sections notorious for a thriving prostitution business. But sections where, due largely to the poverty of the area, there was little likelihood of finding either high-class or high-priced women. Both victims had been, for prostitutes, comparatively elderly. And both were white.
Even with the beefed-up squad Koznicki had given him, this week’s investigation had turned up nothing new or helpful. There had been the usual parade of confessors—people under some weird compulsion to confess to any well-publicized crime. But each had to be checked out, even if only in a cursory manner.
Then, as a result of publicizing that composite likeness of the perp, a whole bunch of people had turned in their friends, relatives, and enemies—anyone who bore the slightest resemblance to the drawing. Those too had to be checked out. Someplace in that pile there could have been a lucky break. But there wasn’t.
Adelle and Ruby had looked through police mug shots of killers, with special emphasis on those connected in any way with prostitutes. Nothing. Then, in a move Tully considered unique in the annals of the Detroit Police Department, the women were given the
That they identified no one in either collection did not surprise Tully.
Relatively few victims or witnesses correctly identify a perpetrator from mug shots. The photos, posed and dour, are frequently misleading and rarely up-to-date. Often the victim’s memory plays tricks. And there is always the very real possibility that the individual’s photo simply isn’t there. Maybe it was the perpetrator’s first crime. Maybe he had never been caught and booked. Or maybe the victim or witness was inadvertently shown the wrong book.
The priests’ Pictorial Directory was another matter. It was Tully’s first venture into what, in effect, were the clerical mug shots of the Archdiocese of Detroit. He had access to the most recent edition, which, having been issued in 1983, was not all that current. There were, by Tully’s count, 958 priests working in the six-county archdiocese. The directory contained 763 photos. Which left 195 priests unrepresented pictorially.
A quick call to Father Koesler apprised Tully that cooperation with the directory people was not mandatory and some priests declined to have their pictures included. Tully thought this a hell of a way to run either a railroad or a diocese. But there was nothing he could do about it. Whether or not a priest was indeed the murderer, there was a fair chance his picture would not be in the directory. If it were up to criminals whether or not to have their photos in the mug book, obviously they would opt out.
So here it was, the end of the second week of the investigation. The first week had been virtually wasted under Tully’s hypothesis that the first killing had been an act of retaliation against one of his prime snitches. That initial supposition had collapsed when the second victim turned out to have no connection with him.
Which brought him to today. And he knew that, realistically, Koznicki could no longer provide the luxury of a supplemented force. This, for all practical purposes, was his last chance for a big push. If he failed today—and he had to admit he well might—he would be pretty much on his own. And the possibility of solving this puzzle would diminish in direct relationship to the number of detectives working on it.
Thus, over Friday and Saturday, he and his task force had meticulously studied Detroit’s many red-light districts, evaluating the neighborhoods as well as the type of prostitute to be found in each. They’d had to neglect some areas that were only marginally qualified in order to locate the sort of prostitute this perp seemed to be looking for.
Eventually, they settled on eight hooker areas, the number they had agreed on at the outset that they would be physically able to police with the number of officers and cars at their disposal.
God, surveillance was dull!
Mangiapane was driving and talking . . . driving slowly and talking fast. Tully tried to recall the beginning of the story Mangiapane was telling. If Tully could remember how it had started, he might conceivably make sense out of what Mangiapane was now saying.
Oh, yes; now he remembered. Mangiapane had gone to lunch in Greektown, where he’d bumped into Wolford and Hughes, two officers assigned to the Thirteenth Precinct. Over lunch, they talked shop, as usual. Mangiapane, with a multitude of his characteristic asides and digressions, was recounting a story the two detectives had told him.
“So,” Mangiapane was saying, “they’re figuring to get off their shift early, when this call comes in from this convent, the Home Visitors of Mary—great bunch of gals, do a lot of real great work—anyway, this nun calls the precinct and gets Hughes. She says there’s a guy over there whose car has been swiped, and would the police send somebody over to help him.
“Well, Hughes figures this will be a great way to end the day a little early: Him and Wolford can run over to Arden Park, get the info and scoot on home.
“So they get there and there’s this little guy—balding, glasses, third-rate moustache, paunchy, and very, very nervous. Somebody, he says, took his car. So the guys talk to him and one question leads to another. They ask how come he parked on this street. There ain’t no businesses, all residential. Of course, there’s always the chance he went into the Cathedral rectory . . . you know, Zoo, Blessed Sacrament Cathedral is just a block away, between Belmont and Boston on Woodward.”
Tully of course knew the area. But he couldn’t have come up with the name of the church. All he knew about churches was that there were a lot of them on Woodward and yes, he guessed some of them might be cathedrals. He would quickly defer to Mangiapane, who, as a very practicing Catholic, would know the name and location of the Catholic cathedral.
“But,” Mangiapane continued, “there is a driveway off Arden Park for the Cathedral rectory. Visitors always park in that driveway. It’s an obvious parking area and it’s lots safer than parking on the street. So it was a logical question: Why did he park on that street?
“Well, he hems and haws for a while. Then he says he’s an architect and he got out of his car so he could study the large, nice-lookin’ buildings in that area . . . sort of on the spur of the moment, you know?”
Tully snorted.
“Right.” Mangiapane agreed with the nonarticulate utterance. “So Hughes asks the guy for his ID. The guy hems and haws some more. Then he tells them he was robbed. And they say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting: You call us over here claiming somebody stole your wheels. Now you tell us that not only did somebody take your car but, oh, yeah, while I think of it, they also robbed me.
“‘Just when did they do that, sir? You were walkin’ up and down the street and—what was it: one or two guys?’
“The guy says, ‘Two ... it was two.’
“Wolford says, ‘So, two guys take your wallet, your ID. And then they say, “Okay, while we’re at it, I guess we’ll take your wheels too”—that about it?’
“And the guy says, ‘Yeah, that’s about it.’”
“Okay.” Tully was slumped in the passenger seat with his shapeless Irish tweed pulled low on his head. “What happened was this: The guy picks up a hooker on Woodward. She asks him what he wants. He says a blow job will be fine. She tells him to pull into a private driveway on Arden Park. He does. She says she’s not gonna service him till she sees some green. He takes out his wallet and right then two of her friends come out of the bushes. They’re armed. They force him out of his car. They take off with the wallet, the car, and the hooker.
“The driveway happens to be next to the convent. So he goes in there, tells the nuns somebody just stole his car—without bothering to mention the rest of the scenario—and asks to use their phone. And the rest is history . . . right?”
Mangiapane thumped the steering wheel. “You got it, Zoo, you got it! And while the guy is telling his story to Hughes and Wolford, these nuns start cracking up and leave the room . . . ’cause they know where the guy is heading and what really happened.”
“Keep at least one hand on the wheel, okay, Mangiapane?” It was ethnic, Tully thought, and he didn’t usually sink to ethnic observations. But maybe there was some truth to it: that if you were to cut off an Italian’s hands, he’d be struck dumb.
It certainly seemed true of Mangiapane. The gestures added zest to his storytelling. Tully couldn’t conceive of Mangiapane’s narrating anything about which he felt deeply without directing the movement, much as an orchestra leader would do. And, in fact, Mangiapane didn’t actually need even one hand on the steering wheel. The guy was so big he could guide the car by pressing his thigh against the wheel . . . especially at the snail’s pace at which they were now traveling.
