Silent Thunder

by Loren D. Estleman

  The window was nailed shut, with paint on the nailheads. The panes were nearly opaque with soot and squinted out on a fire escape coated with orange rust.

  The only item in the room that had cost anything was a new portable color television set on the dresser. It was still warm. I hit the power switch, then hit it again quickly when a re-run of The Untouchables sprang on, rat-a-tat-tatting at top volume. Whoever had been watching last liked noise.

  There was a bath and a door that connected with another room. I opened it, but the facing door was locked on the other side. I stepped into the bathroom. It had been done in black and white deco the first time it was in style, with a few broken tiles now and a wave in the mirror over the sink that made my face look like something in an aquarium. The toilet was white with a black lid. The white enamel tub was a nice long one you could stretch out in if Sturdy weren’t there already.

  He was fully dressed in a neat tan poplin suit and a pair of two-tone saddle shoes floating on their heels on top of the water. His paisley necktie was floating too, but his face was under the surface with his thin brown hair drifting out around it and his eyes and cheeks puffed out as if he were still holding his breath. His skin was the gray shade of cooked liverwurst; at least that hadn’t changed. There were puddles on the floor next to the tub and his fingers were cramped around the rim on both sides. I tried prying them loose and gave up.

  I leaned back against the sink, poked a cigarette between my lips, and lit it from the fresh pack of matches. I smoked it down to the filter, flicking the ashes into the toilet, then dropped the butt in after them and flushed it. I watched until it went down. Then I rolled up my sleeves and got down on my knees and went through Sturdy’s pockets.

  He didn’t have much, just the usual comb, forty-eight dollars in soggy bills in a small brass clip, two flat tablets in foil, and a slim pocket pad with a blue plastic cover and a gold pen clipped to it. No wallet or keys; Sturdy didn’t drive. Many of the earlier notations in the pad had bled through and were illegible, but the water hadn’t soaked through to the pages in the middle. I shook it off, wrapped it inside my handkerchief, and pocketed it.

  The tablets looked familiar. They were plain white and the foil was unmarked. I got up and checked the medicine cabinet. There were more of them in a brown plastic bottle with a white snap-on cap and a label with a doctor’s name and “nitroglycerine” typed on it.

  It could have been a break, although not for Sturdy. If he had a bad heart and it gave out before whoever was holding him under could obtain the information he was after, I might still be in the game, whatever the game was. If so, the killer was either too disgusted to remember to search him, or too stupid to consider it. All things being equal, in the latter event I had a fair idea who he might be.

  Someone banged on the hall door, loudly. “Police! Open up!”

  I left the bathroom and checked the window. Someone was standing in the alley under the fire escape. Through the soot and darkness, stray light from the lamp on the corner lay on an oval of metal on his chest.

  “Open up!” The door bucked in its frame.

  I snatched a penknife and a collar pin from atop the dresser and inserted them in the keyhole of the locked connecting door. The tumblers were worn smooth and hard to grip.

  “Give me that passkey.”

  The passkey was rattling in the hall door lock when my lock gave. I stepped through the connecting door and drew the other one shut behind me, pushing the lock button, just as several pairs of heavy feet thudded into Sturdy’s room.

  I was in a bedroom like the one I had left, except this one was a lot less neat. My feet tangled with clothes on the floor and the air smelled of ashtrays in need of emptying. The room was dark, but an oblong of dirty light coming in through the window fell across a figure sprawled on its back on top of the bedcovers, a figure vaguely female in an old-fashioned white slip with a pair of pantyhose bunched up on one leg. A lot of hair ruthlessly peroxided and punished into waves like bent brass lay on the pillow. The woman was snoring ecstatically. Under the ashtray smell I detected a bellyful of gin and the kind of perfume that ought to come in big jugs with diagonal red stripes on the labels.

  I had taken the Beretta out of my belt just in case. Now I returned it and mounted a search for the source of the gin smell. From the timbre of the snores, I wasn’t going to be interrupted.

