American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel (17 page)

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Don’t waste your breath. If I thought you could do anything with it I wouldn’t be here. I know from years of experience you’re a pump that needs priming.” She wrapped her upper lip over her cup, then set it down and pushed it away. “I hate sugar. So on the level, this Hilary Bairn character is all you talked about?”

She wasn’t letting me off the hook, and I was too tired to
wiggle off. “Bairn went bust at Detroit Beach and wound up in hock to Wilson Watson, then went to her to borrow against what he expected to come into when he married the Fuller woman. Anyway, that’s what he told her, she said. When she showed him the door he tried to raise money to put off Watson. When that didn’t pan out, and his meal ticket died—by his own hand, probably, during a lovers’ quarrel—he fled to her mother’s place on the lake. Esmerelda tracked him there, with his toolbox; you know about his toolbox?”

“Everyone in Felony Homicide knows about the toolbox. You think Bairn shot him?”

“What I think stopped counting when Darius Fuller took me off the job. A sheriff’s lieutenant thinks it, and so does John Alderdyce. Esmerelda’s body in Bairn’s Aztek gives it some weight. Also I caught Bairn trying to escape from his hidey-hole in the shack next door.” I told her what had happened then.

She nodded. “I got all that from John. This security schmoe Loudermilk is government property, if he wakes up. You might have left a little more of him for us to work on.”

“I hit him just as hard as I could with the only weapon I had available. He still out?”

“He’s conscious, but his doctors are still stiff-arming us. But we’ve got as many lawyers as they have. I feel bad for John,” she said, apropos nothing. “You know they’re about to take his job away from him?”

I put down my cup. My brewing skills had deteriorated along with most of the others. “Not for the way he’s been handling this investigation. He wrote the book.”

“The mayor and the chief can’t read. They’re getting ready to reorganize the department: layoffs, of course, and they want to consolidate the precincts into districts. The worst part
is they’re doing away with the rank of inspector. That means promotion to commander, if you’re close enough to city hall, but John’s been too busy doing his job to line up dates for the annual mayor’s convention on Mackinac Island, so he’s looking at lieutenant. He won’t stand for it, which is what they’re counting on, because inspectors are expensive to keep. They’ll shove him into early retirement without having to hike his pension.”

“He seemed a little thornier than usual. I thought it was the leaky roof downtown.”

“That’s part of it. It’s an old slumlord’s trick: let the facilities go to hell and drive out the tenants, then go condo. Why do you think I sent my resumé to Justice?”

“You didn’t sound as if you were committed to the job.”

“A girl has to keep herself in pantyhose. I tried to convince John to go with me, but he’s got a family, and Detroit’s in his blood. He said he wouldn’t last six months in historic Georgetown.”

“He’s right. He was born at Henry Ford.”

“What else you got besides this radiator flush?”

I got up, dumped out the cups in the sink, came back with two glasses, and poured us each three fingers from the bottle I’d brought from the bedroom. We clinked.

“Isn’t this breakfast for you?” she asked.

“Jet lag. Aren’t you on duty?”

She fluttered her lips and drank. “That’s not much better. You ought to be able to afford better with your overhead.”

“Everything’s relative.” I finished ahead of her and bought another round. “I’m not the office watercooler. Why bitch to me?”

“This Fuller case is high-profile,” she said. “He’s almost the only sports hero this town has left. If John can break it
and break it big, the chief won’t have any choice but to kick him upstairs. Only he can’t, because we won’t let him. Not if it means jeopardizing the Charlotte Sing investigation.”

“Am I going to like where this conversation is headed?”

“If some concerned individual in the private sector should manage to lay his hands on Bairn and turn him over to the Criminal Investigation Division, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot Uncle Sam could do to reverse the gears.”

I turned that over with gloves on. All my prepared dialogue was based on people in positions of authority telling me to lay off. “Are you hiring me?”

“Not on a government salary. But a thing like that would go a long way to square you with Detroit.”

“And screw me with Washington. If I louse up the Sing case and they trace it to you, they’ll revoke both our citizenships.”

“Nothing that drastic, but we’ll probably both be audited. I’ll be out of a job, of course, but like the man said, I was looking for a job when I got this one.”

