Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

by Loren D. Estleman

  “You have found her.”

  I said nothing. Suddenly he was an old man. He shuffled blindly to a marble bench near the pool and sank down onto it. His hands worked on his knees.

  “When I didn’t hear from her after several days I became frightened,” he said. “The servants knew we argued. She’d told Debner of my—shortcomings. Before I left criminal law, I saw several convictions obtained on flimsier evidence. Can you understand that I had to protect myself?”

  I said, “It wasn’t necessary. Debner was just as unsuccessful keeping her happy. Any man would have been. Your wife was a lesbian, Mr. Wynn.”

  “That’s a damn lie!” He started to rise. Halfway up, his knees gave out and he sat back down with a thud.

  “Not a practicing one. It’s possible she didn’t even realize what her problem was until about five weeks ago, when she accidentally saw your former maid naked. The maid is a lesbian and recognized the reaction. Was Cecelia a proud woman?”

  “Intensely.”

  “A lot of smoke gets blown about the male fear of loss of masculinity,” I said. “No one gives much thought to women’s fears for their femininity. They can drive a woman to fire a servant out of hand, but she would just be moving temptation from her path for the moment. After a time, when the full force of her situation struck home, she might do something more desperate.

  “She would be too proud to leave a note.”

  Wynn had his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. I peeled cellophane off a fresh pack of Winstons.

  “The cops can’t really tell when a note was written, Mr. Wynn. I just said that to hear what you’d say.”

  “Where is she, Walker?”

  I watched my reflection in the pool’s turquoise-colored surface, squinting against the chlorine fumes. The water was clear enough to see through to the bottom, but there was a recessed area along the north edge with a shelf obscuring it from above, a design flaw that would trap leaves and twigs and other debris that would normally be exposed when the pool was drained. Shadows swirled in the pocket, thick and dark and full of secrets.

  Bodyguards Shoot Second

  “A. Walker Investigations.”

  “Amos Walker?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was male and youthful, one of those that don’t change from the time they crack until the time they quake. I said, “This is he.”

  “Huh?”

  “Grammar,” I said. “It gets me business in Grosse Pointe. But not lately. Who’s speaking?”

  “This is Martin Cole. I’m Billy Dickerson’s road manager.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, really.”

  “I believe you, Mr. Martin. How can I make your life easier?”

  “Cole. Martin’s my first name. Art Cradshaw recommended you. He said you were the best man for what you do in Detroit.”

  “Sweet of him. But he still owes me for the credit check I ran for his company six months ago.”

  “That’s hardly my business. I need a man.”

  I parked the receiver in the hollow of my shoulder and lit a Winston.

  “Walker?”

  “I’m here. You need a man.”

  “The man I need doesn’t pick his teeth with his thumbnail and can wear a dinner jacket without looking as if he was strapped in waiting for the current, but doesn’t worry about popping a seam when he has to push somebody’s face in. He’s a good enough shot to light a match at thirty paces on no notice, but he carries himself as if he thought the butt of a gun would spoil the lines of his suit. He can swear and spit when called upon but in polite conversation wouldn’t split an infinitive at knifepoint.”

  I said, “I wish you’d let me know when you find him. I could use someone like that in the investigation business.”

  “According to Art Cradshaw you’re that man.”

  “I don’t own a dinner jacket, Mr. Dickerson.”

  “Cole. Dickerson’s the man I represent. The jacket’s no problem. We have a tailor traveling with us and he’ll fix you up in a day.”

  “I didn’t know tailors traveled. But then I don’t know any tailors. What business are you and Mr. Dickerson in?”

  Pause. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Probably not. I don’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Billy Dickerson. The singer. Rock and Country. He’s opening at the Royal Tower in Dearborn tomorrow night. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him.”

  “My musical appreciation stops around nineteen sixty-two. What sort of work do you have in mind for this cross between Richard Gere and the Incredible Hulk?”

