Never Street

by Loren D. Estleman

  I thanked him. He tucked the film can under one arm and shook my hand again. “This is stale stuff,” he said. “There’s a classic film festival taking place next week at the DIA. You can catch the originals there, the way they were meant to be seen.”

  “You think he might show up?”

  “That’s only part of it. The festival is connected with a VIP reception next Friday night at the Fox Theater, when Austin Alt’s new picture premieres. He’s one of our greatest living directors. He apprenticed under Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder, and survived the blacklist. He’s expected to attend.”

  “Tell me, does shilling pay better than teaching?”

  He smiled again, this time without apology. “Alt is the man you want to talk to. Your man will, if you don’t. Otherwise his wife might as well have him declared legally dead.”

  I drove back to the office and put in the time till quitting opening my mail and wondering if a complete set of the 100 Greatest Books Ever Written, bound in genuine leather and stamped in fourteen-karat gold, would do anything for the office. At length I concluded I would have to redecorate the place around them and decided instead to replace the dead plant in the waiting room. My service reported that Gay Catalin had called three times without leaving a message, but when I called her number no one answered. I was reaching for the telephone to try again when it rang and I picked it up and it was her.

  “I still haven’t heard from Brian, Mr. Walker. It’s been two days. I’m worried.”

  She sounded calm. I pictured her in the room filled with flowers, drawing from their drowsy serenity.

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No. I thought I’d talk to you first.”

  “Call them. That’s what you pay taxes for. I’ll let you know if I come across anything on this end.”

  “Should I tell them about Neil?”

  “Sure. They’ll bawl you out for not going to them first, but even they won’t be listening. File a report on Neil while you’re at it. Make sure they put out a BOL on his car.”

  “BOL?”

  “It stands for Be On the Lookout. It’s like an All-Points Bulletin, only without Broderick Crawford. People have been known to vanish, but a car has to be parked somewhere.”

  “Do you think Brian’s being gone has anything to do with Neil?”

  “Maybe not. Coincidences happen, although I wouldn’t try to sell that to the cops. You’ll know something when I know.”

  She thanked me and hung up. That was the five o’clock whistle. I bought supper at a drive-through and went on home to rest up for Vesta.

  A bright green Camaro was parked across the street when I pulled into my garage. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything either that someone was sitting inside. What did mean something, or maybe not, was the fact that he was sitting on the passenger’s side. That was an old trick. The street was residential on both sides, made up mostly of retired people waiting for their children to visit or inflation to eat up their Social Security. There was no reason for anyone to leave a passenger waiting while he ran a quick errand.

  It could have been nothing. Just to prove it was nothing, I called the downtown branch of the Secretary of State’s office to give the license number to someone I knew there. A recording told me the office was closed until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow.

  After ten minutes the man slid under the wheel, started the motor, and drove away. I couldn’t see him well enough through the window to recognize him again. I was sure it was a man.

  It was probably nothing. But before I left the house I took my spare gun from the top shelf of the bedroom closet and cleaned and oiled and loaded it. I could feel my pulse where the butt pressed my right kidney when the holster was in place.

  Ten

  FROM TWO O’CLOCK Sunday morning until five o’clock Friday night, Iroquois Heights slumbered seven miles north of Detroit and a thousand miles outside its consciousness. In the memories of the citizens of this sprawling eighty-percent-black metropolis, the Heights was the place where a generation ago an angry mob dumped over a school bus full of children to protest cross-district busing for the purposes of racial integration; and there was still a bigoted message to be read in its aggressive advertising campaign warning lawbreakers to steer clear of its city limits.

  All that changed after quitting time Friday. With Detroit’s night life in its twentieth year of catatonia, city folk in search of colored lights, loud music, and sparkling liquid motored up Telegraph Road and shrapneled out into half a dozen nightspots along the main stem, offering themes from 1940s Retro to head-banging, ring-in-the-nose Heavy Metal.

