Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection

by Loren D. Estleman

  He sat in a quagmire sofa drinking Diet Pepsi from a can, a man in his middle fifties but fit, tan from rugged outdoor work, in jeans and run-down tennis shoes and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He had all his hair, splintered with silver, and from the look of him it was easy to see why his kidney passed muster. But you don’t have to socialize with a vital organ.

  “So you got the boy killed.” That’s what he opened with.

  I remained standing. All the seats in the place looked like sinkholes and I didn’t want to have to wallow my way out of one to clock him. “According to the cops he was dead almost before I started looking for him. Do you want to fight? I sure don’t. It’s been a day.”

  He shook the last drops onto his tongue and tossed the can toward a raveled straw laundry basket heaped over with empties. “I don’t want to fight. I been in fights and I never got a thing out of them, not even the sense to stop picking ‘em. Last time I saw Mark he was in Pampers. I know I ought to feel something, but I don’t. Bastard, ain’t I?”

  “Who told you, the cops?”

  “They make the family rounds when something like this happens. Greasers next door get a visit every time one of their uncles gets squiffed. They got more uncles than a rabbit. Ought to loan ‘em out to colored boys that got no daddies.”

  “You thought enough of Mark to give him a kidney.”

  “First thing I thought when they told me. ‘Well, there’s a piece of me wasted.’ You know about that, huh?”

  “I told you, I’m a detective. So what about it?”

  “That was strictly a business deal. Ten thousand bucks and all expenses paid. See, Mark and me was a perfect match. Is that a hoot? Clary took him when she left and she had less in common with him than me.”

  “Ten grand doesn’t go as far as it used to. That was true even three or four years ago. So you went back for more, and Childs threw you out.”

  His face darkened under the tan. “That what he said?”

  “It’s what I heard.”

  “I ought to go back up there and bash in his skull with one of them nutty statues he makes out of scrap.”

  I didn’t like the way he said it. He was too calm. “If the cops heard you say that, they’d be down here tossing the place for a shotgun.”

  “Go ahead, it’s in that closet. I used to bring it along when I had a job in the country, in case I saw a deer. Now I just keep it around to punch holes in the sky on New Year’s Eve.”

  It was a Remington twelve-gauge in good condition. The barrel smelled oily and there was a little dust in it when I turned it toward the light. It hadn’t been fired recently. I put it back. “Of course, it could be one of a set.”

  He made a kazoo with his lips. “I can barely afford to buy pop in six-packs. Get me one, will you? Take one for yourself. I ain’t had a real drink in twelve years; that’s why my kidney was so rosy pink.” He took one of the two I got from the refrigerator in the kitchenette and watched me snap the top on mine. “If Childs told you I got greedy, then he’s a liar on top of a deadbeat. I only went to that barn of his to get what was promised me. That check he wrote me ought to be tied to a paddle with a string.”

  “It bounced?”

  “Man, I had to duck when I tried to cash it.” He popped open his can. “I guess his insurance took care of the hospital bill, but I don’t go in to get carved on just for the rush.”

  “You didn’t take it to court?”

  “No contract. He said it was dicey legalwise. What you think of that, man lives like that, hanging paper like some goldbrick?” He poured half the can down his throat.

  “Maybe he lives better than he is off.” I sipped. No matter what they put in place of sugar it always tastes like barbed wire left to steep. “I don’t guess you told any of this to the police.”

  “I would’ve, if they asked. Why should I cover up for a squirt like Orson Childs?” He spoke the name with an effete accent.

  “No reason, except they might look at it as motive for murder. You made a deal to save Mark’s life, Childs reneged, so you decided to repossess.”

  He paused in mid-guzzle, swallowed. “Jesus, that’s cold.”

  “It should be. I just took it out of your refrigerator.”

  “I mean what you said. So why’d I wait four years?”

  “Murder plots have been known to stew a lot longer than that.”

  He drank off the second half and flipped the can toward the basket. It wobbled but didn’t fall off, as some of the others had. “Do I look like somebody who’d wait that long?”

