Monkey in the Middle--An Amos Walker Mystery Page 5

  * * *

  The human mind is funny. Under some circumstances, the first thought is the right one. This wasn’t one of those circumstances.

  The corpse at our feet belonged to the federal agent we’d ditched minutes before: Same gray clothes, same dark hair in a 1950s cut, same black shoes with waffle treads, suitable for driving or walking on hard tiles without making noise, the identical dark glasses, not quite wrapped around his face now, with one side bow loose and drawing a black arc under his left cheekbone to expose an eye as big as a golf ball; they look bigger than you think when they start from the socket. It stuck out almost as far as his tongue.

  But it wasn’t the same man.

  Just to be sure I leaned down and touched his cheek. It had grown cool in the shade. There hadn’t been time enough for that, even if he’d figured out where we were going and beat us to the spot. It was his twin, the one who’d gotten out of his car to report to his partner during the surveillance handoff outside the café in Dearborn.

  There wasn’t any need to check for a pulse. Even apart from the loss of body heat, the angry ligature around his neck was the purple-black shade of no oxygen reaching his lungs again, ever; the cord was buried so deep in the flesh only the twist of thin filament the killer had wound around his hands was visible. He lay on his side, his half-zipped jacket gapped open just enough to show the square-handled automatic in an open-toed sheath under his left arm. It hadn’t done him any good with both hands involved trying to keep himself from strangling to death.

  Right-hand holster. If the two were in fact twins, that might make his partner a lefty. That was of no significance then or later. There’s no practical pattern to how one thinks in times of shock.

  Not that what I was feeling qualified as shock compared to Shane Sothern. When I straightened up, his face was grayer than the bare cement walls and his teeth were chattering. I gave him a gentle slap on the cheek. You don’t smack a trauma case hard. It can send him the rest of the way over the edge, same as waking a sleepwalker.

  In retrospect, I should have remembered I was holding a gun in that hand.

  The barrel left a pink welt clear across his left ear and the weight of the piece knocked him off balance. I had to throw my arms around him to keep him from joining the dead man on the floor.

  In any case, it was one of those rare times when a good stiff jolt does the trick. He swept a palm to his cheek, brought it away to inspect it for blood—there was none—shook his head, and gaped at me with the expression of a child who’s been spanked for something he didn’t do.

  “Sorry.” I let go, jerked straight his corduroy coat, and holstered the .38. “If you’re not up to it, find a place to sit down while I check the place out.”

  “I’m okay. She might be hurt.”

  She was probably worse; but if I had to slap him again I might as well wait.

  As it turned out, we had the place to ourselves. A half-wall with a piece of pegboard attached separated us from the adjoining bay. There was no sign of Abelia Hunt there, apart from a sleeping bag, greasy fast-food sacks, and a dozen or so empty water bottles dumped in the old grease pit. An organized person, our fugitive from justice; once a clerk, always a clerk. We didn’t look for toilet facilities. She would likely take care of business camper-style, bagging up waste and scooping out a hole in the dirt outside after dark. How long she’d been doing that in that spot, maybe Shane could tell me later, when and if it mattered.

  Four empty steel sockets, all that remained of the hydraulic lift, had resisted all the efforts of even our talented local scrap hounds. They were stuffed to the tops with trash.

  There was a built-in workbench of unplaned pine, the top scarred all over from banging on fenders and frozen pistons, burned by battery acid, and stained with every color of lubricant, with rectangular holes where the metal drawers had been removed.

  I probably wasn’t the first to make that discovery, or of the missing hoist, or for that matter to look for it. Someone had scouted out the place and concluded there was nothing for the scroungers to come back after. In that neighborhood, there was no reason for anyone ever to visit; even the homeless had their choice of more comfortable accommodations in our abundance of vacant houses. I wondered how many accomplices Abelia had in her flight from justice, or if my companion had more talents than he seemed to advertise. He’d managed to slough off a serious case of shock without even rolling up his sleeves. Then again, I’m not qualified to pass verdict. It had been too long since anything had given me a case of my own.

