Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde

by Loren D. Estleman

  Matador hadn’t changed the guard after all. That meant he intended for me to see them, which meant either he was trying to throw some kind of scare into me or he had a stealth crew staked out somewhere else, to pick me up in case I ducked the first team. I couldn’t figure out why he’d want me scared, and in any case I’m easier and less expensive to scare than the situation seemed to demand. So the bottom line was if the surveillance broke off for any reason, someone in the ranks was going to be reminded that matador is Spanish for more than just a killer of bulls.

  A lot of Gilia’s money was being spent to find out what became of Jillian Rubio. A lot more was being spent to find out what the detective found out at the very moment he found it out.

  It seemed like one more angle than the case should have; especially a case that had started out with an employee accused of simple disloyalty and snaked its way into a jungle filled with mosquitoes and guerrillas and red-hot pennies and poison. It was time to go back to the well.

  NINE

  If there are any conservationists out there interested in preserving the physical evidence of what made Detroit Detroit, they’d better rope off a piece of the warehouse district today, because tomorrow there will be condominiums or a casino standing on top of it.

  It’s shrinking faster than the Brazilian rain forest, this homely stretch of riverfront with its acres of crumbling warehouses, tangled miles of narrow-gauge track, and columns of cold smokestacks. Bricktown bulldozers are snorting in from the west and River town backhoes are scooping out basements from the east, busy making the neighborhood safe for knickknack collectors, penthouse playboys, and blackjack dealers. The landscape is as bleak and hostile as they get, full of gaunt shells with empty windowpanes like missing teeth, and inside them rats and termites, but while they stand it’s still possible for anyone who cares to go down and see the exposed living organs of an American industrial city. I don’t imagine there are many who do.

  A pair of large black Detroit police officers in leathers and earflaps lowered their hands to their belts as I approached the barricade, leaving their cigarettes to smolder between their lips. I guessed the sergeant was the one with the words, so I showed him my ID, folding back the part with the badge, which wouldn’t have impressed him, and said I was working for Gilia. He had a thick black moustache that looked as if it had been poured while molten and hardened in the Arctic air off the river.

  “You with the band?” This came from his partner, a slightly younger version of his superior, with humorous eyes and only his lower teeth open to view. I’d been wrong again.

  “Just a jobber,” I said. “I’m checking in.”

  Somewhere down the decaying length of dead-end street an electrocuted cat sang out its anguish. It stood my scalp on end. The sergeant with the poured moustache rubbed his nose with a leather-sheathed finger. The officer with the humorous eyes went on watching me through the smoke rising from the end of his cigarette. I figured either they were wearing earplugs under their flaps or they’d gotten used to the noise.

  I pointed with my chin. “Spanish invention, the guitar. Took two hundred years to become the most important folk instrument in the world.”

  The cop with the words spat a flake of tobacco from between his lips without dislodging his cigarette. “How about that.”

  “Then they had to go and add electricity.”

  “My kid plays guitar,” he said. “But then whose kid don’t? They’re doing what you call a sound check, for a video. No Gilia today. You ought to know stars don’t stand around freezing off their famous asses till showtime.”

  “They told me at the Hyatt she’s here.”

  “I guess that’s why you had to fight your way through the crowd.” We were the only things breathing within a block of the barricade.

  “Could be she’s incognito. You know, dark glasses and the Monday mink. One of us could go back and check. You’re on duty, so why don’t I volunteer.”

  Someone took another whack at the guitar. A flock of seagulls took off from one of the loading docks, creaking like hinges.

  The sergeant stirred, drew three yards of blue bandanna handkerchief from a slash pocket, and blew his nose with enthusiasm. The honk would have sounded loud if it hadn’t followed the guitar lick. It might have been some kind of signal. His partner tossed his cigarette, turned his back on me, and walked down toward the river. He had that swagger you just can’t help with the Sharper Image for Cops winter catalogue swinging from your belt.

  The wind buzzed around a brick cornice. Otherwise the sergeant and I stood up to our hips in silence.

  “Getting ready to snow,” I said.

