Desperate Detroit and Stories of Other Dire Places

by Loren Estleman

  “How they running, Bar?”

  “They need fixing.” He reached across the stacked coins to shake Murch’s hand.

  “I meant the horses, not the machines.”

  “So did I.”

  They laughed. When they were through, Murch said, “I need money, Bart.”

  “I figured that.” The proprietor’s gaze dropped to the table. “You caught me short, Charlie. I got bit hard at the Downs Saturday.”

  “I don’t need much, just enough to get out of the city.”

  “I’m strapped. I wish to hell I wasn’t but I am.” He took a quarter from one stack and placed it atop another. “You know I’d do it if I could.”

  The bookkeeper seized his wrist. “You owe me, Bart. If I didn’t lend you four big ones when the Dodgers took the Series, you’d be part of an off-ramp by now.”

  “I paid back every cent.”

  “It ain’t the money, it’s the doing what’s needed.”

  Morgan avoided his eyes. Murch cast away his friend’s wrist.

  “Redman’s goons been here, ain’t they?”

  Their gazes met for an instant, then Morgan’s dropped again. “I got a wife and a kid that can’t stay out of trouble.” He spoke quietly. “What they gonna do I don’t come home some night, or the next or the next?”

  “You and me are friends.”

  “You got no right to say that.” Morgan’s face grew red. “You got no right to come in here and ask me to put my chin on the block.”

  Murch slammed his fist on the table. Coins scattered. “If you don’t give it to me I’ll take it.”

  “I don’t think so.” Morgan leaned back, exposing a curved black rubber grip pressing into his paunch above the waistband of his pants.

  Murch said, “You’d do Redman’s job for him?”

  “I’ll do what I got to to live, same as you.”

  Telephones jangled in back, all but drowned out by the whooshing of the machines out front. The bookkeeper straightened. “Tell your wife and kid Charlie said good-bye.” He went out, leaving the door open behind him.

  “You got no right, Charlie.”

  Murch kept going. Morgan stood up, shouting over the racket of the front-loaders. “You should of come to me before you went running to the feds! I’d of give you the odds!”

  His visitor was on the street.

  Dusk was gathering when he left the home of his fourth and last friend in the city. His afflicted shoulder, inflamed by the humid weather and the rough treatment he’d received in Adamson’s office, throbbed like an aching tooth. His hands were empty. Like Bart Morgan, Gordy Sharp and Ed Zimmer pleaded temporary poverty, Zimmer stepping out onto the porch to talk while his family remained inside. There was no answer at Henry Arbogast’s, yet Murch swore he’d seen a light go off in one of the windows on his way up the walk.

  Which left Liz.

  He counted the money in his wallet. Forty-two dollars. He had spent almost thirty on cabs, leaving himself with just enough for a room for the night if he failed to get shut of the city. Liz was living in the old place two miles uptown. He sighed, put away the billfold, and planted the first sore foot on concrete.

  Night crept out of the shadowed alleys to crouch beyond the pale rings cast by the street lights. He avoided them, taking his comfort in the invisibility darkness lent him. Twice he halted, breathing shallowly, when cars crawled along the curb going in his direction, then he resumed walking as they turned down side streets and picked up speed. His imagination flourished in the absence of light.

  The soles of his feet were sending sharp pains splintering up through his ankles by the time he reached the brickfront apartment house and mounted the well-worn stairs to the fourth floor. Outside 4C he leaned against the wall while his breathing slowed and his face cooled. Straightening, he raised his fist, paused, and knocked gently.

  A steel chain prevented the door from opening beyond the width of her face. Her features were dark against the light behind her, sharper than before, the skin creased under her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her black hair was streaked with dirty gray and needed combing. She’d aged considerably.

  “I knew you’d show up,” she snapped, cutting his greeting in half. “I heard about the verdict on the news. You want money.”

  “I’m lonesome, Liz. I just want to talk.” He’d forgotten how quick she was. But he had always been able to soften her up in the past. Well, all but once.

  “You never talked all the time we was married unless you wanted something. I can’t help you, Charlie.” She started to close the door.