  We went back to the corpse. Why, except to confirm we hadn’t imagined it? It sure wasn’t to do more detecting. In another life I’d have frisked the body for whatever it could tell me; in another life I had. But if he was any kind of field agent his pockets wouldn’t turn up anything more informative than an official ID with his name and whatever alphabet agency had employed him. There wasn’t anything I could do with it.

  We hadn’t imagined the corpse. It lay there as fixed in its spot as if the place had been built around it.

  Nothing else to report, apart from some overlapping footprints in the dust and loose grit on the floor. Sherlock Holmes would spend a lot of time on them, and provide a description of all the owners, down to their body mass index, the length of their stride, and whether they preferred their eggs over easy or sunny-side up. I hadn’t that much leisure; not if I was going to get us both out of there before Penn came barging in to find out what had happened to Teller. And not unless I could scare up a client with a bankroll big enough to make it worth the risk.

  NINE

  Outside, clouds were shoving in from Canada, threatening either a storm or the suffocation that comes with a low ceiling and high humidity, tight as the seal on a pickle jar. I could feel pressure building already; I hoped it was the weather. It was still bright enough to see a tire track in a bald spot in the grass a few doors down from Atlas Motors, the tread marks as sharp as etched steel. That had to be the only fresh rubber for blocks around. A good forensics team could likely match it to those behind the Dearborn café, and the detectives could speculate that someone, possibly the murderer, had fled the scene in the feds’ car.

  And, being detectives, would speculate that killer, thief, and Abelia Hunt were one and the same.

  We dawdled just long enough to confirm no one was around who might tie us to the scene. Then we retraced our steps to the Cutlass. A backyard dog we’d somehow managed not to alert earlier flung itself against a wire fence, yammering like all the hounds of hell. We didn’t jump more than a foot. The fighting pit bull, half-starved and pumped full of steroids, is a more appropriate Detroit mascot than a Tiger or a Lion, and has a better season record.

  I drove a route that seemed aimless but wasn’t. Soon we passed a parked gray Chrysler with a U.S. plate, a ten-minute walk from the garage, which exploded my original theory. It was the plate I’d seen leaving the Oasis. Two well-kept vehicles visiting Atlas at the same time ought to have attracted interest; but then so would a Neighborhood Watch sign. Shane seemed to have reached the same conclusion. Anyway he didn’t ask any questions.

  Back at the office, I locked us in and broke the seal on the Christmas bottle I’d put in the safe for special occasions: weddings, anniversaries, cadavers.

  “I don’t really drink.” Shane frowned at the brimming pony glass I’d put on his side of the desk.

  “Start.” I sat back and put mine away Cowboy Channel fashion; if using both hands qualifies. Anyway what I spilled didn’t burn a hole in the veneer. It was good Scotch. I refilled my glass, this time a little down from the top. The shaking had slowed.

  Shane set his down after one sip, wrinkling his nose. “Should we call the police?”

  “They wouldn’t have it five minutes before Washington rolled in and offered to send us both to the Milan federal pen for harboring a traitor. From there it’s a short hop to lethal injection.”

  “Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty,” he said, as if that were the issue.

  “The feds don’t pay attention to that. When one of their own goes down they’re the last court of appeal.”

  “I’m not harboring anyone.”

  “Not anymore. She’s your bargaining chip now. They’ll put up the needle if you tell them where she is.”

  “But I don’t know where she is!”

  “Let’s hope they don’t believe you. Still got that money?”

  He scrambled to retrieve the wad of bills. I counted them and locked them in the safe. Then I picked up the phone and got a number from Information.

  “Grasso Legal Services.”

  A female voice, cultured and steel-smooth. I dropped Abelia Hunt’s name and another voice came on.

