Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss (21 page)

A nurse came in to disconnect the IV and drop off the lunch menu. When she left carrying the empty water cup, she didn’t seem to notice the straw wasn’t in it. I was grateful for that, but I hoped she paid more attention to such things in surgery.

The next visit was from the State of Michigan. It was a two-man invasion, a tall trooper in uniform and a bearish skinhead in a black trench coat over a suit with a wild check; I figured he used the pattern to hypnotize suspects into confessing. There was nothing jolly about either of them. They’d come in straight from outdoors and brought with them a chill I felt through the thin sponge-rubber blanket that covered me to the chest.

“Mr. Walker. Glad to see you’re awake. I’m Lieutenant Kunkel.” The plainclothesman tipped open a folder. “We have some questions to ask.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“That’s not important.”

“Doesn’t know your name,” I said to the trooper.

“I said never mind.” Kunkel’s face darkened under the flush from the cold. “A man answering your description was seen getting
into a delivery truck on the state highway Wednesday night. We got a partial plate number and traced it to the driver. He said he gave you a ride to your car.”

I looked at the trooper. “Even if he just borrowed you from the local post, he could’ve asked you your name on the way here.”

“Evans.” The trooper opened his mouth just wide enough to let out both syllables.

Kunkel ground on. “That was the night you collapsed in the lobby of a motel here in town and were taken by ambulance to the emergency room of this hospital and checked in for treatment and observation. That same night, two vehicles, a snowmobile and an International CXT diesel pickup truck, this year’s model, drove out onto Lake Huron and fell through the ice. The Sanilac County Sheriff’s Department pulled the truck out yesterday morning. Divers are still looking for the snowmobile, but they recovered a body.

“Those same two vehicles caused an accident on the highway,” he said. “We’ve got a good description of the operator of the snowmobile. It matches the corpse. No description yet of the truck driver. Someone saw shooting. You came here with buckshot in your clothes. Maybe you’d care to connect the dots, save us trouble and expense, help out the deficit in Lansing.”

The nurse came in. I took my thumb off the call button I had under the blanket and asked her to check my blood pressure.

“Are you experiencing anxiety?”

I looked from one cop face to the other and back to hers. She cleared her throat and unslung the equipment from around her neck.

“Later, please,” Kunkel said. “We’re busy here.”

“So am I.” She tugged down the blanket and slid the cuff up over my right bicep. The arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow. I’d gouged it punching through lattice.

“Nurse—”

“Van Ash.” She pumped the rubber bulb.

“Nurse Van Ash, you’re interfering with the police in the performance of their duty.”

“Who’s stopping you?”

“What about it, Walker?” Kunkel said.

I’d broken two inches off the end of the glass straw, stashed the rest of it in a Kleenex box on the rolling tray, and was holding the jagged piece in my left hand under the blanket. As the cuff filled and tightened, I made a fist. I gasped a little, coughed to cover it.

Nurse Van Ash’s face didn’t change during the reading. It wouldn’t. She was a short-haired brunette of forty with old campaign lines drawing down the corners of her mouth. She let out the pressure and slipped the cuff down and off.

“You gentlemen will have to come back later. Mr. Walker is in no condition for visitors.”

“We’re conducting an interview,” Kunkel said.

“Sorry.”

“Who’s your supervisor?”

“I’m in charge of the station on this floor. You can talk to Mr. Baird, the administrator.”

“Where is he?”

“Out on the lake. He’s the official mayor of Tip-up Town this year.”

The lieutenant spun on his heel and clomped out into the hall. Evans hung back.

“You, too,” said Nurse Van Ash. “Shoo.”

He slouched on out as if it were his idea. The nurse stayed. “Show me your left hand, please.”

I brought it out full of blood. She seized it, picked out the glass, stuffed a wad of Kleenex into my palm, and closed my hand tight. Her fingers were strung with steel cable. “That’s going to take a
couple of stitches to close,” she said. “Your timing was off. The spike came in the middle of the reading.”

“Where’d you work before this, Jackson Prison?”

“Port Sanilac High. Some of those kids would do anything to get out of gym. What are you going to do when they come back?”

“What kind of cultures you got in the lab?”

