Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (61 page)

It was wild goose season. Two of the older numbers were invalid. Owen Caster’s machine answered, and I left a message asking him to call me back. April Berryman hung up—divorce case.

I wound up with six no-answers, four new-parties-at-old-numbers, and three appointments for interviews. That was swell, provided I could think of some questions.

• • •

“Amos Walker. I hoped I’d never hear that name again.”

Evelyn Dankworth met me at the Caucus Club. Her deep auburn hair and mahogany-colored eyes went with the stained glass and paneling, her tall highball with her two-fisted legacy. Her greatgrandfather helped found General Motors and drank himself to
death in 1930. Her parents had gone in an alcoholic murder-suicide, and after a long custody battle she had been raised by an uncle who later stood trial for drunk driving and manslaughter. These days she divided her time between Betty Ford and a clinic in Toledo where cosmetic surgeons removed the fresh-burst blood vessels from her cheeks.

“I get that a lot,” I said. “I’m only bothering you to prevent someone else from bothering you worse.” I told her about the burglary.

“I hired you to rescue my daughter from a cult. You didn’t deliver. That’s hardly a scenario for blackmail.”

“You hired me to find her. When I did, you tried to pay me to kidnap her and deliver her to some professional deprogrammers you’d hired to scare the cult out of her. I turned you down because she was eighteen and an adult. I’d have stood trial for abduction.”

“In any case I haven’t heard from her in two years. She might be dead.”

“Someone who knew about the situation might want to shake you down. That case file would help.”

“You know my family history. Do you honestly think I could be hurt if any of this was made public?”

I sipped my scotch, a single malt that tasted like the smoke from an iodine factory. “I wasn’t talking about blackmail. Someone might make contact with you and offer to deliver her for a consideration. A phony who got all his inside information from the stolen file.”

“Very well. You’ve told me and I’m forewarned. May I now consider our association to be at an end?”

I said that was fine with me, but reminded her I was in the book in case she heard from someone. She climbed back into her sable wrap and left. She wasn’t in such a hurry she forgot to finish her drink.

• • •

I found Chester Bliss sitting on a broken foundation on Woodward, eating his lunch in what was left of the third largest department store in the world. He was one of the workers hired by the city to clear away the debris after a demolition crew blew up J. L. Hudson’s to make room for a mall or a casino or maybe just another empty lot. The big black face under the yellow hard hat was a mass of bone and scar tissue. He’d sparred with Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson and quit the ring in 1962 after a kid named Clay laid him on his back forty seconds into the third round. When he spotted me wading toward him through the dust and broken bricks, he put down his sandwich and took my hand in a grip I can still feel.

“They’re selling those bricks for five bucks a pop down the block,” I said when I got it back. “You could slip one in each pocket and wait for the market to rise.”

“Suckers. Bricks ain’t history. My foreman said you called. Don’t tell me you found it after all this time.”

I hated to shake my head. Fourteen months earlier I’d spent a week on his retainer trying to track down some items that had been stolen from his apartment. The only one he really cared about getting back was the Golden Glove he’d won in 1954. “Someone pushed in my office last night and made off with some files, yours among them. I wanted to let you know in case someone called and offered to sell you back your glove.”

He grinned. He had all his teeth—a testament to how good a fighter he had truly been—but there was no sunshine in the expression. “They wouldn’t eat out on what they got. All I own’s my pride, and they can’t have that.”

“The B-and-E community’s pretty tight. If I turn up this clown, he might know who hit your place.”

“You think?”

I shook my head again. “Not really. It’s just something I’m supposed to say.”

He picked up his sandwich then and resumed eating. He managed dignity without stained glass and paneling.

• • •

My third appointment showed up at the Scott Fountain on Belle Isle just as I was getting ready to leave. The gunmetal-colored stretch limo crunched to a stop alongside the two-lane blacktop that circled the island and stood there with no one stirring inside while I finished my cigarette. That was apparently as long as it took to determine there were no snipers in the trees or FBI men within eavesdropping range. The driver, six-three and two-fifty in a camel-hair coat and dark glasses on an overcast day, got out then and opened the rear passenger door.

