Alderdyce snatched up the receiver, took it off speaker, dialed. “Yeah, me. Anything? Shit.” He got a nice satisfying bang.
“We were talking about two different Fort Waynes,” I said. “I don’t know anything about a car warehouse.”
“Me neither. I thought all they kept there was cannons and busted beer bottles.” He picked up again, called 1300 back, identified himself, and asked for the duty sergeant. “Who patrols Fort Wayne? No, not if you can answer the question. Is there a car warehouse on that beat? Warehouse.” He cupped the mouthpiece. “Dumb son of a bitch.” He listened and took away his hand. “No shit? I thought I knew everything about this town. Much obliged.”
I sipped from my cup while he was getting off the line. “What don’t you know about this town, besides where to buy decent coffee?”
“That we got more cars than we know what to do with.”
“That? Hell, I knew that.”
He told me the rest.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
TWENTY-NINE
“It’s worked before,” I said.
“Track record isn’t so good with wiseguys.”
“Pirandello’s not a wiseguy. He’s a cousin, three times removed: Kiddy priors, you said, nothing heavy. He was just Yummy’s port in a storm. Ouch!”
“Sorry.” The tech taping the wire to my chest had jerked a hair.
Alderdyce watched the operation from the sucker’s side of the desk in his office. I had the chair this time. There were shadows in the corners. It was 9:45 P.M. I’d gone home to catch a couple of hours’ sleep. The inspector had not, unless he’d put on the same clothes he’d worn earlier, which would have made him someone other than John Alderdyce. When the boy in the Steve Urkel glasses and Sonny Crockett whiskers finished and put away his cutters and extra wire in a tackle box, his superior slid something out of a manila envelope and unfolded it on top of the debris on the desk. When he was through it covered the surface and hung down over the edges like a tablecloth. “Commit this to memory. Try not to touch it. It goes back to the Historical Society in the morning.”
I looked at the brown brittle paper. “Is there a treasure map on the back?”
“Just look it over, okay? They don’t burn as many security lights as they used to on account of the economy, so you want to know where you’re going. If you dent a Hupmobile, you bought it.”
“I’ve got a flashlight.”
“Try not to use it too much. You might spook Tony.”
“He’s not a bat.”
The sheet he’d spread out was the floor plan of a 96,000-square-foot building. It had been a secret from me only that afternoon, and I’d spent most of my life within fifteen minutes of it.
“It’s separate from the barracks,” he said, “built on the old parade ground. It was used to store weapons and ammo during World War Two. Now the Historical Society parks its antique cars there when they’re not on display in the museum on Woodward.”
I buttoned my shirt. “I can’t believe I never heard of it.”
“No reason you should. It isn’t open to the public, and I guess they’d like to keep it a secret because their security’s spread thin. They put the cars up in some sort of glorified bubble wrap, rotate ’em in and out of the displays to keep the museum from getting stale. I practically had to threaten the curator with a warrant to get him to admit it’s there: Hello, we patrol the block.
“When he finally came through, he found Tony’s name in a personnel file. Tony worked maintenance there until they downsized. Either somebody forgot to collect his keys or he had copies made. I had a hell of a time talking the curator out of relocating museum security to the warehouse. He was afraid Tony’d fire up a Packard and drive it out the main gate. He has the impression I’m assigning officers there to protect the inventory while we conduct an investigation.”
“I wonder how he got that impression.”
Alderdyce arranged his features into a frown. It was like a landslide on one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore. “I wish we had a less cockeyed plan.”
“So do I. It’s got whiskers, but there’s a reason for that. It works sometimes. I could learn hypnosis at home or take a crash course in sodium pentothol, but Tony didn’t give us that kind of time. He’s got something to trade or he’d still be running. Either he’s afraid of something out there or he thinks he’s in a frame. The only way to get anything useful out of him is to jack up the fear.”
“The Early Response Team’s already in place. They’re parked five blocks east, around the corner on Summit. Your go word is ‘decaffeinated.’ Three minutes after they hear it over your wire, you’ll be up to your neck in officers, so make sure he’s unarmed.”
