“Murders don’t get committed in any of the suburbs without Detroit stepping in.”
“I’ve got a clean ticket, mister. I’m with the good guys now.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. This murder I’m investigating may or may not be connected to the killing of an Allen Park police officer the same night.”
“Marcus Root.”
I scratched my ear. “That came pretty quick for something that happened more than six years ago.”
“You don’t forget getting dragged out of bed on no charge and grilled for three days without a break.”
“You could have sued the city.”
“I could of got shot in front of the courthouse and woke up in the morgue with a throwaway piece in my hand. What you think I decided?”
“Did you know Root?”
The laugh that got was as old as Pike’s Peak. “Know him? I could practically claim him as a dependent on my taxes.”
I looked at the beer advertisement in its frame. Custer leered back at me from his hill. “If that means what I think it does, we should finish this conversation in person.”
* * *
Cars crawled bumper-to-bumper along I-94. The drivers were working up a fine rage to take home to the spouse and kids. After two hours I bailed out at Michigan Avenue and joined the parade lock-stepping from light to light. It wasn’t much faster but the scenery was better, at least until I entered the city limits.
Jackson’s a prison town, and even though the old state penitentiary became a tourist trap after its last inmate, a former Detroit mayor, got transferred to a facility out West, the place still smells of the can. Pawnshops, check-cashing services, and bail bondsmen thrive around the crumbling skyscrapers in its center, and the crime rate’s one of the highest in the country.
The billboard advertising the Imperial Massage Parlor featured a Manga-type geisha with eyes the size of planets and red lips big enough to French-kiss Godzilla. The woman who answered the bell of the frame house was four-feet-six and seventy pounds of crumpled parchment in a dress made from a grocery sack. Seals from all the local lodges decorated the door frame and the smell of boiled cabbage coming from back in the building swam thick as chowder. Most of the rub-a-dub joints in the New World have Japanese names and all-Korean staffs.
“Oakes Steadman,” I said.
The leer she put on for customers vanished and she stood aside to let me enter. Foot traffic had worn a ditch in the linoleum, leading to various rooms sealed with heavy blackout curtains.
My hostess stopped short, throwing an arm across me in protective grandmotherly fashion. A porcelain doll wearing only a short silk kimono swept out of one of the curtained rooms directly in front of us, carrying something in a makeshift sack fashioned from a terry towel, and let herself through a door at the end of a short hallway. She left a trail of jasmine, or what I supposed jasmine would smell like.
“Hair crippings.” The ancient Asian woman lowered her arm and we resumed walking.
I said nothing. English gave me enough challenges without trying to learn her lingo.
The house was larger than it looked from the front. It had probably started out around a thousand square feet, then built onto over the years in a shotgun arrangement, back and back as far as the plot and the local zoning laws would allow.
I breathed through my mouth and followed her down another dim hallway with the cabbage stench growing stronger until it smacked me in the face in a kitchen designed in Early John Travolta: A man could succumb to avocado poisoning just looking at the major appliances. A six-quart pressure cooker stuttered steam with an angry hiss on one of the stove burners. The smell made me crave corned beef on rye.
The old woman knocked on a door opposite the entrance. A voice came from inside and she opened the door, inclining a head of dishwater-gray hair toward the room beyond.
Actually it was a suite, or whatever you call a spacious apartment laid out on an open plan, without walls except for one containing a half-open door with gleaming gray-pink porcelain beyond, a modern-looking bathroom. The place was even less well lighted than the hallway, by a couple of table lamps with dark shades. I paused inside the door to wait for my pupils to catch up.
A throat cleared, a harsh sound that was nearly a growl. I took a step back to get a better look at the biggest Oriental I’d ever seen.
We’re not supposed to call them that anymore, but this one was straight out of history. I’d seen him, and his twin, in a print in a book, flanking a withered emperor on a throne, with scimitars on their shoulders. It was from a painting made by a Westerner who’d managed to smuggle himself into and out of the Forbidden City without feeding the rats in the imperial gardens. You read some funny stuff when you spend a lot of time on stakeout, watching people come and go.
