American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel (18 page)

“I’m short a man,” he said. Addressing me for the first time.

“I just took a job. Try the Wayne County Jail.”

“Somebody tipped Bairn that Ernesto was coming. He couldn’t of got the drop on him otherwise. I heard you was there.”

“I found Esmerelda. He looked just like a little angel.”

“You found more than that, I heard. You let Bairn get away.”

“I was distracted at the time. It hit the news, I guess. I missed it this morning. What do you know about Fred Loudermilk?”

“Who’s that?”

“Okay, maybe they’re sitting on him. He’s lake security. He drew down on me and told Bairn to beat it. Later he made a more energetic attempt to keep me from going to the law. I dropped a pier on his head.”

“Dead?”

“Concussed.”

“Still?”

“Awake but not talking. How’d Esmerelda find out Bairn was hiding at Deirdre’s mother’s place on the lake?”

“I came here to ask questions, not answer any.”

“If you wanted to beat anything out of me, you should’ve brought more guys.”

“Nobody’s that hard.”

“Not hard. Pigheaded. My old man was a Teamster back when Jimmy ran the joint, and it rubbed off. By the time you get me softened up enough to talk, I won’t be able to. There’s another way.”

“I didn’t come here to negotiate neither. Christ, you got balls big as bazookas. I’ll get ’em dried and hang ’em from my antenna.”

“You can’t pay me. I wouldn’t know what to do with it any more than a dog that caught a car. I’m talking about truth or dare.”

“Swap? Shit.”

I didn’t point out the obvious. Watson’s skin was thinner than his labor status, and he was too good an organizer not to know where his association was weak. Ernesto Esmerelda had known how much pressure to apply without getting carried away and destroying the source of information. Muscle without discrimination had no place on the table.

Elron stuck his Russian pistol behind his back. Leather squeaked. “I’ll hang him out the window. Can’t go wrong with a classic.”

“We’re only two floors up,” I said. “I could chip a tooth.”

“So I’ll take you up on the roof.”

“Shut your hole, Elron.” Watson ran a thumb down the side of his silk necktie. “All right, asshole. We hold the onions for now. Bairn told me about the place on the lake when he was making his pitch about everything he had coming when he
married the Fuller bitch. When that deal went south I sent Ernesto to look for him there. I thought maybe you figured the same thing and got word to him to expect a visit.”

“What I saw of Bairn I didn’t like strong enough to stick my neck out. Anyway, a guy with accounting training could work that out for himself. Maybe he saw your boy coming. It’s the pros that get careless.”

“Not Nesto. He outsmarted Castro’s best and he wasn’t slowing down.”

“There’s another explanation,” I said. “Bairn wasn’t the shooter.”

Watson stroked his soul patch, then shook his head. “Plenty of people didn’t like him, but Bairn’s the one with the connection to that house. And he was still hiding out next door afterwards. You saw him yourself.”

“I didn’t say it was a coincidence. If someone could tip him Esmerelda was coming, that same someone could furnish competition from Esmerelda’s league. They parked Bairn next door where he wouldn’t get in the way but where they could keep an eye on him, did the Cuban, and told Bairn to lie low until someone came for him. There isn’t a mechanic in the business who’d risk being stopped with a fugitive in the car on the way from a hit. Ditching the body in Bairn’s car and driving it into the lake sealed the deal, they thought; no wheels, no flight risk.”

“They didn’t know he had legs?”

“They thought they had him scared enough not to use them, but they overplayed their hand. He was scareder of them than he was of getting caught by the law and charged for Deirdre and Esmerelda. He was sure scareder of them than he was of you. That’s why he took the chance of losing
Deirdre and his shot at two million and used her to hock a stolen watch to pay you something on account.”

“He went to that chink chick for a loan and she told him to take a walk, that’s why,” Watson said.

“No. You got that from me, and I got it from her. That was before I found out how big her ambitions were. She wouldn’t turn down any avenue of financing out of hand. She offered to bail him out. It was what she demanded in return that scared Bairn out of all his best hopes, turned him back into the small-time thief he was just to stay alive and out of bigtime trouble. The kind of trouble that can jack you up for the rest of your life.”

“Such as what?”

“She buys and sells people,” I said. “Start with that.”