  “Protection. Billy’s regular bodyguard has disappeared and he can’t leave his suite here at the Tower without someone to stand between him and his adoring fans. Too much adoration can be fatal.”

  “I don’t do that kind of work, Mr. Cole. Bodyguards shoot second. If at all.”

  “We’re paying a thousand. For the week.”

  I hesitated. Habit. Then: “My daily’s two-fifty: That comes to seventeen-fifty for seven days.”

  “We’ll go that.”

  “Can’t do it, Mr. Cole. I’m sitting on retainer for a local union just now. They could call me anytime. Try Ned Eccles on Michigan; security’s his specialty. Infinitives don’t last too long around him, but he’s hard and fast and he knows how to tie a bow.”

  “I don’t know. Art said you were the guy to call.”

  “Cradshaw’s in the tool design business. He doesn’t know a bodyguard from a right cross.”

  “I thought you guys never turned down a job.”

  I said, “It’s not a thing I’d care to get good at. Tell Ned I sent you.”

  “Will he give me a discount?”

  “No. But he might give me one next time I farm something out to him.” I wished him good luck and we were through talking to each other.

  The union rep didn’t call that day or the next, just as he hadn’t called for a week, not since the day I’d accepted his retainer. Meanwhile I was laying in a hundred and a half every twenty-four hours just for paying solitaire within reach of the telephone. I closed the office at five and drove home. It was November. The city was stone-colored under a gray sky and in the air was the raw-iron smell that comes just before a snow.

  Out of long habit I flipped on the television set the minute I got in the door and went into the kitchen, stripping off my jacket and tie as I went. When I came out opening a can of beer the picture had come on but not the sound and I was looking at a studio shot of Ned Eccles’ fleshy moustached face.

  “... died three hours later at Detroit Receiving Hospital,” came on the announcer’s voice, too loud. I jumped and turned down the volume. Now they were showing film of a lean young man in a gold lame jumpsuit unzipped to his pelvis and stringy blond hair to his shoulders striding down a stage runway, shouting song lyrics into a hand mike while the crowd jammed up against the footlights screamed. The announcer continued.

  “Dickerson, shown here during his last appearance at the Royal Tower two years ago, was shoved out of the line of fire by a member of his entourage after the first shot and was unharmed. The slain bodyguard has been identified as Edward Eccles, forty-five, a Detroit private investigator with a background in personal security. Police have no leads as yet to the man who fired the shots.” After a short pause during which the camera focused on the announcer’s grave face, he turned his head and smiled. “How are the Lions doing, Steve?”

  I changed channels. There was a commercial for a woman’s hygiene product on the next local station and a guy in a chef’s hat showing how to make cheese gooey on the last. I turned off the set and sipped beer and thought. The telephone interrupted my thinking.

  “Walker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Carol Greene. You heard?”

  Carol Greene was Ned Eccles’ business partner. I said, “I just caught a piece of it. What happened?”

  “Not on the phone. Can you come to Ned’
s office?”

  “What for?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.” After a beat: “You owe Ned. You got him killed.”

  “Don’t hang that on me, Carol. I just made a referral. He didn’t have to take the job. Give me twenty minutes.” I hung up and retrieved my tie and jacket.

  Two

  Eccles Investigations and Security worked out of a storefront off Cadillac Square, with an oak railing separating Carol’s desk in front from Ned’s in back and a lot of framed photographs on the walls of Ned shaking hands with the mayor and the governor and various presidential candidates whose faces remained vaguely familiar long after their names were faded on old baled ballots. The place had a friendly, informal, unfussy look that had set its owners back at least three grand. The basement vault where the firm’s files were kept had cost more than the building. I went through a swinging gate in the railing to Ned’s desk where Carol was supporting herself on her small angular fists.

  “Give some guys twenty minutes and they’ll take forty,” she greeted.

  “The rush hour got me by the throat. You look the same as always.”

