Midnight Man

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Doggone. The rest of the place was so neat I guess I just got carried away when it come time to put everything back. You got me there, slick. I was inside the place. I didn’t want the law to know that, with murder done there and all. I didn’t find nothing anyway.”

  “That’s your main fault, overdoing things. Sending that trigger around to scare me off the case, for instance. That was too much.”

  He scraped nonexistent mud off his bootsole on the edge of the rocker panel. “I hope you’ll take that as a compliment, hoss.”

  “Compliment how?”

  “You just had too much on the ball and I had enough competition from the law. That fellow used to pack iron for a numbers man I picked up in St. Louis two years back. I could of run him in too, but I didn’t, so he owed me. You didn’t figure to be the type to rabbit, though. He was just a hunk of ripe meat I drug across the trail to throw you off. Reckon his plane fare was wasted. I don’t know now how you tied him to me.”

  “Simple deduction. You were the only one left.”

  “Well, I didn’t know you so well then. I wouldn’t do it now, and that’s a fact.”

  “I think it is. Anyway, your giving me that stuff you found on Bagley cleans that slate, so let’s forget it. It’s always bothered me why you thought Smith was worth the trip up here, though. Five thousand would barely pay your expenses.”

  He glanced across the Pontiac at the teenagers and caught one staring at him. I couldn’t think why. He was just another Mack truck in a cowboy suit. The youngster looked away quickly.

  “I wouldn’t be in this here business if I didn’t like it,” said Bassett. “Call it a working vacation. Hell, you know what I’m talking about. From some of the things you said I got the feeling you was in this before there was a reward.”

  “I owed someone something,” I said.

  He studied me through clear blue eyes. “We got lots in common, hoss. That we do.”

  I moved off. It was 11:18 by my new watch. The mayor was due at noon. I was stopped twice by plainclothes detectives and forced to show my pass. They weren’t questioning any of the blacks, Smith or no Smith. I could have saved myself a lot of hassle by spreading burnt cork on my face.

  “He’s okay,” said a familiar voice behind me the second time I was stopped. Sergeant Hornet flashed the black cop his credentials. The latter nodded and walked away, adjusting his shoulder holster under a Pistons warm-up jacket.

  “Where’s the neon blazer?” I asked Hornet. He was wearing a blue nylon jogger’s top with a zip front and no tie. The white racing stripe made him look like a weather balloon.

  His expression was sour. “The idea’s to be inconspicuous.”

  “You didn’t make it.”

  “You’re a hoot, Walker. I see your pal Buffalo Bob is here. You two wouldn’t be working together”

  “Like Moscow and Pittsburgh.” I listened to the dark canary on the bandstand moaning a new tune. “John’s with the mayor, isn’t he?”

  “You know so much, why ask me?”

  “You’re a fountain, Sergeant. Who’s your voice coach, Marcel Marceau?”

  “I’m considered a real motor-mouth when I’m with someone I got use for,” he said. “I guess you noticed I don’t do flip-flops whenever you come in sight.”

  “Too bad. I’d like to see that.”

  He’d been standing sideways to me, watching the crowd. Now he turned to face me. He wasn’t like most fat men, with all their features crowded into the center of their faces. His eyes were a hand-span apart and his mouth was as broad as a six-lane highway. He wouldn’t have looked right skinny. His rash had dried to pink crusts on his cheeks. “That’s another thing, your bright patter. You don’t hear that from cops. It cooks out early. John and I do this because we got to. It’s our job, and if we wind up in a bag like Maxson and Flynn or a wheelchair like Sturtevant, that’s just the way milk turns. With you it’s like slumming. If things get hairy you can walk away, tell your client you came up dry and still get paid. We don’t have that option. So excuse me if I don’t find your sense of humor ingratiating.”

  “Sometimes a sense of humor is what’s left after everything else is gone,” I told him. “Sometimes it’s the only thing keeping you from spraying your brains all over the ceiling.”

  “That’s something else,” he snarled. “You got this picture of yourself nobody else sees. Tragic hero, fighting the good fight all alone. One of these mornings you’re going to wake up married to yourself.”

