Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss Read online

  We all stayed standing. There was only one chair for visitors, and most of the time I could have hired it out to the rare coin dealer down the hall. I propped my hip against the desk. I felt hot from my belt to my pant cuff and cold everywhere else.

  “Agent Clemson’s territory covers Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and the eastern portion of Illinois,” Thaler said. “Today he’s in Detroit. Tomorrow, Chicago. You and I could live in Tahiti on what Uncle pays him by the mile.”

  I said, “I knew an encyclopedia salesman who covered all that and Canada. But the worst he had to deal with was a housewife with sewing shears. Find any new sleeper cells in Dearborn?”

  Dearborn is the cradle of the American automobile industry, and incidentally the largest concentration of Arabs outside the Middle East. There are some Cold War leftovers who want to surround it with reinforced concrete and razor wire, but then there would be nobody left to sell liquor and gasoline.

  Clemson’s face went flat. “That’s racial profiling.”

  A sweaty little silence followed. Thaler broke up then, laughing like a drunken teenage girl. I gaped at her.

  “He’s pulling your leg,” she said. “Feds have changed since Melvin Purvis. Some of them can even tell a joke.”

  Clemson smiled.

  I realized the bottle was still standing on the desk. “Do they drink?”

  The agent’s eyes prowled the walls, searching for a clock. There wasn’t one. I measured time by the whiskers on my chin.

  “It’s early for me, but help yourself.”

  “That would be detective profiling.” I put the bottle back in the cellar.

  “Give it up,” Thaler said. “He won’t prod. We went through all that when he came to my office. Agent Clemson wants to consult with you.”

  “I always suspected I had a file in Washington. I didn’t know anyone ever checked it out.”

  “He never heard of you before this morning. I fed him your name.”

  Clemson said, “It’s about contraband traffic.”

  “Pirate DVDs?”

  “They’re a serious problem—in Hollywood,” he said. “Personally and professionally, I don’t care. I’m interested in cigarettes.”

  A carpet shark clamped down on my leg. I sat, fighting the urge to flop. I’d had a bugging incident recently, and still had some residual paranoia. Cigarette smuggling doesn’t come up twice in one morning, even in Detroit. Drugs are the common coin.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sometimes it feels like all one hundred and seventy grains are still in there.”

  Agent Clemson looked interested. “Thirty-thirty?”

  I hesitated. “Ballistics?”

  “Six months in Quantico. It’s standard training now for field agents.”

  I expected him to ask about details, but he’d finished talking. He was the least curious G-man I’d ever met. I asked him to sit down.

  “Lieutenant?” he said.

  “I’m no lady.” Thaler was looking at me. “The reason for this field trip is a name came up in conversation in my office. When I opened that file on the computer, yours popped up, just like a Viagra ad. Let’s just cut the comic relief and say you and Jeff Starzek go way back.”

  “Way back is right. I haven’t had any business with him in five years.” Which was true enough.

  “Glad to hear it. The people he’s doing business with these days are nobody’s choice for Good Neighbor of the Year. Not this side of the Persian Gulf,” she added.

  “Terrorists?”

  “At this point we’re calling them ‘persons of concern.’ ” Clemson kept his face as flat as paint.

  “He can tell a joke,” I told Thaler.

  “We need to talk to Starzek before we upgrade them,” he said. “It’s possible he isn’t aware of the full extent of what he’s involved in. One way he can convince us of that is to tell us what he does know. But no one seems to have seen him in weeks. Even his former associates can’t get in touch with him, and we’ve offered them plenty of incentive.”

  “Did you talk to his family?”

  “He’s never been married.”

  “I didn’t think he had. I meant a brother or sister.”

  “He has a brother twenty years older, who’s some kind of a preacher in Port Huron. They haven’t spoken since the Eighties. After meeting him, I believe him. No sister.”

  I broke open a fresh pack, to give me something safe to frown at. I let him see the tax stamp.

  “I buy at places like Seven-Eleven,” I said, “or cross into Ohio when the state ups the ante. All I know about the tobacco business is how much I burn by the day or week.”

