Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels (27 page)

I put down my drink and picked up the envelope. There were ten bills inside, all the same denomination. Ben Franklin always looks as if he came fresh from a night’s sleep. He doesn’t knock around as much as the others. I said, “I hope you’re okay with basic cable.”

“I’ll try not to be too much trouble. You won’t know I’m here. On the other hand, if you’d rather you did, that’s okay.” A wicked smile pulled at the corners of her lips. Naughty child.

“I’ll have to charge you extra for that.” I slid the envelope into a robe pocket, lifted my glass, and sat back.

Patches of red showed on her cheeks, as if I’d slapped her. “I take back what I said last night. I didn’t misjudge you at all.”

“I got up on the wrong side of bed a week ago and I haven’t gotten over it yet. This all started when I ran out of coffee. A cop I’m friendly with, who happened to be standing at the end of the coffee aisle, put me on to a job, simple recovery work that ought to have meant nothing more than a little horse trading with a local fence and three days’ pay for sixteen hours’ work. I crashed a car, ran a marathon, got threatened with arrest for treason, took a couple of hits, and learned way more than I wanted to know about gangs in Red China. As pleasant as it sounds, getting laid just isn’t enough. Neither is a grand.”

“It’s all I can spare. Eugenia doesn’t pay me much.”

“You can get more. You’re her good right hand.”

“I doubt I still am. I haven’t reported for work in two days.” What I’d said seemed to dawn on her then. “Are you suggesting I embezzle from her?”

“Don’t act like it’s a new idea.”

She saw me looking at the bag and closed both hands on it. The whiteness faded from the knuckles slowly, an effort of will. “I’m sure I need that drink, but I can get it down better with a glass of water. I’m dehydrated. I never got that bottle from the vending machine.”

I went back into the kitchen and filled a tumbler from the tap. When I returned, I looked at the small brushed-steel semiautomatic pistol she was holding. “You’ve been on quite the spending spree,” I said.

“It didn’t cost me a cent. Eugenia will never miss it. I found it in a drawer full of scarves and handkerchiefs she’s never worn. Nick was no better than most men when it comes to giving gifts their wives can use.”

“You should’ve used it on Chang.”

“I kept it at home. I couldn’t afford to get caught carrying an unregistered gun. I’m an amateur. I didn’t want to make an amateur’s mistake.”

“You’ve got millions of dollars in heroin in that bag. I’d say you’re a pro. Where’s the rest of it? That bag wouldn’t hold forty-plus pounds.”

She hesitated. “I had to split it with someone else. Just when did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“You’re even starting to sound like Charlotte Sing. I had my suspicions when you weren’t home when the cops came calling. The thousand dollars was a stronger indication; this house isn’t the MGM Grand. It was the gun that cinched it. I’m a little slow on the uptake today. Normally I have a theory in place by the time the artillery comes out. How’d you manage it?”

“Delegated responsibilities. I told you the day we met I handle all of Eugene’s correspondence. She prefers to play the role of the benefactress in the ivory tower and leave the details to the peasants. The world’s run by clerks and secretaries. I knew there had to be more to a simple shipment of converter boxes than a
Three’s Company
marathon; yours wasn’t the only inquiry. At the time I’d never heard of Madam Sing—really, do people call her that?—but as of the day before yesterday I knew something more was behind them than just a search for stolen merchandise. When they showed up in the system, I put someone on them. Eugenia’s just a name on a paycheck for most of the people who work for her. They deal with me on a day-to-day basis. The rest was a simple business transaction.”

“It got a little more complicated when Sing had you snatched.”

“I admit I didn’t give enough thought to the ruthlessness of the drug business. I’m an underpaid flunky. That worked for me all the time she had me tied to a chair. All I had to do was beg her for mercy. I was sincere about that—up to a point. I wasn’t faking last night; I was scared as hell the whole time she had me, her and that killer she hired. If she’d once pressed me about that heroin, I’d have spilled the whole thing. When she didn’t, I knew there were worse things than being tied to a chair. Going on the way I had, for instance.”