  “I guess that means I’m living in sin now.”

  “I like brains on the ceiling better.”

  “What about it?” I asked. “Is Smith coming?”

  “Not this year. Why should he? Everyone else is dead and he’s squirreled away in some hole hundreds of miles from here.”

  “That might have been true last night.” I mumbled the words.

  He nailed me. “You got reason to think he’s changed his mind?”

  “Gut feeling. You know how it is.”

  “I’d like to.” He was still looking at me. “Maybe someday I will.”

  He left me, a graceful hippo of a man swaying from side to side as he shifted his bulk from one incongruously small foot to the other.

  The crowd was surging in the direction of the parking area, where uniformed officers had set up sawhorses and were standing around sweating in their summer blues, their guns and handcuffs obvious on their webbed belts. Portable radios with antennae full extended rode crackling and sputtering in special pockets, topping off the military look. It was almost twelve o’clock.

  A big black cop with a thick moustache touched a hand to my chest as I started between sawhorses. I displayed the pass. He looked at it, nodded, let me through, and stepped in to block someone trying to come in behind me. If I live to be forty I’ll never understand the faith people put in credentials you can order from any catalogue.

  The asphalt was tacky. This part of the lot wasn’t shaded. The sun nailed directly overhead drew shimmering waves of heat from the composition surface. The officers smelled of leather and perspiration, and when they shifted weight their feet creaked in their boots. I made the mistake of resting a hand on the fender of a parked scout car and jerked it away with a first-degree burn. Forget about eggs; you could roast a fourteen-pound turkey with all the trimmings on the sidewalk and keep it warm for a week.

  They came with a blue-and-white before and behind and enough motorcycles to remake The Wild One, sirens strung out long and thin and warped by the sodden air, the riders in glistening black leather from neck to foot and looking as alike in their mirrored glasses as cartridges in a belt. Two blocks of shiny black automobile—the object of the procession—slid around the corner and into the area enclosed by the sawhorses, with the haughty look of the Queen Mary docking among tugs. It cruised to a stop without a sound. The engine cut out and there was still no sound. You could power a fleet of Honda Civics all week on what it took to get the chief exec here from his office. But the mayor of Detroit doesn’t ride around in Japanese automobiles.

  The cops in the enclosure snapped to life—forcing spectators back from the sawhorses, growling over portable radios, lining up to form a protective cordon of blue around the limo. They could have saved themselves the trouble. Most of the people there were fighting to get on camera as crews from the local TV stations unlimbered their equipment in the area reserved for the press. Politicians come and go, but how often do you get the chance to wave hello to your friends over the airwaves?

  In the middle of all this confusion, a chauffeur in a powder-blue uniform got out, circled the car, and opened the right rear door. One of the mayor’s eight-hundred-dollar suits alighted with John Alderdyce inside. He raised his hand in the characteristic bent-arm wave. At that moment something thumped his chest, kicking him back against the open door so hard a hinge snapped. Then we heard the report.

  29

  IT CRASHED OVER the rooftops, echoing on the Windsor side and finishing
with a roaring hiss somewhere between Lakes Michigan and Huron. You just can’t place a high-powered rifle by its report.

  There were shouts of “Oh, my God!” and “Not again!” but most were unintelligible, deteriorating into shrieks as the realization spread that a sniper was loose and that the mayor might not be the only target. Sawhorses splintered and fell over with a crash. A television cameraman was shoved off balance, losing his grip on his camera. It exploded against the pavement, feeding the panic. Cops bellowed obscenities at the crowd, the sniper, and each other, their guns out and gleaming greasily in the bright sunlight. Screams tore the air.

  Uniforms and plainclothes men had closed in a protective huddle around the fallen detective, cutting off my view. I started shoving my way through to the car. It was a moment before I realized I had my gun in my hand.

  My legs went out from under me suddenly and I came down hard on my back on the sticky asphalt. When I opened my eyes I was looking up the black bore of a Police .38. Beyond that was a bare arm covered with fine red hairs protruding from a short blue sleeve. Beyond that was a freckled face under a shiny black visor.

