Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro

by Loren D. Estleman

  I filled the basin in the little water closet, again without turning on any lights, and plunged my face into the icy water. When I took it out my nerves were prickling. I mopped it off, closed the blinds in the office, and smoked half a cigarette in the dark.

  Not quite dark: A little light leaked in through the pinholes where the cords passed through the louvers. I watched it, spun silver in the braid of smoke twisting toward the bugged fixture in the ceiling, and wondered what the joker on the other end had made of whatever conversation had taken place there earlier. I knew the joker wasn’t Jeremiah Morgenstern. He’d wandered in from another deck. He was just beginning to realize it. Pet wasn’t the only reason he’d put Bugs and Daffy on my case.

  The telephone rang, loud as church bells in the desert atmosphere. I tamped out my cigarette and let it ring. There was only one party who would be calling my office at that hour. Shelly and Nicky had had enough time to find out I still hadn’t gone home, and had decided to backtrack.

  I figured I had just enough time to make the call I’d come there to make before they returned to the perch. I waited thirty seconds after the last ring, then picked up the receiver and dialed a number I knew by heart.

  “Hichens.”

  I settled back in my chair. “You must have a bed and a hotplate in that office. I thought I’d have to have them patch me through to your house.”

  “Where the hell are you? I’ve been calling your house and office for an hour.”

  “You wouldn’t have had much to talk about with whoever picked up. I’m at the office.”

  “Go again. I just tried there.”

  “I didn’t answer. I thought it was someone trying to sell me local long distance.”

  “At three A.M.?”

  “I had my watch on upside-down. Anyway, we’re talking now. What’s on your mind?”

  “Where were you two hours ago?”

  “Visiting a sick friend.”

  “Would this friend be in intensive care at Royal Oak Beaumont?”

  I poked at a live spark in the ashtray with the eraser end of a pencil. “Who called you? Winthrop?”

  “Male nurse at Beaumont. The switchboard gave him to me. It seems I dropped by the hospital a little before one, badged my way into ICU, disturbed a patient and upset the patient’s wife, assaulted a doctor and a security guard, and scampered away. It seems I’m six feet, one eighty-five, with brown eyes and graying brown hair.”

  “Right up until the eyes I thought you were talking about me,” I said. “It says hazel right on my driver’s license.”

  “Shut the fuck up. I’m sending a car. If you aren’t there when it arrives, I’ll swear out a takedown. The boys get in a snit over phony cops; it’s a reputation issue. They might bounce you a couple times.”

  “You’d disapprove.”

  “Not too loud. “I’ve got in my thirty.”

  “If you want them to find me, you’d better send the car someplace else.”

  “Someplace else such as where?” Suddenly a chair leg scraped the floor on his end. “Just a minute. Is that thing still—”

  I cut him off. “I let my subscription lapse to the Bar Association journal. What’s the latest on the validity of a deathbed statement?”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Plymouth was asleep. Moonlight lay in pools near the park, where the only things moving were a man smoking a short stub of cigarette and a dog looking for the right bush. Dog and man looked equally intent. The man gave me a little wave as I drove past. I might be a neighbor.

  I parked on the street and walked through the dewy damp of a warm summer evening, brushing at the occasional mosquito. The crickets all had chainsaws.

  The split-levels were dark except for a single lamp burning in an upstairs window, where a shadow drifted past the gauzy curtain. It wasn’t any less than I expected, nor any more. He was a quiet man, deliberate in his movements, the kind of neighbor you hoped you’d get instead of a house full of healthy teenagers or a tuba player with a day job. He would be a treasured figure on the block. A lifetime of training will show through decades of retirement.

  The big pickup stood in the driveway pointed out. I’d expected that too.

  The front door was locked. I turned the doorknob gently to confirm that. Any rattle, no matter how slight, would separate itself from the normal sighs and crackles of a fifty-year-old house settling into its foundation. Even an amateur house-breaker knows that.

