The Sundown Speech

by Loren D. Estleman

  There were so many things wrong with that it made me tired all over again. I tossed the cheeseburger half-eaten back into the sack and deep-broiled my tongue with nuclear-grade coffee. Something was wrong with it. I looked at the plastic lid. The little blister they push in with a thumb to identify the contents told me I was drinking decaf.

  I woke up from a beautiful dream, where it was always summer, with fireflies blinking on and off like tiny neon lights and brooks jabbering like old men on a park bench and my parents alive and in good health—and tore the steering wheel left, away from the rumble strips leading to a bridge abutment. A helpful truck driver whomped his air horn at me as he swept past, walloping the Cutlass in his wake. You can’t store up sleep. Wherever they keep the account books, some bean counter is measuring half a day’s rest against thirty-four hours awake and recording it in red ink.

  I needed to get wheels out from under me, if only for a couple of hours. Michigan Avenue was coming up. It’s the main drag through Ypsilanti, a community built on the World War II Willow Run Ford aircraft plant, since grafted on to Ann Arbor to the west with no seams in between: Some still call it Ypsi-tucky, after the Southerners who’d swarmed up US-23 to work for top wages building B-25 bombers.

  I passed up a Holiday Inn, a Ramada, and a Comfort Suites as too accessible to a preliminary investigation. In an open area just past a truss barn called the Da-Glo Massage, with fraternity insignia plastered on the glass front door, I pulled around behind two stories of Korean War construction called the Wagon Wheel Motel. A pair of whitewashed tires flanked the driveway, half-sunk in concrete. They hadn’t even bothered to score real wagon wheels. I wondered how Michelin had managed to miss the place.

  There was a package-liquor store across the alley; there would be. I dumped the disposable cup still steaming in a bullet-shaped trash can by the store entrance and commissioned a fifth of Old Smuggler from the unsmiling Arab behind the counter. They throw them in with the fixtures.

  I entered the hotel through a side door and followed a dim prefab hallway to a foyer adjacent to a gaggle of tables and chairs and a stainless-steel serve-yourself counter. It was deserted in late afternoon except for a lazy fly practicing its stalls under the glass cover of a warming tray.

  A clerk who waxed his handlebars extolled the virtues of the free continental breakfast from behind the registration desk, but all I heard was directions to the elevators. His moustache didn’t twitch when I paid cash, but he did look to see I had bags; the fact that one was a paper sack meant as much to him as Austrian edelweiss. The halls smelled of disinfectant with a spearmint base.

  “Smoking or non?” he’d asked.

  “Smoking.”

  He glanced at an electric clock. “We’ve got just the one. It isn’t ready yet.”

  I looked at the clock: 6:22. “When’s checkout?”

  “Eleven; but the housekeeper had trouble rousing the guest. The young lady he checked in with—” He moved a shoulder. We were men of the world. I must have looked even more worn-out than I felt.

  “Yeah. I don’t know why they bother to steal the pants when the wallet’s all they want.”

  He looked pained; and I look like Brad Pitt. “If you want to go out for a bite while you’re waiting, I can recommend—”

  I’d seen all the restaurants within walking distance: Aunt Emma’s, The Chicken Palace, Steaks-’n’-More, an all-you-can-eat buffet without a single car in its parking lot. Steaks-’n’-More had a fiberglass cow on its flat roof, so the filet would be from Secretariat out of Dream Queen. The chain places were just the same thing with a national advertising campaign.

  “What’ve you got in nonsmoking?”

  He slid a key card through his thingamajig and presented it with a flourish. “Two twenty-six. Second floor.”

  The ice machine made a noise like a Cape buffalo hacking up a tourist and spat three cubes into the plastic bucket I got from the clerk. I left them there, bucket and all, and carried my bottle with me into the room.

  It was long and narrow, with blackout curtains that drenched it in early Castle Dracula. I switched on the overhead light, inspected the bathroom for bushwhackers: a couple of cracked tiles, rust stains in the tub, a water bug the size of a grape clinging insolently to the wall above the mirror, which had been wiped down with an oil rag. There was a chute next to the light switch for disposing the kind of razor blades they haven’t made since Dragnet.

