The Sundown Speech (22 page)

Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Sundown Speech

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“I was going to say, âCome back for Octoberfest.' I'll buy you a beer. That was a fool play you made, but it saved everybody trouble. What made you go for the wires instead of the remote?”

“I didn't. First I knew I had 'em was when I looked down and saw them in my hand.”

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

Jerry Marcus' mother made arrangements to have him and his twin brother sent back to North Dakota for burial.

One of Alec Moselle's admirers, a University of Michigan alumnus with too much money for his tax bracket, donated a million dollars to establish a photography scholarship in his name. Several applicants submitted shots taken of naked people in shopping malls and on freeway entrance ramps, thinking that would please Moze's restless spirit, but the board in charge of the scholarship gave the spot to a young woman who specialized in landscapes. By then,
Ann Arbor Exposed,
the dead man's collection of candid nudes, was in stores, and I suppose they didn't want to take the chance of reviving the tradition of the Naked Mile.

I never heard from Dante and Heloise Gunnar again, even though they got back most of the fifteen thousand they'd dropped on Marcus' movie. I did get a call from Hernando Suiz, their attorney, kicking about some items on the expense sheet. I ate the Ypsilanti motel bill, but got him to reimburse me for Holly Zacharias' train fare to Chicago. I struck him off as a future reference.

All this happened a long time ago.

Borders is gone, Thano's Lamplighter, too. They tore all the swanky public telephone booths out of the Michigan Union and just about everywhere else, forcing me to join the cellular revolution.

After 149 years, the
Ann Arbor News
shut down, to reappear later as a dot-com publication, printing two editions per week. Aunt Agatha's mystery bookshop is still there, but I haven't been back to it. I didn't take Karyl up on that beer offer either.

The Michigan Theater still stands, a monument to the days when going to the movies was a dress-up affair, and the destination rewarded the effort; the coalition that owns it has even added a second screen since I visited, along with a proper escape hatch in the projection booth. One of Jerry Marcus' pigeons donated part of his reimbursement toward repairing the damage to the auditorium caused by gunfire; the artisan who restored the architectural details was the great-grandson of one of the original workmen from 1928.

The standoff on Liberty Street was reported widely. Inspired by the publicity, a West Coast production company bought the rights to
Mr. Alien Elect
from Marcus' mother and announced plans to finish it, using area locations to take advantage of Michigan's generous Hollywood stimulus plan to boost its economy; but then the administration changed in Lansing and the plan was struck down. The company wrote off the project.

Holly Zacharias sent me an invitation to her graduation ceremony. I thought of attending, but that day I was in Columbus, Ohio, tracing a series of safe-deposit boxes belonging to a Detroit city councilman who'd let his house on Bagley go into foreclosure. I sent Holly a funny card, but she didn't write back.

I've been back to Ann Arbor only once, chasing a bad lead on a missing-person case. As long as I was there I called the police department, hoping to make up for that Octoberfest no-show, but I was told Lieutenant Karyl had left to accept a position as police chief in a small town in Wisconsin. Zingerman's is still where I left it; I ate a barbecue sandwich and drove back to Detroit.

Last week a thick envelope came to the office with a DVD inside in a plastic case. It turned out to be a week's worth of five-minute stock market reports delivered by a young woman at a TV station in Evanston, Illinois. Holly had let her hair grow out and replaced the studs in her face with a light application of makeup. There was no note, but she put in a picture postcard from SeaWorld. It had been just long enough I had almost forgotten the point of the joke.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Sundown Speech
is a greatly expanded reimagination of
Attitude,
a novella I wrote on commission for the old
Ann Arbor News
in 2004. It ran in installments throughout twenty editions of the newspaper, with members of the staff and their families appearing in photos representing the characters. It was my first experience with that centuries-old publishing tradition, serial fiction, and I enjoyed the experience very much.

Although I haven't confirmed it personally, I'm quite sure that all precautions have been taken from the start to ensure the safety of projectionists and all others employed by the Michigan Theater. I apologize if my use of literary license in order to ramp up suspense has offended anyone.

I'd like to thank Judy McGovern, that “pleasant-faced woman with the eyes of a peregrine falcon,” who oversaw the serial project in her position as features editor, all the
News
employees and their families who took part, and those good sports who wrote to the newspaper to express their forgiveness for the gentle fun I poked at the “Ann Arbor attitude.”

I'm a third-generation Arborite: I was born there in 1952, my father in 1910, and his father in 1867. The city may not be the cultural center of the world, but it has a rich culture, as well as a warm heart.

No aliens were harmed in the telling of his story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Loren D. Estleman
is the author of more than seventy novels, including the most recent Amos Walker titles,
You Know Who Killed Me
and
Don't Look for Me.
Winner of four Shamus Awards, five Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards, he lives in Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

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