Silent Thunder

by Loren D. Estleman

  “A woman called a few minutes ago, but she wouldn’t leave her name.”

  “Maybe it was Dora.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. I just needed some advice.” I thanked her and hung up.

  Shooter’s line was busy. I called Detroit Police Headquarters and asked for Inspector Alderdyce.

  “Alderdyce.”

  “Congratulations, John,” I said. “I didn’t get my invitation to your promotion party.”

  “I’ll throw a party the day I leave this job. I inherited four murders and a series of home invasions from Crosse Pointe to Flatrock. How are you, Walker?”

  “Working, sort of. I was wondering if some cold meat named Waldo Stoudenmire had happened across your desk yet.”

  He jumped on it. “Who says Sturdy’s dead?”

  “The word’s on the street, like they say on TV. Where is the Street, anyway?”

  “Hollywood. If you hear anything else, let me know.

  Sturdy’s the one I wanted to talk to about these home invasions. The scroats have to be laying the stuff off somewhere.”

  “I’ll keep you in mind. You’re my first friendly inspector.”

  “I’ll say.” He let the hard edge go. “Remember Proust?”

  “I thought I could forget him when he left the department. Then he got indicted up in the Heights and I thought he was forgotten. He’s still in office.”

  “He’ll be retired before he sees court. In the Heights they take crime off the streets and put it in city hall where they can keep an eye on it.”

  I belched into a fist. “What do you know about a guy who calls himself the Colonel?”

  “He’s got a white beard and sells chicken by the bucket.”

  “I needed a funny inspector today,” I said. “That’s the only thing the day was missing.”

  “We’re here to serve.”

  We said good-bye. I worked the cradle and dialed again.

  “You’re a hard man to reach,” Shooter said.

  “What’ve you got for me?”

  “Eleven o’clock tonight, same place. Leave the heat behind. Man hates heat unless he’s buying it or selling it.”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  He laughed and broke the connection.

  Three people were waiting to use the telephone. I pegged the receiver and went back to the bar to drink my beer, which was just cool by this time. I drank it anyway. When you’re broke you respect the little investments.

  At my building I paused to poke through the trash basket on the corner. Any other day there would have been four or five old copies of the Detroit News in it; today it was the Free Press and sixteen not-quite-empty cartons from the Chinese take-out place in the next block. I gave up.

  Upstairs in my reception room, Constance Thayer looked up from an old magazine and told me I had a piece of Mandarin orange on my lapel.

  9

  I PLUCKED THE PIECE of spoiled fruit off my jacket and dropped it in the smoking stand. The glamour of detective work never dims.

  I unlocked the door to the inner office and held it for her. The suit was tan today, the blouse gold and caught at the neck with a jade brooch in an antique gold setting. She carried a brown leather handbag into the office and leaned it against one leg of the customer’s chair when she sat down. With some women the things are just props. Her hair was red in the sunlight.

  On my way in I picked up the mail under the slot, sat down behind the desk, and shuffled through it. There were no checks today, just bills and a letter with the stylized owl that Reliance Investigations used for a logo printed in the corner. I knew what it would contain, but since she didn’t seem in a mood to talk just yet I opened it. It was computer-printed on stiff steel-gray stock to match the envelope and Krell’s shrapnel tie clasp. This one should have been pink. I read it a second time more slowly, just as if I were alone, then laid it aside and folded my hands on the blotter like Barry Fitzgerald.

  “Was yesterday morning a special occasion, or does a drink any old time of the day sound better than a kick in the teeth?” I asked.

  “I—I’d like a drink very much.”

  I brought up the bottle and two glasses. I wasn’t sure about them, so I took them into my little water closet, washed them, and splashed an inch of water into each, letting it run first. Back at the desk I colored the water and handed her one. I raised the other.

  “Carthage must be destroyed.”

  She laughed slightly and we clinked glasses. Although she looked like a sipper, she took the top off hers like a steeplejack. An orange flush climbed her cheeks under the tan.

  “Do you always keep it in the drawer?” she asked. “Like a gumshoe?”

  “I did a job for a cabinetmaker once who offered to install one of those trick bars that come out from behind the paneling. But I’d have had to walk clear across the office.”

  “I didn’t drink or use anything at all when I met Doyle, not even when I made those films. He got me started with Irish coffee. That was before the cocaine.”

  “Still do it?”

  She shook her head. “I’m allergic to the smell of hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Me too.”

  She smiled politely. I had some more and set my glass on the blotter. “You talked to Dorrance?”

  “Yes. He was very angry with Mr. Krell for hiring you without consulting him.”

  “Krell has some old-fashioned ideas. He thinks he can run his own business his own way.”

  “You sound as if you admire him. Yesterday I had the impression—”

  “The right one. But he’s his own man, even if it’s on his wife’s money, and he employs only the best. Those that will put up with him, anyhow; they generally don’t for long.” I folded my hands again. Body language. “You didn’t come here to write a book about Ernest Krell.”

  “I came here to re-hire you.”

  “Does Dorrance know?”

  “He thinks I’m home. I tried to call you earlier, but your service said you were out. I took a chance on catching you here.”