  He smoked and said nothing. His eyes followed a white panel truck clattering a loose lifter up Jefferson.

  I tried again. “I know, because my rib’s giving me hell. I broke it on a bullet a lot of years ago.”

  “My right knee,” he said after a moment. “Throbs like a bitch. Thirteen-year-old puke with a zip gun cracked the cap. Department offered me a disability, but what’s that. So I roll an Ace bandage around it when it rains or snows.”

  “I thought zip guns went out with mumblety-peg.”

  “He was the last of his breed. The very last.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s why I’m not a lieutenant.”

  The conversation ended there. A minute later the other cop came back into view. He stopped to light a cigarette, turning his back to the wind and cupping the match with both hands, then resumed; taking his time while I felt the cold.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He didn’t move the barricade. There was a steep curb on either side, and I was making up my mind to climb one when the sergeant with the kneecap lifted the sawhorse and pivoted it to make a space twelve inches wide. I sidled through.

  “Who’re you, Sir Radar O’Reilly?” asked his partner.

  “You ever been shot?”

  “Shit. No.” The partner rapped a gloved knuckle against the wooden crosspiece.

  “Then shut the hell up.”

  Cops. They start out all different shapes and sizes and personality types, and at the end of five years’ erosion you can’t tell them apart.

  The street led between a row of brick piles with concrete loading docks and a long frame hangarlike affair that had sheltered everything from kitchen stoves to bootleg hooch to Cabbage Patch Kids in crates, going back to when Cadillac was a pup; in a couple of years some sheep-faced woman in a green suede vest would be raking up plastic chips on the site. Over on the Canadian side of the slate-colored river the electric sign of the Hiram Walker distillery blazed against a bank of dirty-looking clouds. I’m told I’m related, away on the wrong side of the sheet.

  There were lights on the American side as well, hot ones bouncing off silver reflectors on the same dock where the rumrunners used to tie up while the grandfathers of the two officers on the barricade did pretty much what their grandsons were doing now. A couple of dozen people dressed adrogynously in navy peacoats and Thinsulate milled around, adjusting lights, hoisting shouldercams, swinging microphones on aluminum poles, tormenting Stratocasters, and drinking from steaming Styrofoam cups. There was a pulsing rumble going on underneath it all; I felt it first in the soles of my feet and as I got closer I heard it, growling inside the insulated shell of a generator the size of a refrigerator truck, parked on the broken pavement near the dock, with tentacles of cable leading from it out to where the action was.

  “Who the hell picked this spot?” someone said. “We could’ve gone to Moscow, seen the Kremlin.”

  The speaker was the man with the guitar, a Popsicle stick in Goth black with a crysanthemum head of bright yellow hair. I’d seen him backing up Gilia at Cobo. The hand he strummed the strings with, out on the end of the dock, was swollen and as red as Lizzie Borden’s. He blew on it and tortured another cat.

  “I did. You want to make something of it, or would you rather go back to the Hyatt and practice ‘Stairway to Heaven’?”
>
  This came from a slender technician in Orange County Correctional Facility coveralls and a Dodgers cap with a curled bill. A pair of mirrored sunglasses called attention to her Castilian cheekbones. Someone ought to tell them that eyeglasses only worked for Clark Kent.

  The Popsicle stick folded in on himself. “I’m just cold, okay? The whole reason I left Bismark was to get away from this shit.”

  “We’re all cold, Kit. That was the plan. If we shoot one more video in Southern California, the palm trees are going to have to join Equity. Why don’t you get a cup of coffee?”

  “I can’t hack the caffeine.”

  “Not to drink, hombre. To warm your hands. They’re what I bought. The rest of you just came for the sights.”

  I slid up beside the Dodgers cap. “You need a set of false whiskers. You look just like someone who’s trying not to look just like Gilia.”

  She peered at me over the tops of her glasses. The sun broke through then, and here was someone in show business who hadn’t bought her orthodontist a beach house. One of her front teeth had crossed a little in front of the other. “I should’ve known a smart detective like you would track me down.”

