Sinister Heights Read online

  Iris’s steel-gray Volvo, five years old but dingless and detailed recently, was parked in front of the garage. That put some warmth into the location. I laid my hand on the hood on my way past. The metal felt cool. She’d been there awhile, arguing the case, probably.

  The back porch was an add-on with freshly painted wood siding and a roof that had been reshingled sometime in the last year. It was open on three sides and screened in black nylon. I could see shapes moving around inside, but that was all. I was pretty sure the shapes could see me a lot more clearly.

  I climbed two wooden steps and raised my knuckles to rap on the screen door frame. A hook squeaked out of an eye and I retreated to the bottom step to keep the screen from hitting me in the face. A small woman in a gray sweatsuit and running shoes with soles as thick as snow tires hung on to the door handle. She had on rimless glasses and straight gray hair chopped off just short of her shoulders like Montezuma’s. The eyes behind the weak lenses were white all around the irises, like a convict’s caught in the shaft of a searchlight mounted atop a tower.

  “It’s all right, Ms. Stainback.” This was Iris’s voice. “He’s the man I told you about.”

  Ms. Stainback swiveled out of the way, like a second door. I stepped up and inside. A moth slid in around the edge of the door before she could get it closed and threw itself against a bare bulb burning overhead, hitting it with a tink. It went into a flat spin, made a six-point landing on the floorboards, and lay there without twitching a feeler until one of Ms. Stainback’s thick rubber soles came down on it with a crunch.

  Iris went up on her toes to wind her arms about me and kiss my cheek. The only time she did that in company was when she was putting on a show. As she came back down, one hand brushed my back where the curved butt of my .38 Chief’s Special stuck up above the belt holster under my Windbreaker. Her nod was almost nonexistent. She’d changed into a white blouse, loose pleated slacks, and stout loafers. You never know what attention you might attract when you remove a resident from a shelter for battered women, or whether you’ll have to run away from it or shoot at it.

  “Amos Walker, Constance Glendowning. You met Ms. Stainback over the phone.”

  The back porch was the homiest thing about the place. An old rug the color of burlap, its pattern trod into the background, had lain on the floor long enough to assume the shape of the boards beneath. There were a couple of wicker chairs painted white, with coarse faded cushions, and a four-passenger swing suspended by chains from the roof. The thin blonde woman sitting on the edge of one of the chairs looked older than her engagement picture, and older than she was. The smile she cranked on for my benefit was largely mechanics. Her eyes were cloudy, as from drugs or too many bad memories brought back all at once, or maybe they were just naturally cloudy; you can’t analyze a person you just met without some kind of gauge. She wore a denim work shirt, old jeans, and black combat boots, the kind teenagers wear. The outfit looked borrowed.

  “It’s a pleasure.” I let her lay her hand in my paw. She withdrew it almost before contact.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And this young man is Matthew,” said Iris. “Matthew, say hello to Mr. Walker. He’s an old friend.”

  “Hello.” Matthew stopped swinging to look up at me with David Glendowning’s eyes. He had the swing to himself, sitting in the middle with his short legs sticking straight out ending in tennis shoes too big for his feet. His hair was in straight black bangs and he looked skinny and undernourished in corduroy pants worn shiny in the knees and a T-shirt with a creature on it I recognized from the posters in his room in Toledo. They always look like they’re not getting enough to eat when they’re going through a growth spurt. His expression was grave but not at all frightened. The art of dissembling had come to him more quickly than most.

  “Hi, Matthew. Or do you prefer Matt?”

  “My daddy calls me Matt,” he said with contempt, and resumed swinging. It’s tough not to try too hard with a kid. That’s why I don’t take family-service cases.

  “Ms. Stainback, would you put on a fresh pot of coffee?” Iris asked.

  The woman in sweats removed a tray containing two stained cups from a low rattan table and went through a second screen door into the house, circling wide around me. She eased the door shut to keep the spring from slamming it.

  “Sit down, Amos.”

