Split Images

by Elmore Leonard

  "Maybe we can save ourselves a few hours,"

  Bryan said. "Call Quentin and tell him to pick up Walter Kouza. I'll give you the address."

  Malik said, "Wal ter? Jesus Christ, that's right.

  He might be dumb enough."Parrish said, "Walter's never used a twenty-two in his life."

  "I hope not," Bryan said. "But let's pick him up anyway."

  BRYAN FINISHED OFF a pail of mussels, ordered crablegs and potato skins and was content to wait with his glass of beer, believing he felt as good as he had ever felt in his life. Keyed up but in no hurry. It was his favorite time of the day.

  Angela was working through a Greek salad with Jack Daniels on the side and whitefish on the way, no longer restrained. She had not seen the body, only the red traces that remained, but it had been enough to subdue her through the afternoon. She seemed aware again rather than preoccupied and would look around Galligan's at the after-work crowd with interest, then would look at Bryan again and ask a question. She asked a great many questions.

  "Do you eat a lot?"

  "I've had what, two hot-dogs all day."

  "I just wondered. You don't look like you eat much.""I wondered if you ever ate anything," Bryan said.

  "I do when I'm not on police investigations,"

  Angela said, "and have to go to murder scenes."

  "I shouldn't have taken you."

  "No, I wanted to go. In fact I'll go whenever you ask me." She took a big bite of feta cheese and tomato and made the act seem dainty. "I like to watch you, Bryan. I loved it in the squad room, watching you putting pieces together. You think the little girl was murdered, don't you? Even though there's no evidence to go on."

  "Yeah, I think she was."

  "What if you don't learn anything more?"

  "Then I put it away," Bryan said. "Forget about it."

  "Just like that."

  "Well, try to forget about it."

  She said, "I worked for a newspaper when I started out, but I never did police stories. What's a post? A post mortem?"

  "Yeah, an autopsy. They have to determine the cause of death. Even when a man's been shot four times."

  "It's so different than anything I've ever experienced--just listening to you," Angela said.

  "Everyone seems calm, but you know they're keyed up and they don't want to miss anything."

  The warm look was in her eyes again and sheseemed keyed up herself. "You're a pretty earthy bunch, aren't you? Especially Malik."

  "We work in the street, the street rubs off,"

  Bryan said. "Malik has sort of an indifferent, tough-cop style, but you put him in the Pink Room with a suspect he'll get a statement. I don't mean with intimidation, Malik'll bullshit the guy, put him at ease."

  "And Doug Parrish," Angela said. "Very firm in his convictions."

  "He surprised me today," Bryan said. "You're right, Doug's set in his ways. He usually takes a more conservative approach. But if he's convinced the guy used a silencer then you can be pretty sure the guy used a silencer. He doesn't wing it very often. Annie's much the same, but her manner's entirely different. Annie, you don't even know she's there."

  Angela said, "She seems too nice to be a homicide detective. I mean she doesn't seem the type."

  Bryan said, "Well, you don't need muscle really, you don't have to smoke cigars . . ."

  "The guys aren't inhibited by her?"

  "No, Malik tries to shock her, but how's he gonna do that? She's seen everything. No, Annie smiles. She's a very easy person to be with."

  "Have you ever . . . had a feeling about her?"

  "No," Bryan said. "I've never kissed a cop or gone to bed with one. I kissed a girl writer once andwent to bed with her, but nothing happened. She didn't want to rush into anything."

  "I heard you blew it."

  "Well, I know she didn't."

  "Don't be crude."

  "Can't I say anything I want to you?"

  "I have another question," Angela said. "You don't really think Walter's the one, do you?"

  Bryan looked at his watch. "Well, I'm gonna ask him in about an hour. Then let the parking guys take a look at him."

  She said, "But he knows you'd suspect him. It would be so dumb."

  "I keep an open mind," Bryan said. "That way I never get too surprised. But yeah, I can see Walter doing it. I don't think intelligence is a factor. Look at what's her name, the head of the girls' school who shot the diet doctor. Jean Harris. She isn't dumb.

  You read the poems she wrote to him? Well, they were kinda sappy, I guess. But if anybody was dumb it's that skinny doctor. He didn't see it coming."

