King of the Corner

by Loren D. Estleman

  She said, “You smell like an ashtray. You’re not supposed to go to any bars.”

  “It was a party in an apartment. I’ll tell you about it later.” His head was hurting, too. All the smoke and too much conversation were catching up with him.

  The telephone rang as he was climbing the stairs. Billie answered.

  “Kevin, it’s for you. I think it’s your boss.”

  A TV set was mumbling in the background on Ance’s end. Doc recognized the percussive theme and looped soundtrack of that irritating cold-medication commercial inspired by rap. “Want me to pick you up in the morning?” he asked.

  “Fuck that.” The bail bondsman’s voice had an edge. “You watching Channel Two?”

  He glanced at the dark set and said no. Ance said, “Put it on. I’ll call you back.”

  The picture blipped on just as the commercial ended. He waited through another almost as bad, then the TV-2 News anchorman’s moisturized and barbered face looked up from the sheaf of blank sheets in his hands and announced that an undercover officer with the Detroit Narcotics Squad had been shot to death while on assignment. Doc thought that couldn’t be what Ance had wanted him to see. Then, following a picture of the slain officer taken in uniform, a front-and-profile mug shot came on. The anchorman’s professional-mourner voice continued:

  “Police suspect Starkweather Hall, a prominent member of the Marshals of Mahomet group of African-American activists, believed to be a front for one of the city’s biggest crack cocaine operations. Hall, sought since last December on drug charges …”

  Doc didn’t pay much attention to the rest, which was mostly file information he had heard before. The photo of Starkweather Hall showed a combative face with wide-set eyes, short hair, and black fan-shaped side-whiskers underscoring the hollows under his cheekbones. Clean-shaven, the face would look fuller and younger and somewhat less sinister. That was how Doc had seen it less than thirty minutes before in the entryway of Alcina Lilley’s home in Birmingham.

  Chapter 18

  SATURDAY’S GAME TOOK PLACE under a gray steel sky like the doors of the old solitary cells in Jackson, now used for storage. And it was three-handed.

  Charlie Battle was pulling extra duty in the investigation into the death of Sergeant Ernest Melvin of the Detroit Narcotics Squad, whose body dressed in civilian clothes had been found leaking into the grass behind an empty crack house on Dragoon. Needles Lewis and his two fellow Marshals didn’t show up, and Doc guessed they had been taken in for questioning. Neal was working, and just before Doc and Sean left the house Jeff Dolan called to say he had clients coming in all day to have their taxes done. At that point Doc had suggested canceling, but Sean surprised him by saying he needed batting practice. The boy looked bright-eyed on the way to the corner and almost rugged in a new pair of jeans and a sweatshirt he had cut the sleeves off himself. He carried the bat and fielder’s glove Doc had bought for him.

  “That ain’t no way to throw. You got to snap your arm.”

  Doc, stepping forward to retrieve the ball Sean had tried to throw back at him while he was warming up, looked up as Battle’s son Charlie Junior came trotting across the lot. He was wearing the same cutoff sweatshirt and Levi’s he’d had on the week before. Doc suspected from Sean’s similar outfit that some bonding had been going on outside his notice. “Hi, Charlie!” The boy sounded ecstatic.

  “I thought your dad was working,” Doc said.

  “He is. I walked.” Junior pulled on his glove and turned the palm Doc’s way. Doc threw him the ball. “Sean, you ever see a gladiator picture, they bust down a wall with one of them catapults? That’s how you got to use your arm. Here, I’ll show you.”

  The ballfield was shaping up. Doc and Sean had cleared away a lot of debris during the week, stuffing it into trash bags and carrying it to the curb. Doc made a note to ask his brother if he could borrow his lawn mower next week.

  Things had been quiet since the day of Beatrice Blackwood’s homecoming party. When Ance had called back after the news report on Starkweather Hall and the murder of Sergeant Melvin he had asked Doc to come to his house.

  The woman who had answered the door was nearly as tall as Alcina Lilley, trim, blonde, and younger than Doc. She wore a gold open-necked blouse tucked into beige slacks that hugged her hips and high-heeled sandals on her bare feet with vermilion paint on the toenails.

