American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel

by Loren D. Estleman

  The knob turned without resistance. I took my hand off it and knocked again.

  Nothing. I put my ear to the door, but they hadn’t replaced it with a modern hollow-core and it was like trying to listen for signs of activity from outside a bank vault.

  For once in my life I went with my first instinct and walked away from an unlocked door. Unlocked doors are no good, not in a city where kids chain their skateboards to parking meters. There, only two kinds of people don’t lock up when they’re expecting a stranger, and Hilary Bairn wasn’t a tourist. I’d had plenty enough of the other kind to kill my curiosity.

  I didn’t make it back to the elevator, of course. The cops had set their trap from behind another door across the hall and came out with guns drawn.

  FIVE

  The cop who’d pretended to be Bairn when I’d called was a large black detective third-grade named Burrough, no s, fifty and natty as Easter Sunday in a spotless white Panama and tan Palm Beach suit, gusseted to accommodate the harness. I think he’d transferred from the mayor’s security detail after a dustup of some kind with a reporter from Channel 7. I’d seen Burrough around headquarters once or twice and he’d seemed jolly, but then I’d had a pass to the fourth floor and no manacles on my wrists. I didn’t have them on now, but I got the impression there were orders pending on that.

  He sat me down at the table in Bairn’s kitchen and went through my personal items: a wallet containing a ten and two singles, an empty Winstons pack, fourteen scattered cents, a set of keys, a cell phone in its spring clip, and my ID folder with the toy badge. I’d left the registered Chief’s Special in the safe in my office and extralegal Luger in the car. I hadn’t come in prepared to shoot off any locks. Altogether it didn’t take up much space and looked kind of sad for a man on the thready outer edge of middle age.

  Oh, and fifty thousand in cash in a Number Ten envelope. I kept forgetting about that.

  He counted the bills, using the eraser end of a mechanical pencil to fan them out and then nudge them back inside the envelope. The FBI was watching the department that year and I guessed he didn’t want to take the chance of anything sticking in the heat.

  “Sell short?” That same tired voice I’d heard on the telephone.

  I said nothing.

  “Standing mute?”

  “Conserving energy,” I said. “It’s hot. Guns drawn means I’d have to tell it all over again to a lieutenant or better. It’s that kind of case.”

  “Know the system, do you?”

  “I’ve got cable.”

  “You’re not under arrest. Just detained. So far there’s no law against knocking on a door, even—” He checked himself. “I could be out of date on that. The mail from Washington’s slow this time of year.”

  “I tried the knob, too, don’t forget.”

  One of the uniforms tagged in, a long-jawed officer built like a marionette, loose in the joints, with the eyes of a born bully. He’d popped a couple of seams checking me for weapons. “Let’s house him, Detective. He’s long on smart answers and short on cooperation.”

  “I wish you’d rush it through,” I said. “Tonight’s corned beef at County.”

  Burrough got a dreamy look and slapped me.

  He’d pulled it, but he had a hand like a sap glove, heavy and hard, and I almost lost my seat. I felt a palm-shaped welt rising on my cheek, but I didn’t touch it. This was a variation on an old game: bad cop, bad cop. It told me everything I needed to know about what was in the part of Bairn’s apartment I hadn’t seen yet that afternoon. I’d had a pretty good idea anyway, from the level of tension in the room.

  “You should file a complaint for that,” he said in the tired voice that came from asking questions he didn’t believe the answers to. “Our new lady chief wants a twenty-first-century department, all sharp creases and no blood on the blouse.”

  “Women,” I said.

  “Too much pressure. From the walking scrotums on the street and the brass hats downtown and the cockroaches with briefcases and the assholes from the press and now the Fucking Bureau of Infestation. Enough people tell you you’re shit you start to stink.”

  I touched the welt then, to cover the surprise. It was an apology of sorts, and an apology from a cop is rare and a little pathetic, like watching an old lifeguard let out his belly when he thinks no one can see.

