Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss (10 page)

My gaze settled on the firewood stacked against the barn’s outside wall. It was a standard cord, eight feet long and four high, frosted like a cake on top with a heap of snow that had slid off the edge of the roof. The impact had dislodged several chunks from one end, sending them rolling into a pile. I went over and pushed at the stack with one hand. It swayed and another chunk came loose atop the collapsed end and tumbled down among the others.

I didn’t like that by half. People who are practiced at stacking wood make a better job of it, to get the most into the least space and keep it from falling apart before the first gust. They have competitions where you need a half stick of dynamite to break loose the runners-up. Paul Starzek didn’t seem the type to compete, but he’d been through too many northern winters to slap the dash. I ground the tip of my cane through to the frozen earth, braced myself, and pushed the end of the pile high up with the heel of my good leg. It was an amateur job, all right. The stack canted toward the other end, twisted in the middle, and spilled most of its top three layers into a heap. A three-quarter round of hickory wobbled drunkenly on its square edges and bumped my cane. If I hadn’t been leaning all my weight on it the collision would have swept it out from under me.

When the avalanche stopped I went over, cleared away the bottom layers to the dirt beneath, brown and flecked with black bark but no snow, and tested it with the cane. The original stack had been erected before the first frost, insulating it from the cold. It was the only patch on the property you could penetrate without a jackhammer.

I went back inside the church, traded my cane for the long-handled spade, and used it as an alpenstock on my way back to the demolished stack of firewood, the blade ringing every time it struck hard earth. During the next twenty minutes I forgot the cold. Just clearing away the fallen wood had me sweating, my leg throbbing like a flashing red bulb precisely where the bullet had gone in. The dirt was unfrozen but packed hard, compressed by the weight of the firewood, and I hadn’t the leverage to shove the blade in deep with my foot. I took shallow scoops and made slow progress. After five minutes of digging I climbed out of my overcoat and suit coat and flung them down on the ragged pyramid of hickory and chestnut and white birch.

They hadn’t gone very deep. About two feet down something scraped and a patch of electric blue showed for just a second before the loosened earth slid back down to cover it. I bent over and brushed it away with my hand. The place was rotten with blue plastic tarp. I lifted the shovel to clear away the rest. The blade zinged against something hard underneath the tarp, a sound that made me sick at heart. I tossed aside the shovel, fished out my folding knife, straddled the blue cocoon on my knees, and slitted the plastic from the near end to eight inches. The frozen gray face that stared up at me when I spread the material might have belonged to another marble statue, but it wasn’t lifelike enough for that. It was just dead, with one eye shut and the other not seeing. It seemed to be including me in a private joke.

I groped at my chest, realized I was in my shirtsleeves, picked
up the shovel again, and used it to lever myself up out of the grave. I felt the chill again now, like clammy chain mail against my slick skin, and put on my suit coat before I went into the inside breast pocket and unfolded the church circular I’d taken from Starzek’s supply inside the house trailer. I looked from the face in the picture to the dead face in the ground, with the edges of the tarp framing it like a monk’s hood. That seemed appropriate. I was 90 percent sure they were the same. I knew more than I should have about what happens to a human face when the muscles that operate it stop working.

It had the petrified look of something that had been in the earth for ages. I’d spoken to the owner only a little more than twenty-four hours ago. Or someone who’d said he was Paul Starzek over the telephone.

“Police! Drop the shovel and put your hands on top of your head!”

I jumped, the circular fluttering out of my hand. I hadn’t heard the cruiser coasting to a stop behind Starzek’s pickup or the two deputies approaching on foot on either side of the truck. Both had their pistols thrust toward me in the two-handed clasp, their feet spread and four yards separating them, a firing perimeter. I let the shovel fall with a clank and put my hands where they said.

T
he command officer was a sheriff’s sergeant named Finlander. He had clay-red hair chopped off straight across his forehead in little-boy bangs, but his face was ancient, pleated longitudinally from brow to jowl like vertical blinds. His eyes were glittering black slits, his nose broad and flat, his mouth a parenthesis turned on its side with the corners curved down and just enough lip to prevent fraying. His uniform shirt was ironed as flat as posterboard. Finns are Huns by ancestry. Give this one a fur hat and a tough little monkey of a steppe pony and he looked as if he could sack Rome on twenty dollars a day.

