by Angel Eyes
Cass Corridor. Fire Alley, the boys on the Detroit Fire Department call it, that neighborhood being the arson capital of the so-called inner city. Most people avoid it even in broad daylight, some from righteous indignation over its thriving hooker trade, others because the Cass Corridor Strangler remains at large five years after the killing ceased. After two in the morning, when the bars and bowling alleys vomit their clientele out onto the street, the area boils briefly, then settles back into sullen dark complacency as it waits to swallow the occasional lone transient. The magic word Renaissance opens no doors on Cass.
Ann Maringer’s building was a grimy brickfront as old as the eight-hour workday, its upper floors scorched and their windows boarded up after a recent fire, not its first. The foyers dark but for a streak of greasy moonlight sliding through a broken pane, was strewn with cracked and curled linoleum tiles and stank of cooked cabbage. The smell grew stronger as I climbed the narrow, complaining staircase. Rats’ claws clattered behind the walls as I advanced, their owners scrabbling ahead of me like nasty leaves before a fresh gust.
The apartment was on the third floor, at the end of a flyblown hall painted mustard-yellow above the wainscoting. Harsh light spilled through the open doorway over the gnawed rubber runner. Something else had spilled out with it. A man’s arm.
The rest of him lay on his stomach just inside the threshold, where he had collapsed after using his last ounce of strength to reach up and pull open the door. Part of his red uniform shirt showed garishly above his sheepskin collar. I reached down and felt his neck for a pulse. I could have saved myself the trouble. He had swung his last baseball bat. His flesh was still warm. There was pink froth on his lips and his eyes were white gashes in the mottled face.
Fighting back nausea, I stepped over him into the apartment. The room was cheaply furnished but clean, except for a dark crimson smear some six inches wide matting the carpet from the body to a door on the opposite side of the room, which yawned open. This led into a bedroom just large enough to contain the object for which it was named, a stand supporting a lamp with a white china base, and a peeling dresser. Here the stink of cordite was stronger than that of the cabbage.
The top of the dresser was littered with bottles and jars containing the things women use to ward off time, nothing very costly or difficult to obtain. Woman’s clothing, neatly folded, filled the drawers, their labels bearing the names of chain stores in the area. An open box of sanitary napkins lay demurely beneath a stack of nylon slips.
The unmade bed yielded nothing more interesting. There was room for only one on the narrow mattress, which would disappoint a lascivious cophouse reporter I knew on the Free Press. A faded pair of woman’s jeans and a brown cotton pullover had been flung carelessly across the footboard. A brassiere lay on the floor beneath. Near that was a worn track shoe, too small for most men. I found its mate under the bed.
A light spring jacket hung in the narrow closet next to an empty hanger. Two pairs of shoes designed for fancier and more feminine dress than that required by the track shoes were lined up on the floor like patient sentinels. On the top shelf reposed an expensive calfskin suitcase, not new. I hoisted it down, getting dust on my clothes, and opened it. It was empty.
In the other room, besides the dead man, were the usual furniture, a carton of Bel Airs with three packs gone, magazines, dime-a-dozen landscapes in frames bolted to the walls. A black vinyl shoulder bag slouched wearily on a table near the door. Among the normal junk inside I found one of the missing cigarette packs and a wallet containing three twenties, a couple of fives, and a single. And a bank book showing a balance of three hundred and forty-six dollars.
There was no kitchen in the apartment. The bathroom would be down the hall. Something was missing. No doubt Miss Marple would finger it right away, the presence of a corpse notwithstanding. I was still working on it when I turned and spotted the uniformed cop watching me from the doorway. His youthful face looked frightened, but his gun was drawn, and in that moment I realized with an empty feeling that so was mine.
“It’s a stinking shame they took away our cattle prods.”
The speaker was a plainclothes sergeant, black, in shirt sleeves, with a round slick face the unhealthy gray of cooked liver. The room, claustrophobic and bare but for the chair I was sitting in, was one of the interrogation cells I’d seen a dozen times at police headquarters. This was my first time in the seat of honor. I asked him what time it was. They’d taken my watch.
