Sinister Heights (10 page)

The shelters that take in battered women and children, when they are listed in the public directory, don't include their addresses. The telephones are answered by experienced personnel, some of them former battered women themselves, who know what questions to ask and hang up when the answers don't fit. The information in my book contained addresses and the numbers of private lines belonging to the offices of the directors. Those who didn't know me knew my references. All others could go climb up their own legs. Husbands and their representatives, and those who are suspected of being one or the other, are about as welcome as a roast pig at a bar mitzvah.

I got my swivel chair squeaking and began dialing. Two of the numbers bought me an irritating three-note squeal and a recording informing me they were out of service. I drew lines through them on the pad and continued through the list. One of the numbers had been reassigned to a twenty-four-hour doughnut shop. I wrote “doughnuts” next to it, not knowing when I might crave a cruller at 4:00
A.M.
Next I spoke to a director who knew me, who assured me that no one of Constance Glendowning's name or description had been checked in since April 1, or going back sometime before that date. At another number I reached someone who was new since my original contact, who wrote down my references and called me back after ten minutes to tell me I had a clean bill of health and sorry but nothing there either. A tough female voice dripping with Twelfth Street answered at the last number, listened to what I had to say, provided me with a thorough and not entirely inaccurate account of my lineage, and gave me an earache on the disconnect.

I cradled the receiver, entered a question mark next to that line on the pad, and checked my wristwatch to see how long I would have to wait before the air had cleared enough to try again. For that I needed a calendar.

At home and in the trunk of my car I had a set of ingenious disguises for dealing with similar situations, including an assortment of utility-company coveralls with barely adequate credentials clipped to the breast pockets. I'd selected them with relaxed-fit crotches to accommodate an athletic cup in case I got found out, which was fairly often. I didn't want to put them on, but I didn't want to count too heavily on Jerry Zangara either; he was on his third cup last I knew. So I didn't think about it at all. I typed up a report on the case thus far, ran a credit check I'd been putting off for a client who ought to have had a credit check run on him, answered a few messages waiting for me at my telephone service, went out for a long lunch and a short beer, and took the rest of the day off to scout some junkyards downriver for a hubcap to replace one I'd lost off the Cutlass. I got home at dark with a dashboard compass instead, opened a can of supper, and went to sleep in front of a three-dollar rental movie I'd managed to avoid in the theaters for seven-fifty.

Sometime later I turned off the fuzz on the TV screen and stumbled to bed. I wasn't in it five minutes when Jerry Zangara called, direct from the lap of domesticity. He'd found Constance Glendowning, he thought.

CHAPTER
TEN

“You
think
?” I could just make out the time on the living room clock in the light from the bedroom. It was too late for hunches.

“What's that margin the pollsters use, six percent?” Jerry asked. “I'm inside that. I got a woman at the door, a real diesel job: straight hair, glasses, no makeup, gray sweats. I'm betting you could lose a shoe in the hair under her armpits. She wouldn't even take my card.”

“They never do. A husband's lawyer could use it to prove they know where the wife is. If that's all you've got, to hell with you and good night.”

“You know me better than that, and to hell with you too.” He said it as if he were wishing me good health. “I poked around outside with a penlight. It's a big old house with a garage in back. Driveway needs asphalting. There's a patch where a car sat for a while leaking fluid; trans, I think. Anyway it smelled like it when I got down on all fours and took a sniff. You said Constances Chrysler has a leak.”

“Get into the garage?”

“Naw, I don't do that no more. Also there was a bright son of a bitch of a security light right in front. Did I tell you this was in Monroe? I got to be careful about bending the law in Michigan. Matter of an outstanding warrant.”

“I didn't know there were any shelters in Monroe.”

“I did. That's what makes me worth the two hundred. Anyway this patch might be two—three weeks old, but I ain't Kit Carson. I networked the neighborhood until I found an old crotch that lives next to his window, there's always one. I had a friend in Shipping at the mall print me out a picture from his computer of a ninety-six LeBaron. I showed it to the old bastard along with a couple of other models. He picked it out quick.”

