When Old Midnight Comes Along

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Is that why you didn’t want to let go of him?”

  “Talk to Lieutenant Stonesmith. It’s her beef now.”

  “I did. She lent me the file. If you’d had Lawes under your roof a couple more days, you could claim him as a dependent.”

  “I play the percentages. You know the stats when there’s a spouse in the picture, and how far they go up when there’s money involved.”

  “It wasn’t my first time studying an investigation you headed up. You’ve filled a couple of cellblocks with cons you broke with less than half the effort you put into Lawes. Fifty fresh homicides crossed your desk while you were working him, all just as juicy and some of them with a closer sell-by date. What made him your white whale?”

  “If it wasn’t your first time in the files, you’d see what was missing as well as what was there.”

  Apart from the padded swivel that went with the desk, the only other seat was a goosed-up director’s chair made of chromium and blue leather. I used it, crossed my legs, and laced my fingers across my right knee. “So he wasn’t in your hip pocket pushing for results. A lot of married couples who aren’t very close don’t kill each other. Probably the majority; but then I’m a fan of human nature and could be wrong.”

  “You’re wrong. Not about the majority of innocents, but about being a fan of the race. Your glass has been half empty as long as I’ve known you.”

  “Not always. It depends on what’s in the glass. And I’m still waiting for an answer.”

  He got up and unhooked his suitcoat from the back of the swivel; shrugged into it and sat down. Same old Alderdyce, in uniform now and on the job. “You committed? Not just testing the bathwater with your elbow?”

  “I haven’t cashed his check yet, but yeah.”

  “Make sure it clears. You know how rich people are about paying their bills.”

  “I get it. You don’t like him.”

  “I bet my pension on him the first time we spoke and all the times after that. It’s not evidence, just something you hear out the corner of your ear: Something someone says, or how he says it, lands with a thud instead of a clang. You notice it right off, but you can’t pin down just what it is at first. Then every time you hear it later you’re surer than ever he’s your man. I guess even a plastic badge experiences that from time to time.”

  I nodded, tossing the plastic-badge crack over my shoulder like spilled salt. It was just habit on his part.

  “You’ve dealt with the newly bereaved,” he said. “Even when it’s obvious someone’s dead, they usually use present tense first, then catch themselves as it sinks in.”

  “Not always, but often. Go on.”

  “I’d argue in favor of always when it’s a missing person, especially when it’s as recent as a couple of hours, when there’s still plenty of reason to hope. Not Francis X. Lawes. From the start, he referred to his freshly absent wife in the past tense. Not once, then or later, did he ever say, ‘Paula is.’ It was ‘Paula was,’ right from the time the Allen Park police knocked on his door with the troubling news. Who does that?”

  “Let me guess. Rich people?”

  “Murderers, that’s who. And not just passion killers driven to violence in the heat of the moment. He’d been thinking of her as dead for some time, even when she was still alive and present. And for him she was. Face it, Walker. You’re representing O.J., without the entourage.”

  FIVE

  “What kept you from pinching him?”

  “Couldn’t break his alibi. He was attending a governors’ conference on Mackinac Island; witnesses and photos up the wazoo. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have hired it, but none of our leads in that arena panned out.”

  “That’s it, then? Just your gut?”

  He spread his hands, each of which could palm a medicine ball. “If I had anything better, he’d be in stir; in isolation, where they put the VIP killers so they don’t have to mingle with the riffraff. If you think there’s no class system in this country, drop in on any joint on visiting day and count the contusions and lacerations on the poor schnooks that picked pockets and stole bicycles.”

  “Any objection if I run it out?”

  “Why ask? I’m strictly private sector, like you.”

  “Not like me.”

  “I’ve still got friends in harness, but they won’t be pulling you over for a broken taillight that wasn’t broken when they pulled you over. I won’t squawk if somebody else gets this collar. It’s never been about the credit.

