Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels (15 page)

“I remember Johnny,” he said. “He came under Homicide for a little when it looked like he wouldn’t pull through after that spill he took from the high wire. I don’t see Rudy for this. He isn’t in shape to take a beating, much less dish one out. They say Johnny’s inventory’d retire a modest man in style. We should look into who inherits.”

Alderdyce was slouched against the door with his hands in his pockets, looking as languorous as Mount Hood. “Were you even going to report finding the body?”

“Sure. Even a scrap thief shouldn’t be left to feed the rats.”

“You was eager as hell,” said Hornet, “wanted to do it in person. That’s why you stumbled into that one-way from the wrong end. It don’t explain why you rabbited when the police showed. They could’ve saved you the gas.”

Thaler said, “You locals have plenty of time to turn him on the spit. If Rudy found this Toledo’s house open and helped himself to what he found inside, maybe he saw something.”

Hornet shook his head. “If he did, he blacked it out. All that shit he shoots has worn his brain as smooth as a doorknob.”

“Hypnosis,” she said. “Psychotropic drugs. If a computer geek can recover data from a crashed hard drive, a team of government shrinks can jump-start a user’s memory.”

“Maybe we should try them on Walker,” Hornet said.

Alderdyce wasn’t listening. He was watching me. “Who else did you talk to about those converter boxes?”

I thought of Gale Kreski. Even if Rudy had gotten his box from Johnny’s the night before, I still wasn’t sure Johnny had been dead long enough to consider Kreski a suspect, however much he knew about unarmed combat; his skin hadn’t had the cold waxiness of a corpse that had lain in the same spot for hours. I kind of liked Kreski and didn’t want to jam him up in another murder while he was defending himself against the charge in Guam. Also I thought I still had some use for him. I had no idea just what, but something other than sympathy kept me from saying his name.

The case wasn’t about converter boxes anymore. It never had been, I knew now. When you have to throw someone to the wolves, make sure it’s another wolf. “Eugenia Pappas.”

“Who the fuck’s Eugenia Pappas?” Hornet asked.

“Nick Pappas’ widow.” Alderdyce was still watching me. “She’s kind of high-end.”

“She stalled me with a promise to pump her husband’s old contacts. Make what you want of that.”

“Who else?”

“That’s it. It’s only been two days. I spent most of today on a gurney.”

“Johnny spent longer on the floor,” Alderdyce said.

Hornet wasn’t satisfied; he had a curiosity to go with his appetite. “Failure to report a crime is a crime.”

“Almost everything is now. A funny thing happened on my way to report it.”

“You’ve got a cell. You could’ve done it from the scene and stayed to answer questions.”

“I didn’t see anything they wouldn’t.” Time was when it wasn’t against the law to lie to a police officer, as long as you didn’t sign anything. I hadn’t studied the penal code lately but I supposed that had changed along with everything else when the hammer fell.

Alderdyce wasn’t satisfied either, but he had the metabolism to withstand it. “It stinks that you didn’t pull over for the cruiser. One ticket wouldn’t bend your license.”

“He had to get a haircut,” Hornet said.

“In retrospect it was a lame thought,” I said. “I was a little shook up.”

“Murder suspects usually are. I say Johnny crawfished on your deal and you took away that squirrel rifle he totes around and beat him to death with it to make it look like what happened to your client.”

Thaler shook her head. “Walker’s a pain in the ass with a smart mouth and a couple of dozen other things I could name, but he isn’t a life-taker. Even if he were, he’d know he couldn’t match bare-handed work with a blunt instrument.”

“We won’t know they don’t match till forensics gets it.”

Alderdyce straightened away from the wall. “I’ve got papers to shuffle, and you two have reports to make. It’s your collar,” he told Hornet. “You holding him or not?”

“Not,” said Thaler, before the lieutenant could open his mouth. “He gave us information we might not have had for a week. A few hours earlier would’ve been nice, but one more stubborn P.I. behind bars won’t take an ounce of supersized heroin off the street. Cite him for reckless driving, if you like, but we’ve all got papers to shuffle.”

“You’re forgetting this is my investigation.”

“So has downtown,” Alderdyce said. “I got an e-mail this afternoon and confirmed it by phone. It’s now a cooperative effort with federal and city authorities, with Justice calling the shots. Thaler’s in charge, at least until DEA makes the case for jurisdiction.”

She smiled, looking surprised. “I didn’t know that when I called you, honest.”

Alderdyce looked grimmer than usual. “Yeah. So far. Hornet’s the only honest one in the room.”

In a leap year, anything is possible.

SEVENTEEN

After they left, I righted the chair Hornet had tipped over scrambling out of it, made sure no one was lurking in the little reception room, then locked the door and called Eugenia Pappas. She answered herself.

She was silent while I explained the situation. I left in Reuben Crossgrain’s murder, which was public property, but kept out Johnny Toledo’s, which was not. I whittled things down to the bare fact that the cops were coming.

“I thought keeping confidences was why people hired people like you,” she said when I finished. “Otherwise they’d just go to the institutions they pay taxes to support.”

“You didn’t pay me for my confidence, Mrs. Pappas. Anyway, it’s an official investigation now. I just thought you’d like to know so you can set out milk and cookies for the visit.”

“I suppose I should be grateful for that. I can’t help thinking there was a better way to handle things.”

“From where you’re sitting, there’s no doubt about that. From where I am there’s plenty. Did Ouida find out anything about those converter boxes from your husband’s people?”

“I thought you said the investigation had been taken away from you.”

“It usually has been at this point. Since I didn’t get the layoff speech, I have to assume tacit approval of my cooperation, or at least a lower level of intolerance. In Washington it’s called plausible deniability.”

