Man With An Axe: A Detective Sergeant Mulheisen Mystery Part 11

The way we set up the deal was, Carmine and the Fat Man [Humphrey DiEbola.-M.] would go to a motel in Cadillac that Hoffa knew about, that same night. When we were ready we would call the motel and tell them where to meet us. My plan was we would get into the hunting cabin, look the terrain over, and sometime the next day we'd call and it would only take them about a half hour, maybe a little more, to come out and meet. But I sure as h.e.l.l didn't want them showing up with a bunch of goons, and I didn't want 'em coming before we was ready.

The cabin was all right, if you don't mind being out in the middle of a G.o.dd.a.m.n wilderness, which ain't my idea of paradise. It was down a dirt road, about a quarter of a mile from a county blacktop. It was completely in the trees, not on a lake or nothing, so there wasn't no neighbors. Cess Morgan must of been a complete pig, Sister Mary Herman would have straightened him out, but we got the place cleaned up. Anyways, it's down this road, which is almost roofed over with trees, which are these hardwoods, I don't know what kind, but a lot of leaves and it's cool, although later, when it got hot, there wasn't a lot of breeze around the cabin. But it never got too hot.

It's just a hunting cabin, pretty primitive. One room with a sink and a table and cupboards on one end. The sink has a hand pump, so you got running water, more or less, right in the house. Pretty modern for ol' Cess and his hunting buddies, I guess. And he even built a bathroom on the back, instead of the old s.h.i.tter, which was still over by the edge of the clearing. The toilet you gotta pour a bucket of water in the cistern to flush. But it works okay. Better than a outhouse, anyway. And there's a propane tank for the kitchen range, which is pretty nice, and a s.p.a.ce heater that would run you out of there in below-zero temperatures. But it's a hunting cabin, so it has to have a little stone fireplace and, naturally, Mr. Jimmy Hoffa loves a f.u.c.kin' fire, so we gotta make a fire because it's a little cool at night, and anyway, a fire is always nice. With a little Jim Beam, naturally.

Oh yeah. No electricity. No phone. He had these kerosene lamps with gla.s.s chimneys that I kinda liked. Kind of a nice light and it gives off a faint odor that ain't actually too bad.

This clearing is about, oh, the size of a couple of house lots in town, and then the woods start. The road makes a couple jinks, so you can't see very far down it. In the morning, me and Lonzo took a long walk around the woods. There wasn't much to see. It was just woods, pretty big trees. From driving around and all, it looked to me that this was the only house in about a square mile. There was a farmhouse further down, near a crossroads, but too far away to be any concern. The cabin sat in a state forest, there wasn't any logging going on, no farming, no ponds or lakes to attract summer folks. Only good for one thing, and that was for about two weeks in November when guys come up from Detroit to hunt deer. It was probably not even legally Cess's, was my guess. [It belonged to a relative of Morgan's, who was apparently unaware that the cabin still stood and was in use for hunting.-M.]

It looked pretty simple to me. I figured Carmine and the Fat Man would drive out with a stooge or two, to meet Jacobsen, who would be waiting at the end of the road. They would not know that I was even anywhere around. I would of sent Lonzo to meet them, but I thought him being a Negro it might attract attention from pa.s.sersby, in case there was any, which you never know. Anyways, Jacobsen would hail them down when they come down the blacktop and get in the car with them to ride back on the dirt road. About halfway to the cabin, which is a furlong, if I remember my days at Hazel Park raceway-about halfway down the backstretch. You can't see the road or the house from there and I would have Lonzo's car parked across the road, so n.o.body could drive right up to the cabin.

Lonzo would be there, at the car. Carmine or the Fat Man could go up to the cabin on foot. Whichever. Lonzo and Jacobsen would let the guys know that the woods was full of Hoffa people, but they didn't want no trouble. Course, they don't know I'm even there. Tyrone I didn't want to get in no trouble, so I had him take my car and drive to a little town, I think it's called Faraway, and make the call to the motel in Cadillac that would start the show. Then, if everything is on, he should make sure the tank is full of gas and drive back to let us know. I'd wait for him by the road. Then he should go on down the blacktop, not toward Cadillac, the other direction-toward Faraway, and then at noon (or whatever time we agree on) he should turn around and drive back. By that time Carmine and them should be there. If there was n.o.body at the cabin drive, that meant Carmine and them had already gone up and he should park in a place we found about a hundred feet down the road, but off where you wouldn't notice the car unless you was looking for it. From there he could watch the road to make sure there wasn't no surprise reinforcements coming along five minutes behind. If somebody did show, or it didn't look right for some reason, he should blow his horn-his car horn, not the soprano sax he brung along.

