Easy Street

by Elizabeth Sims

  I supposed Jimmy Donovan was one of those guys who always intended to get out of the business. You squirrel away money. Maybe you cheat your contacts a little more than you used to; maybe you set up one last big transaction; or maybe you set up a big double-cross, where you keep a wheelbarrow of money or goods you were supposed to hand over to somebody else. In that case, you'd need to blow town immediately. Since Jimmy Donovan didn't do that, I had to figure he was a squirreler who maybe tried to do a big transaction that went wrong. Hell, maybe he'd met his end for a small transaction that went wrong.

  If he was squirreling, he was thinking about the future. The older a drug dealer gets, the worse the paranoia becomes: You leap up at every car in the driveway; you shrivel at every tap on the shoulder. You never know. Yes, Jimmy Donovan would have been tiring of the racket by the time that knife found its way into his neck.

  I purchased a wrapped-up ham sandwich and put it in my pocket, then discreetly changed the newspapers in Todd's carrier in a corner of the café, using a local free paper someone had left on a table, and gave him some water and timothy nuggets. We returned to the Caprice where I loaded him in then walked the soiled newspapers around to the rear of the care center and threw them into a trash bin. I cleaned my hands with a Kentucky Fried Chicken towelette from the car's glove compartment. Now we were all set.

  After five tries the Caprice's ignition caught, and we chugged out of the parking lot. It was four o'clock. The engine ran hot immediately. "Shit," I murmured. I pulled over and looked under the hood. The oil was low, as I expected, but I judged there was enough until we needed gas. Nothing else appeared wrong, but I had a bad feeling. I decided to believe that the temperature gauge was faulty. "Let's just make a run for it," I said to Todd. This time it took nine tries before starting. Hoping for the best, I pointed the hood in the direction of the Ohio Turnpike. I was willing for the Caprice to breathe its last in Detroit, our turf, and I was trying to prepare myself emotionally for that. But I didn't like the thought of being stranded this far from home.

  Of course, not liking the thought never has anything to do with it.

  As I threaded my way through the ghetto-ish zone between the nursing home and the I-90, which I intended to take to the turnpike, the Caprice's idiot lights started flashing like Las Vegas. You do know that the dashboard-warning lights are called idiot lights, don't you? Because they only come on when the situation is extreme and not even an idiot could miss the message. Then you feel like an idiot because if you'd done more for your car you probably wouldn't be in this shape.

  I pressed on, the goal now to make it at least to the toll plaza at the turnpike where they have tow trucks and courteous employees. The sky darkened as I accelerated into the concrete chute of the I-90 downtown, or maybe it was my imagination. The weather had definitely gotten colder, and I wondered if it would snow, even though it was still autumn.

  Suddenly the engine lurched and went into fibrillation, missing rapidly, shudderingly. An enormous cloud of blue smoke filled my mirrors.

  "Damn, Todd," I said. "Don't worry."

  I gave it full gas in the sudden hope that the problem might simply be carbon buildup in the cylinders, and visualized eight cleansing flames burning the bad stuff out of each smooth steel tube. In response, the car bucked and screamed like an insane camel. Currents of traffic swept around us, angry drivers honking as if I were trying to thwart them all personally.

  Skeeee! went the Caprice.

  Standing on the accelerator, I forced the car up an exit ramp and onto a surface street where the engine uttered one last waul and went silent. I wrestled with the now-stiff steering wheel and got us over to the curb. I removed the key from the ignition.

  Todd shifted in his case. I reached over and unlatched it, took him on my lap, and stroked his back. Together we just breathed for a few minutes. He seemed glad it was over, and I have to confess I did too. Poor old Caprice. A small amount of smoky vapor rose up from beneath the hood and dissipated into the cold city air.

  Gradually, Todd's warmth on my thighs got my heart rate down. Nothing was all that bad. Be here now. Focus and execute.

  We hadn't made it into a better neighborhood. Actually, this place was not a neighborhood at all. Battered warehouses and blank-faced factory buildings stretched along the street; we were in a light industrial quarter that must have been thriving thirty-five years ago. Now nothing was happening, and everything was storm-cloud gray. The traffic was desultory and sparse. Trees would have gotten in the way of progress on such a street, so there were none.

