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

by Loren D. Estleman

  In the dusky light he resembled his cousin less than he had in the apartment. He hadn’t Yummy’s belly or of course the facial surgical scar, and it struck me then that without it the family features had no character at all. Both men needed haircuts; Tony’s showed no gray yet. He wore a dirty gray sweatshirt, baggy slacks, some kind of sneakers, and a zip-front jacket two sizes shy of closing in front. I figured he’d snatched it from someone’s basket in a Laundromat. He hadn’t had time to grab outerwear when he’d fled his place and Alison Garland’s corpse on the bed. Shadows lay in the folds of his face like dust on old bunting.

  He stood half-turned my way with his left arm out of sight. I was standing the same way, only it was my right hand hidden behind my back. Mirror images, both heeled.

  “You look beat, Tony. Been sleeping?”

  “Now who’s making the small talk? How many cops you got surrounding the place?”

  “Oh, pretty much all of ’em. You’re the flavor of the month on every bulletin board in the jurisdiction.”

  Another quiet stretch. “You wearing a wire?”

  “Uh-huh.” I could almost hear the ERT on the other end grinding his teeth. “You didn’t say I couldn’t, so I just figured.”

  “It’s okay. I got nothing to say I wouldn’t say in court. Where they keeping Marty?”

  “County jail.” I watched my breath curl in the weak shaft of light from the canister above my head. The place wasn’t as warm as I’d expected, but I wasn’t feeling the cold. Adrenaline’s as good as a Union Suit in a pinch. “He rolled over on you, Tony. Yummy did. Tagged you for the Garland girl’s murder.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t know no Garlands.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you didn’t know her name. He says you shot her and put her in the apartment so he’d go down for it. He’s the one with the record.”

  “Bullshit!” It ricocheted off every hard surface like a bullet. I tightened my grip on the Chief’s Special.

  “It checks, Tony. The inspector and I were up to our chins in uniforms almost before he could call it in. Anonymous tip, Dispatch said. He’d have had just enough time to slip out on some excuse before they came and put the collar on you.”

  “When’d he make the call, smart guy? We went to a bar and came back together. We were never more’n two feet apart the whole time we was out.”

  “Which bar?”

  “How the hell should I know? Who looks at the sign? The one on the corner, where I always go. It might not even have a name. You might’ve noticed I don’t live in Bloomfield Hills.”

  “The cops’ll check it out. The bartender or someone might remember if you were the Siamese twins you say you were. Yummy’s crowding fifty. The bladder wouldn’t be what it used to be. Maybe he stepped down the hall to squirt. This one of those places with a pay phone near the toilets?”

  “Who uses pay phones anymore? He’s got a—” He stopped himself.

  “So he had a cell. Even better. Tony, he sold you out. The cops have his statement on paper and on DVD: available soon in a store near you.”

  “It’s a lie either way. You know what he said when he saw that stiff laying there? ‘That bitch!’; that’s what. That sound like a man that expected to find what he found?”

  That one stopped the conversation for a moment. It was becoming surreal.

  “What bitch was that, the dead girl? He blamed her for getting herself killed and landing in his apartment?”

  “My apartment. How the hell should I know? Maybe it was another bitch. The one that put her there.”

  I felt the cold then.

  *

  For a space I couldn’t remember the go word. Then it came back. “Your story doesn’t mean anything here, Tony. It’ll tell better downtown, where the cops can sort it out. Your record’s better than Yummy’s; that counts for something. Isn’t that what we’re here for, so you can come out of the woods?”

  “My sheet’s clean. Unlawful driving away of an automobile, that’s what they tagged me for, twenty years ago, when I was a kid. I did my probation. Then five hundred hours of community service for laying out my foreman at Chrysler a couple of years later. Not even a littering beef since. That sound like a killer to you?”

  “Not to me, and not to them either. Isn’t that what I said? Give me the piece, Tony. You don’t want to be holding it when the cops come. They might get the wrong idea.”

  “I told you I’m unarmed.”

