The Midnight Man (19 page)

“You think he was a prisoner?”

“Maybe not quite. Maybe they just felt he needed reassurance to keep him from changing his mind.”

“Changing his mind about what?”

“Hell, I don’t know.” He dropped back onto the sofa amid a general protesting of springs. His shoulders were slumped and he had bags under his eyes you could pack for an overnight trip. “They busted him out for a reason, but I’m damned if I can put a name to it.”

“What’s he got that the others haven’t?”

He stared down at his hands clasped between his knees. “He’s an experienced killer. The others are amateurs.”

“He’s something else too,” I added. “Condemned.”

He looked at me. “He hadn’t even stood trial when they sprang him. Even then he had a better-than-even chance of beating jail on a plea of insanity. Then the shrinks would look him over and give him a clean bill of health and he’d be back on the street in time for church Sunday. It’s happened a hundred times. At worst he’d have pulled life and been out in six or seven years with good behavior. His hair wouldn’t even be gray.”

“That’s not the way his friends saw it. Their entire philosophy is based on distrust of the system. As far as they were concerned he was dead meat from the time the warrant was issued for his arrest. So he’s a man with nothing to lose, and if whatever they’ve got planned for him backfires, he’s a martyr. Better and better.”

“I don’t know. It sounds too much like a Ludlum novel.”

“Life imitates art,” I said. “Question is, what’s the plan?”

“That’s not the question.” He got up again. “It hasn’t changed from the start. Where is Smith?”

I ditched the butt in the ashtray on the scratched coffee table. “Maybe Bassett took him with him. Maybe it was Smith’s blood you saw.”

“I thought of that. If so, he’ll be turning him in for the reward any time, and there’s no course of action for us. I’m proceeding on the assumption that Smith got away in the confusion and the cowboy went looking for medical aid. That way all bases are covered.” He studied me. “Incidentally, Washington got back to us on those prints we Telexed. Your sniper’s name is Felix Treadaway. Know him?”

“Should I?”

“He’s a fellow vet. Sharpshooter in Cambodia, no rap sheet stateside. Medals from here to next week, including two Purple Hearts. He was a solid citizen until he fell in with this crew.”

“I’d remember someone named Felix Treadaway. He’s your key.” I stood up, straight into the path of another dull headache. It was time to think about lowering my intake. “What about my friend from the office?”

“We’ve got copies of the Identikit picture you put together all over town. Don’t get your hopes up, though. If he wasn’t in the mug books he’s not local. He’s probably back home, counting his money.”

“You agree he was hired.”

“You said he was a pro. Would a pro hang out with this set if he wasn’t being paid?”

“Depends on what set he’s with. Thanks, John.” I got the door for him. “Seven early enough for the morgue?”

“Make it six-thirty.” Halfway through he stopped and looked back. “I really hope you don’t know where Bassett is.”

It was an opening. He waited, but I didn’t step through. Then he got going and I closed the door on my oldest friend.

M
Y PATIENT CONTINUED
to rest comfortably, one massive arm flung across his forehead. After a quick shower I swallowed a couple of aspirins, fixed up the sofa with bedding from the closet, and stretched out raw under a sheet. Bruised or torn or broken, my side was giving me trouble. For a long time I lay listening to the antique clock knocking out the minutes. I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was going tick-tock or tock-tick. It struck three, then the half hour, and I was still wondering. I reached up and switched on the lamp on the end table.

The headache had settled in for a long stay. I got into the robe and slippers and peeked in on Bassett. He was starting to stir and groan. The bedsprings creaked like a gallows in use. I retreated to the kitchen and splashed some Bourbon into a tumbler along with some tap water. When he came to in the glare of the bedside lamp I was sitting in a chair close by holding the glass.

His bright blue eyes flicked around the room and lighted on me. He braced an elbow on the mattress, started to lever himself up, gasped, and settled back. He stroked his injured leg under the covers.

“Drink this here,” I said, mimicking his Southwestern drawl. I got a hand under his head to lift it, and thrust the glass under his nose. He sniffed.

“Where’s the chicken soup?” Rust flaked off his vocal cords.

“I’m out. Sue me for malpractice.”

He drank long and deep, longer and deeper than I could match healthy. I took away the glass and set it down on the table.

