“Sorry. Did you get a better look at the first man when he dived out the apartment window?”
“I don’t know nothing about nobody jumping through no windows. I left after you came. That was one too many for me.”
The door opened and the man in the apron and chef’s hat waddled in. Without glancing our way he went up on his toes, embraced a cardboard carton shelved at eye level, and backed out lugging it, pushing through the door with his hip pockets. When we were alone I said, “Phil, you need to learn meat cutting at home. You’re not a good enough liar for this line of work.”
“Hey, I didn’t have to tell you squat.”
“Sure you did. No one likes the taste of his own teeth. I saw the bedroom. It takes more than two or three minutes to turn a room inside out; I know, because I’ve done it, and so have you.”
“Maybe the shooter frisked the place afterwards.”
“That’s what the cops think, because it checks with their theory that Catalin killed Webb and tore the room apart to make it look like a burglary. Either way it takes too much time. You said you heard the shot thirty seconds after Webb got there, then I showed up before you could get out of your car.”
“My watch don’t light up. Maybe it was longer.” A whining note had crept into his voice. It hadn’t been musical to begin with.
“Which time? Don’t bother, I’ll choose. At least fifteen minutes went by between the time the first man went in and Webb came along. That’s how long it would take for you to hotfoot it over to the next block where the first man walked in from, get the number off his license plate or read the name on his registration, and be back in your car in time to see Webb. You were still there when I went up and traded shots with the first man and he left through the window. Maybe you got a good look at him then, maybe not. It wouldn’t matter, because you already had a line on who he was. It was Orvis Robinette.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“You aren’t getting any better at this. If you knew about the ninety-two grand Silvera got from the video store robberies, you knew Robinette was his accomplice. Robinette went to Vesta’s place for the same reason you did, to search for some clue to where the money was hidden. Webb walked in on the middle of it and wound up getting shot with the gun he was going to use on Vesta.” I ran a hand down the rumpled front of his coat, then smelled the whiskey on my fingers. “What’s the celebration, Phil? Is Robinette going to show his gratitude for keeping your mouth zipped about Webb’s murder by cutting you in on his future heists?”
The left side of his face slid up in a lopsided leer. I discovered I didn’t like him after all.
“What’s the matter, you sore on account of you didn’t think of it first?”
Twenty-three
“HAVE YOU MET Robinette?” I asked Musuraca.
“He’s living in a hotel. I called him. We’re meeting later.”
“Planning to hand him that old dodge about leaving the information with someone who’ll take it to the cops if anything happens to you?”
“I ain’t stupid.”
I wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no. I opted for the Brotherhood of Man. “Neither is Robinette. Even a bad lawyer can get a written statement thrown out of court without a witness or his body to back it up. They won’t find your body.”
“I guess I got this far alive.”
“That’s because you weren’t worth killing. Congratulations. Your stock just went up.”
He took that as a compliment. “Guess you underestimated Fat Phil, huh? Guess everybody did. Well, that time’s past. If you find that ninety grand, you can keep it. I’m investing in futures. No more peephole jobs. No more sitting on my piles in my car outside crummy motels. No more cold squid. Next time you want to see me you can call my secretary and make an appointment. I’ll be heading up my own agency on Main Street, hiring grunts to stake out joints while I practice my putting.”
“Bye-bye, Phil,” I said. “You think I hope it doesn’t work out, but you’re wrong. I’d like to see a little grifter make a big score for a change. The big chains are taking too much of the market.”
He straightened his tie and slung a finger along the brim of his hat. “Pick yourself up some cashew chicken on your way out. It’s the most expensive item on the menu. Tell ’em Phil’s buying.”
I left him there amid the rat droppings and MSG, a little fat man with dreams too big for his belt, and drove home through the rusty rays of dawn over Windsor, smuggling themselves in under the black shelf of yet another storm-front. I was swimming against glue. I could feel my own foulness under my arms and in the bends of my elbows, and my chin rasped against my collar when I turned my head at intersections. When I pulled into the garage and jerked the key from the ignition, the weight of the ring was like dumbbells.
