Stress

by Loren D. Estleman

  Kubicek, who had had his share lately of dealings with newspapers and lawyers, said nothing. He wondered if the commissioner was testing him. Certainly the air had changed with the departure of the third party.

  “How you getting on with the shooting team?” Nichols dissected the fat from a square of steak the size of his thumb and forked the lean into his mouth.

  “Okay. I’m not too sure about the colored guy.”

  “Good. Better you get the hard questions from your friends in the department than the assholes in the media. Getting antsy indoors?”

  “Well, I’m a working cop.” He decided to lighten the conversation. “Don’t them soap opera people ever get a chance to relax? I seen more suicides and pregnancies in the last two weeks than my first ten years on the job.”

  “Gribbs wanted me to suspend you without pay. I guess you can put up with the fucking organ music for a little longer.”

  His face stung. “I’m not complaining, sir. I know the department’s backing me up.”

  “If it were just you I’m not sure I wouldn’t hang you out like a rug the dog pissed on. The STRESS program is taking a lot of flak. It’s my horse and if I don’t ride it into the mayor’s office it’s going to throw me off. I’d have bounced you on New Year’s Day—I had due cause on the moonlighting rule—only that would’ve put the DPOA on my ass and I need the cop vote because I’m sure as hell not going to get it from the inner city. Do me a favor and explain to me why you’re worth all this bullshit.”

  The DPOA was the Detroit Police Officers’ Association, and this was the sergeant’s first indication that the union he’d been paying into for years was doing anything for him besides sitting on its hands.

  “You seen my jacket,” he said.

  “Citations and commendations don’t mean yellow shit to civilians. In this town a police officer’s only as good as his last headline. I guess I don’t need to tell you the headlines lately haven’t been anything to issue a citation over.”

  “If somebody told me the pissant reporters ran this department maybe I’d of paid more attention to them.”

  The commissioner crossed his knife and fork on his plate and pushed it away. Behind the glasses his eyes were pewter-colored. “If that means you’d have thought twice before you tossed a hideout piece beside Junius Harrison’s body, you can put your shield and gun on this table and walk out right now. Is that what you’re saying, Sergeant?”

  Kubicek shored himself up. “No.”

  “Because if I had a speck of evidence to support it, I’d throw you in a hole and roll the sod over on top of you. That’s the difference between me and a politician. A politician would’ve tipped you in the first time a finger pointed your way. Cops stand by cops. STRESS is better than the couple of rotten apples rolling around in it and I mean for it to survive. If it comes down to STRESS or you, and Forensics finds so much as one of your cock hairs on that gun, I’ll hang you with my own belt. I don’t know how I can make that any clearer.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Nichols watched him for a beat, then sat back, wiping his hands with his napkin. “I’ve got a detail for you that should keep you busy and out of sight. What do you think of cop movies?”

  The sergeant felt himself smiling crookedly. “You mean like Dirty Harry, blow down ten perps an hour and no paper-work?”

  “Well, nothing so big as Clint Eastwood. An independent production company has applied for permits to shoot a crime picture on location in Detroit. The mayor’s hot on the project, wants Hollywood to get into the habit of coming here and spending money. The company needs a technical advisor. I suggested you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Theoretically it’s to keep the director from arming the actors with revolvers with safeties and worse. Since they keep making the same mistakes I figure they just want somebody to blame. Are you interested? The pay’s good and you’ll get to see your name in the credits.”

  “Ain’t that moonlighting?”

  “Say I’m assigning you to public relations. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get Richard Roundtree’s autograph.”

  He wondered who the fuck Richard Roundtree was. “Well, if it gets me out of the back room.”

  “Fine. They start shooting next week. Wear thermals. It’s exterior at first and I’m told they take all day to film five minutes.”

  “Thanks, Commissioner.”

  “Just don’t kill any movie stars.” Nichols stood.

  Chapter Eleven

  RUSSELL LITTLEJOHN LOVED HIS BRONCO.

