Midnight Man

by Loren D. Estleman

  The activity was loosening my cramped muscles, but the Russian saber dance was definitely out of the question. At the closet I climbed into my shoes and shirt and got my wallet out of the jacket. Nothing was missing inside. I put it back, leaving the jacket hanging. The flashlight protruded from a pocket. I didn’t bother to look for the Luger; my assailants were low on weapons after yesterday’s police visit.

  The refrigerator yielded a half-gallon of milk and a package of bacon, open but with only a few slices gone. I turned on the gas and drank milk from a glass found in a cupboard above the sink while I buttered a skillet and laid four fatty strips sizzling in the bottom.

  While they cooked I nosed around a little. It was good practice. The guns on the table included two .38-caliber revolvers, one a Smith & Wesson like my own, the other a .357 magnum, and a .45 Colt Army automatic. The shotgun leaning against the wall was an Ithaca 12-gauge pump, pre-World War II, the rifle next to it a Remington 30-06 automatic. All were well oiled, fully loaded, and shared that spotless, pampered look only the true firearms fanatic can achieve. It was damn trusting of him to leave them lying around with a stranger on the premises, but as he’d said, he knew who I was and where I lived.

  The drawers built into the wall were full of cowboy stuff—checked shirts, sun-bleached jeans as soft as chamois leather, a dozen or so paperback books with titles like Showdown at Cimarron and Jake Lomax—Town Tamer, the covers loose and curled from much handling. Pots, pans, and canned goods filled the cupboards. The doors of one cabinet were padlocked. More guns, probably. The News piece said he had one of the largest collections of firearms in the Southwest, not that I expected him to cart the whole thing up here. A thick manila folder on top of the cabinet contained syndicated press clippings on Alonzo Smith, Luke David Turkel, and Willie Lee Gross, going back to the Mt. Hazel shooting. Someone had drawn a fat felt-tipped marker through everything dealing with Turkel and Gross.

  The only genuinely personal items in the trailer were a few snapshots buried in a drawer: Bum in a white T-shirt as broad as a board fence, standing in someone’s back yard with one huge arm flung around a washed-out-looking woman half his size in a print dress; a young, beardless Bum, laughing and standing up a tiny version of himself in his lap in a shabby easy chair; Bum, still clean-shaven, towering over a family group in a different yard, including a younger woman closer to his height and two boys, the one from the earlier picture and the other, older and more serious-looking.

  The others were more of the same. I put them away feeling like a peeping Tom—hardly a new sensation for me. I made it back to the stove just in time to turn over the bacon before it caught fire. The smell of frying fat started my stomach working. I had flipped off the burner and gone for bread to make a sandwich when the trailer creaked under someone’s weight on the step-plate outside the door.

  There was no reason to suspect that one of my various enemies had traced me here, but I hadn’t taken so many kicks to the head I was ready to believe none of them could. I loped to the table on the balls of my feet and snatched up the magnum. When in doubt choose the weapon with the greatest stopping power.

  The door opened outward and she stuck her profile square in front of the muzzle. She heard the hammer drawing back and turned. A medium dark face, like antique gold under a black light. Even features arranged in a heart shape, the V of the chin repeated in the sardonic dip of the unpainted mouth, slanted nostrils, and almost Oriental eyes, large and dark and full of history. Tightly curled hair cropped very close to the head. A long neck. Nefertiti in a flame-colored blouse, white shorts, and sandals. Her eyes lifted from the gun to my face.

  “Nigger season already? My, how time flies.”

  I let down the hammer gently and returned the piece to the table. “You’re being coarse again, Iris,” I admonished. “Who said it became you?”

  Sparks flew from her eyes. “Who the hell are you to lecture me? I don’t hear from you for six months—”

  “Five and a half.”

  She ignored the interruption. “—and when I do, it comes through some other white dude who sounds like Matt Dillon over the phone, saying you been banged around again and you need a nurse. Do I look like a nurse?”

  “No, but then you don’t look much like a hooker, either.”

