Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

by Loren D. Estleman

  I made a decision and started toward the counter. The muzzle swung back my way and squirted white flame. The slug smashed through a glass display case containing a slice of coconut cream pie on a stand and buried itself in drywall. The woman screamed hoarsely. The echo of the shot rang like raining hubcaps.

  “Man said no shooting,” the Indian said.

  “That’s ‘cause he’s a city feller. Somebody’s always popping off in the woods.” Skinhead looked at me. “First jokes, now this. You’re starting to tick me off. I was saving that pie for later.”

  “No more shots. State cops patrol these roads.”

  “You sure spook easy for an injun.” But he put down the pistol.

  That was all the encouragement I needed. I took another long step. I just wanted to get closer to the kitchen. The floorboards shifted behind me. I turned away from the blow and lifted a shoulder, hoping to absorb most of it with tendons and muscle and not skull.

  I was only partially successful. The barrel of the Magnum caught a piece of posterior lobe on the follow-through. Sparks flew and I sprawled out full-length on the floor. I didn’t try to catch myself; that’s how wrists get broken, and I needed all my limbs now more than ever. The Indian kicked me hard in the ribs and told me to get up. I groaned—it came easily—pushed with both hands, and when I was standing I had the ejected cartridge from Skinhead’s pistol between two fingers.

  “Get him in here out of sight before anybody else comes in. You, lock the door and turn off the outside lights.”

  The Indian said, “They might miss the place in the dark.”

  “The man picked it out, not us.” He looked at the woman. “Lock. Lights. Now!”

  She hurried around the end of the counter while the Indian shoved me toward the swinging door to the kitchen, using his empty hand. He’d handled hostages before; enough anyway to know better than to use the one holding the big revolver. His was the stable half of the partnership. I wasn’t sure which one to take out first.

  In a little while we were all crowded in a narrow room with the usual equipment, including a six-burner electric range: the woman, the gunmen, me, and a black man as big as the Indian but older and harder-looking, sitting on the floor in a corner with duct tape around his ankles and across his mouth and his hands behind him. One eye was swollen shut with a gash over it that had bled down the side of his face onto his white T-shirt. He raised his head high enough to take me in with his working eye, then put his chin back on his chest. That’s the kind of confidence I usually inspire.

  I said, “He doesn’t look happy.”

  “Shut up.” The Indian made a motion with the gun as if measuring its heft.

  “Let ‘em jabber.” Skinhead had my wallet now and was going through it. “Passes time. What kind of diner don’t have no TV or radio?”

  The woman found her voice. “Luke says it distracts him.”

  “Who the hell’s Luke?”

  “That’s his name. We called the place Happy’s to get people’s attention.”

  He’d lost interest. He took out my cash and threw the wallet on the floor. “No credit cards. No pictures neither. Looks like nobody’s going to miss you, Amos.”

  “You and Luke are partners?” I asked the woman.

  “Fifty-fifty. We’re married.”

  “Hear that, Roger? That’s what this country’s coming to, mixing the races like chocolate chip cookies. I’m glad now I didn’t eat that pie.”

  The Indian grunted. He didn’t look like a Roger. “I’m French-Irish on my mother’s side.”

  “I wouldn’t eat pie in your place neither.” Skinhead grinned at me. His teeth seemed to have come in any old way. “Luke gave us grief. Them people don’t understand the basic principles of occupation.”

  “Military man,” I said. “Power Rangers or Hitler Youth?”

  The grin went. He played with the pistol, then shook his head. “You’re tired of living, but I’m tireder of being the only white man in the room. It ain’t natural. But we brung plenty of duct tape.”

  “We need to save some,” Roger said.

  “We’re good.”

  His voice dropped. “We talked about how this was going to go down.”

  “You talked. I thought all you people said was ‘ugh.’’’

  I smiled at the woman. The name Pearl was embroidered above her breast pocket in white script. “Bake your pies here?”

  “No. We order them from a place in Marquette.” She stroked her upper arms as if she were cold. Actually it was close in the room even with the stove turned off.

