You Know Who Killed Me

by Loren D. Estleman

  I think it was the name that made up my mind, although I don’t know why. Maybe it was the romantic in me. It helped take away the bitter taste of playing the bully.

  * * *

  Driving away from there I got a call. The number on the screen belonged to Alvinus C. Adams.

  “Okay, you check out,” he said. “Where you want to meet?”

  I said, “Let’s make it convenient for you. Got a favorite hangout?” People open up better in familiar places. Also a place local to him put me closer to Yuri Yako.

  “None I can afford, and I don’t want you picking up the check and charging it against what I got coming. I got an interview in Detroit at four. I’ll drop by your office after.”

  I looked at my watch. It was coming up on noon. I said okay and punched out.

  * * *

  The address I got for Iroquois Heights Traffic Control was an old school building in a residential neighborhood, three stories of brick and frame with one of those old-fashioned chutes I bet the kids had loved to slide down during fire drills, and 1931 chiseled in the cornerstone. The place had a truncated, out-of-proportion look, as if something was missing from the original construction, a bell tower or something gone to demolition. A sign in the parking lot read:

  EMPLOYEES ONLY

  ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOWED

  I parked on the street and fed the meter. They said things were different now, but the changes might not have worked their way down to free enterprise. For as long as I could remember, violators were fair game for any independent with a winch on his truck; he split the fines with the city, and probably with whoever put through the paperwork.

  Inside, the place smelled like cheap varnish and dry rot. The original teal-colored linoleum was worn through to the floorboards in craters, and the boards themselves were so warped that crossing them made you woozy, like walking down the aisle of a train car rocking on the rails. A freestanding sign with arrows directed visitors to where they could pay fines or obtain information.

  A Plexiglas shield protected the woman at the Information counter from citizens. A circular metal grate had been inserted into it for communication. I wanted to ask for a ticket to the matinee.

  She ran a fingernail down a clipboard looking for Yuri Yako’s name. She wore trifocals and a skyscraper wig someone had combed under LBJ; the marks would still be there when we got our first female president. “Three-twelve.” The grate muffled her voice. “Third floor.”

  “Where else would you keep it?”

  “What?”

  I shook my head and went to the stairs. They passed between lath-and-plaster partitions with a green metal fire door at the bottom, propped open with an iron horse block. They squeaked, of course. I avoided gripping the brass railing with its generations of bacilli and spirilla. On the second flight I met a character coming down in a tweed three-piece suit and tortoiseshell glasses carrying a jumble of green cardboard file folders under one arm, papers sticking out from them at all angles. We both said “Pardon me,” and passed each other sideways. I caught a whiff of Old Spice and Jack Daniel’s.

  On the top landing I paused to drag oxygen into a pair of lungs cured in smoke, then followed more worn linoleum under a series of milk-colored globe fixtures until I came to 312 at the end. It was paneled oak, layered with old varnish atop generations of grit, a craquelure effect, with a wire grid sandwiched between frosted glass panes. It was a corner office and in school days would probably have belonged to the principal, or some other administrator worthy of maximum security.

  The door was unlocked. I let myself in.

  The big double-hung windows of Depression-era commercial construction had given way to heat-saving panels. The linoleum had been replaced with dark blue static-free carpet and fluorescent tubes hung in troughs from the ceiling. The only noise came from an ionizer, whirring as it scrubbed dust and airborne spores from the atmosphere. The computer itself, a row of monitors set on a long painted particle-board table operated by a single keyboard, was silent. The man seated at it with his back to me slurped coffee from a white enamel mug without a clever slogan and set it down.

  “Yuri Yako?”

  He swiveled his ergonomic chair, showing no surprise; he’d probably seen my reflection in the glass of one of the monitors. He was about thirty, slender, with black hair cut close to the skull and small ears flush with his temples. When he faced me he looked like he had no ears at all. His cheeks and chin were blue. They would always be blue, no matter how many times a day he shaved. He wore a pale blue dress shirt, no tie, with the cuffs turned back showing a mat of black hair on his wrists and the backs of his hands, all but obscuring a tattoo on the right, the ornate cross of the Eastern Orthodox Church with turnips on the ends.

  “Who’s asking?” No discernible accent. I’d sort of been hoping for Taras Bulba.

  I gave him a card.

  “I’m helping out with the Gates investigation. I understand you worked with him here.”

  He finished reading and slid the card into his shirt pocket. “Just to talk to. I’m filling in for him because I know the machine. I programmed it.”

  “Gates did that, I heard.”

  “He installed it. It’s not the same thing. The old one was in place since the seventies. The timing of the lights downtown was a disgrace, especially during rush hour. Since he knew so much about it, Gates got the job of monitoring the new machine—on the off chance it malfunctioned, which happened maybe twice a year. The rest of the time he sat here sucking up caffeine, like me.”

  “If he knew that much about it, why didn’t he do the programming?”

  “Different specialty. During high-traffic events, say, there’s a high-rivalry school football game, a political rally, and some pimply boy band playing a concert, I come in and change the timing to keep things moving smoothly. Meanwhile someone like Gates sits here—”

  “Sucking up caffeine. Sounds mind-numbing.”

