Silent Thunder

by Loren D. Estleman

  I opened my coat to show I was unarmed. He parked the copy of the Shotgun News he’d had in his lap over his sun visor and laid the nine-millimeter Beretta it had been hiding on top of the dash.

  “You got to cover your ass in this work,” he explained. “They found one of my old partners washing around a pier at the Detroit Yacht Club last week.”

  “They let him in?”

  “Just his top half. That’s all they found. Say, what you want to mess around with one of them big old water-cooled machine guns, anyway? I can put a Russian assault rifle in your hands for sixteen-fifty; weighs one-tenth as much and it’s a whole hell of a lot more accurate.”

  “Where’d you get it, Afghanistan?”

  I saw his molars again. “Man, these ain’t rare books I’m dealing. You don’t need to know where they come from.”

  “What about the big machine gun?”

  “Oh, I can get it. Them plastic rocket launchers, now; I ain’t ever seen one.”

  “Who has?”

  “What am I, a Spiegel catalogue? Do your own shopping. You want the machine gun or not? It’ll run you two grand.”

  I held up a hundred-dollar bill.

  He started sweating and licked his lips. He shook and panted and walked up his side of the cab and across the ceiling and down my side, where he sat up in my lap and begged. Mostly, though, he stayed where he was behind the wheel and made no reaction at all. “You want change?”

  “Uh-uh. Answers.”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  “Why?”

  “I ain’t going to put no shitty stick in it. Just hold it out.”

  I stuck out the hand without the bill in it. He made an impatient noise and turned it over so that the palm was up. He slipped two rings off his left hand and put them in it. He did the same with the three he was wearing on his right hand and unwound the gold chain from around his neck and added it to the pile. Finally he unplugged a diamond I hadn’t noticed from his left earlobe and placed it on top. The hand was getting hard to hold up.

  “That’s fifteen thousand,” he said. “I dressed light today on account of it’s hot. I wipe my ass on C-notes.”

  “Well, for the next time you take advantage of the two-for-one fajita special at Carlos Murphy’s.” I waved it.

  “You don’t understand, man. Wait.”

  He pulled up his tank top. There was no ruby in his navel, which disappointed me a little. What there was was an old scar angling jaggedly up from below the waistband of his shorts to the arch of his rib cage, grub-white against the bluish black of his skin. It was puckered on the edges where the stitches had been pulled out.

  I said, “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “In a way I did. I made a mistake when I was new. I sold a gun to a man and when he asked who I bought it from I told him. Turned out the man was the Man. I got twenny-six months in Cassidy Lake for possession and attempted sale of stolen property, but the man I bought it from pulled five to fifteen years in Milan for burglarizing the National Guard Armory in Grayling. A friend of his talked to me in the handball court at Cassidy. He did his talking with a linoleum knife.”

  “That must’ve smarted.”

  “Didn’t hurt at all, at the time. Two guys held me and he just kind of slid it up my belly. The skin opened up like a fucking theater curtain and I watched my guts dump out. The croaker in the infirmary let me wait while he was taking care of a dozen cases of food poisoning from last night’s haddock; he didn’t figure I was worth wasting time on. It hurt later, but what I remember most is watching my skin open up and them blue guts flopping out.” He tugged down the tank top and took back his jewelry.

  “So what about the hundred?” I asked.

  When he finished putting on the rings and chain he hit the power button and sat back, closing his eyes. The music came on full blast. I could feel the truck’s old frame buzzing. I punched for silence.

  “I’m not asking where you got any of the stuff you’re dealing. I just want to know who’s peddling military ordnance locally. I don’t care if he’s selling neutron bombs to minors. Let the Feds worry about that. I’ve got a client.”

  “Not for no hundred.”

  “How much?”

  “What’s your guts worth to you?” he asked.

  “Don’t go Saint Joan on me, Shooter. You haven’t got the wardrobe.”

  “For two grand I could buy it.”

  I turned on the music, held up a palm, and reached for the door handle. This time he cut the power.

