Sinister Heights (18 page)

“Psychos don't have this much fun. Knick-knack on the other knee next time. Who picked up the bill?”

He was silent, except for some wheezing breaths. I leveled the barrel.

“It was Thorpe! Connor Thorpe! Jesus God, don't shoot me again!”

“Right answer. I guessed that when you said you worked security at the Stutch plant. How about me? Was this your bright idea or Thorpe's?”

“Thorpe's. He said we might as well take you down too, avoid a second front.”

“Right again. He was the only one who knew I was coming here, except Constance's mother, and she didn't fit the frame. What did he mean about avoiding a second front?”

“I don't know.”

“Final answer?”

“What?” His eyes had lost focus behind a film of pain and fear.

“You know the rules: No lifelines. No fifty-fifty, no poll-the-audience, no phone-a-friend. If you miss this one you leave here on a gurney.”

“I'm telling you I don't know. I was just a hired hand. He knew I had a mad on against you and he said this was my chance to blow it out. He didn't say what his end was. Men like him don't. They just put in the order.”

That disappointed me, because I knew he'd answered right again. The .38 was still aimed at his remaining kneecap; comically, he unclasped the one I'd shattered and covered that one with both hands, as if that would lessen the damage.

“Okay, you're one question away from the million,” I said. “What did you do with the boy?”

No hesitation this time. He could see I was hoping he'd get it wrong.

“I took him to Thorpe. I don't know why he wanted him. He didn't at first. He said do Glendowning and use his truck so it looked like it was his thing. After that piece-of-shit Cutlass went off the road I pulled over and poked around inside. Everybody looked dead, especially the—I forgot her name.”

“Iris.”

“Yeah. I could see she was dead for sure, not having a head anymore. The boy was okay. Screamed like hell and tried to take a bite out of my hand when I unsnapped him from the kiddie seat. I had to give him a smack to quiet him down. Thorpe was sore as hell I didn't do more, but he said bring him to the plant. Your call came in while I was there. That made him madder. He said I should have torched the car.”

“You called him before you went over?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Not important. I wondered why his line was busy at that hour. Keep telling it.”

“Your call came. That's when Thorpe told me to go back and wait for you here, and that thing about a second front. That's the shebang. Jesus, it's cold for April.” He was hugging himself, shivering. He was going into deep shock.

I didn't need the .38 anymore. I put it away, took out the Glock, removed the clip and ejected the shell from the chamber and put them in my pocket, and laid the automatic on the step. I retrieved Glendowning's Beretta and went upstairs.

Another of the many reasons Mark Proust had been a lousy cop was he had no imagination. I knew what Thorpe meant by avoiding a second front even if he didn't. Learning he had the boy at the Stutch plant gave me that.

I found what I wanted in the belly drawer of the midget roll-top in the den. David Glendowning's address book was a cheap one bound in brown vinyl, but it was rich with names and numbers. The first name I recognized was all the reinforcements I needed. I put down the Beretta to transfer the data to my pocket pad, then returned the book to the drawer and picked up the gun. In the living room I smeared it between my palms and dropped it on the rug next to the recliner. If the Toledo police were on point, they'd run a carbon test on Proust's hands to find out if he'd done any shooting recently. My prints on the gun that killed Glendowning would just confuse them.

Proust's teeth were chattering when I returned to the garage. He was too far gone in shock to protest when I put my hands under his arms and hauled him out of the way of the pickup. I selected an eight-inch-wide oak plank from the scrap lumber in the storage area—it was only six feet long, short but serviceable—and tossed it into the box. I found the switch that operated the garage door, started the Dodge and backed out, closed the door using the remote clipped to the sun visor on the driver's side, and drove up the steep incline to the street. I parked in front of the house, got out, flipped down the tailgate, and slid the plank back until it tilted to the ground, creating a ramp. I tested it for spring, then started the Indian, rode it to the corner, turned around, and gunned it, getting a running start. The front tire jounced up over the end of the plank, then the rear. I throttled back as I climbed and coasted onto the bed. There I cut the power and got off and laid the bike on the two fat snow tires resting in the front and rear left corners.

