Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (33 page)

I heard footsteps and returned the pistol to its drawer. The disc player was still making plaintive sounds in Sheilah’s lost voice.

“Missus said she is sorry,” the maid said. “She was called away.”

“I didn’t hear her leave.”

“She is dressing. Call later,” she said.

I drove around the corner and parked on the blind side of a bank of lilacs. Through the leaves I could see the front of the house. It was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and the driveway was the only exit. For the neighbors’ sake I pretended to be studying a road map. The map was of Arizona and I had no idea what it was doing in my glove compartment.

Somewhere between Flagstaff and Tucson a bottle green Jaguar chortled down the driveway with Sheilah Sorrell at the wheel. She turned left, directly in front of me. I slumped down until she passed, then threw aside the map, hit the ignition, and swung out behind. There were no other cars on the shady street and I gave the Jag two blocks.

We took Maple Road to Telegraph and points south, past West Bloomfield and neighborhoods that made Farmington Hills look like a welfare project—Ronnie Madrid’s next stop on his way to Grosse Pointe, where the Spanish accents cut the grass and the residents thought a
contra
was a foreign convertible. Below Ten Mile Road the scenery broke down and became plain old Detroit. There the traffic was brisk and I closed up. On Seven Mile the Jaguar drifted into the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant and Sheilah got out and went inside. She had on a yellow cotton shift and dark glasses.

I found a space on the street and adjusted my rearview mirror to include the restaurant door. In a little while a burly black party in an electric blue suit walked past my car carrying a leather briefcase and entered the restaurant.

Things were getting interesting. I’d been visiting police headquarters the day they brought in Virgil Sweet for questioning in connection with a drive-by shooting at a crack house on Watson. Since
then he’d gained about twenty pounds and several yards of expensive Italian tailoring. Two minutes after he went inside he came out and walked back the way he had come, without the briefcase.

Sheilah Sorrell had it. She came clicking back across the parking lot, threw the item onto the front seat of the Jaguar, and got in with it. She took off with a chirp of rubber. Of course I followed.

We went downtown. Afternoon rush hour was thirty minutes away and we could have driven on the sidewalks for all the pedestrians we would hit. Finally she parked behind a produce truck on Monroe and got out carrying the briefcase. I wedged my car into a loading zone and shadowed her on foot. We crossed into Greektown, where restaurateurs with thick arms and white aprons to their ankles were sweeping out their establishments in preparation for the dinner trade. But Sheilah had had her fill of restaurants, and turned into Trapper’s Alley instead.

I almost lost her in the crowd that was a fixture in the vertical shopping mall. When I spotted her she was on the escalator halfway to the second level. She never looked around. I might have been tailing her in an army halftrack.

On the top level she stopped at a newsstand, bought a ticket for the People Mover, and went out on the tiled platform to wait. I bought one too and loitered among the magazines until the train came. We boarded with a small crowd. I hurried past her while she was settling herself on the molded bench under the windows and found a place to stand at the rear of the car.

The train slid out of the station, its motion as smooth as the graft that had built it. We stopped at Cadillac Center, Joe Louis Arena, Grand Circus. Some passengers got on, others left. Approaching Bricktown, the last stop before the station where we had boarded, Sheilah slid the briefcase under the bench and stood. When
the doors opened, she stepped off. The briefcase remained behind. So did I.

I rode the circuit twice and started around again. Several stories below, the streets were thickening with traffic. Nobody touched the briefcase, hidden in the shadows. I had thought I knew what it contained, but when no one claimed it the trip started to look like a try-out, to see if Sheilah followed instructions. At Cadillac Center I got in with a knot of Japanese tourists waiting to alight and scooped up the case on my way through the doors. It felt heavy.

In the nearest men’s room I tried to open the briefcase, but it was locked. There would be time enough to break into it later and remove the newspapers or whatever other useless items it held. I dropped a quarter into one of the telephones in the hallway outside and dialed John Alderdyce’s number at police headquarters. A rum-pled-looking business type in two-toned cordovans was using the other instrument. I turned my back on him.

“Walker, what’s happenin’?” Alderdyce said. “I heard you died.”

“That was three days ago. I’m back.”