  “I have special equipment. Fifty-two weeks of the Free Press for ten bucks off what I’d pay at the stand. When the factories let out, you’re going to be combing rubberneckers out of your hair.”

  “I’m not on the schedule till tomorrow. I like to drop by, see how my money’s being spent. Speaking of which.” She’d lowered her voice.

  I shook my head. “Picking up, not delivering. Where’s Scarface? Matador,” I added, when her forehead dimpled.

  “¿Quien sabe? We are not as the saying goes joined at the lip.”

  “Hip; as if you didn’t know. Lupe Velez wore out that act when your grandmother was in jumpers. Are you sure he isn’t somewhere close, disguised as a caterer? Parole boards take a dim view of ex-cons wandering too far from their tethers.”

  “I’m paying you to find a blackmailer, not my business manager.”

  “I’m on it. So, apparently, is your business manager. I’ve been trailing a couple of carloads of your personal security all around town. I hope they found a parking space in the neighborhood. The downtown situation’s pretty tight.”

  She took off the shades. Behind them in the gray light her pupils had spread and the irises were nearly all black. “Why would he do that, do you think?”

  “That’s what I came here to ask. I’ve got a fair idea, but he might be able to talk me out of it. He’s got a lot more experience hunting than protecting. I want to ask if being back in Detroit confused him about his current job description.”

  “This means what, in inglés?”

  “This means I didn’t hire on as a spotter for the Colombian branch of Murder, Incorporated. The deal was to bring Jillian Rubio back alive, if that’s what she is. With her back on the payroll, the profits dip. Less money all around.”

  “That’s loco. If she’s dead, there is no profit. I’m a gallows bird.”

  Her voice rose a little on the last part. A woman built like a Teamster—she might have been a Teamster—standing nearby in a shapeless jogging suit and knitted cap looked our way with her eyebrows in her hairline. We moved off into the lee of the generator. The motor thumped and putted behind two sheets of aluminum separated by six inches of rock wool.

  I grinned. “You’re getting the vernacular down. Look, I don’t know what goes on in Matador’s head. I don’t spend a lot of time trying because it’s even harder getting back out. I look at a killer and a killer’s what I see. Life’s much simpler that way, and you know what? Life is simple. People don’t change. Maybe they get a little more refined, hire someone else to do their drivebys so they don’t get nitrate all over their French cuffs. A mug’s a mug in Thom McAns or Italian loafers. Especially in Italian loafers.”

  “And what do you see when you look at me? A killer also?”

  “Now that you mention it, I’m having a little trouble locating that political prisoner you were helping escape while Angela Suerto was getting herself poisoned. May I call you Mariposa, when we’re alone? I actually prefer it to Gilia. It’s less like the name of a venomous iguana.”

  If I expected her to curse or spit, shout caramba and dance a flamenco on my chest, I was disappointed. Not a muscle moved in her face. “You’ve been tracking me as well. When do you find time to look for Jillian Rubio?”

  “It makes sense to look back before you pull out into traffic. In my business we don’t ask for references, but it can save time later if we test a client’s story for leaks. It would speed things up if the prisoner had a name.”

  “We did not use names in the resistance. The less each of us knew, the less we had to tell under persuasion. I would say ‘torture, ’ but the word doesn’t do justice to the cleverness of the soldiers of the government. Pencil sharpeners and old-fashioned crank telephones have many uses beyond what their inventors intended.” She put her glasses back on, erasing the last bit of expression from her face. “We went where we were told and did there as we were asked. I never saw the man before that night, and I haven’t had so much as a Christmas card from him since. I don’t know what offense he was in prison for, or whether he was guilty or innocent. The distinction isn’t all that great when you consider how few activities there are that do not violate some law there.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?” She didn’t put an h in front of it, a surprise. Her English had a way of becoming slow and thoughtful when she spoke of home, with fewer contractions and an occasional misplaced accent.

  “Okay as in that’s as far as I can go for now. I’ll be back when I can think of some more questions. I may even have a couple of answers. Meanwhile you can tell Matador to blow his whistle.”

  “His whistle?”

