Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde Read online

  Apart from unconfirmed sightings, however, she did not reappear in the news until the rebel leader’s longtime female companion, a former cabaret dancer and part-time prostitute named Angela Suerto, died in a mountain camp, the victim of a lethal dose of Stelazine. A new warrant was sworn out in Mariposa Flores’s name for suspicion of murder, but it was never served. Her name quietly evaporated from press accounts after six months, when all the leads had been beaten flat.

  By then the revolution was past tense. The rebel leader was in prison waiting to hear whether he was to hang himself in his cell or be shot down in the approved manner while scaling a wall, and most of his confederates were drawing flies at the base of riddled billboards or dangling from makeshift gallows in the villages where they surrendered.

  That was the sum total of what Barry managed to bring up on his portable computer screen from AP and UPI features that had drifted onto American soil. They wouldn’t have gotten that far without the songbird revolutionary–turned–passion killer hook, and there was something musty and brittle about even that, like a John Gilbert movie based on a novel by Gertrude Atherton. Without photographs, sound bites, or tape footage to sustain it, the entire episode withered away in back numbers of U.S. News & World Report. Aristotle’s dentist never got any deader.

  I had most of the worthwhile details in my notebook by the time two platters of beef medallions came sizzling to our table in the Blue Heron in West Bloomfield, but Barry was still working on the angle involving the escaped political prisoner—Mariposa/Gilia’s alibi—over the after-dinner wine, a fortified Madeira he’d chosen to go with the afternoon’s theme of castanets and cordite. It tasted like old Valencia and kicked like a shotgun.

  “Most of the wire accounts would be based on local reporting,” he said, rattling keys between sips. “They take their gag orders literally down there. The government newspapers wouldn’t be eager to report breaches in the penal system, and the rebel sheets couldn’t without laying open their sources to arrest or annihilation. Redundant terms in this case.”

  “If there was an escape,” I said.

  He looked up. “This is pretty Spy vs. Spy for a domestic gumshoe who prefers his steak smothered in onions.” He’d noticed I hadn’t cleaned my plate.

  “The medallions were okay. That grilled cheese I had two hours ago could hold up an overpass.” I poured down the rest of my wine to break it up. “Try entering ‘The Lincoln Question.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe the Net knows.”

  The Lincoln Question was the trick with the red-hot penny Gilia had told me about, the one that had blinded the prisoner she said she’d helped smuggle out of the country the night the Suerto woman was killed.

  He typed it in, waited. “No matches. Could be the equipment. I’ll try it again on the desktop later.”

  “There might not be anything. It sounded pretty gaudy to me when I heard it.”

  “What happens to the case if there isn’t?”

  “The case stays the same. It may go pretty hard on the detective.”

  I spotted my brown shadow eight blocks from the restaurant.

  He was driving a three-year-old Chevy Corsica in dusty gold, the nearest thing to a plain paper sack on wheels, and I could tell it was breaking his heart because he was hunched behind the wheel like a teenage kid hoping his friends wouldn’t see him out with his mother.

  I might not have noticed him at all except he was following all the rules of maintaining a close tail in the city: hanging back a block, observing the limit without becoming a fanatic about it, laying off the horn even when a woman carrying a Jacobson’s bag stepped off the curb right in front of him on Northwestern. He was being so unobtrusive he stank.

  I wanted a better look. I found a residential street, swung into it without signaling, and stopped in the middle of the lane. I counted two beats, then he turned in behind me. His brake lights winked on when he saw the Cutlass, but by that time it was too late. He accelerated and went around me. Neither he nor his partner on the passenger’s side looked right or left as they passed within arm’s reach. They were cruiser class, columnar necks sloping into football shoulders, wearing dark suits as invisible as the car. The driver was Hispanic, thick black hair cut short, Anglo fashion, conspicuously without a moustache. His companion was black, but tipped out of the same double-wide mold. They continued at the same pace to the end of the block, then a volume of thick exhaust spilled out of the tailpipe and they scooted around the corner with a bubble of rising tachs.

  I wondered how long it would take them to circle the block.

  The license number didn’t mean anything and I only committed it to memory out of habit. It would just trace back to whatever rental company they’d used, and I knew whose name would be on the order. The pair in the car had been among the men I’d seen in Hector Matador’s suite at the Hyatt in Dearborn. The black one, the former U.S. Marshal, would have the legs for the job in case I found a parking space and they didn’t and I took off on foot. It was a professional arrangement.

  I gave them a moment to get back into position, then turned around in a driveway and went back the way I’d come.

  I picked them up again when I passed a picture-framing shop with a turnaround in front. This time they didn’t bother to try to blend with the scenery. They’d be with me until a cellular call to Fearless Leader could alert the relief team.

  EIGHT

  In my travels I’ve managed to assemble an impressive collection of road maps, no two folded the same way and all of them taking up space in the glove compartment that would otherwise go to waste on registration and proof of insurance. Some of them go back to when they gave them out free in service stations, back when there were service stations; and those are strictly of historical interest. Others are more up-to-date, and each one tells the story of a routine local tail job that had taken me twice around Circe’s island and past the cave of the cyclops.

