The Witchfinder (13 page)

After an hour I sat up, wide awake, with a sentence on my lips: “ ‘Personal and confidential’ means ‘open now’ to a secretary.”

I pulled the drawer out of the nightstand and tore loose the little blue-bound notebook I kept taped there. It was an abridged and coded version of the larger one I had locked in the safe at the office. I found the number I wanted there and padded into the living room to dial it.

“Goddamn it, hello.”

A young masculine voice I knew, clouded with sleep and maybe something else that was more the business of the DEA than it was mine.

“Bob, this is Walker. Did I get you up?”

“I’m up all the time, friend. Least, I ain’t had no complaints. Hee-hee.” His fog was lifting. “This where I’m supposed to tell you what time it is?”

“Don’t need it. Do you still have that messenger’s uniform from your last job?”

“I never had no messenger’s job.”

“I’m thinking brass buttons and a pillbox hat.”

“Oh,
that
uniform. I took it when they canned me for smoking in a supply closet. I was a hop at the Dearborn Hyatt.”

“What were you smoking?”

“Tobacco, can you dig it? Every time I bring one of my vices down to the next level, the system lowers its level of tolerance to include me out.”

“A uniform’s a uniform. Lose the hat.”

“What’s the job?”

“I need a message delivered.”

“Buy a stamp.”

“I need it to get there.”

“Call FedEx.”

“FedEx collects autographs. I need this one delivered to the person whose name is on the envelope, no one else, by someone who doesn’t keep records.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow morning at eight. Well
, this
morning. You might have to hang around. He’s a cheese, comes in when he feels like it.”

“Holy shit, I better get started. I only got seven and a half hours.”

“I just wanted to be sure you were available.”

“Now you sound like my parole cop. Where we meet, your office?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t start work that early.”

“Hey, fuck you. Your crib it is. You fix me them eggs with peppers and onions and shit?”

“Do I hear the munchies talking?”

“Fuck you again. I been pissing nothing but clean mountain water for six weeks now.”

“One Pancho Villa’s Revenge coming up.”

“
Up
ain’t the direction it generally comes. Be there at seven.”

I flipped the receiver at the cradle and went back to bed with my mind clear.

Robert “Hurricane Bob” Lester had played two straight years of a three-night gig at the Chord Progression on Livernois under the billing “The Best Jazz Guitar West of East.” When a promoter scouting for a New York record label signed him to back up Art Pepper on ten sides, with the promise of six of his own afterward, Bob went on a bat to celebrate. He dropped acid on top of three lines of cocaine and an indeterminate number of Scotch highballs, became convinced that his right hand had detached itself and was trying to strangle him, and hacked off all his fingers with a hunting knife he carried for protection. Neurosurgeons at Detroit Receiving Hospital managed to sew all but two of them back on, then had to remove everything but the thumb when he developed circulation problems.

All this happened before I met him. His bass player, a friend since childhood who had been left out when Bob signed the record deal, hired me to trace him after he disappeared from the recovery room. I found him in a motel room on Telegraph, working up enough bile to put a slug in his head from a Korean pistol he’d bought from a guy named Slash. After I wrestled it away from him I called in a couple of favors to grease his way past the waiting list at a drug rehab center downtown. The bass player and I were standing out front when he came out, thirty pounds lighter and white-haired at twenty-eight. He hadn’t kept a job since, but on the other hand he hadn’t shot himself either. I found work for him when I could.

I was up and dressed a few minutes before seven, dusting bits of onion, green pepper, and extra sharp cheddar off my palms into a skillet paved with crackling eggs, when he came to the front door. He was taller than he looked, and much younger. He’d put back on all the weight he’d lost, although he wasn’t fat, just beefy, and his white hair was receding straight up the middle. His skin was golden brown and sharply wrinkled, as if it had been tobacco-cured. In his wine-red tunic and matching trousers with a gold stripe up the side he looked like an old man stuck in a menial job.

Perfect.

When I let him in he pointed his nose at the ceiling and inhaled deeply.

“Smell them eggs. Do they make your eyes run?”

“There’s no paint left on the ceiling above the stove. You be the judge.”

In the kitchen he sat down at the table I’d set and made quick work of six eggs and two cups of coffee. The special mitten he wore on his right hand had a clamp built in that let him grip his fork.

I leaned back on the counter, nursing my first cup. “You working?”

“Got me a part-time. Flag man for the county road.” He swept up the last of the omelet with a piece of toast and popped it into his mouth. “We’re replacing an overpass railing on the North Lodge. Truck went through it last week.”

“I read about that.”

“Got to get the cage back up before the local pukes start pitching concrete down on the underpass.” He filled a glass from the pitcher of orange juice and drank. “No pulp?”

“When I want to eat an orange I peel one for myself. How’s the money?”

“I ain’t pricing no Ferraris.”

“You said last night you were staying clean. That on the level?”

“I still got the rest of my fingers.” He finished his coffee and pushed away his plate. “Good eggs. Next time more onion.”

“I was down to half a bag. How well do you know Allen Park?”

“I played a bar there one whole summer.”

“The place is on Euclid. Imminent Visions.”

“Sounds like a hop joint.”

“It’s a firm of architects.”

“Same thing.”

I handed him the envelope and a fifty-dollar bill. “Deliver the envelope. Keep the cash.”

He fingered the bill with his good hand. “You can get the job done cheaper.”

“If you don’t want the work, say so.”

“Man, there ain’t no word in Ebonics for that.” He pocketed the bill. “Thanks, Amos.”

I told him to sit still and went for my lightest-weight sportcoat, an unstructured one of raw silk. When I came back I asked him what he was driving.

“Same piece-of-shit Dodge I had two years ago.”

“Give me a head start. I want to be there when you go in. Don’t forget to lock up when you leave the house.”

“Ain’t you afraid I’ll swipe your TV set and sell it for dope?”

“It wouldn’t bring you enough to fill one nostril.” I went out.

I smelled a break in the weather. The overcast was stained blue-black and a wind from the east was rattling the burnt-out leaves on the trees along Joseph Campau. When the rains come in summer they come fists first.

Six blocks from my destination I passed an Ameritech truck parked on a corner and two workers in hardhats scowling over a chart they had spread out on the hood. I hoped that meant they were still looking for the trouble along the line.

At Imminent Visions a green Ford Bronco occupied my old space in the visitors’ lot, but from where I pulled in two slots down I had a clear view of the tent. Nothing was going on there. I slumped down in the seat for comfort and turned on the radio. The weatherman wasn’t reporting rain.

Hurricane Bob Lester’s old blue Dart swung into the lot ten minutes later. He double-parked behind the Bronco and went inside, carrying the envelope. He never looked in my direction.

I gave him five minutes to bluff his way past the guard in the lobby. That may have been generous; when he was straight he had a line of patter that was as good as any of his old guitar licks. Ten more to get upstairs and scam the receptionist, and another ten just for fun, unless Arsenault was late. It was Friday and I hoped he was the kind of executive who came in early to clear his desk for the weekend. Much more than that and I’d know Bob was in trouble.

At the end of twenty minutes the Ameritech truck, or its identical twin, rolled right up to the tent and two men got out to inspect the excavation. They were the same pair I’d seen on the corner.

I hate modern technology more than carrots. If they finished splicing the cut cable too soon, I’d risked a vandalism bust for nothing.

Five more minutes crawled past. I had decided to go with Plan B, which was to wish there were a Plan C, when Hurricane Bob came out without the envelope. He walked straight to his car, backed around, and joined the traffic on Euclid, again without tipping me the nod. He left a piece of his tailpipe behind in the driveway.

The rest was waiting.

The whole idea behind planting a burr under a mule’s tail is to see where he runs. You can’t follow a telephone call even in a souped-up 1970 Cutlass.

I was counting on Lynn Arsenault’s reacting to the extortion demand with the same panic that forced him to flee when I’d made an appointment to ask him about the photograph. The theory was that when he tried to call for help and found the telephones dead he wouldn’t reach for a cellular and trust the call to the public airwaves. I wanted him to break cover and run to the witchfinder with his fears.