  “Hi. I’m Cynthia, Maynard’s wife. You’re Doc Miller. What are the Tigers’ chances for a .500 season?”

  “About five hundred to one against.” He shook her strong hand. “Better if Sparky has a stroke or Monaghan fires him.”

  “Not much chance of that. I think Sparky has evidence that Monaghan worships Satan, or maybe that he’s allergic to pepperoni. I’d have canned him after the ’85 season. Maynard’s downstairs.”

  It was a full basement with a seven-foot soundproofed ceiling and pegboard panels on the walls loaded with tools. It contained a workbench with vise attached and shelves of how-to books arranged alphabetically according to subject and a drill press and bandsaw mounted on stout frames and cans of stain and varnish on steel utility shelves. Doc was no great observer, but during the short walk across the thick carpet from the stairs to the big recliner where Ance sat reading the evening News, he decided that the tools had never been off their hooks and that the lids had never been pried from the cans. The only things in the room that showed signs of use—besides Ance himself—were the recliner, split at the seams with foam rubber bulging out like pale flesh, and a scarred kitchen table leaning in a corner covered with empty brass cartridges and cans of smokeless powder. A bare metal revolver frame with neither cylinder nor side grips lay atop a stack of Shooters’ Bibles.

  ‘‘My workshop, where the cares of the day fade away whilst I’m painting a shithouse for hummingbirds,” said the bail bondsman without greeting. “My third wife sprang it on me when I got back from eleven days in Wisconsin looking for an arsonist. Her psychotherapist told her I needed a hobby. I filed the next day.”

  “Your new one seems nice.”

  “I’ve been married to her longer than the first four put together.” He folded the newspaper and scaled it onto the bench. “How was the party?”

  “Dull, except for the conversation. I was the youngest one there not counting the bodyguard, and he passed out early.”

  “Beatrice the one you had the conversation with?”

  “She’s had an interesting life.”

  “Several of ’em. Which one she tell you about?”

  Doc pulled a stool out from under the bench and sat down. “Just out of curiosity, do you tell Taber any more than you tell me when you send him on an errand? It’d help if I knew what I was supposed to find out. Truman or any one of a dozen people at that party could have driven her home from the hospital. She didn’t need me.”

  “She asked for you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Okay, but she did. I wanted to send Taber. I should’ve guessed how it’d go when I couldn’t find him to take me to the funeral. You two hit it off pretty good there.”

  “Has it got something to do with Starkweather Hall?”

  Ance had gotten out a cigarette and was playing with it. He glanced beyond Doc’s shoulder. “Hit that switch, will you? It goes to the vent fan.”

  Doc reached over and flipped it without getting up. The fan, mounted behind a screen in the wall near the bandsaw, whirred. Ance struck a kitchen match off the edge of the bench and lit the cigarette. “I promised Cynthia she wouldn’t catch me smoking. If you want to keep a wife you’ve got to keep your promises first.” He batted at the smoke until he was satisfied it was drifting toward the screen. “If it wasn’t for Beatrice Blackwood I’d have gone bust years ago. You know what it’s like for a white man in my racket to get information in a place like Detroit?”

  “She’s your snitch?”

  “That’s TV talk. Street skinny is merchandise just like everything else. There’s no shame in sell
ing it. A good intelligence broker gets more respect than a surgeon.”

  “Is that what you’re grooming me for?”

  The question went unacknowledged. “I can’t do the digging myself. It’s got to look good. This is a sports town. A professional jock like you carries his own bona fides. It’d be better if you were black, but maybe not; that’s kind of obvious. They don’t mind being pumped so much if it doesn’t look like you think you’re putting one over on them. It’s complicated when you try to put words to it.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The brokers. The boys and girls with the poopy. The big-eared hookers and the grifters and the smart fellers in the stick joints that know it all except how to hold a job that doesn’t pay in old bills. They know how much what they’ve got is worth, and they like it when you ask them with respect. That’s where you figure in. You treat everybody like people, you know it? Must be that southern upbringing. With Taber it’s asshole this and scroat that. Me too, but we’ve seen more of the world than you. Anyway, if you and Beatrice got on okay today I was going to suggest hiring you out to her, but this thing with the undercover cop fucks up my timetable. What’d you hear?”