  “I asked for it,” I said, “though I thought it would come from Gumby here. Not bad at all, and without even a running start.”

  “Thanks. These kids huff and puff and waste too much time. You got to be quick if you don’t want to get caught on video.”

  We were friends again.

  “Who the fuck’s Gumby?” said the officer.

  His partner, a solid Mexican whose eyebrows and moustache made parallel bars across his pie-tin face, came in from the living room. At one time or another they’d all gone in there, leaving someone behind to watch me, to return seconds later with no expression. I figured that’s where the attraction was.

  “Shift change in ten minutes,” the Mexican told Burrough. “When’s the inspector coming?”

  “When he comes. Got a roast in the oven?”

  “Well, I got a life, same as everybody.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Inspector,” I said.

  The brim of the Panama came up. “You say something?”

  “I wouldn’t think a downtown stiff rated.”

  Burrough jumped on it. “Who said anything about a stiff?”

  “Okay, ‘horizontal American.’”

  There was a little silence after that. Nothing pregnant; the cast had simply gone up on the script.

  The shift ran out. I heard it in the sudden quiet from the main drag when the escape traffic stopped in midsurge and the people who were stuck in town—stuck because they lived there—popped open the first can of apres-ski Stroh’s and plunked down in Naugahyde waiting for the microwave to beep. Detective Burrough jingled the keys and change in his pocket, the Mexican pursed his lips in a dry whistle, Gumby standing behind me shifted his weight from one noisy new oxford to the other. The grapes of wrath grew heavy on the vine.

  The hall door opened and shut and then John Alderdyce, inspector in charge of Homicide, slid in like a lake freighter from the little breezeway that separated the kitchen from the living room where the dead slumbered; or so I thought, and my confirmation had just arrived. The tidy bachelor’s kitchen was packed to capacity now.

  I hadn’t seen John in months. If he’d changed at all it was in the direction he’d been going since puberty, bigger and harder and dressed more carefully than the governor, in wine-colored summer worsted with spectators on his feet and a gray silk figured tie on a shirt of the same shade. His face was made from scrap iron and bitumen, black and angular, and the whites of his eyes burned like hearts of fire deep in their sockets. They went from Gumby to the Mexican and finally to Burrough. To him I was dust in a corner. He was as good a friend as I had. “Press?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” said the detective. “It went out as a disturbance complaint. I talked to the neighbor. Got it when you need it.” He patted the breast pocket of his Palm Beach suit. Next to Alderdyce’s it looked like molded plastic.

  “Show me.”

  Burrough gave the uniforms the stay-put look and led the way out of the kitchen.

  They were gone five minutes. The Mexican checked his watch six times and Gumby redistributed his weight twice, creaking like a gallows. The building shuddered when the elevator trundled up and down the shaft. Bairn’s neighbors were coming home, changing clothes, and going back out to try their luck at the MGM Grand and Motor City casinos and the Indian trap in Greektown.

  I had a sudden thought and looked at the refrigerator. The thickset uniform saw the movement. He was twice the cop his partner was, but he’d probably finish out his service in the blue bag, because everyone knew Mexicans are hardworking and as slow as the tide. I turned it into a full rotation, as if I had a s
tiff neck, and went back to counting the specks on the tabletop. I’d seen what I’d expected to.

  Alderdyce and Burrough came back and the inspector scraped back a chair and sat down across from me and slid aside my effects to lay his forearms on the table. He looked at me then for the first time, but spoke to the detective. “Who hit him?”

  “Me, Inspector. He was being an asshole and I didn’t want Officer Ransom to get himself in trouble.”

  So Gumby’s name was Ransom. I thought I might need it if the feds recommended a clean sweep at the top and he got promoted.

  “Break his nose next time. He won’t file.”

  “Hello to you, too, John,” I said. “Can I bum a cigarette?”

