Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels (11 page)

A commercial zone came up. He thundered down a covered wooden walkway attached to a hotel under construction—in a city that attracts fewer visitors than the Beirut Bob Evans, clearly a graft job—past an adjoining parking structure, and through a bus stop. We foiled at least two drug transactions and a possible negotiation for immoral services; I know I got an ungrateful gesture from a young woman in spray-on shorts and high-heeled waders. At this point I was inhaling razor blades.

The boy—it was a boy, I knew that much now—was nearing the end of his rope. I figured he’d spent some energy early on, doing whatever it was he’d been doing in Johnny’s house when I’d interrupted him, and stumbling upstairs to hide. But I was closer to the end of mine. I was slowing despite myself, doubling my investment and getting only half the return. My legs began to wobble.

I got lucky—I thought. A full-time street recycler in a canvas bucket hat and navy peacoat came out of an alley to the left, pushing a shopping cart piled high with cans and forty-ounce bottles squarely into the boy’s path. The boy lost ground swerving to avoid collision and I lunged, reaching for a handful of jersey jacket, but he grasped the cart by the end and heaved it over onto its side. I hit the cascading returnables and fell across the cart, barking my ribs on the steel frame. The boy bodychecked the pilot of the cart into a one-legged dance to catch his balance and was gone down the alley.

I dragged myself vertical, glass crunching underfoot, and got an earful from the man; judging by the wealth of his vocabulary, he’d come by the navy coat honestly. I hooked my wallet and waved a white flag. The five-dollar bill vanished even faster than the boy, but the old sailor lost interest in me as he stooped to salvage what he could of his cargo.

I did some salvaging of my own as I limped back the way I’d come, blowing like a horse and probing my rib cage for breaks. What had happened didn’t exactly match my recurring nightmare, but there’s no science in prescience. Maybe it would stop.

*   *   *

The house was as I’d left it, the piece of siding still ajar. It was only forty years old, but government construction ages seven to the year. Father Marquette might have hung his cassock inside.

Time hadn’t been any kinder on me. My lungs ached and my sweat was growing cold, wrapping me in a clammy shroud. My pulse had slowed to a drum roll. A family of porcupines had crawled backward out of my throat and someone was running a blowtorch up and down my leg in a steady rhythm. My breath came in short pants, like Mickey Mouse. I was running out of metaphors to describe my condition. There’s nothing like a brisk workout to release the poet in us all.

I was pooped. And my day was just beginning.

Once again I entered behind my gun. But the stillness inside was complete. As I was putting away the weapon, the front sight snagged in something. The flap pocket of my suitcoat hung in a triangle with the lining exposed. I frowned at it and started inventory.

Nothing about the position of the upside-down wheelchair had changed, but I saw now it was the one Johnny used. The scabbard he’d fixed to the side to socket his rifle was empty. Something scraped the floor when my toe touched it and I recognized the single-shot with the slim pistol grip designed for an adolescent hand, an antique model marketed to boys who wanted to grow up to be Teddy Roosevelt; in Detroit, scraphounds excel at recovering percussion weapons from every chapter in history. Johnny was small, built to wriggle through ducts and basement windows. It was no wonder he’d kept the rifle. I bent down to pick it up and saw a foot in a size six-and-a-half combat boot.

It was at the end of a leg sheathed in faded camo. I straightened back up and set the chair on its wheels and found the other leg, bent the wrong way at a right angle, as thin as its mate with the material draped over the atrophied muscles. The rest of him lay twisted over onto his face. The chair had covered him almost completely. He looked like a sock puppet, without any support structure inside.

The knitted watch cap had slid from his shiny shaved head. There was a dent in the skull that reminded me of the golden cherub, only in his case it was starred like caved-in glass. Blood and black cerebral fluid had settled into the cracks, making a pattern. The skull wasn’t the only thing broken and I stepped outside quickly to gulp fresh air. When the nausea settled I went back in to finish what I’d started.

TWELVE

It had been no random working-over. I counted at least three blows that would have done the job. Probably there were more; certainly there were more, from the rag-and-sawdust way he lay at my feet. Man wasn’t intended to survive as an invertebrate. But the city pays people to record every point of impact, and when I turn over a body and it responds like a sack of broken china my curiosity is satisfied. I had no doubt, from what Mary Ann Thaler and Lieutenant Hornet had said, that Reuben Crossgrain and Johnny Toledo had run into the same human threshing machine.

His skin felt cool, but I was still overheated from the foot race, so my internal thermometer was on the fritz. He might or might not have been dead long enough to clear Gale Kreski of his murder. The number I’d called less than thirty minutes earlier belonged to Kreski’s shop clear across town, but these days you never know when you’ve been shuttled to someone’s cell. I had only his word he’d been waiting on a customer. That might have been a stall to turn on the radio in his dash and cover the ambient noise of an automobile in motion. So far he was the only person I’d met on this case who’d given me reason to think he was trained in martial arts.

On the other hand, what did I know? Anyone with a buck and a half to rent
Fists of Fury
knew how to strike the right pose in a bluff.

I didn’t know why Kreski would want Johnny dead. But then I didn’t know why Johnny was dead at all. Once you’d made the decision to live on the dark side of the moon, all your friends were infernal angels at best. I’d lost the 10K to the only person who might be able to tell me what had happened and who had made it happen. The boy was a whiz at track and field, but he lacked the ballast necessary to inflict so much damage, even on someone stuck in a chair. He was even smaller, for one thing, and at a glance I saw nothing nearby that was bloody enough to have been used as a bludgeon.