  I unfolded the worn suede case containing an assortment of instruments that could get me six months in county just for carrying them. They’d belonged to my late partner, who could pick any lock invented since before Houdini. They’d liked him in his neighborhood, too.

  I’d never gotten the knack. Turning the tumblers took me ten minutes under the best conditions, longer when I had to worry about making noise. When the bolt finally slid back, there were scratches on the brass plate Stevie Wonder couldn’t miss. But I wasn’t trying to fool anyone who would see them. I put the picks back in their loops, fixed the snaps on the case, and slid it into a pocket. Then I drew the revolver and let myself inside. I didn’t make any more noise easing the door shut than a head makes going into a hat.

  I waited inside the entrance while my pupils made the necessary adjustment. Low-watt light from an under-the-cupboard fixture in the kitchen filtered out into the living room, outlining potential hazards while leaving others knee-deep in poured shadow. With the aid of memory I identified the sofa and recliner and dark TV set, and to the left the door to the den where I’d familiarized myself with the Delwayne Garnet fugitive case and encountered the name Curtis Smallwood for the first time, a hundred years ago. The polished wooden stair risers leading to the second floor gleamed in the reflected light, rose into a bottleneck of shadow, and picked up light again near the top, where lamplight slid out of a door and onto the landing. My path was clear.

  The refrigerator kicked in with a gasp and a shudder, like an old man forcing his prostate. It bumped me out of my state of suspended animation.

  I slipped off my shoes, crept along the runner to the stairs, and climbed, leaning on the bannister with my free hand in order to keep weight off the steps, which squeaked anyway. I let a minute go by after each complaint. A house will make such noises, but not as regularly as footsteps. No one ever took longer climbing the Statue of Liberty than I did those twelve steps.

  In the second-floor hallway a T-square of light showed around a door standing partially open. I padded down six feet of pale wall-to-wall carpet, tightened my grip on the revolver, and pushed the door open the rest of the way on silent hinges.

  The room was a bedroom, papered in faded brittle gold, with a double bed on a massive oak frame and a matching bureau and night tables at its foot and head. Two of the bureau drawers hung open. A fat brushed-brass lamp on the near table shed light onto an old-fashioned leatherette suitcase with straps, flayed open on top of the bed. Stacks of shirts, underwear, and neatly rolled socks lay around it on the spread. I was alone with all this.

  The only other door belonged to a closet, where a robe and an assortment of sweaters and jackets hung exposed with the door open. The rest was a tangle of empty hangers. Across from me was the window I’d seen light showing through from the street, with its diaphanous pale-gold curtain to match the wallpaper, darkened at the hems with age. No one had touched the decor in the years since the woman of the house had died. It was a widower’s room, utilitarian and lonely. I saw my reflection in the glass behind the curtain. Then movement behind it.

  I sidestepped fast, but not fast enough. Something solid missed the crown of my head and struck the right side of my collarbone. An orange flash of pain soared to the top of my skull. The revolver dropped from my hand and I dropped right on top of it.

  When I woke up, I smelled gasoline.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The blow hadn’t knocked me out so much as paralyzed me temporarily. It was a natural protective function, a signal sent from the brain
throughout the central nervous system ordering it to shut down to prevent permanent damage from shock. A few inches farther to the left and the condition itself would have been permanent. I was a lucky man. And I smelled gasoline.

  After two minutes my toes and fingers began to tingle and I was able to rotate my head and release pressure from the throbbing place where my neck sloped up from my bruised collarbone. In the meantime I felt myself being dragged and lifted into a sitting position, my arms forced behind my back, and something as hard and cold as Arctic ice clamping itself around my wrists. Then the sharp familiar sting in my nostrils. I had a sudden atavistic flash of my father filling the tank of a prehistoric Briggs & Stratton motor from a red metal can with a flexible spout, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  My vision cleared. The figure with the can was thicker through the waist than my father and older than he lived to be, and the thing clamped in the corner of his mouth was a cold cigar. He had on a knitted green polo shirt stretched tightly over the swell of his belly, pleated gray slacks, and cordovan loafers on his big square feet. The can was plastic. I saw all this just as he swung it back and then forward. Amber liquid erupted from the spout, drenching me from hairline to ankles and burning my nose and throat. I choked, hacked, and threw up Regular Unleaded. A thread of spittle glittered between my chin and the carpet between my thighs. I braced my stockinged heels against the floor and tried to stand up, barking my wrists on the underside of the bed. They were handcuffed behind one of the stout oaken legs.

