Never Street

by Loren D. Estleman

  “It’s different.”

  “That’s the diplomatic answer. It’s a sure-fire litmus test for detecting phonies. They get all wet over it. One of them asked me for the name of my decorator.” He laughed; a short, hard sound, like metal striking concrete.

  “If they fail the test, do you refuse to do business?”

  “Not really. As a matter of fact, in this business the straight shooters are the hardest to handle. Are you a straight shooter, Mr. Walker?”

  “I miss four times out of ten.”

  “In baseball you’d be batting six hundred. In business—” He shrugged the shrug morticians shrug when the conversation turns to death.

  At his invitation, I sat in a wingback chair covered in imitation zebra skin. This put me an inch or two below him when he took his throne. That was okay. I wouldn’t recognize equal footing if I had it.

  “What can you tell me about the meeting Catalin walked out on?” I asked.

  A gilt Diana stood on one foot on a corner of the big desk, notching an arrow into her bow. Webb stroked the point with a fingertip. “It was just Neil and me. I don’t remember what we were talking about specifically, just the usual Tuesday bull session: future projects, old business, how to avoid paying Michigan’s chickenshit single-business tax and stay out of court. Nothing for either one of us to get our shorts into a wad over.”

  “That’s what you were talking about when he walked out?”

  “You’ve used that phrase twice, ‘walked out.’ It’s a poor fit for someone like Neil. If he were standing on the edge of a cliff and you pushed him, he’d just go ahead and fall. Grabbing your arm would be rude. As I recall he excused himself to get something from his office. When he didn’t come back I went looking for him. Ms. Yin said he’d left. I called his home, but Gay said she hadn’t seen him since that morning.”

  “Ms. Yin is the receptionist?”

  “Also our secretary. We downsized the staff when the cable companies pulled in their horns.”

  “Did Catalin take his car?”

  “He must have. It wasn’t in the lot when I went home later. Last year’s LeBaron—gray, naturally. He could afford to drive better, but cars don’t mean much to Neil. His sense of style matches his color preference.”

  “Where does Vesta Mannering fit in that picture?”

  The glass shards dulled. It was as if a transparent membrane had slid down over them, like a salamander’s. “Well, well. Gay made a clean breast.”

  “Were you the one who told her about her husband’s affair?”

  “Christ, no. That would be a violation of the male code.”

  “You knew about it, then?”

  “You can’t keep that kind of thing secret in an office. We cast Vesta as the seductress in a PSA about AIDS, and I’m here to tell you there was never a better example of casting according to type. She auditioned here and shot in Southfield. Neil spends a lot of time at the studio, which is his real bent. He was making student films at Michigan, you know, when I was getting my MB. That’s where we met.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Oh, yeah. He was Orson Welles to my Bill Gates. I said he was the creative half. Anyway he spent a lot of time on the set, and by the time Vesta came back here to collect her paycheck, those two were striking sparks like a Zippo. Even the kid who delivers sandwiches had to know there was something going on.”

  “Gay Catalin says she made Neil fire her.”

  “She may have told him to, and maybe he canceled any plans he had to cast her in other projects. It was a ten-day shoot. She finished and went on her way.”

  I made a note. “Do you know where Miss Mannering is working? I haven’t been able to get her at home.”

  “I’ll ask Judy to look her up in the file.” He glanced at a heavy gold watch strapped to his wrist, to show me he’d meant what he said about fifteen minutes.

  “How’s Neil been acting lately?”

  “Same as everyone in this goddamn business, jumpy. The Democrats threaten to shut down television violence, the Republicans threaten to cut public broadcasting subsidies, some little old lady in Taylor complains about her cable bill, and everyone scrambles for a parachute. If it’s security you’re after, take a civil service exam.”

  “You wouldn’t know that to see this office,” I said. “Not everything in here is fake.”

