I started to return them, then shuffled back to a trunk shot of the corpse. “What’s this?”
He leaned forward. I turned the picture his way and pointed at a nearly perfect yellow-brown half-circle the size of a quarter on the concrete near where Arsenault’s left arm had come to rest.
He tilted his glasses and squinted through them. Then he sat back. “Blood, or maybe just grease. They look alike when they dry.”
“I didn’t notice it when I was there.”
“Some things show up in the flash that don’t under ordinary light.”
“It looks like someone drew it with a compass.”
“Who knows? Maybe somebody with oil on his hands dropped a coin and somebody picked it up. That’s the trouble with real life as opposed to murder mysteries. Most of the time a spot on the floor is just a spot on the floor.”
“Is that what you wanted me to see?”
He gave me the cop face. “It’s a small police department. Not so small we have to farm out detective work to a one-man agency with a hole in its head.”
“Excuse me all to hell.”
“Naturally you’ll share with us anything you happen to trip over. That’s just good citizenship.”
“Naturally.” I ticked the edge of the photo. “May I borrow this?”
“Any reason I should let you?”
“Call it a reward for good citizenship.”
“It’s supposed to be its own reward.” But he slid the rest of the prints into the envelope and tied the string. Then he stood.
“Thanks, Sergeant.”
“We serve and protect.”
Thirty
THE GOOD NEWS WAS I had all the pieces.
The bad news was they belonged to different puzzles.
The worse news was I was getting to hate good news/bad news jokes more than I hate light beer, and the case was full of them.
After Sergeant St. Thomas left I rummaged in the top drawer until I found the Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass my late partner, Dale Leopold, had presented to me the day I joined the firm. It was the size of a hand mirror, heavy as a hammer, with a smooth walnut handle where a pink ribbon had been tied. I had never used it in an investigation. With it in hand I switched on the desk lamp and went over the crime scene picture one more time. That was better, but still not conclusive.
I put the glass back in the drawer and called a number from my notebook.
“Cassandra Photo. Randy Quarrels speaking.”
“Quarrels, this is Amos Walker. We met last week.” Another life.
“I remember. Any of those names pan out?”
“One did.”
“I can guess which one. I read the papers.”
“I’ve got another job for you.”
“More names? The city population’s going down plenty fast without my help.”
“No names. This one calls for your talent. I need a picture blown up but I can’t afford to lose a lot of detail.”
“The whole picture?”
“Just one part.”
“That’s a little easier. Got a negative?”
“No.”
“That’s not so easy.”
“If it were easy I’d go to Fotomat.”
“Greasy spoon.”
“I didn’t call to poll your opinion of the competition. Can you do it?”
“I can make a negative from the positive and make an enlargement from the new negative, but you’re going to lose something. How much depends on the quality of the print.”
“It’s a police photo.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You might be surprised. This guy’s slumming.”
“I’ll have to see it.”
“On my way.” I was out the door before the receiver stopped bouncing.
Birmingham looked the same as it had on my last visit; the same as it had always looked since the first grizzled pioneer tacked up the first Neighborhood Watch sign: a patch of expensive sunlight with better police protection than the Oakland County Jail, and a lot less obtrusive. But my perspective had changed.
Today the street was just a street, for all the fresh asphalt and no potholes. The maroon plush staircase leading up from the formal-wear shop was just a set of stairs and the pictures on the walls of the customer area at Cassandra were just patterns trapped in emulsion. Even the snow leopard was just a cat with an attitude.
Randy Quarrels yelled from in back and I flipped up the gate and went behind the counter and then the blue-painted partition. There was a door in back with a red bulb mounted over it. The bulb wasn’t lighted. I knocked anyway and got an invitation. The room was a little larger than a walk-in closet and contained a stainless steel double sink, counters, shelves, and a chemical stench that would be there when the building came down. It had none of the state-of-the-art equipment I had seen in Nate Millender’s dark room; but Quarrels had more overhead and a scruple or two.
“Got it?” Cassandra’s proprietor screwed the cap back on a plastic jug he had half-emptied into one side of the sink and rinsed off his hands in what I assumed was water standing in the other side.
