Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels Read online

  “Your people will get around to it,” I said. “You’ve been busy tapping wires and waterboarding suspects. I don’t know how you get done as much as you do.”

  Hornet fluttered his lips in an accurate approximation of a fart. He was an eloquent man when all was said and done.

  I went on. “All you had to do was pick up a phone. Instead, you broke into my house, drank my liquor, told me to get dressed and come along for a ride. I didn’t ask where; I pay my taxes, it’s in your best interest to keep me healthy and solvent. Healthy anyway. At the end of the ride is a fat circus wagon I don’t enjoy being in the same room with even in the daytime, who offers to hang chains on me because I laughed at him. With angels like you looking out for me, who the hell needs devils?”

  Thaler said, “Is that really a thing? I’ve seen you fake tantrums before.”

  I moved a shoulder. “The Hornet part. The rest was okay seeing as how it was you.”

  “You’re no picnic yourself, pal.” The lieutenant was redder than ever. I wondered if there was a pool downtown on just when he’d throw a piston rod and if I could get in. But I had an unfair advantage. Some people walk around with all their buttons exposed.

  “Were you here?” Thaler asked.

  I smiled. “Now, was that so hard?”

  “Cuff him,” Hornet said. “I’ll take the reprimand.”

  The officer hovered, jingling his manacles back and forth like a slinky. He wasn’t a collector of bad paper like his lieutenant.

  “That’s one sure way of shutting him up for good,” Thaler said.

  “Now say something that sounds bad.”

  She made no response, kept her eyes on me.

  I nodded finally. “I was here yesterday morning. I made my pitch and Crossgrain bought it; three days’ worth, anyway, to hunt down his property. He got one.”

  She asked me what I’d found out.

  “Just that the first day on a case is a waste of daylight, but I already knew that. That’s why I didn’t put the bottle away.”

  “Who’d you talk to?” she asked.

  “I blew my time. Blowing yours too would be extravagant.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Your client’s dead. Why tease?”

  “If he weren’t, you wouldn’t have gotten that much. That’s the private part of ‘private investigator.’ I can’t compete against the public sector without it.”

  “That’s not much encouragement to keep a leash on Hornet.”

  “If I was on a leash, it sure as hell wouldn’t be you holding it,” he said.

  “I heard you before, Lieutenant; it’s your crime scene. Until it isn’t.” She reached up to adjust the glasses she hadn’t worn since the operation. She frowned when she realized her mistake. “What’s your theory on what went down here. Walker? Even a busted slot pays off if you whack it often enough.”

  “In that case I’m overdue for a jackpot.” I looked at the vintage TVs, saw only my funhouse reflection in the bulging glass. “They were after the box all right. Crossgrain showed it to me so I’d know what to look for. It was a sample he ordered before committing himself to an entire shipment. That’s why it wasn’t with the others. When he flashed it on television, they came back for it—him, too. He wasn’t home the first time, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Your investigation would be at least twenty-four hours older and those cottonmouths outside would be the only reason I knew about it at all.”

  “Kind of an alternate universe,” she said. “What makes you so sure they’d have killed him then?”

  “You said yourself it was a hit, planned and executed. When wouldn’t matter.”

  “We know the when. We need the why.”

  “Homicide needs the why,” I said. “It usually leads to the who. That’s their end game, but for you it’s just the jumping-off place. That’s why you’re here, snarling at Hornet over the same gnawed-over bone.”

  We locked glances for a little. She was as hard to read as always. She turned to Hornet. “A favor. Sergeant.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry. For some reason you’ll always be sergeant to me.”

  “Yeah, I got the common touch. What?”

  “Send your people home.”

  “You got something against overtime?”

  “You’re in charge, as you keep reminding me, so what I have to say includes you, but that’s as far as my clearance goes.”

  “What about Walker?”

  “You’ve had almost as much experience with him as I have. How many people do you know who served jail time more than once for not opening up? I’m talking people, not career crooks. The first time usually cures them. I don’t think he’s publishing his memoirs anytime soon.”