If he heard trouble-I mean shooting-I told him to wait right there by the car for fifteen minutes. Don't come in to look around. If I or somebody didn't come along by then to tell him it was all right, there wasn't anything he could do to help us. He should take off and just keep going.

"To where?" he asks me.

"To San Francisco," I told him. " 'Cause if this don't go right, they're gonna be looking for Tyrone Addison for a long, long time. They won't quit."

But I didn't expect nothing to go wrong, really. Carmine or the Fat Man would play it cool on this first visit. They'd want to get a good look at the situation. Then, the second trip would be the dangerous one. Which is why I told Hoffa to do his best to not blow his top, to keep his cool and just talk it out with them. I didn't want no second meeting.

"Talk at Carmine," I told him, "but remember that you're talking to the Fat Man. He's the one you gotta convince."

"I thought just one of them would come up to the cabin," he says.

"That's what we say, but they'll say no, they both gotta talk to you, and Carmine ain't going up there by hisself. So we give in, but no hoods. Just them two. Anyways, maybe you should come down from the cabin, to greet them."

"Won't that be dangerous?" he says. "I'm not scared, but what if-"

I knew he wasn't scared and I told him so, and it was d.a.m.n dangerous. One a them hoods might have a f.u.c.king tommy gun or something and start chopping wood. But I didn't think so. Anyways, they didn't have no reason to be afraid of us, I figured, so they wouldn't be throwing too much muscle around when they didn't know the lay of the land. I thought it would be all right if he came down from the cabin, but stopped just where they could see him. That'd be a few hundred feet maybe, too far for a decent pistol shot, but close enough to yell h.e.l.lo and wave for them to come up. And wait for them.

That seemed okay to Hoffa. "I'll hold my hands up, waving," he says, "but showing 'em that I ain't armed. I'm welcoming them. And don't worry, I won't lose my temper. This is important for me, for my family, and for the union."

"That's the stuff," I said. But I was bulls.h.i.tting. It didn't look good to me at all. I figured it would all go wrong, every f.u.c.kin' step. Something stupid would happen and everybody would get killed. But, what the f.u.c.k, it looked like an interestin' mornin'. h.e.l.l, maybe we'd get lucky and it'd go at least half-right, which is: they come, they look the place over, maybe even get far enough to see Jimmy waving h.e.l.lo, and then for some reason say they gotta come back.

I'm figuring on that, at least. They'll want to control the play, not let Jimmy set the table. There was a good chance that they wouldn't even be at the motel, or only the Fat Man would be there. In other words, stall for time, try to figure out where this was all going down, see if they couldn't load the dice somehow.

If they wasn't at the motel, or didn't wanta drive out and meet, wanted Jimmy to come to them, or one of us, probably Lonzo, to come and set up a "more convenient" meeting-maybe one of them is sick, say-then Tyrone would tell 'em politely he'd have to check and would call back later that afternoon. Then he should come back and we'd figure the next stage.

So we had a nice night. I had Lonzo checking around outside, on guard duty, then I took over. Tyrone and Jacobsen alternated taking a long walk around, but keeping out of sight, in case anybody came along. They were armed, but what was the point? Neither one a them had ever fired a gun in their lives, they admitted, but it might help if they at least showed a gun. I gave them each a .32 auto, little throw-down guns that I'd picked up here and there, over the years, which they could carry in their pockets without too much trouble.

But me and Lonzo were heeled. I offered him a .45 auto, but he comes up with a Llama 9 mm, which he likes. He's got some extra clips for it. Plus he brung a 12-gauge pump from home. Me, I've got the Old Cat plus a few other miscellaneous pieces. So I figure we're okay for a first meeting, anyway. I offered a piece to Hoffa, but he says, "No way. This is s'posta be a peace conference, not a war council."

