Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss

by Loren D. Estleman

  I smoothed out a five on the bar. “That’s to start. I haven’t paid for the beer.”

  He left it there. No contempt on his face. I was starting to like him, but my judgment was suspect since the shooting. “He play piano?”

  “He’s pretty good. I like tin tack myself, so don’t go by me.” I left it there, the way he had the bill. It wasn’t easy. I was starting to feel warm all over, and it wasn’t the alcohol. I got out a ten and laid it on top, squaring the edges even.

  “Me neither. I got a bum ear. First Gulf War.”

  I nodded. He was older than he looked.

  “Ordered Old Milwaukee,” he said. “Clydesdale piss, with a water chaser. I’ve got a policy. I sell alcohol, not bench space. He drank maybe a quarter of the bottle, never touched the water. What do you make of that?”

  “What do you?”

  “He set the glass on the piano and never moved it. A glass of water makes a pretty good mirror.”

  I rotated a quarter turn. A spinet, fairly new and inexpensive, with a plastic veneer, stood near the short hall leading to the restrooms and lockers. It was just something to take up space instead of a potted fern. I nodded again and turned back. “When?”

  “Christmas Eve.”

  I drank from the bottle and pinned the two bills under it. “If you don’t know, say so. I don’t pay by the word. Next time, hesitate a little. You might put it over.”

  He straightened his spine.

  “The beer’s a buck six bits. Thanks for coming and don’t call again.” He turned his back and started wiping his taps.

  I drank up. I was still sitting there two minutes later when he turned back. I pushed the bills his way. “That was a test. The job’s a little like surfing the Net. You have to sort out the genuine screed from stories about alligators in the sewer.”

  He leaned on his hands with the bar rag still in one. He didn’t touch the money or look at it. “You don’t forget Christmas Eve in the saloon business. Half the place is celebrating and the other half is drinking to drown out the jingle bells. Either way they drink just as much and they don’t go home before two o’clock. Sometimes not even then, and ten minutes later the cops come around and threaten to call liquor control. You can set your watch by them.

  “Meanwhile you got a wife at home who’s three months along and she won’t see you for another hour because you’ve got to balance out the register and put the cash in the safe and see out the help and swamp the sick out of the stalls in the bathrooms and look under all the tables for stowaways. You can’t rush home because you might hit a deer, and all the time you’re opening your presents next day you’re listening for the telephone and the call that tells you you’re being sued by the survivors of some smashed-up drunk because you sold him a perfectly legal beverage without giving him a Breathalyzer test first. I don’t need a calendar to remember what happened last Christmas Eve, or the one before that, going back to when I bought the place.”

  I lit a cigarette. “Work’s tough. I got shot outside a bar a lot like this one a few weeks ago.”

  “I thought maybe you were Bat Masterson.”

  I laughed. He laughed. It wasn’t that funny. We were letting out the bad air.

  “Buzz. That your name?”

  “Also Mac, Ace, and Slim. At home I’m Ronald. My folks were Reagan Democrats in California.”

  “Mine named me after half a radio show.” I shook his hand.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  I showed him the picture. He nodded and made a circular motion with the rag. The bills vanished.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Solid little guy. I broke my hand on one of those in high school. They’re as easy to knock down as a fireplug.”

  “Talk to him?”

  “I asked him if that was his Hurst Olds parked outside, a cherry heap. He said yeah and I said I was all set to make a guy an offer on a Shelby Mustang when my wife peed on a stick. He said he’d trade places with me anyway.”

  “What’d he mean?”

  “I guessed he meant he’d rather have a head on the next pillow than a car in the garage. You hear a lot of maudlin shit that time of year, but the way he said it was like saying he had to stop for gas before he left town. I liked him saying it. Most of the guys think it’s a tragedy of our time I had to settle for a minivan. I offered him another beer on the house. He said no thanks.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing. The next wave came in and I got busy. I didn’t know he’d left until Hap Hansen started playing and singing ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’ The little guy was pretty good. Next to Hap he was Chopin.”

  “I think it’s show-pan,” I said.

  He grinned tightly. “I know. That was a test.”

  I thumbed out another five-spot. He took it and opened the register to make change. I didn’t take it. “How well you know Miss Maebelle?”

