Sinister Heights

by Loren D. Estleman

  There was no telling what changes might have been made inside the building since the old man had grown too feeble to climb the stairs to his fishbowl above the pouring vat; but I was betting on the below-ground bunker where Connor Thorpe kept his tabs on his empire of cops, private and public, being the hardest nut to crack. That was what he had meant when he’d told Proust he needed to avoid a second front, the first being the authorities who would rattle the gate with warrants in hand when it got out he was holding a little boy inside. The interior walls were nearly as thick as the ones that held up the building, with the doors to all the offices—steel, or I was no judge—opening onto a single corridor. It was that paradox of bricks-and-masonry security, the impregnable fortress that was also an escape-proof trap. My trail ended there either way.

  I was yawning fit to crack the hinges of my jaws when I closed the book. A cloud of dust and paper shavings curled out and lodged in my throat. I coughed. My eyes watered and I mopped them with my handkerchief. I was just beginning to realize how tired I was, and how many years had passed since I’d waited out a V.C. sniper through twelve hours of the Cambodian night. I was no match for the walls of the Stutch plant wide awake, with a sound neck and two good ankles. In my present condition I couldn’t open a cardboard container of mooshu pork. That made me think of Moo-goo, Carla Witowski’s surgically silenced dog, which in turn made me think of Constance Glendowning, sleeping out a merciful coma in Henry Ford Hospital, unaware that her child was trapped somewhere in the concrete bowels of Iroquois Heights. I needed to follow her example or I wasn’t going to be of use to any of them. Not even the dog.

  I carried the big book back out into the reception area and slid it up onto the counter. Before I could thank the clerk in the helmet of steel-gray hair, she told me someone wanted to see me.

  I turned around and there he was: just under six feet of muscle and hard fat in a blue suit, wire-brushed black hair, and aviator glasses with smoked lenses, smiling impersonally with small even teeth stained a uniform tobacco-beige. I didn’t need to look at the shield he was holding. In a strong light it would show behind his features like a watermark. He said his name was Vivaldi, detective sergeant assigned to the City-County Building, and that Mayor Muriel would consider it a personal favor if I’d accompany the sergeant to his office.

  I went with him without a squawk. That’s how tired I was.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Any relation to the composer?” I asked Sergeant Vivaldi.

  “My father thought so, my mother had her doubts. I dumped a bale of cash a couple of years ago on an outfit in Southfield that looks up family trees, to settle the point. All I got for my money was a shoemaker in Genoa and a couple of dozen relatives here in the States I was just fine knowing nothing about.” There was rough humor in his tone, as personal as a form letter at Christmas. He would converse the same way with suspects in manacles and defense attorneys who were getting ready to tear him apart in the witness box. I sensed a retirement package in his near future.

  We stepped off the elevator on the second floor and followed a gray-carpeted corridor lit through frosted ceiling panels and lined with framed certificates of community achievement. At the end we stopped before a prism-glass door with fresh shiny lettering on it reading:

  ARBOR MURIEL

  MAYOR

  Vivaldi opened it without knocking and held it for me with a polite expression, well practiced to draw the sting from the fact that he was sealing off the only escape route. It was no wonder they’d tagged him for the city hall detail. I went in and he followed, releasing the door to its silent closer.

  More gray carpeting and certificates, a wide window above an air conditioning vent with drapes spread to reveal nothing more interesting than the parking lot, a little sitting area with magazines (no one sitting in it), and seated behind a glass desk a short-haired female receptionist with makeup air-brushed by an expert and Vivaldi’s same have-a-nice-day-asshole smile. She buzzed the mayor, got the okay through the little speaker, and rose to get the door. Vivaldi said he had it and swung it for me. It had glass prisms too, with nothing lettered on them, although there were tiny abrasions where something had been scraped off recently, probably PRIVATE. Muriel had won the election on the promise of an open-door policy; the bankroll General Motors had ponied up had just paid for stamps and paper clips.