  “This is the job every P.I. waits his entire career to land: Give the client what he’s paying for—Paula Lawes’s bones, or proof that bones is all she is—and it’ll reopen the investigation. If it’s a body, the lab rats will establish cause of death, and the CID will turn over the dominoes from there, all the way back to who provided the cause. If it’s a witness, that’s even better; the working detectives can eliminate the white coats, roll up their sleeves, and get cracking. If by some fluke it doesn’t lead to the grieving widower, it’s still justice; if it does—and it will—it’s satisfaction all around. When the file’s closed this time, they’ll put your name on your own personal coffee mug at Thirteen-hundred. In this town that’s Olympic gold. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  When he shook his head, it was like the Great Barrier Reef swaying in the sea breeze. “For someone smart enough to get rich, Lawes can’t see past the wedding night. He could’ve let things stay as they were for a year and cruise off into the sunset with his new squeeze, but instead he’s let his dick lead him square into harm’s way. His dick and a million he can’t get without proof of death.

  “My friends are yours, Walker. Anytime, night and day, weekends and holidays included. It beats Walmart.”

  * * *

  When I eat breakfast I’m rarely hungry before supper, but I had time to kill before collecting those pictures of Paula Lawes. I had pie and coffee uptown and tamped down my indigestion over some reading in the public library.

  Shortly after the feds locked up our most recent bent mayor, one of the swanky monthlies that tried to make Detroit look glamorous had run a puff piece about sweeping changes in the way the city was managed. Near the bottom of the third column on the second page was a photo of Francis X. Lawes shaking hands with the appointed chief of the new administration. I folded the magazine back and showed the picture to the vagrant eating a raw onion hoagie at the next carrel over. “This guy look like a killer to you?”

  His red eyes clashed with the lavender rings around them. He stared at the picture, belched blue fire, and bit into his sandwich with a crunch that shook the building.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said.

  * * *

  If you want to know how the local sports teams are doing, but aren’t curious enough to read a paper or watch TV, swing by the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. There, in front of the blank wall facing Woodward Avenue, squats The Spirit of Detroit, a ton or so of verdigris copper, popularly known as the Jolly Green Giant, holding a radiating sphere aloft in one hand and a nuclear family in the other. If at playoff time it’s wearing a huge jersey carrying the insignia of the Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, or Pistons, we’ve got a dog in the hunt. This year it just had its breechclout, and it was lucky to still have that.

  Francis X. Lawes dealt city services to private contractors from a small suite on the fifteenth floor, far enough away from the current mayor’s office on Nineteen to quash suspicions of too much elbow-rubbing. According to the article I’d read, the company rented the space from the city and the CEO collected no commissions on the construction and maintenance contracts he negotiated; he worked entirely on salary, out of which he paid his staff. Just how much that was didn’t make the piece.

  A long walk down a windowless hall brought me to a plain door with a plastic card in a slot, containing only the suite number and THE LAWES GROUP in white letters. It looked like the entry to the office of a community-college instructor who doubled as the coach of the debate tea
m.

  The reception room wasn’t much larger than mine, and although the furniture was newer (my budget managed old, avoiding the suspicious aura of antiquity) and the walls cheerier—tangerine, eggshell blue, moss green, and cream yellow alternating—whoever decorated it probably wouldn’t have set me back more than a year’s income.

  It was all very modest and understated, including the young woman behind the desk with her strawberry blond hair caught behind her head and eyeglass frames to match, a far cry from the gangsta plush of a couple of previous administrations, and wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in a room full of federal watchdogs. Community-service certificates in frames were the sole decoration. It was unpretention bordering on pretentious; one more sign of responsible spending and I’d have pegged it as stage art. After a certain point, a penny saved is a dollar skimmed.

  I told her who I was and that her boss was expecting me. She used an intercom and asked me to take a seat.

  “Thanks. I’ve done enough of that today. They say sitting is the new smoking.”

