Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde

by Loren D. Estleman

  “They identify the drug lord behind it?”

  “ID’s never a problem down there; they list in the Yellow Pages.” He scrolled down two paragraphs. “Jose Cipriano Nunez, an avuncular character called Papa Joe by those who dealt with him directly. There wasn’t a waiting list. They tended to outgrow their usefulness inside six weeks and float picturesquely down the Rio Cauca.”

  “What would a Medellin Cartel big shot be doing in Detroit? L.A.’s their big market.”

  “Papa Joe’s not anywhere, except all over the central Cordilleras. Someone scored a direct hit on his classic ’34 Bentley with an artillery shell in a mountain pass four years ago. Criminal waste of a beautiful automobile. Bógota suspects his brother-in-law, Francisco. He moved up five slots on the Fortune Five Hundred list of scumbags, scalawags, and highbinders the next week. There’s a footnote.”

  He crossed his artificial leg over his good one and grinned at me. I waited. My back spasmed. I leaned forward then and tapped a couple of keys, any old couple of keys. A list of names appeared on the screen and a box with a snippy little legend asked if the user wanted to delete this file, yes/no. Barry spat a stream of invective, uncrossed his legs, and manipulated his mouse. A tiny blue pistol poked its muzzle at “no.” He waited, then exhaled, brought up his screen saver. This was a montage of tommy guns, armored sedans, and fedoraed plug-uglies from the golden age of the gangster film. I could never figure out if he hated racketeers or revered them, even as he was exposing them. Maybe he’d wanted to be one and his father wouldn’t buy him a blackjack.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” he said. “I thought you didn’t know a control key from a bottle cap.”

  “I don’t. Let’s hear the footnote.”

  “To be called Papa, it helps to be one. Hector Matador was the first one to call him that.”

  I nodded. “I always thought Matador was a guerrilla name.”

  “A show of surprise might be expected,” he said. “It might even be appreciated. When you play a friend for a numbskull, one might consider it the least you could do.”

  His face was as flat as paint. It only got that way when he was close to blowing. The only thing separating his brain from the open air was a sheet of steel not much thicker than foil.

  I said, “Boo frigging hoo. Sometimes the friend’s an enemy.”

  “How many stories have I sat on for you?”

  “Matador is one of those things you’re not objective about. If I’d told you he was in it, you’d have been on him like a bumper sticker. There’s a whole generation of would-be newshawks around town who make their time following you from lead to lead. This one’s hotter than hot. It’s fission.”

  “You said the other day this was a quid pro quo to be named later. Later’s now.”

  “More than ever.”

  I gave it to him, starting with Gilia at Cobo and finishing with the bat nailed to my front door. I had to lay it out in order; otherwise the two things didn’t belong to one story. Listening, he closed his eyes a couple of times, to commit a name or an address to memory. He’d gotten out of the habit of taking notes when the Supreme Court decided they were public property. The Adelaide episode made no visible impression. He went through worse every time the climate changed.

  “Alderdyce had a hard-on against Matador,” he said when I’d wrapped. “Always has. I don’t see him for this. A slug in the brain’s more his style. And he could be in love, why not? Cops forget these guys have glands and follicles and a circulatory system just like them. If they were machines they’d never get caught.”

  I leaned my back against the only section of wall not covered with electronics. He had the only chair. “That’s how I see it. I didn’t want to. The guy’s a coatrack. You want to hang something on him even if you didn’t bring a coat.”

  “That’s how conviction records get broken. The Rubio woman had a partner. Either he surprised her on her way to the bus stop or she arranged with him for the ride and the bus story was just a blind so her mother wouldn’t know she was part of a double act. If there’s anything at all to that ‘in the event of my death’ dodge, it suggests a partner, someone to hold the evidence and deliver it.”

  “Banks have safe-deposit boxes and hardly ever cut themselves in on blackmail,” I said. “Also she wasn’t greedy enough for two. Gilia tips her hairdresser more than five grand a month.”

  “Winos kill each other over a slug of Boone’s Farm. Half of five grand’s a fortune when you’re working for minimum wage. Some people spend their lives too close to the ground to aim high. There had to be a partner. People get abducted and killed every day by strangers. Some of them may be extortionists. One or two might be poisoned. Not with this poison, though, and not this victim.”

  “Alderdyce said Stelazine was used to tie in Gilia and hike the ante.”

  “Even a cop gets a bright idea now and then.” Barry had lost his police credentials when a packet of cash dropped out of a chief’s ceiling during remodeling and Barry broke the story on his cable show. The chief had gone to prison but the whistle-blower’s privileges weren’t restored. These days he didn’t even read Dick Tracy.

