The Lioness Is the Hunter

by Loren D. Estleman

  In its way it was quieter than the clicks, but that was because it had come from inside the ton of steel door.

  There was a whir, then another thunk, and a sharp sliding snick of bolts gliding back into sockets.

  This time I wasn’t acting for the hell of it. I grasped two of the spokes belonging to the wheel and spun it clockwise. It rotated as smoothly as if it had been oiled just that day. The weight of the door started it my direction. I stepped back to keep it from hitting me in the face.

  Wishing more than ever I’d gone back for that gun.

  * * *

  The great door drifted around silently on its hinges, slowed on a system of baffles, and sighed to a rest against the wall, quiet as the tide. If the vault was lighted, the bulb had burned out long ago, or the wires gone to corrosion. The halogens, on a separate circuit, were tilted slightly downward, their light falling three feet short of the back wall of the vault. I groped for the flash, changed hands on it twice to mop the greasy sweat off my palms, switched it on, and pointed it inside. A pile of sacks lay against the base of the back wall. They would be empty. The Depression had closed the bank. They’d have chased down every penny.

  Just in case the door got any ideas about closing, I fetched a couple of packing crates and stacked them against it. The weight of it would fold them like gum wrappers, but they might slow it down long enough for me to climb out. I thought about that, then got some more crates and threw them on top of the others. Then I stepped over the rubber-gasketed threshold.

  I wasn’t John Dillinger. I’d never been inside a bank vault before and had no idea what to expect. It was larger than I might have guessed: It would have held all the furniture in my little reception room with space to spare. It was lined with metal boxes flush to the walls, with a steel butler’s cart mounted on rubber casters for a clerk to roll out Henry Ford’s pocket change. Any smell of money the place might have contained had evaporated around the time of Mick Jagger’s First Communion, leaving behind an industrial order of smooth metal and 3-in-One oil; someone had lubricated the hinges and lock mechanism, and recently. I didn’t know what to make of that. Someone had had more time on his hands than seemed fair.

  I caught another scent then, of stale desperate sweat. It might have been my own, but belatedly I realized it had been there right along.

  My toes came to the pile of sacks and touched something solid. My heart slid into my shoes. The air was close in an airtight chamber in summer, but the sweat on my face turned to ice water. I bent just far enough to grab hold of fabric and pull.

  It didn’t come free. It wasn’t a sack at all, but a suit that would be mulberry-colored under ordinary light with a silver pinstripe. The face of the man wearing it was the same shade as the stripe, and it didn’t belong to Emil Haas.

  * * *

  The last time I’d seen the suit, the man wearing it had been carrying two pieces of luggage into the Delta terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, bound for Beijing. The face was turned toward the floor, but the short hair at the temples matched the stripe and the odds were against meeting two men in one day who could pull off the dark purple in between without looking like a circus barker.

  I started to reach, stopped, then bit the bullet. I grasped him by the chin and turned his face my way. The muscles let me do that; they hadn’t gone rigid yet. It was Carl Fannon all right. One eye was closed, the white of the other glistened through a half-moon of lifted lid. He wasn’t seeing any more out of that one than its mate.

  I knelt and pawed him with the beam of the flash from hairline to heels. No fresh holes in the exposed flesh, no bloodstains. I wasn’t curious enough to turn him over all the way and explore further. I lifted one hand; the outside edge was bruised nearly the same shade of purple as his suit and swollen. The base of the nails were the identical color, and if anything darker.

  Inspecting the other hand was pointless. He’d have hammered at the locked door with both fists, yelled himself hoarse, and when he’d abandoned that and used up all the oxygen in the vault, all ten nails would show the same sign of suffocation.

  It could have been an accident. His firm was negotiating to buy the building, he’d been given permission to inspect it, had decided to check the place out himself, found the vault door open or unlocked, wandered inside without taking the precaution of blocking the door as I had, and it had drifted shut, locking automatically. I didn’t know if the timer had to be reset by someone or if it went back to a default setting on its own; but there would be people who could answer that question.

