A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (17 page)

“That was the theory.” Her tone was arid. “The clothes she had on are in the inventory: blue silk blouse, black skirt, black high-heel pumps, one of those tricky butterfly-shaped hats women used to pin to their hair. It was black too, and so was the little clasp purse she was seen carrying in the store. The purse was never found. She was dressed for a night out.”

“Is that the opinion of a cop or a woman?”

“Both. You wouldn’t listen if it was just a woman.”

“I’d resent that, only I’m too tired. It doesn’t sound like you subscribe to the mugging theory.”

“I’m Felony Homicide. Murders committed in the course of robbery are my meat. The taxi companies had no record of a fare answering Allison Booth’s description leaving Hudson’s that night. No one saw her board a bus or a streetcar. The items she bought were easy to carry, but she had them delivered. She wasn’t going straight home, and no woman would willingly walk more than a few blocks in high heels. And she wouldn’t go shopping carrying a date purse unless she was meeting someone afterwards. Just because no one backed up the perfume clerk doesn’t mean she didn’t see what she said she saw. Even if she was mistaken about the man she thought she saw giving Allison Booth a lift.”

“Maybe it was a friendly thing that turned out not so friendly,” I said. “The running-out-of-gas gag was old even in fifty-six, but it still got used. Maybe she smacked him and got out to walk home.”

“Maybe. But I’d’ve made more of an effort to find the man and ask.”

“Not if you were Saunders and O’Hara, maybe. And maybe not if you thought she was a tramp and got what she had coming for whoring around while her husband was gone.”

“You act surprised. You wouldn’t if you were me and spent as much time in police locker rooms as I have. So what if there’s one more murderer walking around than there was last week? There’s one less two-timing wife.”

My cigarette had burned half away in the ashtray. I closed the folder and poked out the glowing coals with the eraser end of a pencil. “How long can I hang on to this file?”

“I doubt anyone will be asking for it any time soon,” she said. “Or will they?”

I returned the pencil to the cup. Then I sat back and took another Winston out of the pack; but to play with, not to smoke. “They might. If a sheriff’s detective named VaxhÖlm up in Black Lake decides Eugene Booth didn’t hang himself this morning in his motel cabin.”

“I knew when you walked into my office yesterday my weekend was going to be spoiled,” she said.

“No reason it should. It’s not your jurisdiction. Anyway there’s a note and the cabin was locked from inside. A cop like VaxhÖlm spends most of his time investigating break-ins at vacation cottages. He’ll probably be satisfied with suicide.”

“ ‘Satisfied with suicide.’ Sounds like the title of a Gangsta Rap album. Only you don’t care if it does rhyme.”

“One or two things about it don’t. Can you trace an out-of-state license plate?”

“Depends on the state.”

“New York.”

“New York’s dicey. There an officer has to enter his badge number every time he runs a check. Questions can get asked. It seems some members of the sacred and fraternal order of law enforcement professionals have been running a cottage industry on the side. It’s the Information Age. Everybody wants some and is willing to pay to get it.”

“Thank God.”

We were quiet for a moment. I wondered if Louise had read all the magazines in the reception room.

“I’d like to break the Allison Booth case,” Mary Ann Thaler said then.

“You won’t get any medals. The brass would be just as happy if it stayed forgotten. That’s the nature of old cases. You might even lose your shot at city hall.”

“Yeah, well. You can only fetch sandwiches for the chief so many times before it gets old.”

“Like maybe once.”

She took off her glasses and pulled up the bottom of her sweatshirt to wipe the lenses. She had a nice tanned midriff, but it couldn’t compete with her eyes, blue as robin’s eggs and nearly as large. “Even if it is suicide, it could have something to do with what happened in fifty-six. It could shake something loose. If she was a tramp—okay, but it didn’t entitle her to a death sentence. And if by some chance her killer is still around, I’d have the satisfaction of clamping the cuffs around his withered old wrists. That’s why I took the oath and the twelve-week course. Doughnuts make me bloat. Is the plate connected?”

“I won’t know that until I know who it belongs to. Maybe not even then.” I told her about the man in the Yankees cap in Cabin Five.

“Robert C. Brown,” she echoed. “The middle initial is a nice touch. It’s safe to assume he had a gun if he kept his hand covered. Keep me current and I’ll run the plate. I got on pretty good with a sergeant with NYPD Narcotics when he was here last year on an extradition. He might be able to slip it in with a bunch.”