  “Okay, eighteen. Nine hunnert to start.”

  “Five,” I said. “The first hundred now. But it’s got to turn into something.”

  “Fifteen. Half and half. No guarantees, man.”

  “Four hundred.”

  “That ain’t how it works,” he whined.

  I scooped the Beretta off the dash before he could move and kicked out the magazine. I heeled it back in and ran back the action. “Empty.” I tossed it into his lap. He gasped.

  “Watch the oysters, man. Loaded pieces scare the shit out of me.” He laid it on the seat. “A grand.”

  I got out my wallet and emptied it. “Two hundred’s all I got on me.”

  “That’s cool.” He plucked the bills and the original hundred out of my hand. “I call you when it’s set. We go see the man together. You better bring some for him too.”

  “You know my home number.”

  “You bet. You just sit there by that old telephone, wait for Shooter to call.”

  I snatched hold of his gold chain and gathered it in my fist. He said, “Grrrk!”

  “Twenty-four hours,” I said. “Then I come back and find out if your guts really are blue.”

  He nodded.

  I let go and hit the button on the dash. A band that would have a name like Painful Rectal Itch shrieked at me about the joys of having nails driven through one’s tongue.

  “Do yourself a big one, Shooter. Spend the money on a good hearing aid.”

  “What?”

  I shouted good-bye.

  Quitting time. I’d planned on stopping for supper, but I was out of cash and I’d left all my credit cards in my other pants along with my Millionaires Club key and the diploma from Harvard. Instead I battered my way home through rush-hour traffic and around a pair of lady cops who were busy tying knots in the intersections. I didn’t even have to smoke; I just rolled down the window and inhaled bus exhaust. By the time I swung into my driveway I had sweated through the white shirt and the knot of the red tie was down around my ankles.

  I did it up, though, because a burgundy BMW was parked in front of my garage. Before I got out, I opened the glove compartment, racked a shell into the chamber of my unlicensed Luger, and stuck it under my belt. I couldn’t remember entering any contests lately.

  6

  THE ANGLE OF the sun blanked out the car’s windows so I couldn’t see inside. I went up to the driver’s side, where my body blocked the light and I could tell that someone was sitting behind the wheel. Whoever it was didn’t move as I approached. I drew the Luger and tapped the butt against the glass. Going heeled always brings out my flair for the dramatic.

  Theater was satisfied. The man, who had been dozing, opened his eyes, saw the automatic, and gave up the color in his face. It was a handsome face if you were a mare, with a five o’clock shadow worse than mine, black, comma-shaped brows, and topped by a retreating hairline that had left a patch of black widow’s peak behind in its rout.

  I did the border spin for effect, ending up with the butt in my palm, and made a cranking motion with my free hand. He had to start the engine to open the electric window.

  “Mr. Walker?”

  Exhaling, I took the hammer off cock and returned the Luger to my belt. “Sorry. The neighborhood’s not what it was. Nice cars don’t always mean nice people.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “I’ve seen you on talk shows, Mr. Dorrance. I didn’t think famous lawyers drove their own cars
.”

  “I leased this one locally. I get most of my thinking done at the wheel.” He’d composed himself quickly, a big talent with courtroom attorneys. “I was at your office a little while ago, but you were out. I thought you’d gone home. Nobody told me things got this hot here in the summer.”

  “Give it three months.”

  “Of course, it gets a lot hotter in Boston than a lot of people think. Have you been to Boston?”

  “I trailed a bail-jumper there one winter. It can get cold there too.” I glued a cigarette to my lower lip. “Let’s go inside where we won’t have to talk about geography and the weather.”

  “Do you have air conditioning?”

  “I call it a window.”

  I opened his door for him. He was shorter than he appeared on television, although not short, and he was in his shirtsleeves with his tie loosened. They were expensive sleeves, too wrinkled to be anything but pure cotton, and the tie, slate-colored silk with a foulard pattern, would go at least seventy-five. He wore soft black loafers with tassels and thick soles, designed for standing for hours making impassioned speeches to juries. The maroon leather briefcase that a legal hawk like Dorrance would have lay on the passenger’s seat in front.

