“One last question. How do you know this character Walker when you see him?”
“We snagged his photo from the state police file on private investigators. He doesn’t look like anyone special, but I know him when I see him. He keeps weird hours, I can tell you that.”
“As opposed to you,” I snapped. I didn’t appreciate that nothing-special crack.
“Especially lately.” He took another hit from the inhaler; that set his brain working.
“What if there’s a timer? I’m supposed to sit here waiting to find out?”
“Which you never will, either way.”
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ.” He’d gone so white I could see his face clearly in the dark.
I took pity on him then. He was a tadpole in a tank full of barracuda. I knew how that felt.
“George?”
“What?”
I pointed my flash under my chin and snapped it on.
His mouth opened, but not for the inhaler. “Hey! You’re—”
I grinned.
“Go home, George. I’m leaving you the wire as a present. It was a rescue job; I’m a pack rat. But I don’t know what to do with it since my cable company replaced flatwire with fiber-optic.” I opened the door and let myself out.
He was still sitting there putting it all together when I made a U-turn and passed him going the other way. In a little while he was going to get mad. Maybe even mad enough to report the incident.
Chances were no. When he found the ruined lock, he’d replace it on his own dime rather than admit he’d been taken in by a common P.I.; but I’d been disappointed before. At least I knew whoever he was reporting to wasn’t with Treasury, or he wouldn’t have asked what its interest was. That ought to bring comfort eating London broil in the correctional facility up in Milan.
TWENTY-TWO
I undressed completely and slid between the sheets, but sleep’s like chasing unicorns when your back’s aching, your bad leg’s hurting worse than always, your heart’s thumping like the bass in the back of a ’69 Merc, and your brain’s racing down a ninety-degree slope with the brakes out.
In other words, a typical night in the romantic life of the private eye; I’d been tanked, threatened, schmoozed, followed, and cornered into committing a federal crime—one, at least. What George Andrew Gesner chose to make of it in a civil case concerning pain and suffering was up to him and a slew of courts.
Nothing made sense. An ordinary citizen—assuming that creature still existed outside the Museum of Natural History—had been shot to death in his basement, the Ukrainian mob was involved (or maybe not), the Episcopal Church was offering blood money for the person or persons responsible, two more murders had logged in, the feds were involved, I was in their gun sights, a hyperactive kid was giving screwy answers to even screwier questions, a solid citizen (see above) was feeding out disinformation about the first victim’s associations—and there was even a stoic Indian. It was like a collaboration between Robert Ludlum, Zane Grey, Rod Serling, and the writers of an after-school special.
It all seemed like a lot for a job that had started out with me listening to fuzzy tapes and making cold calls.
But that was the nature of the work: A prospective client drops in, you ask him to sit down, offer him refreshment, sit back in your swivel with your eyes closed and your hands tented under your chin like Sherlock Holmes, and listen to his life’s history, making no judgments, because you’ve heard it all before, like an old priest trying to pay attention and not think about that charter-boat service for sale in Florida, or the mom-and-pop bookstore in Indiana struggling against Amazon, or the corner saloon in Toledo, or in my case the small Minnesota town looking for a police chief; some quiet, out-of-the-way place that exists only in reruns of The Andy Griffith Show. More unicorns. So you crank yourself out of bed when the alarm rings, sip two cups of strong coffee in your breakfast nook over the morning paper—another doomed institution—shave, shower, drive to the office, go through the circulars, past-due notices, and letters threatening dire consequences for breaking the chain, set fire to an unlawful cigarette, and wait for the buzzer that would let in the next prospect. Who knows? He might be a dictator in exile, looking for a place to spend the nation’s treasury he managed to pack in his suitcase before the doors crashed in, or a movie star offering gross points in his next blockbuster in return for following you around for a day and learning all the secrets of your trade.
Or a suddenly single mother wanting to know who killed her husband and why it was so important it was worth destroying her world.