“That’ll do for now. Alcohol thins the blood, and you’ve got little enough as it stands. Welcome to the Chateau Walker. We never close. It’s quarter to four
A.M
., you’ve been here since midnight, and a friend of mine who isn’t a doctor anymore plucked that out of your estimable thigh.” I showed him the .25 slug. “What happened?”

“You don’t give a fellow a hell of a lot of time to catch his breath, hoss,” he said.

“We don’t have a hell of a lot of time to work with. The cops are quartering the city looking for you and they’ll have a warrant to search here soon enough. One’s been around already. Where’s your trailer?”

“I made a deal with a guy sells them on Schoolcraft. He’s hiding it out amongst his new models. Figured there’d come a time when I’d want to play button-button with the law. You in trouble on my account?”

“Purely on mine. Bagley. How’d it happen and in what order?”

He climbed into a sitting position with my help and bunched the pillow behind his back as a prop. The movement made him curse. “I been shot before,” he said, massaging the bandaged thigh. “It don’t get no easier. Anyhow, I was chasing down some information—”

“Information from who?”

“None of your friggin’ business, like the injun said. I got folks to protect same as you. Where was I? Oh, yeah.” He shook his leonine head. “The good thing about not being a public servant is I don’t got to worry about warrants. The bad thing is I get shot at a lot. I took down the front door and it was the Lincoln County War all over again. All five of them was in the one room. This nigger with a autorifle—”

“Back up,” I interrupted. “
How
many?”

“Five. So this nigger—”

“Cops found only four.”

“I’m coming to that. This here nigger makes a grab for a auto-rifle on a table and I put one through him. I never made a better shot; he was dead standing. Then something stings my leg and I pull the trigger twice on this white woman who had a little pistol. I got another nigger while he was aiming a bigger automatic. I think he forgot to take off the safety or he’d of nailed me. That was when Smith lit a shuck out the back.”

“You’re sure it was Smith?”

“I carry his picture around with me everyplace I go, like I’m Judge Bean and he’s the Jersey Lily. I fanned one at him, but this here leg buckled on me and maybe he wasn’t hit. A bullet just misses my ear then, and this fourth nigger with a revolver ducks out behind Smith. I fired at him too. Don’t know what come of that.”

“You hit him. He’s dead.”

He nodded absently. “Hell’s fire, that’s a new record.”

“Congratulations. Feed me some more.”

“I tried following Smith, but it was a big house and I was commencing to feel dizzy. I got turned around and ended up back in the front room. You ever been shot?”

“Once.”

“Then you know what it’s like. You always think you’re dying. When I got to my truck I remembered your address from your wallet and come here. I didn’t feel like facing any law just then.”

“Quite a story,” I said. “I wouldn’t buy it in a movie.”

“Hell, I been in worse. One time I braced seven, but only three of them was armed and I had a partner. Even then we didn’t kill but one, and
he
wasn’t the one we was after. That was before I knew about magnums.”

“You like this work, don’t you?”

“I must. I sure as hell ain’t in it for the money. I figure to clear fifty bucks on this job.
If
I get Smith.”

“Alive, naturally.”

He looked at me. “Sure, alive. I don’t make nothing otherwise.”

“How does a guy get started bounty hunting?”

He laughed explosively, then caught his breath, gripping the leg. “Christ, that’s easy. First you got to fail at everything else you try. Then you got to get into bail-bonding and wind up getting stuck for fifteen thousand. Then you bounce all the private detectives and go into business for yourself. Line up some bail bondsmen who like living and don’t mind getting back a client dead now and then and you’re all set. It worked for me. Damn!” His hand moved up and down the injured area.

I handed him the tumbler. He drained it and handed it back. A healthy flush crept up from his collar into his hairline. “Ever see a picture called
Shane?”

“Produced and directed by George Stevens, staring Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon de Wilde, and Jack Palance?”

“I reckon.”

“Heard of it.”

“There’s this big scene,” he said, eyeing me strangely. “Shane faces down the killer and says, ‘You’re a lowdown Yankee lair.’ That was a big insult back then. So the killer draws one of these two hoglegs he packs. He gets off a round, but Shane wounds him and he drops the gun. He goes for the other and Shane shoots him again. He dies. Then Shane mounts up and rides out of town, and no one realizes until he’s almost gone that he’s been hit.”