  He said nothing about my living room, but his coffee-colored eyes took in everything, from the clock that was not quite antique to my one good easy chair and the other sticks of furniture that had outlasted my marriage. Except for the clock I could walk away from all of it tomorrow without a last look. I opened the famous window and offered him a drink.

  “Thanks, I don’t. If you could spare a glass of water.”

  In the kitchen I cracked some ice, ran the tap into a tumbler tinted amber to disguise the Detroit in the local water, and mixed Ten High and Vernor’s for myself. I found him looking over my little library on the shelf over the television set.

  “Good books,” he said, accepting the tumbler. “And read, from the looks of them. I work with private investigators frequently. Not many of them read.”

  “I’m not like other investigators. I was abandoned by wolves as a child and raised by my father.”

  “He was without education, I gather. Those who have had it take it for granted in their children.”

  I let that wander and indicated the easy chair. I started to sit down on the sofa, paused, took the Luger out of my waistband, put it on the end table, and lowered myself the rest of the way, avoiding the weak spring. I knocked the head off my highball. “Let’s lose the small talk and get on with the firing, Mr. Dorrance.”

  He spent some time arranging the crease on his trousers before crossing his legs. “You’ve heard from Mrs. Thayer?”

  “Not since this morning when I took the job.”

  “I must be losing my poker face, then.”

  “You can play poker for me anytime, Mr. Dorrance. You’re not the only lawyer who works with private investigators. I knew before I left Ernest Krell’s house we’d have this meeting.”

  “Really. I didn’t.”

  “That’s because you didn’t know what he was up to. You’re not stupid. Just because you spend a lot of time polishing your public image doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten what put you where you are. This is a big case, a headline maker. You wouldn’t have let any such meeting take place without your presence if you’d known about it. Krell overstepped himself in going outside the agency without consulting you. He does that sometimes. He’s not a detective himself and doesn’t understand there are rules to these things.”

  “If you suspected that, why did you accept the case?”

  “First why don’t you tell me why you don’t want me on it.”

  He set down his water untasted. He’d never intended to drink any of it; taking it in the first place was one of the rules I’d been talking about.

  “I’m painting a picture with the help of the media,” he said. “The public must be made to view Constance Thayer a certain way. A thing like that requires teamwork. I can’t afford to have an independent operator running around stirring up dust. It blurs the picture.”

  “Sounds like you’re working on creating a jury in your own image,” I said. “Isn’t it your job to see the case never gets beyond the preliminary hearing?”

  “Everybody who ever watched Perry Mason thinks he knows what my job is. Let’s just say I play better when my bow has two strings.”

  “Mumbo jumbo. I’m not the Bloomfield Hills Wednesday Afternoon Ladies’ Social and Current Events Society.”

  “I guessed that. I’ll be more specific.” He drew a flat leather wallet from his shirt pocket and removed a pale green rectangle of paper. “This is a cashier’s check for twelve hundred dollars. I think it’s adequate compensation for your time.”

  “I agreed to two thousand dollars a week. I’ve only been on the case half a day.”

  “Consider it good faith money. I may have use for your services someday.”

  “Hold out your hand, Mr. Dorrance.”

  “What?”

  I took off my watch and extended it. He hesitated, then took it. Before he could withdraw his hand I got out my wallet and slapped it on top of the watch. Then I sat back.

  “I don’t understand.” He stared at the items.

  “The watch cost twenty-five bucks when I bought it two years ago,” I said. “I replaced the battery last month. The wallet’s empty, but I’ve only had it a few weeks and you could probably get a buck for it at a junk store. I got this suit for a hundred. The tie cost four-fifty, that’s dollars and cents. Put all of that together with everything you see in this room and you might come up with eight hundred bucks. The house is worth thirty thousand, although I’d be lucky to get twenty because of the neighborhood. I’ve got six hundred in the bank and I owe five more payments on the car. All told I’m worth about twenty-five grand, twice that much if I die because of my G.I. insurance, which goes to my ex-wife on account of I’ve never gotten around to taking her name off the policy. Do you really think a few hours of my time comes to twelve hundred dollars?”