  Everything straight out of the catalogue: Nihilism for Dummies.

  The TV, at least, was a modern flat-screen, but the remote didn’t work. Fourteen typewritten pages in a loose-leaf notebook encouraged me to slide a credit card into the phone and watch Midnight Cinema twenty-four/seven. Prongs of New York caught my eye.

  The window looked out on the parking lot, and a rail-thin party in a hoodie peering through car windows looking for keys left in the ignition. He slouched past my car without pausing. I keep it battered and unwashed for a reason.

  The lock on the window was broken. I’d have been disappointed otherwise. I laid the remainder of my store of quarters in the track so it couldn’t slide open any more than to admit a man’s head, unless he put some shoulder into it. I unshipped the Chief’s Special from my belt clip and laid it on the nightstand on the side of the bed opposite the window, massaged the dent it had made next to my kidney.

  I’d spent my life in that room; the place might have belonged to a chain, each one sprung up simultaneously, unaware of all the others, like toadstools exposed to the same conditions. You know them by their shared features: The radiator/air conditioner under the windows that blasts sopping heat in July, Little America cold in January; the toilet that runs like Pimlico and the sink that drains like the Colorado River carving the Grand Canyon, centimeter by centimeter, eons at a time; the damp spot in the carpet that never dries; the plastic fingernail on the floor behind the headboard, five years out of fashion; the fat phone book that opens automatically to the section on escort agencies (“Discreet Services—Charge Shows up as Entertainment”); the remote you handle with a wad of tissues if you handle it at all—if the tissues in the dispenser have been replaced; three squares of toilet paper left on the roll; the maids who bang on your door at 7:00 A.M., and when you’re gone for the day never come in to clean and change the towels; Handi Wipes pretending to be washcloths; that self-righteous little tent on the bed asking you to throw any linen you want changed on the floor, otherwise Let’s Protect Our Precious Water Supply (and also our city bill); the double lock that makes a satisfying clunk when you turn it, but when you tug on the knob the door opens without resistance, halted only by a thin metal chain designed for a charm bracelet; the wake-up call that never comes, unless it comes two hours early; the little pack of five-dollar cashews in the minibar; the forty-watt bulb over the mirror in the bathroom; the shower that goes from lukewarm to scalding in half a second, and a half-second later to icicles. The Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer, stuck fast to whatever someone had spilled inside while watching Seinfeld. The call to the front desk that rings and rings and rings. The wag who sets the electric alarm clock for 3:00 A.M. just before he checks out, as a raspberry to the stranger who succeeds him. And all night long, adolescent feet pounding the hallway outside in their size fourteen Crocs.

  All to be expected, although not always all at once. That kind of dead-solid consistency belongs only to the inevitable sibilant sound of the bill sliding under the door at four in the morning, marked up 50 percent to address taxes.

  A bulb in one of the lamps was burned out. The air in the nonsmoking room smelled of stale Chesterfields. I dismantled the smoke detector attached to the ceiling, but I needn’t have bothered; the batteries were caked with green mold. I hung my jacket and tie in the open closet, kicked off my shoes, joined the bedbugs on the slick green coverlet, lit up, and blew a cloud of smoke toward a ceiling stained gold with nicotine. I broke the seal on the bottle and took a swig of putative Scotch. It tasted like gym socks put u
p in heather.

  I had to laugh then. It was just the kind of place Mrs. Stevens had warned me I’d wind up in if I didn’t play well with the other children in third grade.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Old motels are excellent conductors of sound. A TV murmured in an adjoining room, toilets flushed, a shower whooshed, whistled, and shut off with a thump. An alarm clock buzzed and kept buzzing for five minutes. A wing of the place was reserved for extended-stay guests; this one was a nightwatchman or a jazz musician or worked the graveyard shift at a plant, and he slept as hard as a bear in January. I anesthetized myself with a second glass and drifted off, but liquor has a backlash effect, snapping you into full wakefulness an hour or two after you pass out. I got up, cleared the coins out of the track, opened the window, and stood there smoking. Nothing doing down in the parking lot: no shadowy figures smoking cigarettes in doorways, not even a muttering old dog lifting its leg against a lamppost. But always the hum of tires on Washtenaw Avenue and on the US-23/I-94 interchange. If you closed your eyes and used your imagination it might have been the surf off Maui; but only if the heater worked.

