American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel

by Loren D. Estleman

  “He might have, if the conversation had actually taken place.”

  “Yeah. Do you mind if we switched tenses? I always had trouble with subjunctive.”

  “As long as it’s understood we’re still speaking in generalities. Even an innocent and indirect connection to an accidental killing would expose me to publicity, and the cycle would begin all over again.”

  “Did he mention who was putting the screws to him?”

  She regarded me, an exotic cat with fangs covered and claws retracted.

  “Wilson Watson,” she said. “I think that was the order. Interchangable Christian names challenge me. Are you familiar with it?”

  “I would be.” I sucked hard at my drink, trying to separate the alcohol from the fizz.

  NINE

  He’s a gangster,” she said.

  “Labor leader, he says. Do you know him?”

  “We have a mutual acquaintance in Victor Cho. Watson’s been trying to organize workers in unlicensed casinos for years. Cho’s had his agitators forcibly ejected several times. This is hearsay. The only interest I have in any of the establishments that operate on my property is the rent.”

  “He tried the same thing in the licensed joints in Detroit, but the gaming commission won’t let him in the door. He has a felony record going back to the sixty-seven riot. If he comes within five hundred feet of a legitimate gambling operation, back to jail he goes.”

  “How does one dictate wages and benefits to an enterprise that’s criminal to begin with?”

  “With clubs and axes and the occasional unexplained fire. Did Bairn say how Watson got his hooks in?”

  “He did, but it was hard to follow. He went broke at Detroit Beach and went to an outside automatic teller machine for cash, which he lost also. The next thing he knew, Watson’s people were pressuring him. Is it possible for a private individual to operate his own ATM?”

  “Possible. Not legal. They buy obsolete machines at auction, retrofit them to their own specifications, and put them up in public places. People think they’re withdrawing their own money, but they’re really giving up their account numbers and PINs to a stranger. Looks like in Watson’s case he’d rather soak them like some state-of-the-art loan shark than just clean them out once like an honest thief. You can steal someone’s whole life with just those two little numbers. You don’t even have to threaten to break his fingers if he doesn’t pay. It’s a new racket. Up till now he’s made his money collecting dues from casino employees who can’t work in the straight places, and squeezing the crooked places for protection. The union only exists in the owners’ worst nightmares.”

  “Nothing about it sounded right, so I gave Mr. Bairn my regrets. The only reason he came to me is the delusion I’m actually involved in Detroit Beach.” She glanced at a tiny diamond watch strapped to the underside of her wrist. “I must be on my way. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  “I doubt you are. But you put a face on the dragon.” When I stood up, a hollow gong struck inside my head. The liquor was kicking in. I needed to float something in it before I bearded someone like Wilson Watson. “Thanks very much for your time.”

  She remained seated. “I was curious to see what kind of snare they were setting for me this time. I’m happy I was mistaken. I’ll hold on to your card. Mai told me you sometimes do security work. Would you consider a temporary position on my staff next time I travel?”

  “I thought you only employed Asians.”

  “I prefer to, when their abilities match or excel those of the occidentals who apply. As a businesswoman I can’t afford to dismiss anyone out of hand on the basis of race alone. I’m not a university.”

  “Would the job include carrying your bags?”

  “No. I have people for that, as well as for the bags belonging to the security personnel. A bodyguard with his hands full is useless.”

  “How do they get their guns aboard the planes?”

  “The planes are chartered. I stopped taking commercial flights after nine-eleven. I’m not concerned about fanatics, but I dislike being ordered about by cocktail waitresses.”

  “I get five hundred a day.”

  “I think I can do a little better. Of course, travel, meals, and accommodations are included.”

  “When’s your next trip?”

  “Sometimes I have to leave on two hours’ notice.”

  “Heat?”

  “Fluctuations in the market.”

  “I’ll start carrying a toothbrush in my pocket.” I hung back at the door connecting to the sitting room. “I know why you have to register under a pseudonym. But why MacArthur?”