  I tried to sit up but couldn’t. A black brogan was pinning my right wrist to the pavement. I was still holding the gun in that hand.

  “Don’t move, you son of a bitch,” the cop was saying. “Try to kill the mayor, will you?”

  His voice shook. People were still running around screaming. I had to shout to make myself heard. “Easy, son. We’re on the same side.” I inched my free hand toward the pocket containing the pass. The gun leaped closer.

  “Don’t move, I said!”

  I stopped. “Check my gun, for chrissake! It hasn’t been fired. Don’t you know a rifle when you hear one?”

  “I heard the rifle. Maybe you’re the back-up.” His mouth stayed open when he wasn’t talking and his breath moved in and out in shudders. But the gun didn’t wobble.

  “Let him up.”

  The command came out in a grunt from behind the cop. He didn’t move. “Who says?”

  “Your bread and butter, sonny.”

  The cop shifted his weight and turned slightly to take in both me and the speaker. John Alderdyce was sitting on the pavement with his legs spread out stiffly, his back resting against the limousine’s doorsill. His chest heaved as if he’d been running. His jacket and shirt were open, exposing a shiny black surface that was distinctly nonorganic. There was a dent where his heart should be. Hornet was bent over him, undoing the straps that held the bulletproof vest in place.

  “He’s got a gun, Lieutenant,” said the youngster. “He don’t look like a cop.”

  “That’s because he isn’t one. But as much as I’d like you to pull the trigger you better give him some slack. It’d be just like him to haunt me.”

  Reluctantly the rookie holstered his revolver and removed his foot from my wrist. I got up and put away my own gun. By this time Hornet had the vest off Alderdyce and was vigorously rubbing the heel of his hand over a discoloration the size of a saucer on the lieutenant’s chest, which was nearly as dark and glossy as the shield itself.

  “That’s one hell of a bruise, John,” the sergeant was saying. “You sure you’re okay? We got a doc here someplace. Where the hell’s that croaker?” He bellowed the last over his shoulder.

  “I’m fine, except for a burning on my chest,” John told him.

  “Burning? Oh.” He stopped rubbing.

  Alderdyce climbed to his feet with the aid of the detectives gathered around him. He was streaming wet. “Get those fucking cameras out of here.”

  There was a general hubbub of grunts and curses as a flying wedge of uniforms shoved two technicians out of the enclosure, their cameras bobbing.

  I said, “Bright move. There aren’t a lot of vests that will stop a bullet fired from a deer rifle.”

  “It’s a new design, effective past a hundred yards. Inside of that there’s no reason for so much firepower.” He worked his left arm, wincing.

  “What if he’d aimed at your head?”

  He said nothing.

  “I can’t figure where he got the gun,” put in Hornet. “We confiscated that thirty-ought-six on Bagley.”

  “There are gunshops all over this town,” Alderdyce said. “Robbery can tell us if any were broken into recently. Any line yet on where the shot came from?”

  “We just got the squeal. Cop down on Shelby. He was securing a rooftop when someone hit him from behind. Investigating officers found a Winchester ditched on the stairs.” Hornet ran out of breath.

  “Roadblocks up where I said?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Jesus H. Christ. I bet you don’t even check your fly.” He shoved a path through to the scout car in front, leaned in through the open driver’s door and snatched out the mike. At that moment Central Dispatch came on the air. The female operator sounded as if she were talking in her sleep.

  “Suspect seen in blue nineteen-seventy-four Buick Riviera license number Tom-Edward-Robert-six-two-seven heading west on West Fort Street between Shelby and Washington.”

  Even as she spoke we heard the gulping sirens. I met Alderdyce’s gaze. The whites of his eyes were brilliant against his blue-tinged skin.

  “Officers engaged suspect at roadblock between Second and Third. Suspect now heading north on Second.”

  “That’s the wrong way,” said Hornet.