  • • •

  I drove away from there, yawning bitterly and hoping Barry Stack-pole’s lights would be out so I could go home and go to bed. But Barry lived without sleep, a journalistic vampire who that season had sublet lodgings downtown, five minutes from each of the city’s three legal casinos. He had a theory that the owners were building a Mafia outside the Mafia with no ties to what the gaming commission interpreted as organized crime, but with all the benefits attendant. He might have had something, at that; the owners were exclusively male, and the mob is not an equal opportunity employer. Traditional gangsters had taken one of his legs, some fingers, and put a steel plate in his skull, so he was less than reasonable on the subject of thugs incorporated. In that vein of mind he’d hacked into every hundred-thousand-dollar bank account between Puget Sound and Puerto Rico. Thirty minutes after I dropped in on him and his computer arsenal, I found out Orson Childs had been selling off his family’s stock for five years, trying to bolster investment losses and personal indulgences, from Childs’ Plaything to a racehorse named Lightyear that couldn’t hold its own beside a California redwood. I promised Barry a case of scotch and left him to his obsession of the season.

  The rest was as glamorous as it gets. I caught a few hours’ sleep in my hut on the west side of Hamtramck, got up at the butt-crack of dawn with black sludge in a thermos, and camped out across the street from the Childs house in Grosse Pointe. That morning happened to be trash collection. I was out of the car the second Truk wheeled the household refuse bin to the curb and started back up the drive, puffing smoke from one of the cigarettes I’d given him.

  I worked fast, because the trash truck was snorting its way up Lake Shore Drive, the collectors evaluating the inventory for personal aggrandizement before feeding it to the crusher. I found what I wanted among the empty single-malt bottles and plain garbage, put it in my trunk, and went home to hose off and change. Rich people are never available before 9:00 anyway; not even rich people who aren’t really rich, mathematically speaking. In America, even the broke are divided into classes.

  Truk let me in with no expression on his face to indicate he knew me from anyone else who came to the door. He didn’t even glance at the red and blue gym bag I was carrying. After a little absence he came back and led me through a room I hadn’t been in and outside to a flagged courtyard where Orson and Clarissa Childs sat in fluffy white robes drinking coffee; Mrs. Childs’s out-of-focus gaze said there was as much Kentucky as Colombian in her cup.

  The houseman faded and I set down my bag, which clanked when it touched the flagstones. Childs, looking up from the Free Press, glanced back at it, then at me. Portrait shots of the shooting victims bordered a grainy picture of the murder scene on the front page.

  “Anything new?” he asked. “There was nothing on the radio that wasn’t there last night.”

  “There wouldn’t be. The press doesn’t know yet about the kidney.”

  The woman started, spilling coffee on the table. Childs folded the paper and laid it on the vacant chair. “It didn’t have anything to do with what happened. I assume you’ve been talking with Worden.”

  “What happens to Mark’s trust fund now that he isn’t around to collect it?”

  “It goes to his heirs and assigns. Before you go any further, you might want to consider the penalty for slander.”

  “What lawyer would press the case after your
retainer check came back from his bank?”

  The couple locked gazes. He blinked first. She set down her cup with a double click.

  Childs said, “You should be having this conversation with Worden. He’s an angry man and simple. His thought processes are easy to predict when he thinks he’s been cheated. Not that there is anything to whatever he told you. Buying organs is shaky from a legal standpoint.”

  “So’s murder. His shotgun tests clean. How about yours?”

  “I don’t own a shotgun.”

  “Not anymore. You decided to get rid of it after you used it on Mark and then his roommates to make it look like he wasn’t the only target.”

  He lengthened his upper lip. “Evidence?”

  “Me, for starters. I’m a witness.” I leaned down, unzipped the bag, and took out one of the pieces I’d retrieved that morning. The barrel had been cut into eight-inch lengths, then split down the middle. When I laid it on the table, Mrs. Childs squeaked, got up, and half ran inside, holding a hand over her mouth. I let her. “If I’d known this was what you were slicing up last night, it would’ve saved me a dive in your Dumpster. No wonder you jumped when I walked in on you.”

