Midnight Man

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Who’d you get to play me?” I asked.

  He thought. “Dreyfuss?”

  “Too short. Eastwood?”

  “Too tall. How about Allen?”

  “Steve?”

  “Woody.”

  I got up. “Pay for the food, Stackpole.”

  I made two stops on the way back to my place, one at a party store to put something in the larder besides dust, the other at Bassett’s trailer in the lot on Schoolcraft for a change of clothing for my patient. He’d lent me his keys for the task. By the time I opened my own front door Alderdyce and Hornet had been there and gone. The toilet flushed and the cowboy came stumping out of the bathroom leaning on the cane I’d left beside the bed. In just his shirt, shorts, and boots he looked like a Viking.

  “I hope that’s food.” He was looking at the paper bag I was carrying.

  “If I’d known you were that hungry I’d have come sooner.” I set down the package on the kitchen counter. “Eating is usually the last thing you think about when you’ve been shot.”

  “When you’re my size it takes a lot of fuel to keep going. Those my pants? Gimme.” He reached for the bundle I had under one arm.

  “First, sit down. I want to look at that wound.”

  “Hell, I clean forgot about the little thing. It’s probably all healed up by now.”

  “Uh-huh. Sit.” I indicated the easy chair behind him.

  He obeyed, muttering. I had him prop the leg up on the footstool and bent to examine the bandage, placing the bundle on the floor. Blood had soaked through the gauze, leaving a brown ring on the outside.

  “Nice going. You managed to open it up again.”

  “A man’s got to go to the can.”

  I started unwinding the stained material. “Cops give you a hard time?”

  “I’m used to it. I signed a statement and got a lecture about leaving the driving to them. They tried to get me to give up my gun, but I said I lost it. I had it under the blankets. Last time I gave one up I never saw it again.”

  “They’re a little more honest here.”

  He said nothing. His thigh was as hard as a tree trunk and almost as big around. There wasn’t a hair on it. “I forgot to ask you if you wanted me to call your wife,” I ventured.

  “I’ll call her my own self. She don’t have to know about this.”

  “I take it she doesn’t favor your occupation.” The stain got redder as I unwound.

  “The bills get paid. She don’t complain none about that.”

  “She’s your second wife, isn’t she?”

  Every muscle in his body bunched. “You been checking up on me?” His voice sounded strained, but that could have been because I was peeling the last of the bandage away from the wound and it stuck.

  “Not really. Hold that.” I placed one of his enormous hands on the blood-soaked pad to maintain pressure on the wound, and rose. “I saw some pictures in your trailer. One looked like a family shot, but the woman standing next to you wasn’t the one you were with in the later pictures. It’s none of my business. I just have trouble turning off the detective when I’m not working.”

  As I spoke I went into the bathroom for the extra roll of bandage Don Wardlaw had given me, and a bottle of alcohol. When I came back Bassett’s magnum was looking at me. I stopped in the doorway.

  “I bet I hold the record for the number of times that same gun has been pointed at one person.”

  “You come close.” Grunting, he pushed himself upright with the aid of the cane. The big muzzle hovered at chest level. “This pains me after all your hospitality, hoss, but I figure I evened things up by giving you that stuff I found on Bagley, so nobody owes nobody nothing. I got business needs tending.”

  “I unloaded it, cowboy.”

  “Look again.”

  I looked again. No light showed through the chambers.

  “I keep an extra loaded cylinder under my truck seat,” he explained. “Can’t remember when was the last time I was more than two feet from a usable weapon. It don’t feel good.”

  “Quite a trek to the garage and back for a man in your condition. No wonder you’re bleeding again.” The pad had dropped to the floor when he stood, and blood was running down his leg into his boot. His eyes flicked down and up, too quickly to do me any good.

  “Fix it.”

  He sat down again, holding the big revolver on his good thigh. I used alcohol and some clean cotton to cleanse off the blood, placed a fresh pad on the wound, and reached for the new bandage I’d laid atop the bundle of clothing on the floor. I put out a hand to steady my balance and it closed on the gun, my thumb jamming itself between the hammer and the firing pin. It was a neat maneuver right out of the textbook, but I forgot about the cane.

