Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss

by Loren D. Estleman

  “That’s long coin with you.”

  “You should know.” I watched the scenery pass in a white wipe. “Clemson told me himself this Treasury-paper thing was too big for anyone but a well-funded gang of terrorists. The Mafia’s gone bust and the independent crooks don’t have the organization. Setting aside terrorists, that leaves just Uncle Sam.

  “He’s poured billions into the war on terror,” I went on. “Who’s to notice if one of his own people diverts a few hundred thousand from the operating fund to open his own shop?”

  “Someone did. They’re calling him in.” The light changed. He chirped his tires crossing the intersection.

  “That action’s recent. He’s been recruiting his people—people like you and Paul and a woman named Miss Maebelle—out of his operation’s budget. Maybe it was serendipity at the start. Maybe he stumbled on a genuine counterfeiting mill in the course of his smuggling investigation and saw his chance to cash in. Look at the code name he picked out.”

  He took his eyes off the road long enough to look again at the printout on the seat between us. “I see what you mean.”

  “Call it Paul Starzek’s legacy. We may never know how your brother came by that Treasury stock. Could be someone in his congregation caught a strong case of guilt and picked the wrong clergyman to hear his confession. They’re all getting close to judgment. Whatever you say about Paul, he was devoted to his do-it-yourself church. He bought himself a state-of-the-art printer and spent his first dividend on a new statue of St. Sebastian. Clemson saw it in less spiritual terms. He may not even be guilty of treason, just misappropriation of funds and a count or two of conspiracy to commit forgery. And murder, of course.”

  “You’re sure he killed Paul?”

  “Paul was a liability. Clemson said so himself, when he was putting the rap on terrorists. Paul mixed up the stock with the paper he used to print his advertising circulars. If he was that unreliable, he’d have shown it in other ways as well. Clemson neutralized him and moved the inventory to another safe house.”

  “The Sportsmen’s Rest. I heard about that business on the lake. It sounded a little like you.”

  “It couldn’t have come as much of a surprise. You stopped to play the piano in Miss Maebelle’s neighborhood Christmas Eve.”

  He used a right-turn lane to beat a red light, swerving around a cautious driver in a hatchback. “Paul bragged a bit. He wanted to impress me with his missionary work. Anyway I wanted to see how deep Clemson was in. I thought it might come in handy.”

  “I got a good look at Miss Maebelle when I showed her your picture,” I said. “She didn’t know you from Andy Jackson.”

  “I didn’t get that far. I’m as good as I am at what I do because when I’m driving, driving’s all I think about. I get most of my thinking done about other things when I stop. I had a swallow of beer, I played a little Bach and Fats Waller. Then I reverted to instinct and ran like hell.”

  “Like hell is right.”

  We went a block in silence.

  “Pull over a minute,” I said. “I want to show you something else.”

  He frowned, but took his foot off the accelerator and let the drag carry us onto a patch of gravel by the Grand Trunk tracks. Low empty buildings dotted the landscape like an adobe village. He braked. A lump of humanity in tattered Carhartt and a backpack looked over at the car from fifty yards down the rails, then resumed scouring the cinderbed for jetsam.

  I’d lied to Ernst Dierdorf about leaving the gun in my car. I hadn’t taken two steps from it since leaving Port Sanilac. I took it out and pointed it across my lap at Jeff.

  He smiled, but he didn’t try to pass it off as a joke. The world amused him. He saw most of it blurring past at eighty-five. He let one hand dangle over the steering wheel and faced me. Two seasoned duelists watching each other over their choice of weapons.

  “Let’s revise,” I said. “You knew I’d come looking for you in an obvious place like a truck stop on the route you told me you’d be taking. You stayed long enough to leave an impression with the bartender. You had a conversation with him. You never do that. Why didn’t you just go ahead and leave a trail of bread crumbs?”

  “The Rest isn’t easy to find from the state highway. I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t miss it.”

  “How long have you been in Detroit?”

