Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde

by Loren D. Estleman

  His face got brutal, which was as brutal as any face ever got anywhere. Then he found the screw on the turnbuckle and smoothed it out. I wondered if that was easier on the nervous system than just hitting someone.

  “Any idea where he is, by the way?” he asked. “He slipped out of his hotel suite early this morning, right out from under our surveillance team.”

  “You ought to pay them better.”

  “They’re on suspension. I asked a question.”

  I answered it truthfully. “I don’t have the slightest idea where he is.”

  “Where were you this morning? I froze my ass off outside for twenty minutes.”

  “My apologies to your ass. I took a walk.”

  “It’s sixteen degrees. You didn’t have a coat.”

  “I came back to get it.”

  “You’re still a goddamn liar.” He sounded calm.

  I decided to get mad. “What if I am? Book me, if you can find a charge that covers it. You cops think crooks are dumb for asking an undercover cop if he’s an undercover cop because they think if he says no and arrests them anyway they’ve got a case for entrapment. Then you turn around and threaten to arrest a citizen for obstructing justice when he tells a cop whatever comes into his head when the cop thinks it’s any of his goddamn business where the citizen went when he went and what he did when he got there. It’s probable cause in an interview room with a steno or a tape recorder present and there’s a signature on the bottom of a formal statement. Anywhere else it’s conversation.”

  I got tired of talking and took a drag. Alderdyce riffled the little notebook’s pages with a broad thumb. They made a purring noise against the quiet of the neighborhood.

  “You ought to take that to Congress,” he said. “They might draw up a constitution or something. So where were you this morning?”

  I laughed. He laughed. I shrugged. My shrug wasn’t a patch on Matador’s. “I went to a crack house downtown, where some people handcuffed me to a chair and tortured me for a while. When I got tired of it I had a smoke and came home.”

  He scratched one ear with a corner of the notebook. Then he put the notebook away. “Town’s full of clams today. Even the mother’s got a case of lockjaw. She’s been taking a lot of walks lately too.”

  “She probably brought that over from the old country.”

  I was sorry I’d said it. I didn’t want him to fixate on which old country that was. I didn’t want him thinking about Miranda Guzman’s fellow emigré in town. Now that what had happened in the house on Adelaide was over I was having a delayed reaction, taking stupid chances. But he didn’t seem to be listening. After the torture story he probably thought I was still smarting off.

  “What is she telling?” I asked.

  “The sad story of Jillian’s childhood. Seems she had polio or something related, still walked with a cane. Could have been the source of her emotional problems. The cane was confirmed by the neighbor in Minnesota: an aluminum job with a black composition handle. I’m wondering about that cane. It wasn’t found with her body.”

  “Neither was the overnight bag.”

  “Yeah. An old tapestry case her mother lent her. The luggage she brought was too big and clumsy for a short trip. We’ve been through it. Nothing there. Clothes and cosmetics. Killer probably threw the cane and the overnight in a Dumpster. Now that I think about it, going through all the trash in the neighborhood would have been a good detail for that surveillance crew I suspended. Wish I’d thought of it; right now some poor bastards in uniform are out there rooting around in frozen dirty diapers and no doubt taking my name in vain.” He gripped and ungripped his knees, spoiling the creases on his trousers. You knew he was preoccupied when he started messing with his haberdashery. He got up. “Your coffee’s ready.”

  I put out my cigarette and stood. I’d forgotten about the coffee. “Don’t forget your coat. It’s sixteen degrees outside.”

  In the kitchen, he left the coat unbuttoned and stuck his gloves in the pockets. He pushed out a dent in the fur hat from the inside.

  “I got more information out of that California lawyer than anyone I’ve been talking to in Detroit,” he said, watching me fill my cup. “He’s an entertainment attorney, with a firm that specializes in everything from contracts to criminal law. That’s a big item out there these days, all those celebrities carving up their ex-wives and shooting horse and running over pedestrians. He says Matador’s made his pile all over again as a business manager to the stars. He wouldn’t say which stars; they’re close about that kind of thing unless you catch them at a cocktail party.”