We was sitting around the fire, having a snort of bourbon, smoking a coupla stogies, and I axed him what he's gonna tell Carmine and the Fat Man. He's gonna have this all talked out by afternoon, he says. He's gonna stay clear of the details of any kind of deal they got with Fitz, but he wants them to know that he's got nothing against 'em, they always been able to work together and he wants to go on working together, but he knows in his heart that Fitz is not doing the union any good. The membership is disillusioned when they see the kind of s.h.i.t Fitz pulls, and he don't blame n.o.body, but when the membership starts droppin' everybody has got a problem, 'cause pretty soon you ain't got no union. So they gotta work out their differences, but he thinks they'll see that it's worth their while to have a strong leadership back, and he'll go on TV and tell the f.u.c.king world that he's okay, no problem, nothing to do with the Mob, he just had to get away and try to figure out, for himself and for the union, what the future needed, and he decided that it needed him to be back running the Teamsters. Amen.

"Good luck," I told him.

Later I went out with Tyrone and he brung along his soprano. We both played on it, in the woods, but it seemed a little eerie and I got thinking that maybe it would attract attention, so we quit. It was dark as h.e.l.l in them woods, so we walked down the drive to the blacktop, where at least you could see the sky, which was crawling with stars, I never seen so many.

I'd been thinking about Tyrone, where he fit into all this. I told him that no matter what happened tomorrow he hadda get the h.e.l.l outta this. He and Vera f.u.c.ked up the minute they picked up Hoffa. I knew they had got some idea that somehow they was gonna make something out of this, some money, big money, which would help them get a record out or something. But that was bulls.h.i.t. There was no way that getting involved could do anything but screw him and Vera. My advice, I said, was to just take off, once he done what I asked him to do.

"You mean just split?" he says. "But what about you, what if you and the guys need help, need a car?"

"We got a car," I said. "The only reason I insisted on bringing two cars was for this. I told you the plan there, in front of everybody, but that was bulls.h.i.t. You split. Once you come back and let me know that the deal is running, you split. You ain't no use to us after that, anyways. If everything goes fine I'll ride back to the city with Jim and Lonzo and Janney. They'll be a little p.i.s.sed at you taking off, but I'll explain to them what I'm telling you now, that I told you to go. Not only that, I gave you the money."

"Hoffa's money?"

"Yeah. I took it out of his bag, a few days ago. There's two hundred thousand dollars. I left him with two grand, wrapped around some funny money that Books got for me. You take it."

He argued, but he was just a kid. What could he say against me? Then I told him the toughest part. He hadda forget about Vera. I knew it was hard, I said, but it had to be.

"There's no way out of it," I told him. "You guys f.u.c.ked up. No matter what happens now, Tyrone Addison is dead. You seen too much and you don't have no power, nothing to protect you, nothing to offer. You can be dead dead, or you can be fake dead, but after tomorrow there ain't gonna be no Tyrone Addison no more, so you can forget about that part of your life."

"What about you?" he says. "You blew that guy away, that Cooze."

"I'm Grootka," I said. "They don't f.u.c.k with Grootka. I'm more trouble than I'm worth. Plus, they think they know me. They figure they can deal with me. I'm in their world, part of their plans. You ain't. You're a jive-a.s.s n.i.g.g.e.r bopper, no offense. You ain't nothing to them but danger. So at best, if everything goes down like good grits, you don't have no future. And Vera don't have no future with you."

This was what he really couldn't take, and you can't blame him. But he must of known, they both must of known. If he cut loose from her they prob'ly wouldn't bother her. The Mob don't take chicks seriously. If she became a problem, sure, they'd zip her shut in a heartbeat. But if Tyrone fades and she steers clear, keeps her mouth shut . . . they might survive. I explained it to him, over and over. He wouldn't buy it.

But I insisted. We were standing in the middle of a empty road in a f.u.c.king forest in northern f.u.c.king Michigan and owls are hooting whenever we quit yelling and I'll tell ya, Mul, I was a little bit, I don't know, not scared, but I'm not so great in the f.u.c.king woods at night, it ain't my scene. I'd rather be on Dexter Avenue at four in the morning with a bunch of drunk spades who think I been hiding the bottle. But I put the heat on the kid until he finally broke down and said, "All right, if the deal goes bad, then I'll split."

"And don't go near Vera," I said. "Don't even call her. She'll figure it out. She ain't a infant. If I get out of this, I'll talk to her. But you and she are done. Got it?"

"Unless everything's cool," Tyrone says.

