“Funny; not.” It was Barry Stackpole’s voice, still singing about the High School Hop. “What I got on Elysian Fields would burn out every fiber-optic cable in town.”
“I know about the pot.”
“Pot’s for fifth-graders. I don’t get out of bed for anything less than Asian heroin.”
“Is that what it is?”
“That’s what I get out of bed for, I said. When did you get so literal? We need to meet.”
“My date card’s filling up, and expenses won’t stand another trip to the Grand. Drop in here and I’ll buy you a drink from the office bottle.”
“Three flights on a Dutch leg? No deal. How’s about you make the trip? I’m parked next to a fireplug in front of your dump.”
“Risky.”
“All the arsonists are working the west side this season, haven’t you heard? Those HUD houses go up like airfares. Bring that bottle.” The connection went away.
I found him behind the wheel of a Sebring convertible with the seat fully reclined and him as well. He had on a pressed flannel shirt, khaki slacks, and hundred-dollar running shoes. Even in broad daylight he could pass for a college freshman. There was a gizmo attached to the steering column that let him operate the brake and gas pedal with his hands; regular driving was just about the only thing he couldn’t do with his prosthesis.
“I’d never have pegged you for a ragtop,” I said, sliding into the passenger’s seat.
“In the old days that was only practical. Now it’d be filed under paranoia. Nobody tries to kill reporters anymore. We stopped counting years ago.” He reached over and scooped the bottle in its paper sack off my lap.
“I meant there’s nothing to stop you from flying when you run into something in a drunken haze.”
“Just a bracer,” he said, unscrewing the cap and taking a swig. He put the cap back on and gave me back the bottle.
“That bad.”
“Bad enough.”
“Guess you know about the stiff in the basement.”
“I caught the squeal when it went out.” He waved a hand toward the scanner in the dash. “He was just the help. Place belongs to a syndicate with Eurasian connections, meaning high-grade dope. It’s a poster child for ethnic diversity: blacks, whites, Italians, Mexicans, Asians, Chaldeans, Netherlanders.”
“Chaldeans? Catholic Arabs?”
“New players, operating on the West Coast.”
“Last I heard those gangs were all still trying to wipe each other out.”
“They got wise. Or somebody did for them, somebody who can mix oil and water.”
“Place moving that kind of stuff, how come the cops are only interested in phony medical marijuana?”
“They were just getting set up. First shipment’s still sitting on a dock in Singapore.”
“What’s your source?”
“If I told you that, I’d wind up in the federal pen in Milan, getting butt-fucked by an entirely different class of con than I’m used to.”
“This somebody who got wise for them, he have a name?”
“Well; the property’s registered to a place called Pacific Rim.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You weren’t supposed to; no one was, especially the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. Marshals, and every other investigative organization in the world. The owner changed the name after all its assets were frozen. Before that it was MacArthur Industries.”
I unscrewed the cap and took a long draft. “Christ,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Not even close,” Barry said.
FIFTEEN
“Are we even sure it’s her?” I asked.
“Who’s sure about anything where she’s concerned? If she’s smart, she got out from under. Maybe that’s when the name changed.”
“She’s smart, all right. Also as crazy as a bug in a skillet. You never know what she’ll do except be back. Do the Detroit cops have any of this?”
“They should by now. They don’t have to hack into my sources.”
“It’s her,” I said. “There isn’t another person living who could get all those gangs to march in step.”
“It takes a big bankroll. She must have cash hid out where the World Bank can’t find it.”
“Rackets she’s in, it’s all cash. She’d’ve been stashing it away for years against this situation. She’s always ten moves ahead of everyone else.”
“Step off, Amos.”
“I was never on. I’m looking for Cecelia Wynn, not Charlotte Sing.”
“Madam Sing always seems to find you.”
“Not this time. She has no reason. This case just brushed her territory, that’s all.”
“Straight dope?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, then.” He cranked his seat back up and started the motor. With his hands on the wheel he looked at me for the first time since I got into the car. “But just to be safe—”
“I’ll sleep with the lights on.” I opened the door and got out.