  “Me, too. We didn’t know each other so well then.”

  “Drop yours first. Then we’ll see.”

  The inside of a cheek got chewed. It was mine.

  “Okay, I’m easy.” If he’d brought me there to kill me there’d have been smoke in the air already. I slid out the .38, slow as the tide. Holding it awkwardly by the middle, I bent down, laid it on the slick floor, and slid it shuttle-fashion a couple of yards up the aisle. I straightened up and waited.

  A couple of seconds went past, tricked out as minutes. Then he stirred. Out came a .32 semiautomatic, a pawnshop piece with black plastic grips. It came to rest a moment later, nearly touching the revolver. He rose from his crouch.

  “Better, no?” I said. “Cold in here. Let’s go down to the precinct and grab a cup of coffee. What do you like, regular or—?”

  I can’t remember if I said the word. If I did, it was drowned out by a report that rang off the sheet metal on both sides of the aisle like a cherry bomb. The plastic bubble shielding the gangster-type touring car to Pirandello’s left collapsed slowly, with a whistle of escaping air; the bullet had clipped it on its way into Tony’s heart.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I was on the floor between the shot and the echo, rolling toward our guns. The one my hand found first was Tony’s little Saturday night special, but there was no time to shop around. I reversed directions, rolled onto my left shoulder, and fired at nothing: In that echo chamber I had no idea where the slug had come from, but it’s only polite to answer, especially when the shooter has the range down pat and you need to keep him busy between shots. The little .32 made a sharp little bark like a terrier, hurting my ears even worse than the first report, loud as it was, and as unexpected.

  A little inquisitive squeak of air brought my attention back to Tony. He was just beginning to fall, with his hand halfway to his chest and his knees bending and turning; descending, like a dancer sinking to the bottom of Swan Lake. I thought he’d’ve been horizontal long before that, but time slows when you’re scrambling for your life. I figured less than three seconds had elapsed since we were standing facing each other.

  A guy like Tony couldn’t maintain that kind of grace all the way to the finish. One of his shoes slipped on the glazed surface of the concrete and he flopped the remaining two feet like a sack of mail. Something rattled like a broken fan blade and then he was quiet, as quiet as the ancient automobiles resting in their cocoons.

  Something struck the floor near my right knee, followed instantly by the roar of the discharge. It was close enough to pepper my pants with bits of cement. I got my knees under me and pushed off, chest down, sliding into home base in the shadow of a Chrysler truck with bloated fenders. There I managed to push against the resistance of the inflated bubble and lay flat under the broad running board, using it as a shield as I tried to pin down the source of the shooting. I couldn’t rely on my hearing to separate the noise from its echo, so I concentrated on my vision.

  I unclipped the big flashlight from my belt and flung it into the aisle between the rows of cars. It struck down at the halfway point and rolled in the direction of Tony’s corpse. A bullet kicked up dust an inch short of the flash. I saw the muzzle flare then, in the same instant I heard the shot, high up the wall at the end of the aisle nearest the entrance. The shooter had chosen higher ground, like any good pro. Not on top of a car; the rounded air-filled protective wrapping would’ve made the footing dicey at best. A platform of some kind.

  I had the little pistol leveled already, propped on my elbow
on the floor with only my arm and my head poking out from under the running board. I sighted in on the fading phosphorescence of the flare, fired. Someone yelped, something clattered to the floor. Something heavier hit just behind that, a body falling or someone leaping off his shooting stand.

  It was a leap, because then I heard rapid footsteps. I tightened my grip on the .32, leveling it parallel with the floor, but then the footsteps got quieter and I knew they were going away. After that I didn’t hear anything, because the world was a confusion of sirens.

  I’d forgotten about the wire, which had picked up the gunshots. I never got the chance to say “Decaffeinated.”

  *

  “It’s a lie either way. You know what he said when he saw that stiff laying there? ‘That bitch!’; that’s what. That sound like a man that expected to find what he found?”

  “What bitch was that, the dead girl?”

