Sinister Heights (24 page)

Naked, I slid between sheets as crisp and cool as dry snow. Just before I coasted off into dreamless black, I thought I heard the grumble and cough of diesel engines barking to life, from as far west as Green Bay and as far south as Louisville. I caught a glimpse behind my eyelids of tall silver stacks farting balls of black smoke in Grand Rapids and Columbus, down logging trails north of Buffalo and along the banks of the St. Lawrence; a dense fleet of eighteen-wheeled heavy cruisers thundering onto freeways on every side of the big mitten, smashing gears and blasting the same harsh note out of their air horns that Ray Montana used when he pronounced the name Iroquois Heights.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

These things I know:

When it comes to sleep, four hours is not as good as eight.

Sometimes, four hours is worse than none at all.

I might have kept myself alert unloading and cleaning my gun and reloading it, practicing my fast draw, or rotating the Ram's tires and changing the oil. Instead I was still coasting downhill through the Black Forest and nowhere near the bottom when my engine started knocking. It was someone's knuckles, Rayellen Stutch's or Mrs. Campbell's, rapping on the guest room door. Before I could answer it I had to brake, turn around, and begin the long climb up toward the light. The trip took more out of me than the one down, and by the time I cleared the bricks of the Stutch plant off my eyelids and blinked up at the gray mesh between me and the ceiling, I was sweating and a heavy fog filled my head, thick enough to roll sluggishly when I turned my head against the needles in my neck, like one of those tilting-wave toys that take up more room on an executive's desk than a day's work.

Someone had lashed a Chevy short block to each of my feet, but I managed to swing them out from under the top sheet and down to the floor. The pain from my injured ankle took the Overland route to my brain, down arroyos and over mountains and around Apache country, but it arrived fresh and full of fire just the same. When I bent down to rub the swelling, the glutinous mass shifted toward the front of my skull and I began to black out. I jerked my head back up, lighting up all the pain-points in my abused tendons but cutting through the fog.

Whoever was out there was still knocking. She'd been knocking for a month. I looked up at a robe hanging from one of the bedposts, a dressing gown with martini olives floating on a burgundy sea and a lining of dark red silk. I stood carefully, dragged it on, and tied the sash. It was old—not worn-old, but of a quality that had gone out with mahogany dashboards and steamer trunks. The sleeves came short of my wrists, the hem just to my knees. The garment would have fit Leland Stutch. It seemed gaudy for a man who had bought his pinstripes and Homburgs in the same store where Herbert Hoover shopped. It had probably been a gift, which explained its bandbox condition. A vintage clothing store would have traded a bundle for it, but for me it was just something to wrap around my nudity.

There were no slipper's. Stutch's size fives wouldn't have supported a sparrow hawk. I waded barefoot through silver pile to the door and cracked it. Mrs. Stutch smiled through the gap.

“I brought coffee. Are you hungry? I sent Mrs. Campbell to the store.”

“Thanks. I'll stay hungry. I'd rather have the circulation going to my brain. Is there a shower in this zip code?”

“The house isn't that big. I bought it to avoid just that kind of joke. Bathroom's across the hall. May I at least set down the tray?”

I swung the door all the way open. She sidled around me, carrying a heavy silver tray with a tall matching coffee pot shaped like a hookah and a pair of white china cups on saucers. She smiled at the sight of me in the dressing gown. “Sorry I didn't have anything in your size. Leland told me he used to have a bodyguard at the time of the strikes, a big good-looker who stood in for Johnny Weissmuller. People were always trying to shake his hand. They thought the little man with him was one of Leland's clerks.”

“It's the little yappy dogs that bite. What time is it?”

“Twenty to six. You've got a couple of hours before dark. Are you sure you don't want to sleep a little longer?”

“I'm sure I do, but I've got arrangements to make. Do you have any kind of athletic tape in the house?” I was gripping a bedpost to keep weight off my ankle.

“Miles. I'm a fitness junkie, remember? Would you like me to wind it on?” She set the tray on an upholstered bench at the foot of the bed.