The substation was a brick box no larger than a caretaker’s shed in a cemetery and bore evidence of having been used as a community library sometime in the past. The musty perfume of disintegrating paper was still apparent and the remaining shelves held a complete run of red-bound copies of the
Michigan Penal Code
up to 1974, a four-drawer steel index-card file box filled with juvenile offenders, and a couple of hundred yards of loosely coiled yellow extension cord. That left just room for Sergeant Finlander and me to sit on either side of a gray sheet-metal desk with a scarred composition top and for Walrus Whiskers to stand. The
deputy’s name was Yardley, for the record. The spare tire pressing at his belt of torture tools was as hard as the rest of him.

“You should smile when they take your picture. I’ve seen hap-pier faces in maximum security.” Finlander had my ID folder in his hands. My wallet and its contents, car keys, cigarettes and matchbook, Paul Starzek’s church circular, and my cane decorated the desktop, the cane across the corner nearest the sergeant and farthest from me. Yardley and his partner had found the gun in my car, but it was nowhere in sight. My carry permit lay open-faced among the money and receipts from my wallet.

“That’s my game face,” I said. “It cracks peepholes and destroys alibis.”

“Let’s process him, Sarge,” Yardley said. “He had the shovel in his hands, for chrissake.”

Finlander fixed his slits on me. “Unlawful disposal of a corpse is a misdemeanor punishable by jail time. Then there’s breaking and entering; we’ve got the bolt cutters and the busted lock. I haven’t mentioned suspicion of homicide, but only because we don’t know yet what killed Starzek. Have you visited our fine modern facility?”

“It’s an empty spot in my collection,” I said. “I think you know I didn’t kill Starzek or bury him. I came prepared to cut off the lock, but someone already took care of that. We’ve been over it.”

“Go again.”

I sighed and went again: the job Oral Canon had hired me for, Homeland Security’s interest in the person of Agent Herbert Clemson, my first visit to Paul Starzek’s house, and the second one that had landed me where I was. I’d told him about Grayling because he’d asked about the cane, but left Jeff Starzek out of that part, also both Canons and what Rose had told me about her real relationship with Jeff. I didn’t mention I’d broken into Paul’s house on my first visit. I said I’d found the circular in the pole barn.

“You’re sure it was Starzek you talked to on the phone?” Finlander had listened as closely as he had all the other times, and let the same length of silence stand while he turned the details over in his mind, or seemed to; he might have been thinking about what Mrs. Finlander was making for supper, if there was a Mrs. Finlander. There wasn’t a personal photo, family or otherwise, anywhere in the little room. It was just as much a monk’s cell as Paul Starzek’s house trailer, without the religious gimcrack.

“I’m not sure at all,” I said. “I never spoke to him before in my life.”

“So this is just a job to you. Your past association with his brother doesn’t figure in.”

“I know Jeff only a little bit better than I knew Paul.”

“Blood’s blood, but money’s money. If you didn’t kill him—which I’m not considering—I’ll bet you whatever you’re making on this job it was baby brother. There was a shitload of cigarettes in that church before it got moved out. Money to burn, you might say.”

“You don’t know it was cigarettes. If it was, they were overequipped for the cargo. Cigarette cartons are mostly air. A stack the size of what was taken out of that barn wouldn’t weigh more than a crate of oranges. A station wagon would’ve done the job.”

“You’re going by floor space, from the clear spot in the dust. Those cartons might have been stacked to the rafters. Unless you know different.” His slits narrowed to seams.

“I saw it through the window before. I told you that.”

“I forgot.” He squeaked his chair twice, rocking. “Someone tampered with a back window of the trailer. I don’t guess you noticed that, Mr. Big City Detective.”

I decided to get mad. It was the only thing I hadn’t tried short of diving out a window. “Your hick-sheriff gag needs work. You don’t have the accent. If you can’t rig it so I broke into the
church—and you can’t—and you can’t rig it so I broke into the house—and you can’t—how can you tag me for murder?”

Squeak. Squeak. “People say liars can’t look you in the eye. I figure they’ve never been lied to by a professional.”

