“Come as you are. If things go as planned all you’ll need is a phone. Got a cell?”
“I held out long as I could, but I can’t afford to miss a call from my lawyer.”
“I’m going to hang on to mine as long as I can, keep the line open. You’ll be outside. When you hear the word, call the cops.”
“What’s the word?”
I thought. “Bud Lite.”
“That’s two words. Hard to work them into the kind of conversation you’ll be having.”
“Not as hard as you think. It’s Tigers Stadium.”
“Shit. You could be anywhere in that old barn.”
“A friend of mine gave me an idea when he said he could trace my cell phone signal to my corpse. They send one even when they’re turned off. Tell that to the cops.”
“What if they take it away from you?”
“The kidnappers? They probably will, but the principle still works unless they heave it across the infield.”
“If they do that, I may have to go in.”
“Call for backup first.”
He picked up the check then. “It looks like you’re working for free. What’s your end?”
“The job started out straightforward, then took a mean slice. Technically, I’m still working it, so this is found money to do what I’ve been doing right along. Considering I’ve got a better than even chance of getting killed, it looks like a sound investment.”
“What about this friend you mentioned?”
“He’s got twice as many guts as I have, but only half the legs.”
“This woman they took; she a friend?”
“Just a casual acquaintance who doesn’t approve of me very much. I get a lot of that. Right now she’s the only connection I’ve got to the end of the job I started. It would be nice if I got her out alive, but it’s not my main concern.”
“You’re a liar. I think you’re the kind of idiot they used to write songs about until people got wise there wasn’t any such thing.”
“You can write one about me if you want.”
He put the check back on the towel and pushed it toward me. “It’s a long time till dark. You should buy yourself a new suit and a four-course meal.”
“You’re turning me down?”
“No way. If we both come out of this, I expect you to be a character witness at my trial.”
*
I got to Mary Ann Thaler’s office in the MacNamara Federal Building just as she was locking up. “Late lunch?”
“They don’t feed us at this level. I’ve got a meeting with the FBI special agent in charge.” She wore slacks and a loose linen jacket with a shoulder bag half the size of the one she’d used to lug around heroin. “Got something to report?”
“I just wanted to ask when you go home.”
“Planning on asking me out?”
“I don’t date women who can outshoot me. I wanted to know if you’d be available tonight after dark.”
“It still sounds like a date.”
“There may be entertainment involved, but I’m not too crazy about the cover charge. I’d owe you a favor if you hung around town a couple of hours past quitting and kept your cell charged up.”
“What’s the ruckus?”
“That’s classified for now.”
“What favor can I expect in return?”
“Second prize is I won’t ask you any more favors.”
“What’s the first prize?”
“Appointment to full marshal, if the cards fall just right.”
“When do they ever? Would this have anything to do with some misplaced dope?”
“I’m not sure it’s misplaced. But yeah.”
She glanced at a watch with a large face and boldface numerals. Tiny elegant ladies’ watches had no place in law enforcement. “I’d run the riddle out, but I’m late. Sun sets around six. I’ll give you till seven-thirty for your call.”
“I probably won’t be the one making it. If a strange number comes up, don’t leave it for voice mail.”
“It isn’t like you to partner up.”
“I don’t usually go to the government for help, either. It’s the season for breaking precedent.”
“This exclusive to the U.S. Marshals? No locals?”
“What happened to the joint operation?”
“Too many meetings. Like the one I’m late for.”
“If that’s how you want it.”
“That’s how it is.” She left, heels snapping on the linoleum. I let her take the elevator down alone. I didn’t want to take the chance of spilling my guts in a tiny enclosed space.
*
John Alderdyce wasn’t at his desk. A civilian clerk said the inspector was out on a call. I asked when he was expected back.
“Ten minutes. Tomorrow, maybe. He’s not delivering pizza.”
The clerk was slight, in his twenties, half an inch short of the department minimum for police training. His face had set in an expression of sour resignation. I gave him the weary smile. “Okay, Sunshine. I’ll hang around. Go back and sit by the scanner.”