I crossed through the kitchen and living room with flatirons strapped to my feet and threw myself across the bed without undressing. Nothing separated me from Phil Musuraca now except seventy pounds and hope for the future.
FADE IN: EXTERIOR CITYSCAPE—NIGHT
BOGART: So many guns around town, and so few brains.
INTERIOR BAR
CAGNEY: Top o’ the world, Ma.
INTERIOR CAR—IN MOTION
LADD: So long, baby.
EXTERIOR WHARF—NIGHT
POWELL: Let’s call it a retainer.
INTERIOR HOTEL ROOM
LANCASTER: Once I did something wrong.
INTERIOR NIGHTCLUB
STANWYCK: You and me, Walter—straight down the line.
EXTERIOR POLICE HEADQUARTERS—NIGHT
MITCHUM: Someone’s trying to put me in a frame. I’m
going up to get a look at the picture.
EXTERIOR ALLEY—NIGHT
GARFIELD: So long, baby.
INTERIOR STAIRCASE
BACALL: If you want me, just whistle.
EXTERIOR CARNIVAL—NIGHT
WELLES: When I set out to make a fool of myself, there’s
very little that can stop me.
INTERIOR OFFICE
HOLDEN: Poor dope. He always wanted a pool.
EXTERIOR BEACH—NIGHT
GRAHAME: We’re sisters under the mink.
INTERIOR GARAGE
RAFT: So long, baby.
SCOTT: So long, baby.
CRAWFORD: So long, baby.
FADE OUT
It wasn’t a dream, exactly. Dreams come with a plotline, whether or not it hangs together in the compassionless glare of the sun. It was more like a scattering of fragments of brain pictures that had slipped their sprockets, stuttering at demented angles in front of the bulb: Grubby walk-up offices lit by slats of moonglow through Venetian blinds, city skylines dusted with glitter, carnival midways tilted forty-five degrees, their merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels turning perpendicularly like huge gears, fans attached to nightclub ceilings casting swooping shadows like bats’ wings, Krazy Kat staircases that turned themselves inside out halfway up like optical illusions on the puzzle page of the Sunday magazine, forcing me to hang on to the railings to avoid pitching into an abyss. The soundtracks had torn loose from the filmstrips, putting the lines in the mouths of all the wrong actors: John Garfield spoke in Gloria Grahame’s falsetto and Barbara Stanwyck snarled with Humphrey Bogart’s trademark lisp. Train whistles brayed from typewriter keyboards. Steam calliopes tootled through tender love scenes. Telephones sounded like ricocheting bullets.
The images were even more disorienting. Automobile grilles spiked with chrome bulged into fish-eye close-ups. Driving rain turned windshields into opaque jewels. Wet asphalt reflected skyscrapers like mirrors, so that it was impossible to tell which were the skyscrapers and which the reflections. Demonic grinning faces appeared upside down in the bowls of spoons. Whoever was in charge of the dispatching department had sent me Orson Welles’s D.T.’s by mistake. I wondered where mine had wound up, and if Welles, straining a canvas chair in Directors’ Valhalla, was having Dwight D. Eisenhower’s.
Lay off the movies, Walker. One of these times your face is going to freeze that way.
The telephone rang at least twenty times before I pried loose of the bed and hurtled out into the living room. I half expected to hear Peter Lorre in the earpiece.
“Mr. Walker, this is Gay Catalin.”
Her crisp voice sounded like something from the other side of civilization: starched table linens and sparkling crystal as seen through a smeared window by the Dumpster. Dust motes kicked and tumbled in the sunlight pouring into the room. I had slept straight through another storm. My watch had migrated to the wrong side of my wrist. 10:05.
“I was going to come see you later today,” I said. “There have been developments.”
“I know. The police just left. I’m sending you a check for twenty-five hundred dollars. Please tell me if that isn’t enough to cover your fee and expenses.”
I peeled off my coat, changing hands on the receiver. My shirt stuck to my skin like a wet Kleenex. “I take it I’m fired.”