  It was a time for quiet reflection, of taking stock of one’s choices, past and present; but all I saw was my own tired reflection in the glass, and my portfolio was empty. I ditched the butt, put the window back together, and went back to bed.

  * * *

  The same construction crew that had been working on every motel I’d ever checked into was up at dawn, pneumatic hammers whirring and thudding, roto-mills chewing up asphalt, power saws wailing like Godzilla on the pot. I stood under needle spray for ten minutes, scraped my chin, put on the same suit but fresh everything else, and went down to savor the pleasures of the continental breakfast.

  The same fly was drifting around inside the glass cover, browsing this time among a pile of bagels that looked hard enough to bust a window. There was the usual mess of scrambled eggs, runny as a rain gutter, bruised bananas, individual-size boxes of Sugar Frosted Diabetes, and not enough flatware. I decided the coffee wouldn’t kill me, but the yellow stuff that trickled out of the spigot argued the point. I dumped it, cup and all, in the trash can and went to the desk in the lobby.

  A different clerk, this one a short blonde, was at her computer. They used to be all the time sorting mail; now their eyes are pasted to an Etch A Sketch. She asked if I’d enjoyed my stay.

  “You forgot my spa appointment.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It was fine. You need to replace one of the lightbulbs.”

  After I left, I felt ashamed of myself for the spa remark. I’d stayed worse places.

  A chicken wearing a chef’s hat on the sign of the restaurant next door advertised family dining. Inside the converted double-wide house trailer I sat at a laminated table near the windows and ordered steak and eggs and coffee. A white-haired couple at the next table discussed storm windows the whole time I waited.

  The waitress brought back a shoe heel and a single fried egg; but the coffee turned my electrolytes back on.

  A six-year-old boy dressed like Dennis the Menace—striped shirt, overalls, the works—toddled my way and stood watching me eat. I was getting a lot of that lately; I must look like someone’s grandfather.

  I glanced around for the boy’s parents, but the only likely candidate, a thirtyish woman reading the classifieds in the Observer, wasn’t paying attention. I smiled at the kid and asked if he was going to grow up to be a cowboy.

  That ended his interest in me. He toddled off straight to Mr. and Mrs. Storm Windows and climbed onto a chair. I wondered, not for the first time, if I was in the wrong line of work.

  Passing the crew in the motel parking lot, I kept alert. Nobody ducked in and out of hedges, no helicopters buzzed me. I wasn’t worth the fuel.

  But I was worth something.

  An Ypsilanti cruiser passed me going the other direction on Washtenaw, slowed as it drew abreast of the Cutlass. At the stoplight at Carpenter Road, I watched in the rearview as it swung into a strip mall, then out through the exit into my lane, stopping a couple of cars back.

  It didn’t have to mean anything. It might have had nothing to do with Lieutenant Karyl enlisting all the neighboring departments to look for an ancient blue Oldsmobile fastback with my number on the plate. The prickling on the back of my neck could mean there was too much starch in my collar.

  When the cruiser followed me onto I-94 West and then onto the State Street exit, I knew I’d moved up on Karyl’s list. That meant he wasn’t any closer to laying hands on Jerry Marcus than he had been, and he needed Holly Zacharias more than ever to smoke him out. He’d have checked all the flights, and probably thought I had her stashed somewhere instead of on a train to Chicago.

  Anyway, that was the hope. As long as he kept the tag on me, the better her chances of her not opening the door of her father’s house to the local constabulary.

  After crossing Eisenhower Parkway, the lights flashed and the siren sounded, a brief warning growl. I pulled over. After the usual wait designed to make you sweat through the upholstery, both doors swung open and they came my way, walking in Quentin Tarantino slow-motion the way they do, hands resting on sidearms. They sandwiched me. I never saw the partner’s face on the passenger’s side, just his midsection in a crisp shirt and the junk wagon belt with all its paraphernalia. The one on my side was fortyish, with a brown moustache clipped military fashion, a pedal-shaped jaw, and the standard mirrored sunglasses.