I grunted and found a cigarette. Jerry was a storyteller; his reports read like pulp fiction. There was no use asking him to skip to the last page. He'd just go back to the first and start over.

He said, “I thought the same as you, probably: Nobody's memory is that good, I'm just a time-killer between his Malt-O-Meal and Ted Koppel. Then he springs the license number on me.”

“You're kidding.”

“Straight money. I says what are you, some kind of fucking. Rain Man, you want to hop the redeye with me to Vegas, bust the blackjack bank at the Sahara? He says no and shows me the spot on the windowsill where he scratched the number with a safety pin. He seen the car swing into the driveway and a woman pile out with a little kid that looks like his. The old man's lost some sawdust out of his head since the Kaiser surrendered; if he's got a kid he's older than I am or dead. Either way he probably don't visit. The old man's smart enough to take down the number so he can put the cops on the case, but he's fuzzy enough to forget all about it until I come along and remind him. He don't even know what day he scratched it in the sill.”

Jerrys tone was ripe with being impressed with himself. Pure dumb luck has done that to better men than he. I snuffed out my butt in the ashtray next to the telephone. “Who runs the shelter?”

“Broad named Mrs. Emory Chapin owns it, that's public record. She might run it or not. I could find out, but it'd cost you a lot more than two hundred. The fucking CIA should be so quiet.”

“What's the address?”

He gave it to me. I didn't have a pencil or even a safety pin, so I repeated it aloud, committing it to memory. There was a pause on his end then, and I knew the story had a kicker. I waited him out.

“I got Mrs. Chapin's address too,” he said. “Also her phone number.”

I told him to hang on and went into the kitchen. I fetched a magnetic pad off the refrigerator and a pen and returned to the living room. “Okay, Jerry, I'm impressed. I'll lay twenty on OSU next time they're in Ann Arbor.”

“Lay it on me instead. I let a vice president at Ameritech pay for a Rolex I fished out of his kid's skivvies last year. He's good for an unlisted number every couple of months. You got a kid, Walker?”

“Not yet. Probably not ever.”

“Good. They're a fucking Achilles heel.” He gave me the information.

I wrote it down. “I'll send you a check.”

“Send cash.”

“It might get stolen.”

“It won't. I told you, I don't moonlight no more. Come back down to God's country anytime you can't stand the mosquitoes in Michigan.”

He hung up. I didn't hear of him again until a minister's wife got frisked at the outlet mall for a pair of pantyhose she didn't have on her and she sued for half a million. The mall let him go. I don't know what his credit union clerk did to him, but a couple of months later the minister's wife got nailed wheeling a display model gas grill out the door of a Montgomery Ward's in Cleveland, and this time the charge stuck.

It was too late to call Mrs. Emory Chapin. I went back to bed, woke up when the alarm clock clicked just before seven, drank two cups of coffee, and sat around reading the
Free Press
until eight. There was a long piece about neighborhood improvements in the Mexican community on Detroit's west side; another ethnic group heard from, adding salsa to the baklava and cannolis and kielbasa and barbecued ribs aboard the groaning local table. It made me hungry, so I got up and made French toast.

Before making the call I used the bathroom and set out a fresh pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. There was no telling how long I'd be charming Mrs. Chapin over the telephone before my shovel rang against metal.

I got a putative female voice with a strand of barbed wire running through it. I pictured Jerry's diesel job. She was only mildly abusive, but it was early yet and she hadn't caught her stride. She knew nothing about shelters or any party named Constance Glendowning. I asked if I happened to be addressing Mrs. Chapin. She knew nothing about anyone who went by that name. She knew nothing about pretty much everything and made it plenty clear it was my fault for assuming otherwise. Just for the novelty of it I told the truth, that the Glendowning party was in line for an inheritance and if she preferred to be the one who did the calling she could reach me at that number or the office later. I left the usual references—police, lawyers, a couple of state legislators not yet under indictment—and threw in the name of a social services caseworker from a child-abandonment job, to knock the sharp corners off the testosterone; but she stepped all over the names, insisting someone had given me the wrong number, said good-bye, and went away with the connection.