I said I'd manage. She went to get the tape while I showered.

The bathroom was Nile green, with French-milled cakes of emerald soap in the shower and in a little jadeite tray shaped like a coiled asp next to the sink. The towels were striped green and white, and Cleopatra trolled her fingers over the side of her barge inside a green baize frame above the toilet, to put the fine point on it. It was a nice house, what I'd seen of it when I was awake, except someone had let a decorator run riot in it.

I'd brought in my bag, and from it I took my electric travel razor and buzzed off the top growth. I pulled out a dark gray jersey top and a pair of crushable khakis, well-crushed, and put them on. Back in the bedroom, I sat on the bed and let Rayellen Stutch watch me tape my ankle from the roll she'd brought, drinking coffee in a mauve satin wing chair. She was wearing the outfit she'd worn previously and looked as fresh as if she'd just put it on; fresher anyway than me. I rolled on thick black wool socks and stuck my feet inside the elastic-sided boots. They felt clammy inside.

“Shouldn't the whole outfit be black?” she asked.

“In a Hitchcock film. These urban nights never get dark enough. I'd stick out.” I took the .38 from its holster and spun the cylinder. Then I stood and put the works on my belt. I stuffed my sportcoat into the overnight bag. I'd left the leather Windbreaker in the pickup. It wasn't any more practical but it went with the look. When they found my carcass I didn't want Mr. Blackwell clucking over it.

I grasped the bedpost to pull myself up and fetch my coffee from the bench. She made a noise of protest and started to rise, but I propelled myself onto my feet, ignoring the jag of pain, and beat her to it. I poured a cup and drank, trying to lean against the bedpost in such a way that it didn't look as if it were standing in for my starch. Otherwise she might do me the favor of calling for back-up after I left. For all I knew, Thorpe had a tap on her line.

She read my mind; the last part, anyway. “I've been thinking about Connor. I know what he's up to.”

“Me too. You first.”

“He worked for Leland a long time. What if Leland promised him a legacy, back before I came along? Then along I came, and Leland forgot. Connor sucked it up then, but this business of additional heirs set him off. He's holding the boy for ransom.”

“Did Leland ever discuss his will with you?”

“We never talked about money.”

“Interesting marriage.” The coffee in my cup hadn't grown on the same slope as the stuff downtown.

“People who never get sick don't talk about their health,” she said. “What do you think of my theory?”

“It makes sense. It made sense when I came up with it. If there's anything in it, you should get a call.”

“It hasn't been that long. Should we wait?”

“That would be prudent.”

She smiled without warmth. “If you were in favor of waiting, ‘smart' would be the word you'd use. ‘Prudent' is for spinsters and presidents.”

“There's a time factor. Unless Proust has used his one telephone call on Thorpe, he doesn't know that I'm not dead in Glendowning's garage in Toledo. I don't think Proust was in any shape to call. Giving birth might be a bigger deal than having a slug taken out of your knee, but I've never heard of anyone carrying on any sort of conversation during either procedure. The longer Thorpe goes without getting word, the more suspicious he gets. I need to get in before he decides to shore up the security or worse, fly the coop. If it's cut-and-run, he'll get rid of the boy. He'd just slow him down.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“What do people usually wait for under these circumstances? Dark.”

She sat back, fingering her cup. “You're a funny sort of detective. Do you go off on crusades often?”

“The crusaders didn't go off on crusades. They're not cost effective. It so happens I've knocked a hole in the criminal code, and if I don't dig up someone to stuff into it, the people who keep the code will use whatever's handy. Whatever's handy being me.”

“It wouldn't have anything to do with your lady friend getting killed.”

“She was beheaded,” I said. “It was a damn good-looking head, too.”

We talked a little more, Mrs. Stutch trying to find out what my plans were for leaving the plant, me changing the subject to the décor in the house. It turned out Mrs. Campbell had done that, too. She was a frustrated aunt. After that we went back down to the studio, where I borrowed an X-acto knife Mrs. Stutch used to trim paper, cleared the drafting table, and sliced young Dollier's photo out of the corner of the General Motors security ID I'd borrowed from him. I cut my picture out of my investigator's license, rubber-cemented it to the GM card, and secured the works behind the window of my pocket folder. It looked cheesy in the room's electric light, and no one was going to believe I was twenty-four years old. I was counting plenty on its being dark enough at the plant to bluff my way past the gate.