He's still got this idea that if Hoffa can pull this off then he and Vera can go back to their old life and he'll play music and make a hit record and they'll get rich . . . and it just goes on and on. Bulls.h.i.t.

The next morning me and Lonzo and the others took our walk and figured out the system, like I said, and I sent Tyrone off about eleven. Eleven-thirty he's back, says he talked to Carmine, who agreed to everything and they'd be here in about a half hour. So I sent him off down the road and I take up my spot, which is near the dirt track, in the woods. I can keep an eye on the road, see if there's any other vehicles, make sure Tyrone is in place so he can watch and blow his horn.

High noon and here comes Tyrone, cruising slowly up the county road, but no Carmine. Tyrone eases by, looking at Janney, who shrugs and waves. As Tyrone gets near me, I step out of the woods and wave him on, but Tyrone just proceeds up the road and pulls into the hiding spot we found. I see he's gonna play it that way, so I sigh and move back into my observation spot.

It's another full half hour before Carmine's limo shows. I can't say I was surprised. Another fifteen or twenty minutes and I'd of called it off, 'cause it meant they was setting something up. But a half hour is not enough to b.i.t.c.h about. Anyways, here they come, tooling up the blacktop in a Town Car, or whatever them things are, but it's all tinted windows and I can't see s.h.i.t. It ain't like when they came in at n.i.g.g.e.r Heaven. Jacobsen hails them and they pull over and the window comes down, a little. Jacobsen says his piece, pointing up the road, then the back door opens and he gets in. I'm watching from inside the woods, not fifty feet away, but they'd never spot me. Still, it makes me nervous, the car just sitting there like that, half on the blacktop and half into the drive, the seconds ticking by like minutes. I'm starting to get interested, wondering what they got to talk so long with Janney for?

But, finally, just when I'm about to go back and signal Hoffa to get lost, the deal's not gonna happen, the car eases into the dirt track and begins to trundle up toward the cabin. I wait a few seconds and step out to the road. From where he's parked, Tyrone should be able to see me. I signal "okay," with a clenched fist, and for the last time I motion to him to hit the road, waving him off, but there's no response. I look around. I don't see no other cars, nothing.

Oh well, I think, it's his funeral. And I hustle back on up through the woods. I make pretty good time and I'm there to see Lonzo standing behind his car, which is parked across the dirt track, the shotgun out of sight but his right hand is hanging down, and I figure he's got the gun in it. The limo is standing there, twenty feet from him, and Jacobsen is standing outside the open back door. It looks like he's relaying messages back and forth from the guys inside to Lonzo. I hear him yell out, "They want to see your weapon!"

Lonzo hoists the 12-gauge with one hand, then sets it down. "Ain't n.o.body gon' get hurt!" he yells back. "We all be cool. You tell him, Jake! They cool, we cool!"

And then, lo and behold, Carmine and the Fat Man get out on either side. The Fat Man is wearing a black suit, in August. It must be like a f.u.c.king oven, I figure, except of course they got air-conditioning. But outside it ain't air-conditioned. It's at least eighty-five and not a breath. Humid. It's shady, though, so I ain't sweating, but I ain't wearing no black suit, just my light summer gray, and anyway I never sweat. The Fat Man has also got on shades and a hat. He looks like a f.u.c.king cartoon Mobster. Carmine is wearing a pale green jumpsuit kind of leisure outfit, with brown-and-white shoes. On his head he's got some kind of f.u.c.king golf hat, and shades, of course.

A couple of goons get out of the back, too. Young guys in dark slacks, sport coats, sport shirts. Shades, natch. And they got Uzis. Holding 'em muzzle up, like the Secret Service guys do, as if they wanta keep the f.u.c.king BBs from falling outta the barrel.

Which leaves at least an armed driver and another armed man in the front seat, but you can't see them, it's tinted. That's a lotta firepower, but no more than I expected, and if n.o.body else comes to the party I guess we can play. Anyway, Lonzo knows what to do.

By now he's got the 12-gauge in his hands, resting the barrel on the roof of his car. But he's friendly, he ain't pointing it at no one, just showing it. "Only one comes forward! You other guys, get back in the car. Don't want no trouble!"

The goons look at Carmine. The Fat Man says something I can't hear, and then the goons get back in the car, but they leave the door open, not wide open, but ajar. Lonzo yells to shut the doors, and they do. Which leaves Carmine and the Fat One, plus Janney, standing. That ain't one man, but Lonzo shrugs. "Okay!" he yells, over his shoulder.

