Downriver

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Idiot! Tired of your head?” Barry caught the ball on the fly and smashed it against the concrete wall on the other side.

  It was no way to greet an old war buddy, but then we hadn’t spoken much over the past year or so, and when we had it dealt with our respective businesses. We’d gone from friends to two guys who knew each other; never mind why. I said, “I thought exercise was good for your health.”

  “Bullshit. It keeps you from assaulting people.” He caromed the ball off the floor and wall and backhanded it when it returned. He was wearing a green-and-white Michigan State basketball jersey plastered to his cylindrical torso and gray sweatpants that covered his artificial leg. Sweat had slicked and darkened his hair, streamlining his head like a seal’s.

  “They told me racquetball was a two-man sport.”

  “My opponents say I’m too aggressive. I don’t see it.” He slapped the wall three times in almost the same spot, leaving marks like grouped revolver shots. Finally he bounced the ball off the floor near his feet and stood dribbling it with the short racquet. “What’s the headline?”

  “ ‘Auto Executive Murdered.’ ”

  “No good. Passive voice. Give me a lead.”

  “ ‘Police found Alfred Hendriks, general manager of Marianne Motors, shot to death in the elevator of the corporation’s headquarters in the National Bank Building.’ “

  “Too busy. And you left out when.”

  “About two hours ago.”

  “As a journalist you’re hell for sleuthing. Who and how come?”

  “Why I’m here,” I said. “Off the blotter?”

  “If I get to put it on later.”

  “I need an accountant.”

  “Tap the lottery?”

  “Hendriks kept some kind of ledger on floppy disks that he locked up in his desk unmarked. I need someone who can read it. New Math ruined me for life.”

  “So get an accountant. What am I, the Yellow Pages?”

  “An accountant who can keep his mouth shut is what I need. You write about organized crime. You must meet them all the time.”

  “The ones I know are too good at it. They don’t even talk to me.”

  “My client’s on the hook for murder. I doubt he did it. If Hendriks was fooling around with company funds it opens up other avenues.”

  He went on dribbling.

  “The Commodore’s involved,” I said.

  He stopped. “Old Man Stutch?”

  “How many Commodores do you know?”

  “I interviewed him ten years ago. He was getting set to buy Atlantic City before the Mob took up residence. The deal went sour. If he killed anyone it would be straight up in the middle of Cadillac Square at high noon.”

  “That’s the way I read him. Anyway he’s got three quarters of a billion dollars tied up in Marianne. Hendriks was juggling millions. This is no alley mugging.”

  He studied the ball. “Amos?”

  I waited.

  “Hell with it. Not important. Exclusive?”

  “Yeah.”

  He tossed the ball in the air and slammed it off the door frame. “I’ll get back to you.”

  I left. In the old days we’d have struck the bargain on a case of Scotch. When you lose a friend, the price goes up on everything.

  In the office time hung like a willow branch. After washing my face and neck in the water closet I turned on the antique fan and watched a twist of cigarette cellophane hop and slither across the floor. That was good for a minute and a half and then it hung up in a corner. I retrieved it and threw it at the wastebasket. Getting it unstuck from the static charge in my fingers was good for another thirty seconds.

  I went through the mail I hadn’t looked at earlier. I wrote out checks for a second and a final notice and put them in envelopes and addressed and stamped them, filed the invoices, slit open the junk just for exercise, and threw it after the cellophane. I dumped the ashtray and stared at the telephone and wondered why no one had need of a private investigator on weekends. It rang.

  “Walker?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Floyd Orlander, remember me?”

  “I remember, Lieutenant.”

  “Forget that shit. I been retired longer than I held the rank. Listen, I was wondering — ”

  “The rest of it was drowned out by a roaring on his end. He was calling from his home at the end of the runway. When the noise died I asked him to repeat it.

  “I was wondering how you were coming with that DeVries thing. I been thinking about it ever since you were here.”

  “Is there something you didn’t tell me?”

  “I gave you what I had. What it is, I been thinking about that miserable partner I had, what a bigoted son of a bitch he was, and how things were after the riots. I mean between black and white. I was a straight cop. I don’t like what I been thinking.”

  “You think maybe you and Sergeant Drake railroaded DeVries into prison?”

  “I don’t mean we made anything up, twisted things around to make him look guilty. Maybe we didn’t look as hard as we would of if things were different, that’s all I’m saying. I still think he did it. I’m just wondering if that’s why we made the case.”

  “Have you been discussing this with your wife, Mr. Orlander?”

  “Yeah, but what’s she got to do with anything? I’m saying what I’m saying.”

  “Thanks for saying it.”

  “I’m not using you for a priest. If you need help I’m offering it. Maybe it’s time this thing went by the numbers.”

  “I hope you still feel that way after you watch tonight’s news.” I gave him the official version.

  “Think he did it?” he said after a moment.

  “No.”

  “You got faith.”

  “The evidence of things unseen.”

  “Just the kind the D.A. loves. Anyway the offer holds.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Orlander. At the moment I’m stuck in neutral myself.”

  “Maybe now I can look at my grandkids and see my grandkids.”

