Stress

by Loren D. Estleman

  After he’d called Wilson from the open-air booth at the Shell station across the road, he pumped the cradle and asked Information for the number of Mary Margaret Whitehorn in Rochester Hills.

  She came, prosaically enough, by taxi, carrying an old scuffed beige-and-blue suitcase with tarnished brass latches; but if Wolf found these details disappointing, he was heartened by the sheer physical presence of the woman. Standing well over six feet in two-inch cowboy heels, she could have been fifty or seventy-five. Her hair, tied casually at the nape and fanning out below that to her waist, was iron gray, but her face, lightly rouged and painted, bore no lines. She wore an ankle-length cloth coat open over a brown corduroy dress whose hem reached the tops of her worn tan boots. The ancient-looking polished black bear’s-claw necklace that hung around her neck had to have cost a fortune; beyond that there was nothing on her person that couldn’t be redeemed out of Wolf’s pocket. He had to wonder what she did with the legendary fees she charged for her special services.

  Respect was crucial. He stepped onto the flight of wooden steps that led to the trailer’s door, holding it open for her. “Mrs. Whitehorn, I’m very grateful—”

  “Give the driver fifteen dollars.” She went inside.

  He saw to the chore. The cabman, a lean black crowding sixty with a CORE button pinned to his Tigers cap, said, “She like a gypsy?”

  “Shaman,” the Indian corrected. “A Creek medicine woman. She practices all over Michigan and Wisconsin. Why, what’d she say?”

  “She don’t like the moon. She say it all bloody.”

  Wolf searched the overcast sky.

  “I can’t see it neither, but I didn’t argue with her. You see her eyes?”

  “I didn’t get a look. Something wrong with them?”

  “All I’m saying is I’m sleeping with the lights on tonight.”

  When Wolf entered the trailer, Whitehorn was bent over Opal. She pried open each of the girl’s eyelids with a square thumb. “How long has she been unconscious?”

  “Couple of hours. I’m thinking she needs the sleep.”

  “The child’s in a coma.”

  Shit.

  The woman peeled the quilt down to the foot of the bed, exposing the tiny body in its cotton gown. Her feet looked blue in the light of the fluorescent tube mounted above the headboard. She placed the back of a hand against the girl’s forehead and cheeks, took her wrists gently and pumped them up and down twice slowly, as if performing artificial respiration, then laid both palms inside Opal’s armpits and slid them all the way down to her ankles, tracing her outline into the sheet beneath her. It all looked pretty theatrical to Wolf, who began to wonder if he shouldn’t have risked calling a legitimate doctor.

  Whitehorn straightened suddenly, removing her coat in the same movement, and threw it into the armchair by the bed. As she lifted her suitcase from the floor to the chair, Wolf saw her eyes. The pupils were vertical slits, the irises large and mahogany-colored, almost obliterating the whites. He could actually see the catlike apertures opening to let in light as she lifted the lid of the suitcase.

  It contained nothing but a bundle wrapped in what looked like deerhide, the size of a swaddled infant, painted all over with geometric shapes in faded primary colors and tied with sinew. She lifted it gently, laid it on the bed near the foot, untied the knot, and spread out the hide. A pungent aroma filled the room when the contents were exposed to the air: a combination of herbs and chlorophyll and something much more basic, which reminded Wolf instantly of his first visit to Mackinac Island, where bicycles and buggies were the only wheeled traffic allowed by law. And he wondered what plain horseshit had to do with the process of healing.

  Moving with assurance—there seemed to be order to the arrangement of the items in the bundle—Mary Margaret Whitehorn pushed back her corduroy sleeves, selected a tiny sprig of green leaves bound at the stems with something that resembled a strand of hair, crushed them between thumb and forefinger, and held them beneath the girl’s nostrils. Although Wolf himself detected the acrid stench, Opal showed no reaction. Whitehorn grunted and returned the sprig to the bundle. She slid a hand behind the child’s head, lifted it, and undid the tie behind her neck with the other hand. Wolf turned away when the gown was removed, feeling like a child molester. But he turned back to watch the rest of the procedure.

