Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (26 page)

“Funny, you don’t sound like her.”

“She’ll tell you the same thing. Blum’s death is starting not to look like suicide and that means you can go back to your bench and leave the field to the first string.”

“How much not like suicide is it starting to look?”

“Just for the hell of it we ran Blum’s prints. We got a positive.”

“He told me he’d never been printed.”

“He must’ve forgot,” Alderdyce said. “We didn’t mess with the FBI. They destroy their records once a subject turns seventy. We got a match in a box of stuff on its way to the incinerator because it was too old to bother feeding into the computer. There is no Leonard Blum. But Leo Goldblum got to know these halls during Prohibition, whenever the old rackets squad found it prudent to round up the Purple Gang and ask questions.”

“Blum was a Purple?”

“Nice kids, those. When they weren’t gunning each other down and commuting to Chicago to pull off the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre for Capone they found time to ship bootleg hooch across the river from Canada. That was Goldblum’s specialty. He was arrested twice for transporting liquor from the Ecorse docks and drew a year’s probation in ‘twenty-nine on a Sullivan rap. Had a revolver in his pocket.”

“Explains why he never registered his guns,” I said. Licenses aren’t issued to convicted felons. “That was a long time ago, John.”

“Yeah, well, there’s something else. Ever hear of Bloody July?”

“Sounds like the name of a punk rock group. No, wasn’t that when they killed Jerry Buckley?”

“The golden boy of radio. Changed his stand on the mayor’s recall on July twenty-second, nineteen thirty, and a few hours later three Purples left him in a pool of blood in the lobby of the Hotel LaSalle. And during the first two weeks of the month the gang got frisky and put holes in ten of their Mob playmates. It was a good month not to be a cop.”

“All this history is leading someplace, I guess.”

“Yeah. We got a lot of eager young uniforms here. One of them spent a couple of hours after his shift was over pawing through dusty records in the basement and matched the bullet that killed Blum with the ballistics report on the shooting of one Emmanuel Eckle-berg, DOA at St. Mary’s Hospital July sixth, nineteen thirty.”

“Yesterday was July sixth,” I said. “You’re telling me someone waited all these years to avenge Manny Whatsizname on the anniversary of his death with the same gun that was used to kill him?”

“Eckleberg. You want someone to tell you that, call Hollywood. I just read you what we’ve got. You’re walking, right?”

“Give me some time to square away a couple of things for my report.”

He might have said “Uh-oh.” I can’t be sure because I was hanging up. It was getting to be a hell of a case, all right.

The address I wanted in Birmingham belonged to a small crackerbox with blue aluminum siding and a rosebush that had outgrown its bed under the picture window. My watch read seven-thirty and the sky showed no signs of darkening. You get a lot more for your money by hiring a private investigator in the summertime.

My knock was answered by a tall slim woman in sweats with blond streaks in her gray hair drawn up under a knotted handkerchief. She had taken the time to put on lipstick and rub rouge into her cheeks, but she really didn’t need it. She had to be in her early seventies but looked twenty years younger. Her eyes were flat blue.

She smiled. “You look like you were expecting granny glasses and a ball of yarn.”

“I was sort of looking forward to it,” I said, taking off my hat. “No one seems to knit any more except football players.”

“I never could get the knack. Come in.”

The place looked bigger inside, mainly because there was hardly any furniture in it and the walls and floor were bare. She led me to a heavy oak table with the round top removed and leaning against the pedestal base. “Will it fit?” she asked.

“Search me. I flunked physics.” I put my hat back on and got to work.

It was awkward, but the top eventually slid onto the ledge where the spare belonged and the pedestal fit diagonally into the well. She
carried out a carton of books and slid it onto the back seat. “Take Telegraph down to Twelve Mile,” she said, getting in on the passenger’s side in front.

On the road I asked if Mr. Shinstone was waiting for her in Royal Oak.

“He died in ‘seventy-eight. I would have sold the place then, but my sister got sick and I took her in. She passed away six weeks ago.”

I said I was sorry. She shrugged. “You were married to Leonard Blum when he was Leo Goldblum?” I asked.

She looked at me, then untied her handkerchief and shook her hair loose. She kept it short. “You’ve been doing your homework. Have you got a cigarette?”