  Her smile belonged on a silk print with ponds and pagodas.

  “Sentiment. He was the first American to leave Korea.”

  Wilson Watson was one of those names, like Twelfth and Clairmount, that brought back memories most Detroiters who lived through the period would rather burn, bury, and cover with salt. He was seventeen in 1967, hauling around a string of juvenile offenses already, when a police raid on a blind pig on that corner touched off the granddaddy of all race riots, with pistols and Molotov cocktails on one side and M-60 tanks on the other. Forty-three people died, 1,383 buildings burned, and the phrase “soul brother” entered the national lexicon, having been spray painted on black-owned businesses in hopes of sparing them from the torch—in vain, by and large. Once a city of a million starts rolling downhill, racial ties alone won’t slow it down.

  Of the nearly four thousand people arrested that week, Wilson Watson was among the first. He’d organized a band of looters who made their way systematically across the smoldering city, across the wounded, wailing city, targeting savings and loan offices, electronics outlets, and liquor stores and removing cash and merchandise that could be liquidated easily. A number of witnesses summoned to testify against him at his trial vanished or lost their memories on the stand, but those who cooperated with the prosecution gave evidence that Watson had set out to raise money to import highgrade heroin from Asia and the Middle East and squeeze out the independents. He’d gotten the Call, which was to become the biggest drug czar in the Great Lakes. The authorities, shell-shocked and uncomfortably aware of the disparity between a predominately white police department and an overwhelmingly black community, were inclined to deal leniently with the common run of portable TV thieves, but Watson was a hard-shell criminal and an opportunist with an agenda. A judge sentenced him as an adult to twenty years at hard labor for his ambition. He served only eleven, despite getting caught placing bets on the 1968 World Series through his attorney, who was disbarred shortly thereafter.

  The friendships you form in prison are the longest lasting. In return for teaching him that the gambling culture offered a higher return for less risk than narcotics, the acquaintances Watson made while inside found employment for life with his organization when they were released. His business manager was a convicted rapist, whose junkets on his superior’s behalf were made more complicated by his need to register himself as a sex offender everywhere he went. His personal security was unchanged from the circle of meat-brained weight lifters who’d protected him in the yard, and he retained the services of his disgraced lawyer as an unofficial legal consultant. His front man, who knew which fork to use at a formal dinner and never wore silk with tweeds, was a murderer; his responsibility was to pay the initial visit to an unlawful casino whose employees lacked union representation. According to legend, Ernesto Esmerelda carried a black steel toolbox containing a hammer and three-inch spikes, which he’d had to use only once to nail a reluctant manager’s hand to his desktop. After the story got around, the sight of the box alone tended to bring out the desired result. If Victor Cho was as stubborn about meeting with Watson’s shop stewards as Charlotte Sing had said, he’d have been wise to keep his hands off his desk when Esmerelda came calling.

  There is an Ernesto Esmerelda in every case, although often the name is less ethnic, and his choice of tools varies. He was my ca
ndidate for the unnamed representative who’d taken Hilary Bairn to task for his withdrawals from one of Watson’s private ATMs. He was a Cuban national, a member of a pre-Castro aristocratic family and a veteran of the Mariel boatlift, who’d smuggled himself back into the U.S. after deportation following his release from the state prison in Jackson. A garden-variety killer and strong-arm specialist fell fairly low on the list for attention from Homeland Security, which was more interested in Islamic terrorists this season. He would be a very old man on oxygen before INS got around to picking him up and sending him back. If it came to a firefight, Esmerelda was the one you took out first, if you were quick enough and not overconcerned with contracting a mortal wound in the doing. I was pretty sure we’d meet.

  What had started out as a simple business proposition with a little implied intimidation had taken a sharp left turn into organized crime. And wasn’t that always the way?