  The medicine woman unrolled a small oilcloth cylinder, picked up one of the matches inside, struck it on the steel bedrail, and lit a small stump of dirty yellow candle. Wolf smelled tallow. Chanting gutturally, she offered the flame to the earth and the sky and the four directions, then tilted the candle over the cheap nightstand until a puddle of melted tallow formed on the surface, whereupon she stood the candle in the viscosity. She turned the switch to the fluorescent light. Now the greasy orange glow of the tiny flame was the only illumination in the trailer. Chanting still, Whitehorn removed the lid from a clay jar. The manure stench sharpened as she rotated her fingers inside the jar, then bent once again to the naked child and smeared the greenish contents all over the narrow undeveloped chest, taking special care to draw circles around the nipples.

  She called for a damp cloth. He went into the claustrophobic bathroom, wet a hand towel in the sink, and brought it to her. She wiped the shit off her hands and gave it back. Holding the towel by a clean corner, he opened the lid of the trash canister in the kitchen end of the trailer and dropped it inside. When he returned to the bed, Whitehorn was pouring white powder from a glazed-pottery bottle into a matching saucer. She set the bottle down, struck a fresh match and, holding the saucer directly over Opal’s chest, dropped the burning stick into the heap of powder. There was a snap and a blinding blue flash and black smoke filled the trailer, stinging the membranes inside Wolf’s nostrils. He swore and reached for the window crank. Iron fingers clamped his wrist. He relaxed his biceps.

  The smoke dissipated. Now the medicine woman let go, and Wolf tilted the glass louvers to let out the sharp sulphurous stink. Whitehorn plucked a fresh sprig from the supply inside the bundle, squashed the leaves, and held them to the child’s nose. The nostrils twitched, the nose wrinkled.

  Grunting again, Whitehorn dropped the sprig, switched on the light, blew out the candle, and rolled it back into the cylinder of oilcloth along with the matches. She re-wrapped the bundle, making sure the side with the painted symbols remained on top, tied it tight, and transferred it to the suitcase.

  “That’s it?” Wolf asked.

  “If you expected me to dance around the bed and shake a rattle, you went to the wrong tribe. You want Comanche.” She shut the lid and snapped home the latches.

  “What about the horseshit?”

  “It’s not just horseshit. But you can wash it off as soon as she regains consciousness.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “See for yourself.”

  He looked down. Droplets of sweat glittered all over the six-year-old’s body. He put a hand to her forehead. It felt cool.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “More than likely.” She snapped her fingers and held a palm under his nose. It smelled of herbs.

  He fished two hundred dollars out of his wallet and laid the bills in her hand. Ten minutes, and she had collected as much as he made in a week excavating basements for the construction firm where he worked during Michigan’s brief building season. She counted them quickly, stuffed them down the front of her blouse, and shrugged into her coat. “Can I pick up a cab at the park entrance?”

  “There’s a Shell station across the road. You can call. If I knew you wouldn’t be here any longer than this I’d have told the cabbie to wait.”

  “There’s no telling. Sometimes it takes hours, or days. She’s young, she wants to live. The dark spirits never had a chance.”

  “Was all that stuff necessary?”

  Her pupils shrank, and he thought he was in for a lecture. Then she moved her shoulders. “Some of it’s show. You can try to guess which part. The two hu
ndred’s for healing, not lessons on how to be a shaman.”

  “I’m guessing it was the magnesium powder.”

  “That was the most important part.”

  Before leaving she spread the quilt back over Opal. The girl’s breathing was ragged now, more like troubled sleep than cataleptic torpor. Wolf walked the woman to the station. He didn’t know why, apart from the fact that she fascinated him. She was more than big enough to take care of herself and he suspected she was in better condition than he. He offered to carry the suitcase, but she ignored him.

  “I’ll wait with you till the taxi comes,” he said when they reached the booth.

  “Be with the child. Coming back from the shadows is hard enough without a familiar face waiting.” Her pupils were huge and shining in the gloom beyond the lights of the station. He had the impression they would reflect direct light with a green glow. “Is your face familiar?”

