Sugartown

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Upstairs,” he said. He moved to one side and I went in past him, breathing through my mouth.

  The store proper was on the ground floor: delicate yellow Japanese tables with legs you could snap between a thumb and forefinger, translucent china and thick clumsy crockery, Malay walking sticks, silk screens with embroidered dragons, gold-handled scimitars and varnished Tartar bows, painted figurines, landscapes made of patches of flat color — tables and tables of the stuff neatly arranged on white lace cloths under a pair of crystal chandeliers fixed to the ceiling, all washed in gray from the shaded windows. The floor was bare polished hardwood. The place was spotless and would have made me feel dirty except for B. O. Plenty standing behind me. When he closed the door the stink got worse. He relocked the locks.

  A spiral staircase Henry Ford wouldn’t have recognized wound straight up from the middle of the floor through a hole in the ceiling. As I went up I felt my escort’s weight on the metal stairs below. I climbed with one hand on the brass rail and the other pressed against my lower back, as if the effort strained it. The butt of the Smith & Wesson felt good under my palm.

  “You should be flattered, Mr. Walker. I allow very few up here where I keep my private collection.”

  The speaker was not tall but looked it, as he was very slender and his burgundy-colored velour smoking jacket matched his trousers in a long thin sweep of rich maroon. His hair was not silver at all close up, but bluish, parted an inch to the right of his widow’s peak so that a lock broke over his left eyebrow. The eyebrow, like its mate, was very black and his face was tanned so evenly that at first I took him for a Hispanic. He had a thin nose that you might call aquiline if you wanted to be polite, but if not you would say it hooked. He had ordinary cheekbones and his face was beautifully shaven, almost feminine in its hairlessness. His eyes were no color at all. His brown throat was bare and he had on red slippers with gold dragons on the toes and between the first and second fingers of his right hand tilted an ebony cigarette holder with an oval butt lisping smoke out the end. That was a first for me. You hear about them, but how many of us have actually seen one in use outside of old war movies?

  Smelling Mr. Hyde behind me, I shifted position to take him in without seeming to. He was breathing a little heavily, whether from the climb or because his malformed nose didn’t work so well I wasn’t sure.

  What I saw here was more of the same, only doubled. The furniture was a little more fragile, the squat vases gleamed a little softer with greater age, the painted canvases on the walls were thinner, almost to the point of transparency. The rug was thin too but lovingly needled by a hand that was dust on some Persian plain by now. The furniture that was made for sitting in and otherwise using was much newer but designed along the same exotic lines and arranged in a living room setup. There were doors leading to other rooms and books with cracked and flaking spines on shelves behind glass. The windows — including the one the blue-haired man had hailed me from — were shaded, as were those downstairs. A globe like a crystal ball lit the room with a milky glow from a bandy-legged table in the center of the room.

  “Cute.” I gestured with my hat toward a folding bamboo screen standing in a corner. “Does Dr. Fu Manchu make his entrance from behind there?”

  The noise of amusement the blue-haired man made was as delicate as the décor, and fluttered like a hummingbird trapped in his throat. “I’ll treat that as a compliment. Humor is often used to conceal awe. Paul, take Mr. Walker’s hat.”

  The Neanderthal in the tunic took a step forward. I said, “I won’t be here that long. I just came to deliver a message to Rynearson.”

  The blue-haired man tapped ash off the cigarette in the holder into the mouth of a ceramic ashtray fashioned after a laughing skull and straightened without raising the holder to his lips. “I am Rynearson. Who are you, besides a man named Amos Walker?”

  “I’m a private investigator. Fedor Alanov’s publisher hired me to deliver this message I’m here to deliver.” I paused. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and incense and Paul. Mostly Paul. “Show me you’re Rynearson.”

  His colorless eyes flicked to the other man, who turned and took himself out through one of the doors, lumbering from side to side like the chimpanzee someone had meant him to be.

  The blue-haired man and I killed the time looking at each other. His ash grew and he got rid of it and the cigarette never got higher than his waist. After a minute or so Paul returned carrying a flat leather wallet with gold corners. The blue-haired man slid a driver’s license out of one of the compartments and held it out between two fingers. I took it and looked at the picture and read the legend and gave it back. “It’s expired,” I said.