  “Where will you sit?”

  “With my boyfriend, if he’ll let me.” Iris smiled down at Matthew, who scootched himself over without hesitation. She sat close against him and put an arm around his thin shoulders. He struggled, but when she let go he stayed put. Men of all ages were just Legos to Iris.

  I settled into the other chair and crossed my legs. I felt like smoking but I didn’t; David Glendowning smoked. I let Iris start.

  “Constance is afraid this is some trick by her husband to flush her out. I told her you can be trusted, but he can be sneaky. He’s a real charmer when he isn’t drinking, she says.”

  “You couldn’t prove it by me,” I said. “Maybe this will help.” I got Connor Thorpe’s letter of authorization from my wallet and held it out. Constance hesitated, then took it and unfolded it. The paper rattled as she turned it toward the light.

  “I don’t know who this is.” She gave it back.

  I said, “He handles security for the Big Three. Leland Stutch gave him his start. He’s the one who put me on to Rayellen Stutch. If you think he’d run interference for a union man, you don’t know much about Detroit history. I can put in a call, have you talk to Mrs. Stutch yourself, but she couldn’t prove who she is over the telephone. If you won’t trust me—and there’s no reason you should, unless you trust Iris—you’re better off staying where you are.”

  “I’m only thinking about Matthew,” Constance said. “David’s crazy about him. He’s a good father, I’ve always known that. I’m afraid he’ll try to take my son from me. I guess that makes me pretty selfish.” She lifted her chin. When she did that, the resemblance to Carla Willard Witowski was undeniable. She was Leland’s granddaughter.

  Iris crossed her legs and spent some time smoothing the crease on her slacks. She had a whole new approach to clothing since she’d stopped working naked. “A mother doesn’t get to be called selfish until her children are grown. Mr. Walker and I go back almost to before you were born. Neither one of us trusts anyone, that’s why we trust each other. I won’t lay a guilt trip on you; if nothing in you says you should do this, you’re right not to do it.”

  “I don’t know.” Constance’s voice was barely audible.

  Ms. Stainback returned with fresh cups on the tray and a steaming glass carafe filled with coffee as black as printers’ ink. There were packages of sugar and Sweet ’n’ Low and a black-and-white creamer shaped like a Guernsey. I waited until everyone had his cup the way he wanted it, then I took a sip. I could have floated my keys in mine. Iris liked everything strong.

  “There’s a point we haven’t discussed,” I said. “Mrs. Stutch’s part of the inheritance pays her thirteen million a year. We’re not talking about toothpick money. It means food and clothing and a house—at least one house—and Harvard for Matthew, if he doesn’t flunk algebra; Princeton if he does and they need a new library. It means independence. Neither one of you has to see his father ever again unless you feel like asking your lawyers to offer him visitation rights.”

  “I wouldn’t want to keep them apart,” Constance said. “A boy needs his father. I realize that’s not politically correct, but I happen to believe it. And David needs his son. If I denied him that, I wouldn’t be any better than he is when he’s been drinking. Iris said you saw him. Is he all right?” She turned her cloudy eyes on me.

  Matthew was watching me too. I drank again.

  “He isn’t in good shape. He’s just starting to realize how badly he screwed up. I’m supposed to know something about people. I don’t think he was acting, but I didn’t marry him.”

  “He wants the money
.”

  Everyone on the porch looked up at Ms. Stainback, except Matthew; he was admiring his shoes. The woman stood with her back to the door leading into the house, ready to repel invaders, of which she would acknowledge only one likely candidate among those present. She was glaring at me as if I were David Glendowning.

  “He doesn’t know about the money,” I said. “Not Stutch money. I told him her signature was needed in the matter of an inheritance. He may put it together once he sobers up. You told him the family story?” I looked at Constance.

  “It started a fight once. He told me if I couldn’t get it to shut the hell up about it.” She was stroking her right arm with her left, as if she were cold. I remembered her mother doing the same thing.

  “Mommy said hell.” Matthew was alert.