  "I forget you're a psychiatrist," Angela said.

  "You read people and advise them."

  "Only certain ones."

  "You advise me, help me look at myself."

  "You're easy."

  "Okay," Angela said. "Do you know what I'm gonna do this evening?"

  He felt a warning he didn't understand and nowwasn't sure what to say. The waiter arrived and gave him time, serving Angela's whitefish, his crablegs. A polite waiter in a black vest, anxious to please. He left them.

  Angela said, "Well?"

  He said, "For some reason I don't like the sound of it."

  The waiter returned with potato skins, giving him a few moments more. He ordered another draft of Stroh's and a Jack Daniels for Angela. He liked the way she sipped it and seemed to enjoy the taste.

  "All right. What're you gonna do this evening?"

  "I'm going home."

  He said, "You don't mean to your hotel."

  "No. All the way home, to Tucson." She seemed to smile, a crafty look. "I thought you were never surprised."

  "I was wrong," Bryan said. "Why're you going home?"

  She said, "Well, I haven't seen my folks in a while, since last summer. I was away for Christmas and tomorrow's my birthday. So, I think it's a good time for a visit. I want to get a picture of you though, before I leave."

  Bryan frowned, all this rushing at him at once.

  "Wait a minute. Are you coming back?"

  "Sure. I'm still working on Robbie."

  "Yeah, but he might be somewhere else.""Well, you might be too. You're going to Florida, aren't you?"

  "Not right away . . . You sound different. How long're you gonna be gone?"

  "I don't know. A week maybe."

  "And then what?"

  He saw her shrug one shoulder in the navy blue coat and tried to remember her without the coat on.

  She said, "I have to finish the piece for Esquire.

  That's Robbie. Then, there's a publisher wants me to do a whole book on rich people. But I don't know if I can handle it, or want to. Then, who knows?"

  He said again, "You sound different."

  "I'm not. Are you different?"

  "No."

  She said, "Aren't you hungry?"

  "I don't think you're coming back."

  "If I say I am but you don't think I am," Angela said, "then I think you're starting to choke up, Bryan. Maybe taking yourself a little too seriously.

  And you know what you do when that happens.

  Right?"

  He said, "There a lot of things I want to say to you."

  She said, "Good. Save them."

  She took a picture of him outside, against Galligan's painted brick wall. She kissed him and said, "Don't I get a hug?" before she got in the taxi. He walked back to 1300.

  In the hallway by the elevators Annie Maguire said to Bryan, "We had them down at Squad Six when Walter arrived, so they haven't seen him yet. They don't know what's going on. Walter doesn't either, for that matter. He's ready to go through the wall."

  "Who's with him?"

  "Quentin." Annie waited a moment. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

  He said, "You want to wait for probable cause?

  Or you want to find out right now? Tell me how many times we get clear-cut probable cause?"

  Bryan entered the squad room.

>   Three of the valet-parking attendants were sitting next to desks like job applicants. The cashier was at Malik's desk and Malik was trying to get her to pose for a Polaroid shot. "Come on, smile now.

  Big smile." The girl was laughing, moving around.

  "I'm not shitting you," Malik said, "we're gonna send it in, Miss Black America contest." Parrish was watching, not saying anything.

  Bryan opened the door to the Pink Room partway. Quentin Terry said, "Here's the man now, Walter. I told you he be here. You want cream and sugar?"Walter said, "Cream, two-and-a-half sugars."

  "Two-and-a- half," Quentin said, getting up from the folding chair to edge past Bryan, rolling his eyes as he went out. Bryan closed the door. He could hear the girl, the valet-parking cashier, laughing.

  Walter sat in the corner between the table with the typewriter and the wall, wedged in there and looking mean, heavy shoulders hunched, ready to come out of the chute.

  Bryan said, "How do you like it?" Meaning the room, nodding then to the Miranda sign on the wall. "Your rights. There they are. Nobody can say we don't give you your rights. Read it, Walter."

  "The fuck you think you're doing?" Walter said.

  "Bring me down here."

  "I got to ask you some questions, Walter. Somebody did Curtis Moore."