  It was the only thing his parents had given him that he truly valued. White over green and six years old, it had been rolled on Long Lake Road by some little puke from Birmingham High School before Russell’s father bought it for $1,500 and then let it sit in the garage for two years until he tracked down a top and a windshield in his price range. In return for helping with the repairs Russell had been allowed to drive it until he finished school, whereupon Dwight Littlejohn had presented him with the title as a reward for not flunking out. Russell had invested his first two weeks’ wages from the marina in an eight-track tape player and four Panasonic speakers, and as he tooled down East Jefferson with the piss-poor vacuum wipers twitching at the granulated snow that collected on the windshield, he bobbed his afroed head to the throb and thrum of “All Along the Watchtower”: Saint Jimi riding the music out as far as it would take him, only it wasn’t far enough, not by half, and so he went the rest of the way on Horse, away out there beyond the Big Dipper where the Man couldn’t follow. He was a constellation now, a halo of stars with a Mongol beard, comets in his eyes.

  The lake was chalk-colored, Jess so in the middle where the river current prevented the surface from freezing in all but the most severe winters, and the wind skinned away crystals of ice and serpentined them across the asphalt ahead, where they made dusty white S’s in the doldrums. From time to time a brawny gust took the top-heavy Ford in its teeth and shook it, once nearly twisting the wheel out of Russell’s hands. He enjoyed the fight for control. He pretended he was the captain of an ore carrier, or better yet the master of a square-rigged schooner, piloting his fragile craft through the storms of January, defying Nature to pop her stays. Memorizing The Diary of Che Guevara, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Mao’s little red book had not entirely lifted the young man away from the boy who had nursed on the thirteen-inch image of Errol Flynn sticking it to the King’s pigs on Bill Kennedy’s Million-Dollar Movie, so many Sunday afternoons ago.

  At length, Captain Peter Blood steered his six-cylindered man-of-war into the parking lot in front of Pinky’s Marina and Snowmobile Rental, where Pinky was waiting for him when he got inside.

  A large, florid man of sixty, with a bald head dented all over and anchors tattooed on his forearms—exposed by the white T-shirt he wore in all seasons—Stan Pinicus was trying to clear the nozzle of a spray gun with a ten penny nail. He had served with the navy through two wars and had owned marinas in Santa Monica and Corpus Christi before moving to Michigan to be near his daughter and grandchildren. Some of Russell’s fellow employees referred to him as the Commodore, not entirely behind his back nor, Russell suspected, without his approval. Today he wore the expression of a chief petty officer who had discovered a poorly tied bosun’s knot in a net containing valuable cargo.

  “You’re almost late,” he said.

  “I call that on time.” Russell shed his Pistons warm-up jacket and hung it on the broken, trident in Neptune’s hand, part of an antique carved wooden figurehead that went with the room’s runaway nautical theme. He bet Pinky wore Popeye pajamas and sang his grandchildren to sleep with bawdy sea chanteys.

  “There’s propane tanks need filling out on the dock and them boxes in the storeroom ain’t going to sprout legs and walk out to the dumpster. Don’t put your coat back on yet. That big window’s so dirty I can’t tell if I’m looking out at the lake or the Mojave Desert. It’s all on this side.”

  Russell stretched himsel
f over the service counter and scooped a sea sponge and a bottle of Lestoil off the under-side shelf. “Wish to hell we had us a squeegee.”

  “Use newspapers. We got stacks of them in the back too, going back to Custer I think. Cops was here,” Pinky added without pausing.

  Russell looked at him. His employer was testing the spray-gun, squirting jets of paint-tinted air into a stained rag in his other hand. “What kind of cops, coasties?”

  “Detroit. Just one, a black guy. Plainclothes.”

  “When?”

  “A little while ago. He said he’d be back.”

  “He ask about me?”

  “Not at first.”

  Jesus. Like pulling teeth with his toes. “Well, what did he want?”

