When Old Midnight Comes Along

by Loren D. Estleman

  I stood, creaking a little, folded my arms across my chest, and stared down at the still figure on the bed. Nothing brilliant of the old school of detecting suggested itself to me; but then why should it start now.

  He lay as motionless as a rack of ribs.

  Francis X. Lawes. He’d asked me to call him X. Maybe I should have. It didn’t seem too much to grant a man during the last days of his life.

  I unfolded my arms and reached down to grope for signs of activity in the big artery on the side of his neck. I didn’t expect to find any, but I’m thorough, if not by any stretch of the imagination an optimist.

  He shot up straight from the waist, eyes wide open, shouting, “What the hell!”

  SEVENTEEN

  When I climbed back down from the goddess Diana, Holly lay halfway across Lawes, hugging him around the shoulders and planting kisses all over his flushed face. Along with his exclamation, a gust of Highland heather—once removed—had come out, and what was left of it hung in the room like an old hammock. His mouth lay open where he’d left it and he was blinking a rapid Morse code. His eyes made their way around to me.

  “Jesus, you scared the—”

  “Welcome to my world. You looked like the front page of The Police Gazette when we came in. What’s with the artillery?”

  “The—? Oh.” He looked down at the gun on the carpet, patted Holly on the back, and disentangled himself. “I knocked it off the table reaching for the glass. I figured it could wait till I got up.”

  “Which wouldn’t have been anytime soon. If that bottle was full when you started, I’m running out and buying shares in Scottish grain futures. Any particular reason you decided to board the D.T. one-oh-nine?”

  “English, please. Even that’s too rich for my head.” He spread a hand to grip both temples at once. That settled the question of his sobriety. The hangover only kicks in when you’re drying out.

  “Why the bender?”

  “I spent all day yesterday trying to get a politician to stop acting as if the layout on a city contract is coming from his own pocket. I got through to him finally that a million saved is ten million earned in the campaign fund for his re-election if it means a hundred fewer potholes. Six hours and a dozen phone calls just for that. Yeah, I made the executive decision to stay home and drink myself into the Twilight Zone. Got a problem with that? Who let you in, anyway? Well?” he said when I let a second’s silence pass.

  “Just wondering which question you wanted me to answer. No to the first. As for the answer to the second, you’re wearing her lipstick.”

  He took the hand from his forehead to mop his face; not that Holly’s transparent gloss had left any tracks. A man who cared for his appearance as much as he did—when he wasn’t sleeping one off—would straighten his necktie before grabbing a mortal wound.

  “Holly?”

  She was shrugging wrinkles out of her outfit. “He wanted to see you. I asked him if he found something. He said it found him. Whatever that means. If I knew you were—”

  “Of course, darling.” He put just enough sap into the response to make it fly. It was gone when he got back to me. “So?”

  I looked at Holly. “Some strong coffee would help clear his head.”

  “I’m an office manager, not an intern. Why don’t you make it yourself?”

  “Because I need to talk to your boss-slash-fiancé alone.”

  Lawes said, “She can stay. We don’t have any secrets.”

  “Bully for you. I do. I hate to trouble you,” I told the woman in a different tone, “but coffee sure would go down good right now.”

  Strangely enough, that seemed to satisfy her. Another time it wouldn’t. God made women, I didn’t. She let herself out of the room, pulling the door to quietly behind her; not quite shut. I shrugged. What she heard didn’t matter as long as she wasn’t in the room. Conducting a face-to-face interview with an extra face present is like observing a wild animal in captivity; the results are inconclusive.

  When I turned back toward the bed, the man in it had switched his body with X., confidant of civic leaders and millionaire contractors. The whites of his eyes were clear. His hair, rumpled from sleep, was as smooth as porcupine quills and he was sitting propped up against a pillow, shoulders squared, hands folded in his lap. He managed to make the space between us seem as substantial as an executive desk.