  “We’ll be sure and issue him a citation when we catch him. Get this thing turned around.” The lieutenant scrambled into the front seat of the scout car and slid to the passenger’s side. A uniformed officer detached himself from the cluster of officialdom standing nearby and got in under the wheel. I dived for the back seat, shouldering aside a plainclothes man. Hornet was already in back. We were moving by the time I got the door shut.

  We were starting to pick up individual reports from officers on the scene, crackling and indistinct.

  “… identified myself. When he didn’t slow down I opened fire. Windshield smashed. I put one in the block too, but I don’t …” The signal faded out.

  Another cut in. “This is Sergeant Morrison at Third and Howard. I think I just spotted that blue ’seventy-four Riviera turning east on Howard from Second. He was going the wrong way till he turned.”

  “Full circle,” said Alderdyce, hanging onto the dash as our car swung in a tight turn inside the sawhorses: “Go right on Jefferson. Come on, come on.”

  We knocked over a sawhorse and shot out into traffic. We were barely clear of the service drive when a tall silver pickup flamed past on our right.

  “Was that who I think it was?” demanded the lieutenant.

  I said, “There can’t be two men that size driving a truck that color and wearing a cowboy hat.”

  “He got a scanner in that rig?” Hornet asked me.

  “Could be. There’s a lot of Buck Rogers stuff in the dash.”

  “Why don’t you climb on the air, John? Order him to pull over”

  “Yeah, I’d like to hear his answer,” I said.

  “Forget him.”

  “Forget him!” echoed the sergeant, incredulously. “He’s interfering in police business.”

  “I said forget him and forget him is what I meant. Stop at Randolph.”

  The driver braked at the intersection. Bassett’s truck hurtled across without slowing and pulled away from us at a rate I wouldn’t have thought possible. I wished I’d taken a look under the hood when I’d had the chance.

  “What we stopping here for?” Hornet peered up and down Randolph.

  “We’re waiting for Smith,” said Alderdyce.

  “What makes you think he’ll come this way?”

  “Twelve years with the department, that’s what.”

  “I got nineteen years says how come?”

  “I get it,” I said.

  The lieutenant twisted around in his seat to glare at me. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? No civilians allowed. Get out.”

  I opened my
mouth to reply. Central Dispatch cut me off.

  “Suspect turned south on Randolph. Cars one-six and three-four-two in pursuit.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Hornet. “But I still don’t get it.”

  “That’s why they gave me my own office and you’re lucky to have a desk.”

  “There he is!” The driver pointed out his open window.

  We saw the blinking red and blue lights first, and then, well out in front, a blue bullet skidding along barely on four wheels as it wound through the slowing traffic. Half the windshield was gone, the jagged edges glittering brilliantly. The Buick roared past within arm’s reach of our radiator. Its slipstream rocked the blue-and-white on its springs.

  “Pull out!” John bellowed.

  Invisible hands pushed me back against the seat. The slot between Smith’s car and the bubblegum machine behind wasn’t big enough for us but we made it. We went into overdrive, and then we weren’t on the pavement anymore. We weren’t earthbound at all. Cars and buildings streamed past in a blur of color.

  The blue back of Smith’s car slewed in and out of sight among the traffic ahead. Tires wailed, horns blared. We were shifting lanes constantly, taking advantage of every opening. Cars drifted right, left, any direction that would put distance between them and the godawful racket our sirens were making. I looked at the sergeant. His eyes were bright and when he shifted his considerable bulk on the seat his movements were hyper

  “I get it now,” he said.

  “Wish I did,” put in the driver.

  “Don’t you see it? John’s figuring to bottle him up in the tunnel. Catch him between bases with the Canadian authorities on the other side. What I don’t see is how he knew Smith was going to go for it.” He looked at the lieutenant.

  “You know how tough it is to extradite a prisoner from Canada?” He kept his attention on the road ahead.

  “Hang on.” The driver spun the wheel and we tore down the circular, spiraling ramp that led down to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, that mile-long air-conditioned umbilical cord linking the United States and Canada. We came in sight of the well-marked entrance just as the rear of a blue car shot into its depths, leaving a trail of black exhaust behind. I wondered if he’d taken a bullet through a cylinder wall.