Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro (30 page)

“Where’d I hit you?” he shrieked. “The belly, I hope.”

I stopped struggling and held my breath. My heart wouldn’t cooperate. It hammered against the bedframe.

“Don’t just stand there. Find a light.”

Nicky said, “Not me, boss. If he can suck in air he can still shoot.”

“So can I, you yellow bastard.” Another shot. The bullet didn’t strike anywhere near me.

“Jesus, you almost hit me.” Nicky was as shrill as Morgenstern now.

“Next time for sure. Do what I tell you.”

A floorboard shifted. The yellow bastard was more afraid of Morgenstern than a slug from me.

“Sing out, Walker. Otherwise I’ll torch the place and you with it.”

Nicky said, “what about Shelly?”

“If you don’t find that fucking light they’ll be saying, ‘What about Nicky?’ ”

A shoe gleamed on the floor. If my hands were free I could have reached out and touched it.

“Don’t think too long, Walker. They won’t know a PI from a pot roast.”

I got my sleeve free and squirmed into position by easy installments. There wasn’t room enough for a decent-size monster under Burlingame’s bed, let alone one hundred eighty-five pounds of red-blooded American detective.

Nicky’s toe touched the lamp. Clothing rustled as he bent to pick it up.

At last I lay on my chest with my head toward Morgenstern’s end of the room. If he was still
on
that end of the room; he might have been moving too. I used my toes and knees to push myself forward.

Nicky fumbled for the switch. The bulb was smashed. I saw a ghostly face beneath the bedframe.

“He’s under the bed!”

Something struck sparks off the steel frame and chugged into the floor two inches in front of my face. I braced for the blast.

There wasn’t one, but I couldn’t lie still while he tried again. Once again I strained the Colt past my hip. Nothing to aim at; I was blinded by Nicky’s muzzle flash. I squeezed my eyes shut. They claim you don’t hear the explosion when you’re in it, but what do they know? I tightened pressure on the trigger. It was slippery with my blood.

“Police! Drop your weapons!”

Captain Hichens’ voice. It sounded like birdsong.

I
finished my stand-up and got off the stage, just like George Burns said.

Hichens let the camcorder run another thirty seconds, then twirled the power cord around his ankle and yanked the plug out of the wall. The red light winked off and the motor stopped whirring. The remote was on the table right in front of him, but he’d have had to lean forward from his chair to use it. The arid eyes in the pale face looked as tired as I felt. In his case the condition was chronic.

“I never heard of an investigation like it,” he said. “Not a single informed decision from start to finish. You just stuck your nose into the wind and stumbled after it, like a—a—” He looked to me for help.

“A hungry coyote,” I said. “Wile E. Except it takes me longer to bounce back after the cliff falls on my head.” I rubbed my eyes and yawned. I was crying pure gypsum and my breath would knock down a wall. Outside the room where we sat in the City-County Building, feet had begun to whisper along the corridor. The bureaucrats were reporting for work. Apart from being knocked silly in Randall Burlingame’s bedroom for a few minutes, I’d gone around the dial without sleep. “It wasn’t an
informed-decision kind of a case. Most of the witnesses were dead and the only piece of concrete evidence spent the last half-century in a wall with Poe’s black cat. The rest was instinct.”

“You were a hair less dumb than Burlingame, if it means anything. If he hadn’t got cute and tried to frame Morgenstern for Garnet, he’d be smoking that cigar of his on some beach right now.”

“He trained under J. Edgar. Doubling the double-cross came as natural as shedding skin cells.”

“Feds and gangsters. Yippies and prizefighters and whore-house madams. What year is it?”

“Backward—” I yawned bitterly. I didn’t have the energy to finish the sentence.

“We’ve got the gun, and if Homeland Security cooperates we ought to find Burlingame on videotape at least twice going through the hotel checkpoint. That ties up the Garnet case. I doubt Smallwood, even if the gun checks out; hard to prove chain of possession after fifty-three years. That’s Oakland County’s headache. I don’t guess they’ll chew much aspirin. Their suspect’s on a slab.”

Hichens hadn’t gone to Plymouth alone. If he had, he might have arrived in time to prevent bloodshed; or to make his own contribution to the pool. He’d stopped to alert the city police and make a courtesy call to Oakland, whose case Smallwood still was. Three departments had converged on the quiet residential street, and Morgenstern and Nicky surrendered themselves without gunfire. Shelly left strapped to a board in an EMS unit.

A perky Pakistani with the Washtenaw County Coroner’s office had opened his bag next to Burlingame’s body and confirmed he was dead. That ended the suspense.

“Be in your office this morning,” Hichens said. “I’m sending a couple of deputies for that bug. There are going to be some vacancies in the Hoover Building when the feds finish tracing it—after we’re through with it.”

“Can you make it this afternoon? I get sleepy every twenty-five hours.”

He made a magnanimous gesture with one hand. I asked him who gets Morgenstern.

“Plymouth, to start. They’ve got your statement and you’ll be hearing from the county prosecutor. New York and Washington too, probably; they’ve been trying to twist him up in a RICO rap through three administrations. Don’t be surprised if the Department of Justice offers you a free extended vacation, complete with new I.D.”

“It’s always been a dream of mine to sell plumbing supplies in Wichita.”

“It won’t come to that. I ran his name through the NYPD rackets division after I found out he was involved. He’s been an embarrassment to the no-necks on the East Coast for years. They call him the Yiddish Little Caesar, not always behind his back. They’ll do handsprings when they find out he got taken down on an operation that won’t kick back to them. They’ll have his territory all divvied up by this time next week.”

