American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Man, I couldn’t help it. It was on me when I went through the wash cycle. Can you fix it?”

  He opened the cell phone and shook out a jigger of water. “I can replace it. It’ll cost you full price. You voided the warranty.”

  “I need to retrieve a number from this one’s memory. Someone called me the other day and I have to get back to her.”

  “What day?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Come back Monday. No, Tuesday. Monday’s the fourth.”

  “I need it today.”

  “Not an option. Frankenstein didn’t build Boris Karloff in a day.” He yawned.

  “I’m impressed. I didn’t think anyone your age knew Boris Karloff from Boris Yeltsin.”

  “Who?”

  I snapped a fifty-dollar bill under his nose. His mouth clapped shut in mid yawn.

  I went out to smoke cigarettes and watch the tumble-weeds. The opposite side of the street was in deep shade but on my side the sun walloped the pavement. The parking meters shimmied and swooned and there was a sweet sticky smell of bubbling tar. A FedEx truck stopped in front of the old Parker block to make a delivery, then moved on, and that was the only human activity I witnessed until I snapped my last stub at the storm drain and went back inside.

  The kid had my dead cell plugged into a laptop computer open on the counter. His hands fluttered over the keys. At least he’d stopped yawning. I admired the racks of fuses, coiled cords, and software on display while he diddled. Everything available seemed to have been made in China, with instructions in English and French.

  “Okay, you want a printout?”

  I put down a gadget that promised to transmit the sounds of Eminem to whatever radio stations weren’t carrying them. “Just show me the screen.”

  He swiveled the laptop my way. I recognized Darius Fuller’s number in Grosse Pointe and several others. I wrote the two I couldn’t identify in my notebook. One of them would belong to whatever instrument Charlotte Sing had used to invite me to interview her at her temporary suite in the Hilton Garden Inn. “Thanks.” I put away the notebook.

  “How do you want to pay for that replacement phone?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I can fix you up right now if you’ve got a card.”

  “I don’t have a card.”

  “Personal check’s okay. We know where to find you.” He looked sly.

  “I’ve got twelve dollars in checking. When I said I’ll let you know I meant whether I decide I want a replacement.”

  “I can give you an upgrade if you’re dissatisfied.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Man, you can’t walk around without a phone!”

  I hung a cigarette off my lower lip. “What do you think people did before cell phones were invented?”

  “Same thing they did before cars: walk on their knuckles and watch I Love Lucy.”

  I went back to the office and tried the numbers. The first didn’t answer and the second turned out to belong to the cell phone company, calling from headquarters to find out how much I liked my purchase. I’d forgotten that call immediately. The kid in the store could have told me what it was and saved me the trouble. I made up my mind then about replacing the cell.

  I went through the mail. There was no change in my Hupmobile stock, so I tried the first number again. A female voice with a musical note in it read back the number by way of salutation.

  “Good morning, Mai. This is Amos Walker. Do you remember me?”

  “Yes. We played a little trick on you.” Her tone didn’t change. “I’m afraid Madame Sing is unavailable. She’s leaving for San Francisco this afternoon.”

  “She offered me a job the other day. I’d like to give her my answer.”

  “I’ll take the message.”

  “The answer is yes; which means I’m going with her when she leaves. What’s her flight number?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t intend for you to start right away.”

  “If something happens because her security is short-handed I’d never forgive myself. Anyway, I want to see how they celebrate the Fourth out on the Coast. A parade with a dragon float, I hope. I can make my own arrangements if she’s booked all her seats.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  I told her my cell was out of order and gave her the office number. I hung up grinning. As Asians went, Mai was thoroughly scrutable. I’d thrown a curve and caught her looking.

  The moment was gone almost before I could savor it. The hall door opened and I was getting up to open the private door when it swung around on its hinges and the knob punched a hole in the plaster on my side. Elron, the Scientologist bodyguard, stooped to look at me and stuck out what looked like a Takarov semiautomatic at arm’s length. He’d traded his gray hoodie for a yellow Ridgerunner T-shirt that exposed most of his impressive superstructure. The heat had gotten to him finally. “Lay it on the desk.”

