Downriver

by Loren D. Estleman

  Civilized gray smoke was leaning from the stacks of the old tractor plant-turned high tech automotive center when I swung through the opening in the chainlink fence. No guard appeared, so I rolled on until I found a space in the dozens of rows of parked vehicles with security stickers on their windshields and got out. The pavement was spongy in the late-afternoon heat and made little smacking sounds when I lifted my feet.

  A red-painted fire door bore the legend AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in yellow stencil. I pulled it open. Inside, a guard in a gray uniform looked up from the sandwich he was eating behind a library table. A fan with a white plastic housing blew hardboiled egg odor at me.

  “Security badge,” he said, spitting bits of egg-white. He was a hard-looking number with graying hair and black eyebrows and a neck like a pork butt. His revolver rode high on his hip with its black rubber grip showing above the table.

  I let him see my ID. “Mr. Piero in the Detroit office said to use his name.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “He gives out his name like I give out hundred-dollar bills. Offices or plant?”

  “Offices.”

  He reached into a corrugated box full of colored Lucite tags on the table and held out a blue one. “Hang that on your pocket and take the elevator down the hall. No detours.”

  It was stamped with a large white numeral twelve. I clipped it to my handkerchief pocket and followed a narrow hallway covered in painted corkboard to a single elevator. There were no buttons for individual floors inside, just UP and DOWN. When the doors opened to let me out I made room for a brunette in a peach-colored business suit, who glanced at my tag.

  “I used to be a thirteen,” I said.

  She was turning that over when the doors sealed us off from each other. Anyway it beat finding myself in the middle of a brawl.

  It was one of those fast-food offices with three women behind a reception counter and rows of waist-high partitions opposite it with desks between them and men and women working like ants at the desks. I asked for Alfred Hendriks.

  “When is your appointment?” The woman who responded was at the other end of the counter from the one I’d addressed. She had silver-rinsed hair and rimless glasses and looked over her shoulder at me from a cabinet where she was filing something. I recognized her quality-controlled voice from the telephone that morning. I said I didn’t have an appointment and told her my name.

  She turned her head away. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hendriks is out.”

  “Would he be in if I said I’m from Stutch Petrochemicals?”

  “Are you?”

  “No. I tried it before. It can’t work twice. When will he be in?”

  “He didn’t say. You can wait if you like.”

  I took a seat and flipped through a glossy copy of something called Modem Aerodynamics. It had a cartoon page but the jargon was out of my reach. I laid it aside and lit a cigarette.

  I had been there ten minutes when a woman entered from another hallway and stopped before the counter. She was tall and slender and had on a suit that looked as if it had been designed for a whole different kind of business from those I’d been looking at. It was satin, for one thing, and a shade of blue you don’t usually see in offices this side of Las Vegas. Her hair was shoulder-length and deep auburn — it would be red in sunlight — her complexion fair, and she had high cheekbones accentuated by hollows and Mongol eyes helped along with a breath of mascara at the corners. They didn’t need help.

  “Is my husband in?” Her voice hung somewhere around the middle register and reminded me for some reason of magnolias and Georgian columns. I’d never been to Georgia and didn’t know either of them from asparagus.

  “Go right in, Mrs. Marianne,” said the receptionist with the glasses. “He’s expecting you.”

  She walked past me, heels snicking, and around the counter, where a hallway swallowed her up. The place was lousy with hallways. I smelled a spring night for several minutes after I lost sight of her.

  I smoked another cigarette and listened to the room. A woman called the Free Press to add something to a full-page advertisement she’d placed earlier for tomorrow’s edition. A man complained to someone on the telephone that his middle initial was missing from a nameplate he’d ordered. Two guys laid bets over the partition separating them on that night’s game with New York. The woman called back the Free Press to cancel the advertisement. It was a going office.

  The redhead in the blue suit came out of the hallway behind the counter and left the way she’d come. She hadn’t learned to walk the way she did watching Aunt Pittipat.

