Angel Eyes (10 page)

Two minutes of silence followed. In homes where rich people live you never overhear loud conversations or children galloping up-and downstairs or televisions playing or pork chops sizzling in the kitchen. While I was waiting, the guy in the raincoat finished his chili finally and paid for it and left, walking the way he ate, slowly and deliberately, as if each step counted. If he was a cop he wasn’t on Fitzroy’s detail.

A woman’s voice said, “Leola DeLancey.” It was a smooth contralto, totally ageless. It wouldn’t have sounded any different ten years ago and would sound the same ten years from now.

“Mrs. DeLancey, my name is Amos Walker.” Another thing about rich people is that they expect you to introduce yourself all over again as if the information you gave the maid or whoever hasn’t reached them. “I’m a private investigator, looking into the disappearance of a woman who calls herself Ann Maringer. I found a man murdered in her apartment, who led me to Phil Montana, who gave me your number. I’d like to come over and talk.”

She had listened in silence. After a couple of seconds of dead air: “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker, but I don’t know anyone named Maringer and in any case I’m much too busy to talk to you. I’m afraid Mr. Montana pointed you in the wrong direction. Which doesn’t surprise me. Good-bye.”

“Her real name was Janet Whiting.”

I caught her just as the receiver was leaving her ear. For a moment we both listened to each other’s breathing. Through the glass of the booth I watched the fat waitress clearing my table and looking for her tip. She’d look a long time.

“Perhaps I could speak with your son,” I suggested.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Mrs. DeLancey. “Neither of us has had any business with Miss Whiting since my husband’s death. I really don’t see how we could be of service to your investigation.”

“It’s a murder case now, Mrs. DeLancey. Through no fault of mine or theirs I happen to be a half-step ahead of the police on this one. Sooner or later they’ll come to see you, and then you’ll be forced to answer some questions. I’m betting on sooner. If you speak to me first, you’ll have an idea of what they’ll be asking.”

“So that I can prepare my answers. Is that what you’re suggesting?” Her tone would grow icicles.

“That’s up to you, Mrs. DeLancey.”

“Would tomorrow morning at nine be suitable?”

“Eminently.”

She gave me directions to her house in Grosse Pointe and hung up without saying good-bye this time.

It was still coming down in five-gallon drums when I pulled out of the playing card-size parking area. My headlamps glared off pavement as wet and black as fresh oil. I turned on the radio in the middle of an emergency bulletin. Funnel clouds had been spotted in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, and one had touched down in Monroe and turned someone’s barn into kindling. I turned it off. No one ever pays attention to those things. The dangers you can count on are problem enough without worrying about something as neurotically unpredictable as a tornado.

I had just time enough to stop at my house, pack a suitcase, and call a cab to take me to a motel. By now the janitor would be talking, and Fitzroy would be putting out an APB on me and my car. All I hoped to gain was a night’s sleep and my interview with Mrs. DeLancey. After that I was theirs.

As I swung into my driveway, my headlamps fell across an unfamiliar brown two-door parked in front of the attached garage. I slammed the Cutlass into reverse, but before the gears could mesh a guy got out from under the wheel of the coupe and stood shielding his eyes against the glare of the lamps.

A blond guy in a checked coat.

F
OR NO REASON
other than curiosity I moved the indicator to Park and got out. He stood his ground as I approached. He was medium height, a slice shorter than I, with wide-set eyes the color of morning frost against an even tan, a straight nose, and a jaw that just missed being lantern. He looked like the guy you see in the cigarette ads, romping in the surf with a lush young thing in a bikini and not a cigarette in sight. His hair was sandy when wet, as it was now.

“You’ve got things backwards, Jack,” I told him, gripping the Luger in my coat pocket.
“You’re
supposed to be behind
me.
That’s the way we’ve been playing it so far.”

“I figured you’d be coming here sooner or later. Before you slug me, read that.” He handed me a card he’d been holding cupped in one hand. It was printed in brown characters on heavy pebbled beige stock and read:

RELIANCE INVESTIGATIONS

“Courtesy, Efficiency, Confidentiality”

Albert Gold, Special Operative

Lansing, Mich.

His home number was included in the lower right-hand corner.

