The Sundown Speech

by Loren D. Estleman

  Moze fished his cap from the wastebasket and put it on, this time with the bill in front. He swept a long skinny arm around his portable developing lab. “I’m safe as houses. You might have noticed I attract crowds wherever I go.”

  “Crowds don’t scare him. He made his last move on a well-lit street just as the bars were emptying out.” I opened the door. “You wouldn’t have that model’s phone number, by any chance?”

  “Waste of time. She’s engaged to the coach of a girls’ high school swim team.”

  * * *

  A tall female cop and a squat party in putty-colored coveralls carrying the logo of the delivery van I’d double-parked next to were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the tow truck. The plainclothesman who’d been following me all over town had pulled his blue Ford into a loading zone to watch. I waited until the pair on the sidewalk were looking another direction, then slid under the wheel and drove away from the shouting with a fresh ticket flapping from under one of my wipers. The Ford chirped rubber catching up.

  At a stoplight I put the Cutlass in park, got out, and walked back to the unmarked car, making a twirling motion with one hand. The window whirred down on the driver’s side. He was an ex-Marine type, jarhead and all, with a tiny silver crucifix glittering on a thin chain around a neck as big around as a leg of lamb. The hand not resting on the wheel hovered near the lapel of his windowpane-plaid sportcoat.

  “I’m going home to snooze,” I said. “Home being Detroit. You might be late for supper.”

  His lower teeth showed in a piranha smile. “No problem, Mac. My wife left me for a CSI.”

  I drove all the way back to Detroit with the cop trailing behind like the tail of a kite. I kept below the speed limit; the signs were blurring and shadows stood out from the pavement in 3-D effect, an optical illusion. My eyes scratched in their sockets. I felt like old copper extruded past its limit.

  The house had a lonely feel, as if a large boisterous family had moved out ten years ago. I walked from room to room, swinging my arms and bellowing yawns. I was more tired than I was hungry, and I was as hungry as a rabbi marooned in a Bob Evans. But before I turned in I called Holly Zacharias.

  “Dad’s gonna be pissed,” she said. “I don’t think he can get his money back on that plane ticket.”

  “I’m glad the cops caught up with you before you gave up on me and called for a taxi. How many officers did they put on you?”

  “Two in a car under my window. I’m not sure about the dude sitting at the bus stop. He’s let two buses go past, but he could be OCD.”

  “Keep your cell handy whenever you go out, okay? Having it out in the open can ward off trouble.”

  “You really think I’m still in danger? ‘In danger,’ God! I sound like one of those wussy teenagers in a slasher movie.”

  “The more I find out about Marcus the worse he looks. Keep in sight of your escort, and stay off the front porch.”

  “Sean’s gonna think I threw him over for a couple of pigs.”

  I didn’t think that was such a bad trade, but I didn’t say so. I told her I’d see what I could do about that plane ticket. I didn’t say what. You never know who’s listening.

  I undressed completely and was asleep the second I drew the covers up to my chin. I dreamed I was running through a crowd of naked people who kept bursting into flame.

  When I woke up it was light out. That was a surprise, because I felt as rested as if I’d been asleep for hours. I solved the mystery when I looked out the window and saw the sun was in the east toward Windsor. I’d been out halfway around the clock.

  My belly button was scraping my spine; at last I knew what “peckish” meant. I found two cans of sardines in a cupboard, polished them off standing at the sink, and chased them with a quart of milk. Afterward I was still hungry, but less likely to take a bite out of the cop I knew was still waiting for me outside, unless someone had spelled him. I showered, shaved, and put on a suit. The man in the mirror looked like a defendant dressed by his lawyer to fool a jury. After the T-shirt, the necktie was like a choke collar, but at least I felt clean.

  The commute had gotten to be a drag. I packed an overnight bag, put it in the car by way of the door from the kitchen, and then went out the front.

  The vet in the blue Ford sat up straight. He looked alert, if rumpled. I hoped a night’s sleep in the car hadn’t wrecked his back. Our friendship was long-standing. I whistled at him and pointed at the garage. He nodded and started his motor. I swung up the door, drove out the Cutlass, went back to pull the door shut, and snatched the ticket from the windshield before getting back in. If I didn’t start paying them soon I’d have to buy a car with a bigger glove compartment.

  We headed west. The Athens of America it wasn’t, but Ann Arbor had me by the short hairs.

  Back on East Liberty, I passed the Michigan Theater. This time I paid closer attention to the Romanesque façade. It looked like a cathedral in some small Italian village owned by the Church. A Chinese film was playing that day, judging by the unfamiliar names of the actors. The electric bulbs chased the title around the towering marquee. It was a commercial feature aimed at the art-house circuit, but the visitor’s guide had confirmed what Alec Moselle had told me about the Cinema Slam: For a few days each July, amateur movie critics could go in and watch the seminal work of fledgling filmmakers like Jerry Marcus and weigh in. They’d weighed in on Jerry, soundly enough to sour him on the city. He’d fantasized about destroying the theater, even taken steps to do it, then had fallen back on the relatively mild alternative of separating local investors from their money; then faked his own murder, using a real corpse.

  So it had been a full week for him, and it wasn’t over yet. Trying to predict the next move of a certified lunatic is like boxing someone else’s shadow.

  Whatever he did next, it wouldn’t involve Holly Zacharias. I don’t promise myself much, but I was going to hold myself to that, with or without the cooperation of law enforcement. To do that I needed the devil’s own plan. Fortunately, I had just the devil in mind.

  PART THREE

  LOOP

  NINETEEN

  I’d trade the inconvenience of not owning a portable phone for the luxury of placing a call from the interior of a vintage booth in the Michigan Union. It’s gone now, along with the others, with no plaque in their place to commemorate the fact that they ever existed. It was perfumed with oak, tung oil, and the ghosts of generations of good cigars, and the horsehide upholstery stuffed with down was like wearing a heat wrap around my back; all those trips between Detroit and Ann Arbor had my lumbar region shooting out little bolts of lightning like in a comic strip. The cozy little cells were too good to withstand the twenty-first century.

  Barry’s cell wasn’t answering. I tried his landline at home. He picked up after three rings.

  “I hope they’re paying you in quarters,” he said when I told him who was calling.

  “I just bought two rolls. This is going to take a lot longer than three minutes.”

  “I never get tired of asking if there’s anything for me.”

  “Everything, if you’ll sit on it till I say; and do me one more little favor.”

  “Call me back and reverse the charges. The little guy with a pitchfork on my left shoulder tells me I can deduct them next April.”

  I hung up and got the operator. At the end of a quarter of an hour, during which I told him what I’d gotten from Alec Moselle, I spent one of my coins on a much shorter conversation with Holly Zacharias.

  * * *

  The university tower was caroling four o’clock when she came my way across the Diag, carrying a camo duffel slung from its strap on one shoulder. She wore the student uniform: tank top, bell-bottoms, and sandals. Her hair hadn’t grown out any, but something was missing. I figured it out while I was throwing the duffel in the backseat.

  “You took the hardware out of your face.”

  “I didn’t want to set off the metal detectors.”


  “You look fourteen years old.”

  “Thanks. Like I don’t get carded enough.”

  “Same flight as yesterday?”

  “Yeah. Dad lucked out. The exchange only cost him twenty bucks extra. He bitched about it five minutes. He’s an okay dad, just cheap.”

  “He’s going to bitch some more.”

  “What?”

  “On the way. Any extra baggage?”

  “No, just the—oh, you mean cops. I don’t think so. I went into the parking garage on Thompson and ducked out the other side. I guess nobody told them I don’t have a car.”

  “It’s okay. I brought along reinforcements.” I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder at the faithful blue Ford. “He’s got a crush on me. I think it’s my aftershave.”

  She glanced at Captain America behind the wheel, shook her head. “Just when I think I got you old dudes figured out, you throw me a curve.”

  “We get old for reasons. Buckle up. We’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  “Where do I think I heard that before?”

