Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde

by Loren D. Estleman

  “I’m flying out to California day after tomorrow,” he said. “One of those useless seminars that are just an excuse for grown academics to behave like college freshmen on spring break. Apparently it is my turn. I am changing planes in Chicago. How far is that from Detroit?”

  “Four hours driving. Not much less flying, under current conditions. I don’t know if I can spare the time. When this thing blows it’ll blow all at once. What airline?”

  “Northwest.”

  “Detroit Metropolitan is Northwest’s hub in the Midwest. Their planes go in and out like buses. You could change there and we could meet in the airport.”

  He took my number, said he’d see what he could do, and he’d call back. He sounded eager. I didn’t know what to make of that. I hoped it would do me some good. I wasn’t sure if I’d recognize it if it did. Once again I’d taken a straightforward missing-person investigation and turned it into an abstract equation, a voyage of discovery, a Bildungsroman; as if there weren’t enough languages involved already, with no more romance to any of them than Punch and Judy. They ought to put me to work designing aptitude tests to be given out by companies that aren’t hiring.

  What the job needed was a CPA. He’d sort all the facts into tidy piles, sweep them into envelopes, hang tags on them, and mail them out with a bill for services rendered. Thank you and please call again. I can help the next person in line.

  I’d found Jillian Rubio. That was the job. Now I’d volunteered myself to wrap up two murders, or at least separate them from Gilia Cristobal née Mariposa Flores. That was not. My Pimpernel Complex was showing. I’d grown a tail that made me curious. A young woman to whom everything in life had come as hard as iron, even blood money, was dead, her body left out to season with the white pine. It all had something to do with the client, and before I handed it over to the CPA I needed to know if the job I’d finished had nailed a killer or framed an innocent. Maybe I was just bored. When it’s February in Michigan it’s been winter forever, and when something interesting comes bumping along in the sluggish current of the longest short month on the calendar, you snatch at it and hang on to see where it leads. Even if it’s a murder. Especially if it’s a murder. I collected them like driftwood. No two were ever alike and displayed together they made intricate tortured patterns, like the work of an alcoholic Swedish sculptor.

  While I was waiting I tore open the mail I’d dumped on the desk earlier, kept some of it, and threw the rest away. Nobody wanted to give me something for nothing, there was no invitation to sail to an uninhabited island and raise a race of beautiful naked savages. There wasn’t even a second notice to indicate that a smooth efficient capitalist system had snagged itself on my empty checking account. If a letter drops through a slot and no one cares if it’s answered, is the stamp still good?

  I figured the telephone call that interrupted this exercise in poetical philosophy had been placed by someone on business from Porlock.

  “Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” I answered.

  The professor was up on his English literature. He hesitated only a second. “Did I break in on Kubla Khan? A thousand pardons.”

  “One would be too much. And thank you for not asking what gives.”

  He chuckled; a dry academic sound, like a dusty thumb riffling through Newton’s Principles. “When you’ve sat in on a few Ivy League conversations, you learn to tune in quickly. What jackasses we must sound like to the janitor. Perhaps not, though. At Columbia the odds are better than even he has a Ph.D. in pre-Christian theology.” Stiff paper rattled. “My flight gets into Detroit at nine-ten A.M. Friday. The layover is two hours. Which, given the present security situation means we will have fifteen minutes. Satisfactory?”

  “Tickles me pink.” I gave him the name of a bar and grill in the Davey Terminal. “Should I scribble PROFESSOR X on a sign and hold it up?”

  This time he hesitated two beats longer. Making up his mind.

  “Zubaran is the name.” He spelled it. “Miguel. I doubt identification will be necessary, at least in my case. I have an idea you’ll know what to look for.”

  I wrote the name on my telephone pad. Then I scratched it out thoroughly. I’d had to memorize even his telephone number. “Zubaran like the painter?”

  “I’m told there is no relation. You know a good deal about arcane matters for an American. How old are you?”

  “Too old for your classes, Professor. My generation talks back.”

  “It would be a refreshing change. All those sheep’s faces and their ubiquitous Walkmans sometimes make me want to vomit. I shudder to think what will happen to the world in hands such as theirs.”

