When Old Midnight Comes Along

by Loren D. Estleman

  I gave him my name and location. Cary said, “Ten minutes, old sport.”

  Killing time, I counted the cash I had left from Lawes’s advance. It was enough to get me to the end of the street with a decent tip to spare. That was farther than I needed to go, but someone has to encourage local business.

  Just before leaving I got something else out of the safe: a Ruger Blackhawk with a dull finish and black Neoprene grips, checked the load, and traded it for the .38 on my belt. It was more gun than I liked, but street toughs like the one dogging me might take their chances with a garden-variety revolver; with a magnum, not so much.

  Rosecranz had found a channel that broadcast Greco-Roman wrestling. In the foyer I could hear the grunts and the Slavic announcer’s jabber from his office down the hall. The small window in the entry door gave me a view of the street directly in front of the building. I couldn’t see the low-rider, but I knew it was there.

  My ride squished to a stop just as I was crushing a butt on the linoleum. The car was better than I’d hoped, a late-model stretch Lincoln, amethyst-colored, with whip antennas and windows tinted as dark as the glass in an oven door. The wheel covers were polished to a mirror finish, with the silhouette of an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse–ear movie camera embossed in the centers, set independently of the rims so that the image was always right-side up. It wasn’t as gaudy as the QE II nor as unobtrusive as the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. I strode across the sidewalk, looking up and down the street like Danny Kaye in a spy spoof, and let myself into the rear salon, pulling the door shut behind me with a crisp satisfying snick. Tufted leather enveloped me like bubble wrap. The interior smelled like an expensive luggage shop. It was almost suffocating.

  A gleaming onyx face under a patent-leather visor hung over the back of the front seat. Out of its high-beam grin came a Jamaican accent. “Thirsty, mister? Plenty of the premium stuff back there in the bar.”

  Purely out of curiosity I lowered a hatch set into the back of the seat. The labels were as advertised, but they looked a little road-weary around the edges. “Dewar’s in a pinch bottle I can overlook,” I said. “If it’s Old Smuggler, I’ll put up a kick.”

  The grin dropped like a checkered flag. “I don’t stock it, mister. Where to?”

  I glanced at the side-view mirror mounted outside the front passenger’s window. The top of a sleek roof showed just above the bottom edge. I folded a twenty and passed it across the seat. “Left lane. Take it slow up to Washington, then go as fast and as far as you want. I won’t be here to tell on you.”

  “Where you want me to stop?”

  “Time it so you’re caught at the light.”

  “That where you’re getting out?”

  “No, I’ll be gone by then. Just don’t change course or look back when I jump out.”

  “Our insurance won’t cover that!”

  “No company in the world would. Don’t worry, my estate can’t afford a lawyer.”

  “Listen, if you’re trying to lose somebody, you picked the right man. I got Lee Iacocca away from the press when he got Congress to bail him out; in a fucking LeBaron yet.”

  “I’m not trying to lose anybody. Just the opposite. Drive, Andretti.” I slid over to his side of the car.

  But Andretti didn’t drive. He stuck my twenty, still folded, back across the seat. “I’ve got a perfect record, boss.” He cocked a shoulder, showing a five-year patch stitched on the sleeve. “I’m not shit-canning it for a double sawbuck.”

  I’d stashed a fifty in my right sock for emergencies; I’d almost forgotten it, which was the point. I dug it out and pushed it between the two fingers that held the twenty. His tongue bulged his cheek for several seconds. Then he reversed the hand, fisted the bills, and turned back around to grip the wheel.

  Traffic was thin that time of day. It was a one-way street, giving him the opportunity to hug the curb that ran in front of the Bloody Run Brewery. The redbrick building bore a distressed metal sign showing a grinning Chief Pontiac scalping a chesty pioneer woman in gingham; Detroit is the last stand for the politically incorrect. I slid into a crouch, grasping the door handle and bracing for the leap.

  The name on the chauffeur’s license displayed for the benefit of his passengers was Jean-Claude Philippe, but the old grin showed in the rearview mirror, so I called him Smiley to myself. Driving prom-goers at the pace of a hearse doesn’t offer much in the way of challenges. Anyway he came through as directed. He drove steadily at about ten miles per hour, forcing the bottom-scraping Dodge to creep along a full block behind. I glanced through the rear window just once—there was no point in looking again—and wriggled my hips to keep them from locking up.