  She was turning that over to look at the other side when one of three communicating doors opened and a woman who was not as tall and not as bony and not at all as black as Deborah Stonesmith came in, although she was tall and slim enough. Her hair was short, cut in bangs at a thirty-degree angle on a broad forehead, and way too pale for someone in her mid-thirties; white is the new blond. It contrasted sharply with her Florida tan. Eyes brown with gold flecks, mile-high cheekbones, a chin that imitated the contours of a pear-shaped diamond. Her neck wasn’t quite long enough to tie in a knot. White heavy-silk blouse, French cuffs linked with onyx, snug gray skirt cut like her bangs, starting two inches above her right knee angling down to two inches below her left. Oxblood patent-leather pumps on her feet, with four-inch heels. The angle, combined with the altitude, made me feel a little queasy, but that might have been the imported pie and smelted-lead coffee I’d had for lunch. She stood with arms folded loosely and one trim ankle crossed in front of the other, a runway pose.

  “Perhaps I can help? I’m Holly Pride. I manage the office.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, but I didn’t order a Holly Pride. I’m waiting on a Francis X. Lawes.”

  “Mr. Lawes is busy at the moment, Mr.—?” She raised arched eyebrows at the blonde, who mouthed my surname. “—Walker. I’m in charge of all the business conducted by The Lawes Group.”

  “I’m not here on Lawes Group business. My business is with Lawes.”

  I got the full body scan. I didn’t have to wait three days for the result: wrong suit, wrong shoes, wrong face. “Will you follow me, please?” She reversed her ankles, turning her body in the direction of the door she’d come through.

  “As long as it leads to Lawes.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I’d run all my lines, and in any case the blonde behind the desk was showing too much interest in the matinee. Holly Pride held the door for me and I entered an office with a window offering a view of the Detroit River. It seemed I couldn’t get away from the river today. It was a fairly Spartan setup, in keeping with the rest of the place: pastel blue walls, architect’s steelpoint drawings in plain frames, a flat-panel desk holding up the usual equipment, including a stand-up photo with its blank back facing me.

  She leaned her hips back against the desk and crossed her ankles the other way. When she did the same with her arms, a ring on her left hand sent off strobes. I shifted positions to keep the glare out of my eyes.

  “Holly Pride,” I said.

  “Right the first time.” Her pale-gloss lips bent up stiffly at the corners like wire.

  “Such names do not fall to those of human lot.”

  A crease marred the smooth surface of her brow. “Confucius?”

  “Close. Charlie Chan. Holly, maybe. Pride, possibly. Together they play like a conspiracy theory: Too tight, no flaws.”

  “Suppose I let your curiosity go on fluttering in the wind, how would that be?”

  “Disastrous. My work’s made up entirely of questions and answers. Who was it said if nothing’s accomplished, no work was done?”

  “Obviously not Congress. Just what is your business?”

  “We settled that outside. Good-bye, Ms. Pride. It’s been lovely.” I turned and grasped the doorknob.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where I started; Mr. Lawes’s office. I think I can find it. It’s not that big a suite, and I’m a trained detective. That’s what you’ve been trying to find out, isn’t it?”

  “If you go prowling around, I’ll have to call security. One of my responsibilities is to shield Fran—Mr. Lawes from annoying interruptions.”

  “My only responsibility is to see Francis—since we’re being informal. I can’t do that while I’m standing here talking in circles. I’m here by arrangement with him.”

  “Is it about Paula Lawes?”

  I smiled. I’d gotten something out of the side trip after all.

  “If he didn’t tell you what it’s about,” I said, “it’s not my secret to share.” I opened the door, looking back over my shoulder. “By the way, is it congratulations, or good luck? Lawes gets one, you the other, but I’m fuzzy on the etiquette.”

  She glanced toward the picture on her desk. I still couldn’t see who was in it, but now I didn’t have to. “Who told you?”