  No amplifiers needed apply at the Castanet Lounge. A foyer paved with blue-and-white Mexican tiles opened between a pair of wicked-looking six-foot mescal cacti into a big room covered in faux-adobe. Here were tables, a long Bakelite bar under blue lights, a hardwood dance floor, and a stand holding up a mariachi band in sombreros and pink ruffled shirts. A honey-skinned Hispanic host in a white jacket conducted me to a table in a corner, where I ordered Scotch and soda from a waitress wearing a sarong and a pile of fruit on her head.

  “Carmen Miranda, eh?” I said, when she returned with my drink.

  “Huh?”

  “Well, then, Bette Midler.” I indicated her headgear.

  “Sorry, sir. If you were looking for either of those people, you should have asked the host.”

  The band hurled itself into “Cielito Lindo,” drowning out any further conversation. I smiled at her and she left, clomping in her cork sandals like a mule on a wooden trestle. All around me people were drinking from glasses the size of cuspidors. The breeze off the heaps of crushed ice gave me frostbite.

  Ten o’clock came and went, followed by ten-thirty, and still no Vesta. A few couples danced, the band finished its set, rested, and started another. They were playing requests, but everything sounded like the little Spanish flea. The clientele was strictly silver-haired graduates of Arthur Murray and Generation X-ers who had discovered Tony Bennett—nothing in between; sequined gowns and ripped jeans. I felt like Jane Goodall, crouched in the bush with binoculars. Time clicked past on flamenco heels. I nursed the first drink. What I did with the second and third was more like CPR. I was sure I’d been stood up.

  Just before eleven she came in. I knew it was her, although I’d never seen a picture or been given a description, and my opinion of Neil Catalin went up a notch. Coming in from the cold white glare of the floodlit parking lot she was just a silhouette, square shoulders and a narrow waist and long legs in a dress of the last shade of indigo this side of black and a bonnetlike hat tied under her chin with a ribbon, but it was clear she was the most interesting thing to happen to the place all night. As she stepped under the inside lights and paused to look around I saw eyes slanted just shy of Oriental, soft, untanned cheeks flushed a little from the day’s heat, red lips, a strong round chin. If like Neil you were thinking of kicking over the traces, you could wait years for a better reason. When her gaze got to me I stood. She came over. Her heels made no more noise on the tiles than a panther’s paws.

  “Mr. Walker?” Her voice had even more husk on it in person than it had over the telephone.

  I said I was Mr. Walker. She nodded slightly. She offered neither her hand nor an apology for being late. I came around and pulled out the other chair for her, holding it while she coiled herself into it. She laid a blue patent-leather handbag the size of a pocket pistol on the table, took off her hat, and shook loose a fall of glistening blue-black hair. By that time Carmen Miranda was there. Vesta traded her the hat for a whiskey sour.

  When we were alone she said, “You don’t look like someone who’d be working with Phil Musuraca.”

  “What would someone who’d be working with Phil Musuraca look like?”

  She glanced toward the ceiling, lost in the darkness above a canopy of tobacco smoke. The whites of her eyes were as clear as the Milky Way. “Dirty nails, bad teeth, cheap necktie, soup stains on his lapels.
Smelling of Old Spice. Reeking of it.”

  “I don’t pay a lot for my neckties.”

  “But you know how to tie one. No dimple.”

  “That sounds like a description of Fat Phil.”

  “So you are working with him.”

  “Never met him.”

  “Did Neil tell you he was following me?”

  “Who hired him?”

  She seemed to realize she’d tipped something. She took a cigarette out of her handbag and tapped it on the table, fumbling for a light. I struck a match and leaned over. I didn’t smell onions. Whatever she had on made me think of pale blossoms under a full moon. She blew a jet at my shoulder. “You haven’t talked to Neil.”

  “Me and the rest of the human race.” I shook out the match and dropped it into an ashtray with writing on the bottom welcoming me to Cabo San Lucas. “Tell me about Musuraca.”

  “First tell me why you’re asking.”

  “I found his number on Catalin’s redial. Did Catalin hire him?”

