Sinister Heights Page 8

  Jerrys tone was ripe with being impressed with himself. Pure dumb luck has done that to better men than he. I snuffed out my butt in the ashtray next to the telephone. “Who runs the shelter?”

  “Broad named Mrs. Emory Chapin owns it, that’s public record. She might run it or not. I could find out, but it’d cost you a lot more than two hundred. The fucking CIA should be so quiet.”

  “What’s the address?”

  He gave it to me. I didn’t have a pencil or even a safety pin, so I repeated it aloud, committing it to memory. There was a pause on his end then, and I knew the story had a kicker. I waited him out.

  “I got Mrs. Chapin’s address too,” he said. “Also her phone number.”

  I told him to hang on and went into the kitchen. I fetched a magnetic pad off the refrigerator and a pen and returned to the living room. “Okay, Jerry, I’m impressed. I’ll lay twenty on OSU next time they’re in Ann Arbor.”

  “Lay it on me instead. I let a vice president at Ameritech pay for a Rolex I fished out of his kid’s skivvies last year. He’s good for an unlisted number every couple of months. You got a kid, Walker?”

  “Not yet. Probably not ever.”

  “Good. They’re a fucking Achilles heel.” He gave me the information.

  I wrote it down. “I’ll send you a check.”

  “Send cash.”

  “It might get stolen.”

  “It won’t. I told you, I don’t moonlight no more. Come back down to God’s country anytime you can’t stand the mosquitoes in Michigan.”

  He hung up. I didn’t hear of him again until a minister’s wife got frisked at the outlet mall for a pair of pantyhose she didn’t have on her and she sued for half a million. The mall let him go. I don’t know what his credit union clerk did to him, but a couple of months later the minister’s wife got nailed wheeling a display model gas grill out the door of a Montgomery Ward’s in Cleveland, and this time the charge stuck.

  It was too late to call Mrs. Emory Chapin. I went back to bed, woke up when the alarm clock clicked just before seven, drank two cups of coffee, and sat around reading the Free Press until eight. There was a long piece about neighborhood improvements in the Mexican community on Detroit’s west side; another ethnic group heard from, adding salsa to the baklava and cannolis and kielbasa and barbecued ribs aboard the groaning local table. It made me hungry, so I got up and made French toast.

  Before making the call I used the bathroom and set out a fresh pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. There was no telling how long I’d be charming Mrs. Chapin over the telephone before my shovel rang against metal.

  I got a putative female voice with a strand of barbed wire running through it. I pictured Jerry’s diesel job. She was only mildly abusive, but it was early yet and she hadn’t caught her stride. She knew nothing about shelters or any party named Constance Glendowning. I asked if I happened to be addressing Mrs. Chapin. She knew nothing about anyone who went by that name. She knew nothing about pretty much everything and made it plenty clear it was my fault for assuming otherwise. