He kept silent.
“I’m on shakier ground here, so let me know when I step wrong. Paula Royce’s history goes back eighteen months and stops. Even the Iroquois Heights cops can’t go any deeper, and this is the age of computers. Her prints go to Washington and nothing comes back. No one person is that good at hiding his past. Only the government can do that, and it’s a specialty of the Justice Department. Paula Royce, who is not named Royce at all, testified against some of her compatriots in the drug trade, probably though not necessarily in Miami, in return for a new identity and relocation courtesy of Uncle Sam, with a steady allowance thrown in so that she doesn’t have to work for a living. She told me herself she had an outside source of income. Her nationality was changed for extra protection and she was given that dumb story about her parents having been killed in an automobile accident, just in case someone asked about her family. That was unworthy of you fellows; a real paste-up job.”
“No, that part’s true,” Theodore Grundy broke in. “Her parents actually were killed that way. We like to incorporate bits and pieces of a witness’s actual past where we can, for authenticity.”
“Could be you were right. It’s just corny enough to be swallowed by anyone but a suspicious private star. Where you fell down was in failing to cure her of her dependence on prescription drugs. Dorchet was supplying her, or at least he was supplying the parties she went to in Grosse Pointe, until the takeover, when True replaced him. Somewhere along the line True got on to his new employers’ interest in Paula, because he took the trouble to find out where she lived. My thought is he sold them the information and then they sicked one of their cowboys on her.
“He botched the job, as cowboys will. I read it that Paula’s roommate, Bud Broderick, got iced trying to protect her and that the killer panicked and ran without doing the job he came to do. Now the Colombians had to forget about her until things simmered down, and clean up. True knew what had gone down and he was a semi-outsider. This trip they waited until real talent was available, and then they didn’t waste any time. Horn got out of stir Christmas Day. Next morning True was literally dog meat. Which leaves just one question.
“Where’s Paula Royce?”
“She’s dead.”
“That’s my line,” I said. “I used it on Horn for the same reason, and he didn’t believe it any more than I did. Somebody in your department has his record stuck, Grundy. Too many people in her family died in traffic accidents. If she did, you wouldn’t be shadowing me. And that brings me back to what I started with. Why the tail?”
He averted his eyes from the mirror, drummed fingers on the edge of the wheel, looked back at my reflection. “The alias program is one of the strongest weapons we have, Walker. Your poking around threatens to uncover too many of the seams. If how it works gets to be public knowledge we’re back where we were at the time of the old Kefauver Committee hearings. You wouldn’t remember those.”
“I would, barely. You wouldn’t. According to your ID you were born the year they would have aired on television. Feed me the rest.”
“The point is they weren’t very effective, short of kicking off a shortlived campaign to nominate Senator Kefauver for President. The witnesses that could have made a difference there and in similar investigations later were afraid to step forward. It wasn’t until we had developed a system whereby we could offer a ninety-nine percent guarantee of protection from reprisal that we began winning indictments against leading figures in organized crime. The program is—”
“I know what it is. This isn’t a high school auditorium. What you’re trying hard not to say is that your precious program’s fate rests on the fates of the witnesses you help take a powder. You can’t afford the headlines if somebody gets to one of them. For some reason, maybe because it was Christmas Eve, Paula Royce wasn’t able to get hold of a fed the night Broderick was killed in her own house and she knew her cover was blown. So she came to me and asked me to get her the hell away from the area fast. She let me know what had happened, but she didn’t confide the rest, because she had every reason to believe that Yankee Doodle Dandy would be able to take over in a day or so when all the wrapping paper was in the incinerator and the leftover turkey was eaten. And she was right. Two days after I drove her into Windsor so she could crash in a nonexistent cabin belonging to Bud’s stepfather—Mrs. Esterhazy would have told me about it when Bud was missing if there were such a place—while I was cooling my heels in the tank, ‘Paula Royce’ went into Lake Ontario and Thelma Ingolstadt, or whatever new name you gave her, was whisked away to Wyoming or some such place equally inaccessible. You haven’t told me I’m wrong so far.”