  I got out and put on my wool pea coat, which luckily I'd tossed in the back seat this morning. Man, that was a long time ago.

  A kid rode past on a bike, flicking a tough glance over his shoulder.

  "Yeah, you too," I muttered.

  I opened the trunk and removed my gym bag and the only other thing in there, a set of jumper cables. I set them on the hood, then sorted through the junk in the glove compartment, picking out my registration, insurance certificate, crumpled repair bills, anything with my name and address on it. I ran my hand beneath the seats and pulled out my gas-pumping gloves and my Detroit Street Finder. At the last minute I remembered an agate from Lake Superior that my friend Billie had dropped for luck into the police-installed map pocket when I first got the car. I plucked it out and held it up. Agates are dull stones when dry, but when water touches them they show their gem-like patterns. This one, Billie had shown me, had tiger stripes. I decided to polish it someday, and put it in my pocket.

  Next, using the short blade of my jackknife, my good old Case double-blade, I managed to unscrew the license plate at only the cost of the skin on one knuckle.

  I stuffed the plate and papers into my gym bag, looped the jumper cables over my shoulder, picked up Todd's case, and took one last look at the Caprice. "So long, friend," I said. "Thanks for everything."

  I couldn't afford to cry right out in public like that. I turned and set off on foot down the dirty street.

  ----

  It took me two hours, receiving vague but ultimately correct directions from the pedestrians I met up with, to walk to the Greyhound bus station on Chester Avenue by the university. No one bothered me; I even stopped at a bar when it got dark and drank a glass of beer for eighty cents, a price I hadn't paid since I couldn't remember when.

  The day's last bus to Detroit had gone, and the next one was at three-fifty-five a.m. I bought a ticket from the clerk behind the counter for twenty-six dollars. I still had a couple of twenties on me, but that was it.

  I set Todd and my stuff on a bench near the snack bar and, remembering the ham sandwich that was still in my bag, bought a Coke to go with it. We settled down to wait for the middle of the fucking night.

  Well, what can you say about an inner-city bus station? Although this one was pleasanter than most I'd seen, with decent lighting and wood paneling from olden days, the place smelled like cold mop water. A few sorry-looking zombies—all guys, of course—lurked in the corners and in the doorway to the men's room. There was no way I could allow myself to fall asleep in that place; not that I feared for my life with the clerk right there around the corner. But you just don't want to lose consciousness in a place where people buy and sell sexual favors that don't involve lying down. You just don't.

  Thank God I'd brought my copy of Encounter in Borneo. After making sure Todd was comfortable in his case next to me on the plastic seat, I ate my sandwich, drank the Coke, and read many soothing chapters.

  The story completely took my mind away from my troubles. That's what a good book does for you. I tried to read slowly to make it last.

  So Calico Jones tears herself away from the stunningly, brainily luscious Ingrid and sets off from Singapore to Borneo in a chartered vintage Beechcraft F90 seaplane piloted by a leather-jacketed deserter from the North Korean secret police. Calico, ever cool, just climbs in, hands the guy a map, and buckles her safety harness. She can tell the guy's trustworthy and a goo
d pilot because when she asks him how fast he's going to get her to this anaconda-ridden jungle in Borneo, he merely says, "Not fast. In once piece. In Borneo, one piece is enough."

  Calico, you'll remember, has to find and stop this mad scientist who's building a climate-control machine using mutant insect larvae.

  So she finds herself paddling this tiny rubber raft to shore from the pontoon plane because of course there's no dock at the godforsaken lake in the middle of nowhere. En route, a crocodile snaps her paddle in two so then she's forced to get into the water and tow the raft containing her equipment and supplies to the slimy shore. She is so cool and brave. I wished the croc would come back so she could punch it in the nose.

  Then Calico's carrying her stuff on her back through the rain forest, and it's hot and she's only wearing her tank top and shorts and sturdy boots, and her muscles are bulging all over the place when a band of headhunters captures her for dinner. All I'll reveal here is that Ingrid had taught her some words of headhunter language which she now uses to convince the headhunters that she's more valuable to them alive than dead, playing on a little-known Bornean superstition involving a certain species of amphibious butterfly.

