Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

by Loren D. Estleman

  “You are Amos Walker?” She had a husky accent and large dark pretty eyes set in the rye dough of her face. I said I was and she told me Mr. Xanthes was delayed and sat me down in a booth halfway between the door and the narrow hallway leading to the restrooms in back. Somewhere a radio turned low was playing one of those frantic Mediterranean melodies that sound like hornets set loose in the string section.

  The waitress was freshening my coffee when my host arrived, extending a small right hand and a smiling observation on downtown Detroit traffic. Constantine Xanthes was a wiry five feet and ninety pounds with deep laugh lines from his narrow eyes to his broad mouth and hair as black at 50 as mine was going gray at 33. His light blue tailormade suit fit him like a sheen of water. He smiled a lot, but so does every other restaurateur, and none of them means it either. When he found out I hadn’t eaten he ordered egg lemon soup, bread, feta cheese, roast lamb, and a bottle of ouzo for us both. I passed on the ouzo.

  “Greektown used to be more than just fine places to eat.” He sighed, poking a fork at his lamb. “When my parents came it was a little Athens, with markets and pretty girls in red and white dresses at festival time and noise like I can’t describe to you. It took in Ma-comb, Randolph, and Monroe Streets, not just one block of Monroe like now. Now those colorful old men you see drinking retsina on the stoops get up and go home to the suburbs at dark.”

  I washed down the last of the strong cheese with coffee. “I’m a good P.I., Mr. Xanthes, but I’m not good enough to track down and bring back the old days. What else can I do to make your life easier?”

  He refilled his glass with ouzo and I watched his Adam’s apple bob twice as the syrupy liquid slid down his throat. Afterward he was still smiling, but the vertical line that had appeared between his brows when he was talking about what had happened to his neighborhood had deepened.

  “I have a half brother, Alexander,” he began. “He’s twenty-three years younger than I am; his mother was our father’s second wife. She deserted them when Alexander was six. When Father died, my wife and I took over the job of raising Alexander, but by then I was working sixty hours a week at General Motors and he was seventeen and too much for Grace to handle with two children of our own. He ran away. We didn’t hear from him until last summer, when he walked into the house unannounced, all smiles and hugs, at least for me. He and Grace never got along. He congratulated me on my success in the restaurant business and said he’d been living in Iowa for the past nine years, where he’d married and divorced twice. His first wife left him without so much as a note and had a lawyer send him papers six weeks later. The second filed suit on grounds of brutality. It seems that during quarrels he took to beating her with the cord from an iron. He was proud of that.

  “He’s been here fourteen months, and in that time he’s held more jobs than I can count. Some he quit, some he was fired from, always for the same reason. He can’t work with or for a woman. I kept him on here as a busboy until he threw a stool at one of my waitresses. She’d asked him to get a can of coffee from the storeroom and forgot to say please. I had to let him go.”

  He paused, and I lit a Winston to keep from having to say anything. It was all beginning to sound familiar. I wondered why.

  When he saw I wasn’t going to comment, he drew a folded clipping from an inside breast pocket and spread it out on the table with the reluctant care of a father getting ready to punish his child. It was from that morning’s Free Press, and it was headed PSYCHIATRIST PROFILES FIVE O’CLOCK STRANGLER.

  That was the name the press had hung on the nut who had stalked and murdered four women on their way home from work on the city’s northwest side on four separate evenings over the past two weeks. The women were found strangled to death in public places around quitting time, or reported missing by their families from that time and discovered later. Their ages ranged from 20 to 46, they had had no connection in life, and they were all WASPs. One was a nurse, two were secretaries; the fourth had been something mysterious in city government. None was raped. The Freep had dug up a shrink who claimed the killer was between 25 and 40, a member of an ethnic or racial minority group, and a hater of professional women who had had experiences with such women unpleasant enough to unhinge him. It was the kind of article you usually find in the Science section after someone’s made off with Sports and the comics, only today it had run Page One because there hadn’t been any murders in a couple of days to keep the story alive. I’d read it at breakfast. I knew now what had nagged me about Xanthes’ story.