Actually, he was the biggest anything I’d seen apart from a porch post. He was nearly eight feet tall. If he stood on tiptoe he could punch his head through the popcorn ceiling. The ceiling would get the worst part of that deal; the head was helmetlike, the hairless scalp stretched taut over solid bone, canting back in flat planes at the temples, and sat atop a neck mortised and tenoned to his shoulders.
South of that he was less impressive, except for one feature, the gun in his right hand. His faded blue T-shirt clung to a hollow chest and his upper arms were no bigger around than his wrists, making his hands look as large as platters. The gun was a chromed .44 magnum. It was the size of a sickle, but it fit the fist that held it, although its weight made his wrist droop. His legs were thin too in green cargo pants, ending in feet that would enter every room five minutes before the rest of him. His sneakers would come custom by way of the NBA.
“Gigantism.”
This came from a corner of the room I’d thought was uninhabited until my eyes adjusted to the gloom. Oakes Steadman—it had to be him—leaned against a wall with his arms folded. He was a well-built thirty in a white dress shirt rolled to his elbows, Wranglers artfully torn at the knees, and boots that laced to the ankles. The whites of his eyes glistened against mocha-colored skin and black dreadlocks hung to his shoulders.
“That’s the word you hear,” he went on. “Probably it’s obsolete, like ‘midget,’ but Py don’t mind so I ain’t looked it up. Something in the glands. His parents was normal pocket-size slants.”
The revolver was getting to be too much for the big man. He reached across his body and gripped his right wrist with his left hand for support. While he was busy with that I kicked him in the shin. The gun thumped to the floor and he followed it down, landing on his backside. The jar wasn’t loud enough to be heard in Toledo.
I bent to pick up the magnum, but I didn’t get that far. The black semi-automatic that appeared when Steadman unfolded his arms was only a fifth of the size of the .44, but the hand that held it didn’t seem likely to let go of it as easily.
THIRTEEN
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.
“I thought I did; though he folded easier than expected.”
“Py’s for show only. I’m supposed to tote a gun-carrier around with me. This could put me in cold storage.” He rattled the pistol. “Our little secret?”
“Cross my heart. Py’s my only corroborating witness.”
He looked down at the big man. Py didn’t look so much like the front row of the Terra-Cotta Army now; more like a skinny Buddha. He sat there with his jaw hanging, a poster boy for Mongolism.
“They grow too fast for strength to keep up. Don’t live long, neither. He’s almost at the limit. He’s no use to me for a week now. I wisht you hadn’t done that.”
“You said.”
“Healed?”
Moving glacially, I spread my coattails and turned around. Establishments like that usually come with somebody who knows what to look for in a customer.
“Let’s see you’re who you said you were on the phone.”
I broke out the folder and tossed it to him. He caught it with his free hand—the gun stayed steady—an
d flipped it open. His lips moved when he read, but that could be just for show, like his pet freak. He tossed it back. “That tin star could cost you your license.”
“It wouldn’t fool a kid. I only keep it for the weight.” I put it away. When I looked back at him the pistol had vanished. “Why the dumb show? If I was going to brace you it wouldn’t be here on your home court.”
“I can’t afford to count on that. You could be a friend of Marcus Root’s; or a friend of an old enemy. I got ’em up to the chin from both sides of the fence.”
“That why you don’t hang out in the state police post?”
He didn’t answer that one. “Py’s uncle owns this crib, along with a dozen others between here and Grand Rapids.” He tilted his head toward the big revolver where it lay on the floor. “Put it on the table, but don’t get any cute ideas. It ain’t loaded, and I filed down the firing pin just in case. He’s clumsy enough to sneeze and jerk the trigger.”
I hoisted it and laid it on the nearest lamp table, glancing at the chambers as I did so. They were empty.