Theft is always good in a pinch. It rates right up there among the Commandments for a reason. The dead man had been sitting—literally, sitting—on a modest fortune in reclaimable metal. The people who paid good money for it weren’t issued hot lists, unlike pawnbrokers, and never paid attention to VINs or serial numbers, only scales. But if theft was the motive, whoever had gone to all this trouble had left most if not all of the plunder behind. He wouldn’t scare off easily. Conquering panic is one of the first lessons they teach in the dojo. I didn’t know if the cherub had toppled off its stand during the beating or in a hurried search afterward. It wasn’t talking without the advice of counsel.

A search was good; I liked a search. It would be a second thing tying the two killings. I hadn’t really counted on Johnny calling me in the event he came into possession of those TV boxes. He was a fence, not a snitch. He’d convert them into cash the old-fashioned way, by turning hot goods around at a profit.

I put a cigarette between my lips, just to see if I could manufacture enough saliva to make it stick, and buried my hands in my pockets. “You made your mark, Johnny,” I said. “That’s the measure of a man. They’ll notice you’re gone when the scavenging drops twenty percent.”

I took out my cell, entered 911, and paused with my thumb on the SEND button. I remembered he had a cell.

One more sophisticated than mine, that took pictures, kept a record of incoming calls, and stored frequently called numbers for one-touch access. It would be the Rosetta Stone that unlocked most of his secrets. I put mine away and knelt to go through his pockets.

It was an awkward business because I had my hand wrapped in a handkerchief. I wasn’t concerned about leaving fingerprints. Someday, some egghead will develop the technology to lift them off fabric, provided he doesn’t abandon fingerprinting entirely for DNA or some other sexy new science. The handkerchief helped me avoid direct contact with nasty damp spots. There is no dignity in death, just social embarrassment.

At length I sat back on my heels and used the handkerchief to mop my palms. He hadn’t the cell on him, which was promising. It wouldn’t have been in his pocket while he was using it, either before the beating or during it. And he hadn’t called the law, partly because he was Johnny Toledo and partly because if he had I’d be up to my neck in it by now. Whoever he had called might have heard something.

I got up and made a quick reconnoitre. I hadn’t the luxury of being methodical; as orderly as they were, a thorough sifting of all those piles needed a week. I inspected the wheelchair for handy pockets, groped inside the rifle scabbard to the bottom. No cell. I was prepared to assume it wasn’t there.

That was promising, too, because it meant the killer might have taken it with him when he left. This was professional work, and pros don’t take souvenirs unless leaving them behind is impractical.

Johnny Toledo had called someone on his cell within minutes of his death.

I gave one to the kid I send for hot dogs so he can send back pictures,
he’d said.
I can’t make him understand what’s wrong with turkey franks.

I knew who “the kid” was, within the narrowest margin of doubt. I didn’t know his name, but I could pick him out of a lineup. I just couldn’t outrun him.

THIRTEEN

Johnny Toledo had subsisted almost entirely on a diet of frankfurters, obtained for him by the kid he’d given a cell phone to, or so he’d said. There were several markets within reasonable walking distance of his house. I went to the wrong one first, a small square celery-green block building operated by a bald Hungarian who spent the entire interview chopping the heads and feet off dead chickens with a monster cleaver. He spoke only at the end: “No.”

“No, you never saw him, or no, you won’t answer?” I asked.

“No.”

A woman placing items in a handbasket smiled at me as I was heading for the door. She had a round, pleasant face, virtually wrinkle-free, but her hair, worn loose to the shoulders, was iron gray and she had the red, swollen hands that come from a million scrubbed pots and pans. “Don’t let Laszlo upset you,” she said in a low voice with a light accent. “He’s lived here as long as I have, and he’s never forgiven the neighborhood for changing.”

“Have you?” I was being polite.

“I take things as they come. He was a child when he left the old country. He doesn’t remember how bad things can get. You said the boy you’re looking for is black?”

“Hispanic too, I think. Maybe Arab.” I gave her the same description I’d given the shopkeeper.

“He sounds like someone I’ve seen around. He always wears that same red jacket.”

“In here?”

“Oh, no. Black people don’t patronize places where they know they’re not welcome. I don’t know how Laszlo stays in business.” Her smile grew doubtful. “Are you with the police?”

“I’m not against them.” I was carrying my torn suit coat. I got my ID out of it.

She put on a pair of glasses on a silver chain to read. “Gracious. I didn’t know there were any of you left.”

“Overhunting. We’re protected now.” I put it back. “The boy’s not in trouble. I just want to ask him some questions for my client.”

“You might try the Vietnamese.”

“Where are they?”

“They own the party store on the corner of Greenfield. They have the best goat cheese in town, or I wouldn’t walk that far. I think that may be where I’ve seen him. He wears that same red jacket, winter and summer. When it’s hot he ties it around his waist. I don’t think he has a home to store his clothes in.”

“Greenfield’s a hike.” I hadn’t drawn the circle that wide.

“Not for him. He runs in, he runs out. Never walks, only runs. I wish I had that kind of energy.”

So did I.

I thanked her. “Why do you shop here if Laszlo’s such a grouch?”

“I don’t have any choice. He’s my son.”

*   *   *

It may not have been too far to run, but it was too far to walk. I was down to my last two Vicodin.

I’d parked Ernst Dierdorf’s rolling bomb down the street from Johnny’s. It had no antipollution equipment to steal, and in any case the block in front of the home of a known receiver of stolen goods is a psychological no-man’s zone. Even so, someone had left smears on the passenger’s side window peering in at the Stone Age sound system before moving on to brighter prospects. He’d missed the forest for the trees, so maybe there was something to be said for the unfinished paint job.

As I got in I gave the house a glance. No prowl cars yet. Johnny might stay right where he was until the cops came around to ask about those missing catalytic converters. The people he did business with weren’t about to do the department any favors and if the boy hadn’t called them by now he never would. I made a mental note to tip them off the next time I was near an anonymous pay phone; right after they tracked one down and told me where it was.