Barry scowled at his can of nuts and threw it in a corner. “I know all Asians are supposed to look alike, but she outdid herself when she cast her substitute. I even did a face match on that shot somebody bootlegged onto the Net. It was grainy, and there’s bound to be distortion when a neck is broken at the end of a length of coarse Tibetan hemp, but it rang a gong from every angle.”
I said, “It was probably one of the human-trafficking cases in her prostitution ring, helped along by plastic surgery. For someone who started out as a slave in a cathouse, she wasn’t above running the same racket. She’d smuggled drugs and human organs and committed murder personally, just to keep in practice. Add it to her tab.”
“Isn’t above running the same racket,” Barry said. “You keep referring to her in the past tense.”
“Maybe if I do she will be.”
Haas was watching me. “You talk as if you’ve met.”
“He shattered her hand the last time.” Barry’s tone was funereally low. “It’s how she wound up in custody to begin with.”
“We’ve met,” I said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “One time or a hundred. Never is too much. Just why she doesn’t pick on another city every time she comes back—it keeps me up nights. Urban blight, wholesale corruption, and the worst homicide rate in the country aren’t punishment enough. We have to have Charlotte Sing. Why not the apocalypse?”
“Haas gave you the answer a minute ago. She told you the last time her bank account was hovering down around a hundred million. These days you need a couple of billion just to put the destruction of western culture on the table. Detroit is the only place in America where you can gobble up real estate with pocket change and turn it into serious cash. Whatever she’s got cooking this time, we know where she’s getting her case dough.
“And Amos,” Barry added, “you’re here. That’s got to be another fortune in her cookie.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“That’s the second racist remark you’ve made in as many minutes,” said Haas.
Barry said, “She’s a race unto herself. Homo maligno. Ever since her G.I. father sold her into slavery she’s had a hate on for everything west of the prime meridian.”
“I suppose that’s understandable.”
“As much as shooting up a playground full of children because your own kid gave you grief,” I said. “She’s the most dangerous animal in the world: a deranged genius with a wallet the size of the Pentagon.”
Barry recrossed his arms behind his head. “Intellectually gifted, check; crazy, definitely. But she didn’t just pluck her stand-in on the scaffold off the street in Seoul. The search for a viable candidate would have taken months or years, and a series of cosmetic procedures with healing time in between at least as long. Notwithstanding the primitive methods of North Korean physicians, the sample they provided of the executed woman’s DNA managed to satisfy the United Nations and the World Court. It was Sing’s, of course: She supplied it. But she had to grease wheels, maybe all the way to the presidential palace. The compound fractures in the right hand matched Sing’s old X-rays, which means her double had to sit still for an artist with a bludgeon. That’s a chunk of change. My guess is she’s so close to rock bottom she couldn’t raise a fleet of private jets without a loan.”
“So whatever she’s got in mind for what she’s making through Velocity, it’s on hold till her checks clear.”
“Made.” Haas gripped the recliner’s arms. “Not making. I’m stopping payment on all checks and declaring a moratorium on all accounts payable until our bookkeeping staff can sort out the legitimate investors from the rest.”
I dealt myself a cigarette, frowned at the smoke detector in the corner of the ceiling, and cradled it unlit in the permanent niche in my lower lip. “You can’t declare anything while you’re a fugitive from justice. You need to turn yourself in while your detecting staff sorts out Ms. Fu Manchu from the rest of the population.”
“How do I know she won’t try to railroad me into a murder conviction? If she’s capable of buying off a foreign government, framing one U.S. citizen—”
“Even psychos can reason,” I said. “There’s no percentage in it for her, and she hasn’t the time. It’s obvious she had Fannon killed to stop up the leak you were investigating. Without him, there’s no link to her except two words on his computer that wouldn’t hold up in court; if she cares about courts at all after what she just pulled. I wasted a day on three Peaceable Shores in this area alone. Also she probably wasn’t within ten thousand miles of the crime scene when it happened.”