  She leaned back, scissoring her cigarette between long fingers. The nails were enameled scarlet, as hard as Kevlar. She took a puff, blew a plume at the ceiling, and crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray. “I suppose if you’re any sort of detective you’ll find out anyway. Musuraca’s working for my ex-husband. His name’s Ted Silvera.”

  The name thumped a rusty bell wrapped in old newspapers. I waited for more.

  “He pushed over a bunch of video stores downriver three years ago,” she said. “The papers and the tv news called him the Shotgun Bandit.”

  “I remember the trial. The prosecution offered him a deal to rat out his accomplices and tell where he’d stashed the money.”

  “Ninety-two thousand dollars, can you believe it? I keep telling Ziggy he should get out of the restaurant business and rent tapes instead. Anyway, Ted told them what they could do with their deal and he’s doing seven to twelve in Jackson. The police followed me around for a while, but when they got the idea I didn’t know what Ted did with the money they laid off.”

  “But not Musuraca.”

  She sipped at her whiskey sour. “Ted’s the jealous type. It’s one of the reasons I divorced him, although he thinks it’s because he’s in prison and I can’t wait. He got wind somehow about Neil and had his lawyer retain Musuraca to follow me. Then Neil’s wife found out and my acting career dried up because Gilda Productions wouldn’t hire me for any more jobs. Musuraca gave up after that. Then yesterday someone opened the door at Ziggy’s while I was standing at the reservation desk and there he was, standing out front. He tried to duck, but he wasn’t fast enough. I’d know that fat tub of lard in the dark.”

  “What makes you think he’s working for Silvera this time?”

  “I went to Ted’s lawyer and he said no, but who trusts lawyers? Who else but Ted would care what I do and who I see?”

  “Silvera had accomplices: a wheel man, and maybe a fence to launder the money. Maybe he didn’t tell them where he hid it either.”

  “I wouldn’t know their names. Ted never discussed his work. Do you think I’d be growing bunions in a chop house if I knew where I could lay my hands on ninety-two grand?”

  I lit a cigarette for myself. “It’s only been three years. Not a long time to keep Dr. Scholl in business while you wait for the coast to clear.”

  She thought about that for a minute and decided to get mad. “Thanks for the drink, mister.” She picked up her handbag.

  “You haven’t drunk it yet,” I said. “I don’t care if you’ve got the money sewed in your brassiere. I’m looking for Neil Catalin.”

  “I don’t have the money. I don’t know where the money is. I don’t know how many other ways I can say it.”

  “Don’t bother. I believe you.”

  She was still clutching the bag in both hands. Women and their purses. “Why?”

  “In my business, if you get to not believing any of the answers—and sometimes you do—you might as well stop asking the questions. If you stop asking the questions you starve. I like to eat. Anyway you wouldn’t have come here tonight if you knew where the money is. I got up your curiosity with that crack about Fat Phil.”

  She put down the bag then. “I don’t know where Neil is either.”

  “What was he doing calling Musuraca?”

  “Why don’t you ask Musuraca?”

  “I’d rather ask you. You smell better.”

  Carmen drifted over and I ordered another round. Our glasses were less than half empty but it was that kind of night. The band took off its sombreros and started something slow with a calypso beat that after a while I recognized: “Ain’t No Use.” That winnowed the dancing couples down to the over-fifty set. They were the only ones who didn’t have to look down at their feet when the tempo let up.

  Vesta said, “I don’t know why Neil would be calling him. I told him about Ted and Musuraca—well, before. That was a mistake.”

  “After that you couldn’t get rid of him. He thought he was protecting you.”

  That confused her for just a second. “I forgot you’re a detective. For a moment there I thought we were just two people talking.”

  I didn’t nibble at that one. “Did you know Catalin has a screw loose?”

  “My father died when I was little,” she said. “I married Ted when I was sixteen to get out of the house. I didn’t see much future in dropping my pants for my stepfather every time he came home with a snootful. When Ted got sent up I saved every penny I made waiting tables to pay for my acting classes. Gilda Productions was my ticket out of places like Ziggy’s. Mister, I’ve been tripping over loose screws since I was six.”

