The Sundown Speech Read online

  “It is.”

  “Are you always this honest?”

  “No. But I could be lying.”

  “Any personal references?”

  I gave her some names and numbers and rolled the Styrofoam cup between my palms while she made the calls. A faux-knitted sampler in a folksy barkwood frame hung at an angle behind her head, reading: DON’T PAINT THE DEVIL AS BLACK AS HE IS. Everything means something to somebody.

  She spent three minutes apiece on each call. She made some squiggles in a notepad, then hung up. A nerve twitched in her right cheek. “You’re not a popular person, are you?”

  “I kind of languished when teams were picked,” I said. “I played dirty.”

  “Not when it counted, I was most reluctantly told.”

  “The people who like me wouldn’t impress you.”

  “I wrote that article myself,” she said. “It’s a pretty big deal when someone makes a movie here. The climate, you know; those smogtown crews are terrified of going over schedule and seeing what their breath looks like in late November. Even when the picture’s set in Ann Arbor, they shoot it in L.A., with about three days’ worth of second-unit footage here for the exteriors. What’s one definition of a Michigan native?”

  “Someone who’s never met a celebrity.”

  “So when snow falls in Death Valley and a legitimate outfit shoots locally, we put it on the front page. We get a bump in circulation and maybe sell an ad or two when the movie premieres.” She frowned. “A lot of folks are going to be disappointed if Marcus turns out to be just another swindler. That’s a daily item around here.”

  “It’s what I’m being paid to find out.”

  “Do we get the story?”

  “If it’s fraud, you’ll get it before the cops. If it’s something more serious, I’ve got a license to stand in front of.”

  “In that event, I’ll have to give it to the city desk. The newspaper business is run on a feudal system, and God help the reporter who turns in the murder of a football player to anyone but the sports editor.”

  Her Rolodex rattled like a bingo basket. When it stopped, she scribbled something on the back of a business card she took from her desk and gave it to me. The telephone number was local.

  “It’s a landline,” she said. “Campus area, I think. Marcus gave it to me when I interviewed him.”

  I stuck it in my wallet. “I appreciate the time. I know how busy you get this time of day.”

  Her face softened. She was an attractive woman when she let herself be. “First time in town?”

  “I come through now and then, never long enough to soak up the atmosphere. Mostly I work Detroit, the northern suburbs, and Downriver. Any dragons I need to know about?”

  “East side’s dicey, and you want to watch yourself in the nightclubs; but where you’re going, burglary’s as bad as it usually gets. Couch fires were a problem until the city banned upholstered furniture on porches. Some were arson, others caused by kids learning how to smoke. It’s a nice town, once you get past the attitude.”

  “What attitude’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s an old saw.”

  “I’m old enough to appreciate it.”

  She had one of those tri-cornered rules on her desk; the kind old-time schoolteachers used to rap the alphabet across errant knuckles. She picked it up and slid it between the thumb and forefinger of one hand; dragging something up from some depth.

  “A long time ago,” she said, “someone told them Ann Arbor’s the cultural center of the world, and they haven’t gotten the joke yet.”

  “They being who?”

  She gave me an edited smile. “If your clients are who I think they are, you’ve met two of them.”

  “I didn’t know the place was that small.”

  “Not as small as some of the residents like to pretend. The population runs around a hundred thousand when university’s in session. But this is the only daily, not counting the student rag, and it isn’t my first. Here you can get hold of a copy of Beowulf translated into Frangi, which is a language that only existed for three weeks in the eleventh century, but you can’t buy a decent cup of coffee anywhere in town.” She sipped from her mug, blue with a yellow block M printed on it, and grimaced.

  “I must have passed half a dozen coffee shops on the way here from the deli.”

  “A new one opens every month or so and lasts about as long as Frangi. When I came here, you could still buy nails by the pound in hardware stores downtown. Now you have to go out to the big-box joints by the malls. In twenty years the place will be wall-to-wall cafes and brew pubs. And the university, of course, gobbling up millions in donations and tax-free real estate.”