  The hickory crook caught me right on the meaty part of the temple and I saw stars, just like in the comic books. My head dumped empty. My hand slipped off the end of the gun and I sat down. Then metal flashed and something a lot harder than a hickory crook found the big muscle on the side of my neck. That time I didn’t see stars. I didn’t see anything but Bum Bassett’s bearded face, surrounded by purple-black and growing rapidly smaller as I hurtled down a long dark shaft. There was no pain, just that shrinking face and the sensation of falling.

  “Sorry about that, hoss.” The voice echoed hollowly down the walls of the shaft. Then the darkness closed in.

  23

  HERE I WAS AGAIN, stretched out on my back on a hard surface, staring up. I was thinking of having my suits tailored with padding in back to spare myself unnecessary discomfort. I couldn’t swallow and the whole front of my skull ached as if the brain were trying to push through. Sunlight dazzled me streaming through the east window. Somewhere in the stratosphere a jet shattered the sound barrier with a throbbing explosion that shook the house. At least I wasn’t blind or deaf.

  I got up, managing not to toss my breakfast, and lurched to the bathroom, where I filled the sink with cold water and stuck my head in as far as I could go. Drowning was better than this. Spluttering, I buried my face in a towel and held it there until my stomach stopped galloping. Then I rubbed my hair gingerly with the towel. Sparks leaped between my temples like a special effect in Colin Clive’s laboratory. Finally I ran a comb through my damp locks and sneered at the bruised face in the mirror.

  “Hello, Zero.”

  I returned to the living room, where the clock read 9:45.I hadn’t been out more than fifteen minutes. The old dressing and the stuff I had used to clean Bassett’s wound were on the floor where I had left them, but the new roll was missing. He had finished the job himself. The fresh shirt and jeans I had brought were gone too. The shirt he’d been wearing was left in their place, folded neatly. I recognized the fold. Why not? I’d seen it in Laura Gaye’s living quarters at the commune the second time I searched the place.

  The door leading into the garage from the kitchen hung open. I stepped through it. The big door was up. There were marks on the front lawn where he’d cranked the big pickup around my car in the driveway. I wasn’t going after him with anything smaller than a panzer.

  My big mistake hadn’t been in trying to get his gun, although that ranked right up there. It went back further. I thought about it while I was changing shirts and selecting a new tie, but all that did was make my head hurt worse. Still, it gnawed at me all the way across town and even us I passed through the entrance to the main branch of the Detroit Public Library on Woodward.

  I found Tulsa, Oklahoma, among the out-of-town directories, looked up the private investigation agency that had the biggest Yellow Pages display, and jotted down the number in my pocket pad. Then I drove to my office to make the call. Karen Sturtevant was sitting in the reception room.

  She stood up when I entered, clutching her purse in front of her. It was blue today: tailored serge suit with a calf-length skirt, no slit, matching flat-heeled shoes, and a darker Robin Hood hat with a feather no larger than the kind they used to stuff pillows with before foam rubbe
r came along. It was obviously an attempt to dress down, and it was just as obviously not working. Sex won’t be overcome so easily.

  “I—I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” She didn’t sound elated that I had.

  “Did you wait long?” I left the door to the hallway open. Silly thing. The sofa wasn’t even long enough for successful seduction.

  She shook her head quickly. The feather bobbed. “No, I just—when someone isn’t in his office by—I assumed you were out working.” She closed her mouth before her tongue could tangle itself further.

  “Well, I was out. Are you in a hurry, Mrs. Sturtevant?”

  “I—no. Not particularly. Nadine’s with Van, and—”

  “I have a telephone call to make. I’d appreciate your waiting in here while I make it.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Read a magazine if you like. I’m proud of my new magazines.”

  “They’re not really so new,” she said abashedly.

