Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde

by Loren D. Estleman

  “I didn’t finish the job on you. I’ve had several years to think about that.”

  “You made an honest try.”

  “I’d try again. If it mattered.” He met my gaze. His eyes had no more expression than a couple of pencil erasers.

  “I know it. I’d have finished the job on you, only I didn’t think Emmett would let me.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. That is the difference between us, Anglo.”

  “Don’t count on it. I need both eyes in my work. That was plain bad theater, Hector. You knew going in I didn’t have those papers. If you didn’t, you knew the cops would make the connection themselves eventually. There isn’t anything in them that isn’t public record.”

  “I do not think as clearly as I once did. I lost my edge in Jackson.” He tried folding the square into three points, didn’t like that and smoothed it out and started over.

  “That didn’t keep you from building a whole new career in Southern California. How’d you swing that with the parole board, by the way? They like you to stay in the same state where you were incarcerated.”

  “I didn’t lose all my connections when I went inside. At that I am not a free man. Whenever I cross a state line I must register with the local police within twenty-four hours. On a tour like this I have had to place as many as three such calls in one day.” He made a Latin shrug; no one but a Latino can do it without looking rehearsed. “My judgment was clouded. I put my heart before my head.”

  I grinned. “You don’t have a heart, amigo. They open you up every three thousand miles and change the filter.”

  “I love her.”

  I waited. I wanted to sneer. I wanted to smoke, but I’d left the pack at home as well.

  He put the square in his pocket the way it had been all along. He started to cross his legs, thought better of that, and returned his foot to the floor. When he couldn’t think of anything else he sighed, and damned if he would have looked out of place in the rosebushes strumming a guitar.

  “Even so,” he said, just as if I’d said something, “I love her. This is a difficult confession. I am twice her age and I have already a wife in Bogota, if she has not died or divorced me. Why else do you think I did not abandon Gilia when she came to me with her trouble?”

  “Payday comes to mind. You stand to make a million off her this year alone.”

  “She is an ordinary talent. Much as it pains me to say this about the only woman I have ever known for whom I would kill, it is the truth. I hired voice coaches to rid her of the things she had learned from her teachers back home, failures who passed on their inadequacies to all their charges in equal measure, so that when one closed one’s eyes one could not tell which of them was singing. Dancing, fashion, cosmetics, surgery to remove a distracting mole from her upper lip. I made her a blonde. Booking offices were filled with beautiful Hispanic girls with glossy black hair. These things are universal. The rest was marketing. I sold Gilia with the same tactics I had used to sell drugs, including bribery and intimidation. These things were more personal, but by no means uncommon. I had been training for show business all the time I was in Detroit, and I never would have known it if I hadn’t gone to prison. Probably I would be dead. It is possible I should thank you. I find the impulse resistible.

  “What I did for her I could do for anyone with a spark of talent,” he went on. “The bus stations crawl with possibilities, any one of them with the potential to be as big as or bigger than Gilia. But they would not be Gilia. I am telling you more than I would tell a priest, Anglo. A priest is of no use to me.”

  I got up and spun my chair back into its original corner. I still felt like sneering, but I didn’t know at whom. If I believed his story it would mean going back and looking hard at a number of things I felt sure about, beginning with whether I was rightor left-handed. So I decided not to think about it.

  “Happen to read the World section in today’s Freep?”

  “Freep?” He lifted his brows. “Oh, the Free Press. I did not get that far.”

  “That’s right, you stopped at the front page. Gilia’s rebel boyfriend hanged himself. Whose idea it was doesn’t matter. He’s dead.”

  “He is the one for whom she killed the puta.”

  “So you think she’s guilty.”

  “I do not care.”

  “You should. If her alibi holds, it could buy her time with Immigration. They might manage to lose a freedom fighter’s shaky visa application, but we got all the passion killers we need. They’d send her back. She might even hang herself in the same cell.”

  Matador smiled sadly. It was no improvement on when he was happy. “Then we must prove her innocent, no?”

