Sinister Heights

by Loren D. Estleman

  A small den off the opposite side of the living room contained a half-size pressboard rolltop desk for paying bills, no interesting bills in its pigeonholes or drawers, and nothing entertaining in the register of a checkbook belonging to a joint account in the names of David and Constance Glendowning. On the writing surface was a Packard Bell computer and printer with the monitor switched off. I didn’t turn it on. What I didn’t know about computers hadn’t made Bill Gates any less rich. The room was neat and clean except for some dust and had that stale smell of a room that hadn’t been used in a while except as a repository for third notices in unopened envelopes. The half-bathroom next door was just as sterile, but only in the way of enlightenment. It needed cleaning and the toilet seat stood at attention. A soaked cigarette butt lay on the surface of the water in the bowl.

  A brief flight of carpeted steps took me to another level. A small bedroom had posters on the walls—the latest action-figure tie-ins from Japan—and a chest with clowns painted on it, half filled with toys; the rounded, soft kind approved for toddlers. I remembered there was a three-year-old boy named Matthew. There were drawers under the midget bed for storage. They didn’t seem to contain nearly enough clothes for a normal kid who liked candy bars and mud puddles, but I hadn’t any of my own and the world had heaved itself around the sun a tired number of times since I wore corduroy overalls. Boys might have changed. However, the place had the same disused smell as the den, no peanut-butter sandwiches or iodine for scraped knees.

  The master bedroom was decorated tastefully in rose and gray. Men’s clothes were flung everywhere and the queen-size bed was a snarl of sheets with two pillows stacked one atop the other and in the top one a slightly soiled hollow made by a single head. I couldn’t tell if anything was missing from among the bottles and lipsticks on the little vanity table, but there were not as many women’s clothes behind the sliding doors of the closet as there should have been. That’s one thing that hadn’t changed.

  A drawer in one of the nightstands held a nine-millimeter Beretta on a .45 Colt frame, a nice weapon that would have almost no kick at all, sweet for shooting targets and men alike. The permit was there too, up to date and in David Glendowning’s name. It allowed him to own the pistol but not lug it around. I flicked out the magazine, put it back in, and checked the slide. Fully loaded: They aren’t much good any other way, although the Million Mothers might have had something to say about live rounds and curious children sharing the same floor. I sniffed the muzzle. It hadn’t had anything hot through it recently.

  The bathroom was my last stop. The toilet seat was standing and the mold on the shower curtain was coming along splendidly. No loofa sponge or feminine moisturizers by the tub, no Lady Schicks in the cabinet above the sink. By then I wasn’t really looking for such things. I didn’t expect to find them.

  What I was looking for I found in a plastic bottle in the cabinet: small round pills coated brown so you wouldn’t mix them up with aspirins. Caffeine tablets. No self-respecting trucker would be caught dead on the interstate at 3:00 A.M. without them. I shook three into my hand, started to put the bottle back, then uncapped it and milked out two more. I went back down to the living room, where Glendowning was still making the John Deere mating call, crossed into the kitchen, and filled a debatably clean glass with water from the tap. Back in the living room I shoved over a bottle to make room for the glass on the end table, straightened, and took aim with the first of the pills. Glendowning’s head was tipped all the way back with his eyeteeth showing, the better to increase the decibel level. I flipped the pill square into the hole and picked up the next from my other palm. I scored five for five. One of them caught sideways in his throat, choking him in mid-snore. When he shot forward, coughing, I was there with the water. I pounded him on the back and pressed the glass into his hand.

  He must have thought it was a beer, because he closed both paws around it and dumped the contents down his throat. That brought on a new fit. His face turned red and he sprayed snot. One of the pills shot out of his mouth and landed on the arm of the sofa. I’d expected at least one to go wild, which was why I’d fed him five.

