King of the Corner

by Loren D. Estleman

  He remembered his glass and had another drink. The junipers had lost their bite. “Hall joined the Marshals because his father was involved?”

  “He never shared his reasons with me or Beatrice. I told him who his father was as soon as he was old enough to understand. I don’t think he believed me then. He wanted so much to be the son of Mahomet. I guess being an M-and-M was the next best thing. He did as much as Wilson ever did to organize the group. More, probably. I said Wilson was lazy. He got them into the drug business in the first place because it was the easiest way to raise money. By the end he’d lost interest in everything else. His mind was just about gone by then. He didn’t have much to begin with.”

  “Did he know Hall was his son?”

  “It wouldn’t have meant anything to him if he did. Wilson wasn’t the kind to accept the consequences of his actions.”

  “That boy was just bad,” Beatrice agreed.

  Mrs. Lilley set her glass down on the table and rose. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She looked down at Doc and he had the feeling he was watching her behind a lecturn.

  “I’m sorry I underestimated you,” she said. “That’s the only apology you’ll hear from me. I’m nobody’s candidate for Mother of this or any other Year, but if my son came to me after killing the pope I’d still take him in and do anything I could to keep him safe. Are you going to tell the police?”

  He ducked it. “I’m a parolee with information on the whereabouts of a cop killer. Every minute I don’t say anything is another screw in my cell door. What would you do?”

  “Melvin was dirty. He was dealing for real, not just to make arrests. Gordon got on his blind side over a negotiation. Melvin was threatening to kill him. It was self-defense. He didn’t even know Melvin was an officer until he heard it on the news.”

  “It’s true,” said Beatrice. “That dealer whose body they found stuffed in a culvert on Antietam last month? Everyone knew he was Melvin’s. He had a reputation as a crazy, whack you if you looked at him wrong. You don’t wait for someone like that to make the first move. That Marshal Dillon stuff will just get you killed up here.”

  Doc said, “Even if it’s true, the police have this thing about nobody touching a cop.” He was watching Mrs. Lilley. “What would you do if I didn’t tell them? He can’t stay in your house the rest of his life.”

  “That’s just what it will be if you tell them. The rest of his life.”

  “Sit down, Alcina. You’re so used to making speeches you forgot how to listen. Young man, Beatrice hasn’t been retired so long she can’t smell a proposition coming. You better slice it up before it spoils.”

  Mrs. Lilley sat down. Doc drained his glass. The stuff was starting to taste like water.

  “I know a detective sergeant,” he said. “His name is Battle. The Starkweather Hall case has been his from the start”

  “I’ve met him,” Mrs. Lilley said.

  “I think he’s pretty straight. At least he’s not the kind of cop that shoots when he should be thinking. We play baseball Saturdays. I could arrange a meeting and Hall could turn himself in.”

  “No.”

  “A voluntary surrender would look good at the trial. It would just be Battle, no backup.”

  “No policeman would agree to that.”

  “He wouldn’t have to know it was about Hall. We have a personal relationship. As far as he was concerned he’d just be meeting someone he plays ball with. It would be in a public place with plenty of witnesses, in case you’re worried it will turn into an execution. I know a restaurant.”

  He thought he could see Beatrice’s corrected eye gathering light behind the patch. “What’s in it for you, the reward?”

  “It’s a lot of money,” he said.

  Alcina Lilley made a noise that withered his entrails. But he maintained control of his expression under the old madam’s scrutiny. Batters had tried to stare him down in the past and encountered only their own reflections in the blank lenses of his eyeglasses.

  “Why talk to us?” she asked. “You could have sent your policeman friend to Alcina’s house and still collected the reward.”

  “Something might have gone wrong. The terms don’t say dead or alive.”

  Mrs. Lilley was looking at him in a way different from her friend. “I was right I underestimated you. You’re the most conscienceless thing I’ve ever seen. At least the men who dumped over school buses full of black children in the sixties were acting out of conviction.”

  “Calling each other names isn’t progress.” He stood and started for the door. The gin lay in a toxic pool on the floor of his stomach.

  Alcina Lilley spoke his name. When he turned she was holding tight to Beatrice’s hand. “I’ll call you after I talk with Gordon.”

