Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels (18 page)

“I’ve seen him eat. I’d rather he lied. I just thought it was the city’s turn.”

“Manpower’s at rock bottom. We’re sweeping up every pusher in town and turning ’em heels up to shake loose some of that primo horse. There’s just no room left in the budget for a loose pin like you. We can always trail you later by the litter you leave behind.” He flipped open a folder and started reading.

I got up. At the door I said, “Give any thought to what happens when that heroin supply stops?”

“Only every waking minute.”

*   *   *

A sergeant with the stoic gaze and sharp beak of a snapping turtle watched me from his station as I made for the exit with my phone ringing, a generic tone that had come with the package; I’d left a far more sophisticated piece of portable technology with the department. He returned his attention to his entry log as I pushed through the heavy glass door, fumbling in my pocket.

“Mr. Walker, this is Eugenia Pappas. May I see you right away?”

There were no ambient noises on her end, not even air stirring in the large room where she’d be bottled up like the authentic imported her late husband’s father had reserved for magistrates and better. She herself might have been ordering office supplies; but that wasn’t her job.

“Is it about Ouida?”

“In person, please. I want to retain your professional services.”

I told her I was on my way. The season was picking up.

TWENTY

Halloween is good for Detroit, once you overlook that business about widespread arson on Devil’s Night.

The DPW sells special trash bags to civic-minded homeowners that when they’re filled and placed at the curb make giant orange jack-o’-lanterns. Genuine pumpkins with grins carved in them flicker on front porches, ghosts made from bed linens and papier-mâché flutter from the carcasses of trees blasted by emerald ash disease, and shops specializing in costumes and decorations string bright temporary banners across empty storefronts where retailers bent on permanence have failed. With the surviving trees in full color, it looks like a living city.

Beyond the limits the leaves turned sodden, hanging like spit curls from glistening branches and pasting themselves so tight to the windshield the wipers slid over them without disturbing them, like a wallpaper brush. The spattery rain we’d had earlier had gathered force as it swept toward Canada, drumming the vinyl roof of the Cutlass and racing along the gutters. Out on St. Clair the lancets stitched up the surface and the low clouds turned the water the color of tarnished silver. A bicyclist made a picture of misery sawing at his pedals on a sidewalk paved treacherously with slick foliage, his athletic shoes squishing on each turn. I powered down to crawl through a puddle the size of a lagoon to avoid splashing him.

Under those conditions the cockeyed Bauhaus architecture of the Pappas house made sense, its uneven roofline leaning like so many sails into the slanting rain. The miniature Greek flag on the mailbox that matched the house jiggled before the wind circling back off the bay.

I turned up the collar of the sport coat and ran for the covered porch, but I got a good dose just the same. I stood in a puddle and used the Zeus-head knocker. I half expected Ouida to answer in her suit and cranberry hair, but the other half suspected why I’d been summoned. I wasn’t surprised when Eugenia Pappas opened the door.

“You’re soaked.”

“It sounded urgent, so I swam over. She still missing?”

She told me to come in. I closed the door behind me and wiped my feet on a coconut mat. She looked less angular standing than she had all coiled up at her desk, tall and strong-boned in a lightweight wool dress a shade off from the one she’d had on before, her long, blue-veined feet stuck in slippers with low heels. The silver inlay in her pale, pulled-back hair glinted like platinum wire in the light reflecting off the porcelain bric-a-brac in the foyer. When she seemed satisfied I wouldn’t leave wet tracks on the floor, she turned and led me into the morning room.

The curtains were drawn back today, providing a wide-angle view of the bay glowering under the overcast. The rain appeared to have settled into one spot, turning the water to hammered tin. The level seemed to be rising as I was looking at it.

“When I still hadn’t heard from her this morning, I sent someone around to her apartment. He talked the manager into letting him in with a passkey. He found the place orderly, the bed a little messed up the way she might have left it when she came to work yesterday morning. Nothing in her papers or on her answering machine to indicate where she’d gone or why. While he was looking around, this call came in here.” She pressed a button on a small telephone counsel balanced on the corner of the Prairie desk.

A metallic-sounding voice issued from the speaker, each word dropping with equal emphasis, sounding as human as marbles falling into a bowl: “We … have … Ouida. Wait … for … our … call.”

“I’m not in the habit of answering the phone myself,” she said when the message clicked off. “When Ouida isn’t here, I let the machine get it.”

“You were expecting your man to report from her apartment.”

“I know Ouida’s number, and the number of his cell. The ID was blocked. How is that possible?”

“Star sixty-seven. It isn’t a state secret. No use asking if you recognized the voice. It could be a man’s or a woman’s scrambled, or computer-generated. Are you still waiting for the call?”

She shook her head. “I turned on the machine when it came in thirty minutes ago.” She pushed the button again. The same mechanical arrangement of syllables directed her to deliver the entire shipment of TV converter boxes she’d received to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in Detroit. She’d tried to ask questions in a voice strung tight, but the directions continued without interruption. The time of the appointment was an hour past dark that evening. A click and a dial tone cut her off in the middle of another question.

“You were talking to a recording,” I said. “Do they have her, do you think?”

“I have to assume they do. She wouldn’t have stayed away this long without word if something hadn’t happened.”

“Do you have the boxes?”

“I don’t, honestly. That I know of.” She stroked a bony upper arm abstractedly. “It’s possible Ouida tracked them down and didn’t have the chance to tell me. If she did and they’re in my possession, they could be in any one of a dozen places: storage sheds, warehouses, the homes of volunteers and people I employ. My charitable work involves auctions of donated goods, recycled clothing and furniture, bottled water and blankets and other emergency supplies for families forced out of their homes by fire. The merchandise is spread out across three counties. Some of the volunteers are recovering addicts, people on parole, former homeless. Their inventory skills are rudimentary, to put it kindly. I’ve placed some calls, but it will be a miracle if we find those boxes before tonight. If they exist.”