  “You really thought I was dead? I’m beginning to doubt your talents as a detective.”

  “Talent’s for trumpet players. This is a job. You hired me to prove your wife’s dead. If you’d hired me to prove you weren’t, I might have gone about it differently. Probably not, though. All that was missing was the organ music.”

  “Just what was it you found? Or that found you? If I spoke in meetings the way you do, I’d still be keeping books for Norway Cement in Westland.”

  “I’ll let this do my talking for me.” I drew out the twist of tissue and let it unwind itself so the ring tumbled out into his lap.

  He looked at it a long moment before picking it up and turning it around, studying it from all sides, including the inscription inside the band. He returned it. “Is it supposed to mean something?”

  “Whoever broke into my house and put it on my kitchen table thought so.”

  “It’s been a long time. It could be the ring I gave her when we became engaged; the inscription is simple enough that I might have ordered it and forgotten. On the other hand, someone might have smuggled in a fake just to throw off your investigation.”

  “Okay.” I rewrapped it and put it back in my pocket.

  His dark brows almost touched his pale hairline. “No argument?”

  “No.” I turned toward the door, where the aroma of brewing coffee was creeping into the room.

  “May I ask why?”

  I turned back. “There’s not much point in arguing with an accomplished liar. You’ve had too much practice haggling with politicians. I should have known that when I sent Holly out. I wanted to see your reaction without a third party in the room.”

  “So I’m a smooth-faced hypocrite? I can live with that. I’ve been called worse.” He refolded his hands. “Just for the sake of discussion, why would I lie?”

  “Because whoever put this in my house wants me to think the woman it belongs to is still above ground; either that, or he—or she—got it off her bony finger, or has been sitting on it all these years waiting for the opportunity to make something off it. If Paula’s alive, you’re still married, and this whole process will have to start all over again. I don’t think that’s what you want; so of course the ring isn’t genuine according to you.”

  His face started to darken. I stopped him before he could open his mouth. “Don’t bother. That would mean I don’t think you killed her. There’s no murderer without a victim.”

  “You thought I killed her?”

  “The police do; but they’ve been on the case longer. I’m too new to it to start thinking. That comes later. So what I do now is back up, turn around, and look for proof she’s alive instead of that she isn’t. If that nullifies our agreement, I’ll figure out how much I’ve spent from the retainer you gave me and we’ll settle up.”

  The aroma grew stronger while he thought. Crockery clinked from the direction of the kitchen. “Keep at it,” he said then. “Let me know what more you’ll need to cover your time and expenses. If you produce a corpse or a living woman, it amounts to the same thing. At last I’ll know the truth, and so will the police. If it turns out she’s still among the living, at the very least it will take them off my back. The prospect of a divorce, however unpleasant, is preferable to this lingering suspicion.”

  “That’s what everyone says.” I didn’t add that almost everything is worse than what you anticipated. A detective could lose work being frank. What I said was:

  “All right. I’ll press Reset and get back on the belt.”

  Holly nudged the door open and came in, carrying two cups and saucers and a steaming
carafe on a tray. She stopped this side of the threshold. “Conference over? I can go back and make scones.”

  “Don’t be cross, darling.” Lawes caught my eye and pointed his chin toward the pocket where I’d slipped the ring. I took it out and handed it to her.

  She did everything he had, then gave it back. “Is it hers?”

  “That’s the question for the bonus round,” I said, turning the ring around and around in my fingers. I told her how it had come into my possession and what had passed between Lawes and me.

  “Ridiculous! If she’s alive, why wouldn’t she show herself in person?”

  I rolled a shoulder. “Lots of reasons. I can’t think of any just now, but give me time.”

  “There’s no giving about it. You’re selling it to us, at the rate of five hundred a day.”

  “You’ve been talking,” I told Lawes.

  “There was no reason not to, now that she knows everything else.”

  She was watching him. She nodded toward the ring. “How could you not recognize it?”