“And they called Nick a schemer. I can’t help you, Mr. Walker. Ouida didn’t return from lunch today and I haven’t been able to reach her on her cell or at home. Frankly, I’m concerned. It isn’t like her to take time off without leaving word. As a matter of fact, it isn’t like her to take time off, period. I practically have to threaten her to use the two weeks’ personal time I give her annually.”

“Want me to check on her?”

There was a brief pause while she consulted her synapses. “I’d rather not give an employee’s personal address to a stranger. At this point I’m still expecting to hear from her at any time.”

“The offer’s still good if you don’t. Would you call me, or have her call me when she shows up?”

“That would be up to her. Thank you again for the information.”

“I’m getting to be in the habit of handing out more than I gather in.” But I was talking to an empty line.

I worked the plunger, then called Ernst Dierdorf at OK Towing & Reapir.

“
Ja
?”

“Oh, knock it off,” I said. “I’m sorry about the Plymouth. Normally a new set of wheels lasts me more than half a day. Can I work out a payment plan? My capital these days is strictly lowercase.”

“You don’t think I’d let it off the lot without insuring it down to the valve caps, do you? I can make back four times that much parting it out. You didn’t crack the block, and I can salvage most of the drive train. I expect to come out enough ahead on the deal to keep my lawyer in gold pen sets through December. Are you all right?”

“Someone thinks so. They kicked me out of the hospital.” As I said it, I wondered if I’d been released at all. The whole business of my exit had felt like a bootleg job. I’d have bet a year’s prescription that if I went back to see my records the screen would come up blank. A lump of ice touched my spine at the thought. If I didn’t exist for Detroit Receiving, I could just as easily never have existed at all. It’s one thing to walk around with a bull’s-eye on your forehead, something else to go through life wearing a delete mark. The infernal angels overlooked nothing.

“Amos?”

“I’m here, Ernst. Much trouble with the authorities?”

“No more than always. When I saw they were going to follow me all the way back to the garage, I speed-dialed for legal help. It was on speaker phone when they came into the office. Apparently there’s no law against swapping cars, even with a desperado like you. The advice was to answer no questions, but I told them honestly I had no idea where you were. They didn’t hang around after that.” An automatic tire spreader popped a rim in the background. It sounded like a pistol shot. “When we towed in that Plymouth, the paint chips on the front looked like the paint on that piece of shit they were following me in.”

“They found me finally. Can I pick up my heap in the morning?”

“Anytime. You can pick up your suit coat, too. It got torn when you crashed the Plymouth.”

“It was torn before. Thanks, and I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“Just don’t ask me for any more loaners. I’m in the auto business, not insurance.”

I thanked him. When the receiver was in its cradle I let my hand rest on it for a moment, then picked it back up and dialed a taxi service to take me home. Even a day like that one had to end sometime.

While I was waiting, I broke open the safe and withdrew a few hundred from the emergency fund. I was running low on Crossgrain’s case dough, tomorrow was Saturday, and without a car I wasn’t sure I could get there before the bank closed at noon. I took the unregistered Luger from the compartment, inspected the magazine, and stuck the pistol under my waistband in the small of my back with a thick rubber band wound around the handle to keep it from slipping. It’s a more cumbersome weapon than the .38 and the Germans who’d designed the action were too fond of moving parts, but the system is getting increasingly slow about returning perfectly legal firearms to their owners. Wearing it stiffened my spine in more ways than one.

I let the cab go in front of my house and emptied my pockets inside, laying the pistol next to my wallet and change. I hefted the cell and wondered if Mary Ann Thaler had snooped through the record of outgoing and incoming calls when she’d had my personal effects in her hands. The screen came up blank when I checked. I was in the habit of deleting stored numbers automatically, but there were ways and ways of retrieving such things. I didn’t know how involved the process was or if she’d had time to put it in play. If she’d had, those converter boxes were closed to me, because she’d have all my contacts.

But as I’d said, the case wasn’t about converter boxes anymore.

I stripped and stood in the shower ten minutes scrubbing off the stenches of hospital and authority. I had a green-and-purple bruise the size and shape of an ostrich egg on my chest from the steering column of the Plymouth, and when I peeled eight inches of treated adhesive from the right side of my rib cage I found a long red scratch where I’d scraped against broken glass climbing out the driver’s window; the impact had sealed the doors shut. A tear inside my left cheek where I’d gnawed nearly through it smarted when my tongue touched it, so of course I couldn’t stop touching it. No other topical damage at first inspection. I’d have bought a lottery ticket if I thought I had any luck left over.

My leg throbbed, but I was fresh out of pharmaceuticals. I got into a robe, poured a bracer without ice, and drank it down standing at the sink, like bicarbonate. It stung the torn spot inside my cheek and rang my head like a bell. I remembered then I hadn’t eaten anything except my own flesh in twenty-four hours. I stuck a jar of peanut butter between two slices of bread and chased it with water from the Scotch glass. That began to sop up the effect, so I half filled the glass from the bottle, leveled it off with water, and carried it into the living room.

I didn’t finish it. When the telephone rang I jumped in the armchair and didn’t know where I was for two or three seconds. The antique clunkety-clock on the mantel showed past midnight. I’d been out an hour. I seemed to have stopped having the dream. Living it had been a poor trade.

The ringing continued when I lifted the receiver off the standard on the lamp table, and I realized it was my cell. I got to it in the bedroom just before it stopped on its own. Even so I hesitated half an instant with my thumb on the call button when I read the caller ID: J. TOLEDO.

“Hello?” I’d never hailed a ghost before. I thought maybe I’d dreamt the whole day there in the chair.

“You are looking for me, I think.”

A young male voice with a strong Spanish accent. “Luis?”

“
Sí
.”

“Where are you?”

“What do you want?”

“Luis, I know you didn’t kill Johnny.”

“Then why do you chase me?”