  “You haven’t spent a great deal of time in waiting rooms. Be with you in a few minutes.” I went into the tank and closed the connecting door.

  It was more like twenty, with most of the discussion tacked to professional courtesy rates. I believed in them, the guy on the other end didn’t. As we jousted I went through the mail I’d found under the slot. Three advertising circulars, a second notice, and a newsletter from the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade in Long Beach, California. How I got on their list I’ll never know. Tulsa and I finally struck compromise: He’d charge the regular rate and I’d stop bothering him about it. But I wheedled a promise from him to get back to me in forty-eight hours with what he’d learned. He’d wanted three days.

  She sat demurely on the edge of the customer’s chair, knees together, purse in her lap. I got out my pack and pushed it across the desk, but she declined. The antique fan rattled and squawked as it shoved the same hot moist air around the room.

  “I tried to get hold of you all day yesterday,” she said. “When I couldn’t reach you here I tried your home, but there was no answer there either.”

  “I did a lot of moving around yesterday. I tried to call you once too and got a busy signal for my trouble. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

  She looked down at her purse. Her knuckles were white on the edge of it. Then she looked back at me. In that light her eyes were like jade. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior the night before last. And to explain. I know what you must think of me.”

  “We’ve been all over that, Mrs. Sturtevant. Like you said, you weren’t alone. Stress brings out sides of our personalities few people ever see.”

  “You sounded just like Joyce Brothers then.” She laughed, a little too gaily.

  “Excuse it, please. Once you’ve been in this business a while you get to be either a vest-pocket Freud or a saltine. How are things between you and Florence Nightingale, if it’s any of my concern, which of course it isn’t?”

  She shrugged. “They were never warm; that hasn’t changed. She didn’t say anything to Van. I can tell, even if he can’t talk. She knows her boundaries and she stays within them. In a way, that’s much worse than anything she could have done or said.”

  “That’s guilt. Forget it. I think you have. That isn’t the real reason you’ve come, is it?”

  “It’s one of them. Mainly I’m here as a client.” Her gaze was level. All the awkwardness had evaporated. She was a cop’s wife, all right.

  I started to pluck out a cigarette, then pushed it back in. It wasn’t dignified enough or businesslike enough. I’d thought from time to time about taking up the pipe, but it involves an entirely different set of mannerisms, none of them honest. “I know where Smith was last night. When the evening News hits the street, so will everyone else. Where he is now I couldn’t say.”

  Her fingers whitened further on the edge of the purse as I related the details of the police discovery on Bagley, leaving out the mayor. As I wound down her eyes took on an emerald hardness.

  “It looks as if I hired the wrong man,” she said stiffly. “Perhaps I should have gone to this Bassett person.”

  “In the first place,” I sighed, “you hired me because the price was right. In the second place, Bassett’s not the kind of man anyone hires, and in the third place, you came to me in the first place. I didn’t go looking for this job. But due in no small measure to my courage and sagacity, the police have a man in custody right now who holds the key to this whole case. Now, I know that’s not what we agreed on, but I have to work in this town and a certain amount of cooperation with the local constabulary is the price I pay to go on practicing.”

  She started to speak. I held up a hand. “As you recall, I gave you an out night before last, and you chose not to take it. I’m offering it again. There are some good men in this city whose services I can recommend, though I can’t guarantee they’ll come as cheap. If you accept I’ll consider my obligation to your husband discharged.”

  “My,” she said, after a beat. “Aren’t we testy.”

  “I have a headache. I’m not at my most disarming when I hurt.”

  She leaned forward over the desk. The mole came into view just above the second button of her blouse. “I’m sorry for what I said. Straight thinking doesn’t come easily to me these days. Please go on doing what you’ve been doing.” She lowered her eyes for an instant. Her long thick lashes were natural. When she raised them I saw tiny gold flecks floating in the deep green, like phosphor in an aquarium. “I wish you’d known me before—all this. I wasn’t always a bad-tempered whore.”

  That presented thorns no matter where I took hold of it, so I didn’t. That was just as bad. We were still looking at each other when the telephone rang.