I sneaked part of a cigarette sitting in a chair outside the office until a woman in a sergeant’s uniform got downwind of it and stuck a glass ashtray under my nose. I put it out and made do with the asbestos in the ceiling.
Alderdyce came along twenty minutes later, whistling. He stopped when I stood up. “I knew this mood was too good to last.”
“Plans tonight?” I asked.
“My wife’s been after me to check out the new MGM Grand. Last time we went gambling, we had to go to Windsor. That’s how long it’s been since we went out.”
“The Grand’ll still be there tomorrow night.”
He spread his feet and rolled his big shoulders under his silk suit coat, assuming a slugger’s stance.
“You may get a call tonight,” I said, “after dark.”
“About?”
“The freak snowstorm we’ve been having.”
“You don’t quit, do you? You’re like an eight-day clock.”
“Chances are the call will come from someone you don’t know. It’ll be quick, to cut down on your response time.”
“Have you ever asked yourself why there’s no pension plan for staked goats?”
“I can’t afford to retire anyway. We on?”
“If it’s a police case. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m sick of looking at Mary Ann Thaler.”
“Agreed. Not the part about looking at Thaler,” I added. “You married guys are too complacent.”
“I may not be married after tonight. This better not be a bad tip. Who’s calling?”
“Someone who’s in even worse trouble than I am.”
“Poor bastard. Just how far am I going after we hang up?”
“Not far, and you shouldn’t run into traffic. Nobody goes there anymore.”
He thought about asking more questions, shook his head a quarter inch, and unlocked the door to his office. “I got those prints back from Johnny Toledo’s whiz-bang camera. Care to check out the competition?”
“Does he have vertical lines shaved in his eyebrows?”
His fist tightened on the doorknob. “You met him?”
“No. Someone did his homework.”
“Stackpole. You run your own irregular police force, don’t you?”
“He says it’s a gang thing in China. He’s here on kind of a work visa.”
“Times have changed. They used to come to Detroit for professional help.” He flipped on the overhead light, thumbed his way down from the top of a stack on his work table, and slid out a folder that looked like all the rest, with nothing written on the tab for guidance; his system appeared to be largely psychic in nature. From it he skinned an eight-by-ten sheet of grainy photo paper and handed it to me. “Keep it. I’m just back from faxing copies to every police agency in the state and the FBI in Washington.”
I took it, wondering if that was the reason for Thaler’s meeting with the local special agent in c
harge.
It was the same balletic pose, but the details were easier to make out in the larger format. The Asian’s face was ageless, probably young, but had a plastic sheen, as if he’d had extensive work done. The razor tracks in his eyebrows were thin, invisible in the original tiny image, and ruler straight: five in the right, four in the left. Barry was always right about the things I wanted him to be wrong about. He wore his hair collar length.
“See anything significant, Sherlock?” asked Alderdyce.
“Red stain on his heel. I’m guessing he didn’t step in nail polish.”
“Might as well have, unless we find the shoe. What else?”
“You mean the face work?”
“We’re canvassing plastic surgeons by way of the AMA, but I don’t expect anything. It looks like the slipshod work they do in China. I mean he isn’t wearing a watch, or jewelry of any kind. No bulge to go with keys or change in his pockets. No pockets, so far as I can tell. Nothing to catch the light or snag on his clothes or jingle or slow him down.”
“SOP in combat situations.” I stroked a corner with a thumb. “No keys means a wheel man to take him to and from.”
“Unless he keeps a hide-a-key stuck to the car.”
“Not in Johnny’s neighborhood. The locals can frisk a car from roof to wheel covers in three minutes. Thanks, John. I think I’ll know him.” I rolled up the picture and stuck it inside my sport coat.
“Hang on.” He conjured up a flimsy sheet of pinkish paper from another stack. “Sign this.”
It was a receipt for personal property. While I was reading it he circled behind the table, plucked a Ziploc bag from a shallow drawer, and dropped it on top of the mountain of paper and cardboard. I signed the sheet, gave it back, and transferred my .38 Chief’s Special from the bag to my belt. I thanked him again.
