Angel Eyes (3 page)

“Maybe you’re bucking for captain and don’t want too many unsolved murders mucking up your record. Or maybe you know who did it and you’re working on a bonus.”

“Maybe you fell down again and swallowed your teeth,” spat Sergeant Cranmer, charging. His partner flung out an arm to stop him. I smiled and shook my head.

“You cops remind me of a cocker I had when I was a kid. He only knew one trick but he made the most of it. I’m sorry as hell, but I’m fresh out of treats.”

The lieutenant swore for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You’re all alike, you private guys. So busy grubbing up a buck you start forgetting who your friends are. We can give you protection if you’ll open up. What do you think Phil Montana’s going to do when he finds out?”

I looked at him blankly. “Where does Montana figure in? Was the waiter a steelhauler?”

“Not hardly. He wasn’t a waiter either, not full time. His name was Bendigo Adams Jefferson, a.k.a. Bingo the Bat, after his favorite method of persuasion. He had the makings of a champion heavyweight back in the sixties until they caught him selling dope and sent him up for ten years. In Jackson he got in tight with Montana when Phil was up on that assault rap, and after his release Montana made him his personal bodyguard. Having Bingo with him had a lot to do with his getting back on top of United Steelhaulers. If you didn’t know all that before you croaked Jefferson, his pockets were full of identification. Your dumb show is older than our good cop, bad cop.”

“I didn’t have a chance to go over the stiff.” I considered. “A guy in his position must have had a lot of enemies. My killing him over a theft attempt makes a pretty big coincidence.”

“Especially with a strike threatening and a lot of angry people on both sides. Which is one of the reasons I don’t believe that part about his trying to mug you. Come on, Walker. He must have been pulling down thirty grand a year just for looking scary.”

“It must not have been enough or he wouldn’t have been moonlighting as a waiter.”

“All right,” he said patiently, “suppose he had expensive habits. Why jump you? You had eleven dollars in your wallet when we booked you, and that suit you’re wearing went out with poems that rhyme. Old ladies gave me better excuses when I stopped them for speeding back on traffic control.”

“Bet they’re still doing time.” I hadn’t told him about the diamond ring. “Why did I pick a fight with him then? I forget.”

“It’s a short step from accepting money to poke around in other people’s lives to accepting money to end them. Every snitch in Detroit knows there’s been a contract out on Montana since he chucked the Mafia’s puppet out of the top union spot. But he never goes anywhere without Bingo, so you were hired to take him out first. Either that, or it was a warning to Montana from the steel mills to toe the line. Which one is it, Walker? You tell me.”

“What about Ann Maringer? Found her yet?”

“Not yet, but we will. She might be an eyewitness.”

“She might,” I agreed. “Which is one good reason for the killer to have taken her with him. Or with her. These are liberated times.”

“It’s also a good reason for her to have ducked out before you drilled her, too.”

“Without her purse? That’s the first thing women grab when they’re in a hurry.”

“Who knows what goes through a woman’s mind when she’s in terror for her life?” But he didn’t sound convinced of that. He was too experienced not to have thought of it, but my mentioning it bothered him even more.

“How come no one in the building reported hearing a shot?” He clucked his tongue. He was on solid ground again. “In that neighborhood? Besides, this is a big department; we’ve heard of silencers. I even got to touch one once.”

“Here’s something else to chew on,” I said. “Why weren’t there any personal articles in the entire apartment? No pictures, nothing. I frisked her purse. No ID. Not even so much as an expired driver’s license or a reminder of a dental appointment. Didn’t that make you the least bit curious?”

“Curiosity,” he mused. “I think I left that next to my virginity. We’re checking out that angle. Maybe she’s not who she says she is. From where I’m standing that doesn’t make you look any more innocent.”

The sparring was starting to wear on me. I was beginning to feel guilty, worrying that I’d let down my guard and allow him to smash my alibi to pieces. That’s how cops work, like priests in reverse but with the same goal in mind: Confession. I said, “I seem to remember something about getting one telephone call.”

“Jeez, I think they’re all out of order,” said Cranmer.

“Shut up,” said the lieutenant.