“They know enough not to shoot me?”
“They’re pros. You don’t make ERT without a sharpshooter medal and good fitness reports up the yin-yang.”
“Seems to me one of those pros shot a little girl last year.”
“They’ve got descriptions of both of you, your ID photo, and copies of Tony’s security picture from the Historical Society. I’d reach for the sky anyway, and try to look innocent.”
“Who came up with ‘decaffeinated’?”
“Me. It’s one of those words you can’t mistake for something else.”
“What’s wrong with ‘Geronimo’?”
“It’s been used recently; Tony might tumble. Also it’s hard to work into a conversation.”
“Okay. Let me do my homework.”
He left while I scanned the floor plan. It was the size of a road map, drawn to scale, and smelled mildewed, with brown spots like an old man’s skin. The warehouse was a huge square cavern partitioned with open wood framing into rooms, each the size of a ten-bedroom house. The automobiles in storage would be parked in rows like in an underground garage. Why Tony Pirandello had chosen it for the meet was easy to figure out. The echo factor would alert him if anything more than a single pair of feet entered the building. He could duck in and out among the cars and avoid an army of cops for hours. He knew all the exits, all the nooks and crawl spaces; it would be like stalking a flea in a horse barn. Sooner or later, boredom and slowed reflexes would open a hole in the net and the flea would slip through.
The layout didn’t need much memorizing: All the rooms were identical in shape and square footage and accessed either through broad framed openings or simply by stepping between the uprights, provided they weren’t spaced too close together. I concentrated on the exits. The windows, which would be the factory type, gridded into square panes by iron frames, were set too high to climb through. I hoped none of the doors leading outside had been boarded up or bricked in; the date of the plan preceded Pearl Harbor.
When Alderdyce came back through the door I was putting on my suitcoat, which gave me an idea. “Tell the boys with grappling hooks I’ll be in shirtsleeves, white. If Tony learned anything from his cousin, he’ll be dressed in dark clothes.”
“Freeze your ass off.”
“Keep me alert, and maybe out of friendly fire. Anyway, it’ll be climate-controlled. In this town we treat cars better than we treat people.”
He stared at me a moment, fists balled at his sides—at ease, for him. “How’s your bad leg?”
“We’ve got rain or snow coming tomorrow. That answer your question?”
“I should’ve asked how your running game is. It might come to that, if he’s as spooky as he sounded.”
“I popped a couple of pills on my way in. Prescription ibuprofen,” I said, when his brows went up. “I sent the Vicodin packing a year ago.”
“Going in armed?”
“You’re damn right I am. Amateur fugitives have twitchy trigger fingers.”
“Say that three times fast,” he said.
*
I drove my own car, past the armored bread truck parked nose-out with no lights showing where Summit dead-ended on West Jefferson, men in night goggles and Kevlar presumably crouched inside. I didn’t turn my head for
a better look; I’d had my mind read too many times to direct attention to my backup parachute. To my left, a ragged hangnail moon cast multiple scalloped reflections on the Detroit River, charging hell-bent for leather toward Lake Erie. It was the mildest night of the spring so far, flirting with forty degrees, and the warm-up had created a low fog that rolled along the choppy surface and soft-filtered the lights of Windsor on the Canadian side. Dense in patches, it threw my headlights back at me like a gray wall. I slowed down to watch for deer and the occasional wandering homeless.
At such times, a route you’ve traveled nearly every day for years becomes foreign territory. Distances seem greater and nothing looks familiar. Noises travel, as across flat water: The shrill hoarse bugling-elk siren of an emergency vehicle clearing traffic sounded so close I automatically started drifting toward the shoulder to make way, but there were no flashers in sight. It could have come from Highland Park, five miles north.
After an hour on the road—it was probably ten minutes—I came within view of the Fort Wayne barracks, sitting on what was left of sixty-two acres of well-armed garrison, now roughly six blocks square. I saw its six chimneys first, then the elongated building itself, four stories high including a gabled attic, with tall windows arranged in rows like regiments. With the moon glimmering on its whitewashed brick and its foundation appearing to float on a layer of ground fog it looked as peaceful as a cemetery at midnight, and why not? It had stood on that spot since 1851, and so far no shot had ever been fired in its defense or in siege.
