When Old Midnight Comes Along

by Loren D. Estleman

  I pulled the Cutlass into the nearest safe curb, got out, and shouted at his back: “I’m surprised you’re not up there buzzing away with the hired help.”

  “Marilee’s orders,” he said, turning without a sign I’d startled him. “Thirty years facing down punks hopped up to the eyebrows and armed to the teeth, and she’s afraid I’ll cut my arm off doing yard work.”

  I jerked my head and we walked down the sidewalk away from the racket. “How’s it going with Albanian Al?”

  “Zip. Tried bluffing his way into a ticket-of-leave. Kindergarten stuff, fell apart in the details. This new breed isn’t a patch on the old; it’s enough to make you miss the good old days of Young Boys, Incorporated. He wasn’t there when the merch was sold. He can’t connect Lawes to the hot ring, let alone swear he knew about the watchman who got squiffed during the heist and make it convincing enough to stand up under an amateur cross in court. I wasted my career on shit like that. Now it turns out I’m wasting my retirement.”

  “Too bad.” I unwrapped the ring from its twist of tissue and held it out.

  He stopped walking, but didn’t take his hands from his pockets. “Anything?”

  “Nothing; not even the murder you wanted to lay on Lawes first.” I told him what I had, beginning with Badderleigh and finishing with Andrea Dawson/Paula Lawes.

  “The groundwork started early,” I said. “While Andrea’s bosses at the drug company thought she was working at home, she called her own line at Baylor and Baylor regularly, establishing a business relationship with Paula. It helped create the illusion of two women co-existing, long before Paula’s vanishing act.”

  We were still stopped on the sidewalk. He took the ring, turned it over in his fingers, pocketed it. “So you literally dreamed that up, and ran with it anyway.”

  “It fit the facts.”

  “Any theory will if you cook it. We need prints, DNA—”

  “You won’t get them. There’s no crime in taking it on the ankles when no one’s chasing you. Anyone can get a face job and change her name.”

  “She’d need a Social Security number to match.”

  “You know the anthem better than I do,” I said. “The real Andrea Dawson died in infancy forty years ago, probably in some Southern state. If the law really wanted identity thieves to give up robbing graves, it’d start cross-referencing birth and death records. The feds in Paula’s situation might make a case based on false representation, but what’s that to you? Her husband’s the one you want.”

  “If Paula didn’t put the ring in your house, who did?”

  “That’s why I’m going where I’m going next. There’s only one person in this mess who doesn’t care whether she’s alive or dead.”

  He waited. That face would stand up to any number of shipwrecks, brush away the shattered masts and bowsprits, and come out looking no more the worse for wear. “I’m guessing you’ll run to me with what you find out. And Deb Stonesmith,” he added; retirement still stuck in his craw.

  “Stonesmith wants the story before it breaks. That’s a favor I owe her. Paula’s not a police case now, unless I decide to press charges for breaking-and-entering.”

  “You never have before. Why start now?”

  “You’ll turn in the ring, of course. It belongs to the company that insured the shop. You may want to have this for a souvenir.” I took a dilapidated notepad from another pocket and held it up. The creased cardboard cover hung crookedly where it had torn loose of the metal spiral.

  This he took without pausing. “If this is what I think it is, a lot of people have been looking for it.”

  “That’s what I said when Andrea—let’s call her Paula—gave it to me. I read it. You won’t find anything interesting. Root couldn’t find anything more about the circumstances of how that ring came into private possession than you could. There’s nothing on Paula’s disappearance, of course; it hadn’t happened yet. It bears out her claim that he gave it to her and that it wasn’t stolen from his corpse. Maybe he thought she could bluff Lawes with it. He wanted to run for president of the police union, she said, and he wanted her help as a kingmaker. Call me sentimental, but I like to think he wanted to make up for past mistakes by helping out his brothers in blue.”

  “You’re sentimental. I’m for disinterring him and bringing him up on charges. You really think Paula wanted to blackmail Lawes?”

  “Not that it matters—Root can’t testify, and she’d be a fool to confess—but it’s the only reason she’d go to the trouble to find out how the ring got into Lawes’s hands. Even if he didn’t have the liquid assets necessary to satisfy her, that million-dollar policy he took out on both their lives would cash out to a tidy piece of change.”

  We’d stopped at the end of the block and were facing each other. He made a gesture toward my breast pocket I remembered from times past. I dealt him a cigarette from the pack and lit it. “I wish you’d make up your mind,” I said.

  “I gave up drinking two years ago. A man needs to have something he can quit.” He blew twin jets out his nose. “Shit. I don’t think I can get used to not wanting to nail Lawes for his wife. Even if I could make a case for receiving stolen property—with or without complicity in robbery homicide—it’d be like filling up on junk food; bloated, not satisfied. What am I supposed to fill my time with now?”

  We turned around and started back toward his house. “There’s always Bingo.”

  “You know, you’re not so sunny yourself. You should be doing handsprings. Unless you’re holding back—which if you’re not would have no precedent—this is one job where you weren’t shot at, beaten up, or arrested.”

