Never Street

by Loren D. Estleman

  I was thinking these thoughts, like God on His cloudy mount, when a red Triumph convertible turned in from the street, paused while the driver took a ticket, and rolled up the aisle between the rows of parked vehicles. I lifted a hand. Vesta saw it and cranked into a handicapped slot two cars over. She swung a mile of smoothly shaved tan leg out of the seat and came my way, hugging herself as if she were chilled, her high-heeled sandals clicking in the great empty space. She wore a white sleeveless blouse knotted above two inches of brown midriff and black shorts. Her hair was gathered inside a white silk scarf tied under her chin and she had on black-rimmed glasses with gray lenses through which I could just make out her eyes.

  “I see you took my advice about the glasses,” I said.

  “Occupational necessity. I can’t afford to squint in bright sunlight. Every fresh wrinkle knocks fifty bucks off my base salary.” She glanced around. “This is the first time I’ve been in this building. It doesn’t look like your usual parking structure.”

  “It’s not. We’re standing in the orchestra pit. The screen was there, with a stage in front of it where Astaire and Rogers danced during personal appearances. It’s kind of hard to envision now.”

  “A movie house.” She smiled without enjoyment. “I might have guessed. You’re the right person to go looking for Neil. You share an obsession.”

  “Don’t think I’m on the trip I seem to be on. That comes in handy when I run up against someone who expects me to react like a Hollywood sleuth of the old order. It confuses them when I break from the script, and that levels the playing field. Anyway, I’m not looking for Neil anymore. His wife fired me this morning.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’re kind of a blunderer.”

  “What I am is a redundancy, with the police of two cities already looking for Catalin for murder. And just what kind of blunderer I am is something you really don’t know much about.”

  She took off her glasses. She had made up her eyes, but there were tiny threads of blood showing in the whites. “You’ll have to excuse me if I’ve bruised your feelings. I’ve had just enough sleep to make the amount I haven’t had that much worse. There’s fingerprint powder all over my apartment. I don’t have a career. I probably don’t even have a job. If I kept a biorhythm chart, which I don’t because I’m the only actress east of Catalina who doesn’t believe in that sort of thing, it would read like a Russian tragedy. I’m here for only one reason.” She put her glasses back on and folded her arms, waiting.

  “Why didn’t you tell the cops about Robinette? Don’t tell me again it’s because they didn’t ask. That one’s as old as greasepaint.”

  “They let me know in a hundred little ways that they had it all figured out and that my input was just for the boys in the computer room. Introducing Robinette into it would just snarl things up. It seemed simpler to let them go on thinking what they thought. Otherwise I might still be there. Did you tell them?”

  I shook my head. “Same reason, different motives. If they thought this connected to the shotgun robberies, they’d think you knew where the money was and tank you as an accessory.”

  “That was taking a chance. What if I had told them? They’d tank you for withholding evidence.”

  “I’ve been tanked before. It’s worse than you expect, but not as bad as you fear. I figured you had enough angst for all of the Barrymores to draw from without a stretch in the county hotel.”

  “Zorro in a ninety-dollar suit. What makes me your damsel? I’m trying to sleep my way to the top.”

  “You’re not having much luck at it. Anyway it’s a narrow market.”

  “Thanks for the compliment.”

  “You’re no femme fatale,” I said. “You just look the part. From where I sit you’re the only fly in this web who thought it was just an innocent doorway. An expert I talked to about Catalin’s fix said if anything jolted him out of it, reality would. The world is a lot more complicated than noir fiction. Bad guys turn out to be just determined survivors, like Phil Musuraca. Some of them even get to be heroes; Robinette may have saved your life. Bad girls are just good girls in trouble. It’s something to think about.”

  “Sometimes things are just the way they seem. I’m nobody’s idea of a good girl.”

  I grinned. “That’s quite a pep talk you give yourself. Stanislavsky or Stengel?”

  “You said something about ninety-two thousand dollars.”

