Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

“I’m Harry Levin,” he said. “I own the place.”

“Go ahead.”

He walked in the lobby. Through the window he saw Detective Frank Mazza sitting at Phyllis’ desk, Phyllis across from him, smears of mascara on her cheeks, Columbus Fletcher on his back, arms bent, legs apart, blood stains under him, dark against the gray low-pile industrial carpeting. A cop from forensics was dusting the lock box for prints. And someone else was photographing Columbus from different angles, flashbulbs popping.

Harry walked in the office, glanced at Phyllis first and then Mazza, noticed the metal cabinet against the wall was damaged. By the look of it someone had used a sledgehammer. Frank Mazza said, “Mr. Levin, you’re keeping us busy.”

“Not my intention,” Harry said, annoyed by the remark. Phyllis got up and came over. Harry hugged her and she started crying, body heaving against him. He guided her back to the chair she was sitting in.

“Perp or perps cut through the fence out there.” Frank Mazza turned the swivel chair toward Harry and pointed north. “Just on the other side of the building. Broke a window, came in through the lavatory. Came in here like they knew what they were looking for. Broke into the cabinet where Ms. Wampler said you keep the lock box. How much was in there?”

“Not much. Maybe five hundred dollars. I keep most of the money in the safe in my office. Leave a little for Phyllis to get started in case I’m late.”

Mazza had traded his Sears wash-and-wear suit in for a tweed sport coat.

“Your night man must’ve heard or seen them and come in to have a look. Shot him with a .45 Colt. Cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. Manner of death was homicide.”

“How do you know it was a .45?”

Mazza took a small plastic evidence bag out of his sport-coat pocket, three shell casings in it. He pushed his heavy-looking hair up on his forehead and it fell back where it had been. “What can you tell me about Columbus Fletcher?”

“Years ago he was a fighter, middleweight.”

“I wondered what happened to his face.”

“Two hundred seven stitches, he told me, thirty-nine fights.”

“Ever see him in the ring?”

“One time,” Harry said, “exhibition bout at Cobo.”

“Married?”

“Three times. Daughter works at Henry Ford Hospital.”

“What was he like?”

“Quiet, likeable, easy-going. Showed up on time, never missed work.”

“How would you know?”

“Everyone punches a time card.”

“He use drugs?”

“I doubt it.”

“He ever been arrested, convicted of a crime?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you sit down, we’ll try to figure out who had motive.”

There was a swivel chair at another desk across the room. Harry wheeled it over and sat.

“Who knew you kept cash in the office?”

“Everyone we did business with. People bring scrap to us in trucks, cars, vans, trailers, you name it. We weigh it, take their name and address, send them in to see Phyllis and she pays them in cash.”

“I told you,” Phyllis said, giving Mazza a dirty look. She liked his hair but didn’t care much for him.

“Why don’t you go over all the receipts the past few days, see if anyone rings a bell.”

“Say you decide to rob a scrap yard. You come in for a look, sell a load, see the money. You think they’re going to give us a real name and address?”

“People are dumb,” Frank Mazza said. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

Phyllis got up, moved to the other side of the desk, knelt next to Mazza, opened a drawer and took out a manila envelope. She folded back the metal clasps and handed it to Harry. Harry dumped the receipts on the desktop. Frank Mazza got up, tapped a Lucky out of the pack and said he was going outside to smoke. Harry sat where Mazza had been, shuffling through the receipts, looking at names and dollar amounts: Clarence Cherry, an address on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, $68.75, Donnell Lewis on 2nd Avenue, $159.33. He looked at forty more, all from the inner city, and then he came to Aubrey Ponder, a trailer park in Pontiac, $28. Right away that one struck him as odd. Harry didn’t get many customers from the suburbs. And it was a long way to come for hardly any money. Harry handed the receipt to Phyllis. “Remember who gave you this one?”

She studied it and looked at him. “There were two of them, sleazy-looking, like they hadn’t used soap and water in a while. They were wearing caps. One said Red Man, the other Cat Diesel. Guy that did the talking had a southern accent.”

Based on that description they sounded like the two who kidnapped Colette. “How do you remember so much?”

“I handed the guy twenty-eight dollars and said, ‘Don’t spend it all in one place.’”

“Were they driving a green Ford pickup by chance?”

“I don’t know.”

Harry went outside and talked to his scale man, Archie Damman, saw Mazza smoking, talking to the cop he’d met on the way in. “Remember two guys came in yesterday, wearing caps, one had a southern accent?”

“Both did. Drove up in a white El Camino with a primer gray hood. They brought in an old icebox from the twenties, weighed a ton. Couple of confederates.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a rebel flag on the tailgate,” Archie said. “They have something to do with what’s going on here?”

“Looks that way.”

“Here you go,” Harry said, handing Mazza a piece of notepaper. “The two that killed Columbus. Gary Boone lives on Clark Street in Pontiac, drives a green Ford F-100, and Aubrey Ponder lives in a trailer park at that address.”

“You know them?”

“I can’t say that,” Harry said.

“What’s going on, they have something against you?”

“You’ll have to ask them.” Harry paused. “If there’s nothing else…” He would’ve preferred to go after the rednecks himself, but Columbus Fletcher was dead, and Joyce was still alive.

Someone was knocking on the door. Hess crossed into the salon, glanced out the window and saw Lois Grant standing at the front door, holding a silver tray covered with tin foil. That’s right, Max had said she would bring him food, baked goods.

Lois rested the tray on brick steps, moved toward the living-room window, placed an outstretched palm over her eyes, trying to cut the daylight glare and see inside. Hess stepped away from the window, out of sight, his back against the living-room wall. He could see Lois’ face close to the glass.

Then he saw her through a side window, carrying the tray, walking back to her house. Hess didn’t like it. He couldn’t be sure what this woman was going to do next. Hess went back in the salon, stood at the window, scanned the street. Zeller’s Ford sedan was parked in front of the vacant lot, Hess wondering when the reinforcements were coming. He believed Zeller was federal police, BKA, and knew they would have sent more than one agent. They would need at least four to set up surveillance, to find and apprehend him, or take him out.

Hess filled the bucket at the kitchen sink, listening to a message on Max Hoffman’s answering machine. It was Lois Grant saying, “Max, where are you? I’ve left three messages. That car parked next to the vacant lot, nobody in the neighborhood knows who it belongs to, so I called the police.”

He carried the bucket to the garage, surprised by how much water had pooled under the worktable on the seal-coated concrete floor, streams running all the way to the garage door. Zeller’s white shirt was so wet Hess could see right through it — his skin and the hair on his chest. Hess could hear Zeller forcing air through his damaged nasal passages, the exhale sounding like a snort, face wet, watery bloodshot eyes watching him.