  I spooned sugar into my coffee and stirred it carefully. I usually drink it black, but I wanted to be doing something that didn’t involve looking at him.

  He said, “Our Colombian friend has a nice suite there at the Hyatt. Not as nice as the ones across the hall, according to the clerk downstairs. Guess who’s staying in one of those.”

  “Gilia.”

  He was still. I blew across the top of the cup and watched the ripples. “I heard she’s shooting a video here. Did I guess right?”

  “Yeah. Twice in two days. I think I’ll see if I can get an autograph. My kid on the Ronald Reagan’s a fan. Make him a big shot with his shipmates. What do you think?”

  “Ask her to sign a CD. You can only listen to ‘Anchors Aweigh’ so many times.”

  He nodded, put on his hat. “A thing like that can get old. Don’t burn your tongue on that coffee.”

  It was his exit line. I thought someone ought to introduce him to Emmett. They could punch up each other’s dialogue.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I almost missed her call. I would have if I hadn’t flooded the carburetor.

  You can invest several hundred dollars in an old motor and merely give it an elevated opinion of itself. The Cutlass had decided it wasn’t starting that cold day, and all I got for my pumping was the smell of raw gasoline, a fresh set of frozen fingers, and heat under the collar. The telephone was ringing when I went back in to finish the pot of coffee.

  “Thank God,” she said, with the true accent that came through when she was worked up. “Your secretary said you hadn’t come in, and I tried you at this number a little while ago and you didn’t answer. I was afraid you were in jail.”

  “Close,” I said. “About jail, not the secretary. That was my service you spoke to. I’ve been in conference with your business manager and the police all morning. Not at the same time or in the same room, but if it had been any closer we might have had an embarrassment. I was just on my way out to see you.”

  “I’ve been going crazy not knowing what’s happening. Every time the phone rings or someone knocks on the door I think it’s the police and I look around wondering what I should grab to take with me, like when the house is on fire. In my country they don’t give you even that much time.”

  “It’s a little better here. They stand outside and wait while you get dressed. If you’re going to need a toothbrush they’ll tell you, and if it’s a question of deportation or extradition they don’t just whisk you out of the country in what you’re standing up in. It can take months. You could pack six trunks. In the present case you could pack seven. They don’t know about you yet.” It didn’t seem the time to tell her a police inspector was thinking of asking for her autograph, among other things. She sounded like a bird on a ledge. “I can be there in twenty minutes. Fifteen if I can get my heap cranked up.”

  “Not here. I’m sick of this suite. Is there someplace we can meet where I won’t be mobbed by slender young men dressed up like Gilia?”

  “Does that happen?”

  “Yes. They’re kind of sweet, and they look cute in their butterfly wings and backless gowns—cuter than me, some of them—but in a very short while you get tired of candy, and then they are just a bright blur with all the others, the gapemouths and fourteen-year-old girls in their training bras and those smelly little men with cameras. I wish to go somewhere there is no blur.�
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  I said I could think of a place and gave her an address. I offered to pick her up.

  She laughed. “If you did, your face would be on the front page of every tabloid for a week. After that you would be very forgotten, more forgotten than if you’d never existed. This celebrity thing is a virus. It runs its course quickly, but it leaves you worse off than you were before.”

  “So retire.”

  “I was talking about you, not me. I have a standard plan for sneaking out of hotels. It’s expensive, but it never fails. I will meet you in one hour.”

  “If it doesn’t work out, ask Matador.”

  “I have not seen him since yesterday, when I told him what you were telling the police. He said I would not for a while, that it would be the best thing for me. Do you think they will put him in jail?”

  “He’s getting to be one of those boys who hire people to go to jail for them. You’re supposed to be worrying about yourself. Be a celebrity. Narcissitate.”

  “This is a word?”

  “It’ll do until one comes along. I threw my dictionary at the houseboy last week. He took it with him and never came back.”

