The Lioness Is the Hunter

by Loren D. Estleman

  * * *

  He was living in a house in the old Corktown district, on the cusp between the vanishing Irish and the burgeoning Mexican population, close enough to Most Holy Trinity Church to feel the chill when its Norman spires cast it in shadow. The fact that he’d signed a two-year lease was evidence he was settling down; either that, or he’d just gotten tired of the Bedouin life. He still had a prosthetic leg and a patch on his skull to remind him of why he’d become a moving target in the first place, but since the people who make bombs have broadened their objective to include private citizens along with muckraking journalists, he was just as unsafe traveling as standing still.

  It was a turn-of-the-twentieth-century bungalow that would smell of corned beef and cabbage every time a resident broke through the plaster. The present owner had painted it a cheerful yellow, trimmed it with white, and replaced all the original wood-sash windows with double-glazed panes in aluminum frames; a homey little place that went with Barry’s personality like Raggedy Ann with G.I. Joe.

  But his less paranoid circumstances didn’t make me feel any more secure when I saw his front door was ajar. Nobody does that in Detroit.

  At least, nobody who owns the door.

  EIGHTEEN

  I didn’t touch the door or call out his name. I went back to the car, retrieved the .38 I’d transferred to the glove compartment in order to drive comfortably, checked the cylinder, and recrossed the sidewalk, holding the gun down alongside my leg to avoid drawing attention from the neighbors. A trigger-happy town had gotten worse since concealed-carry went viral.

  I palmed the door open slowly in case the hinges needed oiling, flattening my back against it and pivoting inside with it. The house was a square box, no deeper than it was wide, with the living room taking up most of the space. Barry had torn out a partition from between it and the kitchen, allowing sunlight to stream in from the eastern side. It made the place even more cheerful and deepened the sense of dread. Sections of the Free Press made tents on the rug, and there was a sticky-looking ceramic mug and a scrap of toast on a saucer on the coffee table; bachelor stuff. No signs that anyone had put up a fight.

  An open arch led into the small dining room, which Barry had turned into his office. He never turned off his computer. The flat-screen monitor on the retired FBI shooting stand he used for a desk made little gasping noises shifting screen-saver images: mug shots of mostly dead mobsters, a pair of shiny shoes poking out the end of a striped sheet some sensitive cop had spread over a corpse on a barbershop floor, a courtroom shot of a capo currently residing in the federal corrections house in Milan, Michigan, towing his oxygen tank; all Barry’s stock-in-trade. The cooling fan whirred in the tower. His swivel chair with its built-in orthopedic support stood slightly off-center, waiting for a reunion with his sore back. A Maker’s Mark bottle stood three-quarters-full where his right elbow belonged, next to a squat thick-bottomed glass. I sniffed at the glass, twisted the cap off the bottle, sniffed at that, and swallowed a bracer straight from the neck. I don’t like bourbon as a rule, but this was a medicinal situation.

  I doubted his computer would enlighten me even if I knew how to work the thing. He’d told me more than once he’d rigged all his devices to play dumb whenever he went offline, and his firewall was better than Langley’s.

  The door opposite the desk was open a few inches. I pushed it the rest of the way with the barrel of the gun and looked at an unmade bed, a copy of Hour Detroit lying open facedown on a nightstand, some clothes in a closet, more clothes in a three-drawer bureau. I pushed around the shirts in the top drawer, picked up a Glock Fifty, sprang out the magazine, put the muzzle to my nose. It was loaded up tight, with one in the chamber, and hadn’t been fired since its last cleaning.

  I knew then Barry hadn’t left on his own. He might have grown complacent enough to venture out unarmed, but he wouldn’t leave the weapon at home without locking his door.

  Back in the living room I checked his answering machine. The robo-voice that came with the instrument told me there were no messages. I tried redial. An operator answered. I hung up without saying anything. Barry automatically dialed O every time he finished a conversation. Star sixty-nine was just as unhelpful; he’d fixed a way to keep anyone from finding out who’d called him most recently.

