Stress

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Shitty damn shame.”

  “Who’s your customer?”

  The question surprised the gun dealer. “Forget it, Homer. You don’t have the temperament to peddle your own merch.”

  “If I did we wouldn’t know each other. Are they commies? Because if they are the deal’s smoke. It’s bad enough they own the rice paddies in Saigon.”

  “Worse than commies. Black Panthers.”

  Angell nodded almost imperceptibly. “Great military organization. The discipline is admirable. You don’t just put on that black beret and call yourself a Panther. Their boot camp stands up beside any in the world. Except the Dutch, of course.”

  “Of course.” He wondered if the wooden shoes got in the way of the drills. “Twelve hundred’s the offer.”

  “Eighteen. At that price you have to score your own ammunition.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s a legitimate purchase. Just walk into any sporting goods store and lay your money down.”

  “You have to sign for it at the counter. I haven’t written my name on a piece of paper in three years.”

  “What about IRS?”

  “I retired from the cement business in sixty-nine. Signed everything over to my wife. She lists me as her dependent. Fifteen hundred apiece, ammo included. That’s the last trip to the well. My ass fell off ten minutes ago.”

  “I hope for your sake the marriage is airtight.” Angell stepped over and stuck out his hand. “How soon do you need delivery?”

  “I’ll let you know.” Joe Piper grasped the hand, grateful for the moment that he had lost most of the feeling in his fingers. Later, when they thawed out, the aftermath of Angell’s crushing grip would be agony. “The feds are too busy roasting Nixon’s nuts to haul you over anyway.”

  “They should’ve let him finish what he started in Cambodia.

  Chapter Seven

  PAUL KUBICEK REMINDED CHARLIE BATTLE A LITTLE of his uncle; but only superficially.

  Since his stroke in 1971, Anthony Battle, three-time professional wrestling Heavyweight Champion of the World, had spent most of his time in the eggshell vinyl Strat-O-Lounger in the extra bedroom in his nephew’s apartment, watching television. Battle, who found it more and more difficult to drag any kind of response out of his uncle, had no idea if the old man was following what was happening on the screen or, if not, what pictures were playing inside his cast-iron skull. He seemed alert and far away at the same time. So the STRESS sergeant appeared in his threadbare padded swivel, staring at the dusty picture tube of the black-and-white Zenith on the same table that supported an electric percolator and an open box of powdered doughnuts in the file room behind the STRESS command center at 1300.

  The program was The Mod Squad, one of Battle’s personal picks for early cancellation, but now bumping along through its fourth season. Linc, the black and beautiful undercover cop with a weakness for wraparound sunglasses, hula-hoop afros, and dashikis short enough to run in without having to hold up the hems like Scarlett O’Hara, was chasing a scuzzy white drug pusher through a maze of L.A. alleys, accompanied by a synthesized score that sounded like a truckload of skillets rolling over. A few minutes and several commercials later, having made his collar, he would receive a pat on his upholstered head from his partners, the Hollywood hippie and the blonde tart in love beads, and the three of them would go out to a rib joint and celebrate. It was enough to make Battle nostalgic for Amos ’n’Andy.

  The station broke and a bullet-headed man in an undershirt came on to intone that he couldn’t believe he ate the whole thing. Kubicek, the trance shattered, sat back and hooked his thumbs inside his belt. Jesus, it was braided white, just the thing for his Stay-Pressed suit with flared trousers; if the ecology shrills were right and the world’s petroleum supply was running out, the entire plainclothes division was going to wind up naked.

  “Man, I love cop shows,” Kubicek said. “Keeps my mind off work.”

  “Kung Fu does it for me.” Officer Aaron Bookfinger, seated astraddle another swivel with a bumper sticker on the back reading HAVE A NICE DAY, covered the bottom half of his face as he pulled smoke into his lungs. “You can cut that guy Caine’s balls off and feed them to him in the first half hour and he won’t say shit, but you better not ask him directions in the last fifteen minutes.”

  Sergeant Stilwell rearranged the red curls covering his baldness. “That boy thinks he can kick. I dated an exotic dancer from the Pussycat that could fold both feet behind her neck.”

  “She any good?” Kubicek asked.

