You Know Who Killed Me

by Loren D. Estleman

  I’d said, “I think you just offended my Italian great-great-grandmother.”

  “Bullshit. Everyone knows you were spawned. Anyway, it’s no longer current, with a Russian mob and a Korean mob and a black Mafia and the boys in Dixie and the Puerto Rican Junior League. There’s one in Aberdeen, but no one takes them seriously in those kilts. If Luigi, Nunzio, and Giuseppe had included a copyright attorney along with their criminal lawyers, they could overturn RICO.”

  It seemed to me I’d heard that somewhere else, possibly from me.

  I figured Barry would know more about the Ukrainians than anyone in Minsk; but the call went straight to his mailbox, which was full as usual. He was probably staking out some gambling hell, disguised as a housefly.

  I hit End without leaving a message. He never returned them anyway. He only took calls on the portable when a name he trusted popped up. Too many people were looking for him with baseball bats, and too many of those knew how to track a signal. I was one of the few he gave the number to when he ditched his burner for a new one every three months. He still lived out of a suitcase on occasion, on account of the organic parts he’d left behind at an old ATF crime scene. When you look up “investigative reporter” in Webster’s, you won’t find his picture. He’s too cagy to advertise.

  Surfing the channels, I caught three minutes of some team sport I’d never seen before from some country I couldn’t place, and narrated in some language that sounded like an Alvin and the Chipmunks album played backwards, punctuated by a hoarse guttural whenever someone scored; which seemed to happen every couple of seconds. Somewhere in the Third World there was a sports bar where people were cheering and bets were being made. Everything else was reality and reruns, which sounded too much like my day. I turned off the set. The sudden quiet hurt my ears, like the vacuum after a thunderclap.

  I found some leftover Gordon’s and made a martini, but poured the bottom half into the sink. It was a shameful waste of perfectly good ice cubes. The dark night of the soul is no hour for cocktails with William and Kate. I tried the stereo, but Sarah Vaughan wasn’t doing it for me either. She sounded like someone burping the alphabet.

  Even that little bit of liquor sat on the party-store hot dog like a rhinoceros with a sprained ankle. I drank part of a Coke and dumped the rest after the gin and vermouth. I couldn’t seem to finish anything, including the case I was working on.

  I switched on an under-the-counter light to discourage burglars and went back into the living room to turn off the lamp next to the easy chair. In the abrupt darkness I saw a light where no light belonged.

  I thought it was an interior lamp at first, in the house directly across the street on the Hamtramck side, but the place had been empty for weeks, looking for a buyer. They were tearing down half the buildings in the city and the other half they couldn’t give away. A reflection, then, but not in the window; some of the local hope for the future of the world had chucked a piece of asphalt through the glass.

  I figured out what it was just before it disappeared; the light from my own kitchen, reflected in the lens of a telescope, or more likely a pair of binoculars, just deep enough in the darkness of a vacant building to put the owner’s face in shadow. Whoever it was had been looking directly into my house.

  TWENTY

  That woke me up even more than the first cheery hello from the Coke. I went into the bedroom and undressed in the light from the nightstand, just another night owl getting ready for bed. That window faced the same direction as the one in the living room, but I couldn’t make out anything through the gauzy curtain. I put out the lamp, lit a cigarette, and lowered it gently into an ashtray after one drag, where the glowing tip would show through the window at about the level of a man smoking in bed. From the bureau I drew some clothes I could barely see in the darkness and put them on, finishing with a pair of black sneakers. Later, when I saw the getup in a mirror, I looked less like James Bond and more like I’d dressed in the dark; but the stripes and checks blended in better than straight black.

  If Peeping Tom was any kind of pro, he’d wait until the cigarette went out before leaving to report, if he had someone to report to. With no one drawing on it I had maybe ten minutes before it burned down to the filter. I took the Smith & Wesson I hadn’t carried that day from the drawer in the nightstand and stuck it under my belt on my way back to the kitchen.