  “Where’s home these days?”

  “I’m staying with my sister in Redford.” She studied me. “You think I’m a coward, don’t you?”

  “No woman who ever shot a man for beating her up is.”

  She dismissed that with a jerky impatient wave. Cocaine gestures are a long time going. “I have confidence in you, Mr. Walker. I realize my character judgment is suspect, considering the man I married, but I liked the way you refused to let Mr. Krell intimidate you yesterday. Leslie was impressed, too, based on his meeting with you last night. I think it would take a lot to make you give up an investigation.”

  “More than you’d think.”

  “I guess I really am a coward. If I weren’t I’d fire Leslie because of my faith in you. But—”

  “But the hearing is in less than three weeks and a retired Supreme Court justice couldn’t do the necessary homework in that time to bring himself up to where Dorrance is now. You could get a continuance, but not in Iroquois Heights, and not in an election year, and not when the father of the man you killed is Doyle Thayer Senior. You don’t owe anyone any explanations, Mrs. Thayer. Least of all me.”

  She picked up her purse, opened it, and laid a bank money order on the desk. It was made out to A. Walker Investigations in the amount of three thousand dollars. I’d been wrong about the purse being only a prop.

  The ante was going up.

  “Naturally,” she said, “the court has frozen our joint assets, Doyle Junior’s and mine. But as you can see, I have my own sources.”

  I didn’t pick up the money order. I took the cap off the bottle and freshened our glasses. Said nothing.

  She said, “For months I’d been selling off the jewelry Doyle gave me and putting the money in an account he didn’t know about. I had paste copies made so he wouldn’t miss the pieces. There’s much more where that came from.”

  “Does Dorrance know that part?�
�

  “He’s my lawyer, not my confessor.”

  “Tell him.”

  “Why? It’s not his business.”

  “Your business is everybody’s business when you’re on the hook for murder. In this case he’ll need to know it for when the prosecution throws it at you as motive.”

  “Doyle gave me the jewelry. I had a right to sell it and I have a right to use the money as I see fit.”

  “That’s how you see it. The other side will say you’d been deceiving Doyle for months and were afraid he’d catch on. Then they’ll use his history of wife-beating against you. They might even say you’d been planning to kill him all that time, that you were preparing a getaway stake. Given the time lapse between your last workover and when you shot him, your self-defense plea is already too shaky to withstand that kind of reasoning.”

  “They won’t know about it. Unless you tell them.”

  I scribbled four names on my telephone pad, tore off the sheet, and slid it across the desk. “Is one of these the jeweler you sold the stuff to?”

  She looked at the sheet. Her expression said it all.

  “What you’ve been doing isn’t new,” I said. “Those four specialize in buying jewelry from housewives in Grosse Pointe, Bloomfield Hills, and the Heights, making good copies, and reselling the originals outside the state. That last part’s important. Their sources can’t afford to have the diamond choker Hubby gave them last Christmas show up in the local stores on Valentine’s Day.” I pointed at the money order. “That’s your maiden name?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “If Cecil Fish, who is the Iroquois Heights prosecutor, hasn’t run your married and maiden names and every possible combination past every bank in the area in search of a secret account, he’s a lot more stupid than he was the last time I saw him. By now he knows about the money, has put two and two together, which is what two and two are for, and is already working on those four names. Crooked politicians aren’t always dumb. Not even usually.”

  The speech had had its effect. Her fingers shook a little when she took the pack of Pall Malls out of her handbag and put one to her lips.

  “That’s the trouble with being basically honest.” I lit it for her. “When you do get tricky you haven’t had any practice.”

  She blew smoke deliberately at the money order. “Do you think it was a getaway stake?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference what I think. People are always asking anyway.”

  “Well, that’s just what it was. I was getting set to run. I had no chance of taking our son with me if we divorced; Doyle’s father would’ve seen to that. Without me around to hit, it would be just a matter of time before Doyle got zonked enough to hurt Jack. The money was for us to get away and to live on until I found a job somewhere else, under another name.”

  “What kind of a job?”

  It must have come out differently from the way I’d intended. Anyway her hazel eyes got hard.

  “I’d make films again if I had to. You do what you can to survive. When it’s you and your son you do more.”

  “Why didn’t you run?”

  “I should have. I didn’t.” She used my ashtray. “I told myself I wasn’t ready, that I needed more money to be truly secure. That’s the kind of trap you get into when you go to live in a big house where someone else pays the bills. I’d probably still be there, playing the good wife during the week and selling pearls on Saturday, if that one night he hadn’t beat me so hard I’m still passing blood.

  “No, I’m not a coward, Mr. Walker. No more than most. I’m not courageous either. Or I wasn’t, until that night.”

  I looked at the money order. I still hadn’t touched it. “Did you see anyone following you here?”

  “No one followed me.”

  “Sure they did. You’ve had a tail on you since you made bail. That’s how it works. Well, if the law has access to your bank records they know about this money order and who it’s for, so it doesn’t much matter. Tell Dorrance about the account. And tell him I’m back on the case.”

  “Are you back on the case?”