  “I’m a man. As soon as we throw money at a thing we forget about it. It’s only a symbol after all.”

  She scowled. “About fifty thousand dollars’ worth of symbol.”

  She had a head for figures.

  “Forty-five,” I said. “It has flaws.”

  “All diamonds have flaws.”

  “Women are born knowing such things. Jewelers and fences have to learn it. Detectives too.” I chewed a cheek. There didn’t seem to be anything to lose, so I asked Lawes the question. “Did Paula ever mention a cop named Marcus Root?”

  He looked puzzled. He was human after all. The hangover had suggested it, but here was proof. “No. Who’s he?”

  “Was. He was the first cop on the scene where Paula’s car turned up without her in it. You must have heard the name when the cops talked to you.”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember. I had a bit more on my mind.”

  “He was killed that same night. It was on the news.”

  “Again—” He shrugged. “But why should she have mentioned him at all? She vanished before he came on board.”

  I gnawed on the other cheek. I said, “No reason,” and let myself out.

  It wasn’t the time to bring up George Hoyle. A promise is a promise. Until it isn’t.

  * * *

  It took me four blocks to spot it; an embarrassment. Back when I had a partner to take up the slack, the vehicular tail was one of my specialties. I could paste myself to a subject’s rear bumper for miles without tipping my hand, and when I was the subject, I nailed the shadow straightaway. But working alone for so many years had dulled the fine edge.

  There was, of course, a question of profile. The rearview gave me nothing, but when I turned a corner I caught it in the side mirror. That mirror was set at a slightly different angle, just enough to catch a vehicle hugging the pavement almost at curb level. Gang low-riders are like Stealth bombers, sliding literally below the radar.

  EIGHTEEN

  In that situation there are three choices to be made. It’s always three, and always the same. I could lose the tail, confront it, or string along with it until I knew who was behind it and why.

  The list is in ascending order of risk. You might think turning around and bracing the party is the most dangerous, but if you do it right and keep surprise on your side, you cut the hazard in half. Ducking it is the easiest, in a town I know as well as the face I shave, where the cops let you drive as fancy as you like so long as you don’t wreck the bell curve, and with my track record in that area of enterprise. But playing dumb and just carrying on is like zip-lining through a tiger pit; you give your pursuer space to arrange a plan of battle, with no clue as to how good he is at it. The longer you maintain slack, the better his chances and the worse yours. It’s all a matter of timing, same as diving off the Great Barrier Reef and microwaving popcorn.

  Leaving this one in the dust was the course to take, no doubt about it; doing a 180 and bearding him in the act was next best. So of course I did nothing, taking him on the scenic tour, on the off-chance he’d tip his hand before giving me the same deal as Officer Marcus Root.

  He was good; that much I established in the first five minutes. Drawing him around Grand Circus Park at the base of Woodward, I spotted him only once, when he gunned his motor to avoid losing me on the first curve; the combination of after-market horsepower and glass-pack exhaust system soared above the monotonous hum of lesser engines like a panther’s cry in a teeming jungle. After that it was mostly guesswork: a seeming empty space between trailing cars in bumper-to-bumper circumstances, a javelin-shaped reflection sliding across the ground-floor windows of the Book Cadillac Hotel on Michigan, a prickling at the back of my neck when there’d been no concrete evidence for a dozen blocks.

  He was as good as his machine, not some green initiate set on me to prove himself worthy of the colors. That was enough information for now. From Monroe, I feinted a left onto Randolph, a one-way street, and when I calculated he’d taken the bait I spun around and took off against the flow of traffic. Horns flattened the air, a siren whooped; but by then I was on Lafayette, obeying all the signs with a solid wall of traffic between me, the cops, and Lowboy.

  My shoulders were tented up around my ears. Willing myself to relax, I shifted positions. The ring in my side pocket poked a dent in my hip.