  “The Michigan Theater, probably. Sooner or later they had to have got around to Bette Davis.” I let out the clutch, throwing her back into the seat. Every once in a while it’s reassuring to impress youth with a virile show.

  We drove down State Street. The blue Ford closed within a length. The point of the tail was to keep me from smuggling my passenger out of town, and my direction had Sergeant York upright with both fists on the wheel.

  I lit a cigarette, flipped the match into the slipstream, and offered her the pack.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t really smoke. I only do it sometimes to make people disapprove. I don’t guess you know why that’s important.”

  “It isn’t. But it beats Sodoku.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I’d turned south on Main Street. “Airport. You have a flight at six.”

  “Double back and take I-94. US-23’s under construction near the interchange.”

  “I know. I like to watch my tax dollars at work. A road crew in my block spent a month filling a pothole the size of a cereal bowl.”

  “If it’s backed up I’ll miss my plane.”

  “You’re going to miss it anyway.”

  She turned my way. Her window was open. The wind stirred the stubble on her scalp. “My dad’ll shit if I don’t show up on time at O’Hare.”

  “Does anyone show up on time at O’Hare?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “This have anything to do with the blockhead in the Ford?”

  “This has everything to do with the blockhead in the Ford. For the record, he isn’t a blockhead. I tried everything to expose him for one and he didn’t rise. He’s just a guy doing his job.”

  “Stake me out like a goat. Cops,” she spat.

  “They’ve got bills to pay, same as everyone else.” I tipped the butt out the window. It was like sucking on a lump of coal. “Zacharias. That’s Greek, right? Studying ancient civilizations?”

  “Minoring in Poli Sci,” she said. “So the answer’s yeah.”

  “Going to run for office? I mean after you turn loose Moby Dick?”

  “Shamu. Gonna nail the ones that run. TV reporter.”

  “Taking journalism?”

  “Just one course. I dropped out when the instructor said the business of a newspaper is to make money.”

  I laughed.

  She swung back my way. “I said something funny?”

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t why I laughed. When I was six, I asked my mother what my father did for a living. She said, ‘He makes money.’ So that’s what I thought he did, printing bills on a press.”

  She faced front. “I wish I knew what you were talking about half the time.”

  “I’m an enigma,” I said, “wrapped in a mystery, with a chewy caramel center.”

  “Shi-i-it!” She laughed then.

  Orange barrels ganged up on us near the I-94 interchange. I got out of that lane. So did the blue Ford. I accelerated and changed again, passing traffic on the right. The Ford changed too. With the barricade coming up I closed in again on the outside lane. A green Corvette sped up to shut me out, braked when our fenders kissed: Steel trumps fiberglass. Brakes screeched behind. I got into the space and stopped to avoid rear-ending a truck. I still hear the screech late at night. The green Corvette’s horn blasted. The blue Ford halted short of the barricade.

  My pet cop was still waiting for a break when the pace began to pick up. When a semi in the other lane lagged back to downshift I used the square inch of space and pushed the pedal to the floor. The four-barrel carburetor kicked in with an atomic blast. We hit ninety with a whump. I rolled up my window against the booming wind. Holly did the same, and we were sealed in silence with a gray blur on either side. There was no sign of the Ford when I made the interchange, floating on air two inches under both right tires. My knuckles swelled white on the wheel.

  I braked, slewing onto the shoulder and spraying gravel. As we powered down, Holly pried her fingers from the dash. “Where’d you learn to drive?” It came from two inches below her larynx.

  “The Phnom Penh highway. It’s less interesting without land mines.” I leveled off at seventy, with cars passing me. It felt like I could open the door and step out for air. “He’ll go on to the airport and look for us there.”

  “I think I’ll take that cigarette now.”

  I lit one off the dash lighter and handed it over. She took two shallow puffs, opened her window a crack, let it free, and sucked in air from outside. “Where to now?”

  “Rest stop.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “Me neither.”

