Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde (16 page)

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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

Tags: #Mystery: Thriller - P.I. - Hardboiled - Detroit

BOOK: Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde
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I
walked the last five blocks from the bus stop with my lapels standing and my fists jammed deep in my pockets. I felt like Dustin Hoffman. Matador’s Armada hadn’t given me time to grab an overcoat on the way out. The air was stiff enough to fold and the streets had that naked granite look of nuclear winter. I wanted to start the car warming and soak my feet in hot coffee and bourbon. What I got was Inspector John Alderdyce standing on my doorstep.
“I called your office,” he said. “Your service told me you hadn’t checked in yet. What’d you do, get lucky last night?”
He looked as big as the county jail in a fur hat with flaps all around and a tan double-breasted camel’s-hair that hung below his knees. His breath clouded around his head like smoke from the burning bush.
“Yeah, I found a penny.” I tried putting my key in the lock. My fingers had all the feeling of balloon animals. He took away the ring and unlocked it for me. He held the door open and trailed in behind.
In the living room he glanced around at the little bookcase, the rack of vinyl, the TV and VCR, the one good easy chair, a dust bunny or two threatening to turn feral. “Still keeping the decorators off the welfare line, I see. What you need is a wife.”
“I had one. What I need now is a drink.”
“It must be past noon in Borneo.”
“Lent starts next week. I need something to give up.”
I went into the kitchen, filled the coffee filter, poured water into the reservoir, and checked the cupboard above the sink. The bourbon bottle was empty and I wasn’t desperate enough to try Scotch in coffee. So I added another scoop to the filter and turned on the machine. Alderdyce had followed me in. He got out of his coat and hat and gloves and dumped them on the table in the breakfast nook, on top of the
Free Press
. He looked even bigger in his midnight blue suit with an American flag pin in the lapel. He wasn’t as large as any of Matador’s men. He could fill a ballroom with just his character.
“Why Stelazine?” he asked.
I finished rinsing out the cup I’d used that morning and stood it upside down on the drainboard. My hand felt hot. The circulation to it had been cut off twice that day and this time it had come back with an attitude.
“Get the toxicology report?” I asked.
“No, I guessed. Just like you.”
“Any good cop knows about hunches. Even a bad cop gets a good one now and then.”
“They made some kind of record up in Lansing. It helped that they knew exactly what to look for. If you say the word ‘hunch’ one more time I’ll shove it up your ass and break it off.”
The machine started gurgling. “Let’s go in the living room. This is one of those days when I can’t seem to get out of the kitchen.”
I gave him the easy chair. Being a cop he would’ve taken it anyway. I found the one good spring on the couch and parked on top of it. I still felt some cold on my spine. I decided to blame the weather.
He took out a leather-bound notebook the size of a card case. The higher you got in the department the less things you had to put in one. “Toxicity five. The scale only goes to six, a short list that includes cyanide and cobra venom. I guess snakes are too awkward to carry around.”
“How’d it get in her?”
“Did I forget to say I didn’t come here to answer questions?”
“Okay, ask one.”
“I did. You gave me the eleventh-week lecture on hunches. That was a good guess you made. You aren’t that smart and you aren’t that lucky.”
I got up, opened a drawer in the table next to his chair, found a pack and a book of matches and went back to my seat. I got one going and made a contribution to the nicotine stain on the ceiling. I wondered what the toxicity level was on that.
“I had a case once involving Stelazine poisoning,” I said. “I remembered it works pretty fast, especially when injected. If someone picked up Jillian Rubio in a car and didn’t have to drive any farther than the lumberyard behind her mother’s house to have a body to dispose of, that was one possibility that occurred.”
“He could have cut her throat, or shot her in the heart or head. That’s even faster.”
“You didn’t say there were visible wounds on the body. I didn’t think that was the kind of thing you’d forget to mention. You said her mother told you she was diagnosed bipolar. Stelazine’s one of the narcotics doctors use for treatment of severe depression. That’s what got me thinking that direction. So’s Thorazine. If I’d said Thorazine, would we be having this conversation?”