  Her open hand struck the only part of my face that didn’t hurt. A second later she was all over me and halfway down my throat, all silken arms and sinuous legs and darting tongue and nipples as hard as bullets. Her lips burned.

  When we came up for air she said, “What is it with you and trailers?” Her voice now was a purr, with few of the crisp West Indian overtones that came out when she was angry.

  I didn’t answer. We’d once spent some very nice moments in a mobile home in a park west of Detroit. I had just been beaten up that time too, and with brass knuckles, but with nothing like last night’s success. She leaned all her weight on my supporting arm so that I had to hold tight to keep her head off the floor, and ran gentle fingertips over my contusions and abrasions.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were still swoll up from the last time. What happened?”

  “Just a little message from the other side. If they’d meant business I’d be this week’s unidentified stiff on the Eleven O’Clock Report. Say, you’ve lost weight.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” The accent was back. She lifted the burden from my arm and pushed out of my embrace. “Is it going to happen again?”

  “Not if I stop what I’ve been going. How about some bacon? There’s enough for two, if you don’t mind splitting a sandwich.” I stepped back over to the stove. The meat continued to crackle even with the fire off.

  “Bacon? I’d rather eat a tarantula. That stuff will kill you.” She unslung a white leather bag from her shoulder and put it down on top of the guns on the table. I remembered another bag of similar design she used to carry, for practical reasons. She hardly glanced at the arsenal; in her line the trick was to avoid tripping over them. The cell was something else.

  “What the hell is that? What kind of place is this?”

  “Down in Oklahoma they used to call it the Tumbleweed Wagon back when Hanging Judge Parker was in practice,” I said. “A couple of federal marshals would haul it around the Indian nations, picking up fugitives and strays for trial back in Fort Smith. The principle’s the same. Our host just updated the transportation.”

  “How come you know so much about it?”

  “I owe it all to a lifetime watching B westerns. Sure you won’t have any?” I held up the bacon on a spatula.

  She made a face and shook her head. I shrugged, moistened two slices of bread in the grease of the skillet, and went through the ritual, lining the slices up with the crusts like cards in a deck. She watched, fascinated and appalled. “You’re really going to eat that, aren’t you?”

  “I wasn’t at first. I’d planned to mail it to my foster child in Albania, but I can’t find a stamp.” I leaned against the refrigerator and took a bite. It tasted as good as you can expect a bacon sandwich to taste under those circumstances, which is merely terrific.

  “When you finally succumb to cholesterol poisoning,” she advised, “don’t count on cremation. You’d just melt into a puddle of grease on the undertaker’s floor and they’d have to bury the mop.” She closed her mouth, then opened it again. “Are you going to?”

  “Be cremated?”

  “Don’t be difficult. Are you going to stop what you been doing before they kill you?”

  I shook my head, chewing. “I’d like to say it’s because I owe a guy, but it’s gone past that. Now I’m mad.”

  “Well, the hell with you.” She reached for her bag.

  “What’d I say?”

  “I can’t be mixed up with a guy who wants to be dead before he’s forty.” She thrust her arm through the strap and hoisted the heavy-looking satchel effortlessly up onto her shoulder. The streets made them strong or they chewed them up and spit them o
ut. “Besides, I can’t watch you eat that sandwich.”

  I put it down and went after her. I almost didn’t catch her; a charley horse rendered my right leg useless. She had the door open when I laid a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away, glaring.

  “Why’d you call me, anyway? You need a keeper, not a nurse.”

  “I don’t need either. I need information.”

  The fire in her eyes cooled too far. They grew frosty. “You mean a snitch.”

  “This trailer belongs to a cowboy named Bassett,” I explained. “He and I happen to be working on the same case from different ends, which is how he came to pull me out of the Twilight Zone after a bunch of black militants finished playing kick-the-can with my cranium. When he asked me who I wanted to take care of me until the doctor gets here, I thought of you right off. Partly it’s because I think you might have what I need to get back on target. Mostly it’s because you’re the only one in town who seems to care whether I die from poor diet or a knife in the kidney.”

  “What’s the matter, you lose your friend in the cops?”

