Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

by Loren D. Estleman

  The dead man’s name turned out to be Jarvis, and he had been questioned and released in connection with three unsolved homicides in the past year and a half. I didn’t know him from Sam’s cat. You can live in a city the size of Detroit a long time and never get to know all the killers if you’re lucky.

  Dead Soldier

  Nha Nelson’s Oriental face was shaped like an inverted raindrop, oval with a chin that came to a point. She just crested five feet and ninety pounds in a tight pink sweater and a black skirt that caught her legs just below the knees. Her eyes slanted down from a straight nose and her complexion was more beige than ivory. She was as Vietnamese as a punji stick.

  I said, “My name’s Amos Walker. I think we spoke on the telephone about a package I have for Mr. Nelson.” I held up the bottle in the paper sack.

  “Come in.” She gave every consonant its full measure.

  Carrying my wine like a party goer, I followed her into a neat living room where two men sat watching television. One rose to grasp my hand. Reed Nelson was my height and age—just six feet and on the wrong side of 30—but he had football shoulders under his checked shirt and wore his brass-colored hair cut very close. His brittle smile died short of his eyes. “My neighbor, Steve Minor.”

  I nodded to the other man, fortyish and balding, who grunted back but kept his seat. He was watching the Lions lose to Pittsburgh.

  “Nha said a private detective called.” Nelson’s eyes went to the bottle. “It’s about the tontine, isn’t it?”

  I said it was. He asked Steve Minor to excuse him, got a grunt in reply, and we adjourned to a paneled basement. Hunting prints covered the walls. Rifles and handguns occupied two glassed-in display cases, and a Browning automatic lay in pieces on a workbench stained with gun oil and crowded with cartridge-loading paraphernalia. My host cleared a stack of paper targets off one of a pair of crushed-leather armchairs and we sat down.

  “Expecting someone?” I asked.

  He smiled the halfway smile. “Friend of mine owns a range outside Dearborn. I was a sharpshooter in the army and I’d rather not lose the edge. If I were you I wouldn’t smoke; you’re sitting on a case of black powder.”

  I looked down at the edge of a carton stenciled EXPLOSIVE sticking out between the legs of my chair and put away my pack of Winstons.

  “David Kurch hired me to find you and deliver the bottle,” I said. “He’s the lawyer you and the others left it with when you formed the tontine.”

  “I remember. He was an ARVN then, stationed in Que Noc.” Nelson’s expression turned in on itself. “That was only twelve years ago. It’s hard to believe they’re all dead.”

  “They are, though. Chuck Dundas stepped on a mine two feet shy of the DMZ in ’seventy. Albert Rule was MIA for seven years and has been declared dead. Fred Burlingame shot himself in New York last year, and Jerry Lynch died of cancer in August. Congratulations.” I handed him the bottle.

  He slid it out of the sack, fondled it. “It was bottled in some Frenchman’s private vineyard in ’thirty-seven. Al found it in a ruined cellar near Hue, probably left behind when the French bugged out. The tontine was Fred’s idea. The last man left was supposed to get the bottle. Were you over there?”

  “Two years.”

  “Then you know how preoccupied we were with death. But, hell, I forgot all about this till you showed up. When I saw the package I remembered.”

  I passed him my receipt pad with a pen clipped to it. “If you’ll sign this I’ll shove off.”

  He read it swiftly and scribbled his name. “How’d you find me? I just moved to Detroit from Southfield, and my number’s unlisted.” He gave back the pad and pen.

  “Kurch said you were an engineer at General Motors. I got it from Personnel.”

  “They have a hell of a nerve, after I just got fired.”

  “They cutting back again?”

  He moved his head from side to side, but his eyes stayed on me. “They said I was a poor risk from a psychiatric standpoint.”

  “Are you?”

  “You were in Nam. What do you think?”

  I let that ride and got up. Crowd noise filtered down from the TV set upstairs. Someone had just made a touchdown. Nelson said, “You drink?”

  I sat back down. “Do they make cars in Toyko?” This time his smile made it all the way. He turned his head and called, “Nha? Two glasses, please.”