You spend most of your time studying dusty records under a sixteen-watt bulb and the wary eye of a minimum-wage civil servant, dialing phones and crossing out numbers, sitting in a car with the engine off in all extremes of weather, playing with a cigarette you can’t light and staring at the door of some building until your eyes water and you swear it’s opening, but it isn’t, and when it does you almost miss it, because your brain went out for a walk and left your body behind. Why it came back at all was just habit.
You never know where the spoor will lead; to a big payoff, a dead stop, a crack on the skull, a cop with brass knuckles for brains, a gangbanger with his veins full of horse and only you standing between him and his next hit— it was always the amateurs that got you, ask any dead gunslinger—a slug in the back and a pimple-faced M.E. eating an egg-salad sandwich over your entrails on a table. Every P.I. has faced enough melodrama to fill a book, if not quite a series like the heroes of fiction. The amount you meet is scary enough. But if routine follow-up was all the work offered, I’d just as soon teach ballroom dancing to quadriplegics.
If only it weren’t for all that government green gnawing its way to the surface. It didn’t matter how many coats of beige and sky blue and rose you slapped on top of it; it started as a haze, like crabgrass, and before you knew what was happening you were in it up to your knees.
The telephone rang, a welcome shock treatment.
“Sorry about the hour.”
Lewellyn Hale’s voice, crisp as a crumpet. “Four o’clock there, isn’t it?”
“Not that bad.” I stood naked in the living room, shivering in sixty degrees. I’d turned down the thermostat before piling in a half hour before. “Michigan’s in the Eastern Time Zone. I can’t seem to get that into people’s heads.”
“Really. I must make a note of that. I’m an insomniac. I thought you might be one also.”
“Only when acted upon by outside forces. Don’t they have sleeping pills up there?”
“And lose my edge? I consider my affliction an advantage over the average bloke.”
“So bloody English, so bloody early. Where are you from, really?”
“They tell me I was born in Southampton, while my parents were waiting for the boat to the States. I lived with them till I was thirty. Hard to scrape off the fish-and-chips after all that mollycoddling. Okay, pal,” he said, in a questionable imitation of Steve McQueen. “I wanted to report while it was all fresh. It’s never the same when I’m reading from notes, for some reason. The wink-winks in between wipe out all the intuitive impressions.”
“Hang on.”
I put down the handset, fetched a robe, and switched on the coffeemaker. The gurgling helped. I lit up my first of the day; or maybe it was the last of the day before. Back in the living room I picked up.
“Fire away. In American, please. It took me five years to get though David Copperfield.”
“What that man did to the King’s English should have put him in the dock. I talked to Chuck Swingline. The Ojibway?”
“I was just thinking about him, in an abstract way.”
“An ordeal. My man in Ottawa got on his bad side right at the start, addressing him as a Native American. Swingline spent five minutes explaining why no Indian worthy of his heritage would appreciate being called American. You chaps really did a number on the aborigines.”
“So did you Canucks. The Mexicans too. And let’
s not forget the British. I read somewhere they were the ones who taught them how to take scalps.”
“Balls. One of the first sights the pilgrims recorded was a row of Huron topknots waving in the breeze from Iroquois lances. I didn’t call you to discuss the history of genocide.”
“You started it. Hang on once more.”
The machine had finished gurgling. I snatched out the carafe, scalding the back of my hand on the stream still coming out, filled a cup, and sipped from it on my way back.
“Fire away.”
“Malroux—that’s my man, he’s from Montreal—caught up with Swingline ice fishing clear up on Lake Nipigon, which is where polar bears go to cool off; the plane fare will be on the bill. Crazy former bush pilot named Eagan, with a steel pin in every bone in his body. Swingline had fourteen tip-ups going. That’s more than Caucasians are allowed by law, but the tribal lawyers make sure the treaties are honored.”
I sat down in the easy chair. “What was the temp?”