I got out of the robe and into the shower, scraped off the Cro-Magnon growth of the night, put on a suit fresh from the cleaners, and drove to the office, where I sat around making a good impression on the walls until the telephone rang at ten.

“Amos?”

That Jamaican lilt sent me way back. I felt the outer layers of shell dropping off like something I didn't need anymore, or hadn't yet needed then; or maybe I was just coming down from a hot flash.

“Iris?”

“Only to you. I'm Mrs. Emory Chapin to everyone else. You need to work on your people skills. You didn't make a hit with Ms. Stainback.”

“If she'd let me get as far as knowing her name was Ms. Stainback I'd have sent flowers.”

“That's what I mean. She isn't the type that appreciates them.”

“To hell with her, then. You got married, I heard. The name wasn't Chapin. And it was Kingston town, not Monroe.”

“Kingston. Roger Whittaker's the only one who calls it Kingston town. Charles died; leukemia. I won't discuss Emory. I only wear the name because if he heard what it's connected with now he'd have a stroke. And how are you? Still single and mean as a sewer cat?”

I didn't deny either assumption. I'd known Iris when she worked the streets for a needleful of Mexican brown; any secrets we had were new since then. “How long have you been running a shelter?”

“Two years. Five years before that running errands and observing while I waited out accreditation. I saw things I never saw in a crackhouse. I thought I was a tough little street rat before I got this gig. I can't blame Ms. Stainback for being the way she is. I'd have got that way myself if I didn't know there was more to the world than this. What do you want with Constance Glendowning?”

That was Iris: business up front, no sitting around chewing over old times and Ferris wheels. I told her what I'd told the other woman. “It isn't a cover,” I added. “There's serious money involved.”

“Money's always serious. I'm giving a deposition in Detroit today, and I'm late. Where would you like to take me to dinner?”

“Ms. Stainback might not approve.”

“To hell with her, to quote a wise old sage. Make it some place that serves steak without a pile of underdone Brussels sprouts on the side. I gave up vegetarianism when I gave up Mr. Ghapin.”

“Smoking or no?”

“No. The son of a bitch may drive up my cholesterol, but he won't give me cancer. I've had my fill of hospitals after Charles.”

I said there was a place I hadn't tried down the street from the MGM Grand. “It should be quiet. People who lost the rent don't whoop it up. We can meet there.”

She got the name of the restaurant and the location and said six-thirty. “If you get there early, go down the street and put down fifty for me on seven.”

“Red or black?”

“What you think?” She could still put on the Twelfth Street twang when she wanted to. “Don't bring flowers.”

“How about a Hummel?”

“What's a Hummel?”

“A kewpie doll with a pedigree. Bum joke. Will I know you?”

“You're still a detective, right?”

When we were through talking I sat thinking for a little while, about a Detroit with an annual homicide rate approaching four figures and a man in the mayor's office that had cost the city a million dollars to redecorate to his taste. There'd been plenty of work in those days, with cops moonlighting as contract killers and jealous wives looking for their husbands with magnums in their handbags. When I'd had enough nostalgia I called to reserve a table for two in nonsmoking and did a little investigative work not related to the Stutch case until noon. Then I went out looking for a place that served underdone Brussels sprouts for lunch. I had a hankering.

When I came out picking my teeth a caramel-colored Chevy was parked behind my Cutlass on the street with someone smoking a cigarette on the passenger's side. The visor was down and I couldn't see his face. It was only worth noticing because I sometimes do that when I'm watching for someone and I want the idly curious passersby to think I'm waiting for the driver to come back from an errand.

A few blocks later I spotted a caramel-colored Chevy in my rearview mirror, three lengths behind and a lane over. There was no passenger and the driver's face was just a blank oval in front of the headrest.