  It was a pleasant room as offices went. Some effort had gone into making it look like the private den of a businessman who worked hard during the day and painted birdhouses in his basement in the evening. Aromatic red cedar paneling gave the place the air of a mountain cabin. Again the carpeting was gray, but the office had just changed hands and it was imprudent politics to spend too much on renovations at the outset, even if the previous tenant had been obliged to drop out of the race when his wife named one of his unpaid volunteers as a co-respondent in her divorce suit. Muriel, or his image consultant, had hung the walls with Audubon prints. A settee and armchairs in the corner where he entertained the press were covered in tan Naugahyde to suggest seasoned leather, but not so loudly it might arouse the animal rightists. The desk from behind which he came to shake my hand was heavy and paneled, with a genuine leather top distressed to appear to predate controversy, a good reproduction of a partners table from the Woodrow Wilson era. Indirect lighting took the place of the sun through a window in back with its drapes drawn shut. If my sense of direction wasn’t muzzled by sleep deprivation, it would look out on the Stutch plant.

  “Thank you for making time for me, Mr. Walker. I’m always delighted to welcome visitors from the city to the south.”

  He had a firm grasp, naturally. He’d had time to bring down the swelling since the campaign finished and to get back into practice. Arbor Muriel was the kid who stayed after school to clean the erasers. His ears were big, with his graying temples trimmed close to let them spread out, and he had a slightly bulbous forehead, like a baby’s. Beneath his round cheeks his jaws came straight down to a rectangular chin, a keyhole shape and not at all like a skull in one so lively. He wore glasses with tortoiseshell rims and plastered his black hair over to the side from a part that was broadening like the gap in the Red Sea.

  He was in his shirtsleeves, tie a little loose, as if he’d been about to turn back his cuffs and dig into a little wholesome porkbarrel-cutting like he’d promised the electorate. Bad advice. His bony sloping shoulders needed the pads in the suitcoat that hung on the back of his ergonomic chair.

  But then again, the gawky awkward message he put out may have been part of the homey tapestry, like that line about the city to the south. You just never know with politicians.

  “I’m from Detroit,” I said. “Not Biloxi.”

  He opened his wide grin to give that the hee-haw. “Now, we’ll have none of that intra-urban rivalry. It never did either of us any good under the old economy. Now it’s just pointless. Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Vivaldi took this dismissal out of the office without apparent rancor. He was a well-trained yard dog. When the door shut, the mayor and I went through the business of seating, the big desk between us like a fence, and discussion of refreshments. I said yes to coffee, on the condition that it was leaded and black enough to swallow a small galaxy. He put in the order over the intercom, thanking the air-brushed receptionist on the other end twice. He did everything but wag his tail and try to lick her face. He sat back, just far enough to make contact with the back of his chair, and rested his hands lightly on the arms. I’d heard he’d taught high school civics for twenty years before throwing his hat into the ring. He looked like an assistant principal, at that.

  “I understand you’re here on business for Mr. Thorpe,” he said.

  I smiled. “I’m impressed.”

  “I’m sorry?” His eyebrows went up, but the grin didn’t slip.

  “The clerk downstairs looks like a veteran to me. It usually takes a little while for the new boy in town to bring those petty warlords into the lo
op.”

  “If you mean Mrs. Patrick, she reported your visit, yes. I make it a point to get to know as many of the personnel as I can the first day. They seem to appreciate it. Connor Thorpe’s been a friend to the people of this community. We like his associates to know we’re flattered when they make use of our facilities.”

  “I’m not an associate, Your Honor. I’m just a fetch, like your man Vivaldi.”

  “A fetch? Yes.” His brain pushed that around like a tongue. He was adjusting his approach to the station of the approachee. I wondered when that coffee would get here. I thought a cigarette might re-ignite my brain cells, but I remembered the voters in Iroquois Heights had passed an ordinance banning smoking in public buildings.

  “Have you been working for Mr. Thorpe long?”

  “Off and on for a couple of years. I’m a contract laborer. I don’t work for anybody for long.”