  “He also thought Gilia hired Matador to do the job,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t mind tying it around his neck myself. It would be one way to balance out the karma for all the knots he’s slipped. But you have to have a client.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. Next time I get the urge I’ll stick a fork in a wall socket. After this job it’ll be a vacation.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Sure you did.” I raised two fingers in absolution. “I still don’t like Rubio breaking a family reunion in half to keep an appointment she’d had standing for months. I think I’ll go down to Mexicantown tomorrow and have another look around.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “It’s Sunday. Miranda Guzman takes her favorite pooch with her when she goes to church. She keeps the rest locked up in the kennel out back.”

  “You’re a little old to be crawling through transoms.”

  “I’m no older than anyone who knows what a transom is. Being able to get into a movie on a student ID doesn’t make you Peter Pan.”

  “Okay, so we’re both old. When did that happen?”

  “I’m jinxed enough without this discussion. So you want the bat?”

  “If you didn’t, I thought I’d put it in Lucite, stick it on the shelf next to the change purse they made out of Willie Santacetti’s scrotum. Want me to watch your back? These mestizos play for marbles.”

  I shook my head. “When Matador comes at me, it’ll be from the front. He’ll want me to know who’s killing me.”

  “At least let me get you a tranquilizer gun,” he said. “For the dogs, not Matador. For him you need a wooden stake.”

  “Where would you get a tranquilizer gun? All your contacts use bullets.”

  “The Malevolenza brothers ran a horse parlor out of a biggame preserve up in Midland until the feds kicked it in last summer. I was with the second team. If I’d gone in with the first, I could have brought back a water buffalo.”

  “I’d have more use for the buffalo. These dogs sprinkle tranquilizer guns on their kibble.” I took my coat off a table stacked high with computer manuals and shrugged into it. “Do you ever get to thinking all these popcorn machines might edge you out of your job?”

  “Never. They can hack into a file, but they can’t peek through a keyhole. What about you?”

  “Same answer. So how come I need a license and you don’t?”

  “First Amendment, pal. I serve the public all of a piece, not one at a time like you.”

  I started to button the coat, then remembered to leave it open. I was wearing the .38 all the time now and needed access. “We okay?”

  He drummed his fingers on the arm of his ergonomic chair. “If Channel Seven breaks this before me, we may not ever be okay again.”

  “I’ll call you right after nine-o
ne-one.”

  “By then you may get my voice mail. Ever since they installed cordless phones I can monitor all the emergency calls in the greater metropolitan area.”

  “That’s just about the most illegal thing I ever heard.”

  “No more illegal than crawling through transoms. Word of advice? Don’t go down there wearing a pork chop around your neck.”

  I had a good answer, but he was already back at the keyboard, playing the underworld fugue. I let myself out. No one shot at me in the thirty-foot stretch from the house to the car, but that didn’t stop the skin between my shoulder blades from crawling. Matador would come from the front, but I wasn’t so sure about his squad of irregulars.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “A Walker Investigations.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I would catch you in. Back home I was told Americans never worked weekends.”

  An overmodulated TV voice was speaking in the background on his end, but I recognized the accent.

  “The streets aren’t paved with gold, either,” I said. “How are you, Professor?”

  “Exhausted and irritated. My internal clock is three hours fast. I was expected to retire last night at what was for me seven P.M. so that I would be fresh to address a breakfast meeting at lunchtime. Why does man fly?”

  “Why do birds walk? How’s the weather?”

  “Predictable and bland, with a forty percent chance of earthquakes. I was wondering if our little talk had borne fruit.”

  “Some. It’s a little green right now, but I expect it to get ripe in a day or two.” I stopped myself there for the sake of metaphors everywhere. “Do you know anything about bats?”

  The TV droned on about a fire in Laurel Canyon. The sun wouldn’t be up yet outside his hotel room. “Do they all leave a mission wall at the same time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then my answer is very little. Is it important?”

  “Only to bats and Indians. I was just making conversation. I don’t have much in common with educators.”

  “Nor do I. They are self-important bores. But I can neither lay brick nor repair an automobile engine.” The TV went silent. “I wanted you to know that the young woman we discussed is an individual of character. I define character as a capacity to acknowledge and atone for the wrongs one has committed. It is a quality not uncommon among my fellow countrymen, though you would not know this by observing the behavior of our government. We do not look upon expiation as a birthright.”

  I went silent myself for a moment. “Excuse me one second, Professor. Someone’s at the door.” I laid the telephone on the blotter, got out a handkerchief and mopped both palms. I picked the receiver back up. “False alarm, sorry. Would you repeat what you just said?”

  He did, word for word. I thanked him and wished him a safe trip. He said something equally courteous, and we passed out of each other’s life. You never hear about academics and detectives again once the gods have stopped mucking around with the smooth steady line of your life. I hung up and looked at my palms. Epiphanies always bring out the stigmata in me.

  The telephone rang again. Alderdyce didn’t seem surprised to have caught me in the office. He asked if anything was new.

  “Vampire bats are Central American, false vampires range wider and farther south,” I said. “That’s about it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. The only bats I know anything about are Louisville Sluggers.” That ended that line of conversation. For a detective, he wasn’t very curious. “I thought you’d want to know we lost Matador.”

