Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

by Loren D. Estleman

  Teeth drew a finger smelling of marijuana down my cheek. Then he balled his fist and rapped the side of my chin hard enough to make my own teeth snap together.

  “Let’s you come in, trooper. Unless you’d rather wake up smiling at yourself from your bedside table every morning.”

  I kicked him in the crotch.

  He said, “Hee!” and hugged himself. Meanwhile I threw myself forward, popping the button and stripping out of my coat. My left arm was still tangled in the sleeve lining when I pivoted on my left foot and swung my right fist into a face eight inches higher than mine. I felt the jar clear to my shoulder. I was still gripping the keys in that hand.

  The guy I hit let go of the coat to drag the back of a hand the size of a platter under his nose and looked at the blood. Then he took hold of my shirt collar from the front to steady me and cocked his other fist, taking aim.

  “Easy, Del. We ain’t supposed to bust him.” Teeth’s voice was a croak.

  Del lowered his fist but kept his grip on my collar. He was almost seven feet tall, very black, and had artificially straightened hair combed into a high pompadour and sprayed hard as a brick. In place of a jacket he wore a full-length overcoat that barely reached his hips, over a sweatshirt that left his navel and flat hairy belly exposed.

  Behind me Teeth said, “Del don’t like to talk. He’s got him a cleft palate. It don’t get in his way at all. Now you want to come in, talk?”

  I used what air Del had left me to agree. He let go and we went inside. In front of the door to my private office Teeth relieved me of my keys, unlocked it, and stood aside while his partner shoved me on through. Teeth glanced at the lock on his way in.

  “Dead bolt, yeah. Looks new. You need one on the other door too.”

  He circled the room as he spoke and stopped in front of me. I was ready and got my hip out just as he let fly. I staggered sideways. Del caught me.

  “That’s no way to treat a client, trooper,” Teeth said. “It gets around, pretty soon you ain’t got no business.”

  “Client?” I shook off the giant’s hand. My leg tingled.

  Teeth reached into the slash pocket of his Pistons jacket and brought out a roll of crisp bills, riffling them under my nose. “Hundreds, trooper. Fifty of them in this little bunch. Go on, heft it. Ain’t no heavier’n a roll of quarters, but, my oh my, how many more miles she draws.”

  He held it out while I got my coat right side in. Finally his arm got tired and he let it drop. I said, “You came in hard for paying customers. What do I have to forget?”

  “We want someone to forget something we go rent a politician,” he said. “Twenty-five hundred of this pays to look for somebody. The other twenty-five comes when the somebody gets found.”

  “Somebody being?” Knowing the answer.

  “Same guy you’re after now. Frank Corcoran.”

  “That standard for someone who’s already looking for him for a lot less?”

  “There’s a little more to it,” he said. “Thought there might be.”

  “You find him, you tell us first. Ahead of his wife.”

  “Then?”

  “Then you don’t tell her.”

  “I guess I don’t ask why.”

  His grin creaked. “You’re smart, trooper. Too smart for poor.”

  “I’ll need a number,” I said.

  “We call you.” He held up the bills. “We talking?”

  “Let’s drink over it.” I pushed past him around the desk and tugged at the handle of the deep drawer. Teeth’s other hand moved and five inches of pointed steel flicked out of his fist. “Just a scotch bottle,” I said.

  He leaned over the corner to see down into the drawer. I grabbed a handful of his hair and bounced his forehead off the desk. The switchblade went flying. Del, standing in front of the desk, made a growling sound in his chest and lurched forward. I yanked open the top drawer and fired my Smith & Wesson .38 without taking it out. The bullet smashed through the front panel and buried itself in the wall next to the door. It didn’t come within a foot of hitting the big man. But he stopped. I raised the gun and backed to the window.

  “A name,” I said. “Whose money?”

  Teeth rubbed his forehead, where a purple bruise was spreading under the brown. He stooped to pick up the currency from the floor and stood riffling it against his palm. His smile was a shadow of a ghost of what it had been. “No names today, trooper. I’m fresh out of names.”