  “I see.” He didn’t. “I imagine he’s particular about whom he contracts with. That speaks well for you.”

  “Does it?”

  He frowned. He noticed the pebbled gold cover on his appointment calendar was standing straight up. He flipped it down with an index finger. Then he made another pass. “May I ask what it is you do?”

  “I’m in information services.”

  “Ah. Publicity.” Now he was in friendly territory. Then he frowned again. For a man in his line he was as easy to track as a box step. “I shouldn’t think a man in Mr. Thorpe’s position would have much use for it. Security is usually pretty much concerned with achieving the opposite.”

  “I shouldn’t think a man in your position would say ‘I shouldn’t.’ The people who cast their ballots your way might think you’re putting yourself above them.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Better. Americans like their public servants good and ignorant. Ignorant, anyhow. It’s the great leveler. Glad to have been of service. I’ll be shoving off just as soon as I’ve had my coffee.”

  He got sore at last. I’d about given up. His round cheeks reddened, but just then the receptionist came in carrying two steaming mugs and he had to wait until she set them down and left.

  “I invited you here in good faith,” he said. “Mr. Thorpe has made many investments in this town’s welfare on behalf of his employers. With a new engineering and design center going into the former Stutch plant, he promises to make many more. Naturally the residents are eager to know when. On the one hand there will be layoffs when the plant closes. On the other there will be jobs in construction, and more jobs later when the new facility opens. When someone carrying credentials signed by Thorpe asks to see the plant’s original blueprints, it’s not too far outside the realm of probability to assume preparations are under way to demolish the existing structure, get the ball rolling, or rather swinging.” The frown this time was thoughtful. He was making a note to use the turn of phrase later. “As mayor it’s my responsibility to remain informed upon such issues. It’s a trust I take seriously. If you don’t, this interview has no purpose.”

  “I didn’t request an interview, Your Honor. My preferences in the matter weren’t considered enough of an issue to ask. Sergeant Vivaldi is a polite party, his ancestor worked an honorable trade in Genoa, but I’ve been rousted by champions. I recognize all the techniques. The last time I came here a couple of missing links in uniform tried it the old-fashioned way, with cuffs and bruises. I preferred that. It worries me when a gorilla behaves like a citizen, the same way it worries me when a man of the people employs the personal subjunctive as if he were addressing the House of Lords.” I paused to take a slug of coffee. It was that yellow-brown belly-wash the vending machines spit out. It smelled like soap and tasted like sewage. I’d swallowed enough to make the comparison.

  “You were mishandled by officers of my police department? What are their names?” He unclipped a gold pencil from the calendar.

  I stopped in the middle of a sneer. I was pretty sure he was serious. That didn’t line out with anything I knew about places like Iroquois Heights. The people in Iroquois Heights empowered slick crooks with good tailors, aw-shucks country boys with rumpled hair and larceny in their hearts, big daddies in Stetsons, shriveled rats in sharkskin, musty-smelling bookworms with two sets of ledgers, petty thieves with holes in their mattresses, big-time crooks with numbered accounts in Berne; carny guys, top hats, born-agains, fallen reformers, sticky-fingered prudes, lechers in French cuffs, loud liars, quiet chiselers, wardheelers and skimmers, kleptos and kickback kings, brown-nosers and backstabbers—nice men, sometimes, for the variety, soft on children and three-legged cats, but rotten black inside. Men who knew how to make the machine run. They didn’t elect idiots. They wouldn’t get the chance, because the men who choreographed the elections wouldn’t give them that choice.

  The easy explanation, that I was being hustled, sent me back for another gulp of the nasty stuff in the mug. It burned my tongue and dissolved some of the corrosion from my connections.

  “I didn’t get their names,” I lied. “Anyway, what would be the point? Even if you stripped their blouses for show they’d just turn up in some place even worse than this. There’s no place worse than this, so they’d probably just come back.”

  “Just what are you?”