“Twenty below, by your measure. There may be a surcharge for treatment of frostbite.”
“What was Swingline wearing?”
“Wearing? I—oh.” I could hear him blush. “I am guilty of over-reporting. Assign it to forty-one hours without a wink.”
“We’re all tired. Continue.”
“Swingline’s not the garrulous type, and I don’t suppose time in that rough country polished his social skills. He told Malroux he only visited that hunting lodge with Gates and the rest because they were footing the bill; to be able to tell the folks back home they hunted with a real Indian, I imagine. He considered Rudy Johnson the only real hunter in the pack, and he was a drunk—not, I suspect, that that part bothered him. Swingline had a six-pack of Moosehead keeping cold in all fourteen holes and he drank two at every stop while Malroux was following him around. You’d think they’d make some effort to avoid the stereotype.”
“What about Gates?”
“Had to be reminded who he was. The fellow doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression, but then I don’t suppose the old boy’s faculties can be trusted at the bottom of that ocean of beer. There wasn’t much point to asking him if he had any idea who killed Gates, but of course the question was asked. Do I need tell you the answer?”
“Where was he New Year’s Eve?”
“Trapping beaver up on Hudson’s Bay, just like you read in books. My opinion? He had a stash of liquor, and possibly a warm companion to share it with. Ojibways make a killing selling genuine pelts to Yanks on holiday; some of them even came from this side of China. We confirmed his story with the proprietor of a picturesque trading post in Fort George—bearskins, spears, convincing arrowheads, all that rot—who sold him four cases of Moosehead New Year’s Day.”
“He could have caught a plane.”
Hale chuckled. No U.S. citizen could do it the same justice.
“It just so happens I thought of that. An Alberta Clipper tore through that morning, dumping a meter of snow by noon and closing every airport from Toronto on up to Baffin Island. Even that maniac Eagan wouldn’t go out in it; he was shacked up with his half-Inuit wife in a cabin in Winnipeg. You Yanks haven’t quite managed to cock up the climate up here just yet.”
“I’m bleeding; really, I am. You just can’t hear it from this distance. I hope you got all this over the phone.”
The air stiffened on his end.
“I’m a religious man, Walker. I don’t fritter away church money.”
“Don’t be so cranky just because you didn’t get enough sleep.” I fingered a cigarette. “I wonder why Perlberg said Swingline and Gates were close?”
“Is that an assignment?”
“No, just guessing out loud. Thanks, Lulu. Look me up next time you’re in town.”
“If you promise not to call me Lulu.”
I didn’t go back to bed after we finished talking. I never lighted the cigarette. Gray was bleeding into the black outside, and I was wide awake. I had time before the city woke up to make a decent breakfast to dump on top of last night’s leaden hot dog and chase it with a gallon of black coffee. I could actually smell the pancakes when I fell asleep in the chair, and when I woke up the sun was strong for winter.
I needed to start making visits.
Dressing after my shower and shave, I glanced through the bedroom window at the empty house across the street, and that’s when I realized it had snowed. It had started sometime after I’d dozed off, fluffy as baby chicks, and by the time the sun broke through it was piled nearly to the sill of the window George Gesner had stood behind. The first real sun in days struck sparks off it like stripper dust.
It was painful to look at in the strong light. When I turned my head away, green-and-purple balloons floated inside my pupils as if someone had popped an old-fashioned flashbulb in my face at point-blank range.
I hadn’t seen anyone inside the house. I wondered if George was back on duty or if there was a day man, and if he’d be the one who’d follow me when I left. I’m not so stuck on myself I expect Washington to spend that much of its budget on me; but an institution that would pay two hundred bucks for a twelve-dollar pipe wrench is capable of anything.
TWENTY-THREE
The announcer was reciting a long list of school closings when I flipped on the car radio. I listened impatiently; it was like being a kid again and your school always seemed to be the last to call in. When Iroquois Heights came up, I pointed the hood that way and called Amelie Gates.