  I cradled the receiver and left my hand on it. Cops. Just when you’ve got the plant classified as a noxious weed it sends up a blossom.

  Quitting time came and went. I stayed. The longer I sat there the less respect I had for my brains. When I left, whenever it was, Barry would call right after; it was some kind of law. The telephone rang. It was John Alderdyce.

  “Hear from your client?”

  I sat back. “That means you haven’t.”

  “His parole cop told us where he’s staying. I wonder why he hasn’t shown.”

  “I didn’t tip him.”

  “How’s he know we’re looking for him if he didn’t cap Hendriks?”

  “Hell, John, I was by the Alamo. You can smell cop from Belle Isle.”

  I heard a bureaucratic buzzing in the background. He was at 1300. Finally he said, “Listen, I ran your Frances Souwaine through the computer. She’s dead.”

  “Dead how?”

  “Wrapped her Corvair around an Edison pole on Hastings in 1968. If it didn’t happen, though, some pimp would’ve got her or she’d have tripped out someday and lost the way back. Couple of busts for solicitation on her sheet and ninety days in DeHoCo for possession of LSD. Whatever happened to LSD?”

  “Where’s Timothy Leary?”

  “Doing a road show with G. Gordon Liddy last I heard. We’re old.”

  “John, has it occurred to you that everyone involved in that armored car robbery is dead?”

  “All but one,” he said. “You know the drill: you hear from your client, I hear from you. He can’t hide. All he’s got to do is stand up. He’s a parolee wanted for questioning in a murder case and he’s considered armed. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

  “You’d think it would’ve changed in twenty years.”

  “In court, yeah. The street’s still the street.” The line clicked and hummed.

  I gave it another ten minutes, then locked up. I
t was what I had a service for. Then I had to run back from the stairs and fumble with the keys and spear the receiver on the fourth ring. It was Barry, instructing me to meet him at his place in Harper Woods at ten o’clock, and to bring the disks.

  24

  IF ANY EVIDENCE was needed to prove that the Mafia had lost its teeth, Barry Stackpole’s address would do.

  After a bomb had blown off his leg and two fingers, Barry had written his column on a portable typewriter all over the city for years. His address had included some thirty apartments and motels and, for one two-week period, my living room. He never unpacked his suitcase the whole time and used a Luger for a paperweight. Rumor had it the local capos had hung a fifty-thousand-dollar tag around his neck.

  But for the past three years he had been living like ordinary folks in a rented brick house in Harper Woods. With half of the organization facing federal indictments and the other half more worried about the new tax code than the Code Siciliano, the fate of one reporter had lost all priority. Never mind that that reporter’s investigations had brought about the public outcry for an end to gang rule and the evidence that had brought that end in sight. The damage was done, and mere survival had made revenge too expensive to consider.

  Barry’s problem was he had been too successful. With the war won, or at least fought to a bloody draw, his ammunition was no longer needed, and his readers had found new interests at the same rate at which the enemy had lost its interest in him. His syndicated column had been losing newspapers for months. A major publisher, after a flurry of early excitement, had decided not to accept a book he had written about his experiences as a correspondent in Southeast Asia, and it had since been rejected by half a dozen others. This sudden drop from a peak that had included an interview on Nightline and a bylined cover story in Time had soured him and damaged his personal and business relationships. Yet he continued to write about and gather proof against the bosses, underbosses, street soldiers, shooters, bought judges, bent cops, drug runners, and pimps, in the end the only people toward whom his attitude had not changed, and whom he and a few others knew were down but not dead, defeated but not destroyed. He had become head cheerleader in a game everyone thought was over.

  Barry opened the door before I could ring the bell. He had on a denim shirt tail-out over a pair of patched jeans, his working clothes. “Get in here before somebody sees you.”

  He hadn’t done anything to the living room since my last visit except change the magazines on the coffee table. At that time he’d been living with a model and there had been the odd Vogue and Ms. among the copies of American Rifleman, Soldier of Fortune, and the Harvard Lampoon. We went into his office, where he had added a word processor and a short round man in a white shirt and brown corduroy trousers. The light was off and the short round man’s face was bilious in the glow of the electronic screen, reminding me of Commodore Stutch under the influence of his green-shaded lamp. It was the only thing about him that reminded me of the Commodore. He had blue jowls, a full head of glossy black hair, and great brown eyes that swiveled like casters in their sockets. He swiveled them from me to Barry. “Was he followed?”

  “I circled a couple of blocks to make sure I wasn’t,” I said. “It’s standard procedure after I’ve been talking with cops.”

  “You didn’t tell me the police were involved,” he said quickly. So far he’d spoken only to Barry.

  “They don’t know about you.” Barry looked at me. “A ten-year-old gambling ring in New Orleans is looking for new management because of this gentleman’s testimony before a federal grand jury. The Justice Department gave him a new identity and relocated him here. One condition of his cooperation tonight is I can’t tell you what that identity is or who he was before he assumed it.”

  “How is it you know?”

  “I was on the case six months before the Justice Department.”

  “He an accountant?”