  “You make it sound like you were here when they poured the first sidewalk.”

  “Not so long, really. The place keeps making itself over. The only thing that never changes is the attitude.”

  I grinned. “Frangi, seriously? Does everyone in town have a Ph.D.?”

  She colored a little. “The place drips with erudition. Don’t get me wrong; I love it here. The people are friendly, by and large, the bookstores are great, and you can walk through downtown after midnight any day of the week, safe in a crowd. But sometimes you want to go to a place where people double their negatives and think Fellini’s something you can order at Olive Garden.”

  I emptied my cup, just to prove what a tough character I am, and got up.

  “Thanks for the number. Also the lowdown.”

  She smiled. “Got your first parking ticket yet?”

  “They nailed me outside Zingerman’s.”

  “You get used to it.”

  THREE

  I found another public phone; that’s how good a detective I am. Even the homeless party camped on the sidewalk among his overstuffed trash bags had his broker on his cell.

  No answer at the new number. When the cheerful recorded voice of Ma Bell cut in telling me to try again later, I waggled the plunger and dialed a number I knew by heart.

  “Where are you?” Barry Stackpole asked, when I identified myself. “You sound like you’re calling from the hull of an oil tanker.”

  “Pay phone in Ann Arbor.”

  “No shit. Museum of Natural History?”

  “There are a couple of dodos left.”

  “Going back for your master’s?”

  “I’ve got a number that won’t answer. I need an address to go with it.”

  “Anything for me?”

  “You’re the second reporter who’s asked me that today. Don’t you people ever take a break?”

  “Waiting for an answer.”

  “I already promised dibs. You’re next, unless there’s bleeding involved.”

  “You’re in luck. I’m online right now, exploring the mysteries of the Vatican.”

  “The pope’s mobbed up?”

  “Can’t say, but there’s a cardinal who finds it way too easy to get World Cup tickets. Give me a sec. I uploaded all the reverse directories in the metropolitan area just last month.”

  “Aren’t those fire department property?”

  “What’s your point?” Keys clattered on his end.

  Barry was living on the west side of Detroit that year, in a HUD home-turned-crackhouse-turned-abandoned-shell he’d bought from the city for the sum of one dollar and the promise to rescue it from urban blight. He’d sunk most of his 401(k) from his time as an investigative reporter for the Detroit News into replacing the wiring and plumbing, scavenged by the local scrap rats, a new roof, and exterminators; every time one of those vans pulls into a driveway, the rats and roaches boil out in all directions like dust from a controlled demolition. His settling in was a good sign; since a mob pineapple had blown off one leg, two fingers, and part of his skull, he’d been in the habit of changing addresses as often as the Ten Most Wanted.

  “Yahtzee,” he said. “It’s a residential address on Thompson Street.” He gave me the number.

  “Thanks, buddy. If it turns out to
be nothing, there’s a bottle of Scotch with your name on it.”

  “Fuck my name. It better start with Glen.”

  The house was off State Street, the main drag running through the University of Michigan campus. Thompson was mostly student housing, around the corner from Borders books; not the store Heloise Gunnar managed. It’s still student housing, but Borders is long gone, a victim of over-ambition and bad choices regarding the Internet. Back then it was jumping, with browsers wandering the aisles beyond plate glass and checking out the bargains on tables outside. It was the flagship of the fleet, the first big-box bookshop, founded by two brothers under Richard Nixon. I think it’s a coffee shop now.

  I waited through a couple of light changes. The system was operated by a thirty-year-old computer, and when green finally came up, the first driver in line always went through the same four-step process: 1. realization; 2. comprehension; 3. mechanical analysis; 4. acceleration. Only in Ann Arbor, and every time I visited.

  Jaywalking 101 had just let out as I approached campus. I tooted my horn and got a choreograph of raised middle fingers in response. When a space opened up I turned the corner and parked in a parallel slot a block from my destination. Yellow parking tickets decorated most of the windshields on the block. I fed the meter tight.