  “Just long enough to pick up a couple of things. Change of socks. A new paint job. Clemson was looking for a blue car. I’ve done a lot of business over the years with OK. Who do you think recommended you when he was looking for a buyer for that Cutlass?”

  “Were you planning on dropping by my place?”

  “No.”

  “A man in your tight needs all the friends he’s got.”

  “Open the glove compartment,” he said.

  I didn’t even look at it. “Turn off the motor.”

  He twisted the key in the ignition. When the rumbling stopped, the silence hurt my ears. He’d torn out all the carpeting and insulation that muffled the noise from under the hood. Heater, too; our breath curled.

  “Key,” I said.

  “Gun.”

  After a second I laid the .38 on the dash. He took the key out then and put it next to the revolver. I popped open the glove compartment.

  It didn’t contain any of the usual junk, not even an insurance card or registration. All it held was a No. 10 envelope. I slid it out. It was blank. I lifted the flap, spread it open to look at the Michigan driver’s license inside. His picture looked recent.

  “ ‘Jason Argo,’ ” I read. “You better hope you don’t get stopped by a classical scholar.”

  “What are the odds?” He smiled, waggled the hand hanging over the wheel. “I’m a romantic. It’s always been about the driving. The money was just for gas and oil.”

  “There’s always NASCAR.”

  “Too many rules. Too many logos. Too many yellow flags. My parents were hippies, don’t forget. It’s in the blood.”

  “Paul must have gotten a transfusion somewhere else.”

  “Not true. He didn’t have to start his own church. He could’ve been a Baptist.”

  I flicked a finger at the license. “This is good work.”

  “It better be. It cost me five cases of Luckies.”

  “Where’s the Social Security card?”

  “You don’t need one in Canada.”

  I put the license and envelope back and shut the compartment. “Take the tunnel. Trucks on the bridge back up for hours. If you’d asked me to keep Clemson and his people busy, I might have said yes. You didn’t have to snag me in with a phony cry for help.”

  “It wasn’t phony. Cops and hijackers I can handle. I know the playbook. The spooks change the rules as they go. I needed another guerrilla to split their concentration.” He spread his fingers. “I didn’t know you well enough to ask. You might have said no.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes. I was tired, my leg hurt.

  “I didn’t mind so much,” I said. “Not even screwing up the leg. You pulled me out of that parking lot. I might have, if I knew I was just there to drag a dead skunk across Clemson’s path. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done all the same things. It just would have been different.”

  “Does he know about Rose?”

  I looked at him. I felt lonely suddenly. Whistling in the wind will do that.

  “Not yet, but he knows where you went to school. He knows I have a client, from a bank deposit I made. He’s closing in.”

  “How do you figure he got all that without help from Washington?”

  I sat up. “He’s got a mole. Probably the same one who forwarded all his calls and mail from the Detroit office. He said it took three days for a note I sent from Port Sanilac to reach him. He’d have found Rose long before this if he could go through regular channels. He can’t pay for the service much longer. He put a match to his working capital.”

  “He’s folding his tent.”

  I lit the cigarette
I found between my lips. I didn’t remember putting it there. “His cards, maybe. He doesn’t usually overplay his hand.”

  “He doesn’t have to. He owns the deck.”

  I shook out the match. While I was doing that he snatched the key off the dash. The Hurst’s engine grumbled to life. I made a move for the gun. Then I saw the blue-and-red flashers in his mirror.

  “Hang on to your teeth.” He threw the car into gear. Gravel sprayed.

  THIRTY

  Jeff Starzek laughed. “God, I love this.”

  His enthusiasm seemed inappropriate. We were flying down a long grade with a flat section at the bottom where streetcar tracks had been torn up decades ago, with a sharper grade rising from that. The topography presented a distinct advantage to the heavier Detroit cruiser on our tail, which gobbled up yards out of the gap with each second; its momentum would match the Hurst’s acceleration on the climb. I hung on to the door handle and felt the siren yelping in my leg.

  “City cops don’t know Clemson’s gone rogue,” I said through my teeth. “You should’ve ditched the car, not repainted it.”