*
It was dark when I crossed into Wyandotte. The yellow lights of an ore carrier showed on the Canadian side of the river, twinkling like stars when snowflakes drifted between us. Freezing rain had sizzled on and off throughout the day, and when the temperature followed the sun down behind the horizon the needlelike drops changed to little ragged flat floaters that turned like cinders in the air in front of my headlights. When I switched on the high beams, the light glittered off crystal jackets on all the tree branches; beautiful, fragile chandeliers that could break under the weight any time and send two hundred pounds of shattered bough through my windshield. West Jefferson was paved with black ice. It was a treacherous night near the end of a treacherous season in a treacherous life that was more than half over. I was in a sunny mood. I couldn’t walk two steps in any direction without tangling my feet in corpses and international criminals.
Nobody knows Wyandotte. I don’t think even Wyandites, or whatever they’re called, do; they just sleep there. Detroit sure doesn’t know it. The slaves who stopped there along the Underground Railroad knew it. For a brief space during the Industrial Age, the world knew it. The city on the river had made most of its steel there, courtesy of Detroit’s first millionaire and pioneer of the Bessemer Process. But Eureka Iron and Steel had barely outlived Eber Brock Ward. Prohibition rumrunners knew it: They bought its elected officials and docked their boats in broad daylight. But after Repeal the place joined the rest of Downriver as a blob on the map where sea serpents swim and traffic empties into during the evening rush hour. The big furnace and sprawling foundry are gone, along with 2,200 acres of railway and coke-providing beech forest, barns and basements where fugitives crouched dreaming of freedom, and the slips where young toughs in snap-brim hats and underarm holsters beached their fermented gold. What’s left is a horizontal town of bedrooms and widescreen TVs, orderin pizza, indifferent sex when the kids are in bed, and back to work in the morning.
Little Roundtop belonged to a local Civil War reenactor whose great-great uncle or something had taken a ball through a lung in a skirmish while serving with the First Michigan. So far as anyone knew, he was back in overalls pitching hay in South Lyon long before Gettysburg and the battle named for the hillock that had claimed much of the fifty thousand dead; but Cold Harbor sounds like a sushi place, and Midwesterners like their food cooked and their fish made of cow. Georgian columns held up a porch roof as thick as a cracker and parking valets dressed like General Sheridan climbed into cars knocking off their cocked hats and swearing under their breath at the plastic sabers slapping their calves. Six months after I ate there it was a Denny’s.
A hostess got up like Scarlett O’Hara shook her sausage curls when I described Cecelia Wynn and conducted me to a two-top under a painting of Pickett’s Charge done in toothpaste on terry, with a tag informing me it could be mine for $250. “Nice dress,” I said. “I bet you saw it in the window and had to have it.” She smiled a vapid smile and drifted out of my li
fe. I was ready for stuffing and mounting.
I was a little early; when Melanie, my waitress, boated over in a hoop skirt, I said I was waiting for someone and ordered a martini. She set down two elephant-folio menus with a steel point engraving of Lee surrendering to Grant at Appomattox on the covers and came back five minutes later carrying a square glass of clear liquor with ice cubes and a pimento olive on a tray full of drinks. I sipped pure gin. When it doesn’t have vermouth, and it’s not served in a funnel-shaped glass, is it still a martini? Downriver is no place for philosophy.
The music playing over the sound system was cornpone marinated in mint julep: There is no accounting for a modern Yankee’s sympathies when it comes to the War Between the States. I swung my foot to “I’m a Good Ole Rebel” and admired the reproduction tattered battle pennants hanging on the walls.
Sugarland was covering “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” when she came in.
