“If you’re looking for a job, Walker, we’re fresh out of openings on the custodial staff. We’ll always be fresh out when you call.”
“Nothing of the sort, Proust,” I said. “I just called to ask if you thought we might have snow for New Year’s Day and if you might be interested in withdrawing the charges against my license if I hand you Bud Broderick’s murderer.”
“Haven’t they buried her yet?” He sounded pleased with his wit.
“If you mean Paula Royce, there’s a law against burying women alive in this state. I’m standing across from her right now.”
A swivel chair squealed miles away. “Shoot it to me.” He wasn’t pleased now.
“She’s not the one you want anyway. She never was, but you wouldn’t have cared about that, which is why she didn’t have to look too far to find someone to get her to Canada. The killer is also in the room. Now, if you and Cecil Fish want me to go to the press with the girl whose death you both confirmed, we will have some cameras. I just thought you might like to be able to throw the real culprit at the folks who ask what about Paula Royce. But I’m often wrong. So long, Proust.” I started to hang up.
“Walker? Walker!”
I put the receiver back to my ear. “Yeah.”
There was a muffled noise on the other end, as of someone talking to someone else with a hand over the mouthpiece.
“Proust?”
“Okay, Walker, deal. If what you got is good enough.”
“I think you’ll agree it is.” I gave him the address in Grosse Pointe.
“That’s out of our jurisdiction.”
“I know. I’m calling the G.P.P.D. next. You might call them too and let them know you’re coming. Send Bloodworth. If Zorn wants to come along he can, but if he messes the rug, out he goes.”
“They’re on their way, fucker. Ten minutes. And Walker?”
“Yeah.”
“If this turns out to be nothing I’ll nail your balls over my office door.”
“Colorful, Proust. But not original.”
He made a rude noise and rang off.
Next I called the Grosse Pointe cops and talked to Captain Quincannon.
“I don’t want those crooked bastards in my yard,” he said coldly, after I’d filled him in.
I said, “They’re not all crooked, Captain. And this did start out to be their case.”
“Working a deal, are you?”
“I have to eat.”
“I heard it before. Be there in five.”
Paula was glaring at me when I put down the instrument. “Pretty slick.”
“If I were that I would have stayed in the army and been a lieutenant colonel by now.”
“Is that true what you said about helping me because you thought I was innocent?”
“Me lie to a cop?”
“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t let me go to jail while you investigated the murder.”
“You said yourself I’d promised to help.”
“And you said that wasn’t meant to be a blank check.”
“You I lied to.”
She was watching me with a look I’ve seen a couple of times, too far apart. “I don’t think I ever knew anyone like you,” she said.
“There used to be a lot of us.”
I was still watching Fern. She was slumped on the sofa, one arm dangling over the edge, knees sprawled apart. She looked like something wrung out and flung into a corner. A fresh cigarette smoked untended in an ashtray on the end table. I walked over and put it out. I’m a compulsive or I wouldn’t have done that and left her gun lying next to the telephone. I might as well have chucked it out the window and thrown myself after it. When I turned around at Paula’s gasp, Horn was smiling at me from the apartment doorway.
27
“GO AHEAD,” he said.
He stood just inside the threshold, just a large mild-looking fattish man in the same blue suit and gray coat he’d been wearing when I met him. His hands were at his sides and one of the coat sleeves that were too long for his short arms hung down over the bandage on his wrist, concealing it. With his enormous chest and broad face he looked like a professional wrestler who had retired and gone to work in the front office.
He’d followed my eyes to the gun on the table. I was ten feet closer to it than he was, just a step and a scoop away, but I didn’t try for it. “I’ll pass,” I told him. “I’ve seen you move.” I didn’t mention the revolver behind my hip. He was too fast even for that.
Something like disappointment fluttered over his fair features, but he covered up well. His friendly eyes moved to the woman on the sofa. “Hello, Fern.”
Fern didn’t respond. She was sitting up straight now, her hands braced on the cushions. Her breathing was audible.