  “Don’t start.” She put the cigarette she was holding between thumb and forefinger to her lips, bit off some smoke, and tipped it down her throat in a series of short, jerky movements like a bird bolting grain. She was a small, wiry woman in a man’s flannel shirt and jeans with gray-streaked blond hair cut very short and unadorned glasses with underslung bows. She had been Ned Eccles’ junior partner for ten years. Whatever else she might have been to him wasn’t my business today or ever.

  “How much do you know about what happened to Ned?” she asked.

  “Just that he was killed. Apparently by someone trying to get Billy Dickerson.”

  She nodded jerkily, ate some more cigarette, ground it out in a glass ashtray full of butts on the desk. “Dickerson stopped to sign an autograph in front of the service elevator on the way up to his suite at the Royal Tower. Ned had told him to avoid the lobby. He’d told him not to stop for anyone either, but I guess Billy-boy didn’t hear that part. The guy ducked Ned and stuck a pad in Dickerson’s hand and while Dickerson was getting out a pen he pulled a piece. Ned saw it and got between them just in time to get his guts drilled. That was about noon. He spent the afternoon dying. I just got back from the hospital.”

  Her eyes were a little red behind the cheaters. I said, “Who saw this?”

  “Dickerson’s manager, Martin Cole. Dickerson. Some gofer, Phil something. I talked to them at the hospital. While they were busy getting the Music Man out of the way of the bullets, the gunny lit out through the rear entrance. Six feet, a hundred and eighty, thirties, balding. Dark zipper jacket. That’s as good as it gets. The croakers dug two thirty-eight slugs out of Ned’s insides.”

  “Say something before he died?”

  She shook her head, firing up a fresh cigarette from a butane lighter whose flame leaped halfway to the ceiling. “Outside of cussing a blue streak. That why you turned Cole down? You had dope on the shoot?”

  “I was in the clutch when he called.”

  “Yeah.”

  I said, “Ned and I didn’t get along, that’s yesterday’s news. We had different ideas about how the investigating business should be run. But I didn’t put him in front of those bullets.”

  “Yeah. I guess not.” She tossed the cold lighter atop a stack of Manila file folders on the desk. Then she looked at me. “I’ll go your full rate to look into Ned’s death.”

  “Ned’s death was an accident.”

  “Maybe. Either way you get paid.”

  “You’ve got a license.”

  “I make out the books, trace an occasional skip. That’s all I’ve done for ten years. Ned was the detective. You do this kind of thing all the time.”

  “Wrong. Mostly I look for missing persons.”

  “The guy who killed Ned is missing.”

  “He’s cop meat,” I said. “Save your money and let them do their job.”

  “Cops. First Monday of every month I hand an envelope to our department pipeline, a night captain. A thing like that can shake your faith. You still in the clutch?”

  I nodded. “Retainer. I sit by the telephone.”

  “You’ve got an answering service to do that. Look, I won’t beg you.” She made a face and killed the butt, smoked only a third down. “I know everyone thought I was sleeping with Ned, including that slut of a wife of his, who should know about that kind of thing. I haven’t cared what people thought of me since my senior prom. For the record, though, I wasn’t. He was my friend and my partner and I have to do this one thing for him before I can go back to what I was doing. If you won’t take the job I’ll find someone else. The Yellow Pages are lousy with plastic badges.”

  “I’ll look into it. Courtesy rate, two hundred a day and expenses. Couple of days should tell if I’m wasting your money.”

  She wrote out a check for five hundred dollars and gave it to me. “That should see you through. If it doesn’t, come back here. With an itemized list of expenses. No whisky.”

  “You keep the books, all right.” I folded the check and stuck it in my wallet. “One question. Don’t hit me with the desk when I ask it.”

  “Ask.”

  “Did you ever know Ned to be the kind of a bodyguard who would throw himself between a gun and its target, even if the target was the person he was guarding?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “No, I didn’t know him to be that kind of bodyguard.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Three

  I cashed the check at my bank, deposited all but a hundred of it, and drove the four miles to Dearborn. The sky was low and the heater took ten minutes to chase the chill out of the upholstery. I parked in the lot behind the Royal Tower. A uniformed cop stopped me at the main entrance to the hotel.