Mr. Jimmy Hoffa comes down the path. He stops and waves. He's got on a shirt that's too big for him, must be one a Lonzo's, a Hawaiian shirt with the tails out. "Hey, Carmine!" he yells. "Humphrey! Where's Tony?"

Carmine says something to the Fat Man, who has strolled around the car and now is standing next to him. Then Carmine yells out, "Tony wouldn't come. He's chickens.h.i.t. He's scared of you and"-he points around to the woods-"your f.u.c.king trucker buddies! He thinks you're gonna beat him up!" He laughs, very loudly. The Fat Man laughs too, but he's looking around. Jimmy laughs.

"Hey, Jimbo!" Carmine yells out. "How you doing? They treating you all right up here? Whatta you got, some bimbos back in the woods? What izzit, Indian squaws or something?"

They all laugh.

Jimmy comes down a little closer. "Nah, it's just a cabin. You been here, ain't you? It's Cess Morgan's old place. C'mon up. We can talk. C'mon. There's n.o.body out there." He half-turns, waiting, waving his hand at the woods to indicate that it's empty.

"You sure?" Carmine yells, gawking around, almost clowning-he's got his hand up to the bill of his golf cap, like a Indian scout. But you know, Mul, even here in the middle of the f.u.c.king North Woods, Carmine looks like a million bucks. Even in that stupid suit, which it looks like a f.a.g put on him. He's lean, not old, not young, got that steel-wool hair that looks like it's ironed on his neat little skull-Perry Como hair. But even with those Italian designer gla.s.ses on, I can see he's nervous. He mutters something over his shoulder to the Fat Man, then he calls out, "I think I'll stay here, Jimbo! I don't feel too good. I had a s.h.i.tty breakfast. These s.h.i.tkickers up here, they don't know how to make a breakfast-f.u.c.king pancakes like lead. I'm gonna stay in the car. You and Umberto can settle this."

Carmine looks yearningly at Hoffa. You can tell he don't wanta be out here in this bulls.h.i.t woods. He wants to be on a golf course, or on his yacht in the Detroit River, or in Hawaii.

Hoffa stands there, his fists on his hips, shaking his head. Then he shrugs and waves the Fat Man on. Carmine steps back to the car and opens the door to get in.

That's when I seen the first guy. I don't know how many there was. Not many, I guess. Maybe only two or three. They were in the woods, between the car and the cabin. They must of come the back way, but they must of known where they was going. There was no sound from the road, so maybe they got Tyrone first. But I think they knew where they was going.

The guy I seen was beyond Jimmy, just stepping out of the woods. He was maybe twenty feet from Hoffa and he had a rifle, which he had brought up to his cheek, aiming. I shot him clean with the Swedish K I'd parked in the woods for myself. He went flying back, arms wide, the rifle tossed, and he lay there. Just a single shot. But I switched to auto right away.

The Fat Man whirls around. He's got a revolver, nickel-plated. He shoots Jacobsen right in the face. The two punks bounce out. One shoves Carmine into the back, the other grabs at the Fat Man, trying to wrestle him into the car and in the bustle knocking the gun out of his hand, which it gets kicked under the car. Then the two kids slam the doors and jump out of the way so the car can back up at very high, dirt-throwing speed, and they're crouched in that movie position, both hands on the Uzi, blowing away the bark off the trees on either side. Obviously they got no idea where I am.

I ran out one clip on them, and believe me, that G.o.dd.a.m.n K is a cannon, though of course there's so many trees, you're not gonna hit anything like that. But it puts the kids back out of the way, retreating back down the track. So I run to help out Jimmy, slapping a new clip into the K. Lonzo has disappeared, I notice, lying half under the car and not moving. I stop on the edge of the road to hose the boys back and I see that the limo has got away.

Then I look up the other way and there's Jimmy blazing away with a revolver at the trees.

I don't know where that gun came from, but it didn't help Mr. James R. Hoffa. Because a second later he was pert-near cut in two by a h.e.l.l of a f.u.c.king cannon, from somewhere not too far back in the woods. I mean, that was ordnance. I don't mean like a law, but like artillery, except this kind of ordnance is laying down the law. It sounded too big to be portable and it actually made everybody stop firing when it quit, because you didn't want to be on the same field with that kind of s.h.i.t.