  “I’m sorry, darling. Mommy was bad.”

  “Mommy’s bad.”

  “Men only want two things,” Ms. Stainback said. “Money’s one.”

  “I dealt in both. If that’s all there was to them, I’d have finished up in a dumpster with a needle in my arm.” Iris watched her coolly. “If you can’t stick to subjects you know, go back in and make the beds.”

  Ms. Stainback stood still, as if someone had struck her across the face with something that stung and she was afraid if she moved it would happen again. Then, very slowly, her face fell apart. She turned quickly, tore open the screen door, and went through it, not bothering this time to keep it from shutting behind her with a bang. Presently from the other end of the house there came a low hooting, the sound of a swamp bird in distress.

  I got out a cigarette then, just to be doing something with my fingers. “I miss her already. As long as she was here I knew where I couldn’t turn my back.”

  “I’ll apologize to her later,” Iris said. “I get tired of her sometimes. She got a raw deal from men starting with her father, and she gets to acting like she was the only one. But then it’s all she has.”

  Matthew said, “She smells funny.”

  Iris nudged him. “That’s because she’s afraid. You’d smell that way too.”

  “I ain’t ’fraid.”

  Constance began laughing. A high shrill note ran through the laughter like a violin string stretched to the snapping point. Iris jerked her head around, startled. But it was just the tension of the last few minutes. Constance was laughing for real.

  “I’m glad, Matthew,” she said, when the peak was past. “Mommy’s glad you’re not afraid.”

  Matthew laughed too, bouncing his feet up and down. Iris hugged him to her with both arms and grinned at me with her chin on top of his head. “Matthew, how would you like to go for a ride in a very old car?”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Constance wasn’t up for a meeting with Rayellen Stutch that night. When I said her mother was offering her old room, she rubbed her arms for a moment, then: “Why not? If she promises not to run down David in front of Matthew.”

  I said I’d pass the message along. While mother and child were getting ready upstairs, Iris checked out the living room for residents, then let me in to use the telephone. The place had a community-room look: worn upholstery and picked-over magazines. Above the old-fashioned radiator hung a print made from a painting of stylized bodies dancing against a background of tropical colors, lifting the gloom a little. That would be Iris’s contribution.

  I kept the calls brief. Carla Witowski was breathless with anticipation. Mrs. Stutch was just out of breath; she’d done three miles on the treadmill before dressing for the fundraiser downtown. We made the appointment for tomorrow at noon. “Mrs. Campbell will serve lunch,” she said.

  Constance had put on a sweater and gotten Matthew into a light cotton jacket and an Indians cap with Chief Wahoo on the front. He was dragging an overnight bag nearly as big as he was.

  “He insisted on carrying it,” his mother said. “He’d pull his arms out of their sockets before he’d admit it was too heavy. I guess I’ll never understand men.”

  I looked at her. With her hair tied back out of the way and a flush on her cheeks, she looked younger than she had on the porch, her eyes less clouded. I said, “You look like your parole came through.”

  She glanced around. Iris had gone into the kitchen to make her peace with Ms. Stainback. Constance leaned in and lowered her voice. “Iris has been wonderful, but this place is depressing. The residents are so angry. I think it’s that woman.”

  “Shell shock,” I said. “You got out in time. Not everybody does.”

  Matthew said, “I want to see the old car.”

  “Pipe down and I’ll let you turn the crank.”

  Iris came out, putting on a long-tailed shirt that reminded me of that morning. “Well, she won’t quit tonight. I offered her minimum wage.”

  We went outside. It was a mild night and there was an early firefly or two winking turquoise out beyond the reach of the streetlight. I struck the bottom of my awesome well of experience when it came to putting a three-year-old boy in the Cutlass. I test-tugged the safety belts in the rear seat, which hadn’t been used since before the Kent State Massacre, and when they didn’t come apart in my hands I left the business of anchoring Matthew in his booster seat to his mother. He sniffed the cigarettes in the air and said the car smelled like Daddy. When Constance slid in next to him I looked at Iris. “A shotgun would make me feel a little less like the family chauffeur.”

