Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro (21 page)

The younger man’s face ran its full emotional range, ending in a pout. He lowered the pistol to his lap.

I withdrew the muzzle from Shelly’s neck. He worked out the kinks, twisted the big magnum’s barrel free of his suitcoat lining, and resettled it in its holster. “I hope you got plenty of insurance. Mr. Morgenstern had this car built from the ground up.”

“Then you shouldn’t leave it on the street. Especially my street.”

Nicky said, “You should of used that popgun when you had the chance.”

Shelly was looking at me. “They ran
Reservoir Dogs
on the hotel TV last night. Nicky took notes.”

“I stepped on him once. Every time I see you guys I have to raise the ante. What more do I have to do to keep you out of my Zip code?”

“Not everything’s about you, golden boy,” Shelly said. “We’re waiting on a passenger. You got a customer upstairs.”

“Morgenstern?”

“Go on up and see for yourself.”

A string of cars cruised past. I turned my body to mask the revolver. The older man looked at his partner. “Put it up, I said. People can see in from the windows.”

“What about him?”

I grinned and stuck the .38 under my belt. Nicky swallowed the insult, swallowed it hard. He popped open the glove compartment and laid the Beretta inside. He left the lid open.

Shelly rubbed at the spot where I’d poked him. “I’m getting old. I should be home watching golf.”

“You’re just overqualified for the job,” I said. “There’s a parking lot around the corner. Cops enforce the ordinances on this street.”

“Thanks.” He started the motor.

“The hell with that. If Nicky drills a meter maid in this neighborhood I’ll lose the little off-the-street trade I’ve got left.”

“Some loss,” he said. “You’re the first pedestrian we’ve seen since we got here.”

“Yeah. King Tut called. He wants his tomb back.” His partner barked a laugh that sounded just like Morgenstern’s.

Shelly put the car in gear. “Shut up, Nicky.”

I smelled her from the landing.

The scent was fragile, and she hadn’t sprayed it on with a fire hose. Old buildings, like old dogs, have an odor all their own, of moldy plaster and dry rot and tobacco chewed by teeth that had been grinning at coffin linings since the Bank Holiday, and anything fresher than this morning is bound to smell like the British Botanical Gardens. The last time I’d been in contact with this particular perfume, I hadn’t taken much notice because it was laced generously with Scotch. I took my hand off the gun under my belt and let myself into the outer office. The door wasn’t locked.

Pet was standing with her arms folded loosely, reading the fine print on the original
Casablanca
poster in its frame, the room’s only decoration apart from the plastic plant in its bed of molded Styrofoam. She was dressed for the street, if the street were Fifth Avenue instead of West Grand, in a frost-green
blazer over a black top and a black skirt that ran out of fabric six inches above her knees. They were nice knees, and all of a piece with her legs, sheathed in sheer hose. She had on three-inch heels, frost-green like the blazer, with open toes. She was turned three-quarters away from the door to the hallway. I admired the way her deep red hair grew up from a
V
at the nape of her neck without a single black root.

“Did you know this poster is worth a fortune?” she asked without turning. “Jeremiah trades in them. He bought out an entire estate at Sotheby’s last year. A few more thousand and he could have owned the building. You ought to keep it behind lock and key.”

“Funny, I thought I did.” I closed the door behind me.

“Your super let me in. I think he has a soft spot for redheads.”

“He wouldn’t admit it. To hear him tell it, he poisoned Stalin and blew up Sputnik.”

“I heard of Stalin. I didn’t know he was poisoned. I don’t know who Sputnik was.”

“Nobody’s that young,” I growled. “Shelly moved the car to a lot around the corner.”

She faced me. She had amber rings under her eyes behind the powder. “You saw him?”

“I ran into him downstairs. I only told you because you don’t want to stand on the street looking for your ride.”

“You think I’d be arrested for soliciting?”

“In this town we only arrest the johns. We import hookers by the busload just to keep a steady supply. This isn’t the best neighborhood for a woman alone.”

“Are men out of season?”

I didn’t have anything for that. I lifted my chin. “You shouldn’t drink so much. On you it shows.”

She touched her face. “I don’t, usually. I was bored yesterday. Do you give out beauty tips to all the women you meet, or am I a special case?”

