MOTOR CITY BLUE

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Does that go for the guy that looks like Kong and talks like Willie Best out front?”

  That took a moment to seep through. Then she laughed that tinkly little laugh again. “You mean Felix. Yes, he’s harmless. If you believe what he says, he’d have been the world heavyweight champion in 1936 if they hadn’t forced him to throw his biggest fight. If they did, it was the only time he was ever paid for something he did all the time unintentionally and for free.”

  While she was talking, a slender black girl with very closely cropped hair drifted down the stairs, smiled at me dazzlingly, helped herself to a cigarette from the box on the table, and retreated back to the second story. I watched her openly. Anything else would have been ludicrous, as she was wearing a pair of rubber shower clogs and nothing else. Her skin was deep brown with a purplish tint. She had conical breasts and round, firm buttocks and a pubic patch that grew wild over her small mound, untouched by any razor. As she walked, the loose clogs came up and slapped the soles of her feet, but aside from that she made no sound at all. The dog watched her movements with a bored expression. Naked females were nothing new to him.

  I won’t say I wasn’t stirred. I’ve slept with women who didn’t move like that when they were fully clothed. But drinking’s the only vice I indulge in before noon. I reached over and stubbed out what was left of my cigarette and hoped to hell my hand wasn’t shaking as noticeably as it seemed.

  Beryl Garnet looked amused. She was still scratching Ulysses, who was sitting beside her chair now and, it appeared, studying my throat closely. “Don’t let Iris embarrass you,” she said. “She’s new. They’re like children at that stage, always trying to shock the grownups. I’ve found that if you ignore them when they do something outrageous, they soon become embarrassed themselves and stop.” She let her hand drop back into her lap. The Dane swung its mammoth head in her direction, looking for more attention; when none came it got up, stretched, its bones cracking, and trotted out the doorway through which it had entered.

  “You’re dying to know what a sweet little old lady like me is doing running a whorehouse.” She brushed fussily at the dog hairs adhering to her pink skirt. “When you’re my age you’ll realize that you don’t get to be a sweet little old anything without seeing a lot of life whether you want to or not. My husband was a pimp. In some circles that’s considered an insult, but it never was in our house. The money he made doing what he did best gave us both a very handsome living and I saw no reason to give it up just because he died. It pays better than Social Security, and if I have to spend a night in jail now and then, those are the chances I take, like falling out of bed and breaking my hip. Only it’s less painful and in the long run much more rewarding. But listening to an old woman’s prattle won’t help you find the girl you’re looking for, will it?”

  My hand stopped halfway to the pictures in my pocket. “Who talked?”

  The Cupid’s-bow took an adorable dip. That was the word, adorable. “You did, Mr. Walker. You told my maid you were a private investigator. They’re nothing new here. We average two or three a year, hired by some father or mother or uncle or grandparent who hasn’t seen Suzy since the senior prom. They usually come during business hours, though, so that if nothing comes of it the trip won’t be a total waste and they can charge it to expenses. Sometimes I can help them, sometimes not. If it weren’t for runaways, I’d have to advertise under Help Wanted. I don’t get many calls from placement services.”

  “How about her?” I gave her the graduation shot. She fished out a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses and peered at it as if it were a doubtful twenty. Almost immediately she broke into a smile. A real smile this time, showing a row of perfect teeth molded and matched by a dental technician’s patient hand.

  “That’s Martha.” She handed it back. “A lovely girl. I knew she belonged to somebody.”

  “Martha Burns?”

  She nodded. “You’ve done your homework.”

  “Someone’s been doing it for me. Is she here?”

  “Heavens, no. Not since early February. She left on Groundhog Day. Don’t ask me why I remember that.”

  “Did she say where she was headed?”

  “No again. Girls in this business seldom leave forwarding addresses. Or their right names, for that matter.”

  “Tell me a story.” I got out my notebook and pencil.