  That night Billie summoned him to the telephone. As he lifted the receiver he thought it might be Mrs. Lilley. The first thing he heard was a garbled announcement over a P.A. system in the background.

  “Our plane leaves in twenty minutes,” said Charlie Battle without greeting. “This better be good.”

  Chapter 27

  CHARLIE BATTLE, LOOKING MORE casual than Doc had ever seen him on a weekday, in clean canary yellow sweats, Nikes, and a blue Windbreaker, walked into the bare room without knocking and kicked an empty carton out of his way. Most of the color in the room came from the orange wall-to-wall carpet. The walls were dead white and the slipping sunlight made sharp trapezoids on the floor in front of windows without curtains.

  “Nice big room,” he said, looking around. “That’s one butt ugly rug.”

  Doc plugged in the coffee maker in the little kitchenette and came out to shake the sergeant’s hand. “I can’t afford a new one just yet. I’m looking for a color to paint the walls that will distract attention. What do you think?”

  “Make ’em purple. What’s upstairs?”

  “Bedroom and bath. There’s a bed with a nightstand and a dresser. I’m getting everything else from Rent-A-Center until I can swing the down payment on a living room set.”

  “Who’s this?” Battle pulled a framed picture out of a carton full of Doc’s goods. It showed two rows of young men in baggy cotton baseball uniforms with an empty grandstand behind them. A little off to the right stood a white-haired man with a long sour farmer’s face and ears that stuck out like wind wings.

  “The Louisville Lagoons. I pitched for them the summer I graduated high school. That’s me kneeling second from the left.”

  “Semi-pro?”

  “Very semi. Sometimes we played for chicken dinners.”

  “Who’s the codger?”

  “Charlie Steiner, the manager. He was the only southpaw on the Toledo Mudhens pitching staff in 1916. He’d’ve been with the Ty Cobb Tigers except they bounced him for drunkenness a week before they were going to call him up.”

  “That why you picked Detroit?”

  “My father picked Detroit. He had a job waiting.”

  Battle returned the picture to the carton. “My wife and I almost separated two years ago. We saw a counselor. I promised to pay more attention to my family and less to the job. We’re on standby for another flight to Denver day after tomorrow. If I’m not there she and Junior are leaving without me. What’s so hot you couldn’t discuss it on the phone?”

  “I think I can deliver Starkweather Hall.”

  He showed no reaction. “Ance?”

  “He’s not involved. Yet.”

  “How many guesses do I get?”

  “I’d rather not go into the how just yet. My information is he’s ready to turn himself in, but only with me present and only to you. If you don’t come alone it’s off.”

  “That’s all? Why not a first-round draft choice and an outfielder to be named later?”

  “Excuse me, Sergeant. I wasn’t aware you were just about to arrest him on your own.”

  “Let’s just say when a cop-killer starts dictating terms I don’t pop for champagne.”

  “My information is S
ergeant Melvin wasn’t much of a cop. He was a dealer and a killer besides.”

  “I heard that.”

  Doc assimilated. “You did?”

  “If you like money and it’s a choice between being pensioned off in twenty years—if you don’t get whacked first and the mayor’s bridge partners don’t empty out the fund—and using what you learn about the junk trade when you’re undercover to turn a profit, there’s just no contest. Narcotics officers are pricks to start with or they wouldn’t put in for a shitty detail like that. It’s no trick to turn a prick, excuse the poetry. So Internal Affairs keeps a separate jacket on everyone in the squad. When you’re as big a prick as Ernest Melvin it slops over onto a lot of desks. That doesn’t mean we’re paying a bounty to the man who offed him.”

  “The way I heard it he threatened Hall’s life.”

  “I’m dying to hear all about it. From Hall.”

  The coffee was percolating. “Coffee, Sergeant?”

  “Got any beer?”

  “Refrigerator’s not plugged in. Sorry.”

  “Coffee then.”

  Battle followed him to the kitchenette and leaned in the doorway watching him fill two mugs. “What’s your end?”

  “That reward still good?”

  “I guess.”

  “Sugar? I don’t have any cream.”