  “I’m a family friend.”

  She went on watching him while a tractor-trailer rig advertising New Tide with Enzymes ground down for the turn into the driveway, air brakes farting. Then she lifted the receiver from the telephone. “She’ll be hungry when she wakes up. Lots of protein and liquids. Orange juice.”

  “Now you sound just like the A.M.A.”

  “Where do you suppose they picked it up?” She started dialing.

  The walk back was bitterly cold. He’d neglected to put on his quilted vest and he felt it in his bones, just the way the old ones used to complain about when a big snow was coming. The built-in electric wall heater cut in with a whir when he opened the trailer door, welcoming him like a happy dog. Opal was propped up on one elbow, digging sleep out of her eyes with a fist.

  “Someone pooped,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “DETROIT P.D., THAT’S WHAT THEY WAS CALLING IT,” Horace Hyde told Mac McDowell, the night sergeant at the First Precinct.

  “Yeah?” McDowell grinned, anticipating. Wednesdays behind the front desk were flat as piss and he’d been glad as hell to see the sixteen-year Traffic Bureau officer stop by for a cuppa on his way home. Horace—they were calling him “Hollywood Hyde” now, on account of his brief exposure before the cameras in the movie shoot going on downtown—was a good storyteller, which as far as McDowell was concerned was the most important thing once a cop proved himself on the street.

  “Well, that got the mayor’s juices going, Detroit being in the title and all. So he opened up all kinds of doors: issued permits, waived the disaster bond, put cops on the barricades—shit, I bet if that hippie fuck director took a dump in the middle of Gribbs’s office Hizzoner’d wipe his pimply ass for him. Public image, tourist revenue, show the country we got crime in hand; you know the drill.”

  “Sure do.”

  “So in the Freep this morning, Doc Greene starts his column with the scoop that they’re changing the name of the picture. You want to guess what they’re calling it?”

  McDowell shook his head. He lifted his mug but didn’t drink from it. If this was as good as he suspected he’d be squirting coffee out of his nose in another minute.

  “Murder City.”

  The sergeant roared, spilled coffee on his blouse anyway and jerked a napkin out from under his chocolate fried cake to mop it up before it stained. “Jesus!” There were tears in his eyes.

  “Gribbs shit a brick, Nichols too. They’re holding a press conference tomorrow.”

  “Give Hollywood the old heave-ho.”

  “Oh, hell no. They want that studio money. What they’ll do is make faces and write letters and fall all over themselves kissing Ryan O’Neal’s or whoever’s ass next time they come to town looking for a cheap shoot. Shit, if I had a daughter and she came to me and said she wanted to be mayor, I think I’d buy her a pair of them go-go boots and set her up on the corner of Michigan and Third. At least when you tell a hooker to roll over and spread ’em she don’t make no speech first.”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Just a second.” McDowell gave the citizen who’d come up to the desk a grazing glance and returned his attention to Hyde. “You figure this joker Young’s going to be any better?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Maybe it’s time this city had a black mayor; make the collar match the cuffs.”

  “Charlie Battle. I’m with 1300.” The man standing in front of the desk held out a palm with a shield on it. “If you’re Sergeant McDowell, you called me earlier tonight. About my uncle.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I thought you was some drunk looking for a hole for the night.” He gave Battle the once-over, to show it was an honest mistake. The black officer had on a gray overcoat that needed brushing on top of a rumpled shirt with a dirty collar that looked as if he’d rescued it from the hamper. He carried a paper shopping bag with handles. His face was haggard. “Watch the desk, will you, Horace? Come on back.” He climbed down from the platform and held open the swinging gate that separated the reception area from the rest of the building.

  Battle followed him down the aisle that ran between the desks, only three of which were occupied by a skeleton crew that wasn’t even bothering to look busy; one, a balding uniform with a Clark Gable moustache, was setting his wristwatch according to the recorded voice rustling in his ear from the telephone receiver he had tucked under his chin.