I said I had it. He pulled the chain on a ceiling fixture, dousing us both in harsh unshaded light, took the picture out of the file folder I handed him, and held it up. His mud-colored hair was still gathered into a ponytail and he had squeezed his short thick body into a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and jeans soiled and tattered well beyond the fashion standards of Generation X.
“That’s what I need a better look at.” I indicated the half-circle on the floor by the corpse.
“Good paper. Suburban cops, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“They farm out to custom developers. Detroit uses its own equipment and that cheapshit paper. This stuff gives us a fighting chance at least. You weren’t kidding about the photographer.”
“What’s the verdict?”
“Shut the door and we’ll deliberate.” He switched on a pink bulb over the sink and jerked the ceiling chain, washing everything in rosy light.
An hour and a half later, poorer by an additional fifty of Jay Bell Furlong’s dollars but richer by a high-quality negative, a couple of practice prints, and one reasonably clear suitable-for-framing blowup of a spot on a concrete floor, I swung into the short-term parking lot across from the Airport Marriott. I was past due to report to my client.
What I saw while I was cruising the aisles told me I was going to be later yet.
She only caught my attention because all the slots within easy trotting distance of the hotel entrance were taken. Walking between the rows of cars, fishing in a handbag, she looked like a parking space in the making. By the time she passed me, not looking at me or the Cutlass, I’d placed her.
It might have been the way she carried the handbag once she’d gotten her keys out. She’d carried a watering can the same way, freshening the plants in the reception area outside Lynn Arsenault’s office at Imminent Visions. It was enough to make me look again; and two’s the limit, dented skull or no.
I’d seen her just once, briefly, when I’d had an appointment with her boss and he’d ducked it. She wasn’t wearing the octagonal glasses now and her hair was darker, but someone had told her sometime that tailored suits were becoming to her and the compliment had stuck. Changing one’s identity requires a commitment that not every man is prepared to make, and damn few women.
I crept on in the opposite direction, keeping Greta Griswold’s straight matronly back in the rearview mirror.
Nobody would have mistaken the yellow Neon she eventually climbed into for the old blue Oldsmobile registered to the former Cathlin Margareta Faolin. The license plate frame that showed when she backed out of the space belonged to Budget Rent-a-Car.
I let her drive to the end of the aisle and out toward the exit, then powered around the end nearest me, down the next aisle, and decelerated in the main traffic lane to avoid catching up to her at the booth. Before Arsenault had inherited h
er, she had worked for a bigoted, suspicious man for twelve years. She would recognize the same car twice in her mirror.
She paid for her parking, didn’t engage the attendant in conversation, didn’t take a receipt. I did the same.
I gave her half a long block on Airport Drive, then closed up as we neared the long-term lots and the traffic started to thicken. She never looked around once. We parked a dozen spaces apart in the Green Lot, and while she was wrestling an eggshell suitcase and garment bag to match out of the trunk I threw my coat and tie into the back seat of the Cutlass, put on a pair of dark glasses, and took out the briefcase full of nothing I keep in the trunk for those occasions when I want to look like something other than a snooper on the scent. Airline passengers without luggage stick out like pajamas in church.
We caught the same shuttle bus to the Smith terminal. She took the rear seat by the bags. I sat up front behind the driver. In between us, a white-haired business type in a double-breasted suit and a young black in a ball cap and starter jacket spent the short trip discussing affairs of import.
“Nothing wrong with the Tigers a healthy bullpen wouldn’t cure.”
“This point I’d settle for a bullpen. They all had AIDS they couldn’t be worse than what we got.”
“One iron man could do it. You know, an arm that’s good for nine innings. You remember Jack Morris?”
“Before my time, man.”
“Well, that’s what we need. Another Morris.”
“Right now I’m just waiting for basketball season. I can’t root for no dead men.”
I stretched my arms across the back of my seat, half-listening. Thinking about the breaks and how you don’t necessarily have to live right to benefit from them. There was hope for the home team yet.
