You Know Who Killed Me (15 page)

He opened the driver's door and flopped down without checking the inside of the car. He must have called in sick the day they taught that.

“Spies these days,” I said. “You lost your edge when the Berlin Wall fell.”

He jumped half a league, saw my shape in shadow, and made a move toward his coat, which was fastened with snaps to his neck. I could have waited—with that setup I had all night; it made me want to write my congressman—but I wanted to get to bed too. I left my revolver under my belt and gave him a glimpse of the tin star the county used to pass out like toothbrush samples, my thumb over the embossed legend. His hand stopped.

“Agent Gesner, I'm Archibald West. The badge is temporary; gives me better jurisdiction than a city shield, and it limits curiosity. We don't carry any as a rule. Places I've been, a stop-and-frisk can turn into fifteen years in the Taliban Hilton, or my head in a diplomatic pouch.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Please.” I looked all-knowing; in the darkness a waste of a good facial expression. But someone would have given him my description at least.

“Who are you with?” He had a high, shallow voice. I spotted him an octave for his nervous condition.

“Since they added ‘explosives' to Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, I never use it. ATFE sounds like a safety razor.”

“What's Treasury got to do with—anyone else?”

He'd caught himself; he hadn't missed class the day they gave Indoctrination. It takes more than an executive order about interagency cooperation to overcome a century of conditioning.

“Never mind that.” I snapped on my flash. “Is that an option with this model, or part of the standard equipment?”

He followed the pencil beam to the flat wire running from the underside of the steering column through the crack of the door on the hinge side.

“I don't—”

“Of course not. Who'd drive around with Primacord fixed to his ride? The newer stuff that makes it look like Reddi-wip, but they don't need it to blow a pothole the size of Crater Lake under this car. There wouldn't be enough even for the scrap hounds.”

“It looks like ordinary TV antenna wire.”

“I'll pass that along. Next time they'll make it round and black with a burning fuse, straight from Acme, so there's no confusion.”

“But, why—?”

“You tell me.” I gave it a beat, but he wasn't having any; sighed, as if I were disappointed. “From the position, I'd say it's wired from the steering mechanism to the drive shaft, to go off when you put the car in gear and turn the wheel; but it could be a decoy. Ignition makes a better spark, and there's always the speedometer, set to blow at the mph of choice. Did you see
Speed
?”

“I was only inside a few minutes.”

“Irrelevant. Last year, a congressional aide stopped ten seconds to pay the toll in Oklahoma and wound up all over the panhandle. Someone mistook him for his boss. We traced the charge to a member of a NASCAR pit crew. He's in Gitmo now, blowing up water wings.”

“We haven't sent anyone there in years.”

Jackpot. Whatever division he worked for, it had teeth. “You'd know, probably. They lie to me all the time; but I guess I'm not in your pay grade.”

He reached for his door handle. I leaned across him and caught his wrist.

“I wouldn't. He might've rigged a claymore inside the seat, to explode when you lift your weight off it.”

“Jesus!”

He let go of the handle and I released my grip. He was hyperventilating now. He snatched open his coat. My hand went automatically toward my belt. He came out with a plastic inhaler, shook it, stuck it in his mouth, and pumped. When he took it out he was breathing normally—for a man who thought he was sitting on a bomb. He had even me feeling nervous.

“Why me?” he said again.

“What are you working on?”

“That's classified.”

I chuckled and slapped him on the shoulder. He tried to give the car a sunroof with his head.

“Good man, Gesner. You'll get the flags at half-mast. Do me a favor and stay put for five minutes. I'm putting my kid through Columbia.” I opened my door.

This time it was my arm in the vise. “Aren't you going to disarm it?”

“I'll have to call a team. I'm only trained to spot them, not put them out of action. The union might get sore.”

“Well, call them!”

“They're not the fire department. They don't just come on my word. I could be an imposter, or gone over. Without something they can check, they'll stay put rather than charge into an ambush. Who's your assignment?”

