Midnight Man

by Loren D. Estleman

  She burlesqued a scream. “I give up!”

  Traffic swished by down below. It was nearing the early rush hour.

  “I saw Don Wardlaw yesterday,” I said.

  “Oh?” She sucked on the cigarette.

  “He’s worried about you.”

  “Sweet of him.”

  “He thinks there’s a chance you’ll start shooting up again.”

  “He should talk. Didn’t you tell me he went cold turkey twice?”

  “He’s not the subject of this conversation. You are.”

  She tapped ash into a tray shaped like the state of Florida. Whatever happened to plain old ashtrays? “I’m off it, Amos. I don’t plan to go back on. What else do you want?” Her chocolate brown eyes were steady.

  I exhaled. “When I start caring, stop me. It’s a bad habit in my profession. It can get you killed.”

  “If you stopped caring you’d be just another cop.” She blew smoke out her nostrils. “So don’t go playing the perfect reasoning machine with me. I may not know you as well as I should, but I know you better than that.”

  “I’ve got to go.” I hooked my jacket off the back of a chair.

  “Where? After Smith?”

  “Not today. Tomorrow. By then I’ll have a whole police force behind me. But other things need taking care of first.”

  “I’d feel better if they were in front of you.”

  I bent down to kiss her. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

  She got back at me. She bit my lip.

  The temperature was down some that morning, and with the humidity still up there and a little wind blowing, the walk to my car was like a stroll along the south shore of Lake Superior. A light haze softened the edges of buildings and obscured flaws on their faces. I kicked on the wipers to sweep condensed moisture off the windshield. The seat felt cool.

  Alonzo Smith was all over the radio. In the wake of Barry Stackpole’s scoop in last night’s News, the cops had released the suppressed information on the Bagley shooting, with the exception of the plot against the mayor. A spokesman for the NAACP denounced Bum Bassett’s “storm-trooper tactics” in dealing with a delicate civil rights issue and called for a thorough investigation of the incident. A Detroit Police Officers Association rep said that if it were up to him he’d award Bassett a medal. The police commissioner, still smarting from the reaction to his earlier statement that the Mt. Hazel killers deserved no more consideration than a pack of mad dogs, regretted the violence. The mayor was on his way back from a panhandling trip to Washington and was unavailable for comment. Editorials for and against gun control abounded.

  I swung by my place for a shower, shave, and change into my last suit, bolted toast and coffee, and headed back downtown to police headquarters. A double phalanx of hyper patrolmen in riot gear stood between a swelling mob of black men and women and the entrance. A camera truck belonging to one of the local TV stations was parked across the street, the crew standing by while a male model in blow-dried hair and blue blazer counted into a mobile microphone. Nobody seemed in a hurry. Nothing much was going to happen until the tape started rolling.

  A uniform I had seen with Alderdyce from time to time recognized me and let me through, to a chorus of mutters from the crowd. As I entered the squad room all conversation stopped. I was used to that, but this time there was an electricity in the silence that had more to do with the scene down in the street than my reverse charisma where authority was concerned. A big dick with terminal five-o’clock shadow announced me to Alderdyce and I went past him into the office.

  John and Sergeant Hornet were bent over a large-scale map of the riverfront area spread out on the desk, with another pair of plainclothes men I didn’t know following the lieutenant’s gestures across the maze of streets and freeways. He was using a compass and protractor to seal off possible escape routes.

  “What’s going to stop Smith from crossing your pencil lines?” I asked.

  “Hold it down!” snapped Alderdyce. “Let’s keep this between you, me, and the fifty or sixty cops on the grapevine. What do you want?”

  “How come you’re on security?”

  “I’m not. Thankfully, there are enough homicides in the City of Champions to keep me from having to wet-nurse politicians. Protecting the mayor is someone else’s headache. Nabbing Smith is mine. But since they happen to come together in this case I’m working with security. I work here, they work downstairs. See how we cooperate? What do you want, Walker?”