  “I’m a private detective. From that it should follow that the other thing you want to know is nobody’s business but Thorpe’s. I can’t sell it to him and give it to you for free. In my little circle I’m considered an ethical character.”

  “A very little circle.” It was his only good line and he didn’t like it, being out of character. It tasted as bad as the coffee.

  We were silent for a while after that. I was telling my leaden muscles it was time to exit when a door I hadn’t noticed before opened in the cedar paneling to my left and Cecil Fish, Iroquois Heights’ former city prosecutor, came in with a look on his face that said he’d heard every word.

  Everything made sense then. Mark Proust had told me Fish was the one who told Mayor Muriel where to sign, but I hadn’t put any store in it. Proust was the kind who told everyone he had friends high up, even if he was the only one he managed to convince. I should have given him the benefit of the doubt. This case seemed bent on tipping every one of my old monsters out of the closet.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Corrupt men are often small. I don’t know why. All the large, bluff Big Jims and Honest Johns who at one time ruled the nation’s dirtier, more sprawling cities seem to have been repealed along with Prohibition, or demoted to used-car lots and midnight cable companies. The Napoleon complex is handy: The runt kid whose pants were always getting run up the flagpole at summer camp finds stature serenading the press from the top courthouse step or misquoting the Old Testament on television, and hasn’t the patience to get there by the numbers. Or maybe the NFL and the NBA have snapped up all the greedy glandular freaks and all that’s left are the half-pints. All I know is you could pack the dozen or so well-placed crooks I’ve had the happy fortune to know in the back seat of an Escort and still have room for the week’s graft.

  Cecil Fish was one of the dozen. His three-piece suit, dark brown, and the shine on his cordovans, Italian slip-ons with two-inch heels, called attention to his bantam build and George M. Cohan strut, and the razor-edge white handkerchief in his show pocket made him look like the little man on the Monopoly box, minus the monocle and handlebars. A new hairdresser and male-pattern baldness had gotten rid of his blonde bangs, but the gray was gone. It takes dedication to stay on top of the roots once you decide to tint, but he had the fussy temperament required. He strode in as if he were late for a plane, but stopped short of the desk and looked around, possibly for the flunkies who carried his bags. He was keeping a low profile these days and didn’t have flunkies.

  The sacrifice hadn’t improved his attitude, or maybe he just didn’t like what he’d heard. His gaze jerked past me and landed on the mayor. “I’ll see to this, Arb. You’
ve got that lunch with the county commissioners.”

  Muriel glanced at his watch, plain gold with a leather band. It had cost about as much as the clasp on Fish’s Rolex. “That isn’t for an hour.”

  “They’ll want the reassurance of your smiling face when they drift in. You don’t want to come in last: Too imperial. Too last administration.”

  That final addition made up Muriel’s mind. He nodded, a short jerk of his rectangular chin, got up, and slipped on his suitcoat. The built-up shoulders made him appear more mayoral. He was one of the nice ones. He stuck out his hand for me to take. I went ahead and took it and then he was through with me. He paused before a mirror with a polished wooden frame hung near the door to reception, snugged up the knot of his tie, and then he was gone.

  The atmosphere in the room changed then, but it had less to do with Muriel’s leaving than with Fish’s presence. Whenever he entered a place it felt as if someone vital had just stepped out.

  Fish swung the mayor’s swivel and slung himself into it as if it were his favorite easy chair in his own home. He sat sideways with his head turned to face me, hung one knee over the other, picked up the gold pencil from the desk, and held it with the blunt end against the desk’s leather top. He was never at a loss over what to do with his hands, and what he did with them never seemed to have a point. The smirk on his face was as close to genuine warmth as his face ever achieved. It was a failing that had cost him the first couple of times he ran for office; he’d given up on getting rid of it finally and like all good politicians had found a way to turn the liability into an asset. The cocksurety was considered a plus in obtaining flashy convictions. The smirk was Fish’s answer to the hole in Adlai Stevenson’s shoe.