Don't Look for Me: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Novels)

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Improper disposal of the body, maybe.”

  “M.E. says no, based on prelim; postmortem lividity in all the right places to suggest he wasn’t moved. Dead twelve hours, minimum: Rigor starting to wear off. Those grow-lights can make an unheated cellar right comfortable for the living, so there’s no delay due to our celebrated spring climate. What sort of man was he to talk to?” His thick lids hung low over his eyes. He was having trouble staying awake, was Inspector Alderdyce.

  I grinned. “Show me the surveillance tape with me on it and we’ll continue this conversation.”

  He didn’t pursue that line. He wouldn’t chase his hat in a gust of wind, expecting it to come blowing back and land back on his head, at the angle he liked. “We’re chiefly interested in his full-time clerk. The only employee on the premises when the drug boys busted in was the janitor, who comes in twice a week to sweep the floor and wax the leaves on the hanging plants, the legitimate ones in the shop. He says the clerk clocks in every morning just in time to open at eight. Not today.”

  “What time did the raid go down?”

  “Seven fifty-six.”

  “So if they’d held their water four minutes you wouldn’t be sitting here drinking my good liquor.”

  “You don’t punish initiative. So the clerk comes around, sees all the activity going on inside, and cruises right on past. I call that guilty conscience. What do you call it?”

  “Same thing. Anyplace but Detroit.”

  “That a crack against the local authorities?”

  “What’s local? The FBI’s watching the PD, the state cops are watching the crime lab, and the governor’s watching all three looking for a reason to run the city direct from the capital. A conscientious citizen thinks twice before he jumps into the middle of a three-ring circus. I call that self-protection.”

  “What makes you think it’s a he?” He was disappointed, not that he showed it; gosh, in another minute he’d fall forward into his glass sound asleep and I’d have to pull him out before he drowned.

  “Oh, is the clerk female?”

  “You know goddamn well she is. Smoke Wygonik, that’s the name in her personnel file. I don’t know where the Smoke came from, but she holds down the joint morning to closing, eats her lunch at the counter. She’d have been behind it when you went in looking for whoever it is you’re looking for.”

  “Oh, is it a who?”

  “Missing Persons, that’s your beat. Says so in the Yellow Pages. I don’t give a shit about you, but I want to find out what she knows about her employer and how he came to his untimely passing, which means I need to know what brought you into the place besides your health, which if you cared anything at all about you wouldn’t lock up the good stuff in your safe and sit here sucking down piss strained through a kilt.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Seriously, how do I look on video? I hear the camera adds five pounds.”

  “Holy shit.” He came awake then, as if he’d been any closer to the unconscious state than a politician to the English language. His size-thirteen feet in hand-lasted leather hit the floor with a thud and he thunked his glass down on his side of the desk. Two bits’ worth of the Auld Cadenhead slopped out and landed on the corner, playing hell with what finish was left. His eyes were wide open, and as bright as new handcuffs. “She’s the client.”

  THIRTEEN

  “That’s against the law,” Alderdyce said.

  I finished lighting a cigarette, shook out the match, and lobbed it toward the tray on his side of the desk. It teetered on the rim, then fell out. “So’s breaking and entering. What do you want to talk to this Smoke person about?”

  “If that’s what she’s paying you to find out, why should I do all the work?”

  “If the taxpayers are paying you to find her, why should I do all the work?”

  “Because obstruction of justice is a hell of a lot more serious than smoking in a place of business.”

  “That’s my loophole. I don’t do enough business here to cover the price of a carton. And you make a better obstruction than I ever did.”

  The rock pile that was his face slid into a scowl. He hadn’t been smiling to begin with. I crossed my legs and tapped ash into my pants cuff. “I’m working a missing person, John. That’s not the same as working for a missing person. If I went to this health-food store and talked to this Smoke girl, it was to develop a lead on something that had nothing to do with your locked-room murder mystery.”

  “Would you sign a statement to that effect?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why, because it’s only legal to lie to a cop until you swear to it in writing?”

