Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro (14 page)

“Who keeps the checkbook in your house, Mr. Babbage?”

That one went home. The ham face became opaque.

“I do, since she took ill. You’re no kind of detective if you think she’d hire someone else and rob herself of the satisfaction of killing Garnet.”

“That wouldn’t stop you.”

He drew himself up then, and I realized how big a man he was when he wasn’t trying to fade into the furniture. “I don’t think I like you, Mr. Walker. I doubt I would if we belonged to the same generation. The difference is I’d be in a position to do something about it.” He went to the door and opened it.

I turned at the threshold. “What did your wife mean when she said you were right? It was just after she accused me of being honest.”

He blinked. “Something I said once. She reminds me of it from time to time, usually to prove me wrong. I said if you live long enough, someday you’ll ask someone a hard question and get the truth back, not just what you want to hear. It’s not a virtue. It’s a burden, like total recall.”

I went out and he shut the door. The air in the open entryway was as heavy as ever, but I gulped it in as if I’d been holding my breath for an hour.

L
lewellyn Hale screwed the bowl back into place and stepped down from the customer’s chair. I got up from the swivel in the corner, switched off the radio I’d put on to mask the noises, and followed him out through the little reception room into the hall.

The Canadian investigator ran his fingers through his pale hair, which had threatened to come untousled. Today he wore a Blue Jays jersey with the tails out over jeans as stiff and blue as the ones he’d had on when we’d met in the Loyal Dominion office. It might have been the same pair. The sneakers were different.

“It looks like a more advanced version of the latest gimmick in next year’s catalogue,” he said. “‘State of the art’ doesn’t cover it. Not for another six months anyway. This one could pick up half a decibel in a volume of air the size of a big top.”

“You can tell that just by looking?”

“I’d have to take it apart and test it with instruments to be sure. You said leave it where it is.”

I’d called him that morning from Rosecranz’s desk, offering his day rate and travel to take a look at the new feature in my
office, along with one or two other things. Electronic surveillance was a specialty at Loyal Dominion.

“The advantage shifts my way until whoever planted it finds out I know about it,” I said. “Could it pick up both ends of a telephone conversation?”

“Did you check for taps?”

“I took apart the handset. Nothing.”

“That means they went for versatility. If the party on the other end spoke loudly enough to be heard by someone else in the room, yeah. Easy. Let me know when you’re ready to disconnect. Trade you my fee for it.”

“Triple it. I may be technologically challenged, but I know the market. Would a private agency have access to anything like that?” I was thinking of the Babbages and how far they’d go to balance the account on Karl Anthony Mason.

“Pinkertons, maybe. Not even them, probably. Intelligence services always get first crack at the new toys.”

“What about the mob?”

“That one I can’t answer. We don’t have organized crime in Canada.”

I looked at him. His freckles joined in a flush.

“Okay. An experienced thief can lay hands on anything. Especially when there’s a long history of cooperation between his employers and the various agencies. We
are
pickier about that up north; but then the security of the planet isn’t our jurisdiction.”

“You can have it anytime you ask. What about the other thing?”

He drew a miniature Etch-a-Sketch from his hip pocket and poked at the buttons with a stylus attached to it by a wire. “Lost Galleon Entertainment is a little more than just four guys, if you count a couple of wives and a girlfriend with a doting father and a little mad money. No wants or warrants, one misdemeanor conviction, possession of marijuana. That may be a job requirement. One bankruptcy, years back. Couple of passbook
accounts dragging bottom, printers’ bills in arrears to the tune of seventy-five hundred American. I spoke to the senior partner. He was high on Delwayne Garnet’s scripting and artwork, not so high on his personality, as when was that ever a serious handicap for an artist. I don’t think he killed him over it, but that’s just my opinion.”

“I wanted to take a crack at him myself. What else?”

“Junior partner’s got a gambling problem. Casino Windsor barred him over a scuffle with a pit boss when he dropped the monthly distribution budget on a turn at blackjack.”

“Run that down.”

“I did. He pawned his wife’s engagement ring to make good. Right now Lost Galleon is a comic book publisher with debts and no artist. Not exactly an inducement to murder their sole asset.”