  “Who’d buy them?” I asked.

  He let that steep, then told the uniform and the apprentice medical examiner to take it on the ankles. “If Siddons is still in the kitchen, tell him to wait in the car. He can play with the radio.”

  The cop found his feet and the kid hoisted his case. After the door closed at the top of the stairs we waited for the front door to do the same. When it had, Thaler looked around.

  “They—he—whatever—didn’t make this mess looking for that box,” she said. “The energy was better spent messing up our vic until he told them where they could find what they wanted. That gave them a head start on the rest of what they came for.”

  I found a cigarette in a pocket of my Windbreaker and played with it, just to have something to occupy my hands. The smell from the chemical they’d used to test for blood or whatever impressed me as too volatile for striking matches. In any case my bad leg was aching more than my lungs. “He dialed nine-one-one, you said?”

  Hornet answered for her. “Someone did. Caller ID put a lot of trace experts out of work, but it’s sure faster.”

  “He showed me a doohickey that lets him surf through menus using an old-fashioned rotary phone.”

  “So that’s what that was,” he said. “He had it in his pocket with your card.”

  Crossgrain hadn’t changed clothes. Many people who worked at home didn’t bother often. I seemed to remember he’d smelled a little musty, like old magazines stored in a damp corner. Plenty of people I’d had to deal with smelled worse. Hornet’s aftershave would kill a gnat at ten paces.

  I said, “That’s what bothers me. It’s a wonder Master Po waited while he dialed.”

  Thaler and Hornet exchanged looks. “We figured he had a cell with his home number on it and called the emergency line as he was breaking for the stairs,” the lieutenant said. “We didn’t find one, but we assumed the killer took it with him for some reason.”

  “I wasn’t told that.” Butter wouldn’t melt in Thaler’s mouth. Iron might.

  “And you’re so good at sitting on information we agreed to withhold.”

  I broke up the fight. “Crossgrain preferred old for old’s sake, just like his customer base. He wouldn’t have had a cell. Your killer called nine-one-one from the landline and hung up on his way out. He wanted the victim found as early as possible.”

  “Some kind of warning,” said Thaler. “Shape up or else.”

  “Your turn. Deputy.” I smoothed the cigarette between two fingers and put it back in the pack.

  PART TWO

  WEAR AND TERROR

  NINE

  “We never had this conversation,” Thaler said.

  “We haven’t had it yet.” It was impossible to tell when Hornet was being thick on purpose.

  “Let’s just have it,” I said. “It’ll be on the Drudge Report tomorrow whatever we do.”

  “Let’s pretend it won’t and practice shutting up.” She looked from him to me. I tried looking earnest back. “The terrorists are running out of money.”

  I said, “I knew it was going to be terrorists. I’m stopping on the way home and buying a lottery ticket.”

  Hornet told me to shut the fuck up. “I knew they were running low on suicide bombers. I didn
’t know they were strapped for cash. We taking up a collection?”

  “Now you shut the fuck up,” she said. “We suspected a suicide bomber crunch when they went to women, who as we know are five-cent returnables in the Islamic world; no forty virgins and a trip to Miami Beach for them. We were sure of it when they went to mental defectives.”

  “As opposed to fanatics who are mentally sound.” Every Leap Year, Hornet makes an intelligent remark. It was almost worth waiting for.

  Thaler let it coast. “Attrition loses most wars. The side less capable of replacing personnel and equipment sues for peace. That’s a matter of economics, not dedication. God knows these sand barons can chuck a rock in any direction in their hemisphere and hit a pocket of reinforcements. But those recruits have to be fed and supplied with arms and transportation and methods of communicating with each other and their command. You can’t just stroll into the Baghdad Walmart and load up on TracFones on credit.”

  Hornet said, “I’ve got to dip into equity to fill up at a Mobil station. I thought most of that money went straight into Sheikh Asscrack’s mattress.”