Boy Falco gestured to the driver to stay with the car and trotted up the steps to the fountain, swinging his club foot out in a half circle with each step. He’d dropped the
d
from the end of his first name about the time of his first face-lift. Scuttlebutt said he hoped to win the sympathy of the grand jury with the illusion of innocent youth. They’d voted to indict anyway. He was out on bond pending a new trial; a witness had recanted.

“Entertain me.” He stuck his hands in his alpaca pockets and leaned back against the railing.

“Aren’t you supposed to shoot at my feet?”

“I forgot you’re a comic. Somebody cut out my sense of humor in the shower at Jackson. This about that stolen credit card?”

“You used the name on the card, Cruickshank, to fly to Miami and pick up a shipment from Bogota. The client died while I was working the case, bum ticker. I proved he wasn’t on that plane so the
Widow Cruickshank wouldn’t have to pay the bill. There was no reason to ID you as the card user.”

“There was one damn good reason not to. You shaking me down after all this time.”

“What would it buy me, a better coffin? No one would see it. The file walked out of my office last night. I don’t want your boys coming to me in case someone calls you looking for Christmas money.”

“That could be a fancy PI. way of putting the sting on me without fingering yourself as the stinger.”

I moved a shoulder. “Don’t pay.”

“I never do. In money.” He pushed himself away from the railing. “If the credit card turns up in court, you won’t.”

“I thought you’d say something like that. I’d hoped it would be more original.”

“The old ways are the best. That’s why they’re the old ways.” He went back down the steps and swung his club foot into the car.

• • •

The telephone was ringing when I got back to the office. It was Owen Caster, replying to the message I’d left on his machine that morning. He was an investment broker with a juvenile theft conviction that had been sealed for thirty years. On his behalf I’d broken a couple of things in the living room of the former court stenographer who’d tried to sell him a duplicate transcript, and the threat had gone away.

“Someone else called after you,” Caster growled. “He offered to sell me my file for a thousand.”

I sat up. “What did he sound like?”

“I’m not even sure it was a he. It was a whisper. Twice I had to ask him to repeat himself. It might have been a woman.”

“Disguise. Anything unusual?”

“Foreign accent, maybe. Probably another disguise. Tell me, do I have to hire you again to clean up your own mess?”

“This one’s on me.”

“I’m starting to think I should have paid the stenographer and kept you out of it.”

“You’d still be paying him.”

“Him, Mister or Miss Whisper, what’s the difference? What the
P
stand for in PI., Pandora?”

“Paradox. Clients hire me to take away their grief. Most of the time I manage to do that. Sometimes I just exchange it for a different kind of grief. I’m a necessary evil at best.”

“Maybe not so necessary. Call me when you sort this out.”

“When I do, can I get a tip on the market?” I was talking to a dead line.

The receiver rang right out from under my hand. A jovial Chester Bliss told me he got a call after his shift asking how badly he wanted his Golden Glove. The old fighter hand danced around with the caller for a minute, but the party got suspicious and hung up.

“Man or woman?”

“Woman, I think,” he said. “She was whispering.”

“Did you notice any kind of accent?”

“Couldn’t say. I don’t hear so good over the phone. Patterson busted my eardrums good.”

“Thanks, Chester.”

He hesitated. “You don’t suppose she really has my glove?”

“I wish she did.”

“Mr. Walker.”

“Did you get a call, Mrs. Dankworth?” I’d just had time to get a cigarette going. I flipped the match at the ashtray.

“Ten minutes ago. When I asked for a description of my daughter, they quoted from the one I gave you. I hung up.”

“Was it a woman?”

“Certainly not. I can tell a man’s whisper from a woman’s, even if he was European.”

“What kind of accent was it?

“Oh, I don’t know. One of these eastern countries we’re always sending food to. What are you going to do?”

“Make a call.”

• • •

Boy Falco was a while coming to the telephone. He didn’t have one in his office above the meat-packing plant he owned on Michigan and took all his messages through the realtor next door. So far the federal judges don’t okay wiretaps on instruments belonging to gangsters’ neighbors. “This better be something,” he said.