  NINETEEN

  “There may be a hitch,” I said.

  “And what would that be, Anglo?” He was all positive energy, courtesy of a growing conviction that he would remain potent after all. The therapy is not recommended, because the results tend to vary.

  “She might be guilty.”

  “I do not see this as a serious setback.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  He rooted inside his suit coat, produced a flat gold-and-enamel case with his monogram engraved on the lid. He offered it to me. I frowned, selected one of the brown cigarettes, and let him set fire to it with a lighter attached to the case. It tasted like burning mattresses. “I think the documents are in the mother’s house,” he said.

  I blew the smoke as far away from me as I could. “You’re welcome to look for them. Have you met Mrs. Guzman’s dogs?”

  “I have not had the pleasure. I find dogs to be overrated, except in the case of children and caninophobes. Did you know there are but seven varieties of bacteria in a dog’s mouth, as opposed to seven thousand in a human’s?”

  “This particular dog swallows you whole. The smallest one is about the size of a calf.”

  He appeared to consider that. “We will put Mrs. Guzman upon the back burner for now. I used to know someone, upon a purely casual basis, who specialized in breaking into bank safe-deposit boxes.”

  “Just for now we’ll entertain alternatives to federal crime,” I said. “Not to mention the fact that we don’t know which bank, or even if a bank was involved. Forget the documents. They’ll be irrelevant in less than a week. Who killed Angela Suerto if not Gilia?”

  “A whore’s life has the valuation she places upon it. Who would not?”

  “Whoever killed Jillian Rubio.”

  He held his own cigarette between thumb and forefinger, like Peter Lorre. “I do not understand this reasoning.”

  “The only person who would have a motive to kill Suerto and Rubio is the one person we want to prove didn’t.”

  “No es verdad. Rubio’s death means exposure of the Suer to matter.”

  “Unless Rubio was bluffing.”

  “How can one know?”

  I was pretty sure the brown cigarette was gumming up my gray matter. I threw it into a corner, where with luck it would catch something on fire and save the city the expense of demolition. “If she was bluffing, we’ll know in a few days. Next Wednesday’s the official deadline—three months since anyone’s had contact with her—but when the cops release her name in connection with the stiff in the lumberyard, the jig’s up. Or not. In the meantime I’m not waiting for miracles.”

  “You have the lead?”

  “I have the lead.” I watched him apparently enjoying his smoke. “You’ve got Gilia to look after. If there’s anything to what we’ve been talking about, I wouldn’t leave her in Benny’s hands.”

  “People underestimate Benito. He is not a man of initiative, but he will follow an order into hell. He would have made an ideal soldier.”

  “For what army, Mexico’s or Colombia’s?”

  “His mother was born in Tenochtitlan. He is part Aztec. One makes allowances. I think I shall accompany you upon this search for truth.”

  “I think you won’t.”

  He inhaled carefully, blew smoke out his nost
rils. “We are still enemies.”

  “Always and forever. Not because you iced Frank Acardo, who was born to be iced, and not even because you tried to put me on the same block. I’m not exactly accustomed to people trying to kill me, but now and then it happens and I just have to put it down to the nature of the work. But I don’t team up with gangsters.”

  “As far as the police are concerned, we are already a team. You are the one who convinced them of that.”

  “That was easy. They think I’m a crook on general principle. It bought me leg room. I plan to use it to find out who killed Angela Suerto, or prove Gilia didn’t. They might turn out to be the same thing.”

  “And what shall I do?”

  “Whatever you’d be doing anyway. Buy a senator. Hijack a truckload of Acapulco Gold. Call up a pharmacy and ask if they have Prince Albert in a can. Whatever draws flies to you and keeps them off me.”

  “And the Rubio murder?”

  “One for the cops. Maybe she was blackmailing someone else and tripped up.”

  “I do not believe you. I think you wish to tie up both cases as they say with the pink bow. To this I have no objection, provided that the box does not contain Gilia.”