  I’d drawn the Chief’s Special without thinking. I put it on the blotter and took a step back. “I thought you union types always looked for the label.” I tilted my head toward the foreign pistol.

  He looked at it as if noticing it for the first time, then made a dry sound in his throat and lowered the hammer and the weapon. “Wilson don’t supply the equipment. They sell this Russian military ordnance by the pound. Threw in a case of ammo free of charge. Okay.” He stepped inside and away from the door.

  They came in single file because there wasn’t a doorway this side of Uncle Ed’s Oil Shop that would let them in two at a time. None was as big as Elron, but all four of them in one place shattered the local safety code. Their faces wore the empty sightless concentration of the bodybuilder’s trance: hour after hour pumping away in the exercise yard, nothing to listen to but the rattle of the weights and the whistle of their breath. They trundled in and stood with their backs to my walls, arms not quite hanging at their sides because the shortened tendons bent them at the elbows. Two were white; say what you like about Wilson Watson—and people did—he did his recruiting by the board foot and not on the basis of race.

  “Okay, Wilson,” Elron said.

  Today it was urban upscale, P. Diddy instead of Fresh Prince. Watson had left the cap and leather jacket behind and turned out in a silver pinstripe and gray fedora with a black silk band, but he still looked like Humpty Dumpty. He waddled in on his broken-straw legs, looked from me to the revolver on the desk to Elron. “Check him for hideouts?”

  “Nah. Man don’t wear them in his own digs. They’re uncomfortable enough outside.”

  Watson didn’t like that, but he didn’t pursue it. I learned something then: He was a little afraid of his own security. He’d picked it for size and punishing power, but he was still the sick kid hiding from bullies in the corner of the playground. It was a handy thing to remember.

  “I’m short a man,” he said. Addressing me for the first time.

  “I just took a job. Try the Wayne County Jail.”

  “Somebody tipped Bairn that Ernesto was coming. He couldn’t of got the drop on him otherwise. I heard you was there.”

  “I found Esmerelda. He looked just like a little angel.”

  “You found more than that, I heard. You let Bairn get away.”

  “I was distracted at the time. It hit the news, I guess. I missed it this morning. What do you know about Fred Loudermilk?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Okay, maybe they’re sitting on him. He’s lake security. He drew down on me and told Bairn to beat it. Later he made a more energetic attempt to keep me from going to the law. I dropped a pier on his head.”

  “Dead?”

  “Concussed.”

  “Still?”

  “Awake but not talking. How’d Esmerelda find out Bairn was hiding at Deirdre’s mother’s place on the lake?”

  “I came here to ask questions, not answer any.”

  “If you wanted to beat anything out of me, you should’ve brought more guys.”r />
  “Nobody’s that hard.”

  “Not hard. Pigheaded. My old man was a Teamster back when Jimmy ran the joint, and it rubbed off. By the time you get me softened up enough to talk, I won’t be able to. There’s another way.”

  “I didn’t come here to negotiate neither. Christ, you got balls big as bazookas. I’ll get ’em dried and hang ’em from my antenna.”

  “You can’t pay me. I wouldn’t know what to do with it any more than a dog that caught a car. I’m talking about truth or dare.”

  “Swap? Shit.”

  I didn’t point out the obvious. Watson’s skin was thinner than his labor status, and he was too good an organizer not to know where his association was weak. Ernesto Esmerelda had known how much pressure to apply without getting carried away and destroying the source of information. Muscle without discrimination had no place on the table.

  Elron stuck his Russian pistol behind his back. Leather squeaked. “I’ll hang him out the window. Can’t go wrong with a classic.”

  “We’re only two floors up,” I said. “I could chip a tooth.”