“Reliance, huh? I should have known by the smart clothes. All you guys dress alike.” I pocketed the card. You never know when they may come in handy.

He nodded. He thought it was a compliment. “You know us, then?”

“Five years ago I had a partner. We did some legwork for you on an embezzling case. We ended up going to small claims court to collect.”

He nodded again. “It’s in the file. Some kind of computer foul-up. Whatever happened to your partner?”

“He died.”

“Oh.” He looked sad. “Natural causes, I hope.”

“Only as far as lead is a natural substance.”

“Oh. Can we go inside? I just had a permanent this morning and the guarantee doesn’t include a hurricane clause.”

“We wouldn’t want your mascara running, either.”

He flushed under his sun lamp tan. “You’re saying what?”

“I’m saying I don’t like being followed. I’m saying I don’t like people parking on property I pay taxes on, uninvited. I’m saying I don’t like glossy detective agencies that hire their talent off a movie lot and drop a bundle on miles of electronic spaghetti and window dressing and base their reputations on the hard work of real investigators not on their payroll and then stiff them. But most of all I’m saying I don’t like you.”

He bristled. “I ought to punch you out for that. But I won’t.”

“Aw,” I said. “Please?”

For a moment it looked as if he might try it. I was hoping he would. He was all muscle and a thousand dollars’ worth of martial arts training, and scraping the driveway with his pretty face was just the release I needed after the day I’d had. But then he seemed to remember the first part of his agency’s motto, and relaxed as suddenly as a guard dog upon hearing his master’s control word. That’s the way it would always work. Let him just entertain the thought of leaning on a reluctant source or acting upon a hunch or trading a small secret for a bigger one, and the credo “Courtesy, Efficiency, Confidentiality” would jerk him back like bait on a line.

He said, “If you want me to go I’ll go. But I’ve got a proposition that may prove mutually beneficial if you care to listen.”

“Oh, Christ,” I groaned. “Not another one.”

“What?”

“I’ve got packing to do. You won’t mind if I do it while you talk.”

I went back, cut the engine and jerked out the keys, unlocked the front door, turned on the hall light, waved him inside and went back again to kill the headlamps. He was standing in the entranceway trying not to drip on the linoleum. I took his coat, climbed out of mine, and hung them with my hat in the hall closet. I slid the holstered Luger into a more comfortable position on my belt. That bothered him, that did; he almost broke his jaw yawning.

Ditching my jacket and tie on the way to the kitchen, I offered him a drink but he said he was on duty. I said so was I and poured myself a slug from the bottle in the cupboard over the sink and brought it through the living room into the four-by-six bedroom while he tagged along. I tasted my drink, set it down on the nightstand, wrestled my scraped and battered suitcase out of the closet onto the bed, and opened it to let the bats out while I pulled out the top dresser drawer. He watched me from the doorway.

“Going on vacation?”

“Yeah.” I placed pajamas and a change of underwear inside the suitcase.

“I’d say you’re going on the scout.”

I was bent over the drawer pawing through the stuff there in search of a decent shirt. I stopped and turned to face him. He was leaning against the jamb, stroking the guttered paint with a fingertip. It fascinated him. “Spill it,” I said. “What are you holding?”

“I followed you to Cass tonight.” He poked at the old nail holes where the original owner hung up his dozen kids when they got too frisky. “I was parked outside The Crescent when you came out and looked up and down the street like a Communist spy in a crummy old movie. It made me curious, so I hung around. A girl went in a few minutes later. Pretty soon the police showed up. When they came out and snatched the mike out of the scout car I flipped on my scanner and guess what I heard?”

“The Pistons lost.”

“You know what I heard.”

I got my pack out of my shirt pocket and shook it. One left. I stuck it in the corner of my mouth and lit it and drew the smoke down deep. It tasted good. I felt good. I had his number. I said, “How much?”

He looked up from the jamb and raised his eyebrows. Montana was right; every one of them spent his evenings in front of The Late Show taking notes. In three strides I was on him and glommed a double handful of his collar. I yanked him into the room and hurled him up against the wall hard enough to knock loose the pictures on the other side. I leaned into him. He wasn’t armed.