  She rang off laughing. It had been a silly sort of conversation, at least on my side, but it had gotten her off her nervous perch. It was a comfort to know that in five years, when according to Matador the last P.I. had hung up his Kevlar vest, I could put on a cap and bells and entertain the famous rich.

  Well, they’re no different from you and me, just more people know their names and they have more money than God. More than a third of them never went to college. Half of that third didn’t finish high school, and in order to convince people they read books they spend as much on first editions as they spend on astrologers and personal trainers. More than half of them are as nice when you meet them as you hope they’ll be; it’s the louts who get drunk in first class and the sociopaths who fire off Magnums at parties who get most of the press and give the whole set a bad stench. Some, like Churchill and Errol Flynn, had whole other fascinating lives before they became icons. A tiny few climbed too high to approach and glowed brightly for decades. A good many more streaked across the sky with a cheesy green flash and piffled out. I could think of only one who had fought in a revolution. There may have been more. Truth is the first casualty of the studio biography.

  You couldn’t judge them until you peeled off all the foil. In a world in which Public Enemy Number One can fall in love with a nightclub act half his age, anyone is capable of anything.

  The car started finally, with a racket like a washtub bouncing down the north face of Everest. I let it warm up for a minute, and when it settled into its bubbling purr I backed out and drove to the office. A snowflake the size of a corn plaster lighted on the windshield long enough for me to admire its open-weave pattern, then dissolved against the defrosted glass. The ones that followed were less intricate, or maybe I just didn’t pay them as much attention. They say no two are ever alike, same as fingerprints. But that would mean having examined every flake and every finger that had ever been and comparing them to all those that ever would be. In an infinite universe, exact duplication is not only possible, but inevitable; and what does that do to meteorology and criminology? You can work up plenty of heresy driving through falling snow.

  In the little waiting room where hardly anyone ever waited I dusted the fake plant and rearranged the magazines on the coffee table into a fan, then rearranged them again into stacks with the most recent issues on top. Inside the heart of the great machine the smell of stale cigarettes and desiccated spiders seemed stronger than usual, but I was inhaling it through Gilia’s nose. I opened the window for a few minutes, stashed some unpaid bills under the blotter, blew the tobacco ash out of the corner between the desk lamp and the telephone, made my peace with the rest, leaned back in the swivel, and saw a smudge of dead insects inside the globe fixture above the desk. I couldn’t remember when the last time I’d dumped it out was. I climbed onto the swivel and did that, disposing of the remains in the wastebasket.

  I did office stuff: called the service and wrote down some messages, ignoring the ones that had been left by Alderdyce and one from a woman who had not left her name. That was my client. I’d spoken to both of them since. The others were followups on other cases. I made three calls and closed those files. Just another day in the life of the gainlessly employed. Torture and bookkeeping.

  After a while I felt a chill and remembered I’d left the window open. I got up to close it, and while I was doing that a Yellow cab smooshed to a stop against the fuzzy white curb three stories down. A woman in a long coat, red galoshes, and a white head scarf got out. When she looked up at my window I recognized the dark glasses.

  I didn’t move from the window after she found the front door and went inside. Two seconds after the cab pulled away, a stubby red Geo headed the same direction hove to on the other side of the street. A blur of pale face leaned over from the driver’s side, hovered there, then withdrew. The exhaust pipe stopped smoking. I figured he had the number of the building; the rest would come later.

  I didn’t think he belonged to Matador. The car was too bright and there wasn’t enough room in it to make a running shot.

  She’d reached the landing by the time I got to the hallway door. Before she saw me in the dim light—she still had the cheaters on—she paused to remove the scarf and take the pins out of her hair. When she shook it loose, the fall of white gold gathered all the light there was in the narrow wainscoted passage and set it on cold fire. She almost cast a shadow in the reflected glow. The bleach job had been a good idea on her business manager’s part. Leave it to a drug lord to know how to make a big impression.

  She caught me looking and flushed.

  “Go ahead and say it. I like to make an entrance.”

