Edsel (17 page)

Janet pulled into the curb and braked. “Nice place.”

“It was the stairs that sold me,” I said. “I like to hear my joints in the morning. Thanks for the ride.” I pressed down the door handle. “Thanks for a lot of things.”

“How are you getting to work tomorrow?”

“There’s a DSR stop on the corner.”

“I could pick you up.”

“It’s out of your way.”

“I could start from here.”

I read her face. She would have to work on that if she planned to become an executive. “You don’t want the complication,” I said. “Believe me.”

“I liked you from the start, Connie. You’re one of the few men I’ve met who haven’t told me they were sorry about my arm.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It’s on the list.”

“Everybody’s got something. I’ve got a sugar problem and fallen arches to start.”

“It’s Agnes, isn’t it?”

“It’s Agnes,” I said. “And it isn’t Agnes. We’re contemporaries. We don’t have to fill each other in before we fight. I’ve got Al Jolson in my record collection, for Christ’s sake. I thought James Dean was the head of a college somewhere until somebody set me straight. You and I would just waste six months finding out what we already know: It won’t work. You’re young enough to squander that much time on a lot of young men who won’t be good for you. My time isn’t more valuable; I just don’t have as much to risk.”

She smiled. It was the saddest thing I’d seen that day, and I’d watched three men half my age who made twice as much as I miss pop flies I could have caught with my arms full of groceries. “You know what you sound like? You sound like a man working overtime trying to talk himself out of something.”

“You know what? You’re right.” I leaned over, gripped her shoulders hard, and kissed her. Her lipstick tasted like strawberries. “I’m not so old I’ve forgotten what I’m passing up.” I got out and slammed the door. I went up the walk without turning and got my key out and let myself inside. It was another minute before I heard the Lincoln start up and pulse away. By then I knew I wasn’t alone in the house.

T
HE
D
ETROIT
I
KNEW
didn’t leave its lights on when the house was unoccupied. Back when a quarter was so big you couldn’t see around it, the risk of burglary was infinitesimal compared with the certain knowledge that, second by second, your hard-struck pennies were rolling down a cord and out through the meter, and there was nothing to steal anyway. That was changing, but I wasn’t. That’s why the ellipsis of yellow light poking out of the cramped living room into the little entryway when I closed the door had me reaching back for the handle. Somewhere around age forty-nine I had thrown out my baseball bat, deciding to leave criminal confrontations to the people I fed with my tax dollars.

“Oh, don’t leave. I been waiting long enough. You know?”

I knew that sharp pioneer twang, bitter as white dust. I shut the door again and stepped into the living room, where J. W. Pierpont was sitting in the overstuffed chintz chair that had come with the place. He was still rushing the season in his Panama and he had on a brown three-piece knobby-knit suit and yellow shoes with hard round toes like Mickey Mouse wore. My copy of
Kon-Tiki
lay open in his hands under the light from the china lamp I had inherited from my mother, by way of the pawnshop where my father had sold it along with the rest of the parlor furniture for the money to bury her. His thick round glasses were opaque in its light. A water tumbler containing a honey-colored liquid stood on the lamp table beside a dusty green bottle I recognized.

“You don’t have no liquor in this dump, you know? This shit is so old it’s turned to vinegar.”

“The landlord threw it in with the stove and refrigerator. You’re supposed to use it for cooking.” I sidled over to the portable three-speed phonograph I kept on the window seat, my only recent indulgence if you didn’t count the Motorola in the corner, and lifted the lid. The little aluminum film canister where I kept my household cash rolled up was still taped inside the cutout that provided access to the tubes. It didn’t look as if it had been disturbed. I turned the knob all the way over to REJECT. The long-playing record at the top of the spindle dropped to the turntable and the arm swung over and down. Rosemary Clooney began singing “Come On-a My House.” It could have been anything, but it would be that.

“I never cook with liquor. The best part burns off.” He let the cover fall shut on the book and refilled his glass. “I don’t figure this guy Heyerdahl. Waste months putting together a boat and sailing it all the way from South America to a bunch of birdshit islands in the middle of the Pacific. I don’t see no percentage. You know?”

“The book sold two hundred thousand copies last count.”

“No kidding, is that a lot?”

“Mine sold twenty-five hundred. They said.”

