Sinister Heights

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Why, what happened?”

  I gave him the short form. He said “Sons of bitches” twice, then asked me for their names.

  “I’m a big boy, Mr. Thorpe. I fight my own fights. Just so I don’t have to keep fighting the same one, though, I’ll take a letter from you on GM stationery saying I’m working on a confidential matter for the board of directors. If I go on showing Mrs. Stutch’s check, her signature will get rubbed off and they won’t cash it at my bank.”

  “I’ll have it on your desk tomorrow.”

  “The day after will be soon enough. I try not to visit the Heights two days in a row. It voids my insurance.” We talked around in a circle for another minute and rang off. I finished my supper in front of a giant parade of TV commercials without ever finding out what show was playing, then read for a while and went to bed. I had a big day tomorrow, starting when the bank opened.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  My bank, a 150-year-old Detroit concern, had recently taken down its sign and replaced it with one bearing a name more suited to its new conglomonational status; whether it had merged with, been bought by, or had bought a chain of similar institutions stretching from Key West to Point Barrow was a Chinese puzzler for its shareholders to figure out; its immediate concern to me was that all of its services had dried up like the ink in its ballpoint pens. A snazzy pamphlet had come my way by mail, announcing the name change and informing me that three withdrawals of my own money in a single month would be considered excessive activity and cost me a buck and a half. I’d made up my mind to cash out my balance as soon as I had one and look for another mattress to stick it in, but that would have to wait until I had a handle on the heirs of Leland Stutch and Cecilia Willard.

  The blonde in the tellers cage took Mrs. Stutch’s check, gave me a flimsy printout that told me how much I’d just deposited, no extraneous information such as how much I now had in the account, and gave me back the two hundred I was holding out for cigarettes and bribery. The remitter’s signature didn’t get so much as a flicker from her. She’d been born since fuel injection; she would pronounce Renault without the t.

  Back at the office I spent a little on Information in Grass Lake and called the number the operator gave me for Fred Witowski, husband or ex-husband of Cecilia’s daughter Carla and father of Constance. I got a gruff outgoing announcement on a warped tape and hung up without leaving a message. I only wanted him for Carla’s address in Melvindale, and waiting by the telephone was not a good use of Rayellen Stutch’s money. I dipped into my bag of special detective tools and opened the telephone book.

  Witowski is not an uncommon name in a metropolitan area built on the strong backs of Poles who had fled the Czar to grade and lay track for the Michigan Central Railroad, and later to forge engine blocks at old Dodge Main. There were several Witowskis listed in Melvindale, but only three C. Witowskis, and no Freds; not that many divorced or separated women were still listing themselves under the names of their exes. Fewer yet in this age of stalkers and demographers cared to advertise their single sisterhood by using their Christian names, so there weren’t any Carlas either. I called the first one on the list and got a recording giving just the number. I hit the plunger before it finished and tried the next.

  “Hello?” A female voice, age indeterminate.

  “Is this Carla Witowski?” I asked.

  “That depends on who wants her.”

  “I’m with UPS. I’ve got a package for a Carla Witowski in Melvindale, but I can’t make out the number or street.”

  “What’s in the package?”

  “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I left my fluoroscope in my other pants.”

  “And what have you got in this pair?” She was purring now.

  “Nothing for you, Cornelia.” I reached for the plunger.

  “It’s Cynthia, smartass. Now, who—”

  I cut her off and tried the third number. No one answered. Sometimes you have to let your feet do the walking. I was starting to do just that when the telephone rang.

  “A. Walker Investigations.”

  “Gotcha, smartass. You ever hear of star sixty-nine?” She’d lost the purr. Its place had been taken by a rusty alcoholic edge. “Who says you can insult a woman in her own home?”

  “Thomas Jefferson. Bye-bye, Clothilde.”

  The bell had started ringing again when I went out the door.

  On the way downriver I pulled into an oil shop and dropped a little more client money on an overdue lube and a change. When the junior mechanic lifted the hood to replace the air filter he said, “Holy shit.”