Barry said, “Let’s hope.”
“Even if she was, she’s got the best alibi in the world: She’s officially dead. Whoever was at the end of the strings, if he’s caught and he fingers her, won’t be believed. Assuming he knows who hired him. If she tipped her hand to him, she’s slipped a lot.”
“Which based on what she’s got going with Velocity isn’t likely,” said Barry. “It’s a simple plan, and brilliant. If Fish or any of your other enemies manages to make any of his accusations stick, she’s managed to shift the blame to China. You can damn well bet if Peaceable Shore ever surfaces, so will a direct link to the People’s Republic.”
“Do it,” I told Haas. “I’ll drive you to Homicide and let you off at the curb. You can walk right up to the desk and do the citizenship thing.”
“And after you let me off, what will you be doing?”
“Earning the fee your daughter gave me. Proving you innocent.”
He stood and scooped the receiver off the phone on the nightstand. “I’ll call my lawyer. He can do the driving.”
While he was speaking with whoever picked up, Barry took me into a corner. “Where’ll you start?”
“Off the record?”
“Come on.”
“Sorry. Old habit. Downtown. To talk to a man named Frank about a package of wieners.”
* * *
Richard, Cecil Fish’s pudgy, not-as-young-as-he-looked assistant, kept me on hold two minutes while I listened to a campaign plug for his boss. He wasn’t openly running for anything, but he had a collection of area city officials and county executives lined up, each with a foot in the door when it came time for endorsements. Just what he had on them was anyone’s guess.
“Sorry about that, Mr. Walker. What can I do for you?”
“Sweet of you to offer. I was wondering if you’d had any luck running down that party we talked about last time.”
“Running d—? Oh, you mean locating. No, no one seems to know where he’s gone. I don’t mind telling you the experience opened my eyes to the plight of the homeless. What we need is someone—”
“What we’ve got is the Salvation Army, Forgotten Harvest, the VA, Mother Waddles, and more churches than a bishop could shake his stick at. I heard the pitch while you were slitting envelopes and answering more important calls. Thank you so much.”
I hit END. On the other side of my windshield, a troupe of yellow school buses crawled along I-96, heading for some soccer game. I’d waited until I got to the parking lot before calling. I trusted Barry’s “off the record,” but there was no sense sharing trade secrets with my client.
I was relieved. I’d only thrown Frank to Fish in return for Peaceable Shore. The derelict outside the Sentinel Building wasn’t of use to me then. Had I known I’d be doing Homicide’s job, I’d have rolled him up and tucked him in my sock. If Richard had gotten to him first, he’d be ruined as a witness. All it takes to make a street survivor clam up is an amateur asking the wrong questions the wrong way. As it was, just pumping the refrigerator-box crowd for his whereabouts had probably driven him deeper underground. When someone you habitually overlook suddenly draws your attention, his first reaction is flight.
But that was okay. I know all the flight patterns.
I drove to the city offices, now named the Coleman A. Young building by someone with a short memory. It’s from the Lego school of architecture: nineteen charmless stories att
ached to a box squatting at the busiest intersection in town. When they forgot to put windows on the side facing Woodward—just the city’s main street—a local sculptor erected a Neanderthal there in tarnished bronze and called it the Spirit of Detroit.
Pontius Quick took up space in an office two floors down from the top of the tower. Its size matched its view of downtown; it was a square trinket box on the building’s blank side. He was in his late sixties, cinnamon-colored, with white hair and beard, both buzzed close, and wore a green uniform in solidarity with the army he commanded: employees of the Department of Public Works and the Health Department assigned to rodent control.
City Hall is too busy counting violent crimes to estimate the number of rats in residence. The rule of thumb says cities have twice as many rats as people. The last census fixed the population at just under a million, so if you prefer your glass half full, the vermin problem improves every time someone decamps to the suburbs.