  The one I selected, after I parked in the Tonka-size lot a block over from my building, was a cute pop-up affair that featured the Rust Belt in all its El Niño-battered glory. It was as easy to fold as a conventional accordion map, with the added advantage of not being as detailed. But I wasn’t using it to attack Bastogne.

  None of the customers in my waiting room could distract me from my higher purpose, even if there were any; the trade off the street in that neighborhood would drive a pusher into real estate, and anyway you can’t expect to just walk up two flights and hire an investigator on a whim. You need to bring your wallet.

  I found out from the service no one had called, and grunted at the girl when she asked me if it was snowing yet. I guessed the switchboard room didn’t have windows. Mine was sealed with a nail from one of Alexander’s horseshoes and the panes had cataracts. I spread open the map on the desk, sat down, and found the red pen I employed to keep the accounts.

  Matador had met Jillian Rubio for the first time last February in Chicago. Five thousand dollars had changed hands in return for letting the woman who called herself Gilia go on being Gilia. I drew a scarlet X on the little circle that marked Chicago on the map. In March it was Indianapolis, in April Des Moines. I marked them. Des Moines again in May, then clear up to Duluth. Another X. Omaha, Omaha, Chicago again. Scratch scratch. Milwaukee for the first time in October. The upper Midwest was beginning to look as if it were stitched together with crimson thread.

  Milwaukee again in November. That was the first time the blackmailer had failed to show. Matador had decided, in view of the Rubio woman’s propensity for returning to the scenes of earlier crimes, to go back to the same place in December and January, adding five thousand to the envelope each time to bring his client’s account out of arrears. It was a sensible plan, only Jillian wasn’t having any of it. We were coming up on the first anniversary of the arrangement next Saturday, also three months since anyone had seen the extortionist vertical and breathing, and that was as long as she was supposed to stay missing befor
e the whole thing came spewing out into the living room of Mr. and Mrs. America.

  As itineraries went it wasn’t Magellan’s. All the locations were within twelve hours’ driving distance of one another. Whoever had drawn it up either lived somewhere within that twelve hours or wanted whoever looked at it to think that. The last was an unlikely hypothesis; blackmailers made life inconvenient for other people, not themselves. A related theory was that if the person did live in that area, the one place she would not set up a drop would be the city where she lived. It would be bad form to be recognized by an old acquaintance while committing a felony.

  I excavated the big Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass someone had given me in the spirit of jest, and which I used far more often than the someone had intended, although hardly ever to magnify anything. Its heft made it a good tool for rehanging pictures, and in this case it functioned equally well as a compass. I laid the glass on top of the map, lining it up so that all the marked cities showed, with Milwaukee and Indianapolis on the extreme right edge at top and bottom, Duluth and Des Moines framing the center, and Omaha at the left. I used the red pen to trace a circle around the glass, then pushed aside the magnifier and with one eye closed and my tongue between my teeth marked a bold red X in the circle’s exact center. Then I leaned back to admire my artwork.

  The cross of the X fell squarely on the Mississippi River where it divided Minneapolis and St. Paul. Which were the only bold-faced cities on the map where Jillian Rubio had never arranged to meet Hector Matador.

  I enjoyed the moment, then tossed the map into the wastebasket. It wasn’t even good enough to drive around with anymore. Life doesn’t work out like a crossword puzzle. If it did, it wouldn’t have any place in it for angle-bangers like me. But it so happened I knew someone I could call in St. Paul, if Millennium Confidential Services hadn’t gotten to him first.

  Sometimes life does work out like a crossword puzzle. My hand was on the telephone when it rang, and it was Lester Ziegler at Millennium. He’d oiled the rollers in his deep voice, and now he sounded like the man who describes toaster ovens on game shows.

  “Nothing yet,” he said, “but my people have a few more places to call. If this Rubio woman drove and paid cash, she could use whatever name she liked. Only these days people notice when you pay cash.”

  “You called to report nothing?”

  “Not exactly. I ran your name through TRW after we spoke. They never heard of you. I’ve never come across that before. If I didn’t think it was a computer glitch, I’d swear you had no credit rating at all.”

  “Go ahead and swear. I haven’t.”

  “That’s impossible. Everyone has a rating, even deadbeats. It’s like you don’t exist.”

  “I’ve been told that.”

  He got tired of waiting for me to tack something onto the end. “I checked with your bonding company. You’re covered for up to a million, but that’s strictly boilerplate and it only protects your clients in case you take their retainer to Brazil. This isn’t a cash-and-carry business. We need a secured method of payment.”

  “We aren’t in the same business, Mr. Ziegler. You’re Big Oil and I’m a pump jockey. I don’t owe anybody and nobody owes me. That makes me a nonperson where the credit companies are concerned, but from where I sit it means I haven’t made any enemies. Not the kind they’d recognize as such, anyway.”

  “You could send us a check.”

  “Will you keep your people on the case while they’re waiting for it?”