The buzz of activity outside the soundproof interrogation room hurt my ears. Voices droned in the squad room, paper whispered, telephone bells jangled, a hunt-and-pecker plucked desultorily at the keys of an ancient Underwood typewriter. Under the watchful eye of a fresh-looking cop in uniform I bonged two borrowed dimes into a pay telephone and punched out Lieutenant John Alderdyce’s home number. He was better than a lawyer any day.

T
HE NEXT ROUND
of questions was interrupted by a knock at the interrogation room door. Cranmer poked his head inside and whispered in the lieutenant’s ear. “Shit!” exclaimed his superior, pushing past him. The door was pulled shut. Alone in the room, I fell asleep on the hard chair and dreamed of men with holes in their chests dragging themselves through gory slicks, pink bubbles forming inside their nostrils and at the corners of their mouths. I awoke with my hands gripping the legs of my chair to find John Alderdyce glowering at me from the doorway. I rubbed my eyes with my thumbs and ran my fingers through my hair to clear out the snarls. I wondered how much more gray there was in it this morning.

“Thanks for coming down, John. I owe you.”

“Forget it,” he said. “Forget me. Please. There’s nothing I like better than coming back to the station ten hours before I have to. Do me a favor and forget I ever lived.”

A coarse-featured black man with as much eye for fashion as one can entertain on a detective lieutenant’s salary, John had settled in his haste for a shirt that looked as if he’d wore it all through the four P.M. to midnight shift, under a tailored brown safari jacket five shades lighter than his trousers. But his necktie appeared fresh. We’d met twenty years before, when his father and mine went into partnership in a west side garage. Not that we could be called friends in our respective professions.

I said, “Did you get my bail ticket?”

“I got your freedom, not that I’ve got anything against Renaissance. Fitzroy’s letting you go.”

“Fitzroy?”

“You just spent two hours with him. Weren’t you introduced?”

“We may have been. I’m punchy. Did you leave any marks?”

“No rough stuff. Just logic.” He was still boiling. “They can’t find a murder weapon and the woman who reported your fight with Bingo Jefferson refuses to sign a statement.”

“A woman,” I reflected. “Redhead, nice build, medium height?”

“You saw her, then.”

“With her pimp. Anything else?”

“They haven’t found the killer, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was thinking of Ann Maringer.”

“We could be talking about the same person.”

“I thought about that. I don’t think so.”

He put that one on a back burner. “What did you say to Fitzroy? He doesn’t usually turn that shade of purple just because a case goes sour.”

I shrugged. “I got a little smart. Sue me. He was only trying to ram Murder One down my throat.”

A cop in uniform came up behind Alderdyce. “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but we need the room for a rapist.”

“Put it to music and go to Nashville.” He looked back at me. “My office.”

We detoured downstairs to reclaim my stuff from the front desk. The sergeant there, a bifocaled veteran with four stars on his sleeve and crew-cut hair the color of rusted steel, told me they were holding onto my gun for the time being. I said I’d ask his captain about that. He replied that I could do something vile with a duck for all he cared. On our way back up we met Lieutenant Fitzroy coming down, in corduroy topcoat and a narrow-brimmed hat that made him look like an economy-size leprechaun.

“Try to get past the city limits,” he told me. “Just try. You’ll be ass-deep in law before your foot touches ground.”

John said, “Stop playing dick, Fitz. Walker’s a pain in the butt, not a killer.”

The other shifted his eyes from one to the other of us with the jolly lights still dancing in them. Some mortician was going to have fun trying to jack that smile down from his face. Then he left us, heading for the street.

“Watch him,” warned Alderdyce when we were among the familiar men’s-room surroundings of his office in the C.I.D. He swung a long leg over the corner of his gray metal desk and began patting his pockets. “He’s got Proust’s ear, and you know what
he
thinks of you.”

My old friend Inspector Proust. I wondered if he was still notching the grip of his pearl-handled Colt automatic. I dug out my pack of Winstons and offered one to John. “Nobody can accuse me of sucking up to the brass,” I said, lighting his and then mine. It tasted good on my empty stomach. Like sucking a tire. “What about Fitzroy’s partner?”

“Cranmer? He’s a psycho. One of the little side benefits of lowering the standards to achieve racial balance in the police department.”

I watched him smoke. “I thought you quit.”

He made a face, drawing on the butt. “Don’t you start on me too. I get enough of that from my wife. That’s no pool cue between your fingers.”