“The information might be in Ouida’s computer.”

“I know next to nothing about them. Do you?”

“No, but I know someone who does.” I asked to use her telephone. She handed me the receiver and I pecked out Barry Stackpole’s number. “They didn’t say it has to be you making the delivery,” I said as I waited for him to pick up. “You don’t want to be in that neighborhood after dark. Not since they built Comerica Park. You know what’s at Michigan and Trumbull?”

“I’m afraid I know little more about Detroit than I do about computers. I’m from Philadelphia originally. The stories Nick told me about what went on down there frightened me away from ever visiting the place.”

“It’s old Tigers Stadium. Anything can happen in a big empty shell like that. It might as well happen to me as anyone. Barry? Amos Walker.”

The voice on the other end wouldn’t have been out of place on prom night. “What are you doing calling from Nick Pappas’ old number?”

“I see you upgraded your photographic memory to digital.” I gave him a thumbnail of the situation. “Think you can lift what we need off the P.C. she left behind?”

“Depends on the incentive.”

I put a hand over the mouthpiece. “Seven-fifty, to start. That covers expenses.”

“Agreed,” she said.

“You’re on the sheet,” I told Barry.

“Put it toward a correspondence course on DNA. I want a seat on Eugenia Pappas’ board of directors. Tell her I’m feeling charitable.”

“Who is this man?” she said when I’d delivered the message.

“He’s an investigative journalist, specializing in organized crime.”

“Don’t you know anyone else who’s good with technology?”

“A few, but I trust Barry.”

“Let me speak to him, please.”

I gave her the receiver and went over to the window to watch the rain skidding off the opposite side of the lake. The clouds had lifted slightly, letting sunlight slide under it, an eerie sight. The choppy surface appeared to be artifically lit, like a studio exterior in an old Technicolor movie. I turned back when she hung up.

“Obstinate man. We reached a compromise. No seat on the board of any of my foundations, but an unpaid press agent’s position. It will give him a chance to check the veracity of our press releases before they reach the public.”

“Dangerous concession on your part.”

“Not at all. After Nick died I ran all the rats out of the basement. If there’s anything unlawful going on in my operation, I want to know about it first. That was
his
concession.”

“Ouida told me she’d report to you before she told me anything. You run a tight ship.”

She smiled, a tight-lipped V in her angular face. “I paid attention when my husband spoke. His Old Country ancestors were fishermen, and his father and grandfather piloted boatloads of contraband across the Detroit River.” She nodded. “I run a tight ship.”

I made a decision that was bound to get me in trouble. “This kind of contraband is worse than radio tubes and cases of Old Log Cabin, Mrs. Pappas. Those boxes are dummies filled with heroin.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she said after a moment.

“I’m under what amounts to a federal gag order not to, so I hope you’re as straight as you make out. People in the drug trade are a lot quicker on the trigger than most smugglers, and the people behind this deal make the regulars look like Muppets. You and Ouida seem close.”

“If I’d thought a daughter of mine would turn out like her, I wouldn’t have avoided pregnancy all those years.”

“You need to be prepared for the fact that she may already be dead. This outfit is conscientious about cleaning up after itself. Two people are dead as a direct result, and the stuff they allowed to leak out through those boxes has been killing habitual users all across town for a week. I want your permission to bring in the authorities.”

“You certainly cannot have it. You heard the instructions: no police, no FBI, no one in law enforcement. One lone courier or they’ll kill Ouida. I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t take the chance if there’s any possibility at all she’s still alive. I literally could not live with myself if she were to die because of something I did.”

I started to say something, but she went on. “I know you’re skeptical when I say I’ve separated myself entirely from my past with Nick. I wasn’t a barefoot, ignorant wife; I knew the kind of business he was in even if I didn’t know all the details. I know some people died in its pursuit, and I know he was directly responsible in at least two cases. The detectives who came to interview him didn’t know that.

“I’m getting to be an old woman. The immaterial things mean more to me now. Frankly, I’m frightened of what awaits me. I intend to buy salvation the same way Nick bought himself and his people out of trouble with the courts.”

“There’s an inherant weakness in that line of thought, if you’re a Christian.”

“I’m not sure I am, although I’ve donated fortunes to the Greek Orthodox Church. All my sins postdate Christ, so I don’t accept that He died for them. But Christianity doesn’t hold the monopoly on the afterlife. You can call my plan a cynic’s perversion of faith, but I’m a practical devout. I’m very fond of Ouida. I like to think I’d do anything in my power and beyond it to bring her back safe strictly out of the kindness of my heart, but if I’m the cause of her death, it means everything I’ve invested in my spiritual delivery up to this point will come to nothing. I can’t write it off, and I can’t afford to die in a state of celestial bankruptcy.”

“You will, though, regardless. You can’t buy holy indulgence. The bottom fell out of that market when the Spanish Inquisition went bust.”

“It’s enough that you know where I stand. If you go against my wishes in this matter and the worst happens, I’ll have nothing to lose. But you will. You and your friend Barry Stackpole.”

“That speech usually comes with a gun in someone’s hand.”

“I held one only once, when it was given to me as a gift. But I know how to dial a telephone.”

I pinched a cigarette from the pack and rolled it along my lower lip. Her nostrils turned white; plainly it was a nonsmoking house. I said, “And you’ve separated yourself from Nick how?”

TWENTY-ONE