  I said, “It works this way. You tell me the name. I don’t shoot you.”

  “You don’t shoot. Desks and walls, maybe. Not people. It’s why you’re broke and it’s why I get to walk around with somebody else’s five long ones on account of it’s what I drop on gas for my three Cadillacs.”

  “What about a Chrysler?”

  “I pay my dentist in Chryslers,” he said. “So long, trooper. Maybe I see you. Maybe you don’t see me first. Oh.” He got my keys out of his slash pocket and flipped them onto the desk. “We’re splitting, Del.”

  Del looked around, spotted my framed original Casablanca poster hanging on the wall over the bullethole, and swung his fist. Glass sprayed. Then he turned around and crunched out behind his partner, speckling my carpet with blood from his lacerated fingers.

  The telephone rang while I was cleaning the revolver. When I got my claws unhooked from the ceiling I lifted the receiver. It was Lieutenant Winkle. He wanted to see me at Headquarters.

  “Something?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he said. “Don’t stop for cigarettes on the way.”

  I reloaded, hunted up my holster, and clipped the works to my belt. No one came to investigate the shot. The neighborhood had fallen that far.

  On Beaubien I left the gun in the car to clear the metal detectors inside. Heading there I walked past a brown Chrysler parked in the visitors’ lot. There was no one inside and the doors were locked.

  Seven

  The lieutenant let me into his office, where two men in dark suits were seated in mismatched chairs. One had a head full of crisp gray hair and black-rimmed glasses astride a nose that had been broken sometime in the distant past. The other was younger and looked like Jack Kennedy but for a close-trimmed black beard. They stank federal.

  “Eric Stendahl and Robert LeJohn.” Winkle introduced them in the same order. “They’re with the Justice Department.”

  “We met,” I said. “Sort of.”

  Stendahl nodded. He might have smiled. “I thought you’d made us. I should have let Bob drive; he’s harder to shake behind a wheel. But even an old eagle likes to test his wings now and then.” The smile died. “We’re here to ask you to stop looking for Frank Corcoran.”

  I lit a Winston. “If I say no?”

  “Then we’ll tell you. We have influence with the state police, who issued your license.”

  “I’ll get a hearing. They’ll have to tell me why.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Corcoran was the inside man in an elaborate scheme to bilk Great Western Loans and Credit out of six hundred thousand dollars in loans to a nonexistent oil venture in Mexico. He was apprehended and agreed to turn state’s evidence against his accomplices in return for a new identity and relocation for his protection. You’re familiar with the alias program, I believe.”

  “I ran into it once,” I looked at Winkle. “You knew?”

  “Not until they came in here this morning after you left,” he said. “They’ve had Mrs. Corcoran under surveillance. That’s how they got on to you. It also explains why Washington turned its back on this one.”

  I added some ash to the fine mulch on the linoleum floor.

  “Not too bright, relocating him in an area where his ex-wife’s cousin lives.”

  Stendahl said, “We didn’t know about that, but it certainly would have clinched our other objections at the time. He spent his childhood here and had a fixation about the place. The people behind the swindle travel in wide circles; we couldn’t chance his bein
g spotted. Bob here was escorting Corcoran to the East Coast. He disappeared during the plane change at Metro Airport. We’re still looking for him.”

  “It’s a big club,” I said. “We ought to have a secret handshake. What about Corcoran’s son?”

  LeJohn spoke up. “That’s how he lost me. The boy was along. He had to go to the bathroom and he didn’t want anyone but his father in with him. I went into the bookstore for a magazine. When I got back to the men’s room it was empty.”

  “The old bathroom trick. Tell me, did Corcoran ever happen to mention that the boy was in his mother’s custody and that you were acting as accomplices in his abduction?”

  “He seemed happy enough,” said LeJohn, glaring. “Excited about the trip.”

  His partner laid manicured fingers on his arm, calming him. To me: “It was a condition of Corcoran’s testimony that the boy go with him to his new life. Legally, our compliance is indefensible. Morally—well, his evidence is expected to put some important felons behind bars.”