  “So you hedged your bet by cozying up to the boss.”

  She watched me over her drink. “You can’t cozy up to a rock. There has to be some give.” She swallowed and thumped down the glass. “Oh, hell. I’m not actor enough to carry off that hardboiled pose. My motives weren’t pure, but neither were Neil’s. And he was so clumsy and sweet about the way he moved in. I knew by the second day of shooting he wasn’t hanging around the studio just because he liked playing C. B. DeMille. When you’ve heard all the lines it’s a relief just to meet somebody who couldn’t deliver one with a crib sheet. It was fun for a while. Then it got weird. That’s when I dumped him.”

  “His wife says she made him dump you.”

  “He may have let her think that. All I know is Gilda didn’t call me back, and I know I shot the best feature it ever made.”

  “Catlin’s got an old-movie complex, his wife says. Your situation comes right off a Hollywood back lot. If he’s gone bugs again he might look up you or Musuraca to write himself in as the hero.”

  “Well, he hasn’t looked me up.”

  I put out my cigarette. “Catalin’s brother-in-law is missing too. His name is Brian Elwood. Did you ever meet him?”

  “The little creep was always sneaking around the studio, looking for something to steal. He caught Neil and me behind the scenery once. We weren’t doing much, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t coaching my acting. The creep told Neil if he gave him a thousand dollars he wouldn’t tell his sister.”

  “What did Neil say?”

  “He told me to go home. I finished the job the next morning and left before he showed up. When he called me that night I told him it would be better if we didn’t see each other and asked him not to call me again unless it had to do with work. Well, he didn’t, and neither did anyone else at Gilda. So I guess we can figure out what Neil told Brian.”

  “Not necessarily. Catalin couldn’t have been feeling very charitable toward you with your heelprint in his heart.”

  “You don’t know Neil. He had his faults. Being vindictive wasn’t one of them. When he wouldn’t come through on the extortion, Brian made good on his threat and ratted him out. Neil’s wife put her foot down, and here I am juggling menus.”

  “Leo Webb told me it was obvious you two were keeping company outside the studio. If that’s
true anyone at Gilda could have blown the whistle.”

  “Leo.” She smiled without enjoyment. “If sweetening the job were all I was after, I’d have taken up with him instead of his partner. There wouldn’t have been as many complications. God knows I had enough chances. My stepfather was subtle compared to Leo.”

  “Gay Catalin wouldn’t say how she found out,” I said. “It would make sense that Brian told her. She may have suspected her kid brother was capable of blackmail. No sense hanging out all the dirty linen.”

  She flagged our waitress and asked for her hat. “I just put in twelve hours,” she said. “I only agreed to see you to find out why Musuraca’s following me again, but I don’t know any more than I knew when I came in here, while you know everything.”

  “Does Musuraca drive a green Camaro?”

  “He couldn’t get behind the wheel of a Camaro, green or otherwise. Why?”

  “No reason.” I hadn’t seen it since it had pulled away from my house. The gun butt against my kidney told me I had a persecution complex. The old bullet wound in my ribs told me I was entitled to one.

  Her hat came. She stood. “I usually get taken home from this place.”

  I took out my wallet and held up a fifty-dollar bill. “That ought to cover gas.”

  “I’m not a whore.”

  “You’re an actress who seats customers in a restaurant. Put it toward a ticket to Hollywood.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Get a look at Fat Phil.”

  “Believe me, it’s not worth fifty.” But she took the bill and left, trailing her hat by its ribbons, along with every male eye in the place. I put down money for the drinks and went out behind her.

  In front of the canopy the parking attendant, wearing a buff-and-blue uniform from the Mexican War, held the door of a red Triumph for her and she gave him a dollar and drove away. A moment later a pair of headlamps came on and a black 1960 Buick Invicta with one white fender pulled out of the line of spaces across the street and burbled after her. By that time I was sliding under the wheel of the Cutlass six spaces over. I waited until the big car turned left onto the main stem, then swung out and did the same. Phil Musuraca and I had one thing in common: We never used valet parking.