“How’d you know about Martha?”
“She had the room next door. There are twice as many now as when the place was built. The partitions are made of Kleenex and spit. She cut me in for another third for the big hush.”
“Why was she tricking?”
“Why else? Money. She told me that boyfriend of hers didn’t give her any because he was afraid she’d leave. He was hiding her here for some reason; I never knew why and she never said. But she was climbing the walls to get out from the first night. Besides, I kind of think she needed it. To get laid, I mean. There aren’t as many like that in this line as most people think, but when one does come along she’s hell to compete with.” She shook her head, smiling. “One night she had two brothers up here at once. Jerry and Hubert Darling. I don’t know what they were doing exactly, but it sure made entertaining listening.”
“She was doing this all the time she was here?”
“Not for the first couple of nights. I guess she wanted to be on her good behavior until she got the lay of the land. Excuse the expression.”
“What do you know about her boyfriend?”
“Nothing. I never even saw him. Neither did any of the others. He only came to visit her two or three times, always after business hours when the rest of us were asleep. She clammed whenever anyone asked about him.”
“Why this concert?”
Her eyes went down, then up. “Look, you’re after Martha, right? Don’t answer that, it’s a bonehead question. What do you charge?”
“Like the man said, if you gotta ask, you can’t afford it.”
“It’s not a question of affording it. It’s not being able to afford not doing it. When Martha left she took something of mine with her. I want it back.”
“Cash?”
“She took some of that too, but I can get that much back on a good night. I’m talking about a little gold heart.”
I grinned. “A prostitute with a heart of gold?”
“Shut up, damn it! A little gold heart, about like this”–she made a circle with her index finger about the size of a collar button–“with a tiny loop for a gold chain but no gold chain. It and the cash were missing from my jewelry box the morning she split. It was a present from my mother the day I left home. I can’t go back without it.”
“When are you planning on going back?”
“Someday.”
“Uh-huh.”
The big eyes flared. “That means what?”
“Just uh-huh. What makes you so sure she took it?”
“She was the only one who knew where I kept the box. She saw me once through the connecting door when I was putting it away.”
“Why don’t you just get another one? They aren’t rare and they can’t cost any more than fifteen or twenty bucks.”
“Twenty-five. It’s got to be that one. I can’t explain it, but I just can’t see myself–without it I can’t go back. It’s the only thing I have that–” She trailed off.
“This is why the slow streak through the living room? To get my attention?”
She nodded.
“I’ll do what I can.” Before she could collapse on me I stuck the black and white snap under her nose. She took it in one hand, stared at it blinking, wiped a forearm across her eyes, sniffed, stared again.
“Is this Martha?”
“You tell me.”
She shrugged and gave it back. “If it is, she’s got a lot to learn.”
“Recognize the room?”
She shook her head. I disengaged myself and struck out for the stairs. On the landing I paused, then went on more slowly. Beryl Garnet was waiting for me at the base of the staircase with Felix and the great dog Ulysses.
10
STANDING BESIDE HIS COMPACT employer, the black man looked impossibly huge, his shoulders nearly as broad as she was high and each of his paws large enough to palm her fluffy head as if it were a regulation-size basketball. He had shed his parka, and the late-morning sunlight slanting in through the east windows shone off his shaven skull, an enormous, melon-shaped mass with thick veins drawn like cargo netting across the top. His oriental eyes, made so by the mantle of scar tissue that scabbed his forehead, did a slow burn as they watched me come down the stairs. They were as baleful as those of the big Dane standing on the other side of Aunt Beryl and just about as intelligent.
The lady herself eyed me with none of the sparkle I’d seen earlier. The more I saw of her the less she looked like a comfy throw pillow.
I stopped two steps from the bottom. This gave me an inch on Felix and, if I was alert, half a second to get to my Smith before he connected with one of those trained sides of beef he called fists. Having thirty years on an ex-prizefighter wasn’t enough, not even when he was a bad ex-prizefighter. I fished out my last cigarette and placed it in the corner of my mouth without lighting it, keeping my eyes on his left shoulder all the time. When it dropped I was going for the gun.