  The house was a two-story frame with tile siding, yellowed to the standard shade of bad dental hygiene. A sagging front porch supported a dirty red-velour sofa and two young people drinking from red plastic Solo cups. One wore his hair in cornrows, the other mowed his close to the scalp. Both wore Michigan basketball jerseys, baggy cargo shorts, and cross-trainers with the laces dangling. I asked the one seated closest to me if Jerry Marcus lived there. A full set of studs turned my way. It was female.

  “Sorry, mister. Grandpa’s already cast.”

  “I’m investing, not auditioning.” I held up a dollar bill.

  An arm with barbed wire circling it in blue ink swept out and fisted the bill. “Upstairs, all the way back.”

  “Thanks. I thought couches on porches were illegal in this town.”

  “Also underage drinking.” She drank from her cup and belched beer. Cornrows snorted a giggle and dragged half a Marlboro deep into his lungs.

  The screen door grated against the pressure of its spring and slapped shut behind me. It opened directly into a small dim living room with mismatched furniture and an orange shag carpet that had been shampooed the week Saigon fell. Something moved sluggishly in an aquarium on a stand, glistening emerald green in the light from the window next to it. I wondered if there was a local length limit on pet boa constrictors.

  The stairs were bare and the banister wobbled. I left it alone and ascended freeform. The smell of fries cooked in day-old grease increased in direct ratio to the distance I put between myself and the kitchen on the ground floor. I wondered if they still made hot plates or if the tenants had built their own fires from the wooden rods missing from the banister.

  Mice had chewed abstract patterns in the rubber runner in the upstairs hallway. The window at the end was painted over. There were ceiling canisters with bulbs in them, but nothing happened when I flipped a switch on the wall. I groped my way down the tunnel, past a bathroom with its door open and fish swimming on a plastic shower curtain. On the evidence the toilet brush had been burned along with the stair rods.

  It was typical student housing. Dostoevsky would have recognized it from Minsk City College.

  Near the end I tested the invisible wall for breaks. When I ran out of plaster I brushed a wooden panel with a knuckle. The door squeaked open. I stepped inside, rapping on the frame to announce myself. No one called out. No footsteps came.

  “Aw, hell.”

  I jumped at the sound of the voice, even though it was mine. I felt like I hadn’t spoken in days. It was just premonition; but I always test well above average on that subject.

  It was just the one room. He’d have to share the bathroom outside with his neighbors. A chipped ceramic skillet on a Coleman stove turned a rolling TV cart into a kitchen. Clothes and books scattered the carpet, green and rubbery and discolored from sun and stain. The fibers crunched underfoot. What I thought at first to be someone sleeping turned out to be a twisted heap of bedding on a twin mattress. Brass paint curled off the iron frame in paper-thin scraps. A poster of Das Boot clung to the wall above the bed, stuck to it with curls of tape leaving telltale bulges at the corners. The U-boat seemed to be streaming straight toward me, torpedo tubes wide open.

  A white CRT computer monitor glowed with a sullen hum on a student desk. The screensaver was a shifting montage of black-and-white images: Welles in Citizen Kane, Mastroanni in La Dolce Vita, Stallone in Rocky, others I didn’t recognize. Those I did were all the work of independent filmmakers. No surprises so far. The place could have been done by a set decorator with a clear understanding of the kind of character who would live there.

  Some no-shows stuck out: film cans, reels, a projector, all absent. I’d always thought auteurs slept with their equipment. A sleek ruby-red camera, probably digital, lay on the floor beside the bed. It was about the size of a deck of cards but less than half as thick. It seemed a careless way to treat an expensive item like that; but artists are supposed to be eccentric. I’d heard.

  The room smelled a lot worse than eccentric, as if no one had taken out the garbage in days.