“You haven’t given me much chance.” He drummed his fingers again. “If what you say is true—and I’m not saying for one minute that it is—her safety would depend on your going home and forgetting about her. That would be one good reason why I’m following you, to make sure you do. It doesn’t appear that you have.”
“There’s a little matter of my license,” I said. “My license which I don’t got no more on account of I was there to help out when you weren’t.”
“I’ve been wondering about that. She helped us because the bunch we were after killed her brother, who was a low-level guard on their drug shipments until they found out he was funneling some of it off for his own business on the side. We helped her because her testimony was instrumental in breaking up one of the biggest drug rings in Florida. Why did you agree to help her? What did you have to gain?”
“It was Christmas.”
His eyes in the mirror looked confused.
“Forget it. Let’s just say it’s not all Gene Autry and hysterical reminders in the newspaper about how many shopping days are left.” I holstered my .38. “I take it you know as much about who pulled the trigger on Bud Broderick as I do.”
“We don’t have any interest in finding out. He was never our concern.”
“Even if the killer is your star witness?”
He was looking at me over the back of the seat now. His moustache twisted. “They call us the Justice Department. It’s just a name. No one expects us to live up to it.”
I gave him that one. I’d have had to untangle it before I could top it anyway. I broke the clip out of his automatic, ejected the shell from the chamber, stuck it in the clip, and dropped the gun on the front seat. “So long, Grundy. I’ve told me all I need to know.” I tossed the clip onto the ledge under the back window and opened the door.
“Just a second,” he said. “Are you going to continue looking for Paula Royce?”
“As long as Horn is. It has something to do with my picking up a key early on a holiday morning. It doesn’t matter that it was a phony. You wouldn’t understand.”
I got out and slammed the door. He cranked down the window on his side. The glass had frosted over just since we’d been talking. He blinked up at me in the glare of a spot mounted on a pole overhead. “I’m not making any promises. I have to speak with my superiors. Suppose things could be fixed so you got your license back. Would that interest you at all?”
“I hear you talking, Mr. Grundy.”
He smiled the crooked smile. “I thought you might. You’ll be hearing from us.”
He rolled the window back up and started the engine. I stood watching as he backed around and left, one rear tire spinning a little on a slick spot on the pavement. I trotted back to my car. The badge on the visor had bought me a ticket for parking in a loading zone, nothing else.
22
CALL IT CLAIRVOYANCE or crackpot reckoning or a dream’s passing shadow, but it happens. At ten past three the next morning I sat straight up in bed, convinced that Paula Royce was still in the area.
I told myself those things you trot out when a batty idea keeps you awake. I was wrong to begin with, and even if I was right there was nothing I could do about it right away, and probably not at all, and even if I could what business was it of mine? That didn’t work. It had never been any business
of mine from the start.
Why was the Justice Department burning good daylight tailing a busted cop? Not, as Theodore Grundy had intimated, because they were afraid I’d foul their ponderous machinery single-handed. Even Congress couldn’t do that, although it had tried often enough. If I were that much of a danger, they could have taken me out of the picture in less time than it takes a waiter to spit in your eye after you’ve tipped him a quarter. A search of my car alone would turn up the unregistered Luger, which in Michigan is good for a year of planting trees along state highways if the judge feels like leaning.
The papers had filled plenty of space from the official police line that I was the last person to see Paula after Bud Broderick was murdered. The Justice Department, which had a vested interest in her well-being, had then hung a shadow on me. Why? In the hope I’d lead them to where she was hiding. They’d moved fast to rig her death, but that was just a temporary measure to buy time while they located her and spirited her away from harm. Now that they knew I wasn’t cooperating they were going to dangle my license under my nose, and if the carrot failed the stick was next. I’d told Grundy I didn’t know where she was, but guys in his line lie so much about their identities and occupations you couldn’t expect them to recognize the truth if it came up and wet their pantlegs.