  “This is Janet Grasso.” This one was less flinty, more aristocratic: One of those melodic Kentucky bluegrass accents that come with tall green drinks and picture hats. It matched the tall slender woman who’d accompanied Abelia into the federal building before she vanished. I’d heard the voice on the radio and TV whenever the manhunt threatened to go stale.

  I gave her my name and said I had a line on her client’s whereabouts, but my contact needed representation.

  “Mm-hm.” But she took down my professional references and asked me to hold. Thirty-two bars into “Delta Dawn” she came back on, more honey in her tone. “I don’t suppose your contact has a name.”

  “Not over the phone, and I don’t know when I can present him in person. When Uncle Sam comes around I want to tell him I’m lawyered up and go climb a flagpole.”

  “Is that all?”

  “For now.”

  She didn’t pause. “I’m flying to Washington tonight. I’ll call when I get back. If you don’t have a name for me then, I’ll give yours to Un
cle.”

  I thanked her and hung up. Shane said, “I can’t afford you and a lawyer.”

  “You won’t have to. She needs the win. Our end is to deliver a twofer: her client and whoever killed a federal agent.”

  “How can we do that?”

  “If I knew, we wouldn’t need Grasso and her trip to D.C.; part of which time I’ll spend finding out how you got into this mess and how I’m going to get you out. Me, too, if there’s time.” I took the receiver off the hook, laid it on the blotter, and turned off my cell. “Start talking.”

  He did. It sounded like something out of a Gerald Rickey novel: An “anonymous source” had put Sothern on to Abelia Hunt’s hideout just days after she fell off the earth. I’d chased too many of those ghosts to waste sweat pumping him for a name. In any case I had a hunch who it was.

  The opportunity had been too good for Kid Scoop to pass up; Barry Stackpole would’ve been on it like ketchup on a French fry. Shane had followed the directions and also the instructions about how to avoid dragging a train behind him.

  The meeting took place inside Atlas Motors. Abelia spoke around a crispy chicken sandwich and two bottles of water, a housewarming gift from the visitor. Shane wasn’t sure why she confided in him, but I was: His profile was so low a government spook wouldn’t trip over it. The rest was pure personality. Even a fugitive sought in every country in the world would find it hard not to spill her guts to such a living embodiment of Tickle Me Elmo, and he in his turn was just the kind of sap who would accept the story without testing it for leaks. It was a match made in millennial heaven.

  And it seemed too good to be true, but I accepted it as a working hypothesis. I hadn’t anything else to go on except a tire tread that in a little while would be mud mixed with road salt.

  “She’s been made the victim of a monstrous cover-up,” he said. “She came across evidence that our government has been conducting illegal surveillance on American citizens on a grand scale: interfering with mail delivery in order to record the names of their contacts, tapping their phones, bugging their homes and offices. She tried going to the media, but they treated it as a joke. Whether they’re honestly doubtful or part of the conspiracy, she doesn’t know. Anyway it was those documents she copied and shared with them that got her in trouble.

  “And there’s more she hasn’t shared,” I said. “As reasons go to join her in the bear trap, that one trumps the Galahad complex. You want the material to spice up the story you’re going to peddle.”

  His color came and went. “What do you think I am?”

  “Simmer down. There isn’t a newshound in the country who’d pass up the chance. She must know she can’t hide out forever. There are four major agencies that have nothing to do but root out threats to national security. Now, with one of their own murdered, they’ll come shooting.”

  “She knows that—about her original position, I mean. She intends to surrender herself eventually, or she did. But not before she has a chance to get her story out. That’s where I come in, no matter what you think of my reasons.”

  “This is where you go out. Now.”

  His chin wobbled. “I can’t! She’s counting on me to—”

  “—go down with her in flames. You need to brush up on your history. Sometimes these hot-button political rebels go to jail or worse; usually not, because once they make breaking news they acquire a following: Pesky folk with picket signs and pro-bono lawyers, bad for the public image and another clog in the criminal justice system. It’s the helping hands that get nailed to the cross.”

  “Give me back my money.”