  “Yeah, and after we took such good care of it.”

  He let that one drain down the line. “Good-bye, Mr. Walker. I cannot say I look forward to our discussion, but taking part in it will be my privilege. One so seldom gets the chance to give something back.” There was a plop and then the little silence before the dial tone, like the space between novenas. Or was that twenty-four hours? I’d been too much in church of late and too little of faith.

  I wrote 9:10 A.M. on the Friday square of my calendar. My eyes jumped to the next row. Ash Wednesday was coming up next week. It was also February 13th: the date of the fourth consecutive appointment that Jillian Rubio would fail to keep with Hector Matador. No date since Lenin’s birthday had lost its significance so fast.

  SEVENTEEN

  Breakfast is the most destructive meal of the day. It diverts blood from the brain, where it’s most needed at that hour, and it soaks up too much caffeine. But not counting the cardboardy supermarket sub I’d slammed down the night before on my way home from the office I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. The work is like that sometimes, all fuel consumption and empty miles. I stuck a hard-fried egg between two slices of toast and admired Hector Matador’s picture on the front page of the Free Press.

  It was a police mug shot from an eight-year-old arrest. His hair was shorter now and he was a little less gaunt, but sullen arrogance is a quality untouched by time. Take away the nifty numbered placard, sling a hundred-dollar necktie around the bare throat, and it might have been taken last week.

  Inspector John Alderdyce was quoted, saying that Mr. Matador was not a suspect, and that foul play had not yet been established in the case of the young woman whose body had been found in an advanced stage of decomposition in an unnamed lumberyard on the southwest side. The woman had been identified, but police weren’t releasing the name pending notification of next of kin. That was so much eyewash, next of kin having discovered the body, but in a nonelection year the cops never miss an opportunity to keep the press uninformed. Mr. Matador’s history with the authorities filled up much of the article, whose byline belonged to the reporter who had covered his trial for first-degree murder in the matter of Frank Acardo, deceased. I wasn’t mentioned, but then I hadn’t been interviewed. That was some more poker-playing on the part of the thin blue line; otherwise the reporter would have made the connection with my trial testimony, and the lead story on the fighting in Kandahar would have been bumped below the fold. That would have meant more officers assigned to media liaison and fewer on the street.

  I didn’t mind, except that the free advertising might have come in handy later. I had some sleuthing of my own to do, and it’s tough enough climbing through windows without trailing the guardians of the First Amendment from my heel like so much toilet paper.

  There was another, much smaller item of interest in the World section: six inches tucked in an inside corner about the prison suicide of a former rebel leader in a country no one read much about these days. He’d begun six years before by organizing a walkout by government hospital workers and ended up hanging from a bedsheet in his cell. In between there had been some rough mountain fighting and one successful engagement against superior numbers of government troops that for a moment had distracted the attention of the world from the rest of its squabbles. Then came the reversals, a lieutenant�
��s betrayal, arrest, and two years of trial postponements while a case for treason was being built. Now the only question was who had tied the knot in the sheets. It wasn’t raised in the article, and it certainly wouldn’t be in the capital, although it might have come as a surprise that prisoners were even provided sheets. In the end it didn’t really matter whether they did it to you or helped you reach the decision on your own. You were just as dead. As dead as the revolution.

  No mention was made of the murder of the rebel leader’s girlfriend. There wasn’t room for it, even if it had come in over the wire. They would have had to drop a comic strip to make room, or reduce the size of the crossword so you’d need a magnifying glass to read the clues. Someone would have written an angry letter to the editor, someone else would have dropped his subscription, and the dominoes would start to fall. It was a wonder they’d found space for the rebel leader to begin with.

  I finished breakfast, called Sid Corcoran at the Twin Cities Detective Agency in St. Paul, and got him on the first ring. He was always the first man in the office and the last to leave. He said he’d been about to call me. The local cops had been all over Jillian Rubio’s duplex in suburban Coon Rapids. The neighbor on the other side of the common wall had told them a detective had been around asking questions about Ms. Rubio a day or two earlier; he still had the man’s business card. That had brought them to Twin Cities. Corky had told them his role in the agency was strictly administrative, and if they wanted to know what one of his operatives was working on they would have to ask him. That had sent them back to headquarters for more ammunition, but he knew they’d come back and he wanted to talk to me before he ratted me out for the sake of his license.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “The cops here know all about it. I just called to find out how fast they were moving. How’s Spitzer going to take it?”