  “Thought you’d never ask,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see how the other half lives. Did you know three quarters of this country’s wealth is in the hands of the rich?”

  “Sure. If it were in the hands of the poor it wouldn’t make any sense.”

  She shook a finger in my face. “You’re a Republican.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m Episcopalian.”

  As I rumbled the engine to life, Matthew asked his mother, “Are they married?”

  “I don’t think so, honey. They just like to fight.”

  We headed up I-75. Matthew approved of the acceleration; he made a noise of pure joy as I slid into the pocket between a tanker and an RV hauling an inboard on a trailer, then swung out to pass the RV. I figured he’d been conceived in Detroit. Iris found a retro country station Constance liked on the radio, and we listened to Jerry Reid for four miles.

  Traffic was light. The evening rush had been over for an hour, it was the middle of the week, and with the Tigers in the cellar nobody was in a hurry to get to the ballpark, especially the new one. I let the speed freaks take out their payment frustrations on the fast lane and tooled along at a safe ten miles over the limit.

  Approaching Downriver a pickup got on my tail and stuck there like a decal. Its square headlamps were set just high enough to blind me bouncing off the rearview mirror. I flipped it to night-side and slowed down to let the truck pass. It crept a little closer, then slowed too.

  I turned off the radio. Iris picked up on it. “What we got?”

  “Could be nothing. They give out driver’s licenses to the first hundred callers.” I fed the 455 some gas. The pickup fell behind a length, then closed the gap. I could hear its engine winding up. He’d had some work done on it after it left the factory.

  “It’s David!” Constance’s voice was almost a shriek.

  The truck was pale in the reflection from my taillights, with rounded retro fenders, riding high on big tires. It could have been a white Ram. I’d seen one parked in Glendowning’s garage.

  Something bit into my right thigh just behind the knee; Iris’s fingernails.

  “Cheer up.” I pushed down the pedal.

  All four barrels dumped open and the big block pounced ahead. After a microsecond the rest of the car caught up, a stretching action, like the coaches falling in behind a locomotive. The bubbling acceleration vibrated in the soles of my feet. The truck slipped back. Then it began to come on all over again.

  I nearly climbed up the trunk of a Ford Fiesta with dirty taillights, invisible until my headlamps thre
w its shadow forty feet ahead. Iris’s nails drew blood, but I cranked the wheel and skinned past it in the passing lane, my chrome literally tickling its left rear fender. This brought me bumper-to-bumper with a U-Haul van, but instead of braking I cranked right and cut in front of the Ford, the Cutlass rocking on its suspension as I straightened out. The complaining bleat of the Ford’s horn reached me with the remote impersonality of a gong struck underwater; there was already a quarter-mile separating us. I glanced at the speedometer, just for entertainment. We were coming up on a hundred—whoops, nope, we were past it.

  In the mirror, square headlamps separated themselves from those of the U-Haul, like a cell dividing, and slid in front of the little Ford. For most of a mile, the Ram maintained the distance between us, neither closing nor falling back. Then it began to creep closer. From that point on the gap narrowed steadily. I looked at the speedometer again, on the hunch I’d blown the radiator hose or thrown a rod and was losing speed, but the needle was edging past 102. Glendowning had to have eliminated the anti-pollution equipment, added ballast to the pickup’s box, struck a deal with Satan for immunity to the laws of physics. It had been thoughtful of whoever had customized the truck to remember to leave room for a driver in that rolling power plant.

  “Amos,” Iris said. It sounded like the opening of a prayer.

  “There’s a state police post in Trenton. Highway eighty-five. Keep an eye out for the sign. I don’t know the exit number.” I raised my voice for Constance. “Hang on tight to Matthew. I don’t trust that belt.”

  “Maybe we should pull over.” Her voice was thin and tight.

  “No.” Iris.

  “We’re just making him madder.”