  “Black’s fine.” The sergeant accepted a mug. “You surprise me. I didn’t think you were a money kind of a guy.”

  Doc stirred sugar into his mug and unplugged the coffee maker. “I don’t know anybody like that. The best third baseman I ever knew, maybe the best of all time, told me he never picked up his glove without thinking about how much he’d make next season if he threw just two guys out in that game.”

  “That must be why they call it the hot corner.”

  “Well, this one’s mine, except I only have to throw one guy out.”

  “Anything else?”

  He leaned back against a cupboard. “My parole officer’s every bit the asshole you said he was and with interest. He’s busting my balls over my attitude, says he’s considering filing an unsatisfactory conduct report with the board. That would revoke my parole.”

  “Sure. The board’s just a rubber stamp. Nobody ever checks up on P.O.’s and they got more power than the governor. A grand jury was getting set to indict one of them a couple of years back on charges he had three of his cases pulling heists for him when he went into the hospital for a triple bypass. He never got off the table. Took fifteen years to compile enough complaints against him to put him in the dock. Looking for a recommendation?”

  “You offered to help out with Kubitski if I turned something on Starkweather Hall. I wanted to make sure the offer hadn’t expired.”

  “Theoretically it shouldn’t matter, or the reward either. Harboring a fugitive in a homicide could dump you back in Jackson until you’re too old to bend over and pick up a baseball. Much less throw one.”

  “But then you wouldn’t get Hall.”

  “Oh, we’ll get Hall.”

  A TV murmured on the other side of the duplex.

  “I’ll put in a good word,” Battle said then, “for what it’s worth. Assuming everything’s everything.”

  “Actually I was counting on a little more than that. I want you to call off the dogs.”

  Battle’s hand paused briefly in the act of raising his mug to his lips. He raised it the rest of the way and swallowed, the muscles of his throat making two distinct movements. “What dogs.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “Even assholes do things for reasons.” Doc hadn’t touched his coffee, just held the mug in both hands as if to warm them. The indoor-outdoor thermometer mounted on the wall of the kitchenette read sixty both places. “It takes more than a couple of cocky interviews and a legitimate job your parole officer doesn’t happen to approve of to get him to go for your throat, unless someone puts him up to it. What made you think I knew enough to make it worth applying pressure?”

  “Nothing. But I ran out of leads. How’d I tip my hand?”

  “Going on vacation just when I needed you most as a character reference was overdoing it a little. You already had the screws to me. You didn’t need the extra twist.”

  “It isn’t an exact science,” Battle said. “I’ll call Kubitski as soon as Hall’s in custody. When will that be?”

  “I’ve got one more arrangement to make. Tomorrow maybe. I’ll call you. You want to make your flight the next day.”

  “Oh, that. I’m not going anywhere. Can’t get the personal time while this investigation’s on. I was just seeing a friend off at Metro when I called you tonight. I didn’t think the special effects would hurt.”

  “You’ve got a friend?”

  Battle leaned in through the doorway and set his mug on the drainboard. It was still almost full. “It’s my job,” he said. “If you’re looking for personal consideration I’m fresh out. Where we doing this?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Hey, we’re on the same side now.”

  “You don’t always throw the pitch the catcher’s expecting. Some batters look to see where he moves his mitt”

  “Life isn’t a baseball game, Lefty.”

  “Sergeant?”

  He lifted his brows.

  “Fuck you.”

  After a beat the sergeant decided to smile and stuck out his hand.

  Doc shook his head. “Not just now.”

  “Okay.”

  When Battle left, Doc poured the contents of both mugs and the carafe into the sink, washed them, and went out to call Maynard Ance from a pay telephone on the corner. Twenty minutes later a cab let him off in front of the bail bondsman’s home.

  Ance opened the door wearing a striped bathrobe and carpet slippers on his bare feet. His hair was still damp from the shower. Doc’s call had pulled him out of but as far as Doc could tell the black dye hadn’t run. “Where’s Cynthia?”

  “Playing racquetball or some horse’s-ass sport like that down at the Detroit Athletic Club. It’s Ladies’ Night. What’s the scoop on Starkweather Hall?”