He reached over to the lamp near him. It had a three-way switch. When he took it up to the limit, the objects in the room assumed shape. I cranked up the lamp on my side. An orange shag rug covered the floor, most of its nap squashed flat and as grimy as a rug in student housing. The tables and two unmatched armchairs screamed garage sale. The wallpaper was flocked and discolored. “Homey,” I said. “Where’d you shop, Bed, Bugs and Beyond?”
“I had a better layout in the Wayne County lockup, but here I get to go out Saturday night. I can’t beef about the rent. Old Man Chung puts me up to cut down on raids. Also I keep his boy out of trouble. He’s a walking target.”
“How can he be sure you aren’t casing the place so the cops know where to look?”
His smile was tight-lipped, and gave out short of his eyes. They were opaque, like the skin that forms on a bowl of soup. “I’m with the cops, but I’m not a cop. It carries certain benefits. I’m gonna give up free room and board because a back rub turns into a hand job or better, customer gets his change in the form of a Ziploc bag full of ’ludes?”
Py’s electrolytes had begun to blink back on. The eyes half-hidden under the epicanthic fold shot poison darts at my face, but he didn’t stir from the floor. Steadman scooped up the magnum, leaned down, and held it out to him butt-first. The big man snatched hold of it like a dog snapping at a treat and held it loosely across a thigh thinner than my own.
“How’d you get this gig?” I asked Steadman.
“I done a nickel up in Marquette for GTA”—grand theft auto—“had me a reunion there with some bangers I hadn’t saw for a while. They was all talking about who they was gonna get even with when they got out, what new skids they’d work, same old shit I heard all the time in the boys’ school, some of it from the same mouths. None of ’em figured to last long enough to buy liquor legal. Me, I like it here above ground. I started staying away from ’em, playing the house nigger for the turnkeys, helping some fresh fish learn what their teachers didn’t bother to pass on to them when they was in school. After two years a social worker came in and gave me an IQ test; turns out I got enough going up above my eyebrows to get my GED and even take a crack at college if I want. So the warden gives me a pass to use the computer room and in two months I ain’t a dropout no more.
“I guess Lansing keeps tabs on my kind of case, ’cause four months before my parole I get a registered letter from a state police commander to come in for an interview when I walk out; he even offers to put in a word with the board during my review. Since the city cops think the way to solve the gang problem is run a sweep twicet a year, tag a few, and turn the rest loose, the governor hands it over to the troopers. I’m an inside expert. So here I am, a high school honor-rollee with what you might call a full ride scholarship with the University of Scrote Studies.”
“Now you sound like Albert White.”
He looked ready to spit. “That old piece of shit. He’d like me to go down for Root. That’d make it worth all the wires he pulled to make that crook look like Jesus.”
“Tell me about Root.”
“Slot machine. You fed in the right coin, next time you got caught up in a sweep, whatever you might be carrying in your jeans didn’t make it into the evidence room. That way, if you fell short, there was plenty of shit to choose from when you wasn’t carrying.”
“Anyone ever file a complaint?”
“Bangers was all he muscled. They’re gonna bop into the cophouse, ax Officer Leathernuts to take down their statement? That ain’t the kind of suicide they got in mind.”
“Any evidence?”
“I give a shit you don’t believe me? You called me. I didn’t issue any invitations.”
“White thinks there’s a connection between Root’s death and the Lawes disappearance. Root was the first officer on the scene. White as much as said your gang took the job on a hire to seal his mouth. Whoever killed him took his notebook.”
Steadman’s face flattened. “I wasn’t deaf, and I didn’t have no reason then to pass anything along any ideas I had. Root wasn’t popped over that deal, or if he was it was a twofer. He swallowed the bait set out to take him off a lot of guys’ backs.”
“The Impala.”
That, according to White, was the car Root was getting ready to pull over when he was killed.
“A little water on the plate and a drive down a dusty road, and the heap could belong to the queen of England for all you could make out the numbers,” he said. “I used to hunt pheasants in empty lots in Detroit. When a female’s nesting, she staggers off faking a busted wing to draw you away from her chicks: Same thing when you drive like a drunk. The most experienced cop in the world don’t see nothing else but that.”