“Take the Land Rover, why don't you?” Mrs. Stutch asked, as I swept away the scraps and put the folder in my pleated hip pocket. “If you're right about the pickup, you might be stopped before you make it to the end of the block.”

“I'd rather take the chance no one sees the plate. White Rams are as common as carjackers. There's only one Stutch Land Rover, and I look even less like you than I do the kid who belongs to the card. Anyway, using Glendowning's ride appeals to my sense of justice.”

“I didn't realize you were so poetic.”

“It's not an asset in my work. I'll call you when it's finished.” I didn't add that the call wouldn't be necessary if it finished the way I had planned. Everyone in Iroquois Heights was going to know there were doings up on the hill. I slid off the stool.

“It's not dark yet,” she said.

“I've got someone I have to see first.”

She got up from the chair she'd been sitting in. “You didn't tell me that part.”

“I don't tell anyone everything. It's a habit.”

She stood very close in front of me. I smelled scented soap on her skin. It wasn't the green stuff from the guest bath. It would be engineered to remove all traces of the heavy exercise she liked, with something added that wouldn't be available to the general run of health maven. “I've forgotten your first name.”

“Amos.”

“I like it. Old Testament?”

“It's not getting any younger. Don't fall into the habit of calling me by it. When the cops come visiting I'm just a hand you hired for some legal legwork.”

“Don't worry. I have the advantage of not having been born with money. A better education might have made me think I'm smarter than them.” She put a hand to her throat. “It's been a long time, you know.”

“Since Brooklyn?”

“No.” She was breathing shallowly. Her nostrils quivered. “Being Mrs. Leland Stutch is like being the most popular girl at school. All alone Saturday night because everyone assumes she's spoken for.”

“It's longer than that. Old Man Stutch died before Viagra.”

“So you can see my situation.”

“I bet you were popular, at that.”

There was a little space during which Mrs. Campbell, back from the store, sounded out the opening bars of a nocturne in the next room, or maybe it was Count Basie on Valium. Then the mistress of the house went up on the balls of her feet and kissed me. Her tongue pried at my lips. I let it. After a while I grasped her upper arms and pushed her back down on her heels.

A hard red light flickered in the brown of her eyes. “Maybe I'm not Dutch enough for you.”

“Brunettes are okay. My mother was a brunette. Field hands don't mesh with boss ladies. No future in it.”

“Ethics, is it?”

“To start.”

“I fired you, remember? We're just two people.”

“I'm just one person. You're the navy and the marines and the New York Philharmonic. Bad arithmetic. Leland's dressing gown doesn't fit. I'm getting out before you order one in my size.”

“That's reverse snobbery. I'm not in the market for a kept man.”

“That's okay, because I don't keep any better than yogurt. This is just juxtaposition and adrenaline. I need the adrenaline for later.”

She tugged down the hem of her blouse. “You're in mourning, is that it?”

“If you like. There's no future in it either way.”

“Don't flatter yourself. I wasn't thinking of anything permanent.”

“That's the hell of it,” I said. “I'm in the kind of work where the landscape keeps changing. Permanence is the only thing that might buy me.”

She'd stopped rearranging herself. She hadn't gotten that disarranged to begin with. She looked Indian again, as impassive as the head on a can of baking powder. “Someday, some woman—not me—will make you that offer. I hope for both your sakes you won't be too busy looking back over your shoulder to listen.”

“The thing is I was.” I picked up my bag and got out of there.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

The Land Rover had tracked a mixture of sand and red clay into the garage. For a moment I thought about moistening a handful of it with water from the sillcock inside the door and smearing it over the Ram's license plate, but vetoed the idea on the grounds that even an Iroquois Heights cop might be familiar with the gag and move in for a closer look.