“What about insurance policies?”

“Can’t swing the premiums. My opinion is you’ve got a homegrown homicide on your hands.”

“You got all that today?”

“I got all that this morning. Part about the hocked ring came in over the on-board computer during the drive down. Your bill.” He pocketed the gizmo, slid a folded sheet off his other hip, and stuck it out.

I snapped it open, read it, and put it in my inside breast pocket. “How many operatives you employ?”

“Two full-time. We’re a second-rate power. We try harder.”

“That famous inferiority complex of yours is just a blind for an ego as big as Newfoundland,” I snarled. “You heading straight home?”

“I thought I’d make it a weekend, take in Henry Ford and the MGM Grand. I’m staying at the RenCen.”

“Check your messages. I might have another errand or two since you’re in town.”

He produced a flip-phone from a slash pocket. “Number’s on the bill.”

“Where do you carry your wallet?”

“I get by on my boyish good looks.” He grinned.

“You remind me of a reporter friend of mine. He thinks he’s the lost Baldwin brother.”

“I thought we already had one of those. I bet we wouldn’t get along.”

“Save your cash for the Grand.” We shook hands. I hung on. “Ever hear of a boxer named Smallwood?”

“Sounds like a medical condition. Is it important?”

I let go of his hand. “I didn’t think so until just now. When you found Delwayne Garnet so quick I didn’t figure the job to set me back more than a day. I had to rewind better than thirty years. Now it looks like I’ll have to go back further.”

“How far?”

“All the way.”

When he left I went back into the office and bought myself a drink from the honor bar in the desk; let whoever was on the listening end of my new sound system make what he wanted of the gurgles and clinks. I thought about Barry Stackpole, the local branch of the Llewellyn Hale chain of narcissistic professionals, and picked up the telephone. I needed all he could give me from the archives circa 1949 and the Curtis Smallwood case. It was beginning to look like Delwayne Garnet had inherited his father’s enemies.

I was dialing when I remembered the bug all over again; like reaching for the light switch when you know the power’s out. I called for the time instead, hung up, adjusted my watch, and left. At these prices even Bill Gates couldn’t monitor every telephone in town.

A gray Jaguar prowled past as I was walking toward the booth in the next block. Since Ford bought the insignia they’re as common as Starbucks, and I wouldn’t have noticed except the car was doing half the speed limit, which in the Motor City is regarded as one of those quaint old laws like not leaving your
milk wagon unattended between the hours of six and eight. I stepped in a doorway and pretended to light a cigarette while it took the corner, accelerating on the turn. Someone looking for an address. I lit up for real and continued walking. A few more cases like this one and I’d be hiring derelicts to start my car.

Near the corner a man walking my way stopped and asked if I knew the way to the Fisher Building. He was about my build, in his thirties, wearing an expensive brown suede jacket, poplin slacks with a razor crease, and Italian loafers that glistened like oiled mahogany. I’d seen him before recently, but I couldn’t remember where. I didn’t like that; but more than that I didn’t like the fact he was wearing a jacket too warm for the weather. I told him I was a stranger myself and kept walking. There was no other traffic on the street, pedestrian or otherwise. He put a hand on my arm.

I spun with the pressure and brought my heel down hard on his instep. His other hand was inside the open zipper of his jacket. In the same movement I jabbed at his left eye with my cigarette. He got his shoulder up in time, but I followed through, mashing the cigarette against his shoulder and shoving him off balance. I broke into a run.

I cut the corner and ran flat out up the side street, which like the other was all parked cars and nothing else moving. My brain was working as fast as my feet. I remembered where I’d seen the man before: sitting across from Jeremiah Morgenstern at the noisy table in the dining room of the Airport Marriott.

At the same time I registered the presence of the gray Jaguar, stopped against the curb halfway down with the motor running. The curbside door popped open and a gun came out, hauling behind it another figure dressed all wrong for the season. It was that big of a gun; a full-length .44 magnum could have nested inside the L of its chromed frame. I made a dogleg between two parked bumpers, adjusting course toward the opposite side of the street.