  “Like fucking a mackerel.”

  They laughed, Battle too. Kubicek laced his fingers together and stretched his arms over his head. His knuckles went off like a string of firecrackers. “Ain’t it the truth. Them broads save it for the runway.”

  Bookfinger said, “Charlie here wants to ask you a couple about the Crownover shoot.”

  The STRESS detective took in Battle’s crisp uniform. His eyes were the dull gray of soft-nosed slugs. “What’s this, Saint Patrick’s Day?”

  “He’s on loan from City Hall,” Stilwell said. “Zagreb’s idea.”

  “Cap’n Crunch. Shit. He still floating-plastic boats in his bathtub? Cuts a fart, hollers ‘Torpedo’?”

  Battle smiled. He was leaning back against the closed door. “I want to talk about Harrison’s gun.”

  “Hunky piece of junk. I’d rather pick up a fresh turd.”

  “Did he have it in his hand when you spotted him?”

  “He was going for it. His hand was in his pocket.”

  “Did you shoot Nampula first because you weren’t sure Harrison was armed?”

  Kubicek grinned lopsidedly at Stilwell, standing near the room’s only window. Greektown glowed cheerfully through the steel mesh, Detroit’s best-lit block. “You never hunt duck?”

  “Duck? No.” Battle was pretty sure the question was meant for him.

  “You got two in formation, you shoot the farthest one first. Plenty of time to get the closest one after.”

  “Especially when the farthest one has a scattergun,” Bookfinger offered.

  “So you shot Harrison second.”

  “Hell no. Didn’t you read my report?”

  “What’s the procedure with three ducks?”

  “There ain’t no procedure. The best shooter that ever lived never got more than two at a pop.”

  “Let’s forget the ducks,” Battle said. “As close as you say Harrison was when you spotted him, he had to be a lot closer after you shot Nampula. But you shot Potts next. Wasn’t that taking a risk?”

  “Shit fire, I never thought of that. I wouldn’t get mixed up in no shooting if I thought there was risks.”

  Stilwell chuckled. Bookfinger covered his mouth and blew a rattling jet of smoke at the ceiling, already tinged orange from generations of nicotine. Battle was beginning to feel like the freshman at a hazing.

  “Help me out, Sergeant. I’m just trying to get a picture of what happened New Year’s Eve.”

  “There was a lot of civilians running around. I lost track of Harrison. Meanwhile there was Potts pulling down on me with a fucking magnum. What would you do, rook?”

  “The same thing, probably. And I’m not a rookie. I’ve been with the department a year and a half. Why do you suppose Harrison made a break for the terrace? He must have had a clear shot at you while you were dealing with Potts.”

  “Just because you got your dick in your hand don’t mean you can get it up. He seen his partners go down and he rabbited.”

  “Did you see his gun before you shot him?”

  Kubicek looked at Bookfinger. “You boys in Special Investigations need to lay off me and sit in at the academy. They’re leaving out some things. Or maybe Mr. Year-and-a-Half skipped class the day the rest of the fish learned you don’t have to see a gun when a suspect fleeing an armed robbery forgets to stop when you tell him to.”

  “I was just asking if you saw it. It landed on the terrace next to h
im when he fell, and I’m curious to know why he took it out if he wasn’t going to use it.”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t know how them people think.”

  “What people? Black people?”

  “You said that, not me.” Kubicek leaned forward and snapped off the set in the middle of the opening credits for Owen Marshall. Instead of leaning back, he remained in a kind of crouch with his forearms resting on his knees. His stiff suitcoat pouched behind his neck in a way that reminded Battle of a snapping turtle. “Everything’s race with you colored guys. I’d of shot them three just as quick if they was white. What do you think I am?”

  “An experienced cop collecting dust in a back room watching TV while the murder rate goes to Pluto. The quicker we get through this the quicker we can get you back on the street where you’re needed. Is that okay with you, Sergeant?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He sat back. “Excuse the nerves, son. I got a pension to think about and a daughter who wants to be F. Lee Bailey. That’s spelled M-O-N-E-Y. If I knew this guy Springfield and his Ethiopian Congress was going to hang me out to dry over a scroat like Harrison, I wouldn’t of taken the Crownover job and that’s for damn sure.”