  He smiled at his reflection in a jade bowl containing erasers and paper clips on the desk. “I admit I’m a sucker for plush things. On top of that I’m supporting two ex-wives and a house in Farmington Hills. It helps to be hungry when you’re in charge of financing. God knows Neil isn’t. You’ll probably find him in a little shit theater someplace, watching The Seventh Seal for the thousandth time.”

  “Can I see his office?”

  “I’ll have Ms. Yin show you.” He reached for his intercom.

  When he was through, I thanked him for his time. We shook hands. At the door I said, “Mrs. Catalin’s brother is missing, too. His name’s Brian Elwood. Do you know him?”

  No cloudy membrane now; his eyes would cut paper. “He came to take Neil home once when his car was in the shop. I caught the little punk going through Neil’s desk while he was in the john. He said he was looking for cigarettes. I told him if I saw him around here again I’d call the police. I will, too. A thief is worse than a murderer in my book.”

  I let myself out.

  Seven

  JUDY YIN WAS WAITING for me in the hallway. She was tall for an Asian, which made her medium height by American standards, the top of her head just clearing my shoulder in three-inch heels. Her smile was cool, as might be expected. Nothing about her would bring water to a boil; around the office, anyway. I’d had some experience with these professional types.

  “Mr. Catalin’s office is this way, Mr. Walker.” She opened an arm and followed it. I followed her. She wore trim-fitting brown stirrup pants with the champagne-colored blouse, and she hadn’t anything in the pockets.

  Neil Catalin’s office was a poor working cousin of his partner’s, a third smaller and less demanding on the eye. It had a plain desk and file cabinet and a chipboard table containing a combination TV and VCR with a ten-inch screen and a stack of videotapes in plastic sleeves. A computer terminal on a stand, too, of course, but the hell with that. It wouldn’t tell me anything the rest of the office and a kid with glasses in South Bend didn’t already know. The only personal items were a smiling picture of Gay Catalin in a silver frame on the desk and a two-by-three-foot movie poster behind glass on one wall: Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford.

  The painting of the red-headed bombshell dancing in a low-cut evening gown was nearly identical to the etching on the glass door leading into the reception area. That explained the name of the outfit.

  The receptionist hovered inside the door. I said, “Mr. Webb said you’d look up Vesta Mannering’s work number.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that before you leave.” She leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms.

  I opened the desk drawers and found the usual desk stuff, rubber bands and pencil shavings and unremarkable contraband. The message pad by the telephone was blank. None of the titles hand-lettered on the videotape sleeves on the table meant anything to me. I poked one into the gate and turned on the TV. I watched two minutes of an infomercial for a miraculous new product that turned fresh fruit into compost.

  “One of our most successful projects,” said Ms. Yin when I turned it off. “Our client sold sixty thousand units in Metropolitan Detroit alone.”

  I tried the drawers of the file cabinet. They were locked. I made a show of giving up and looked at my watch. “Okay if I call my answering service?”

  “If it’s local.”

  The first button on the telephone lit up when I lifted the receiver. I punched Line 2 and dialed the number for Gilda Productions.

  The telephone rang in the reception area. Judy Yin stirred and withdrew to answer it. I laid the receiver on the desk and
inspected the file cabinet. It was a standard bar lock, as old as the chastity belt. I had it open with my pocket knife in two seconds. Inside I found files. Not one of them was labeled WHERE I WENT.

  Disappointed, I closed the drawers, jimmied the lock back the other way, and returned to the desk. Ms. Yin was still telling the telephone hello. I punched the button for Line I and hit redial. That was the line Catalin had used last, unless someone else had made a call from his office recently. On the second ring a woman’s voice, metal with a serrated edge, answered.

  “Musuraca Investigations.”

  I hung up just as Judy Yin came back. “Did you get your messages?”

  I said I got one.

  “That puts you one up on me,” she said. “There was no one on the other end.”

  “Kids.”

  She swung a hard glance around the office that stopped at the file cabinet. She went over to it and tugged at one of the drawers. When it didn’t budge she made a noncommittal little noise and turned my way.

  “Ziggy’s Chop House on Livernois. Miss Mannering’s a little hostess there, or was when she left that number.” She gave it to me.