  “Good morning, Officer. There’s a revolver in the glove compartment. I’ve got a permit.”

  He asked for it, along with my license, registration, and proof of insurance. He had a light Southern accent; Kentucky, maybe.

  He looked at the stuff. “You’re Amos Walker?”

  I had a number of clever answers ready, none of them appropriate. I said I was.

  “Get out of the car, please.”

  I did, and stood for the frisk, feet spread, leaning on my hands on the hood, while the faceless partner opened the glove compartment.

  Kentucky said, “Will you follow us, please?”

  “I’m not under arrest?”

  “Someone just wants to see you. If you prefer, you can ride in the cruiser and Officer Brindle will follow in your car.”

  I elected to drive.

  We headed downtown, as of course we would. I switched on the radio. There was a traffic update, then the weather, then a teaser promising an important new development in the Ann Arbor murder, after the station break. The light baritone at the mike made it sound like he was reporting the results of a contest.

  “The Ann Arbor murder;” quaint. In Detroit we just assign them a number.

  * * *

  I slid the pointer all the way right and left, but the old conspiracy was still in place: All the stations had gone on break at the same time. I went back to the first. The news reader’s voice, resonant and lighthearted, announced that the murder victim the Ann Arbor Police had identified as Jerry Marcus wasn’t, despite DNA evidence that had seemed to confirm the matter, and that Marcus was now being sought for the murder. Who the victim was, and how modern forensic science had managed to confuse him with his killer, had turned a fairly routine killing into a mystery. It was no wonder this guy was having such a good time. Last night’s Pistons victory was a letdown after that.

  A woman at the next station I tuned into had more. Fingerprints and ballistics had established a direct connection between Marcus and the shooting of a bouncer in front of the Necto Nightclub early the previous morning.

  None of this was new, of course; Karyl had sat on the details as long as he dared. Just like in a romantic comedy, you have to come clean before the woman finds it all out by herself, and the media is nothing if not a woman you had to court the old-fashioned way or plunge into a world of pain. But I listened to it all as if it were new, on the off-chance hearing it laid out by a stranger might trigger something. It didn’t.

  As I leaned over to switch off t
he radio, I spotted a gray minivan in my right-hand mirror, tailgating the car in the lane next to mine. I wouldn’t have thought anything about it, except for the driver’s curly head and elfin face.

  Where he got the wheels didn’t matter. Even an amateur movie director knows a little about a lot of things, and this one needed a trailer just to carry his IQ around.

  His resemblance to the dead man was eerie. I felt a theory beginning to sprout, in the dark, like the eyes on a potato. It made as much sense as anything else in the case, and as much as anything else nothing at all.

  TWENTY-TWO

  We turned off Main Street onto Fourth, a block short of the street where the police station stood. It wasn’t a mistake; the Kentucky Kop signaled the turn a hundred yards ahead to make sure he didn’t lose me. When two unoccupied meters came up, the cruiser swung into the curb. I took the one behind. When I got out, the officer who’d been driving pointed at my meter. I went back and cranked everything I had into it: For all I knew I wouldn’t be back for not less than one year nor more than five.

  So he was a company man. Only not so much he dropped a lousy two bits into his own meter; it was blinking red. I knew there was something about his moustache I didn’t like.

  He left his partner to monitor the radio and we walked south. The sun was bright, but our breath curled in the air. There were still some tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops about. I put my summer wear away in October, but it was a local thing. In Florida the polar coats and mukluks would have come out.

  We’d lost the van, or it had lost us, at the last turn. I figured Jerry Marcus had found a space past the corner. Where he’d go from there was the first easy thing about this job.

  At Washington we crossed to the other side. There was a barbecue place up ahead, with an orange neon sign. I asked who was buying.

  The cop said nothing; he was as good as his moustache.

  We passed the place. Just beyond it he opened a door and held it for me. He reached behind his back and brought out my Chief’s Special in its clip. “He says you can have this back.” He didn’t follow me inside.