W
atson perched on the edge of the customer’s chair with his feet spread in varnished cordovans, forearms on his knees, snap-brim shoved to the back of his head to give his brain some air. After a moment he straightened and snapped his fingers at one of the wrecking crew, who cut himself loose from the wall and dug out a thick fold of bills in a diamond horseshoe clip. Watson took it and sat fingering it. It seemed to be his rosary.

“What’s Bairn got that the dragon lady wants so bad she’d off Nesto and buy this toy cop to keep him out of the can?”

“Loudermilk was bought already,” I said. “I’d be guessing the rest.”

“Guess away. Nobody here knows how to take notes.”

I sat in the swivel. I wanted to stay on my feet in case Elron or one of the others broke his leash, but my legs were still rubbery from the lake. “Bairn’s a bookkeeper for a courier firm. It could be she wanted him to cook the books and skim some off for her, but if he were any good at that he wouldn’t be peddling stolen merchandise for quick cash. Anyway, if the scope of her operation’s as big as advertised,
she needs millions to grease the wheels, not the few thousand he might manage to chisel, and even if that was the plan it shouldn’t have frightened him so much he’d jeopardize his meal ticket to pay his way out of the hole you put him in.”

“Okay. So we know what it wasn’t. What was it?”

“It’s a courier service, don’t forget. It delivers medical supplies and human organs all over the world by way of its own air fleet. It’s a sweet front for funneling case dough to Sing’s contacts overseas and transporting human cargo back home. No one has to know the planes don’t return empty except the bookkeeper, whose figures would reflect the extra fuel consumption. If she tried to recruit him to cover up traffic in illegal aliens, just when they’re top priority in Washington, it might scare him plenty. She didn’t refuse his request for a loan; he refused her offer on account of the strings she tied to it.”

“So you figure she offed his bitch to show him she meant business. That’s cold.”

“That’s something
you
might do. Maybe she arranged it to jam Bairn with the law so bad he’d have to agree to her terms to clear himself. She’s got the pockets to lawyer him up tight, or she could go the simpler route and throw someone to the wolves to take the rap. Maybe the actual killer. Meanwhile, though, she’d have to keep Bairn out of official custody in case he talked. Owning most of Black Squirrel Lake as she does, Sing figured he’d hide out at Fuller’s old vacation house. Your boy Esmerelda just happened to track him there when Sing’s own enforcer was on the premises, explaining things to Bairn.

“It had to have been a chance encounter,” I said, when Watson’s head started shaking. “It explains the battlefield decision to stash Bairn next door until things cooled down
enough to spirit him away. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been within twenty miles of that spot when Esmerelda showed up. Sing would already have had him on ice.”

Watson riffled the edges of the bills with a thumb, twiddling. “The shooter was in so much of a hurry he didn’t give a shout-out to Loudermilk. So the toy cop let Bairn boogie instead of stashing him where Sing’s peeps could finish explaining.”

“More likely Loudermilk panicked when I showed. Holding two men under one gun for different reasons was just a little outside his area of experience. When push came to shove all he remembered was Bairn had to be kept away from the authorities. He told him to beat it while he had me pinned down, and now Sing’s people are busy combing Oakland County for her patsy. It’s a big county. My guess? She’s put the same enforcer in charge who killed Esmerelda. If they can’t throw a loop around Bairn long enough to make him cooperate, they’ll cut their losses and plug him the minute he breaks cover. All it takes is one scared snitch to bring down a government or a corporation or an international conspiracy.”

“He’s the one I want. The enforcer.” Watson slid off the horseshoe clip, skinned ten bills from the fold, and held them up between two fingers of his left hand. “Thousand a day till you find out who killed Nesto. Tell me, not the cops. And don’t milk it. I got eyes all over town.”

“Use them. Even if I worked for thieves, I wouldn’t work for you.”

Elron stirred. I felt it in my legs. I wondered if those big weightlifter’s muscles would slow him down long enough for me to get to my gun before he jammed the Takarov down my throat.

But Watson only looked amused. He rewrapped the bills around the fold and slid the clip into place. “Nesto and I go back. They stopped exporting his quality years and years ago, like good Havanas. You tell me your terms and we’ll negotiate.”