“What were you doing up there?” demanded the old lady. It was hard to imagine a voice like that laughing with a tinkle.
“You can’t blame a guy for trying,” I said. “I used to be pretty good at sneaking in for a free matinee when I was a kid. Guess I’ve lost the knack.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?”
“I had hopes.”
“Felix.”
She might have been calling to the dog. The big man’s shoulder dipped a fraction of an inch and I scooped the gun out of its holster and planted the muzzle between his eyes with a hollow clop. The fist stopped, hardly airborne.
“Brains don’t scrub out of carpets.” I spoke around the cigarette.
It would have gotten very quiet then if Ulysses weren’t growling.
“Pretty brave, ain’t you?” Felix rumbled. “With a piece.”
I said, “Thanks. That was all this scene lacked. A good cliché.”
“What were you doing up there?” Aunt Beryl repeated. “I have a right to know that, Mr. Walker. This is my house.”
I kept the gun and my mouth where they were.
“I have friends in the state police,” she said. “I can have your license revoked. Trespassing is an illegal act.”
“Do that. I’ll tell the board of inquiry I was trying to get information out of one of your whores.”
“You’ve made your point, Mr. Walker. Put the gun away.”
“Call off your animals.”
Felix, his fist still cocked, made a noise in his throat that drowned out the dog. I crunched back the hammer of the Smith, which was as effective as it was unnecessary.
“See to the rear walk,” directed his boss. “Take Ulysses.”
The fighter held his ground long enough to save the face of half a million Chinese, then lowered the massive left and shambled out, whistling through a space in his teeth for the dog to follow. I put away the revolver and was on my way past Beryl Garnet when she placed a hand on my arm.
Her tiny eyes glittered up at me. “I let you have that one, Mr. Walker. Next time I won’t be so sporting.”
I removed my arm from her hand and left her to her hookers and her big pets.
My usual space across from my building was taken by a dark green Mercury without a speck of chrome on it, one of the new small jobs, so I parked around the corner. I noticed as I walked back around to the front door that there were two men in it, the one behind the wheel reading a newspaper. Automobiles had become surprisingly popular study spots of late for November. I noted the license plate number as I went in.
Lunchtime found me at my desk polishing off one of those modern rarities, an unadorned hamburger, and washing it down with Pabst. Those finished, I dialed police headquarters and got a receptionist who explained that Lieutenant Alderdyce was on another line and put me on hold. Five lonely minutes later I got John.
“Got another number for you,” I said. “I may be getting paranoid, but I think my office is being watched.”
“So what’s new?” He sounded harried.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. What’s the Kramer burn doing under glass?”
“Forget it.” It came too fast.
“Come on, John. You know I’m good for it.”
“Goddamn it, I said forget it!” He caught himself shouting. He turned down the volume but left the intensity where it was. “Walker, I’m sick to Christ of you sticking your snooper into police business. I’m warning you, stay out of the Kramer case or I’ll see they yank your ticket for good!” He banged off.
I replaced the receiver as if it were a live bomb, zipped the top off a fresh pack of Winstons, and sat and smoked and wondered. I tried the number for Aphrodite Records, just for fun, and got a recording that told me Mr. Zacharias was out for a while, would I please wait for the beep and leave my name and number? I didn’t wait. I snatched up the morning Free Press and attempted to interest myself in Part One of a windy series on the life of the late Freeman Shanks. A stirring account of his struggle to survive a diabetic childhood. It didn’t stir me. Halfway through the second paragraph the door to my outer office opened and closed. When my visitor’s shadow appeared on the pebbled glass of the inner door I cranked down the drawbridge.