  “A cop’s the last thing I need. If Alderdyce finds out I’m in on this one despite his warning, he’ll put on his seven-league boots and make what happened to me last night look like a game of girl’s high school volleyball.”

  Her expression sobered. “Alonzo Smith, right?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Bassett. I read about a Bassett in yesterday’s paper. He’s after Smith for the reward. You said you were both working on the same case. Well, I don’t know where Smith is. Every one of us niggers don’t know what all the others is doing all the time. Would you believe I never even met Lou Rawls?” Her voice had a blue edge.

  “You’re a working girl,” I said. “Customers have a way of opening up when the lights go off. Also, you know the dope scene. The people I’m dealing with are into cocaine, and probably some of the hard stuff as well.”

  “Well, I’m not anymore. I copped the cure.”

  I studied her closely. As long as I’d been in the racket I could never tell when some people were giving it to me straight. She held out her arms. “Look. No tracks. Would I be wearing short sleeves if I was shooting up? Or short pants?”

  “As I recall, you shot between your toes.” I slid the leather strap off her shoulder. She met my gaze defiantly, but made no resistance.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you.” I went through the bag. “I get lied to a lot, often by the best people.” It was full of purse stuff, no syringes or rubber hoses or cellophane packets stitched into the lining. I gave it back.

  “Deak,” I said. “That name mean anything to you?”

  Her expression didn’t change. I braced myself for another slap. The imprint of her hand was still hot on my face from the last one. Then she grew thoughtful.

  “Deak could be short for Deacon. I know a lot of those. Anything else?”

  “I think he hangs out, or did once, at the commune where Smith and Laura Gaye lived on McDougall. I got his name from a girl there named Tallulah. Black. Jail bait. Nice hair, if you like sponges. A doper. You know her, don’t you?” I’d been watching her color bleed gray.

  She nodded, not as if she’d been looking forward to it. “Tallulah Ridder.” I almost didn’t hear it. “We used to shop in some of the same stores, and I don’t mean the kind with fairy floorwalkers and end-of-season discounts. She’s Deak Ridder’s kid sister.” She fell silent, then: “He’s bad, Amos.”

  “That’s okay. I’m good enough for both of us. Know anything else about him?”

  “If I said I did you’d make me tell you, so I’m not saying. If you want to commit suicide that’s your lookout, but don’t ask me to hand you the gun.”

  We played stare-me-down for a while, but that soon made as much sense as urban renewal. Someone started collecting shopping carts in the parking lot outside. We listened to the jingling rattle. I said, “I’ll just get if from someone else, someone who may not bother to let me know how deep a hole I’m climbing into. Maybe I won’t know Ridder when I see him. But he’ll know me. You want to give him that edge?”

  “Oh, hell.” She folded her arms and glowered at the base of the refrigerator “He’s tall, about your height, but skinnier. Bald in front, fluffs his hair up in back. Wears a Fu Manchu moustache. I heard he worked out at the Rouge plant when he wasn’t pimping, but that was a couple of years back. I don’t know where or on what shift, or even if he’s still there.”

  “Laura Gaye worked at Rouge. Could be she met Smith through him.” The description didn’t match anyone I remembered from last night, but then I’d been preoccupied. “Ever hear his voice? Was it deep?”

  “He never said anything where I could hear it. He used to pimp for some girls I knew. But I heard plenty about him.” She looked at me. “Stay clear of him. Smith’s a killer, but Ridder is Grade A fanatical black militant. With him every white man is fair game, not just cops. I mean it. When you see him coming, cross the street.”

  “I’ll keep the advice in mind.”

  “But you won’t take it, will you?” You could cut the West Indies in her speech with a cricket bat.

  “Not taking it and ignoring it are two different things.” I changed the subject. “How long you been off poppies?”

  She counted on her fingers. “Three months, two weeks, six days”—a glance at her watch—“forty-four minutes. It’s getting better. I don’t count the seconds anymore. And you wondered how come I’ve lost weight.”

  “Is it as rough as I said it’d be?”

