Midnight Man

by Loren D. Estleman

  I had trouble concentrating on the words. I kept going over the confrontation in my office and coming up with more questions I didn’t need. If the gunsel had come from Ridder, he must not have heard about his sister’s death or he would have sent him in shooting. On the other hand, the look I got from the errand boy when I mentioned Ridder’s name made me wonder if he was the one behind the visit after all. On the other hand, if Ridder hadn’t sent him, who had? That was three hands, too much for one man. I made my mind blank and concentrated on the pavement slipping under the cab, trying to hypnotize myself into believing I was Sherlock Holmes. I couldn’t even manage Dr. Watson. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet.

  I was too late for the baseball game. There was a golden light over the Sturtevants’ subdivision that made each house look a little different, something the developers hadn’t counted on or they’d have had the sun rezoned. This time the nurse answered the bell. She was almost my height, and her dyed-black hair skinned back into a knot at the nape of her neck gave her already severe face the look of a diamond in the rough, hard and homely. She didn’t like my face either, or maybe it was just the bruises.

  “My name’s Walker” I said. “We met yesterday, sort of. Is Mrs. Sturtevant in?”

  “No, she’s not. You’ll have to come back later.” She started to put the door in my face. I braced a hand against the panel.

  “Can I wait for her? We have kind of an appointment.”

  “I don’t know. Mr. Sturtevant shouldn’t be disturbed. It’s time for his speech therapy.”

  “In his place I’d welcome a little disturbance now and then.” I showed her the county buzzer. She made a show of reading the embossed legend as if it meant something. At length she backed up a step and opened the door just enough for me to squeeze my shoulders through one at a time. If the Japanese had been that obstinate we’d still be busy in the Pacific.

  On the way into the living room I saw that the telephone was off the hook. The recorded message that instructs you over and over to hang up and the peevish alarm that follows it had recognized their match in the nurse and given up a long time ago.

  My client was in his wheelchair facing the window. The sunlight took on a copper tinge coming through the glass and lent his features the look of rosy health. It was the veneer of veneers. He was as dead as a man could be and still be breathing. His eyes were in the shadow of his brows and I couldn’t tell if he was watching me or the television that was going in the window across the way or the pictures in his brain. He had a bathrobe on over striped pajamas and his bare feet were thrust into backless slippers. A paperback copy of one of Wambaugh’s police novels lay open face down on the arm of the chair I had occupied on my last visit. She’d been reading to him when the doorbell interrupted.

  Somewhere in the house the fan was still whirring, still with no effect upon the shut-up room.

  The nurse drew the drapes, and the illusion of health was gone. He looked grayer than he had the day before. Maybe everything did, and it was just me. I got out a cigarette and tapped it against the back of my other hand.

  “Could I have a few minutes alone with him? It’s a private matter.”

  She pressed her lips tight. They were painted scarlet, which was a mistake. They made a raw slash against her pale skin. “Five minutes,” she said. “He must be under my close observation. And no smoking.”

  I made a thing of putting the weed away. When she had withdrawn into another room, I held up the pack for Sturtevant to see. His eyes were visible with the drapes shut. The lids moved down and up twice. Yes. I lit two and placed one between his lips.

  I didn’t sit for fear my joints would seize up. Standing with my hands in my pockets, I filled him in, beginning with my ill-timed visit to the commune on McDougall and continuing through my recovery in Bum Bassett’s trailer, the corpse in my trunk, and that bit of pulp that had taken place in the office that evening. “Right now Ridder’s the only handle I’ve got,” I wound up. “I don’t usually tip my leads to clients, but I’ve got a funny feeling about this one. I’d like someone to know where I’ll be tomorrow morning. Which is why I’m waiting for your wife.”

  I paused. I don’t know why, maybe from force of habit. I like to talk, and I have to kick myself every few minutes to give others a chance to comment. Sturtevant didn’t, of course. He just sat there without moving while the ash grew on his cigarette. I continued.

  “What I can’t shake is the feeling that there’s purpose in all this. Laura Gaye and her friends didn’t bust Smith out just because they wanted to stick it to the white establishment. The raid was too well organized for aimless fanatics, the escape too well planned. No one even saw them leave. Then there’s the girl’s murder. If that was the work of militants, it was to shut her up. She was a doper and inclined to let things slip. For the sake of my faith in human nature I’d like to believe that Ridder had nothing to do with his sister’s death. And I’m still trying to fit the joker in my office into the deck. Everything swings on the conviction that the group needed Alonzo Smith for something specific. My theory is that whoever took the trouble to tidy up Laura Gaye’s cell after I left the place last night knows what it is.”

  Sturtevant’s exhausted eyes were looking right through me. His left hand came up slowly from the padded arm of his chair to the cigarette, took it from his mouth, tapped ash onto the carpet, returned it, and lowered back to the arm. I started at the movement. It was as if the Lincoln Memorial had scratched its nose. I’d forgotten he wasn’t totally paralyzed.

  “I’m a little worried about Bassett.” I spoke faster. My five minutes was up. “He gave the newspapers a statement about bringing Smith in alive or dead. When I asked him about it he said it was just showmanship, but I’m not so sure. The reward is for arrest and conviction, so I can’t see what he’s got to gain from knocking him down. That doesn’t keep me from wondering about his motives. Character and motive, that’s what my work comes down to. Just like a writer.”

  The nurse came back into the room. If she’d overheard any of the monologue it had no effect on her. She spotted the cigarettes and gave me a withering look.

  “Sorry.” I took one last drag and killed my stub in the ashtray on the coffee table.

  “You’ll have time enough to be sorry when Mr. Sturtevant’s in his grave and you realize you put him there.” She rapped out the words.

  I was fresh out of snappy retorts. I watched her pluck the half-smoked Winston from her patient’s mouth and crush it out with the no-nonsense movement of someone experienced in extinguishing other people’s smokes. Then she turned his chair around and wheeled him through an open door into a bedroom. Most of the plaster held when she pulled the door shut behind her.

  The front door opened and closed a few minutes later and Karen Sturtevant walked into the living room. She stopped when she saw me. She was wearing a lime-colored cotton blouse open at the neck and another of those longish skirts with a slit up one side, in the shade of green the pansy decorators call chartreuse. Her platform sandals were a shade darker green. When your eyes are that color you can’t wear much else. Her face was shiny, and the faint scent she wore was made slightly acrid by perspiration. On her it was like musk.

  “I didn’t see your car in the driveway. Where’s Van?” She clutched her pocketbook—also green—in white-knuckled hands, bracing herself.

  “Relax,” I said. “He’s being tucked in by Erich von Stroheim in drag.”

  She smiled in relief, but tension haunted the tiny cracks at the corners of her eyes. “I smell tobacco. I’ve gone a few rounds with Nadine on that subject myself.” She put the purse down on the telephone stand. Noticing that the receiver was off the hook, she replaced it. “What happened to your face?”

  “I box on the side. Been shopping?”

  She shook her head. “Seeing our lawyer. He wants to draw up Van’s will.”

  “Does a policeman have much to bequeath?”

  “The lawyer seems
to think so. I don’t know whether I agree with him yet. It seems silly. Van’s brother died two years ago and his parents are long gone. We don’t have children. Have you made any progress?” She indicated the sofa. I accepted. She sat down beside me, crossing her legs. The slit fell open and I had to speak slowly to get the words to come out in the right order.

  “This Iris,” she said, when I had brought her up to date. “Is she a detective?”

  “She’s a hooker. Sometimes that’s better.”

  “I see. I think. Can I get you a drink?”

  I said Scotch rocks would do. She got up with a scissoring movement of her slim legs and went into the kitchen. The refrigerator door closed, ice rattled against glass. At the end of three minutes she reappeared carrying a small barrel glass in each hand.