  “Not to someone who busted his butt doing odd jobs to put himself through school. I’ll still be paying off my student loan come the trumpet. Did you know the first car gets five seconds for the driver to make up his mind to go through the green, while all the rest get two? That’s the brilliant sort of thinking that put Gates in this chair.”

  “Some guys got all the luck.”

  “Yeah. His parents weren’t rich, but they put him through school on what they’d saved since he was in the womb, and because he had a degree in computer science he stepped right into this job still wearing his mortarboard. The city had just decided to junk the old computer when he came for his interview. He was the first through the door and they told everybody else to go home.”

  “You being one of them.”

  “Yeah, but I got a callback. They needed a programmer.”

  “So it all worked out.”

  “Except the job doesn’t pay as well.”

  “Mind telling me where you were New Year’s Eve?”

  White teeth showed in the blue lower half of his face.

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to that. I was right here, checking the program for the annual drunks’ parade. See, the rest of the year the lights go to flashers after midnight, but that’s when things get lively on January first, so we chuck that. Someone has to make sure they turn green and yellow and red when they’re supposed to. Gates had seniority, so he got the night off while I rang out the old with a pot of Folger’s.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Just me and the security cameras at all the doors. Check the tapes. You won’t find me ducking out before my shift ended at eight A.M.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Mr. Yako.”

  “Yako.” He pronounced it with a short a. “I’m Ukrainian on my father’s side, Russian on the other.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  He colored.

  “Don’t ask my father that question. Ukrainians are descended from Cossacks. Cossacks fought alongside Russia only when they were paid or when t
hey could use the help. They didn’t give a shit about fancy Easter eggs or Peter the Great setting fire to beards at Court.”

  I thanked him for the history lesson. “And thanks for the heads-up on those two seconds.”

  “You didn’t hear it from me. I don’t want to be responsible for another land rush.” He scratched his stubble. “Who blew the whistle on me?”

  I turned back from the door. “No one. We’re just talking to everyone who knew the victim.”

  “The cops already did that. Why’d I have to go all over it again?”

  “Consider it a callback.” I left.

  There was no point in checking with security. If the cameras had caught him sneaking out early, he’d already be in custody. Henty was too good to have overlooked it.

  I knew about Ukrainians. I’d just wanted to see if he riled easily. Most killers do.

  SIX

  “Walker?”

  “That’s what it says on the door.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m Walker. Please sit down, Mr. Adams.”

  Alvinus C. Adams tugged at the chair in front of the desk, lifting his heavy brow when it didn’t budge.

  “Just a precaution against bad breath,” I said. “Nothing personal. I bolted it down years ago.”

  He lowered himself into it as if it were a steaming tub. Seated, he looked bigger than he had standing. His legs were short, bowed, and his work trousers bagged around them; childhood rickets, possibly. He looked too young for polio. I filed him on the sunny side of forty, with no gray in his black hair and his eyes around the irises as clear as egg whites. From the waist up he was built broad and solid, his face a mass of bony ridges with some old scar tissue; some fists had broken up on those rocks. He was clean-shaven, with muscular hands and square nails clipped or bitten short. He was dressed for manual labor, in blue twill and steel-toed boots. The red necktie looked out of place; but I remembered what he’d said about his reason for being in the city.

  “How’d the job interview go?”

  “Don’t know yet. They’re seeing other people, the man said. So I’m still looking and will be after they call me with the news. Or don’t, which happens just as often.”

  “What do you do?”

  “You name it. Forklift, power shovel, dozer, tractor-trailer. My driving record’s clean as a colon flush and not a single accident on a worksite. So why see other people?”

  I looked at the facial scars, the ones on his knuckles, and hazarded a guess.

  Anyway it was a rhetorical question. “Anybody can rent an office in this town by the day, especially a dump like this. How I know you’re the guy I axed about all over southeastern Michigan?”

  I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at my license framed on the wall next to the window.

  “That don’t prove a thing. There’s a shop in Port Huron where I can get a newspaper printed saying I was elected president.”

  “Anyone can be elected president. Anyone can’t operate a bulldozer; or find a missing child. I can see you’re a hard man to take in, Mr. Adams. A lot of guys who thought they could are probably still hearing bells.” I lit a cigarette and tossed the pack his direction. He had a pack of his own in one flap pocket and the rectangular outline of a lighter in the other. “Let’s break the law and smoke up some conversation.”

  After a moment he scooped up the pack, tapped one loose, and drew it from the pack by the lips. He started to put the pack on the desk.

  “Keep it,” I said. “Yours looks kind of flat.”

  “I wouldn’t, but they’re getting to be an investment.” He found room for it in his pocket and buttoned the flap: the tidy type. “Thanks. This don’t come out of the reward, does it?”

  I studied his face, decided to chuckle. “No.” I swiveled toward the safe that had brought over Queen Isabella’s jewels, opened it, and broke out another hundred. I shut the door on the office bottle and the clean shirt I kept there in case I bled on the one I wore and spun the knob. At the bank, I’d taken the cash out of Florence Melville’s check in fives, so there was a nice neat band around the bundle. I put it on the desk and stood the heavy rotary-dial phone on top of it.