  “Because my mug on a video isn’t enough to drag me in and make a formal statement. If there is a video, and if my mug is on it. If it is, so is the killer’s.”

  “We need your steel-trap mind on the CID. We’re checking, but the place has a rear entrance for customers who park in back. No camera there. Who’s the missing person?”

  “If I could tell you that, you’d be working it already. It doesn’t say ‘private’ on my license just for the rhythm.”

  “It won’t say anything on your license if you don’t have it anymore.”

  “That’s state, not local. I’d get a hearing, and the date would still be pending long after you wrapped this one up or stamped it cold.”

  He got up, making none of the noises big men his age usually make in the process. “Did you ever do the right thing purely on the basis of good citizenship, without being bullied into it?”

  I took out my notepad, tore loose a sheet, and held it out. He didn’t move to take it. “What is it?”

  “It’s a license plate number belonging to a character who’s been following me around in a beat-up Chevy Malibu, or did until he tagged off to someone driving a gray Lincoln Town Car. That number I didn’t get. It could be it has something to do with your homicide. How’s that?”

  He frowned at the sheet before taking it. “Arizona. Why would those guys mess around in a pitch-penny racket like pot?”

  “Maybe the RICO laws backed them into that corner. They’ve taken away just about everything else.”

  “What about the Town Car?”

  “Two guys. The one behind the wheel’s plenty good, so I have to assume the shotgun is too. I only noticed them and the Malibu this morning, so it might have something to do with the raid.” I described the driver of the Chevy.

  “That surgical scar is promising. Think you can pick him out of the book?”

  “He wouldn’t be in one of yours. Anyway, what would you haul him in on, loitering in my foyer? But if you can trace the plate, you might know who’s paying his 401(k). Probably not, but if you can find out who the car was stolen from, maybe the owner got a peek at the thief and can pick him out of a book in Arizona.”

  “Right now I’m more interested in the ones in the Lincoln. If they’re tailing you for some reason other than you dinged their door in a parking lot. Or if they’re tailing you at all. If you look in your mirror long enough, everyone in the world could be on your heel.”

  “The guy in the foyer had an appointment with a chiropractor who hasn’t been in business all year. He could have come up with a hundred better excuses for gathering moss downstairs, but he didn’t have to. I was supposed to spot him, so I’d be looking for him instead of his pals in the better set of wheels. Either they think I’m pretty smart or dumber than a string collection. I’ll let you know when I know.”

  “If the mob’s interested, this is a whole different kind of investigation.”

  I nodded. “The black and Mexican gangs crowded them out of Detroit years ago, when they were too banged up by Washington to fight back. The boys in the District ought to have learned the basic theory of vacuums.”

  “They might be trying to shove their way back in by way of an enterprise nobody else cares about.”

  “On the other hand, I might’ve been tagged by someone who has nothing to do with what went down on
Livernois.”

  “That’s the trouble with real life versus murder mysteries,” he said. “Stuff seeps in from outside.”

  He locked glances with Custer in the framed print on the wall, not that they had much in common; Alderdyce wouldn’t have set foot in the Little Big Horn until Forensics reported on DNA evidence left by the Sioux and Cheyenne Nations and a positive on Sitting Bull based on FBI photo files. He turned his back on the Seventh Cavalry. “I’ve got a man in front of her place, but so far she hasn’t shown up. If she gets in touch with you, call. She isn’t a suspect, not even a person of interest. Just someone we want to talk to so we can mark her off the list. I don’t hear from you by close of business today, I come back with a court order to search this office and your house. If I were you, I wouldn’t do any spring cleaning while I’m waiting. That would rotate you up to the top of the list.”

  I watched him grip the doorknob. “Last time I waste good Scotch on you.”

  *

  He wasn’t gone five minutes when the phone rang. It was my latest client.

  “One moment, please.” I laid down the receiver, got up, and stuck my head into the waiting room to make sure Alderdyce hadn’t forgotten to leave. I went back and picked up.