  She no sooner gives these guys the slip than another band of head-hunters grabs her, this one made up exclusively of chiefs and their queens. Now Calico's getting impatient, so she gives a major karate demonstration on them and escapes with the subtle help of one of the headhunter queens, who found herself getting tremendously hot watching Calico Jones sending all those tribal chiefs flying ass over teakettle.

  I closed the book. A creepy guy edged toward me, but as soon as I gave him an icy Calico Jones stare, he backed off. The station clock said eleven-fifteen. Less than five hours to go.

  Chapter 18

  When dinosaurs roamed the earth, public transportation in southeastern Michigan was very good—all those streetcars and whatnot. Times indeed changed, but the bus system these days wasn't as bad as you might expect. You could get around, not fast or in style, but you could do it if you didn't mind walking a mile or two on either end. The Greyhound got into Detroit at seven-thirty in the morning. One DOT ticket and two transfers later, I was drinking coffee and eating oatmeal and bacon at the diner where my friend Billie worked, the Cracked Mug, on West Jefferson in Ecorse.

  My good friend was busy, so we didn't talk much. I watched her speed-slide four mugs into a row on the counter, then fill them with coffee in one deft sweep. Her arms were ropy from years of heaving plates and elbowing countermen, but her face looked young because she never let the hard work get her down. Of all my friends Billie was the quickest to smile. She eyed my luggage, said hello to Todd in his case, asked if I was all right, and refused to give me a bill.

  "What'll the boss say?" I asked, getting up.

  "Shut up," she said. "I see you're on the move. Do you need a place for Todd?"

  "Naw, but thanks. Get this—I'm house-sitting for a cop and solving a murder at the same time!" A solid breakfast makes me feel cocky.

  "Good God. What's going on?"

  "Way too much. I'll tell you about it soon."

  ----

  I stepped up to Porrocks's front porch and rang the bell. The drapes were drawn and the house was quiet. I was a little surprised that Audrey Knox had gone out so early; I should have called to tell her when to expect me. To be honest, the thought had occurred to me, but I feared sounding pathetic. I didn't want her jumping in her car to come rescue me when Porrocks's place needed protecting.

  I rang again just to make sure. I looked up at Audrey's apartment windows across the street. The sun was bright, as the day was cold and clear, and I couldn't tell whether she was home or not. Terribly anxious to tell her about all the intelligence I'd gathered, I hauled my gym bag, Todd, and my jumper cables over to her building and rang. No answer.

  "Well, hell," I muttered. I crossed the street again and went down to Porrocks's boathouse, which I'd locked after finishing my work there. Of course, I'd left the key on the same ring as the house key, which I'd given to Audrey. I took off my coat and set Todd and my stuff in the marginal shelter of the doorway—there were a couple of shrubs to block the cold breeze that flowed around the house and along the riverbank. I went around to the end of the boathouse where the boat well was.

  The structure had been designed in a simpler time, when barbed wire was used only on ranches, and tall unscalable fences were built for soldiers to scramble over in boot camp. A long narrow board had been nailed to the outside of the boat well as a marginal bumper. Finding that it held my weight, I set off, edging my Weejuns along it as you'd go along a rock ledge. The river lapped along inches beneath me as I used cracks in the weathered siding as fingerholds. I smelled the old familiar river smell, that cool, mossy, earthy aroma that always means peacefulness to me.

  When I got to the end of the wall, I reached around and grabbed one of the handles on the garage-type door facing the river. I half expected not to be strong enough to raise that door from my one-handed awkward position. But it slid upward on what must have been well-packed, overbuilt bearings. Typical of the quality of construction in those days.

  I rested a moment, then swung around the wall quickly, half-leaping to the inside walkway.

  "Ha!" I exclaimed with satisfaction, brushing my hands on my jeans.

  The door from the boat well to the inside had no lock. I went in, turned on the electric baseboard heat, and brought in Todd and my stuff. Now we had a warm place to wait for Audrey. Todd was asleep in his case. The ghost image of Drooly Rick lay across the kitchenette floor, unfaded.