“No, that would mean I’m unsatisfied with your services. Now that the police regard Neil as a wanted fugitive, I no longer consider employing a private detective to find him a positive use of my husband’s money. I’m calling our lawyer instead.”
“Your husband’s no murderer.”
“That’s for the lawyer to prove. Thank you for all your hard work, Mr. Walker. Please feel free to use me as a reference.” The connection broke.
I cradled the receiver and rummaged in my sodden shirt pocket for the pack that wasn’t there. I broke a fresh one out of the drawer of the telephone table, found a book of matches, and killed a couple of hundred brain cells, but that wasn’t enough to make me stop thinking. Then I spotted the TV set.
I don’t own a remote, so I surfed barefoot, with my hand on the old-fashioned knob. Three or four talk shows, all featuring men in miniskirts. A couple of reruns of sitcoms I hadn’t bothered to laugh at when they were fresh. An infomercial hosted by the former star of one of the sitcoms. I Love Lucy, which killed five minutes until the feminine hygiene spot. A soap opera. A war. A political round table discussion that incorporated the best of those two art forms. Pepe LePew and the cat.
The VCR was long overdue at the store, but it didn’t know that. I punched it on, turned the channel to 3, and hit PLAY. The tape in the deck happened to be Pitfall. I sat down and watched it from the beginning until the scene where Dick Powell took over the controls of Lizabeth Scott’s boat. Then I got up, turned off both machines, and dialed the number of Vesta Mannering’s apartment. The hello I got on the sixth ring came from the same sub-basement I had crawled out of when Gay Catalin called.
“When did the cops cut you loose?” I asked without salutation.
“Who’s this?”
“Amos Walker, alias the money fairy. Did they at least give you a ride home?”
“They offered. I called a cab. I prefer the brand of disinfectant the Yellow people use. Hold on a second.”
I held on a little longer. Paper and cellophane and foil crackled. Steel scratched flint. A pair of lungs filled and emptied. In the suburbs another couple of hundred brain cells died without a whimper. Then:
“What did you say about money?”
“Later,” I said. “I wanted your undivided attention. Are you a suspect?”
“Not unless I hired it done, and I guess all those original Rembrandts in my three-hundred-buck-a-month walkup don’t put me in the right tax bracket for that. I was slinging menus in front of a hundred witnesses all the time Leo was getting himself shot in my bedroom. Did you do it?”
“No, and neither did Neil, but that’s how Detroit’s handling it. How much of what you told me did you tell them?”
“If you mean did I tell them about Orvis Robinette slapping me around, the answer’s no. They didn’t ask.” She paused. “Oh, hell. Would they tap my phone?”
“Not for a couple of little victims like Elwood and Webb. Anyway, Detroit hasn’t had the case long enough to get the court order, and in Iroquois Heights it’s last season’s catch. We’re safe to talk. Are you working today?”
“I doubt I’m still employed. Two big Detroit cops in uniform plucked me out from behind the registration desk in the middle of the evening rush hour. That doesn’t add up to four stars in a restaurant review.”
“If you’re rested up enough to see me in half an hour, you may not need to look for another job for a while.”
She paused again. “I’ve gotten exactly two hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four. Even when I’m rested I’m not good at riddles. Spell it out.”
“What would you do if you had nine thousand dollars in your hands right now?”
“Oh, please.”
“Indulge me. You’re up already.”
“I’d get a new wardrobe and have some pictures taken by a good photographer and hire a booking agent and get my acting career out of the toilet. While I was at it I’d pick a religion I liked and find the church most in need of a new roof and drop nine hundred in the collection plate. Miracles don’t come cheap.”
“Are the cops still hanging out at your place?”
“They took down the seal, but I’ve still got Leo’s picture in masking tape on my bedroom carpet. I slept on the couch.”
“Not there, then. The Detroit cops knock usually, but that Iroquois Heights gang thinks every little murder gives them a ninety-nine-year lease on private property, especially when there’s a chance of catching a beautiful woman naked. Where can you meet me?”