  She removed her glasses and put them away. The sparkle in her eyes had changed. “No, you start. My girls call me Aunt Beryl, Mr. Walker, because I look after them. I wouldn’t want to turn any dogs loose on them. Especially not on Martha. I have to know why you want her.”

  I gave her my spiel, minus names and specific places. She watched me the way an auditor studies the books.

  “Have you ever considered grifting, Mr. Walker?” she asked when I had finished. “We get a lot of confidence men here. Most are like you, polite and youthful-looking and brimming with sincerity, but you’ve got something most of them haven’t. I think it’s the brown eyes. They make me think I can read your mind. Anyway, I’ll take the chance.”

  She talked. I wrote.

  9

  “SHE SHOWED UP ON my doorstep December twenty-eighth.”

  The old lady folded her pink, useless-looking hands and stared at me with her brilliants, waiting for me to ask the question. When I didn’t, she continued as if I had. “I know it was the twenty-eighth because that’s the only slow day we get during the holiday season, midway between Christmas and New Year’s. ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ is a nice song, Mr. Walker, but that’s all it is. If everybody who sang it meant the words, I’d be working for the Post Office come December. Right away I could see she was a young lady. That seems to be a dirty word among women these days, but there’s an art to looking like you belong everywhere you’re seen without becoming part of the scenery. She had that. She had a great deal more, not that it did me any good.”

  “I’ll bite. Why not?” I looked up from my scribbles.

  “I’m coming to that. She was with a young man. At least I think he was young. It was so hard to tell with his collar turned up and that hat he had jammed down to his eyes. And it was dark, about three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Hat?”

  “Gray felt, with a wide brim. A fedora, we used to call it. Like the one my maid said you were wearing when you arrived.”

  I was beginning to think I could walk around town naked except for that hat and it would be the only thing anyone noticed.

  “Black? White? Oriental? Aztec?”

  “He was black. Well-built, leaning toward heavy. He seemed young as I said. On the green side of forty anyway, and to me that’s almost adolescent. I didn’t recognize him. He seemed to be afraid someone would though, judging by that costume.” She giggled girlishly. On her it fit. “Men are amusing creatures. Of course he didn’t realize that all he was doing was calling attention to himself, rather like those movie stars who go around wearing dark glasses on cloudy days. His features were very average. I’m sure I could pick him out of a lineup, but I’d never be able to describe him so that you’d know him if you met.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, to put it bluntly, he shoved a fistful of fifty-dollar bills into my hands and told me I had a boarder. Actually he was much more tactful, but that’s what it amounted to. I got the impression I had no choice in the matter.”

  “Aren’t you the boss in your own place of business?”

  “Are you?” She smiled again. “The point is, young man, that we all take orders from someone. In my case the someone can be particularly unpleasant when you ask too many questions. Ask Felix. If you’ll pardon my being coarse, his kidneys haven’t functioned properly since he started complaining too loudly about having to lose that fight I told you about. Besides, I was holding eight hundred dollars in cash, which makes a compelling argument even when you’re not assured, as I was, that the incident would be repeated twice a month for as long as the gentleman chose to k
eep her beneath my roof.”

  I whistled. It seemed called for. “How did she act?”

  “Shy. She let her escort do the introducing. I think you suspect she was a prisoner. That may have been the case, but if so it was the strangest relationship between a captive and her keeper I’ve ever heard of. She was hanging on his arm as if he were the only thing that kept her from plunging forty stories to her doom, as the announcer used to say at the end of each chapter during those marvelous old Hollywood serials. But of course that was before your time. Television is a poor substitute. I never watch it myself, nor read the newspapers. I’m prattling again.” She shrugged daintily. “She seemed reluctant; nothing more.”

  “She wasn’t turning tricks?”

  “No. He was specific about that. Brutally specific. If he got wind that she was anything more than a guest in this house, he explained, I’d be wise to hold onto the money for plastic surgery.” She heaved a ladylike little sigh. “It was such a waste, too. There are men among my clientele who in a moment of inebriation would have signed over controlling interest in their companies for one night with a girl like Martha.”