  “I’m not talking about cigarettes now. That’s ATF, and if you think Home Security has issues, you’ve never dealt with that bureau. Starzek’s branched out in a whole new direction.”

  I met his chilly gray gaze and tried to make my mind blank. I succeeded just the way I had in business. Diversified is the word. Starzek’s word, accompanied by himself on piano. He’d said he was carrying something else back down the coast.

  Jeff Starzek, who had no sister named Rose and therefore no brother-in-law named Oral Canon.

  “The specific nature of his cargo is classified.” Nothing in Clemson’s expression said he’d read anything in mine. “It always will be, if we can get to him before he makes delivery. If he’s been duped, as we think, he may just walk.”

  “Is that on the table?”

  “I said ‘may.’ I’m not authorized to speak for the attorney general. At least he’ll keep his citizenship.”

  He produced another pigskin folder from a side pocket and dealt me a card with the usual eagle on it, armed to the beak and carrying a box lunch. “The cell and pager’s in the lower left-hand corner,” he said. “If you hear from Starzek, or remember anything helpful, I’d appreciate the call.” He stuck out his hand again before I could get up. I shook it.

  “Lieutenant?” he said.

  “Wait for me.”

  She watched me light up a cigarette while the office door closed and then the one to the hall.

  I dropped the match in the ashtray and poked Clemson’s card under the wooden base. “How you getting along with the new chief?”

  “What’s not to like? She’s a woman.” She wasn’t smiling.

  “ ‘Duped,’ ” I said. “He said it. You heard him say it.”

  “It’s in the dictionary.”

  “So’s ‘brigand,’ but he didn’t hang around long enough to use it. I guess you checked his credentials.”

  “They checked.” She pointed her eyebrows toward the cane. “It’s my business to ask. Don’t read anything into it like I care.”

  “Hunting accident up north. Somebody mistook me for a buck.”

  “Try again. You don’t resemble Bambi even a little bit.”

  I gave it to her then, all except Starzek. He lifted right out. “I think it got a paragraph in the News or Free Press. Probably not both.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I was on jury duty all last month. It eats into keeping up with current events.”

  “What defense attorney would put you on a jury?”

  “Is it permanent?”

  “Just about everything is this side of forty. But I plan to donate the stick to the Lion’s Club before Easter. They can paint it white and give it to an umpire.” I sat back, smoking and stretching out the leg. “I’m considering retirement.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No. I anticipated the suggestion.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking it. Someone else would just creep into the empty space and I’d have to get used to a whole new set of misdemeanors.”

  “I’d miss you too. I was just waiting for you to say it first.”

  She flashed me a signal that was not the universal sign of affection and left me alone with my thoughts.

  I chewed another pill and almost washed it down with Scotch before I remembered what happened to Judy Garland. I went back to the sink for water and when I c
ame out I was surprised not to find another visitor in the slot.

  Two walkins in one morning. If this kept up, I’d have to put in another chair.

  FOUR

  Ithought for a while and when I got tired of thinking I dug out Oral Canon’s card and picked up the telephone. His cell wasn’t answering. I broke the connection and tried the number he’d written on the back, which he’d said went to his home. If there was no Rose Starzek Canon there probably was no baby either. An annoying female bray came on after five rings and offered to let me record a message for a dollar six bits. I cradled the receiver for free.

  There were no Canons in the metropolitan directory, but when I called an operator she told me there was a number in Belleville but I couldn’t have it. She wouldn’t confirm it was the one I had. Next I got a dispatcher at DTE Energy and asked if Oral Canon worked there. I tried to sound like a worried homeowner with a stranger at his door. The worried part wasn’t hard. The dispatcher put me on hold for thirty seconds and said they had a splicing technician by that name and that he was on the road.

  I dialed Barry Stackpole and gave up six rings in. Most of the people who tried to reach him didn’t like to leave voice prints behind, so he’d never bothered with a machine. Anyway he was a long shot. If Canon wasn’t mobbed up, Barry wouldn’t know him from Paris Hilton.