It was Rosecranz, the building super. He was a little man with a fraying face and scruffy hair from which all the color had run years ago and a posture so stooped he seemed to be lugging two thousand years of misplaced guilt in the bib of his overalls.
“Hope I ain’t caught you busy, Mr. Walker,” he squeaked. His vocal cords seemed always to be in need of a lube.
“Nobody’s timing is that good, Mr. Rosecranz.”
“I just wanted to remind you of the clause in your lease that says you can’t change what’s on the windows.”
I turned around to look at the single square window behind me, partially hidden behind the dusty, half-drawn venetian blinds. Then I turned back to give him the same blank expression.
“That fellow I let in an hour ago,” he said helpfully. “The one come in to measure for curtains. Your lease says you got to stick with them blinds. How’d it look to the folks outside if every office had something different on its windows?”
“What did this fellow look like?”
He frowned. “Not tall, not short. Dark hair. Kind of average. Looked like a lot of other fellows.”
“That’s probably what makes him average. Black or white?”
“Oh, he was white. I’d of said so if he was otherwise. He had on a blue suit, though, which struck me as kind of queer.”
“That it was blue?”
“That it was a suit. Where would he carry his folding rule?”
I thanked him and told him not to worry about the blinds. After he left I sat and smoked and crushed out the stub in the glass ashtray on my desk. I looked in all the drawers and underneath them. I checked out the file cabinet. I crawled on my hands and knees along the floor and ran my fingers over the baseboards. I stood on the desk and peered inside the glass mantle of the overhead fixture. I found a gum wrapper and six dead flies. Finally I sat back down, lifted the telephone receiver, and unscrewed the mouthpiece. A disc about the size of a dime and twice as thick was taped inside the rim.
I didn’t touch it. I screwed the whole thing back together and cradled it and lit up and sat and smoked and stared at the wall on the other side of which, three stories down, two men in a green Mercury were staring at the door of this building. Then I grabbed my hat and coat and headed for the hallway.
The sedan didn’t pick up on me right away. They were too good for that. It came into my rearview mirror when I was two blocks down Trumbull, and maintained that distance until I turned onto Michigan, where it fell back. That was what I’d been waiting for.
I had time to kill before Barney Zacharias came back from lunch. Without signaling I hung a sharp right onto Harrison, cutting across two lanes of traffic in front of a tanker with good air brakes and a healthy horn, squealed into a private driveway and sat there pretending to consult a map of Indiana while I waited for the fireworks. I barely got the thing unfolded when more rubber screamed, accompanied by fresh horns, and a dark green bullet shot down Harrison past the end of the strip of concrete where I was parked, rear end fishtailing on the slushy street surface. I banged the indicator into the R position and swung out behind them, gunned the engine, spun slush and snow until the tread caught, and tore off in their wake.
They must have seen me looming up in their rearview mirror, because I was almost on their bumper when they began pulling away. There was more mill under that nondescript hood than the engineers had in mind when they’d designed it. Even with my disguised Caddy I couldn’t take time out to burn tobacco without losing half a block. Bravery and cowardice had nothing to do with it; it’s disconcerting to go along thinking you’re the hunter and then suddenly find yourself the quarry. You need time to get away by yourself and think it out. I wasn’t letting them have it.
In a chase, all the advantage belongs to the guy doing the chasing. If the driver of the Merc knew where he was going, I knew where he’d been, and if he could take a forty-five-degree curve at eighty without turning his car into a football, or plow through a snowbank without getting stuck, I knew I could too. There were a couple of times when I could have swept alongside and forced him over, but I resisted the temptation. That kind of stuff works on the tube, but the only time you can expect the odds to be in your favor east of Hollywood is when you’re at the wheel of a semi or a tanker or a Sherman tank and your quarry isn’t. What I was doing was waiting for him to make his second mistake. His first was tailing me to begin with.