  I needed something in my stomach before I forced a meeting with Wilson Watson. There was a Burger King not far from the Hilton Garden Inn, and I fortified myself with a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a full-leaded Coke on the way back to the office, where I looked up the number of the front he was using that year, a tool-and-die shop in Warren. The perky receptionist I got there had never heard of Watson, but took down my cell phone number without making any promises. I told her my business had to do with Deirdre Fuller. She asked me to spell both names.

  “Have you got a TV in the office?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Turn it on, any channel. You’ll see it pretty soon.”

  After that there was nothing to do but swallow the bitter pill and call Darius Fuller. I had a little over two hours before I turned back into a church mouse and had to report to the head cat at the cophouse.

  “Yeah, man.” He sounded played out, and mellow from something that didn’t necessarily come in bottles. I asked if the police were there.

  “They left a little while ago. Nice boys, sympathetic. No guarantee they’ll stay that way.”

  “They ask about Bairn?”

  “Yeah. I told them the situation with Dee-dee; the fight, everything. Nice boys, didn’t bat an eye when I mentioned the two million. I don’t think either one of them was old enough to see me pitch.”

  “They hatch full-grown. Did you tell them about our arrangement?”

  “No. They didn’t ask.”

  “Want me to sit on it?”

  A long breath got drawn with a rattle in it. “Oh, who the hell cares? Give ’em what they want. They’ll be back anyway.”

  “Maybe not the same ones. It may be an inspector named Alderdyce and a detective named Burrough.” I let three seconds of silence tumble down the line. “There’s more to the story.”

  “Figured there would be.” He didn’t sound curious.

  “I don’t need to tell the cops any more than they ask, but do you want me to come up there first and bring you up to code? It doesn’t tell over the phone.”

  “Not tonight, okay? I got arrangements to make starting early tomorrow, and I don’t know when they’ll let me have the—have Dee-dee.” He breathed again. “I got to call her mother. I don’t mind telling you I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “Sure. Can I come see you tomorrow when it’s done?”

  “Am I still paying you?”

  “Not if you say no.”

  “We’ll talk about it. Call first. I got to the end of the month to be out of here, but I don’t think I can stand it that long. There’s no furniture, and everywhere I look she fills the space. Shouldn’t, she hasn’t lived here since she was little. You know?”

  “I don’t know, but I can guess.”

  “Thanks for that.” He sounded sincere. “First fucker tells me he knows just how it is gets the high hard one straight in the mouth.”

  I said nothing. That seemed to be expected.

  “I got one credit card I didn’t max out,” he said. “I been saving it. Think I’ll blow it on a hotel room. That old sleeping bag’s not much to put between the floor and these old bones.”

  “The suites at the new Hilton aren’t bad.”

  “It’s too close to the new ballpark. I never did forgive the club for giving up on The Corner and selling out to a fucking financial institution. I lost my eighty-four Series bonus in that whole S-and-L deal.”

  “You should’ve stuck with baseball.”

  “Tell that to my arm. Sooner or later everything you depend on goes away.” He swallowed something. “Call. I’ll tell you where you can find me.”

  “Sure you want to be alone tonight?”

  “Sure as hell. I don’t expect to be again for a long time.”

  His voice was getting guttural. I said okay and got off the line. When I got back on it to check for messages, the connection was still open. I heard air stirring in an empty room. When I tried again after a minute the dial tone came on, so he must have found the cradle with the receiver finally.

  Dusk was crumbling in. I shut down the plant and put wheels under me. In a little while Greektown came up, always open, the bluebottle and pink popsicle lights of the tribal casino spilling out of Trappers Alley, an appropriate name if ever there was one, and beyond it the rotting hulk of 1300 Beaubien—Detroit Police Headquarters—rising like a ruined redoubt from the fog that prowled in from the river when the mercury slipped. I found a spot for the car and went inside to make my offering.

