A Smile on the Face of the Tiger

by Loren D. Estleman

  “I thought it was.”

  “They call him that because every time he completed a contract he sent a tasteful bouquet of gladiolus to the funeral. It was in the way of submitting a statement to his customers for services rendered. You can’t accuse him of being a piker; some of those hits took place out of season. But I imagine he deducted his florist’s bill from his taxes as a business expense. I can’t help wondering what went through the widows’ minds when those bouquets showed up.”

  “His testimony sent a don to prison.”

  “For putting out a single contract. The feds thought swinging a conviction was worth forgiving more murders than Jack the Ripper committed. But let’s not kid ourselves. Washington and Quantico don’t care about killings. Murder isn’t in their jurisdiction. Paul Lippo was costing them too much in uncollected taxes and all the accountants on their payroll couldn’t uncover a paper trail to save them. So they dug up Eddie and got him to corroborate a couple of wiretaps and let him walk without so much as a Hail Mary. And the gladiolus on fifteen graves are doing splendidly.”

  “What else can you tell me about him?”

  “First tell me about Black Lake.”

  I rolled my glass between my palms. “I don’t want to turn on my TV tomorrow and see it.”

  “You won’t. You don’t have a cable box. You won’t anyway. Not until you give me the high sign. How long have we known each other?”

  “Don’t go there, Barry. You won’t like the ride.” I drank.

  He looked at me blandly, his fake leg slung over one arm of his chair. “Okay. I’m off the air until this Ukrainian thing breaks anyway. My future father-in-law might tune in and find out I’m not a Harvard man. How’s that?”

  “Better.” I told him the Black Lake part; more than I’d told Lieutenant Thaler but less than I’d told Louise Starr, and he didn’t have to know the name of the client. I left out Lowell Birdsall and Fleta Skirrett. Their connection with Allison Booth’s death fell outside Barry’s area of expertise.

  “I read Eugene Booth when I was a kid,” he said. “Dynamite style, but he had the establishment sitting on his face like a fat dominatrix. I never bought Roland Clifford as a saint. My old man sold cut-rate suits out of a second-floor joint on Clairmount in forty-three. He didn’t see any heroes that weekend. Not in uniform. I wrote a piece on the riot when I was with the Free Press, but my editor spiked it. Too one-sided, he said. He was right. The only people who would talk to me were the blacks who survived it. The whites all had bad consciences and even the police officers who were retired were afraid of losing their pensions. Freedom of Information only bought me the runaround. The files were always in some other precinct. Bad karma. But you can’t publish that without a source.”

  “So much for Barry Stackpole’s autobiography.”

  “Twenty-three ninety-five will buy you Eddie’s, complete with his signature. I can’t add much, just everything that counts. He got ten of his notches the old-fashioned way, two soft-nose slugs in the back of the head close up, which says a lot more for his bedside manner than his marksmanship. He’s a charming fucker. He garroted three others, which is the really old-fashioned way, if you’re up on your Sicilian history. He favors nylon fishing line, fifty-pound test.”

  “He said his old man was a fisherman.”

  “His old man was a shark, which is as close as he ever got to a fish. Genovese mob gunned him when they moved in on the loan action in Manhattan mid-town. Eddie wouldn’t tell you that if he was incognito.”

  “That was just an impression. He had on a cap and sunglasses in his cabin and he was disguising his voice.”

  “All the more reason his former bosses wouldn’t tag him for a quiet hit in a jerkwater town in northern Michigan. He’s not your boy.”

  “Then why was he carrying?”

  “You didn’t see a gun.” He broke into a grin when I looked at him. “Okay, okay. It just doesn’t make sense they’d use a high-profile character like him and then have him go through all the trouble to make it look like suicide. And copping Booth’s manuscript. I mean, come on.”

  “That might have been curiosity. And maybe he was just spotting the job. He checked out the night before.”

  “He would have anyway. Even if he was only casing the pigeon for another shooter, he’s still Glad Eddie, the talk-show kid. That’s a job for an invisible man, a nebbish. You’re sure it was him? Don’t take that wrong; two years ago I blew half a season’s budget collecting footage on a Nazi war criminal who turned out to be a retired baker from Brooklyn named Israel Feinstein.”