We shot past a couple of stop signs and splattered dirty spray over a pedestrian or two, and I was beginning to wonder if the eighth of a tank of gas I had left was going to hold out, when the idiot up ahead stood on his brakes. I was two car lengths behind him when I reacted. I floored the brake pedal, twisted the wheel left, and let the ice and snow under my tires do the rest. When Detroit stopped whirling I was parked facing in the direction from which I had come, one wheel was crammed up over the curb, and my right rear fender was snuggled against a stout maple planted in a box on the sidewalk. The tree would never be the same and neither would my bridgework.
My mirror had been knocked askew by something, probably my head. In the rectangular job mounted outside the driver’s window I could see the familiar rear of a dark green sedan and, hurrying toward me, the most average-looking guy I’d ever met. He had on a blue suit and a black topcoat and his hair was dark and the automatic in his left hand shone like a movie starlet’s hopes.
My revolver was in the glove compartment where I kept it while driving, a whole arm’s length away. My engine was still running. I punched the accelerator. The rear wheels whined merrily and that was it. I was stuck in a snowbank. My mirror was full of Mr. Everyday. I lunged for the glove compartment, but before I got there a hot light exploded at the base of my brain and suddenly it didn’t seem so important anymore. Stretching out on the seat did.
“He’s down, General,” said a voice on the other side of a blaze orange nightmare.
11
FICTION’S NICE. WHEN A writer hits his golden-armored alter ego with the Penobscot Building, the lucky slob gets a few minutes of much-needed sleep and comes out of it with no headache that three fingers of Hiram Walker’s won’t cure. He takes the count quiet and gets up disheveled but clean, his necktie romantically askew and a lock of hair hanging Gable-like over one eye. The rest of us go down shouting and swallowing our tongues, and when after a lifetime we finally slog our way back to the surface, we’re crumpled in the dusty corner of a rumbling automobile in a pool of our own vomit, our pockets hanging out and the linings of our thirty-dollar overcoats flapping where the stitches have been popped loose by a sharp knife.
I hadn’
t been completely out, naturally. If in the course of your daily routine you’ve ever been sapped on the underside of your occipital lobe by something like a pistol swung sideways, you know that it’s your motor functions that go first, making so much spaghetti out of the intricate nervous system that carries electrical impulses from your brain to your various muscles and turning your limbs into dead weight. Then your brain cells begin to blink out in clusters, then just one by one, until you’re left with just enough to wonder what was so bad about staying in bed that morning, and precious little else. Had the blow been just a little lighter I’d have tingled all over and caught myself before I’d gone down, and that would have been it except for a sore spot on the back of my head. Had it been just a little harder I’d have qualified for bed space in the produce section of the local supermarket, next to the other cabbages.
I knew it, but was powerless to stop it, when two pairs of hands working from opposite sides of the car turned me over and emptied my pockets and went through the linings of my coat and jacket. When I was lowered to the floor and folded into the corner under the dashboard to make room in the driver’s seat I knew that too, but only by the change of scenery since I was as numb as a victory party in the losing candidate’s campaign headquarters. My head began to throb dully as it rocked from side to side over the squishy spot with the lurching of the Cutlass being freed from its snowy prison.
For a while I fluttered in and out, and then reality slammed into me as suddenly as it had been taken away. I turned my head and retched again. That brought me up a rung or two from the bottom of the barrel, but it was a deep barrel and there was a lid on top. I attempted to spit out the farmer’s brogan in my mouth, but the taste was there to stay. Then I said something that wasn’t a sentence in any language I’d ever heard of and started the long crawl up to the seat.
“He’s coming around, General.”
The voice, which belonged to the driver, was the same one I had heard reporting my condition just after my lights were shot out. It was ordinary like the rest of him, innocent of regional accent, and about as distinctive as a paper clip. I sneaked a look at him as I was scaling the seat. He had a good profile, with a straight nose and clean line of jaw and dark, wavy hair, not short, not long, the way even politicians are wearing it these days. He could have been thirty or forty-five.
MOTOR CITY BLUE Page 8