  “Federal issue,” Randall Burlingame said. “They don’t make carbon steel any higher. Careful, there. You don’t want to strike any sparks.”

  I looked up at him. My eyes were stinging from the gasoline. “I wouldn’t light that cigar, either,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to lose the house now that it’s paid for.”

  “Who says it’s paid for? It started out as a thirty-year loan and I refinanced it into the next century. But it won’t be my problem after tonight.” He set down the can and took the cigar out of his mouth. “Thanks, by the way. This is from the box you brought me from Canada.”

  “Sorry they aren’t Havanas.”

  “Don’t apologize. They’re overrated. I did a little stint down there when I was in the field. How come you came here early? You asked Hichens to meet you here tomorrow morning with a warrant.” He stopped, grinned, and screwed the cigar back between his teeth. “I get it. You were smoking me out. How’d you find out I bugged your office?”

  “Just because I never clean out the fixture doesn’t mean I never look at it. I should’ve figured it out sooner. A former FBI big shot would maintain some contacts with Special Ops. You knew I’d be tied up in Toronto all day. Once your spooks were finished, you’d be in on every conversation that took place near my desk. That’s how you found out Garnet would be at the Marriott that day.”

  He sniffed at the hand that had been holding the gasoline can. “I need to wash up. Can’t have airport security smelling Amoco on my luggage.” He went out into the hall. I heard water running a moment later. He raised his voice. “Sorry about this, Amos. After what you did for my daughter I should’ve known you wouldn’t walk away from the case just because you lost your client.”

  I experimented. If the carpet was thick enough I might be able to press the handcuffs down far enough to slide the chain under the leg of the bed. I braced my back against the frame and pushed down.

  I kept up my end of the conversation. “That’s the part I couldn’t figure out without talking to Regina Babbage. I knew why you killed Curtis Smallwood. You blamed him for your sister’s death. Even a teenage kid can work up enough hate to turn killer. But it wouldn’t be strong enough to want to kill Smallwood’s son fifty years later.” I strained, relaxed. The bed had stood in one spot too many years. The leg had sunk through the pile. Only a thin layer of fiber separated it from the floor. There was no room to slide the chain between them.

  “Him being Smallwood’s kid had nothing to do with it. I’m sure Regina told you that. There’s a lady who can keep a good hate going. Thirty-four years, and it was just as fresh as the day her boy blew himself to kibble.” The faucet turned off with a clunk. He came back in, wiping his hands with a towel. He was still chewing the cigar.

  “Not me,” he went on. “Seeing that arrogant would-be Sugar Ray Robinson bleeding brains on the pavement satisfied me. You could say I even felt guilty. That’s why I went back to school, studied law, and took my degree down to D.C. Thought I’d spend the rest of my life enforcing the law I broke. Opal would’ve approved. She never thought department-store model was as high as a Burlingame could reach.” He swallowed. “That’s why she worked so hard to pay for my education.”

  “Killing Smallwood didn’t make you a killer. You couldn’t pull the trigger on Regina, even though she was an eyewitness.”

  “Peggy, she called herself then. Peggy Yale.” He tossed the towel aside and picked up a stack of shirts from the bed. “I thought he’d be alone. I should’ve guessed he’d already have another one lined up when he dumped Opal. I didn’t even know about the actress then. I’d been away at school. For all I know, he had that butcher who killed my sister on call.” He threw the stack into the suitcase.

  My eyes were streaming from the gasoline fumes. I twisted my head to wipe my cheek on my shoulder. The lock-picks in my pocket tinkled when they shifted. I might have been able to get at them and jimmy open the cuffs—if I chewed an arm off first.