  “You’re forgetting another concussion for my collection.”

  “You’ve built up so much scar tissue one more won’t matter. As far as cases go, this time you’re barely used.”

  “The case isn’t finished yet.”

  “Get the hell off my lawn.” He went back to watch the destruction.

  * * *

  A couple of sharpies in peaked lapels and jewel-colored shirt-and-necktie sets loitered in front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, diddling tablets the size of subway tiles. They were either toppling foreign governments or playing football with the cast of The Avengers. I walked in past them and rode the elevator alone to Fifteen.

  The strawberry blonde in Reception recognized me through her eyeglasses. She buzzed Lawes’s office and said he’d be with me in a few minutes. Just then Holly Pride came in: everything the same as in dress rehearsal, a few days and a thousand years ago. She was back in vertigo mode, only it seemed to me her bangs angled back the other way, her hip-hugging red skirt cut on the opposite bias with a bolero jacket tugged down over the belt, red on one side of the buttons, gray on the other.

  “Oh, Mr. Walker.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I know you’ve got a monitor or something in your office. Nobody’s timing is that good twice in a row.”

  “As disagreeable as ever, I see. Have you come with news about Paula?”

  “Yeah, but this time I’ll talk to you first.”

  Once again she opened the door to her office and held it while I went in and looked at the river, a deep Windex blue. The fog had burned off; all the scene needed was a scattering of bright-colored sails to pose for a picture postcard in the airport, but it was still too early for that. Any day now the lid would slam back down and the parkas and galoshes come back out.

  For the second time she leaned back against the plain desk, crossed her ankles and her arms, and blinded me with the diamond on her left hand.

  I pointed at it. “It’s got a good half-carat on the one he gave Paula. He show you the bill of sale?”

  “He told you that wasn’t the ring he gave her.”

  “No, he said he couldn’t remember. I half believe him, even now. I imagine after what happened under some previous administrations he deals his city contracts under a strong microscope. He’s gotten so used to operating on the up-an
d-up he might be forgiven blocking out mistakes of the past. If we accept that, it’s likely he didn’t know the ring had blood on it. Why should he? What thief would volunteer the information and open himself up to a murder charge?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You ladies need new material,” I said. “That’s just what Paula said.”

  She uncrossed her limbs and straightened. The rouge on her cheeks, expertly applied as it was, stood out like reflectors against the sudden pallor. “You found her?”

  “Now I’m insulted. It’s what Lawes hired me to do, dead or alive, and since you knew she was alive you should have had enough faith in my ability to track her down.”

  “How would I know—”

  Her intercom buzzed, sparing me the burden of composing another caustic comment.

  She reached over and flipped the switch. The receptionist’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Mr. Lawes is ready to see Mr. Walker.”

  “In a minute, Gretchen.” She turned it off and assumed her earlier position. That short diversion had given her the chance to change strategies. Some people are like that.

  “I won’t insult us both,” she said. “You’ve been working. You’re right. In our responsibility to the city, we analyze the business practices of the contractors who bid on public works; that includes the health benefits they offer their employees. Francis can’t do everything, so that part falls to me. I met Andrea Dawson while investigating GlobalCare Pharmaceuticals.

  “I didn’t recognize her at first. You’ve seen her. The surgeon she selected must love Canada, because he could write his own ticket in Hollywood. But I knew Paula when I was just the receptionist here, early in her marriage to Francis. You know how you sometimes meet someone, and certain characteristics—little gestures, the way they hold their head, and of course the register of their voice—despite the distraction of a broad accent—remind you of someone you used to know?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, it doesn’t happen frequently, but often enough that you chalk it up to certain types of personality, like automobiles belonging to the same line. But when those similarities are so strong they become distracting, you start to speculate. You argue with yourself—no, so-and-so would be too old now, or should recognize you as well, is dead. It doesn’t take, though. The sensation is so strong it trumps all the facts on the other side.”

  “Who cracked first?” I said.

  “She did, over a business lunch in the London Chop House; as public a place as that, can you imagine? But the din of the place, the dishes being served, the racket coming from the kitchen, the customers’ conversation, is better than the privacy of a closed room.

  “She got sick of her dry-hump of a marriage; I won’t wear out your patience with the details. They’re always dreary, aren’t they?”

  “Not always, but the ones that aren’t are just plain scary. What about the ring?”

  “That came much later, in the quiet of her office. She suspected it was stolen the day he gave it to her; something about his attitude, and the fact that there was no box. She didn’t say anything then. It was a good match for her, and like most people in that situation—men and women—she didn’t ask the questions she didn’t want to know the answers to. But she’d learned just enough from her police friend to make her nervous about keeping it around. It was nothing anyone could take to court, but—”

  “I know. I read Marcus Root’s notebook.”

  “Where better else to hide it from Francis than with his fiancée? You see, I’m smarter than she was when they were engaged—more experienced, anyway. I know just enough about him that the information was no surprise.”

  “But not so much you’d break off the engagement.”