  “Better than some, not as well as others. I wasn’t one of her students. I’m not as young as I look. She buys her beer to take out.” He jiggled the bills and coins in his hand, waiting.

  “The owner of a truck stop must have noticed that CXT she’s got parked out at her place. International doesn’t sell more than a hundred of those a year.”

  “It’s a lot of truck, even for a woman her size. Tip-up Town won’t pay it off in ten years.”

  “She says she’s holding it for a friend.”

  He found a place for the cash and put the rag to use. A fly would starve to death in that bar. “I hope for her sake she’s charging storage. It’s been parked in that spot for a month.”

  “It hasn’t moved? Maybe in the last couple of days?”

  “I couldn’t swear to it. I don’t look that way every day.”

  “She says she’s got heating problems in one of the buildings.”

  “No shit?” He looked unimpressed. “I had to shut down for a week last February on account of burst pipes.”

  I showed him Paul Starzek’s church flyer. “See anyone passing these out?”

  “Not that one. I get Witnesses, Adventists, Church of Christ, Scientists. One raggedy-ass Buddhist with a bad case of the shakes; I don’t think he’s committed. No Freshwater Sea.”

  I put it away and got my wallet out one more time. He held up a palm.

  “It’s not a good idea to flash too much cash here. Truckers are as honest as anybody, but the pilot fish that swim around them are as bad as bad gets. The hookers bang on cab doors before they come to a stop. What’s the racket, hijacking?”

  I put the cigarette out in a tray shaped like a truck tire. “Seen any queer bills lately?”

  He made a move for his apron pocket, checked himself.

  “The ones I gave you are good, so far as I know,” I said.

  “I found a bad twenty Christmas morning. I reported it.”

  “How’d you spot it?”

  “Cheap paper. What’s counterfeiting got to do with inheritance work?”

  “Not a damn thing, brother.”

  “My brother’s a dispatcher with Roadway. I only hear from him when the Lions don’t cover the spread.”

  “How well do you know Miss Maebelle?”

  “I tend bar. I know everybody and nobody at all.”

  I thanked him and left. On TV, the evil truck was plunging into the canyon. The gang at that end of the bar had lost interest and started arguing about the bill.

  NINETEEN

  Back on the highway, I got out of the path of a Sanilac County cruiser with its lights and siren going and watched its square rear end sproing into the distance, slush flying from all its tires. That settled the point. As hunches went, the one that had led me to the Sportsmen’s Rest wouldn’t hold up to cross-examination by a six-year-old. An experienced lammister like Jeff Starzek wouldn’t have put up there for an hour, let alone overnight. If he broke for it, his low-slung bucket wouldn’t make six hundred yards on the snow track that ran past the place with a four-wheeler in hot pursuit. Ditto a das
h across country to make the blacktop. I’d been pushed that direction by nothing more substantial than a divine wind: Kamikaze is the Japanese term. It fit me so well it sent cold splinters up my back with the heater blowing full blast.

  He’d stopped to play piano at the Air Horn Christmas Eve. It seemed to be the only rest he knew. That was nearly a month fresher than any other news about him, but it was ten days old, and it didn’t put him any closer to Miss Maebelle than two miles. I wouldn’t have found the place on my own. The only evidence the cheerful fat woman had told me a fish story was a monster truck that retailed higher than her four acres lakeview and the fact she’d lied to me about Cabin Twelve, and daylight was no time for me to make that long a cast. I needed a place to curl up until nightfall.

  In Thumb terms, Port Sanilac is San Francisco. It has a harbor, an airport just large enough to accommodate commuter planes, and a number of motels belonging to the smaller chains. Lake freighters steam right past on their way down to Detroit and Toledo, but in summer the pleasure boats stack the slips six deep. They were in mothballs now; the marinas were shuttered tight and the harbor itself looked as bleak as Little America. The clerk at the place I checked into, a compact redhead in a green vest, French cuffs, and from the amount of makeup on her face an Avon rep on call day and night, glanced at my cane and said she had a handicap room available on the ground floor. I said I needed quiet and took a smoker on the second floor back. It had a radiator, a bathroom with a chute for throwing away used safety blades, a telephone, a TV with a dial and no remote, and a mattress made from old refrigerator boxes. I sat up in bed with my leg propped on pillows, smoking and watching real people discussing their infidelities with an interviewer, waiting for more real people to come on and practice their infidelities before a coast-to-coast audience. That would be the evening lineup, and time to go to work.

