The Midnight Man (26 page)

There were very few white faces. You had to be white to notice the undercurrent of bitterness beyond scattered shoving matches and the rabble-rousing of street orators desperately trying to attract an audience. Conversations stopped as I drew near isolated knots of people. The jostling I got when I penetrated the main stem seemed rougher than necessary. I was wearing a Windbreaker over a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and I was constantly reaching back as if to tug down the elastic band and brushing the butt of my concealed .38 just to reassure myself that it was still in its holster. The hunt for Alonzo Smith had set back race relations ten years locally.

I didn’t see John Alderdyce anywhere, but I did recognize three or four plainclothes men from police headquarters sprinkled among the celebrants, all black; and there were likely many more from the precincts and uniform division in mufti. You could pick some of them out by the fact that they were wearing jackets. With the temperature in the low nineties, the only good reason for having one was to hide a gun.

I circled back to the parking area for some fresh air, and saw Bum Bassett’s big silver pickup standing near the entrance. He had the driver’s door open and was sitting on the seat facing out. His huge raw face broke into a thousand wrinkles when he saw me.

“Howdy there, hoss,” he said, pumping my hand with his meat grinder. He was wearing a white T-shirt and his biceps were as big as grapefruits. An old tattoo on his right had faded or been obliterated to a blue blur. “I been meaning to call. I’m right sorry about cold-cocking you that way. I wanted to get out of there and I wasn’t in no mood for arguments.”

I worked circulation back into the hand. “I thought maybe it was because you didn’t want to talk about your first wife.”

“Well, there’s some things a man don’t like to get into. No hard feelings, I hope.” His grin was anxious.

“I don’t use all my brain cells anyway. What’s a few hundred thousand more or less? No objections outstanding. How’s the leg?”

“Sore as hell, but I’m used to that. Just a matter of keeping her clean and not climbing any mountains for a spell. I’ll get this here back to you soon as I can meander without it.” He patted the cane, hooked on the steering column.

“I’d appreciate it. I consider it good luck. As long as I have it, maybe I’ll never need it. Knock wood.” I reached up to rap the cane. In a twinkling he had the .44 magnum out of the frontier-type holster on his right hip and pointing at me. I froze.

He smiled shamefacedly and replaced the gun. “Sorry. You don’t do what I do and get to be my age by liking quick movements.”

“No apology needed.” A drop of sweat rolled down my rib cage. “That’s some draw. You practice?”

“Every day in front of a mirror. Ain’t had to use it but once. That once made it all worthwhile.”

“How’d you get that hogleg past security?”

“I got police credentials from three states. Also, I’m famous. You’d be surprised how much red tape just being known cuts through.”

“I’ll bet. And you do all you can to stay known, don’t you? Like dressing up like John Wayne, and the way you talk, all those ‘I reckons’ and ‘hosses’ and such. You really put the myth of the American cowboy to work for you.”

He winked broadly. “Okay, so you flushed me out. Do me a favor, hoss? Don’t tell nobody. I need all the weapons I got.”

“I’m not writing any autobiography this year,” I assured him.

A small group of young black men and women was gathered on the other side of a battered Pontiac parked next to the pickup, conversing in low tones punctuated by sharp laughter. A strong scent of marijuana drifted our way. I moved closer to Bassett and dropped my voice.

“Assuming he decides to go ahead with it, how do you figure to beat the entire Detroit Police Department to Smith?”

Teeth flashed in his red beard. “I was just fixing to ask you the same thing.”

“My situation’s changed. I’m just here for the festival.”

“Funny, you don’t look it.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Bum.”

“Didn’t know I had to,” he said. “But I like you, so here it is. When something happens I like to be there. I couldn’t see staying home changing bandages when the one I come a thousand miles to get is here. Maybe I don’t get him, but I figure I paid to see him get got. Answer enough?”

I watched him. “No, but I know when to settle.” I paused. “What did you expect to find when you went through Laura Gaye’s things at the commune?”

“What makes you think I did all that?”

“There are things everyone does the same way every time, and that no one else does quite the same. One is folding clothes. You shouldn’t have bothered, Bum. They weren’t that neat when you found them.”