  Her smile was as crooked as her bangs and the hem of her skirt. “You don’t know my background, Mr. Walker. I came from nothing, with no prospects. If you think answering the phone and taking messages carries a promise of advancement, you haven’t read many success stories.

  “I felt I owed Paula the favor of safeguarding that ring. If she hadn’t left him, I’d never have had the chance to take her place. That alone promoted me to second-in-command. And having the ring gave me an ace in the hole in case he changed his mind about marrying me, with all the benefits that carries.”

  “Then why give it up? Good housebreaking, by the way. Especially for an amateur.”

  “Who said I was an amateur? I told you I came from nothing. One learns to get along.” She rolled her shoulders. “I did some research based on what Root gave Paula. When I found out someone had been killed in order to get that ring to Francis, I got scared. Theft is one thing; murder’s the gift that keeps on giving. That’s why I tried to hire you away before you found out Paula was alive, to stop that train. When you wouldn’t cooperate, I transferred possession of the evidence to you. That way, when things blew up, Francis wouldn’t blame it on me. I’ve always known he was unscrupulous, but finding out just what he’s capable of—”

  “And just what is that?”

  The hinges on the door were well-oiled. My back was to it, and I was blocking Holly’s view. We didn’t know Lawes was here until he spoke. If the element of surprise didn’t make him the center of attention, the gun in his hand did.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I’d seen it once before, lying on the carpet next to Lawes’s bed. Even with its extended barrel, the Glock was smaller than Py’s huge magnum, but it looked bigger in Lawes’s life-size fist. It was big enough in any case: I hadn’t thought to strap my Ruger back on after leaving Wayne State University. Someday, just for kicks, I’ll sit down, tot up all the mistakes I’ve made against the smart moves, and pay due respect to the miracle of dumb luck.

  The pistol looked longer yet with the addition of an attachment threaded to the end of the barrel, sausage-shaped with a brushed-steel finish: a noise suppressor. That turned my knees to water.

  I raised my hands without waiting for direction.

  He’d been drinking. His suit, dove gray with a silvery sheen, was pressed and his blue silk tie was snugged to the notch of his shirt collar. His abundance of fair hair was brushed back neatly. But his eyes were unfocused and his mouth slack; not unfocused enough, or slack enough. A firearm employed in the closeness of a room doesn’t need precision.

  “Graft job, this,” I said, “like all government buildings. You can hear a flea sneeze in a box of cotton on the other side of the door.”

  “I heard enough. So Paula’s still among the living. That’s one rap they can’t hang me with.”

  “You’re welcome. You don’t have to pay me now. I’ll send you a bill with my report.”

  “Forget the report. I was listening, remember? Just give me the notebook and the ring.” He held out his free hand.

  “You should’ve waited to hear the rest. The police have them.”

  He jacked his jaw up into position, gestured at Holly with the pistol. “Search him. Make it convincing.”

  “Fran—”

  He’d been pointing the gun at the middle ground between us. Now he swung it directly on her.

  She turned back toward me. Her hands shook, but they found my wallet, keys, notepad, and pencil. She examined all these and returned them to their pockets, shook her head at Lawes.

  “Not even a weapon,” he said, pointing his at me. “I’ve been reading too much sensational fiction. I thought all you hard-boiled dicks went heeled.”

  “Sorry. I’m a three-minute egg.”

  He looked at Holly. “I sent Gretchen to lunch. She works too hard. You know, I think she has her eyes on your job. You set a dangerous precedent.”

  “I guess you’re kicking me to the curb.” Her voice wobbled a little. I gave her credit for finding it at all.

  I said, “You’re overreacting, Lawes. Even if the cops manage to make a case, it won’t go any further than receiving stolen property. There’s nothing to tie you to murder. You’d get off with probation, maybe even keep your job.
The city’s kept worse on the payroll.”

  “I wish you were as dumb as you pretend, Walker. I’m serious. Then I wouldn’t have to trouble my friends with disposing of two bodies from the eleventh floor of a high-traffic building.”

  Holly might have taken in her breath; but that might as well have been me. I nodded. “I can guess who your friends are. The cops know all their hangouts. The raid on Monte Carlo’s was to the garden-variety crash-and-grab what robbing the Louvre is to a mugging on Hastings. It was a distribution center for retailers across the country, so the stakes were high. Your friends bought the truck for cash, to minimize the chances of being picked up on the way to or from the heist. They had the equipment to tear out the vault where the most valuable stuff was kept, and someone who knew how to blow it once they were out of earshot. That takes financing.

  “It was your job from the start,” I went on. “No city employee could manage that on his pay. My guess is you were smarter than the crooks you replaced, spreading the jobs evenly, taking smaller kickbacks from more contractors, and staying under the radar.”

  “You’re smart too.” His smile was tight; no slack now. He was growing more sober by the second.

  I talked some more; he might think it rude to shoot someone in the middle of a sentence. “Any killing that occurs in the course of a robbery is related directly to everyone involved. It makes you an accessory both before and after the fact. That ring can still wind up around your neck, Lawes, no matter what happens to us. John Alderdyce has worked up too much of a mad against you to let go. Eliminating us isn’t worth it.”