  “Not exactly ten thousand. But if I like what I hear, it’s the first installment. Dazzle me.”

  “I was walking my dog in this Gates’s neighborhood. I didn’t know it was his neighborhood then, and I didn’t know him from Pharaoh. I only put it together later when I saw the house on the news. About dark it was. There was a car parked in front of the place with the motor running: You can’t miss that on a cold day, the exhaust comes thick out of the pipe. Man behind the wheel. I didn’t think nothing of it; maybe he belonged to the house and was waiting for someone, his wife or someone, warming the motor while he waited. I can’t afford that, gas costing what it does; but maybe he’s got a job. Some folks still do, I guess.”

  I drew in smoke, let it out through my nose, watched it drift toward the window, said nothing. He lived alone, probably, just him and the dog. No one to talk to but the dog.

  “Didn’t think nothing of it, till he saw me, that is. Right away he flips the visor down in front of his face, pulls away from the curb, and drives off, turning his head away from me like he’s looking for an address on the other side of the street.”

  Silence creaked. The lights dimmed, then brightened; Karaoke Press had opened for business. I wondered again just what an e-book was and if there was any work in it for me.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “Yeah. The sun was going down behind him, you see. He had no reason to turn down that visor except to cover his face; and if he was looking for an address, why’d he stop there?”

  “Read his directions. Look at a city map. Use his cell, the way you’re supposed to, not while driving. Blow his nose, which takes two hands. That’s just off the top of my head. People stop their cars and pull over for all sorts of reasons or none at all.”

  He ditched the cigarette in the tray. “They don’t hide their faces unless they’re up to something.”

  “Better,” I said. “But not ten thousand dollars’ worth. Not a hundred bucks’ worth either. Gas money, maybe, from here back to the Heights. I made a resolution this year to take better care of my fellow man, but the expiration date always runs out about this time in February.”

  “What if I gave you a license number?”

  “Better yet. If it leads to something promising, I’d consider staking you to the hundred. That’d give you something to build on if the ten grand comes into play.” I slid over the telephone pad and dealt myself a pencil.

  “V-A-L. I didn’t get the rest.”

  I wrote. “Michigan plate?”

  “Yeah. Blue and white, anyway; none of that vanity bullshit.”

  “It’s a start. Make and model?”

  “One of those midsize jobs, looks like a shucked oyster. I can’t tell ’em apart no more.”

  “What’d the guy look like?”

  “I didn’t see his face, like I said.”

  “How’d you know it was a man?”

  “If it was a woman she should try out for the Lions, he was that wide crosst the shoulders. Had him on a quilted coat, some kind of hat; sock hat, I think, no fancy fluff. It was a man, I’m sure of that.”

  “This was New Year’s Eve?”

  “Night before.”

  I pushed the pad away.

  “No gas money for you. Gates was alive the night before, the next day too. Whoever clocked him did it between when he left the office New Year’s Eve and midnight New Year’s Day, or shortly after.”

  “You ever hear of casing a place?”

  “Look, Mr. Adams, I’ll see it’s run out. If it looks good, someone will be in touch with you. That’s a promise. My license comes with a stiff bond. I can’t afford to make pledges I can’t keep.”

  He stood up all of a piece, fists balled at his side. I drew my feet under me and leaned forward in my chair, lifting the telephone, standard and all. It
was my best chance to block one of those fists if it went airborne.

  I’d forgotten about the hundred. He misunderstood the action. He didn’t reach for it, but he opened his hands and let them hang.

  I opened the belly drawer and slid the bundle of bills into it. His fingers twitched, but I felt better with the drawer open. The Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special lay inside.

  He couldn’t see it from his angle, but all the starch went out of him then; he was a proud man, a man out of work, a hard man who’d taken so many punches from someone out of his reach there wasn’t much use in being proud or hard. He nodded and turned away, dragging his feet now in their armored boots.

  “What’s the breed?” I asked.

  He stopped, turned an uncomprehending face on me.

  “Your dog.”

  “Chow.” His expression lightened a little. “Prettiest little chow you ever did see. Smarter’n any crew I ever worked with. Ten years old, thinks she’s still a puppy. When’s the last time you saw a seventy-year-old jump his own height over a low branch?”

  I tugged four fives out of the bundle and shoved the drawer shut. I stood and held them out.

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Unless it’s against the ten thousand.”

  “That’d be stringing you along. It’s a loan. Thanks for coming down.”

  “Mister, there’s no down from where I am. And a loan’s only a loan if you think you can pay it back.” He was looking me in the eye now. The bills in my hand didn’t exist.

  I folded them, stuck them inside my breast pocket, and tore the sheet with the license number on it off the top. On the next sheet I scribbled a name, tore off that sheet, and held it out.

  “This man works in the City-County Building. They call it the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center now. He’s in Human Resources.”

  “Janitor?”

  “No such luck. There’s a high turnover in security guards there. That’s because the pay’s low. On the other hand the hours are long and the health plan wouldn’t keep your dog in shots. Got a record?”

  “I got probation when I was thirteen. Possession of pot, four ounces.”