  “So I’ll take you up on the roof.”

  “Shut your hole, Elron.” Watson ran a thumb down the side of his silk necktie. “All right, asshole. We hold the onions for now. Bairn told me about the place on the lake when he was making his pitch about everything he had coming when he married the Fuller bitch. When that deal went south I sent Ernesto to look for him there. I thought maybe you figured the same thing and got word to him to expect a visit.”

  “What I saw of Bairn I didn’t like strong enough to stick my neck out. Anyway, a guy with accounting training could work that out for himself. Maybe he saw your boy coming. It’s the pros that get careless.”

  “Not Nesto. He outsmarted Castro’s best and he wasn’t slowing down.”

  “There’s another explanation,” I said. “Bairn wasn’t the shooter.”

  Watson stroked his soul patch, then shook his head. “Plenty of people didn’t like him, but Bairn’s the one with the connection to that house. And he was still hiding out next door afterwards. You saw him yourself.”

  “I didn’t say it was a coincidence. If someone could tip him Esmerelda was coming, that same someone could furnish competition from Esmerelda’s league. They parked Bairn next door where he wouldn’t get in the way but where they could keep an eye on him, did the Cuban, and told Bairn to lie low until someone came for him. There isn’t a mechanic in the business who’d risk being stopped with a fugitive in the car on the way from a hit. Ditching the body in Bairn’s car and driving it into the lake sealed the deal, they thought; no wheels, no flight risk.”

  “They didn’t know he had legs?”

  “They thought they had him scared enough not to use them, but they overplayed their hand. He was scareder of them than he was of getting caught by the law and charged for Deirdre and Esmerelda. He was sure scareder of them than he was of you. That’s why he took the chance of losing Deirdre and his shot at two million and used her to hock a stolen watch to pay you something on account.”

  “He went to that chink chick for a loan and she told him to take a walk, that’s why,” Watson said.

  “No. You got that from me, and I got it from her. That was before I found out how big her ambitions were. She wouldn’t turn down any avenue of financing out of hand. She offered to bail him out. It was what she demanded in return that scared Bairn out of all his best hopes, turned him back into the small-time thief he was just to stay alive and out of bigtime trouble. The kind of trouble that can jack you up for the rest of your life.”

  “Such as what?”

  “She buys and sells people,” I said. “Start with that.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Watson perched on the edge of the customer’s chair with his feet spread in varnished cordovans, forearms on his knees, snap-brim shoved to the back of his head to give his brain some air. After a moment he straightened and snapped his fingers at one of the wrecking crew, who cut himself loose from the wall and dug out a thick fold of bills in a diamond horseshoe clip. Watson took it and sat fingering it. It seemed to be his rosary.

  “What’s Bairn got that the dragon lady wants so bad she’d off Nesto and buy this toy cop to keep him out of the can?”

  “Loudermilk was bought already,” I said. “I’d be guessing the rest.”

  “Guess away. Nobody here knows how to take notes.”

  I sat in the swivel. I wanted to stay on my feet in case Elron or one of the others broke his leash, but my legs were still rubbery from the lake. “Bairn’s a bookkeeper for a courier firm. It could be she wanted him to cook the books and skim some off for her, but if he were any good at that he wouldn’t be peddling stolen merchandise for quick cash. Anyway, if the scope of her operation’s as big as advertised, she needs millions to grease the wheels, not the few thousand he might manage to chisel, and even if that was the plan it shouldn’t have frightened him so much he’d jeopardize his meal ticket to pay his way out of the hole you put him in.”

  “Okay. So we know what it wasn’t. What was it?”

  “It’s a courier service, don’t forget. It delivers medical supplies and human organs all over the world by way of its own air fleet. It’s a sweet front for funneling case dough to Sing’s contacts overseas and transporting human cargo back home. No one has to know the planes don’t return empty except the bookkeeper, whose figures would reflect the extra fuel consumption. If she tried to recruit him to cover up traffic in illegal aliens, just when they’re top priority in Washington, it might scare him plenty. She didn’t refuse his request for a loan; he refused her offer on account of the strings she tied to it.”