  “Did Rembrandt dabble in oils? On the way here he added up the numbers on all the license plates we passed and divided the total by my address, all in his head.”

  “It was more of a feat before vanity plates,” the short round man admitted.

  “How’d you check his answer?”

  Barry said, “You bring them?”

  I produced the disks. He slid them partly out of their sleeves and replaced them. “They’re compatible.”

  “Let’s hope he hasn’t demagnetized both of them by carrying them around in his pockets.” The short round man accepted them. He hadn’t forgiven my challenging his best trick. “If you’ll excuse me. I work best when no one’s gaping over my shoulder.”

  Barry and I went into the living room. “Coffee?” he said. “I’m on the wagon. Again.”

  I said coffee was great. He filled two mugs in the kitchen and brought them out. He slung his Dutch leg over the arm of the sofa. “Shouldn’t take long. One thing the Justice Department boys didn’t find in his deposition was a mistake in arithmetic.”

  “He that rabbity all the time?” I took a chair opposite.

  “I wouldn’t know. This is the first time I’ve seen him in two years.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “The man knows the square root of seven.”

  “Then what’s his percentage?”

  “Creole shooter named LaPointe found out his route to the courthouse in Baton Rouge from the hotel where the U.S. attorneys had him stashed. I got wind of it and tipped them. Local cops shot LaPointe just as he was drawing a bead.”

  “It isn’t like the Justice Department to move a witness to a place where someone knows him. Especially a reporter.”

  “It was going to be North Dakota. I had more use for him here.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Cost me a couple of markers.” He swallowed some coffee. “Tell me about Hendriks.”

  I fed him the whole thing, starting at Marquette and ending at the National Bank Building. I included Edith Marianne’s auto ride with Hendriks and her hospitality to me at her house that afternoon. Barry didn’t take notes, but I wasn’t fooled. His memory for names and facts was at least as good as the short round man’s memory for figures. I could hear the word processor bleeping in the next room.

  “DeVries the kind to turn himself in?” Barn asked.

  “Would you?”

  “He’s bigger than anything on the police range. You’ll have to work fast if you don’t want a dead client.”

  “What I’m doing.”

  He raised his voice. “How’s it coming?”

  “I’m not boiling fish,” said the man in the office. “Give me a few minutes.”

  “Artists,” Barry said.

  I asked him how things were at the News.

  “I’m about ten papers away from being called into the managing editor’s office for a little talk in those concerned tones he’s famous for. There’s a lady gossip columnist who’s been eyeing my space a long time. I know she’s a lady because I haven’t caught her drooling yet.”

  “You could try writing about something else.”

  “I could write doggerel about the British Royal Family or compare restaurants in the area, as if” there were more than three worth trusting your stomach to. Probably land myself a five-minute spot on one of the local TV stations.”

  “You don’t have to go that far.”

  “How far is far?” He put his fiberglass foot on the floor and set his mug on the coffee table. “There’s a mobbie out on the Coast who’s into a White House aide so deep that when his shorts ride up the guy grunts in Washington. Last month men working for the mobbie kicked down the door of an apartment in Hollywood, made the three teenagers inside kneel on the floor, and shot each of them in the back of the head, one by one. It was the wrong apartment. The one they wanted was two doors down, where some Chicanos were dealing cocaine without the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. This month, the White House aide published the results of his study of the long-term effects of pornography
on the white-collar class. What should I write about, who serves the best breadsticks in town?”

  “Write about why you write about what you write about.”

  “It’s too much like whining.”

  “Why tell me?”

  “You I can whine to.”

  The short round man came out of the office and handed me both disks. “I’d like to meet the man who kept these,” he said.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Too bad. There’s something about a man stealing millions that makes you want to see him get away with it, whereas you wouldn’t if it were a few dollars or an item of no particular value.”

  “He was stealing?” I asked.

  “Not precisely stealing. Flimflamming is more accurate, also a bit roguish and rather romantic. Simply put, your man allowed other corporations and individuals to buy approximately two hundred eighty percent of his corporation’s stock.”

  Barry said, “You’re saying he sold the same horse several times?”

  “It’s considerably more complex than that. It involved blind accounts, a double-entry system of bookkeeping, and a rather original method of electronic transference that automatically erased all record of the transactions and effectively rendered the money nonexistent insofar as the corporation was concerned. But yes, that’s the basic concept.”

  “In other words, if not for these two disks there would’ve been no way of finding out what he was up to,” I said.

  “Not until it came time to pay off on the investments. By then your man would have had some live hundred million dollars socked away in numbered accounts in Andorra. The numbers are listed on the second disk.”

  “Andorra?”

  “A small autonomous state located between France and Spain, the secret of its autonomy lies in its banking system. Most people are unaware that Swiss accounts are subject to lien and seizure by the Zurich government under certain extreme conditions. Andorran accounts are not. I established some close contacts there on behalf of my last employer.”

  “How’d you get access?” Barry asked. “Our man wouldn’t let just anyone tap into that kind of information.”

  He swiveled his eyes floorward modestly. “I have a system. It’s a kind of skeleton key and I’m not prepared to share it.”