  “I haven’t driven in years. Paul is my chauffeur, among other things.”

  “I’ll bet. Does he do it to you or do you do it to him?”

  Paul made a sound in his throat that was not amusement and started toward me.

  Rynearson transferred the wallet and license to the hand holding the cigarette holder and grasped Paul’s arm in his free hand. He moved swiftly and apparently without effort. But the skin went white around his fingernails and the bearded man’s face twisted in pain and he stopped.

  I admired that. Rynearson could pass for sixty but I figured he was closer to seventy, and Paul was at least thirty years younger and built like a piling.

  When it was obvious the wide little man had been subdued, the hand was withdrawn. His hairy features betrayed no relief and he made no move to rub the arm, but the sleeve held the cast of Rynearson’s fingers and there would be purple marks on the flesh beneath.

  Rynearson said, “I think that you’re being deliberately unpleasant, Mr. Walker. It seems to be the latest step in Fedor Alanov’s campaign of harassment against myself and my business.”

  He spoke with an American accent, but his language was careful and his pronunciation of the writer’s name was subtly different from Louise Starr’s.

  “Alanov’s publisher sees it the other way,” I said. “The way I heard it, you tried to snatch him once and when that didn’t work you frisked his hotel suite looking for the manuscript of his new book.”

  “ ‘Frisked’?”

  “Tossed. Rifled. Ransacked. Burglarized. Broke into the place and defiled the man’s personal and intimate possessions with your vile Bolshevik paws.”

  “I see. You have a melodramatic, if sarcastic, bent. When did I do this —frisk?”

  “Last night, while Alanov and his translator were in Warren.”

  “Impossible. I was downstairs in the shop from four to seven, and after that I was up here entertaining the owner of a rather fine K’ang-hsi bottle that I have my eye on. He declined to sell,” he added bitterly,

  “He have a name?”

  “Not for you. He will for the authorities should you choose to make this a police matter.”

  “Giving you time to cook up a story with him, if he exists,” I said. “What about Paul? Was he entertaining too?”

  “He had the night off.”

  I looked at Paul. He wasn’t spitting out any answers today. His plum eyes glittered hard as wet river stones. Back to Rynearson. The blue-haired man had on a cat’s smile.

  “What’s funny?”

  “That I would have any interest in Alanov or his book. I read The Window on the Baltic twice. The man has an interesting style. You almost don’t notice that he has nothing to say. If he had been born here he would be considered one of the better second-rate writers, nothing more. But because some bureaucrat behind what is laughably called the Iron Curtain had difficulty understanding his convoluted epigrams and decided that he was writing in some kind of dangerous code and should therefore be ridden from the country with trumpets, he is considered a patriot and a sensitive artist and feted by political and literary groups whose members have never read so much as a newspaper from start to finish. No, Mr. Walker, I assure you I have no designs either on that poor man’s Pasternak or his Asylum.”

&nb
sp; I jumped on it with both feet. “Who told you the title of a book that hasn’t been written yet?”

  He was still smiling. “Dear boy. Alanov, of course. Each time he’s interviewed in the press he makes certain to mention the project at least once. He’s an incorrigible publicity hound, as who wouldn’t be, given his opportunities?”

  “You said he was harassing you. Harassing you how?”

  “It’s difficult to operate a legitimate enterprise under the best of circumstances. Well-nigh impossible when police and federal agents are continually prowling the premises, looking under tables and lifting the lids off six hundred-year-old teapots to peer inside.”

  “Suspected spies should expect such inconveniences.”

  “Oh, yes, that KGB rot. I’d hoped that was laid to rest finally. I suppose that’s the risk every honest businessman takes who makes numerous trips abroad and is seen meeting in public with opposite numbers from the so-called captive nations. I would make a singularly inept spy, Mr. Walker. I have no access to government secrets and the gentlemen with whom I meet are similarly handicapped. If any of them happens to be in the pay of the U.S.S.R., it has no bearing on our talks, which rarely concern themselves with subjects more current than the early seventeenth century.”

