Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro

by Loren D. Estleman

  Her eyes widened a little. They were too blue for the room. “You’re a good guesser.”

  “I’ve been a detective a long time. Not all the way back to Sputnik, but what would be a very long time by your calendar. I tried to make him mad all the time we were talking. The only time it worked was when he realized that just being in the same hotel where a murder took place had probably queered the deal he was working. It’s not much of a hike from there to the notion he’d been set up.”

  “I suppose you know what the deal was.”

  “That wasn’t much of a hike either. If it makes him feel any better, you can tell him it wouldn’t have panned out anyway. Greektown already has one Indian casino. It won’t support two even if the gaming commission gave it thumbs up. This town only has so much money to piss away at the tables. It doesn’t draw any from outside.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how many ways he underestimated you.”

  “That’s the idea, Petunia. Nobody has to tell a private detective anything if he doesn’t want to, and any real cop fresh out of a cadet’s uniform can pop him for withholding whatever information he manages to get. Privileged communication is only for priests and lawyers, and we all know what they are. Being underestimated is the only weapon I’ve got.”

  “Please don’t call me Petunia. I can barely tolerate Pet.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  She hesitated. “Duffy.”

  I grinned.

  “My great-grandfather came from County Kildare,” she said.

  “Okay, Duffy. How come I’m talking to you instead of to Jerry?”

  “He can’t be seen outside the hotel. There may be some people on the gaming commission who can put two and two together as well as you.”

  “Uh-huh. He could’ve sent Shelly. Which he did.”

  “He was going to. I convinced him I made a better first impression.”

  “You didn’t say that. If you did, Shelly and Nicky would be up here with you.”

  She smiled. “I can steer Jeremiah up to a point. I’m a trained communicator, remember?”

  “Uh-huh. Who’s Jerry’s contact in Detroit?”

  “He didn’t trust me with that.”

  “Then I’ve got no place to start. But you don’t care if he runs a casino in Detroit or the marbles concession on Long Island.”

  She stopped smiling. “What makes you so sure of that?”

  “Up till tonight, you’ve done everything to avoid Jerry’s affairs but avoid Jerry. I’ve got a nice head of hair and one of those crooked grins that breaks hearts like potato chips. Only not yours. So it’s not Jerry’s business and it’s not monkey business. What business is it?”

  She picked up a purse the size of an eyeglass case from the coffee table. “Can we go inside? I don’t feel like submitting to a complete physical in the waiting room.”

  “This week it’s more private out here.”

  “There really is a bug in there?” She glanced toward the inner door. “Jeremiah couldn’t keep his face straight talking about it. I thought he was kidding.”

  “No reason you shouldn’t have. It’s been a joke ever since Watergate. Except you can put sixty of the kind they’re using now into one of those and pick up six hundred times as much.” I opened the door to the hallway.

  “Where are you going?”

  “My neighbor next door is a mail-order tycoon. He only uses the place for a drop slot. We can talk in there.”

  “Do you have a key?”

  “Why bother with a key when we’ve got Rosecranz?” I went down to get him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The room was a twelve-by-twelve box with an old-fashioned pull-down shade over the window and all the ambience of a janitor’s supply closet. The bulb in the ceiling fixture had been burned out since Dred Scott, leaving only the razor edge of light around the shade to illuminate the bare walls and linoleum floor. A pile of letters and packages toppled over when I pushed open the door, which was pierced only by a skeleton keyhole and a slot with a hinged brass hatch. The mail was addressed in large, moronic handwriting. There wasn’t much of it and most of it wore a fine skin of dust. The operation was a front of some kind but I didn’t know for what.

  A charmless desk with a gray composition top on a steel frame stood against the wall under the window with a chair made of plywood and bent tubing shoved into the kneehole. I drew out the chair, wiped off the dust with my handkerchief, and tugged out the desk’s only drawer. It contained two paperclips and a gnawed stump of orange pencil.

  “No liquor, sorry. I won’t insult you with my brand. It comes in a fifty-five-gallon drum.”