  “Figured we had us a drunk at first,” McDowell was saying, “then a psycho case. We were all set to call Ypsi State to send some guys with a happy jacket when he started talking about you. Matt Kellog happened to be around. I guess he knows you. Anyway that’s where we got your number.”

  The holding cell, seven by six, contained a plain army cot, olive-drab canvas on a wood frame. Anthony Battle sat on its edge with a blanket over his shoulders, staring somewhere into the middle distance. His big bare feet were dark against the worn green linoleum tiles on the floor.

  “Matt’s civvies fit him as to pants. Couldn’t find a shirt he wouldn’t split the first time he raised his arms. Forget shoes. Your daddy’s a big man.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  McDowell looked sympathetic. “We had to pull him in. Buck naked running down the street—he’d of froze to death if some old lady didn’t stab him with her umbrella for attempted rape. You ought to put him somewhere.”

  “Can I talk to him in private?”

  “Hell, you can take him on out of here. We only locked him up for his own protection.” The sergeant unlocked the cell with a key attached to the case on his belt.

  “I’d like to talk to him first.”

  “Sure.”

  Alone with the old wrestler, Battle smiled. “You sure had Thea worried. She thought you were in your room watching Medical Center. How’d you sneak past her?”

  “Ginny, that you?”

  He felt a lurch. Anthony’s wife had been gone eight years. Ovarian cancer. “No, Uncle. It’s Charlie.”

  “Charlie ain’t coming out. Don’t know why he done went and kilt that man. He don’t neither, I’m betting. Stick that shit in your veins and stop thinking. I know we can’t afford to bring up his boy. It’s just till Social Services finds someone to take him in. I don’t want my flesh and blood in no state home.”

  “You did a good job, Anthony. You and Aunt Ginny. I never felt like I didn’t have a mother and father.”

  A grin transformed the brutal face. “It won’t take long. That boy sure looks cute in that Davy Crockett hat.”

  “I’ve still got it somewhere. Ginny kept it in her hope chest along with her wedding hat.”

  “What you talking about, boy? Your Aunt Ginny’s been dead for years.” Anthony’s grin was gone, his eyes in focus. “Get me out of here. I never done a day in jail in my life. This is a damn disgrace.”

  Battle held out the sack. “I brought some clothes. It’s two below. You’ll freeze your nuts off.”

  “I never took one penny didn’t belong to me; Not when I carried a hod for fifty cents a hour, feeding three mouths. Not even when I was getti
ng my brains beat out at lunch for bets.” He bent to pull on his socks. The blanket slid off. His build was still impressive, despite the slackening muscles. Battle envied him his shoulders.

  “You didn’t get them beat out much. That’s why Charlie Balls offered you that wrestling contract.”

  “Wrestling? Shit. Monkey-training’s more like it. Airplane spins. Atomic drops. We had us a script. Otherwise I’d of throwed the Peruvian Giant clear acrost Olympia.”

  Battle knelt to tie his uncle’s shoes. “You make it how you can. That’s what you always told me.”

  “Not you, Charlie.”

  He raised his head. Anthony was looking at him.

  “I bust my buttons when you took that oath,” the old man said. “You come a far piece, boy. Mother run off, your daddy dead at twenty-seven with a shiv in his ribs in the shower at Jackson. Everybody said you’d end up the same way.”

  “Not you.”

  “They was times. When you cut up them bus seats your aunt and I thought we lost you for sure.”

  “Reggie Cleveland dared me. It was his scout knife.”

  “Walking them eighteen blocks to school and back for the rest of the semester cured you of that. Ginny said I should drive you, but I said no, walking gives a boy time to think.”

  Battle helped him button his shirt. “Anthony, we’ve got something to talk about.”

  “I know.”

  The old man’s tone was suddenly grave. When his nephew looked at him, his eyes were watering. He hoped this wasn’t going to be another uncontrollable jag. Sometimes the wires in his head crossed and he started blubbering.

  “Hey, Battle!”

  “We’re on our way, Sergeant.” Battle threaded his uncle’s arms into the sleeves of the old coat he’d brought.