“Who’s winning, Ponch?” I shook his big hand and sat down in the metal folding chair facing his desk, a pressboard item no bigger than you’d find in a cubicle but too big for the room. On it he’d arranged family pictures in a half-circle facing him. There always seemed to be a new one whenever I visited. The Quicks were multiplying almost as fast as his quarry.
“Oh, I expect real results real soon. Got me a councilman’s nephew on staff worked out a formula to calculate the strength of the enemy: Just count the legs and divide by four.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a framed PhotoShop picture of himself grinning in a safari outfit with a rifle on his shoulder and one foot propped up on the carcass of a rat the size of a dump truck. “I sent him up to Greektown, where they’re redoing the casino, with a calculator. You know every time they swing that big iron ball a couple thousand rats come scrambling out of the rubble. It’s like busting the world’s worst piñata.”
“I saw a bunch the other day marching out of Toyota. You know what people say about when they desert.”
“The gents on the top floor just authorized another sixty grand for poison. I don’t know why we don’t just pipe in water from Flint. What brings you down to City, Amos? Going back into the public sector, human race got too much for you?”
“God, no.” I rapped on his desk, not that there was enough real wood in it for luck. “I threw down the badge, just like Gary Cooper. I won’t pick it up. You still running that program you learned from Chairman Mao?”
“Hell, yes. Doing bidness with some of the finest folks in town. We’re under budget third straight year. I got to cook the books up instead of down so’s they don’t cut my allowance. You volunteering?”
Pontius Quick had come up with an extermination plan so simple it was no wonder no one else in government had ever thought of it. No one else, that is, except Mao Tse-tung, who wrote a law requiring each one of Communist China’s billion citizens to turn in a daily quota of swatted flies to his local Communist Party headquarters or be fined. Detroiters don’t pay fines—they don’t even pay bills for city services—but Quick had been commended by the mayor for shaking loose a quarter for every man, woman, and child living in a shelter or on the streets for each dead rat delivered for inspection, relieving the crisis and helping the unfortunate at the same time. “Killing two rats with one stone,” as he put it.
“I’m only after one rat, Ponch. I’m hoping to catch it through one of your irregulars. You’ve got their names on file, right?”
“First names and nicknames, mostly. Some of ’em been on the skids so long they don’t remember the ones they was born with. Tally’s got to match with what leaves the dump station, and each catch goes into a box with the name of who brought it in. One of the bugs I had to work out in the beginning was they’d go around to the Dumpster and come back in with carcasses we already counted and paid for.”
“Like deposit bottles. When I was a kid I’d get two cents a pop from the party store, then go back around to the storage room and grab another load.”
“Dating yourself. It’s a dime now, and they lock up the bottles like government gold. No rat goes into the incinerator till it’s been counted twice and paid for once.”
“What about locations?”
“Oh, we stopped keeping ’em in the Dumpster overnight. Some folks are sensitive about smell.”
“I mean the homeless people.”
He squinted one eye. “What part of ‘homeless’ don’t you understand?”
“Give me a break, for past associations.”
I hated to draw that card. Five years back I’d sprung his granddaughter from a junior high school expulsion for bringing her great-grandfather’s captured German Luger to show-and-tell.
“‘No tolerance,’” he snarled now. “I was brought up tolerant. What’s your boy’s handle?”
“Frank.”
He didn’t stir. “Narrows it down.”
“He put the arm on me for the price of a package of wieners. Franks, he called them. Some joke.”
“No help. Oscar Mayer’s the new cuppa coffee.” He made a noodling gesture with the fingers of one hand.
“The one time I saw him he had on one of those canvas vests with lots of pockets, like fishermen wear.”
“They change clothes sometimes. Some of ’em even use soap, which is more than I can say for a couple of people in this building got bigger offices than mine.”
“He has a tattoo on his chest.”
“My brother’s twins got pineapples on their butt-cheeks, and they ain’t never been to Hawaii. I don’t mean to be difficult. I got a meeting with the mayor today and a rabies specialist to interview: Set ’em up in that order in case Hizzoner bites me.”