  It would take someone with other skills to find out how a man who should by then have been cruising over the Himalayas on the way to China wound up smothered to death in a disused bank vault ten feet under the streets of Detroit.

  My jaw ached. I wondered why, then realized my teeth were still gritted. I opened my mouth and worked the jaw from side to side to loosen the muscles. Then I stood and poked the flash around, looking for a dying clue.

  In detective stories there is often such a thing, when the victim has time to confirm the inevitability of death and also the urge to avenge himself. I’d never seen it myself, and I’d been involved in that kind of murder case more times than I thought wise to list on my résumé. For one thing, the victim has to have had a good idea of his killer’s identity. Most do, but in those situations the party responsible is still there when the police respond, holding the murder weapon more often than not. The ones that keep the cops up nights are usually committed by strangers, leaving the dying party with a piece of chalk in his hand and nothing to write.

  That’s if he even thinks about writing anything.

  I can’t swear what I’d do in his shoes, but it seems to me I’d be more interested in finding a way out. I’m willing to bet that anyone who ever fell or was pushed off a tall building spent the time in freefall learning to fly.

  But who was I to take issue with professional writers? There is always a first time, even for a grizzled vet like me. I prowled every inch of the space, looking for anything that didn’t belong there apart from a dead body.

  I looked for something etched with a finger in the dust, a message scratched with a thumbnail, a clever coded clue using the objects at hand. If I was really on the ball, I’d have chewed the murderer’s name backwards into the rubber casters of the rolling cart, so that if you dipped them in ink and rolled them across a sheet of white butcher paper …

  Carl Fannon hadn’t done any of those things—or for that matter taken out the gold pen clipped to the inside breast pocket of his suitcoat and written it on the neat little pad that matched it. The pages were blank.

  Happening to spot the familiar bullet-shaped cap when the coat fell open, I thought about something else. Today’s high-power executive never goes down the hall to the toilet without carrying along any number of whiz-bang communication devices. I’d been thinking too old-fashioned; if he truly thought all was lost and wanted to hang it on someone, his first inclination would be to note it on some gizmo like that.

  Or call for help, if he could get a signal through all that steel and concrete.

  I knelt again, patted his pockets, and found a flat pigskin wallet containing a book of American Express travelers’ checks, the usual bling of metallic cards in stacked pockets, and a thick sheaf of crisp bills, which I didn’t count because they preserve fingerprints like soft wax. I hadn’t made up my mind yet whether I was going to report what I’d found, but cops are proprietary about such things as the victim’s personal effects, and I wasn’t exactly in their good books at the best of times. I wiped off the rest and put it back. No smartphone, tablet, PalmPilot, or Bluetooth within sight or touch.

  I was sitting back on my heels, poking my tongue around my mouth like a man probing for a missing tooth, when something chimed, a merry little one-note that plastered me to the ceiling.

  When I climbed back down, something was glowing in the dimness of the vault. I took Fannon’s left wrist between thumb and for
efinger, turned it, and looked at a brushed-silver watch on a crocodile strap, a Dick Tracy job that transmitted and received messages, turned off the iron at home, balanced your checking account, and when it had a chance even told you the time. The text on the glowing face was bright yellow against a sapphire-blue background. I could have read it in the center of a black hole.

  SEVEN

  I knew how to play it then, at least off the first tee. After that it was anyone’s game.

  On the other hand, that first shot can determine the remaining holes. The trouble with mistakes is you have to make them first.

  I took one last look at Carl Fannon. It seemed there ought to be something to say, but I hadn’t known him long enough to make any sort of eulogy, or even to decide whether I liked him. Then I stepped outside, kicked the packing crates free of the door, and heaved. It didn’t take much, just enough to get it started. After that it shut on its own. That was a point in favor of the accident theory, and of my foresight in blocking it to begin with. I had more faith in the latter.