  I got up and leaned on the counter by the woman with the glasses. “ That Timothy Marianne’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “She looks like a model.”

  “She was.” She folded her arms atop her workspace. If she had on make-up behind the granny lenses it was strictly basic. She was younger than she tried to appear. “They met at the auto show when he was with Ford. He took her off the hood of a brand new Thunderbird. I thought everyone knew that story. It was in People and everything.”

  “I guess I was wasting my time with Billy Budd that week. Do you need those?”

  She touched the glasses. “Only to see with. Why?”

  “You ought to try contact lenses. Green ones. And shampoo that tinsel out of your hair. What are you really, twenty, twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-five. And you’re out of bounds.”

  “Just restless. Mr. Hendriks get in?”

  “You didn’t see him, did you?”

  “I figured there was a back way. You know, like Al Capone had.”

  “Who?”

  “He was an Italian saint. Forget him. Might Mr. Marianne be free?”

  “When is your appointment?” She’d turned on the deep freeze.

  “We did that already. Tell him it’s about his general manager, Alfred Hendriks. And an old robbery-murder.”

  The room got quiet, or maybe it just seemed that way because all three of the receptionists were looking at me. After a moment, Specs lifted the receiver off her intercom and flipped a switch.

  15

  “WHAT YOU SAID out there was textbook character assassination,” said Timothy Marianne. “If Al doesn’t sue it sure won’t be because his lawyer told him he had a weak case.”

  I said, “My assets include a bottle of Scotch and one of those kitchen knives with a fifty-year guarantee. He can have the Scotch but I need the knife. I might want to cut my throat someday.”

  He made a noise halfway between a grunt and a chuckle. We were sitting in his office, which wasn’t nearly as big as you’d expect it to be, especially in a building constructed from his own plans. He had a good view of the river and of Fighting Island behind his desk, but except for the antiques and a hardwood floor you could skate on, the room might have belonged to any corporate vice president in town. His big tufted chair was tipped back as far as it would go and he had one of his Thom McAns cocked up on a corner of the desk. It shared the gold leather top with a pen set, a telephone intercom, and a fiberglass model of the Stiletto the size and approximate shape of a bedpan.

  “I learned something of the private investigation business when my first wife was divorcing me,” he said. “Even the sleaziest of them hang out with lawyers too much to think they can get away with slandering a big gun in front of witnesses. What’ve you got?”

  “A client who says Hendriks buffaloed him into providing cover for an armored car robbery in 1967. And something Hendriks told me when I spoke to him on the telephone this morning, which I’ll go into later. Just now I’d like to discuss how he came to be with you.”

  “Shouldn’t you ask him that?”

  “I would if he didn’t hide under his desk every time I try to talk to him. He’s got that in-a-meeting and out-to-lunch line down cold.”

  “He’s busy. We all are.” He rolled the Stiletto model forward and back two inches with his toe. He was an angular six feet,
slumped almost horizontal in a blue suit that looked as if it had fallen off a truck and he had picked it up and put it on and come straight there. No matter how good his tailor, the careless way he sat and moved would have any suit looking just like it in half an hour. His shoulders were high and narrow, his neck long, his face not as big as it seemed at first because I had been seeing it in newspapers and on television for a couple of years. It was long, tan, and rugged and his brows were darker than his hair, which was clipped short around the thin spots and left long where it was full to play down the retreat. I liked him, I don’t know why. Maybe it was the suit.

  “You mentioned murder,” he said.

  “One of the robbers was killed. The cops think he was shot by a partner.”

  “You think the partner was Al Hendriks?”

  “What I think isn’t part of the package. My client thinks Hendriks set him up to take the fall. If he’s right, Hendriks got away clean with two hundred thousand cash. How much has he got invested in Marianne Motors?”