  “Jo’s Bakery,” Skinhead said. “Our Christmas pies came from there.”

  Roger said, “Now who’s talking too much?”

  I said, “All this pie talk makes me hungry. Okay if I ask Pearl to fry me a couple of eggs?”

  “Mister, you don’t want me to cook. I burn salads.”

  “Anybody can fry an egg,” I said.

  “You heard her,” Skinhead said. “Be hungry.”

  “I need to keep up my blood sugar. I could faint.”

  “So faint. We could use some quiet around here.”

  “I’ll do the cooking.” I took a step toward the stove.

  Roger shifted his weight to his gun side. I stopped. But I was in reach of the controls.

  Luke started coughing, a strangling sound behind the tape across his mouth. Everyone looked at him, bent forward and looking a little green, his chest heaving; everyone but me. I made a try for the knob under the nearest burner.

  Pearl spoiled it. She pushed me out of reach and started toward the man convulsing on the floor.

  “Whoa.” Skinhead jerked up his pistol. His lidless eyes had all the humanity of dripped paint.

  She put on the brakes. Her face was white. “He has trouble breathing through his nose. He broke it playing football.”

  “Why ain’t I surprised?”

  “Please! He’ll suffocate.”

  “I guessed that already.”

  Roger stuck his revolver in his hoodie pocket and crossed the room in two strides. Luke’s eyes were rolling over white when the Indian bent down and tore away the tape. Luke sucked in air like a swimmer breaking the surface and fell back against the wall, rattling all the pots and pans hanging from it. His chest emptied and filled and emptied again and his natural color returned.

  “Buzzkill.” Skinhead lowered his weapon.

  Pearl sagged. I caught her. She hadn’t fainted; the wire that had been holding her up all this time had worn through.

  “Shoot ‘em both if he opens his mouth for anything but oxygen.”

  Skinhead looked around, eyes bright. “Well, what do we do for fun now?”

  “The man said no killing,” the Indian said.

  “He should’ve told his boy that years ago. It was the same way with my old man: Too little, too late.”

  Something glimmered then; this was no ordinary hostage situation. I gave Pearl’s thin shoulders a reassuring squeeze and she straightened and stepped away from me. “What about those eggs?” I said. “I can’t be the only one who can use a bite.”

  “It’s always eggs with you,” Skinhead said. “What are you, part weasel?”

  Roger said, “I could eat.”

  “No time.”

  “We don’t know how much time we got. These things never come off on schedule, the man said.”

  “Mitchell don’t know squat about how things work up there.”

  The Indian looked around at the rest of us, then went over to his partner and whispered something.

  “You worry too much. Big Chief Worry Wart, that’s you.”

  Roger retreated, falling silent. He was troubled by something other than results.

  His partner stuck the nine-millimeter under his belt. “I’m going to the can. Keep ‘em covered, and see he makes mine runny. I like to lick the plate.”

  The Indian grimaced. “Jesus, Benny.”

  He looked like a Benny. I wasn’t sure why.
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br />   I wasn’t crazy about the timing. Electric burners take time heating up, and Benny didn’t seem like the type who stopped to wash his hands. I didn’t know if I could take both men at once. I didn’t know if I could take even one, but from the way the skinhead slung information around, there was only one way this thing was going to end if I didn’t start cooking. I knew who Mitchell was. For once in my life I wished my hunch had been wrong. I turned to the range and twisted the knob all the way to High. “Eggs, please.”

  Pearl stared at me a moment, but the Luke incident seemed to have sapped her of the will to protest. She opened a Sub-Zero refrigerator and took out a carton.

  “Skillet.”

  Roger was standing by the pots and pans. When he turned his head to take one down, I took the pistol cartridge out of my pocket and tucked it back between my fingers.

  “No butter.” He passed me the skillet by way of the woman. “I’m fat enough.”

  I put it on the burner. “I hear they pile on the starch in Mar-quette. Makes it hard to squeeze your gut through a tunnel.”

  “You and Benny both talk too much,” he said.

  “Give me some credit. Prison’s the only circle the two of you would ever travel in together.”