  “Those things’ll take ten years off your life.”

  “Just the lousy ones at the end.”

  “Try the patch?”

  I shook my head. “Couldn’t keep it lit.”

  “You see, Inspector?” said Ransom.

  “I’ve seen.” To me: “Well, I finished quitting, so you can tell your lungs to hold their water. Who’s paying?”

  “Nobody. I came to see a friend.”

  “You told Burrough on the phone you represented someone with a proposition.”

  “The proposition was a beer, and the someone was Anheuser-Busch. We joke like that all the time.”

  “You’re usually funnier than that.”

  “Thanks. I never thought you were listening.”

  “What’s the name on the lease?” he asked Burrough without lifting his eyes from mine.

  “Hilary Bairn.”

  “Where’d you two meet?” he asked me.

  “Some bar.”

  He twitched a little finger wearing his University of Detroit class ring; all the others had grown too thick to fit. “You need to be careful where you go in this town with that much cash on you.”

  “I figure I’m in the same boat with it or without it.”

  “It’s your money?”

  “It’s my pocket.”

  “We’re supposed to report this kind of thing to the IRS. It could put you in a higher tax bracket.”

  “I’d like to be in a bracket. Last year I didn’t even file a return.”

  Ransom said, “I was telling Detective Burrough we should house him, Inspector. Obstruction of justice.”

  I decided to get mad. “I made a telephone call and knocked on a door. Next thing I know I’m getting hosed down, slapped, and held without benefit of tobacco. I’m the one being obstructed.”

  Alderdyce didn’t stir a molecule. “Feel better?”

  “A little. I could use that smoke.”

  “It isn’t what you did,” he said. “It’s the number you called and the door you knocked on and the day you picked to do it.”

  “How was he killed?”

  Nothing. He’d built the wall over more than thirty years of interrogating suspects in rooms like that one and downtown and being interrogated by defense lawyers in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. I said, “It’s homicide because that’s your detail. I’m having trouble getting from there to why a bookkeeper in Mt. Clemens draws a visit from the top brass in Detroit. Where’s Mary Ann?”

  “Lieutenant Thaler’s interviewing in Washington. Going to be a lady U.S. marshal.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “I didn’t know you had a case against her.”

  “I don’t. I’ll miss her. All four of you guys are cute as shovels. I was looking forward to the treat.”

  “She won’t get the job,” he said. “The politicians make a lot of noise about equal opportunity, but it’s the bureaucrats who do the hiring. They’ll take one look at those big brown eyes and tell her her app’s on file.”

  “Not if they take a look at her folder.”

  “They’ll say it was sweetened. The chief ’s a woman.”

  “Bet you twenty she gets the job.”

  “Kind of lean, with fifty grand at your fingertips.”

  “I didn’t save it up being careless.”

  “You going to keep running with that?”

  “Until I get tired.”

  One of his big shoulders moved. It was like watching a water buffalo adjusting its load. “Always happy to take your money. Care to see the damage?”

  “I might as well. He didn’t pick these chairs for comfort.”

  “Showing our age, are we?”

  “Doing our best not to.” I got up, using my good leg for leverage. He rose smoothly and all of a piece. We’d been poking nails into each other like that since we were calves.

  A red-and-black wool rug covered the living room floor to within eighteen inches of the walls, exposing the original hardwood, two-inch strips sanded and stained golden brown and sealed with poly. The walls were eggshell, with mall prints in frames of giraffes and gourds and construction workers eating lunch on a girder twenty stories above the street. I couldn’t see a theme. The furniture was Pottery Barn, with wormholes drilled into it. Bairn had dropped more money he didn’t have on a liquid-crystal TV on a metal stand with drawers to hold the VCR and DVD player and a small collection of movies and CDs. I didn’t like the place any more than I had that morning, and the fact that someone had kicked over a lamp and a potted plant and knocked a picture off plumb was no improvement. The body on the floor wasn’t even Hilary Bairn’s.