  “Nothing about Hall. If you’d told me all this before, I could have asked.”

  “That’s just what I didn’t want. Jesus. How’d you survive seven years in Jackson?”

  “I’m too big to bugger.” He’d had that one ready. “Why are you interested? You said those rewards are never paid.”

  “Those community pool jobs never are. He’s a cop killer now, though. That changes everything. The cop union, the D.P.O.A., will match them or better, and they have a reputation for making good on their offers. The sons of bitches think when one of their own goes down it’s a bigger deal than when it’s just a citizen. That’s bad for democracy but good for me. An extra hundred grand would keep me in lightbulbs and envelopes for the next six months.”

  “You didn’t know he was going to be a cop-killer when you lent me out.”

  “Let’s say I was speculating in Hall futures. He’s got a hot head and every blue bag in town smelled promotion all over him.” Ance pinched out his cigarette half-smoked and laid it on the bench. “This undercover, this Melvin, was moling his way into the M-and-M’s. His last message out said he had a line on Hall. Two days later some kid looking for a connection or an open window stumbles over Melvin’s body, and Hall’s the biggest catch in town since Jack Dance.”

  “I’m nobody’s idea of a mole. Everything shows on my face.”

  “That’s why people trust you. Even Charlie Battle. He’s got you spying on me.”

  Doc knew better than to hesitate. “If that were true he’d be wasting his money. I told you I had nothing to tell him.”

  “Don’t get sore. I said there’s nothing wrong with selling what you know. Who was at the party?”

  “You’ve got a bad habit of accusing people of things, then backing off,” Doc said. “I told Battle I’d keep my eyes and ears open. If I didn’t he could screw my parole down so tight I’d be happy to go back to prison. I think I just quit.”

  “A speech like that is usually made standing up.”

  Doc stood up.

  “Sit down. Everybody knows how tall you are. I believe you.”

  Doc sat down.

  “Better. Trouble with ballplayers is they all think they got to live up to the numbers on the back of their card.”

  “I never had a card.”

  “Who gives a shit? Some kid winds up trading eighteen Doc Millers for one Boog Powell and there you are with a price sticker on your ass.”

  “Boog Powell? Give me a break.”

  “I don’t see you doing beer commercials. Anyway, fuck mat. What counts is what you’re worth to me. You’re there when I call. I’d dump Taber, but he knows too much about the way I do business. Who was at the party?”

  “I didn’t get most of the names. Truman at the door. A woman with a scar on her cheek.”

  “Bonnibelle Rudge. The Sicilians gave her that scratch when they knocked over Joe Petite’s place in ’66.”

  “Someone mentioned Sebastian Bright.”

  “Dead for years. Come on. Anybody who can memorize all those fancy signs ought to be good at names.”

  “Theron Something Gidrey. Gidgy, Beatrice called him.”

  “Old guy? Weak eyes?”

  “More than weak. Blind. She said he used to own the Morocco Motor Hotel.”

  “Owned a hell of a lot more than that before the riots. Jesus, I was sure he died. Who else?”

  That time he hesitated. “Alcina Lilley.”

  “No shit, you talk to her?”

  “I took her home.”

  “Yeah?” It had a leer in it. “No wonder you’re zonked.”

  Doc was in the middle of a bitter yawn. His headache was better but his bones felt heavy. “She’s a little old for me. I was nine when her husband got killed.”

  “A man can learn a lot from an older woman. I’m kidding. What did you talk about?”