  When I got tired of smoking I napped. Fifteen minutes later I got up, took the .38 Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special out of my overnight bag, and sat down on the bed to check the chambers and test the action. I hoped it wouldn’t throw off my balance.

  TWENTY

  The curtain dropped square on six with a nearly audible thud, pierced only by the security lights in the motel parking lot and the tiny yellow glow of the odd Coleman lamp out on the lake, the other side of the universe. I snapped on the bedside lamp and got into warrior mode.

  I stripped and put on a thermal suit I’d packed. It clung to my skin, all loose-woven cotton and space-age elastic, and felt like chain mail. Over it I pulled on wool slacks, a flannel shirt, and heavy ribbed socks that reached almost to my knees. With my feet in the lace-up boots I’d worn all day—which I’d parked next to the radiator to evaporate clammy sweat—my coat, and a navy watch cap that molded itself to my skull and covered my ears, I felt impregnable, a sensation that would last for about two minutes in the cold. I left my snap holster in the overnight bag and slipped the revolver into the deep patch pocket on the side of the coat. Last I tugged a brown jersey glove onto my left hand, leaving my shooting hand bare. The material was too bulky to fit easily through the trigger guard; I could keep the hand in the gun pocket until I needed it.

  In the full-length mirror on the closet door, I was a study in muted earth tones, which blended into the shadows far better than cat-burglar black. They’d be of no help at all when it came to crossing two or three acres of snow. I looked around the room, picked up the bag, and went out, but I kept the key. I didn’t know how late I’d be and if I’d have the energy to drive all the way home that night.

  I left by a back entrance at the base of a rubber-runnered flight of stairs and walked through a vapor of spent breath to my car. The crystals lit on my face like scampering spiders. The overcast had vanished, opening the earth to the cruel constellations that come out in winter and a cold that came straight from outer space. The moon was a tattered semicircle and gave little light, a break.

  The 455 ground, groaned mortally close to extinction, and caught with a smoker’s cough that settled into a smooth four-barreled rumble. I’d left the blower on, and switched it off when the first icy blast shot straight through three layers of material to my feet and ankles. A shudder racked me shoulder to sole. I got out with the scraper to clear the windshield, pausing several times to tuck my bare hand under my arm and wait for the sensation to return to the fingers. It had been a mistake to throw the other glove back into the bag. When I got back behind the wheel the heater had warmed up and I thawed the hand out the rest of the way in front of the vent. Now it burned and throbbed as if I’d scalded it. That was okay; it took my attention off my leg. I’d forgotten to take Vicodin before leaving the room. I thought about the bottle in the bag, but I didn’t reach for it. Pain keeps you alert.

  The little burglar kit I keep in the glove compartment got the once-over in the dome light and went into the pocket on my left side. In its vinyl snap container it looks at a glance like a portable assortment of miniature mechanic’s tools, appropriate to the owner of a car thirty years old. At a second glance the wire picks and penlight are probable cause for arrest. In detective school they tell you you need a steady hand, an analytical mind, and a gift for gab. They don’t mention second-story work.

  I took the side road to the Sportsmen’s Rest in first gear, but just below the speed where I’d have to shift into second to prevent stalling. I needed it in order to churn through some new drifts courtesy of the lake. Even then I got stuck once and had to rock my way out.

  At night the caboose and low bungalows set at picturesque angles looked like the aftermath of a train wreck. The only light visible came through the window of the caboose and the floods on top of the sign, another break. Apparently the fishermen on the lake were locals and the place was vacant until the weekend, with only Miss Maebelle present, drinking her beer and smoking her handmades.

  I drove on past without slowing and went another half mile before I found a place to park, in an angular cut on the side of the road where the most recent snowplow had turned in to shove aside its load. The Cutlass’ left rear fender stuck out a couple of inches into the roadway. I hoped it remained as untraveled as it looked. Outside the car I hesitated with the door open, then threw the cane into the passenger’s side. From here on in it would hamper more than it helped.