The girl had gotten a good dose of just how badly the system could fail when it failed. This time through she decided to trust no one but herself and a P.I. who had nothing to gain from betraying her, and she hadn’t trusted him enough to hand him the whole story. She’d skipped the country until things hotted down, but she’d be back, if only long enough to make connections for parts unknown. It wasn’t as easy to be a fugitive in Canada as it had been at the height of the war in Vietnam. She’d know that. She was smarter than all of us. Smart enough to outsmart herself and land square in the jaws of a hunting thing like Horn.
Around five o’clock I gave up on sleep, climbed into my robe and slippers, and sat down in front of the set to watch a late-late showing of a movie starring George Sanders as The Falcon. I dropped off before he solved the murder and woke up at seven in time for a kiddie show. Next I’d be following the soaps along with all the other hardcore unemployables. I switched off the set and grumped into the bathroom for repairs.
The telephone rang while I was reading about Moses True’s murder in the Free Press after breakfast. Sergeant Somebody of the Michigan State Police post at Northville wanted to know if I’d be in my office later that morning before he sent around a trooper to confiscate my license, CCW permit, and wallet credentials. I said yeah and hung up in his face. But I was glad he’d called. I’d begun to feel like the widow whose life was in suspension until she could get her husband’s remains into the ground and out of the way.
In the light of day, my theory concerning Paula Royce was as full of holes as a catcher’s mask. Even if she had come back, and even if she couldn’t book a flight out during the holidays, she’d have cleared the area fast if she had to do it on foot. It wasn’t until I got to the office and saw again the wreckage of my door that I gave the hunch any weight at all. Horn thought as I did or he wouldn’t have hung around Detroit just to scare the hell out of me. He would at least have gone to Canada to see if he could get a line on her from there. He was a native, after all. His story about avoiding small towns and border crossings was just a story.
I called down to maintenance for a new door. I told Rosecranz, the superintendent, that a professional killer had trashed it by way of showing off. Rosecranz told me to lay off the sauce and I wouldn’t walk into so many doors, and said he’d bill me after the job was done. I don’t know why I bothered. Maybe I could hang astrology charts on the walls and take up telling fortunes. It was bound to pay better than what I’d been doing.
The mail came just before ten. Season’s greetings from two city council members up for re-election, a bill, a magazine sweepstakes, a once-in-a-lifetime offer for an eight-week correspondence course in fingerprinting, and a calendar from my bonding company. I kept the bill and the calendar and tipped everything else into the wastebasket.
My mind was growing weeds. I broke out a deck of cards for some heavy thinking. Sherlock Holmes’s fiddle had nothing on clock solitaire. I was placing a red trey on a black four when I remembered Arthur Stillson.
When I was still recovering from the headache she’d handed me at her place, I’d babbled something to Paula about the lawyer’s side racket involving phony IDs. She was a person who would remember a reference like that when the need arose, and from her experience with the Justice Department she would know just what was required. With a complete new set of papers and a new hairdo she could walk through a double row of hawk-eyed cops and board a plane for anywhere.
I looked up Stillson’s number in the Iroquois Heights book and got a female voice as smooth and hard as polished steel that informed me he was vacationing in the Bahamas and wouldn’t be back until after the first of the year. I thanked her and the conversation was over. I wasn’t disappointed. If I had to wait so did Paula. And if she had to wait, sooner or later she would have to get in touch with Rhett Grissom.
Grissom was the rich kid I’d mussed up about a hundred years ago in Grosse Pointe to find out who was supplying Paula with pills. She would still need them, and with Moses True treading clouds Grissom was the next likely source. If anyone had seen her since Windsor it would be him. I left the cards where they were and snatched my coat and hat off the peg on my way out. On the stairs I passed Rosecranz heading up to my floor with a steel tape measure.