  “I broke the first rule: Don’t fall in love with your machine.” He didn’t sound contrite. We struck sparks off the frame at the base of the hill, straining our seat belts tight. He put his foot through the fire wall. The carburetor gulped air and we headed for open sky. Behind us the cruiser hit the flat with a bang and bore down on our rear bumper.

  I expected Jeff to swing left onto Joseph Campau, splitting the enclosed suburb of Hamtramck and gaining ground on the straightaway. He shot past it and took the square corner onto East Grand on two patches of tire no bigger than the palm of my hand.

  “You know Detroit?” I asked.

  “Does a Jew know Jerusalem?”

  “You can’t lose him downtown.”

  He said nothing, baring his teeth at the windshield.

  We were nearly across Harper when he took a left, cutting the corner off the curb on the right side but not touching it with his tires; the world tilted thirty degrees, then righted itself with a report I felt in my teeth when our wheels touched down. I turned my head in time to see the cruiser slew around 360 in the middle of the intersection and come out of it with rubber smoking. It was no rookie at the wheel.

  Another left on Mt. Elliott, two inches shy of a white Escalade waddling across from the other direction, and we powered past old Dodge Main, now a GM assembly plant. Jeff knew its history.

  “I’m thinking Chrysler next time,” he said. “See how that new hemi handles dirt roads.”

  The Escalade had stopped in the middle of the intersection, but the cruiser had looped around it and was coming on hard.

  I said, “In your position I’d consider a paper route.”

  When Mt. Elliott branched off to the right, we went straight on Conant, lefted again on Holbrook, and tore across Hamtramck. This was home territory to me, but when we left that major cross street for the neighborhoods I saw signs I’d never seen before. We slalomed among the drives and courts, avoiding the cul-de-sacs, for several minutes, losing ten miles an hour to the turns, but the cruiser was no longer in sight. I heard its siren, baying like a hound quartering a field.

  “You live around here, don’t you?” Jeff asked.

  “The garage is empty.” I directed him.

  In my driveway I scrambled out to lift the door, forgetting my limp. He nearly clipped the bottom edge with his roof. The door thumped down and I heard the furious yelping pass by a street or two over.

  Jeff got out, looking as if he’d just scored a good space in the lot at Ford Field.

  “We can’t stay here,” I said. “Clemson knows where I live.”

  He glanced around the windowless garage. “Does that door lock?”

  It didn’t, but I took a screwdriver off the peg board near the side door and jammed it through a slot in the right track near the floor. I gave the door a test pull. It lifted two inches and stopped when the roller met the obstruction.

  “I’ve got time for a drink,” he said.

  “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  “Only when I’m driving.”

  We went into the kitchen. I filled two tumblers with ice, poured Scotch, and we sat facing each other in the breakfast nook.

  “Nice house.” Jeff drank. “Rotten liquor.”

  “It was a tough choice.” I drank. The stuff kicked like a kitten. My heart was still jumping two hundred to the minute. “Where to from here?”

  He wore a green twill shirt and jeans, no overcoat. He patted the breast pocket. Paper rustled. I hadn’t seen him retrieve the envelope containing his fake driver’s license.

  “They’ll be watching for you at Customs,” I said.

  “They’ll be watching for the car. I know a guy has a heap he’ll be tickled pink to get rid of. Get what you can for the Hurst, if they don’t confiscate it; I’ll mail you the title. That should pay your hospital bill.”

  “You know Windsor?”

  “I know all the places where cigarettes are cheap. I’ve got some cash there in a locker. You’d be surprised how much you can put aside when you don’t pay taxes or insurance. I can live a year there on the exchange rate. Longer, if there’s anything over there the politicians in Ottawa don’t want people to have. There’s thousands of miles of back road in the western territories.”

  “You might not have to.”

  He shook his head.

  “You can’t take him, Amos. They won’t let you. They’ll just close ranks. With me out of reach, he’ll lose interest. Call it a draw. Paul won’t mind.”