  No, his enemies couldn’t trace him. But neither could his friends. This one was left to wonder if he’d gotten himself in trouble or if I’d brought it to him.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Child worked out of 1300 Beaubien, still the Detroit Police Department’s official headquarters until more space opened up in the old third precinct where most of the staff had emigrated. The original, from the outside an impressive Deco pile overlooking the lively Greektown neighborhood, was rotting from the top down, kind of like the city, and most of the personnel had moved to the lower floors to lessen the impact when the collapse began. It smelled of dry rot and pre-war cigars.

  The situation was just as cramped, so he’d forfeited the privacy of his own office for a steel desk in a corner by a window with a view of the Greektown Casino, where the owners had erected a scaffold to redo the façade along the lines of the out-of-state chain that had bought it. Either he was a masochist or he chose the site to remind himself to stay on his toes. A few months earlier, an off-duty armored car guard had walked up to a cash truck parked in front of the casino, told the guard on duty to open the hatch, and walked away lugging half a million dollars in cash in sacks. That insult, committed right under the DPD’s nose, had led to an arrest in record time. A run-of-the-mill homicide could wait while that one was processed.

  In a suit without stripes he looked even wider top-side than before. Hair cuttings pasted the collar of this outfit, same as the last, but they hadn’t been there more than a day. He must have liked his barber well enough to overlook his shortcomings with brush and blower, to visit him at least twice a week.

  He heard me out, running a broad palm across his already showroom-smooth chin. The clock plugged into the wall behind him made sizzling noises in the silence after.

  “Gone less than forty-eight, you say?” he asked then.

  “I just talked to him yesterday. But if you knew his history you’d know he didn’t leave on his own, so let’s wave that rubbish about protocol.”

  He wasn’t the arguing type. He lifted his receiver, made the report, and hung up. “Deb Stonesmith’s running Missing Persons now. She don’t let the grass grow.”

  “She doesn’t. I met her when she was with Major Crimes, before they broke it up. Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  “You think you hit a nerve at one of those Peaceable Shore places?”

  “Barry’s got his own set of enemies, but the timing’s interesting. I didn’t mention his name in either of them, but it wouldn’t be hard to trace me to an old news story or two with his byline. It’s no great leap from there to figuring out he’s my main information broker. Seal him off and I’m half blind.” I’d told him about the rehab place in Warren with its own drug-delivery service and the skin treatment center on the river. He stopped me when I got to the massage parlor by the airport.

  “We cooperated with County on that one. It was one of a string owned by a South Korean national that got himself booted to Buddha when he tried to move in on a competitor. The feds shut down the others. He was too lawyered up for us to waste the taxpayers’ time on him before; but things have a way of working themselves out, don’t they?”

  “Sometimes. Most times they need a nudge.”

  “Meaning from someone with big fat elbows like you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He spotted one of the loose clippings, pried it loose with a fingernail, studied it like an entomologist examining a bug, and scraped it off on the edge of his tin wastebasket. “Offhand, the skin joint’s the place to start, given its history. Except you didn’t make any contact there.”

  “If someone saw me, recognized me, made the connection to Barry, and moved at t
he speed of light to scoop him up. I don’t buy it.”

  “Me either.” He snapped open a handkerchief and wiped the barber slickum off his finger. “I’ll see what the boys in Narc have on the Warren operation; that Atwater crowd too. I imagine the Mexican miracle drug’s just as popular with them itch-scratchers. Could be your friend’s been raking some muck in that racket. They saw your card, and like you say, you and Stackpole aren’t a state secret.

  “I’d like it better if this has something to do with our business downtown,” he said then. “My money’s still on Haas. I like things nice and obvious.”

  “Anything new there?”

  “Nope. The daughter don’t know anything. You?”

  “You’ve got what I’ve got.”