  “I’m never sure of anything until someone rubs my nose in it. But he’s in town this weekend and I don’t like coincidences. They screw up the odds for the rest of us.”

  “If anyone paid attention to the odds we wouldn’t have casinos coming in all over like blackheads. But putting aside all the things I’ve been saying, we have to ask ourselves why Eddie would muck around with this at all. That’s his old job. He’s too busy being a celebrity, and making more money on the legit than he ever did tipping over stoolies and working whatever crumbs the made guys threw at him to keep him solvent between hits.”

  “I don’t know why he’s still around to make money. Whatever happened to omerta?”

  “Went out when RICO came in,” he said. “Ever since Uncle Sam threw out the Bill of Rights in mob cases they’re more afraid of him than they are of the Godfather. They’re rolling over on each other to beat raps they used to do in their jammies. But I am a little surprised someone didn’t hang his cat or something, just to keep their hand in. He got away too clean to suit me.”

  “Maybe he didn’t.”

  He moved a shoulder and drank. Then he realized I was still looking at him. He swirled his ice. “Meaning this is the price he’s paying for his early out. One last job.”

  “It’d be like them to make it unpleasant,” I said. “He told me himself he hated the country. He said the frogs were driving him nuts.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still crazy. He might as well be walking around with George Washington’s face from the dollar.”

  “Maybe that’s the idea.”

  That troubled him enough to set his glass on the table beside the chair. “Setup?”

  “It’s a theory.” I finished my drink.

  “Damn it, Amos. I’m in this Ukrainian thing up to my steel plate.”

  “So what? You can’t use it yet.”

  “That’s not the point. How am I supposed to keep my mind on the Gaming Commission when you hand me Eddie Cypress on a plate with an apple in his mouth?”

  “I haven’t yet. Coincidences happen. It might have been Robert C. Brown in Cabin Five. He might have had a TV remote in his hand.”

  “Right. And this time next month I’ll be Mr. Tatyana Ostrokovich. Your theories have a rotten habit of holding some water. Goddamn it.”

  I got to my feet and poured myself another. My appetite was returning. “So Glad Eddie shot ten and strangled three. What about the other two? Do I have to watch for a knife?” I thought of Allison Booth in the morgue, punched full of holes; but that would have been before his time.

  “You should be so lucky. He went Golden Gloves in seventy-two but didn’t turn pro. He beat the poor dumb bastards to death with just his fists. Smiling all the time, would be my guess.”

  20

  Barry was asleep in the armchair when I came out of the kitchen carrying a plateful of fried-egg sandwiches to absorb the alcohol. I dug an extra blanket out of a closet, threw it over him, then ate two of the sandwiches and turned in. When I got up with the sun in my face and the Tet offensive replaying in my head, he was gone and so was the rest of the Scotch. I made a note to enter the bottle on the expense sheet and drank coffee until the mortars stopped pounding.

  It was Saturday. The neighborhood was alive with the ripping of power mowers. The grown son of the retired GM foreman across the street was using the chainfall that lived in the branches of the oak in the fro
nt yard to hoist the engine out of the Chevy Suburban he’d been working on since Kissinger was a pup. As I stood with cup in hand watching him through the kitchen window, a herd of bicyclists in helmets and kneepads whooshed past. Weekends in Detroit always have something to do with wheels.

  The combined edition of the News and Free Press was unenlightening. There were two paragraphs on Eugene Booth’s death buried inside, culled from an old library file on the Michigan writer with a tacked-on lead stating that he was an apparent suicide. Glad Eddie Cypress’ Sunday signing at the Birmingham Borders got three lines in the local section and the Tigers were hosting the Orioles at home that afternoon. Detroit was starting its last season in the old ballpark. I decided to go.

  Before I did I swung around to the Alamo Motel. In the parking lot I watched the scarlet sharkfin sail of a ketch bucking the current in the river, then climbed the gridded iron steps to 610.

