the Kingfish knew of something Wayne’s group had not discovered in their search of the premises-a concealed trapdoor dating back to prohibition days. It had remained unused since that time. Now the sound of scraping chairs masked its use.
As young Freddy Wayne read the documents he assumed would be the basis for their discussion, beneath the table a portion of what seemed to be a solid wooden floor was moving.
The next few seconds had been carefully and repeatedly rehearsed.
The trapdoor flew open. The buffet tables were upended as three men carrying automatic weapons erupted from the basement.
Chairs were overturned as the Wayne group sprang to its feet and stampeded toward the back wall. Several instinctively reached for the weapons that had been taken from them.
The shooting seemed as if it would go on forever.
The bodies of the victims jerked in a macabre dance of death. Some extended their arms and hands as if these ineffective extremities could ward off the bullets that tore through flesh and bone.
In seconds the slaughter was over.
Kingfish’s men advanced cautiously. Each of the victims was checked to make certain none lived. All were beyond death. The victors stayed only long enough to congratulate each other.
Proprietors of neighboring businesses, after waiting to make sure the shooting was over, called the police.
Among those first at the scene was Patrolman Alonzo Tully. He alone was able to identify those of the victims who still had a face left. And he could guess the identity of the others. Even in those early days, Zoo Tully lived for his work: He had memorized the names and faces of the mug shots of both the Kingfish’s and Mad Anthony’s gangs.
Tully had never before seen such carnage. However, it was the attitude of several of his fellow officers that surprised him. Once the identities of the corpses had been tentatively established, several of the officers treated the event as if it were a cause for celebration.
Five hoods wasted. Five men the cops would no longer be bothered with. Five reasons to make merry. Tully noted a sergeant using his nightstick to stir the brains of one victim. There seemed little if any respect being paid to this crime scene-or to the victims of this crime. And Tully well knew the prime importance of preserving intact the scene of the crime as the one and only inerrant clue.
The uniformed detachment was closely followed by several homicide detectives. Outstanding among them was the stereotypical larger-than-life Sergeant Walt Koznicki. His fame in the department had little to do with size or strength. More impressive was his meteoric advancement. He had been scarcely out of his rookie phase when he was tapped for the prestigious Homicide Division. After nine years, his record for solving cases was storied.
It took Koznicki only a few minutes to assess this situation.
It was a gangland slaying of a rival gang. And the crime scene was being trivialized by some cops who were celebrating the destruction of enemy forces. Forgotten was the responsibility for solving a crime. This was not a legal execution; it was mass murder. The police officer’s duty was to determine who had done it, find proof, and make the arrest.
Instead, these officers had by and large contaminated the crime scene.
This execution was a professional job that had been done by the numbers. There would be precious few clues left behind, and most of them, Koznicki expected, had been obliterated or tainted by the careless and sloppy approach now evident.
Koznicki, somewhat out of character, blistered the police who had responded to this call. A thoroughly embarrassed silence supplanted the former festive scene.
It was then that Koznicki discovered Alonzo Tully.
It was not Tully’s place to reprimand superior officers for their unprofessional conduct. But, quietly, he had been surveying this for what it was, the scene of a crime.
Carefully steering clear of the blood and gore, he had uncovered something. He called Sergeant Koznicki over and showed what he’d found.
Freddy Wayne had sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the head. He was undoubtedly dead before he hit the floor. His body was in a curious position, arms and hands flexed as if holding something. But only a scrap of paper remained clutched between thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Scattered about were several sheets of paper, the top sheet missing its lower corner. Tully explained his theory: These must have been what Wayne had been holding when he was shot.
Evidently one of the killers had ripped the papers out of Wayne’s hand and then discarded them. If Tully had not recovered them, they would have been saturated by the conglomerate blood that spread across the floor.
With great care, so as not to destroy any latent prints, Tully and Koznicki studied the sheets of paper. Clearly, the whole constituted a position statement, an overture toward peace on the part of the Tony Wayne faction.
Whoever had ripped the papers from Freddy’s hands must have glanced through them and, finding nothing of consequence, discarded them. That was a mistake. And if the killer’s prints could be found, it would be a mistake compounded.
Koznicki gingerly handed the papers to one of the police technicians who had just arrived. To aid the techs in a projected search for identities, Tully enumerated at least fifteen of the Kingfish’s top hoods. Both Tully and Koznicki simply assumed that these killers belonged to the Kingfish gang.
For Koznicki and Tully, it was respect at first sight.
Tully wanted to follow this investigation through, and he was invited in by Koznicki.
It proved to be one of those cases when everything worked in favor of the good guys. On the sheets of paper that had been cast aside, three sets of prints were found: those of Fred Wayne, his secretary, and Juahn Carter, the Kingfish’s right-hand man.
Carter was easily located and picked up. No credible way could he explain away those prints.
Sergeant Koznicki, with Alonzo Tully sitting in, explained with seeming concern Carter’s options. He could remain silent and take the fall. In which case he would most certainly be convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. In which case, additionally, Mad Anthony most assuredly would put out a contract for his son’s killer. The life sentence would thus be considerably abbreviated-by execution.
Or he could cooperate with the police and implicate everyone who had participated in this massacre, including the one who masterminded it-the Kingfish. No deal without the Kingfish.
At that point, Koznicki left the room so that Tully, with the same degree of consideration that Koznicki had shown, could explain, in as many ways as possible, these options, over and over again.
It required many and assorted explanations to get through to Carter the value of fingering the Kingfish. Carter was only too aware of the Kingfish’s talent for torture before execution. In comparison, prison seemed a downright pleasant choice. Tully reminded Carter that Mad Anthony’s men would be waiting in Jackson-and there was little the authorities could do about that.
On the other hand, for his cooperation with the police and the prosecuting attorney’s office, a deal might be worked out whereby Carter could vanish from the scene and surface elsewhere to live to a ripe old age in peace and freedom.
Understandably, Carter’s confidence in the law’s ability to protect him needed much reinforcement. The very name of the Kingfish was enough to send shudders up and down Carter’s spine.
Finally, with the encouragement of a near-exhausted Patrolman Tully, Carter saw the wisdom of the police offer. Carter sang beautifully, giving the prosecutor’s office seven convictions of first degree murder. The Kingfish himself was the eighth.
The conclusion to this affair:
Malcolm Ali, a.k.a. the Kingfish, was sentenced to life without parole. He lived in relative peace in Jackson Prison for almost a year. That lull led the authorities to believe that the Kingfish might live many more years in captivity. As a result, they relaxed their guard … and the Kingfish was found eviscerated with a homemade knife.
In much the same way, nine years prior, that Walt Koznicki had been inducted into the elite Homicide Division, Koznicki now became rabbi for Alonzo Tully, who promptly became “Zoo” to his fellow detectives.
Tony Wayne exacted revenge for his son’s murder. And, gathering power steadily, Mad Anthony waited for what he foresaw as the Taming of the Mafia. Eventually he became Numero Uno of metropolitan Detroit’s crime
