The Sundown Speech Read online

  The young cop who had asked me about moonlighting came in with my statement typed out. I read it, signed it, and handed back the lieutenant’s pen. He slid the stapled sheets into a cardboard folder. “Well, that’s that.” He gave me his Gypsy stare.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I got up. “Save the sundown speech. I’m headed home.”

  “I was going to say, ‘Come back for Octoberfest.’ I’ll buy you a beer. That was a fool play you made, but it saved everybody trouble. What made you go for the wires instead of the remote?”

  “I didn’t. First I knew I had ’em was when I looked down and saw them in my hand.”

  * * *

  Jerry Marcus’ mother made arrangements to have him and his twin brother sent back to North Dakota for burial.

  One of Alec Moselle’s admirers, a University of Michigan alumnus with too much money for his tax bracket, donated a million dollars to establish a photography scholarship in his name. Several applicants submitted shots taken of naked people in shopping malls and on freeway entrance ramps, thinking that would please Moze’s restless spirit, but the board in charge of the scholarship gave the spot to a young woman who specialized in landscapes. By then, Ann Arbor Exposed, the dead man’s collection of candid nudes, was in stores, and I suppose they didn’t want to take the chance of reviving the tradition of the Naked Mile.

  I never heard from Dante and Heloise Gunnar again, even though they got back most of the fifteen thousand they’d dropped on Marcus’ movie. I did get a call from Hernando Suiz, their attorney, kicking about some items on the expense sheet. I ate the Ypsilanti motel bill, but got him to reimburse me for Holly Zacharias’ train fare to Chicago. I struck him off as a future reference.

  All this happened a long time ago.

  Borders is gone, Thano’s Lamplighter, too. They tore all the swanky public telephone booths out of the Michigan Union and just about everywhere else, forcing me to join the cellular revolution.

  After 149 years, the Ann Arbor News shut down, to reappear later as a dot-com publication, printing two editions per week. Aunt Agatha’s mystery bookshop is still there, but I haven’t been back to it. I didn’t take Karyl up on that beer offer either.

  The Michigan Theater still stands, a monument to the days when going to the movies was a dress-up affair, and the destination rewarded the effort; the coalition that owns it has even added a second screen since I visited, along with a proper escape hatch in the projection booth. One of Jerry Marcus’ pigeons donated part of his reimbursement toward repairing the damage to the auditorium caused by gunfire; the artisan who restored the architectural details was the great-grandson of one of the original workmen from 1928.

  The standoff on Liberty Street was reported widely. Inspired by the publicity, a West Coast production company bought the rights to Mr. Alien Elect from Marcus’ mother and announced plans to finish it, using area locations to take advantage of Michigan’s generous Hollywood stimulus plan to boost its economy; but then the administration changed in Lansing and the plan was struck down. The company wrote off the project.

  Holly Zacharias sent me an invitation to her graduation ceremony. I thought of attending, but that day I was in Columbus, Ohio, tracing a series of safe-deposit boxes belonging to a Detroit city councilman who’d let his house on Bagley go into foreclosure. I sent Holly a funny card, but she didn’t write back.

  I’ve been back to Ann Arbor only once, chasing a bad lead on a missing-person case. As long as I was there I called the police department, hoping to make up for that Octoberfest no-show, but I was told Lieutenant Karyl had left to accept a position as police chief in a small town in Wisconsin. Zingerman’s is still where I left it; I ate a barbecue sandwich and drove back to Detroit.

  Last week a thick envelope came to the office with a DVD inside in a plastic case. It turned out to be a week’s worth of five-minute stock market reports delivered by a young woman at a TV station in Evanston, Illinois. Holly had let her hair grow out and replaced the studs in her face with a light application of makeup. There was no note, but she put in a picture postcard from SeaWorld. It had been just long enough I had almost forgotten the point of the joke.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Sundown Speech is a greatly expanded reimagination of Attitude, a novella I wrote on commission for the old Ann Arbor News in 2004. It ran in installments throughout twenty editions of the newspaper, with members of the staff and their families appearing in photos representing the characters. It was my first experience with that centuries-old publishing tradition, serial fiction, and I enjoyed the experience very much.