  Childs turned his head slowly from side to side, as if he were trying to get out of my shadow. “Assuming that’s where you found it, what’s it prove? You can’t trace scrap.”

  “You know a lot less about shotguns than you do about metal-work. Cutting up the barrel’s a waste of time; it’s smooth, leaves no striations on the pellets. In order to connect the weapon to the murder, all the cops have to do is match the firing pin to the marks on the shells found on the scene.” I was holding the bag now. I took out the heavy Browning receiver and laid it on the table. The incriminating evidence was intact.

  He stared at it while I let the bag drop with the rest of the pieces inside.

  “Planting that high-grade pot was smart,” I said. “It should have been coke or heroin, but maybe a man in your circumstances doesn’t know how to go about finding them. Smart, and stupid: It diverted the investigation, but it put it in the hands of a narc named McCoy, who’ll have all the upper-end dealers in the area in his data bank. The one you bought it from will turn you if it means ducking four charges of homicide.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “I don’t know much about dope or shotguns.”

  “Don’t say anything, Orson. All you did was buy marijuana.”

  I turned around. Clarissa Childs was standing in front of the door to the house with the twin of the chopped-up Browning raised to her shoulder. The barrel looked as big as a culvert.

  “He wasn’t lying to you, Mr. Walker,” she said. “Orson has never fired a shotgun in his life. My first husband taught me how to hunt. I’ve been putting game on the table for years.”

  I thought about the revolver in my belt. She read my mind. The shotgun twitched. I held my hands out from my body.

  “Clarissa—” Childs began.

  “I said don’t say anything!” She kept her eyes on me. “Nothing that ever came from Hank was any good. His son was defective; even his kidney didn’t fix what was really wrong with Mark. After everything Orson and I did for him, he turned his back on his education and ran away. Why should he fall into money when we’ve got three mortgages on this house?”

  “Clarissa?” This time his throat throbbed with warning.

  “Drop it!”

  We turned our heads together. Childs sat motionless, staring at Lieutenant Mary Ann Thaler, Rick McCoy, and three uniforms standing with sidearms pointed at the woman with the shotgun. I’d called them early enough to avoid a standoff, but they must have taken the long way around the house.

  “Drop it!” Thaler shouted again.

  Clarissa Childs hesitated, then lowered the shotgun. The officers were advancing when she swiveled the butt down to the ground, jammed the muzzle up under her chin, and tripped the trigger with the toe of her slipper.

  • • •

  “We got a partial off that air conditioner knob that puts the mother on the scene,” Thaler said while my statement was being typed up. “For what it’s worth.”

  “It closes the case. That must be worth something to someone.”

  She was drinking tea again, from one of those mugs they sell downstairs with the police seal on it. Headquarters is running a boutique to catch up on repairs. Today she had on a grayish-pink suit; ashes of rose, I think they call it. She looked less tired. “All we’ve got on Orson Childs is attempting to destroy evidence. I don’t think we can make accomplice after the fact stick. Some mother, huh? I used to think there was something to maternal instinct. I thought I was missing something.”

  “Not wanting kids and killing the one you have don’t walk under the same sun.”

  “Plus three other mothers’ sons just for garnish. Sometimes I hate this town. Other times I just dislike it a little.”

  “It started in Grosse Pointe.”

  “It’s all Detroit.” She worked the tea bag. “I’d sure like to know how you confirmed the Childses had money troubles. If I thought you knew your way around a computer I might ask the boys in white-collar crime to keep an eye on you.”

  “You don’t have to log in to run a bluff.”

  “On,” she said. “You log on to the Internet, not in. But you knew that. You’re overdoing it.”

  “The less people think you know, the better for you.”

  “If that’s true you’ll live forever.”

  I said nothing.

  She said, “I know about you and Barry Stackpole. You two are the evil twins of amateur law enforcement.” She took out the tea bag and dumped it into her wastebasket. “Any questions?”

  “None I can think of.”