“What can I do for you, you blasphemous son of a bitch?” he asked brightly.

“What do you hear lately about Virgil Sweet?”

“Nothing good, and I read the obituaries every day. Word is he’s partnered up with the Hispanics. Shooting kids on street corners is for the help. What about him?”

“Would one of those Hispanics be Ronnie Madrid?”

“That’s the name I heard. We’re looking for Ronnie, by the way. He missed an appointment.”

“A hearing?”

“Prelim. Nobody’s seen him in a duck’s age. What’s Sweet up to?”

I couldn’t answer the question. I probably wouldn’t have anyway.
I saw movement reflected in the shiny black surface of the telephone. Then a purple light exploded in my skull and I didn’t see anything for a while.

I woke up to a white glare. Someone was moving a penlight back and forth between my pupils. I said, “Turn that off or I’ll use it to take your temperature.” That was the planned speech. It came out in some dead language.

“Dilation normal,” muttered a voice I didn’t know. “How many fingers am I holding up, son?”

“December 7th, 1941.” That at least sounded like English, winched up from the bottom of a dusty shaft.

Someone else chuckled. I knew John Alderdyce’s sinister mirth. I was lying on my back on the hard floor in the short passage outside the men’s room at Cadillac Center. The man with the penlight and the fingers was supporting my head with one hand. He was a balding person with thick-rimmed glasses and a long tragic face that looked medical. Beyond this was John’s brutal black features, gentling slightly as he spread into middle age. “I had your call traced,” he said. “I almost arrested the doc here when I found him bending over you. I thought that ‘Stand back, I’m a doctor’ line went out with Louis B. Mayer.”

I said, “The briefcase.”

“What briefcase?”

“That answers one question. Got a light?” I sat up and patted my pockets. My head expanded like an airbag.

The doctor sat back on his heels. “You should check yourself into Emergency. You could be concussed.”

“Walker bounces backhoes off his skull Saturdays.” John speared a mentholated cigarette between my lips from the pack he was always quitting from and lit it off a disposable lighter. It tasted like Old Spice.

“In that case sign this.” The doctor snapped open a folded sheet from a pocket and held it and a pen under my nose. It was a form releasing him from liability. I scribbled my name at the bottom and he was gone like Clayton Moore.

“What’s new?” John asked.

I grabbed his arm and jacked myself vertical. My head kept expanding. It was going to hurt like hell when it finally burst. The small crowd we’d collected began to fade. “I make it Ronnie Madrid was kidnapped,” I said, leaning against the wall. “Sheilah Sorrell, his squeeze, told me he was away on a buy, but someone called the house and she was in a lather to leave after that. She met Virgil Sweet in a Chinese place on Seven Mile and he gave her a briefcase. She left it on the People Mover. When nobody claimed it I figured it was a trial run, snatched the case myself, and called you. That’s when the sky fell on me.”

“Ronnie Madrid’s dead.”

I waited.

“Metro called just as I was leaving the office,” he said. “Somebody put two in him and dumped him behind a video arcade on Michigan Avenue. Customers heard a car tearing away about five this afternoon.”

“That was just about the time his girlfriend caught the train.”

“They must’ve been pretty sure she’d deliver.”

“Who do you like for it?” I asked.

“The guy was a dealer. Tomorrow morning I’ll sit down with the city directory and check off the names of the ones I
don’t
like for it.”
He watched me crush out the cigarette. “You okay? Maybe the doc was right about having yourself looked at.”

“It was just my head.”

“Get a hinge at the sapper?”

“Just for a second. A legend died today; I didn’t spot the tail when I left the train. He was waiting for me when I came out of the toilet, pretending to be making a call. He looked like a bad salesman.” I described what I remembered, including the flashy cordovans.

“Pudge Capstone,” John said. “Legbreaker and bag man. Does a little bodyguarding when he feels like being legit. He’s got a thing for fancy footwear.”

“How about a lift to my car? I’m sick of trains.”

“Sure. I’ve only got a half-dozen homicides waiting for me back at the shop.”

“Thanks, John. I was afraid I’d be imposing,” I tested the pulpy spot on the back of my head. My finger didn’t go in, so I was only half done. “Capstone ever do any body-guarding at Redline Records?”

“Maybe. Some of those rockers need protection. Why?”

Just a thought. You’d be surprised what a knock on the head does for the faculties of reason.”

“In that case you must be the most reasonable guy in town,” he said.

The bell played several bars of “Spanish Harlem” before Sheilah Sor-rell came to the door. She had on the African robe I’d seen before, as if she’d never been out of it.296

“Where’s Eva Braun?” I asked.

“If you mean Greta, it’s her night off. I’m a little tired now, Mr. Walker. Call me tomorrow.” She started to close the door. My shoulder got in the way.

“Tonight’s better. By tomorrow the place will be crawling with cops.”

She took a step back. I slid in through the opening and pushed the door shut behind me. The house looked the same, right down to the Oriental armor. I wondered if Ronnie had had time to regret leaving it at home.

“What is it, Mr. Walker?”

“I thought you might like to know there’s an all-points out for Pudge Capstone. My guess is when they get him he’ll talk. Murder’s out of his line.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Sure you do. You hired him to take me down and grab the ransom you conned out of Virgil Sweet for Ronnie’s release.”

She looked at me, at the suit I’d wrinkled while napping on the floor at Cadillac Center. “You’re drunk. Ronnie’s in Miami.”

“Ronnie’s in formaldehyde and you know it. You put him there. The cops found him right where you had him dumped. Who did the dumping doesn’t matter right now; it could have been anyone in pants. Men like to do you favors. Ask Ansel Albany.”

She turned toward the living room. “I’m calling the police.”

“Ask them what’s keeping them,” I said. “On my way here I stopped and left a message for a friend at headquarters. I was with him a little while ago and could have told him in person, but I wanted time with you first.”

She turned back. “Maybe I’m the one who’s drunk. I don’t follow you.”

“You should’ve ditched the gun after you shot Ronnie. Could be you clean and oil it as regularly as any good N.R.A. granny but I doubt it. You must have dirtied it recently. It’s my hunch Pudge worked for Redline a time or two, and you found out he was good for the rough stuff. Why you killed Ronnie isn’t important. Maybe it was an accident, because an ambitious young dealer like he was would be worth a lot more to you alive than any ransom as long as you could hold him. Maybe you found out you couldn’t, and reacted badly. Anyway you made the most of it, stashed the stiff someplace while you convinced Virgil Sweet his partner had been kidnapped by a rival outfit and that they’d told you to deliver the ransom alone. Sweet came through with the cash today and you went through the motions of a drop because you knew I was watching. Pudge was already aboard the train when you and I got on. He hits hard.”

Her face was like something carved from teak. “That’s a lot to draw from a freshly cleaned gun. I mean, without a laboratory.”

“The gun was just part of it. Things moved just a little too fast once I came in. I had the feeling the party was waiting for me to arrive before it heated up.”

“Yes.” It was just a word to fill the silence. Then the teak split. A tear slicked her cheek. “I didn’t want him to hit me any more.”

“Who, Ronnie?”

“He’d hit me so many times. I was so bruised I stayed home from the studio so I wouldn’t have to show my face. I don’t even remember what it was we were fighting about this time. He came at me and I used this.” She drew the derringer out of the pocket of her robe and pointed it at me. “He gave it to me for protection.”

“You don’t need it now. You need a lawyer.” Keep her talking.

“It was my ace in the hole. I shot him and he fell.”

She gave me the gun.

“As anybody would, with two slugs in him.” I put the two-shot in my coat pocket.

She said, “I only shot him once.”

He wasn’t in his office, a crabbed little accident of a room created when two walls were improperly joined; warehouse architecture is not the UN Building. But I knew where to look.

The light shed by the ceiling funnels in the big echoing room where Redline stored its old recordings fell short of the floor, making the tall racks look as if they were floating on shadow. I could smell Ansel’s tobacco smoke in the stale air. I called his name. No answer.

The racks were arranged like library stacks with wide aisles running between them. I walked along the ends. One, two, three aisles, all unoccupied. Four...

Something clipped the corner of a record sleeve near my right ear, followed closely by a report that swallowed up all the air in the room. I jumped back, snapping my Smith & Wesson from its belt clip.