  He leaned on it. His bad shoulder howled. “Liz, you’re my last stop. They got all the other holes plugged.” He told her about Adamson’s broken promise, about the bank and his friends. “Redman’ll kill me just to make an example.”

  She said, “And you’re surprised?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He controlled his anger with an effort. That had always been her chief weapon, her instinct for the raw nerve.

  “There’s two kinds in this world, the ones that use and the ones that get used.” Her face was completely in shadow now, unreadable. “Guys like Redman and Adamson squeeze all the good out of guys like you and then throw you away. That’s the real reason I divorced you, Charlie. You was headed for the junkpile the day you was born. I just didn’t want to be there to see it.”

  “Christ, Liz, I’m talking about my life!”

  “Me, too. Just a second.” She withdrew, leaving the door open.

  He felt the old warmth returning. Same old Liz: deliver a lecture, then turn around and come through after all. It was like enduring a sermon at the Perpetual Mission in return for a hot meal and a roof for the night.

  “Here.” Returning, she thrust a fistful of something through the opening. He reached for it eagerly. His fingers closed on cold steel.

  “You nuts? I ain’t fired a gun since the army!”

  “It’s all I got to give you. Don’t let them find out where it came from.”

  “What good is it against a dozen men with guns?”

  “No good, the way you’re thinking. I wait tables in Redman’s neighborhood. I hear things. He likes blowtorches. Don’t let them burn you alive, Charlie.”

  She shut the door. The lock snapped with a noise like jaws closing.

  It was a clear night. The Budweiser sign in the window of the corner bar might have been cut with an engraving tool out of orange neon. Someone gasped when he emerged from the apartment building. A woman in evening dress hurried past on a man’s arm, her face tight and pale in the light coming out through the glass door, one brown eye rolling back at Murch. He’d forgotten about the gun. He put it away.

  His subsequent pounding had failed to get Liz to open her door. If he’d wanted a weapon he’d have gotten it himself; the city bristled with unregistered iron. He fingered the unfamiliar thing in his pocket, wondering where to go next. His eyes came to the bright sign in the window.

  Blood surged in his ears. Murch’s robberies had all been from company treasuries, not people; his weapons figures in ledgers. Demanding money for lives required a steady hand and the will to carry out the threat. It was too raw for him, too much like crime. He started walking away from the bar. His footsteps slowed halfway down the block and stopped twenty feet short of the opposite corner. He turned around and retraced his steps. He was squeezing the concealed revolver so hard his knuckles ached.

  The establishment was quiet for that time of the evening, deserted but for a young bartender in a red apron standing at the cash register. The jukebox was silent. As Murch approached, the employee turned unnaturally bright eyes on him. The light from the beer advertisement reflecting off the bar’s cherrywood finish flushed the young man’s face. “Sorry, friend, we’re—”

  Murch pointed the .38 at him. His hand shook.

  The bartender smiled weakly.

  “This ain’t no joke! Get ’em up!” He tried to make his voice tough. It came
out high and ragged.

  Slowly the young man raised his hands. He was still smiling. “You’re out of luck, friend.”

  Murch told him to shut up and open the cash register drawer. He obeyed. It was empty.

  “Someone beat you to it, friend. Two guys with shotguns came in an hour ago, shook down the customers, and cleaned me out, even my wallet. Didn’t even leave enough to open up with in the morning. You just missed the cops.”

  His smile burned. Murch’s finger tightened on the trigger and the expression was gone. The bookkeeper backed away, bumped into a table. The gun almost went off. He turned and stumbled toward the door. He tugged at the handle; it didn’t budge. The sign said PUSH. He shoved his way through to the street. Looking back, he saw the bartender dialing a telephone.

  The night air stung Murch’s face, and he realized there were tears on his cheeks. His thoughts fluttered wildly. He caught them and sorted them into piles with the discipline of one trained to work with assets and debits. Redman couldn’t have known he would pick this particular bar to rob, even had he suspected the bookkeeper’s desperation would make him choose that course. Blind luck had decided whom to favor, and as usual it wasn’t Charlie Murch.

  A distant siren awakened him to practicalities. Soon he would be a fugitive from the law as well as from Redman.