  “Early retirement, if I can swing it. For now I’ll settle for an update. It’s my case too.”

  “Funny, the commissioner didn’t mention you when he gave me this assignment.” His eyes took in Hornet and the others. “Beat it.”

  The two strange detectives glanced at me curiously on their way out. The look I got from Hornet would melt zinc. When the door was shut:

  “Who tipped Stackpole the details of the Bagley shooting?” demanded the lieutenant.

  “You have an idea or you wouldn’t be asking me,” I said.

  “You as much as promised me yesterday you’d keep it under wraps.”

  “I said I’d sit on the plot angle, which I did. You were going to release most of it by this morning anyway. I owed Barry a favor, so he got it first. You know how that works, John. We’ve used it on each other often enough.”

  His fist smacked the map. “Damn it, I’m trying to catch a killer! Will you at least tell me what you’re going to do before you go off and do it?”

  “How am I supposed to follow all of your rules if you keep making them up to cover something I already did? I don’t like dance charts. Sometimes I have to invent my own steps, and when I do I don’t always have time to send you a Xerox copy.”

  “The courts keep changing the rules on me. Why should you be different? Oh, to hell with it.” He tossed me a laminated card with the Seal of Detroit stamped on one side.

  “What’s this?” I fingered it.

  “That’ll get you through the cordon tomorrow. You’re a royal pain in the ass, Walker, but you’ve got good eyes. Keep them open.”

  It took me a moment to adjust to the about-face. Then I pocketed the pass. “Where will you be?”

  “Never mind about me. Smith’s the one you want to look for.”

  “Has Hizzoner been notified?”

  “He’ll be met at the airport today by someone I trust, don’t bother asking who. He’ll still want to put in an appearance, of course, and even if he doesn’t his PR people will talk him into it. One act of bravery is worth a thousand baby-kissings at the polls.”

  “Is that good or bad? For your purposes, I mean.”

  “Bad. But we’ll handle it.”

  “Handle it how?”

  He smiled secretly. I hated him when he did that. There was no trace of his earlier anger. “Let’s just say I know enough about him to predict his reaction to certain suggestions my man will make.”

  “You’re being cagey, John,” I said. “You know you’re not good at it.”

  The smile was stuck on his face. He was wearing a tawny jacket over a yellow shirt and matching tie, and the color scheme together with his self-satisfied expression gave him the look of a hunting cat.

  “There was some shooting early this morning on Antietam,” he said then. “Hear about it?”

  “Should I have?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I haven’t heard a thing.” That much was true.

  He played with his protractor and frowned. “It’s probably nothing. Blue-and-white answered the call. They found a slughole in one of the boards nailed over a window. The building’s coming down next year. It’s one of the old addresses we have for Alonzo Smith.”

  “Anyone see anything?”

  “If they did they aren’t talking. It’s that kind of neighborhood.”

  “How many of those has the department investigated down there in the past year?”

  This time his smile was bitter. “You made your point. I gues
s I’ve got Smith on the brain like you said. When this thing is finished, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to grab the wife, drop the kids off at her sister’s, and head west. I’ll pin my badge on my shirt and keep going until someone asks me what that thing is I’m wearing, and that’s where we’ll stay until I’ve used up every minute of vacation time I’ve got coming.”

  “Ulysses did that,” I said. “He used an oar. When they asked him what he was carrying on his shoulder, he pitched his tent on that spot.”

  “I remember. Was it before or after the voyage?”

  “After.”

  He nodded. “Smart man, Ulysses.”

  I said, “Tomorrow’s going to be sticky, if what’s going on out front is a clue.”

  “Forget about that. I keep seeing the same faces at all these demonstrations. They’d protest lower taxes and higher wages if they thought it would draw a crowd. A cop can’t take a leak in this city without someone seeing something sinister in it.”

  “I bet someone told Mussolini the same thing. Just before they shot him and strung him up by his heels.”

  That bothered him for all of two seconds. Then he returned his attention to the map. “Send in Hornet and the others on your way out, will you?”