Paula stood in the middle of the room with her back to the casement window. She’d guessed the newcomer’s identity, but you’d have to have seen her in various situations to realize that. A slight whitening around the nostrils, flesh pulled taut and shiny across cheeks and forehead. But for that she might have been waiting for a bus.
Fear crept into the room like cold through an open window.
Horn closed the door behind him without turning around. His slightest movements were hypnotic. They had the velvet-wrapped power of a bear pacing its cage.
He was still looking at Fern. “I spoke to your stepmother over the phone. She wouldn’t tell me where you’d moved, so I went out there and talked to the neighbors. I told them I was your second husband’s lawyer and that I had to have your signature on some papers. Somebody remembered the name printed on the moving van. I called the company and they gave me this address. You’re a lot short of smart, Fern. Miles short.”
“I had to do it.” She spoke rapidly. “She said if I didn’t take her in she’d tell what happened Christmas Eve. I was going to call you, Fletcher.”
“No, you weren’t. Her body in your apartment would have been harder to explain. Besides, you’re afraid of me.”
She forced her mouth into a pleasant expression, got up, started snaking toward him in a jerky parody of her usual style. She put her arms around his neck. He was an inch taller. She kissed him lingeringly. I worked a hand inside my coat and around behind.
“Still think I’m afraid?” she asked him, coming up.
Horn hadn’t moved. He was wearing the same tight-lipped smile he’d had on when he came in. He reached up and grasped her wrists in both hands. She took in her breath. I knew that hold. He brought his hands down and out to the sides, twisting her elbows in. She sank to her knees, whimpering.
“You should’ve just done your part and backed out.” His tone betrayed all the effort of a fat dog snoozing in the shade. “Now I’ll have to mop up, and you know how I hate working for free.”
“Let her go, Horn.”
He looked at me, then at the .38 in my hand. His smile may have flickered a little. He relaxed his grip. Fern folded the rest of the way to the floor and lay in a heap of red hair and long legs at his feet. She was sobbing for real now.
Horn said, “I still got rust in my joints or that wouldn’t have happened. I was counting on that present I left you in your car to keep you from getting tangled up in my feet. You want my hands up or what? I’m unarmed.”
“You’re never that. Fold them across your chest.”
He obliged. It seemed to amuse him.
“Let’s talk,” I said. “Why’d you kill Moses True?”
“I never said I did.”
“We’ll pretend.”
“He was trying to chew both ends of the string. He found out where Paula Royce lived and offered to sell the address to my employers. They laughed at him and said they could find that out without his help. Then he threatened to go to the cops if they didn’t pay him off. They paid him off.”
“Why’d you strangle him?”
“The day I need anything more than my hands to cool a dud like True is the day I retire. The same goes for his fucking dogs.”
“Today’s the day. What about Rhett Grissom? He gave you the information you were after or you wouldn’t be here. He wasn’t the kind to hold out so long you had to beat him to death.”
“We’re just pretending, remember. I said I was rusty. I forgot to pull my punches.”
“I think it’s more than that. I think you slipped your cog. Get out of here,” I told Paula.
She stayed put. I said it again, and then she started hesitantly toward the door. I glanced at her and away from Horn, which was my second big mistake that day. When I looked back he was moving.
He caught my gun hand with the side of his foot just as my finger pulsed on the trigger. The report gulped up all the sound in the room. Something shattered, the noise falling tinnily on my battered eardrums. Horn pivoted clear around on the other foot and kicked me in the ribs. My coat saved them from breakage, but my lungs turned inside out and I staggered. Before I could catch my balance, the edge of a stiffened hand came down on my forearm and I wasn’t holding the gun any longer. I had True’s mongrel to thank for his not having broken my arm; it obviously hurt him to use that hand. Lucky me.