  “They pay you ten times the gross national product of Uruguay to do just that,” I said. “Why be embarrassed?”

  “I’m supposed to be incognito.” It was a stage whisper.

  “Then take off the damn glasses. You look like Dennis Rodman trying to look like Greta Garbo.”

  She took them off, using both hands the way they do. When she smiled, the hallway went negative. You can’t get that from a dentist or cosmetician. You’re born with it, same as dark brown eyes and a good singing voice. I’d been wrong before about her looks. You got away from her and you thought you’d fallen for the hype. Then you saw her again and found the faith you’d lost. She hadn’t really needed the hair. I held the door for her and let it drift shut while I hurried across to hold the one to the inner office.

  She took it in at a glance. “I could shoot a video in here. Noir effect. Do you own a trench coat?”

  “No.”

  “Think about it. It could get you business.”

  “In Hollywood. Did you know you’re being followed?”

  Her face paled under the pigment. She went to the window and looked down. She said something abrupt in Spanish. “I gave the concierge a hundred dollars to keep him busy specifically.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I was not aware they had names. Only cameras.”

  “Paparazzi?”

  “Sí. A comic word for the lowest life-form on earth. I am afraid I have failed to keep you out of the tabloids.”

  “He probably gave the concierge a hundred to tell him when you gave him a hundred. I was afraid he was a cop.”

  “In that car?”

  “All the unmarked units look like unmarked units. The agencies will rent a car to anyone, even cops and shutterbugs. Don’t worry about him. I can use the free advertising.”

  “You do not know what you are saying, hombre. This filth will hound you to the grave and beyond. Ask Princess Di.”

  “She’s the one who set the pace. You people kill me. You spend a hundred thousand dollars getting their attention and a million trying to avoid it.”

  “This one has been paying me attention for eight months. In Los Angeles it was a green Fiat.
In Vegas, a yellow Neon. You never know what he’ll be driving, except it’s always small and bright, like a stinging bug. He snaps pictures and snaps pictures until he gets one of me glaring at him. Then a week later it shows up under a headline about my love affair with a cocker spaniel. I didn’t come here to explain to you the contradictions in the life I lead. You will find that out yourself from the little fellow in the car.”

  “For only a week, you said. Then I’m confetti in someone else’s parade. Let’s have your coat.”

  She was still holding the scarf and glasses in one hand. She stuck them in a pocket, unbelted the coat, and took it off. It was one of those black all-weather jobs that glisten like a wet suit. Underneath it she was wearing rose-colored slacks and a matching blazer over a black bustier, above which was all her. It’s funny how you can take a body you’ve seen naked, cover most of it, and wind up with something that makes you want to pound your fist against the wall just to have something else to think about. Before I could hang up the coat she rescued a pair of black slingbacks from the other pocket. She sat in the customer’s chair to slip off her boots and slip on the pumps. The pale polish on her toes made me think about the chips of red Jillian Rubio had still had on her fingers. That was as good as pounding a wall.

  I went around behind the desk, drew a sheaf of typewritten sheets out of a folder in the file cabinet, and pushed it across to her side. She asked what it was.

  “The file on the Rubio case,” I said. “Which isn’t labeled the Rubio case. It would take a Navajo code talker to figure out my system, and then he’d have to know what all the initials stand for. My files were burgled a couple of years ago. Since then I don’t take chances.”

  She removed the clip and sat back to read. I got into the swivel and drew a doodle on the telephone pad.

  She glanced up. “Do you have to do that? You remind me of a booking agent I almost had. Who almost had me.”

  I speared the pencil back into its cup. I watched her read. Her eyes moved rapidly and her lips didn’t move. The people who had taught her English could have chaired a department at Dartmouth, if they wouldn’t mind the cut in pay. When she was finished she shuffled the pages back into order, put the clip back on, and laid them on the desk. “The poor woman. I was so busy thinking about myself I never realized her life was as hard as mine. Harder. My story came out all right. Or it has so far. Is the mother telling the truth, do you think?”