“She’s not as smart as she’s made out to be,” I said. “She was a slave before she was a billionaire. She took advantage of the fact that she was invisible in order to get where she got. She inherited the mistakes that made her what she is. Who’d you recruit for the grunt work? Those hands never drew a staple from a shipping carton.”

“Just another version of myself, a little lower on the scale. I cut him in for half; I’d tried for less, but I tipped my hand. I said I’m an amateur. Hold still!” The gun came up, shaking a little. The tremor did nothing for my confidence; guns go off in unsteady hands more often than not. I paused with my hand in my robe pocket.

“Just my cigarettes and matches. I like to have something in my hands when I’m at gunpoint.”

“You can smoke when you’re back on the way to the American side. You’re taking me to Canada.”

“Now you’re back to amateur. That’s just what they’re expecting.”

“If I am a suspect, they’ll be looking for a woman traveling alone, under a passport made out to Ouida Rogers. I have one; Eugenia’s business takes me across the border three or four times a year. I had the photo transferred to another name. That’s what’s taken me all this time. Having contact with all of Eugenia’s people means I have contact with all of Nick’s. Did you know the U.S. passport is easier to forge than a Michigan driver’s license? I didn’t, until after I’d parted with another thousand. I hope yours is up to date.” She showed uncertainty for the first time. It had been there right along, below the surface. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

“Shooting me won’t get you there any faster. I’ve got a copy of my application. That’s all I need for now.”

“Get it, and get dressed. When they ask you your reason for visiting Canada, tell them you and your fiancée are going to the casino in Windsor. They like that. Business has fallen off since they made them legal here.”

“Suppose we make it? Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty. Ottawa won’t block extradition.”

“You let me worry about that. I’ve got all the traveling papers I need.” She patted her bag.

I was running out of stalls, but just then a squawking noise drew her attention to the table beside the armchair. It was the signal that the telephone was off the hook and the party on the other end had hung up.

I said, “I was talking to the cops when you came to the door. I guess I didn’t get it all the way back on the cradle.” As I spoke I scooped the envelope out of my pocket and dashed the bills in her face.

She fired, but I was moving by then, and the flutter of hundred-dollar bills threw off her aim. A police forensics expert made the hole in the ceiling worse digging out the slug. I let my momentum carry us both over backwards, chair and all, and had my foot on the wrist of her gun arm when the first prowl car swirled into the driveway.

*   *   *

The jury went easy on Ouida. She gave up her partner, who surrendered to Narcotics officers with ten kilos of heroin stashed under the bed in his apartment in Sterling Heights, and got five to ten. She’ll probably draw probation on appeal as a first offender. Shau Win Chang got tourist-class passage to Beijing, handcuffed to Deputy U.S. Marshal Mary Ann Thaler, and the chance to preboard on a disability; soldiers greeted him when he disembarked. Charlotte Sing got another million on the reward for her arrest and conviction and an hour on
Dateline.
I got a picture postcard of the Great Wall signed by Thaler. Her offer to bear witness to Gale Kreski’s character was declined when the U.S. district court dismissed all charges against him on the evidence of a confession by a member of Winfield’s personal bodyguard; one of the record producer’s staff thought he’d been cheated out of money he’d helped cheat from clients, and had claimed his due by right of vendetta. Kreski went on to an early vote-off on
American Idol
, but earned enough to buy back his piano. I’m invited to celebrate the event, but I haven’t RSVPed. My one good suit is still awaiting repair at the tailor’s.

The Sing woman wakes me up nights. The thought of evil without abstraction always has, but proof that it exists and is walking around somewhere in broad daylight is like a triple shot of No-Doz. It makes me get up and double-check all my locks.