  “No guarantees, amigo. She could turn out to be Lady Macbeth.”

  “That is neither here nor there, unless the police are persuaded to do something about it. In which situation I will ice you.”

  “You can try. Until then I won’t climb into your yard and you don’t climb into mine. Next time I look over my shoulder and see a brown face, I’ll push in yours.”

  “You can try.”

  I watched him stand up. A spasm took him, but he covered it with a last drag on his cigarette. He dropped it and ground it into the linoleum.

  “What if the lady says no?” I asked. “She probably gets a thousand proposals a week, some of them from men without a rap sheet.”

  “She will not say no, because I will not ask. I said I was in love. I did not say I intend to take any action beyond that which I am doing. I am not so foolish as I appear.”

  “You and Cyrano. I don’t see it.”

  “It is not necessary that you do.” He smoothed back his polished hair with both palms, straightened his tie, fiddled with his cuffs. By the time he was finished I wanted to kick him again just to see if he could put himself back together as completely every time. “You may wish to consult with your client,” he said. “She did not hire you to solve any murders.”

  “Now and then I have to solve one so I can concentrate on the job I was hired to do. I’ll drop around this afternoon. Where’s she shooting?”

  “She is not. There is some trouble with her permission to use Mexicantown. She does not have it. That was the second item on my list for today. You will find her in her suite.”

  He said he was parked around the corner—the blue Bonneville that had followed me after the Corsica broke off—and offered me a ride. I said I’d catch a bus. I’d had enough of his careful English and tailoring for one day. “What happened to those testosterone jobs you used to zip around in?”

  “In Detroit I prefer to maintain the low profile. You are not the only enemy I have in this town. Fortunately, I still have friends who owe me favors. Not Camaro favors, alas. There has been a devaluation in the local currency since high-grade cocaine passed out of fashion. Also in my stature. The name Matador is largely unknown to the methadone-and-Ecstasy generation.”

  “Sorry to hear it. Are you going to kill all of them?”

  “If I were, I would wait until the economy recovers. There is more satisfaction in allowing a man to climb to the top of the ladder before pulling it from under him. He has so much farther to fall. I am joking, of course,” he said. “I am a monument to the success of the prison rehabilitation system.”

  “Uh-huh. If I were you I wouldn’t clear-cut. Show business is riskier than peddling drugs. You never know when you might need to borrow another Pontiac.”

  “You are more out of fashion than I, Anglo. There is more to the world than good and bad.”

  I said I’d heard that. It always seemed to be the bad guys who said it.

  TWENTY

  I walked the last five blocks from the bus stop with my lapels standing and my fists jammed deep in my pockets. I felt like Dustin Hoffman. Matador’s Armada hadn’t given me time to grab an overcoat on the way out. The air was stiff enough to fold and the streets had that naked granite look of nuclear winter. I wanted to start the car warming and soak my feet in hot coffee and bourbon. What I got was Inspector John Alderdyce standing on my doorstep.

  “I called your office,” he said. “Your service told me you hadn’t checked in yet. What’d you do, get lucky last night?”

  He looked as big as the county jail in a fur hat with flaps all around and a tan double-breasted camel’s-hair that hung below his knees. His breath clouded around his head like smoke from the burning bush.

  “Yeah, I found a penny.” I tried putting my key in the lock. My fingers had all the feeling of balloon animals. He took away the ring and unlocked it for me. He held the door open and trailed in behind.

  In the living room he glanced around at the little bookcase, the rack of vinyl, the TV and VCR, the one good easy chair, a dust bunny or two threatening to turn feral. “Still keeping the decorators off the welfare line, I see. What you need is a wife.”

  “I had one. What I need now is a drink.”

  “It must be past noon in Borneo.”

  “Lent starts next week. I need something to give up.”