I hadn’t fought straight karate style since my M.P. training, and no one had been out to kill anyone that time. But instinct is a powerful weapon. Instead of resisting I went with the blow, spinning on the ball of my left foot and slicing the stiffened fingers of my right hand into where his solar plexus would have been had he cooperated. He twisted just in time for me to graze his rib cage instead. I was rewarded with a loud grunt and a whoosh of spent breath. I jabbed at his eyes with my other hand. He ducked and shouldered me low in the abdomen, tearing me off my feet. My elbow struck the floor and my arm went numb. I tried to roll, but he was on top of me too quickly. Fingers closed around my throat.
Over his beefy shoulder I glimpsed a flash of red hair, and then Fern was gone out the door. I decided I didn’t blame her. Then I forgot about her. Horn’s breath hissed through his teeth, flecking my face with spittle. He was the only one of us who was breathing. I rabbit-punched him behind the ear as hard as I had ever hit anyone or anything. All I did was hurt my hand. My vision turned black around the edges.
A fresh explosion rocked the room. An astonished “Huh!” broke from Horn, and his weight sagged. His grip on my throat went slack. Sweet air poured down into my lungs. Paula’s face hovered somewhere overhead, behind the smoking blue mouth of the .32 automatic thrust out in front of her in both hands. Her eyes were very large.
I was starting to push out from under the limp sack of meat when it went rigid, and then Horn was up on one knee and pivoting. I shouted a warning. It came out a strangled croak. Before Paula could move, he swept a hand around and grasped the gun by its barrel and twisted. The muzzle spat red and blue fire. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the casement window collapse in a slow-motion shower of glittering iridescence, all in eerie silence because I was still deafened by the earlier blast. The gun came free as Horn rose and backhanded Paula with his empty hand. She spun and collided with the telephone table, overturning it and sending Ma Bell’s instrument flying. I got a hand under me to push myself up.
“Horn!”
The amplified address squeezed past the ringing in my ears. It must have been nearly as loud as the shots. Horn froze. He was holding the automatic by its butt now, standing halfway between me on the floor and the girl half-reclining on the dislodged table and the debris that had scattered when it fell.
“Horn!” repeated the deep voice. “This is the police. All the exits are covered. Throw out your weapon and come out with your hands on top of your head or we’ll open fire.”
I started to get up. Horn switched hands on the gun and covered me. “You stay there!”
I sank back down on one hip. My breath was rasping in my throat. Horn reached down and grabbed Paula’s arm and yanked her stumbling to her feet. She was still trying to catch her balance when he flung an arm around her neck and propelled her toward the open door that led to the stairs. His right side under the coat was slick with blood where the bullet from the .32 had grazed him.
“I got a woman hostage here!” he shouted. “Anyone gets near me I blow her backbone out her belly.” He jammed the gun into her ribs and twisted it until she squealed.
There was a short silence. Then:
“What do you want, Horn?” The voice sounded weary and vaguely familiar over the bullhorn. My ears were beginning to open up. The voice belonged to Captain Quincannon.
The killer chortled. “That’s better. I want all you cops to clear out. Out of the building, off the street. I got a nice new car parked down the block. I see a uniform or anyone who looks like he’s someone who might be a cop on my way there, it’ll be just too bad for the woman. Got that?” Another pause. “I said, ‘Got that?’ ”
“Can’t do it. Why don’t you just give yourself up and save us the trouble of shooting you?”
“I’m not in the business of saving cops trouble! You want raw meat? We deliver. I got nothing to lose.”
“He means it, Captain,” I called.
“Walker? That you?”
I said it was. “Horn’s a professional. Pros don’t have to bluff.”
Silence again. Quincannon broke it, without the bullhorn this time.
“You win, Horn. Give us ten minutes to clear the street.”
“You got five!” He winked at me. “You and me next time.”
I said nothing.
A general rustle of movement floated up the stairs. Horn nudged the door farther open with the end of his gun to watch down the stairwell, holding Paula in front of him.