  “She was that much of a looker?”

  “Not just that. She was lovely, yes, but at this level of the business nothing less would be acceptable. Detroit isn’t some dusty cowtown in Reconstruction Texas, where anything in skirts was enough of a novelty to be worth a month’s hard wages. It was everything about her: her carriage, clothes, the way she behaved toward others, aloof yet unspoiled. Women like that are walking aphrodisiacs. Men dream of obtaining them in the same way the captain of a scow fancies himself at the wheel of the Queen Mary. That simile’s as mixed up as it is anachronistic, but I think you know what I’m driving at. The lady was just that, a lady. God help her, there aren’t many left.”

  “How did it work out?”

  “Better than you’d think. A situation like that is bound to cause jealousy among the other girls, but despite her obvious breeding Martha was such an unassuming, likable individual that the others took to her right off. She was a talented singer with a remarkably good voice, and knew her way around a keyboard. On a slow night the girls would spend hours around that piano just listening to her. If there was any conflict I’d have known about it.”

  I scratched a handful of meaningless signs on the page to make her think I considered that worth preserving. “What about the raid last January?”

  For an instant she stopped being Aunt Beryl, and I found myself looking at a whorehouse madam. Then she pulled her gentility back up. “That, Mr. Walker, was double-dealing of the vilest sort. I pay good money to people in high places to prevent that kind of thing from happening. I’m not naïve. I understand politics and I realize that arrests must be made from time to time for certain officials to remain in office. All I’ve ever requested is advance warning so that people like Martha and my maid and my more important customers may be spared unnecessary embarrassment. Ten months ago they forgot that part, and I assure you that there have been some nervous people in the City-County Building ever since.”

  “Is that why she left? Because of the raid?”

  “Yes. It was a foolish business. They had no evidence, and so everyone was released the next day, after the media had lost interest. Most of the girls took it in stride, but not Martha. She locked herself in her room and none of us saw her for days. Even took her meals there. When she didn’t answer my knock the morning of February second, I got my passkey and went in. She was gone, along with her clothes and luggage. She’d sneaked out early that morning after everyone had gone to bed to stay.”

  “Alone?”

  She nodded. “Her gentleman friend fairly raised the roof a couple of nights later when he came to visit her and found she’d left. He made all sorts of threats. I had to call Felix to persuade him to leave.”

  “Any idea where she might have gone?”

  She started to shake her head and stopped. She called the maid. “Corinne, dear, do you recall that funny Greek fellow who was here New Year’s Eve? You know, the one who said he owned a recording studio? Didn’t he give us his card?” When Corinne withdrew to fetch it: “You see what I mean by ‘funny,’ Mr. Walker. Any man who would leave his right name, let alone his card, in a place like this–” Corinne reentered and handed her a small white pasteboard rectangle with printing on it. “Barney Zacharias. That was his name. He heard Martha singing and playing and told her she’d make a fine recording star. Of course that’s just a variation on a line as old as the Greek theater, but she seemed mildly interested.”

  She gave me the card. It read:

  APHRODITE RECORDS

  Bernard Zacharias, Prop.

  The address was clear out in River Rouge. I pocketed it. Then I passed over the other picture of Marla Bernstein. She hauled out her glasses again.

  I hadn’t expected it to shock her and I wasn’t disappointed. “Martha?” she asked calmly, peering at me over the rims.

  “If Martha’s the girl I’m after. Would you know where that was taken?”

  “I have no idea.” She returned it. “You see, Mr. Walker, the market that buys pictures like that is entirely different from mine. People who look don’t do, and vice versa.”

  I put away my paraphernalia and got up. “Thanks, Mrs. Garnet. I wonder if I might talk to one or two of your girls before I go? Just to make sure I haven’t missed anything.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” She arose gracefully except for a little hop at the beginning to bring her tiny feet into contact with the floor. “They couldn’t supply anything more than I have. As I said, I know everything that goes on here.”