“You didn’t, and so we are. Know what I think? I think you did have a case involving Stelazine poisoning. I think you’re having it now. Ever hear of Coon Rapids, Minnesota? I didn’t make it up; actually it’s a suburb of Minneapolis, folks there probably wear shoes and hardly ever spit watermelon seeds over the back fence. Rubio lived there. The police checked with one of her neighbors. He said a P.I. was there a few days ago, pumping him for information.” He glanced at the notebook. “Alvin Spitzer was the name on the card he gave the neighbor. With the Twin Cities Detective Agency in St. Paul. I’m waiting to hear what Mr. Spitzer has to say. Ever have any business in St. Paul?”
“As a matter of fact I have. As a matter of fact it was with the Twin Cities Detective Agency, and as a matter of fact the
man they assigned to the case was named Spitzer. He probably still is. I told you yesterday I was looking for Rubio. What did Matador say? He’s the client.”
“
Sen
or
Matador was polite.
Sen
or
Matador was eager to cooperate.
Sen
or
Matador gave us
nada
. I considered tanking him as a material witness. His lawyer called from L.A. while I was considering it and gave me a Latin lesson. So instead I notified his local parole officer. Parole cops are mean as bloody turds. I’m thinking after they’re through discussing the rest of
Sen
or
Matador’s life in Jackson he’ll come looking for us begging to hear what he has to say.”
“Can I be there when he does? I want to see what you do to him after he spits in your eye.”
His face got brutal, which was as brutal as any face ever got anywhere. Then he found the screw on the turnbuckle and smoothed it out. I wondered if that was easier on the nervous system than just hitting someone.
“Any idea where he is, by the way?” he asked. “He slipped out of his hotel suite early this morning, right out from under our surveillance team.”
“You ought to pay them better.”
“They’re on suspension. I asked a question.”
I answered it truthfully. “I don’t have the slightest idea where he is.”
“Where were you this morning? I froze my ass off outside for twenty minutes.”
“My apologies to your ass. I took a walk.”
“It’s sixteen degrees. You didn’t have a coat.”
“I came back to get it.”
“You’re still a goddamn liar.” He sounded calm.
I decided to get mad. “What if I am? Book me, if you can find a charge that covers it. You cops think crooks are dumb for asking an undercover cop if he’s an undercover cop because they think if he says no and arrests them anyway they’ve got a case for entrapment. Then you turn around and threaten to arrest a citizen for obstructing justice when he tells a cop whatever comes into his head when the cop thinks it’s any of his goddamn
business where the citizen went when he went and what he did when he got there. It’s probable cause in an interview room with a steno or a tape recorder present and there’s a signature on the bottom of a formal statement. Anywhere else it’s conversation.”
I got tired of talking and took a drag. Alderdyce riffled the little notebook’s pages with a broad thumb. They made a purring noise against the quiet of the neighborhood.
“You ought to take that to Congress,” he said. “They might draw up a constitution or something. So where were you this morning?”
I laughed. He laughed. I shrugged. My shrug wasn’t a patch on Matador’s. “I went to a crack house downtown, where some people handcuffed me to a chair and tortured me for a while. When I got tired of it I had a smoke and came home.”
He scratched one ear with a corner of the notebook. Then he put the notebook away. “Town’s full of clams today. Even the mother’s got a case of lockjaw. She’s been taking a lot of walks lately too.”
“She probably brought that over from the old country.”
I was sorry I’d said it. I didn’t want him to fixate on which old country that was. I didn’t want him thinking about Miranda Guzman’s fellow emigré in town. Now that what had happened in the house on Adelaide was over I was having a delayed reaction, taking stupid chances. But he didn’t seem to be listening. After the torture story he probably thought I was still smarting off.
“What is she telling?” I asked.
“The sad story of Jillian’s childhood. Seems she had polio or something related, still walked with a cane. Could have been the source of her emotional problems. The cane was confirmed by the neighbor in Minnesota: an aluminum job with a black composition handle. I’m wondering about that cane. It wasn’t found with her body.”
“Neither was the overnight bag.”
“Yeah. An old tapestry case her mother lent her. The luggage she brought was too big and clumsy for a short trip. We’ve been through it. Nothing there. Clothes and cosmetics. Killer probably
threw the cane and the overnight in a Dumpster. Now that I think about it, going through all the trash in the neighborhood would have been a good detail for that surveillance crew I suspended. Wish I’d thought of it; right now some poor bastards in uniform are out there rooting around in frozen dirty diapers and no doubt taking my name in vain.” He gripped and ungripped his knees, spoiling the creases on his trousers. You knew he was preoccupied when he started messing with his haberdashery. He got up. “Your coffee’s ready.”

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