  “That’s all right,” Pet said. “I’m taking the pledge. My looks are all I’ve got.”

  I gave her the deadpan. “You need a license to fish in this state.”

  “I wasn’t fishing for compliments. But thank you for not taking the bait. May I have one of those?”

  I’d perched on a corner of the desk and lit a cigarette. I tapped another one out of the pack and held it out. She plucked it free inexpertly and managed to put the right end between her lips. She leaned forward to let me light it.

  “First one this life?” I shook out the match and dropped it on the linoleum.

  “Not really. I maintain a two-a-year habit. They help settle my nerves.”

  “I wouldn’t think life with Jerry Morgenstern would be so peaceful.”

  “He’s kind of sweet, actually. The belligerence is just an act for the office. Mostly it’s boring. I tried writing a book.”

  “I was wondering when the next mob memoir was coming out. It’s been a couple of weeks.”

  “It was a novel. A romance.” She moved a shoulder. “It never got beyond fifty pages. I have a delicate gag reflex. I went to night classes in journalism, keeping my hand in. That didn’t last. Night was the only time Jeremiah had for me. I tried shopping, but I don’t like the stores in New York. The prices are a joke and the salesgirls all look like drag queens. Everyone there is acting some sort of part. Me, too. I’m the moll with a college education, too good for the role she’s stuck in.”

  She stopped talking, tore the cigarette out of her mouth. She looked around for a place to dispose of it.

  “Try the floor.” I flicked ash on the linoleum.

  She dropped it and stepped on it. “I’d hoped to do this in better surroundings.”

  “Do what?”

  “Cast my feminine spell.”

  “Don’t let that stop you. I’ve been seduced in worse places.”

  She smiled, ran a hand up and down her arm as if she were cold. “Well, the moment’s sort of passed. You’re not supposed to talk about it before you do it.”

  I took a drag, blew out a chuckling stream. “It’s a wonder you got as far as fifty pages. Let’s try it without sex. You want out.”

  “I want out.”

  “So get out.”

  “It isn’t that easy. Why do you think he sent Shelly and Nicky with me? It isn’t that he’s afraid I won’t come back. He’s afraid of where I’ll go and what I’ll say.”

  “Back at the hotel you seemed to have it all figured out. What happened to covering your ears and yodeling?”

  “That doesn’t always work. Some things filter through. Everyone else gets the chance to retire, even racketeers. The golden age home for burned-out mob mistresses is a cemetery on Long Island.”

  “Ever hear of WitPro?”

  “Witness Protection is for witnesses. I don’t intend to testify against Jeremiah. He doesn’t have that coming. It isn’t his fault I’m bored out of my mind. Anyway, if I went that route, I’d just be swapping shackles. Someone else would decide where I live and what I do. I didn’t come here to wind up teaching freshman English in Nebraska.”

  “You should have that hummingbird removed from your ankle. It’s gone to your brain.”

  She looked at me a long time. Then she opened the little pocketbook and took out a b
rick of currency bound with a rubber band. It made a thump when she tossed it on the desk.

  I left it there. “That looks like a lot of smuggled butts. How long before he notices it’s gone?”

  “It’s mine. I wasn’t barefoot in rags when I met him. You’d be surprised how a money market account can grow when you don’t have to dip into it from day to day.”

  I picked it up, riffled through it with a thumb. It was all Benjamin Franklin. “Where to, lady?”

  “Does Northwest still have that eight A.M. to Caracas?”

  She had a cell telephone the size of a ticket stub in a pocket of her blazer, part of Morgenstern’s leash. I borrowed it and pecked out the number of Llewellyn Hale’s cell from my notebook. He answered from inside a wind tunnel.

  “Walker,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “I got lost, like you said.” He was shouting. “Where’s Auburn Hills and why do I have to drive through a drainage ditch to get there?”

  “You’re on I-75. Get off at fifty-nine and double back.”

  “More busy work?”

  “Taxi service.” I told him where to meet us. I flipped the telephone shut and gave it back to Pet. “You need a place to stay tonight. What about clothes?”