  One of the gaggle of temporary administrators who’d taken the place of our incarcerated mayor had spearheaded a drive to beautify the city with tree plantings, conveniently located in front of eyesores that the budget wouldn’t stretch far enough to demolish. A full-press renovation on the part of Bloody Run’s partners had rescued its quarters from condemnation in the interim, but the cottonwood on the corner hadn’t been pruned since young adulthood; its branches, weighted down by fat, pubis-shaped leaves, screened most of the front entrance from the street. I waited until we passed the tree, then popped the door handle and threw the door open with all my weight. The cold mist felt good on my face; I was sweating in spite of the temperature. My bum leg reminded me why as I used it to push myself out into empty space.

  I landed on my feet; in a manner of speaking. I made contact long enough to feel the earth through my soles, then obeyed a law of nature, tumbling forward, belly-bumping rock-hard ground, executing an Olympic-quality somersault, and scraping fabric and flesh off a shoulder when I lighted on my back against concrete fencing a window well belonging to the brewery’s basement.

  Tempting as it was, I didn’t stay there waiting for my lungs to reinflate. I was up again before inertia overtook momentum, running around behind the building where my Cutlass stood on what was left of a paved parking lot belonging to the typewriter repair shop that had once occupied the building. I had the door open and myself behind the wheel before my leg remembered to start throbbing.

  The engine—which is where I spend all the money I save on bodywork—caught with a bellow. I slammed the transmission into gear and spat gravel and chunks of asphalt off the rear tires, slewing right and left as I tore around the building toward the street.

  When it comes to automobile ownership, there are certain advantages to maintaining a chalky finish, some surface rust, and more dings and dents than a linebacker’s skull. I nudged shopping baskets out of parking spaces without a second thought, enjoyed ample room in my slot courtesy of more cautious motorists parked on both sides, and found uses for my machine other than simple transportation; two tons of Detroit steel make a fearsome projectile. The character in the Charger, on the other hand, had put half my year’s pay into his paint job alone. Like having a child, such attention to appearances tends to rearrange one’s perspective when it comes to dealing with jeopardy.

  Also, there was a better-than-even chance this one had made these investments at the cost of bothering to insure his vehicle against collision.

  Smiley had missed the green light, as directed; a rare talent. The signal had changed again, and he was rolling across the intersection just above idle when I left the lot doing forty, scraping sparks off my undercarriage against the curb, pasted the foot-feed to the floor, and aimed straight at the gang-banger inching along behind the limousine.

  The tree had provided the cover I’d hoped for. He was so intent on the car in front of him, thinking I was still a passenger, that he paid no attention to what was coming at him from left field until the wail of the big 455 under my hood made him turn his face toward the window on his side. At the speed I was approaching the face was only a pale oval with a black hole in it, wide enough to release whatever blasphemies sprang to mind in the instant. Almost too late he spun the wheel right and tromped on the pedal, scraping the rear
bumper of the limo on the right with his left front fender just close enough to bruise the top layer of paint on the Charger. At the same moment I stood on my brakes with both feet. My tires howled, leaving twin strips of black on the pavement that will still be there come the invasion. The car traveling behind the hot rod, a Ford Flex shaped like a box of animal crackers, stopped just short of hitting me broadside. As I bronco-rode my shocks and springs, the Charger bucked up over the berm on the side of the street opposite the brewery, carved furrows in the damp grass on the corner, creased its twin pipes on the curb alongside Washington, swung left into that street, and huddled itself against the curb; as sweet a job of parallel parking as I’d seen.

  There was a vacuum, as after a detonation. The pressure hurt my ears. The silence broke only when the driver of the Flex remembered to pat his horn and continued on his way. A whistling sound startled me; it was me breathing. I slammed the cane into reverse and backed up onto the lot belonging to Bloody Run. A scrum of customers and the owner, a Chaldean named Fakim, had gathered in front of the building to see the show. I killed the engine, pried my fists off the wheel, and opened my door to fall out.

  III

  FORGETTING TO REMEMBER

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Charger was still parked on the wrong side of Washington, engine rumbling, the driver gripping the wheel with both hands. He was staring through the windshield and didn’t seem to notice my approach. On the way I reached back for the Ruger and pawed at an empty holster. I’d lost the thing leaping out of the limo.