Everyone in this line has something he’s best at. Some can stake out Rushmore until Lincoln sneezes. Others can shadow a man on foot for sixty deserted blocks unnoticed, or plant an electronic bug in a woman’s wig without her knowing it. With me it’s the vehicular tail. The man who taught me the basics said I could follow a Thunderbird from New York to California in a Moscow city bus without detection.

Okay, so it isn’t the polio vaccine.

I waited. The clouds took on a purple cast, then black, and still the radio was predicting more of yesterday. Three visitors left the lot, two more pulled in and walked into the building. A secretary or something in a white silk blouse, gray split skirt, and red high heels came out and talked with the telephone workers, who tipped back their hardhats and explained to her the principles of electronics. She nodded understanding, tossed her tawny hair, and clittered back inside. The clouds turned the color of fresh tar. Thunder grumbled. No cars had entered or left the underground garage in half an hour.

The workers struck the tent, rolled and folded it and put it in the back of the truck, and began putting away their tools. I got out of the car and walked down the ramp to the garage entrance.

The attendant in the booth was asleep on his elbow with his mouth open and a thread of spittle glittering off the end of his chin. His visored cap was cocked to one side, showing two inches of shiny pink scalp above a fringe of white hair. He had a flesh-colored lump of hearing aid in one big ear and bifocals with lenses as thick as hockey pucks. I didn’t tiptoe on my way past.

The air was fetid, sour with mildew and the dank stench of stale urine and new rubber and old exhaust and concrete that had never quite dried. The atmosphere was oppressive. I walked down the aisle with my mouth open, not so much to avoid the smell as to equalize the pressure inside my head. It was more than just the heat and the stagnant air inside and the storm building outside. I had felt it before, and every time I had come upon something unpleasant.

I found the emerald-green Porsche parked next to the elevator in a space with Arsenault’s name embossed on a red metal plaque on the wall in front of it. The vanity plate above the rear bumper read PRED-8-OR.

Somebody had gotten a boot out of that.

The window on the driver’s side was starred from a neat round hole in the center. I closed my mouth, shook out my handkerchief, and tried the door handle. It tipped up without resistance and the door came open.

The man behind the wheel didn’t fall out right away. He hovered, his head tipped back against the rest, then slid sideways. He turned at the waist in a slow ballet. His shoulder touched the concrete floor first and then his head fell to the side and back, spotting the grainy surface from the hole in his left temple. His feet never left the floorboards.

I
LOOKED DOWN
at him for a while without moving; trying to siphon off some of the wisdom from those half-open eyes. Now I noticed the one smell that didn’t belong in a garage, a mixture of sulphur and saltpeter that stung my nostrils like nettles. It would have hung on longer than usual in the motionless air, but in another few minutes it would be gone entirely.

The expression on Arsenault’s face was serene. It belonged in a Renaissance painting. It was the same one he had turned to the camera eight years ago; fleshier now and pinched at the corners of the mouth, but still youthful. Nothing removes stress from one’s life like leaving it.

I sat on my heels and touched his skin. It felt warm, but the close air would have preserved his body temperature longer. I wiped off my DNA, then used the handkerchief to mop my palms. Despite that they were as cold as the concrete.

I stood and looked around. From where the shooter had stood I could see the attendant asleep in his booth. Nothing in that. His back was turned, and a small-caliber report in those surroundings would have sounded like someone dropping a pen on the floor. It wouldn’t have awakened a man with a hearing disability. It wouldn’t even have carried ten yards beyond the entrance, where I had sat in my car listening to the weather report on the radio. The telephone men wouldn’t have paid it any attention. Or it might have happened before we got there.

I had a thought.

I was either getting old or the muggy conditions were rusting my reflexes.

Just to prove that wasn’t it, I sprang the Detective Special from its clip in a fast-draw. There was no one in view to impress, but the porous rubber grip absorbed perspiration from my hand and the weight of the frame steadied my arm.

There were a dozen more vehicles parked on that level. I inspected them all, jerking open doors that weren’t locked and thrusting the gun inside. Nobody was hiding in any of them. I crept up to the fire door by the elevator on the balls of my feet, swung it open by the handle and pivoted, drawing down on a flight of empty steel steps. The heavy door made a lonely sound drifting shut.