  “He’ll find Rose.”

  He said nothing. His face said the same. He’d spent his adult life bluffing his way through Customs and traffic stops and the muscles had set into a bland mask.

  “He’ll use her to get to you,” I said. “Me, too. We’re the only ones who can tie him to counterfeiting and murder.”

  “He already got to you.” He drained his glass and rose. “Thanks for the company. I can’t remember the last time I had a passenger. I won’t thank you for the hospitality. I’ll send you a case of Canadian. The good stuff, not the grizzly sweat they export.”

  “Don’t. I’m going on the wagon. Need a cab?”

  “No. Not even Clemson will think to look for me on foot.”

  After he left by the front door, I sat there and watched my ice cubes melt. I thought about Rose Canon, the woman who loved Jeff Starzek, and of all the women who loved the wrong men for the right reasons. One wrong was all it took to waste your time.

  I emptied the glass, still without effect, and got up to wash it. I scooped Jeff’s off the table and chucked it into the trash can, hard enough to break it. I didn’t want to take the chance of drinking from it by mistake.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I’d left without breakfast that morning, so I threw two eggs in a skillet, made toast, emptied and washed the coffeepot, and made a fresh batch, extra brawny. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed something to sit on top of the Scotch. It really was rotten stuff.

  I ate without tasting and carried my second cup into the living room. Rose Canon’s telephone rang four times before she picked up. Little Jeffie was mad as hell about something, raising blisters on my ear. “Just a second,” Rose yelled. “I’ll put you on speaker.”

  Her end of the conversation echoed after that. She stopped to sing to the baby in snatches, make cooing noises, jiggle it while her voice wobbled in response to my questions. Jeffie went on screaming.

  “Heard from Oral?” I asked.

  “He called this morning. We had a long talk. He’s coming to take me out to dinner Friday night, an honest-to-God date. He thinks we ought to go back and start over. Is that a good idea?”

  “I’m way underqualified to answer that one. Maybe you should start by just enjoying the meal.”

  “Is there any news about Jeff?”

  “He’s okay. Still running.”

  She jumped on it. “How do you know? D
id you see him?”

  “Not over the telephone. Agent Clemson call you yet?”

  “No. You have to tell me about Jeff.”

  “I’m on my way.” The baby was coming in loud and clear over the speaker. I had an idea. “Is there someplace you can go for a couple of hours today?”

  “Shopping, but we don’t need anything. Why?”

  “I want to set up a meeting with Clemson. I don’t think he’ll open up in my house or office, and I don’t trust any place he’d suggest. I wouldn’t ring you in, except if he doesn’t know all about you by now he will soon anyway.”

  “Are you thinking of turning Jeff in?”

  “No. Whatever he’s done or hasn’t done, I’m still carrying him on the books.”

  “You did see him, didn’t you? Something happened between you. I raised Jeff. I know when someone isn’t telling me the whole story.”

  “In person.”

  There was a little gulp of silence. The baby had paused for breath.

  “I suppose it won’t hurt to stock up,” Rose said. “When?”

  “I’ll call back after I talk to Clemson.” I worked the plunger and dialed the agent’s cell number, which I knew now by heart. It rang three times and kicked me over to voice mail. I broke the connection again and tried his pager.

  Two minutes later the telephone rang. “This better be good,” Clemson said. “We just went on orange alert. Someone wants to blow a hole in the middle of Martin Luther King Day.”

  Something hummed in the background; tires on pavement. He was driving.

  “Well, I can’t touch that,” I said. “I wanted to tell you I had a drink this morning with Jeff Starzek.”

  The line crackled. A hand gripped the receiver tight. “Where?”

  “My place, but he left.”

  “You’re there now?”

  “I’m just leaving. I can meet you in Oak Park.” I gave him the Canons’ address.

  “What’s in Oak Park?”

  “All the family Starzek has left.”

  It was dangerous bait, and I almost didn’t use it. But he struck.

  “Are you saying you’re coming through with your client?”