  “So size does matter.” I blew smoke and pushed myself away from the pillar I was leaning against.

  “Outside it’s a heap. What do you do, run dope?”

  “I’m a dance instructor.”

  He slitted his eyes at me. He was a clean-cut black kid who had knocked the top off every knuckle he had. “That don’t make no sense.”

  “That’s what the cops in Iroquois Heights said.”

  “That place.” He spat and rubbed the spittle into the concrete floor with the toe of his shoe. “They ought to take it down brick by brick and throw salt on the dirt.”

  “You and Cato.”

  “Cato, my ass. I’d do it myself if I could afford the salt. They got a funny curfew there. It only works if you forget to be white.”

  When he handed me my keys I said, “I’m on my way to Melvindale. I’ll bring you back some salt.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. From the mine.”

  He shook his head. He was too young, a condition that was becoming epidemic. I tipped him two bucks and pulled out of the bay, gunning the big 455 as a gift. He probably didn’t know who Cato was either.

  Underneath Detroit is another city, inconceivably old and made entirely of salt. It’s a thousand feet underground and extends more than two miles between the cities of River Rouge and Melvindale, in a vein that stretches from Wyandotte to Port Huron, an area roughly the size of Costa Rica. For a hundred years the International Salt Company excavated thousands of tons of chalk-white deposits from an ancient ocean, first to cure meat for pilgrims traveling west, then to mix with cinders and spread on roads and highways throughout the northeastern states during the winter, to melt snow and ice and incidentally christen the entire region America’s Rust Belt. Operations on the American side have been shut down twenty years for unexplained reasons, obliging the various road commissions to purchase their salt from Canada. Meanwhile the original equipment, more than a century old and preserved by the dryest air outside the Presbyterian Church, sits undisturbed among caverns blasted from pure salt, with salt roofs supported by salt pillars anchored to salt floors. Melvindale, which holds title to the only remaining unsealed entrance, scratches up some money from time to time conducting guided tours; otherwise there’s no reason to go there unless Melvindale is where you live. Detroit has three times as many satellites as Jupiter, and most of them are just as difficult to tell apart without a glass.

  The address listed for C. Witowski in the telephone book belonged to one of the newer houses in a snarl of serpentine streets and cul-de-sacs off Oakwood, which did not mean that it was at all new; the housing sprawl that had begun nine months after V-E Day and ended with the Edsel had left its droppings all over Wayne and Oakland counties. The inspirational touch here was that the contractor had reversed the blueprints from time to time so that the faux stone facing to the right of the front door on one house was to the left on the next; or maybe the straw boss had dropped the plans and spread them out any old way when he picked them up. Some of the roofs had been replaced over the years by the individual homeowners, eroding further the uniform scheme, and here and there a hawthorn hedge or a low redwood fence had boldly supplanted the architects junipers, but except for that and the occasional Toyota truck in a neighborhood of Fords, Chevies, and Chryslers, the homes were as alike as barracks on a military base. If one of them sold for sixty tho
usand, the property values would spike up fifteen percent.

  I parked on the street and walked up a composition driveway past a nine-year-old Cavalier hatchback with an S.O.S. sticker on the rear bumper and a fat asterisk next to the legend SAVE OUR SCHOOLS. On the other corner was an older one, scuffed and peeling, on which faded letters spelled out TEACHER OF THE YEAR 1991.

  The doorbell imitated a set of chimes. Someone had a coughing fit inside and a set of off-white curtains in the window next to the door parted, revealing a black nose on the end of a shaggy tan muzzle. That was the source of the coughing noise. It was like a bark with a silencer.

  “Yes?”

  The woman who opened the door was about fifty, with blondined hair waved back from a handsome sort of face that wore a little more makeup than Rayellen Stutch, but little enough still to annoy Revlon. She was tall and stood unnaturally stiff, as if she had a bad back. She had on a dark brown scoopnecked top with sleeves that came to her elbows, beige pleated slacks, and brown leather loafers, scuffed just enough to have character. She wore no rings or jewelry of any kind except for pearl buttons in her ears to keep the holes from closing. She had steady eyes and a strong jaw, but I’d been fooled by those before.