  The bottle had fallen off the bed, probably out of the woman’s hand, and rolled to a stop against one of the legs, where the carpet was damp around it. When I picked it up, its contents settled into a cozy half-inch on the bottom. I carried it into the bathroom, shut the door, and switched on the light over the sink. The layout was black and white like the one in Sturdy’s bathroom, but that was where the resemblance ended. The floor was shaggy with strands of blond hair with gray roots and the sink was green with mold. Tentacles of wet pantyhose dripped from the overhead rail into the tub, where several varieties of mushrooms thrived. The toilet tank was a jungle of bottles, atomizers, and jars of industrial wrinkle cream. A pyramid-shaped bottle half full of the perfume I had smelled in the bedroom wore a tag around its neck with a handwritten message: “For Corinne from her favorite sniffer. Love, Andy.”

  The bathroom was separated from Sturdy’s by a common wall. Excited voices murmured on the other side over the body in the bathtub. I took a swig from the gin bottle, and as the heat climbed my spine I shook the remaining drops into my palm and smeared them over my neck. For good measure I sprinkled some of Andy’s perfume onto my shirt. I checked the goods in the mirror, decided I looked too upstanding, rumpled my hair, and unfastened two shirt buttons. Now I looked like the tattered end of a gaudy night and smelled like a Sunday sermon.

  Corinne was still rattling the plaster when I left the bathroom. Just as I turned my back on her she stopped in mid-snort and started whimpering. I went back and got the empty gin bottle and pressed it into her hands. Without opening her eyes—they looked painted shut, like the windows—she turned over on her side, raised the bottle to her lips, and started sucking on the neck. Very soon she was snoring again.

  I left her. The idea was to get to the door before they started banging on it and woke her up. I took a deep breath, then opened it and leaned against the jamb, shaking loose my last Winston.

  A uniformed officer with a twisted nose and the general look of having been broken down from sergeant at least once turned around at the noise and stared at me, fingers resting on the butt of his revolver. I hoped he hadn’t been among the group at the fairgrounds last night.

  “What’s the argument?” I said sleepily. “Can’t a guy hang over in peace in this burg?”

  “Who’re you?” His voice sounded like a circle saw turning on reduced current.

  “Andy Winters.” Wintersong was the name on the perfume label. “If you cops busted these hookers on the street where you’re supposed to, you wouldn’t have to wake up honest citizens.”

  “What makes you think we’re arresting a hooker?”

  “Isn’t the mayor running again in November?”

  “You got identification says you’re Andy Winters?”

  I shook my head. I got the cigarette lit finally. That hadn’t entirely been an act.

  “Nothing? No driver’s license?”

  “They took it away in April.”

  “You live here?”

  “Corinne does. I’m a friend.”

  His mud-colored eyes flicked past me. “That Corinne?”

  “It better be. I don’t sleep with strangers these days.”

  “What’s Corinne’s last name?”

  I grinned moronically and shrugged.

  “No strangers, huh.” His fingers stroked the revolver’s butt like a cat kneading its claws. “Where you from, Winters?”

  “Why the grill?”

  “Answer the question. They passed an ordinance in this town against cohabitation in nineteen-oh-three. I could run you in on it if I had a mind.”

  I didn�
��t touch that one. “I live in Harper Woods.”

  “You walk all the way from Harper Woods?”

  “Corinne drove. We went out.”

  “Smells like you had a good time. Where’d you go?”

  “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

  “Blind pig, huh? When’d you get in?”

  I scratched my jaw. “Eleven, eleven-thirty.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Eleven-thirty, I guess.”

  “You hear anything the last hour or so?”

  “You mean besides that?” I tilted my head in the direction of the racket on the bed. “What happened, somebody get rolled?”

  “You know who lives in three-ten?”

  “Corinne might. If you can wake her up. I gave up nudging her finally and got dressed. I don’t suppose you cops could call me a cab.”

  The desk clerk from downstairs joined us. He looked awake now. He had small suspicious eyes and a V-shaped mouth with no lips, like the flap of an envelope. Awake or asleep, his skin was the color of bad buttermilk. I had him down for alcoholic hepatitis.