“Doggone. The rest of the place was so neat I guess I just got carried away when it come time to put everything back. You got me there, slick. I was inside the place. I didn’t want the law to know that, with murder done there and all. I didn’t find nothing anyway.”

“That’s your main fault, overdoing things. Sending that trigger around to scare me off the case, for instance. That was too much.”

He scraped nonexistent mud off his bootsole on the edge of the rocker panel. “I hope you’ll take that as a compliment, hoss.”

“Compliment how?”

“You just had too much on the ball and I had enough competition from the law. That fellow used to pack iron for a numbers man I picked up in St. Louis two years back. I could of run him in too, but I didn’t, so he owed me. You didn’t figure to be the type to rabbit, though. He was just a hunk of ripe meat I drug across the trail to throw you off. Reckon his plane fare was wasted. I don’t know now how you tied him to me.”

“Simple deduction. You were the only one left.”

“Well, I didn’t know you so well then. I wouldn’t do it now, and that’s a fact.”

“I think it is. Anyway, your giving me that stuff you found on Bagley cleans that slate, so let’s forget it. It’s always bothered me why you thought Smith was worth the trip up here, though. Five thousand would barely pay your expenses.”

He glanced across the Pontiac at the teenagers and caught one staring at him. I couldn’t think why. He was just another Mack truck in a cowboy suit. The youngster looked away quickly.

“I wouldn’t be in this here business if I didn’t like it,” said Bassett. “Call it a working vacation. Hell, you know what I’m talking about. From some of the things you said I got the feeling you was in this before there was a reward.”

“I owed someone something,” I said.

He studied me through clear blue eyes. “We got lots in common, hoss. That we do.”

I moved off. It was 11:18 by my new watch. The mayor was due at noon. I was stopped twice by plainclothes detectives and forced to show my pass. They weren’t questioning any of the blacks, Smith or no Smith. I could have saved myself a lot of hassle by spreading burnt cork on my face.

“He’s okay,” said a familiar voice behind me the second time I was stopped. Sergeant Hornet flashed the black cop his credentials. The latter nodded and walked away, adjusting his shoulder holster under a Pistons warm-up jacket.

“Where’s the neon blazer?” I asked Hornet. He was wearing a blue nylon jogger’s top with a zip front and no tie. The white racing stripe made him look like a weather balloon.

His expression was sour. “The idea’s to be inconspicuous.”

“You didn’t make it.”

“You’re a hoot, Walker. I see your pal Buffalo Bob is here. You two wouldn’t be working together”

“Like Moscow and Pittsburgh.” I listened to the dark canary on the bandstand moaning a new tune. “John’s with the mayor, isn’t he?”

“You know so much, why ask me?”

“You’re a fountain, Sergeant. Who’s your voice coach, Marcel Marceau?”

“I’m considered a real motor-mouth when I’m with someone I got use for,” he said. “I guess you noticed I don’t do flip-flops whenever you come in sight.”

“Too bad. I’d like to see that.”

He’d been standing sideways to me, watching the crowd. Now he turned to face me. He wasn’t like most fat men, with all their features crowded into the center of their faces. His eyes were a hand-span apart and his mouth was as broad as a six-lane highway. He wouldn’t have looked right skinny. His rash had dried to pink crusts on his cheeks. “That’s another thing, your bright patter. You don’t hear that from cops. It cooks out early. John and I do this because we got to. It’s our job, and if we wind up in a bag like Maxson and Flynn or a wheelchair like Sturtevant, that’s just the way milk turns. With you it’s like slumming. If things get hairy you can walk away, tell your client you came up dry and still get paid. We don’t have that option. So excuse me if I don’t find your sense of humor ingratiating.”

“Sometimes a sense of humor is what’s left after everything else is gone,” I told him. “Sometimes it’s the only thing keeping you from spraying your brains all over the ceiling.”

“That’s something else,” he snarled. “You got this picture of yourself nobody else sees. Tragic hero, fighting the good fight all alone. One of these mornings you’re going to wake up married to yourself.”

“I guess that means I’m living in sin now.”

“I like brains on the ceiling better.”

“What about it?” I asked. “Is Smith coming?”

“Not this year. Why should he? Everyone else is dead and he’s squirreled away in some hole hundreds of miles from here.”