“Where you’re going they measure time with calendars.” He thrust his face to within two inches of mine. His breath smelled like an ashtray. “Like I was saying, a jab or two with one of those little electric mothers and you’d remember everything right down to the Preamble to the Constitution.”
I said, “I’m surprised you’ve heard of it.”
“Don’t smart-mouth me, nigger-killer. Who’s to say you didn’t attack me and force me to defend myself by turning that pretty face into Silly Putty?”
I grinned. He backhanded me across the mouth. I grinned again, feeling blood trickle down my chin from my split lip. He reached back for a swipe in the other direction. His partner caught his arm.
“That’s how guys get rich in this town,” the partner told him calmly. “Suing the police for brutality.”
Shorter than his partner but built more solidly, this one had a mop of curly yellow hair and stiff eyebrows to match, which stood out against his ruddy complexion like bristles caught in fresh paint. His light blue eyes were inclined to sparkle and his mouth was fixed in a constant tight-lipped smile. He looked like somebody’s uncle.
His partner didn’t think of him that way. Their gazes locked for a moment, and the gray went out of his face as suddenly as if a tap had been thrown open somewhere in his system. He said, “Okay,” quietly, and his arm was released. Pouting, he rubbed circulation back into his wrist while the other handed me a handkerchief to stop the bleeding.
“You fell, right?”
I looked at him, at his twinkling eyes, and said, “Yeah, right.” I mopped my chin with the handkerchief. There wasn’t as much blood as I’d thought. Not as much as there could have been. He watched me.
“You’ll have to excuse Sergeant Cranmer. He hasn’t been the same since the Miranda decision. You might say it broke his spirit.” He fished a crushed pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and offered me one.
“What kind?” I asked.
“Luckies.”
“Forget it.”
He shrugged and put away the package without taking one for himself. “It’s almost five,” he said, answering the question I’d forgotten about. “You’ve been in here an hour and a half. Too long to stick with that story you gave us.” His voice was soothing.
“But long enough to run a ballistics test on the slug you dug out of the waiter’s body and prove it didn’t come from my gun,” I replied. “And your good cop, bad cop routine has whiskers.”
His smile faltered, and for a moment it looked as if he might cuff me himself. But his gyroscope held true. Calmly he said, “We’re still waiting for the report, but it’s a fact your gun hadn’t been fired recently. It wouldn’t be the first time a job was done with a throwaway piece, ditched in favor of another weapon for protection.”
“Brilliant deduction, Lieutenant. I bet in high school you used a corkscrew for a slide rule.”
“You were seen fighting with the victim earlier, after which you made your escape in a blue ’70 Cutlass, license number GJZ-600. The uniform who took that report spotted the vehicle parked in front of the apartment building and found you standing over the victim with a gun in your hand. The apartment’s being searched and I’ve got men combing the alley next to the building. When they find a murder weapon we’ll see what we can do about bringing back capital punishment in this state.”
I didn’t like it. His case was flimsy as a hotel room chair, but if the killer had happened to dump the widowmaker in the vicinity, I wouldn’t see
daylight for a week. “Who called the cops?”
His smile was blandly diabolical. “Nice try, Walker. This department doesn’t invest in revenge.”
“What’s my motive? I won the fight.”
“Maybe that wasn’t enough. Maybe you were interrupted before you had a chance to finish the job and came back later to follow him until a better opportunity arose.”
“Maybe you’re bucking for captain and don’t want too many unsolved murders mucking up your record. Or maybe you know who did it and you’re working on a bonus.”
“Maybe you fell down again and swallowed your teeth,” spat Sergeant Cranmer, charging. His partner flung out an arm to stop him. I smiled and shook my head.
“You cops remind me of a cocker I had when I was a kid. He only knew one trick but he made the most of it. I’m sorry as hell, but I’m fresh out of treats.”