  I sat there listening to traffic stumbling over potholes on West Grand and felt like the old man on the rock. I had no wisdom to impart and none coming. I called another operator and asked for the number of a Starzek in Port Huron, where Agent Clemson had said Jeff’s brother was some kind of preacher. She found a Paul Starzek on something called Old Carriage Lane and tripped the switch on a recording with the number. I let Ma Bell dial it for me; I was getting a case of tennis elbow.

  “Church of the Freshwater Sea,” blatted a voice on the second ring. It seemed to have come with its own built-in amplifier. I held the receiver out from my ear.

  “Paul Starzek?”

  “This is Dr. Starzek. The church is closed for the season. Call me in April.”

  “I’m good for now,” I said. “My name’s Walker, Dr. Starzek. I’m a Michigan State licensed investigator calling from Detroit. I’m trying to locate your brother Jeff.”

  “Why do you people keep bothering me?” he blared. “I withheld myself from that foul trafficker fifteen years ago. I’m not his keeper.”

  “My motives are different. I’m not with the federal government.”

  “That’s what the last one said.”

  “What last one was that?” But I was talking to an empty line.

  I listened to the dial tone and unplugged myself from the system. I sat back and played with the cane, twirling the crook. My leg felt better but my head was starting to hurt. Herbert Clemson was a fast man with his credentials. He didn’t seem the type to claim he was a private citizen even if it would get him what he wanted. Being a private citizen myself, I didn’t know just when that would be. And if there had been a “last one” coming to him with questions, that was one more than I knew about.

  Finally, if fifteen years had passed since the Starzek brothers had had any contact, Jeff had been a teenager, with all his foul trafficking days far ahead of him. The Reverend Dr. Starzek lied as well as any sinner in his flock.

  There was no reason to take the thing further, especially when I had an appointment with my physical therapist that afternoon. No reason at all, except if it weren’t for a tencent smuggler in thousand-dollar trouble the only appointment on my calendar would be with the embalmer. The therapist had warmer hands.

  I hadn’t been to Port Huron in years. I wondered if they’d cleaned up the beach.

  Michigan has two industries, automaking and tourism. When either of them catches cold, the state catches pneumonia, and the EMS team has to break out the paddles to jump-start Port Huron’s heart.

  When the logging business ran out of trees under President Cleveland, the sawmills shut down, and with them the railroads connecting them to Flint, Saginaw, and Ludington, clear across the state on Lake Michigan. Port Huron sold pencils for a while from a tin cup. When the foundries in Detroit couldn’t keep up with the production lines at Ford and General Motors, steelmaking plants sprang up on the mouth of the St. Clair River where Lake Huron emptied into Lake St. Clair. Then miles of white beach opened for business, and for a little while, until the black flies came and the superhighway system discovered Miami, the place was a little northern Riviera three months out of the year, complete with freshwater clam restaurants propped up on piers and “Rhapsody in Blue” drifting out from a bandshell. On a hot Sunday in July or August, striped umbrellas still crowd the shoreline, and the sails of the Port Huron-to-Mackinac Race blot out the blue water in midsummer, but most of the time it’s the sanitation crews shoveling up dead fish and old condoms who get the best tans. On the first iron-scraped workday of the year, the place was Moscow, with a view of Ontario.

  Downtown’s an hour’s drive north of Detroit when you obey the speed limit. I made it in forty minutes, and two state troopers passed me without their flashers on. Throttling down from the off-ramp, I drove past the county courthouse and a row of sidewalk cafes, closed for the season with snow skirting the ornamental fencework, and then followed the wide river north, where gray empty sky seemed to be reflecting the surface of the big lake rather than the other way around. A couple of disgruntled-looking gulls picked at something frozen in the crags of boulders left by ancient oceans and polished by waves as tall as watchtowers. Kelp lay in loose black coils on the sand with empty Coke cans winking among them in the diffused light like giant squid eyes. But they say even Beale Street looks desolate after Mardi Gras.