  “Just to make sure.”

  “I’m sorry, but I must insist. I don’t want my girls talking to men before business hours. It makes them independent.” Her eyes now were hard little steel pellets sunk in folds of fat. I studied them a while and nodded. The maid glided in with my coat and hat, helped me into one and handed me the other. Beryl Garnet restrung the Cupid’s-bow. “Good-bye, Mr. Walker, and don’t forget us after sundown. Corinne, show him out.”

  “No need. I’m a detective.”

  She laughed as I made my way to the door, then turned and waddled airily back out through the arch. The maid vanished again. I had my hand on the knob when someone whispered my name. I turned around, but there was no one there. I made another assault on the door.

  “Mr. Walker. Up here.”

  I looked up. Iris, the black, horseless Godiva of a few minutes before, stood on the staircase landing leaning over the bannister. She had drawn on a diaphanous lavender something that concealed her dark body about as well as vermouth conceals an olive. She signaled for me to join her.

  “You changed costumes,” I commented cleverly, as I mounted the landing. She shushed me and swished down the carpeted hallway in a manner that bore following. I didn’t resist. The view from up here was better.

  She led me through a door near the end into a no-nonsense bedroom with a number of feminine things scattered about the pile-covered floor and, so help me, a waterbed big enough to freeze and use for a skating rink, with a mirror mounted on the ceiling over it. I wondered if Aunt Beryl deducted the furnishings from her taxes. On signal I pushed the door shut behind me.

  We stood a couple of yards apart facing each other in silence. I finally tore my eyes away from the silhouette beneath the dressing gown long enough to note that the Turkish butt she had bummed downstairs was crushed into the bottom of an onyx ashtray on the dressing table, got out my pack, and offered her a Winston. She didn’t snatch at it; she lunged for it as if it were a piece of flotsam from the Titanic and she were a survivor. I took one for myself and lit them both, starting with hers. A quarter of it went in the first drag.

  “God, that’s good,” she said. “I’ve been smoking those fuses of Aunt Beryl’s so long I’d forgotten what a real cigarette tastes like.”

  I said nothing. She had a West Indian accent that went with her exotic figure. Her le
gs were long and slender, not the sticks they use in the pantyhose commercials, and ended in small feet with unpolished nails. She had a heart-shaped face and big eyes and regular islander features. The rest you know. She was devouring the cigarette, but it wasn’t what she really wanted.

  “What do you do, shoot it between your toes?” I asked.

  Her eyes expanded. “What are you talking about?” She fired it too fast.

  I seized her wrist and turned it over. “No tracks. Behind the knees is just as popular, but I’ve seen those too. That leaves between the toes, which is a painful place to stick a needle unless you care about your looks.”

  She snatched back her arm. White marks showed where my fingers had dug in. “How’d you know?”

  “You could be just naturally nervous, but you’re a hooker too. The rest was guesswork.”

  “Big deal detective stuff.”

  “It works one time out of six. What’ve you got for me?”

  She turned it on. Her hand went up and down my arm. “Maybe I just wanted to be alone with you.”

  “Truckers don’t go for Sunday drives.” I knocked her hand out of the way. “Spill it.”

  I braced myself for her palm. They don’t take it kindly when you turn down a freebie. At the last moment, however, she jammed the butt between her lips and sucked it down to the letters. Then she stabbed it out beside the Turkish.

  “All right, damn you. Aunt Beryl wasn’t telling you the truth when she said Martha wasn’t tricking.”

  “You were here then? I thought you were new.”

  “Everyone’s new the first year. It’s like tenure.”

  “Why would Aunt Beryl lie?”

  “She wasn’t lying. She didn’t know. Martha was taking them up here after working hours when the old lady was asleep.”

  “What about Felix?”

  She laughed. “Who do you think brought them here? She had him in for a third. That wasn’t hard for him after dealing smack and coke to me and some of the others as long as I’ve been here.”