  TEN

  I found John Alderdyce in his office, glowering at a plastic bucket collecting drips from a reservoir stagnating in the crawl space between his ceiling and the floor above. No rain had fallen for two weeks, but at 1300 it’s always monsoon season. Eighty years of indifferent use, with two decades of corruption at city hall, had turned a proud local landmark into a leaky hut in Thailand. Overhead, the entire seventh story was deserted, evacuated by order of a former chief because of rotten ventilation, sagging plaster, rats, black mold, and pigeon filth.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” I said.

  He gave up trying to stare a hole through the bucket and started on me. “You hear where they’re planning to put us now?”

  “Belle Isle? They’re shutting down the aquarium. Everyone gets a window.”

  “The Michigan Central Depot. It’s ten years older than this dump, with bats.”

  “Use them instead of the silhouette targets. Ten or better to qualify.”

  He pointed a scarbound knuckle at the school clock on the wall. “Your watch is fast.”

  “I thought I was cutting it kind of close.”

  “That’s what I meant. I had the arrest report all typed, with blanks for resisting and getting shot trying to escape.”

  “End of the shift, you said. I knew you’d still be here. You never shave a minute off city time.” I lifted the bucket, catching the water while I slid the chair out from under it and set the bucket on the floor. The seat was damp when I sat down. The leak had gotten a head start.

  The telephone rang on his desk. He let it go until someone got it on an extension or the caller gave up. He was sitting in his old brown-and-yellow plaid chair with his hands resting on the arms where all the pattern had worn off. He watched me through the holes in his skull without moving. Water dripped into the bucket without any rhythm or pattern: Plinkety-plunk splat bloop plunketa-plink gurgle smack. Taking down the old building with it, a gram at a time.

  “Darius Fuller,” I said.

  He clapped his hands once. It sounded like a shot.

  I said, “The fifty grand was to offer Bairn to walk away from the daughter. You know about the two million she had coming on her next birthday.”

  “Bairn’s a bookkeeper. Didn’t Fuller think he knew six zeroes beats four of a kind?”

  “That was my end. I was supposed to make mean faces and crack my knuckles while he considered.”

  “Muscle now, is it? Times are harder than I thought.”

  “Not that hard, and I told Fuller so. It did
n’t change his mind. Later I found out some things about Bairn that told me he might like the walking-around money now as opposed to waiting two months to inherit the ranch.”

  “Who’s he owe, and how hard are they leaning?”

  “I didn’t get that far.” My voice throbbed with truth. “He tried to raise cash by conning Deirdre Fuller into hocking a hot watch.”

  “Rolex?”

  “My guess. I didn’t get that close. Anyway the pawnbroker threw it in her face, so I figured Bairn for an easier fall than he looked at the start. Then the situation changed again.”

  “The daughter threatened to move up the wedding date. My officers got that from Fuller. She sprang it on him, he said, while they were arguing about Bairn. You know this gives him two motives for her killing, both biblical.”

  “Wrath and greed,” I said. “Worst of the seven. You really like him for it?”

  “Like doesn’t figure in. I’d like it if everyone who ever got murdered just ran into the wrong stranger on the wrong corner. Then it’s just a matter of following leads, collecting evidence, and baling it all up for the prosecutor. Clean and clinical, like a scientist isolating a virus. I could wear white. But the killers don’t care what I like. Two thirds of the complaints that roll across this desk have to do with husbands killing wives, children killing parents, parents killing children. It happens we’re having our hottest summer in years, with brownouts fucking up the air conditioners in those houses that have them. That rachets up the rage factor, and since there are more guns in Detroit than in Texas, a fight that in November might lead to a black eye winds up here on my desk. I’m looking forward to the first frost. Do I think Fuller did it? No, even though he’s got no alibi for how he spent the next several hours after he and Deirdre had words in Grosse Pointe. He says he got got drunk and passed out on his sleeping bag because his bed got sold. The officers who spoke with him there smelled marijuana, which helps to corroborate his story rather than tear it down. I never worked a passion killing yet that was committed under the influence of that kind of depressant.”