“Just reload it before you go wherever it is you’re going. We recycle the ammo.”
*
I went to the Hockeytown Cafe for a late lunch, not for the food but for the noise and company. I didn’t taste what I ate and when I left I didn’t remember what I’d ordered. In the office I cleaned the fat cop thumbprints off the revolver, applied oil, wiped off the excess, and loaded all the chambers from the box I kept in the safe. The process brightened my outlook a little; the Luger was reliable, but it handled like borrowed property and I didn’t like the action.
I put it aside and went through the mail. I opened a letter from a party I’d known pretty well for a while, but it read like something written by someone I’d bumped up against on a cruise years ago. I dumped it with the rest. I burned tobacco, tilted back in my chair with my ankles crossed on a drawleaf, and studied the photo of the man who’d killed Johnny Toledo and probably Reuben Crossgrain. It had been difficult to concentrate with a police inspector looking over my shoulder.
He was Chinese. I wondered why the plastic job. I picked up the phone to ask Barry if it was a Paper Dog thing, some kind of shape-changing ritual to isolate raw recruits from their past before training, or if it was repair work in keeping with the rough-and-tumble nature of the occupation; but I thought Barry would just pester me about letting him ride along that night. I cradled the receiver.
I was glad now I’d decided to keep the office dry. There are plenty of excuses to drink. Boredom is one of the most common. The odds against me hardly needed help. I smoked, napped, typed up some surveillance reports I’d had hanging, filed the carbons, and stacked the originals for mailing. I still felt drowsy, from a combination of irregular hours and adrenaline highs and lows. I smashed water into my face in the little water closet and let it trickle down inside my collar while I stood at the window to watch the traffic beginning to clot two stories down for the four-hour rush hour. It gave me glimpses of crepey orange-and-black party deocrations piled in back seats and the occasional tiny passenger dressed up like Harry Potter. We were all waiting for the sun to go down.
*
Gale Kreski drove a commercial panel truck with no windows in the back, probably to discourage thieves from spotting the musical equipment he would carry often; a magnetic rubber sign on the side of the cab read LI’L TREASURES DAY CARE for camouflage. He honked in front of my building and I went downstairs, chewing pills. The .38 rode low on my back under the tail of my sport coat.
Outside, the street lamps had just come on: Mosquitoes, gnats, and the odd little brown bat circled the globes. I rode with him a block and a half down to the lot where I parked the Cutlass and went over the instructions on the way. We checked to make sure our cell batteries were working, the modern equivalent of synchronizing watches. No need for that with all of them feeding off the same atomic clock. His ponytail spilled out over the adjustable band of a dark figureless cap and he’d tugged on a dull blue sweatshirt over his tattoos.
Parking in Corktown wasn’t a problem at that hour. The family places did most of their business toward the end of the week and the Irish saloons where mayors and governors were elected in a time of more innocent corruption were boarded up. Roving bands of pirates hawking nonsanctioned pennants and key chains had migrated downtown when the Tigers deserted their century-old home for Comerica Park. Kreski slid into the curb two spaces behind me, shut down his motor, and sat in darkness. I left my car unlocked for reasons of expedience and walked two blocks down to the Corner.
Michigan and Trumbull, and on it the dog bowl–shaped pile of brick and cement where Cobb and Greenburg and Kaline and Horton, Tramell, Whitaker, and all the other immortals had thrown and slugged and run bases from the first major league game in baseball history until free agency and skyrocketing payrolls gave the game to the corporations. Their statues in Comerica Park were made of stuff less permanent than their phantoms’. With the floodlights shut down and looted of their copper and silver, the building seemed darker than night.