  “Not two hundred thousand to start, although his holdings are worth twenty times that now. He was among my first backers when I left Ford to start my own firm. I took him with me out of the accounting pool there. Al’s the best man with numbers I’ve ever seen. If he wanted to steal he could have stolen far more without ever leaving his desk.”

  “He wasn’t an accountant yet when the armored car job went down. About when did he start working at Ford?”

  “I don’t know. I’d been aware of him for some time when he asked to join the team. He’d run figures for me sometimes as a favor. It was both our jobs if the brass found out. That was eight long years ago. If I’d known how long it would take …” He played with the model car some more.

  “None of the stolen bills ever turned up, according to the cops,” I said. “It takes time to launder that much dirty money. Years sometimes, and then you only get a few cents on the dollar. Meanwhile he had to live. When the cash did come through he couldn’t spend it all right away. Your venture might have come along just at harvest time.”

  “I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

  “Better you talk to me than I talk to the press. Old Man Stutch might get nervous and withdraw his investment.”

  “The Commodore’s too busy concentrating on breathing to worry about money. The man is one hundred years old. But his grandsons are very, very conservative. You don’t strike me as the type who goes crying to the press.”

  “I’m not. It was a bad bluff. But I’m fresh out of open doors, and I think you’re just as curious about this as I am.”

  “You said something Al told you this morning made you suspicious. What was it?”

  I uncrossed my legs and recrossed them the other way. “The man my client claims set him up was a student at Wayne State at the time of the stickup. Hendriks admitted he went to Wayne State, but he said he was studying in England on an exchange program during the race riots, which is when the thing took place.”

  “I know he went to Cambridge.”

  “Not then. I called Wayne State. Their records say he was carrying a full course load right here in Detroit that July.”

  “A mistake.”

  “Maybe. I want to hear him say it.”

  After a space he took his foot off the desk and got his intercom working. “Denise, when Mr. Hendriks comes in, would you ask him in here? He is? Yes, now.” He hung up. “He’s in his office.”

  The room got quiet. Then the man himself came in. He was wearing his dark hair shorter these clays and it had started to gray, but his even features and trim build and the Cupid’s-bow mouth could still stampede the distaff side of any singles bar in town. His dark suit and paisley necktie lay on him like cloth of gold. When he saw me sitting on the customer’s side of the desk his stride slowed, but he kept coming and stopped in the middle of the room. He had never seen me before.

  “Al, this is Amos Walker,” Marianne said. “He wants to ask you a question. I’m sure you can satisfy him and then he can leave and we can go back to work.”

  “Walker.” He pulled up the crease on his pants and sat in the chair facing mine. He had a dandy’s taste in shoes, alligator with gold ornaments on the straps. He recognized the name from that morning. When I told him what I’d told Marianne he crossed his legs.

  “I admire your deviousness,” he said. “You could make it in the business world. Not far, but you might survive the office intrigue. Universities don’t open student files to anyone who asks. Certainly not in the time since we spoke.”

  “I never even called them.”

  “I didn’t think so. Anything else, Tim?”

  “I guess not.”

  Hendriks rose and looked down at me. “I ought to take you to court. You’d be bareass in the street by Thanksgiving.”

  “Nice shoes,” I said. “Know where I can get a pair like them for thirty bucks?”

  “Stupid. Your client’s got a stupid detective.”

  He went out. Marianne propped his foot on the desk, stuck his hands in his pockets, and hoisted his eyebrows. “What was that about? You didn’t strike me as a crank.”

  “I didn’t expect him to break down and confess. Maybe I hoped he’d cook up some kind of excuse, but not too hard. Mainly I wanted to see how he’d take it.”

  “Pretty calm, I thought.”

  “So did I. If he’d shown just a little indignation I might be closing the file on him right now.”

  “You’ll continue?”

  “I’m like a bad cold that way.”

  “Are you always this sure of yourself?”