  I wandered around and thought about Jimmy Donovan's treasure. How much might he have hidden? He surely wasn't a big-time dealer, not a guy who'd routinely bought and sold huge shipments for millions. Guys like that need an entourage, and his widow, Lisette, hadn't mentioned anything like that. On the other hand, there was the gold smuggler's bracelet I'd found, which reasonably seemed an artifact of volume dealing.

  If Donovan had handled $1,000 a day five days a week and put away $200 of it, he'd have more than $50,000 at the end of one year. If he'd handled $2,000 a day, double it. And a big score could have boosted that.

  One thing that had occurred to me on the bus from Cleveland was this. Those walls were plaster throughout the two buildings—that's the way they built them then. Wet plaster, everybody knows, is a fussy material to work. Which is why they use gypsum board, or drywall, in houses today.

  I examined the busted wall in the boathouse. You'll remember that only one side had been demolished. I took a close look at the remaining part, from the unmarred side and from the inside, as it were.

  How had I missed it before? Because I hadn't looked for it. The cops hadn't looked for it. The opposite side of that wall had been patched with drywall—about a two-by-two-foot square of it at knee level, covered with a swatch of that nauseating daisy wallpaper. The spot would have been selected for its seclusion behind a piece of heavy furniture. And in fact, I perceived a faint rectangle, bureau-shaped, surrounding the newer paper patch like a halo. If you weren't looking for the patch, you wouldn't really notice it, and you wouldn't remark on it.

  Now that I'd figured out the M.O., I'd easily be able to find more patches, if they existed, in the main house.

  Something Porrocks said way back at the party came to me. Talking about the house, she had said, "I think someone with a temper lived there."

  Of course. With her cop's acuity, she must've noticed patches like this in the house, all at a similar height. And she probably deduced that some habitually angry person kicked the wall, then had to patch it, time after time.

  "Ha!" I said again, so pleased with my analytical powers. I couldn't wait to get another look inside the main house and boast about it all to Audrey. "Ha!"

  Two hours, however, passed with no sign of her. Restlessly, I walked over to her apartment and rang again. Nothing. I returned to Porrocks's house and stopped at the side door. Suddenly an exceptional
ly odd feeling swept through me, the ugly clutch of dread.

  I opened the storm door and tried the inside knob. It turned smoothly, and the feeling of that cold knob turning like that with no resistance made me sick to my stomach.

  Dear God. Oh, dear God, my Audrey—please, God, my Audrey. Where would I find her? Lying in a pool of blood, having been hacked to death by the same greedy, insane monster who killed Rick? Or was she at this very second crawling toward the telephone, left for dead but barely alive, rasping my name through a hideously torn mouth? Or was her battered body floating down the river now, having been callously discarded the way you'd kick away a dead rat? My dear perky one.

  I swallowed my spit and stepped in. "Audrey?" My voice echoed in the silent kitchen. At first I thought everything was all right. The air was completely still and cool. But I walked quickly into the dining room, then to the living room, and that much was enough to tell me I'd made an enormous and terrible mistake.

  Porrocks's home looked as if fifteen Drooly Ricks had been given wrecking bars and told to find the bourbon between the studs.

  "Audrey! Audrey!" I cried. I listened for footsteps, rustling, breathing, moans. Nothing. I raced through the house, stumbling over rubble in my haste to find my curvaceous, exciting lover. Shards and chips of plaster lay thick underfoot, mixed with splintered lath, clumps of dust and dirt, like debris from an earthquake. On second thought the destruction was much more bomb-like in its violence. Porrocks's furniture had been shoved away from the walls, every single one of which had been savagely broken into. Unsurprisingly, I saw no currency or valuables lying about.

  Nor was there any sign of Audrey.

  I yanked on the handle to the trapdoor to the attic, which I'd noticed in Porrocks's upstairs dressing room. I scrambled up the ladder and poked my head into the gloom. "Audrey?" In the weak daylight coming in from the vents I saw bits of junk—a suitcase, a birdcage, a box of Christmas decorations—but no Audrey Knox.