“The police say you’re up to your chin in debt.”
He’d stopped to take in air. It had been quite an address to deliver in one breath. He found enough to snort; if that’s what it’s called in his tax bracket. “I’ve made satisfactory arrangements with my creditors. Is that all you’ve dug up since breakfast, the state of my finances and John Alderdyce’s opinion of my character?”
“I broke for lunch.”
He decided to get mad again; but I jumped in before he could make another speech.
“I’m not paid to clean up messes, just sort them out. That takes time, especially when someone else got there before me and I have to figure out their system before I try mine. I came here to report and to collect photographs I can show around to jog the memory of people who haven’t followed the case since it fell off the map.”
That had a placating effect, for some reason; but then he’d built a business on giving just the right impression or no impression at all. In any case he spent some time watching cars cross town fifteen stories below his feet, his palm flat on the polished surface of his desk. When he lifted it to rub his chin it left no wet mark at all. He swiveled my way, opened and shut a drawer, and laid five pictures on the desk, fanning them out like playing cards.
I picked them up and shuffled through them. He took his women the way he took his mimosas, tall and cool. Paula had the somewhat rangy look of someone who knew her way around a bridle path. She didn’t smile any more in hard copy than she had on his cell.
“One more question. Was Holly around when Paula disappeared?”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Questions never mean anything. Answers do.”
“Yes. She was my receptionist then. It didn’t take long to see she was overqualified for the job. Does that make her some kind of suspect?”
“Not according to the cops, or her name would’ve shown up in the paperwork.”
“There’d be no reason. In those days our relationship was strictly professional.”
“Thanks.”
He watched me slide the pictures into a pocket. “Where are you going with them?”
“Allen Park, the last place your wife was seen. It seems as good a place to start as any.”
“The trail started and ended there. What can you possibly hope to turn up that the police haven’t, after all these years?”
“A crumb, maybe. A witness still in residence who didn’t find talking to cops a good investment of his free time. A broken pencil point, red clay residue in a footprint in ordinary brown dirt; the usual stuff Miss Marple specializes in. A thread to tug at for want of a string.”
“Are you sure you’re not just running out the clock? I get enough of that from plasterers and electricians who work by the hour.”
“Just clawing for traction, Mr. Lawes.”
He showed his not-suspiciously-even teeth in ten centimeters of smile. “You switch metaphors like a yard engine.”
“Work like one, too.” Back and forth, forth and back. I left him.
* * *
My office building was under scrutiny for asbestos again. The subject came up every time it changed owners, and so far the solution had always been the same: Cover it up and hope the inspector doesn’t notice or has a kid in college who can’t catch a forward pass. It was no landmark, so it wasn’t likely to be fobbed off on a syndicate based in Beijing like the others; but if the decision was to tear it down it would be all the same to me. Whatever they slung up in its place would be so swank and gaudy I couldn’t get through the front door without a bulldozer. When they say Detroit’s coming back, they don’t mean you’re coming with it.
The only sign the super was at his post was the odor of borscht boiling in his cubbyhole off the foyer. It followed me up two flights, where I pushed my door shut against the pressure. There the same old smell of dust and unintentional pro bono activity awaited me in the reception room. Sometimes a customer came straggling in to sneer at the magazines, serve a short stretch in Purgatory, then pass through the second door to unload the chains he’d forged in life; but not lately. I’d blame the Internet, but I’d been brick-and-mortar since Bill Gates was getting his shorts yanked down in gym and the traffic hadn’t changed.
On into the holy of holies, where the feng shui was just as absent: two war-surplus file cabinets filled with dissatisfied clients and bills outstanding; a teacher’s desk from a school since converted into a movie studio, then a crack factory, George Armstrong Custer selling beer from his crest in hell, long flaxen hair flying, saber flashing, buckskinned to the bone; all the details as accurate as a long-range weather report. Maybe that was the appeal. Not one of the cases I’d typed into the reports bore even a slight resemblance to what had actually happened, and I didn’t consider myself a fabulist.