“I guess that’s still an insult up here. Let’s not fight.” I shifted positions to put out the fire in my thigh. “You’ve only got cigarettes on the brain because of Jeff Starzek’s record and crooks don’t usually change their lay. But experienced smugglers don’t kill each other over a six-month supply of butts. Whatever came out of that church was a lot more compact and a hell of a lot more valuable pound for pound.”

“Such as what?”

“Such as that’s your headache. I was hired to find Starzek, not break up Murder, Incorporated.”

Deputy Yardley smacked his lips and redistributed his weight from one foot to the other. There’s one in every department. It was too bad for him the place didn’t have a basement. That’s where they keep the rubber hoses.

Finlander stopped rocking. “Who’s paying your freight?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Is it a lawyer?”

I said nothing. Hoping he’d run with it.

He didn’t. “If you’re not a lawyer, or representing one, you can’t suppress so much as a fart without obstructing justice in a criminal investigation. Not under the law. And you sure don’t look like a priest.”

“I’ve already told you a lot more than Deputy Yardley’s partner said I have to.”

“Keppler’s studying for the bar. He’s got a fine clear voice. Put his bracelets back on,” he told Yardley. “You’re in luck, Walker. You get to fill out your jail collection.”

Walrus Whiskers stepped forward, jingling his manacles. I’d
had them on before, but this time I’d feel them every time I shot my cuffs for a month.

“Do I get a telephone call up here?”

Finlander raised a hand, stopping Yardley in midcharge. “Lawyer?”

“Client. I need to clear it before I give up the name.”

He was less imposing when he stood. He had short legs and they bowed slightly. It wasn’t a comfort. The lower the center of gravity, the harder they are to tip over.

“Use line two,” he said. “Line one goes directly to headquarters in Port Huron. Let’s step out, Deputy.”

“We going to just leave him here alone?”

“That window looks in just as well as out.” The sergeant picked up my cane and looked down at me. “I’d stay in the chair. If you get up, you may need two of these.”

He left by the only door, carrying the cane like a baton. Yardley jingled out after him. There was a window in the door and he filled it with his big fish-eating face. He would spend his weekends on the ice, bullying the bass out of the water.

I punched the second button on a black conference telephone the size of a window planter and dialed the Canons’ home number. While it rang I fiddled with some of my effects on the desk, steering clear of the cigarettes and matches; Yardley might have thought I was getting set to torch the place. I stroked one of the small bills I’d broken out of one of Canon’s C-notes. It had a velvety texture you can’t duplicate no matter how much you pay for paper stock. That was where Honest Abe got his smug expression. I hadn’t said anything to Finlander about last night’s comedy with the state trooper, but only because I’d forgotten all about it. In the cold light of a cold day, counterfeiting seemed a long way to reach. Jeff was a small-time smuggler when all was said and done, working just a little less hard than the average stiff for the same
blue-collar wages. His brave new cargo was probably stolen pantyhose.

“Hello?” Rose Canon’s husky voice. No baby crying in the background today.

“Walker here. Talk to your husband?” I snapped away the five-spot, picked up my keys, and counted them. There was one I’d been carrying so long I forgot what lock it opened. I didn’t want to throw it away in case I came across the lock. That was the investigating business all over.

“Yes. He knew someone had been smoking in the house the minute he walked in. When he started asking questions, the speech I had ready went right out of my head. I—made a clumsy job of it.”

She sounded on the edge of hysteria. I talked her off the ledge, or tried to. “Speeches don’t work. The truth sounds better when you shake it straight off the tree. What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I laid down the keys and unfolded the circular Paul Starzek had had printed to advertise the Church of the Freshwater Sea. I couldn’t keep my hands still.

“He sat in the same chair you did all the time I talked, staring at the floor and crackling his knuckles. I’ve asked him not to do that; it’s like chewing tinfoil. Then he got up and went out.

“I thought he was coming right back,” she went on. “He left the door open, something he never does. He says he isn’t paying Michcon to heat the whole neighborhood. When I heard the car start I went to the door to call him back, but he was already gone. That was two hours ago, Mr. Walker. I think he’s left me.”