  “Let’s talk about that. Did Crownover—no, not Crownover; what’s the husband’s name?” Battle looked at Stilwell, who was still playing with his curls next to the window.

  “Ted Ogden. I guess that’s the downside of marrying that old auto money, nobody remembers your name.”

  “I could live with it,” Bookfinger said.

  “Did Ogden say he was expecting trouble when he hired you for security?” Battle asked Kubicek.

  “No, he wanted to keep his insurance company happy. There was jewels and shit there.”

  “What about the motorboat?”

  “It was a motorboat.”

  “Do you think it was a coincidence it was there by the dock and took off after the shooting?”

  “Yeah, and it was running on Kentucky sipping whiskey. What do you think a boat was doing there New Year’s Eve, fishing for confetti? Them boys wasn’t going to walk across the lake after they shook down all the guests.”

  “You didn’t see the pilot.”

  “No. Christ, how many times am I going to have to answer that one?”

  “No registration numbers? Not even a partial?”

  “It was dark. I was in the light. You ever try to catch a license number standing under a streetlamp at midnight?”

  “Well, was it a four-cycle or a high-speed job? They sound different.”

  “No shit?” Kubicek lifted the end of his necktie, apparently searching for stains, then smoothed it down. Battle was pretty sure it clipped on. “It was a speedboat. One of the fiberglass jobs, probably. You don’t see no wooden rowboats on Saint Clair.”

  “Think it was stolen?”

  “I ran it through Records. Nothing reported since Labor Day. Nobody heists boats in December.”

  “Back to Harrison. Your report said you identified yourself and ordered him to halt. What exactly did you say?”

  The sergeant grinned with one side of his mouth. “ ‘Guess who, cocksucker.’ ”

  “That was it?”

  “What’d you expect, Ironside? Fucking ‘Freeze’?”

  Battle stood. “Thanks, Sergeant. Sorry to have to crank you through it again.”

  “Just so you get me back outside. I know that damn Brady Bunch song backwards and forwards.”

  Stilwell announced he had to pee. Battle, himself feeling the effects of the coffee he’d ingested earlier, accompanied him to the men’s room. Bookfinger went along to be sociable. The room, all black-and-white 1920s Art Deco under half a century of cheap wax and grit, smelled of Lysol, industrial-strength lemons, and an officer defecating in the rear stall. The walls were a directory of penciled telephone numbers, belonging mostly to lawyers and bailbondsmen and somebody named Alice who was evidently a retired circus performer. Stilwell went on streaming against the back of his urinal a full minute after Battle had zipped up and washed his hands. Bookfinger flipped his cigarette butt into a vacant basin. No one said anything while the man in the stall flushed, pulled up his uniform pants, and went out after drying his hands on a sheet of coarse brown paper. He was a hulking black with gray in his hair and a thick bar of moustache.

  “The man’s a Neanderthal,” Battle said as the door sighed shut.

  Bookfinger tapped a Benson & Hedges out of his pack. “That’s Jackson with General Service. He went to Michigan on a basketball scholarship, but he flunked out and got fat.”

  “I mean Kubicek. Is he always like that, or was he just rutting for my benefit?”

  “He’s an arrogant asshole. Twenty more like him and the riots never would’ve gotten beyond Twelfth and Clairmont. It’s always a mistake to underestimate that old guard.”

  “The department has twenty more like him. That’s why we had riots.”

  “How old were you then, sixteen?” Stilwell flushed and turned away from the urinal. “I’d of closed this out by now except for this Ethiopian thing. We got three criminal records, three guns, and a shitload of eyewitnesses that didn’t see a thing wrong.”

  “They also didn’t see Harrison’s gun until the shooting was over. Or hear Kubicek say anything before he shot him.”

  Stilwell scowled at his hairline in the spotted mirror. “Well, hell, that’s good enough for me. Let’s string the fucker up.”

  “Not just yet. I want to talk to someone else first.”

  “Who?” Bookfinger lit the cigarette off a Cricket lighter.

  “The guy in the boat.”

  Chapter Eight

  CROWNOVER COACHES HAD BEEN SERVING AMERICA’S transportation needs since 1848.

