Peeper (23 page)

“It should keep me out of the joint.”

“I been wondering about that. How'd you get the monsignor upstairs? It took two of us to carry him down and we could of used two more.”

“He walked up.”

“He was
alive?”
Ralph sat up and propped his pillow behind his back.

“He was with a hooker. Well, she told me she was a hooker; I don't know what she told him. The woman in the paper sounds like her.”

“April?” Her real name, as the police had learned from an FBI circular, was Cora Diedhoffer, age thirty, wanted in connection with a series of car bombings during a steelwbrkers' strike in Gary in 1981. Her live-in boyfriend, a suspected former mob button with a rap sheet going back to Nixon, was serving a life sentence in the Indiana State Penitentiary for one of the bombings, in which a man had been killed.

“I'm pretty sure,” Lyla said. “She's the one set it up with me, said she was going to talk him into coming to try and talk me out of the life, then drug him and put him in my bed. We was going to take pictures and blackmail him after. Only he died.”

“She didn't kill him?”

“I don't think so. It looked like a real heart attack to me. We put him in my bed—that was as hard a job of work I done since I took on the Anderson quintuplets—and she told me to call the cops. They wouldn't investigate too hard, she said; the Church'd see to that. Then she left and I called you. I got to work in this town.”

“She came back,” Ralph said. “She's the one rigged your place.”

“I guessed that. It's why I didn't say nothing.”

After a little silence Ralph said, “Sorry about your sister.”

“I haven't seen her since I left home. We were strangers.” She paused. “I just wanted to call and say thanks.”

“You're gonna have to speak up. I'm a little deaf in one ear since this morning. I thought you said thanks.”

“That's what I said.”

He paused. “I don't think nobody ever thanked me for nothing before. Well, except April, and that didn't turn out so good.”

“Well, somebody has now. I don't know when I'll see you. They want to hang on to me here for another week, and then I don't know what the cops will want. I thought I better say it how.”

“Okay.”

They hung up.

The telephone rang ten minutes later.

“Whoever you are, you're dead,” Ralph said.

“Ralph, this is Neal.”

“Then you're a dead Neal. I only got to bed at three. It's five-fifteen!”

“Thanks. You seen the papers?”

“Yeah.” This time he didn't ask which one.

“Funny, I didn't see nothing in it about my cut.”

“I was going to call you about that.”

“And say what?”

Ralph blew a loud raspberry into the mouthpiece and pegged the receiver. Then he picked it up again and left it off the hook.

He must have replaced it in his sleep, however, because an hour later it rang again.

“AIDS Hotline,” he grumbled.

“Poteet?”

It was a woman's voice.

“Depends on who's asking.”

“This is Lucille Lovechild. Have you seen the papers?”

“All of 'em.”

“That was quite an investigation you pulled off. I suppose some kind of congratulations are in order.”

“Hurts, don't it?” He raised himself again. This was almost worth getting stiffed by Carpenter; the reporter seemed to think that saving Ralph's life wiped out the sixteen hundred dollars he owed Ralph. “I guess you called to offer me my old job back. Well, I should make you squirm, but I won't. I need a raise, though, hunnert bucks a month. And an office with a window.”

“You do have a sense of humor, Neanderthal though it is. I can appreciate it now that you're no longer working here.”

“No openings, huh.”

“As it happens there is one, although I'd sooner hire the Ayatollah. I fired Chuck Waverly this morning.”

“How come?”

“He came staggering in two hours late, howling drunk and screaming something about turtles. I couldn't make any sense of it.”

“Victorian turtles?”

“Something like that. Does it mean anything to you?”

“Are you wearing that lace-necked blouse of yours today?”

She paused. “I am, as a matter of fact. Why?”

“Nothing. My mind wandered.”

“You shouldn't. It's not big enough to cross the street alone.”

“Hey, I don't need to get called stupid in my own place. I can go anywhere for that.”

“I'm sure,” she said. “The reason I called, when you left here you took the key to the file room with you. I want it back.”

“When your twat thaws out, Lucy.” He cut the connection with a bang.

He stayed awake for a while after that, staring at the instrument. When it rang next time, however, he had gone back to sleep sitting up.

“Hell-o,” he said musically.

“Mr. Poteet?”

Another woman.

“At your kind service.”

“This is Grace Capablanca. Vincenzo's widow?”

“Whatever can I do for you, Mrs. C.?”

“I'm calling all the tenants to let them know I'm flying out next week to take over management of the building. I've decided to turn it into condominiums. You will have thirty days to come up with two hundred thousand dollars to buy your apartment or move out. Have a nice day.”

Ralph wished her the same and replaced the handset gently.

Some days it just didn't pay to answer the telephone.

A Biography of Loren D. Estleman

Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.

Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once
The Oklahoma Punk
was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.

Estleman's most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980's
Motor City Blue
, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel,
Sugartown
, won the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman's most recent Walker novel is
Infernal Angels
.

Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980,
The High Rocks
was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010's
The Book of Murdock
. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author.
Journey of the Dead
, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.

Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.

Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.

Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.

Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.

Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book
Journey of the Dead
.