  The young man who answered the door stood six-two in sandals and cutoff jeans and a black open-weave tank top that ended just above his navel. He had gold rings in his nose, eyebrows, and upper lip, and his hair was shaved close to his scalp. He might have been wearing eyeliner; looking at the hardware on his face made my eyes water so I didn’t study it too closely. He was holding a plastic tub of some kind by its molded handle down at his side.

  “Yes?” His voice was a deep thud.

  I glanced at the number on the door to make sure I hadn’t miscounted. “Lowell Birdsall.”

  “He’s out of town.”

  “Business?”

  “Hobby. He’s at a pulp collectors’ convention in Cleveland. I’m in six-oh-nine. He asked me to come in and empty the tank in his dehumidifier.” He lifted the tub and let it fall the length of his arm. Water sloshed around inside. “He’ll be back Monday. Can I take a message?”

  “No message.” I turned away.

  He slid his free hand from the knob to the top of the door and struck an S-curve with one hip. “You don’t look like a collector. Are you one of his customers?” He put a lilt in the question. It sounded like a tight end playing Juliet in a college production.

  “No. I don’t have any systems that need analyzing.”

  “Too bad. I thought you might be hiring. I’m thinking of changing professions. My knees can’t stand it.”

  “Are you a baseball catcher?”

  He giggled and pushed the door shut. I squared my shoulders and went back down to the car.

  The peeling casserole of Tiger Stadium—Bennett Park, Navin Field, Briggs Stadium, the Rusty Girder, call it what you will according to your generation or where your loyalties lie—stands at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull avenues, although for more than a century all you have had to do is tell the cabbie to take you to the Corner, and in due course of time he will deposit you in front of the cavernous entrance. You pass through the usual smells of mildewed concrete, stale grease, sharp mustard, spilled beer, and glove oil, up a ramp that hasn’t been mopped since Nixon, and then there you are in bright sunlight, dazzled by the impossible green of the infield; the same one where Ty Cobb bribed the grounds crew to hose down the area in front of the batter’s box to make sure all his bunts died on arrival. On a blistering Saturday in August 1920, Cobb nailed a vicious line drive hit by Babe Ruth in right field, not too many blocks from the alley where legend said Cobb, mean cracker that he was, beat to death a would-be mugger early in his career. On June 4, 1984, Dave Bergman stood like an iron jockey at home plate with two out in the bottom of the tenth and fouled off seven Toronto pitches before drilling one into the upper deck to win the game. Game Seven, 1968 World Series, sixth inning: Beerbelly Mickey Lolich picked Lou Brock and Curt Flood off first to clinch the championship after coming back from three games to one against St. Louis, first time ever.

  Kaline and Greenberg, Leonard and Cash, Northrup and Trammell, Whitaker and Parrish, Horton and McLain and Gibson and Schoolboy Rowe and Gates Brown and Bird Fidrych and all the rest; flashing signals, spitting tobacco, and doffing their caps to the bleachers. There were too many ghosts running the bases and warming up in the bullpen for the live players to move around and so a new stadium had to be built downtown. They had decided to name it after a bank.

  The game was unworthy of the venue. An umpire made a bad call, the scattered crowd uncorked some favorite obscenities and halfheartedly threw their beer cups and crumpled popcorn bags down on the field. An easy Baltimore pop fly plopped onto the ground between right and center while the fielders watched. Detroit carried a two-run lead into the fifth inning and came out the bottom down by seven. In the eighth they loaded the bases with one out, then struck out and flied to the shortstop. The Orioles scored an inside-the-park home run at the top of the ninth, just for fun, and put Detroit down one-two-three to win.

  Free agency and a string of indifferent owners had managed to do what the Gashouse Gang, Murderers’ Row, and two major race riots couldn’t: break the spirit of a proud team. But they’d come back. Coming back was what they did best, after spoiling New York’s shot at the pennant.