A shot crashed. A chunk of asphalt jumped out of the street
three feet in front of me, leaving a sizable pothole. I stopped running then and put up my hands. Behind me I heard footsteps hurrying from the corner; uneven steps, accompanied by curses. I was going to pay for that broken foot.

T
he Jaguar’s rear seat was covered in graphite-colored leather, soft as heavy cream. It smelled like a saddlery, but that might have been the man in the suede jacket. He sat next to me with one shoe off and the stockinged foot propped on his knee, massaging it with his fingers as he wriggled his toes. He sucked air through his teeth. “Jesus.”

“Busted?” The man who’d shot a hole in the street sat behind the wheel with an arm resting on the back of his seat and the barrel of the king-size gun lying across his forearm, pointing languidly at me. He seemed old for the work. His complexion, swarthy and whorled, made his hair look as white as a snow-cliff by comparison. Age didn’t seem to have shackled him; he’d frisked and bundled me into the back seat without any unnecessary handling.

“How the hell should I know? I know it throbs like a son of a bitch. That a symptom?”

“If you can’t get your shoe back on, that’s how you tell. You ought to wear steel toes on this kind of job.”

“It wasn’t the toe he stomped on, you dumb fuck. Oh,
shit!
” He spotted something and tugged at his left jacket sleeve. I’d
burned a hole through it with my cigarette when I’d tried to put out his eye.

I was ready for his elbow and rolled with it. My head smacked the window just the same. The interior of the car slid sideways, then righted itself like a ship heeling in the direction of its ballast.

“Hey, hey.” Whitey sounded uninvolved. “The man said don’t fold.”

“This jacket set me back eight hundred bucks.”

“You can get a decent suit for that, look like a mensch.”

“How about you cut back on the fashion tips and drive the fucking car?”

Whitey opened his suitcoat, which had cost him considerably less than eight hundred dollars, and threaded the big revolver into an underarm holster as long as a rifle scabbard.

“Nice weapon,” I said. “Pick up any satellite stations?”

Suede Jacket told me to shut up. He was busy trying to work his foot into its Italian loafer.

His partner looked at me. He had the kind of pale gray eyes that always look like they’re swimming in tears. It’s almost always an illusion. “Fifty magnum,” he said. “New this year. Next size up comes with a navy man-of-war.”

“How’d you get it on the plane?”

He thought about that. “Who says I flew?”

“My mistake. I saw your buddy eating with Morgenstern at the airport. Come to think of it, I didn’t see you.”

“I drove. Mr. Morgenstern don’t like rental cars. Also it’s easier transporting artillery. Flying’s just too complicated for out-of-town work.”

Both men had New York accents, neither as pronounced as Morgenstern’s.

“I tried to get in touch with your boss,” I said. “This how he returns calls?”

“You called the shot when you stepped on Nicky’s foot. The
plan was just to give you a lift. You always make things this complicated?”

“I don’t like guns. Especially other people’s guns. Next time tell Nicky to dress for the climate. You can hide anything you want under gabardine.”

“You too with the clothes?” The younger man slid a nine-millimeter Beretta out of his jacket. It looked like a tin whistle after the .50 magnum. “Why don’t I punch a hole in that off-the-rack piece of shit to match the one in my sleeve?”

I laughed.

He almost dropped the gun. His knuckles whitened on the handle. “What.”

“Here we are in the twenty-first century, up to our eyes in computers and wireless everything, and you everyday-low-price hoods are still running around talking like the Midnight Movie. I thought you’d all assimilated by now.”

“Jesus. Some guys must want to die dumb. Jesus.”

His partner said, “Nicky.”

Nicky wasn’t listening. Foam stained the corners of his mouth. It might have been his game face. They say Night Train Lane used to unhinge his jaw before scrimmages just to intimidate the opposing line.

“How’s the foot?” Whitey asked.

“What foot?” He waggled the gun. Trying to decide which end to use.

“What foot. Athlete’s foot. Your foot, Jimmy Neutron. Get that shoe back on?”

That broke the spell. Nicky shuddered a little. He dragged the muzzle down my cheek and shook a finger in my face. Then he returned the pistol to its clip. “Yeah, I got it on. Stings like a son of a bitch.”

I ungripped my thighs.