“Detective. No one’s in trouble. I just want to ask some questions.”
“Mr. Badderleigh is the man you want. Our manager. He was a bartender then, I think.”
“Perfect.”
Blue eyes the size of robin’s eggs scanned me hair to heels. A suit and tie will get you places a T-shirt and jeans won’t; it’s a wonder the criminal class hasn’t caught on. Anyway she opened the door the rest of the way and stood aside. She wore a starched white apron over a black velvet dress.
We followed a narrow corridor past a busy kitchen smelling thickly of frying onions, boiling cabbage, roasting meat, and lard—brunch fare a la Winston Churchill—into a square dim room where tin-shaded bulbs shed just enough light in the booths to see to eat. At that it would be like a hospital theater compared to the gin-some, sin-some paradise it had been in times past.
It was a genuine sports bar now, if the miniature Jumbo-Trons spotted around the room were any indication. They were dark now.
The little Dutch Maid signaled to me to stay put and approached a burly party supervising a table set-up with his hands folded behind his back, Napoleon fashion. A head that was mostly untrained hair and eyebrows like soffits came up, turned my way, nodded. The hostess or whatever she was flounced off and after another moment spent scrutinizing the position of the flatware the burly party trundled my way, rocking on bowed legs and pigeon toes. He wore a green suede vest, brass buttons unfastened, a white dress shirt with cuffs the size of flowerpots, striped trousers, and shoes that matched the vest. The two halves of an old-fashioned do-it-yourself bow tie hung on either side of his open collar.
“Edgar Badderleigh.” He caught my hand in one the size of a palm frond and let go. “I didn’t get your rank, Mr. Walker.” He had an accent you could cut with a cricket bat.
“I don’t have one, Mr. Badderleigh. Badderleigh, is that Welsh?”
“Cornish. Penelope said you’re a detective?”
“Private. I’m following up on an old police case. Penelope—her real name, or just something to go with the iron front?”
“It’s the one she put on her résumé.”
“Penelope said you worked here under the old management.”
“Sad to say, yes. I was about to give my notice when the owner announced the sale. My ancestors belonged to the serving class, who took pride in waiting upon only those persons they respected.”
“That wouldn’t include a Recorders Court judge feeling up a legal secretary under the table.”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
Crockery clacked. A vacuum choked on something solid. A cart rattled past carrying mops, brooms, and buckets, grazing my hip. “Is there a butler’s pantry? I feel like a snag in the river.”
“This way.”
I trailed him, trying not to rock from side to side the way he did, like a career sailor on dry land. Childhood rickets, I thought, watching his trousers flap around calves not much bigger around than copper pipe. We turned into a short pine-paneled passage between doors marked BLOKES and BETTYS and through a plain unmarked door into a square room that was part office and part storage, with a desk made of black pebbled iron with a scratched Formica top and stacked cardboard cartons advertising brands of liquor and toilet paper. The walls were bare lath with old mortar squeezing out like lemon filling from between the slats. That made the building older than any dozen renovations. Fluorescent tubes mounted to the ceiling shed albino light, for once without a flicker.
There was no place to sit other than the chair behind the desk, a blown-out swivel patched with duct tape. Badderleigh, ever the gentleman, remained standing, with his hands behind his back. He lacked only a riding habit and a Russian wolfhound to complete the set.
“Whose idea was it?” I said. “Yours?”
“Idea?” The long stray hairs in his brow kept moving after he finished raising them.
I waved a hand, encompassing the building’s whole interior. “The Dog-and-Whistle, yoiks and away, and so say all of us. A bit of the Old Blighty just spitting distance away from the Motor City. Or did that come first and the accent and Sherwood Forest family tree come after?”
Here was another poker face in my gallery. Even his tone was unrippled.
“You are a rum one, aren’t you? Is this how you go about requesting my assistance in an official investigation, by insulting me?”
“I had to ask. It was the only way I could see to get past that stiff upper lip.”