  The shouting was still going on as I left the building. Someone made a grab for my shoulder but I ducked it and kept moving, forcing my way through the press of sweating bodies while trying my best not to look like a cop. The cameras whirred. By the time I got clear I was wringing wet and my heart was rattling like a loose rod. Getting torn to pieces by an enraged mob does not rank high on my list of enviable demises.

  I was in the car and office-bound when I remembered the guns under the front seat. I had no idea how many pickup sheets the little Remington I had taken from Smith might be on, and if the cops retrieved any of the slugs Karen Sturtevant had fired on Antietam and traced them to her husband’s gun I didn’t want them making the jump to me. Together the two pieces of evidence formed an indigestible lump in the pit of my conscience.

  In a city as crowded as Detroit, ditching hot iron is only a little less troublesome than getting rid of a body. The river was out, at least from the bank—too many windows by day, too well patrolled after dark. “Well, officer; I had this client, see, and she hired me to catch this wanted fugitive, but when I got him she tried to kill him with this gun and I took it away from her, and, well, I already have one of my own, and—what’s that? The other gun? No, that’s not mine either; actually. You see …” But there was Belle Isle.

  Sunlight was sparkling off the gunmetal-colored surface of the Detroit River as I turned off East Jefferson, my tires whistling on the MacArthur Bridge, and approached the thousand-acre playground located halfway between Detroit and Windsor. Two hundred years ago it had been called Isle des Cochons, or Hog Island, because pigs were pastured there to protect them from wolves. But in 1763 it offered feeble security against Chief Pontiac’s braves, who swam across to massacre the family that looked after Fort Detroit’s vegetable garden. Today a greasy fountain marks the gravesite of the family’s two small boys.

  There weren’t many people milling around this early on a Friday. After parking in the almost empty lot I took off my jacket and tie, thrust the guns and the switchblade into my pants with my shirt hanging out over the butts, and got out to walk along the beach. I stopped a couple of times to pick up stones and examine them before casting them away. To anyone watching I was just another rockhound. I flipped odd items of debris idly into the river. One of them was the knife. A hundred yards farther on I squatted near the water’s edge where part of the beach had been scooped out to launch a boat and looked at some more stones. While I was doing that I tugged out the revolver and automatic and slid them into the water one after the other. They made a few bubbles going down.

  The rest of the day was a write-off. I called Iris from work and talked about nothing at all, read the mail, swept out both offices, had lunch, and waited until five for the telephone to ring or the door to open. They didn’t. After dinner I caught a movie solo, went home not liking it, and cleaned and oiled the Smith & Wesson and the Luger. I hit the sheets at ten. The night was warm and I dreamed of death and dying.

  28

  AFTER AUTOMOBILES AND MURDERS, Detroit is most famous for its riverfront ethnic festivals, which take place every weekend of the summer, rain or shine, at Hart Plaza. Polish, German, Italian, Ukrainian, Greek, Hispanic—each group gets a weekend. In an area where more than twelve percent of the population spoke no English only eighty years ago, the emphasis on its motley heritage is understandable. Just as understandable, in view of the city’s changing complexion, is the fact that many of the celebrations grow less crowded and rowdy each year. But not the Afro-American festival. It just keeps getting bigger.

  This year’s was no exception. Under a sky so blue it hurt to look at it, the parade ground was jammed with people carrying Thermos jugs and picnic baskets, screaming children in shorts and bare feet thundering around and between and occasionally into them amid twangy curses and flying chicken sandwiches. A skinny sweating brown girl with cornrowed hair and African jewelry that clanked and rattled like a scrap truck when she moved stood on the bandstand, wailing soul into a microphone while an amplified combo behind her made the earth tremble. The greasy-sweet smell of ribs roasting on portable grills was everywhere.

