Never Street (29 page)

His next move was as predictable as inflation: a heel would come down on the top of my spinal column, severing it. After my body was flung off the roof, the medical examiner would roll the injury into the general inventory and declare it consistent with a fall from a great height. I wondered if it would be Albert Chung.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a grail. It didn’t have to be
the
Grail. I was lying next to the narrow outhouse-shaped shelter that had been built over the stairs. After carrying me up the last flight, Gordon had propped open the fire door with an object that had been left there for that purpose. It was a wrecking bar, thirty-two inches of iron gone sandy with rust. I swept out my arm, closed my fingers around the cold rough shaft, and followed through. When the iron struck the knob of bone on the outside of Gordon’s knee I felt the shock clear to my shoulder.

Forget the groin. As any cop knows who has carried a baton into a fight, the most vulnerable points on the human body are the joints. The big man took in his breath and crumpled. He was still rocking from side to side on his back, clutching his knee with both hands and groaning, when I got my feet under me and took a swipe at his head with the bar. I was out to kill. There was no stopping him any other way.

His reflexes were still good. Blinded with pain and sick to his stomach, he ducked the blow and scrabbled out of range on his hands and one knee, dragging the injured leg behind him. My own empty swing carried me off balance. I stumbled, and by the time I found my footing, Gordon was upright, the calves of his legs pressed against the retaining wall on the edge of the roof for support.

He closed his stance and waited. His eyes reflected what light there was in a feral glow.

This was where my self-defense plea went south. The enemy was at bay, the stairs and escape were within easy reach. All I had to do was walk away.

I wasn’t interested in walking away. In the space of a few hours I had been handcuffed and badgered and strangled and batted around. A little before that I had been shot at and grilled by the police of two cities. The hero business was getting old. It was my turn to be the villain.

I lunged, aiming the forked end of the bar like a javelin at the thickest part of Gordon’s body. I had all my weight behind it, but the big man’s hands were faster. He caught it in both fists, stopping my charge as abruptly as a concrete abutment. I nearly gored myself with the blunt end.

He braced himself to wrench the weapon from my grasp, but this one time I anticipated him.

I let go.

The iron bar went flying over the surrounding rooftops, end over end, twirling and flashing like a drum major’s baton. He bent backward, arms flailing. I saw the white flags of panic in his eyes.

That wouldn’t do. The cops preferred their murder suspects alive and talking. I couldn’t be the bad guy after all. I hadn’t the wardrobe for the part. I reached out and caught hold of his belt.

The belt broke.

The fire door hadn’t locked when it swung shut. I set the button so that it would when I closed it behind me. That was a point in my favor if I went with self-defense. For all I’d known I couldn’t have escaped if I’d wanted to. I might care later. I didn’t now.

I leaned on the railing going down. My clothes were soaked clean through. The cuffs of my trousers dragged against the stair grids. My coat and shirt weighed sixty pounds. Every muscle in my body was sore. My throat was scratchy from strangling and I had a deep pain in my abdomen from two blows beneath the sternum. My head throbbed. The scab on my lip had broken and I was bleeding again. I didn’t feel like looking in any mirrors.

The door to Ashraf Naheen’s room was ajar. He was still sitting in the chair where I’d seen him last, but now he had my revolver in his lap. The videotape was still playing on the TV set. The man on the green sofa was saying something about staying up past his bedtime to watch the Late Show after his father had passed out in his easy chair.

“I don’t know where my mother was,” he said. “She was out a lot, and then she stopped coming home when I was thirteen.”

Naheen looked up when I came in, but he didn’t seem surprised to see me coming back from the roof alone. He was beyond such emotions. He looked as bad as I felt. He’d removed his spectacles, and his eyes had the pinkish swollen naked look of eyes that are accustomed to wearing glasses. The cognac smell was strong in the room. The balloon glass on the lampstand was empty. I was pretty sure it was a new empty. He’d been getting ready to do something.