“Good morning, Mr. Walker. No, I’m afraid Michel isn’t home. He’s spending the day with a friend.”
“Can you tell me where? I want to ask him a couple of things.”
“No, I can’t let you do that without me present. You understand.” She went on without pause, almost tripping over her words. “I really can’t talk now. I’m late for Belle Isle.”
“Sure you can make it?”
“I have to. As bad as it is for me, it’s worse for those poor people on the island.”
“I’ll pick you up. I’ve been driving in this stuff since I was sixteen.”
“No, there’s no—”
I hung up as if I hadn’t heard her. I didn’t like the way she sounded. It all made sense, but she hadn’t had to speak at 78 rpm to make her point. A truth told at lying speed might as well be a lie.
* * *
She must have been watching through a window. I’d barely got stopped, sliding a little in the wet snow, when she came out wearing her old quilted coat and man’s checked hunting cap with a tote bag over her shoulder and let herself into the passenger’s seat. I asked her what kept her going.
“This,” she said, drumming her fingers on the bag in her lap, as if that meant something more than just jangled nerves. “All this. It’s more than just avoiding sitting around, dwelling on things. When I see those people literally fighting to survive—I don’t mean just men and women, but small children, who did nothing to deserve what’s happened to them—I’m reminded I’m not the only one in the world with sorrows.”
She looked down, smiled, and turned her head my way. “I don’t suppose there was anything original in that. I heard it myself, before—well, before. But it’s like falling in love for the first time and suddenly understanding what all the songs are about.” She returned her attention to the windshield. “Have you ever been in love, Mr. Walker?”
“I was married.”
“Not an answer.”
“Then the answer is I don’t know.”
“I’ll accept that. People who say you know when it’s real don’t know what they’re talking about. I honestly don’t know if I loved Don. He was a good man, and I was comfortable with him, but not so much recently. He seemed to be drifting away. It’s not the same as when you asked if he was acting differently; he just—he wasn’t always there. They say that’s not unusual after a certain number of years, but—”
“Yeah. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Drifted away how?”
“Not important. Mr. Walker, I want you to quit this investigation.”
“Uh-huh.” I slowed almost to a stop behind a city snowplow, scraping the white stuff into rusty clumps on the sidewalk, then powered around it when the opposite lane opened.
“You’re not surprised?”
“A little, but only because that usually comes later. At one time or another, just about every client loses interest. You got used to the way something was, so you try to do something about it. Then you get so you’re used to the way it is. This seems early. But everyone has his own timeline.”
“I just want for Michel and me to be left alone. It was horrible enough, then when the church offered that reward it became grotesque. The reporters block their numbers when they call, so when one doesn’t come up I let it ring. When the machine kicks in and they don’t leave a message, I know I was right.”
“Either that or someone wanted to sell you something.”
“Anyway,” she said, folding her hands on the bag, “the police will go on looking. I happen to have more faith in them than some people with money.”
“It’s not as simple as that. You’re not the client.”
“Reverend Melville is an understanding woman. If she knows how much it means to us, I’m sure she’ll agree, and withdraw the offer.”
“Again, not that simple. The only one who can take it down is the donor who put it up, and she won’t budge on who it is.”
“Can you talk to her, at least? I can’t imagine her resisting the wishes of a widow and her child.”
I drove for a little.
“This got anything to do with my wanting to talk to Michel?”
“It does, in a way. I don’t want him drawn into this. He’s lost his father, there’s nothing that can be done about that now. But I can prevent him from losing his privacy.”
“Little boys can’t spell privacy, much less know what it means. They write their names in the snow in public.”
“Well, sense of security. Even after it’s all over, solved or not, the press keeps calendars. Every big anniversary they scrounge up an old story and play it up with bright colors. It could haunt him all his life, as if he peaked at age ten and all the rest was follow-up. They can turn a person into a freak.”
You Know Who Killed Me Page 12