  There were very few white faces. You had to be white to notice the undercurrent of bitterness beyond scattered shoving matches and the rabble-rousing of street orators desperately trying to attract an audience. Conversations stopped as I drew near isolated knots of people. The jostling I got when I penetrated the main stem seemed rougher than necessary. I was wearing a Windbreaker over a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and I was constantly reaching back as if to tug down the elastic band and brushing the butt of my concealed .38 just to reassure myself that it was still in its holster. The hunt for Alonzo Smith had set back race relations ten years locally.

  I didn’t see John Alderdyce anywhere, but I did recognize three or four plainclothes men from police headquarters sprinkled among the celebrants, all black; and there were likely many more from the precincts and uniform division in mufti. You could pick some of them out by the fact that they were wearing jackets. With the temperature in the low nineties, the only good reason for having one was to hide a gun.

  I circled back to the parking area for some fresh air, and saw Bum Bassett’s big silver pickup standing near the entrance. He had the driver’s door open and was sitting on the seat facing out. His huge raw face broke into a thousand wrinkles when he saw me.

  “Howdy there, hoss,” he said, pumping my hand with his meat grinder. He was wearing a white T-shirt and his biceps were as big as grapefruits. An old tattoo on his right had faded or been obliterated to a blue blur. “I been meaning to call. I’m right sorry about cold-cocking you that way. I wanted to get out of there and I wasn’t in no mood for arguments.”

  I worked circulation back into the hand. “I thought maybe it was because you didn’t want to talk about your first wife.”

  “Well, there’s some things a man don’t like to get into. No hard feelings, I hope.” His grin was anxious.

  “I don’t use all my brain cells anyway. What’s a few hundred thousand more or less? No objections outstanding. How’s the leg?”

  “Sore as hell, but I’m used to that. Just a matter of keeping her clean and not climbing any mountains for a spell. I’ll get this here back to you soon as I can meander without it.” He patted the cane, hooked on the steering column.

  “I’d appreciate it. I consider it good luck. As long as I have it, maybe I’ll never need it. Knock wood.” I reached up to rap the cane. In a twinkling he had the .44 magnum out of the frontier-type holster on his right hip and pointing at me. I froze.

  He smiled shamefacedly and replaced the gun. “Sorry. You don’t do what I do and get to be my age by liking quick movements.”

  “No apology nee
ded.” A drop of sweat rolled down my rib cage. “That’s some draw. You practice?”

  “Every day in front of a mirror. Ain’t had to use it but once. That once made it all worthwhile.”

  “How’d you get that hogleg past security?”

  “I got police credentials from three states. Also, I’m famous. You’d be surprised how much red tape just being known cuts through.”

  “I’ll bet. And you do all you can to stay known, don’t you? Like dressing up like John Wayne, and the way you talk, all those ‘I reckons’ and ‘hosses’ and such. You really put the myth of the American cowboy to work for you.”

  He winked broadly. “Okay, so you flushed me out. Do me a favor, hoss? Don’t tell nobody. I need all the weapons I got.”

  “I’m not writing any autobiography this year,” I assured him.

  A small group of young black men and women was gathered on the other side of a battered Pontiac parked next to the pickup, conversing in low tones punctuated by sharp laughter. A strong scent of marijuana drifted our way. I moved closer to Bassett and dropped my voice.

  “Assuming he decides to go ahead with it, how do you figure to beat the entire Detroit Police Department to Smith?”

  Teeth flashed in his red beard. “I was just fixing to ask you the same thing.”

  “My situation’s changed. I’m just here for the festival.”

  “Funny, you don’t look it.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, Bum.”

  “Didn’t know I had to,” he said. “But I like you, so here it is. When something happens I like to be there. I couldn’t see staying home changing bandages when the one I come a thousand miles to get is here. Maybe I don’t get him, but I figure I paid to see him get got. Answer enough?”

  I watched him. “No, but I know when to settle.” I paused. “What did you expect to find when you went through Laura Gaye’s things at the commune?”

  “What makes you think I did all that?”

  “There are things everyone does the same way every time, and that no one else does quite the same. One is folding clothes. You shouldn’t have bothered, Bum. They weren’t that neat when you found them.”