I asked him if he got a call.

“You mean besides this one?”

“That answers my question. There’s a good chance you will. Whoever copped those files has been running up his bill all day. When he calls you, I want you to arrange a drop.”

“Be glad to.” He sounded too pleased.

“I’m not setting up target practice for your boys. Once he agrees to the details, I want you to forget all about them.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll send my notes to the Federal Building.”

“What do you want done with the ashes?” he snarled.

“You’ll be too busy sweeping out your cell in the Milan pen to make the arrangements.”

“Where do you want the drop, meat?”

“Four thirty-one Howard.”

There was a long silence. “That’s the DEA!”

“He’ll feel safe there.”

“I sure as hell won’t.”

“That’s the idea, Boy. If your word were your bond, the judge wouldn’t have had you put up half a million to stay out.”

He had me repeat the details several times; writing things down wasn’t his long suit. “I want those notes,” he said then. “The file too, when you get it back.”

“Too rich.”

“I ain’t asking.”

“You’ve got enough on your plate without hanging me up on one of your hooks,” I said. “You know a lot of people. A client of mine had his Golden Glove stolen a little over a year ago. He wants it back.”

“Baseball?”

“No, the other one. Boxing.”

“Trophies are tough to unload. I might know a fence with a soft heart. I ain’t promising nothing.”

“Me neither. I may not get that file back.”

“I’ll make some calls.”

“Don’t tie up the line,” I reminded him.

I killed the time browsing through the yellow pages for a locksmith whose name I liked to replace the dead bolt on my office door. The telephone rang while I was deciding between Sherlock’s Home Security and Lock You.

“The puke called,” said Falco by way of greeting. “It’s set for seven thirty tonight.”

I wrote down six o’clock. I trusted Boy like pro wrestling. “How much?”

He snorted. “Thousand bucks in small bills, brown envelope. I got no respect for leeches in general, but I got less than no respect for a cheap one.”

“Was the leech male or female?”

“Male. I guess I know a chick when I don’t hear one. That whispering dodge has got hair growing out of its ears.” He paused. “I think I found your glove thing. There’s a name engraved on the plate. Sailor Jack Moran.”

“Wrong name.” I winched my heart back up where it belonged. “Wait. Does your fence do engraving?”

“Not for free.”

“I’m good for it. Tell him to match the plate.” I spelled Chester Bliss’s name.

• • •

I left the office in plenty of time to buy a current
TV Guide
at a Rite-Aid, check a listing, and call Channel 2 from a public telephone to confirm something. Then I drove to Howard Street.

There was a wire city trash basket on the corner near the plain building with the flag flying out font. I slid the brown envelope under a Little Caesar’s pizza box and walked around the corner out of the pool of light from a lamp. I came back on the shadowed side of the street and pegged out a spot in a doorway across from the basket. An empty crack phial crunched under my foot, ten yards from the Detroit office of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

It might have been the trouble he was in, but for once Boy Falco kept his word. In an hour and a half a handful of people walked past the trash basket, and not one of them was packing a tommy gun. I had a palpitation when an old woman in a knitted cap and a torn and filthy overcoat stopped to root through the trash, but she stopped
when she found a piece of petrified pizza in the little Caesar’s box, claimed it, and moved on.

Seven-thirty came and went. The temperature had dropped since sundown, and I had begun to lose all feeling in my toes when he showed up.

He had on a shapeless fedora and a faded mackinaw over his old overalls. His breath frosted in the air while he poked among the newspapers and Styrofoam cups in the basket, then lifted the pizza box, plucked up the thick envelope, tested its heft, glanced around, and stuck it in a side pocket. He turned and started back the way he’d come, his heels scraping the sidewalk.

I crossed the street and fell in step behind him. I followed him a full block before he turned his head.

He didn’t try to run when he recognized me. Instead he leaned against the lamppost, collapsing a little like a sack of old fruit. I circled around to stand in front of him and held out my hand. I had my other hand in my coat pocket with the Chief’s Special, but it didn’t come out. He slid the envelope out of his mackinaw and laid it in my palm.