Seeing me told him he was ready. The gun lay on the palm of his hand as if someone had placed it there. I wondered if it had been Gordon, and what he had expected his employer to do with it. Suddenly the psychiatrist closed his hand around the butt and thrust the muzzle into the soft flesh under his chin. He moved fast; much faster than seemed possible coming out of a state of near catatonia, and if I hadn’t still been pumping adrenaline he might have caught me flat-footed. I lunged and batted the gun out of his hand. It struck the long mirror over the chest of drawers, cracking a corner, and bounced off onto the carpet.

I went over and scooped it up, but Naheen had spent his roll. He leaned forward in the chair and planted his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands and began blubbering into them. He seemed to be saying something, but I wasn’t paying attention. I lifted the receiver off the telephone and pushed the button for Security.

While I was waiting I stopped the tape and started it rewinding. I peeled off my sopping coat, slung it over a floor lamp, and switched on the bulb. In the bathroom I stripped and wrung out my shirt and pants and socks over the sink. I scrubbed my hair with a towel and used my comb. My face didn’t look as bad as I’d thought; it probably wouldn’t stampede a classroom full of third-graders, although the teacher might faint. A dirty-yellow bruise was blooming in the area of my solar plexus. I got dressed and left the bathroom.

Naheen was standing in front of the chest of drawers, rummaging with both hands in a brown morocco-leather toilet case with his initials on it in gold. I wrestled it away from him, backhanding him across the face when he tried to snatch it back. He fell sprawling to the bed and lay there whimpering.

The case was a cornucopia for suicides: razor, iodine, barber shears, prescription sleeping tablets, plenty of dental floss in case he felt like braiding himself a noose. I zipped it up and tossed it onto the top shelf of the closet out of his reach.

Someone knocked on the door. “Security.”

“Just a second.” I went over and popped the rewound videotape out of the machine and tucked it under the waistband of my pants in the small of my back. I put on my coat, which was a long way from dry but felt warm from the electric bulb, and left it unbuttoned.

The hotel dick was one of the modern breed, politely impersonal in a tailored maroon blazer and black wool slacks with a stripe up the seam. He had smooth walnut features and short black hair with a spray of gray at the widow’s peak. He carried a walkie-talkie and said his name was Brockburton.

“Amos Walker.” I shook his hand. “This is Dr. Naheen. He’s registered here. He should be in a hospital. He’s had a shock.”

Brockburton barely glanced at the man on the bed. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with a report we got ten minutes ago about someone falling off the roof.”

“It would. The victim’s name is Gordon. He’s registered too, but I don’t know his last name. He worked for Naheen.”

“Who do you work for?”

“The same, or I did until a little while ago, when Gordon tried to throw me off the roof. I’m a detective. Private, like you.”

“Not like me. I’m employed to discourage the guests from throwing each other off the roof. The language isn’t specific, but that’s sort of covered in the job description.” His eyes took in the room. “You know it’s the second time for this building. A woman jumped off it while the place was still under construction.”

“I remember reading about it.”

“Sure put a damper on the Renaissance. I’m not going to have any trouble with you, am I? It’s been a tough day. The lights went out twice during the storm.”

I shook my head. “I suppose someone called the police.”

He tipped the walkie-talkie toward the window. “Those aren’t air raid sirens.”

I heard them now, growing louder as they took the turn from Woodward onto Jefferson. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette? Mine got wet.”

“No-smoking room. Sorry.”

That was the end of conversation between us. I offered him the bottle of cognac, but he shook his head. I drained it into the hotel glass I’d used earlier and took a seat by the window to sip and watch the rain letting up. I shifted around to keep the edges of the videocassette from digging into my back.

B
Y THE TIME
I got away from the cops it was late afternoon. I had barely an hour to go home and get ready to go out. The sun was back, as hot as it had been before the storm broke. Steam rose from the water standing in the gutters. I wondered if I would ever again look at the rain without thinking of the roof of the Westin.

Several traffic signals were out. One that wasn’t had been blown down by the wind into the middle of West Grand River. There it stood at a tilt in the pothole it had made when it struck, as tall as most of the cars that maneuvered around it, still going through its cycle of green, yellow, and red. It didn’t seem to matter that everyone else had stopped paying attention. I stopped and waited for the green, ignoring the horns bleating behind me. Professional courtesy.