  SIX

  Alderdyce put on a pair of disposable latex gloves from his pocket, bent, and lifted the woman’s head from the floor to give me a better look at the face. She lay in a loose braid, on her back with her hips twisted sideways and her head turned so only her profile showed when you were standing over her. She’d exchanged the white summer dress for a yellow linen jacket and slacks and a knit black top. One of her open-toed pumps, black patent leather, was off her bare foot. Her flap of black hair fell down over one eye when her head was lifted. The other eye was looking at something way outside my range.

  “We never met,” I said.

  “Deirdre Jacqueline Fuller.” Detective Burrough read from a spiral pad. “Name on her driver’s license, and the photo checked. She had a key in her purse that fit the apartment door.” He tilted his Panama toward a shiny black handbag on an end table.

  Alderdyce lowered her head to the rug. The puddle of drool had begun to dry. “Lab monkeys won’t thank you for laying on hands,” Burrough said.

  “What they going to do, stomp my toes in their paper shoes?”

  “They were okay before. It was that TV show turned them into arrogant pricks.”

  “Head trauma?” Alderdyce asked.

  “Bruise on the left temple. I make it she fell and hit the floor lamp on the corner of the metal shade. Or somebody pushed her.”

  “Accident?”

  “I don’t see how you could plan it. You can land punches on the temple all day and miss the sweet spot.”

  “Well, maybe we won’t have it long. Five hundred hours community service and three years probation if he cops. Anyone see Bairn?”

  “Neighbor heard the door slam after the commotion in the living room. He didn’t look out. Didn’t hear the elevator, so he figured whoever it was took the stairs. Stewed for a little and then called it in. Ransom and Ordoñez caught the squeal. They found the door unlocked and called me when they saw this.

  “Be different it was a couple blocks north,” he went on. “Voices raised, slap on the chops, that’s a day in the life. Down here they’re interested in stopping things before they slide back.”

  Alderdyce stripped off the gloves, watching me. “How long since you went to a Tigers game?”

  “When did they close down the stadium?” I asked.

  “It’s the same team, no matter where they play.”

  “Same jerseys. Different names on the back. I lost touch. You trying to get rid of an extra ticket?”

  “It wasn’t a social question. You really don’t know who Deirdre Fuller is.”

  “Another friend of Bairn’s, apparently.”

&nbs
p; “Her father’s Darius Fuller: the Fuller Brush Man. That’s how come she rates an inspector. The mayor takes it hard when the children of famous locals come to bad ends. Especially when it’s inside city limits. In a couple of hours this place is going to be crawling with media.”

  “Assholes.” Burrough swept shut his notepad.

  “The detective’s beef is personal. Mine’s professional. When they stick their corn dogs in my face and start yapping questions, it would be nice to say we’re questioning her boyfriend. It’s always the boyfriend, so they’ll accept that and stand back and give us some air. If you did know Bairn casually, you should be able to shed some light on their relationship, what it was and if they got along, but you say you didn’t know her. If, and I know it goddamn well to be true, he’s business, you do know. So is he the client or the subject of the investigation?”

  “He isn’t a client.”

  “Progress. Who’s the payroll?”

  “I didn’t say there was one.”

  “Bullshit. You made a business call to this number and you didn’t even know it wasn’t Bairn’s voice on the line. The only way you’d make that mistake is if you’d never heard him talk.”

  “You can tie up a domestic killing without my help,” I said. “For you it’s a daily crossword. All I did was—”

  “If you say ‘make a telephone call and knock on a door,’ I’ll leave you here with Burrough and Ransom and take a walk around the block. The FBI can make what it wants to out of it when it comes up for review.”

  He’d kept his temper, but then he’d had it on a leash so many years he knew he could whistle it back anytime he cut it loose. Only the bright whites of his eyes told you what would happen to you in between. I said, “I have to talk to the client.”