  “Wanted to know was I missing any boats New Year’s Eve.”

  “We were closed New Year’s Eve.”

  “That’s what I told him. Only a damn fool’d be out on the lake after Christmas. Hit a chunk of ice and play Titanic.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Wanted to know about my employees. I said, ask away, I ain’t got but three. He asked about you most.” He wiped off the nozzle with the rag.

  “I guess you told him I’m your best worker.”

  “I don’t lie to cops. I said you got in trouble once but you was up front about it when you put in for the job. Been clean ever since so far as I know. He asked what kind of trouble. I said I think assault, some kid rap. He said he’d be back after he checked it out.”

  “Fucking cops. They got no imagination. Every time something goes down they go to the fucking books.”

  Pinky’s scowl reminded him of Neptune’s. “He comes back, you answer his questions. And watch your fucking language. In Grosse Pointe only the customers swear.”

  “Why’d you have to tell him about my juvie?”

  “He asked.”

  “Shit.” He lifted a bucket and tossed the sponge inside.

  “Maybe you ought to be grateful he didn’t ask about the gas.”

  “What gas?”

  Pinky set down the rag and spray gun and mopped his palms on his denimed thighs. Although he was shorter than Russell his hands were nearly as big, with knuckles the size of ship’s bells. “I drained the tank on every boat Christmas week. January second Everett and I pulled them up on the dock and carried them to storage. One of ’em sloshed when we lifted it. The Maybelline. Tank was damn near half full.”

  “So you missed one.”

  “No, I drained it all right. Everett didn’t know nothing about it and neither did Pete when I asked him yesterday. Did you gas up that boat and take it out?”

  “Hell, no. New Year’s Eve I was home sucking on a reefer and listening to Wolfman Jack.”

  “I didn’t say New Year’s Eve. Cop said that. It could’ve been any time between Christmas and the second.”

  “I don’t even like the water.”

  Pinky rose from the low stool, listing slightly when at his full height. One leg was shorter than the other due to some bone that had been removed from his knee along with several ounces of shrapnel, a souvenir of his tour aboard the Hancock. “Well, be ready to tell that to the cop.” He steadied himself against the counter as he worked his way behind it. Although he took a rubber-tipped cane to work every day he seldom used it.

  Russell scrubbed the big lakeside window, put on his jacket, and went out to dump the bucket into the lake. When that was done he carried the first of a row of propane tanks from the dock to the side of the building and filled it from the big tank. He forced himself to put his brain on suspension while he performed these menial chores. He had topped off the last of the portable tanks and was on his way to the storeroom to dispose of the empty boxes there when he spotted the gray Plymouth parked at the edge of the lot in front of the building. Looking at the twin whip antennae mounted on the rear fenders, Russell wondered why they didn’t just go ahead and paint PIG on all four sides. He wondered too how they managed to make their vehicles materialize in select locations without anyone noticing them approaching. He swore the spot had been empty five seconds earlier.

  The pig was standing inside the storeroom when Russell entered through the door from the dock. The man was black—which threw Russell, although he knew there were black officers with Detroit—coarse-featured, and obviously well built beneath his charcoal suit and tan topcoat. Russell might have taken him for some kind of athlete if he hadn’t spoken to Pinky or seen the unmarked police unit outside. He looked to be in his early twenties and wore his hair in the understated natural that had begun to spread through the black middle class after the shock of the sixties wore off. When it got so you couldn’t tell the pigs from the regular brothers, maybe it was time to start looking in some new directions.

  “Russell Littlejohn?”

  That nailed it. Only a pig called you by both names.

  “Who’s asking?”

  This one carried his shield in his bare palm, no hot-shit leather folder. It wasn’t gold either, but the plain silver of the uniformed cop on the beat. Russell felt a little more sure of himself then. This was no fulltime detective. “See they let you wear long pants today.”

  The pig didn’t look offended. He even smiled a little. “My name’s Charlie Battle, Russell. You can call me Officer Battle.”