We got out at American, where Greta ignored a skycap who offered to load her bags aboard his cart and carried them herself through the electric doors. She didn’t tip the driver, either.
The foot traffic was heavy inside. It was the usual run of corporate nomads augmented by early vacationers, race junkies headed in to catch the Grand Prix on Belle Isle and veteran Detroiters headed out to avoid it. Greta walked past the ticket counter without stopping, paused before the American departures monitor—leaning in to read it without her glasses—and went on toward the gates, hauling both pieces of luggage with her. Some people have limitless faith in airline tolerance toward oversize carryons.
That was a hitch. Security was tight that season—a jet had exploded in midair and no one knew the reason, so the continent was crawling with terrorists—and I needed a ticket to get past the checkpoint. I’d hoped to get in line behind her and buy one. The wait wasn’t long, but by the time I got away with a roundtrip to Chicago in hand she’d been cleared through the x ray and metal detector. I lost more time showing my ID to the guards and explaining that my briefcase was empty because I was under orders to pick up some affidavits on the other end. The security chief, a tall Masai warrior complete with tribal tattoos on his cheeks, stroked his lower lip with the antenna of his walk-around Motorola, then waved me on. By that time Greta was as gone as Garbo.
I did some detecting. Of the flights listed on the monitor she had stopped to read, the 2:55 to Miami looked most promising; it left in less than an hour, and Miami is the jumping-off point for travelers bound for Argentina and Peru, tropical paradises with the added attraction of having no viable extradition treaty with the United States. The Miami junket was the one most popular with wanted druglords, deposed dictators, and secretaries who gave false statements to the police in homicide investigations. In any case it made more sense than the only other cities with flights departing within reasonable waiting time: Kansas City and Pasadena.
I went to the gate indicated. The waiting area was full of everybody but Greta Griswold.
Of the piles of luggage left unattended by optimistic souls off on errands, none contained her suitcase and hanging bag. I checked the nearby cafe and bookshop, glanced in at the magazine stand, then went back and staked out the gate for fifteen minutes, long enough for her to do what needed to be done twice in the ladies’ room. When she didn’t answer the general boarding announcement I decided to check out the other gates.
There were only seventeen of them stretched out along a concourse longer than the Bataan Death March. I saw honeymooning couples and sparring old marrieds, unruly children and the creepy Stepford variety, exhausted salesmen in tired pinstripes, high-rollers in yellow socks, nuns and working girls, graying executives and their long-limbed nieces, Midwestern men in floral shirts, Middle Eastern women in saris and veils, briefcase-swinging lawyers, pill-popping aerophobes, gaggles of touring seniors with white hair and cocoa tans, straggles of would-be Amarillo Slims wandering home from Vegas with their pockets hanging out and poleaxed expressions on their pale faces, stewardesses—excuse me, flight attendants—towing luggage on leashes, pilots carrying map cases, airport loungers in cowboy hats, teens in baggy britches improving their minds in the miniature video arcade, a kindergarten class on a field trip, floor-sitters with knapsacks, one minor celebrity, women in shoulderpads with laptops, ten thousand Japanese with cameras, a pair of drag queens, a lot of people with atrocious taste in reading, and all the rest of the loose change of humanity that spills through the vaulted echoing machine-buffed halls of Here to There. I saw two pockets picked. I didn’t see Greta Griswold.
I stood in front of a glass wall, biting the inside of a cheek and watching a big-bellied 757 take off at a steep angle. I wondered if she was on it.
Finally I stepped into the brief embarrassment of a bar and ordered a whiskey sour to match my thoughts. I’d looked in twice on my way past in both directions and hadn’t seen her. She didn’t seem the type; but then she hadn’t seemed the type to ditch a job she’d held for seventeen years and make a dash for the tall timber either. As I leaned over to set my briefcase down in front of the bar, I spotted the end of an eggshell-colored suitcase poking out from behind a square ceiling post in the corner.
I paid for my drink, picked it up and my case, and walked over to the hidden booth.