  “You know this guy?” the cop asked him.

  He stared at me hard and shook his head. Then his nose twitched. “We might as well just take the door off its hinges. I’d of gave her the boot a long time ago, but she’s paid up till January. Two-bit whore.”

  “That’s my girl you’re talking about,” I said.

  “This guy says he came in with the lady around eleven-thirty. You see it?”

  He was still staring at me. “Nobody came in at eleven-thirty. I been on duty since eight.”

  “And asleep since nine, I bet,” said the cop.

  “What is it, Flask?”

  The newcomer was a uniform at least fifteen years younger than the other, with a ginger-colored puppy moustache and sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves. His eyes were on me.

  “He says his name’s Winters, Sarge. He was sleeping next door, he says.”

  “Has the lieutenant seen him?”

  “No.”

  “Get him.”

  Moving like someone with strong opinions about taking orders from cops two-thirds his age, Officer Flask left us and went into Sturdy’s room. He returned a minute later with Lieutenant Romero.

  22

  HE HAD TRADED his cocoa straw hat for a narrow-brimmed Panama, cream-colored with a black silk band and beautifully blocked. The rest of him, except for his brown face and hands and polished black shoes, was blue: a midnight blue suit and a navy blue knitted tie on a powder-blue shirt with the collar buttoned down. His narrow Latin face was solemn as always. The black eyes betrayed nothing, not even recognition. He looked at the officer.

  “You found him where?”

  “Right here, Lieutenant. It was sort of he found me.”

  Romero looked at me again. “Do you make it a habit to always attack the thickest part of the fence?”

  “It was a judgment call.” I knocked off some of my ashes. “Naturally I didn’t expect you to be working this shift.”

  He nodded. When he spoke again, his intonation hadn’t changed.

  “Cover him, Sergeant. Officer, brace him and search him for weapons.”

  Flask hesitated only briefly. He had his sidearm out before the young sergeant could react. “You heard him, Andy. Against the wall. Pretend you’re doing pushups, only standing. Spread the legs.”

  As I turned, the sergeant drew his revolver finally. Flask kicked my feet apart. I had to grab the wall to keep from falling. My cigarette dropped to the floor. He patted me down swiftly, found the Beretta stuck inside my belt under my shirt, and stepped back.

  “How’d you know, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “See what else he has on him.”

  I was relieved of wallet, keys, and Sturdy’s notepad wrapped in my handkerchief. I had left my own notebook in the car.

  “Well, what do you know for asking?” Flask said. “He’s a private eye named Walker. And he’s loaded.”

  “Give them here. Cuff him, Sergeant.”

  The younger cop hooked cold metal around my left wrist, yanked it behind my back, and cuffed the right. I turned around. Romero had the Beretta in one hand and my wallet and Sturdy’s pad and the keys to the Mercury in the other.

  The sergeant spoke. “Think he’s our man, Lieutenant?”

  “Maybe. Stoudenmire wasn’t shot.”

  “I told you he didn’t come in with the tramp.” Triumph glittered in the desk clerk’s nasty little eyes.

  “Thanks for your help,” Romero said. “We’ll call you.”

  The clerk pouted, but it didn’t work without lips. “You won’t tell the papers the name of the hotel. I like this job.”

  “Nobody but you cares.” Romero waited.

  The clerk bent to pick up my cigarette, stamped out the smoldering carpet runner, and retreated toward the stairs. The lieutenant went on waiting until the steps stopped squeaking. “What happened, Walker?” he asked then.

  “It was love at first sight. I mean Corinne and the bottle.”

  “You’re not talking to the chief now.”

  He sounded a little hurt. It was too far past my bedtime to wonder if it was a trick. “Do we need the Praetorian Guard?”

  He thought about it. “Officer, secure the front of the building,” he said. “Sergeant, call downtown, tell them we need the medical examiner and a wagon. Use the telephone in the lobby. The print men are late as always.”

  “Procedure is two men with a suspect at all times,” the sergeant pointed out.

  “I’ve read the manual, too.”