“What’s your end?”

She clattered a set of clear-polished nails on her glass. “If it weren’t for John Alderdyce, I’d still be in the blue bag on Stationery Traffic. The old mayor—you know the one I mean—had the son of a friend all lined up for the vacancy in Felony Homicide. I had the chops, but the son had the testicles. John threatened to bring in the union.”

“He went on suspension once. He wouldn’t talk about it.”

“That was part of the deal to put him back on duty. He hadn’t been an inspector long enough to make demands, but the administration was in too bad a cess with the DPOA as it was to piss off the rank-and-file over one more issue. John won, but he knew he’d never make commander as long as
anyone remembered what he did. Now I’m in a position to do him the same solid. You, too. He could’ve busted you down to a job with mall security a dozen times; the licensing board would’ve listened to him. Twice I tried to get him to do just that. I’m not asking any favor you don’t already owe.”

I took another hit, but it did nothing to stiffen my spine. I did need a better brand. “What else can you tell me about Charlotte Sing?”

“She’s my territory. Bairn’s yours.”

“They’ve overlapped twice now. I may have to bag her, too.”

I
t was Friday, the first day of the Independence Day weekend. That made for four days of deserted expressways downtown and in the suburbs and choked arteries to the North and West. A truck dumpover at dawn, a chain collision at seven-fifteen, and a police chase at eight had the outbound traffic backed up a total of twenty-seven miles. The chopper jockey on WJR could barely contain his glee.

I was out of just about everything, so after Mary Ann Thaler left I sopped up the alcohol with toast and a fresh pot of coffee I hadn’t strained through limburger cloth, boiled off the sweat and stink of Black Squirrel Lake with hot water, shaved, and put on a sport shirt, slacks, and loafers. It was Casual Friday in the detective business, but even that has its limits. I swung by the office to break the Chief’s Special out of the safe and snapped it to my belt under the shirttail.

From there I drove to the old Kern block and entered a narrow deep shop in Merchants Row, a thirty-million-dollar face-lift on a ninety-five-year-old commercial neighborhood with loft apartments erected atop 28,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, most of it filled with stepladders
and draped canvas; when you build it they don’t necessarily come. The clerk behind the glass counter was a kid who couldn’t stop yawning. He tore off a bitter one and turned over the object I’d placed in his hand. “Man, you’re not supposed to immerse these in water.”

“Man, I couldn’t help it. It was on me when I went through the wash cycle. Can you fix it?”

He opened the cell phone and shook out a jigger of water. “I can replace it. It’ll cost you full price. You voided the warranty.”

“I need to retrieve a number from this one’s memory. Someone called me the other day and I have to get back to her.”

“What day?”

“Wednesday.”

“Come back Monday. No, Tuesday. Monday’s the fourth.”

“I need it today.”

“Not an option. Frankenstein didn’t build Boris Karloff in a day.” He yawned.

“I’m impressed. I didn’t think anyone your age knew Boris Karloff from Boris Yeltsin.”

“Who?”

I snapped a fifty-dollar bill under his nose. His mouth clapped shut in mid yawn.

I went out to smoke cigarettes and watch the tumble-weeds. The opposite side of the street was in deep shade but on my side the sun walloped the pavement. The parking meters shimmied and swooned and there was a sweet sticky smell of bubbling tar. A FedEx truck stopped in front of the old Parker block to make a delivery, then moved on, and that was the only human activity I witnessed until I snapped my last stub at the storm drain and went back inside.

The kid had my dead cell plugged into a laptop computer open on the counter. His hands fluttered over the keys. At least he’d stopped yawning. I admired the racks of fuses, coiled cords, and software on display while he diddled. Everything available seemed to have been made in China, with instructions in English and French.

“Okay, you want a printout?”

I put down a gadget that promised to transmit the sounds of Eminem to whatever radio stations weren’t carrying them. “Just show me the screen.”

He swiveled the laptop my way. I recognized Darius Fuller’s number in Grosse Pointe and several others. I wrote the two I couldn’t identify in my notebook. One of them would belong to whatever instrument Charlotte Sing had used to invite me to interview her at her temporary suite in the Hilton Garden Inn. “Thanks.” I put away the notebook.