  I went into the kitchen, filled the coffee filter, poured water into the reservoir, and checked the cupboard above the sink. The bourbon bottle was empty and I wasn’t desperate enough to try Scotch in coffee. So I added another scoop to the filter and turned on the machine. Alderdyce had followed me in. He got out of his coat and hat and gloves and dumped them on the table in the breakfast nook, on top of the Free Press. He looked even bigger in his midnight blue suit with an American flag pin in the lapel. He wasn’t as large as any of Matador’s men. He could fill a ballroom with just his character.

  “Why Stelazine?” he asked.

  I finished rinsing out the cup I’d used that morning and stood it upside down on the drainboard. My hand felt hot. The circulation to it had been cut off twice that day and this time it had come back with an attitude.

  “Get the toxicology report?” I asked.

  “No, I guessed. Just like you.”

  “Any good cop knows about hunches. Even a bad cop gets a good one now and then.”

  “They made some kind of record up in Lansing. It helped that they knew exactly what to look for. If you say the word ‘hunch’ one more time I’ll shove it up your ass and break it off.”

  The machine started gurgling. “Let’s go in the living room. This is one of those days when I can’t seem to get out of the kitchen.”

  I gave him the easy chair. Being a cop he would’ve taken it anyway. I found the one good spring on the couch and parked on top of it. I still felt some cold on my spine. I decided to blame the weather.

  He took out a leather-bound notebook the size of a card case. The higher you got in the department the less things you had to put in one. “Toxicity five. The scale only goes to six, a short list that includes cyanide and cobra venom. I guess snakes are too awkward to carry around.”

  “How’d it get in her?”

  “Did I forget to say I didn’t come here to answer questions?”

  “Okay, ask one.”

  “I did. You gave me the eleventh-week lecture on hunches. That was a good guess you made. You aren’t that smart and you aren’t that lucky.”

  I got up, opened a drawer in the table next to his chair, found a pack and a book of matches and went back to my seat. I got one going and made a contribution to the nicotine stain on the ceiling. I wondered what the toxicity level was on that.

  “I had a case once involving Stelazine poisoning,” I said. “I remembered it works prett
y fast, especially when injected. If someone picked up Jillian Rubio in a car and didn’t have to drive any farther than the lumberyard behind her mother’s house to have a body to dispose of, that was one possibility that occurred.”

  “He could have cut her throat, or shot her in the heart or head. That’s even faster.”

  “You didn’t say there were visible wounds on the body. I didn’t think that was the kind of thing you’d forget to mention. You said her mother told you she was diagnosed bipolar. Stelazine’s one of the narcotics doctors use for treatment of severe depression. That’s what got me thinking that direction. So’s Thorazine. If I’d said Thorazine, would we be having this conversation?”

  “You didn’t, and so we are. Know what I think? I think you did have a case involving Stelazine poisoning. I think you’re having it now. Ever hear of Coon Rapids, Minnesota? I didn’t make it up; actually it’s a suburb of Minneapolis, folks there probably wear shoes and hardly ever spit watermelon seeds over the back fence. Rubio lived there. The police checked with one of her neighbors. He said a P.I. was there a few days ago, pumping him for information.” He glanced at the notebook. “Alvin Spitzer was the name on the card he gave the neighbor. With the Twin Cities Detective Agency in St. Paul. I’m waiting to hear what Mr. Spitzer has to say. Ever have any business in St. Paul?”

  “As a matter of fact I have. As a matter of fact it was with the Twin Cities Detective Agency, and as a matter of fact the man they assigned to the case was named Spitzer. He probably still is. I told you yesterday I was looking for Rubio. What did Matador say? He’s the client.”

  “Senor Matador was polite. Senor Matador was eager to cooperate. Senor Matador gave us nada. I considered tanking him as a material witness. His lawyer called from L.A. while I was considering it and gave me a Latin lesson. So instead I notified his local parole officer. Parole cops are mean as bloody turds. I’m thinking after they’re through discussing the rest of Senor Matador’s life in Jackson he’ll come looking for us begging to hear what he has to say.”

  “Can I be there when he does? I want to see what you do to him after he spits in your eye.”