  I broke another law and frisked the place. Sweatshirts, jeans, socks, and underwear in a cheap slap-together dresser, a pair of horn-rim glasses in the nonmatching nightstand. I picked them up without unfolding the bows and peered through the lenses. Window glass: a prop, maybe. I put them back. Someone had built shelves by laying planks across stacks of bricks and filled them with spavined books: Hitchcock/Truffaut, The Coen Brothers, Eisenstein, The Three Stooges.

  That last one had to be a clue. I slipped it out, riffled through the pages, held it upside down by the covers and shook it. A Borders bookmark fluttered to the floor. I picked it up. Nothing written on either side but advertising.

  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  I slipped it back into its place and stood in the middle of the room with my fists on my hips, looking around. Everything else had probably been there when he moved in. No caller ID on the cordless telephone, but I punched redial. The little screen on the handset gave me an exchange and number I didn’t recognize. I hung up before anyone answered; I had to know a lot more before I spoke to whoever it was. I wrote the number in my notebook.

  I let the computer alone. I don’t know anything about them.

  I realized I was breathing through my mouth. The room seemed to stink worse than when I’d entered. I felt the same drop in temperature I’d felt then.

  There was one more place to look.

  It was a narrow door hinged to a compartment built into the wall to hold an ironing board. I pulled it open and stepped back, but no board swung out. Neither did Jerry Marcus. He was stuffed in too tight for that, and stiff as the blood in his curly hair. The bullet hadn’t done anything for his boyish good looks.

  FOUR

  I looked at the watch on his right wrist. It was intact: No smashed face, no time of death. I didn’t search the body. There were people who got paid to do that sort of handling.

  I spent the time looking the room over with new eyes. The carpet had stood more abuse than one tenant could provide; I detected several generations of cats, and a string of keggers reaching back to the old Stroh’s plant.

  Other stains were more recent. Splinters of what looked like fine china clung to a dark elliptical blotch the size of a dessert dish. I’d seen that circular fragment pattern before. It said someone had forced Marcus into a prone position, probably on his stomach, and shot him execution style at close range; the fragments were pieces of skull. But there were people who were paid to spend more time on that too. I was satisfied he’d been killed in the room and his body jammed into the cupboard to slow down discovery.

  Other items in the mess we
re harder to explain. What at first appeared to be more bits of skull turned out to be soft and springy when I picked one up and pressed it between thumb and forefinger. Styrofoam. It looked as if someone with nervous fingers had shredded his coffee cup during intense conversation. The problem with that was it could have happened at any time and had nothing to do with murder. I shook the piece loose and let it fall.

  That was it for the crime scene. Others with the right tools could sift through what I hadn’t the training or patience for, and the sooner the better.

  Clues, phooey. A shred of tobacco, a candy wrapper, a footprint in the dust, bits of red clay unique to El Valle de los Dios in Quetzaltenango, a moustache follicle, a drop of sweat from Custer’s left nut, preserved in a plastic case like an Indian-head penny; they’re all significant, or all irrelevant, or some combination of both; close your eyes and stab a finger and follow it up. When Inspector Finch-Hatton is on the case, a half-eaten peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich can crack it wide open. Settle for a sleuth named Walker, and it’s just somebody’s leftovers.

  Most often it’s a break in an established pattern of behavior, a slip of the tongue in conversation, a shadow in the wrong place in a picture taken at a certain time on a certain day; something as intangible as a memory you might only have dreamt, and that slips away as easily. An analyst’s couch is a more useful tool in the work than a dustpan and a magnifying glass.

  I hovered over the cordless phone, then lifted the receiver and pecked out 911. My prints were already on it and the cops could yell at me only so loud.

  The operator repeated the word “murder” as if she were taking an order for lunch. They’re all the same, even in a town where the occasional break-in was page one news; all the emotion of a white-noise machine running on a low battery.

  After I hung up I went back downstairs and out to the porch. The bald girl was in the same position, balancing the plastic cup on a leg enveloped in green canvas with pleated pockets. The boy in cornrows snored on the other end of the sofa with his head jammed into a corner. I envied him his flexible youth. When he woke up he probably wouldn’t even have a stiff neck.