  “Does the mayor think he’s Jesus Christ?”

  I laughed, and it really did hurt, just like they say. “You’ll clear the post with room to spare.” I took her wrist gently and turned it so I could read her watch. 1:56. “Got a car?”

  “I took a cab. What happened to that bomb of yours?”

  “That’s what I mean to find out. I lost the keys, probably while I was getting the bejesus booted out of me, but I’ve got a spare set under the hood. If I still have a hood. Hail us a hack and I’ll drop you off on the way.” I got my jacket out of the closet, put a hand under her elbow, and opened the door. The fresh air made me realize how stuffy it was inside the trailer.

  “What about the doctor?”

  “He can sue me for malpractice. Just a second.” I left her and went back for the sandwich. “Okay, let’s go.”

  She dug in her heels. “With that poison?”

  “With alacrity.” I pushed her out ahead of me and snapped the lock on the door on my way through.

  9

  “YOU ALL RIGHT, mister? You don’t look so good.”

  The hack was a squat black with a bald head, glasses, and an unlit cigar screwed into the center of his face. There wasn’t much concern in his eyes as I paid the fare and tipped him a buck; so long as I didn’t die in his cab, his world turned well enough. I told him I always looked like this, and he sped out of my life. If he’d stayed I might have explained that the effects of a night’s sleep and Bum Bassett’s surefire cure for everything had worn off and that I was beginning to feel like something forgotten in the back of the refrigerator.

  Daylight did for McDougall what a bare electric bulb does for a mutilated corpse. Today the street was in the possession of a gang of dirty kids roller-skating over the broken sidewalk in their fathers’ cut-down pants. They always seem to be able to afford things like roller skates, for some reason. One of them ran into an old black woman stumping along with a shopping bag in one hand, bounded off, and rolled around her; shouting quaint obscenities at her as she sought her balance. It was the kind of neighborhood that couples in their mid-fifties dream of retiring to someday.

  I’d spotted my car among the other abandoned heaps along the curb. The wheel covers were gone, and someone had loosened the lugs on the right rear wheel preparatory to making off with that too, only to be interrupted or to lose interest in the face of something a little more flashy. I opened the hood. Everyt
hing was there, including the case containing my other set of keys, fixed with electrical tape to an unlikely spot, never mind which one. I undid the tape and slammed down the hood, anxious to be out of there and away from the smell of rotting garbage. The stench grew worse as I neared the trunk in quest of the lug wrench to tighten those nuts.

  The spare tire had been removed to make room for her. At her age the fetal curl seemed natural, except that the head was all wrong. It was turned too far around on the neck and was looking straight up at me, the eyes flat and without luster in the brilliant sunlight. She was still wearing the sweatshirt and cutoffs.

  I lowered the lid slowly and leaned on it until the lock caught. A swell of hot air thick with putridity and snarling flies struck me full in the face. I didn’t know how I could have missed seeing the flies. There were hundreds of them, fat and slick and drunk from the stink. My mouth filled with bile. I started walking, only dimly conscious of my destination, holding my back stiff like a souse with dignity. Anything to get clear of that smell.

  Two blocks down stood a corner party store with its faded awning in ribbons and a square of cardboard taped over a hole in the plate-glass window. The counterman, a lean old black with hair like dirty cotton, hesitated suspiciously when I asked to use his telephone for a local call, but pointed it out at the end of the counter. I thanked him very politely, dialed police headquarters, and asked for John Alderdyce’s extension. The voice I got wasn’t his.

  “Hornet.” From the sound of it, the guy on the far end was up to his eyes in boredom and sinking fast.

  “You want me to hold on while you swat it?” My wit’s sharpest when I’m in mild shock. You ought to have caught me the day my mother died. “Let me have the lieutenant.”

  “He’s in the can, wiseass. What you got that’s too hot for a sergeant?” He didn’t sound any more enthusiastic than he had when he answered the telephone. I told him, aware of the counterman staring at me with eyes suddenly too big for his corrective lenses. Sergeant Hornet listened without interrupting. When I wound down: