“This ain’t a favor, it’s a business proposition. When they took down the bishop, the meal ticket went with him. Before that we stood to split a thousand a month for life.” He cut the figure in half out of habit. “If Steelcase was going to pay that much to hush up what happened to the monsignor, think what Newton would contribute. All them jerks in Washington want to be president.”
“Why would Newton care how a Detroit priest died?”
“That’s what I want to find out. It’s hard to blackmail somebody when you don’t know what you got on him.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I just give you back your pictures? I’m not cut out to be a crook. I stink at it.”
“There could be a million in it.”
“Dollars?”
“Hell, BMWs. You ever seen what a politician pays the phone company?”
Neal pushed away his plate. “I’d need to program the machine to keep throwing codes until it accessed.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I can’t do that on my system. You need an office computer for that.”
Ralph chewed and thought. “If I get you one, can you do it?”
“You don’t find them in the five-and-dime. You need the use of a state-of-the-art system for several hours.”
“Answer the question.”
Neal sighed. “I was honest before you came along. Yeah, I can do it.”
“I knew it. From now on it’s you and me, pal, fifty-fifty. Just like the old days.”
Neal glared at him from under his heavy brows. “You cross me, I’ll have your balls for breakfast. I’ve got a client owes me a favor. G. Gordon Liddy fired him because he scared him.”
“I never stiff friends.” Ralph finished his meal and rose. “Don’t forget what I said about the tip.”
Chapter 18
“Anita, call security,” Lucille Lovechild said into the intercom. “It’s back.”
Ralph, standing in front of her desk holding his hat, said, “I ain’t here to cause trouble. I changed my mind about that severance pay.”
“Cancel security, Anita.”
“Phooey,” the receptionist’s voice crackled. “Get me all excited, then quit. Just like my first husband.”
Lucille sat back, toying with her eyeglasses. She had on a blue suit with a skinny necktie that made her look like Nixon. “What happened to your new job?”
“Small delay. The boss died.”
“My condolences. Was it before or after he sobered up and found out whom he’d hired?”
“The offer’s still good. I just need operating expenses till it comes through. I just paid forty to get my car out of the impound.”
“How much were we paying you?”
“Three hundred a week.”
“Try one-sixty. Of which we withheld fifteen.” She pressed the intercom button. “Anita, cut Poteet a check for two hundred and ninety dollars.”
“What’d he do, sell you his entire wardrobe?”
“Just make out the check.”
While they were waiting, Ralph put on his hat. “How’re things in the hole?”
“If you mean the file room, I’m turning it into an employee lounge. Everything’s in the computer and I don’t need a place to hide you anymore.”
“What’d you say?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t need a place to hide you anymore?”
“No, before that.”
“The files are all in the computer. Why?”
He shrugged elaborately. “Uh, what’s Chuck Waverly up to?”
“Forget Chuck Waverly. He doesn’t exist for you. I have hopes of turning that young man into a first-class operative and the last thing he needs is to keep company with a dime detective like you.” She said it with some heat.
Ralph got out a matchstick. “I was right about Klugman, huh? He was tapping his own till for some skirt.”
“I don’t discuss this firm’s cases with outsiders. Thank you, Anita.”
The platinum-haired receptionist handed Lucille the check and slapped Ralph. The noise was like a pistol shot.
He put a hand to his cheek. “You had some lint on the back of your dress.”
She slammed the door behind her.
Lucille signed the check and held it out. “Take care of yourself, Poteet. It’s a cinch no one else will.”
“Babies get took care of. Grownups need cash.” He folded the check and put it in his breast pocket.
“That’s your exit line.”
In the reception room he hesitated. The Rolodex containing the home addresses and telephone numbers of personnel, Chuck Waverly’s included, was in plain sight at Anita’s left elbow. She was reading a magazine as usual.
“Anita, you got a smudge on your nose.”
“Ralph, I got a pain in my ass.” She didn’t look up.
“No, I mean it. You better go powder it or whatever it is you broads do.”
“I’ll powder my nose when the pain in my ass is gone.”
Ralph, deep in thought, was getting into his car in the parking lot when a brand-new yellow Volkswagen Rabbit pulled into the space next to his.
“Mr. Poteet?”
“Go fuck yourself.” He slammed his door. Then he opened it again. “Kid, is that you?”
Chuck Waverly was beaming over the Volkswagen’s roof. His hair was fiery red in the afternoon sunlight, putting the carrots in the Cadillac Club to shame. “Hello, Mr. Poteet. I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again.”
“How was jail, kid?”
“Worse than I expected. You wouldn’t believe what they put me in with.”
“If it wasn’t a mountain man named Warren, you was ahead of the game.”
“I wanted to thank you for that advice. Klugman was in the room next door when the excitement broke out at the Acre of Ecstasy. It made him nervous and he dropped his insurance claim. Mrs. Lovechild gave me a bonus.”
“I bet she loved that.”
“She acted like I was holding her up. But she made up the bonus rule, so she couldn’t refuse. She also put a reprimand in my file for violating company policy.”
“Forget about it. If reprimands was bullets I’d be a tennis racquet.”
“I wasn’t complaining. I made a down payment on this car with the bonus.”
Ralph sensed something. “You got your priorities in order, kid. Glad I could help.” He started the Riviera. As he was turning his head to back out of the space, he locked gazes with Waverly, who was standing by the Riviera now and bending down. Feigning surprise, Ralph cranked down the window. “What now, kid?”
“I was just wondering.”
“No good. Hurts the head. Spit it out.”
“I was thinking, maybe if you weren’t too busy sometime, I could tag along with you on a case and get some pointers. You know, about detective work.”
“What case? I’m unemployed.”
“Not for long, I bet.”
“Forget it, kid. It’s the jail food talking. That saltpeter does something to both ends.”
“The best detectives always went to jail. Lew Archer—”
“A wienie. They’d bugger him into next Tuesday at County. Anyway, he wasn’t real.”
“I know that. I just thought—”
“I don’t know, kid.” Ralph chewed his matchstick. “I might be working on something you can help with.”
“Great! What is it?”
“Hang on. It’d be like an internship. No pay, just experience.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Ralph smiled. “You got access to that computer Lucille’s always bragging about?”
Ralph’s apartment still smelled of April Dane. He couldn’t tell if it was a scent she used or if it was just her, but it lingered hours after she had caught a cab home to Ann Arbor. He opened a window to let in some of the mildewy Detroit air he was used to and called Neal’s office.
“Go away, Ralph.”
“How�
�d you know it was me?”
“Because I’m busy.”
“Listen, we’re meeting Chuck Waverly at Lovechild Confidential Inquiries tonight at ten.”
“What’s a Chuck Waverly?”
“Young squirt at Lovechild thinks I spit the moon. I didn’t tell him what we needed to find out, just said we needed to break a security code. He says the office machine can handle it. He’s letting us in after closing.”
“What’d you promise him?”
“Hands-on training from the best private star in Detroit.”
“The guy on West Grand River?”
“Funny. Can you make it?”
“I guess so. Do I need a black turtleneck and one of those two-foot-long flashlights?”
“Not to go in the front door. This is strictly legal, I tell you.”
“Boss know about it?”
“That’d just complicate things.”
“So we’re breaking in.”
“Hell no,” Ralph protested. “The kid’s got a key. Just to be safe, though, we’re going in the back door. The cops might not know we got a right to be there.”
“Uh-huh. You said ten o’clock?”
“Ten, like in ten times a thousand makes a million.”
“More like ten to life. I’ll be there.” Neal hung up.
Ralph spent the next half hour tidying the apartment. He straightened overturned chairs and tables, threw his shirts and underwear into their proper drawers, replaced cushions with the slashed sides down. When he was through with that, all the place needed was a mop and a bucket of disinfectant, like always. Finally he emptied the dregs of three different kinds of liquor from six bottles into a glass tumbler and emptied that down his throat. He dumped the empties into a plastic garbage bag with the rest of the debris, opened the bedroom window, took aim on the dumpster in the alley, and let go. It landed with a whump, displacing a similar amount of senior trash and sending two cats and a man in a dirty sports jacket and a hat like Ralph’s over the side. Then he went downstairs. The dregs had only whetted his thirst.
“’Afternoon, Mrs. Gelatto,” he said as he rounded the second-floor landing.
The old woman standing at the foot of the stairs looked up, adjusted her thick glasses, and pointed a red-knuckled finger. “That’s him!”
Then Ralph saw the young police officer standing next to her, the one he’d seen twice before. In front of them the door hung open to the apartment where Ralph had stashed Vinnie’s body. The officer unholstered his revolver.
“Freeze!”
Ralph had never heard a policeman actually say it before, except on television, which was where he suspected the officer had got it. He wondered if anyone ever froze. His instincts told him not to. He had turned and now was running up the stairs he’d just come down. Behind him he heard other feet pounding.
On his floor, panting, he fumbled for his keys, then said to hell with it and went through what was left of the door, which started his nose bleeding again. The window where he’d stood to dump the trash was still open. Without hesitating he ran to it, let himself over the sill, sat there for a second, then, as footsteps hit the hallway outside his apartment, pushed off. For a second he was airborne. Then, with a jolt that drove his knees into his chin, he was sitting among the coffee grounds, banana skins, squashed Dixie cups, and five of the six very hard liquor bottles he had thrown out moments before.
When he pushed his hat back from his eyes, his face was inches from that of the man in the Tyrolean and dirty jacket, who had evidently just returned to the dumpster. He had the sixth bottle tipped upside down and was rubbing at the inside of the neck with a crusty finger. Ralph recognized him as the bum he had splashed yesterday.
The man sucked on the finger and screwed up his face. “You drink this shit?” he said.
Chapter 19
Ralph couldn’t believe his luck. Although black, the derelict was built along his own slightly dumpy lines and their hats were the same except that the feather was missing from the derelict’s and the nap had worn off, leaving it shiny in spots. The only jarring note was the sports jacket, orange-and-green plaid under a patina of filth. Ralph’s suitcoat was a more conservative dark polyester.
“You got roller skates or what?” Ralph asked. “I thought all you bums stayed in one place.”
“I ain’t no bum,” said the bum.
“What are you, Miss October?”
“When them Christmas decorations go up in Hudson’s, I’m one of the homeless.”
“Can you drive a car, Homeless?”
“Is Carlos king of Spain?”
“That mean you can drive a car?”
“Hey, I wasn’t always like this. I was Jimmy Hoffa’s bodyguard.”
“Homeless, how’d you like to make ten bucks easy?”
“Did Gabriel García Márquez win the Nobel Prize?”
“Let me guess. You sleep in the library.”
“Man, you can find me between Hispanic Studies and Istanbul any Tuesday. That’s the tall-books shelf; I toss around some,” he added, smiling with three teeth that had never been introduced.
Ralph held up a ten-dollar bill. “First, we change jackets.”
Homeless frowned speculatively, put down the empty bottle, and felt one of Ralph’s lapels between thumb and forefinger. “I’m partial to wool,” he said. “But okay.”
They made the exchange. Ralph handed him the bill and his keys. “There’s a red Riviera parked in front of the building. Get to it and scratch rubber. You’ll be chased.”
“Cops or Mafia?”
“Cops.”
“Okay. I don’t mess around with no Cosa Nostra. Where you want me to leave it?”
“Ditch it anywhere. It ain’t mine and the owner’s got other problems.” Ralph heard running footsteps in the alley. “Get going.”