It had been commissioned partly to defend the border against raiders from Canada, but mostly to put pork in some congressmen’s cellars: The old-fashioned square nails had cost as much as a dollar apiece in the ledgers. Soldiers had drilled there for nearly a century, but not even the Civil War put it to use for its original purpose. During World War II it had served as a recruitment center and storage for tanks built by Chrysler. Now it was a military museum maintained by the Detroit Historical Society, with armaments and uniforms on display dating back to before the War of 1812, and its grounds were routinely swept of partiers and vagrants. There were more of those than history buffs these days. Because its mettle has never been challenged, some locals believe that as long as Fort Wayne remains standing, no outside invader will ever threaten the city.
Which leaves us with only the people inside to worry about.
Beyond the building, a darker construction carved a black hole out of the lights across the river. At first it looked dark inside, but as I crept closer, the speedometer barely registering, I saw low-level security bulbs glowing feebly behind high-placed windows.
I found a three-cornered niche on the edge of the roadway, a speed-trap feature, and backed into it. The clock on the dash read 10:38. I switched off the ignition and listened to the engine clicking as it cooled in the damp air. I was breathing shallowly. I sucked in deep to break the seal. Then I ditched my suitcoat and grabbed my flashlight, a big one encased in black rubber I’d bought at a police auction after the Malice Green killing had banned them from the equipment room; it was as long as my forearm and heavier than a blackjack. I pointed it at the floor under the dash and snapped it on for a second to check the bulb and batteries. It was bright enough to double as a flare in case I needed backup, illuminating the underbellies of clouds when pointed skyward.
Getting out, I hung it on my belt by its clip, clamped the Chief’s Special in its holster into place so its grip nestled in its permanent hollow to the right of my spine, and dropped my shirttail over it. A sharp little breeze from Ontario chilled me to the bone. I thought of putting my coat back on, but it was too late to tell the Early Response Team of the change; I didn’t want to use the wire in case Tony Pirandello was within earshot.
I hoped the wire was working. Modern technology was moving so fast it had passed the problems inherent in skin-to-ear transmission right by.
I rotated my arms to boost circulation—carefully, to avoid dislodging the tape on my chest. After that I couldn’t think of anything else to keep me from going into the heart of darkness, so I stepped away from the friendly shelter of my automobile and went looking for a chain-link fence to scale. I wasn’t too old for that yet, no sir.
THIRTY
The fence was eight feet high, the gate secured with a chain and padlock. Security had the only key to that one, and there’d been no time to locate the personnel in charge of it. A local recession that predated the national one by ten years had made continuous on-foot surveillance impractical, so the guards rotated on an alternating schedule, leaving regular patrols to the squad-car cops assigned to the neighborhood. This was an off night, as Tony would know, even if the schedule had changed since his time; few people leave their inside friendships behind when they leave a job. I assumed there were cameras, but they’re only as good as their blind spots, and he’d know about those too.
Locks aren’t my strong suit. I can pop a latch with a credit card, but then so can a high school freshman. Picking them is a special skill. Even then they don’t slip as easily as they do in movies. Straight from the factory no two are alike, same as snowflakes and fingerprints, and the longer they’re in use the more the tumblers and keys wear into grooves unique to them. In any case I hadn’t the time to fool with it. I started climbing.
From bottom to top took longer than it would have ordinarily; I was carrying extra weight and that damn wire had me worried. Letting myself down on the other side went a little faster, but I didn’t want to leap the last three feet because of all of the above and a bullet I’d taken through a leg years ago, gone but not forgotten. The cold and the climb already had it throbbing. Even hospital-grade ibuprofen is no substitute for addictive painkillers.
Back at ground level I waited another minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the compound, then started toward the warehouse at an easy walk, as if I were strolling around the block in my own neighborhood. If Tony was watching, I didn’t want to skulk like an uninvited guest.