  “Okay for now.” He was looking at me the same way he’d looked at that rogue hair. “This isn’t a blank check. You got two detectives bending the rules and flirting with the wrong end of influence-peddling, and cops can hold a grudge till it screams, especially when they think you’re playing things too close to the buttons.”

  “I’ve heard that one, Lieutenant. I can sing it word-for-word in the shower.”

  “Brother, you never been so naked as you are right now.”

  I calculated the odds of spilling what I suspected against each minute I sat facing his desk, got up, and left, not forgetting to thank him for his time. Mom always said a kind word is a pass into heaven.

  NINETEEN

  When I got back to the hutch, Gwendolyn Haas was sitting on the padded bench in the room where customers trickled in to count the bubbles in the wallpaper, stroking the screen of a handheld device with a thumb. The palette today was slate-blue, from silk blouse to starched skirt to modest heels. It was an even better choice for her red hair and pale skin, and a woman with legs as good as hers should have done away with slacks entirely. It made up for the slight spread of her waist. Well, we were all taking up more space than fashion intended.

  I couldn’t tell if she’d been waiting five minutes or all day, and maybe neither could she. That three-by-five screen sucked people into a void where time had no value.

  “Your magazines are stale,” she said without looking up. “But then, who reads them anymore?”

  For once I had no comeback. I unlocked the door to the confessional and stood aside. She got up, her stiff skirt rustling, and went in past me, still thumbing her doohickey. Only when she was back in the customer’s chair did she put it in her purse—a blue one this time, to match her outfit, slightly smaller than a golf bag—and look around. “You made a joke about a ficus, but you should have some kind of plant. It creates the illusion of life.”

  “Not when you forget to water it.” I sat down, took a half-turn in the swivel, and broke a bottle of good Scotch out of the safe. It was a birthday present; I made a note to send myself a thank-you card. “Join me?” I selected two glasses from the stationery drawer and set them on the desk. “No ice, sorry. I can cut it from the tap, if you don’t mind a little rust.”

  I made the offer half-expecting to offend her into leaving. I was feeling cranky. She called my bluff. “I can use the iron. I’m anemic.”

  In the little water closet I poured two inches, went back, and stained it a pale gold, watching her. She observed the operation without nodding until it turned the shade of old bronze. I brought my own glass to the same level, without water.

  “Don’t read anything into this,” I said, twisting the cap back on. “I’m a little bruised today.”

  She picked up her glass, drank off the top, and sat back cradling it. Her skim-milk cheeks pinkened slightly. “Me, too. I heard from Dad.”

  * * *

  I sliced off the same amount. “In person or over the phone?”

  “Neither.” She moved a bunch of junk around inside her bag, drew out a Number 10 envelope, and flipped it onto the desk. “Someone slid it under the door of my apartment, sometime this morning. I was up late last night. It was there when I got up.”

  I looked at it without picking it up. There was no writing on it, just the Velocity logo with the hollow V with racing lines running through it on cream-colored rag stock.

  “I was careful to handle it by the edges.” She shrugged when I looked at her blankly. “Fingerprints.”

  “Oh, no one bothers with those anymore. It’s all genetics now.” I drank again.

  “Aren’t you going to open it and read it?”

  “Tell me what’s in it.”

  “But it’s right there!”

  “You couldn’t prove that by me. All I know is what you said; which is what I’ll tell the cops if they ask. They have to ask. Hearsay isn’t evidence. I can’t go to jail for withholding it. If I were to read what you say is in that envelope, and it’s what you say it is, I’d be required to report that you had direct contact with the chief suspect in Carl Fannon’s murder; which is what your father is unless and until he comes forward and is exonerated. Then they wouldn’t have to ask. Do you want the cops to know you heard from him?”

  All trace of pink had vanished. “Dad and I have some issues, but what kind of daughter would I be if I gave him up and somehow he goes to prison for a crime he didn’t commit?”

  “A bitch.”