  “Uh-huh. Lost as in bereavement or lost as in you’re reassigning another surveillance team to Dumpster detail?”

  “The little son of a bitch is slipperier than a snotty nickel. Checked out of the Hyatt this morning and dropped his tail like a tadpole inside a dozen blocks. His boy Benito’s still in the hotel, for what that’s worth. I’m guessing not much. Benny never was much of a challenge for a red-blooded type like you.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  “That’s it? Thanks?”

  “Are you offering police protection?”

  “No.”

  “Then yeah.”

  “If we see him, we’ll pull him in. If he’s packing, he’ll finish out his sentence.”

  “He’ll be packing. This one’s personal.”

  “We probably won’t see him,” he said. “He’ll be slowing down at yellow lights and signaling his turns. For a murdering bastard he’s a cautious sort. How long’s it been since you took time off to go fishing?”

  “What year is it?”

  “I hear the fishing’s good off Maui.”

  “I hear everything’s good off Maui. I may go there someday, when no one’s chasing me.”

  “You know what the mortality rate is for heroes?”

  “Cowards die too.”

  “I know. A thousand times, Wilde said. He was wrong about just about everything else, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise he was wrong about that.”

  “I didn’t know you read the classics.”

  “It was either that or a Tigers game, and I knew how that would come out.” It was quiet at 1300 for a moment. “You’re not good enough, Amos. I memorized his rap sheet. He left a longer one in Colombia and they both read like The Seven Samurai.”

  That gave me pause, but only because I couldn’t remember his ever calling me Amos before. “You know his name isn’t Matador.”

  “What’s the difference? Ivan the Terrible’s parents didn’t name him Ivan the Terrible. You have to earn a name like that. They’re literal folks down there. They don’t call a big man Tiny or a fat man Slim.”

  “I know. I was just keeping you on the line.”

  “What are you carrying these days?”

  “Chief’s Special.” I didn’t mention the spare Luger in the car. He knew about that, but not officially.

  “No one carries those anymore. Get yourself a stopper. Only I wouldn’t get one where I had to wait three days to pick it up. That last part’s not advice, understand. We’re very high on gun control in my line.”

  “I’m used to the thirty-eight.”

  “You’re one stubborn son of a bitch.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I went home at dusk. I’d only gone to the office because that’s where I did my best thinking. The thermometer had edged up above freezing but the ground was still cold and the man on the radio who couldn’t pronounce “meteorologist” spent most of his two minutes explaining why that meant an ice storm was coming. I picked up supper at a drive-through and ate it driving. I couldn’t remember tasting any of it.

  The Pistons were playing on TV. I watched most of two quarters, but I got tired of watching grown men swinging from hoops for seven figures and turned it off. I wanted a drink but I didn’t pour one. Home isn’t home when you can’t lower your shield. I was reading a magazine and not taking any of it in when the telephone rang. It was Gilia.

  “When I didn’t hear from you I thought I’d better call.” She sounded high-strung. She was doing a benefit at Cobo Hall that night, a trade-off with the city for permission to shoot her video. I figured she was getting into warrior mode.

  “I’m okay. How’d you get this number?”

  “I’m famous. Don’t tell the people in charge at Ameritech. I wouldn’t want to get a fan in trouble. Are you upset?”

  “It’s okay as long as it’s you. I guess you heard Matador checked out.”

  “That’s why I called. I didn’t know until just now, when I tried to reach him in his suite. I think he may be coming after you.”

  “Maybe he’s just on a bat.” I started to laugh. I shut my mouth. I’m not normally hysterical.

  “Why don’t you come down and see the show? I’ll leave two tickets at the box office. You can bring a friend.”

  “Thanks. I think I’ll stay home. I’m a little tired from doing nothing all day.”

  A woman was speaking rapid Spanish in the background. I guesse
d it was Caterina Munoz, the wardrobe mistress, cursing a crooked seam.

  “You’re not safe there,” Gilia said.

  “I wouldn’t be any safer at Cobo. It’s a good show, but I’ve seen it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “You should call the police.”

  “These days the police call me. It’s a service they provide for customers who are frequently threatened. It comes with a gold whistle and a plot in Mt. Elliott Cemetery.”

  “Amos, I’m—”

  “Don’t say it,” I said. “People pay me to find things out. Often the things you have to pay people to find out are things other people don’t want found out. It’s the reason I charge more than a search engine.”

  “You don’t need to show off to impress me.”

  “I’m not. I’m doing it to impress me. I got the don’t-be-a-hero speech once already today. It was the wrong thing to say for the right reasons. I’ve put too much time into the first two acts to walk out on the third. That’s not heroism, just common curiosity.”

  “Nico felt the same way. He didn’t make it to the curtain.”

  “Okay, point out the only flaw. But he had an army to fight, and look how long it took them. All I’ve got is Hector, and he telegraphs his punches. Incidentally, I talked to the professor today.”