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CHAPTER EIGHT

September 14, 1996

Saturday late afternoon

T he house was on Dugan Street in Roseville. It was one of those split-level houses that was popular in the late sixties and early seventies. The bottom half was part basement. The front door and tiny foyer floated between the two floors with a short stairway running up or down to either floor.

We climbed out of the Belvedere and walked up the cement walkway to the front door. It was election season and the lawn was decorated with political signs: CLINTON/GORE, LEVIN FOR SENATE, BONIOR, NO ON E. After Clinton, none of that made much sense to me.

After we rang the bell it took a minute or two for Suzie Reilly to answer. She was a thickset woman wearing a pair of jeans and men’s cotton work shirt. Her hair was graying and cropped short, and her skin was nearly as white as snow. My gaydar went into four alarm mode.

“Hey,” Cass said. “Can we come in and talk to you?”

“Of course, you can. I’ll make some coffee real quick. Make yourselves comfortable in the dining room.”

Before she walked up the short flight of stairs to the main floor, she gave me a suspicious glance. As she should. I followed Cass into the house.

On the main floor, the living room was one of those sets you buy from the back of the newspaper for a scandalously low, low price. Four or five or six matching pieces. Sofa, love seat, not-so-comfortable chair in a thick, scratchy brown fabric. Coffee table and end tables. There was a reproduction of the Last Supper on the wall above the sofa.

The dining area was off the living room. It was pretty bare, other than the table and chairs and a large crucifix on the wall. I was sensing a theme. Cass made himself comfortable at the far end of the table. I sat at the other end, far less comfortably. I could hear a Mr. Coffee chugging away in the kitchen, when Suzie came through the swinging door and set a bowl of sugar and a creamer on the table.

“All I have is skim. Cutting down on fat. I hope that’s okay,” Then she went in for the kill, “And you are?”

That was a tough question. Cass tried to field it starting out, “He’s, uh…”

Avoiding the idea of a name completely, I said, “I work with a charity. Loosely affiliated with Big Brothers of America. We help unite kids with their parents. Cass wants to find his father.”

I was very proud of the fact that one of those sentences was true. Cass did want to find his father. Suzie looked at me skeptically but then turned to study Cass.

“You want to find your father? Why didn’t you ever say anything? You always act like you’re perfectly fine with just Joanne.”

“I don’t know. It just… It seemed like a good idea.”

“Do you need money? Are you in trouble? Is Joanne not taking care of you?”

“I’m seventeen. She doesn’t need to take care of me. I just want to find my dad. Can you talk to… this guy?”

“If you want me to, of course. Let me get cups.”

I stared at Cass for a moment. I wanted to say, “Fuck, why didn’t we think of a cover story on the way over.” Well, I knew why. The kid was difficult and I barely wanted to talk to him most of the time. Sure, I felt bad for him. But I also didn’t trust him. That was not a good combination.

Aunt Suzie was back. She had the pot of coffee and three mugs hanging from the fingers of one hand. She’d clearly been a waitress at one time. Normal people don’t carry mugs like that. She plunked the mugs onto the table and poured us each a cup of coffee. Then she sat down at the table.

Aunt Suzie and I took our coffee black. Cass loaded up on milk and sugar.

“All right. Go ahead.”

“Your brother disappeared in 1982?”

“Yeah. July. Around the twenty-first. We’re not really sure. Joanne claims she came home on the twenty-first and all his things were gone. No one has seen or heard from him since.”

“And the last time anyone saw him? Other than Joanne.”

“Probably a few days before the twenty-first.”

“But you would have been there,” I said to Cass.

“I was four.”

“Yes, I remember that. But you might have been there.”

“And he might not have been there,” Suzie said. “He could have been with Joanne’s mother or someone in her family or even a friend.” To Cass she said, “You were passed around a lot. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

“So you think he wasn’t there the night Dom left?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Tell me about your brother, just in general.”

“Dominick was good-looking, really good-looking. But I don’t think he knew it. He talked about Joanne like he didn’t deserve a girl as pretty as she was. But I think he could have done better. He just didn’t know it.”

I took a sip of my coffee and waited, hoping she’d go on. “He wasn’t book smart, but he had common sense. He certainly wasn’t street smart. We come from decent hard-working people and that’s all he wanted to be. He loved building cars. He loved everything about them.”

“What can you tell us about his marriage?”

“It gave us Cass.” She turned and smiled at him. “That’s the only good thing I can say about it.”