So far as I could tell I did all this without witnesses. If anyone had heard the picture window breaking, he must have thought he'd dreamt it and gone back to sleep to wait for the alarm. The shots had taken place in an insulated garage, built into the hill that supported the rest of the split-level. The architect had been considerate, a good man to have next door. The neighborhood was just coming awake, lights going on in windows not facing the rising sun.

The pickup was fully loaded—more fully than when it had left the factory—and I knew what it could do. I needed the transportation, Glendowning didn't, and I'd promised Dollier I'd have his bike back in time for work. The cops wouldn't have a tag out on the Dodge until after they'd talked to the owner. I would put all the miles on the odometer I needed by the time they found out he wasn't talking.

I was going to leave then, let the cops deal with Proust when they came to see Glendowning about his missing son, but that might take hours, while shock turned a crippling wound fatal. I didn't give a damn about that, except it was something Proust would have done. I went into the house and called 911, then hung up. The operator would trace the call, and send a car when no one answered.

Before I left, I circled the block, purely out of curiosity. Proust had to have driven some kind of vehicle down from the Heights on his way to kill Glendowning and borrow his pickup. I spotted it parked around the corner, a late-model caramel-colored Chevy I'd seen before. That explained a number of things.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

I-75 was in the horror of rush hour, and I didn't get back to my house until nearly seven-thirty. Dollier, sitting on my front step, looked up as the pickup swung into the driveway, then got to his feet when he saw who was behind the wheel and trotted over, carrying his helmet. He'd discarded the black T-shirt for a white one reading
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
. The face above the goatee was a stack of worried inverted
V
's; he'd spotted his motorcycle lying in the bed.

“Laid it down, didn't you?” he said. “I told you it wasn't a mountain bike.”

“It still isn't.” I got out and gave him the key. “Thanks for the loan. There isn't a scratch on it.”

He hopped up into the box to confirm that. I put the ramp into place and between us we got the bike up on its wheels and guided it down to the pavement. He looked it over closely on both sides, pulled out his handkerchief to eliminate a smudge not visible to the naked eye of a non-owner, and strapped on the helmet. “How'd everything go in Toledo?”

“Bang-up job.” I leaned against the pickup and lifted my bad foot. “Do you wear some kind of badge into the Tech Center?”

“No badge. Just show my ID at the gate.”

I asked if I could see it. He hesitated, then produced a tooled-leather wallet with western stitching from his hip pocket and took out a laminated card. I took it from him and studied it. It had “General Motors” on it and his name and DOB and description, with his picture in the upper right-hand corner.

“I need another favor,” I said. “I need to borrow this today.”

“What for?”

“Did you ask Connor Thorpe what for when he told you to bring the Indian here?”

He scratched his chin-whiskers. “They won't let me on the grounds without the card.”

“Take a sick day.”

“I'm not sick.”

I lit a cigarette. It spared me from setting fire to him. “Nice morning. Weatherman says it's going to be like this all day. There must be a place you can ride a great bike like yours on a day like this.” I hadn't heard a weather report. If the rain held off two more minutes I had a shot.

“They'll can me.”

“They won't know where I got it. Nobody's going to get that long a look.”

He frowned at the bike. “There's a swap meet in Flint this weekend. They're setting up today. I wasn't going till Saturday.”

“First day's always the best.” I got out my wallet and removed two twenties and a ten. I put his ID card in the wallet and pocketed it. “Put that toward a pair of saddlebags.”

“Never use 'em.” But he took the bills. “Nobody'd buy that's you in the picture.”

“I'll grow a beard.”

He was holding the money in one hand and his wallet in the other. I grabbed his hands and helped him stuff the bills into the wallet. “You get fifty more when I give back the card. That's for not telling anyone we had this conversation. Including Thorpe.”

