Sweet Women Lie (22 page)

“It’s okay,” Trilby said. “He’s a friendly.”

The guns came down and my hands with them. Gail was breathing heavily with her wrists linked behind her back, looking at no one, saying nothing. Something about her had crumpled in. She looked like a little old lady, although she was barely in her forties. I had seen her do it before, but that had been in a movie, and there had been special effects involved.

Trilby, wearing his three-button suit and car coat, holstered his revolver under his arm. I asked him how much he had heard.

“Enough to charge. Maybe enough to convict, with that typewriter. Who’s this?” He did something with his foot. Dennis’ automatic scraped across the floor and bumped into a wall.

“He used to throw himself in front of bullets for Sam Lucy.”

“Looks like he was good at it. That phone work?”

“I used it to call you.”

He dialed 911 and ordered an EMS unit. Hanging up, he looked at his watch. “Twenty-seven hours short of the deadline. Not too shabby.”

“I’ve cut it closer,” I said.

“What makes all this easier than just tipping me the whole shebang in the first place?”

I rubbed my eyes. They were burning and I realized I’d been up all night. “A long time ago I represented a client who stood to lose his life if certain information reached certain people. A very long time ago: All the way back yesterday. Business isn’t so good I can afford to help kill off customers. He got killed anyway, but by then he wasn’t my client anymore. You know part of it, if your man Burack has filed his report.”

“I read it. You brought yourself some slack when you invited us in on that show downtown. That’s all you bought. We’re not in business to provide backup for you. Next time — no, there won’t be a next time. Keep it out of East Detroit.”

“Funny, that’s what an inspector told me a little while ago. Only he said keep it out of Detroit.”

“Your circle’s getting tight, Walker. Maybe you ought to consider changing your methods.”

“I considered it,” I said.

“And?”

“Nah.”

I left just behind the ambulance. The paramedics thought they could help Dennis hang on to the cup of blood he had left until they got to Detroit General, after which he was somebody else’s headache. I went home to sleep, gave up on that after an hour, got up and called the hospital. A nurse told me the emergency shooting case they had taken in that morning was still in the operating room. I took a shower, shaved, dressed, rode in a cab to the lot where I’d parked my car the night before, and drove up to East Detroit to dictate the complete statement I’d promised Trilby. The tape recorder took it all down without scowling. Afterward I ate a late breakfast at the Black Bull. When I caught myself falling face first into my eggs I paid the tab and went back home and slept sixteen hours straight. I dreamed not at all.

I was in the office at seven o’clock Monday morning. The mail wasn’t in yet and my answering service wouldn’t report for another hour, so I started a fresh pack of Winstons and called Detroit General. Dennis Arguella was critical but stable after a four-hour operation to remove a bullet and graft a new piece onto his femoral artery. After a few games of Solitaire the mailman whistled his way into the outer office and I watched two bills, a contest circular, and a picture postcard slither through the brass slot. When my curiosity overcame my inertia I got up and went over and picked up the mail. The postcard was an advertisement from a travel agency in Redford.

I sat down awhile, stood at the window awhile, sat down again and called my service. There were no messages. I tried to interest the girl in conversation. She was polite. She told me good-bye before she hung up in my face.

I was wired. I had enough energy for two detectives and not a kidnapped heiress or a missing set of crown jewels in sight. I thought about a vacation. What I had in savings ought to get me as far as the Ohio border if I didn’t mind pushing my car back. When the telephone finally rang I hoped it was the post office saying a check had come for me express, would I come down and sign for it? It wasn’t. It was Albert Schindler, informing me he’d found the very car I was looking for and that it would run me a thousand on top of the five hundred I’d given him. It took me a moment to remember why I’d wanted the car in the first place. I told him that case had gone sour. He said something in German and hung up without saying good-bye.

The buzzer sounded in the outer office as I was replacing the receiver. “Enter, friend.”

Catherine had on her silver fox coat over a black shift and black pumps. I stood up.

“The funeral’s today,” she said without greeting. “I thought I might as well get it over with.”

“I didn’t want it that way.”

“Just don’t tell me you’re sorry.” She sat down and shrugged out of the coat. Her arms were bare. I couldn’t remember if funeral etiquette covered that, but it wouldn’t have mattered to her. The plain black showed off her athletic figure. “The office hasn’t changed. Same old dump.”

I sat. “I like it.”

It sounded defensive. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. “I read about what happened. What the police say happened. I mean with the Hope woman. I couldn’t make sense out of it.”

“You’re not supposed to. The blanket’s on. Have you heard from Pym?”

“He stood me up Saturday night. When I tried to call his apartment I got a recording saying the number was no longer in service. The building superintendent said he’d moved out, no forwarding, with eight months to go on a year’s lease. Would you know anything about it?”

There’d been no mention of Usher under any name in the news reports of the People Mover shooting. William Sahara was identified as a despondent civil servant whom police had slain in a hostage situation. No connection was made with the Pingree murder or the arrest the next morning of former movie beach goddess Gail Hope; the media were still trying to sort out that one. “I told you why Pym was here,” I said. “Sahara’s dead, he’s gone. What else do you need?”

She was going to fight me over it. I saw that, and I saw when she wasn’t.

“I just wish I knew where you figured in this,” she said. “I just wish I knew that.”

“That’s the first thing you and I ever had in common.”

She blew out some air. “Well, I’m back where I started. Only this time I’m a widow.”

“Any plans?”

“Get a job, I suppose. The son of a bitch didn’t have any insurance.”

“Spies are bum risks.”

“So are detectives. I sure know how to pick ’em.” She got up and put on her coat. “Did you have breakfast?”

“Are you inviting me?”

“Don’t read anything into it.”

I’d been playing with the picture postcard, sliding it around the blotter on its slick surface with the eraser end of a pencil. I flipped it over, looked at the picture, yellow sand and creaming surf. Then I chucked it into the wastebasket and went for my coat and hat.

“Let’s not get married this time,” I said.

Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.

Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once
The Oklahoma Punk
was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.

Estleman’s most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980’s
Motor City Blue
, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel,
Sugartown
, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman’s most recent Walker novel is
Infernal Angels
.

Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980,
The High Rocks
was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010’s
The Book of Murdock
. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author.
Journey of the Dead
, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.

Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.

Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.

Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.