  Now, watching Charlie Junior showing Sean how to cock his arm with the ball in his hand, then straighten it out with a snap, following through after the ball was in flight as if directing it with an invisible rod, Doc wasn’t sure why he had said nothing to Ance or anyone else about seeing Starkweather Hall at Alcina Lilley’s house in Birmingham. If it was Hall. He had seen the man only briefly and with the light behind him, and as often as Doc had talked himself into accepting that Sergeant Melvin’s suspected killer was staying with Mahomet’s widow, he had talked himself out of it just as often. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the reason he had kept silent. He didn’t know if he would have done the same before Jackson. The Kevin Miller who had never been to prison had nothing to discuss with the Doc Miller who watched life on the outside as if it were still framed by the nineteen-inch screen in the TV room. Paralyzed by the terms of his parole, he was no more a participant in the world than Sean was in front of his everlasting video games. Even his sex was brought to him and applied literally at arm’s length for a fee.

  “Heads up, Doc!”

  Junior’s warning penetrated as a wild throw from Sean sent the ball spinning at Doc’s head. He pivoted, caught it in front of his face, then followed through in a full turn, knifing it at Junior with everything he had. It struck the boy’s glove with a sharp crack. He held on to the ball a fraction of a second, then dropped it, flung away the glove, and doubled over, hugging his hand between his thighs. “Ow. Shit. Jesus God. Ouch.”

  Doc ran up to him in a chill of remorse. “I’m sorry. You okay? I’m really sorry.”

  Junior straightened, shaking the hand and blowing on the fingers. “Who’d you think you was pitching to, Reggie Jackson? Jesus.”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I uncorked the heat. Let’s go to the house and put it in ice. You want to go to the emergency room?”

  “I don’t think nothing’s broken.” He flexed his fingers. He had a red patch on his palm. “Man, you’re wasting your time here. You ought to be back with the Tigers.”

  Sean’s eyes were as big as bases. “You were a Tiger?”

  Before Doc could answer, a gray stretch Lincoln as long as a throw to center field drifted into the curb behind home plate. Its horn flatted.

  “Watch it!” said Junior when Doc started walking that way. He sounded like his father the cop.

  “If it’s a drive-by, the gangs are coming up in the world.” But Doc slowed his pace. The driver was a large black man in a blue serge suit. Another black man was seated on the passenger’s side. The windows in back were smoked. As Doc drew near, the dark window on his side glissed down.

  “Who’s winning?”

  Alcina Lilley had on a dark blue dress with a yellow-and-red scarf knotted at the side cowboy fashion and because it looked like rain a belted car coat of a shade of white that Doc guessed was called eggshell. A yellow silk carnation was pinned to her hair two inches to the right of the part. It made him think of a pic
ture he had once seen of Billie Holliday. By daylight he could see tiny lines around her eyes.

  “Nobody’s winning or losing,” he said. “We’re just fooling around.”

  “I stopped at your house. Your sister-in-law told me you were here.” She looked apologetic. “Are you committed? I’d like to borrow you for the day. Part of it, anyway.”

  He glanced at the two men in the front seat. “I don’t play golf.”

  She made introductions. The pair nodded their beachball-size heads infinitesimally. Their names slid out of Doc’s grasp like glycerine. “I want to take you to lunch,” she said.

  “Am I dressed for it?” He looked down at his flannel shirt and corduroys.

  “The dress code is whatever turns you on. Are you free?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Junior, still working his stricken hand, goggled at the woman in the car. “That who I think it is?”

  “How would I know that?” Doc said. “Okay if I leave you guys? Sean needs practice hitting the low ones.”

  “He needs practice hitting the ground with a bat. He’ll be Cecil Fielder when I get through with him. If it don’t rain first.”

  Doc turned toward the car. Junior called his name. He looked back.

  “Use a condom.”

  Doc threw him his glove.

  The backseat, upholstered in heavy-duty tweed with leather reinforcing, was like a divan, wrapping itself around Doc’s hips and shoulders as the car ghosted out into the street Alcina Lilley touched his knee briefly. The gesture was warm and natural and over too quickly to be sexual; but suddenly he was very far away from the ballfield.

  “I got the feeling I was abrupt with you the other night,” she said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting a visit from my nephew. It threw me off.”

  He murmured something about not having noticed. He felt a sudden strange sadness. He had just about talked himself out of believing that it was Starkweather Hall he had seen. Her bringing up the other night said different.