  In the silence that began to lengthen Walter said, "Come on," with reverence. "Come on, don't shit me."

  "I'd never do that, Walter."

  "Jesus Christ, you mean it? Curtis? "

  "You didn't hear about it? It was on the news."

  "How'm I gonna hear about it? I'm driving around the fucking limo all day. Pick these guys up, take 'em the plant. Pick 'em up again, take 'em out the airport. Listen, you find the guy did it let me know. I want to shake the fucker's hand.""What plant?"

  "Daniels. He's selling all his equipment. Got these buyers in from Cleveland, Indianapolis, Christ, Mexico, Japan. Couple Japs, they come all the way over here to buy some machines that turn out nuts and bolts. Big fuckers--I mean the machines, like drill presses. Another guy don't speak nothing but Kraut, he comes all the way from West Germany."

  "How about around ten this morning, a little before?"

  "I left home quarter to ten, from Grosse Pointe.

  Eight-nine-nine Lake Shore. Ask the cook, he'll tell you. Fucking Ukrainian."

  "Who'd you pick up at the Plaza?"

  "What's that, the one at the RenCen? I never picked anybody up there."

  "Didn't go near it, uh?"

  "No, first thing I picked up these guys out at the airport. Fly in, fly out. Daniels had riggers there right at the plant. Some guys from the Teamsters, two-nine-nine. Give the buyers an estimate right on the spot, how much to haul the shit out. The auction isn't suppose to be till Monday, but Daniels, he can't fucking wait to get out of the nuts and bolts business. It was okay for his old man but Robbie, see, he's a friend of George Hamilton, whoever the fuck George Hamilton is. I met him, I still don't know.""You drove the Cadillac?"

  "What do you think I pick 'em up in, the fucking Omni?"

  There was a yellow legal pad next to the typewriter. Bryan said, "Write the names on there and the approximate time you picked them up."

  "I don't know their names."

  "You can get them, can't you?"

  "I don't know. I'll see."

  Bryan opened the door several inches, glanced out and closed it again.

  "Coffee's not ready yet. You want to wait?"

  "You mean," Walter said, "do I want to leave now or do I want to wait till the cof fee's done? Jesus Christ," Walter said, getting up off the folding chair.

  Bryan pushed the door open all the way, caught Malik's eye and saw one of the valet-parking attendants look over his shoulder.

  "Quentin's gonna drive you home."

  "Tell that dinge I don't need any conversation this trip. Fucker never shuts up," Walter said, pulling down the sleeve of his gray suit, brushing at invisible dirt. He followed Bryan through the squad room now and out into the hallway to the elevators. Here, Walter narrowed his eyes, turned back to the squad room as Quentin came out putting on his suit coat, Walter catching a glimpse of the three valet-parking attendants looking this way. The door closed."Wait a minute," Walter said. "What's this shit going on?"

  Bryan pushed the elevator button again. Quentin was adjusting his suitcoat.

  "You brought me up here to get eyeballed, didn't you? Who're those guys. You try and put me in the Plaza today--that where they're from?"

  "They park cars," Bryan said.

  "Hey, I used to pull this kind of shit too, you know. You bring me up here, not a fucking shred of probable cause, hoping one of those monkeys'll cop on me, huh?" Walter stopped. He looked at the door again and said in a much quieter tone, "What'd you say they do?"

  "They park cars," Bryan said, "at the Detroit Plaza Hotel. Where Curtis Moore used to park cars till somebody took him out."

  "How?"

  "We don't know yet."

  "Bullshit--was he shot, stabbed, what?"

  "Shot. Four times."

  "What kind of gun?"

  "That's what I meant, we don't know yet."

  "The guys up in Firearms know," Walter said.

  "You telling me they haven't given you the ballistics yet? Bullshit."

  Bryan said, "Thanks for coming, Walter."

  When Quentin Terry got back from Grosse Pointe he met them at the Athens in Greektown, the cop bar. Parrish had gone home to watch "Hill Street Blues." Bryan, Annie and Malik were about ready to leave, having a last beer, picking over the information they got from the valet-parking attendants and the cashier, which amounted to almost nothing.