  I picked up the money order and put it in the top drawer of the desk. “It’s more than I ask for in a retainer, but the expenses are running high on this one. If there’s anything left when the thing is done, you’ll get it back, minus my day rate.”

  “Can you start right away?”

  “I never stopped.”

  The look I’d seen before came into her eyes then. I cut her off.

  “Don’t put on the cap and veil just yet, Mrs. Thayer. It so happened I had nothing to do this morning and no bills to pay. I’m not in the hero business.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that you were.” She put a hand on one of mine. It was cool and dry as before. “Thank you.”

  “Where can I reach you?”

  She picked up the pencil I’d used before and wrote a Redford address and telephone number on my pad. Then she rose. “I hope Leslie doesn’t quit when I tell him.”

  “He wouldn’t quit this one if you confessed to first-degree murder on Donahue.” I got up to let her out.

  When the outer door closed behind her, I went back to the desk and finished my drink. Then I poured myself another without water and read the money order. It had a lot of zeroes, just like the case so far. After a while I put it in my wallet and left for my bank, where the girl behind the counter smiled at me for the first time in two days.

  From there it was only a block to the party store where Marcus worked. In the storeroom I mopped the back of my neck with a handkerchief and watched him stacking crates of bottles until he had time to pull a copy of last night’s News out of a pile. I gave him two bucks.

  “You know, Mr. Walker, you can get that free if you ask up front.” Today he had on a yellow T-shirt, dark with sweat, with a Monster truck rampant on his chest.

  “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t get to come back here and read your clothes.”

  “You after a killer?”

  “Actually, I’m working for one.”

  Outside the store I unfolded the paper and looked at the lower right-hand corner. The item that Ma Chaney had clipped out of her copy and stuck in a pocket ran a column and a half, with a double heading:

  FIFTH AREA HOME INVADED

  Intruders Threaten Couple with Automatic Weapons

  10

  THE SIDEWALK WAS no place to give the article any concentration, but I wasn’t ready to go back to the office. I folded the paper and carried it to the little lot where I parked my car. Sitting there sweating in the sun with all four windows open, I read it.

  Police have linked the armed invasion of a house in the 1600 block of Pembroke last night with four previous robberies conducted in the Detroit metropolitan area over the past two weeks.

  Shortly after 8:00 p.m. yesterday, police said, four men in ski masks and armed with light automatic rifles burst through the front door of a house occupied by Dr. Anton Juracik and his wife Marian and threatened to kill the couple if they did not surrender all the cash and drugs in the house. When Dr. Juracik resisted, one of the intruders struck him in the face with the butt of his weapon, knocking him unconscious, police said.

  According to police, Mrs. Juracik then turned over an undisclosed amount of cash, whereupon she was struck on the side of the head with a blunt instrument which police believe to have been either the barrel or the butt of an automatic rifle. Police said the bandits then ransacked the house and left with a videocassette recorder, two color television sets, a number of stereo components, and jewelry valued at $18,500.

  Dr. Juracik was treated for a broken nose at Detroit General Hospital and released later in the evening. Mrs. Juracik remains in critical condition there with a fractured skull and a severe concussion.

  “This robbery is definitely connected with similar actions which occurred in Detroit, Grosse Point, Iroquois Heights, and Flatrock within the last two weeks,” reported Inspector John Alderdyce of the Det
roit Police Department, who has been placed in charge of the investigation. “The police of all four communities are cooperating in this effort and we have a number of definite leads.”

  The article, which continued inside the first section, recapped the four previous robberies, including a casualty count of six injured homeowners and an estimated take totaling $110,000.

  Alderdyce’s statement was half lie and half sin of omission. The police of four neighboring communities couldn’t cooperate in the same life raft, and the “definite leads” would number around ten thousand. I read the article again, then put the paper back together and tossed it into the back seat.

  Despite her taste in clothes, make-up, furniture, and personnel, Ma Chaney was fastidious. She wouldn’t save an article just because it caught her eye, but she’d be the type to keep a record. The targets of the five home invasions, all located in high-income neighborhoods and belonging to professional people approaching middle age, hadn’t been chosen at random. The careful planning extended to the choice of weapons, full automatic rifles instead of the usual run of cheap revolvers and pump shotguns. You don’t buy military assault weapons behind a diner on Sherman. For that you go to Macomb County.

  I was weighing the pluses and minuses of going back there myself when the door on the passenger’s side opened and a man climbed in beside me. He was slender, in an unlined powder-blue jacket and white duck pants that made him look cool despite the heat, and a cocoa straw hat with a narrow brim turned down in front. He had a thin, café au lait face with a mealy complexion and one of those pencil moustaches that would have looked more at home, like the man himself, with an all-white drill suit and a pitcher of margaritas on a verandah overlooking a firing squad.

  “Amos Walker, I think.” He had a slight, almost too slight, Latin accent. It had been worked on, then allowed to slip back, possibly in a fit of ethnic pride.

  “Is that a question?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Philip Romero. My chief would like to speak with you.”

  “Which chief would that be?”

  He unbuttoned his jacket, exposing a bone-handled .38 in a holster with a gold shield pinned to it bearing the elaborate old-fashioned Iroquois Heights city seal.