  “Excuse me, sir, but are you a guest here?”

  “No, I’m here to see someone.”

  “No one goes in without a room key, sorry. We had some excitement here earlier.”

  I handed him one of my cards. “Would you see that Martin Cole gets that? He’s with Billy Dickerson. It’s important.”

  The cop called over another uniform, gave him the card, and told him to take it up. Ten minutes later the second officer returned. “Lieutenant says okay.” To me: “Three-oh-six.”

  More uniforms and a group of men in suits greeted me in the hall when I stepped off the elevator. One of the latter was an inch shorter than I but half again as broad through the shoulders. It would have been a long time since he had gone through a doorway any way but sideways. His skin was pale to the point of translucence, almost albino, but his eyes were blue. He combed his short blond hair forward over a retreating widow’s peak.

  “Walker? I’m Gritch, homicide lieutenant with the Dearborn Police.” He flashed his badge in a leather folder. “Cole says to let you through, but we got to check you for weapons.”

  “I’m not carrying,” I said, but stood for the frisk by a black officer with hands like Ping-Pong paddles. Gritch meanwhile looked through the credentials in my wallet. He handed it back.

  “Okay. We got to play it tight. The description of the guy that tried to kill Dickerson fits you as good as it fits a thousand other guys in this town.”

  “Anything new?” I put the crease back in my topcoat.

  “Now, would I be earning your tax dollars if I answered that, after going to so much trouble to keep the public off the premises?”

  “Nothing new,” I said. “I thought so. Where’s three-oh-six?”

  “Right in front of you, Sherlock.” He stepped away from it.

  Before I could knock, the door was opened by a young man in shirtsleeves and stockinged feet. His hair was brown and wavy and combed behind his ears, his face clean-shaven, and his eyes as lifelike as two stones. He had a nine millimeter automatic pistol in his right hand.

  “Let him in, Phil.”

  The man who spoke wa
s smaller than Lieutenant Gritch but not so small as Carol Greene, with a great mane of styled black hair and a drooping moustache and aviator’s glasses with rose-tinted lenses. He wore a dark European-looking jacket with narrow lapels and a pinched waist over yellow-and-red checked pants. His shoes were brown leather with tassels, and he had a yellow silk scarf knotted at his throat.

  “Walker, is it? I’m Martin Cole. Decent of you to stop in.”

  At first glance, Cole was as youthful as his voice, but there were hairline fissures around his eyes and pouches at the comers of his mouth that his moustache couldn’t hide. I took the moist warm hand he offered and entered the suite. The room was plushly carpeted and furnished as a living room, with a sofa and easy chairs, but folding metal chairs had been added. Cole caught me looking at them.

  “For the press,” he said. “We’re holding a conference as soon as the police finish downstairs. Billy Dickerson, Amos Walker.”

  I looked at the man seated on the end of the sofa with a small barrel glass of copper-colored liquid in one hand. In person he was older and not so lean as he appeared on television. His skin was grayish against the long open collar of his white jumpsuit, and a distinct roll showed over his wide brown tooled-leather belt with an ornate gold buckle. His long yellow hair was thinning at the temples. He glanced at me, drank from his glass, and looked at Cole, “He the best you could do?”

  “Walker came on his own, Billy,” the manager said.

  Quickly he introduced the man with the gun as Phil Scabarda.

  I said, “He must have a permit for that or he wouldn’t be waving it around with the cops so close. That doesn’t mean he can point it at me.”

  Cole gestured at the young man, who hesitated, then hung the pistol on a clip on the back of his belt. “Phil is Billy’s driver and companion. These days that requires courses in racing and weaponry.”

  “Ned Eccles’ partner hired me to look into the shooting,” I said. “I appreciate your seeing me.”