  “Mrs. Witowski?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Carla Witowski?”

  “Yes.” Now her brows were separated by a vertical line. She hadn’t many.

  I pressed my luck. “Carla Willard Witowski?”

  The line smoothed out. Her eyes were dark and deep-set, like those in the portrait of Leland Stutch in the foyer of the house in Iroquois Heights. I didn’t see the fiercely glowing centers I’d observed in person, but she had another fifty years in which to acquire those; if they were his eyes, and if she’d inherited them.

  “What is it you want?” she asked.

  “To confirm you’re Carla Willard Witowski, for a start. Would you mind telling me your mother’s Christian name?”

  “If I did that, I’d have given you four names. You haven’t given me even one.”

  “You teach math, don’t you?” I grinned, but she didn’t do anything with it. I gave her a card.

  “Amos Walker,” she read. “Is that your real name?”

  “It’s the one I use most of the time.”

  She read the rest of the card. “It says here you’re a private detective.”

  “It does not. It says ‘Investigations.’”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “There isn’t any. The state police don’t like anyone who is not a policeman printing up cards calling himself a detective. I humor them, in return for which they let me keep my license.”

  “My mother’s name was Cecilia. I taught English, not math. I retired last year.”

  “Not many teachers can afford to retire before fifty-five.”

  “I’m not one of them. I’m shopping around. I’d rather try to live on my savings than draw a paycheck from a school system with a dropout rate of seventy percent.”

  “That’s what convinced you to quit?”

  “Persuaded,” she corrected. “You convince someone of an idea; you persuade him to an act. Did you attend school in Detroit?”

  “Yeah, but don’t blame the principal. In my work I don’t get to diagram many sentences. Is it all right if we take this inside? I’m getting a sunburn.”

  “I can see.”

  I touched my skinned cheek. “No, I got that last night. A cop bit me.”

  Her dark eyes considered, but she let it loose. “I still don’t know what this is about.”

  “It’s about your inheritance. I’m working for Leland Stutch’s widow.”

  Now came the fierce glow, but only for a second. She got out of the way and I stepped over the threshold.

  A brown and tan miniature chow about the size of a lunchbox braced itself against a square of linoleum and coughed at me. Its ears were perfect triangles and its shaggy tail curled up over its back like a scorpion’s. It sounded like a lawn mower that wouldn’t start.

  “Moo-goo, don’t!” Carla Witowski snapped. The dog ignored her. “He’s very protective. I don’t get many visitors.”

  “What’s wrong with his bark?”

  “I had his vocal cords surgically altered. The neighbors kept complaining.”

  “You should’ve had theirs altered.”

  “Are you a dog lover, Mr. Walker?”

  “My father gave me a lab when I was ten. He’s on a farm somewhere, my mother told me. The lab got run over.”

  She leaned down carefully and scratched the pooch behind the thick ruff at the base of its neck. It stopped coughing and waggled its curly tail. “I don’t talk for Moo-goo, or dress him up like Santa at Christmastime. I didn’t even name him Moo-goo; he came with that. I’d probably have opted for something ridiculous, like Spot. When you’re alone it’s just good to know there’s another heart beating in the house.”

  “You have a daughter.”

  “I have a daughter.” It was a confirmation, not a concession. “I think you’ll find the armchair more comfortable than the sofa. Men generally do. Would you like something to drink? I’m afraid all I have is juice.”

  “Thanks, I’m full of coffee.”

  The living room was small but cheerily lit through a window with spread curtains in front of which stood a cherrywood half-table with a bowl of flowers on a scarf. It had a sculptured carpet—brown and tan to match the dog, a practical choice—a seventeen-inch TV on a rolling stand, a straight-backed chair upholstered in stiff-looking fabric, and a skirted sofa and easy chair covered with nubby brown cloth with gold threads glittering in it, a set. There was a fake cuckoo clock on the wall opposite the window, family pictures in different-sized frames on a decorative shelf, and a dog bed in the corner shaped like Moses’ reed basket. There were more dog hairs in a hollow on the sofa’s center cushion than there were in the bed. It was a tasteful room; a little dowdy, but pleasant to spend time in.