The glass elves hadn’t paid the house a visit while I was away. On the other hand, no burglars had, either; the square of plywood was still in place where the window pane had shattered. I had a hard time convincing myself that had happened just last night. The shabby easy chair and the inexpensive rag and the hunting prints on the wall looked like things that had been picked out by someone who wasn’t me.

I might have been standing in a stranger’s house. A stranger who couldn’t afford a decorator.

I went into the bathroom. My clothes were almost dry, but I hadn’t seen so many wrinkles since I did bodyguard duty for the Detroit Democratic Irish League. I looked at the videocassette I’d smuggled out of Ashraf Naheen’s hotel room. So much dynamite in such an ordinary-looking plastic case. Four people dead and counting. I put it in the hamper under the dirty laundry. I shoved my suit and shirt into a bag for the cleaner’s, stood under the shower for fifteen minutes, shaved around the cuts and bruises, checked my watch, and padded back out into the living room in clean shorts and a new shirt to call Vesta and tell her I was running late.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You sound wiped out.”

“Just a long day. The details would just put you to sleep.”

“We can postpone.”

“No, I need this. I’ll be there at seven.”

I worked the plunger and dialed my answering service. I hadn’t been in the office since Pluto was a pup.

“Just one call, Mr. Walker.” I couldn’t tell if I’d heard this particular female voice before. Speech impediments, regional accents, and anything else that might smack of dangerous individuality seemed to be against company policy. “Inspector Alderdyce called at eleven-fifteen. No message.”

Alderdyce hadn’t been among the cops who had come to investigate the swan dive from the top of the hotel. I’d been on my way there when he’d called. I tried his extension and got his voice mail. He sounded even more surly on tape than he did in person. I didn’t leave a message either.

I put on a Frank Lloyd Wright tie and the black pinstripe double-breasted I’d bought for security work in Grosse Pointe and deducted from my taxes, shined my black Oxfords, picked up the snap-on holster containing my .38 from the bureau, then put it back. It had been a long time since I’d needed a gun to enter a restaurant.

On Telegraph I pulled the Cutlass into a car wash and ordered the works. During the rinse cycle, the water gushing against the windshield and windows reminded me of the Westin roof. Watching the attendants buffing the hot wax to a glassy finish in the mirrored bay at the end, I started to feel reborn. I overtipped them and joined the thickening home-bound traffic, avoiding puddles as if they contained toxic waste.

She must have been watching at the window when I turned into the little parking area. She emerged from the side door just as I was getting out of the car, wearing the same deep-indigo dress she’d had on when we met, only this time she was walking out of the shadows into the sunlight. Her black hair was swept up and she wore a thin silver band around her throat and matching bobs in her earlobes and no other jewelry. Her face was fresh under the makeup and she was smiling.

The smile faltered when she saw the marks on my face, but she covered up quickly. “You clean up nice,” she said, looking me over from head to foot. “Where do you keep the bazooka?”

“Left it in my other suit. You don’t look so hideous yourself. Did you cut your hair?”

“I considered it, but at the last minute I lost my nerve. I pinned it up. Do you approve?”

“I hate it. Now I have to go out and rent a Cadillac.” I walked around to the passenger’s side and opened the door.

We took Telegraph down to the Reuther. When we were entering the expressway she said, “Do you want to tell me what happened, or do I assume you moonlight as a sparring partner for a steam thresher?”

She was looking straight ahead through the windshield. I didn’t speak until a space opened in the rat race and I wedged inside.

“It’s not the best start for a relaxing evening out,” I said. “Once it begins you have to listen all the way through to the finish, like ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

“I’m as patriotic as the next girl.”

I told her the whole story, starting with Dr. Naheen’s visit to my office, including my conversations with Miles Leander and Mr. Blint at Spee-D-A Couriers, and ending with Naheen’s attempts at suicide after Gordon’s fall. I left out only the identity of the patient whose session was on the videotape. I was saving that for later. By the time I wound up we had shifted to I-96 West, where the cars began to thin out. The first coppery streak of sunset appeared in the froth of clouds on the horizon. It reminded me of Susan Thibido’s hair.