  I speared it halfway through the first jangle. Bell’s invention has done more for celibacy than all the saltpeter produced over the past two centuries. “Walker.”

  “Don’t bother tracing this, pig. I’ll be smoke by the time anyone shows up.”

  An even voice, young, masculine, slightly drawled, a little out of breath. Traffic noises in the background. Karen Sturtevant saw my reaction and leaned closer.

  “Is this Mr. Jones?” I asked. Simple association. Even my client caught it. Her eyes widened, then returned to normal. Unattractive lines appeared under her eyes and from her nose to her mouth. Her nostrils went white.

  “That’s right. Stupefyin’ Jones. Like in Li’I Abner, get it?”

  I said I had it. “I didn’t expect my message to reach you so soon.”

  “I got lots of friends. What you got to sell?”

  “Same as in the message. Your life.”

  He laughed nastily. “Damaged goods, pig. Sell me something I can use.”

  “That’s my point. I’m not a pig.”

  “You roll in their mud, honk.”

  “That doesn’t make me one of them. You want to keep breathing or what?”

  “I hear you talking.”

  “Here’s the script. We meet someplace, your choice. You turn yourself over. I make a call to the press, have them at police headquarters when we arrive. TV cameras, the works. That way you don’t get picked off on the way up the steps. The idea is to get you into police custody alive. After that you’re on your own.”

  “Why can’t I just walk in by myself like I done before?”

  “You know the answer to that or you wouldn’t have called.”

  An automobile horn blasted wherever he was. I wondered what sort of disguise he was wearing to call from a public booth in broad daylight. “How does this make you rich?” he asked.

  “Publicity. When you do what I do, a little free advertising never hurts. Also the people I work for want you brought in kicking. Who they are doesn’t matter.” I met Karen Sturtevant’s gaze. “Thing is, I’ve nothing to gain from your untimely death.”

  “Words. Why’d you say I want to do this again? I’m flappin’ free right now.”

  “What are you wearing?”

&n
bsp; “Huh?”

  “Your clothes. I’ll take a guess. Big hat, long coat with a standing collar.”

  “Pretty close, pig. So what?”

  “It’s eighty-nine in the shade. You call that free?”

  He said nothing. I pressed on.

  “A lot of otherwise tolerant people want to stuff you and stand you out by the airport as a monument to safe streets. They’ve saved a spot for you next to Laura Gaye and the rest.”

  “You know about that, huh?” I thought he sounded subdued. Then I thought he didn’t. You can’t tell over the telephone.

  “It was pretty tight,” I said. “Your odds of squeaking through the next time are that much smaller.”

  “Call you back in ten.” The line went dead.

  “He’s afraid of a trace,” I told Mrs. Sturtevant, pegging the receiver.

  “I heard. I think I’ll have that cigarette now,” she said.

  I reached one over. This time she let me light it. She tilted back her head and expelled smoke, showing off the long line of her neck.

  “Do you think he’ll agree to it?”

  “We’ll know in ten minutes.”

  “It’s an eerie feeling, listening to you talk to the man who shot Van. Like going back over what’s left of your house after it burned down. You can almost convince yourself it didn’t happen until you’re faced with the evidence. But of course I face it every day, so maybe it’s not the same at all. Still, it’s strange.”

  There was nothing in that for me. I lit one up too. We sat and smoked and took turns using the ashtray on the desk. Streetside a big truck took off from the light with a loud mashing of gears. The sound reminded me of Dooley Bass and his Kenworth. I hadn’t read anything of him in the papers, so I assumed Transcontinental Transport had elected not to press charges. He was probably driving for another company under somebody else’s license. Keeping his nose clean until the climate cooled down enough to attempt another boost. People don’t change, don’t change, don’t change.

  The telephone beckoned again and I took time squashing out the butt, letting it go three times before answering.

  “Where the hell was you, in the can?” He sounded agitated, maybe. There were no traffic noises this time. He’d found another instrument.