  “Well, you know what they say about curiosity.” She sipped.

  Slipstream

  The blue flashers made me slow down. The red flashers made me pull over and stop to see if I could help scrape someone off the pavement. When the state troopers and the county sheriffs both come out, it means there’s been more than just a merger of fenders.

  The light bar on the EMS van was stuttering in a desultory kind of way, splashing colors off the dewy asphalt and into the faces of the usual human detritus that gets pulled into the slipstream of accidents, fires, and drive-by shootings: guys in quilted vests and baseball caps, cigarette-puffing women in head scarves and denim, teenage boys reeking of Stroh’s, and big cops in leather jackets writing birthdates and license numbers into spiral notebooks with doodles on the covers. The air smelled of scorched metal, gasoline, and carbon tetrachloride. A plume of dank smoke hung over a charred blob of something that might have been a Ford Escort or a Cadillac Seville or the tail section of the Hindenburg, kneeling on bare wheels with its front end accordioned against the trailer of a flatbed truck parked across Square Lake Road, somewhere in No Man’s Land between Southfield and Iroquois Heights, seven miles north of Detroit.

  “See anything you like, mister? Oh, Christ.”

  This cheery greeting, altered when I turned to face him, came from a man mountain in a Chesterfield with velvet collar and a tweed cap, who answered to Killinger. He wore amber shades astraddle his Irish pug and an impressive set of handlebars that must have set him back an hour each morning in the bathroom. He topped off at six and a half feet, high normal among the Michigan State Police, and dressed out at around two hundred fifty.

  “Evening, Lee,” I said. “This is a piece out of your pen, isn’t it? I heard you were commanding the Northville post.”

  “Your hearing’s just fine. I’m meeting friends for dinner at the Machus Red Fox. Or I was.” He checked his watch, a steel aviator type. “They probably think I’ve pulled a Jimmy Hoffa by now. Anyway I caught the squeal and that makes me the ranking officer on the scene. What about you?”

  “Just rank. I thought I had a client up in the Heights. If she’d said over the telephone her missing Ambrose was a pit bull I’d have saved a trip. Is that a K?” Two EMS attendants in navy were
busy zipping up a vinyl bag on a stretcher on the gravel apron.

  Killinger nodded. “Charbroiled in the can. The M.E., who’s been and gone, thinks male, between twenty and twenty-five, but he says he’s been wrong before. Sheriff’s men put out the fire. No skid marks. Poor son of a bitch came over the hill and met God.”

  “What was the truck doing blocking the road?”

  “We’ll know that when we find the driver. He might’ve jack-knifed and been trying to straighten out when the car came. Probably he was drunk. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that’s the case when somebody rabbits.”

  “No witnesses?”

  “Just rubberneckers. Video arcades must be closed.”

  “What’d you get on the plate?”

  He might have smiled under the moustaches. In any case, it wouldn’t have meant anything. “Rita Donato.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No, I always joke around whenever I help pull a Crispy Critter out from under a steering wheel in my supper suit.”

  “Then that’d make this—?” I nodded at the bag being slid into the back of the van.

  “At a guess, Albert. The son. Heir to the department store chain, currently in receivership while the widow of its late humanitarian founder stamps books in the library in Milan on a three-to-seven for income tax evasion.” Then he did smile. “Didn’t I call him a poor son of a bitch?”

  Walter Donato, dead five years, had been named for his adoptive parents and reared in Dearborn, where he inherited his foster father’s five-and-dime at age thirty and within sixteen years ran it into the largest chain of cut-rate department stores in the Middle West. After spending several millions of his personal fortune probing fruitlessly into the mystery of his birth, he had diverted his energies toward the establishment of a foster-care foundation that became a model of its type and put his face simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek. When bronchial pneumonia took him at sixty-two, the President of the United States authorized an annual grant in his name to be awarded to deserving projects in the area of child placement. The local archbishop had been overheard to remark—and was censured by Rome for so doing—that he’d consider nominating Donato for canonization if he were anything but a Baptist.