A lot of people will go to any effort to avoid meeting someone in a crowded restaurant. It takes rare repose to stand in the middle of a noisy room, searching for a familiar face, without looking like you just fell off a flatcar. Cecelia Wynn had repose. She paused inside the entrance, spotted me in an awkward half-crouch with my hand raised, and came over. Tables parted to let her through. She had on a dark gray dress of some plush material that gave off violet highlights as she moved, under a white thigh-length coat whose tails spread behind her like a cape. Her legs were bare but evenly tanned, ending in ankles as delicate as stemware and long narrow feet in open-toed shoes of a shade to match the highlights in her dress. She wore her hair as in her picture, the same length and the same natural shade of red. It should have clashed with the violet but it didn’t. It wouldn’t dare.
Men watched her, women too. I saw all that and wanted to kick Alec Wynn in the ass for not hiring a more expensive detective.
I got up the rest of the way, but she sat down letting my right hand flap loose. “What’s that, a martini?”
“I was just debating that.”
Melanie pitty-patted up. Cecelia pointed at my glass. “Vodka for me. Straight up, with a twist.”
I asked her if she was eating.
She shook her head. Her hair moved freely and fell back into place as smoothly as cards shuffling. The place was dark, lit mostly by electric candles flickering in orange glasses on the tables and the lights above the bar. They cast shadows under her cheekbones. She’d lost weight, but her face hadn’t the gaunt look of heroin chic. Alcohol and vitamins were the only vices I could swear to.
“You should eat,” I said. “I hate to think what that lemon will do to an empty stomach.”
“Go ahead and order for yourself. Alec’s paying.”
“No appetite, thanks. You left some baggage behind.”
“Tell him to give my clothes to Goodwill. They were dead weight. He can throw out the pills. I had a hole I tried to fill. Finally I just walked away from the hole. It has nothing to do with him. I don’t know, maybe it has everything to do with him. But he shouldn’t feel responsible.”
There wasn’t anything in that for me. “Elysian Fields got raided, did you hear?”
“I heard something on someone’s radio. I didn’t know the dead man. I didn’t know anything about marijuana. How’s Smoke?”
“Lying low. She says she has issues not connected with the operation. Pretty girl.” I watched her closely in the rusty light.
“Is she? I suppose so. Those natural earthy types don’t make much of an impression on me.”
“How about Ann Foster?”
Her eyes did a little jig, I thought; I couldn’t be sure because of the damn flickering. “What about her?”
“She got another job. In case you were feeling guilty about giving her the sack. I don’t think she was really cut out to clean houses.”
Her drink came. When the waitress left she took a sip and relaxed in her chair. The air around her had changed. It might have been the booze but I wasn’t counting on it. “I’m glad. Maybe I did her a favor.”
“She thinks you’re a closet lesbian.”
“Then she must be one. Lesbians think every woman’s a dyke.”
“She came out. Maybe she was never in. Anyway she’s shooting girl-on-girl films in a place called Stormy Heat Productions. Her theory is you canned her because you found yourself attracted to her and it freaked you out.”
“So that’s her theory.” She took another drink holding the funnel glass in both hands as if she were warming them.
“Anything in it?”
“What’s it to you if there is?”
“It’d be something to report to Mr. Wynn. You said maybe it had nothing to do with him. Maybe it would satisfy him. Get him to lay off. ‘Don’t look for me,’ that’s what your note said.”
She stood her glass precisely in the wet ring it had left on the table and slid a hand inside a pocket of her coat. “What’s he owe you?”
“Nothing right now. He’s paid up through three days.”
A pocketbook came out and flopped open when she unsnapped the strap. Out of that came cash in a tight roll with a rubber band around it, the way some men carry cash and few women. It didn’t have to mean anything; I can match my tie to my display handkerchief, and I like girls. “Here’s a thousand. Tell him the case is closed. Say I said I’m okay and happy. I hope he takes it the right way, but if he doesn’t, I can’t do anything about it. It’s my life, and it’s brand new.”
I took it—fifties and hundreds, but it made a thick package just the same—got out the receipt book I carried next to my notepad, scribbled the particulars and signed it, and pushed it and the carbon across the table along with my pen. “Just sign the carbon and you’ll never hear from me again, Mrs. Wynn.”