  I had a book of county maps open to St. Clair County on the seat beside me, with the secondary roads marked out in blue ballpoint. I almost missed Old Carriage Lane at that, and had to back up to read the sign, marked PRIVATE ROAD and pitted all over with rust and .22 slugs. I followed broken pavement between Grim Reaper trees and metal-sided bungalows that had started out as tarpaper shacks, most of them shuttered until spring, with here and there a boat trailer sunk up to its hubs in snow and chained to a post in the front yard. You can still buy property up there by the acre instead of the foot, as long as it doesn’t touch the lake. From there it’s all high six-figure log mansions and Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs with pontoons and cabin cruisers tied up to sheltered docks like four-car garages.

  The road angled down from the highway, bootjacked, and ended in an egg-shaped turnaround, with plenty of pine and brush separating it from the beach. I parked in front of a 1950s house trailer on concrete blocks with no footprints in the snow around it and backtracked on foot. I had no address for Paul Starzek, but a 1979 Dodge Club Cab was parked in front of a no-longer-mobile home of the same vintage with a magnetic sign on the cab:

  CHURCH OF THE FRESHWATER SEA

  P. Starzek, Pastor

  Behind the house rose a pole barn of dull aluminum with icicles drooling from its green roof. It didn’t look much like a place of worship, but then Pastor Starzek had not sounded much like Bing Crosby over the telephone.

  I had to be careful where I placed the tip of my cane. There were patches of ice, and drifting snow had filled in the potholes, smoothing them over like tiger traps. Private roads are only as well kept as the people who live on them, and from the look of it, Old Carriage Lane hadn’t seen a snowplow or a fresh coat of asphalt since tubeless tires.

  Starzek’s driveway, at least, was open, and his steps swept. My hands came away from the painted metal railing with a peeling sound and the two-by-eights were frozen hard as iron; there was no give under my feet. I used the doorbell, sheltered in a bell-shaped depression plated in dirty brass. I couldn’t hear if it worked. I rapped on the metal frame of the storm door. When nothing came of that I let myself back down the steps and hobbled around behind.

  The door to the pole barn was sealed with a combination padlock on a hasp. I’m no good with combin
ations and hadn’t the equipment with me to get around it the blue-collar way, and in any case I wasn’t curious enough to damage property. The door hadn’t been opened since the last snow; it was drifted up over the sill. I went around, cupped my hands, and peered through a storm window. I saw rows of folding metal chairs, a woodstove, a trestle table with a lectern set on it as at a Friars Club roast. It was all pretty dim. Sheeted shapes suggested the building doubled as storage in the absence of the faithful.

  I shifted my angle—and flinched when I saw a human face staring back at me. It belonged to an armless naked male store mannequin standing on a platform behind the trestle table with a couple of dozen fletched arrows sticking out of its torso at all angles like quills. Whatever denomination the Church of the Freshwater Sea belonged to, it went beyond a cross and a handful of nails. Maybe the pope had canonized Custer while I was under anesthesia.

  A cord of wood was stacked against an outside wall in a pile of snow where a section had slid from the metal roof. A six-foot oil pig fueled the house. No gas lines yet in that country.

  Nothing seemed to be stirring inside the house. Some snow was tented around the tires of the pickup truck, which meant nothing; in those areas, the year-rounders often buy their supplies in bulk and only venture forth once or twice a month to restock. You never know when that lake effect will close the roads for a week.

  The front and back doors were deadbolted; those communities where folks don’t lock their doors are a rural myth. Someone had weather-stripped the windows and sealed them in clear plastic. All except one, facing the pines lakeside, where wind had worried the plastic to shreds. I parted them and had a look. There didn’t seem to be a catch, but the sash was sealed to the sill with old cracked paint.

  Of course there wasn’t anything in sight that could be used as a pry. My leg was aching merrily by the time I got back from the car with a screwdriver concealed under my coat. I don’t know why I bothered with stealth. The neighbors were all in Florida.

  A bit of scraping, the heel of a hand against the butt, and a little leverage broke the seal with a gasp. When the gap was wide enough I inserted my cane and used it the same way. Then I curled my fingers underneath the sash and slid it high enough to crawl underneath. Inside, I sat on the sill with my hands on my thighs and panted a little. I was out of shape from the hospital and as a housebreaker out of practice.