  “I thought I’d buy what I need when I get down there. I didn’t clean out the store,” she said when I looked down at the bills in my hand. “I’ve got credit cards, and I checked on doing an electronic transfer.”

  “The credit cards are history, or will be when Morgenstern figures out you took a powder. Make the transfer as soon as you get away from here. Hoods like him collect bankers like china.” I tugged five bills out of the pack and held out the rest. “The fee’s five hundred a day, same for molls and sisters of charity. The gentleman I just called is on retainer in another matter.”

  She started to say something. I held up a hand, shutting her off. Two sets of feet were squeaking their way up the third flight of stairs outside.

  I slid off the corner of the desk, took her purse, and stuck the money inside. I gave back the purse and went to the door. The feet were in the hallway now. I waited until they passed the door, then opened it a crack. Shelly and Nicky had stopped in front of the door to my outer office. Pet had been gone twice as long as she needed to put Morgenstern’s proposition to me. Nicky tried the knob, found out it wasn’t locked, and drew his Beretta. Shelly hauled the big fifty out into the open and they went inside fast, clapping the door shut behind them.

  There wasn’t time for conversation. I took hold of Pet’s wrist and pulled her out into the hallway and toward the stairs. We were on the second flight going down when I heard a door slam above. I wasn’t holding her wrist now. We picked up the pace and hit the foyer on the run.

  The car was where I’d left it after I rammed the Jaguar. I put her in the passenger’s side and started the motor just as the two men boiled out onto the sidewalk. The guns came up when they saw us. I laid twin black streaks all the way around the corner. The roar of the big 455 drowned out any revolver reports. I didn’t figure there were any; Shelly at least was smart enough not to open fire with the boss’s girl in the car.

  I eased back a little when we joined the heavier traffic on Livernois. I gave the Wrong brothers three minutes minimum to get to the Jag and pry it out of the parking lot, and I didn’t want to give up the advantage by attracting a scout car. They’d just heave to and pick us up when we resumed rolling. In a little while I made my way down to Fort and First, where I pulled around behind a white glazed-brick building and eased between a pickup with a mangled right fender and a Dodge Charger missing its engine, where the battered body of my old Cutlass blended in like chalk on whitewash.

  Pet worked the door handle on her side. I reached across her and yanked the door shut.

  “We’re a little early,” I said. “Just sit back and soak up some history.”

  “What history would that be?” Her voice shook. She was looking at the homely old building, with its outside doors marked MEN and WOMEN.

  “The oldest drive-in gas station in the world. Also the first, and still in operation. Before that, whenever you needed to fill up, you went inside and bought it by the jug.”

  “What is it with this town and cars? Isn’t just building them enough? Do you have to have invented the parking meter, too?”

  “As a matter of fact, we did.”

  Last night’s storm had swept away the clouds. The sun hammered the asphalt, drawing ribbons of heat from it like molten glass. A seagull off course from the river perched atop the ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOWED sign and spread its wings, drying its armpits. I turned on the ignition and used the air conditioner. We’d been sitting there ten minutes when a red Malibu turned off Fort, hesitated as it rounded the building, and parked on the grass on the other side of the gutted Charger. Llewellyn Hale got out and walked around to my side. The sun brought out his freckles.

  I cranked down the window and made introductions. He bent down and smiled at Pet. “Hi.”

  “Hi. You’re standing on sacred ground.”

  “Is that so?” He glanced at the seagull for explanation. It shrugged and fluttered off.

  “Yeah. Father Marquette stopped here to gas up the canoe.”

  I said, “How’s your room at the RenCen?”

  “It’s a room,” he said.

  “How many beds?”

  “Just one, a queen. You moving in?”

  “Not me. See if you can get another room on the same floor. Next door with a connecting would be best. You’ve got a neighbor for tonight.”

  He smiled at Pet again. “Hello, neighbor.”

  “She’s got a morning flight tomorrow from Metro. Set your clock for five-thirty and don’t let her out of your sight until she goes to her gate. After that you can head back to Toronto and send me a bill.”

  “Bad husband?” he asked her.

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Ask my wife. We work together.”