Luis Quincy Adams occupies nearly as much of my thinking time. When I went to visit him at Detroit Receiving Hospital, the nurse at the station told me he’d released himself without leaving a billing address. A subpoena was issued for his testimony to a grand jury investigating the latest instance of domestic terrorism, but no one could run fast enough to serve it. I’ve given up watching ESPN for news from Mexico City; Argentina continues to table petitions to reinstate bullfighting in its jurisdiction. The bulls there can rest easy for a while, but I’m not so sure about Pamplona.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When
Infernal Angels
—the twenty-first novel to feature Amos Walker—appears, it will mark thirty years in which Walker will have occupied some small part of the world’s fabric.

In the cosmic scheme of things, the time is hardly vast, but it represents more years than I’d lived when I created the character in 1980. I was twenty-eight, Walker (as I recall) thirty-two; at this writing I’m fifty-five, and when last recorded, Walker was somewhere in his forties. Someone once said that heroes age on a sliding scale, but having established him as a veteran of the Vietnamese War, I will at some point have to acknowledge that he’s passed the half-century mark.

But letting him age has advantages. I’m a rough old cob of a god and have put him through plenty. To do it all over again, without asking him to face the additional challenges of growing older and the inevitable effect of those ordeals on a middle-aged body, would be to risk monotony, not to mention incredulity. (“In the pursuit of my profession I’d been shot, beaten, coldcocked, drugged, and threatened with death.… It would be a good joke on a lot of bad people if it was a heart episode that took me.”) I put a bullet through his thigh in
Nicotine Kiss
and three books later he’s still limping; Vicodin has joined his daily regimen of cigarettes and Scotch. He’s never been Superman. He’s smart enough to fill in the blanks when they begin to form a pattern, but he’s not a savant. He can hold his own in a fight, but he sometimes loses, and more often lately than when he was in his prime. He has enough courage to defy ordinary odds and enough caution to hold back when they’re extraordinary. Even Superman has his Kryptonite, or he’d be insufferable. If Walker’s courage, strength, and intelligence are to be tested further, I can’t think of an opponent more formidable than time itself.

The years have sped. His birth seems so recent, yet Jimmy Carter was president, the United States was being held hostage in Iran, there was no Indiana Jones, no Madonna, no Internet. Cell phones were science fiction, “rap” meant
talk
, and AIDS was an obscure African disease attributed to eating monkey meat. In Detroit, Walker’s main port of call, there was still hope that the local auto industry would turn around and reverse the damages caused by the 1967 race riot and the Murder City years of the 1970s. Who’d have thought that three decades later the picture would still be bleak? But bad times for cities are fodder for crime fiction, and Walker will never be stumped for an opportunity to risk everything for small-
j
justice.

His greatest challenge, however, came not in Detroit, but from New York City. At the beginning of the 1990s, a legal dispute with a publisher forced me to place the character on a seven-year hiatus from books. Although I managed to keep him alive in short stories placed with
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, New Black Mask,
and a number of anthologies, the readership wasn’t precisely the same, and I was afraid he’d be forgotten. But when I reintroduced him to novels with
Never Street
in 1997, the reception was strong enough to continue the series through today.

It would be ignorant as well as arrogant to claim more than my part for this longevity, particularly in view of the fact that so many excellent series that were created by other authors at the same time have perished. Ruth Hapgood launched Amos Walker when she bought
Motor City Blue
for Houghton Mifflin, James Frenkel of Tom Doherty Associates edited the book you’re holding as well as
Poison Blonde, Retro, Nicotine Kiss, American Detective,
and
The Left-Handed Dollar,
Bill Malloy of the Mysterious Press returned Walker to the bookstalls after his long holiday, the late Cathleen Jordan edited Walker stories for
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,
where her successor, Linda Landrigan, continues the tradition, and Janet Hutchings brought him (and his creator) to
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
for the first time. The relationship between writers and copy editors is often adversarial and too frequently contentious, but that has never been the case between me and, first, Lois Randall, then MaryAnn Johanson, whose skill and hard work have kept Mary Ann Thaler’s brown eyes from turning blue from book to book (I doubt their common Christian name is a factor), as well as many other embarrassments from coming to light.