“I’ll call you right behind my client.” I took out my notepad and gave her the number.

She put on her glasses, wrote the number in her pad, and put it back in her hip pocket. “What was Booth’s beef with the mob?”

“He knew something and got drunk. He might have opened his mouth. He wasn’t sure. His wife might have been killed as a warning.”

“What did he know?”

“He swung from his belt before he could tell me.” I didn’t want to confuse her with details. One confused detective in town was enough.

“It doesn’t wash,” she said, and I thought my poker face had slipped. “They don’t kill wives as a warning. That’s what dogs are for.”

“They can’t all be Don Vito Corleone. Anyway it worked, if gagging Booth was what was intended. He shut his mouth and the weight of it broke him and his career.”

“Then he opened it again and the weight of him broke his neck.”

“Ironic,” I said, “but not accurate. He strangled.”

“They always do. A crime writer of all people ought to be able to come up with a better way to clock himself.”

I picked up the cigarette I’d been playing with earlier. “If you spend all your time with inspectors and sergeants, you’re never going to marry that dull character with the gas grill.”

“Look who’s talking. Your gig is missing persons. Your job ended at Black Lake.”

I centered the butt on the blotter and circled a finger around it; part of a trick I couldn’t get the hang of in Southeast Asia and hadn’t had any luck with since. “You know a limerick that begins, ‘There once was a lady from Niger?”

“I’ve heard about the man from Nantucket, but nobody ever finishes it. What are you doing?”

“Trying to magnetize the tobacco. The limerick goes something something ‘ride on a tiger.’ ”

“It would have to. Is it a static electricity thing?” She was watching the cigarette.

“Search me. I’m trying to tell you about this limerick.”

She flicked her nails at the back of my hand and I withdrew it. She stared at the cigarette for a moment, then traced an index finger around it slowly. On the second pass she picked up the pace, tightening the circle. By the fifth lap the movement was a blur. On the seventh and eighth she slowed down. The tenth time around, the cigarette twitched. Twice more and then it revolved in a full circle, following her finger as if it were attached with an invisible filament.

She got up. “Keep the file. If anyone asks for it they won’t be expecting it right away. I’ll call you if I need something I haven’t already committed to memory. Don’t forget my number if you raise anything on your end. Right, the limerick. I don’t see much point to it if the lady doesn’t wind up inside the tiger.”

She left while I was rising to open the door for her.

I got there in time to hold it for Louise, who drifted in carrying a folded copy of the
Free Press
under one arm. She glanced back toward the hall door. “Interesting woman. I offered her a chance to write her memoirs. Women doing traditional men’s jobs is a good market.”

“She isn’t a writer.”

“These days that doesn’t matter. There are plenty of talented writers out there who are willing to ghost.” She looked around. “Same charming office. Gene Booth would approve.”

“Sorry I kept you waiting.”

“That’s all right. I took the liberty of reading your paper. Debra subscribes to
USA Today.
That news I can get from the TV networks.” She put the newspaper on the desk and let me pull the chair out for her. “I see you don’t keep it bolted to the floor anymore.”

“Some of my clients don’t use mouthwash. But a lot of them feel more comfortable if they can push up close and whisper.” I took my seat. It was uncomfortably warm from my own body heat and I turned the fan up another notch. “Have you been taking in the sights?”

“You mean the casinos? Are they open?”

“Not yet. The MGM Grand is renovating the old IRS building.”

“Appropriate. I do want to check out Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum.”

“Don’t try to do both in one day. The Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop and the chair Lincoln was shot in is too much history all at once.”

“Small talk.” She smiled. “The news must be bad.”

“Uh-huh.” I picked up the magnetized cigarette and plunked it into the wastepaper basket. Then I folded my hands on the blotter. That made me feel like an undertaker so I rested them on the arms of the swivel. “Booth is dead. I found him this morning hanging in Cabin Four at the Angler’s Inn.”

One hand went halfway to her mouth. Then it drifted down and found the other one in her lap. “Oh, dear God. Suicide? No, what a ridiculous question to ask. Of course it was suicide. The poor man.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“He was old and miserable and sick. He told me the first time we spoke he had a bad heart. It seemed likely. Do you mean it wasn’t?”