“How do you know it's a who?”

“I don't fly solo, George. The whole reason behind Homeland is all the agencies share information, up to a point. We know you're surveilling someone in the area”—
surveilling,
I was pretty sure he'd approve of that—“and that you just came in from your shift to report. Who's the pigeon?”

He drummed his fingers on the inhaler in his lap. “Local private detective named Walker, Amos Walker.”

“Why?”

“I don't know why, that's need-to-know. I'm just supposed to stake out his place, follow him if necessary, and report on his movements. That's it.”

I reached up and ran a hand along the headliner.

“What are you doing?”

“Sometimes they plant napalm canisters under the roof. They're only about the size of a thirty-five-millimeter film container, but they take out the guess factor. The day after nine-eleven, a GSA accountant survived a whole case of C-4, so they upped the ante.”

“Jesus!” He crossed himself.

“Relax. There's nothing up there. Somebody doesn't think you're important enough to stretch the budget.”

“I'm not important at all.”

I fished out my cell. “I'll make the call. Sit tight for the crew.”

“How long will
that
take?”

“Twenty minutes is the record. That was Hamilton, a legend in the District; but he's in Yemen now, and anyway that was before the underwear bomber. You might be in luck, though. We've got more men assigned to Dearborn than Washington, and that's just next door. All those Arabs, you know? You didn't hear that from me. We don't profile no more. Who do you report to?”

“Nobody.”

“Who was the folder for? We've been watching you a while, George.”

“That was the day's log. I seal it in a pouch and put it in a pigeonhole with a number on it.”

I didn't ask for the number. I wasn't about to compound the felony by breaking into the federal building.

“One last question. How do you know this character Walker when you see him?”

“We snagged his photo from the state police file on private investigators. He doesn't look like anyone special, but I know him when I see him. He keeps weird hours, I can tell you that.”

“As opposed to you,” I snapped. I didn't appreciate that nothing-special crack.

“Especially lately.” He took another hit from the inhaler; that set his brain working.

“What if there's a timer? I'm supposed to sit here waiting to find out?”

“Which you never will, either way.”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ.” He'd gone so white I could see his face clearly in the dark.

I took pity on him then. He was a tadpole in a tank full of barracuda. I knew how that felt.

“George?”

“What?”

I pointed my flash under my chin and snapped it on.

His mouth opened, but not for the inhaler. “Hey! You're—”

I grinned.

“Go home, George. I'm leaving you the wire as a present. It was a rescue job; I'm a pack rat. But I don't know what to do with it since my cable company replaced flatwire with fiber-optic.” I opened the door and let myself out.

He was still sitting there putting it all together when I made a U-turn and passed him going the other way. In a little while he was going to get mad. Maybe even mad enough to report the incident.

Chances were no. When he found the ruined lock, he'd replace it on his own dime rather than admit he'd been taken in by a common P.I.; but I'd been disappointed before. At least I knew whoever he was reporting to wasn't with Treasury, or he wouldn't have asked what its interest was. That ought to bring comfort eating London broil in the correctional facility up in Milan.

 

TWENTY-TWO

I undressed completely and slid between the sheets, but sleep's like chasing unicorns when your back's aching, your bad leg's hurting worse than always, your heart's thumping like the bass in the back of a '69 Merc, and your brain's racing down a ninety-degree slope with the brakes out.

In other words, a typical night in the romantic life of the private eye; I'd been tanked, threatened, schmoozed, followed, and cornered into committing a federal crime—one, at least. What George Andrew Gesner chose to make of it in a civil case concerning pain and suffering was up to him and a slew of courts.