The only reason I’d stopped in at all was to check the mail, of which there was none under the slot, abuse my liver, and place calls on a secure landline; secure because I pose as much threat to authority as a sunken ship in a fishbowl.
I got out the photos of Paula Lawes and looked at them again, hoping to jump-start my powers of extra-sensory perception, but they weren’t strong enough to turn over a new leaf. I put the pictures back in my pocket, drew out my notebook, and called the public relations firm she’d worked for. Three pickups and three music playlists later I got a sympathetic party who’d known her, liked her, and was willing to help with a new investigation into her vanishing act. I read off the list of her clients I’d gotten from the police file along with the rest of her known associates. Of the five I gave him, my new best friend said two had moved on, one was dead, but two were still customers, and would he like me to arrange interviews? I said not at this time, thanked him, depressed the riser, and dialed a number from the directory.
The voice I drew this time, buzzy like a telephone transmission in an old radio show, got everything out of me but my operation to correct a deviated septum before it agreed to relay my message to the person I wanted. I slobbered thanks all over the receiver and cradled it.
This season the stuff in the office bottle was burned only once, from a single source. I’d bought it out of the proceeds from a case that on second thought would have drowned better in Old Renal Shutdown. I pulled the cork—I think it was the sound of it that appealed—poured enough into a shot glass to float the dust, and rolled it between my palms to coax the bouquet up to my nostrils, like Highland heather marinated in nettle honey, or what I thought it would smell like.
That was almost enough. I might have poured it back into the bottle except it could contaminate the rest of the contents. I contaminated my stomach with it instead.
I let the telephone jangle three times before I picked up. The stuff was affecting me more than it used to, especially on a stomach lined with eggs Benedict, sourdough toast, pie a la muck, and Colombian sludge.
“A. Walker Investigations.” I heard my voice drawing it out like a recovery crew dragging a pond for a corpse.
“This is Commander Albert White, retired. Who the hell is Amos Walker?”
It was a voice like my father’s, ground to gravel shouting orders on a loading dock. “Someone who shares your initials,” I said. “Didn’t the party at headquarters give you the rest?”
“This is Allen Park. We’ve got no headquarters, just a police station. So you’re conducting an investigation for a private party. I’m twice removed from that: Once, ’cause I’m retired. The second time, because when I wasn’t retired I wouldn’t give a private snog the temperature of my left nut. So why am I returning your call?”
“Why are you?”
“’Cause it involves the Lawes case, and I’m sitting here on my back porch drinking fucking lite beer, pretending it’s pilsner, black as Uncle Tom’s ass and strong as a skunk’s, and wishing I had another crack at it. How soon can you get here?”
“Commander White, that’s me ringing your doorbell.”
“When it is, make sure you’re luggin
g a six-pack of Purple Gang.”
SEVEN
The house was a fairly new brick ranch in a cul-de-sac off Outer Drive, with a straight-line view across the street to Detroit, specifically the VA hospital, an ugly sprawl of Lego-like construction where a line of ambulances waited outside the emergency room, eager to neglect their passengers.
A fluffy-looking woman of sixty in pea-green sweats answered the door and led me past a lot of wooden ducks, fishing creels, and Little Red Riding Hood baskets and out onto a screened porch, where a man sat in a wicker chair with a can of beer standing beside him on a cooler. The woman smiled and left us, walking noiselessly in blinding white sneakers.
Albert White hadn’t changed much since his television interview the night Paula Lawes’s car was found abandoned in his city. He looked just as flinty without the gaudy cap and stiff uniform, with steel-gray hair planed flat across the top of his head, eyes the same color set back in a web of sharp creases, a nose that had been broken and spliced, and a chin with a cleft you could park a bicycle in. He had on gray pleated slacks, brown shoes, and a pressed denim shirt. A bolo tie with a silver steer skull closed his collar.