  “Your brother’s the Five O’Clock Strangler?” I tipped half an inch of ash into the tin tray on the table.

  “Half brother,” he corrected. “If I was sure of that, I wouldn’t have called you. Alexander could have killed that waitress, Mr. Walker. As it was he nearly broke her arm with that stool and I had to pay for X rays and give her a bonus to keep her from pressing charges. This article says the strangler hates working women. Alexander hates all women, but working women especially. His mother was a licensed practical nurse and she abandoned him. His first wife was a legal secretary and she left him. He told me he started beating his second wife when she started talking about getting a job. The police say that because the killer strangles women with just his hands he has to be big and strong. That description fits my half brother; he’s built more like you than me, and he works out regularly.”

  “Does he have anything against white Anglo-Saxon Protestants?”

  “I don’t know. But his mother was one and so was his first wife. The waitress he hurt was Greek descent.”

  I burned some more tobacco. “Does he have an alibi for any of the times the women were killed?”

  “I asked him, in a way that wouldn’t make him think I suspected him. He said he was home alone.” He shifted his weight on the bench. “I didn’t want to press it, but I called him one of those nights and he didn’t answer. But it wasn’t until I read this article that I really started to worry. It could have been written about Alexander.

  That’s when I decided to call you. You once dug up an eyewitness to an auto accident whose testimony saved a friend of mine a bundle. He talks about you often.”

  “I have a license to stand in front of,” I said. “If your half brother is the strangler I’ll have to send him over.”

  “I understand that. All I ask is that you call me before you call the police. It’s this not knowing, you know? And don’t let him find out he’s being investigated. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he learns I suspect him.”

  We took care of finances—in cash; you’ll look in vain for a checkbook in Greektown—and he slid over a wallet-size photo of a darkly handsome man in his late twenties with glossy black hair like Xan-thes’ and big liquid eyes not at all like Xanthes’ slits. “He goes by Alex Santine. You’ll find him working part-time at Butsukitis’ market on Brush.” A telephone number and an address on Gratiot were written on the back of the picture. That was a long way from the area where the bodies were found, but then a killer hardly ever lives in the neighborhood where he works. Not that that made any difference to the cops busy tossing every house and apartment on the northwest side.

  Two

  He looked like his picture. After leaving the restaurant, I’d walked around the corner to a building with a fruit and vegetable stand out front and a faded canvas awning lettered BUTSUKITIS’ FINE PRODUCE, and while a beefy bald man with fat quilting his chest dropped some onions into a paper sack for me, a tall young man came out the front door lugging a crate full of cabbages. He hoisted the crate onto a bare spot on the stand, swept large shiny eyes over the milling crowd of tomato-squeezers and melon-huggers, and went back inside swinging his broad shoulders.

  As the grocer was ringing up the sale, a blonde wearing a navy blue business suit asked for help loading two bags of apples and cherries into her car. “Santine!” he bellowed.

  The young man returned. Told to help the lady, he hesitated, then slouched forward and snatched up t
he bags. He stashed them on the front seat of a green Olds parked half a block down the street and swung around and walked away while she was still rummaging in her handbag for a tip. His swagger going back into the store was pronounced. I paid for my onions and left.

  Back at the office I called Iowa Information and got two numbers. The first belonged to a private detective agency in Des Moines. I called them, fed them the dope I had on Santine, and asked them to scrape up what they could. My next call was to the Des Moines Register, where a reporter held me up for fifty dollars for combing the morgue for stories about non-rape female assault and murder during the last two years Santine lived in the state. They both promised to wire the information to Barry Stackpole at the Detroit News and I hung up and dialed Barry’s number and traded a case of scotch for his cooperation. The expenses on this one were going to eat up my fee. Finally I called Lieutenant John Alderdyce at Police Headquarters.