I’d been a detective too long. For the smallest piece of a second a light showed in her eyes. It didn’t have to mean anything. It could have been the sheen of tears.

I ran a test. “You could get a book out of it I suppose. But you’d need a murderer. Otherwise it’s a long joke without a punchline. Anyway, who would you get to write it, one of your ghosts?”

The delicately chiseled face went stony. “That’s a despicable thing to say.” Her tone was barely audible.

“I’m the one who took him down.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked it.

“Me too.” I stirred myself finally and opened the file drawer at the bottom of the desk. “Scotch is all I have. I’m sorry about that too. You’re welcome to join me.” I stood the bottle on the desk and the two shot glasses I kept for genteel company. It was the good brand I’d bought out of the spring’s largesse. Spring seemed a long time ago.

“Thank you, I will.”

I poured hers first and then mine. I didn’t propose a toast out of respect for the deceased.
Bullshit,
he’d said, the one time I asked. I wanted to put mine down in one easy deposit, but I made myself sip it. The sip Louise took was healthier than expected. It brought a flush to her smoothly tanned cheeks.

“Tell me all of it,” she said.

I told her all of it, including the part I hadn’t told Lieutenant Thaler. When I finished she was thinking like a publisher. I decided I hadn’t misinterpreted what I’d seen before, but what the hell. The Scotch was already working. It paid to buy the best.

“Do you think this Robert Brown did it?” she asked. “He’s a mobster?”

“If he is his name isn’t Brown. It probably isn’t anyway. This year’s Robert Brown is last year’s John Smith. I’d need a lot more help than you could afford to look them all up, even if I confined myself to New York State, and then he wouldn’t be one of them. I’m having his plate run but that will be a dead end too. If it isn’t he’s probably innocent. If all my hunches played out I’d be down at the Grand now, waiting for the doors to open.”

“It had to be murder. If it wasn’t, the manuscript would have still been in his cabin.”

“The manuscript didn’t mean anything. He was writing fiction. It wouldn’t hang anyone without proof. If he was killed and the killer took it, it would just be to satisfy someone’s curiosity about what Booth knew. It wasn’t worth killing for.”

“Duane Booth’s original police report would be, though. That’s why he put it in your cabin. He must have known his life was in danger.”

“Only an idiot doesn’t,” I said. “He told me his brother destroyed the report and signed his name to Roland Clifford’s. He hadn’t made his mind up about me yet. Either he did before he left my cabin or he was too drunk to remember it was in the case of whiskey. Either way he left me with a grenade and walked away holding the pin.”

“Where is it now?”

I patted my breast pocket. Her eyes widened a little, but they still weren’t as big as Mary Ann Thaler’s.

“Do you think it’s wise to carry it around? It should be in a safe deposit box.”

“Hiding it in a safe place didn’t help Booth. Anyway I don’t think anyone knows it exists. Otherwise whoever strung him up would have tossed the cabin looking for it.”

“Why is it still important? Clifford’s dead. His reputation is of no use to anyone.”

“It is to the city of Detroit,” I said. “They’ve built this latest renaissance on his shoulders. A white hero in a black cause might go a long way toward reversing white flight. I don’t think they’d kill an old man to protect his memory, but I’ve seen worse done by people high up.”

“Alive he was an asset to the underworld. Dead he’s a boon to society. How ironic.”

“There’s a book in that.”

She gave me the violet stare. “I’m sorry a man got killed, but I’m fighting for my life. If Booth’s manuscript still exists I want it.”

“Are you making a pitch?”

“You don’t have to take the job if it repels you. There are other private detectives who will, some of them just as good as you and maybe better. But they’d lose at least a day catching up to where you are now. Meanwhile whoever has the book may burn it.”

“It’s probably burned already. It’s evidence of murder.”

“The chance is worth taking. I’ll double your fee and add a bonus if you manage to deliver the script. Ten thousand dollars.”

“You can’t afford ten thousand. Even if I find the book, you don’t own it.”

“I’d have advanced him a lot more to publish it. I can scratch up the difference to deal with his literary estate. If he didn’t have one I’ll enter a claim in Lansing. In any case that’s my headache. Yours is to continue the investigation. If you agree.” She leaned forward and touched my hand. “Do it for me if not the money. We have a history.”