  Happy hour was over. I snapped my expired butt in the general direction of the VIP seats. It bounced off a van that had rusted through all its fenders and rolled toward the iron grating over the drain. “Trust me, you don’t want the whole shot. The law will never leave you alone, and even if it does, Robinette won’t. That kind of hero he isn’t. Ten percent’s customary from the insurance companies. A crafty lawyer might be able to jack them up for another five plus his fee. If you want someone to run interference and you’re allergic to lawyers, I’m between assignments at the moment.”

  “And what might your fee be?”

  “I get five hundred a day and expenses. There won’t be any expenses. Hour’s work over the telephone. Fifty ought to cover it.”

  Her brows shot up above the dark glasses. “That’s all?”

  “You were right about one thing,” I said. “Sometimes the good guy is just as honest as he looks.”

  “Of course, this is all theory so far. Where’s the money? How’d you find it?”

  “Neil helped.”

  “So you did talk to him.”

  “Communed would be the word. I watched the same pictures he did. Pitfall in particular. Did you see it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t own a VCR, and we couldn’t exactly visit Neil’s basement. He talked about old movies a lot. I wasn’t always listening.”

  “I’ll sketch it out: Married man, single dish, boyfriend in the slammer, fat sleazy private dick. Sound familiar?”

  She said nothing.

  “Coincidence maybe,” I went on. “For sure when he found out the rest of it, his interest level went up: Here was his chance to lead the life he’d only been able to experience secondhand. It fascinated me too, but only because the resemblances sharpened the deeper I got into your relationship. There were differences. Raymond Burr went after Lizabeth Scott for purposes of lust, while Musuraca was only interested in the missing money. Your ex-husband gave you a car. Scott’s boyfriend bought her a boat. But those were only questions of props and continuity.”

  “Car.” She was starting to get it. She was a lot more intelligent than her past behavior indicated.

  I said, “The same guy who told me about the difference between a movie and the real world pointed out the significance of the boat in Pitfall. I didn’t need that, because you’d already told me about the one condition Ted Silvera had made in your divorce. I even took pity on Fat Phil, who’d been trailing you for days and didn’t realize he was never more than a block away from what he was after. I recommended he read Poe. A half-smart guy, Phil. He got the drift, but he missed the point. He thought I was talking about your apartment.

  “The night before he was busted for the shotgun robberies, Silvera met with Ernie Fishman, the fence from Flatrock. That much you know. What you didn’t know, but that Robinette knew, was that Ernie dealt in stolen jewelry as well as everything else that can be carried away in one trip and turned into quick cash. Ninety-two thousand dollars in the small well-circulated bills found in video store cash registers is bulky and hard to conceal. Silvera traded it to Fishman for something a lot more portable. He must have known the law was close, so he hid the merchandise somewhere they wouldn’t be likely to look when they came around with a warrant. They were looking for cash, remember. They’d ignore the places that are too tight or wet. You said the only thing Silvera asked for in the decree was the option to buy back the car he gave you.”

  She turned around, looking toward the Triumph. “I’ve cleaned that car a hundred times, inside and out. I had it in twice for
detailing. If he—”

  “He wouldn’t put them anyplace where they’d be found during normal cleaning and maintenance.” I walked past her and around to the front of the little convertible. It was a miniature version of a 1930s roadster, complete with running boards, a doughnut cover over the spare tire on the trunk, and a hinged straddle type hood.

  I’d thought about the gas tank, but stickup men are a lazy lot, and anything like a string that would make a package easy to retrieve would be obvious every time the tank was filled. Magnetic boxes under the fenders and chassis fall off too easily and call attention to themselves up on the hoist. Just for fun I unscrewed the radiator cap and peered down inside, but that had all the same drawbacks as the gas tank, so the disappointment didn’t disappoint me.

  The windshield solvent reservoir was a blue plastic box mounted under the wipers with a cap the size of a jar cover. I removed it and stuck my hand down inside, groping along the smooth sides and saturating my shirt cuff with the blue-tinted liquid. When my fingers found a lump the size of a baby’s fist I felt for the edges of the tape. It tore loose with a noise like Velcro and I withdrew the package and shook off the excess moisture.