“Mickey Spillane, there’s a guy that knows how to clean up in the scribbling racket. He sells millions and I bet he never set foot in no boat. I sure have to thank him, too. Pussy’s a lot easier to find since he started writing about Mike Hammer. I just show ’em my license and invite them back to my place to see my big gun.” His dry heave of a laugh made bubbles in the glass.

“I’m sure he’d be happy to know he’s making a difference.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know about cleaning up. You got nothing worth having, just an idiot box and a record player with a hunnert and thirty-two bucks hid inside. No wonder you got a lock on the front door I could pick with my dick. Don’t worry,” he said when I turned back toward the phonograph, “I put it back. The retainer I get from the UAW pays me more’n that in the time it’d take me to put it in my pocket.”

“I hope you didn’t spend too much of it waiting for me. I identify with labor.”

“I sure don’t. It sounds just like work. Walter says hello, by the way. Big shot like him, I bet you thought he forgot all about you.”

“He didn’t get to be a big shot by forgetting people.” I excused myself, went into the kitchen, and came out with a small glass, which he filled obligingly from the bottle. It was worth a diabetic episode to me if the wine would blot out the picture of J. W. Pierpont alone in an apartment with a woman. I sat down on the horsehair sofa, a mistake; the weak springs made a hollow that put the glare of the lamp in my eyes. I closed them.

“Walter ain’t heard from you,” Pierpont said. “He wants to know if the deal took.”

“I was supposed to wait for you to get in touch with me.”

“He’s worried. All you been doing is hanging out with nigger wrasslers and going to ball games with dames half your age. You ought to be ashamed.”

“For what, my choice in women or spending time with Negroes?” I’d had a hunch someone had been following me. I was pretty sure who it was, although I hadn’t spotted him. I supposed he was good or Reuther wouldn’t have hired him to begin with.

“Oh, hell, there ain’t nothing like that moist young pussy. You should stay out of them coon neighborhoods, though. I can’t watch you and my hubcaps both.”

“Pierpont, I don’t give a flying fuck about your hubcaps and neither do you. All you had to do was pick up a phone and I’d tell you what I found out.”

He held a fist next to his face. “Ring, ring. Hello, Connie? This is Jerry. How you doing? Fine, fine. Oh, I think winter’s got its licks in. No, this one wasn’t so bad. Well, I got to go. Oh, say, what’d you find out about that plot to ice Walter Reuther?” He lowered the fist.

“Not a damn thing.”

“Connie, I’m disappointed. Walter’s disappointed.”

“I’m watching my step. Israel Zed is on to me. He as much as said he knows all about that meeting with your client. That’s a leaky organization you’re working for.” I had an illuminating idea then, courtesy of the bad sherry. “Or maybe you’re walking on both sides of the fence.”

He smiled, showing me the wonders of the denture-maker’s art. If he wasn’t the oldest private detective in Michigan he had a good shot at it. “I tried that. There’s no percentage. My partner could give you a second opinion only he’s sniffing flowers from the wrong end in Mount Elliott Cemetery. I can’t say I’m surprised, though. Them union pimps is too dumb to remember who paid them the biggest bribe and what it was for. So they cross everybody. Now, it
could
be Zed was suspicious from the start and had a tail on you when the boys and me picked you up, but it ain’t likely. I ain’t the best shadow man around, but I got the best eye for one. Somebody spilt the
frijoles.”

“Anyway, you can see I’m not much good to you.”

“I never figured you was. Turning you was Walter’s idea. He’s got this control thing. I’d of quit him a long time ago, but I can’t see going back to traffic court and hanging around waiting for someone to pay me to beat the streets collecting eyewitness affidavits.”

“Will you tell him I can’t help him?”

“I would, Connie. Honest to Christ I would. But I’m fresh out of leads and Walter’s starting to wonder if I’m worth keeping around. You can see why I can’t let him do that. So I guess you’re going to have to start digging and be quiet about it.”

I drained my glass. The sediment in the bottom tasted like soggy pencil shavings, but the glow in the pit of my stomach was welcome even if I did have to deal with what happened later. “You’re the detective. Tell me how.”

“My old man was a deputy sheriff down in Arkansas when Judge Parker was on the bench. My uncle was an Arizona Ranger. This work’s in my blood. I can’t tell you how to do it any more’n you can tell me how to tie one word onto the end of the one before. I can tell you
why.
You don’t want to spend your sixty-fifth birthday slurping soup cold out of the can in no eight-foot trailer up in Oakland.”