“Are you a case?”

“I get it. Small talk’s over. Jeremiah sent me to hire you.”

“He wasted your time.”

“He said you might say something like that. He said to remind you you weren’t always so picky.”

“I don’t mind working for gangsters, if it’s legal and they’re not just using me for bait. I don’t even mind working for people I don’t like. Gangsters I don’t like are something else. I need a certain amount of hostility to deal with some of the people I have to in the course of an investigation. When I’ve wasted most of it on the client, it puts me at a serious disadvantage.”

“If I put it to him that way, you’ll be a lot more than just disadvantaged.”

“Put it to him any way you like. Tell him it’s outside my specialty.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I’ll guess. He wants me to find out if the person he came to Detroit to meet lured him here to set him up for Delwayne Garnet’s murder.”

Her eyes widened a little. They were too blue for the room. “You’re a good guesser.”

“I’ve been a detective a long time. Not all the way back to Sputnik, but what would be a very long time by your calendar. I tried to make him mad all the time we were talking. The only time it worked was when he realized that just being in the same hotel where a murder took place had probably queered the deal he was working. It’s not much of a hike from there to the notion he’d been set up.”

“I suppose you know what the deal was.”

“That wasn’t much of a hike either. If it makes him feel any better, you can tell him it wouldn’t have panned out anyway. Greektown already has one Indian casino. It won’t support two even if the gaming commission gave it thumbs up. This town only has so much money to piss away at the tables. It doesn’t draw any from outside.”

She shook her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how many ways he underestimated you.”

“That’s the idea, Petunia. Nobody has to tell a private detective anything if he doesn’t want to, and any real cop fresh out of a cadet’s uniform can pop him for withholding whatever information he manages to get. Privileged communication is only for priests and lawyers, and we all know what they are. Being underestimated is the only weapon I’ve got.”

“Please don’t call me Petunia. I can barely tolerate Pet.”

“What’s your last name?”

She hesitated. “Duffy.”

I grinned.

“My great-grandfather came from County Kildare,” she said.

“Okay, Duffy. How come I’m talking to you instead of to Jerry?”

“He can’t be seen outside the hotel. There may be some people on the gaming commission who can put two and two together as well as you.”

“Uh-huh. He could’ve sent Shelly. Which he did.”

“He was going to. I convinced him I made a better first impression.”

“You didn’t say that. If you did, Shelly and Nicky would be up here with you.”

She smiled. “I can steer Jeremiah up to a point. I’m a trained communicator, remember?”

“Uh-huh. Who’s Jerry’s contact in Detroit?”

“He didn’t trust me with that.”

“Then I’ve got no place to start. But you don’t care if he runs a casino in Detroit or the marbles concession on Long Island.”

She stopped smiling. “What makes you so sure of that?”

“Up till tonight, you’ve done everything to avoid Jerry’s affairs but avoid Jerry. I’ve got a nice head of hair and one of those crooked grins that breaks hearts like potato chips. Only not yours. So it’s not Jerry’s business and it’s not monkey business. What business is it?”

She picked up a purse the size of an eyeglass case from the coffee table. “Can we go inside? I don’t feel like submitting to a complete physical in the waiting room.”

“This week it’s more private out here.”

“There really is a bug in there?” She glanced toward the inner door. “Jeremiah couldn’t keep his face straight talking about it. I thought he was kidding.”

“No reason you shouldn’t have. It’s been a joke ever since Watergate. Except you can put sixty of the kind they’re using now into one of those and pick up six hundred times as much.” I opened the door to the hallway.

“Where are you going?”

“My neighbor next door is a mail-order tycoon. He only uses the place for a drop slot. We can talk in there.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Why bother with a key when we’ve got Rosecranz?” I went down to get him.

T
he room was a twelve-by-twelve box with an old-fashioned pull-down shade over the window and all the ambience of a janitor’s supply closet. The bulb in the ceiling fixture had been burned out since Dred Scott, leaving only the razor edge of light around the shade to illuminate the bare walls and linoleum floor. A pile of letters and packages toppled over when I pushed open the door, which was pierced only by a skeleton keyhole and a slot with a hinged brass hatch. The mail was addressed in large, moronic handwriting. There wasn’t much of it and most of it wore a fine skin of dust. The operation was a front of some kind but I didn’t know for what.