“It wasn’t the killer’s bullet that hit him,” I corrected. “It came from upstairs. Shane and the bushwhacker fired at the same time. The bushwhacker died.”

“Whatever.”

“So?”

“So it don’t work that way. When you got a forty-five slug in you, everybody’s gonna know it because you can’t stand up. Even that little twenty-five near done for me. When are them movie people going to wise up to what getting wounded is all about?”

“When one of them gets wounded, I suppose.”

He scowled and combed his fingers irritably through his red beard. His eyes moved around the room. “Not married, huh?”

“How’d you know?”

“No mirror on the dresser. Ever been?”

“Once.”

He grinned. “That’s what you said about being shot.”

“Yeah.”

“Tough row to hoe. So they tell me.” He switched tracks. “Reckon I’m wanted myself, now. Maybe I’ll have a bounty man on my own back.”

“My sympathies to his widow. What were they doing when you broke into the place on Bagley?”

“Sitting around talking.” He snorted. “That was a sucker move on my side. If I’d thought to peek in through a window I’d of known they had all their hardware out on the table. I’m damn lucky they weren’t heavyweights or they wouldn’t of been so slow to react. I guess I’m getting old.”

“You didn’t happen to overhear any of the conversation.”

He started to shake his head, then looked at me. He was sweating. Talking had taken a lot out of him. “I reckon you and me are about even now.”

“I reckon.”

“Not really, though. I wasn’t taking chances with the law when I took you in. That puts you one up on me.”

“Maybe. I flunked math.”

“I pay my debts,” he said solemnly.

“It’s not that much. Laura Gaye was wanted, which made her friends guilty of harboring her even if you can’t prove Smith was there. You have quasi-official status built up over a period of years. Then there’s a little matter of self-defense. Technically you’re not wanted at all, except for questioning. Alderdyce wants to see me later this morning; I’ll tell him you showed up after he left. He won’t believe me, but that will square things between us. I wanted to hear your story first. Besides, I like you.”

He squirmed. “Where the hell are my pants?”

Don Wardlaw and I had removed everything but his shirt.

“In a trash can out back. We had to cut them off you. I’ll fetch clothes from your trailer when you’re ready for them. There’s a cane in the living room closet left over from the time I sprained my back. I’ll make you a present of it, but you won’t be leaving for a while. The cops can just as well pump you here. You lost enough blood to power a rabbit and it needs time to replace itself.”

“It’s my wallet I want.”

“Forget it,” I said. “It’s on the house.”

“I ain’t talking about money. You ain’t been through it?”

“Why should I? I know who you are.” I got his wallet from the dresser and handed it to him.

“I been doing this a long time,” he said, fingering the papers inside. “I wasn’t so silly from that bullet I didn’t think to scoop up what evidence I could from the table and stuff it in here.” He drew out a couple of things, glanced at them, and extended them to me. “Like I said, I owe you.”

I examined the two items. One was a detailed street map of the downtown area. The other was a photographer’s contact sheet with four rows of 35-millimeter positives exposed on a black background. The mayor of Detroit was featured in every frame.

“W
HEN WERE THESE TAKEN?”
The lieutenant frowned over the contact sheet on his desk. Sergeant Hornet stood behind Alderdyce, looking over his shoulder

I was standing at the window, admiring the cityscape by early-morning darkness through the iron-mesh grille. Lighted windows were scattered like yellow diamonds on black velvet. Dawn was a sliver of lead over Windsor.

“Pretty recently,” I said without turning. “That’s his new limousine he’s getting into. The trees in the sidewalk plots are fully leafed out. Sometime this summer or late last spring. The shots were taken with a telephoto lens, probably from across the street.”

“How can you tell?” asked Hornet.

“I take a lot of pictures through keyholes, remember?”

Alderdyce said, “This is getting to sound more and more like a bad Movie of the Week.”

I turned. “Stop talking as if I wrote it. I got it from Bassett and came running to you with it right away like a good little citizen. It explains a lot. The sniper rifle you found on Bagley, for one. Why Smith was pried out of custody, for another”