  This time I didn’t do anything to help. I stood back with my hands in my pockets and watched him excavate his lungs for oxygen. He found a good wheeze, then another, and very slowly his color went from magenta back to red and finally the grayish pink of the serious drunk. “Jesus Christ.” His voice was a raspy bass, like a Muppet monster’s. He glared down at the clear liquid in his glass, then as if he’d seen my reflection his eyes climbed out of it and shook themselves off and focused on my face. “What the fuck you looking at?”

  “I’m not sure. It might not be classified yet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? And who the fuck are you?”

  “Walker’s the name. I told you I was an investigator. I still am. You weren’t out that long. But man, you were out.”

  A sluggish tongue found its way around his teeth, tasting caffeine. Just then he seemed to understand what I was saying. A hand went to his chin. “Jesus. What’d you hit me with? And how many of you did it take to lift it?”

  “You helped. You were moving forward. And it wouldn’t have put you down so deep if you didn’t have half of Milwaukee swimming through your veins. How’s the head?”

  He reached up both hands to knuckle his temples. The glass was still in one and he spilled water on his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I might of went on forgetting about it if you didn’t ask. Jesus.”

  “The caffeine should help. It opens up the arteries.”

  He tasted again. “I thought that’s what it was. Any left in the bottle?”

  “Plenty, but forget it. As things stand, when the alcohol burns off you’ll jump like a flea. Give them a few minutes to work.”

  “Jesus. I’ll be dead in a few minutes.”

  I went back into the kitchen, took a deep breath and held it, and opened the refrigerator again. There were two unopened bottles of beer left in the cardboard six-pack inside, an omen. I took them both out and twisted off the caps and returned to the living room and stuck one under his nose. He couldn’t get rid of the water fast enough. What was left in the glass slopped onto his jeans as he set it down and grabbed for the bottle. He tipped it straight up and left it there like a quart of oil. It gurgled four times before he brought it back down. That left less than half.

  The slug I took was dainty by comparison. I flicked away the fugitive pill and sat on the arm of the sofa. The part with the cushions looked like a maneater and I wasn’t sure he’d smoldered out. There was always the chance he’d flare up again without warning. I stayed in starting position.

  “That’s better,” he said, sounding dreamy enough. “Jesus.”

  “I don’t think He’s in to you. God knows you paged Him enough.”

  He ran fingers through his spiky hair without visible effect, scowled, and studied the lay between his chair and the sofa. It must have looked like the center span of the Mackinac Bridge, because he settled back with a heavy sigh. He was as hard to read as a stop sign.

  “So your name’s Walker and you’re a private eye.”

  “That’s right,” I snarled. “A dick. A sleuth. A peeper. A lone star, a plastic badge, heat on a stick. Alternative law.” I stopped, not because I’d run out of euphemisms, but because I thought he might have the idea by now. I looked at my watch. I don’t know why, except it seemed a long time since I’d been outside. They might have finished I-75 and started planting trees.

  “You working for Constance’s lawyer?”

  “Why would Constance have a lawyer?” When he didn’t react I said, “So you’ve split up. Mind telling me where she went?”

  “If I knew that, I’d go there and bring her back.”

  “She take the boy?”

  He looked at me with what he thought was pity. His eyes might have been a pair of ice cubes melting in tomato soup. “Well now, what do you think? She’s a good mother. If she le
ft little Matt with me he’d be picking pockets by now. That’s how she’d see it anyway.” He took a swig from the bottle and blasted a belch they heard in Kentucky.

  “When did she fly the coop?”

  “May fifth. Cinco de Mayo. I know that because I stopped at a Mex place to celebrate on my way home. Happy Hour all day, that’s what I was celebrating. I don’t know what the Mexes were. Their green cards maybe.

  “We had a fight when I got in around eleven,” he said. “I missed the end of it. I went to sleep in this chair. She and Matt were gone when I woke up. No note. I thought they’d be back when she cooled off. I guess she ain’t cooled off yet.”

  “She didn’t go to her mother’s. I just came from there. What about a friend?”

  “She don’t have any friends.”