  “Then why was a car with the name of your shop stenciled on the side involved in an attempt to kidnap Alanov?”

  “That is the easiest of your questions to answer. It wasn’t.”

  “Someone says different.”

  “Someone is either mistaken or a liar.”

  “You’re making it hard to deal, Rynearson.”

  His very black eyebrows slid up without disturbing the smooth brown skin of his forehead. “Deal? Oh, spare me the colorful synonyms this time, I’m familiar with the word. Its use in this context makes me curious.”

  I slid the thick packet of bills out of my inside breast pocket and tossed it onto the tea table between us. The light coming from the globe lamp waggled a little. Paul’s mouth opened slightly, a black inverted crescent in his matted beard. Rynearson glanced down at the packet briefly. Smiled.

  “Five grand to forget the name Fedor Alanov and his book until he’s out of reach,” I said. “But since you say you’re not interested in either of them I’ll just take my little bundle and split.” I stepped to the table and bent down.

  Rynearson laughed.

  It rocked me a little. His laugh was almost noiseless, a broken hissing off the roof of his mouth, and it wasn’t the reaction I was after. I straightened with the packet in my hand, tapping the edge against my other palm. Waiting.

  Showing very white teeth against his dark skin, the blue-haired man removed the stub from his holder, put it out in the skull, tipped back the hinged lid of a heavily carved mahogany box nearby, selected a fresh oval cigarette with elaborate care, and fitted it into the holder. From a pocket of his smoking jacket he drew a lighter whose smooth green case might have been jade and played with it. He said:

  “Look around you, Mr. Walker. The carpet you’re standing on cost fifteen thousand dollars. I paid cash for it. There is nothing in this room worth less than a thousand. I’m a wealthy man. If I were engaged in some nefarious plot to keep the Russian out of print, do you really think that tiny bit would make me waver? An unimaginative idea at best, and whoever had it did you no favor. Very well, Paul.”

  Paul was faster than he looked. He came in low and hard in one of those diving tackles that turn pro quarterbacks into commercial spokesmen in less time than it takes to describe it, but I wasn’t there when he expected to make contact. Dropping the money, I pivoted aside like a door and he rocketed past. I crossed an ankle in front of one of his but his reflexes were too good. He hopped over it and, with the momentum still behind him, he spun on a dime and launched himself shoulder-first sideways at my chest. I danced again and he struck me a glancing blow that knocked air out of my lungs. That made me mad. I scooped a four-foot black vase off a fluted wooden stand and brought it down on his head with both hands. Pieces flew all over.

  Someone groaned, mortally injured, but it wasn’t Paul, out cold on his face on fifteen thousand dollars of Persian carpet.

  The groaner was Eric Rynearson, staring at the curved shards of black porcelain littering the room.

  “That was a Ming!” His voice cracked.

  “Take it out of Paul’s salary. He broke it.” I got my gun out and held it on him while I bent a knee and scooped the packet of bills off the floor. My left bicep stung when I returned the money to my coat. I figured I’d pulled it maneuvering the heavy vase. “Hands high, Rynearson. Like in the movies.”

  He lifted them to his shoulders with the lighter in one hand and the cigarette and holder in the other. His expression was still dazed. I stepped over the unconscious man on the floor and around the tea table and patted down the shopkeeper. I felt the flat wallet in one of his pockets, nothing else. I stood six inches in front of him, looking into his dishwater eyes. The room felt close after my exercise, and the stink of incense and Paul were oppressive. My chest hurt where I’d been struck. My left arm tingled.

  I clapped the gun sideways against the side of Rynearson’s blue head. He cried out and reeled.

  “That’s for paying someone to be hard for you. Swishes I can take or leave, but swishes that buy muscle I don’t like lots.”

  He stood with his head bowed and one hand to the side of his skull, glaring up at me through the hair in his eyes. I said, “What do you want with Alanov or his book?”

  He started to shake his head. I hit it again. He whimpered.

  “Talk it up, Cary. I’ve got a big mad on and the whole day to get rid of it.” I raised the gun again.