Anyway, it didn't speak again and there was Jimmy Hoffa splattered all over the drive. And pretty soon you could hear the little birds calling. Be a good place to take your mother some time, Mul. Maybe she could tell me what that bird is that goes witchety-witchety.

12.

Lonzo's Blues I think it frequently happens that a person about whom we have been thinking is soon enough thrust upon our attention for other reasons. In this case, I had been anxious, after talking to Vera Jacobsen, to interview Lonzo b.u.t.terfield and Books Meldrim. The former for whatever information he could give me regarding Vera and Tyrone, as well as Grootka and Hoffa and Jacobsen, of course. The latter because I felt now that he was the silent partner in this entire episode, as well as its aftermath.

First things first. Earlier, I had tracked down Lonzo b.u.t.terfield. It wasn't difficult. He wasn't in hiding or anything. He was in a rest home and not in very good shape. The home was off Davison, near Van d.y.k.e, not far from Forest Lawn cemetery, and not more than twenty minutes from Vera's place in Ferndale. It wasn't a bad place, as these places go, but it wouldn't have made much difference if it had been. Lonzo wasn't paying too much attention; he was kind of self-absorbed.

He was just a shadow of the Lonzo I used to know. Instead of looming about six feet, six inches or more, and weighing three hundred plus, he seemed to be about five-ten, and he sure didn't weigh any more than a hundred and fifty pounds. He harbored an incredible melange of disorders, from diabetes to a cirrhotic liver, including various tumors, some of them malignant; he had suffered at least one mild stroke, partial renal failure, a cardiac arrest or two, you name it. The resident doctor (or perhaps he was only an occasional visitor, it wasn't clear) was a young man of thirty who seemed almost proud of Lonzo, as a kind of catalog of disease and decrepitude. "The man's a walkin' Dorland's Cyclopedia," he declared.

"Walking?" I gaped at Lonzo, who was admittedly mobile, but bent over and pushing a wheeled walker that also carried a couple of bottles of fluids that were tubed into his arms, as well as sacs that were receptacles for tubes issuing from his legs and abdomen.

"Shufflin', then," the doctor conceded. "But, what the heck, he's breathing."

He was breathing, but barely, and he wasn't talking much. I had remembered him as a dark-skinned man, but he seemed faded into a khaki color, except for around his eyes, which were as dark as the old tenor man Ben Webster's. His mind seemed in gear. He appeared to recognize me and he certainly lit up when I mentioned Grootka.

"Saymalie," he breathed. We had made it back to his bed in his little room. The room was plastered with old posters of Coltrane and Miles Davis, and there was a safe on the floor, a square green metal box of heavy gauge steel that was not only padlocked but was actually secured to the floor with heavy chains that led from welded rings in the steel box to steel rings or loops mounted onto the floor with heavy lag bolts.

He repeated the word or phrase until I grasped the meaning: he meant that Grootka had saved his life. I supposed that part of the problem in understanding him was the bullet that had taken a chunk of his tongue and broken his jaw. Now that I thought about it, the two or three times that I had met Lonzo he had been a little inarticulate, but I had attributed that to alcohol. And I recalled another thing: that in each case it was Grootka who had brought us together. So now I saw that Grootka had meant for me to meet Lonzo, to get to know him.

"Grootka saved your life?" I said. "When they killed Hoffa, you mean?"

His eyes grew round as saucers. "Whirjoogeddat?" he croaked.

"Grootka's notes. He left me his notebooks." I showed one of them to him. "Tells the whole story. You, Grootka, Tyrone, Janney Jacobsen."

He shook his head, his withered lips in a grimace. "Jake," he said. "a.s.so."

"Jake was an a.s.shole?"

Lonzo nodded. "Tole." He nodded more. "Jake tole."

"Told who?"

"Ca-mine." Lonzo squeezed his eyes tightly. "Gruuk, Gruuook, Grrk. Grrka," he shook his head slowly.

"Grootka didn't know? He didn't know that Jacobsen was the one who told Carmine where Hoffa was?" Lonzo nodded. "He thought it was you, didn't he?" Lonzo nodded more. "Did you know? At the time?" He shrugged. "You suspected, but you didn't know?" He shrugged. So it seemed that he hadn't known, probably not at the time, anyway, but later came to know. I put it to him and he nodded. "Did you ever tell Grootka?"