He didn’t stand or offer to shake hands, just snatched the six-pack I’d bought out of my grip and set it on the floor. “Warm as piss.”
“They didn’t have the brand in the cold case. Sorry.”
“Grab a can.” He removed his from the cooler.
I wasn’t thirsty, and it was still a little chilly to be sitting on a porch drinking cold beer. Besides that it was lite; but I’d drunk worse under less pleasant conditions in the interest of establishing a bond. I tipped up the lid and dealt myself one from inside. A few more floated in slushy ice.
I reached inside my coat with my other hand and opened my ID folder, folding the honorary county deputy’s star out of sight. It never impressed anyone anyway and would only put a real cop out of sorts. He waved a palm. “’Course your name’s Walker and you got a snooper’s ticket. Who’d lie about that?”
Grinning, I put it away and sat in a wicker chair facing his at an angle. An above-ground pool stood in the backyard of the house next door, covered with a blue tarp and with the usual assortment of last summer’s junk scattered around it, plastic lawn chairs and foam-rubber noodles, rust-stained by snow and rain and faded by sunlight. At that it was easier on the eye than the hospital.
“I heard John Alderdyce pensioned out,” he said.
“If you want to call it a pension. It won’t put his grandson through Michigan. He’s filling the empty hours as a snooper.”
“Damn shame. The state pays a football coach a million a year to wipe a freshman’s ass but the city won’t shake down dick to stand in front of a bullet. You know Detroit don’t even foot the bill to bury an officer killed in the line of duty? The family has to pony it up on their own, or pass the hat like those pricks at the airport.”
“What about Allen Park?”
“Oh, it’s got a whole different set of rules in place to ass-fuck the boys and girls in blue.” He sipped, lifting the can between thumb and forefinger, a delicate gesture that seemed uncharacteristic. “Who you working for?”
“Francis X. Lawes, the widower in the Paula Lawes case. If she’s deceased. That’s what he’s paying me for, to confirm the vocabulary. He’s got the wedding-bell blues and they won’t wait.”
“Risky, if the Detroit crew we dumped this one on weren’t just guessing. They had him all ready to rope, tie, and brand—except for the rope and the tie and the iron.”
“On the other hand, it goes a little way toward clearing him of murder. I don’t buy the insurance angle; all he has to do is wait a year.”
“On the other hand, it could be the ace he needs to play to get the system off his back. How many hands is that?”
“Too many. Anyone who’s ever tried that ‘why would I stick my head in a noose if I had anything to hide’ act outside of cheap melodrama winds up stepping into the hole he dug.”
“Not if he makes damn sure she’ll never be found.”
“You don’t need a corpse in this state to prove murder. I might find something. I’m pretty good.”
“Maybe he don’t know that. That being the case, what’s he figure he’s got to lose? You come up empty, he enjoys being single-o for another year—less, if I remember right—and gets married anyway. He’s paying you to fall on your face and wash him in the blood of the lamb all at the same time.”
“That’s just about the opposite of what Alderdyce said. He thinks it’s a dream job: deliver the goods in the way of evidence and put myself in a cozy spot with the cops. It wouldn’t be the first time someone in their sights turned out to be too big for his skin.”
“I hope he’s right, if he’s right about Lawes. The older I get the less I like living with the thought of another guilty bird flying free with the rest of the flock. When it comes to justice I’m just a sentimental old slob. Maybe it’s why I hung it up.”
“Is it?”
“Naw. I should’ve stopped at inspector. One rung closer to the chief is one rung too high. When the party in office changed I knew he’d be out on his ass and me with him, so I pulled the chain before they could. I’d never been fired from a job in my life and it was too late in the day to start setting precedents.”
I drank beer. A gnat that had been tickling the back of my neck turned out to be something else. “Did you bone up on the Lawes case after I called you?”
“Now, do I look like the kind of schoolboy that’d go on doing homework after he dropped out?”