  “Yeah,” I tipped some smoke out of my nostrils. “I guess you got too busy to clue in Mrs. Corcoran.”

  “That was an oversight. We’ll correct it while we’re here.”

  “What did you mean when you said it was a big club?” LeJohn pressed me. “Who else is looking for Corcoran?”

  I replayed the scene in my office. Lieutenant Winkle grunted. “Monroe Boyd and Little Delbert Riddle,” he said.

  “I had one or both of them in here half a dozen times when I was with C.I.D. Extortion, suspicion of murder. Nothing stuck. So they’re jobbing themselves out now. I’ll put out a pickup on them if you want to press charges.”

  “They’d be out the door before you finished the paperwork. I’ll just tack the price of a new old desk and a picture frame on to the expense sheet. The bullethole’s good for business.”

  “How’d they know you were working for Mrs. Corcoran?” Stendahl asked.

  “The same way you did, maybe. Only they were better at it.”

  He stood. “We’ll need whatever you’ve got on them in your files, Lieutenant. Walker, you’re out of it.”

  “Can I report to Mrs. Corcoran?”

  “Yes. Yes, please do. It will save us some time. You’ve been very cooperative.”

  He extended his hand. I went on crushing out my cigarette in the ashtray on Winkle’s desk until he got tired and lowered it. Then I left.

  Eight

  Millicent Arnold owned a condominium off Twelve Mile Road, within sight of the glass-and-steel skyscrapers of the Southfield Civic Center sticking up above the predominantly horizontal suburb like new teeth in an old mouth. A slim brunette with a pageboy haircut answered the bell wearing a pink angora sweater over black harem pants and gold sandals with high heels on her bare feet. Charlotte Corcoran might have looked like her before she had lost too much weight.

  “Amos Walker? Yes, you are. My God, you look like a private eye. Come in.”

  I kept my mouth zipped at that one and walked past her into a living room paved with orange shag and furnished in green plush and glass. It should have looked like hell. I decided it was Millie Arnold standing in it that made it work. She hung my hat on an ornamental peg near the door.

  “Charlotte’s putting herself together. She was asleep when you called.”

  “She seems to sleep a lot.”

  “Her doctor in Austin prescribed a mild sedative. It’s almost the only thing that’s gotten her through this past month. You said you had some news.” She indicated the sofa.

  I took it. It was like sitting on a sponge. “The story hangs some lefts and rights,” I said.

  She sat next to me, trapping her hands between her knees. She wasn’t wearing a ring. “My cousin and I are close,” she said. “More like sisters. You can speak freely.”

  “I didn’t mean that, although it was coming. I just don’t want to have to tell it twice. I didn’t like it when I heard it.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  I said nothing. She tucked her feet under her and propped an elbow on the back of the sofa and her cheek in her hand. “I’m curious about something. I recommended Reliance to Charlotte. She came back with you.”

  “The case came down my street. Krell said she was referred to him by one of his cash customers.”

  She nodded. “Kester Clothiers on Lahser. I’m a buyer. I typed Charlotte’s letter of reference on their stationery. The chain retains Reliance for security, employee theft and like that.”

  “I guess the hours are good.”

  “I’m off this week. We’re between seasons.” She paused. “You know, you’re sort of attractive.”

  I was looking at her again when Charlotte Corcoran came in. She had on a maroon robe over a blue nightgown, rich material that bagged on her and made her wrists and ankles look even bonier than they were. Backless slippers. When she saw me her step quickened. “You found them? Is Tommy all right?”

  I took a deep breath and sat her down in a green plush chair with tassels on the arms and told it.

  “Wow,” said Millie after a long silence.

  I was watching her cousin. She remained motionless for a moment, then fumbled cigarettes and a book of matches out of her robe pocket. She tried to strike a match, said “Damn!” and threw the book on the floor. I picked it up and struck one and held the flame for her. She drew in a lungful and blew a plume at the ceiling. “The bastard,” she said. “No wonder he never had time for me. He was too busy making himself rich.”