  “I’m standing across the street,” Smoke said. “A big scary-looking man in a nice suit just left your building and drove away in a car that might as well have had UNMARKED on the plate. I’m impressed. How’d you get them to pay a house call?”

  “Lady, all I have to do is stand still and they drift in hip deep. Are you stalking me? I’m hauling around a lot of rolling stock as it is.”

  “I thought I’d drop in, kill some time since I don’t have a job. I had a foot off the sidewalk when Shrek came barreling out. What do you mean, rolling stock?”

  I didn’t go into the Malibu Man or the pair in the Town Car.

  “Is the he you said you work for named Radu Czenko, by any chance?”

  “He’s the one I answer to. I’ve never met the owner. Is he in jail?”

  “Come on up and we’ll gab about it.”

  “Connection’s fine out here. What about Radu?”

  “Let’s not discuss it where any little old lady with a scanner can pick up your signal. I can offer you a smoke, Smoke.”

  “I’m hanging up now. You can tell me later.”

  I gave up then. “Your boss is in cold storage in the Wayne County Morgue, waiting for a party with a scalpel to find out what put him there. Somebody left him in the basement at Elysian Fields to fertilize the pot.”

  You can’t judge a silence by its length over a cell. That’s one of the things our hit-and-miss technology has taken away from us. I’d wanted to see her face when I told her, but she was elusive, like her name.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “Radu’s dead? How do they know somebody left him there?”

  “He was locked in from the outside. Do you have a key to the padlock?”

  “No. I told you I’ve never been in the basement. Are you—”

  “I’m a lot of things. Accusing you isn’t one of them. Anyway, you don’t need a key to lock a padlock that would’ve been left open by someone who went downstairs. But it’s one of the things the cops will ask you. They don’t mind being obvious.”

  “So they think I’m responsible.”

  “The cop I spoke to says no, but I wouldn’t rule it out. He’s an inspector with Homicide. If I were you, I’d head straight to his office. It can make the difference between a comfortable seat with a cup of coffee and a couple of sweaty bulls asking you questions with leather throats.”

  “What about my previous situation?”

  “I’d be up front about it. They probably already have it, but if you outdraw them it’ll look better for you all around. How come you didn’t give me Czenko’s name when I asked who you worked for?”

  “Because he wasn’t a very nice man to work for, and if he found out I was talking about him with a detective, he’d be even less nice.”

  “Was he a yeller or a hitter?”

  “He was a yeller. Might’ve been a hitter, too, but he yelled so loud nobody let it go beyond yelling.”

  “Did he yell at you?”

  “Every day he didn’t was a day on the black side of the ledger. I don’t think he had the balls to raise his hand to anybody his size; but I wasn’t his size. Bullies are all cowards, right?”

  “Some of them. The rest are either on the lam or on Death Row because someone thought all bullies are cowards.” I looked at my watch. “You’ve got my advice, which is free. I just scored a record from hire to final report. I’m feeling guilty about that hundred. Swing by the office after the cops kick you and I’ll refund fifty.”

  “Let’s let it ride until we know who killed Radu and why.”

  “Uh-uh. I don’t investigate murder to begin with and to finish with I don’t investigate it for fifty bucks and in the middle I don’t investigate murder.”

  “I can raise more if you give me a couple of days. I own a couch Craigslist would love to post.”

  “What’s so important you’d give up having something to sit down on to find out?”

  “If he was selling pot and someone thought he was worth killing over it, what’s to stop him from killing me, too?”

  “Everything, unless you’ve got an idea who did it.”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be trying to hire you to find out. Look, why don’t I come up? We’ll hash it out.”

  I drummed my fingers on the desk. “This couch you’re putting up. Is it a couch or some inventory that found its way out of the basement at Elysian Fields?”

  When the dial tone came on I jumped up, scurried through the waiting room into the hall, and looked out the dusty window at the end facing the street. She was gone. Smoke. Parents rarely get it that right when they tag their kids.