  I didn’t bother to write it down. I knew Ziggy’s. I looked at Judy Yin. Her black eyes were bright with something close to anger. I didn’t think I was the cause. I said, “I get the impression that when Vesta makes it big, you won’t be going to the premiere.”

  She moved a shoulder. “She’s an actress, or fancies herself one on the basis of a couple of cat-food commercials. In her book that puts her above us lowly telephone girls. Even if she does sling hash to keep up her car payments between feminine hygiene spots.”

  “That’s kind of a big chip to still be carrying around two years later. See or hear anything of her since?”

  “Not a thing, and neither has Mr. Catalin. For someone who’s not looking for him, you seem awfully interested in things he had the use of.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t looking for him.”

  She tapped her teeth with a coral nail. They were good teeth, blue-white against ivory skin. “I don’t think I’d hire you, Mr. Walker. You have an attitude I wouldn’t care for in someone who was working for me.”

  “It’s a handicap. I considered getting help to overcome it.”

  “What was the decision?”

  I shook my head.

  She set the lock on Catalin’s door and pulled it shut behind us. Back in the reception area I watched her take her seat with a flashy kind of economy of movement she probably wouldn’t have used without someone watching. When I made no move to leave she lifted her brows at me.

  “That insurance policy between Webb and Catalin,” I said. “Were you a witness, or did you just file it?”

  “I don’t know anything about an insurance policy,” she said after a moment. “Is there one?”

  “Search me. It was just a gag to get information I didn’t want to ask Webb about and make him mad enough to give me the boot. As arrangements go it’s standard among longtime partners: When one dies, the other benefits, and the business goes on.”

  “If you’re suggesting something happened to Mr. Catalin and Mr. Webb was responsible, I can’t help you. He may not be the ideal employer, but that doesn’t make him Klaus von Bülow.”

  “That kind of information is easy to get.”

  “How nice for you.” She slid her eyes toward the door. I went after them.

  My car didn’t want to start again. I smoked a cigarette while it got used to the idea, and thought about Musuraca Investigations. I knew Phil Musuraca; not personally or even by sight, but the way a hardworking gardener knows a destructive species of beetle. Where he had gone, no honest investigator could follow without slipping in Phil’s greasy footprints. What his number was doing on Neil Catalin’s redial was one for Ellery Queen.

  Eight

  “GOOD MORNING. ZIGGY’S Chop House.”

  A low voice for a woman and even some men, with fine grit in it, like a cat’s lick. Conversations collided in the background with tinkling flatware and clattering crockery. I could almost smell the carcinogens frying in the kitchen.

  “I’m trying to locate Vesta Mannering,” I said. “Does she work there?”

  “Speaking.”

  I leaned against the telephone cover. The Penobscot Building across the street shimmied in the August heat ribboning up from the pavement. Parking attendants and Federal Express couriers, their uniforms just beginning to wilt as the Judas cool of the morning burned off, paced themselves like pros as they made their way toward the shrinking shade.

  “You’re a hard woman to get hold of, Miss Mannering.”

  “I don’t let just anyone get hold of me. Who is this, please?” Her voice had dropped. Not taking personal calls on restaurant time would be among the commandments at Ziggy’s. Another would be keeping kitchen secrets.

  “My name is Amos Walker. I’m an investigator hired by Gay Catalin to find her husband.”

  “That again. I told her I haven’t seen Neil in over a year.”

  “Not seeing him doesn’t cover telephone calls and letters.”

  “You left out singing telegrams, which I didn’t get either. I lost a valuable career contract because of Catalin. Now this job’s all I have, lousy as it is. Do you want me to lose that too?”

  There was no reason to play the card, no reason at all, except that I was losing the hand and the Joker was all I had left.

  “What about Fat Phil?” I asked. “Heard from him?”

  The little silence that followed was like the bank breaking. When she spoke again the background noise was muffled, as if she had inserted her body between it and the telephone. “What do you know about Musuraca?”