I glanced around the room quickly. My revolver had come to rest against the base of the stereo cabinet. Well, it was the next logical step, logic being what it had been lately. I took a breath and rolled.
Horn shouted and fired. I didn’t bother to see where the bullet went. It didn’t hit me, anyway. I fell on top of the .38 and scrambled to get it and me into position. While I was doing all this I was dead five times. But Paula was struggling to get loose, kicking him in the shins with her bare heels and jostling his gun arm. I shot him under that arm. At that instant, several guns rattle-banged in jackhammer succession, punctuated by the shuddery boom of a shotgun going off in close quarters. Horn slammed backward against the door casing and slid down spraddle-legged. He sat on the floor with his chin in his throat and most of his chest gone.
Munchkin voices yammered hysterically under the echo of the blast. It was the telephone alarm, telling us the receiver was off the hook.
Dick Bloodworth came to the door cradling a riot gun that went like hell with his jacket and tie. Blue smoke curled up the stairwell and parted around him. His eyes lighted on Horn just long enough to determine he wasn’t worth looking at, then went to the pale-faced girl leaning against the edge of the door, and finally to me. I was still kneeling on the floor with the gun dangling between my palms.
“You should’ve done your praying when it counted.” He tried to sound bantering and came up yards short. His face was gray under the pigment.
“I did.” I got up, holstering the .38. “He isn’t the one I called Proust about. She flew the coop.”
“If you mean the tall redhead,” said Captain Quincannon from the staircase landing, “we got her downstairs. She was coming out as we were coming in.”
“She’s Fern Esterhazy, Charles Esterhazy’s daughter. She killed Bud Broderick.” I paused. “Meet Paula Royce, the only one in this room who never killed anybody.”
They looked at her with new interest but said nothing. Some uniforms were on the landing behind Quincannon and Bloodworth, murmuring among themselves and gaping at the corpse on the threshold. Sergeant Zorn, wearing his overcoat and jaunty fur hat with feather, elbowed his way through and whistled. “Looks like he bought the full load.”
Bloodworth was starting to feel the impact. “He called it. Why don’t they just let us do our job without killing them?”
“The
hell with him and everyone like him.” I righted the overturned table and put the telephone on top of it and thumbed down the plunger, releasing it for the dial tone. Then I turned to Paula. “Where’s that card with Uncle Sam’s number?”
Outside, an ambulance wheeled whooping into our street.
28
ANOTHER NEW YEAR’S EVE at the end of another year. The temperature had dropped fourteen degrees since noon and the National Weather Service had issued a travelers’ advisory for all of southeastern Michigan, predicting eight to ten inches of snow by morning. The police were broadcasting huffy warnings to partygoers: “Space out your drinks before hitting the road or see in the new year behind bars.” The spirit of brotherhood was already fraying around the edges.
I emptied my Christmas bottle into a pony glass and sat down in front of the stereo, considering Ella Fitzgerald’s invitation to follow her and climb the stairs to where love was for sale. She would find me lousy company. My muscles ached and it hurt to swallow. After three days I could still feel Horn’s fingers on my throat.
I had spent the better part of two of those days driving back and forth between two police departments, giving the same story to bored sergeants seated at antique typewriters. At least they gave me coffee in Grosse Pointe. In the Heights I got blamed for screwing up the year-end crime statistics and I could dry up and blow away for all they gave a damn. Cecil Fish was especially grumpy because the incumbent whose state senate seat he was after had announced shortly after Christmas that he had decided to run again after all. So in Iroquois Heights they gave me to a cop who was deaf in one ear and typed with one finger.
I never saw any of them again, except of course the cops and Sandy Broderick, who got his network spot. A son killed being chivalrous swung a big club in the Nielsens.
The telephone interrupted Ella while she was peddling old love and new love and everything but true love. I turned down the volume and answered.
“Thought you bachelor types were all out partying,” Dick Bloodworth’s voice announced.
I set down my glass. “No you didn’t, or you wouldn’t have called. Where are you?”
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