  “But it isn’t coming back out. The oil emirs like to see our buildings fall down, but when push comes to shove they like their gold-plated belly dancers and Atlantic-size swimming pools more, especially when the return on their investment isn’t as spectacular as it was in the beginning. They’re spoiled by fast profits and expect the same from their intrigues. Well, the Blessed Struggle is bogged down worse than we are over there, and the hose has sprung plenty of leaks.

  “At the top of the food chain, the money’s moved the same way as on Wall Street, through offshore accounts by electronic transfer, but a bushel of zeroes on a computer printout won’t buy a handful of grain or a box of shells in the Syrian Desert. Before entering the theater of war the securities are converted into hard cash and shipped by truck and pack animal and on Omar’s back. The temptation’s too much for anyone but a foam-at-the-mouth lunatic, and those are nowhere near as common as they look in those government-staged protests on CNN. Everyone takes his cut, from General Buck Abdullah on down to Private First Class Billy Joe Mohammed. The amount that makes it to the weapons bazaars scores barely enough dynamite to blow the head off a Barbie doll.”

  “Greed.” Hornet was grinning. “I knew we’d come up with an export they can use.”

  “We and our Arab allies can claim partial credit for the shortfall when we froze the assets of known terrorist supporters in the U.S. and the Middle East. The purse strings are tight.”

  I said, “I’m enjoying this as much as Hornet, especially the clever names for Islamic fascists, but we were discussing how to get Girls Gone Wild on your Motorola after HDTV kicks in.” Actually I saw a glimmer of light, but I wanted to catch her before the slide projector came out.

  “When Congress passed that law requiring all commercial stations to switch to digital, they created the biggest cash cow this country has seen since the tobacco settlement. That’s where we think the terrorists are raising funds now. Ever hear of MacArthur Industries?”

  My eyes strayed to the spot where Crossgrain had put the sample converter box in my hands; but we were all out in the open now. “That’s the outfit our stiff ordered from,” I said. “No one else in town seems to have heard of it.” I deliberately blocked out Eugenia Pappas’ little hesitation when I’d mentioned the name. I couldn’t pack up the poker face just yet.

  “I’d heard of it. I read the briefings from Washington. So far, though, you and Crossgrain and the news crew that interviewed him yesterday were the only ones to have actually seen one of the converters. We haven’t been able to identify a single customer. One of our people happened to be watching when the camera moved in on the manufacturer’s plate.” She heard herself and frowned. “Okay, he happened to be watching because he happens to be employed to monitor all the local media. It’s a couch potato’s dream job and he takes it seriously.”

  “So that’s why I got feds in my pants,” said Hornet. “Took you long enough to clue me in.”

  “It took almost that long to get the information through channels. The first police team was on the scene when I came to talk to Crossgrain.”

  “Thank Christ. I was starting to think you had a mole in the CID.”

  “If we did, I wouldn’t be told. I don’t have that kind of clearance.”

  “Shit. I bet it’s Siddons. He couldn’t find wax in his ear.”

  I said, “MacArthur has a drop box in Southfield. I don’t guess that’s news.”

  “It’s got boxes in fourteen cities across the continent, including Toronto, where we think they’re shipping the merchandise into North America, only not through that box. The Canadians think nine-eleven was a capital jest, but so far no one’s crashed a plane into—I don’t know; a statue of Benedict Arnold?” She had a grudge of some sort against our neighbors across the river. I think her uncle was killed by a moose. “Where you order from determines which plate they screw on the back. We think. It’s the biggest shell game in the world.

  “The reason we’re looking so hard at MacArthur is it’s the only company trading in the converters we haven’t been able to trace directly to its headquarters. The snarl of dummy addresses, holding companies, subsidiaries, sub-subsidiaries, and sub-sub-subsidiaries makes the search for the Nile look like a ride through the Tunnel of Love.”

  “Crossgrain told me he ordered from an eight hundred number,” I said. “You must’ve been able to trace that.”