  “What about your neighbor?” I asked.

  “He’ll understand. Steve and I aren’t all that close. I only invite him over because I knew him slightly in Nam and he put me on to this house, not that that was such a favor with this mortgage staring at my throat. He introduced me to my wife.”

  On cue, Nha appeared, set a pair of stemmed glasses down on the workbench, and withdrew. She seemed flushed. Nelson scooped a Swiss Army knife out of a drawer in the bench and used the corkscrew to unstop the bottle. When the glasses were full of dark red liquid, he handed one over and raised his. “Chuck, Al, Fred, and Jerry. Four among the fifty thousand.”

  We sipped. It was good, but nothing beats twelve-year-old scotch. “Were you married over there?”

  He nodded. “She was working in a Saigon orphanage. Grew up there, after her parents got napalmed in ’sixty-five. You like being a private eye?”

  We drank wine and sold each other our biographies. There wasn’t much to tell beyond the gaping hole of Vietnam. After an hour or so, the noise upstairs ceased abruptly. Steve Minor had switched off the set. Nelson replaced the cork in the bottle, which was now half empty. “There’s another afternoon’s drinking in here,” he said, rising.

  I was already on my feet. “Share it with your wife, or with someone else close.”

  “She’s a teetotaler. And if there were anyone else close, do you think I’d be wasting it on a shamus I don’t even know?” His eyes pleaded.

  I said I’d call him. Upstairs, Nha saw me out without speaking. Minor had left.

  Two

  It was three weeks before I made it back. I had spent much of that time following a city councilman’s wife from male friend to male friend while her husband was on a junket to Palm Springs. Nelson greeted me at the door, explaining that Nha was out shopping. We killed the bottle in near-silence. He hadn’t found a job and he wasn’t talking much. It looked as if the novelty had worn off our relationship. We parted.

  The rest of the month died painlessly. The Lions blew a late-season rally just before the play-offs. Snow was on the ground most other places. Detroit’s streets were clogged with brown slush. Reed Nelson called me at the office on a Saturday and asked me to meet him somewhere for lunch.

  “I’ve got a job interview in Houston next week,” he said, when we were sharing a table in my favorite restaurant, one where the chef wore a shirt and didn’t swat flies with his spatula. “Only the bank ate my last unemployment check and the savings account is down to double figures. When I applied for a loan, the manager of my friendly dependable finance company snickered and called in his assistant because he said he needed cheering up.”

  I blew on a spoonful of steaming chili. “What about old Steve? Army buddies are usually good for a few bucks.”

  “The hell with him.”

  I glanced up at Nelson’s face. He’d lost weight. His cheeks were shadowed and there were purple thumbprints under his eyes. “How’s Nha?” I asked.

  “She’s fine.” The words cracked out like shots from a .22.

  We ate. I said, “I’ll give you two hundred for the Browning.”

  He hesitated. “It’s not worth that. The trigger mechanism’s sloppy and the barrel needs bluing.”

  “I always was a rotten businessman. We’ll stop at my bank on the way back to the office. I’ll come by later and pick up the automatic.”

  “Thanks, Amos. You ever need anything, just name it.”

  “Pass the salt.”

  Three

  I returned from a tail job early Monday afternoon. Whoever said travel is broadenin
g never followed a possibly larcenous salesman clear to Toledo and sat up all night in a freezing car. I hadn’t eaten since Sunday. Nursing the crick in my neck, I turned on the TV in my living room and lurched into the kitchen to find something to defrost. The volume was too high. When the sound came on, the name “Steven Minor” pasted me to the ceiling.

  The picture was just blossoming on when I got back in. Floodlights illuminated two paramedics sliding a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. Then the camera cut to a male model in an overcoat standing in front of a house I recognized with a microphone in one hand. Police flashers throbbed sullenly in the street nearby.

  “Police aren’t saying yet what may have caused Nelson to shoot his neighbor and barricade himself in his house. But evidence suggests that the tragedy of Vietnam has just claimed another victim.” The model identified himself and his grim face disappeared, to be replaced by a smiling one back at the Eyewitness News Desk. I left the set running and got out of there.