A charmless desk with a gray composition top on a steel frame stood against the wall under the window with a chair made of plywood and bent tubing shoved into the kneehole. I drew out the chair, wiped off the dust with my handkerchief, and tugged out the desk’s only drawer. It contained two paper-clips and a gnawed stump of orange pencil.

“No liquor, sorry. I won’t insult you with my brand. It comes in a fifty-five-gallon drum.”

“That’s all right,” Pet said. “I’m taking the pledge. My looks are all I’ve got.”

I gave her the deadpan. “You need a license to fish in this state.”

“I wasn’t fishing for compliments. But thank you for not taking the bait. May I have one of those?”

I’d perched on a corner of the desk and lit a cigarette. I tapped another one out of the pack and held it out. She plucked it free inexpertly and managed to put the right end between her lips. She leaned forward to let me light it.

“First one this life?” I shook out the match and dropped it on the linoleum.

“Not really. I maintain a two-a-year habit. They help settle my nerves.”

“I wouldn’t think life with Jerry Morgenstern would be so peaceful.”

“He’s kind of sweet, actually. The belligerence is just an act for the office. Mostly it’s boring. I tried writing a book.”

“I was wondering when the next mob memoir was coming out. It’s been a couple of weeks.”

“It was a novel. A romance.” She moved a shoulder. “It never got beyond fifty pages. I have a delicate gag reflex. I went to night classes in journalism, keeping my hand in. That didn’t last. Night was the only time Jeremiah had for me. I tried shopping, but I don’t like the stores in New York. The prices are a joke and the salesgirls all look like drag queens. Everyone there is acting some sort of part. Me, too. I’m the moll with a college education, too good for the role she’s stuck in.”

She stopped talking, tore the cigarette out of her mouth. She looked around for a place to dispose of it.

“Try the floor.” I flicked ash on the linoleum.

She dropped it and stepped on it. “I’d hoped to do this in better surroundings.”

“Do what?”

“Cast my feminine spell.”

“Don’t let that stop you. I’ve been seduced in worse places.”

She smiled, ran a hand up and down her arm as if she were cold. “Well, the moment’s sort of passed. You’re not supposed to talk about it before you do it.”

I took a drag, blew out a chuckling stream. “It’s a wonder you got as far as fifty pages. Let’s try it without sex. You want out.”

“I want out.”

“So get out.”

“It isn’t that easy. Why do you think he sent Shelly and Nicky with me? It isn’t that he’s afraid I won’t come back. He’s afraid of where I’ll go and what I’ll say.”

“Back at the hotel you seemed to have it all figured out. What happened to covering your ears and yodeling?”

“That doesn’t always work. Some things filter through. Everyone else gets the chance to retire, even racketeers. The golden age home for burned-out mob mistresses is a cemetery on Long Island.”

“Ever hear of WitPro?”

“Witness Protection is for witnesses. I don’t intend to testify against Jeremiah. He doesn’t have that coming. It isn’t his fault I’m bored out of my mind. Anyway, if I went that route, I’d just be swapping shackles. Someone else would decide where I live and what I do. I didn’t come here to wind up teaching freshman English in Nebraska.”

“You should have that hummingbird removed from your ankle. It’s gone to your brain.”

She looked at me a long time. Then she opened the little pocketbook and took out a brick of currency bound with a rubber band. It made a thump when she tossed it on the desk.

I left it there. “That looks like a lot of smuggled butts. How long before he notices it’s gone?”

“It’s mine. I wasn’t barefoot in rags when I met him. You’d be surprised how a money market account can grow when you don’t have to dip into it from day to day.”

I picked it up, riffled through it with a thumb. It was all Benjamin Franklin. “Where to, lady?”

“Does Northwest still have that eight
A.M
. to Caracas?”

She had a cell telephone the size of a ticket stub in a pocket of her blazer, part of Morgenstern’s leash. I borrowed it and pecked out the number of Llewellyn Hale’s cell from my notebook. He answered from inside a wind tunnel.

“Walker,” I said. “Where are you?”

“I got lost, like you said.” He was shouting. “Where’s Auburn Hills and why do I have to drive through a drainage ditch to get there?”