  “So you figure she offed his bitch to show him she meant business. That’s cold.”

  “That’s something you might do. Maybe she arranged it to jam Bairn with the law so bad he’d have to agree to her terms to clear himself. She’s got the pockets to lawyer him up tight, or she could go the simpler route and throw someone to the wolves to take the rap. Maybe the actual killer. Meanwhile, though, she’d have to keep Bairn out of official custody in case he talked. Owning most of Black Squirrel Lake as she does, Sing figured he’d hide out at Fuller’s old vacation house. Your boy Esmerelda just happened to track him there when Sing’s own enforcer was on the premises, explaining things to Bairn.

  “It had to have been a chance encounter,” I said, when Watson’s head started shaking. “It explains the battlefield decision to stash Bairn next door until things cooled down enough to spirit him away. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been within twenty miles of that spot when Esmerelda showed up. Sing would already have had him on ice.”

  Watson riffled the edges of the bills with a thumb, twiddling. “The shooter was in so much of a hurry he didn’t give a shout-out to Loudermilk. So the toy cop let Bairn boogie instead of stashing him where Sing’s peeps could finish explaining.”

  “More likely Loudermilk panicked when I showed. Holding two men under one gun for different reasons was just a little outside his area of experience. When push came to shove all he remembered was Bairn had to be kept away from the authorities. He told him to beat it while he had me pinned down, and now Sing’s people are busy combing Oakland County for her patsy. It’s a big county. My guess? She’s put the same enforcer in charge who killed Esmerelda. If they can’t throw a loop around Bairn long enough to make him cooperate, they’ll cut their losses and plug him the minute he breaks cover. All it takes is one scared snitch to bring down a government or a corporation or an international conspiracy.”

  “He’s the one I want. The enforcer.” Watson slid off the horseshoe clip, skinned ten bills from the fold, and held them up between two fingers of his left hand. “Thousand a day till you find out who killed Nesto. Tell me, not the cops. And don’t milk it. I got eyes all over town.”

  “Use them. Even if I worked for thieves, I wouldn’t work for you.”

  Elron stirred. I felt it in my legs. I wondered if those b
ig weightlifter’s muscles would slow him down long enough for me to get to my gun before he jammed the Takarov down my throat.

  But Watson only looked amused. He rewrapped the bills around the fold and slid the clip into place. “Nesto and I go back. They stopped exporting his quality years and years ago, like good Havanas. You tell me your terms and we’ll negotiate.”

  “It’s timing, not price. When I deliver to my first client, the package will include the name of the shooter. Why not give your backfield a break and let the cops deal with him?”

  “I thought Fuller would of shoved you off by now.”

  “He did. I’m the client now. I’ve been shot at and pushed around and almost drowned. It’s me time.”

  The telephone rang. I let it twice, then picked up.

  “Mr. Walker? This is Charlotte Sing. Mai gave me your message.” Her voice was raised a little, the way people do when they’re speaking on a cell.

  “One moment, please.” I cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. “We done?”

  Watson rose, pushing on the seat until he had his weight distributed evenly on his toothpicks. “Anyone jacks you around, you tell him I got an interest in the concern.”

  “More Esmereldas?”

  “That’s the thing about unions. There’s always the second shift.”

  The Village People preceded him out the door; all except Elron, who paused to scoop the revolver off the desk, shake the shells into his big palm, and toss them into a corner. Then he left, the Russian pistol riding a clip on the back of his belt. I didn’t have a refrigerator there to tip over.

  After the outer door closed I put down the receiver and got up to make sure no one had stayed behind, then went back to my seat and apologized to Mrs. Sing for the interruption.

  “If you’re indeed going to work for me, I have to insist you address me as Madame.”