  The man who invented litmus paper got the idea from a redhead. Her face flushed so deep her freckles vanished. Her knuckles whitened gripping the bag, but she didn’t smack me with it. “For someone who works for me, you seem to be giving all the orders.”

  “If you knew which ones to give, you wouldn’t need me. Right now I’m wishing I’d taken money from you so I could make the grand gesture and give it back. Am I fired?”

  I watched her mood ring of a face shift colors, hoping for red again so I’d be down to two clients, one dead, the other missing; the best kind when it came to having to drop everything and make a report.

  “I don’t like walking on eggs,” she said.

  “No one does, Miss Haas. Take it from someone who does it for a living.”

  She breathed in and out, admired the view through the window, nodded, looked back at me. “He said not to worry about him, that he’s just gone somewhere to think and that I mustn’t think he’s in hiding for anything he’s done, but rather to avoid doing something he finds distasteful. That’s the word he used, ‘distasteful.’ It was always one of his favorites when he felt his partner was stepping over the line. Father looked upon himself as the conscience of the firm. He talked Carl out of some deals that would have put them on the cover of Fortune, just because they struck him as shady.” She leaned forward and tapped the envelope. “I took it from this that this was one of those times when Carl refused to pull out.”

  I made a quarter-turn toward the window to see what had caught her eye. A river gull had lit on the roof of the pseudo-pub across the street and was nibbling lice from under one wing. People who’d swing a shovel at a rat throw peanuts to gulls and pigeons because they have feathers. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me about this, Miss Haas.”

  “But I—Oh.” She turned paler than when she’d come in. “You mean the police could use this as evidence he killed Carl Fannon.”

  “He had means and opportunity, and a dandy motive like smiting his partner in a noble cause could turn a grubby local prosecutor into a national celebrity. That empty bank vault in the Sentinel Building would go on display in the FBI museum next to O.J.’s glove.”

  “You won’t tell anyone we had this conversation.”

  “We didn’t.”

  She nodded again and picked up the envelope. The flap was open and a corner of the sheet folded inside stuck up a quarter-inch, jagged where someone had trimmed it with scissors, probably to remove a printed letterhead. It was dusty pink with a thin green stripe running up the edge.

  I said, “Have you got any cash in that duffel?”

  “Twenty or thirty dollars. Why?”

  “Give me twenty. That makes you my client officially. When the cops bust me for accessory after the fact, I’ll
at least have something to tell them better than I’m working for a dead man.”

  “Does that mean you have something to go on?” The milk face curdled. “You held out on me until I could put something in your pocket?”

  I said something not entirely under my breath. “Lady, if I was going to go to that kind of trouble, don’t you think I’d have held you up for a C-note at least?”

  After she left I picked up the crisp pair of tens she’d put on the desk. Alexander Hamilton looked even smugger than usual, with good reason. Not because I’d now squizzen forty dollars out of the Haases on the same investigation, but because my bad luck was holding. If I’d been looking in another direction, I’d have missed that pink-and-green stationery in Gwendolyn’s envelope, sent by her father; all it would have taken was half a second. As long as I had a lead I was still on the case, and how I got it could put me in the tank down the hall from Emil Haas.

  TWENTY

  Barry still had connections high enough up in the News to get me into the morgue, where a woman in shoulder pads and a floppy bow tie typed my request into a computer and left me standing at the counter long enough to wonder if Working Girl had been the last movie she’d seen before going underground. The room took up all the square footage in the basement where in times past the great cylinder presses had set the building rocking on its foundation; gone to scrap, now. Fluorescents glowed through semi-opaque panels onto open steel shelves with aisles in between, supporting plat-size books of bound early numbers and more recent issues in bright yellow microfilm boxes and discs in plastic cases. Almond-colored file drawers lined a wall that went back into infinity like some gothic scene in a Coen Brothers film. They would contain prints and negatives of all the photos the newspaper had published since Teddy Roosevelt’s last whistle-stop visit.