  I turned off into a roadside oasis with a faux-fieldstone building advertising toilets, refreshments, and tourist brochures. Barry Stackpole was waiting for us in the parking lot, leaning on a yellow Land Rover with black trim, like a flashlight. He was my age, but looked as if he’d been packed away in dry ice after extra work in Rebel Without a Cause. In those days he still camouflaged his missing fingers in a flesh-colored cotton glove. The artificial leg and aluminum patch on his scalp concealed more subtly.

  “Nice ride.” I shook his good hand. “What’s rhinoceros taste like?”

  “It’s a loaner. I got a Central American drug dealer off Death Row. Good family man, loves his kids. He’s letting me use it while he serves three consecutive life sentences in Huntsville. Uses more fuel than the Exxon Valdez.” He smiled at Holly. “Anyone ever tell you you look like Jamie Lee Curtis?”

  “I thought the same thing,” I said.

  “Tony Curtis’ daughter.” She smiled at my reaction. “I saw True Lies, and I’ve got Turner Classic Movies on a pirate hook-up. The Black Shield of Falworth rocks.”

  “Barry Stackpole, Holly Zacharias,” I said. “Proper introductions later. Get in.” I swung open the door on the passenger’s side of the Land Rover.

  She climbed up onto the seat. I put her duffel in the back, gave Barry an envelope with train fare and the clipping with Jerry Marcus’ picture. “Michigan Central Station. If you see him, holler for security.”

  “Too slow.” He made his youthful face and showed me a walnut handle in an underarm clip. I hadn’t known he owned a firearm.

  Holly said, “Hey.”

  I smiled at her. “Tell your dad he can bill me for the airline ticket. I’ll charge it to expenses.”

  She shook her head. Without a face full of metal she had a brilliant smile. “You represent—for a Boomer dude.”

  I waved as they pulled away. Her I’d miss. She was better company when she wasn’t trying to make people disapprove of her.

  TWENTY

  I was a fugitive, but only so long as it took Lieutenant Karyl’s detail to find out I hadn’t taken Holly Zacharias to the airport, check back with Ann Arbor, and track me down at my office in Detroit or my house outside Hamtramck.

  That wouldn’t take long; he’d have followed up on u
s both the moment the officers he’d put on Holly reported she’d given them the slip. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on their end of that conversation; when a callow coed outsmarts months of training and years of experience, all his Hungarian ancestry would come out, going back to Vlad the Impaler.

  Better he burn himself out on them than on me. I’d committed one felony, possibly more, and made a significant contribution to road rage, Michigan’s chief export and a commodity that is never in short supply.

  I drove home with one eye on the speedometer and the other on the rearview mirror, looking for prowl cars and unmarked blue Fords. Those twelve unconscious hours came in handy, also the inadequacy of my breakfast. The sardines and milk were long digested, leaving the blood flow entirely to the brain, where I most needed it.

  Nevertheless I exited at the first sign of a pair of golden arches and dropped blazing hot coffee on top of a double cheeseburger. While I was waiting for my order, a siren yelped in the same block. When I climbed back down from the headliner, the kid at the window shook his head. “Happens all the time; except last month, when somebody stuck up the place. Took ’em twenty minutes to get here, and the station’s just around the corner.” He grinned. “Bet if we was a Dunkin’ Donuts—”

  I snatched the sack and cup out of his hands and drove off.

  At the restaurant exit I passed a couple of opportunities to turn into the street while a set of flashing red-and-blue lights swung onto the ramp of the expressway a block and a half beyond. A polite tap on a horn behind me sent me on my way.

  In a situation like that it sometimes helps to remind oneself of one’s pressing responsibilities. Staying out of jail topped the list. But then it did so often it had become almost an abstract concept, like breathing and smoking tobacco.

  Drawing a murderer’s attention from Holly, an eyewitness who could put Jerry Marcus in state housing for life, came next. It meant setting myself up as a decoy; he had to shift his concentration to me, strong enough to rearrange his own priorities.

  That meant finding him first, which was the job I’d hired on for at the beginning, back when it was a simple case of possible fraud.