  That window faced the house next door on my side of the street, but the counter light would make a glow visible from the one opposite mine. I was careful not to pass in front of the light and make a flutter. I let myself out through the side door to the garage, scooping my keys off the hook next to it, just in case.

  There my options narrowed. A corner streetlamp illuminated the window, and although the bay door faced away from the deserted house, a partner watching that side would see me go out that direction if I did it the usual way.

  So I didn’t do it the usual way. I tugged the door up a foot and a half, blocked it with the battery charger I got a lot of use out of in cold weather, and limboed my way out through the gap. Something slipped in my lower back when I levered myself up onto my feet. I was getting too old for subterfuge.

  It all took too long. By the time I made it through the strip of darkness between the kitchen window and the house next door, a motor started and a car pulled away from the curb in front of it, traveling without lights. That would be my surveillant, if such a word exists.

  Just for the hell of it, I sprinted back to the garage, this time without worry about being seen, wrenched the door up the rest of the way, threw myself into the Cutlass, started it, and shot out, forgetting the battery charger and chipping a tooth when my right front tire knocked it over, bumped up over it, and landed hard on the concrete pad. I spun the wheel to keep from repeating the mistake with the rear tire and guided the car through the narrow gap on the kitchen side to the street my watcher had taken. My next-door neighbor was going to give me hell for that; we shared that strip of grass.

  For once I caught a break. I had my lights off, and the only other car in sight had stopped at a signal, the driver being an honest citizen who didn’t want to risk being pulled over on a stakeout job. So far he thought he was in the clear. Ukrainians are usually smarter than that; the czars used to pay them tribute. But I was only guessing he was Ukrainian. I collect enemies like Hummel figurines.

  We headed downtown. When a DPW truck trundled out of a side street into the block I’d left between us, I switched on my lights.

  There were more cars wandering around near the business section, restaurant staff and city workers heading in for the red-eye shift. I blended in with them and followed a pair of tilted taillights right onto First Street. The streetlamps there were working. The lights belonged to a late-model silver-gray Corolla. The license plate bulb wasn’t lit; but if the number started with V-A-L, it would be an insult to my intelligence.

  The lights of Greektown—especially the neon of the casino—never go out. On nights like that they bathe the bellies of the clouds in candy colors visible for a mile in every direction, like an exploded clown. I could make out architectural details and the occasional rat scurrying after pheasants from the vacant lots in the neighborhoods. A salvage crook ducked out of sight into a doorway, carrying a coil of copper wire. I kept an eye out for urban coyotes, the four-legged kind.

  The nerve center of what used to be one of the largest cities in the United States looked as dead as a kidney in a slop bucket. The wind lifted a newspaper section and nudged it down the sidewalk, a devil ray stranded on dry land.

  The unexpected movement distracted me. I lost the Toyota in that second; but it had only deserted the street for the curb. The tailpipe smoked creamily in the frigid air, then stopped as the lights went out.

  I drove past, timing it so the driver was distracted by his seat belt buckle—I hoped—and parked in a loading zone near the end of the block. I adjusted my side mirror and watched a medium-built figure in a dark-colored parka get o
ut of the car and cross the street, carrying a slim folder. Without looking around, he scampered up a flight of steps, fished out a set of keys, and let himself into the McNamara Federal Building.

  That was satisfaction of a kind. I knew he wasn’t smart enough for a Cossack.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I stayed put and smoked part of a cigarette, in case he’d left something in the car and came back out to get it. When I was reasonably sure he’d be inside a while, I got out, popped my trunk, made a selection from the socket set in the toolbox, took out an impact wrench, a ball-peen hammer, wire snips, and eight feet of flat cable; why I had the cable I couldn’t remember, except I can’t pass anything lying in the road that might be useful. Walked boldly down the street in the direction of the Toyota carrying my tools and cable; just another midnight-shift city worker earning his pension, for anyone left in the city who cared to look out for his neighbors. I thought of the copper thief, and about my defense if I got picked up. But no one showed on foot or on wheels during the short walk, or when I shone my pocket flash on the dark plate screwed above the bumper: It told me nothing. Government surveillance cars don’t advertise, although shame on them for not buying American.