  “He’s got his good points. Up there you need a friend in the White Power gang if you want to live till parole.”

  “The joint’s a great leveler. Where else would a couple of bums hook up with a rich kid like Emmet Mitchell Junior?”

  “He drops names, Benny does. I told him it wasn’t cool.”

  “I didn’t need the hint. I keep current. Emmett Senior spent millions trying to acquit his boy. Looks like he had a few left over. Junior’s a serial killer. Benny’s got an excuse; he’s a psychopath. What’s yours?”

  “Mister, you don’t get no more unemployable than an Indian ex-con. Even the casinos won’t touch me. What’s it to me how many night-call nurses got themselves raped and killed so long as the old man pays cash?”

  “Emmett Mitchell,” Pearl said. “I heard that name.”

  I said, “They moved him to maximum security in Marquette State Prison after he tried to escape from Jackson. That was before DNA linked him to Victim Number Six. Not even the press knows when they’re taking him downstate for the hearing. But Roger and Benny know. It’s tonight. You need a bankroll like Emmett Senior’s to buy that kind of information.”

  The eggs were starting to sizzle, but just then Benny came back in. I could tell by his face he’d overheard plenty, but he wasn’t upset. He looked like a man who had won a bet with himself. He leveled the pistol at me.

  “Private cop walking in just when he did,” he said. “He was laughing at us the whole time, us talking all around what he knew already.”

  “You’re wrong, Benny. Why would he have his ID in his wallet if he was undercover?”

  “Cops are dumb, that’s why. They keep talking about the world’s dumbest criminals, but they’re the ones make all the mistakes. Our boy Amos made two: The day he was born and the day he died.”

  I concentrated on the eggs. It was an argument I couldn’t win. The trick was to keep him close without pushing him over the edge.

  “You’re smarter than you look,” I said. “If Old Man Mitchell is paying the officers transporting Emmett Junior to stop here, and he’s paying you to tie them up and maybe knock them out to make it play like an old-fashioned escape set up by a couple of Junior’s former inmates, you can be sure he’s paid someone else to make sure you don’t turn state’s evidence against him when you get caught.” I chose that moment to let the cartridge drop into the middle of a yolk to avoid making noise.

  “So we don’t get caught.” The skinhead placed the muzzle against the bone behind my right ear.

  That was too close. Any sudden disturbance would startle him into jerking the trigger.

  “Pearl, they’re fixing to kill all of us.”

  This was a new voice, hoarse from lack of use. Luke had recovered from his choking fit. He sat in his corner perfectly alert, his good eye glistening. Benny didn’t move. “Roger, I told you what to do the minute he opened his mouth.”

  “I don’t flag people. They only got me because I wouldn’t shoot.”

  “Luke’s right,” I told him, watching the skillet. The brass shell was almost submerged in yellow goo. “Mitchell Senior can’t afford to leave anyone behind, Benny knows that. Not even the cops he bought. That’s the way the two of them worked it out. You won’t need any more duct tape.”

  “Benny?” Roger’s tone was less guttural, almost shallow.

  “Don’t be a dumb digger injun. If you wasn’t so skittish we’d’ve done this at the start and saved all this jabber.”

  I knew then I couldn’t wait for a diversion. If I moved fast enough... but no one was that fast.

  No one except Luke. He shoved himself away from the wall, rolling, and caught Roger behind the knees with a bulky shoulder. The Indian folded like a cardboard cutout, the gun flying from his hand when his elbow struck the floor, but for a man running to fat he wasn’t clumsy. He dove to retrieve it.

  Benny pivoted that way, taking the pistol away from my head. I swung the skillet with all I had, catching him square on the corner of the jaw with the edge, spraying hot egg over both of us, grabbed his gun arm in both hands, and broke it over my knee. He shrieked and his fingers lost their grip. I caught the pistol as it fell, but by then I didn’t need it.

  Pearl was faster than all of us put together. She’d beaten Roger to the Magnum and stood in a feral crouch, covering him with the weapon in both hands. He remained motionless on all fours.