Something tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. It might have been a tic brought on by memories of Rorke’s Drift. “I’ve been a citizen of this country twenty years, but I’ll never get over how you Yanks think you’ve cornered the market on irony. No, the idea was the current owner’s. He’s a native of Los Angeles, which is where he spends all his time. I don’t disregard the possibility that he took his inspiration from me. Incidentally, the stiff upper lip went out with the empire, or didn’t you pay attention when the royal family was forced to issue a statement upon the occasion of Princess Diana’s death?”
“No kidding, she died? A barkeep who can pick out a Recorders Court judge from the general run of horndogs should remember a few other faces from the old days. What can you tell me about this one?”
That morning’s Free Press had featured the Hoyle killing in Section A. Murders, especially those that took place in the suburbs, rarely drew that kind of attention, but when a retired ranking police officer was involved, the new bridge to Canada got kicked backed to Travel and Leisure. Someone had downloaded a head shot from the According to Hoyle web site. It was a good likeness, apart from the genial smile I’d never encountered on that horse face in person. I held out the clipping.
After a moment Badderleigh freed one of his hands from behind his back and took it. He frowned as far as his eyebrows, went around behind the desk, sat, and switched on a lamp mounted on a flexible tube. A pair of Delft-blue eyes that apparently didn’t need correction scanned each line of text, then fixed on the image, about the size of a Christmas seal; stayed on it with all the concentration of a crime victim studying a mug shot. Finally he straightened and scaled the clipping across the desktop. “I’m sorry.”
“Baloney.”
“Sorry?”
“Poppycock. Balderdash. Whatever you Brits say when what you mean is bullshit. My pedigree doesn’t stretch as far back as yours. I can’t claim a Vidocq on my tree, but I’ve been a detective as long as you’ve slung drinks, and I know a positive ID when I see it in the making. The name may not ring Big Ben, but you know that face like your own.”
The fingers attached to one of his flippers beat a tattoo on the desk. Factoring in the English temperament, he was frothing at the mouth.
“You must understand, we’ve been years overcoming a reputation—”
“Detroit isn’t the West End,” I said. “We’ve had bootleggers in the City-County Building who were issued those little gizmos that turn red lights green so the mayor didn’t miss his three-martini lunch, and police chiefs who stashed their graft in the ceiling. The LCC won’t yank your liquor license because you got involved in a homicide investigation. Especially when you cooperated.
“Give me a break, Badderleigh; that’s not what’s got your bowels in an uproar. Your man in Hollywood wouldn’t be a front, would he? To spare you the embarrassment of a harder look at your interest in the Gamesman?”
The fingers stopped drumming. “I’ve never made a secret of my past mistakes. I lost a nice little family tavern in Cleveland Heights the third time a bartender I trusted—my ex-son-in-law, if you insist on details—sold spirits to underage customers. You can’t maintain a business of this nature selling vegetable juice.”
“You wouldn’t be the first owner of a bar who let a virgin front for him,” I said. “Hell, if you could patent the practice, our little metropolitan community would clear seven figures in royalties annually: We invented it the day Prohibition was repealed. That’s where my plastic badge trumps the gold-pla
ted bling they hand out at the academy. It’s what puts the ‘private’ in ‘private detective.’” That tasted like something past its sell-by date; I’d used it once too often on this deal. “What’ve I got to gain by selling you out? The cops might even stretch the point and pull my ticket as an accessory; enough of them don’t like me to say I sat on the information since I took this job. This is the kind of place I’d take the family, if I had one. Who knows what’ll move in once you’re gone? Maybe something worse than what it was last time: An Internet café, maybe.”
I stabbed Hoyle’s long face with a forefinger, hoping that was enough. My throat was getting raspy from my summation to the jury.
He drew his eyebrows down to the corners of his mouth. Then he sat back and spread his hands. That was something no one had been able to get from his race since William the Conqueror.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Is it too early for a drink?” he said.
“I’ve never understood that question.”