  He pocketed the gun and ran.

  His breath was sawing in his throat two blocks later when he spotted a cab stopped at a light. He sprinted across to it, tore open the back door, and threw himself into a seat riddled with cigarette burns.

  “Off duty, bub,” said the driver, hanging a puffy, stubbled face over the back of his seat. “Oil light’s on. I’m on my way back to the garage.”

  There was no protective panel between the seats. He thrust the handgun in the driver’s face and thumbed back the hammer.

  The man sighed heavily. “All I got’s twelve bucks and change. I ain’t picked up a fare yet.”

  He was probably lying, but the light was green and Murch didn’t want to be arrested arguing with a cabbie. “Just drive.”

  They passed a prowl car on its way toward the bar, its siren gulping, its lights flashing. Murch fought the urge to duck, hiding the gun instead. The county lock-up was full of men who would ice him just to get in good with Redman.

  He got an idea that frightened him. He tried tucking it away, but it kept coming back.

  “Mister, my engine’s overheating.”

  Murch glanced up. The cab was making clunking noises. The warning light on the dash glowed angry red. They had gone nine blocks.

  “All right, pull over.”

  The driver spun the wheel. As he rolled to a stop next to the curb the motor coughed, shuddered, and died. Steam rolled out from under the hood.

  “Start counting.” His passenger reached across the front seat and tore the microphone free of the two-way radio. “Don’t get out till you reach a thousand. If you do, you won’t have time to be sorry you did.” He slid out and slammed the door on six.

  He caught another cab four blocks over, this time without having to use force. It was a twenty-dollar ride out to the posh residential district where Jules Redman lived. He tipped the cabbie five dollars. He had no more use for money.

  The house was a brick ranchstyle in a quiet cul-de-sac studded with shade trees. Murch found the hike to the front door effortless; for the first time in hours he was without pain. On the step he took a deep breath, let half of it out, and rang the bell. He took out the gun. Waited.

  After a lifetime the door was opened by a very tall young man in a tan jacket custom made to contain his enormous chest. It was Randolph, Redman’s favorite bodyguard. His eyes flickered when he recognized the visitor. A hand darted inside his jacket.

  The reports were very loud. Murch fired a split second ahead of Randolph, shattering his sternum and throwing off his aim so that the second bullet entered the bookkeeper’s left thigh. He’d never been shot before; it was oddly sensationless, like the first time he’d had sex. The bodyguard crumpled.

  Murch stepped across him. He could feel the hot blood on his leg, nothing else. Just then Redman appeared in an open doorway beyond the staircase. When he saw Murch he froze. He was wearing a maroon velvet robe over pajamas and his feet were in slippers.

  The bookkeeper was motionless as well. What now? He hadn’t expected to get this far. He had shot Randolph in self-defense; he couldn’t kill a man in cold blood, not even this one, not even when that was the fate he had planned for Murch.

  Redman understood. He smiled under his moustache. “Like I said before, Charlie, you just don’t live right.”

  Another large man came steadily through a side door, towed by the automatic pistol in his hand. He was older than Randolph and wore neither jacket nor necktie, his empty underarm holster exposed. This was the other bodyguard. He held up before the sight that met his eyes.

  “Kill him, Ted.”

  Murch’s bullet splintered one of the steps in the staircase. He’d aimed at the banister, but that was close enough. “Next one goes between your boss’s eyes,” he said.

  Ted laid his gun on the floor and backed away from it, raising his hands.

  The bookkeeper felt no triumph. He wondered if it was fear that was making him numb or if he just didn’t care. To Redman: “Over there.” He gestured with the .38 toward Randolph’s gun where he’d dropped it when he fell.

  The racketeer stayed put. “You’re losing blood, Charlie.”

  “Shut up.” He cocked the hammer.

  Redman took a step toward the pistol.

  “Pick it up. Slow,” he added, as Redman stooped to obey.

  He accepted the firearm with his free hand and dropped it carefully in a pocket to avoid smearing the fingerprints. To Ted: “Get the car.”

  Murch was waiting in front with his hostage when the bodyguard drove the Cadillac out of the garage. “Okay, get out.”