  “Who’s working the Five O’Clock Strangler case?” I asked him.

  “Why?”

  I used the dead air counting how many times he’d asked me that and dividing it by how many times I’d answered.

  “DeLong,” he said then. “I could just hang up because I’m busy, but you’d probably just call again.”

  “Probably. Is he in?”

  “He’s in that lot off Lahser where they found the last body. With Michael Kurof.”

  “The psychic?”

  “No, the plumber. They’re stopping there on their way to fix De-Long’s toilet.” He broke the connection.

  Three

  The last body had been found lying in a patch of weeds in a wooded lot off Lahser just south of West Grand River by a band student taking a shortcut home from practice. I parked next to the curb behind a blue-and-white and mingled with a group of uniforms and obvious plainclothesmen watching Kurof walk around with Inspector DeLong nipping along at his side like a spaniel trying to keep up with a Great Dane. DeLong was a razor-faced twenty-year cop with horns of pink scalp retreating along a mouse-colored widow’s peak and the kind of crossed eyes that kept you wondering where he was looking. Kurof, a Russian-born bear of a man, bushy-haired and blue of chin even when it was still wet from shaving, bobbed his big head in time with De-Long’s mile-a-minute patter for a few moments, then raised a palm, cutting him off. After that they wandered the lot in silence.

  “What they looking for, rattlesnakes?” muttered a grizzled fatty in a baggy brown suit.

  “Vibes,” someone answered. “Emanations, the Russky calls ’em.”

  Lardbottom snorted. “We ran in fortune-tellers when I was in uniform.”

  “That must’ve been before you needed a crowbar to get into one,” said the other.

  I was nudged by a young black in starched blue cotton, who winked gravely and stooped to lay a gold pencil on the ground, then backed away from it. Kurof’s back was turned. Eventually he and DeLong made their way to the spot, where the psychic picked up the pencil, stroked it once between the first and second fingers of his right hand, and turned to the black cop with a broad smile, holding out the item. “You are having fun with me, Officer,” he announced in a deep burring voice. The uniform smiled stiffly back and accepted the pencil.

  “Did you learn anything, Dr. Kurof? DeLong was facing the psychic, but his right eye was looking toward the parked cars.

  Kurof shook his great head slowly. “Nothing useful, I fear. Just a tangible hatred. The air is ugly everywhere here, but it is ugliest where we are standing. It crawls.”

  “We’re standing precisely where the body was found.” The inspector pushed aside a clump of thistles with his foot to expose a fresh yellow stake driven into the earth. He turned toward one of the watching uniforms. “Give our guest a lift back to Wayne State. Thank you, Doctor. We’ll be in touch when something else comes up.” They shook hands and the Russian moved off slowly with his escort.

  “Hatred,” the fat detective growled. “Like we need a gypsy to tell us that.”

  DeLong told him to shut up and go back to Headquarters. As the knot of investigators loosened, I approached the inspector and introduced myself.

  “Walker,” he considered. “Sure, I see you jawing with Alderdyce. Who hired you, the family of one of the victims?”

  “Just running an errand.” Sometimes it’s best to let a cop keep his notions. “What about what this psychiatrist said about the strangler in this morning’s Freep? You agree with that?”

  “Shrinks. Twenty years in school to tell us why some j.d. sapped an old lady and snatched her purse. I’ll stick with guys like Kurof; at least he’s not smug.” He stuck a Tiparillo in his mouth and I lit it and a Winston for me. He sucked smoke. “My theory is the killer’s unemployed and he sees all these women running out and getting themselves fulfilled by taking his job and sometimes snaps. It isn’t just coincidence that the stats on crime against women have risen with their numbers in the work force.”

  “Is he a minority?”

