Marcella drank herself to sleep that night, passing out on Will's living room sofa. When Will awoke early the next morning she was gone. She had left a note: "Thank you. I will consider what you have said. I will seek what I have to seek. I envy your peace. I will try to gain what peace I can."
* * *
Will Berglund anticipated my one question: "I'll call those policemen in Milwaukee. I'll tell them you're coming."
I nodded at the farmer-lover-spiritual seeker. He seemed to take my brief turn of the head as absolution, and a slow trickle of tears ran from his eyes.
It was 5:00 A.M. I walked back to the Badger Hotel. My room had been gone through—magazines had been turned over and the bed had been tousled. I checked the contents of my suitcase. Everything was there, but my gun had been unloaded. I packed and walked downstairs and through the lobby, getting curious and hostile looks from some early-rising townspeople. I walked down Main Street feeling awed and humbled—and also powerful; I had been handed the wonder on a platter, and now it was up to me to put it in order.
20
It took me two hours to get to Milwaukee. The Wisconsin Dell Highway was deserted as I drove past small towns and through deep green grazing land. I had been awake for more than twenty-four hours, had traversed fifty years of history and was now nowhere near tired. All I could think of was the history lying in wait for me in Milwaukee, and how to synthesize all the knowledge that only I could tie together.
I thought of pharmacist's mates John DeVries and Eddie Engels. Had they known each other at the Long Beach Naval Hospital? Was Eddie connected to Marcella there? Was that the genesis of the train of deadly events that erupted in 1950 and continued through this summer?
Coming into Milwaukee on Blue Mound Road—an incongruously named, smog-choked four-lane highway—I said to myself: don't think.
Milwaukee was red brick, gray brick, white brick, factory smoke, and rows and rows of small white houses with small Wisconsin green front lawns, all modulated by the breeze wafting from Lake Michigan. I parked in the basement of the Greyhound Bus Depot on Wells Street, then shaved and changed clothes in the huge lavatory.
I checked my image in the mirror above the basin. I decided I was an anthropologist, well suited to dig into the ruins of blasted lives. This conclusion reached, I threaded my way down a corridor laced with sleeping winos to a pay phone, where I dialed the Operator and said, "Police Department, please."
Detectives Kraus and Lutz were still partners and were working the Eighth Precinct, located on Farwell Avenue, a few blocks from the sludgy, waste-carrying Milwaukee River. The old three-story police station was red brick, sandwiched between a sausage factory and a parochial school. I parked in front and walked inside, feeling nostalgia grip me in a bear hug: this had been my life once.
I showed my phony insurance business card to the desk sergeant, who didn't seem impressed, and asked for the detective division. Nonplussed, he said, "Third floor" and pointed me in the direction of the Lysol-smelling muster room.
I took the stairs two at a time in almost total darkness, and came out into a corridor painted a bright school-bus yellow. There was a long arrow painted along the wall underlining "Detective Division: The Finest of Milwaukee's Finest." I followed the arrow to a squad room crammed with desks and mismatched chairs. Nostalgia gripped me even harder: this was what I had once aspired to.
Two men occupied the room, conferring over a desk underneath a large ceiling fan. The men were blond, portly, and wearing identical gaudy hand-tooled shoulder holsters encasing .45 automatics with mother-of-pearl grips. They looked up when they heard my footsteps and smiled identically.
I knew I was going to be the audience for a cop comedy act, so I raised my arms in mock surrender and said, "Whoa, pardner, I'm a friend."
"Never thought that you weren't," the more red-faced of the two men said. "But how'd you get past the desk? You one of Milwaukee's finest?"
I laughed. "No, but I represent one of the finest insurance companies in Los Angeles." I fished two business cards out of my coat pocket and handed one to each cop. They responded with identical half nods and shakes of the head.
"Floyd Lutz," the red-faced man said, and stuck out his hand. I shook it.
"Walt Kraus," his partner said, extending his hand. I shook it.
"Fred Underhill," I returned.
We looked at one another. By way of amenities I said, "I take it Will Berglund called you about me?"
By way of amenities, Floyd Lutz said, "Yeah, he did. Who choked Johnny DeVries's sister, Underhill?"
"I don't know. Neither do the L.A. cops. Who sliced Johnny DeVries?"
Walt Kraus pointed to a chair. "We don't know," he said. "We'd like to. Floyd and I were on the case from the beginning. Johnny was a beast, a nice-guy beast, don't get me wrong, but seven feet tall? Three hundred pounds? That's a beast. The guy who cut him had to be a worse beast. Johnny's stomach was torn open from rib cage to belly button. Jesus!"
"Suspects?" I asked.
Floyd Lutz answered me: "DeVries pushed morphine. More correctly, he gave it away. He was a soft touch. He could never stay in business for long. He'd always wind up on skid row, sleeping in the park, passing out handbills and selling his blood like the other derelicts. He was a nice, passive guy most of the time, used to hand out free morph to the poor bastards on skid who had got hooked during the war. Floyd and me and most of the other cops did our best not to roust him, but sometimes we had to: when he got mad he was the meanest animal I've ever seen. He'd wreck bars and overturn cars, bust heads and fill skid row with dread. He was a terror. Walt and I figure his killer was either some bimbo on the row he beat up or some dope pusher who didn't like a soft touch on his turf. We checked out every major and minor known heroin and morph pusher from Milwaukee to Chi. Nada. We went back over Johnny's rap sheet and checked out the victims in every assault beef he ever had—over thirty guys. Most of them were transients. We ran makes on them all over the Midwest. Eight of them were in jail—Kentucky to Michigan. We talked to all of them—nothing. We talked to every skid row deadbeat who wasn't too fucked up on Sweet Lucy to talk. We sobered up the ones who were too fucked up. Nothing. Nothing all the way down the line."
"Physical evidence?" I asked. "ME's report?"
Lutz sighed. "Nothing. Cause of death a severed spinal cord or shock or massive loss of blood, take your pick. The coroner said that Big John wasn't fucked-up on morph when he was sliced—that was surprising. That was why Walt and I figured the guy who sliced him had to be a beast or a friend of Johnny's—someone who knew him. Anyone who could slice a guy like that when he was sober had to be a monster."
"Did Johnny have any friends?" I asked.
"Only one," Lutz said. "A chemistry teacher at Marquette. Was. He's a wino now. He and Johnny used to get drunk together on the row. The guy was nutso. Used to teach a semester, then take off a semester and go on a bender. The priests at Marquette finally got sick of it and gave him the heave-ho. He's probably still on skid; the last time I saw him he was sniffing gasoline in front of the Jesus Saves Mission." Lutz shook his head.
"What was the guy's name?" I asked.
Lutz looked to Kraus and shrugged. Kraus screwed his face into a memory search. "Melveny? Yeah, that's it—George 'The Professor' Melveny, George 'The Gluebird' Melveny. He's got a dozen skid row monickers."