“That might have been true last night.” I mumbled the words.

He nailed me. “You got reason to think he’s changed his mind?”

“Gut feeling. You know how it is.”

“I’d like to.” He was still looking at me. “Maybe someday I will.”

He left me, a graceful hippo of a man swaying from side to side as he shifted his bulk from one incongruously small foot to the other.

The crowd was surging in the direction of the parking area, where uniformed officers had set up sawhorses and were standing around sweating in their summer blues, their guns and handcuffs obvious on their webbed belts. Portable radios with antennae full extended rode crackling and sputtering in special pockets, topping off the military look. It was almost twelve o’clock.

A big black cop with a thick moustache touched a hand to my chest as I started between sawhorses. I displayed the pass. He looked at it, nodded, let me through, and stepped in to block someone trying to come in behind me. If I live to be forty I’ll never understand the faith people put in credentials you can order from any catalogue.

The asphalt was tacky. This part of the lot wasn’t shaded. The sun nailed directly overhead drew shimmering waves of heat from the composition surface. The officers smelled of leather and perspiration, and when they shifted weight their feet creaked in their boots. I made the mistake of resting a hand on the fender of a parked scout car and jerked it away with a first-degree burn. Forget about eggs; you could roast a fourteen-pound turkey with all the trimmings on the sidewalk and keep it warm for a week.

They came with a blue-and-white before and behind and enough motorcycles to remake
The Wild One,
sirens strung out long and thin and warped by the sodden air, the riders in glistening black leather from neck to foot and looking as alike in their mirrored glasses as cartridges in a belt. Two blocks of shiny black automobile—the object of the procession—slid around the corner and into the area enclosed by the sawhorses, with the haughty look of the
Queen Mary
docking among tugs. It cruised to a stop without a sound. The engine cut out and there was still no sound. You could power a fleet of Honda Civics all week on what it took to get the chief exec here from his office. But the mayor of Detroit doesn’t ride around in Japanese automobiles.

The cops in the enclosure snapped to life—forcing spectators back from the sawhorses, growling over portable radios, lining up to form a protective cordon of blue around the limo. They could have saved themselves the trouble. Most of the people there were fighting to get on camera as crews from the local TV stations unlimbered their equipment in the area reserved for the press. Politicians come and go, but how often do you get the chance to wave hello to your friends over the airwaves?

In the middle of all this confusion, a chauffeur in a powder-blue uniform got out, circled the car, and opened the right rear door. One of the mayor’s eight-hundred-dollar suits alighted with John Alderdyce inside. He raised his hand in the characteristic bent-arm wave. At that moment something thumped his chest, kicking him back against the open door so hard a hinge snapped. Then we heard the report.

I
T CRASHED OVER
the rooftops, echoing on the Windsor side and finishing with a roaring hiss somewhere between Lakes Michigan and Huron. You just can’t place a high-powered rifle by its report.

There were shouts of “Oh, my God!” and “Not again!” but most were unintelligible, deteriorating into shrieks as the realization spread that a sniper was loose and that the mayor might not be the only target. Sawhorses splintered and fell over with a crash. A television cameraman was shoved off balance, losing his grip on his camera. It exploded against the pavement, feeding the panic. Cops bellowed obscenities at the crowd, the sniper, and each other, their guns out and gleaming greasily in the bright sunlight. Screams tore the air.

Uniforms and plainclothes men had closed in a protective huddle around the fallen detective, cutting off my view. I started shoving my way through to the car. It was a moment before I realized I had my gun in my hand.

My legs went out from under me suddenly and I came down hard on my back on the sticky asphalt. When I opened my eyes I was looking up the black bore of a Police .38. Beyond that was a bare arm covered with fine red hairs protruding from a short blue sleeve. Beyond that was a freckled face under a shiny black visor.

I tried to sit up but couldn’t. A black brogan was pinning my right wrist to the pavement. I was still holding the gun in that hand.

“Don’t move, you son of a bitch,” the cop was saying. “Try to kill the mayor, will you?”

His voice shook. People were still running around screaming. I had to shout to make myself heard. “Easy, son. We’re on the same side.” I inched my free hand toward the pocket containing the pass. The gun leaped closer.