“Not even a low-rider pulling up alongside him with a shooter in the passenger seat.”
“Just a guess, like I said.”
The man on the floor had decided to get up. He stuck the muzzle of the magnum against the floor and used it as a pry. It was no way to treat an expensive firearm, even an inoperable one, but with the leverage he might have gotten himself upright sometime before sundown. I grew bored with the show and returned my attention to Steadman.
“Why snitch Root’s notebook? It couldn’t identify anyone connected with his murder, if that’s how it went down. He wouldn’t have been writing in it while he was getting ready to flag a driver.”
“I ain’t got nothing for that. This the first I heard it was ripped off. Must of been one of them things the cops sit on to prune back the phony confessions.” He rolled a shoulder. “Probably it was somebody being cute. When you’re looking for a notebook, maybe you’re not looking so hard for a man.”
“Not if you’re a cop, and the man you’re looking for killed one of your own.”
“I said it was cute. I didn’t say it was smart. What’d I say about them pukes and the future?”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember how you came by your theory.”
“Uh-uh. It’s getting to be a long time ago, and I was daydreaming is all.”
I couldn’t read anything in his expression. A civilian has to earn eyes like those; just one killing won’t do it. Cops have them, too, but for all I know they bring them with them to the academy. It isn’t one of those jobs you drift into.
FOURTEEN
I actually started to ask the next question that came to mind. I covered it with a cough, and put out my latest cigarette, as if that was the cause.
Half of detection—the half that’s easiest on the legs—is asking questions and getting answers. Even if they’re lies it’s progress of a kind. Nothing types a character like the falsehoods he chooses to employ. But sometimes the questions left unsaid are the wisest. It isn’t like conducting a radio interview, where silence is a problem. A pause in the flow of an interview can be as good as a breakthrough, if you knew how to work it. Someday I hope to learn how. I thanked him for his time and turned toward
the door. A flash of surprise brought his features back from the dead.
“I didn’t give you much to go on,” he said.
“Sure you did. You told me Root’s a dead end. Saved me time running down a bum lead.”
“You believe me, then.”
“You as much as told me you killed him, or was involved in his murder. In my eyes that writes your name in the golden book in the sky.”
“I didn’t—”
“Okay. You guessed. I didn’t hire on to find out who killed him. The cops got manpower enough to chase that rabbit without my help. Frankly, I don’t care. They know what they’re signing on for when they take the oath.”
“Py, see the man out.”
The giant seemed to come awake then. He’d been sitting on some distant planet. As far as I could tell he’d forgotten what had passed between us, or for that matter who I was and where I’d come from. His problem appeared to go beyond a glandular aberration. I felt pity for him then. Being too big to buy your clothes in Walmart seemed challenge enough.
“Unnecessary,” I said. “I left a trail of breadcrumbs from the front door.”
“It’s a slow day. You might get tackled on the way and lose your innocence. Half of Uncle’s girls are slave labor, recruited from the street. You work up some muscle Dumpster-diving for supper in Pyongyang.”
He was being dramatic, a by-product of his former profession. On the way back through the Land of Cabbage I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t see any faces, just eyes glowing back in the dimness between curtains in the doorways, like raccoons’ watching the trash being put out.
* * *
With the prison town in my rearview mirror I had second thoughts, wondering why I hadn’t asked Oakes Steadman about what George Hoyle had told me, about the seeming intimacy between Marcus Root and Paula Lawes. There was no reason to suspect a gang-banger would know everything that went on between a bent cop—if he was bent—and the public at large; then again, I wouldn’t know without asking, even if he denied any knowledge of the situation. It was instinct on my part, pure and simple. The difference between Man and Beast is Beast doesn’t question why it does what it does. There’s something to be said for the inability to reason.
When Old Midnight Comes Along Page 7