The lieutenant swore for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You’re all alike, you private guys. So busy grubbing up a buck you start forgetting who your friends are. We can give you protection if you’ll open up. What do you think Phil Montana’s going to do when he finds out?”
I looked at him blankly. “Where does Montana figure in? Was the waiter a steelhauler?”
“Not hardly. He wasn’t a waiter either, not full time. His name was Bendigo Adams Jefferson, a.k.a. Bingo the Bat, after his favorite method of persuasion. He had the makings of a champion heavyweight back in the sixties until they caught him selling dope and sent him up for ten years. In Jackson he got in tight with Montana when Phil was up on that assault rap, and after his release Montana made him his personal bodyguard. Having Bingo with him had a lot to do with his getting back on top of United Steelhaulers. If you didn’t know all that before you croaked Jefferson, his pockets were full of identification. Your dumb show is older than our good cop, bad cop.”
“I didn’t have a chance to go over the stiff.” I considered. “A guy in his position must have had a lot of enemies. My killing him over a theft attempt makes a pretty big coincidence.”
“Especially with a strike threatening and a lot of angry people on both sides. Which is one of the reasons I don’t believe that part about his trying to mug you. Come on, Walker. He must have been pulling down thirty grand a year just for looking scary.”
“It must not have been enough or he wouldn’t have been moonlighting as a waiter.”
“All right,” he said patiently, “suppose he had expensive habits. Why jump you? You had eleven dollars in your wallet when we booked you, and that suit you’re wearing went out with poems that rhyme. Old ladies gave me better excuses when I stopped them for speeding back on traffic control.”
“Bet they’re still doing time.” I hadn’t told him about the diamond ring. “Why did I pick a fight with him then? I forget.”
“It’s a short step from accepting money to poke around in other people’s lives to accepting money to end them. Every snitch in Detroit knows there’s been a contract out on Montana since he chucked the Mafia’s puppet out of the top union spot. But he never goes anywhere without Bingo, so you were hired to take him out first. Either that, or it was a warning to Montana from the steel mills to toe the line. Which one is it, Walker? You tell me.”
“What about Ann Maringer? Found her yet?”
“Not yet, but we will. She might be an eyewitness.”
“She might,” I agreed. “Which is one good reason for the killer to have taken her with him. Or with her. These are liberated times.”
“It’s also a good reason for her to have ducked out before you drilled her, too.”
“Without her purse? That’s the first thing women grab when they’re in a hurry.”
“Who knows what goes through a woman’s mind when she’s in terror for her life?” But he didn’t sound convinced of that. He was too experienced not to have thought of it, but my mentioning it bothered him even more.
“How come no one in the building reported hearing a shot?” He clucked his tongue. He was on solid ground again. “In that neighborhood? Besides, this is a big department; we’ve heard of silencers. I even got to touch one once.”
“Here’s something else to chew on,” I said. “Why weren’t there any personal articles in the entire apartment? No pictures, nothing. I frisked her purse. No ID. Not even so much as an expired driver’s license or a reminder of a dental appointment. Didn’t that make you the least bit curious?”
“Curiosity,” he mused. “I think I left that next to my virginity. We’re checking out that angle. Maybe she’s not who she says she is. From where I’m standing that doesn’t make you look any more innocent.”
The sparring was starting to wear on me. I was beginning to feel guilty, worrying that I’d let down my guard and allow him to smash my alibi to pieces. That’s how cops work, like priests in reverse but with the same goal in mind: Confession. I said, “I seem to remember something about getting one telephone call.”
“Jeez, I think they’re all out of order,” said Cranmer.
“Shut up,” said the lieutenant.
The buzz of activity outside the soundproof interrogation room hurt my ears. Voices droned in the squad room, paper whispered, telephone bells jangled, a hunt-and-pecker plucked desultorily at the keys of an ancient Underwood typewriter. Under the watchful eye of a fresh-looking cop in uniform I bonged two borrowed dimes into a pay telephone and punched out Lieutenant John Alderdyce’s home number. He was better than a lawyer any day.