  I sat back down, burned just enough tobacco to scrape at the place where a cheeseburger belonged, and remembered I hadn’t eaten since the USSR fell. I closed up and left. I looked for my Town Car, but either they’d laid off or had changed vehicles, which is what a good closed-tail does when he starts to go stale. An independent pub I’d been in before sat me in a booth that needed a wipe down. That came along just as I sipped my beer and picked up my charred coaster on a bun. I managed to dodge the crumbs and then my cell rang.

  The voice in my ear was so low I had to thumb up the volume to hear it above the murmur of voices and crackling of grease in the kitchen. I asked the owner to repeat herself.

  “Mr. Walker?”

  I’d guessed the gender right, although it was one of those throaty contraltos that can make you wonder, if your senses aren’t on edge when you hear it. I confessed to the identification.

  “This is Cecelia Wynn,” she said. “Alec’s wife?”

  “Oh, that Cecelia Wynn.” I put down the burger and scrubbed my hand on my napkin. “How are you?”

  But she wasn’t making small talk. She wanted to meet me.

  FOURTEEN

  “Hold on,” I said. “Show me you’re Cecelia Wynn.”

  “My mother’s maiden name was Howard. Mine was Collier. I was born in Effingham, Illinois, April 8, 1984. I married Alec Wynn June 19, 2006. We live—I lived at number three Woodland in Grosse Pointe. I’m five-six and a hundred and fourteen pounds. I’m a natural redhead, although you’d better buy me dinner if you want me to prove it. I had a mole removed—”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you sure? There’s so much more.”

  “Who’d lie about being born in Effingham, Illinois?” I was scribbling what she’d given me onto a pad to check with Wynn. I’d thought her mother’s maiden name was Slobotnik, but that was just a guess. I hadn’t needed most of it to start looking. “Where can we meet? The office is off-limits at the moment.”

  “Renovating? Or fumigating? There’s a reason I never go downtown.”

  “We flushed out the rats a while back. Now we’re working o
n the rodents. At the moment I’m someone’s object of interest. If your husband’s double-teaming me, I don’t want another agency stumbling over you and do me out of the rest of my fee.”

  “That happens?”

  “There’s no American Sleuths Association to regulate ethics in my work. I can lose the tail, don’t worry. I’m the best around at that.” You never know when the subject of a case may be a future client, and the advertising was free. The silence on her end was just long enough to make me wonder if I’d been too up-front. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d scored a point in my own backfield.

  “I’m going to take the chance you’re telling the truth,” she said then. “You know Downriver?”

  “I’m surprised you do. Most people think civilization ends on the east bank of the Rouge.”

  “Do you know it or not? I don’t have a whole lot of minutes on this dime-store phone.”

  “I know it.”

  “There’s a bar in Wyandotte, Little Roundtop?”

  I said I knew it too. “Eight o’clock?”

  “Nearer ten. I want the homebound commuters long gone.”

  “You could wear a false beard. No sense taking the chance one of your husband’s cronies’ll recognize you anyway.”

  She addressed that obliquely. “Needless to say, Alec mustn’t know we’re meeting. Afterwards you can tell him what you like. I won’t be in this part of the country much past midnight. I’m counting a lot on the discretion of a complete stranger, Mr. Walker. The background check I did on you was encouraging, but what’s more changeable than human nature?”

  “The weather, in this state; but you can always throw a raincoat, a bottle of sunscreen, and long johns in the backseat. You get in the same trouble trusting no one as trusting everyone, my father said. I’ll pick up the check and put it on Wynn’s account. That way, you get a free drink out of the deal.” But I was being glib to an empty line. Going back over what I’d said, I didn’t think it was such a bad deal.

  The caller ID read BLOCKED CALL. I wondered why I wasted money on the feature. Everyone knows star sixty-seven.

  The same two words came up when the phone rang again a minute later. I let out air and picked up. “A. Walker Investigations. Running behind technology since 1979.”