  His fault, if Carla Witowski hadn’t just been blowing bubbles. I didn’t point it out. If this was going to work without breaking up the furniture, we had to be pals. I can make a Cape buffalo curl up in my lap when I have to. It’s on the license application.

  I was getting the drift of what had gone on in that house, but it was something I would have to sneak up on.

  While I was thinking about it he rubbed his free hand over his face. The caffeine was kicking in. The cobwebs came away with the hand. “You said something about an inheritance. What’s the deal?”

  “Family thing. We need her signature. I hear you’re a union rep.”

  The zoo air in the room was getting to me. I should have opened a window. But the ham-handed attempt at a change of subject worked. He got lively.

  “I’m just a shop steward, but I’m a good one. Guess you wouldn’t know it to look at me at the moment. I don’t drink behind the wheel and you don’t have to be careful about lighting a match around me when I’m shut up with management. The boys want me to run for president of the local.”

  “Uphill climb. These days they like college diplomas.”

  “OSU offers a night-school course on contract law. I guess I can pick up enough Latin to pass. Anyway the college crowd is what got us in the ditch we’re in, so I figure the pendulum’s swinging my way. You boys got representation?”

  I shook my head. “You wouldn’t want to try it on, either. All the ops that can swing the dues work out of air-conditioned offices with a modem and a key to the executive washroom. It’d be like negotiating for the enemy.” I took a pull from the bottle, for effect. For effect it tasted pretty good. “My old man was a Teamster twenty years. Worked his way up from a pedal truck to a diesel rig back when people ran outside to watch one go by.”

  He grinned for the first time. It made him look younger. He was just past thirty. “They didn’t have power steering in them days. I bet he had an arm on him.”

  “You couldn’t tell by me. He never used it on anyone who couldn’t hit back.”

  It was more or less a blind cast; I was still pondering my approach and didn’t even know I’d made it until I got a strike. The grin went out like a smashed bulb. He leaned forward to fumble his bottle onto the endtable, knocking off one of the empties in the process. He stayed leaning forward with his feet on the floor, straddling the footrest, and covered his face with both hands. “Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, Jesus God.” His shoulders shook. He was sobbing.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  I finished my beer while he was crying. He wasn’t through by then so I lit a Winston. I got up and went over and pried up the sash of a window that looked out on the street. It was a quiet street: no backyard hot-rodders or chainsaw maniacs, just houses and trees and a solitary roller-blader padded up to the gills racing his shadow along the opposite sidewalk, making no more noise than a handful of marbles rolling downhill. My street had been like that once and might be yet again, if the reform crowd downtown managed to resist graft for another term or two. It was a lot to hope for.

  The fresh air and new tobacco improved the atmosphere in the room. I drummed a Winston partway out of the pack, nudged Glendowning’s shoulder with the back of my hand, and held the pack out. He took his face out of his hands to look at it. After a moment he snuffled, dragged his twill sleeve across his eyes, and took the cigarette. His hand shook a little as he pushed the tobacco end into the flame of the match I held for him. When he had it burning he nodded and sat back. He sniffed, composing himself. His eyes were redder than they had been, but apart from that he might have been anyone else coming off a bender.

  I cleared space on the sofa and sat down. My back was nearly as stiff as Carla Witowski’s after the drive down and the workout on the porch, and I didn’t think there was going to be a rematch right away. I picked up my empty beer bottle and tapped ash into it. A little on the rug wouldn’t have hurt the room in the condition it was already in, but there is a protocol.

  “Which one did you hit, your wife or your son?” I asked. “Or both?”

  “Who says I hit anyone?” He flicked his cigarette toward the heaped ashtray. He didn’t even come close.

  “There are shelters for that kind of thing. She could have checked into a motel, but she’d go to her mother’s before she did that. The only time a shelter’s better than family is when there’s a question of safety. That means beating. Also there are the tears. We’re all of us very sensitive today, very New Wave. I don’t think. A trucker needs a reason to cry. More so a champion of labor.”

  “I never hit little Matt.”

  I smoked and said nothing.