  “Meet me and we’ll swap stories.”

  “Not here,” she said quickly. “Do you know the Castanet Lounge in Iroquois Heights? I’m through here at ten.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  The Mercury was ready to start finally. Waiting for a hole in traffic, I read the clock on the dash. Eleven hours till Vesta. It was too early for lunch and there was nothing waiting for me back at the office but some bills and a water stain shaped like Mike Tyson. I drove to a garage I knew on the East Side and that the car knew even better, like a tired horse returning to the barn.

  OK Towing & Auto Repair worked out of a building that belonged on the National Register of Historic Places, whenever the NRHP got around to recognizing the age of the automobile: one of the dozen or so remaining garages built of white glazed brick still being used for their intended purpose. A Standard gasoline pump, no longer functional and missing its original glass globe (stolen, no doubt, by a collector), rusted out front, its price for Regular Leaded frozen at 29.9 cents, and a cardboard sign depicting the proper firing order of pistons in an eight-cylinder engine slouched in the window, gone the color of mummy wrappings and no longer visible to the people who worked there. The proprietor had declined several offers by the city to buy the building so it could be torn down and replaced by a park named for a felon who had managed to get himself beaten to death by overzealous police officers. Rumor had it the proprietor was waiting for someone from Greenfield Village to take it off his hands and transport it brick by brick to the historical theme park in Dearborn. Meanwhile he papered the wall of his office with citations from the city designed to nickel-and-dime him into submission. He had a pit bull for a lawyer and more motions for injunction on the table than a politician has teeth.

  I found Ernst Dierdorf seated on a stool at the bench, swamping out a four-barrel carburetor with a toothbrush and a cup of gasoline. The cup was the same one he used for coffee, with his first name lettered on it in gold-leaf Gothic. His Aryan Nation poster-boy features had begun to slip past sixty, the clean chin blurring and the skin growing thick around his chilly blue eyes. The rest of him was the same as always, stunted and misshapen under what had to be the first pair of coveralls he had ever owned, strataed and sub-strataed with layers of black grease.

&
nbsp; “I need you to look at my car when you get a minute.” I had to shout to make myself heard above the whimpering of air wrenches and the clanging of tire irons.

  “I’ve seen your car.” He blew through the carburetor. It made a sound like a flute. Then he went back to scrubbing. It wasn’t the note he was looking for.

  “You need new material, Ernst.”

  “You need a new car.”

  “You say that every time I come in.”

  “I mean it every time.”

  “Well, take a look at it.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Why not? Did you find that Nazi gold you buried in forty-five?”

  “Go to hell, Amos. I was too young to serve in the Wehrmacht.”

  “I heard it was the Hitler Youth.”

  “I don’t need to look at your car to know what’s wrong. You’ve got fissures in the block. You had fissures in the block last time. They don’t heal.”

  “Use more epoxy.”

  “It’s ninety percent epoxy now. That’s not a car you’re driving. It’s a rolling advertisement for miracle adhesives.” He wiped the carburetor with a rag slightly less filthy than his coveralls, blew through it again. “I got a car for you. Let you have it for a grand.”

  “You’ve been trying to sell me a car ever since I bought this one.”

  “You should’ve come here instead of buying it hot.”

  “We’re not married, Ernst. I wasn’t being unfaithful.”

  He wiped the carburetor again, with a clean rag this time, and set it on the bench next to the sawed-off Remington shotgun he used to protect himself at night from burglars and the Jewish Defense League. “You want to see it or not? I already got one offer from a collector. Thousand, cash.”

  “Why didn’t you take it?”

  “I hate collectors worse than bolsheviks. They treat cars like pussies.”

  “Show me what you’ve got.”

  He climbed down from the stool and hobbled through a back door propped open with the block from a Packard Eight. He moved painfully, using only the balls of his feet. He had not used the rest since the Russians had got hold of him three hundred feet from the Bunker. All it took to turn Ernst Dierdorf violent was to order a glass of vodka anywhere within his hearing.