  “You didn’t know about his testifying?” I asked.

  “He came through with his child support on time. That’s all I heard from him. It explains why he never came by for his weekends with Tommy.” She looked at me. “Is my son in danger?”

  “He is if he’s with his father. Boyd and Riddle didn’t look like lovers of children. But the feds are on it.”

  “This is the same federal government that endowed a study to find out why convicts want to escape prison?”

  “Someone caught it on a bad day,” I said.

  “How much to go on with the investigation, Mr. Walker?”

  “Nothing, Mrs. Corcoran. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  She smiled then, a little.

  “What progress have you made?” asked Millie.

  “I’m chasing a lead now. If it gets any slimmer it won’t be a lead at all. But it beats reading bumps.” I got the package of prints out of my coat pocket, separated the original of Corcoran and Tommy from the others, and gave it back to Mrs. Corcoran. “I’ve got twenty-five more now, and at least that many places to show them. When I run out I’ll try something else.”

  She looked at the picture. Seeing only one person in it. Then she put it in her robe pocket. “I think you’re a good man, Mr. Walker.”

  Millie Arnold saw me to the door. “She’s right, you know,” she said, when I had it open. “You are good.”

  Attractive, too.

  Nine

  There was a gymnasium right around the corner on Greenfield. No one I talked to there recognized either of the faces in the picture, but I left it with the manager for seed along with my card and tried the next place on my list. I had them grouped by area with Southfield at the top. I hit two places in Birmingham, one in Clawson, then swung west and worked my way home in a loop through Farmington and Livonia. A jock in Redford Township with muscles on his T-shirt thought Corcoran looked familiar but couldn’t finger him.

  “There’s fifty bucks in it for you when you do,” I said. He flexed his trapezius and said he’d work on it.

  I’d missed lunch, so I stopped in Detroit for an early supper, hit a few more places downtown, and went back to the office to read my mail and call my service for messages. I had none and the mail was all bills and junk. I locked up and went home. That night I dreamed I was Johnny Appleseed, but instead of trees every seed I threw sprang up grinning Monroe Boyds and hulking Delbert Riddles.

  Ten

  My fat photograph
er neighbor greeted me in the foyer of my building the next morning. He was chewing on what looked like the same Marlboro remnant and he hadn’t been standing any closer to his razor than usual. “Some noise yesterday,” he said. “Starting a range up there or what?”

  “No, I shot a shutterbug for asking too many questions.”

  I passed him on the stairs, no small feat.

  With my gun drawn, I entered my office, felt stupid when I found it unoccupied, then saw the shattered glass from the poster frame and felt a little better. I swept it up and called my service. I had a message.

  “Walker?” asked a male voice at the number left for me.

  “Tunk Herman, remember?”

  “The guy in Redford,” I said. “Yeah. That fifty still good?”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about that dude in the picture, so I went through the records of members. Thought maybe his name would jump out at me if I heard it, you know? Well, it did. James Mul-doon. He’s a weekender. I don’t see him usually because I don’t work weekends except that one time. I got an address for him.”

  I drew a pencil out of the cup on my desk. It shook a little.

  Eleven

  It was spring now and no argument. The air had a fresh damp smell and the sun felt warm on my back as I leaned on the open-air telephone booth, or maybe it was my disposition seeping through from inside. Charlotte Corcoran answered on the eighth ring. Her voice sounded foggy.

  “Walker, Mrs. Corcoran,” I said. “Come get your son.”

  “What did you say? I took a pill a little while ago. It sounded—”

  “It wasn’t the pill. I’m looking at him now. Blond and blue, about four feet—”

  The questions came fast, tumbling all over one another, too tangled to pull apart. I held the receiver away from my ear and waited. Down the block, on the other side of Pembroke, a little boy in blue overalls with a bright yellow mop was bouncing a ball off the wall of a two-story white frame house that went back forever. While I was watching, the front door came open and a dark-haired man beckoned him inside. Corcoran’s physique was less impressive in street clothes.