  I’d come too far not to see it out. Turning away from the crowd across the street, I stuck a hand in my side pocket and tapped the window frame on the driver’s side with my stiff forefinger.

  That one was older than Castle Rock, but it worked. He jumped high enough to thump the headliner with the crown of his skull, turned toward me full-face, and lifted his hands from the wheel, showing me his palms.

  He was a light-complexioned black with his hair buzzed to a reddish haze and features that looked as if they’d been applied against a fierce headwind: Eyes, nostrils, lips, and cheeks canted backward from the center of his face. He bore a close resemblance to the lead singer of Fine Young Cannibals.

  Not that he’d be old enough to understand the reference. You know you’re over the hill when the crooks and cops start looking like the kids on Sesame Street.

  His window was open; as far as I could tell there was no glass on either side. His hands were still raised. I reached in, turned off the motor, and jerked the key from the ignition. I frisked him to the waist and ran my palm inside both his thighs, then groped at the door pocket. Finally I reached up to tip down the sun visor. If there was a gun in the car—and there would be—it wasn’t within easy reach from the driver’s seat. I backed up a step, gesturing with the hand in my pocket. “Unlock.”

  “Can’t. Doors are welded shut.”

  I looked down. Sure enough, there was no outside handle. That explained the window situation. The car was built to race.

  I walked around to the passenger’s side, grasped the roof with both hands, chinned myself, and swung my legs through the opening. I landed on the bucket seat without grunting any more than a moose with a hernia and popped open the glove compartment. A Sig Nine lay on the manual that had come with the car. I worked the slide, kicking out the cartridge that was already in the chamber, said, “Tsk-tsk,” and rested it on my lap with the muzzle pointing his way.

  “Oakes told me never trust another man’s gun. It might be missing the firing pin.” He had a shallow voice with a street accent. It wobbled a little.

  I went on looking at him, not down at the piece. “Nice try. That one’s even older than sticking up a guy with a hangnail.” I reached across with my other hand and patted the empty pocket.

  “Aw, shit.”

  I grinned.

  Somewhere in Detroit a siren gulped at an intersection.

  “City’s making a comeback,” I said. “People are bothering to call the police.” I handed him his key.

  He looked down at it as if I’d tipped him a quarter.

  “That means go, genius. If you’re street legal, I’m Princess Kate.”

  He inserted the key and tickled the engine into life. The rumble made the soles of my feet tingle. Rubber chirped and we swung right on Grand River. He drove with both hands on the wheel. Hieroglyphic tattoos began on the backs of his hands, climbed inside the rolled-back cuffs of a denim jacket faded from blue to white, and erupted from his scoop collar, scaling his neck almost to his chin.

  At Madison Avenue I directed him to turn right and drew my finger across my throat as we came abreast of a gray stone pile that looked like a mausoleum. He slid alongside the curb and drew the emergency brake. “What’s this?”

  “Music hall. It’s the least likely place to draw cops. Oakes Steadman sent you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  I swatted his ear with the barrel of the Sig. He howled, clapped a hand to the ear, and drew it away to inspect it for blood. “You busted my eardrum!”

  “Don’t exaggerate. In a day or two the ringing will stop. You introduced Steadman into the conversation, I didn’t. What’s he afraid of?”

  “He ain’t—” He cut himself off, seeing me lift the gun again from my lap.

  I lowered it. “I parted friends with him and his golem, I thought. What’s he up to, sending you after me with a street cannon?”

  “He didn’t,” he said, shielding his ear with his palm. “He said to keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t draw any fire.”

  “Fire from who?”

  “‘My past associates.’ What he said.”

  “His old gang? What am I to them?”

  “Just somebody that might’ve been seen meeting him. Not all of Oakes’s old friends are happy he’s snuggling up with the cops. Some of ’em wouldn’t think twice about working you over to find out what you was talking about.”

  “Some of ’em wouldn’t include you, by any chance.”

  A set of Scandinavian-type features arranged themselves into a wounded expression. “Oakes is the closest thing I got to a family. Anyways, not one that smacks me around with a belt buckle and locks me in the basement with the rats and spiders. I took off half my skin crawling out a shoebox window. He found me, cleaned the shit off me, gave me a place to sleep. I been sleeping there sixteen months now.”

  “The Imperial Massage Parlor?”

  “Yeah. I bunk with Py.”