She didn’t see me. No one makes eye contact in airports. A high-profile murder trial in California was grinding away on the TV screen mounted under the ceiling, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was sitting with her back to the wall, smoking a filtered True and turning a nearly empty glass around and around in its ring on the laminated tabletop, her eyes on the middle ground between herself and infinity.
She jumped when I set my own glass on the table.
“Can I get you another one, Mrs. Griswold? Just at a glance I’d say gin and bitters. Guessing drinks is one of my hobbies.”
She blinked in my direction, squinted. Then she snapped her tongue against her teeth and rummaged through her handbag for the octagonal glasses.
When she had them on she still didn’t know me. I realized I was still wearing my dark glasses. I took them off, and when that didn’t seem to help I showed her the ID. Then she remembered. Good secretaries retain the names they write down on their employers’ appointment calendars.
She slumped back, dragged deeply on her cigarette, and blew a jet at the table. The post-fifty lines in her face showed through the makeup.
“Yes, I will have another.” A light brogue came out that I hadn’t heard the first time we’d met, “This time ask them to hold the bitters.”
Thirty-one
“YES.”
He definitely worked on the accent. Making a single one-syllable word sound British over the telephone takes practice even in England.
“Walker, Mr. Lund. I have something to report.”
I had to stick a finger in my ear and raise my voice to blot out the jabber from a gang of French Canadians who had decided to convene near the exit from the Smith terminal. Montreal must be the loudest city north of Dallas.
“Very well.” He waited.
“Not over the wire. Not in the suite either. You might want to break it to Mr. Fur
long in your own way.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Bad is relative. I’ve found the witchfinder.”
“Indeed.”
“Where can we meet?”
“I’m expected at the Fisher Building in half an hour. I plan to sublet an office in the tower for the reading of the will and the leaseholder has promised me a tour of the facilities. We could meet in the lobby an hour from now.”
“Sounds jake.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Fisher at four-thirty is satisfactory. How’s himself?”
“Not well. I have to help him in and out of bed now. The hotel is sending up a registered nurse. I imagine she’ll recommend he check into hospital.”
“We’d better talk fast then.”
“I fear we had.”
I made two more calls against the oo-lah-lahs and got out of there.
Driving back to town on 1-94, the Edsel Ford, avoiding flagmen and recently patched potholes mounded over like fresh graves, I thought about dreams and how the subconscious works the swing shift while the rest of the brain is at rest. The one I’d had about hunting lions was a case in point. They’re as likely to be behind you as in front. If this kept up I would have to find some way to work snooze time onto the statement I provide clients.
My brief conversation with Greta Griswold in the airport bar had been nothing more than mortar to hold together the foundation I’d built after leaving Cassandra Photo. I’d left her with a pair of county officers, holding a fresh unlit cigarette and contemplating the same gulf of nothing I’d found her staring at when I joined her.
Albert Kahn—like Jay Bell Furlong a legendary architect, but with a twenty-year head start—had left his thumbprints all over the City of Detroit, and although city planners and an army of demolition experts have been working overtime for decades trying to erase them, the soaring, fluted Art Deco lines of his factories, museums, and skyscrapers, all built between the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 and the downfall of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1935, are likely to remain a part of the metropolitan landscape long after the antiseptic glass towers of the Less-Is-More crowd have imploded into their basements. The jewel in his crown is the Fisher Building, an L-shaped pile culminating in a twenty-six-story tower commissioned by the seven Fisher brothers of Body by Fisher, across Grand Boulevard from the General Motors Building—another Kahn design resembling a hinged deck of trick playing cards and for many years the largest office building in the world. Rumor had it GM was offering to trade its headquarters to the city for offices in the Renaissance Center on Jefferson, with the RenCen’s complex of shops and offices to move into the City-County Building after the bureaucrats vacate. Just what benefit this game of musical chairs held for anyone was a mystery—more space for more council members’ relatives, I suppose—but Henry Ford II, who put up the seed money to build the Center, is no Ford at all if he doesn’t come back to haunt the General Motors executives who will be scratching up the desks there with the heels of their Guccis.
The Witchfinder Page 22