Lonzo shook his head. "Try . . . b'na."

He had tried, but Grootka either didn't believe him, or had ignored him. The information was coming from the wrong person. When somebody asks who killed c.o.c.k Robin, that bird with the bow and arrow can deny it until his breath fails, as this one was doing.

At this rate, I thought, I'll get all the information I need by the turn of the century, if Lonzo holds out, which seems doubtful. I wanted to ask him why Jacobsen would betray Hoffa to Carmine, but it seemed too complex to answer, and anyway, would he know?

A few possibilities occurred to me. a.s.suming that Jacobsen already had a relationship of some sort with Carmine, which he must have had, one could infer a motive of fear: if Carmine discovered that you knew and hadn't told him, he'd be murderously angry. Or greed: there would be a variety of rewards for whoever helped the Mob out of this potentially disastrous jam. And don't forget jealousy. I wasn't so sure about that one. Was Jacobsen jealous of Tyrone? Or Vera? I didn't know, and when I phrased it to Lonzo he wasn't much help.

"Get Hoffa 'way," was the best Lonzo could provide, meaning that he thought-he signified with shrugs and so forth his not very strong feelings or knowledge-that Jacobsen simply wanted Hoffa out of the way, possibly that he felt that Hoffa's presence was too dangerous for Tyrone's good health, or his own plans for Tyrone. Something like that.

I had a feeling that this was probably the case. It had that foolish, almost heartbreaking air of validity that human actions sometimes have when the inconsequential leads to desperate acts. We think at first, Oh no; but something deep inside says, Oh yeah.

"What about Vera?" I asked.

His shoulders and chest heaved, simulating laughter, and he attempted a grin, but his last ministroke had made only a smirk possible. Still, he was clearly cheerful as he hoisted his open palms before his midriff to evoke heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and he shook his head admiringly. "Helva woom. Peesa.s.s. Helva woom. Golotta-lotta guts. Got guts. Hard, hard," he emphasized sternly, "hard wook . . . sh' hardwook'n. f.u.c.k'n Ty, leff'r."

That seemed understandable, with some effort. His condemnation of Tyrone for leaving her was not severe, it would seem, at least on conventional grounds, but rather he thought it foolish. Perhaps he thought Tyrone should have taken her with him when he vanished, a.s.suming that he vanished on his own and wasn't, rather, disappeared as the Argentinans have it. But Grootka was fairly convincing on that topic, I thought. An obscure young jazz musician might be able to disappear-indeed, he certainly had-but probably not with a s.e.xy white wife or mistress.

I asked him what he thought of Tyrone taking off, otherwise. He smiled. Then his face lit up and he had an idea. He gestured me to be patient and he got painfully off his iron bedstead and knelt on the floor to unlock the strongbox, as he called it-"Da.s.s my strawnbox"-from which he took a plastic-encased audioca.s.sette tape. It was not a professional commercially produced recording but one made by someone who had recorded from another source. He popped it into a little portable ca.s.sette player, which he also got from the strongbox. It was the kind that joggers use, which had flimsy earphones attached, and he listened for a few seconds before handing the earphones to me. He watched me expectantly as I put on the headset.

I was surprised by the quality of the sound, not audiophile quality obviously, but certainly not bad. A terrific jazz group was playing, evidently a live concert. It sounded familiar, especially the baritone sax, which was crisp and authoritative, full of amazing leaps of intervals. It was M'Zee Kinanda, of course. I recognized the sound, if not the tune, which seemed to be more of an up-tempo bop blowing vehicle than one of Kinanda's wild Free pieces. I thought the recording must date from a period before his more recent, esoteric stuff. This was furious fingering to a driving ba.s.s and drums, more consciously swinging, rooted in the chords.

"Is this old stuff?" I asked Lonzo.

"Na, na." He shook his head. "New. Live. Dee-troit. Two, three." He gestured with fingers. "Juss . . . juss now. Live."

So, it was recently recorded, live. A friend or somebody, he didn't say, had taped it and brought it. Good stuff. Great music. But I could see that Lonzo was exhausted by my visit. He flopped back on the bed and gratefully allowed me to drape the headset on his shrunken noggin. He closed his eyes and listened and I walked away.