  “Observation and instinct, and one of those hunches that hardly ever pan out. The ring helped,” I said, when she looked down at it. “But you’re already asking the kind of questions a wife asks about her husband. He’s picky when it comes to choosing a mate, if the pictures I’ve seen of Paula Lawes mean anything, and the kind of women he generally comes into contact with are in politics. The only really good-looking ones are in Hollywood, playing politicians. That leaves you and the blonde outside, who on short acquaintance has the personality of a paper clip.”

  “Impressive—and insulting to slightly more than half the world’s population. You aren’t much on people skills, Mr. Walker.”

  “It depends on which skills are required for the particular job. Good-bye again, Ms. Pride, and best wishes on your betrothal.” I let myself out and pulled the door shut behind me.

  SIX

  No whistles blew and nobody tackled me as I walked past the receptionist’s desk and stopped at the door facing the one that led into Holly Pride’s office. The woman behind the desk didn’t raise her chin from her smartphone, but I could feel her eyes following me from behind the glasses. This door was blank too. I knocked. A familiar voice asked who it was. When I identified myself, the owner of the voice invited me in. There was a puzzled frown in his tone.

  “Why weren’t you announced?” Lawes asked. He was sitting in front of a window in a padded leather chair, half-turned toward it with a hand resting on a paneled desk that might have stood next to Holly Pride’s in the showroom. He had on the same dark gray suit and his beautifully brushed hair hadn’t gone any grayer since morning.

  “Ask your fiancée. She wanted to strip-search me before letting me into the royal presence.”

  “Holly told you we’re engaged?”

  “I told her. I had the impression she was the one who was pushing for your wife’s declaration of death, but she put me straight on that when it took her a while to guess why I scaled the wall.”

  “You didn’t get that impression from me. Holly knows nothing about it. I wanted to surprise her with the information that we were free to marry, when I have it. I wish you’d spoken to me first.”

  “So do I. When I get the third-degree, I’m used to getting it from a cop with b.o. Chanel Number Five throws me off my game.”

  “Le Chat Blanc’s her label,” he said. “Seventy dollars an ounce. I gave it to her last Christmas. Now I’ll have to spring for another bottle. I was going to give her the news for her birthday, if the timing worked out.”

  “From the look of her you’d have had to have it gilt-edged and engraved, with a diamond choker on the side
.”

  Red spots the size of quarters blossomed on his cheeks. “Your lack of diplomacy goes beyond mere bluntness.”

  “You’re not buying my diplomacy, Mr. Lawes. I’ve just come from John Alderdyce,” I said, shifting gears.

  The spots didn’t fade. “That son of a bitch. I should have filed a harassment complaint. If he’d spent half as much time looking for Paula as he did browbeating me, I wouldn’t have had to hire you in the first place.”

  “As he saw it he was doing both. You didn’t improve things by acting like you lost a favorite putter instead of your wife.”

  “I’d have bled from my palms if it’s what he wanted. I deal with politicians, tycoons, lobbyists, and the press. It takes a poker face and a tough shell to bring them all together. I’m sorry if I don’t fit the conventional profile of the distraught husband. I haven’t that luxury.”

  “There is no conventional profile. I’ve seen psychopaths blubber real tears on cue and genuine victims stand up to ruthless grilling with all the outward emotion of a Roomba vac. But not many speak of their life partners in the past tense when they’ve only been gone a few hours.”

  “She’d been gone to me longer than that. Alderdyce might have mentioned what I told him at the time, that our marriage had been on automatic pilot for years. We neither loved nor hated each other; we just shared the same quarters. Neither of our careers gave us the time to file for separation or divorce. The Paula I spoke of in past tense was the Paula I fell in love with; that Paula was as dead as Cleopatra, as I suppose I was to her.”

  “There’s also the small matter of a million dollars in death benefits. A cop looks at that and it’s Christmas.”

  “A million, what’s that today? In this office a year’s worth of toner. I’m worth a million, probably more, and I spend what I must to get by and to put up just enough of a front to impress a client, but not so much he might think the city’s gone back to business as usual. What would I do with another million, retire? Not today, and certainly not to smooth the ruffled feathers of the police.”