  In the light of the flash I studied the steering-wheel handle. It was made of nubbed steel. Offhand I didn’t think an expert could lift a good print. In any case I wiped it with my handkerchief, destroying any hope of lifting one; more particularly of lifting mine. That was my first crime of the day, tampering with evidence, although it wasn’t the first time I’d committed that one. Upstairs, I opened the fire door, peered up and down the alley like a character in a comic spy movie, saw no one, shut the door, and wiped off the handle. On the way back to my car I did the same thing with the key Haas had given me and leaned down to poke it through a grate into the storm drain in the gutter.

  Back behind the wheel I looked around again. The street was deserted at that hour. I cranked on the motor and drove away. The perfect crime.

  I thought.

  * * *

  Darkness chased me down the street. My watch told me all decent people should be in bed: Me, too. Everything always looks better in the morning, they say: But they haven’t seen me before a shower, a shave, and a bowl of black coffee. I went home, scrounged supper from the refrigerator, chased it with twelve-week-old Scotch from the cabinet above the sink, and slept the sleep of the guilty. In the morning I felt hungry enough to fry a couple of eggs, until I turned one over sloppily and a half-moon of white glistened up at me like one of Carl Fannon’s dead eyes. I dumped it in the trash and munched dry toast with my coffee.

  I caught the news on the radio, but for once there was only one murder and it was the wrong one.

  In the foyer of my building Rosecranz, the ancient super, was at the directory, prying snap-on letters loose from the brackets and flicking them contemptuously into the stiff leather pocket of his tool belt, like a gardener plucking hornworms off a cabbage.

  Watching him, I slid a cigarette between my lips, but didn’t light it. I hadn’t enough saliva to hold it in place for such a dangerous operation. “Who bugged out this time?”

  “Some millionaire,” he said in his obsolete Russian accent. “Probably made his pile designing those web site things and moved into the RenCen, down the hall from the boss of General Motors. What do I know? He left me with a wastebasket full of shredded paper and a busted computer I got to call up somebody to come in and recycle it, on account of the battery. Otherwise we poison the earth.”

  “Don’t forget to double-wrap it in black plastic before you drop it in the Dumpster. They won’t take it otherwise.” I left him to his work and climbed the stairway to the stars.

  I’d met the former tenant in passing. I remembered a haircut resembling a mushroom cap, two Twizzlers in a shirt pocket, and three sets of eyeglasses strung around his neck: one for the computer screen, another to read printouts, the third to find the other two. A few weeks after he’d left, a detective with the state police came around asking if he’d left a forwarding. Lansing suspected him of downloading child porn and selling it to habitual offenders who’d grown wary of cyberspace. It was that kind of building; not that you could blame a pile of brick for what took place within it. One of my neighbors had been in the Peace Corps. She probably had an FBI file nearly as thick as mine.

  But that morning I thought about my three clients: one dead, another unaccounted for, the third busy lecturing professional spokesmen on how to reel in dangling participles. Oddly enough, I felt loyalty in direct reverse ratio to the monetary reward. The late Carl Fannon’s fifteen hundred bucks ran third behind Emil Haas’s twenty and Gwendolyn Haas’s nothing. If I worked things right, I could satisfy them all in one swing of the sword: Zorro minus the horse and wardrobe.

  If I worked things right.

  As it turned out, to no one’s surprise, least of all my own, they didn’t. But I’m not a plumber or an electrician. They guarantee their work.

  In a little while I dragged over the phone and pecked out a number from the pad on my desk. Three rings gave me a menu. The one I wanted gave me reception, and a cool voice I’d heard before that asked me to hold and didn’t wait to see if I was okay with that. While I was waiting I took a drink, dealt myself a Winston, and bought myself a misdemeanor at the head of a match. I was blowing it out when the voice came back. I asked for Brita.

  “She’s on another line at the moment. May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Amos Walker. She’ll remember me. She referred another party to me just this morning.”