  “I’m not sure now. If I were, this job would be a lot closer to finished. I’m being paid to find the ones who committed the robbery.”

  “You could lose your shirt. Al doesn’t make empty threats. It’s one of the reasons I made him general manager.”

  “The day I get a summons with his name on it and mine, I’ll know I’ve got the wrong man.”

  “Explain.”

  “It would force me to prove he’s guilty. Only an innocent man would risk it.”

  “You’ve got a hell of a lot to learn about the law,” he said. “Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, it changes color and scoots out from under you. Why do you think it took me eight years to get this far?”

  “It’s far.”

  “The higher I go the scareder I get. At first I was afraid I’d never have the money. Now that I have it I’m afraid someone will take it away. Never make a pretty woman your wife.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was talking about the auto business or Mrs. Marianne. I got up. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  He nudged the model car with his toe. It rolled six inches and stopped at the edge of the desk. “My security chief isn’t working out. There might be an opening there soon.”

  “I met him. Firing him would be a mistake. I wish you hadn’t said that. It puts you on the dark side of the list.”

  “I can’t have you running around raising suspicions, even unfounded ones. This is a superstitious industry. One bad rumor and investors take to the hills.” He pushed the car back the other way. “Don’t make me destroy you, Walker. I’m just starting to like you.”

  The guard downstairs had finished his sandwich and was reading a paperback with a naked woman and a scar-faced cowboy on the cover. He collected my tag and deposited it in the box without looking up.

  “Mr. Hendriks asked me to put something in his car,” I said. “I forget what it looks like.”

  He turned the page. “What am I, a car hop?”

  I didn’t push it. Outside, the skyline was clawing at the sun. I took off my coat, loosened my tie, picked a direction, and started walking along the front of the huge building. It wouldn’t be parked where the general population left its cars.

  My shirt was soaked through when I found the executive lot, two rows of diagonal spaces behind the building on the far end. It would have been closer if I’d gone the other way. But the ex
ercise had loosened the muscles in my neck. Most of the cars, including the one parked in front of a sign with Marianne’s name on it, were Stilettos. The one in Hendriks’ space was a blue Porsche. It must have been a topic of some lively conversation upstairs.

  I looked around. The lot had no guard. I inspected the underside of the canopy over the executives’ entrance and stepped away to scan the roof, but there was no surveillance camera either. Mr. Piero was wasted on the dummy offices in Detroit. I walked around behind the Porsche, unholstered the Smith & Wesson, and shielding the movement with my body, smashed the right taillight lens with the butt. I scooped up all the shards from the pavement, wrapped them in my handkerchief, and put them in my left side pocket. Then I walked back the short way to get my car.

  There were some unoccupied spaces opposite the Porsche. I pulled into one that was starting to come into shadow and killed the engine. I cranked down the window on the passenger’s side for cross draft and sat back and wanted a cigarette but didn’t light one. The sun hung lower and lower in my rearview window and then dropped below the edge.

  16

  IT WAS NEARLY DARK OUT when Alfred Hendriks left the building, moving in that executive’s stride I had seen in Marianne’s office, unlocked the Porsche, and got in behind the wheel. The taillights sprang on, one of them white where the bulb was exposed, and the car shot backward out of the space and swung around and pounced forward, passing the Renault where I sat slumped below the headrest. I had to hustle to start the engine and get out behind him; I’d been expecting some noise when he started the Porsche. He was halfway to Jefferson by the time I rounded the building, but I needn’t have worried. That white taillight stuck out like a cauliflower ear.

  The shift had changed half an hour earlier, but traffic was still heavy. I kept him in sight easily until Detroit, where it cleared a little and he picked up the pace. The Renault had to think about it before kicking in when I punched the accelerator. I almost lost him when he turned onto Woodward, but I spotted the taillight at the last second and cut somebody off taking the turn, getting a chirp of brakes and an angry horn in my right ear. I closed to within half a block of him on Woodward. There the lights were against him.