  Four

  John Alderdyce was the lieutenant in charge of the investigation. He spoke to a big sergeant from the Tactical Mobile Unit, who reluctantly let me through the cordon. John’s black and has been a friend since childhood, or as much of one as a plastic badge can hope to find among the blue brotherhood.

  “What’s your billing in this?” he demanded when we were inside Nelson’s house.

  “Friend of the family.” I scuffed a sole on a red stain on the carpet. It was still fresh, and it wasn’t wine. The room was a shambles of overturned furniture and broken crockery. “When did Minor

  die?”

  “He was DOA at Detroit Receiving.” Alderdyce’s face fluttered. “Damn it, who told you he’s dead?”

  “I’m a detective. Rumor has it you’re with Homicide.” I fed my face a butt. “What did I miss?”

  “Right now it looks like this guy Nelson popped his cap, plugged his neighbor with a thirty-two auto, then locked- himself in, holding his wife hostage. Hostage Negotiations people talked him into surrendering. He’s wearing handcuffs in the basement. Vietnam vet, certified psycho, unemployed. They ought to print up a form report for this kind of thing with blanks where we can fill in the names, save on overtime.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Don’t need ’em. Nelson confessed. We’re just waiting for the press to clear out so we can take him downtown and get it on tape. He and Minor were talking downstairs when he flipped. You ought to see that gun room. I guess you have.” He nailed me. “Since when are you anybody’s friend?”

  “Even the garbageman rates a cup of coffee now and then. What’s Nha say? That’s his wife.”

  “I met her. Pretty. Did I ever tell you I had a crush on Nancy Kwan before I was married? She was hysterical when I got here. Nelson’s wife, not Nancy. We called her doctor. He just left. She’s in the bedroom, under sedation.”

  “I wonder how she got along without it when they burned her parents to death.” I blew smoke. “Can I see Nelson?”

  Alderdyce’s eyes glittered in narrow slits. “As what? Friend or representative?”

  I said friend. He considered, then nodded as if agreeing with himself and started for the stairs. I dogged his heels. Drops of blood mottled the steps. I halted.

  “Where’d Minor get it?” I asked.

  “In the right lung.” The lieutenant looked back up at me from the bottom step. “He staggered up the stairs, bounced off some furniture on his way through the living room, and collapsed by the front door. Hospital says he drowned in his own blood. Anything wrong with that?”

  “Are you asking as a friend or a policeman?”

  He made a rude noise and resumed moving. A cop in uniform and a plainclothesman I didn’t know were guarding the prisoner, who was sitting in the chair I had occupied on my two visits, manacled wrists dangling between his knees. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. When I entered, he looked up and a tired smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His features were cadaverous.

  “I used your gun,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “What’s he mean, your gun?” snapped Alderdyce.

  “Private joke,” I said. “What happened, Reed?”

  “They’re saying I killed Steve. I was shooting at Charlie.”

  “Charlie?” Alderdyce’s brow puckered.

  “Viet Cong.” I ditched my cigarette in an ashtray on the workbench. “Shrinks call it Vietnam Flashback. Years after a vet leaves the jungle, something triggers his subconscious and he suddenly thinks he’s back there surrounded by the enemy. He reacts accordingly.”

  “Oh yeah, that. As if murderers didn’t have enough loopholes to squirt through as it was.”

  The telephone rang upstairs. Alderdyce jerked his head at the uniform, who went up to answer it.

  “It’s a legitimate dodge,” I said. “Only not in this case, right, Reed? Steve Minor was the target all along.”

  The uniform’s feet on the stairs were very loud in the silence that followed. “It’s for you, Lieutenant,” he said. “The lab.”

  Alderdyce pointed at me. “Hold that thought.” He left us.

  Five minutes later he returned. His eyes were very bright. “Blow your diminished capacity plea a kiss quick, Nelson. We’re going Murder One.”

  Five

  “The D.A. won’t buy it,” said the plainclothesman, after a moment.

  “Bet me. The lab found powder burns on Minor’s shirt, but guess what? There weren’t any around the wound. I called the hospital and checked.”