  “Is it in connection with real estate?”

  “About three hundred cubic feet.” That would be the total of the dimensions of the vault in the Sentinel.

  The line went dead. I waited for the click and a dial tone before making another try. Then a fresh voice came on, with a tone I associated with tall summer drinks.

  “Who is calling?”

  “Do you always do business this way? If the girl didn’t give you my name, you should fire her. If you’re just stalling for time, you should quit. I’ll thank you and so will the firm.”

  A little gulp of silence that might have been a gasp; or more likely the party on the other end of the line repositioning its forces. “Yes, Mr. Walker; I remember you now. You have to understand we do business with a great many people in one day. I can’t be expected—”

  “Carl Fannon, please.”

  “I’m afraid he’s away on business. Can I—”

  “You can’t. I’d like a chunk of your time when you can spare it.”

  “My time? But—”

  “Don’t be so modest. With one partner on the other side of the world and the other dropped off its edge, you’re Velocity Financing. You know Fannon hired me and why. I’ve come into some information and I need to discuss how to handle it. That makes you the chosen one while he’s walking on the Great Wall.”

  There was a brief cool silence on her end. Then: “May I finish a sentence now?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “If you knew all the time he was in China, why did you ask to speak to him?”

  “I’m collecting business excuses for a book I’m writing. I wanted to see how you’d play it.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “Meh.”

  Something rattled; probably keys on a device rather than a Rolodex. I hadn’t evolved even that far; what numbers I didn’t keep in my head I recorded in a little memorandum book and locked it in the safe.

  The rattling stopped. “I can give you between eleven and eleven-fifteen this morning. There’s a staff meeting at noon I’ll have to prepare for.”

  “A half hour would be better.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  “Ink me in then. One thing.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Tell the staff you might be fifteen minutes late.” I cradled the receiver.

  EIGHT

  The Parker Block is a single building sticking up six stories above Woodward Avenue, Detroit’s main drag. It’s been there more than 130 years, resting solidly on a cast-iron ground-floor front with arched win
dows above the fourth floor and gulls prowling the ledges for handouts. Copper letters mounted on the black-painted iron spell out B. SIEGEL CO. in relief. Siegel was one of the merchant princes of the Victorian era who invented the modern department store. Years ago they tore out the hanging cashier’s cage inside and the system of ropes and pulleys that carried paper currency up and change back down, replaced the hydraulic lift system with electric motors, and erected partitions between Foundation Garments and Sporting Goods to rent them out as offices. It was the only property associated with Velocity it didn’t own, either alone or on behalf of a foreign backer; there are still some places around that aren’t for sale. The company had settled for the top two floors and a whopping tax break from City Hall.

  The elevator I rode no longer had a folding cage, but the original bronze-finish doors were intact and the back wall mirrored for no reason I could figure apart from a last-ditch opportunity to straighten one’s tie or adjust one’s girdle before yakking with someone upstairs. My tie was straight, suit pressed, shoes shined. I wore them for the first time. The old pair had gone out with the trash. They’d left tracks in the dust on the floor of the vault. Intaglio marks, fingerprints, and bits of clay are still meat to the forensics team even in the age of DNA. I still hadn’t made up my mind about whether I’d report what I’d found to the authorities. That was part of the reason I’d made this appointment.

  The secret was still exclusive, apparently. I hadn’t passed any blue-and-whites parked in front of the Sentinel Building on my way there. On the other hand, there might be a squad of uniforms camped out inside waiting for the criminal to return to the scene of the crime, corny as it sounds. Corny is one thing cops don’t mind being called.

  The doors glided open opposite a wall of tinted glass with the hollow V in the company’s name outracing the other letters etched on it in gold. Beneath it:

  EMIL HAAS, C.E.O.

  CARL FANNON, President

  I’d always thought they were the same thing. I had a lot to learn about business: like how to make it pay.