The building had been pale brick before dark paint was added—red, probably, by daylight, to bring it up to colonial code. But there’d been no room in the budget for a fresh coat, so it had peeled away in leprous patches. A steel fire door, painted once also in a wood-grain pattern that wouldn’t fool anyone after seasons of sun and rain and snow and ice and lead-based auto exhaust, had a modern brass lock. Just for fun I tried the thumb latch, and when it opened the door without resistance I put away the key the curator had provided, stepped inside, and yanked it shut behind me to keep from silhouetting myself against the pale moonlight. I crab-walked to one side to get away from the door. Doors attract bullets, and Tony might have changed his mind about turning himself in.
Canister lamps recessed in the ceiling twenty feet overhead shed light that didn’t quite reach the floor, a single slab of concrete with a smooth surface, sealed with something that made it easier to sweep. But it reflected off curved enameled fenders, the rims and glass of bulbous headlights, and great plastic blisters that protected the historic automobiles from dust and moisture like the boy in the bubble. Bug-eyed, perched high on their chassis, their narrow tires the only thing connecting them to a natural element, they looked like prehistoric insects preserved in amber.
There was light enough to proceed without using the flash, but I was glad I had it. Its heavy butt inside its steel-and-rubber skin bumped comfortingly against my thigh, the next best thing to an encouraging pat on the shoulder. If the .38 failed me, I had a bludgeon for backup. I walked down a wide center aisle, my feet on the cement making scraping sounds that whispered in the rafters. As I walked I glanced to right and left, not to admire the artifacts of the Industrial Age, but to look for someone crouching between their rear and front bumpers. The place couldn’t have been furnished better for ambush if they’d put a renegade Apache in charge.
“Tony?” I used my indoor voice, but it bounded around the room like the sounds from a lively game of basketball. I stopped until it quit, lis
tening for others, but no one answered. I moved on.
Past a phaeton that looked as if someone had slapped a motor on a frontier buckboard, with a spring seat and wooden-spoked wheels. Past an experimental model Ford Mustang, shaped like a dinghy, with a candy apple–red finish and white leather seats. Past a square bottle-green Model T sedan, painted before Henry Ford discovered that Japan black dried faster, speeding up the assembly line. Past the inverted fishbowl of an AMC Pacer. Past Dodges, Pierce-Arrows, curved-dash Oldsmobiles, Buick Super 8s, Willys Jeeps, Terraplanes, tortoise-shaped Nashes, torpedo-nosed Studebakers, cracker-box Edisons; Kaiser-Frazers, Hudson Hornets, Stutz Bearcats; concept cars that had never touched pavement, Titanic-size disasters that never should have, a black ’49 Mercury shaped like Buck Rogers’ spaceship. Those were the ones I could identify. Fleets of makes and models I couldn’t. I suppose there was just one of each, but the wildly contrasting body shapes and unfamiliar insignia and kaleidoscope colors and the intoxicating smell of Turtle Wax and immaculate rubber had me dizzy and seeing everything in multiples. All put up in plastic, like giant Matchbox toys in FAO Schwartz.
In the heart of Detroit, just minutes from the sprawling Ford River Rouge plant, the Fisher Building, the Renaissance Center, and Grand Circus Park, where I’d spent most of my adolescence and all of my adulthood. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t known the place existed. Some swell detective.
“Walker?”
Even as it echoed throughout that barn, that tight shallow voice might have been a hallucination. The place was that unreal.
I stopped. I couldn’t tell where the call had come from. “Yeah, Tony.”
“You alone?”
“Cut the small talk. You’ve got ears.”
“You packing?”
I’d slid my hand under my shirttail to rest on the butt of the revolver. “No. You?”
“No. I never mess with ’em.”
Couple of liars talking in the gloom. “Come out and let’s stop shouting,” I said. “All this river air is giving me a sore throat.”
There was a long stretch of silence. Then air stirred ahead and to my left and Anthony Pirandello stepped out of the shadows between a pair of wooden uprights and stopped with a ragtop seven-passenger Lincoln on one side of him and a fin-tailed Chevy on the other.
Don't Look for Me: An Amos Walker Novel (Amos Walker Novels) Page 18