“The tat’s a reasonable likeness of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
“Well, hell. They must pay you by the hour.” He had a slim computer monitor on the corner of his desk. He spun it to face him and struck some keys hunt-and-peck. “Frank Nelson. Worked as a deckhand for McLouth Steel ten years—two on the Fitzgerald, by God—walked away from the navy after Desert Storm. Washington don’t bother with peacetime deserters anymore, so why should I? Hangs his hat, when he’s got one, in the shelter next to Annunciation on Lafayette.”
“That’s just a couple of blocks from where we met.”
“They got rails and they run on ’em. What bidness you got with him?”
“Couple of questions. I saw a rat in a place near where we met, that’s why I thought of him. He may have seen something connected with the job I’m on. He’s not in any trouble that I know of.”
“Just don’t bend him. He brings in more carcasses than anyone else on the East Side. I got him lined up for this year’s James Clavell Award. Comes with a six-month supply of food stamps. He can invite all his colleagues in for a wienie roast.”
“Who’s James Clavell?”
He smiled, showing off the city’s premium dental plan. “He wrote King Rat.”
TWENTY-FIVE
You’ve seen it in movies, read about it in books: the big bare room, divided into iron bedsteads with their legs stuck in coffee cans filled with kerosene to discourage roaches; maybe stern signs warning residents not to spit on the floor. But roaches are rare in Michigan and spitting’s optional even if smoking is not. The homeless shelter next door to the Annunciation Greek Orthodox cathedral was built along the lines of a YMCA, partitioned into private rooms with comfortable beds, reading lamps on stands, and simple but sturdy cabinets for clothes, complete with plastic hangers. Throw in a TV and a bottle of Scotch and for me it was home sweet home.
The majordomo was a sturdy party of indeterminate age—and for that matter sex—in a smock, sweatpants, and canary-yellow Crocs, leaning on a cane with four sturdy tips, who met me in an eight-foot-square foyer paved with sturdy linoleum and painted in sturdy beige. Our city is constantly tearing itself down and putting up nothing in its place; but its homeless shelters are as solid as the Coliseum. The creature had a stack of clean towels folded over one forearm. I tucked my ca
rd into a terry fold, faceup.
“I’m looking for a man named Frank Nelson. Social visit.”
“Are you of the faith?” The voice was a contralto, if it was feminine. Tenor if not. I flipped a mental coin and it came down female.
“Do I have to be to see Frank?”
She shifted the towels to the other arm. “Are you carrying a weapon?”
“No. Should I be?”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Let’s start over.” I got out my license folder and showed her the honorary sheriff’s star. “He’s not in any trouble. He might be a witness in a police case.”
I spoke quietly, but two men got up from a bench just inside the door, gathered up their tattered bundles, and left.
“Please keep your voice low. The police aren’t exactly popular here.”
“What about Frank?”
“We don’t ask them their names.”
“He’s got a tattoo of a shipwreck on his chest.”
“Last room, end of the hall. Take this to him, please.” She separated a plain white towel from the stack and held it out.
The rooms were separated by painted plywood, smudged with greasy telephone numbers and the odd phallic cartoon. They were open to the aisle. My hot dog man lay on a rollaway bed with an army blanket folded at the foot, a copy of National Geographic spread facedown on his stomach. It was hot in the building, despite window fans humming throughout. The fisherman’s vest hung on the back of a plastic deck chair, giving me a clear view of the doomed ore carrier decorating his hairless chest. It wasn’t moving.
I didn’t linger long.
I found the woman with the towels, hanging them on rails attached to the partitions.
“Wouldn’t he see you?” she asked.
“Couldn’t. Is there a phone? I left my cell in the car.”
“Is it a local call?”
“Nine-one-one. Someone smothered him with a pillow.”
The Lioness Is the Hunter Page 13