“They be shooting?”
“That shouldn’t bother Jimmy Hoffa’s bodyguard.”
“Back then I wasn’t standing in front of no bullets for less’n twelve yards a week.”
“What can I say? The market’s thin.”
Homeless shrugged, squared his hatbrim, flicked an orange peel off the sleeve of Ralph’s suitcoat, and vaulted over the top of the dumpster. Ralph heard the officer shout “Freeze!” again and then there were galloping footsteps. A shot made the sides of the dumpster ring. Under the echo he heard more running, probably the officer’s.
He stayed where he was even after he heard the Riviera coming to life with the terrible grinding noise of a tortured starter and then the shrilling of rubber on asphalt, indicating that Homeless had made his escape; he wasn’t sure whether the officer had called for a backup to watch the alley. He spent the time among the wet coffee grounds and used Kleenexes deep in a philosophical study. This wasn’t the cushy spot he had been anticipating.
After about ten minutes he grasped the edge of the dumpster and peered over. One of the slat-sided cats he had frightened away earlier was licking an empty plastic meat tray on the pavement. Otherwise Ralph appeared to be alone. He climbed out. The loud jacket had begun to itch ominously.
Just to be sure he wasn’t seen, he scaled the alley fence into the parking lot next door, stepped out into a side street, and walked for several blocks along the sides of buildings not intended for public viewing. The air had become chill and he took his warmth from the legality of his condition and the exhaust fans blowing kitchen odors from Thai restaurants, bar grills, and diners run by men named Mac and Buster with their service records tattooed on their forearms. At length he came out on Michigan Avenue, where six cabs passed him by before a nearsighted, born-again Christian hack driving an old Checker took pity on the man in derelict’s clothing and stopped.
“Let’s see your cash, brother.”
Ralph got his wallet out of his hip pocket and showed him. The driver peered at the picture of the costar of The Dukes of Hazzard.
“Okay, hop in, Mr. Wopat.”
In the cab, Ralph felt somethin
g in the right side pocket of his jacket, found a half-eaten Ding Dong that had either been thrown into the dumpster or belonged to Homeless or both, sniffed at it—he hadn’t eaten since the Cadillac Club—and reluctantly tossed it out the window when it proved to be moldy. He caught the driver glaring at him in the rearview mirror.
“Where to, Tom?”
Ralph hesitated. He had five hours to kill in a city that was hunting him for murder. “Ann Arbor,” he said. “I’ll tell you where to go when we get there.”
“Folks generally do, brother.”
The trip was memorable. The driver provided Ralph with a detailed account of how he had come to find Jesus and, somehow avoiding blasphemies, managed to curse at every driver who changed lanes within his vision, which extended roughly eleven inches beyond the Checker’s hood. It was like being driven by a Mrs. Gelatto with religion. In Ann Arbor, they shot across an intersection a full ten seconds after the light had turned red, with a city police car just two cars behind them. Through the back window Ralph saw its flashers come on, but then the cab roared over a steep hill and swung around a corner at the bottom, bumping over the curb and scattering a group of young men dressed in fraternity sweaters waiting to cross the street.
“I think you lost him,” Ralph said.
“Lost who, brother?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yes, brother, yes.”
Three major traffic infractions later and two blocks from April Dane’s apartment, Ralph told the driver to pull over and got out.
The driver took his fare. “Good luck to you, Mr. Wopat. I know you’ll see the light.”
“It’s a wonder you did.”
April opened her door wearing a Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt and cutoffs. Her feet were bare and her hair was tied behind her neck. When she recognized Ralph, her face brightened. “Hi!”
“Yeah. Lemme in. There’s a campus cop downstairs.”
She stood aside and he swept past her. “Are you in some kind of trouble?” She closed and locked the door.
“Same old kind. You got anything to drink?”
“Just Diet Coke.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t drink. I could go get something.”
Peeper Page 11