I got out two, lit them from the dash lighter, and gave her one. She blew smoke into the slipstream outside her window.

“I started seeing him when I was in high school,” she said. “He was twenty and very dashing. They all were; handsome boys in sharp suits and shiny new automobiles. We thought they were Robin Hoods. Never mind that people got killed, it was all for a good cause. The right to get hung over. The world was different then.”

“Just the suits and automobiles,” I put in. “Prohibition was repealed in December nineteen thirty-three. In January nineteen thirty-four, Goldblum shortened his name and invested his bootlegging profits in construction.”

“He and Ed Klagan, Sr., had a previous understanding. I don’t know how many buildings downtown are still being held up by people Leo didn’t get on with. Mind you, I only suspected these things at the time.”

“Was Manny Eckleberg one of them?”

“Who was he?”

I told her as much as I knew. We were stopped at a light and I was
watching her. She was studying the horizontal suburban scenery. “I think I remember it. It was during that terrible July. Leo and some others were questioned by the police. Somebody was convicted for it. Abe Somebody; my sister dated him once or twice. Leo and I were married soon after and I remember hoping it wouldn’t mean a postponement.”

“Why was he killed?”

“A territorial dispute, I suppose. It was a long time ago.”

“Did you divorce Blum because of his past?”

“I could say that and sound noble. But I just got tired of being married to him. That was twenty years ago and he was already turning into an old crab. From what I saw of him during the times I ran into him since I’d say he never changed. Turn right here.”

She had three rooms and a bath in the back half of a house on Farnum. I carried the table inside and set both pieces down in the middle of a room full of cartons and furniture. She added the box of books to the pile. “Thank you, Mr. Walker. You’re a nice man.”

“Mrs. Shinstone,” I said, “can you tell me why Blum might have been killed by the same gun that killed Manny Eckleberg?”

“Heavens, no. You said he was killed by a gun from his collection, didn’t you?” I nodded. “Well, I guess that tells us something about the original murder then, doesn’t it? Not that it matters.”

She let me use her telephone to call my service. I had a message. I asked the girl from whom.

“He wouldn’t leave his name, just his number.” She gave it to me. I recognized it. This time it rang fourteen times before the voice came on.

“What’ve you got for me, Mississippi?” I asked. “They’s a parking lot on Livernois at Fort,” he said. “Good view of the river.”

“No more parking lots. Let’s make it my building in half an hour.”

I broke the connection, thanked Mrs. Shinstone, and got out of her new living room.

The sky was purpling finally when I stepped into the foyer of my office building. A breeze had come up to peel away the smog and humidity. I mounted the stairs, stopping when something stiff prodded my lower back.

“Turn around, turkey white meat.”

The something stiff was withdrawn and I obeyed. The lanky gun broker had stepped out from behind the propped open fire door and was standing at the base of the stairs in his summer running outfit and alligator shoes. His right hand was wrapped around the butt of a lean automatic.

“Bang, you dead.” He flashed a grin and reversed the gun, extending the checked grip. “Go on, see how she feels. Luger. Ninety bucks.”

I said, “That’s not a Luger. It’s a P-thirty-eight.”

“Okay, eighty-five. ‘Cause you discerning.”

“Keep the gun. I’m getting my fill of them.” I produced my half of the hundred I’d torn earlier, holding it back when he reached for it.

He moved a shoulder and clipped the pistol under his tank top. “He goes by Shoe. I don’t know his right name. White dude, big nose. When he turns sideways everything disappears but that beak. Tried to sell me the tommy gun and some other stuff on your list. Told him I had to scratch up cash. He says call him here.” He handed me a fold of paper from the pocket of his shorts. “Belongs to a roach
hatchery at Wilson and Webb.”

“This better be the square.” I gave him the abbreviated currency.

“Hey, I deal hot merchandise. I got to be honest.”

They had just missed the hotel putting through the John Lodge and that was too bad. It was eight stories of charred brick held together with scaffolding and pigeon-splatter. An electric sign ran up the front reading O LPON C. After five minutes I gave up wondering what it was trying to say and went inside. A kid in an Afro and army BVD undershirt looked up from the copy of
Bronze Thrills
he was reading behind the desk as I approached. I said, “I’m looking for a white guy named Shoe. Skinny guy with a big nose. He lives here.”