  “I can’t do that. Our plate is full of paying customers. I only got this started because you sounded professional over the telephone and I was sure you would have some kind of credit history and we could decide whether to proceed depending upon what it was. This agency belongs to a corporation. The board wouldn’t enjoy explaining to the stockholders why it accepted a phantom for a client.” Something tapped a beat on his end—a pencil or more likely a keyboard. “I’ll waive the standard ten-day waiting period while the check clears. Get it in the mail today and we’ll be back on the case day after tomorrow.”

  I glanced at the bank calendar on the wall. I knew what the date was day after tomorrow. I just liked to look at the picture of Tahquamenon Falls. The attraction hadn’t changed in more than a century. No new owners had acquired it and anyone who wanted to could go up and look at it for free. He didn’t need a credit rating. “The case blows up in five days, Mr. Ziegler. I’m not going to sit on my hands for two of them waiting for your people to make half a dozen calls I could make myself if I knew the names of their contacts.”

  “Well, the contacts are what you buy.” He’d lost interest. “I hope for your sake your luck holds, Walker. It’s the only thing keeping you afloat.”

  “Does that mean I shouldn’t expect a comfortable buyout package?” But I was barking down a dead line.

  I replaced the receiver carefully, then rechecked the number on my desk directory and dialed. A voice that sounded like a dump truck downshifting through gravel answered on the third ring.

  “Twin Cities Detective Agency, Corcoran.”

  “Corky, this is Amos Walker in Detroit. How’s every little thing in St. Paul?”

  “St. Paul-Minneapolis,” he corrected automatically. “We’re up to our tits in snow and there’s more coming from Alberta. I had to get a jump this morning to start my electric razor. Hope you’re the same.” His tone had changed to one of cordial malice.

  “Not a flake so far. I’m cooking out Valentine’s Day.” It was good to hear his voice, even if it did mean running a Chapstick around inside my ear afterward. Sid Corcoran employed five full-time investigators and a secretary and held a degree in criminal law. In addition he did security work for some of the local flour mills and advised law enforcement agencies on the state of the art in electronic listening devices. His operation was just big enough to attract the attention of a cruising shark like Millennium and just small enough to be swallowed whole. “I’ve got a missing-person case that just pointed your direction, maybe, but I can’t remember who owes who at this point.”

  “Whom.” Other telephones purred on his end, a regular chorus of them, with a different tone for each agent. “Last time was that runaway from Mendota Heights you found hustling line workers in the parking lot at Chrysler,” he said. “So you’re in the black. What’s the ruckus?”

  I gave him Jillian Rubio’s name—just that one, the one she used stateside—date and country of birth, height, weight, eyes and hair, citizenship status unknown, some other bits of slag from the notebook. “Minneapolis-St. Paul’s a hunch,” I added. “If it pans out, she has a car, or at least a driver’s license, so she ought to be on file at the secretary of state’s office. No picture, sorry. Try the morgues and hospitals. She missed three important appointments in a row beginning the middle of November.”

  “Department of Motor Vehicles issues licenses here, not the secretary of state.” It was the absent tone he used whenever he lectured someone on regional terminology or the rules of grammar; he was the first detective in a family of university professors. “There might be something in that bout with infantile paralysis. I don’t guess she gets around on crutches, or you’d have mentioned it. Maybe not, though. One time a police inspector described a missing witness for me, tattoos included, very detailed. Left out the fact the guy was a Siamese twin.”

  “No help there. She was always sitting down when the contact arrived. It’s a lead if you can make a lead out of it. She might need a regular prescription. Any doctors or pharmacists on your snitch list?”

  “Don’t need ’em. I’ll see what Bill Gates has to say. Not plugged in yet, are you?”

  “Computers make me nervous. ‘Select any key to proceed.’ Too many choices.”

  “The technology keeps changing. If you don’t hop on soon, it’ll leave you behind.”

  “My first reaction to that is to say good-bye.”

  He switched gears without pausing. “Want us to hang on to her?”
r />   “No contact. Just let me know where she can be reached.” I breathed in and out, dreading what came next. “This one has a deadline. She has to be alive on the thirteenth.”

  “Shit. Of February? Shit.” More telephones purred. Someone on the other side of a thin partition was arguing on a separate line. The sound got muffled—Corky’s big paw cupping the mouthpiece—the head of the firm yelled. When he came back on, his was the only voice I heard. “I’ll put Spitzer on it. He can make the Dalai Lama take a swing at him, but he goes through dead bolts and doormen like shit through a pigeon. This might tip you over into the red. His bailbondsman’s into me for twenty grand already.”

  “How’s my credit history?”

  “What the fuck’s that?” We swatted some more insults back and forth, and he said I’d hear from him. He didn’t say good-bye. His superstitions went back to the Inchon invasion.

  I hung up with the snuggly feeling that Minneapolis-St. Paul was covered, for whatever it was worth, lit a cigarette, took two puffs, put it out, and got up to peer out through the film that covered the window on both sides. The dusty gold Corsica was parked across the street with both men inside. It reminded me of the day Frank Acardo took three in the belly, but that wasn’t what was bothering me.