  The sergeant moved his shoulders around disapprovingly, touched his moustache, holstered his gun, and started stairward. I made a chirping whistle in his direction and half turned, wriggling my fingers.

  Romero said, “Take back your cuffs, Sergeant.”

  “I just put them on.”

  “That was for the clerk.”

  “Procedure—”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell Chief Proust all about it. He’s paying you enough to spy on me.”

  He unlocked and removed the cuffs more roughly than he had applied them and took them downstairs. Flask handed me one last muddy glance and followed.

  Romero tapped on the door to the room opposite Corinne’s with the Beretta’s barrel, waited, tapped again. When no one answered the second time, he produced the passkey and opened it. He motioned me in first.

  It was a dusty front room with a bare mattress on an iron frame and the shade drawn over the window. The Cuban turned on the overhead light and closed the door behind him, double-locking it. There were no chairs in the room. I sat on the mattress. “Where’s your other half?”

  “Pollard? We’re not joined at the hip.” He laid my things on a child’s-size writing desk with a skin of dust on top and put his hands in his pockets. Waiting.

  “Who hollered cop?” I asked.

  “A woman in the building. She tried calling down to the clerk to complain about the loud television in three-ten and when he didn’t wake up she called us. I recognized the room number; Stoudenmire spent more time downtown than the night cleaning crew. I thought it was worth a look. It was.”

  “Whoever turned up the volume did it to cover the noise when he drowned Sturdy,” I said. “If he drowned. I found heart medicine in his pocket and in the medicine cabinet.”

  “I guess that’s when your pants got wet.” It was an invitation.

  “I got a bad tip a couple of days ago that he was dead,” I said. “When I heard he was alive I came here to ask him how come. Then you showed up.”

  “Who told you he was dead?”

  “Emma Chaney.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “She sells guns in Macomb County, or did until the sheriff’s men picked her up tonight. She will again. She said she heard it around,” I lied.

  “What does Stoudenmire have to do with the Thayer killing?”

  “That’s the other thing I cam
e here to find out. Ma Chaney did some gun business with Doyle Thayer Junior. Sturdy recommended her and gave young Thayer a letter of introduction.”

  “I heard you were off that case.”

  “I was for a while. Now I’m back on.”

  “Sort of like Billy Martin.”

  “The money’s smaller,” I said. “Are we going downtown or what?”

  “Should we be?”

  “If you’re planning to charge me with breaking into Corinne’s room. You’ll need a motive to prove murder.”

  “Who has one?”

  “Strictly speaking, nobody. I think he died on whoever was trying to soak information out of him in that bathtub. The autopsy will show if his heart gave out.”

  “That could have happened while he was drowning.”

  “Only if there’s water in his lungs. If there isn’t we’re in business.”

  “Are we.”

  “You’ve got his notebook. I’m holding the other cards, or at least some of them. What’s it worth to a cop in Iroquois Heights to solve the biggest case his town’s seen in years, right out from under the federal government and the Detroit Police Department, and in an election year to boot?”

  “Stoudenmire isn’t that big.”

  “That’s not the case I’m talking about.”

  He took a lacquer box from his inside breast pocket, removed one of his long slim cigars, and set fire to it with the gunmetal lighter. Blue smoke turned in the stale air. “Mrs. Thayer has confessed to killing her husband,” he said, watching it. “Thayer Senior wants her convicted quickly and with as little noise as possible. The policeman who stirs things up won’t be a policeman long.”

  “Not here. You don’t want to be an Iroquois Heights cop your whole life.”

  “Sometimes it seems like I already have been.” He blew a series of rings. “I was hired through Affirmative Action. When I placed first in the sergeant’s examination they had to promote me from uniform or look bad. I made lieutenant last year when I broke an auto-theft operation involving three states and all the television stations in Detroit covered it; there was an opening and they couldn’t very well ignore me. But I make Proust worry. An honest policeman who is very good at his job is always a threat to policemen like Proust. He has people watching me on duty and off. I have to be very careful. Other officers may fudge the details. Not Romero, or he’s out. Unemployment doesn’t pay enough to buy my family’s freedom.”