  Ted slid out from under the wheel. Murch made Redman take his place and climbed in on the passenger’s side. “Start driving. I’ll tell you what turns to make.” He spoke through clenched teeth. His leg was starting to ache and he was feeling lightheaded.

  In the side mirror, the bodyguard stood watching them until they reached the end of the driveway. Then he swung around and sprinted back inside.

  “He’ll be on the phone to the others in two seconds,” Redman said. “How far you think you’ll get before you bleed out?”

  “Turn right.”

  The big car took the bumps well. Even so, each one was like a red-hot knife in his thigh. He made himself as comfortable as possible without taking his eyes off the driver, the revolver resting in his lap with his hand on the butt. He welcomed Redman’s taunts. They distracted him from his pain, kept his mind off the drowsiness welling up inside him like warm water filling a tub. He wasn’t so far from content.

  The dead bodyguard would take explaining. But a paraffin test would reveal that he’d fired a weapon recently, and the gun in Murch’s pocket was likely registered to Randolph. Redman’s prints on the butt and the fact the dead man had worked for him, together with the bullet in Murch’s leg and a clear motive in his testimony in the bribery trial, would put his old boss inside for a long time for attempted murder. “Left here.”

  The lights of the Fourteenth Precinct were visible down the block. Detective Sergeant Kirdy’s precinct, the home of the kind, proud grandfather who had protected Murch during the trial. Murch told Redman to stop the car. It felt good to give him that last order.

  Charlie Murch had stopped being one of the used.

  He recognized Kirdy’s blocky shape hastily descending the front steps as he followed Redman out the driver’s side and called to him. The sergeant shielded his eyes with one hand against the glare of the headlights, squinted at the two figures coming toward him, one limping, the other in a bathrobe being pushed out ahead. He drew his Magnum from his belt holster. Murch gestured to show friendship. The noise the policeman’s gun
made was deafening, but Murch never heard it.

  “That was quick thinking, Sergeant.” Hands in the pockets of his robe, Redman looked down at Murch’s body spread-eagled in the gutter. A crowd was gathering.

  “We got the squeal on your kidnapping a few minutes ago,” Kirdy said. “I was just heading out there when you two showed.”

  “You ought to make lieutenant for this.”

  The sergeant’s kind eyes glistened. “That’d be great, Mr. Redman. The wife and kids been after me for years to get off the street.”

  “You will if there’s any justice. How’s that pretty granddaughter of yours, by the way?”

  Bad Blood

  This one is an exercise in style; the ironic twist came as a surprise even to me.

  • • •

  Light spread gray through the sycamores, igniting billions of hanging droplets with the black trunks standing among them looking not fixed to the earth but suspended from above like stalactites. A mockingbird awoke to release its complex scan into the sopping air. There was no answer and the song was not repeated. Leaves crackled, drying.

  The man was already awake, a tense silhouette against a yellowing sun louvered by vertical tree shafts, a knee on the ground, the other drawn up to his chest and one fist wrapped around a rifle with its butt planted in the moist earth. His profile was sharp, with a pointed nose like a check mark, the angle dramatized by a long stiff bill tilting down from a green cap with JOHN DEERE embossed in block letters in a patch on the front of the crown. His shirt was coarse and blue under a red-and-black-checked jacket with darns on the elbows. His jeans had been blue but were now earth-colored, like his boots under their cake of silver clay. He had been there in that position since an hour before dawn.

  From where he was crouched, the ground fell off forty-five degrees to a berry thicket that girdled the mountain. The thicket had been transplanted by his great-grandfather from a nearby bog and allowed to grow wild until it resembled the tangled barbed wire in which the great-grandfather’s son would snare himself thirty years later and wait for the Germans to discover him in a muddy place called Ypres. This natural barrier had trapped a number of local men the same way, to wait like the soldier and, now, like the soldier’s grandson for the dawn and what the dawn would bring. The slope bristled with leafed trees and cedars and twisted jack pines, heirs to the great towering monarchs that had fallen to the timber boom of another century. Their black stumps still dotted the mountainside like rotted teeth.