  A loud report made us all jump. The pistol cartridge from the skillet had continued to heat up for a second after it hit the floor, and went off like a kernel of popcorn. The slug dug a hole in a baseboard. I’d worried about what direction it would take.

  “You work for Mitchell?” Pearl seemed ready to include me in her firing trajectory. Her pumpkin-colored hair hung in her face.

  “Don’t make me lose respect for you. I’m only here because of a rumble strip.”

  “What?”

  “You know. Those things they put on the edge of the highway to warn you you’re drifting off the road.”

  “We can use those other places,” she said.

  I found the roll of duct tape and trussed up Benny, clucking over his screams when I jerked his shattered arm behind his back. I remembered to take my money out of his pocket. Then I saw to Roger. There was enough tape to go around after all. Finally I helped Pearl cut Luke loose.

  “Good tackle,” I said.

  He grinned lopsidedly; his bruised eye was a kaleidoscope of color. “You should’ve seen me on the field.”

  “NFL?”

  “St. Helens High. They overlooked me in the draft.”

  “Too bad I’m not a scout.”

  “Now what?” Pearl repaired her hair, a pin in her teeth. “They cut the phone wire.”

  “Now we stop a prison van and reunite father and son.” I went out to the car to get my cell.

  Sometimes a Hyena

  Why I told the joke at all I can’t say. It wasn’t that good, but then neither was the bar I told it in nor the bartender I told it to. I was drenched through with the sweat of a long day, with nothing else to show for it but the thought of an unpleasant telephone conversation with the client the next morning. Sometimes you stick with the subject like his own bad taste in aftershave, sometimes he drops you like a weak signal; but the guy paying your freight is never a philosopher.

  I’d driven past the place a hundred times without noticing. I hadn’t been thirsty the first hundred times. A long way back it had been someone’s idea of home, a square frame eight-hundred-square-foot house with a shingle roof and tile siding that reminded you you’d missed three appointments to have your teeth cleaned. It didn’t identify itself: The owner had just bought an orange LED sign that said OPEN and stuck it in the front window. But in that neighborhood a bar was
all it could be. I still think of it, when I think of it at all, as the Open.

  Inside was permanent dusk, two piles of protoplasm dumped on stools at the end of the bar, and a tabletop shuffleboard game whose pine boards had been slapped with a varnish that went tacky in high humidity so that one of the shuttles had stopped halfway down its length one day and decided that was where it would stay. A paint can opener would be needed to pry it loose.

  I don’t remember what the bartender looked like. He would be a middle-aged guy running to flab who had seen Cocktail once, pictured himself in some swanky joint juggling shakers and stem glasses, and like the shuttle had come to everlasting rest in that spot. Normally I wouldn’t have spoken to him beyond ordering a double scotch, but while he was siphoning it out my gaze lit upon a sepia picture in a frame on the wall above the beer taps. Someone had cut a photo of zebras grazing in the veldt from National Geographic and put it behind glass to make the place seem exotic.

  “Guy walks into a bar,” I said.

  “Guys do, pleased to say.” He slapped a paper napkin in front of me and set my drink on it. “This is a joke?”

  “That’s the punchline from another ‘Guy walks into a bar’ joke; but you tell me. There’s a kangaroo mixing the drinks. Kangaroo looks at the guy and says, ‘I see you’re surprised to find a kangaroo behind the bar.’ Guy says, ‘I’ll say. Did the zebra sell the place?’”

  He grunted, which told me all I needed to know about how he’d wound up in a dump like the Open. A really first-class barman laughs when the joke isn’t funny and shakes his head when the story isn’t that sad. Now that I think of it, his face belonged on the other side of the bar, tie-dyed with red gin blossoms and yellowed lost opportunities. But then that might just have been my face in the peel-and-stick mirrors in back of the bottles with recycled premium labels. An unexpected glimpse of one’s reflection on that sort of day is no treat.

  I’d thought of leaving him change from my ten, but I put it away. His kid could scrub pots and pans for his tuition, just like all the other self-made millionaires. I was in what the poets call a dark humor. I looked around for someone to kick sand in my face.