“If you’re serious about the money, you pick. I need the laugh.”
I thought. Then I had it. “Got a pencil?”
She went to look for one. When I gave her the address she asked me to make it an hour and a half. “I’ve got bags under my eyes you could pack shirts in.”
“Wear dark glasses.”
She made a noise with her lips. “Give me a hint about this nine thousand.”
“Ninety-two hundred,” I said, “to put the fine point on it. That’s the ten percent finder’s fee the insurance companies will pay you when you return the money your ex-husband stole from the video stores downriver.” I hung up.
Twenty-four
I LEFT WHAT I COULD of the Monday From Hell in the shower drain and the sink basin, dressed fresh from the skin out, ate breakfast for the first time all year, and rolled out. The air smelled scrubbed and rinsed. This had been the rain we’d been waiting for since July, the one that broke the cycle of pressure and heat and swept the sky as clear of clouds as a china bowl. The temperature was in the low seventies. Tops were down, bare midriffs were in, businessmen walking back from lunch swung their briefcases and whistled. I might have joined them if I could think of any tune but “The Song of the Volga Boatmen.” It had been a long hard row, the boat had landed in the wrong spot, and I was the only one who seemed to care.
I dropped off the VCR and the Debbie Reynolds movies I hadn’t gotten around to watching and wrote a check to ransom my good name. The clerk, a different kid this time with the same skin condition as his predecessor, didn’t send up any flares. There were four identical machines on a shelf behind the counter and, incredibly, no one had been in over the weekend asking for Tammy and the Bachelor.
For the film aficionado and the student of architecture, the Michigan Theater in downtown Detroit is the place to go to be depressed. Built in 1926 along the soaring Art Deco lines of the Albert Kahn buildings sheltering the police department, the two daily newspapers, and the Fisher Theater, the Michigan had packed its auditorium for Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, and Clark Gable, eked in enough viewers to cover the rental fees for
James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, shut down through the entire film careers of Ryan O’Neal and Karen Black, and then in the time of disco and Jimmy Carter was gutted of its velvet seats and rosewood stage and turned into a parking garage. Now Luminas and mini-conversions and Nissans blackened the crumbling ornamental plaster at the tops of the ceiling columns with monoxide and dripped oil and transmission fluid on the mosaic floor tiles. What the ghosts of the Sheik and Cleopatra and the crew of the battleship Potemkin made of it all was anybody’s guess.
I parked under the remains of a green-gilt false balcony, its bottom burst from water draining off the roof and trailing clumps of horsehair plaster, got out and wandered around for a while. I was ten minutes early, an old detective habit. By all rights my veteran’s pension should kick in ten minutes before my sixty-fifth birthday and my casket should be lowered into the ground ten minutes ahead of the time advertised in the obituary, not that anyone would be there to notice. When I got to the gates I would smoke a cigarette while waiting for St. Peter to come back from lunch.
It was a big old echoing shell of poured concrete and red iron girders, with enough space overhead to house the phantom population the city bribed the census takers to report to Washington. Pigeons fluttered among the flies like bats in a cathedral. My footsteps slapped back at me from vaults and groins where the treble of a pipe organ long since gone to scrap might still be reverberating, as unaware of the change as a Japanese soldier on a remote island in the Pacific. I thought I smelled hot buttered popcorn under the guano and gasoline, but that was probably race memory. It was just a place to park cars.
I leaned against the Cutlass’ rear fender, smoking and watching the entrance. I wondered if Neil Catalin had been watching the same way when his wife came here to meet him four days ago, when this was just a missing-person case and there were two more people in the world. I wondered if he had arranged to meet her at all. If I was right, and Webb had called Gay, successfully imitating his partner’s voice, to keep us busy while he killed Brian Elwood and pinned it on Neil, then sent us to the DIA while he went to Vesta’s place to kill her, I couldn’t work up much indignation over Orvis Robinette. All he wanted was the money he thought he had coming to him, and all he had done was kill a killer.
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