“It isn’t Mrs. Wynn. Nor Collier either. You don’t start a new life by going backwards.” She signed her name and returned the copy and pen. Before she could withdraw her hand, I grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the table.
“What’s your name, really?” I grinned at her. “It never was Cecelia Wynn and you were never married to Alec. I don’t think you ever met him.”
SIXTEEN
She tried to pull back, but I applied pressure with my thumb on her pulse. Her face paled and she stopped resisting. She had a tiny X-shaped scar on the back of her hand, a childhood injury probably. Wynn had said his wife had no visible scars. I said, “I could be wrong about that last part, but I think my client would’ve told me if he knew there was a woman running loose who looked enough like his wife to fool an experienced detective.”
Her face went stony. “I thought we settled all this over the phone. I gave you—”
“You gave me nothing you couldn’t get from official sources. It’s a pity they couldn’t include the name of a servant, even one she fired. You’d have had to Google Ann Foster, but you’d have to know she existed first. The name caught you by surprise. I watched you dangle a moment, then threw you a line. Once you knew what Ann Foster was to the missing woman, you got your foothold. I don’t know if you’re a trained actress, but improvisation isn’t your strong suit.
“It was a hurry-up job all around,” I went on, “and time was lost tracking down someone who resembled Cecelia Wynn in her most recent photo. Otherwise whoever did it might have stopped to consider that a woman who didn’t want to be traced would change her makeup and hairstyle and probably the color. But you look like someone who’s trying very hard to look like the person I’ve been hired to find.”
I let go and sat back, not so far I couldn’t get up if she bolted. Someone was covering “Johnny Yuma” on the stereo but he sounded less like Johnny Cash than the woman across from me looked like my quarry. “You picked a place to meet Downriver—dark—where it was unlikely anyone who knew Cecelia Wynn would see you and come over to say hello and realize they’d made a mistake and say so. I never heard her speak or saw her move, so you didn’t have to worry about doing an impression, but you couldn’t fool anyone
who knew her even casually. You had a sample of her handwriting and did a fair job of forging it, but the note Wynn showed me had a left-hand slant, which if you’re right-handed, like you are, you can only duplicate by crabbing your hand the wrong way around the pen, like you did. The angle’s only natural if you’re a lefty. But there wasn’t time to train you to write with the hand you don’t normally use.”
“I’m Cecelia Wynn. I don’t know how I can convince you if you’re so set on not believing me.”
“The best liars don’t give up easy. You’re either a pro or a gifted amateur. Amateur’s my guess. The time factor’s too tight, and you look too much like her. Professional training too would be just blind dumb luck.”
“I’m a file clerk.”
That shut me up. I hadn’t expected her to get calm. She even managed to drink from her glass without spilling it on the couple at the next table, who’d become very interested in their soup once our voices raised. But I’m just detective enough to know when a woman is putting on a show of nerves.
“A file clerk where?”
She ignored the question. “That’s the job I’m good at. Don’t judge me by this one. I couldn’t resist the money. Are you going to call the police?”
“So far you haven’t broken any laws I know about. If you have, I’ll help you, because you’re just a cat’s-paw. All I want to know is whose. Then you can go. Here. I don’t take money not to investigate.” I pushed the stack of bills her way.
But she was smarter than I thought; or dumber. Anyway she had the shrewdness of a trapped animal. She reached for the money and in the same movement shoved the table into my sternum, and when I pushed back my chair and grabbed for her, she screamed.
Not a good, shrill, theatrical scream like in the movies. It was hoarse and ugly, but it was loud enough to turn every head in the room, and then we had company: a broad, middle-aged black with a cropped head and mascara on his lashes. What he was doing working in a joint with an Antebellum theme was between him and the NAACP. He wore a tight T-shirt that showed his muscles, also a roll of fat around his waist, cargo pants, and size-thirteen oxfords. A big steel meat-tenderizer hammer swung at his hip.
Don't Look for Me: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Novels) Page 10