  “I see. Very colorful.”

  “Not even original. I stole it from a gun broker just today.” I took back my watch and wallet.

  “Do you want the check or not?”

  “Mr. Dorrance, you weren’t listening.”

  He put it away. “Payment or not, you’re off the case. Krell was on my retainer when he hired you.”

  “Who’s arguing?” I had some more whiskey and ginger ale. “What strategy are you using in court?”

  His smile was bit-tight in the horse face. “It would hardly be ethical for me to tell you that, now that you’re no longer with the defense. Or prudent.”

  “Would it be safe to assume that it won’t involve investigating Doyle Thayer Junior’s activities in the weapons trade?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You mentioned compensation. If you’ll answer that question I’ll call us square.”

  “Why is it so important?”

  “It so happens I’m a detective, Mr. Dorrance. It’s the kind of work that if you’re going to be any good at it at all you have to have a thirst for answers. You can’t expect me to get all worked up and then walk away without some kind of release. There’s a name for women who do that.”

  “I’m not a woman,” he rapped.

  This unexpected piece of bitterness fluttered on the air for a moment. Then his expression softened.

  “Sorry. It has to do with growing up with the name Leslie. I’ll answer your question. No, I’m leaving the weapons angle alone. There’s ample evidence that Thayer was a wife-abuser, which is where the sympathy lies today. Sixty percent of the population of Detroit owns guns. I don’t want to risk making him a hero: The Right to Bear Arms and all that.”

  “It’s a big thing to ignore.”

  “The court is justice in a vacuum, Mr. Walker. Everything is simpler inside those marble walls; antiseptic. A great deal of trouble is taken to see that it remains so. This involves protecting jurors
from those pesky little truths that can only confuse them. The average guy in the gallery who watches the news on television, incompetent though it is, knows more about the case being tried than the jury does. That’s no accident.”

  “One other question. It won’t involve confidences.”

  “Shoot.” His eyes flicked toward the Luger on the end table and he laughed self-consciously.

  “Do you expect to win this one?”

  He laughed again, not self-consciously. “Nobody wins anything anymore outside of sports. Oh, your occasional state lottery player beats odds of ten million to one, but there’s no skill involved and all he’s really won is the opportunity to fend off mythical relatives to the end of his days, or at least of his fortune. Even our wars peter out with both sides claiming victory. The best a modern lawyer can hope for is to make a legal point or two and get his name in the Giant Golden Book of Precedents. If you’re asking me if I expect to do that, the answer is yes. In my crowd that’s winning.”

  “For you. What’s your client got to look forward to?”

  “Appeals. It’s all a system of raises and calls and raises again, and the winner’s the one who buys the pot.” He studied me. “Are you shocked?”

  “Vindicated is the word. I never thought it’d be a lawyer that did it. Thanks for being candid.”

  “Thanks for not showing me the door.” He stood and stuck out his hand.

  I got up and took it. “Who’s going to play you in the TV movie?”

  “I rather like this fellow Chamberlain. He doesn’t look anything like me. Well, good-bye.”

  I went out with him and pulled my car out of the driveway so he could leave. In the street I sat watching the BMW gliding down the block until a horn behind me pointed out I wasn’t alone on the planet.

  Later, after I had put the car in the garage, I thawed out a roast beef dinner and chased it with cold beer while watching the conclusion of a miniseries starring a former movie queen who had outlived all her scandals to win a couple of lifetime achievement awards. They hadn’t improved her acting one bit. I only half-watched it in any case. The job was over, it was time to think about the next one. I was past the age when it was fun to stew over what was finished, or to insert myself where I would be about as popular as the Calcutta Burger King. There was no percentage in pursuing a dead case; nothing to be gained except a contempt-of-court citation and a long unpaid vacation after my license was lifted. Only an idiot would consider it.