Rising, he excused himself. He might even have made a slight bow, but that could have been just part of the overall impression. He was too British for Britain, just as some Texans are too Texas for Texas; get them off native territory and they spread out like knotweed. I killed time while he was gone opening a beige fire door and leaning out to admire a side street that paralleled the one in front of the building, two narrow lines running the opposite direction from the other. The fog was lifting, levitating all in one piece like a block of cream cheese. The sun of what promised to be a mild day poked out of its top; probably a tease.
I drew the door shut just as Badderleigh returned, lugging a brown enamel tray supporting a pitcher filled with scarlet liquid, two stout glasses, and a third thin one with green onions and celery stalks sticking up from it like pencils in a cup. He kicked the door shut with his heel and set the tray on the desk. I poured for us both, stirred mine, and laid aside the celery stick. A man could put his eye out if he wasn’t careful.
He looked at his chair, hesitated. “I neglected to think this thing through.”
I shook my head, slid a large carton up to the desk that was solid enough to support my one-eighty-five, and sat. That country-gentleman act was getting thick. I was beginning to think Great Uncle Nigel was more comfortable with a potato fork in his hand than a silver salver.
He could mix a cocktail, though. I couldn’t tell where the tomato juice—fresh-squeezed and still smelling of the vine—left off and the Worchestershire sauce began. The gin was Bombay Sapphire, or some other label as distantly removed from fusel oil.
He tasted his drink, evaluated it, and dismissed the results all in a lump. So far as I could read those eyebrows his face was as legible as a good map, but they could be camouflage. His hands, wide as platters, were more honestly expressive. He flattened both on the desk, bracing for the worst.
“I never knew the man’s name until this moment,” he said. “The people who tell a bartender all about their religious preferences and the state of their marriage rarely introduce themselves.”
“No one would do both. I’d insist on anonymity myself if most people didn’t pay by check. Apart from that our work’s not so different.”
“Yes. Well, men like Hoyle were bread-and-butter to the old Gamesman. He was one of our regulars. The same could not be said about the women who accompanied him. He changed them like shirts.”
When I raised my glass to drink, the stiff photograph in my inside coat pocket rustled. It wasn’t time to play that card. “He was a player.”
“We used to call them libertines. Even ‘whoremonger’ dignifies them beyond their due. A prostitute sells her body to survive. A nymphomaniac is a slave to her infirmity. They’re to be pitied, nothing worse. Animals like Hoyle— Is there a masculine counterpart for ‘slut’?”
“It’s your language. We just have it on loan. How often did he come around?”
“Often enough to call me Ed. You remember that song, ‘Where Everybody Knows Your Name’? It applies only to bartenders. It almost never works the other direction.”
“Always with a date?”
“Always. Well, except the last time.”
“What time was that?”
The tomato juice had left a stain in his glass. He ran a finger inside the rim and sucked it dry. “It was a Tuesday, I know, because that was my day off, but the part-time man called in sick. I had tickets to the Fisher Theater that night; Phantom. I was still in a ruddy bad mood when he came in. I’m afraid I wasn’t as polite to this fellow—Hoyle?—as a good counterman should be. That was unlike me, and so in spite of my feelings toward the man I was coming round the bar to apologize and offer him a drink on the house—the house being myself—when he nearly bally well bowled me over dashing for the exit.”
“He stiffed you because you were rude?”
“No, he paid for his drink. I got the impression he was following someone and didn’t want to be left behind.”
It was time to play my hole card. I slid out Paula Lawes’s photo and laid it on the desk. “They had a fight here one night.”
He glanced, shook his head. “He was alone this particular evening. Come to think of it now, he might have stopped in specifically to make contact with the man he ran out after.”
“Man?”
“One of our regulars. A police officer.” He stopped turning the glass and looked up. “His name I know, because he was killed soon after. It was in the news for days.”
* * *
Someone knocked. He said, “Yes?” and the small woman dressed like a barmaid came in carrying a big carton with a label from the Peninsula Paper Company.
“Ah, yes. The droll cocktail napkins.” That acid undertone of contempt was purely Anglo-Saxon. “Over there, please.”
