Peeper

by Loren D. Estleman

  “You going to ask to see my gun?”

  Her eyebrows went up. They were just a little thick, like Brooke Shields’s. “Do you carry one?”

  “When I can find it.”

  “What’s your specialty?”

  “I take pictures.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Then I won’t take yours.”

  “Oh. You’re that kind of detective.”

  “Somebody has to be.”

  “Do you look for missing persons?”

  “When it pays.”

  The elevator set down. They went out through the lobby. The sun was out, warming the sidewalk. Coeds strolled the sidewalks with their jackets off and no bras.

  “What do you charge?”

  “Depends on the job. Two hundred a day’s the base, expenses extra.”

  Neither of them said anything for a while. She led him to a Queen Anne house painted gray, with more features than a Swiss Army knife, and he escorted her up three flights of stairs to a tower room with posters of Bruce Springsteen and something called U-2 on the walls. It contained a double bed, a couple of chairs, and a study desk with a gooseneck lamp. A door stood open to a bathroom that made Ralph’s cramped one look like an airplane hangar. Kids put up with a lot, he decided. He felt out of place under the ten-foot ceiling in his feathered hat and wash-and-wear suit.

  “I want you to find the ones who tried to murder Lyla,” April said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We weren’t very close. But she was—is my sister, and even if her life hasn’t been so hot, it’s hers. Nobody has a right to try and take it. I learned that much from our parents, at least.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I know the police are trying, but they have a lot of other cases. You were her neighbor. Maybe that means you’ll work a little harder.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Trouble is, I can’t afford your rates.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Maybe we could work something out?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  They were standing very close now; the size of the room allowed for little else.

  “I’m not my sister,” she said, “but I’ve been around. You know how it is when you get out of a strict home finally.” She reached for his fly.

  Ralph couldn’t remember if he’d put on fresh shorts that morning.

  Chapter 14

  Ralph’s telephone was ringing when he staggered in shortly before two in the morning. With stiffened muscles he lowered himself to the bed and lifted the receiver. “Yeah.”

  “Ralph?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Neal.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay? You sound like you’re a thousand years old.”

  “What is it, Neal?”

  “I been trying to reach you all night. You didn’t check in.”

  “I was busy.”

  “If you didn’t answer this time I was going to send that film to the cops. So did you score?”

  “What?”

  “The bishop. Christ. Did you make a deal with him for the pictures?”

  “I’m working on it.” He shifted his weight carefully on the mattress. He felt as if he’d been scrubbed down with a Brillo pad. Which, come to think of it, was not far off. He wondered how the daughter of born-again Christians had learned so many uses for household items.

  “Hey, you okay?” Neal asked. “If I didn’t know you better I’d swear you been working out.”

  “Forget it, Neal. I’ll check in tomorrow night.”

  “You better. If you’re figuring on cutting me out, I’ll have your balls.”

  “Get in line.”

  He’d been stretched out fully clothed on the bed for several minutes when the telephone rang again.

  “Jesus Christ, Neal.”

  “Who’s Neal?” It was O’Leary’s voice.

  Ralph groaned. “It’s two-fifteen ayem!”

  “Thank you. This is the tenth time I’ve tried to call. I left messages at all the bars you told me about yesterday. You were right about Florentino’s. I wouldn’t go back there if I were you.”

  “What’s the squeal?”

  “Murder, pal. You’ve been holding out on me.”

  Vinnie. Ralph sat up, grunting when his sore muscles reacted, and fumbled for his flask. It wasn’t in his pocket. “Where are you, downstairs?”

  “Hell no. Why should I be downstairs? I’m in Farmington Hills.”

  “Farmington Hills?”

  “Farmington Hills. Is that echo on your end or mine?”

  “What’s in Farmington Hills?”

  “A lot of neurotic dogs with names longer than mine and houses I couldn’t afford if I made commissioner tomorrow. And one dead bishop.”

  “No shit, Steelcase?” Immediately he regretted saying it.

  There was a pause on O’Leary’s end. “That popped out quick for a Baptist.”