“Looks don’t count, you know that. You’ve worked a lot of investigations—plenty of them missing persons and homicide, I’m sure, working this close to Detroit. It was a high-profile beef, but a lot of soup’s been spilled since. You’re pretty strong on details after six years. You even know it’s been a little more than six. Specific dates are just about the last thing anyone remembers, cops included.”
A frown chiseled deep lines from the corners of his mouth to both sides of his chin. With the cleft in the middle, it looked as if he’d been scarred with a pickle fork.
“I wouldn’t be likely to forget the very last case a good officer worked before some son of a bitch murdered him.”
EIGHT
“You boys all right?” The screen door opened and the woman in sweats poked her fluffy head out onto the porch. She hadn’t the reedy voice of an old lady; the timbre suggested vocal training. You never know about people based on appearance. We detectives are supposed to know that.
White switched his glare to her, then back to me. “Either of us laying on the floor grabbing his chest?”
“Well, you don’t have to snap.” The head withdrew and the door banged shut at the end of its spring.
“I’ll pay for that.” He sat back, swirling the beer left in his can. “Marcus Root, eight-year veteran, four commendations, one for dragging a five-year-old boy out of a retention pond and giving him CPR. The kid’s a senior in high school now. When Paula Lawes’s car was found abandoned, Root was the first responding officer.”
I waited. Someone was playing scales up my spine.
“Same night,” he said. “Well, the next morning, if you want to go by the clock. Busy tour. Observed a motorist driving erratically: tan late-model Chevy Impala. Plate muddy, couldn’t radio the number while driving. His last report.
“Way the investigating team pieced it together, somebody pulled up alongside him and put two through the driver’s window. Nine-millimeter slugs, closest thing to a brown paper bag in ballistics. One grazed his neck, the other went through his left cheek, exited out the right temple, and lodged in the headliner above the passenger door. His unit struck a lamppost. Witness found him slumped over the wheel. M.E. said he was dead before he hit the post.”
“How’d it play out?”
“Didn’t. We never found the Impala and nobody came forward to report what happened. We found everything on his person and in the car that was
supposed to be there, except one thing.”
“His notebook.”
His empty can crackled in his grip. “You know? Sure, you came across that when you read up on the Lawes case. So why play Rain Man for me?”
“It was a guess. I’m a suspicious person. I didn’t know about any cop-killing. Chances are the press didn’t pick it up till the next day and it got lost in the glare of the other investigation. If I heard about it at the time I forgot.”
“Yeah. PR flacks are always bigger scoops than a murdered cop. We’re paid to be permanently in season.”
“The first responder’s report is the most important,” I said. “He’d have given everything he had to the detective team while it was still fresh.”
“You never held down a beat. The solid facts get set down first, for the record. Whatever thoughts, ideas, hunches, brainstorms come later, for the officer’s own reference during debriefing. Some detectives don’t like that: ‘Kid, you wanna be Kojak, take the exam. Just for now, stick to what you saw and heard and save the fancy footwork for America’s Funniest Felonies.’ Me, I’ve only got one head, I can always use more. Only I didn’t get it that time because he didn’t live long enough to file the paperwork and whoever popped him ran off with his first impressions.”
He finished crushing the can and threw it at a bucket half full of its ancestors. It struck the bail, bounced off, and rocked to a stop on the boards of the porch. “That’s what kept me on the job long after Cynthia started nagging me to retire: some bottom-feeding, dick-licking, goat-fucking rat bastard going through a dead cop’s pockets, handling him like he was a slab of meat after he killed him. I wanted that piece of shit so bad it made me piss blood every time I thought about it.
“Root had two little kids and a third on the way. Lost it when she got the news.” He popped open another beer.
Mine had gone flat. I stood it on top of the cooler. “You think what happened to him had something to do with what happened to Paula Lawes?”
When Old Midnight Comes Along Page 4