  “I never meant to hit Connie. I mean I never planned it. She has a way of getting to me. Well, shit, that makes it sound like it’s her fault. It isn’t. I never laid a hand on her sober. I’m a mean drunk. I guess you know that.”

  “I’ve seen meaner. But I’m not your wife.”

  “I never beat her up neither, just smacked her a couple of times. Okay, more than a couple. I might of busted her nose once. Put a bump in it anyway. She had two black eyes for a week and didn’t go out. That wasn’t my idea, I mean the not going out; she didn’t want people to ask questions because the answers would get me in trouble. She loves me all right. Or she did.” He sucked hard on the filter, got mad at it and tore it off. The butts in the tray were unfiltered Pall Malls. He took in a double lungful of full leaded, tried to blow it out his nose, and coughed. He was still sniffling. “I’m a rotten son of a bitch.”

  “You hit her the last time?”

  He nodded. Then he laughed, a short bark full of self-hate. “The joke is it wasn’t all that hard. Not nearly hard enough to raise a welt. I guess it was just one feather more than the pile’d hold. I’d give up drinking if she’d come back. I miss her even more than I miss Matt. Is that bad? I love that kid more than I love me. When I loved me.”

  “You’re bargaining in the wrong direction. She might come back if you give up drinking, or maybe she wouldn’t. I never met her, she might be smarter than I’m giving her credit for. It still wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to start talking to someone.”

  “You mean a shrink? I thought of that. I can’t afford it and I wouldn’t go to the one that works with the union. It’s like using a toilet on a plane. Everyone knows where you’re going.”

  “There are good ones that will work with you on their fee. I know a few around Detroit. I could give you some names.”

  “Maybe everyone’d be better off if I just blew my brains out.”

  “It’s a way out,” I agreed. “You’ve certainly got the firepower upstairs.”

  He looked at me the way he had just before he took his swing at me. Then he took a drag and let it out with the smoke. “You’re a detective, all right. You find the magazines in the back of the closet?”

  “They wouldn’t interest me unless they told me where your wife went. Just for argument, though, you should lock up the piece. It might be a start.”

  “Connie was always after me to get rid of it. I only bought it when I got involved in the union. You meet some types that just knowing you own one makes you feel better, even if you don’t kee
p it with you. I don’t guess it matters what I do with it now.”

  I poked my stub into my empty and let it fall. It spat when it hit the dregs. “That’s the trouble with you pity bugs. You never follow one line of thought to the end. First you’re going to reform, then you’re going to clock yourself, then you’re right back where you started. Why don’t you buy another case and drown yourself in it?”

  “Why don’t I punch you through the back of that fucking sofa?”

  “I think you found out that’s not as much fun as you thought.”

  He gave that some consideration. Then he nodded, laid his stub on top of the heap, and drank the rest of his beer. He made a face, as if the beer was flat, but it was just another crying jag. When it was over he wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, “I’m a piece of work. What makes me think I’m worth some cop digging a bullet out of my skull? Did you mean that about giving me the name of a shrink?”

  “It’s not like getting fitted for glasses. You’d have to keep going back. And you have to want what he has to peddle. The good ones don’t like just drawing their pay.”

  “I’d do it for Connie and Matt.”

  “Forget it then. If it’s not for you it won’t take.”

  We sat saying nothing for a while. Cars began to go by outside. People were coming home from work, leaving the job at the office or the plant, looking forward to dinner and the tube, or not looking forward to a band concert at the kid’s high school, or let’s face it, a third straight night of the cold shoulder because someone smiled the wrong way at the wrong spouse at the company picnic; pick your scenario, whatever it was it was going on under someone’s roof other than David Glendowning’s. It looked like Walton’s Mountain to me.

  I got out one of my cards, wrote a name and telephone number on the back of it, and made room on the coffee table to set it down. “Try not to lose this under a bottle. He doesn’t have a Viennese accent and he won’t make you lie on a couch. If he doesn’t hang up when you tell him who recommended him, he may be the man for you.” I stood.