“I really don't like that part. Why don't you get the clearance from him?”

“Takes too long.” I looked at my watch. “If you're going to say no, you'd better do it now. There's a back-up on 75 north to Warren.” I hadn't heard a traffic report either; but here I was on safer ground. The odds that there wasn't a back-up were about the same as winning the lottery.

That made his decision. Nothing makes a Detroiter turn pale faster than a freeway snarl on the way to work. He put away the wallet. “My old man never missed a day on the line in forty years. He'd be pissed at me if he wasn't dead.”

“Don't sweat it. Come tomorrow, no one at GM is going to remember you weren't at work today.”

After he roared off I went inside and sat down and propped my foot up on the ottoman, but I didn't take off the Windbreaker. I didn't want to get too comfortable. When the Toledo cops found Glendowning and Proust and compared notes with the state troopers from Michigan who were looking for Glendowning's son, I was going to have visitors, and I wasn't up to entertaining. First I called Henry Ford Hospital to ask about Constance Glendowning's condition. The nurse or receptionist I was eventually handed off to told me her condition was stable but that she hadn't regained consciousness. There were no broken bones or internal damage. She might have been talking about a car up on the hoist. I thought about having Carla Witowski paged, then decided that would take too much time. I rang off and called the number I'd copied from David Glendowning's address book. The name that went with it was Ray Montana.

A thousand years ago I'd had dealings with Phil Montana, Ray's father, who a thousand years before that had battered out the American Steelhaulers Union with his bare fists and a couple of hundred thick-skulled fellow truckers. Some of them had had those skulls bashed in by rented muscle, including whole police departments employed by the steel mills, but the gaps closed quickly, and after consolidating its gains the ASU had gone on to organize the entire transport industry. Phil was dead, but a succession of mob puppets in the president's chair had forced the Justice Department to take it away and offer it to Ray in hopes the magic of the family name might prevent the rot from spreading. He'd finished out that appointed term, then carried the next election in a landslide. Justice was pleased at first, then alarmed; the creature had assumed a life independent of its creator. Under Ray, ASU had expanded its operations to represent taxi drivers, airport luggage handlers, food concessionaires, computer technicians, school bus mechanics, messengers, and golf caddies. If the job involved wheels, Montana was on it. Although a campaign to organize prison work gangs backfired when police officers threatened to bail out of the union, the message was clear: The Steelhaulers were standing still for no one. When Ray's aggressive management of the union pension fund proved more successful than the government's handling of Social Security, congressional hearings were suggested to determine whether any RICO laws had been violated. It was the kind of meddling talk that only increased Ray's standing among the rank-and-file. There were truckers, some of them former draft dodgers, who would take a bullet for Ray Montana.

The functionary who answered the telephone—a medium, velvety voice, sex unknown—got my name and Glendowning's and asked me to wait. I spent the time hoping things went better with Ray than they had with Phil. We hadn't parted company with anything like a firm handshake and a slap on the back.

“Ray Montana.” A light voice, lacking his father's raspy baritone. He'd never stood on a loading dock bellowing above the grumble and peep of forklifts. These days a cell phone call or an e-mail from the Detroit headquarters carried farther than a speech backed up with blackjacks.

“Amos Walker, Mr. Montana. I'm a private detective, working a case involving one of your union representatives. David Glendowning.”

“Shop steward in Toledo. Go on.”

I paused. “That's impressive, if you don't mind my saying so. Like Patton recognizing the name of a corporal at Fort Bragg.”

“Glendowning's on the short list for president of the local. I make it a point to keep track of the good men coming up.”

Not to say the competition. But I'd learned a thing or two since Phil and held my tongue. “He's dead. Shot in the head to look like suicide, but it wasn't.”

“I hadn't heard.” No change in tone.

“It isn't public knowledge. You can confirm it with the police in Toledo. They ought to be filing their reports about now. They have a man in custody, a former Iroquois Heights cop named Proust.”