“I know Cass is sitting right here, but I need you to be as honest as you can be.”

She looked over at the boy and he nodded, giving her permission.

I asked, “Do you know specifically what was wrong with their marriage.”

“Well, Joanne was what was wrong. She’s a bitch. And I don’t call other women names lightly.” She paused and sipped her coffee. “Nothing was ever good enough for her. And Dominick gave her everything he could, but she was never happy. It was never enough.”

“Do you know what might have been happening right before he disappeared?”

She sighed. “They were fighting a lot, more than usual. Joanne wanted to go back to school to be a paralegal.”

“And he said no?”

She shook her head. “He said yes. But he wanted her to wait until Cass was in school all day. It would have been two years. I thought he was being reasonable. Everyone thought he was being reasonable.”

“So he disappeared and she became a paralegal?”

“She signed up for some course almost right away. My parents would babysit for her. Not because they wanted to help her, but it was really the only way to see Cass. It wasn’t a long class, and then she was working for Mr. Cray in Novi. Almost right away.”

“And this is the guy she still works for?”

“Yeah,” Cass said.

I decided to ask about him later, when Cass and I were alone. I changed direction. “Did your parents ever report your brother missing?”

“Of course they did. Nothing happened, though.”

“Do you know why?”

“Because the police believed Joanne. She said he ran off and they believed her.”

“All his things were gone,” Cass said.

“She could have packed them up and gotten rid of them,” Aunt Suzie said. Her voice was gentle and kind. I got the impression she’d been waiting a long time for this conversation. She was probably right, too, since we proved she’d sold his papers. I glanced at the kid. There was struggle on his face. He seemed unprepared for the direction this might take.

“He must have had a car,” I said.

That brought a smile to her face. “Boy did he have a car. A ’68 Plymouth Barracuda. Fastback. Matador red. Lord, he loved that car. Babied it. Washed it every week. It was in amazing condition.”

“So that’s a family thing? You Reillys love your Plymouths?”

“I’ve got a Voyager in the garage.”

Not on par with a classic from the fifties or sixties, but I smiled anyway. “If your brother didn’t run off, what do you think happened to the car? Chop shop?”

She shrugged. “In 1982 there would have been a number of possibilities. Chop shop, yes. Or it could have been smuggled out of the country and sold somewhere that doesn’t look too closely at registrations. If you wanted to keep it in the US—well, by that point there would have been a lot of Barracudas in junkyards, so you could have swapped a couple of VINs with a car that’s been totaled.”

“Wait. Explain that a little more. I know what a VIN is, but why do you need more than one?”

“Ah. The VIN number for each car is put in various locations. That car had the number on the dashboard. The same number would have been somewhere in the engine. And also on the frame. Some of the locations are easy to change out, others are not. You change the number in a couple of locations and then get a salvage title based on the totaled vehicle. It would have lowered the value of the car, but that doesn’t always matter. Plus, there are ways to get a clean title at some point.”

“So the car just disappeared?”

“Maybe. As far as I know it’s never been found—not that the police are looking for it. It wouldn’t have been hard to drive it down to Indiana or Ohio and do a private sale. It could be legally registered and insured somewhere and we’d have no idea. Particularly if it’s on its third or fourth owner.”

“Do you have the VIN number?”

“I don’t. I wouldn’t. It would be with Dom’s things. Which Joanne says are long gone. Maybe it’s somewhere in her house, but she’s not about to let us search for it.”

She glanced at Cass, but he was looking at the ceiling. I tried to figure out if she’d ever asked to be allowed to search the house. She might not have. Clearly, he was touchy about his mother. Backing off, I said, “Even if we found the car, it wouldn’t mean anything. Dom could have sold it himself.”

I decided not to mention that if Dom was at the bottom of Lake Erie his car might be with him. Not to mention there were about a thousand other lakes in Michigan he could be at the bottom of.

“Did your brother have any connection to The Partnership?”

“Was he in the mob? No. He wasn’t.”

“I meant, would they want to get rid of him for any reason?”

“Not that I’m aware of. He’d been in and out of work for a while. The Plymouth plant he was working at closed and got sold to GM. But they were going to take most of the guys on so things were looking up.”

“How were they getting by?”

“Unemployment, odd jobs he’d pick up. They were okay. I mean, it wasn’t enough for Joanne, but nothing’s enough for Joanne.”

“What about friends? Anyone you think we should talk to?”