  The door on the passenger’s side was locked, and likely the one on the driver’s too. I placed the socket attached to the wrench on the lock, hesitated—destroying federal property is a felony, but they feed you better than in County—then gave it a smart smack with the hammer. I twisted the socket and pulled, drawing out the cylinder. I had the wire snips ready, but no alarm went off when I opened the door. He must have been in a hurry to file his report and go home to bed.

  After rigging the cable, I laid the tools carefully in the gutter out of sight and slid into the passenger’s seat. The dome light hadn’t come on when he’d opened the door, so he’d switched it off like a good little spook, but just to make sure there wasn’t an override I reached across and opened the driver’s door a couple of inches. The light stayed off. I pulled the door shut.

  I found the vehicle registration in the glove compartment, but all my flash told me was the car belonged to Uncle Sam, and I’d known that already. I put it back and shut the lid.

  I had a brainstorm. I reached again, this time to the sun visor above the steering wheel, felt something, and unclipped a driver’s license. Some people still do that, and he’d have his government ID on him for most purposes. In the light of the flash a moon face smiled at me under thinning fair hair. I found out George Andrew Gesner was thirty-three, stood five-foot-ten, weighed 215 pounds, and lived in Farmington Hills. I put him back where I found him. Made myself comfortable.

  A blue-and-white crept the opposite direction, poking a sidebeam randomly among the scenery, and a few seconds later a barge of a 1969 Mercury cruised the other way, the bass that had replaced the backseat thumping and making the Toyota’s windows buzz. The prowl car’s beam swiveled that direction after they passed and the speaker went silent. The vehicles went their separate ways. Apart from those distractions I might have been camped out at Point Barrow.

  It was still warm in the car. When I felt myself nodding off I opened my door a crack to let in the flinty cold. Just then the glass door at the top of the fed house steps swung open and my guy skipped down, tugging up the hood of his parka. His hands were empty now. I got a glimpse of pale hair and a round face.

  He opened the driver’s door and flopped down without checking the inside of the car. He must have called in sick the day they taught that.

  “Spies these days,” I said. “You lost your edge when the Berlin Wall fell.”

  He jumped half a league, saw my shape in shadow, and made a move toward his coat, which was fastened with snaps to his neck. I could have waited—with that setup I had all night; it made me want to write my congressman—but I wanted to get to bed too. I left my revolver under my belt and gave him a glimpse of the tin star the county used to pass out like toothbrush samples, my thumb over the embossed legend. His hand stopped.

  “Agent Gesner, I’m Archibald West. The badge is temporary; gives me better jurisdiction than a city shield, and it limits curiosity. We don’t carry any as a rule. Places I’ve been, a stop-and-frisk can turn into fifteen years in the Taliban Hilton, or my head in a diplomatic pouch.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Please.” I looked all-knowing; in the darkness a waste of a good facial expression. But someone would have given him my description at least.

  “Who are you with?” He had a high, shallow voice. I spotted him an octave for his nervous condition.

  “Since they added ‘explosives’ to Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I never use it. ATFE sounds like a safety razor.”

  “What’s Treasury got to do with—anyone else?”

  He’d caught himself; he hadn’t missed class the day they gave Indoctrination. It takes more than an executive order about interagency cooperation to overcome a century of conditioning.

  “Never mind that.” I snapped on my flash. “Is that an option with this model, or part of the standard equipment?”

  He followed the pencil beam to the flat wire running from the underside of the steering column through the crack of the door on the hinge side.

  “I don’t—”

  “Of course not. Who’d drive around with Primacord fixed to his ride? The newer stuff that makes it look like Reddi-wip, but they don’t need it to blow a pothole the size of Crater Lake under this car. There wouldn’t be enough even for the scrap hounds.”