  Ralph laid the receiver in his lap and mounted an expedition for the pocket flask. It had fallen out of his suitcoat and was wedged between the mattress and his kidneys. There was one swallow in it. Then there wasn’t. He wiped his lips on the sheet, then mopped his face.

  “Poteet, you there?”

  “Yeah. What do I know about a dead bishop?”

  “To begin with, you knew his name. I didn’t, and my wife’s Catholic.”

  “I’m a trained detective.”

  Another pause. “I guess you never heard of Dale Carnegie.”

  “Why call me?”

  “Homicide called around to find out who saw him alive last. They got in touch finally with this altar boy named, let’s see—”

  Ralph tingled.

  “Francis Xavier Dillinger,” O’Leary went on. “He said His Excellency didn’t show up at the rectory today. Somebody else did, though, looking for him. He left his card. You still there?”

  Ralph said nothing.

  “Yeah, I can hear you breathing. Anyway, nothing’s secret downtown, especially not everybody else’s cases. Homicide called me. I think you better come down here.”

  “How come? A card don’t mean nothing.”

  “Because the detective on the case doesn’t know you like I do. He’s liable to send a couple of uniforms to jump up and down on you until you decide to come. Unconstitutional as all hell, but the Supreme Court’s backed up even further than we are. So when can we look for your smiling face?”

  By dark, the gray stone house belonged in an old Universal horror movie. Light from the coach lamps threw cruel shadows and the firebushes were an obscene scarlet. Ralph paid his cab-driver, who glanced around at the black-and-whites and unmarked units parked in the cul-de-sac.

  “’Nother B-and-E, I bet,” he said. “You couldn’t pay me to live in one of these places.”

  “In that case, let me have my tip back.”

  The cabbie cranked up his window and tried to run over Ralph’s foot.

  A uniformed officer let Ralph into the foyer, where the arson investigator greeted him with a pietà tapestry at his back. The Madonna seemed to be squinting against the smoke from his cigarette. “What bus ran over you?” he asked Ralph.

  “Long day.”

  “That a hickey on your neck, or are the mosquitoes running big as roaches this year?”

  “I caught it in the cab door. Where’s the stiff?”

  “In the study.” O’Leary didn’t move.

  “Where’s that?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d fall for that one. This way.”

  Ralph followed him down the worm-eaten-oak corridor. The door stood open to the study, where a group of uniforms and plainclothesmen stood talking in front of the big desk. One of them was a man half O’Leary’s size, with a pinched face and a natty moustache under a narrow-brimmed hat with a silk band. He had on a tight blue suit and looked like a gangster.

  “This is Lieutenant Bustard,” O’Leary said.

  “Any comments?” Bustard had a h
igh sharp voice.

  Ralph shrugged.

  “Lieutenant Bustard is with Homicide,” O’Leary said. “The bishop’s behind there.”

  Ralph took two steps forward and peered over the desk. The white-haired old man lay on his left side on the carpet, wearing the same black cassock Ralph had met him in, or one just like it. Dark blood from the hole between his eyes had made spidery tracks across his forehead into the creamy waves over his left ear. Except for his overturned swivel chair, the room appeared undisturbed.

  “Deader’n Jesus,” O’Leary said. “We won’t have to wait three days.”

  “There’s no need for blasphemy, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”

  An Oriental man in his thirties sat on his heels beside the body, placing instruments in a black metal case lying open on the carpet. Bustard said, “How long, Doc?”

  “Rigor’s fully advanced. Six hours, anyway. Maybe longer. Tell me when he had lunch and I’ll get back to you.” He lifted out a package swaddled in transparent plastic, unwrapped it, and made a face. “Anybody like liverwurst?”

  “Angle of entry?”

  “Downward, about twenty degrees. No powder burns. Killer stood about ten feet in front of the desk. Maybe if I had some mustard.”

  Ralph said, “I think I got some on my tie.”

  “Eighteen feet from the desk to the door,” Bustard said. “We measured. Steelcase let him get eight feet inside the room without leaving his seat. That means he was expecting whoever it was.” He turned a pair of small pale eyes on Ralph.