“I still see Dick Potter every so often. If I go back to the old neighborhood.”

“The old neighborhood?”

“We grew up in Corktown. My parents bought this house in 1972. I was just out of high school. I don’t think Dick knows anything. I mean, he and I have talked about this for years.”

I asked for his phone number but avoided saying the obvious. If this guy did know something unflattering about Dom he probably wouldn’t tell his sister. And it was almost always unflattering things that led to murder.

“You believe your brother’s dead, don’t you?”

“I know he’s dead. He wouldn’t have broken off contact with my parents. Never.”

“And he’s never been declared dead by a court?”

“Joanne wouldn’t do it, and as his wife it’s really up to her. She claims he’s alive, but she’s a liar. Sorry, Cass, but she is. When my parents passed away they left this house to me and Dominick. He owns half of it. Of course, Joanne has asked for his half in cash. Says she’s owed it for child support.”

“Wouldn’t it be hers if she had him declared dead?”

“No. The way the will is written it goes to Cass if Dominick is gone.”

“What did you tell her when she asked for money?”

“This was five, six years ago. I offered to take Cass off her hands if she was having trouble taking care of him.” To Cass she said, “I’d invite you to stay for dinner, but it’s my league night and I’m meeting a couple of friends at Coney Island.”

I assumed Coney Island was some kind of restaurant, she obviously wasn’t flying to New York City for dinner. She’d be pretty hungry before she got there.

Cass hugged his aunt goodbye at the door. There was an awkward moment where she could have said, “It was nice to meet you…” But I hadn’t ever said my name. The look on her face said she was very aware of that.

Once we were in the Belvedere, Cass asked, “Where to now?”

“I’d like to stop somewhere and buy a jacket and maybe some underwear. And some dinner might be nice.”

Ten minutes later, Cass had found a K-Mart. Like most department stores they were ahead of the weather. The coats were mainly winter jackets. More than I needed. I picked out a navy blue crew neck sweater and a black puffer vest to go over it. I grabbed a pack of boxer briefs and some white socks. On the way out I snagged a large bottle of Tylenol.

“Why are you taking so much aspirin and shit?”

“I got shot. Christmas of eighty-four. In one side, out the other. The bullet went through my right shoulder blade. They screwed it all back together temporarily. I was supposed to get it all done again, but life got in the way. Last month I took a fall and it all came apart. They went in and screwed it all together again. Still hurts.”

Saying it all made me feel a bit like Humpty Dumpty.

“Who shot you?”

“I ruined a woman’s plan to get rich. She’d probably shoot me again if she knew where I was.”

I decided to leave out the part where the fall I took was because I’d ruined a woman’s plan to get away with murder. Ruining women’s plans… There’s something there I might want to think through.

The cashier rang me up quickly and I paid with my credit card. The total was nearly a hundred dollars. Most of it was the puffer vest. On the way back to the car, I said, “Tell me about Mr. Cray.”

“He’s my mom’s boss.”

“And…”

“He’s old. Married. He’s got like six kids.”

“What is old to you? Your mom’s age or your grandparents’ age?”

“Like in the middle.”

“So, fifty?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

That was sobering. I’d be fifty in two years. And yes, when I was seventeen I would have thought that was old. It just didn’t seem as old as it used to.

It was easy to find the car since it was almost four decades older than everything else there. He unlocked his door and got in. I waited for him to reach over and unlock the passenger door. When he did, I put my bag on the floor and climbed in.

“What else? Do they get along?”

“She thinks he’s great. Most of the time.” He was taking the anti-theft bar off the steering wheel.

“And when she doesn’t think he’s great?”

“She just likes to get her way. Everyone does, don’t they?”

“She’s worked for him a long time, right?”

He turned the key and pushed the R button. “Yeah, I guess twelve years or so.”

“Your mom went to work for him right after she became a paralegal?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how she paid for her schooling?”

He shrugged. As we drove out of the parking lot, I asked, “How’d your mom find the job?”

“I don’t know.”

“She never said?”

“I guess she got it the normal way. Like through a newspaper ad or something. These aren’t important questions. My mom’s job doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to my dad.”

“So what does?”

He didn’t say anything. We sat at a red light. I asked, “Do you think Mr. Cray might have connections with The Partnership?”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“They have lawyers, believe me. Haven’t you ever seen The Godfather ?”

“We’re Italian. We boycott movies like that. They’re all made up.”