The lines in her face didn’t stir. “The police put in more time here than the residents. Most are okay, but you’ve got to take the Kunkels with the rest. Did I do the right thing keeping my mouth shut?”

“You weren’t the only one. The lieutenant didn’t mention the buckshot holes in the truck.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she said. “Miss Maebelle’s a beloved local character.”

“Who said anything about Miss Maebelle?”

“The description’s all over the news. There’s only one fat woman around here who drives a snowmobile.”

“Do the police know?”

“If they don’t, they’ll put it together when she doesn’t answer the telephone. One of the buildings at the Sportsmen’s Rest burned to the ground last night.”

N
urse Van Ash helped me into the bathroom the first time. After that, I took the walker for a spin around the room. It took a little longer than the Rose Bowl Parade and all I got for my efforts was a fresh case of the shakes and a view of a maintenance man blowing snow off the walk outside the window. My leg was a little swollen, the foot dragged. Mostly I needed the support because my body had used up all its strength fighting fever, but I didn’t like the way my foot felt as if it weighed fifteen pounds. Dr. Immelman might not just have been trying to throw a scare into me after all. Hauling a cane around for the rest of my life would throw a crimp into climbing through windows and dodging buckshot.

I hated to do it because I owed him already, but I put a call in to Barry Stackpole. I couldn’t think of anyone else who would drive all the way up there to bring me a change of clothes. Nurse Van Ash may have been the original immovable object, but Lieutenant Kunkel was an irresistible force with a bald head and a loud suit. He wouldn’t waste time poking his face into a couple of hundred ice shanties looking for Administrator Baird; he’d go straight to the nearest district judge and come back with a warrant for my arrest.
That could take hours or minutes, depending upon whether court was in session.

Barry didn’t answer, and the cheerful nasal voice of the new Ma Bell told me I couldn’t keep ringing. I hung up just as Herbert Clemson entered.

“Nice legs. You ought to wear Bermuda shorts.”

I was sitting on the edge of the bed in a paper gown and slippers with a bandage on my scraped ankle. The Homeland Security agent was better turned out. He’d traded his gray coat for an insulated parka, boots with felt liners that stuck up above the tops, heavy woolen trousers, and a cable-knit turtleneck. With his cool eyes, clean features, and cultivated blue chin, he looked like a ski instructor. I asked him if he’d been downhill racing.

“I’ve just come from a long walk along your beautiful Lake Huron shoreline. It reminded me all over again how many thousands of miles of border I have to protect. I can’t get enough staff to sharpen pencils.” He was carrying a briefcase, the bulky old-fashioned kind with straps. He set it down, took off the coat, and flung it across the visitor’s chair.

“What’s it pay? I’m looking for a desk job.”

“I don’t blame you. I saw your chart.”

“I thought that information was confidential.”

We laughed.

He picked up the briefcase and started unbuckling. “I like you, Walker. I’d put you in for it if I didn’t have a conflict.”

I watched him draw out an envelope I’d seen before.

“Three days from Port Sanilac to the Federal Building in Detroit,” he said. “That’s a couple of hours by automobile. Seems to me the post office was more efficient when it didn’t have any competition, but that’s someone else’s department. You should know it isn’t a good idea to send cash through the mail.”

“I didn’t, technically.”

“Let’s not split hairs. We have people who do that. They’re testing the sheet now.” He took out the piece of folded motel stationery, tipped my business card out of the end, looked at it as if he hadn’t seen it before. Then he put both items back in the envelope. “I went to the motel first. That’s the reason you sent it. Were you really planning to wait for me?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly hitting on all cylinders.”

“They told me you were here. I got the rest from the local authorities. For a man with one good leg you manage to get around.”

“The good leg isn’t that good. I tricked out the knee in basic. I don’t guess you brought cigarettes.”

“I don’t use them. You never know when they’ve been smuggled.”

“Company man.” I ran my fingers through my hair. Gray hair feels more brittle than brown. I felt a lot of brittle. “What now?”

He spread the briefcase, tucked the envelope in a pocket, and drew out a bundle wrapped in a paper Marshall Field’s bag. The mattress bounced when he tossed it at the foot. “I had to guess at the sizes: sixteen-and-a-half neck, thirty-four waist, eleven double-E’s.”