  “I can’t hit a buffalo’s ass from ten feet.”

  “You own a gun?” asked the lieutenant.

  “If you want to call it that. I ain’t seen it in weeks, though.”

  Bustard gestured to one of the uniformed officers, who held up a Ziploc bag with a stubby black revolver suspended inside. “This it?”

  Ralph started to feel sticky under his clothes. He recognized the new grips. Carpenter hadn’t left Ralph’s apartment empty-handed after all.

  “A gun’s a gun,” he said.

  “I don’t blame you.” O’Leary tapped ash onto the carpet. “I owned a piece of shit like that, I wouldn’t admit it either.”

  “That been dusted?” Bustard pointed at the telephone on the desk. One of the plainclothesmen said it had. He lifted the receiver and dialed. “We called in the serial number an hour ago. The computer should have kicked out a registration by now.”

  O’Leary said, “That’s two dead priests in two days. You want to tell us anything?”

  “You said Monsignor Breame had a heart attack.”

  “He isn’t in the ground yet.”

  “Great.” The Oriental, eating his sandwich on the floor next to the corpse, brushed crumbs off his shirt. “Nothing like going inside an embalmed body forty-eight hours after death to determine cause. Anybody got any salt?”

  “Son of a bitch.” Bustard slammed down the receiver. “Computer’s down.”

  Ralph said, “I want to report a burglary.”

  Chapter 15

  They put him in the tank with a hammer murderer, a pair of transvestites accused of stuffing a midget pimp named Chester into an Amana Radarange, and a mountain man awaiting extradition to Idaho to answer charges of abduction, sodomy, and boarding livestock in a neighborhood zoned residential.

  The transvestites kept to themselves, and the hammer murderer seemed content to sit on the one available bunk pounding the pillow with the heel of his shoe, but the mountain man developed an immediate affection for Ralph. Since he ran close to seven feet and 500 pounds, with a full black beard that tangled with the hair curling over the vee of his shirt, Ralph was not inclined to discourage his friendship. His name was Warren.

  “Ralphie,” he said, laying an arm like a tollgate across Ralph’s shoulders, “you like sheep?”

  “I ain’t like them at all,” said Ralph with some desperation.

  “Bang, bang,” said the hammer murderer.

  “Didja see his face when I punched ‘Cook Code’?” said one of the transvestites.

  “No, no,” said Warren, putting Ralph into an affectionate hammerlock. “Do you like sheep?”

  “Well, how do you mean?” Ralph’s reply was choked. “Fried in deep fat with mint jelly, or to take out dancing?”

  “Bang, bang, bang!” said the hammer murderer.

  “That wasn’t nothing compared to when you stuck the rotisserie up his ass,” said the other transvestite.

  “Sheep’s what we got the most of in Idaho, after potatoes,” Warren said. “They serve potatoes with everything out there. If you order fries they give you a baked potato on the side. You can’t do nothing with a potato except eat it.”

  “That’s what I heard,” said Ralph.

  “Sheep, now; they’re something else. You ever wrap yourself real tight around a wool blanket on a cold night, Ralphie?”

  “Bang, bang, bang, bang!” said the hammer murderer.

  “We shouldn’t of left his keys in his pocket, though,” said the first transvestite. “You ain’t supposed to put metal in no microwave.”

  “What you in for, Ralphie?” asked Warren.

  “They say I killed a bishop.”

  “That’s bad. A bishop. Wow.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You should stick to sheep. They almost never die on you. When they do, you can eat them.”

  “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!” said the hammer murderer.

  Warren was reminiscing aloud about a ewe named Margaret when the guard came. “Poteet.”

  “Present.” Ralph ducked out from under the mountain man’s arm and gripped the bars.

  The guard shook loose a key from his ring and inserted it in the lock. “You’re sprung. Your lawyer’s here.”

  “Which one? I called three.”

  “Deaf old guy in a green suit. Looks like an abortionist. I think we’ve had him in here a time or two.”

  “Oh. Doc Skinner.”