Nothing made sense. An ordinary citizen—assuming that creature still existed outside the Museum of Natural History—had been shot to death in his basement, the Ukrainian mob was involved (or maybe not), the Episcopal Church was offering blood money for the person or persons responsible, two more murders had logged in, the feds were involved, I was in their gun sights, a hyperactive kid was giving screwy answers to even screwier questions, a solid citizen (see above) was feeding out disinformation about the first victim's associations—and there was even a stoic Indian. It was like a collaboration between Robert Ludlum, Zane Grey, Rod Serling, and the writers of an after-school special.

It all seemed like a lot for a job that had started out with me listening to fuzzy tapes and making cold calls.

But that was the nature of the work: A prospective client drops in, you ask him to sit down, offer him refreshment, sit back in your swivel with your eyes closed and your hands tented under your chin like Sherlock Holmes, and listen to his life's history, making no judgments, because you've heard it all before, like an old priest trying to pay attention and not think about that charter-boat service for sale in Florida, or the mom-and-pop bookstore in Indiana struggling against Amazon, or the corner saloon in Toledo, or in my case the small Minnesota town looking for a police chief; some quiet, out-of-the-way place that exists only in reruns of
The Andy Griffith Show.
More unicorns. So you crank yourself out of bed when the alarm rings, sip two cups of strong coffee in your breakfast nook over the morning paper—another doomed institution—shave, shower, drive to the office, go through the circulars, past-due notices, and letters threatening dire consequences for breaking the chain, set fire to an unlawful cigarette, and wait for the buzzer that would let in the next prospect. Who knows? He might be a dictator in exile, looking for a place to spend the nation's treasury he managed to pack in his suitcase before the doors crashed in, or a movie star offering gross points in his next blockbuster in return for following you around for a day and learning all the secrets of your trade.

Or a suddenly single mother wanting to know who killed her husband and why it was so important it was worth destroying her world.

You spend most of your time studying dusty records under a sixteen-watt bulb and the wary eye of a minimum-wage civil servant, dialing phones and crossing out numbers, sitting in a car with the engine off in all extremes of weather, playing with a cigarette you can't light and staring at the door of some building until your eyes water and you swear it's opening, but it isn't, and when it does you almost miss it, because your brain went out for a walk and left your body behind. Why it came back at all was just habit.

You never know where the spoor will lead; to a big payoff, a dead stop, a crack on the skull, a cop with brass knuckles for brains, a gangbanger with his veins full of horse and only you standing between him and his next hit— it was always the amateurs that got you, ask any dead gunslinger—a slug in the back and a pimple-faced M.E. eating an egg-salad sandwich over your entrails on a table. Every P.I. has faced enough melodrama to fill a book, if not quite a series like the heroes of fiction. The amount you meet is scary enough. But if routine follow-up was all the work offered, I'd just as soon teach ballroom dancing to quadriplegics.

If only it weren't for all that government green gnawing its way to the surface. It didn't matter how many coats of beige and sky blue and rose you slapped on top of it; it started as a haze, like crabgrass, and before you knew what was happening you were in it up to your knees.

The telephone rang, a welcome shock treatment.

“Sorry about the hour.”

Lewellyn Hale's voice, crisp as a crumpet. “Four o'clock there, isn't it?”

“Not that bad.” I stood naked in the living room, shivering in sixty degrees. I'd turned down the thermostat before piling in a half hour before. “Michigan's in the Eastern Time Zone. I can't seem to get that into people's heads.”

“Really. I must make a note of that. I'm an insomniac. I thought you might be one also.”

“Only when acted upon by outside forces. Don't they have sleeping pills up there?”

“And lose my edge? I consider my affliction an advantage over the average bloke.”

“So bloody English, so bloody early. Where are you from, really?”

“They tell me I was born in Southampton, while my parents were waiting for the boat to the States. I lived with them till I was thirty. Hard to scrape off the fish-and-chips after all that mollycoddling. Okay, pal,” he said, in a questionable imitation of Steve McQueen. “I wanted to report while it was all fresh. It's never the same when I'm reading from notes, for some reason. The wink-winks in between wipe out all the intuitive impressions.”