still, what if this situation were reversed? What if some gossip columnist had written something implicating Alice and someone else? He found it difficult to imagine. But, what if? If she denied it, would he believe her? Would he believe in her even without a denial?

As it happened, the situation had never arisen. To his knowledge, Alice had never been involved with anyone besides him … at least not since their relationship had begun. But … what if she had? What if, at very least, someone implied that Alice was interested in seeing someone else? What if she were seen dining … or in a car … with another man? Would Tully still trust her? Implicitly.

Tully had to smile, at least briefly. He simply couldn’t even imagine Alice two-timing him. And if someone were to suggest that she was, he would just refuse to believe it.

Then why in hell couldn’t she react to scurrilous innuendo against him in the same way? Wasn’t there something in the Bible about do unto others? Or was it, in the jargon of the streets of Detroit, do unto others, then split!

Ah, the streets of Detroit. They had their own language. You had to be savvy enough, alert enough, experienced enough to understand that language.

This guy walking up Fourteenth, the upper torso like Rambo, spindly legs can barely support him, yet a definite swagger to his walk: He’s a graduate of Jacktown-Jackson State Prison. He went in there a ninety-eight-pound weakling. He got treated like a toy. Then he started pumping iron. He was really motivated. Eventually, he could break most of his tormentors in two. Mostly, he no longer looked like a fragile boy. He was big. He was powerful. And he had developed the joint swagger.

And he’s walking very purposefully. He is definitely going somewhere. He is going to a dope house. If he leaves that house scratching his head, he hasn’t scored. He’s got to figure out where to go next to find some crack or whatever. If he leaves the house striding securely, he’s got his fix. He’s got something to do.

Tully shook the image from his mind. This wasn’t what he wanted to consider on his way downtown. Damn that DeVere broad! She had proved to be a distraction. Intolerable!

Back to Salden. Was it a random shoot? So common on the streets of so many big cities. So terribly common on Detroit streets. Because somebody wants a classy jacket, a stylish pair of shoes. A drug turf war. A case of mistaken identity. For no good goddam reason at all.

The possibility of senseless murder was a brooding presence almost all the time. Guns were so available. Anyone who owned only one was a virtual pauper. And guns, compared with just about any other weapon, were so surgical. Not the mess that comes with a knife, a hammer, an ice pick, hands around a throat, you name it. Especially with the powerful guns of today, just ride by without stopping and spray a house. Kill everybody in sight, even those out of sight.

And that, of course, was it: The nine-millimeter machine pistol became a weapon of choice if one wished to hit a great number of people indiscriminately. Set the control for automatic fire and spray the crowd. That’s the ticket for terrorism or for a spaced-out crazy.

But what if you have a machine pistol, capable of mass destruction, but you pump two bursts, six rounds, into one back? You’ve got to want that one person very dead. Especially if you use jacketed military bullets. In that case, you not only want the guy very dead, you don’t particularly care if somebody else buys it too.

And that is precisely what happened with Salden. Two bursts, six rounds pumped into his back. The killer doesn’t specifically want to hit anybody else. If he had wanted to bring down some others, he could easily have sprayed the crowd. No, he wanted Salden. He wanted him so badly he simply didn’t care what happened to the slugs after they did the job on Salden. It was as simple as that.

But that’s where the simplicity stopped.

Who would want to kill a reporter? A religion writer? And why?

This is what called to him like a siren song. No platter this. A real whodunit. Tully could hardly wait to find the answers. And the answers, he strongly felt, began at the Detroit News.