  “You’re right about Regina,” I said. “A band singer in nineteen fifty couldn’t come forward saying she was out with a Negro boxer and stay employed. But she had a good memory. The FBI liked publicity. By the time you took over the Detroit office, your picture would have been in the paper plenty of times. She’d remember you; and after Garnet ran to Canada, she’d have come to you to collect on all those years of silence.”

  “She wouldn’t let it go. And I can’t blame her. May she rot in hell. Did she die?”

  “She was sleeping when I left.” I concentrated on those picks. They took my mind off the throbbing where he’d hit me with whatever he’d hit me with. I’d made more noise coming up those stairs than I’d hoped.

  “Does she know she’s dying?”

  The eyes in the square face were hooked up to a mind that had been trained legally. I worked on that.

  “It wouldn’t hold up in preliminary,” I said. “A deathbed confession needs two witnesses. Her husband and the nurse were too busy trying to get me out of the room. Everything else is circumstantial. Why do you think I used your own bug to draw you out? You can quit packing.”

  “Not while you’re alive. We’re too much alike. I didn’t lift those files just to protect myself from the Bureau. Or even to convince Regina I hadn’t forgotten her. An open case is like an open wound. It won’t drain forever.”

  “Don’t you want to get to know your grandson?”

  “Kids these days have enough baggage without having a jail-bird for a grandfather. I’ll miss his mother. That’s the hard part. But I’d miss her just as much behind bars.”

  I gave up then. He finished loading the suitcase, latched it, and buckled the straps. He carried it out into the hall. While he was gone I wriggled around, trying to jostle the case of burglar tools out of my pocket. They rattled around but stayed put.

  He came back in and picked up the gasoline can. “The ironic thing is, if I’d just sat still for a week or two, I’d be free to enjoy my retirement. Who knew the old lady was so sick?” He splashed gasoline on the bed and slung it up the wall. It splattered against the window and streaked down the glass. There were more fumes in the room now than oxygen. I put my head down and breathed.

  “Exodus,” I said.

  “What?” He stopped and waggled the can. There wasn’t much left in it to slosh around.

  “ ‘An eye for an eye,’ ” I said. “I don’t know the rest, but I know what book it’s from. It’s the one most people remember. It�
�s the one Regina remembered. She sang in a choir before she signed with Rex King and his Royal Athletics. She brought it up when I was questioning her. ‘Fair trade,’ she said. She let you have your murder, but you had to pay for it with hers. A life for a life.”

  “That’s not in the passage. The Chief expected all his agents to go to church. You’re right, it comes up a lot. I made a point of memorizing it. ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.’ Exodus, twenty-one, twenty-four. There’s no ‘life for a life’ in it. But a lot of people have been killed for a lot less than a misquote.” He spread his feet and upended the can. The rest of the contents spilled out onto the carpet.

  While he was doing that I strained at the manacles. They say Billy the Kid could slip out of any pair they put on him. But he had small hands and big wrists. I only managed to scrape some hide off bone and put a kink in my back. I stopped for breath.

  “Torching the place won’t cover up murder,” I said.

  “I’m buying time, not a clean bill of health. When the DNA tests come back and they know the crispy critter in my bedroom isn’t me, I’ll be in a different hemisphere.”

  “Southern or eastern? Most countries extradite. The rest confiscate.”

  “Let ’em extradite. I cashed out my life insurance and stock portfolio the day after you came here asking about Delwayne Garnet. It’s all in a bank draft in my wallet. I’m not a whole lot healthier than Old Lady Winthrop; I’ve got angina and both kidneys never work at the same time. By the time they find me and finish the paperwork, I’ll be a corpse with a big fat smile on my face.”

  “It didn’t have to be this way. You should’ve taken your lumps for Smallwood. Back then they were still lynching Negroes down South for looking at white women. Figure in a fatal abortion and a mixed-up kid, and you could’ve walked.”