  “Empty your pockets. Put everything on the dash.”

  He hesitated, then plundered his jacket and jeans and deposited it all in a row: a box of Marlboros, a disposable lighter, a department-store cell phone, an open package of condoms, and an old-fashioned-looking key on a ring. It looked like just the kind that would fit the front door of the old house in Jackson.

  “Okay, put it back.”

  Stowing it away revived his confidence. “You believe me, uh?”

  “For now. I left my portable polygraph in my other suit. What do they call you?”

  “Dex.”

  “Go home, Dexter. Get a rubdown and tell Oakes thanks but nuts. Next time I see one of these skateboards I’ll run it over, even if it scratches my undercarriage.”

  “I can’t just go back empty-handed.” His expression belonged to a wounded malamute.

  “Tell him I’m going to Harper Woods. You beat it out of me.” I kicked the magazine out of the pistol, shucked the shell from the chamber, pocketed the loads, and returned the pistol to the glove compartment. “Take me back to my car.”

  Back on Grand River he circled the block without being told, looking for lingering police activity. The closest thing to it was a parking ticket under my windshield wiper; the current administration was cracking down on derelict vehicles. The spectators were gone. I was wandering around, spreading blades of overgrown grass with my feet, when Fakim, the Chaldean proprietor, came out holding the Ruger by its handle between thumb and forefinger
.

  “You know, those things are what’s wrong with this place,” he said, when I took it back.

  “I thought it was the weather.” I made a quick inspection and put it back in its clip. “Sorry about your lawn.” The Cutlass had scored two ruts in the grass.

  “I think you should find someplace else to park.”

  “How much time can you give me?”

  “Say to the end of the week.” Apology dragged at the Mediterranean features. “I have expenses: taxes, health inspectors, city councilman on the cuff. I can’t risk showing up in police reports.”

  “I used to feel the same way.”

  I got in. My key was still in the ignition. I started up and backed around behind the building, gentle as the crystal mist that was still falling down.

  * * *

  Dusk crept along the streets of Harper Woods and lay thick as ivy on the eastern exposure of George Hoyle’s Tudor house. I wanted to hear straight from him the circumstances of his break with Paula Lawes, and this time I left the velvet gloves behind.

  The up-and-down, down-and-up tolling of the door chimes sounded like the BBC signing off during the Blitz. The sky had stopped weeping, but the occasional drop let go of a bare tree branch and struck the flagstone walk with a splat. While I was waiting I finished the cigarette I’d started in the car, then snapped it toward a puddle and pressed the button again. When that still got me nothing I tried the brass thumb latch. It responded without resistance and the door opened away from my fist.

  Technically it was breaking and entering; all you have to do is move the door to qualify as a felon. I rapped on the frame, as much for good luck as to announce myself, said, “Hoyle?” That would look good on the signed statement.

  It was probably my imagination, but the single syllable seemed to bounce off the walls of the large foyer like a tennis ball slowing to a stop, or a call inside a cave that had been vacant since the Neolithic.

  I knew a chill of déjà vu. How many empty houses had I stood in and felt that same sensation? Big old piles with impressive dates carved into the lintel; bigger houses yet, smelling of fresh paint and new money; claustrophobic dumps with something scratching behind the lath-and-plaster; two-story condos carved out of reclaimed warehouses; tiny apartments reeking of cooked cabbage and worse, with greasy light switches and narrow aisles plowed through piles of yellowed newspapers, heaps of food containers, exhausted but populous, brambles of dried-out ballpoints, atolls of pet feces, broken toys, pieces of drywall, spilled insulation, carcinogens, and sometimes carcasses; products of some architect’s hangover, indirectly lit, rooms that flowed into one another with no walls dividing them and no sign of anyone ever having trod the carpets or looked out the windows; cozy old farmhouses built by immigrants, with wood-burning stoves, Sears & Roebuck wallpaper, root cellars, potato bins, and barns out back twice their size; tidy houses, messy houses, overdecorated houses, houses furnished from yard sales and curbsides; Jetsons-style structures run entirely by satellite; ranch styles and A-frames, American Craftsman and saltbox, Victorian, Edwardian, Palladian, prefab; log, stucco, tile, clapboard, tin, cold marble, warm brick. Every kind of shelter, castles and wickiups not excluded. It’s always the same. Like walking through the rib cage of a skeleton.