  I took the easy chair while she lowered herself into the one with the straight back. Years of standing in front of blackboards are murder on the lumbar. The dog scampered over and tried to climb up onto her lap, but she brushed it away. It sneezed indignantly, swung its rear end on her, and pattered over to the sofa, where it braced itself to leap. Its mistress snapped her fingers—the crack was worthy of a .22 pistol—and the dog thought better of the plan and went over and hopped into the basketbed and curled up without the circling that usually precedes that business. In Mrs. Witowski’s classroom, iron discipline had been served up between the first and second predicates.

  “I wasn’t aware Stutch left a widow,” she said.

  “It wasn’t a secret,” I said. “Just quiet. I gather the ceremony was civil and probably out of town. Also he had more money to spend on keeping his name out of the news than most movie stars spend getting theirs in. And no one squawked when the will was read.”

  “I wasn’t invited to that.” A nerve jumped in her cheek. It might have been a back spasm.

  “Mrs. Stutch is aware of that. She realizes the extent of the injury that was done to your mother and you, long before she met and married Mr. Stutch. It’s too late for your mother, but she wants to make it up to you and Constance. Constance, that’s your daughter’s name, right? Constance Glendowning?”

  She let that branch wave in the air. “My mother died alone in her house in Redford. When the pain in her head got so bad she couldn’t stand it, she called me instead of 911, because she didn’t think she could afford the ambulance. I made the call, but she was gone before it got there. I arrived five minutes later. The paramedics said they couldn’t have saved her even if they’d been on the spot when the artery exploded. They’re supposed to say that. It might have comforted me if I’d heard it in a waiting room at Detroit General instead of my mother’s kitchen. Can Mrs. Stutch make up for that?”

  Her voice didn’t rise or shake or give any other indication that she was doing anything but reciting the
i before e rule. She sat with her chin lifted and her back pressed tight against the back of the chair, her hands resting on her thighs.

  “Here’s a thought.” I leaned forward. “They cremated Stutch and buried his ashes in Centerline, where he started out way back when they burned cowflop for fuel. I’ll dig him up for you and you can spit in the urn. Then you and Mrs. Stutch can talk.”

  “I know it’s not her fault. Do you know that man sent my mother money until I was eighteen, which is as long as the court would have required if she’d won her case? Sometimes I feel I’d think better of him if he’d never sent a dime. Since he didn’t have to anyway, why did he stop when the law would have told him he could?”

  “I don’t try to think like rich people, Mrs. Witowski. I might spend the money I’ve been saving for braces.”

  “The question was rhetorical. He used the money as a cold compress on his conscience, what there was of it; then as soon as he felt better he took it away. Meanwhile in the eyes of the world my mother was a gold-digging slut.”

  I couldn’t do anything with that, so I hung one knee over the other and channeled Father O’Malley. The dog was asleep on its bed, snoring louder than it barked. It had heard all this before.

  Carla Willard Witowski shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Leland Stutch looked out at me. If her mother had just taken her to court and let her look at the judge, the case would have gone to the jury. “Do you realize, Mr. Walker, that if I’d been born forty years earlier—about the time my father turned twenty-five—I would not have been permitted to teach school in the state of Michigan? My bastardy might have polluted the entire seventh grade.”

  I made a note on my brain to look up bastardy when I got home. I’d never heard it used before, but being an English teacher and a bastard both she seemed to have the provenance. I said, “So hooray for the twenty-first century. You don’t need a crank to start a new automobile built in the Stutch plant either. When can you meet with Mrs. Stutch?”

  She worked her hands on her thighs. It wasn’t quite a rubbing motion. “Exactly how much money are we discussing, Mr. Walker?”