  “It led to a boiler room where the operators process the incoming through an Internet address. When we tried tracking it, we got so much spam it shut the District down for four hours.”

  Hornet and I stood silent while she collected her thoughts, appreciating her ordeal. The lieutenant belched.

  She went on. “Some of the companies we connected with MacArthur are legitimate corporations trading on the New York Stock Exchange and in Tokyo. Their CEOs say they never heard of MacArthur, and we’re not so sure they’re all lying. It’s the supernumeraries who look after the nuts and bolts; nailing the right clerk or secretary or junior exec is like trying to tail one bee in a swarm. We don’t have the people, and when I say we I’m including the FBI and the CIA and Homeland Security and the intelligence divisions of all the branches of the U.S. military.”

  “Wow,” Hornet said, when she ran down finally. “It almost makes me sorry I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  She let him have her cool brown gaze. “Maybe you will when someone drives a car bomb through Thirteen Hundred.”

  “It already looks like someone did. You been away a while, so you forgot what police do. Walker’s right, for once: When somebody’s careless enough to drop a corpse in our streets like a turd, it’s our job to scrape it up. If we can find out who dropped it, we flush it and go home, just like a guy walking his dog with a plastic bag.

  “I ain’t spy material. For one thing I’m too fat to jump on roofs and hook up with shady characters in rug shops, and for another I don’t have that kind of time. I just had a file dumped on my desk that went cold two years ago. It’s still cold. No new evidence, no witnesses we didn’t talk to ten, twelve times, just a family member that hit it off with the attorney general over a plate of spaghetti in Lansing last month, but it’s open again and that’s that, we make room for it next to all these heroin overdoses and now Crossgrain. If you can tell me why he had to die just because he took delivery on a shipment of legal merchandise, then I’ll give a rat’s ass.” He waited, watching her with his mean little pig eyes folded in suet.

  It was a barn-burner from start to finish. I wouldn’t have thought he had the wind to get through it.

  “I can’t tell you until I have a chance to examine the merchandise,” she said. “So far, Walker’s the only person with a pulse who’s gotten close enough to touch it.” She looked at me, expectation dripping all over.

  “I hefted it is all. I’ve held heavier Manhattans.”

  To Hornet
she said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass why Crossgrain was killed if finding out doesn’t lead me to who sent the shipment.”

  “I’m just after the shipment,” I said. “If anyone’s asking.”

  “You’re a lame duck,” said Thaler. “Your client’s in the shop with a cracked block.”

  “Where I can’t give him a refund. I still owe two days on the retainer.”

  “It won’t do his ghost any good if you spend ’em sitting in a cell at County,” Hornet said.

  “I’m confused. Am I a lame duck or a rat’s ass?”

  The deputy marshal moved in close to Hornet and said something in a low voice. He pushed out his paunch and flattened his hands against his kidneys, like a pregnant woman with a bad back, and turned away from me, burying his response in two and a half feet of blubber and polyester. I felt like a customer in a butcher shop getting ready to buy two pounds of thumb.

  When they were facing me again Thaler said, “How about staked goat?”

  I asked what it paid.

  “Two days on the street,” Hornet said, “no interference from us. All you got to do to thank us is come running back with whatever you get.”

  “If it’s all the same to you I’ll take the jail time. I can use the R and R.”

  He said, “That’s a bluff we can call. Me and the marshal.”

  “Deputy,” she said.

  “International terrorism amps up the volume. The city can’t house you without a charge, but Deputy Marshal Thaler can dock you in the Milan Federal Correctional Institution for reasons of national security, same old specialty of the house. The Bill of Rights don’t exist when the republic’s at stake.”

  “Why not Guantanamo? I can top up my tan.”

  “There’s a three-month waiting list for admission to Gitmo,” Thaler said. “Can’t think why. The food’s better in Milan. Justice likes to keep its prisoners fat and sluggish.”

  I stuck a hand in my pocket and turned the cigarette pack over and over. “Who would I report to?”

  “Me.” Once again they spoke at the same time.