  “I hope so.” He grinned quickly and without mirth. “No, I know what you mean. Maybe. Minorities outnumber the majority in this town in case you haven’t noticed. Could be the victims are all WASPs because there are more women working who are WASPs. I’ll ask him when we arrest him.”

  “Think you will?”

  He glared at me in his cockeyed fashion. Then he shrugged. “This is the third mass-murder case I’ve investigated. The one fear is that it’ll just stop. I’m still hoping to wrap it before famous criminologists start coming in from all over to give us a hand. I never liked circuses even when I was a kid.”

  “What are you holding back from the press on this one?”

  “You expect me to answer that? Give up the one thing that’ll help us separate the original from all the copycats?”

  “Call John Alderdyce. He’ll tell you I sit on things till they hatch.”

  “Oh, hell.” He dropped his little cigar half-smoked and crushed it out. “The guy clobbers his victims before he strangles them. One blow to the left cheek, probably with his right fist. Keeps ’em from struggling.”

  “Could he be a boxer?”

  “Maybe. Someone used to using his dukes.”

  I thanked him for talking to me. He said, “I hope you are working for the family of a victim.”

  I got out of there without answering. Lying to a cop like DeLong can be like trying to smuggle a bicycle through Customs.

  Four

  It was coming up on two o’clock. If the killer was planning to strike that day I had three hours. At the first telephone booth I came to I excavated my notebook and called Constantine Xanthes’ home number in Royal Oak. His wife answered. She had a mellow voice and no accent.

  “Yes, Connie told me he was going to hire you. He’s not home, though. Try the restaurant.”

  I explained she was the one I wanted to speak with and asked if I could come over. After a brief pause she agreed and gave me directions. I told her to expect me in half an hour.

  It was a white frame house that would have been in the country when it was built, but now it was shouldered by two housing tracts with a third going up in the empty field across the street. The doorbell was answered by a tall woman on the far side of 40 with black hair streaked blond to cover the gray and a handsome oval face, the flesh shiny around the eyes and mouth from recent remodeling. She wore a dark knit dress that accentuated the slim line of her torso and a long colored scarf to make you forget she was big enough to look down at the top of her husband’s head without trying. We exchanged greetings and she let me in and hung up my hat and we walked into a dim living room furnished heavily in oak and dark leather. We sat down facing each other in a pair of horsehair-stuffed chairs.

  “You’re not Greek,” I said.

  “I hardly ever am.” Her voice was just as mellow in person.

  “Your husband was mourning the old Greektown at lunch and now I find out he lives in the suburbs with a woman who isn’t Greek.”

  “Connie’s ethnic
standards are very high for other people.”

  She was smiling when she said it, but I didn’t press the point. “He says you and Alexander have never been friendly. In what ways weren’t you friendly when he was living here?”

  “I don’t suppose it’s ever easy bringing up someone else’s son. His having been deserted didn’t help. Lord save me if I suggested taking out the garbage.”

  “Was he sullen, abusive, what?”

  “Sullen was his best mood. ’Abusive’ hardly describes his reaction to the simplest request. The children were beginning to repeat his foul language. I was relieved when he ran away.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Connie did. They never found him. By that time he was eighteen and technically an adult. He couldn’t have been brought back without his consent anyway.”

  “Did he ever hit you?”

  “He wouldn’t dare. He worshiped Connie.”

  “Did he ever box?”

  “You mean fight? I think so. Sometimes he came home from school with his clothes torn or a black eye, but he wouldn’t talk about it. That was before he quit. Fighting is normal. We had some of the same problems with our son. He grew out of it.”

  I was coming to the short end. “Any scrapes with the law? Alexander, I mean.”

  She shook her head. Her eyes were warm and tawny. “You know, you’re quite good-looking. You have noble features.”

  “So does a German Shepherd.”

  “I work in clay. I’d like to have you pose for me in my studio sometime.” She waved long nails toward a door to the left. “I specialize in nudes.”

  “So do I. But not with clients’ wives.” I rose.