“Edgar Croswell.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was the country cop who broke up Little Apalachia.” He stared. I moved a shoulder. “Friend of mine knows the Book of Sicilians chapter and verse,” I said.

“I guess I can take it into retirement. That and Delwayne Garnet. If I had any ambition left, you’d be showering at County right now.”

“A shower sounds good.”

“I’m glad. I didn’t want to say anything.”

“We through?”

His telephone rang. He held up an index finger and answered. He listened, said thanks, and hung up.

“I’ve been trying to reach Morgenstern’s girl at the Marriott,” he said. “I can’t get an answer. Any idea where she got to?”

I glanced up at the clock. The Caracas flight was off the ground, barring delays.

“Not a one.”

He gave me the bleak look. It didn’t have to mean anything. “That was the Royal Oak substation on the phone. I asked Oakland to put a man outside Regina Winthrop’s room. She died forty minutes ago.”

“That ties up Smallwood.” I peeled myself off the chair and cracked some bones. I smelled pretty stale, at that. “Thanks, Captain. You sounded good there in the dark.”

“You ought to hear me in the tub. You’re lucky that old Colt didn’t blow up in your hand.”

“They made them good then. Not much else. Abortion’s as safe as root canals and no one cocks an eyebrow when a black fighter dates a white entertainer. None of this would have been necessary today.”

“Yeah. They sure knew how to dress, though.”

The same sweet-faced old lady took the slip Hichens had signed and gave me my Smith & Wesson. A cop had scooped it off the floor where it had fallen out of the drawer of the nightstand when it tipped over. I remembered almost nothing of the drive from Plymouth, but I found where I’d parked, snapped the revolver into its compartment, and drove away with the windows down to clear out the stink of my own corruption. My wrists were still raw from the cuffs. None of the officers present had had a key that worked on them, but someone had found the one that belonged to them in Burlingame’s pocket. When I turned my head at intersections, I felt the tight soreness where the gun barrel had bruised my collarbone. Lately it seemed like every job I took left me damaged in some way. Maybe it always had, and I’d just been young enough to shrug it off. Now I wondered if each new ding would be permanent like the rest.

I stopped at the office to call my report into Lawrence Mel-drum, who seemed relieved the firm wouldn’t figure front and
center. I ignored whoever might be listening on the receiver the cops had found in Burlingame’s den. Next I called Barry Stack-pole. I gave him the whole story on one condition: that he agreed to share a byline with Edie Van Eyck. He had no problem with that.

When we were through talking I worked the plunger and called my service. There was one message, from a Mr. Hale: “The bird has flown.” I made a snarky laugh, thanked the operator, and hung up.

The State of Michigan tried Jeremiah Morgenstern, Sheldon Bardo, and Nicholas Delarocca separately for charges connected with the death of Randall Burlingame. I testified in all the proceedings. Shelly attended his preliminary in a wheel-chair with I.V. attached, but by the time of his sentencing he was able to stand with the help of his attorney. He drew life for accessory to murder and most of the factory options, including the attempted murder of one Amos Walker, a misdemeanor. Nicky got seven to fifteen for commission of a crime involving a firearm, pled down from accessory to murder when he rolled over on Morgenstern. At his own request he was moved from the state penitentiary at Jackson to an isolation cell in the maximum security facility at Marquette in the Upper Peninsula, after he slipped in the shower and broke his jaw and seven ribs.

The judge in Morgenstern’s case gave the defendant two life sentences to be served consecutively, for murder and conspiracy, then handed the gavel to the U.S. District Court, which scheduled him for trial on twenty counts of violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That was high and outside for me. I went home.

I didn’t get any midnight telephone calls telling me to watch my step. No one kissed me on the mouth without my consent, sent me a dead pigeon by registered mail, or called my obituary into the
Free Press
. I felt like sending myself a funeral bouquet just for the anticipation.

My Luger was waiting for me behind the registration desk at
the Renaissance Center the day after I made my statement to Captain Hichens. None of the cartridges had been fired.

I saw Hichens just once after I left him downtown, but not to talk to. We were both giving evidence the same day, and he nodded at me from the gallery as I was looking for a seat. He’d bought a new black suit for the occasion. A week after the criminal trial I read a three-inch piece in the
News
announcing his retirement after thirty years with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department.

Regina Winthrop was buried in a Catholic ceremony in Royal Oak. I didn’t attend, but I went to a memorial service in Dearborn for Edie Van Eyck, who’d died in her sleep from complications of diabetes in August. Someone had framed the front-page story she’d written with Barry and propped it on a table cluttered with pictures of Edie drinking beer with friends.

On July 1, I got a bill from Llewellyn Hale at the Loyal Dominion Enquiry Agency in Toronto, only part of which I charged to Meldrum & Zinzser, Attorneys at Law. No personal notes were exchanged.

And last Christmas a card came to the office with a foreign postmark, showing Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer sprawled in lounge chairs overlooking the heartbreaking blue of the Caribbean. It was signed “Duffy.”

L
oren D. Estleman, author of the acclaimed Amos Walker private detective novels and the Detroit series, has won three Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, four Golden Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. His other novels include the western historical classics
Billy Gashade, Journey of the Dead
, and
The Master Executioner
. Detroit hit man Peter Macklin made his return in
Something Borrowed, Something Black
(2002), having previously appeared in three novels:
Kill Zone, Roses Are Dead
, and
Any Man’s Death. Retro
is the seventeenth Amos Walker novel, his second for Forge Books. Estleman lives in Michigan with his wife, mystery author Deborah Morgan.