  One of them didn't know Curtis had been working this morning. The others saw him, yeah, but didn't notice anything funny going on or Curtis talking to anybody in particular. The one who found Curtis's body said that blood led him to it; he thought at first somebody had spilled paint. The cashier remembered Curtis coming in, getting some keys from where they hung on hooks, Curtis saying a man needed something from his car; but people were at the window, she was too busy to notice anything. Except when the police came and she heard about Curtis, she remembered him getting the keys. No, there was nothing unusual about the keys that she remembered. Wait now--or did it have some kind of a charm or good-luck piece on it? She'd try to remember and let them know.

  Quentin Terry said, "Walter didn't hardly open his mouth in the car. I told him a couple Polish jokes, the man didn't even smile."

  Bryan said, "He ask you about the gun?"

  "Yeah, he tried different ways," Quentin said."Especially interested if the gunshots were through and through. Wanting to find out the caliber."

  "He was surprised when I first told him," Bryan said. "Couldn't believe it. The guy that did it, I think if he'd walked in Walter would've put his arms around him and kissed him."

  Malik said, "Kissed him, he'd have blown him."

  "But out in the hall," Bryan said, "he was different. You notice?"

  Quentin said, "Like something begun to bother him."

  "Not so much that we'd set him up," Bryan said.

  "It was when he found out those guys in there parked cars. Why would that bother him?"

  He walked with Annie Maguire to the parking structure on St. Antoine, past the Saturday-night lineup waiting to get in the Hellas Cafe. She asked him where his girl friend was.

  "I just met her yesterday, at Walter's hearing."

  Annie said, "You have to start somewhere." She said, "I bet she's from a big family."

  "I don't know. She didn't say."

  "Haven't gotten into all that yet."

  "Well, I don't know if we will," Bryan said. "She went home. Tucson, Arizona."

  "She told you she'd be back, didn't she?"

  "That's what she says, I don't know."

  "Come on, don't play dumb, Bryan."

  "I mean it. I don't know what she's thinking.""Well, this afternoon," Annie said, "she took he
r eyes off you maybe once."

  "Is that right?" Bryan said. "I didn't notice.

  Annie stopped and looked around. "Isn't that your car back there?"

  They had walked past Bryan's seven-year-old BMW. It was faded gray with rust spots along the chrome like sores. He said, "It looks like mine."

  Annie said, "You need to get away, Bryan. Soon."

  Daniels wasn't in his study when Walter got home and he couldn't go up the front stairs to look for him. He had to go through the pantry and the kitchen to the goddamn back stairs and go up that way if he was going to his room. The bathroom door was closed. Walter knocked. He heard the sound of the cook's voice give him a grunt. "Wash your hands when you're done!" Walter called through the door. Fucking Ukrainian. He went downstairs again to use the other john, the powder room in the front hall.

  The black Mercedes sedan was gone from the garage. The yellow Mercedes convertible that Daniels called a drop-head was there. The Cadillac was there and the Dodge Omni that nobody used was there. So Daniels could've taken the big Mercedes or his wife could've. Walter hadn't said two words to the wife. It was a fucked-up house. No-body talked to anybody. Nobody even argued. The place was like a hotel where you passed people in the hall and everybody was polite but nobody seemed to give a shit about anything.

  Walter heard a car; somebody dropping Mrs.

  Daniels off. She came in to find him sitting on the Queen Anne bench in the front hall, cocked a hip as she looked at him and smiled, sort of half-closing her eyes.

  "You've been waiting for me, haven't you?"

  Walter said, "Pardon?"

  Mrs. Daniels seemed a little high. No question about it--all at once sinking down next to him in her lynx fur that Walter remembered from Robbery would run about eight, nine grand. She smelled of booze, but she smelled good too, leaning against him now. He didn't know what was going on. Her hair was in his face, but he'd have to touch her, hold her up if he tried to move. Now she was raising her face to look at him. He felt her hand on his thigh, trying to squeeze it but not able to get any purchase. He didn't know what was going on.

  Mrs. Daniels said, "Can I ask you a question, Walter?"

  He felt her hand crawl to his fly--Christ!--and probe until she found his member.

  "What do you call one of these in Polish?"

  Walter sat as straight as he could, not moving.