Peter Leonard - Voices of the Dead

Harry was thinking, come on. What is this? Now they were preparing to audit his company. Harry had asked his secretary, Phyllis, to pull all the records‚ back up that supported his tax returns, everything from 1969 and ’70. He had no clue why they were coming after him. He’d maintained accurate, up-to-date records. The examiner named at the top of the letter was William Decker.

He was in the waiting room when Harry arrived, stood up and introduced himself as Bill. Looked like a former athlete, six three, a couple inches taller than Harry, but about his age, early forties, hair going gray, cut to the top of his ears, big hands, firm handshake.

Decker told him the audit was random, not personal, but Harry had trouble believing it. He paid cash for scrap, and a business like his was an easy target. Harry and his scale operator‚ Jerry Dubuque‚ loaded a dozen banker boxes in the back of Decker’s Fairlane station wagon, three years’ worth of shippers, cash slips, weight tickets, metal settlement reports, bids and contracts. The IRS would match it all up with what Harry said on his returns or Decker would give him a call.

Harry owned twelve acres on Mt. Elliot near Luce just east of Hamtramck. He’d bought the business from his uncle, in ’62. Worked there since he was seventeen. Harry had six million pounds of scrap, a mountain of auto parts, refrigerators, bed frames, steel beams, railroad tracks and farm equipment that rose up five stories and extended five hundred feet from end to end. To move the mountain he had two hydraulic crawler cranes, one outfitted with a magnet, the other a grapple. He also had three scales, a baling press, alligator shears, guillotine shears and four loaders to haul scrap to the mills.

When Decker left, Harry took the black guys’ wallets out and looked at them. Afro was Ray Jones, eyes closed in the license photo, six one, 180, six dollars and a piece of paper with a name on it: Yolanda, and a phone number in the scuffed-up brown wallet with a ninja in black illustration on it. Guy in the backseat was Darnell Terry, five eleven, 170. He was the high roller, had twenty-seven dollars and two credit cards, a Visa and a MasterCard with different names on them.

Harry owned a three-bedroom Tudor on Hendrie, a tree-lined street in Huntington Woods. He’d lived alone since his daughter had gone away to college in Washington DC a year earlier. She’d decided to stay there for the summer after her freshman year, work part-time and take a couple classes. Harry couldn’t blame her, living in DC sounded exciting, and beat the hell out of Detroit.

Harry had a thing going with a neighbor named Galina, a big-breasted thirty-seven-year-old Latvian Jew whose breath smelled like sauerkraut, and privates like wild geese. She lived on the street behind him and over a couple houses. Her husband worked for Ford and had taken a job in London. She didn’t want to go to a place where it rained all the time, so they were in the process of divorce — although there had to be more to it than that. She’d call once a week, usually in the evening, say she was horny and available, drive around the block, and park in his garage so the neighbors wouldn’t see what was going on. They’d go up to his bedroom, take off their clothes and spend a couple hours in bed. She’d run down to the kitchen, naked, bring up snacks and drinks to satisfy some appetites and replenish others. This had been going on for several months until one day she told Harry she’d met someone and thought it was serious. Harry liked her but it didn’t go much deeper than that. He wished her luck.

He’d also had a recent fling with a girl he’d met at an Allman Brothers concert at Pine Knob. He noticed this petite good-looking girl, long hair parted down the middle, skinny arms and big jugs hanging free in an Allman Brothers tee-shirt, sitting next to him, smoking pot. He looked at her, she handed him the joint. He had never smoked marijuana, but thought, what the hell. Took a hit and started coughing and she looked at him and grinned.

“First time?”

Harry nodded.

After the band did “Statesboro Blues‚” she stood up and screamed, and it was so loud his eardrums hurt. When the noise had died down he leaned over and said, “You’re the best screamer I’ve ever heard in my life. You should be in horror films.”

She smiled and said, “You haven’t heard anything yet.”

And she was right. After “Whipping Post” she let one out that was even louder.

Harry said, “What’s your name?”

“Janice Jones.”

“You a Playboy Playmate?”

“No,” she said, “a bartender.”

“Janice, you have any other hidden talents?”

“Call me,” Janice said, “and find out.”

She wrote her number on his palm with a blue ballpoint, and he woke up the next morning looking at it. They met for lunch a couple days later at the Stage Deli in Oak Park. He had chicken soup and the South Pacific club. She had a King and I with extra Russian. Janice was from Bottineau, North Dakota, a town thirteen miles from the Canadian border.

“How do you get there?” Harry’d said.

“Fly to Minot and have someone pick you up.”

Her parents were farmers. Janice said she looked at the future and saw an old, broken-down version of herself by the time she was forty — like her mother — and wanted better. She’d run away when she was seventeen. Went to San Francisco, met some people and lived in a house in the Haight. She was in Detroit for a couple of weeks visiting friends.

After lunch they went back to Harry’s house. She put her purse on the kitchen table and looked at him. “Want to get high?”

“Sure,” Harry said, feeling adventurous. He watched her take a plastic sandwich bag of marijuana out of her purse, sprinkle some into a rolling paper, and roll a joint that looked like a cigarette with one hand. They smoked it and he gave her the grand tour, and when they got to his bedroom she sat on the bed and took off her tee-shirt, sitting there bare-breasted, patting the comforter next to her leg.

“Want to fuck?”

She said it casually like she was asking him what time it was.

Harry walked over, seduced by this North Dakota farm girl with perky tits, sat next to her and they started making out. Next thing he knew they were naked between the sheets and he was between her legs, Janice on top, body erect, breasts bouncing, hands on his chest, riding him. After a few minutes her eyes rolled back and she came, and let out a scream. It was summer and the windows were open. Harry couldn’t believe it. “What’re you doing?”

“Getting off,” she said.

“My neighbors are going to call the police.”

Harry grinned thinking about it, and made himself a vodka and tonic, went outside and sat on the patio. He read the Free Press and cooked a two-inch-thick Delmonico steak on the grill, watched the Tigers beat the Angels 3–0. Joe Coleman struck out ten. Stanley and McAuliffe both homered. He was in bed at eleven.

Hess found out the woman lived on P Street in Georgetown, not far from the consulate. He told the ambassador he was having dinner with potential clients, and wanted to drive himself. It was unorthodox, but plausible. He had been issued one of the embassy’s Mercedes sedans. He stopped at a bookstore and bought a map of the area, and located P Street. He drove there and saw the Goldman residence, a federal-style brick townhouse.

Hess went to a restaurant and had dinner and a couple drinks. At ten o’clock he drove back, parked around the corner on 32nd Street between two other vehicles so the license plate was not visible to anyone driving by. He walked to the Goldmans’, stood next to a tree in front of the three-storey townhouse. There were lights on the first floor. He walked to the front door and rang the buzzer. He could hear footsteps and voices inside. A light over the door went on. Hess stood in the open so whoever it was would see he was well dressed. The door opened, a man standing there, assumed he was Dr. Mitchell Goldman, dark hair, big nose, mid-forties, top of the shirt unbuttoned, exposing a gold chain and a five-pointed star. Hess smiled. “My car is on the fritz. May I use your phone to call a tow truck?”