  “It looks like ordinary TV antenna wire.”

  “I’ll pass that along. Next time they’ll make it round and black with a burning fuse, straight from Acme, so there’s no confusion.”

  “But, why—?”

  “You tell me.” I gave it a beat, but he wasn’t having any; sighed, as if I were disappointed. “From the position, I’d say it’s wired from the steering mechanism to the drive shaft, to go off when you put the car in gear and turn the wheel; but it could be a decoy. Ignition makes a better spark, and there’s always the speedometer, set to blow at the mph of choice. Did you see Speed?”

  “I was only inside a few minutes.”

  “Irrelevant. Last year, a congressional aide stopped ten seconds to pay the toll in Oklahoma and wound up all over the panhandle. Someone mistook him for his boss. We traced the charge to a member of a NASCAR pit crew. He’s in Gitmo now, blowing up water wings.”

  “We haven’t sent anyone there in years.”

  Jackpot. Whatever division he worked for, it had teeth. “You’d know, probably. They lie to me all the time; but I guess I’m not in your pay grade.”

  He reached for his door handle. I leaned across him and caught his wrist.

  “I wouldn’t. He might’ve rigged a claymore inside the seat, to explode when you lift your weight off it.”

  “Jesus!”

  He let go of the handle and I released my grip. He was hyperventilating now. He snatched open his coat. My hand went automatically toward my belt. He came out with a plastic inhaler, shook it, stuck it in his mouth, and pumped. When he took it out he was breathing normally—for a man who thought he was sitting on a bomb. He had even me feeling nervous.

  “Why me?” he said again.

  “What are you working on?”

  “That’s classified.”

  I chuckled and slapped him on the shoulder. He tried to give the car a sunroof with his head.

  “Good man, Gesner. You’ll get the flags at half-mast. Do me a favor and stay put for five minutes. I’m putting my kid through Columbia.” I opened my door.

  This time it was my arm in the vise. “Aren’t you going to disarm it?”

  “I’ll have to call a team. I’m only trained to spot them, not put them out of action. The union might get sore.”

  “Well, call them!”

  “They’re not the fire department. They don’t just come on my word. I could be an imposter, or gone over. Without something they can check, they’ll stay p
ut rather than charge into an ambush. Who’s your assignment?”

  “How do you know it’s a who?”

  “I don’t fly solo, George. The whole reason behind Homeland is all the agencies share information, up to a point. We know you’re surveilling someone in the area”—surveilling, I was pretty sure he’d approve of that—“and that you just came in from your shift to report. Who’s the pigeon?”

  He drummed his fingers on the inhaler in his lap. “Local private detective named Walker, Amos Walker.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why, that’s need-to-know. I’m just supposed to stake out his place, follow him if necessary, and report on his movements. That’s it.”

  I reached up and ran a hand along the headliner.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sometimes they plant napalm canisters under the roof. They’re only about the size of a thirty-five-millimeter film container, but they take out the guess factor. The day after nine-eleven, a GSA accountant survived a whole case of C-4, so they upped the ante.”

  “Jesus!” He crossed himself.

  “Relax. There’s nothing up there. Somebody doesn’t think you’re important enough to stretch the budget.”

  “I’m not important at all.”

  I fished out my cell. “I’ll make the call. Sit tight for the crew.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Twenty minutes is the record. That was Hamilton, a legend in the District; but he’s in Yemen now, and anyway that was before the underwear bomber. You might be in luck, though. We’ve got more men assigned to Dearborn than Washington, and that’s just next door. All those Arabs, you know? You didn’t hear that from me. We don’t profile no more. Who do you report to?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Who was the folder for? We’ve been watching you a while, George.”

  “That was the day’s log. I seal it in a pouch and put it in a pigeonhole with a number on it.”

  I didn’t ask for the number. I wasn’t about to compound the felony by breaking into the federal building.