  It was a common pint-size Ziploc refrigerator bag, doubled over twice and secured with wide waterproof transparent tape. I peeled away the tape, unfolded the bag, zipped it open, and told Vesta to hold out her hands. When she complied I tipped ten lumps of what looked like quartz crystal into her cupped palms. The diamonds ranged in size from raisins to lemon drops, cut in pear shape and sparkling in the light they hadn’t seen in three years.

  I was wrong about one thing, and I learned that the next morning when I opened the Free Press. The police in Iroquois Heights found a body identified as that of Philip Francis Musuraca, curled into a fetal position in the roomy trunk of his 1960 Buick Invicta, parked behind a Chinese restaurant. He’d been beaten to death.

  Reel Three

  Dissolve

  Twenty-five

  “A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS.”

  “Mr. Walker, please.”

  I changed ears on the receiver. “This is Amos Walker.”

  The short silence on the other end told me I hadn’t fooled anyone. If I’d really been trying I’d have answered the telephone with Judy Collins’ soprano. “Mr. Walker, this is Ashraf Naheen. We met last week at Balfour House. On Mackinac Island?”

  I recognized the British accent now, too precise to have been acquired in the country of origin. I put down my Smith & Wesson and the midget screwdriver. I’d located a screw to replace the one I’d lost when I threw the office at Orvis Robinette. It was Wednesday morning. Eighteen hours had passed since I’d left Vesta Mannering admiring her sparklers in the ruins of the old Michigan Theater. “I remember you, Dr. Naheen.”

  “I have a little matter I’d be pleased to discuss with you this afternoon, if you plan to be in your office. It isn’t related to what we spoke about last week. I wish to consult your services.”

  “I’ll be in. Do you know the address?”

  “I still have your card. I’m catching the ten-thirty flight to Detroit City Airport. Look for me about two o’clock.”

  When we were through talking I sat back and thought about the Pakistani psychiatrist, brown and pleasant-looking, sitting in his green office and not discussing the nervous breakdown that had placed Neil Catalin in his care eighteen months ago. I thought about Tom Balfour, the island brat and all-around dogsbody, and his suspicions that Naheen videotaped his sessions with his patients for purposes of shaking them down. That didn’t get me anywhere, so I stopped thinking. I finished putting together the revolver, loaded the cylinder from the box of cartridges I kept in the safe with my change of shirts, and returned to the morning edition of the Free Press and the article about Phil Musuraca.

  It wasn’t much, just two and a half inches in the Local section without a picture. Brian Elwood and Leo Webb had received more play, and no connection was made between them and Fat Phil. I supposed I was indirectly responsible for his beating death. If I’d fingered Orvis Robinette for the Webb killing, he wouldn’t have been available to pay off Musuraca’s blackmail try with his fists. On the other hand, if the Iroquois Heights detective hadn’t tried to cash in on Webb’s homicide, I wouldn’t have had any reason to feel guilty. So that was one more thing to stuff into my little internal box of angst and sit on the lid until it locked.

  The second murder had moved the Elwood story from the police column to a spot below the fold on Page One. The Freep had dug up photos of the three principals: a flattering three-quarter portrait of Webb in suit and tie that I had seen in a frame hanging in the hallway leading to his office, a high school yearbook shot of Gay’s baby brother Brian, retouched to mask facial blemishes, and Catalin’s driver’s license picture, face front and sweating guilt through every pore. The article bore as much resemblance to the facts as the Hollywood version of an eighteenth-century novel did to its source. Journalists. Even when they got it right it didn’t sound like anything you’d had something to do with. I turned to Tank MacNamara for my minimum daily requirement of truth and committed the works to the circular file.