3
THE NEXT ROUND of questions was interrupted by a knock at the interrogation room door. Cranmer poked his head inside and whispered in the lieutenant’s ear. “Shit!” exclaimed his superior, pushing past him. The door was pulled shut. Alone in the room, I fell asleep on the hard chair and dreamed of men with holes in their chests dragging themselves through gory slicks, pink bubbles forming inside their nostrils and at the corners of their mouths. I awoke with my hands gripping the legs of my chair to find John Alderdyce glowering at me from the doorway. I rubbed my eyes with my thumbs and ran my fingers through my hair to clear out the snarls. I wondered how much more gray there was in it this morning.
“Thanks for coming down, John. I owe you.”
“Forget it,” he said. “Forget me. Please. There’s nothing I like better than coming back to the station ten hours before I have to. Do me a favor and forget I ever lived.”
A coarse-featured black man with as much eye for fashion as one can entertain on a detective lieutenant’s salary, John had settled in his haste for a shirt that looked as if he’d wore it all through the four P.M. to midnight shift, under a tailored brown safari jacket five shades lighter than his trousers. But his necktie appeared fresh. We’d met twenty years before, when his father and mine went into partnership in a west side garage. Not that we could be called friends in our respective professions.
I said, “Did you get my bail ticket?”
“I got your freedom, not that I’ve got anything against Renaissance. Fitzroy’s letting you go.”
“Fitzroy?”
“You just spent two hours with him. Weren’t you introduced?”
“We may have been. I’m punchy. Did you leave any marks?”
“No rough stuff. Just logic.” He was still boiling. “They can’t find a murder weapon and the woman who reported your fight with Bingo Jefferson refuses to sign a statement.”
“A woman,” I reflected. “Redhead, nice build, medium height?”
“You saw her, then.”
“With her pimp. Anything else?”
“They haven’t found the killer, if that’s what you mean.”
“I was thinking of Ann Maringer.”
“We could be talking about the same person.”
“I thought about that. I don’t think so.”
He put that one on a back burner. “What did you say to Fitzroy? He doesn’t usually turn that shade of purple just because a case goes sour.”
I shrugged. “I got a little smar
t. Sue me. He was only trying to ram Murder One down my throat.”
A cop in uniform came up behind Alderdyce. “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but we need the room for a rapist.”
“Put it to music and go to Nashville.” He looked back at me. “My office.”
We detoured downstairs to reclaim my stuff from the front desk. The sergeant there, a bifocaled veteran with four stars on his sleeve and crew-cut hair the color of rusted steel, told me they were holding onto my gun for the time being. I said I’d ask his captain about that. He replied that I could do something vile with a duck for all he cared. On our way back up we met Lieutenant Fitzroy coming down, in corduroy topcoat and a narrow-brimmed hat that made him look like an economy-size leprechaun.
“Try to get past the city limits,” he told me. “Just try. You’ll be ass-deep in law before your foot touches ground.”
John said, “Stop playing dick, Fitz. Walker’s a pain in the butt, not a killer.”
The other shifted his eyes from one to the other of us with the jolly lights still dancing in them. Some mortician was going to have fun trying to jack that smile down from his face. Then he left us, heading for the street.
“Watch him,” warned Alderdyce when we were among the familiar men’s-room surroundings of his office in the C.I.D. He swung a long leg over the corner of his gray metal desk and began patting his pockets. “He’s got Proust’s ear, and you know what he thinks of you.”
My old friend Inspector Proust. I wondered if he was still notching the grip of his pearl-handled Colt automatic. I dug out my pack of Winstons and offered one to John. “Nobody can accuse me of sucking up to the brass,” I said, lighting his and then mine. It tasted good on my empty stomach. Like sucking a tire. “What about Fitzroy’s partner?”
“Cranmer? He’s a psycho. One of the little side benefits of lowering the standards to achieve racial balance in the police department.”
I watched him smoke. “I thought you quit.”
He made a face, drawing on the butt. “Don’t you start on me too. I get enough of that from my wife. That’s no pool cue between your fingers.”