  “Proving?” I asked.

  “Proving he wasn’t wearing it when he was shot. Someone held it up and fired a bullet through it, then put it on him while he was dying upstairs to make us think otherwise. We know you were at Metro Airport an hour before the shooting, Nelson, and that the airline lost your reservation on a flight to Houston. Was Minor in bed with your wife when you came home, or did you just have time to take off his shirt?”

  The prisoner leaped to his feet, but was shoved back into it by the other two officers. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Slouched.

  “Neighbors reported only one shot, Lieutenant,” the plain-clothesman pointed out. “And there was just one cartridge gone from the gun.”

  “They didn’t hear the first because it was fired in the basement. And don’t you think a man smart enough to know we’d question a chest wound without a corresponding hole in the shirt and then make up that psycho story to cover himself is smart enough to replace one of the spent shells? I want a crew here to search every inch of this house until they find where that second bullet went.” He nailed me. “You knew Minor was the target. How? Did you know about him and Nelson’s wife?”

  “No, and I still don’t,” I said. “You’re zero for two. Nelson never shot anyone. Not in this hemisphere, anyway.”

  Nelson glanced at me, then away. I continued before Alderdyce could ask any more questions.

  “Reed was a sharpshooter over there. Still is; he told me he keeps in practice. There’s no way, if he thought Minor was a Viet Cong, that he’d miss the heart at this range and give Charlie a chance to retaliate. And if it was Minor he wanted to kill, he would’ve made sure his victim didn’t hang around long enough to talk. It’s my guess he was shot before Reed got here.”

  “No! I killed him!” This time the cops held the prisoner in his chair.

  “His car was parked in the driveway when the neighbors heard the gun go off,” Alderdyce snarled. The skin on his face was drawn so tight it shone blue, as it often did when I was speaking.

  “You said yourself it was the second shot they heard,” I reminded him. “That one was his, to keep anyone from wondering why Minor didn’t have his shirt on in his neighbor’s house, and he did it upstairs because he knew it wasn’t safe to pull a trigger in the basement with so much black powder lying around. Just one other person could have fired the fatal bullet. Just one other person was in the house at the time.” I breathed some air. “What were Nha and Steve Minor to each
other back in Vietnam, Reed?”

  “Prostitute and pimp.”

  Alderdyce and I turned. Nha Nelson, barefoot in a Chinese house dress, her hair down and disheveled, was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairwell. Her face was streaked and puffy.

  “Don’t, Nha,” pleaded her husband.

  “I should not have let it come this far.” She spoke slowly, like a record winding down. The doctor’s sedative had furred the fine edge. “Minor made money on the side running prostitutes in Saigon. I was one of six. When his tour ended, he introduced us all to GIs he knew, hoping some of us would marry and he could blackmail the husbands later by threatening to tell all their friends and business associates what their wives used to do for a living.

  “Reed was an engineer for a large corporation, the perfect victim. But he lost his job before Minor could begin squeezing him. Then he blackmailed me, but not for money. He was a depraved man. He said if I did not have sex with him he would tell Reed I lied about my past. I agreed.”

  Her eyes filled and ran over. Nelson said her name. She acted as if she hadn’t heard. “I love my husband. I was afraid he would leave me if he knew the truth. Minor waited until Reed left for the airport and then he came over to collect. But I could not do it. I had done it many times, with many men, but that was in Vietnam, before I had Reed. I excused myself while Minor was undressing and came down here for a gun. I wanted only to scare him, to make him leave. He suspected something and followed me. When I heard him on the stairs I panicked. I turned and—” Bitter tears strangled her.

  I gave her my handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and nose. Nelson was weeping too, his face buried in his hands, the chain dangling between the wrists. Quiet rolled in and sat down. Alderdyce booted it out. “Do you have the names of the other five women?”

  “Three of them,” she said. “The other two didn’t marry the men Minor wanted them to. I even know the husbands’ names and what cities they lived in. He bragged to me about how he had traveled around the country all this time, setting up shop wherever a victim was. That’s what he called it, ’setting up shop.’”