“Ten and a half. My toes won’t mind the extra room. What about a coat?”

“Listen to the man. I could’ve come with a couple of beefy marshals and marched you out with your bare ass flapping in the breeze.”

“I figured you’d bill me later.”

“Consider it recompense. You just became a paid government informant.”

I shook my head. “Not even for Armani.”

“Well, put them on. You can always return them.”

I pulled the bag over and looked inside. I saw plaid. “This how you recruited Jeff Starzek?”

“There was no haberdashery involved, but the situation was similar. The old patriotic pep talk doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

I got up, supporting myself on the bed rail, took off the flimsy gown, stood naked while he watched, memorizing scars and moles, broke new underwear out of cellophane, and began the long drawn-out business of dressing. I sat down a couple of times to rest. He didn’t offer to help. The shirt, a black-and-white buffalo plaid, was a little short in the sleeves, but the flannel gave comfortably in the shoulders. The socks were heavy and warm, and the slacks, a sage-green cotton-and-polyester blend, broke just right at the insteps of the stiff new oxfords.

“Where’s the letter sweater?”

He said, “They were running an overstock sale on back-to-school. I have to look out for the taxpayers. Hang on a minute.”

He went out, shutting the door behind him. He was back in less than a minute, pushing a wheelchair. “Hospital regs. We cooperate where we can.”

My cane hung over the back. He must have parked it outside the room.

“I haven’t been released.”

He took a pregnant manila envelope out of his briefcase and dumped it out on the bed. “I took care of the red tape. We invented it, don’t forget.”

I braced a knee against the bed frame, inspected the cylinder of my .38, stuck it in my hip pocket. I put away my ID folder and opened my wallet. There was a twenty-dollar bill inside. I held it out. “I was down to bare leather when I got back to the motel.”

“Personal loan. You can’t get back home without gas. I took care of your motel bill, too. You’ll have to make your own arrangements with the hospital. I’m only a poor civil servant. Pay me soon.”

I put the twenty back in the wallet. “How do I know it’s genuine?”

“How does anyone? Anyway, there’s not so much Treasury paper floating around as there was last week.”

He’d heard about the fire.

“You’re under arrest, Walker. Suspicion of homicide.”

This was a fresh voice, or as fresh as it got coming out of Lieutenant Kunkel of the Michigan State Police. He stood in the doorway holding a fold of official-looking paper. Trooper Evans stood behind him and a little to the side. His right hand rested on the walnut handle sticking out of his holster.

Kunkel aimed his face at Clemson. “Who are you?”

Clemson asked him the same question. General flapping of leather as the two compared ID folders. I sat down on the bed to wait.

“This man’s in federal custody, Lieutenant. You can have him when we’re through.”

“Where’s your warrant?”

The agent put away his folder, took out a long flat wallet, and handed him a folded sheet from the collection inside.

“This is a John Doe.”

“For now, so is Mr. Walker. My agency would consider it a favor if you didn’t spread that around outside your division.”

“What’s Homeland Security got to do with what happened out on the lake?”

“I can’t discuss that.”

“Where are you taking him?”

“I can’t discuss that either.”

“It’s always the same old shit with the G, isn’t it?”

“It’s war, Lieutenant. We’re all in it together.”

“Yeah. I didn’t see you out there bobbing for bodies. I have to
call my commander.” He took a step toward the telephone on the bedside table.

I put my hand on it. “Not on my bill.”

He stopped, patted his pockets. The trooper drew a cell from a flap pocket and held it out. Kunkel snatched it.

While he was talking, I looked at Clemson. “The Age of Communication.”

“I could do with less of it. You can tap a wire. There are just too many voices in the air.”

“I never got one.”

“Good God! How do you manage?”

“I seem to.”

The lieutenant thrust the cell at Clemson. “My commander wants to talk to you.”

“What’s his name?” He took it.

“
Her
name is Villanueva.”

The agent began talking. I pointed my chin at Evans. “Did he ever get around to calling you by your name?”

“Shut up,” said Kunkel, to both of us.