  I remembered the receptionist at Loyal Dominion, with Hale draped across the station talking to her. I’d thought he was on the make. I reached across Pet’s lap, worked the catch under the glove compartment, and snapped the Luger free. I inspected the load and stuck the pistol out the window, butt-first.

  Hale didn’t take it. “Sorry. I never saw the use.”

  “You will if two guys named Shelly and Nicky show up. Shelly’s gun came with training wheels.” I waggled the Luger.

  He took it, found the release, examined the magazine for himself, and rammed it back into the handle. I looked at him. He stuck the pistol under his belt. “I didn’t say I didn’t know how to handle one. You Yanks weren’t alone in Desert Storm.”

  “Put it in an envelope with my name on it and leave it at the desk when you check out. They’re doing random checks at the airport.”

  “I guess I don’t get to know what this is about.”

  “That part’s up to your passenger. I’m under the seal of the confessional. If you spot a gray Jaguar with New York plates, beat it downtown. You won’t be able to stay ahead of it on the open road.” I grinned at his reaction. “You asked for work, don’t forget. You were bored.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around.” Pet was looking at me. “What about you?”

  “I’ve never been less bored in my life.”

  “You know what I mean. Jeremiah flies off the handle when he loses a cufflink.”

  “I’ll try not to hurt him. You got a passport?”

  She took a navy folder stamped in gold out of her blazer and showed me the eagle. “I’ve kept it on me ever since it came through. He doesn’t know I have it.”

  “How’s your Spanish?”

  “I know, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ and ‘I have money.’ ”

  “Hire a tutor.”

  “Do they come with long sideburns and tight pants?”

  “Better get an old fat one with boils. You’ll need to concentrate. You may not be able to come back next year wi
th the hummingbirds.”

  “There are newspapers in Venezuela. Someone has to write the obituaries.” She returned the passport to her pocket. “You got a passport?”

  I shook my head. “I’m too old to learn any new languages.”

  Suddenly she leaned against me and gave me a kiss I felt in the back seat. Hale turned away and admired the pickup with the crippled fender.

  When we came apart she said, “You notice I never asked why. There are easier ways to make five hundred dollars.”

  “Send me a list.” I reached out the window and swatted Hale’s arm. He turned back, saw my hand, and shook it.

  I said, “Anytime you want to join the States.”

  “Anytime you want to turn Tory.”

  I looked at Pet. “You still here?”

  She beamed, piled out of the car. When she looked back in I raised a hand.

  “So long, Duffy.”

  After the Malibu turned into the street I got out and stood on the corner, watching until it vanished. No tail.

  I felt a little lonely. Cars pulled up to and away from the pumps, clanging the bell as they drove over the black hose on the pavement. The station had been self-service for thirty years and no one was answering.

  If Shelly and Nicky earned what Morgenstern paid them, they’d be waiting for me back at my building. I used the pay telephone outside the station to call my service. My contact at the DIA had called. He’d found the videotape of Curtis Smallwood’s only televised fight. I was back on the clock.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  He was a flawed poem, a plot with a hole in it, a showpiece bridge with a design defect; a thing made to impress, but that would collapse the first time pressure was applied to the right spot. That first time might be years in coming; it might come in the next minute. You couldn’t keep your eyes off him for fear of missing it.

  Even in the shimmery, overexposed black-and-white Kinescope filmed directly off a TV screen, then transferred from film to videotape, Smallwood’s speed and ferocity shone. He moved in on his opponent smoothly and swiftly as if mounted on rollers, no holding back, and scissored at him, left, right, left, right, left-left, step, left again, following through boldly with each blow, no concern about missing and spinning himself around into harm’s way. He lived in the moment. Whoever tagged him The Black Mamba had known a little about the snake’s work ethic. He was fast, he was focused, but most important, he was young, and therefore immortal. The other man, Manuel Castillo, was three years older, smart and in good shape, but somewhere in those thirty-six months he’d lost that last bit of iron that makes all the difference between reckless confidence and cautious percentages. He was trying to beat a tiger on points. It can’t be done.