  “Hey,” said one of the transvestites, as the guard was relocking the door behind Ralph. “When do we eat?”

  “Hour.”

  “How come so long? Ain’t you got a microwave?” The other transvestite giggled.

  “Take care of yourself, Ralphie,” said Warren, through the bars. “Don’t forget what I said.”

  “I ain’t likely to.”

  As Ralph accompanied the guard down the corridor, the mountain man took a seat on the bunk next to the man with the shoe.

  “Stanley,” he said, “you like sheep?”

  “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!” said the hammer murderer.

  Lloyd Skinner was waiting for Ralph in the receiving room, along with Sergeant O’Leary, Lieutenant Bustard, and, behind the desk, the same gray-haired Wayne County Sheriff’s deputy who had processed Ralph in three hours earlier. The deputy emptied a paper sack full of Ralph’s valuables onto the desk and checked them off against a list on a clipboard.

  “One silver ashtray.”

  “Hello, Ralph.” Skinner took Ralph’s hand in his clammy grasp. He was a shriveled brown man in his seventies, smaller than Bustard, with dirty nails and a hearing aid. He was often mistaken for a disgraced doctor, hence his nickname.

  “Hiya, Doc. How’s Betty?”

  “One crystal toothpick holder.”

  “You’re out of touch, Ralph. Betty was two wives back. It’s Fredericka now.”

  “Wasn’t you married to a Fredericka before?”

  “No, you’re thinking of Henrietta. This one’s a cheerleader.”

  “One notepad in leather cover.”

  “No kidding, Wayne State?”

  “Fordson high. She’ll be eighteen in January.”

  “I thought you looked tired.”

  “Eleven packages of Sweet ’n’ Low.”

  “What happened to those other two guys I called?” Ralph asked.

  “Jack Scavarda’s wanted for nonpayment of alimony and
Herb Wassermann’s in intensive care at Detroit General. He forgot to show up for Fat Phil Camarillo’s preliminary hearing last Thursday.”

  “One gold watch.”

  “Well, I’m glad you showed, Doc. Thanks for busting me loose.”

  “One silver watch.”

  “Thank these two. I was just starting to make writ noises when they dropped the charges.”

  “One watch, metal unknown.”

  Ralph looked at the two plainclothesmen. O’Leary shrugged and dropped his cigarette butt to the linoleum. “It’s the lieutenant’s case.”

  “One rubber gasoline syphon.”

  “The medical examiner places Steelcase’s death somewhere between eleven ayem and two,” Bustard said, adjusting his hat. “You were in Lucille Lovechild’s office at eleven-thirty, getting fired—”

  “I quit.”

  “—and an altar boy at St. Balthazar says you were at the cathedral from a little before noon until past one-thirty. After that you were in Ann Arbor with Sergeant O’Leary. Now, it’s barely possible that you could have killed the bishop in Farmington Hills at eleven and then highballed it downtown in time to—”

  “Quit,” supplied Ralph.

  “—but you’d have needed better luck with the traffic lights than I’ve ever had, not to mention prowl cars. Except for dressing like my uncle Ed used to, we’ve got no reason to hold you.”

  “One zodiac necktie, green,” said the deputy behind the desk.

  “So can I go?”

  “Two matchbooks from Red’s Lithuanian Grill and Topless Talent Emporium.”

  “You could be a good citizen and tell us what your business was with Steelcase,” Bustard said.

  “Three quarter slugs, two Canadian pennies, and a fifty-cent piece with Art Linkletter’s picture on both sides. Sign here.”

  Ralph signed the receipt and distributed the items among his pockets. “I wanted to give him my condolences on Monsignor Breame punching his ticket.”

  “You some kind of a magician, mac?” asked the deputy behind the desk.

  Bustard took off his hat, ran a finger around the leather sweatband, and put it back on. Except for a neat fringe he was as bald as Vinnie. “Come on, Poteet. He was killed with your gun.”

  “I said it was stole from my apartment.”

  “Speak up, Ralph.”

  Ralph looked at Doc Skinner. “I thought it was your job to tell me not to say anything.”