  That made up my mind. I swung back toward the river and entered the lot next to the Reliance building and inserted my heap between a pair of vehicles so nondescript they stood out like circus wagons. I was halfway to the front door when I turned back, unshipped the .38 in its clip from my belt, and locked it in the glove compartment. The place had more metal detectors than Detroit Metropolitan Airport and the people who monitored them were a lot less cordial than the TSA.

  Four-ten was open this time. John Alderdyce sat at the pale-blue metal desk, scribbling with a ballpoint pen. Today was casual, at least from the waist up: burgundy cashmere shirt buttoned to the neck, emphasizing the deep purplish hue of the skin.

  I tapped on the door. “Still doodling?”

  “Totting up how many employees of this razor-sharp institution are duplicating each other’s work. Ernest Krell’s spinning in his Frigidaire.”

  The prevailing wisdom—if it ever prevailed anywhere—was that according to the terms of his will, the founder of Reliance Security Services had been cryogenically preserved in a facility in upstate New York, until such time as a cure could be found for terminal arrogance. “Who made you the presiding efficiency expert?”

  “It’s this or crossword puzzles, which drive me nuts. I can’t convince The New York Times there’s no such thing as a wild ox, unless they trot out the guy whose job is to strike off into the bush and castrate a feral bull.” He folded his gold-rimmed glasses and tapped them on the desk. “Tell me you’re here to announce Francis Lawes’s arrest.”

  I shook my head. “My previous record stands.” I laid the ring on the sheet he’d been writing on and spread the tissue.

  He looked at it as if a fly had landed there. Then he put the glasses back on his nose and picked it up. He went straight to the engraved inscription.

  “He give it to you?”

  “No.” I told him how I got it.

  “He identify it?”

  “No again. But if what he hired me to do is what he hired me to do, denying it makes sense.”

  “Because he’d have to free himself the hard way, through the courts.”

  “If that’s what he wants. If he killed her, I still don’t see why he’d want to pay me to stir up the same old dust.”

  He placed it back in the center of the crumple. “What makes it my business?”

  “I want to find out where it came from, what jeweler, and who he sold it to. If it was Lawes, then I’ll know it’s a clue and I can concentrate on who delivered it to my place. If it isn’t, I’ll know that some third party is trying to roil the waters.”

  “S
o take it to Deb Stonesmith. She’s got the resources.”

  “Also a public blotter. I need someone who still has contacts but doesn’t have to go on record. I peddle discretion; it’s the most popular product in my inventory. Once the newsbirds find out that the story’s grown a new set of legs, they’ll trample all over the footprints and lost buttons I need to piece together the puzzle and unveil the answer. Preferably during a formal dinner party with all the suspects in attendance.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Your per diem, to keep it strictly on the up-and-up with the brass here. Mainly your own peace of mind: Lawes in custody, or Lawes cleared of suspicion. Don’t try to tell me it hasn’t been working on you all this time.”

  “Like a flesh-eating virus.”

  Him and Commander Albert White. I don’t know what it is about cops. They can’t wait to get in their thirty and skedaddle. Then they spend another thirty chewing over the gristle they left behind.

  Someone rapped on the open door. “John?”

  Alderdyce aimed a scowl past my shoulder. I shifted my weight and looked at a middle-aged party in a white short-sleeve dress shirt, black necktie, and a belly hanging over the waistband of his tan Dockers. He wore his hair in bangs, Three Stooges style. A goose bump of a nose was marooned in the middle of his big pink face. White-painted pencils stuck out of a plastic sleeve in his breast pocket like pickets in a fence. He’d shipped here straight from Cape Canaveral, 1961.

  “Dale.” The man behind the desk turned a palm my way. “Dale Grange, Amos Walker. Dale manages the joint.”

  Eyes like white grapes took me in. “Are you a client of this firm?”

  “A colleague.” I dealt him a business card. “Ernest Krell used to farm out some work my way. I’m hoping to return the favor.”