  Although I haven’t confirmed it personally, I’m quite sure that all precautions have been taken from the start to ensure the safety of projectionists and all others employed by the Michigan Theater. I apologize if my use of literary license in order to ramp up suspense has offended anyone.

  I’d like to thank Judy McGovern, that “pleasant-faced woman with the eyes of a peregrine falcon,” who oversaw the serial project in her position as features editor, all the News employees and their families who took part, and those good sports who wrote to the newspaper to express their forgiveness for the gentle fun I poked at the “Ann Arbor attitude.”

  I’m a third-generation Arborite: I was born there in 1952, my father in 1910, and his father in 1867. The city may not be the cultural center of the world, but it has a rich culture, as well as a warm heart.

  No aliens were harmed in the telling of his story.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Loren D. Estleman is the author of more than seventy novels, including the most recent Amos Walker titles, You Know Who Killed Me and Don’t Look for Me. Winner of four Shamus Awards, five Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards, he lives in Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Books by Loren D. Estleman

  AMOS WALKER MYSTERIES

  Motor City Blue

  Angel Eyes

  The Midnight Man

  The Glass Highway

  Sugartown

  Every Brilliant Eye

  Lady Yesterday

  Downriver

  Silent Thunder

  Sweet Women Lie

  Never Street

  The Witchfinder

  The Hours of the Virgin

  A Smile on the Face of the Tiger

  Sinister Heights

  Poison Blonde*

  Retro*

  Nicotine Kiss*

  American Detective*

  The Left-Handed Dollar*

  Infernal Angels*

  Burning Midnight*

  Don’t Look for Me*

  You Know Who Killed Me*

  The Sundown Speech*

  VALENTINO, FILM DETECTIVE

  Frames*

  Alone*

  Alive!*

  DETROIT CRIME

  Whiskey River

  Motown

  King of the Corner

  Edsel

  Stress

  Jitterbug*

  Thunder City*

  PETER MACKLIN

  Kill Zone

  Roses Are Dead

  Any Man’s Death

  Something Borrowed, Something Black*

  Little Black Dress*

  OTHER FICTION

  The Oklahoma Punk

  Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula

  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes

  Peeper

  Gas City*

  Journey of the Dead*

  The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association*

  Roy & Lillie: A Love Story*

  The Confessions of Al Capone*

  PAGE MURDOCK SERIES

  The High Rocks*

  Stamping Ground*

  Murdock’s Law*

  The Stranglers

  City of Widows*

  White Desert*

  Port Hazard*

  The Book of Murdock*

  WESTERNS

  The Hider

  Aces & Eights*

  The W
olfer

  Mister St. John

  This Old Bill

  Gun Man

  Bloody Season

  Sudden Country

  Billy Gashade*

  The Master Executioner*

  Black Powder, White Smoke*

  The Undertaker’s Wife*

  The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion*

  The Branch and the Scaffold*

  Ragtime Cowboys*

  The Long High Noon*

  NONFICTION

  The Wister Trace

  Writing the Popular Novel

  *Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Part One: Smash Cut

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two: Cutaway

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part Three: Loop

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Four: Cinema Slam

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Books by Loren D. Estleman

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE SUNDOWN SPEECH

  Copyright © 2015 by Loren D. Estleman

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Drive Communications, New York

  Cover Images © 2015 Shutterstock

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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  New York, NY 10010

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  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Estleman, Loren D., author.

  The sundown speech: an Amos Walker novel / by Loren D. Estleman.—First Edition.

  p. cm.—(Amos Walker novels; 24)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3736-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-3435-4 (e-book)

  1. Walker, Amos (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3555.S84S93 2015

  813'.54—dc23

  2015023332

  e-ISBN 9781466834354

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  First Edition: November 2015