  “Are you in love with her?” She handed me a glass, tucked a leg under and sat down.

  “In love with who?” I had to change hands to drink. She was that close. The musk was stronger.

  “Your face looks awful.”

  “I’ve been told that.”

  “You know what I mean. I feel responsible.”

  “Don’t. I warned you about the possibility of screwing up. I’m the type that doesn’t benefit from experience. I have to learn how to be a detective all over again every time I go out. Sometimes I don’t learn fast enough. It isn’t your fault, and maybe it isn’t even mine. It’s just something that happens, like green eyes.”

  I’m dumb. I hadn’t seen it coming, not that fast. She took my glass from me and leaned forward to set it down next to hers on the coffee table, and as she came up she twisted a little and tried to devour the lower half of my face. Her body pressed hard against mine from breast to thigh. There wasn’t anything under her blouse but her. I responded. She was quivering all over.

  “God, it’s been weeks,” she murmured between writhing lips. Her nails dug into my biceps. I was getting her into a reclining position when the nurse came in.

  13

  I TRIED TO DISENTANGLE myself, but Mrs. Sturtevant hadn’t seen the newcomer and it was like wrestling a nest of pythons. The nurse paused in mid-step, then continued past briskly and picked up the police novel from the arm of the easy chair. She didn’t look at us on her way back to the bedroom.

  I got loose, seized my glass, and emptied it in one installment. That was a shame, because it was good Scotch. “I’ll have a typewritten report in the mail tomorrow,” I said, standing. “As of now I’m a free agent.”

  She remained as I had left her, looking up at me from the cushions on the end of the sofa and breathing like a marathon loser. “If you’re worried about Nadine, forget her. She’s the soul of discretion.”

  “It’s not her I’m worried about. There are a lot of things I’d do for your husband, because I owe him. Assuming his matrimonial duties isn’t one of them.”

  “St. Amos the Incorruptible,” she said acidly. “I wasn’t exactly alone on this couch.”

  “I didn’t say you were, Mrs. Sturtevant. But when a man’s on the wagon it’s not a good idea to hang around liquor stores. I know a couple of good local P.I.s who might be persuaded to take an interest in this case; I’ll include their names in the report.” I started out.

  “Wait! Please.”

  I waited. She struggled into a sitting position, grabbed her purse off the coffee table, and clawed a cigarette out of a fresh pack. I was right there with a match, but she set fire to it herself with a table lighter. I’m not fast enough for today’s woman. She drew the smoke deep, then lifted a hand and swept back a lock of blond hair with that gesture no one ever has to teach them.

  “I don’t want you going away thinking what a whore I am,” she said. “In six years of marriage that’s the closest I’ve come to cheating on Van—not that there weren’t plenty of opportunities in our crowd. And it isn’t even that, really. You can’t cheat a man out of something he can’t have anymore. You don’t know what it’s been like this past—how long has it been since the shooting?”

  “A little over two weeks.”

  “My God, it seems like two years. I’m not trying to excuse my behavior, just explaining my position. For a few moments there I wasn’t an invalid cop’s wife. It felt damn good.”

  “You don’t owe me any explanations, Mrs. Sturtevant.”

  “I owe myself one. Oh hell, this is beginning to sound like Ryan’s Hope.” She mashed out the smoke after only a couple of drags. Then she looked at me. “Don’t abandon the investigation. You can report by telephone if you like. I’ll put it on a paying basis.”

  “How much?”

  Her mouth fell open a little. Then she drew it shut, and there were hard lines at the corners. “How much will it take?” Her voice was cold.

  “You tell me,” I said. “What’s a little girl’s life worth? What’s the sticker on a private agent’s relationship with the police that he’s worked years to build? How much will you bid on each bone that gets broken before this thing is wrapped up?”

  She was staring at me. “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. I’m not making a lot of sense tonight. That’s how much I owe Van. When I have something I’ll call.”

  “Just call?” She sounded smug.