  My own reporter’s instinct awakened, I cranked my Paleozoic Underwood down from its perch atop a file cabinet and typed up a report on the Catalin missing-person case for Gay Catalin to throw away without reading. It read like a screen treatment for Jack L. Warner to drop his cigar ashes on and then hand over to Ben Hecht and W. R. Burnett for rewrite. I stuck it in a manila envelope, stamped and addressed it, and sailed it at the floor in front of the mail slot. Then I wrote out checks for the rent, utilities, and membership dues in the Blunt Instrument of the Month Club against a checking account balance that didn’t exist yet and dispatched them after the report. That carved twenty minutes out of my hectic workday.

  Break time. I started a pot of coffee on the little four-cupper in the water closet, washed my hands and face and smoothed back my hair, tracking the progress of the gray in the peel-and-stick mirror tile above the sink, filled a Chrysler Corporation commemorative mug from the pot, and carried it to the desk. The coffee tasted weak. I hoisted the working bottle out of the file drawer of the desk and put a nail in it. My watch told me another eleven minutes had swept past. If this kept up I was going to have to hire an assistant.

  Ashraf Naheen was sitting in my reception room when I got back from lunch. Small, round, and brown in his rimless glasses and a cocoa three-piece gabardine, he looked up pleasantly from a two-year-old copy of Police Times and stood, offering his hand. He saw me glance at my watch before I took it.

  “We’re ahead of schedule,” he said apologetically. “We arrived at the airport in time to take an earlier flight. This is Gordon, my head orderly. I never travel without him.”

  I had already noticed Gordon, for professional reasons. He took up all the space in the oversize club chair I’d promoted from a curb on St. Antoine, and when he laid aside the Entertainment Weekly with Emmanuel Lewis on the cover and stood, he filled the gap between the crown of his head and the ceiling. He had the spotty tan of the infrequent island goer-outer, black hair sheared close to the skull, probably by himself, and slabs of muscle on his shoulders that threw off the lines of his Big and Tall sportcoat. His face was a plank with features penciled on. We didn’t shake hands.

  “Does Gordon ride with the passengers, or do you check him through?”

  Naheen was pleasant. “Some of my less successful cases harbor resentments. Even a doctor of psychiatry must sometimes resort to prehistoric methods for his protection. And Gordon is an agreeable companion. He seldom speaks, but when he does, what he has to say is invariably significant. May we go into your office?”

  I unlocked the door and the doctor and I went through. Significant Gordon stayed behind to sort through the selection of New York Times crossword puzzle books on the coffee table, starting with the back pages where the answers were. I scooped up the mail—two or three circulars and a thick mailer—and carried it
to the desk. The mailer was as heavy as a brick.

  Naheen wandered the office like a visitor to a gallery, stopping in front of the Anheuser-Busch print of Custer’s Last Stand.

  “Interesting choice,” he said, “and possibly a revealing one. Are you a defender of lost causes, Mr. Walker?”

  “Only when it pays.”

  He smiled his pleasant, noncommittal analyst’s smile. “I ask your pardon. When I see an office so aggressively generic, containing only one item of personal expression, I’m tempted to read much into the item. It’s a professional gaucherie that has cost me a number of valued friendships.”

  “We’re not friends, Doctor. I’m just the help. I inherited the office and the furniture in it. All I changed was the magazines and the wall art. A target silhouette used to hang there. The print was just the right size to cover the spot where the wall didn’t fade.”

  “Any number of less provocative prints would have done the job just as well. I suspect you’re obfuscating. But I am tilling another’s soil. Cigar?” He produced a leather case shaped like three torpedoes and opened it. When I shook my head he selected one, returned the case to his breast pocket, and went through the ritual. When he had it burning he dropped the match and the band in the ashtray I slid across the desk and sat down in the customer’s chair.

  I took my seat and didn’t smoke. The fumes from the doctor’s cigar were thick enough to have texture.

  “The news from Detroit makes its way into our little island paper on a regular basis,” he said. “It always saddens me to learn the fate of a guest I was unable to help. Is Mr. Catalin still at large?”

  “He was as of yesterday, when the case stopped being mine. As I remember, you thought it was unlikely that his personality would split this wide.”