  “You can call me busy. Pinky don’t like us talking on shop time.” He lifted an empty carton off the top of a stack and carried it out to the dumpster. He half expected the pig to follow him, but when he went back inside, Battle was standing on the same spot. When Russell reached past him to pickup another carton, Battle swept out a hand and closed it on Russell’s wrist tightly.

  “I talked it over with your boss. He said it was okay.” There was no strain in the detective’s tone.

  Russell, who had tensed his biceps when his wrist was seized, relaxed them. Battle turned the young man’s hand palm up and squeezed the tendon at the base of his thumb, spreading Russell’s fingers. Then he let go. Russell could still feel the pressure afterward. The detective’s fingers were like articulated iron.

  “I’m looking for a speedboat,” Battle said.

  “We got lots. Don’t look for no low rates just because the lake’s froze over, though. Pinky don’t give discounts.”

  “Actually I’m looking for the pilot of a speedboat. Someone took this one out late New Year’s Eve.”

  “It wasn’t nobody here. We was closed from Thanksgiving till the day after New Year’s.”

  “So was every other marina on the lake, or the half of them I’ve been to, anyway. None of them reported a boat stolen, so I’m assuming somebody borrowed one. Pinicus says you have a key to the back door. Did you use it that night?”

  “You don’t need to get in to take a boat. They was all tied up at the dock.”

  “All the ignition keys are hanging inside, behind the counter.”

  “Anybody can hot-wire a boat.”

  “Russell, I’m getting a lot of answers from you and none of them fits the question. Did you take a boat out New Year’s Eve?”

  “No. I stayed home that night and read Motorcycle World.”

  “It took you all night to read one magazine?”

  “Who’m I, Evelyn Wood? I got up a couple times to take a leak.”

  “That’s not a very exciting evening for a young guy like you.”

  “I guess you don’t know what kind of young guy I am.”

  “Is there someone who can confirm you were home between nine and ten-thirty?”

  “My parents, maybe, but I didn’t see them. I got an apartment with its own entrance. What if they can’t? You going to arrest me?”

  Battle put his hands in the pockets of his topcoat. “I found your record at Juvenile Division. You were busted when you were seventeen for sticking up a movie theater. The crime I’m investigating is armed robbery.”

  “You need a gun to stick up a place. They didn’t find no gun on me when they picked me up. I pleaded guilty to assault.
Anyway I got no record as an adult. This that Crownover thing, right? I heard about it from the TV. Seems to me this pig that blowed away every brother at the party’s the one in trouble.”

  “That’s what I’m investigating. Whoever drove that speedboat away from the party when the shooting started is the only one who can tell us whether Junius Harrison was in on the heist or just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone else involved is dead. I’m not saying that boatman is going to walk, but if he comes forward and tells the truth, some judge will consider that when he hands down his sentence. The robbery itself isn’t important,”

  “Bullshit. When you’re in on a stick-up and somebody gets iced, don’t matter if it’s one of the stick-up guys, whoever’s left gets nailed for felony murder. I know that much.”

  “That’s the theory, only it almost never works out that way in court.” Battle took his hands out of his pockets. There was something in one of them. “I could arrest you right now, Russell. Those needle tracks between your fingers are fresh. That’s probable cause for a warrant to search your apartment. A gram of heroin is enough to send you to Jackson for a couple of years.”

  “Go ahead and toss it. You won’t find nothing.” Russell wondered what was in the pig’s hand. It was too small for a piece.

  “I don’t like that,” Battle said. “Everybody has something he doesn’t want found. Unless he’s got a good reason to get rid of it.”

  Russell said nothing.

  In the silence a heavy truck whined past on Jefferson, chuckling over a break in the pavement. Battle stuck out the hand. Russell jumped, but there was nothing but a card between the fingers.

  “That’s Special Investigations. Ask for me, Charlie Battle. If I come back here uninvited, there won’t be a thing I can do for you.”