Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss (27 page)

“Where’d you get Operation Sebastian?” he said. “That’s a level-one secret.”

“I started at level ten. I kept winning free games.”

“What was that you said on the phone about an arrow?”

“I left in such a hurry I forgot it. I’ll send it to you in the Milan pen, just the way you sent it to me. You got a little gaudy there. That story you made up about someone sending a golden arrow to Paul Starzek should have been enough. The Order of St. Sebastian. What a ham.”

“It was sent. I sent it. Without Jeff Starzek, it had to look like terrorists. Where is he?”

“Flew the coop. You should take his example. Even if you kill us, he’s a witness against you. You’ll never run him down, even if you manage to talk yourself back into harness.”

“I’ll run him down. I did it once. What if I don’t? He’s a fugitive and a known felon. They’re calling me in over irregularities in my operational budget, a bookkeeping snafu. Who do you think they’ll believe at the finish?”

The baby woke with a shriek. Rose put a hand on him. “Jeffie.”

“Jeffie.” Clemson whispered. “I never thought he stopped anywhere long enough for that.”

I drummed my fingers on my cane. “You didn’t kill Paul just to frame Jeff. You can’t always crook a man of God so he’ll stay crooked.”

He struck at the bait a second time. “That man of God blackmailed one of his own parishioners into giving him the stolen paper. He was a retired Treasury clerk with a sore conscience. I kept Paul out of jail and paid him as an informant. I knew he was a bad risk, but I needed the storage space until I set up shop. If I knew he was printing off twenties for himself, I’d have stopped him before he mixed up the stock.”

“Meanwhile you made other storage arrangements with Miss Maebelle. Her price was a truck.”

“Not just any truck. That’s the item that got me in hot water. Sooner or later I’d have had to kill her, too. You saved me that chore. Don’t move!” He dug the gun hard into Rose’s back.

“I want to pick up my son.”

“Let the bastard bawl.”

I said, “I took Maebelle off your hands, but it cost you your operation. Burning it up was pure panic on your part.”

He smiled his disarming, nongovernment-issue smile. “I’ve got a big territory. I split the stuff up after Port Huron. There were only a few sheets of the genuine on top of the pile. The rest was newsprint.” He took a step back. “I got what I came for: You’re an army of one. The buck stops here.” The gun came up.

I raised my voice. “Did you get that?”

“Got it.” Barry Stackpole’s voice had an aluminum edge coming out of the telephone speaker. “Should I play it back?”

I looked at Clemson. “Your call.”

The smile stayed on his face. The rest of him seemed to fade away from it like the Cheshire cat. He hesitated with his gun pointed at neither Rose nor me.

She shifted to shield the baby with her body. The movement drew the gun her way.

I threw the cane like a javelin. He ducked to the side, knocking
it away with his free arm. The gun fired. Under the report, glass tinkled like bells far away. I scooped up the .38 and shot him in the chest.

The impact of the bullet hurled him into the wall. Baby pictures showered down. There was no blood on his sweater. I’d forgotten about his Kevlar vest.

He spun my way and snapped off another shot, but I was no longer in the rocking chair. I rolled onto my bad leg with all my weight and landed on my chest with the revolver extended in both hands. Barry was shouting all the way from his condo downtown. All he heard was gunshots and breaking glass.

Clemson flung his forearm across Rose’s throat and back-pedaled toward the front door. His gun was out of sight behind her. She hung onto the stroller with both hands; it rolled with them, the baby screaming to bring down the ceiling. Clemson got the door open and tried to drag Rose through it, but the stroller jammed tight between the door and the frame. He gave up and ran.

I grabbed at the seat of Oral’s big Naugahyde chair and pulled myself to my feet. I still owed Clemson twenty bucks.

A motor roared and climbed to a wail. Asphalt shredded tires in a long, tearing shriek. The shriek ended in a wet thud.

I manhandled Rose out of the way, stroller and all, and lunged out onto the porch holding the gun. Ten yards down the block, Jeff Starzek was stepping down from the driver’s seat of the grimy plumber’s van. The front end was caved in. The thing that had caved it in lay behind the van, a heap of rags in the street. I went over there.

“Put away the gun,” Jeff said. “I hit where I aim.”

T
he feds wanted to talk to Jeff Starzek, but the crafty little rats they pay to serve their subpoenas got no closer to him than the van he’d left in the middle of the street, which traced back to a small fleet belonging to a plumbing contractor who hadn’t noticed it missing. Jeff’s name is still on an FBI pickup list, but regional authorities scattered along the Huron shoreline stopped looking months ago. They’ve got their hands full with a new crop of smugglers since the tax on cigarettes went up again in March.

Rose and Oral Canon sent me a wallet-size studio shot of little Jeffie, a real porker at six months, with his father’s big head. My physical therapist tells me I should be walking without the cane in time to attend his first birthday party. I bet him his fee, double or nothing, I’ll be rid of the limp by next spring. He didn’t take me up on it, but that was just a matter of ethics. I don’t expect to get a birthday invitation either, because by then the Canons should have forgotten about me. That’s my hope.

Jeff had two minutes with Rose before he fled the sirens on foot. I didn’t ask her what they’d talked about.

I logged a lot of time in the Federal Building in Detroit. The investigators were convinced I knew where Herbert Clemson had
hidden the rest of the missing Treasury paper, despite the evidence on the tape, and I’m pretty sure they know my current bank balance better than I do, in case I decide to make a large deposit in uncirculated twenties. Clemson’s mole in the system, if he had one, never surfaced. A lot of press conferences in front of a lot of flags spent a lot of words talking about terrorist links, but all they really cared about was all that fake money floating around. They pretty much confirmed that when they let the terror alert fall back to yellow.

Barry Stackpole’s story broke big in the
Detroit News. The New York Times
bid higher, but he went with his loyalties. Anyway the fee bought him a new hard drive to replace the one he’d destroyed to stay out of federal custody.

Not long ago an envelope came in the mail with the owner’s title on the Hurst Olds, endorsed over to me. No note, and no return address, just a Charlottesville, Virginia, postmark, which was probably a blind, since Jeff has contacts in all the major tobacco-growing states. I’ll miss the car when it sells, but the hospital’s threatening to go to a collection agency, and I’ll be glad to get the Cutlass back in the garage. The trunk was empty except for a single carton of Winston’s—my brand—and a bottle of Scotch—Old Smuggler, if you want to know. I disposed of the evidence in a week.

L
oren D. Estleman has written more than fifty novels, this being the eighteenth one featuring Amos Walker. In his illustrious career in fiction he has already netted four Shamus Awards, four Golden Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards. He lives with his wife, author Deborah Morgan, in Michigan.