“If his name ain’t Smith or Jones it ain’t in the register.”

He laid a dirty hand on the desk, palm up.

I rang the bell on the desk with his head and repeated what I’d said.

“Twenty-three,” he groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Second floor, end of the hall.”

It had been an elegant hall, with thick carpeting and wainscoting to absorb noise, but the floorboards whimpered now under the shiny fabric and the plaster bulged over the dull oak. I rapped on 23. The door opened four inches and I was looking at a smoky brown eye and half a nose the size of my fist.

“I’m the new house man,” I said. “We got a complaint you’ve been playing your TV too loud.”

“Ain’t got a TV.” He had a voice like a pencil sharpener.

“Your radio, then.”

The door started to close. I leaned a shoulder against it. When it sprang open I had to change my footing to keep my face off the floor. He was holding a short-barreled revolver at belly level.

A day like that brought a whole new meaning to the phrase Detroit iron.

“You’re the dick, let’s see your ID.”

I held it up.

“Okay. I’m checking out tonight anyway.” The door closed.

I waited until the lock snapped, then walked back downstairs, making plenty of noise. I could afford to. I’d had a good look at Shoe and at an airline ticket folder lying on the lamp table next to the door.

I passed the reader in the lobby without comment and got into my crate parked across the street in front of a mailbox. While I was watching the entrance and smoking a cigarette, a car rolled up behind mine and a fat woman in a green dress levered herself out to mail a letter and scowl at me through the windshield. I smiled back.

The streetlights had just sprung on when Shoe came out lugging two big suitcases and turned into the parking lot next door. Five minutes later a blue Plymouth with a smashed fender pulled out of the lot and the light fluttered on a big-nosed profile. I gave him a block before following.

We took the Lodge down to Grand River and turned right onto Selden. After three blocks the Plymouth slid into a vacant space just as a station wagon was leaving it. I cruised on past and stopped at the next intersection, adjusting my rearview mirror to watch Shoe angle across the street on foot, using both hands on the bigger of the two suitcases. He had to set it down to open a lighted glass door stenciled ZOLOTOW SECURITIES, then brace the door with a foot while he backed in towing his burden.

I found a space around the corner and walked back. Two doors down I leaned against the closed entrance to an insurance office, fired a Winston, and chased mosquitoes with the glowing tip while Shoe was busy striking a deal with the pawnbroker.

He was plenty scared, all right.

It was waiting time, the kind you measured in ashes. I was on my third smoke when a blue-and-white cut into the curb in front of Zolotow’s and a uniform with a droopy gunfighter’s moustache got out from behind the wheel.

The glass door opened just as the cop had both feet on the pavement. He drew his side arm and threw both hands across the roof of the prowl car. “Freeze! Police!”

Empty-handed, Shoe backpedaled. The cop yelled freeze again, but he was already back inside. The door drifted shut.

A second blue-and-white wheeled into the block, and then I heard sirens. A minute crawled past. I counted four guns trained on the door. Blue and red flashers washed the street in pulsing light. Then the door flew open again and Shoe was on the threshold cradling a Chicago typewriter.

Someone hollered, “Drop it!”

Thompsons pull to the left and up. The muzzle splattered fire, its bullets sparking off the first prowl car’s roof and pounding dust out of the granite wall across the street and shattering windows higher up, tok-tok-tok-tok-tok.

The return shots came so close together they made one long roar. Shoe slammed back against the door and slid into a sitting position spraddle-legged in the entrance, the submachine gun in his lap.

As the uniforms came forward, guns out, an unmarked unit fish-tailed into the street. Lieutenant Alderdyce was out the passenger’s side while it was still rocking on its springs. He glanced down at the
body on the sidewalk, then looked up and spotted me in the crowd of officers. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Mainly, abusing my lungs,” I said. “How about you?”

“Pawnbroker matched the guns this clown was selling to the hot sheet. He made an excuse and called us from the back.”

I said, “He was running scared. He had a plane ticket and he checked out of the hotel where he was living. He was after a getaway stake.”