  I opened the safe, took it out, and slid it across the desk, dealing myself two hundred off the top first. “Kill fee,” I said. “Rotten compensation for bending my credit with the lawyer, but I’m one of those marginal types I was talking about. I might need her in my own corner.”

  A lip got chewed. Then a head got shaken. He pushed the stack back my way with both hands. “I’ve got nowhere else to go. That’s as close to an apology as you’ll get from me.”

  Part of me wanted to punch his face through the back of his head. The rest of me was glad to see there was a sliver of steel in all that post-grad mush. I put a couple of bills in my wallet and returned the rest to the safe. When I swiveled back his way, his glass had half emptied itself. I refilled mine, topped his off, and sat back, cradling my drink in both hands. “Okay, let’s concentrate on how the party in the Foster Grants found his way to Atlas Motors.”

  “Maybe we didn’t lose him after all.”

  “Not the same spook. They weren’t really twins; not identical, anyway. Just two recent trainees from the same dye lot, and probably the same barber.”

  “I’m sure no one followed me any of the times I went to see Abelia—oh.” He went red.

  “We’ll skip last night,” I said. “You went through the rudiments of shaking a tail, but I’m as good as my advertising. What are the chances someone in the place you’re living now tipped him off? He handed off the stakeout to his relief plenty quick for someone with a hot lead. If he’d passed it on, his partner wouldn’t have had any reason to follow us. It wouldn’t be the first time a team player decided to pitch, hit, and run the bases all by himself for the sake of the sports section.”

  “I don’t see how anyone could have told him anything. I’ve only been there a couple of weeks.”

  “The desk jockey at the YMCA said you took at least one call from a woman while you were camping out there. Was the woman Abelia, and did she call you again at the Oasis?”

  His face bled out. I reminded myself to play poker with him someday. I nodded.

  “We’ll go with that, for what it’s worth, which is enough. We’re not prepping for your day in court. If you spoke on a landline, there was an extension, and if it was on a cell, someone eavesdropped. When they turn the space above a hash house into apartments, they rarely waste money on the materials.”

  “I only use my cell. She called from a pay phone.”

  I knocked the top off my glass, let the liquid pool in my throat for a moment before committing it to my stomach. “Now let’s move on to whether we’re helping a killer evade justice.”

  “No. Absolutely not. You’ll have to take that on faith. No one who would do what she did for the reasons she had would commit murder.”

  “You’re assuming the reasons she gave you were the reasons she had.”

  “What could she possibly have gained, apart from bringing attention to American citizens that their liberties are being taken away? Whatever else she might be holding back—and I’m not saying she did—what she gave to the press was dynamite, with no money exchanged or expected. She’s a patriot, not a traitor.”

  “So was Nathan Hale.” I picked up the landline and dialed another number I knew as well as my own.

  “Who are you calling?” He looked alarmed.

  “Chill out. It’s not nine-one-one.”

  The voice that answered was a cross between a pitch for the Republican Party and someone who doesn’t really care how important your call is; it had all the personality of a P.A. announcement. The owner of the machine was still using the recording that came with it. “Barry, it’s Walker. I’m at the office.”

  I cradled the receiver, picked up my glass, and met his blank look with a grin.

  “The code in the old days was to let it ring ten times; but Ma and all the Baby Bells don’t let you do that now. He’ll call back in a couple of minutes. Or not. You never know whether he’s being paranoid or out stalking someone, disguised as Mother Teresa.”

  “Who is he, some kind of spybuster?”

  “Not just spies. Tell him what you want busted, it’s busted. You said Abelia wants press. If she’d called Barry first, she might not be on the run.”

  He was still working on that when the phone rang.

  TEN

  Fairlane—named for the old Ford estate—is one of the oldest shopping malls in the country, and one of the most controversial. Some years back the local black community staged a boycott based on accusations of racial discrimination, but thanks to a lot of gassing by politicians and self-appointed activist leaders and the usual apologetic bromides, the shops and soft-pretzel stands survived.