  “Who gives a shit? I suspended him without pay. A summons server was waiting for him last night when he got off the plane from Detroit. The whole reason I packed him off was to buy time until we could work out a deal with the court. What the hell happened to him back there?”

  “A dog barked at him.”

  “He ain’t been barked at till he’s been barked at by me. One more bonehead play like that and I’ll can his ass.”

  “I don’t know why you held on to him this long.”

  “Got under your skin, did he?”

  “Nothing a kick in the shin couldn’t cure. I meant the dog thing.”

  “It takes all kinds to run a carnival. Anytime you get tired of the one-man band, come see me. Climate’s the same here, but you won’t have to scrounge for your supper.”

  “I’d miss the scrounging. Thanks, Corky. Don’t forget to send me a bill.”

  “That’s the day I leave my balls on the bus.” He sounded cheerful. A little out-of-town murder made a nice break from credit checks and deadbeat dads. We called each other a couple of names and stopped talking.

  Someone knocked at the front door while I was knotting my tie. I started that way, then spotted the Free Press front page on the corner of the kitchen table and went back for the Smith & Wesson. I was holding it behind my hip when I opened the door on a mahogany-colored suit with gold buttons. Big Bad Benny had to stoop to look at me under the top of the frame. The studs glittered in his broad Basque face.

  “He wants a word,” he said.

  I showed him the .38. “Tell Mr. Matador my office door is always open, even to him.”

  He looked at the gun as if it were a quarter tip. “He wants a word.”

  “You deserted your post,” I said. “Who’s throwing groupies off the boss lady’s balcony?”

  “Don’t make him say it again. Benito’s a stuck record. He missed the CD revolution.”

  This came from behind me. I relaxed my spine and turned my head to look at the black man I’d seen in Matador’s hotel suite and again in the Chevy Corsica that had followed me from the Blue Heron in West Bloomfield. Matador had said he’d trained with the U.S. Marshals, and he had the build for it, as wide as Benny across the shoulders but narrower through the middle; a big, hard, athletic-looking thirty-five in a navy suit cut by someone who knew how to make room for muscles and firepower. His weapon was a European-style semiautomatic with a brushed steel finish and a bore as big around as a marble. He held the gun tight against his hip and didn’t wave it around. His voice was a warm rumble and his face was friendly enough, if you didn’t look at the eyes.

  I said, “I’m having combination locks installed. Someone’s been selling my keys on eBay.”

  “Locks are for rich people,” he said. “You don’t have a thing worth stealing. You heard Benito. The man wants a word.”

  Benny stuck out his paw. I laid the revolver in it. “Okay if I close up? I don’t want the neighbors to find out how poor I am.”

  “Let me. I picked the back, I can unpick the front.”

  The Corsica was parked on the street. I looked back at the black man. He’d put the pistol in the side pocket of his coat. We both knew he still had it. He gave me a pained smile.

  “I didn’t pick the wheels. When they told me I’d be working with Colombians, I thought I’d at least get a good ride.”

  Benny said, “I ain’t Colombian.”

  “He’s Chicano this week,” I told his partner. “He thinks no Anglo can tell the difference.”

  Benny opened the rear passenger’s side door and held it. When I started to get inside he put a palm against my back and shoved hard. I twisted around so my shoulder took the impact when I hit the opposite door. I almost dislocated it, but I saved my skull for later.

  “Take it easy,” the other said. “Matador wants him talking.”

  “Senor Matador.”

  “Don’t get your jalapenos in a wad, muchacho. I taught Irish accents to better than him when I was with WitPro.”

  Benny drove. His partner squeezed in next to me. We turned the corner and headed west. I wondered if we were going to Mexicantown or the Hyatt.

  I said, “You were with the Witness Protection program?”