  “I said I was on the wagon.”

  I hopped a cab to my Hamtramck abode, which looked the way I felt. The air inside was hot and stale and little curls of dust twitched and danced on the living room rug when I opened the windows. I got out the sweeper and did what I could with it, then emptied the contraption into the kitchen wastebasket and dragged into the bathroom for a hot and then a cold shower. The icy water pricked at my various cuts and bruises like dentists’ needles. The thick tape around my abdomen felt like a suit of armor.

  I toweled off carefully and stepped into a fresh pair of shorts. If I had a wife, she might have had a drink waiting for me when I emerged from the bathroom, but I didn’t anymore, and the one I’d had never had been home anyway. Three years married to her had put me in fine shape for bachelorhood. I mined out a bottle of Haig & Haig I’d given myself for Christmas, poured some of its contents over ice in a glass, and went into the living room carrying the glass and the bottle.

  The TV listing had Robert Mitchum starring in Thunder Road at ten o’clock. I made a note to see it again, but nothing came of that. I passed out in my chair halfway through a rerun of a situation comedy, which considering the program was just as well. But I hated missing Thunder Road.

  I woke up with my head doubled under me and a stiff back to go with my neck. I felt chilled. Daylight bled feeble gray through the windows, but the wall clock my grandfather had bought for my great-grandmother when he was nine years old said it was already 7:45. I stood and stretched, my bones cracking. The carpet was damp where I stood barefoot looking out one of the open windows. According to the thermometer on the back porch, the temperature had dropped eighteen degrees since last night. I sneezed. That figured.

  There was nothing to eat in the house, but I didn’t cry over it. My head was echoing from all that Scotch, and half the Third World had tramped through my mouth overnight without anyone pausing to wipe his feet. I fixed up the coffeemaker and left it gurgling while I shaved and dressed. Studying my reflection in the mirror above the bathroom sink, I decided that the swelling had gone down some. Then I decided it hadn’t. But I didn’t feel as sore as I had the day before.

  An hour later, coffeed up and sporting a comparatively fresh suit, I finished putting another hack’s son through college and presented myself at police headquarters, where a glowering Lieutenant Alderdyce gave me a voucher for my car. In pinstripe shirtsleeves with the cuffs turned back and his tie at half-mast, he still looked sportier than I had at my wedding.

  “Pry anything out of Bassett?” I asked.

  “He was born without handles.” He yawned, not bothering to cover it. The memory of acid coffee and stale tobacco clung to the elevator-car-size office. That, and a shower and a change of
clothes in the locker room, seemed to be as close as he’d come to a night’s rest. “He hung on to that story about finding the commune deserted till it bled. We couldn’t keep him, but I’ve got a man on him while his background is being checked.” He snorted. “That ought to read like The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.”

  “He’ll shake your man like tissue off his shoe.” I made my voice casual. “Any ID yet on the girl?”

  “The papers, radio, and TV are running a description of her later this morning. She’s Jane Doe until someone comes forward. Forget the neighbors; we barely got out of there yesterday without busting heads. We tracked down the gymnasium’s owner up in St. Clair Shores, but he doesn’t know anything about the girl. Says he rented the place a year ago to a black dude who gave his name as Woods. Always pays on time and in cash by special messenger. We’re looking into that, but I’ll lay odds Woods is this year’s John Smith.”

  “Speaking of Smiths,” I said.

  His face shut down with a bang. “You’ve got your car back. Roll.”

  I took his advice. On my way through the squad room I met Sergeant Hornet and his maroon jacket. He held up short, leaning backward slightly to counter the forward pull of his paunch.

  “That’s some new development in the Smith case,” I observed.

  His dishwasher-colored eyes drifted past my shoulder to Alderdyce’s door, then back to me. He smiled a fat man’s smile, tugging the corners of his mouth out a fraction of an inch. “Tough titty, shamus,” he said. “Ain’t no fishing allowed up here.”