The first gate I came to was chained and padlocked. It would be the same at all the others. I scaled the chain link and let myself down on the other side. I felt like a kid sneaking in to catch the last couple of innings. The passage beyond was flanked by block walls with leprous patches of bare concrete gnawing through the dark paint. A waist-high iron railing installed to funnel the crowds toward ticket-takers was scabbed with rust, icy to the touch; the skeleton of the old park was asserting itself through the rotting flesh. Something glistening slithered into a patch of greasy moonlight before a low breeze. I recoiled, but it was nothing more sinister than a fresh condom wrapper. The old barn hadn’t been abandoned entirely.
I strained my nostrils for the reassuring smells of mustard and sauerkraut and old cooking oil, but even their ghosts had decamped, leaving behind a sour assurance of mildew. The place felt and smelled like an unused basement. It reminded me unpleasantly of the scene of Reuben Crossgrain’s massacre.
The recesses behind the concession counters were empty and black: no more five-dollar hot dogs, no bobble-head dolls to tear apart at an eight-year-old’s inquisitive hand. I found my way to the base of the steps leading to the seats, rested a hand on the .38, and climbed, up to the top where by day and by floodlight the green of the infield had glowed like Kryptonite, with men in white livery playing a boys’ game of catch; now it lay shaggy and dark in a sharp angle of illumination, and beyond that dead black. All the seats that had ringed the field of play, even the bleachers, had been scavenged by vandals or sold by the management to souvenir hunters. The empty tiers had acquired a kind of ruined elegance through their absence, alone among the park’s features; they might have belonged to the Colosseum in Rome.
I felt more alone than I ever had. I was an astronaut marooned on a dead planet, billions of light years from home. I didn’t know if I was early or too late.
“Hello?”
No response, not even an echo. The two syllables had fallen dead on the top step.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted at the top of my lungs. “Hello!”
This time it rang, wobbling around the perimeter like the first line
of “The Star Spangled Banner” and a thousand names forgotten and sent back to the minors. It had the tinny quality of stage thunder.
“There’s no need to tax your vocal cords, Mr. Walker. The acoustics here are quite marvelous. Impressive, actually, for so young a civilization.”
The voice was a smooth contralto, planed all around until no trace remained of a regional accent, not even generic American. Mocking, for all that. I knew it as well as my own, and it carried nothing but chill dread.
I waited years, feeling the weight of them in the pause. At length a shadow separated itself from the black at the opposite end of the stadium, stretching from the visitors’ dugout nearly to the pitcher’s mound, what was left of it; towing a tiny figure that as it advanced in my direction seemed to fill the vast empty space until I felt like backing away to give it room: a small, feminine shape despite the mannish tailoring of its dress, and one that in the paranoia of the waking night I’d hoped never to see again.
PART FOUR
THE GARDENS OF MADAM SING
TWENTY-FIVE
The last time I’d seen Charlotte Sing, we’d been several miles over Buffalo, New York, and closing the distance fast. It had been in a cargo plane with a refrigerated hold containing several hundred million dollars’ worth of human organs bound for the European and Asian black market and one dead body scheduled for disposal in the North Atlantic; me, too, I’d suspected, but the plane had crashed before that could be established, and Madam Sing vanished.
She was the product of an American serviceman and an illiterate South Korean girl during the U.S. Police Action, but cosmetic surgery and rigorous diet and exercise took twenty years off her appearance. From what I could see from my position halfway up to the nosebleed section, two years as a fugitive from international justice hadn’t added so much as a wrinkle. Small-boned and straight, in a dark suit cut to play down the swell of her breasts and her girlish waist, she placed one modest heel in front of the other, crossing the ragged turf of the diamond as if it were a polished floor.
She stopped short of home plate with her hands folded demurely in front of her: a tiny thing, five feet and less than a hundred pounds, but a heavyweight on the Most Wanted list. She’d come to the United States a slave, toiling as an unpaid prostitute in massage parlors, and parlayed what she’d learned into an executive position in the flesh-peddling market worldwide, billions in undeclared income, section upon section of real estate leased on the up-and-up to brothels and gambling hells—her legitimate front—and a crackpot plan to flood the Free World with illegal aliens. She had brains to spare, but they’d gone rotten on a steady diet of hate.
Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels Page 16