  South of Greenland and north of the Elephant Latitudes, there is no cold like the cold on the shore of a Great Lake after the sun’s gone down in early January. It closes on you like the hinged halves of an iron maiden, exerting pressure like the weight of a great ocean. You can’t get your breath, and what you manage to suck in sears your lungs like the air in a burning building. When the gusts come, pushing snow like clouds of volcanic ash, you can only turn your shoulder into them and wait for them to pass; otherwise you’ll lose your sense of direction and they’ll find you in the spring.

  I trudged through my own wheel tracks with my chin on my chest and both hands stuck deep in my pockets, the cold touch of the revolver like a pump handle against my bare palm. In some stretches the loose snow had caved in to fill the tracks and I had to wade through it, soaking my trousers, but not for long. It refroze in the near-zero air, stiffening the wool and turning it into aluminum siding. The walking kept my feet from freezing, but I lost all feeling in my lower legs. Unfortunately, that wasn’t where I’d been shot. I felt that part fine. Trying to keep my weight on my good leg made me wobble like a rickshaw with a broken wheel.

  At last I made the driveway of the Sportsmen’s Rest. I leaned against a tree trunk as hard as Pilgrim’s Progress to wipe my runny nose on the heel of my glove and blow steam. The sweat of exertion froze on my face. I rubbed feeling back into my cheeks with my bare hand, put it back in my pocket, and shoved off.

  A row of tall white pines flanked the driveway like giant pickets. I kept close to them for cover, and when I came to the last one I took a deep breath and sprinted jerkily across a broad clearing to a huge juniper spread nearly flat to the ground beneath the weight of sn
ow, spreading myself flat alongside it. If she was looking through her window, I hoped Miss Maebelle would think I was a gimpy deer. I hoped she didn’t need the venison. Folks up there don’t decorate their walls with shotguns for House and Home.

  I was lying on my belly on the earth’s iron core, and it wasn’t nearly as warm as advertised. A minute grunted past, also on its belly. The snowmobile parked near the caboose blocked my view of the door, but I was between gusts and didn’t hear anything. I rose into a crouch and made for the big salami shape of the propane tank on its slab. This was slower going, because the way led across a shallow dell filled with drifted snow. I wallowed through it hip-deep, the slowest-moving target since the great woolly dodo and as hard to spot in reflected starlight as an eight ball on white linen, but I had the caboose’s blind corner between me and the window now and I could concentrate on my destination. I was wheezing when I reached the tank and sat down in the snow with my back against the slab’s hard edge. My pulse ping-ponged between my ears. This was no work for an aging PI with a disability.

  The thermal underwear had been a mistake. Cotton is absorbent, and the longer I sat the clammier I felt. My leg had given up throbbing and sent a clear unbroken signal to my brain like a needle through my eye. I got up again, and even though there was another window on the side of the caboose that was now facing me I trudged a straight line through snow over my boot caps to the prefab bungalow with the Incredible Hulk’s truck parked outside it. I needed all the physical resources I had left just to finish the job.

  Luck and inertia—Miss Maebelle’s inertia, not mine—were on my side. A middle-aged woman of her girth didn’t push herself up out of her chair just to look at the scenery, and so far the blanket of snow had been insulation enough to muffle whatever noise I’d made, mostly of the panting variety. Nobody shot at me as I passed around the end of the truck, placing it comfortingly between me and the caboose. The snowmobile stayed silent. I laid my naked hand on the truck’s hood. The engine was cold, and from the snow tented around the tires it hadn’t moved since my visit in the afternoon. Standing close to it for the first time, I felt like half a dwarf. The cab stuck up a yard above my head, a giant straight out of Norse mythology, and I could stretch out across the front seat with almost a foot to spare on either end. The extension behind the seat was bigger than my kitchen. The bed, lined with stainless steel, ran only a third of the total length, but you could have parked a spare pickup inside it if you didn’t mind dropping the tailgate. The vehicle was what Goliath drove to the field of battle. Later, David pulled the wheels and made it his palace. Next to it, a Hummer was a Shriner’s car. Telephones installed front and rear would have different area codes. You needed a rope ladder to climb inside and a parachute to get back down. It was taller than the Flatiron Building, wider than Hadrian’s Wall, longer than the first flight at Kitty Hawk, and burned more gasoline than Saddam Hussein. It was a very big truck.