  We were in the curator’s office in the military museum, which smelled of mildewed wool and dry rot. Alderdyce had gotten keys to the barracks and the office along with the one he’d given me to get into the warehouse; how he’d anticipated needing the room was his secret. If he’d missed a step in thirty years on the job, I wasn’t around to see it. He stood, I sat, in a folding metal chair someone had borrowed from high school band. I smoked a contraband cigarette and enjoyed the heat, even if the thermostat was set low for evening. I was still in shirtsleeves. I scratched my chest where the tape had been removed, along with a clump of hair.

  The room looked as if someone was either moving in or moving out. Cardboard cartons were stacked in every corner and the chipboard desk was empty of everything except the .32 popgun and the gizmo replaying Anthony Pirandello’s words and mine. Hearing a dead man speak is always unsettling, even in a place not already overpopulated with the ghosts of minutemen and Yankee volunteers.

  We listened through the first gunshots, then he replayed it all for the third time, his big fingers fumbling with the little buttons on the MP3 player or whatever it was. A tech with the Early Response Team had recorded it straight from my wire onto a disc or chip you could lose in a belly button. Smaller and tinnier is the new bigger and better.

  “Do I really sound like that?” I asked when he finally turned it off. “I’m a baritone in my head.”

  “You didn’t see anything. Maybe something in the muzzle flare? Black? White? Male? Female?”

  “I was lucky to see the flare. Whatever it was, I think I winged it.”

  “Sounded like it. We’ll know when the flack-jacket boys report. I’m not waiting for the weasels from the lab to finish their chow mein and ride in on their Segways.”

  He hated CSIs for some reason. Maybe he’d get over it when he had his own TV show.

  He stared at the window. Only his reflection showed against the blackness outside. “‘That bitch!’ What do you think he meant?”

  “Maybe Alison Garland. You can get mad at a nail when it won’t hammer in straight.”

  “You believe that?”

  “The part about the nail.”

  “Who, then?”

  I had a theory, but I didn’t want to say it aloud and make it real. “That’s what Yummy should have said: ‘Who?’ It’s what anyone would say if he didn’t recognize the corpse. He was surprised, all right, but that was because it didn’t belong in that bed. He knew who it was, all right, and he knew who put her there.”

  “A partner?”

  “Or an employer. The woman I’m thinking of doesn’t go fifty-fifty with anyone.”

  “That again. You’re turning into a conspiracy nut.”

  “I hope I am.”

  He picked up the little semiautomatic, popped out the magazine, ejected the cartridge from the barrel, and put it all back together. He paid as much attention to the operation as brushing his teeth; when you’ve spent most of your life around guns you make them as safe to handle as possible without thinking. He let it rest on his palm like a compass. “Not bad shooting, if you did hit anything. Tony wasn’t the best judge of firearms.”

  “He was an amateur, like I said. That’s why the trick worked. He didn’t know Yummy well enough in his working life to know he didn’t spill his guts easily.”

  “Not that you got anything out of him we can use.”

  “We got the one thing. There was more, which is why somebody followed him to the warehouse and took him out.”

  “Maybe they followed you. Maybe that Town Car crowd.”

  I still hadn’t told him about the Israelis. “If they did, they changed vehicles. I don’t think I was followed. It would’ve been hard to penetrate the place without being heard. The place echoed like Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech. If anything, whoever it was was already in place when Tony showed up.”

  “Are you saying the police line was tapped?”

  “It isn’t impossible, but not necessarily. Any kid with a scanner can pick up a cell phone transmission. Or it could have been an educated guess. Tony’s ties to the warehouse weren’t a state secret. They might have had a plant in all the likely places he’d choose for a meet.”

  “How’d they know he wanted a meet?”

  “He was scared. Of the two, he was the one most likely to strike a deal. They’d go after the bird in the bush and take out the one in hand at their leisure. I guess you’ve got the Swiss Guard surrounding Yummy by now.”