  “Whatever he uses. His dogs are distracting me and I’m too busy to find out why.”

  “So now I’m your messenger.”

  “I’d tell him myself, but he knows more places to hide around here than I do.”

  “And if he says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about, which is probable?”

  “He might want to find out. I have some favors outstanding in Lansing, never mind what or who. He’s got the longest leash of any Jackson parolee I ever met. Somewhere he has to have bent the terms of his release. Up at the capital they hate like hell to shorten a life sentence. They don’t need much of an excuse to reinstate it.”

  Her glasses reflected the city skyline, stepped black against gray. “You’re stupid, hombre. Not brave. Stupid.”

  “I get that a lot,” I said. “But this is the first time I’ve been stupid in two languages.”

  “I’ve got a video to set up.” She walked away from me, raising her voice and clapping her hands for attention.

  The cops were still smoking at the barricade when I climbed around them. I looked at the one with the humorous eyes. “You were right. She wasn’t there.”

  He thought about that hard. His lower lip worked at the end of his cigarette. “We never get the really good celebrities. If we did, they’d pull us off and put two other cops in our place.”

  I left them and cranked my car out of a patch of gravel and broken glass. Back by the river, the electric guitar screeched again, then played a snatch of honest music: “Stairway to Heaven.” Kit’s fingers had thawed out, along with his sense of humor.

  TEN

  It’s eight hundred square feet on the border of Hamtramck and the United States, too small for a house and not quaint enough for a cottage. I acquired it from a foreman at Dodge Main who’d bought it for a starter home in 1940 and moved out thirty years later into his daughter’s house after she caught him trying to replace a spent fuse with a shotgun shell. After twenty-five years I don’t guess it’s a starter for me either. It’s a place to smoke a cigarette without alerting Detroit Vice, and maybe the only place in the solar system where a man can tell a visitor to go screw himself and
make it stick. It needs a new roof, a coat of paint, and while we’re at it a cellar stocked with vintage Amontillado, excellent before dinner and when entombing enemies. I’d settle for the paint.

  The open tail I’d been touring with most of the day had evaporated sometime while I was parked in the warehouse district, replaced by a pale blue Bonneville with tinted windows; it had taken forty-five minutes of aimless driving to pick the car out of rush-hour traffic. After that I’d torn the wrapper off some tricks I’d learned in my varied and ultimately pointless career, but this one didn’t shake. Unlimited drug money and then the Gilia Fund for Unemployed Parasites had taught Hector Matador the value of hiring quality. I returned to conventional driving. I’d only been amusing myself. If the threat I’d passed through Gilia was worth the breath it took, the second team would go away on its own. There was no sign of the Bonneville when I’d pulled into my garage; which whether it meant something or nothing I was too tired to decide. Nothing is more draining than a day of asking questions without answers.

  I heated a bowl of chili for supper, cooled it down with two beers, and took stock of my panoramic view of the neighborhood. In the dying light I saw no vehicles I couldn’t assign to a regular, but that was similarly inconclusive, so I stopped thinking about it. I read part of a mystery that had more holes in it than Augusta. I watched two figure skaters stumble out of Olympic gold on TV and went to bed. I had as much on my mind as Big Top Pee-Wee and I dreamed I was asleep in bed dreaming of nothing at all.

  When the telephone rang I switched on the light to read the alarm clock.

  “It’s three-fifteen,” I answered. “Do your kids know where you are?”

  “I don’t even know if I have any. I always give a phony name.”

  It was Barry Stackpole, sounding as bright as the moon. “It’s chipper,” I said. “Its news must be good.”

  “There is no bad news, only bad reporters. Where can we meet?”

  “I’d offer my office, but since you didn’t say after breakfast I’d say give it to me over the telephone, but since you won’t do that I’ll say the Atheneum. They’re open all night and you need a baseball bat to stir the coffee.” Barry wouldn’t order a pizza over a land line and he never touched cordless. He’d been tapped, bugged, and black-bagged under Nixon and Clinton, and under the present conditions all the cops needed to listen in was a thumbs-up from an Eagle Scout or better.