“If I had to give up everything that could kill me, I’d commit suicide. What about the slug?” I sat down on a hard chair. Compared to the one in the interrogation room it was a hassock.

He thrust a hand into his side pocket, brought it out, and uncurled it beneath my nose. Against the dusty pink of his palm it looked tiny and insignificant, hardly lethal. Bits of lint adhered to the snarled lead.

“A thirty-two,” he explained, “probably fired from a revolver, on account of no jacketing. Also there was no casing left behind. The M.E. pried the slug out of Jefferson’s spine, where it lodged after piercing his right lung. Death occurred around two
A.M
. He drowned in his own blood, by the way.”

I nodded, just to be doing something. “Angle?”

“Straight on.”

“That would make the killer about Jefferson’s height.”

“The hell. Guns are portable; that’s why they call them handguns. It could have been a midget standing on a chair. Or Jefferson could have been on his knees, saying his nightly prayers. You’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes again.”

“It helps me forget my work.” I clamped the cigarette between my teeth and turned my attention toward making myself presentable. He watched me.

“You want to tell me about your client?”

I related my brief interview with Ann Maringer, leaving out the part about the diamond ring. I didn’t know why. Repeating it, I understood why Fitzroy hadn’t bought my story. I was having trouble with it myself. “The rest you know,” I concluded, “or should. It’s on the tape.”

“She didn’t say why she was expecting to disappear?”

“That was to come later. How was I to know there wouldn’t be one?” I did up the necktie, suppressing the urge to check my reflection in John’s bald spot. My neck felt like an emery board.

“How much retainer she give you?”

“She didn’t, and if she had it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

“Murder is my business.”

“I read that book,” I said. “Anyway, it isn’t your case.”

“Don’t remind me. Half the department’s on hold waiting for all hell to break loose with the Steelhaulers. They take me off Homicide to brush up on crowd control, and when something happens that might trigger violence, who gets it? Harold Evan Fitzroy, who, when asked during training the best way of preventing a civil disturbance, replied that it was a tossup between riot guns and tear gas.” He spat smoke bitterly and snapped away his butt to join the others on the dirty linoleum.

“You should air your feelings,” I cautioned. “You’ll get ulcers.”

“Listen to the virus talk about cold prevention.”

“Is there going to be a ruckus?”

He started counting on his fingers. “The rank and file is talking strike. The union brass is talking wait and see. The steel mills are hiring scab labor in case the drivers go out. Every gun shop in town has ammunition on reorder. So far every effort to avoid a ruckus has been spared.”

“What do the drivers want?”

“What do I look like, a fucking shop steward? Quit changing the subject! You never did anything for nothing in your life. Why should you start with this Maringer woman?”

“I think it was her eyes,” I said.

“Is that what you call them?” He hurried on before I could figure out what that meant. “What makes you think your client didn’t kill Jefferson and blow?”

“Every time I wash it that way the colors run. If she left on her own, why didn’t she take her purse? Her bank book showed enough cash to get her out of the state and then some. Besides, I tossed her place and didn’t find the peekaboo costume she’d had on earlier. How far would she get dressed like that?”

“Don’t try to butter me up by feeding me straight lines. She could have changed at the cellar joint, or maybe she threw something on over the costume.”

“She kept the place pretty neat, except for the clothes I figure she was wearing before she changed into the costume, slung over the end of the bed. So what would she have to change into at the bar? And if she was in such a hurry that she didn’t bother to shuck the costume, why wouldn’t she have just grabbed them instead of something harder to get in a drawer? And even if you answer those questions there’s still the abandoned purse. It’s all circumstantial, but it piles up.”

“At this time of year she’ll freeze to death.”

“She’s wearing a coat, if the empty hanger in her closet is any indication. And that’s not the only thing missing.” I waited for him to ask. When he didn’t, I continued. “There wasn’t a single photograph in the apartment. Not of her, not of anyone else. She didn’t even have a driver’s license in her wallet. That didn’t seem to bother Fitzroy. Okay, so maybe she’s camera shy. But what about family, friends? You don’t normally give up things like that unless the alternative is pretty grim. That would be one reason for her not having any ID, or at least one that meant anything. Anyone can take out a savings account under any name.”