  He stretched, cracking every bone in his body. Since he was made mostly of bone it sounded like the skeleton dance. “We’re calling it twenty-four-hour suicide surveillance, to keep the press from catching wind of a possible lead story. He sneezes, he’ll get a gesundheit from five sides.”

  One of the ancient floorboards creaked outside the door. He asked who it was before the visitor could knock.

  “Lieutenant Halley, Inspector. ERT.”

  He came in at Alderdyce’s invitation, six-four in khakis and a vest that covered him from neck to groin. The long bill of his baseball cap cast a shadow past the tip of his nose in the overhead light. “Shooter fired from a staircase leading to the roof,” he said, holding out a plastic snack bag containing three brass shells.

  The inspector took it, held it so the light fell on the numbers stamped on the flanged ends. “What the hell fires a thirty caliber?”

  “Walther P-38 comes to mind. Muzzle velocity trumps some larger rounds. Vic took one in the pump, looks like. Some bully shot in that light.”

  “Okay, True Grit. What else?” Alderdyce handed back the evidence.

  “Your civilian nicked the shooter. Some blood spots, but the pattern petered out after a few yards.”

  “What, no compliment to the civilian?” I asked. “I was firing at an upward angle, and the light was even worse for me. It didn’t reach the walls.”

  But I wasn’t in the room for Lieutenant Halley. “He went out a rear exit, scaled a chain-link on the river side. Gravel there, no footprints. But we got these between the warehouse and the fence.” He stashed the bag of shells and came up with a digital camera from another pocket, a red Canon the size of a business-card case. Alderdyce and I huddled around the tiny screen as Halley pushed a button. Waffled tracks in loose sand diagonaled across the screen, spaced out in a running pattern. Halley or someone had thought to place a new yellow pencil next to one of the footprints.

  “Size four?” The inspector’s question went up on the end like the uncertain answer to a tough question.

  “Maybe four and a half. Boy’s-size sneakers.”

  “Or a small woman’s,” I said.

  Both men looked at me, lighting a fresh cigarette with a flame I couldn’t keep steady.

  *

  Alderdyce dismissed the lieutenant. When the floorboards outside stopped complaining, he said, “Charlotte Sing’s not the only petite person in the world. Anyway, she doesn’t do her own heavy lifting.”

  “She would if she’s running out of help. The world police agencies have her hemmed in from three sides. If she chooses the fourth, any one of the As
ian nations would execute her without trial.”

  He drew out another folding chair, sat, and rested his forearms on the desk. “Fire away. What’s her game?”

  “I’m guessing, so don’t tank me for withholding evidence. Suppose she was planning to use Elysian Fields for another drug-fueled plan to destroy the West, but before she could get it up and running, the manager she’d hired got his fingers into the medical marijuana scam, drawing official attention. So she kills him, or has him killed. Then I showed up, asking questions about one of Elysian’s customers. She puts Yummy Mondadori on my trail to find out what I’m after. He finds out, I don’t know how yet. Then she brings in a ringer for the customer to end my interest. But Detroit cops raid the place, which spoils it for her uses once and for all. The plan’s on autopilot by this time, the ringer, Alison Garland, can’t be recalled. When Alison reports it didn’t work, Yummy kills her, probably leaving her where she fell, or the body wouldn’t have been so easy for Sing to scoop it up and dump it in his cousin’s apartment where he’s staying, then make an anonymous call to the cops so he’ll be tagged.”

  “Why take the chance he’d talk? Why not just drop the hammer on him?”

  “I said I’m guessing, filling in the holes after I stumble into them.” I put out the cigarette against the metal seat of my chair. “Her picture’s in every police station in the free world, and there are surveillance cameras all over the city. Maybe she can’t move during the day, but she couldn’t wait for sundown. If it made perfect sense it wouldn’t be a hunch. She knows Yummy’s reputation or she wouldn’t have recruited him. She could be reasonably certain he’d keep his mouth shut even if he knew he’d been betrayed, and take his pound of flesh on his own after he made bail or a good mob attorney got him off scot-free. Clearly he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. But meanwhile he’s on ice, so she can move to Square Two.”