“It’s timing, not price. When I deliver to my first client, the package will include the name of the shooter. Why not give your backfield a break and let the cops deal with him?”

“I thought Fuller would of shoved you off by now.”

“He did. I’m the client now. I’ve been shot at and pushed around and almost drowned. It’s
me
time.”

The telephone rang. I let it twice, then picked up.

“Mr. Walker? This is Charlotte Sing. Mai gave me your message.” Her voice was raised a little, the way people do when they’re speaking on a cell.

“One moment, please.” I cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. “We done?”

Watson rose, pushing on the seat until he had his weight distributed evenly on his toothpicks. “Anyone jacks you around, you tell him I got an interest in the concern.”

“More Esmereldas?”

“That’s the thing about unions. There’s always the second shift.”

The Village People preceded him out the door; all except Elron, who paused to scoop the revolver off the desk, shake the shells into his big palm, and toss them into a corner. Then he left, the Russian pistol riding a clip on the back of his belt. I didn’t have a refrigerator there to tip over.

After the outer door closed I put down the receiver and got up to make sure no one had stayed behind, then went back to my seat and apologized to Mrs. Sing for the interruption.

“If you’re indeed going to work for me, I have to insist you address me as Madame.”

“It’ll take getting used to,” I said. “It has a different meaning in this country, as I’m sure you know.”

“In my culture it’s a simple sign of respect. Many of my employees are new to this hemisphere. If I preserve some of the old customs it makes the transition much easier.”

“I’ll brush up on my tea ceremony.”

“I’m curious to know what made you decide to accept my offer. You struck me as a man who prefers self-employment.”

“That’s just another way of saying I’ve got a different boss every week. Also the travel opportunities are vastly overrated. Last month I was in Toledo three times.”

“I think I can promise you something a bit less tedious. Not San Francisco, however; not today. I’ll be back after the holiday. There is some briefing involved, and my schedule is tight.”

“I was hoping to get away for a while. I’m still keyed up over the Bairn case.”

“I heard about it on the news. Does this mean you’re finished with it?”

“Just a couple of loose ends to tie off. I was hoping to do that on the plane if you weren’t too busy.”

“I? I told you everything I know.”

“That’s not what Fred Loudermilk said. Well, bon voyage. Hope they serve fresher pretzels on chartered flights.” I cradled the receiver.

The telephone rang again as I was retrieving the cartridges from the floor where Elron had tossed them. I had a box in the desk, but I was thrifty and in no real hurry. One of them had rolled out of reach behind the radiator and I got up to get a pencil and tease it out. The telephone went on ringing all
this time. It was still ringing when I finished reloading the Chief’s Special and went to lunch.

I ate at the Pegasus in Greektown. I didn’t particularly feel like Greek, but I’d found a parking space nearby and just around the corner from police headquarters, which didn’t offer a valet service like Trapper’s Alley, although it does better business. I put away a plate of stuffed grape leaves, chased it with strong coffee as thick as Valvoline, refed the meter, and walked to 1300. I took my time to avoid breaking a sweat in the heat. I was in no real hurry.

John Alderdyce had set up camp at a desk out in the public ward, exposed on all four sides. The name on the trivet belonged to a sergeant on suspension pending an investigation into twenty-five kilos of cocaine missing from the evidence room. The inspector and Detective Burrough were bent over a multicolored pile of paper when I walked in. The third-grader wore seersucker, the other silk. If Burrough had put on silk, Alderdyce would have turned out in chinchilla, with diamond pendants on both ears. The pair seemed to be waging a war of sartorial one-upsmanship. It’s what passes for morale down there these days.

“Don’t tell me they broke you down already,” I said. “I just heard about the reorganization.”

Alderdyce looked up from under his rocky outcrop of brow. “Ceiling in my office fell in and took out the computer and fax machine. I had asbestos in my iced tea. Who told you the department’s reorganizing?”

I stalled, working my teeth with the cinnamon stick I’d scooped up at the cash register in the restaurant. “You can’t keep a secret in a drafty old barn like this. Anything to it?”

“Not if the union decides to grow a set of testicles. What
the hell were you doing staking out Fuller’s neighbor on the lake? You said you were off the case.”