“I’ve been thinking about what Reuther said. He was bluffing.”

“Was he now.”

“A labor strike is a last resort. It’s hell on the union treasury and breeds enemies among the rank-and-file. In the end everyone loses. It’s only good as a threat, and he’s too smart to consider throwing away such a powerful weapon to bring one reluctant middle-age spy into the fold. The E-car’s success means just as much to the union as it does to Ford. If it goes over, the profits will be bigger and so will the payrolls. If it fails there will be cutbacks and layoffs. That attempt on his life is starting to be a long time ago. He’s not about to wrap everything he’s fought for in an eight-year-old newspaper and throw it down the sewer.”

“You’re right. A man’s got to get up early to put one over on you. Me, I don’t sleep. I’m like the Pinkertons that way.” He curled a spindly arm over the side of the chair and hoisted a tattered brown leather portfolio into his lap. It was scuffed down to the yellow undergrain at the corners and much of the stitching had come loose. With all the patient care of a dowager determined to preserve the wrapping on a gift for later use, he undid the tie and flayed it open. Out came a mottled-gray cardboard file folder containing a sheaf of stapled sheets and half a dozen glossy eight-by-ten photographs. He held up each of the latter a full ten seconds, facing me, before putting it down and reaching for the next. Somebody who knew a good deal about photography had caught a scale model of the Edsel at all angles.

I felt hollow-headed. My field of vision was closing in. I bent down to set my empty glass on the floor. This put my head between my knees and brought blood to my brain. When I sat back again I felt almost normal.

“I know you’re busting to tell me where you got those,” I said.

“Well, look at the serial number.” He held them out. When I didn’t reach for them he got up and laid them gently in my lap.

My vision was still clearing, but I didn’t want to bring the pictures close to my face with him watching. I stared until I could make out the row of numbers embossed on the model’s detailed undercarriage.

“Maybe you don’t recognize it,” Pierpont said. “Lots of people don’t know their own telephone number or the numbers on their license plate. Maybe you don’t know that when Ford strikes off these nifty little toys they record the numbers so they know which one goes to which office. They don’t want no extras floating around, you know? So when one of them turns up someplace it don’t belong they can look at the serial number and it tells them straight off whose knuckles need knocking. I guess I don’t got to tell you whose name is written next to the number you see on the model in them pictures.”

“They could’ve been taken before the model got to my office. Or before I had the chance to change the combination on the safe.”

“Could have. I don’t think there’s room to write all that next to the name and number. Keep the shots. There’s negatives.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Good question. I could sell them to GM or Chrysler or DeSoto and retire, only I wouldn’t have time to wet my first hook before Walter’s friends caught up to me with blowtorches. Or I could stick a stamp on ’em and send ’em to Hank the Deuce. He’d be grateful. He likes cutting people off at the knees. Ask Harry Bennett.”

“Or you could hang on to them until I found out what Reuther wants me to find out.”

He moved his thin shoulders. “I got a safe deposit box at NBD. Plus I’m bonded.”

That made me laugh despite myself. He surprised me by getting mad.

“You eastern sonsabitches set one hell of a lot of store by what’s right. What’s right is what you say is right. It’s damn funny what you figure you can’t live without once you got all the things you really can’t live without. I was ten when I found out shoes ain’t just for grownups. That was fifty-two years ago and you can still strike a match on the sole of my foot. You try going barefoot in the snow on one plate of fat drippings a day for ten years. Try it for a week. Then come back and tell me what’s right. See if it’s the same.”

I could see his eyes now behind the aquarium glass of his spectacles, swollen out of their lids with the veins showing like bits of broken thread. He was breathing hard, whistling through his nose.

I said, “If you’re waiting for an apology, you can stick it up your blackmailing ass.”

His breath whistled for another minute. At length it grew even and he felt for the brim of his hat with both hands as if to make sure he was still wearing it. The movement reminded me of a dignified old woman adjusting the pins in her hair. There was something spinsterish about J. W. Pierpont. I wondered if that shoeless childhood had included wearing hand-me-downs from a legion of older sisters. “That the answer you want me to take back to Walter?”