“How do you want to pay for that replacement phone?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“I can fix you up right now if you’ve got a card.”

“I don’t have a card.”

“Personal check’s okay. We know where to find you.” He looked sly.

“I’ve got twelve dollars in checking. When I said I’ll let you know I meant whether I decide I want a replacement.”

“I can give you an upgrade if you’re dissatisfied.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Man, you can’t walk around without a phone!”

I hung a cigarette off my lower lip. “What do you think people did before cell phones were invented?”

“Same thing they did before cars: walk on their knuckles and watch
I Love Lucy.”

I went back to the office and tried the numbers. The first
didn’t answer and the second turned out to belong to the cell phone company, calling from headquarters to find out how much I liked my purchase. I’d forgotten that call immediately. The kid in the store could have told me what it was and saved me the trouble. I made up my mind then about replacing the cell.

I went through the mail. There was no change in my Hupmobile stock, so I tried the first number again. A female voice with a musical note in it read back the number by way of salutation.

“Good morning, Mai. This is Amos Walker. Do you remember me?”

“Yes. We played a little trick on you.” Her tone didn’t change. “I’m afraid Madame Sing is unavailable. She’s leaving for San Francisco this afternoon.”

“She offered me a job the other day. I’d like to give her my answer.”

“I’ll take the message.”

“The answer is yes; which means I’m going with her when she leaves. What’s her flight number?”

“I’m sure she didn’t intend for you to start right away.”

“If something happens because her security is short-handed I’d never forgive myself. Anyway, I want to see how they celebrate the Fourth out on the Coast. A parade with a dragon float, I hope. I can make my own arrangements if she’s booked all her seats.”

“I’ll call you back.”

I told her my cell was out of order and gave her the office number. I hung up grinning. As Asians went, Mai was thoroughly scrutable. I’d thrown a curve and caught her looking.

The moment was gone almost before I could savor it. The hall door opened and I was getting up to open the private
door when it swung around on its hinges and the knob punched a hole in the plaster on my side. Elron, the Scientologist bodyguard, stooped to look at me and stuck out what looked like a Takarov semiautomatic at arm’s length. He’d traded his gray hoodie for a yellow Ridgerunner T-shirt that exposed most of his impressive superstructure. The heat had gotten to him finally. “Lay it on the desk.”

I’d drawn the Chief’s Special without thinking. I put it on the blotter and took a step back. “I thought you union types always looked for the label.” I tilted my head toward the foreign pistol.

He looked at it as if noticing it for the first time, then made a dry sound in his throat and lowered the hammer and the weapon. “Wilson don’t supply the equipment. They sell this Russian military ordnance by the pound. Threw in a case of ammo free of charge. Okay.” He stepped inside and away from the door.

They came in single file because there wasn’t a doorway this side of Uncle Ed’s Oil Shop that would let them in two at a time. None was as big as Elron, but all four of them in one place shattered the local safety code. Their faces wore the empty sightless concentration of the bodybuilder’s trance: hour after hour pumping away in the exercise yard, nothing to listen to but the rattle of the weights and the whistle of their breath. They trundled in and stood with their backs to my walls, arms not quite hanging at their sides because the shortened tendons bent them at the elbows. Two were white; say what you like about Wilson Watson—and people did—he did his recruiting by the board foot and not on the basis of race.

“Okay, Wilson,” Elron said.

Today it was urban upscale, P. Diddy instead of Fresh
Prince. Watson had left the cap and leather jacket behind and turned out in a silver pinstripe and gray fedora with a black silk band, but he still looked like Humpty Dumpty. He waddled in on his broken-straw legs, looked from me to the revolver on the desk to Elron. “Check him for hideouts?”

“Nah. Man don’t wear them in his own digs. They’re uncomfortable enough outside.”

Watson didn’t like that, but he didn’t pursue it. I learned something then: He was a little afraid of his own security. He’d picked it for size and punishing power, but he was still the sick kid hiding from bullies in the corner of the playground. It was a handy thing to remember.