  “What makes you think it’s about him?”

  “We were together in the office three fucking hours ago. You didn’t call me to discuss the Pistons’ play-off chances. Let’s go downstairs. I had the place swept for bugs last week.”

  “Find any?”

  “One of those old C-72s the FBI used under Hoover. I bought the house at a tax auction. Before that a bookie owned it.” He was walking as he spoke. Doc noticed he had a bald spot the size of a coaster on the back of his head.

  The basement smelled of cigarette smoke. A butt smoldered atop a heap of them in an ashtray on the arm of the big recliner. Ance lit a fresh L & M off the butt and sprawled in the chair. Doc selected a stool, sat down, got up, moved it to a spot where he wasn’t looking up the bail bondsman’s robe, and sat down again. There were flakes of ash on Ance’s chest, the same color as the sparse hairs sprouting from the soft pink flesh. “I thought you were trying to quit.”

  “Shit. You ever see an eighty-year-old man didn’t look like he wished he was dead?” He inhaled. No smoke came back. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Doc lied. “I know where he’ll be tomorrow, if you go along.”

  “Son of a bitch. I thought maybe you had some kind of lead, but shit. Where’d you get it, those pukes you play ball with?”

  “Who else?”

  “Yeah. You talk to him?”

  “No reason. The deal’s with Charlie Battle. We’re using the Acropolis. For that you cut in for half the reward.”

  “Who gets the rest, you?”

  “No, that goes to Hall’s defense.”

  “Oh, right. Heh-heh.”

  Works every time, Doc thought. Give them the truth and they think you’re joking. That’s what the town had come to. Just wanting to get out from under wasn’t enough, you had to turn a profit while you were at it. Anything less and people got suspicious. />
  “What time we doing this?” Ance asked.

  “I haven’t heard back from Hall’s people to tell me it’s a go. I should know by morning. Should I call you here?”

  “No, I’ll be in the office early.”

  Doc fell silent. Ance smoked and appeared to be thinking. Watching him was like viewing film of a leaky steam pipe played backward, the vapor disappearing into the aperture and staying there. A few puffs and the cigarette had burned back almost to his lips. He punched it out. “I’m glad I canned Taber and kept you. He thought initiative was a picture with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. You could be a bail man, you know it? Why not? I can’t do this shit forever. Cindy’s been pestering me to take her around the world, I tell her great, who’s going to sit on the scroats and jumpers while we’re busy humping camels in Cairo? With you minding the store I wouldn’t have to sweat it. I bet I don’t even call you more than once a day.”

  Doc gaped. “Are you offering me a partnership?”

  “Well, junior. I’ve got to front for the license on account of you’ve got a record. We’ll call my half of the reward your buy-in. Wait. Don’t answer yet. Open that drawer. Not that one, shit, that’s full of nails. The one next to it. What do you see?”

  The drawer under the edge of the workbench was filled with cans of Planters mixed nuts in rows. Doc reported this.

  “Well, open one.”

  “Which one?”

  “Jesus Christ, go eeny, meeny, miney, mo. What’d I say about initiative?”

  He chose one and peeled off the plastic lid. At first he thought it was full of rolled-up newspaper clippings. “Looks like a roll of fifty-dollar bills.”

  “Take it. Now you’re paid up through next month. Your luck stinks today, kid. If you picked one of the ones stuffed with hundreds you wouldn’t have to come back to me for the rest of the year.”

  He counted the bills and pocketed them. Now he had enough to furnish the apartment without renting or even buying on time. “Thanks, but what’s the idea?”

  “I got more in the bank, but I don’t trust ’em since the savings and loan thing. Also banks report to the IRS. The idea is the bail business pays better than anything else legal. Our customers don’t haggle, the price is set by the courts. I charge ten percent and get collateral for the rest. That’s fair. I know bail men who demand a statement of worth and attach everything the client owns. That’s bloodsucking but the law says it’s okay. There’s nothing to regulate what we charge, like there is with finance companies. Ever buy a new car and pay cash? You don’t get highs like that from drugs. Best of all”—he swung the recliner upright and grasped Doc’s knee—“you can go on playing long after your arm’s shot.”