“I’ve dealt with every kind of blackmailer and shakedown artist.” My cigarette bobbed in his face. “No, that’s not strictly true, because there’s only one kind. Get this straight. Even if I weren’t planning to turn myself in tomorrow I wouldn’t toss you a nickel. The longer you put off reporting me to the cops to make me sweat, the more trouble you’re in for not going to them sooner. That’s accessory after the fact. We’d both end up in the slam and the odds are it’ll be the same one, and that’s when I’ll get you.”

He was scared. His jaw was slack and his eyebrows were trying to climb up into his hairline. He was young, not more than twenty-five. This was his first shakedown. He hadn’t planned it, just saw his opportunity and seized it. I felt sorry for him the way I felt sorry for Godzilla when the Japs left him for dead at the bottom of the ocean.

“Sing me a ballad,” I told him. “About where Reliance fits into this. About who you’re working for and why. About why you’ve been shadowing me. And look out for the sour notes, because I’m a music critic from way back and I’ll know when you’re off key.”

His breath was whistling in his throat. I relaxed my grip long enough to let him fill his lungs, then tightened up again. Still he didn’t say anything; that damn motto was too deeply ingrained. I didn’t have time to debrief him, so I just held on until his face took on the proper shade of purple.

“Our client isn’t a who,” he gasped, when I gave him room again. “It’s a what. Reliance is on permanent retainer from a coalition of major steel mills to maintain surveillance on United Steelhaulers at the executive level. Your conversation with Montana’s secretary today was monitored. What you said about Bingo Jefferson’s murder interested the brass. I was detailed to observe you.”

“You’ve got a tap on Montana’s telephone,” I said. “That’s illegal. Were you detailed to put the squeeze on me?”

The smoke from my cigarette made his eyes water. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks. He was growing younger before my eyes. “That was my idea. You won’t tell them.” His expression was pleading.

“Hell, they’d probably give you a raise for dedication to company policy. As long as a man like Montana heads up the union he’s a threat to the big mills. Your agency’s job is to get something on him that’ll make him easier to deal with. If he refuses, the mills can make it public, and if it’s bad enough the steelhaulers will take care of the problem for them. Reliance Investigations. ‘Sneakery, Perfidy, Skullduggery.’ Give me your wallet.”

I released him and stepped back. He stared, looking more afraid than he had when his throat was in my grasp. He had been reared in a family whose possessions meant more than eating and breathing.

“You’re right,” I said disgustedly. “This entire day was part of an elaborate scheme to separate you from your pocket change. The cops were in on it and so was Montana. The corpses were papier-mâché. My name isn’t even Walker. Under this clever disguise I’m actually Clifford Irving. Hand it over.”

He hesitated another beat, then fingered a black morocco billfold out of the inside breast pocket of his jacket and extended it. He carried less than fifty dollars, but there were enough credit cards in fold-out plastic windows to strangle a gorilla. That would be company policy as well; no cheating on expenses for a Reliance man. I lifted his photostat license, then out of curiosity unsnapped the photograph section and spent some time studying a picture of a petite-looking blonde in a light blue pleated blouse closed at the neck with a green brooch. She looked like eighteen trying to look twenty-one. Behind that was a snap of a pair of towheaded kids, boy and girl, splashing in a wading pool in a grassy backyard beside a garage with a basketball hoop mounted over the door. They might have been three and two. There were individual shots of each of them behind that, taken in a photographer’s studio. I looked up at Albert Gold.

“Yours?”

He craned his neck to see what I was referring to, then nodded. I thrust the wallet back at him savagely. There are a lot of things I don’t like about being single, but looking at pictures of someone else’s children is the worst. Besides, it made it harder for me not to like him.

He watched, horror-struck, as I tore his license into tiny pieces. “You won’t believe it,” I said, dusting the bits off my palms. “Maybe you never will, but I’m doing you a favor. Go back to Lansing and tell your boss you quit. Punch him in the nose if you feel like it, but first make sure there aren’t any witnesses around or you’ll wind up in court. Go home. Get a job selling real estate. Shoot a few baskets. Make another kid. Otherwise the ones you have will wake up one of these mornings to an explosion and the Medical Examiner’s staff will have to come around and scrape you off the ceiling of your garage. Maybe your wife will be up there with you, or one of the kids. Bombs are an equal opportunity destroyer.”