  “Not long. I quit when they wouldn’t transfer me to the Air Marshals. I didn’t train to be a baby-sitter. You ever watch a snitch try to read his new ID papers? Their lips wear out before they get to the end.”

  “So now you sit with celebrities.”

  “They’re not so bad. They’re not so good, either. Most of them think you’re a cheap analyst. You’d think they’d know how much the tabloids pay for tips. They’re not the brightest buttons in the box. Benito could beat the whole gang in a spelling contest.” He shifted positions, grunted, removed the pistol from his pocket, and laid it on the seat between his hip and the door. There wasn’t that much seat. “I should’ve stuck with the service. Who knew the demand for air marshals would go up overnight?”

  “You talk too much.” Benny’s eyes were hot in the rearview mirror.

  “Maybe you don’t talk enough. It might just put our friend in the mood.”

  “Gilia tell you the story of her childhood?” I asked.

  “Ask Benito. I never got closer to her than the outside of the crowd.”

  We turned south. If we were going to Dearborn or Mexicantown, we were blazing a new route.

  I took another shot. “I didn’t check my service today. Yesterday we were all working for the same party.”

  The black man grunted again, picked up the pistol, and slid it back inside his pocket. He couldn’t seem to get comfortable. “Seen the papers today? You ought to throw over this line of work, friend. You’d make a dandy press agent. Except Matador’s the reclusive type.”

  “It was either give them him or give them Gilia. I’d expect him to understand that.”

  “Say it in Latin, it makes as much sense to me. I’m just the guy on the edge of the crowd, like I said. Maybe he’s pissed at you for some other reason. Maybe he’s pissed at the world. Most spicks are, for some reason. At least we had slavery. Maybe they never got over the Frito Bandito
.”

  “You’ve been sniffing around behind me from the start. Or you were. Gilia seemed surprised to find out she’d been paying your bunch to duplicate my movements. You I can understand. These other guys aren’t used to government work.”

  “You ought not to say that, friend. Not this year. This year the government’s got Christ in a bucket.”

  I gave up then. Big Bad Benny was right. The guy talked too much.

  We parked finally on Adelaide, in a block that looked like Bomber Row in a wartime photograph taken in London. Weedy desert lots peppered the neighborhood like shell craters, with paintless saltbox houses standing among them looking hardly less desolate; their owners had abandoned them for the suburbs under LBJ, then given up collecting rent on them under Nixon. Shortly after the Spanish Mafia pushed out the original franchise, they’d been converted to heroin dealerships, but there had gotten to be such a choice of available houses the entrepreneurs had moved to better locations with more closet space. There is a hierarchy even among hovels.

  We made a P.I. sandwich going in, Benny in front and the former marshal riding drag with me in the middle. The pistol was back out in the open, a sight that if there were any neighbors to see it in that neighborhood would excite about as much interest as a robin on the bum. You knew warm weather was around the corner when you spotted the first abduction of spring.

  We entered without knocking. Inside was the sour odor of mildew and the ghost of boiled kidneys. The carpet, a thin pile job, once blue, was curling away from a plywood floor, and here and there a broken crack phial caught the light, twinkling like an extracted tooth. It was dank cold in the entryway, colder than the air outside because it lay there without circulating, but still not as cold as it should have been if the house had stood empty for years. I followed Benny down a narrow hallway lined with bulging Sheetrock and into a warm kitchen.

  It was a smallish room, just big enough for the sink and major appliances and a couple of kitchen chairs but no table, and with the two men who were already inside and the three who joined them it was as crowded as a morning bus. The counters, the linoleum floor, and the stove and refrigerator were the same shade of avocado, a color scheme that had come and gone with H. Rap Brown, I Dream of Jeannie, and an evening of sitar music and magic brownies around the lava lamp. The stove was on. Someone had done meatball surgery on the gaspipe, rerouting it from the wall to a squat propane tank on the floor. A griddle lay across the burners, and one of the big Hispanics I’d seen taking inventory of the arsenal in Matador’s hotel suite was standing in front of it in his shirtsleeves, turning something over on the surface with a wooden-handled spatula. It didn’t smell like food cooking.