A high small sun shone almost straight down onto the lake, its rays flashing off the choppy cobalt surface. The buildings on the foreign side, glowering on my last visit, looked as scrubbed and bright as children’s faces on Easter morning. Across from them, Detroit was a reflection in a dirty mirror. The garage next to the Grissoms’ Victorian manse was closed and there was no sign of the snowmobile I’d trashed. Rhett probably had two more on order. As I got out of the car, a miserable-looking seagull with wings streaked brown turned a round black eye on me from its roost on a gull-proof roof pike, leaned forward, and twisted its tail to show me what it thought of such precautions.
“Good for you,” I said, stepping up onto the round wooden porch.
The door looked like a giant Hershey bar, deep brown and paneled. It had a screw-you window the size of a jeweler’s eyepiece that was as much Renaissance Detroit as it was nineteenth-century London. I pressed a mother-of-pearl button and waited for an eye to appear. When none did I pressed again, then knocked, and I was still waiting. I tried the knob. It gave. I had a premonition. I was going to make a discovery I would regret.
The front parlor—“living room” didn’t quite do it—was large enough to make a lot of antique furniture look like a little, skylit, and paved to within six inches of the walls with a bland rug that was as old as Christianity and just had to have cost as much as some houses. It reminded me of home, if home were an exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum. The other rooms on the ground floor were almost as big, every bit as stiff and expensively furnished, and just as empty of Rhett Grissom. The kitchen looked as it had the last time I was in it. There was a room on the second floor that had been a ballroom but now contained spoiled plants flourishing in fat pots, two bedrooms half as large, and a den in a tower room overlooking the lake. A matronly lady with thick arms and legs in a maid’s uniform and fluffy gray hair under a white cap was bent over a glass-topped desk in the den, shoving around a chamois dust cloth for all she was worth. She straightened, turned, saw me, and jumped twelve feet. She had a thick East European nose and blue eyes that were faded and frightened.
“Rhett’s friend?” she inquired hopefully. Living in Hamtramck as long as I had been, I knew a Polish accent when I heard it.
“Kind of,” I said, when I remembered what my tongue was for. Old Hawkshaw here hadn’t expected to run into a maid in a Grosse Pointe mansion. “I rang and knocked. No one answered.”
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“What?”
I said it all again. She repeated, “What?” That time I got the message. “Where’s Rhett?” I shouted it.
“People walk in, people walk out, all the time. In, out like a hotel. Parties. Parties day and night. A burglar could walk in, a sex fiend, how’d I know he isn’t Rhett’s friend?”
“Rhett,” I bellowed. “Where is he?”
“Rhett’s friend?”
I was living an ethnic joke. “Where is Rhett?” Long pauses between words as I wrote them in the air.
“Where’s Rhett?”
I nodded. My hat shook loose. I caught it and jammed it back on.
“Where’s Rhett, how’d I know where’s Rhett? Two, t’ree days no Rhett, then party. Who cleans up after Rhett’s parties? Not Rhett.”
“Okay if I look around for him?”
“What?”
I waved good-bye.
The place had four bathrooms. He wasn’t in any of them. I went outside through the kitchen. The garage and the boat house were locked, the latter with a padlock on the outside. Through the garage window I saw a yellow Lamborghini and a black-and-silver Eldorado and some odds and ends of garage stuff, spotless rags and tools that didn’t look as if they’d ever been used. The Eldorado would be for winter driving so the Italian job wouldn’t rust out. The crunched snowmobile was parked between them. He hadn’t repaired it yet. The bath house down by the lake was open and empty. I wandered around the grounds and out to the end of the wharf. The view was pretty even in winter. The water made little slurping sounds on the sandy shore.
I almost walked back up the dock to leave. I can’t say why I didn’t. Call it instinct or gut feeling or just that same atavistic caution that makes a child look under his bed before going to sleep. I got down on my knees on aging boards slimy with fish scales and guano and curled my fingers around the edge and peered underneath. At first I didn’t see anything. Then my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light reflecting up off the water and casting crawling haloes on the dark underside of the dock and the thing trapped there and bobbing on the polite tide.
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