  “Don’t!” He crossed his hands in front of his face. He’d dropped the jade lighter on the first blow and the cigarette holder dangled, empty and forgotten, between his fingers. “Please! I don’t want them. I’m a collector, not a spy. Please, I’m telling the truth.”

  I’d done some more threatening business with the Smith & Wesson. The room seemed smoky now, and very hot. His features swam. I talked a little faster.

  “Your car was seen. The feds have a file on you. Too much coincidence is bad for the system. What are you after?” I cocked my elbow for the backhand.

  “Not the book. An object. A silver ornament, very old. A religious item.”

  The words came out faster than his lips formed them. It was like watching a movie with the sound out of synch. I could barely make out his face now, though we were as close as lovers. I was sweating from my hairline to my toes. My left side was numb and the gun was slippery in my right hand. It seemed that Rynearson was watching me closely, but out of curiosity, not fear.

  “A religious item,” I echoed. The words were a long time getting out. My tongue was as thick as a tire.

  “A cross,” he said. “With a blue stone at the axis, a lapis lazuli, and garnets at the points. It dates back to the reign of Sigizmund Augustus of Poland. There is an inscription on the back—”

  Suddenly the voice was Martha Evancek’s. I turned from him, almost falling, did fall over the tea table, landing hard on my dead left shoulder and losing my gun. The light in the room wobbled crazily, I hoped because the globe lamp had fallen and rolled when the table went over, but I wasn’t sure enough to be relieved. I got up and stumbled towards the stairs. The way was clear and I was glad of that. Then I wasn’t. It shouldn’t have been, there should have been something on the floor between me and the stairwell. What? Think about it later. I felt good. I felt warm, cozily insulated, and deliciously drowsy, a man in flannel pajamas under a thick comforter in a room icy with winter. My foot found the first step. I dragged the other, the numb left one, over the edge of the well and set it down next to the first. It was wearing a lead boot. I grasped the rail. It squirmed in my hand like a snake but I held on. I found the second step, the third, rounded the first turn going down. My hand skidded along the rail. I let go, mopped my palm on my pants, started to tip f
orward, grabbed again for the rail.

  The rail wasn’t there …

  22

  “GIVE ME YOUR LEFT ARM, Amos. No, your left. That’s a good boy.”

  I smiled. The blue-haired man smiled back and that made me feel good. He had traded his burgundy jacket for a white coat like doctors wear and he looked very professional with a hypodermic needle in his hand and I liked that. I liked everything about him. I couldn’t understand how I could have not liked him before, but I didn’t want to think about that; it made me feel ashamed. He had a nasty bruise on the left side of his head that closed his left eye a little. It looked as if some nasty person who didn’t like the blue-haired man had done it and it made me very mad at the nasty person, but not mad enough to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to go on lying in that comfortable bed that was like a cloud and do things the nice blue-haired man asked me to do so he would call me by my first name and tell me I was a good boy. I thought then that I must have been in heaven. I didn’t even feel the prick when the needle entered my wrist.

  I dreamed. The nice blue-haired man was my father and we were at the carnival, the one that used to come to our town every summer until someone died when a rusty cable snapped on one of the rides, and then narcotics agents busted the man who ran the shooting gallery for awarding the same winning contestant his third identical panda stuffed with cellophane packets full of white powder. But this was an earlier summer, a deep blue July night with the midway lit like a Christmas tree and so many small brown moths fluttering about in the light that you had to be careful when you opened your mouth that you didn’t swallow one. Canned music clanked and wheezed from the merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel creaked as it turned and the loudspeaker over a peeling booth invited visitors to come see the Two-Headed Baby and the Giant Mummy and the Goat with Its Head Where Its Tail Should Be, the same message over and over in a tinny voice, so that it seemed as if it would go on forever just as it had been going on before we came and would continue after we left. I thought I understood infinity then. My blue-haired father kept asking me questions to find out how much I was seeing and how much I would remember of what I saw. Most of his questions had to do with a huge silver cross that towered over the midway where the main light pole usually stood, deep blue light shining from its center and less dramatic red lights glowing at the points. There was writing on the back in strange characters, but I found that I could read them quite easily.