  By the bottom of the eighth you could have counted the fans who had remained to see it out and still had time to go for a hot dog. Most of them were there for the park. Me too; I didn’t know any of the younger players and they were too busy trying to make routine catches look like Willie Mays to hold my attention for long. The only thing I got out of the experience was a tan and a program and a chance not to think about Eugene and Allison Booth or Louise Starr or Fleta Skir-rett or the Birdsalls, Senior and Junior, or Glad Eddie Cypress for three pitches at a stretch.

  Until the end.

  Trickling out with the rest of the diehards I spotted something lying in the grass outside the Michigan Avenue exit and went over and picked it up. It was a piece of brick about the size of an egg. I looked up, but I couldn’t tell what part of the wall it had fallen from. In a year or two or ten, when they stopped trying to save the building and finally tore it down, the bricks would sell for up to twenty-five bucks apiece. I juggled the chunk on the palm of my hand. Then I arranged my index and middle fingers on it in the Aurelio Lopez three-fingered grip, pounded it into the palm of my left hand, and went into the wind-up, one foot raised and my eyes focused on a spot of white paint on a streetlamp ten yards away.

  “Hey!”

  A Detroit cop as big as a bus stepped in front of the lamp, thumbs hooked in his belt and his big jaw drawn up into the shadow of his visor. He looked like an umpire. I lowered my foot, tossed the piece of masonry back into the grass, and waved at the officer on my way to find where I’d parked. He waved back.

  21

  Winter got in one last slap Saturday night. The thermometer dipped below forty just before dawn, brewing a heavy fog and stacking a honey of a pileup on the downtown John Lodge when a truck loaded with furniture jackknifed and dumped over near the Howard Street exit, scattering lamps and loveseats and an Ethan Allen four-poster bed as far as Lafayette. Detour traffic was still heavy on the surface streets just before noon, and it was Sunday. How the people who live in the suburbs and work in the city get in on time when that happens during the week is not as big a mystery as why.

  Glad Eddie Cypress had a jam of his own on the front porch of Borders, where a crowd was waiting to get inside and form a line. There were posters in the window with a blowup of the book jacket and the same picture of the author that had run in the Free Press, along with the date and time of the signing. There was also a bulky black party in a midnight-blue serge sportcoat and Ray-Bans standing next to the door facing in the opposite direction.

  I was still thinking about him when I beat out a square green barge of an Olds 98 for a parking space freshly vacated by a station wagon full of kids. Although it went against the grain to confront a character like Cypress carrying nothing but a book, I unsnapped the holster from my belt and tucked it and the .38 into my glove compartment. The 98 blasted its horn and took off with a chirp to find another spot.

  A pair of women in fre
sh permanents carrying shoulder bags as big as rucksacks were admiring Eddie’s picture when I joined the crowd.

  “He’s so good-looking,” one of them said. “I can’t believe he did the things they say he did.”

  The other one snapped her tongue off her teeth. “I heard he had plastic surgery.”

  “To disguise himself? They say the Mafia is offering a million dollars for his head.” The first one whispered the word Mafia.

  “No, just a nose job. It used to bend to the left. Honey, if the mob was offering a million, I’d take a crack at him myself.”

  The crowd slid forward under the eye of Blue Serge. He had a two-way Motorola radio on his belt. His sportcoat covered whatever else he had on it. As I came abreast of him he took a step my way. “Watch your step, sir. No pushing, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll all get your turn.” He put a steadying hand against my chest, then swept it down to brush my hip pocket on the right side. It was as neat a frisk as I’d seen, and as thorough as could be managed without discouraging the people in back. He’d noted I was carrying a book in my left hand and that it was too small to conceal a gun.

  Our gazes met through the tinted lenses of his Ray-Bans. He lowered his voice to a murmur. “No trouble, okay, cowboy? We don’t want to upset customers.”

  “I’m a customer myself,” I said.

  “You don’t look like one, cowboy. You just look like work.”

  “U.S. marshal?”

  He shook his head, but a little surprised smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Secret Service, retired. Running my own shop now. Does it stick out?”

  “You ought to let your hair grow out a little. You looked too smart for FBI.”

  “I’ve got fibbies for friends. Beat them all the time at Scrabble. Their letters never spell anything.”