  In March of that year, Abner Crownover, who had left a wife and three children in England when he emigrated to Detroit to take up cabinetmaking, built and sold the first of a fleet of covered wagons to a pioneering family bound for the Oregon Territory. Lighter than the more famous Conestoga and sturdier than the Dearborn, the Crownover caught on swiftly. Ten years later, with the antebellum westward migration at its height, A. Crownover & Company was the largest private employer in a city that challenged Philadelphia for the title of wagonmaker to a restless nation.

  Politics killed the dream. In 1859, Abner, an ardent abolitionist, met with John Brown on the northern end of the Underground Railroad and agreed to finance Brown’s mad plan to storm the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and procure weapons for armed insurrection against the United States. After the raid collapsed and Brown was hanged, Abner stood trial for treason. His acquittal for lack of evidence failed to save his reputation, and he was forced to sell his interest in the wagonmaking business to support himself and his second family. He died a broken man on the eve of the second Battle of Bull Run, his country aflame with civil war.

  His son, also named Abner, went to work for the company at age eleven to feed his mother and three sisters. By virtue of hard work and intelligent suggestions, he rose from grease boy to regional vice president before his eighteenth birthday. Wagon trains had by this time begun to grow scarce, and as a result of his persuasion the firm turned its emphasis from cross-continental carriers to short-haul freight vehicles, passenger coaches, and finely crafted carriages for the landed gentry. Abner, Jr., himself was credited with the invention of an elaborate system of suspension that smoothed the ride to the theater and the opera and made Crownover’s distinctive coronet emblem a symbol of position and excellence in places as distant as New York, Boston, and San Francisco. In 1874, having ascended to the board of directors, Abner Crownover II sold his house on the River Rouge and took advantage of depressed stock values created by the ’73 Panic to acquire controlling interest in Crownover Coaches. He was twenty-three.

  Abner’s first wife having died childless of scarlet fever, he remarried in 1876 and fathered six children, two of whom died in infancy. The eldest of the three surviving boys, Abner III, assumed directorship of
the Detroit office in 1898. Edward, the youngest, was placed in charge of the upholstery shop. Harlan, born second and pronounced feeble-brained at an early age, became a dock foreman. When Abner proved himself incapable of making a decision and seeing it through—he would sign a contract with a lumber firm on Friday for the hickory required to frame the company’s popular Town and Country Phaeton, change his mind over the weekend, and dispatch a messenger to intercept the contract on Monday—his father discreetly reassigned him to the new position of Executive Director and appointed a more competent colleague in his place. Upon the colleague’s retirement in 1902, Edward ascended to the regional post widely regarded as the final step before the company presidency. By this time there was pressure among the board of directors to retool the plants in Detroit and Dearborn to provide bodies for the burgeoning automobile industry. Abner II, past fifty now and beset with health problems, resisted, believing that the motorcar was merely a rich man’s toy, beyond the means of even his wealthiest customers, and furthermore was too contrary in its mechanism for practical use. Edward, who had never gone on record in opposition to any of his father’s views, concurred.

  Harlan Crownover had been considered slow-witted throughout his first thirty years, his reluctance to join in family discussions interpreted as inability to understand. Six months after taking over the loading dock at the Detroit plant, he inaugurated a system that allowed workers to offload a freight wagon in half the time with less muscular strain, almost eliminating sick days among the crew. He used the extra hours in his working day to meet with automobile pioneers, including Ransom E. Olds and young Henry Ford; convinced by their enthusiasm for their invention, Harlan canvassed the directors for support should those convictions lead to a fight.

  On October 15, 1903, old Abner, with Edward in tow, stormed onto Harlan’s dock, shaking a bony fist and denouncing his second son’s conspiracy to ruin the company Abner had rescued from bankruptcy. In later years Harlan would declare his life’s brightest moment to be the time his father fired him, only to be confronted with a sheaf of letters assigning Harlan power of attorney to dispose of the largest single block of Crownover stock as he saw fit, signed by three members of the board and Edith Hampton Crownover—his mother, to whom Abner had presented ten thousand shares on the occasion of their wedding. Thus began the Harlan Crownover Era, and Crownover Coaches’ period of greatest prosperity.