In response to his gesture she placed the box on top of a stack. It seemed to be as light as a balloon.
“The Marcus Root case,” I said when we were alone again. “I wish I’d been hired to crack that one. It keeps throwing itself in my face.”
Badderleigh cocked a thumb toward the picture. “Who is this woman? I think I might have seen her in here.”
I told him. “Oh, yes,” he said. “She came in a number of times with Hoyle. I remember because he rarely escorted the same woman twice; and of course there was all that bit in the papers when she disappeared.”
“The police must have asked you some questions.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t tell them anything helpful. They showed me a picture of this man Hoyle, taken from his driving license, but they never told me his name. I said he’d been in with the Lawes woman. It didn’t seem to excite them; but then the policemen are the same here as in England: wouldn’t give you an ‘Ouch’ if you stabbed them in the bum.”
“He’d already told them they were seeing each other. Did you report the other thing when they were here?”
“I never thought of it. It wasn’t the night she vanished and when Root was killed. Are you suggesting Hoyle—?”
“No, that’s come out. But if Hoyle followed him the first time and didn’t get what he wanted, he’d do it again and again, until he got something he wanted more.” I sipped again and let the rest of the Bloody Mary in the glass. Now that I’d found a use for my wits I meant to keep them intact. “Thanks, Mr. Badderleigh, for the drink and information. Or do you prefer Ed?”
“My given name is Edgar. Given me, not you. Mr. Badderleigh, if you would be so kind.”
TWENTY-NINE
Along with the opening bell of a typical workday, the traffic pattern in Allen Park had shifted, away from the northern incursion into Detroit toward homebodies running errands in town. Pickups and mini-vans puttered past the Gamesman’s little parking lot, diehard cyclists in teardrop helmets and skintight Spandex pedaled hell-for-leather around the block, panting vapor under the fog, still climbing toward the sun with all the haste of a teenager crawling out of bed. But the signs pointed toward a break from winter; one of those Michigan particulars in
which college coeds shed yesterday’s parkas to sun themselves on the roof of Delta Sigma Phooey before the next blizzard hits. It’s like Russia without the dogma; but it’s what makes those six weeks of summer so bittersweet.
I kept the motor warming while waiting for a receptionist with a voice like chromed steel to put me through to Human Resources at GlobalCare Pharmaceuticals: That was the name I got from the recording when I called for Andrea Dawson’s extension.
This one wasn’t steely, but just as smooth, like sand sifted through a fine screen. The name was Van Fleet. He asked who was calling.
I’d given the receptionist my name, but it almost always slips through the seam between lines 1 and 2. I gave it again. “Ms. Andrea Dawson’s cooperating in an investigation I’m conducting with the police in Detroit and Allen Park, a case involving an old acquaintance of hers. I’m finishing up the paperwork now. Can you tell me anything about her history with GlobalCare?”
“Without hesitation. She’s one of our best.”
I doodled in my pocket pad while he ticked off those parts of her employment record suitable for public consumption. She’d been with the place eight years, coming straight from a college course she’d signed up for after divorcing Mr. Dawson: “A lawyer, I understand; not an unpleasant parting, apparently. She refused a settlement. We thought that impressive; enough so that we agreed to let her work at home during her probationary period.”
I stopped doodling. “Was that unusual?”
“More then than now. She explained that she performed better under those conditions, having taken all her courses online. Her duties were chiefly research, so the request wasn’t difficult to fulfill. When after two years of flawless services we offered her a position with Information Services, she moved her operation to an office here.”
“Information Services, that’s Public Relations, isn’t it?”
“It’s more a matter of putting a human face on a commodity, like Betty Crocker or Snap, Crackle and Pop, only in her case she had the advantage of being real. And it’s a nice face, both attractive and approachable. When she finally posted her picture on Facebook, our CEO directed me to interview her in person—to make sure there hadn’t been any, um, enhancement in the posting. There wasn’t, as it turned out. Thank goodness, because those of us who’d spoken with her on the phone were predisposed in her favor.”
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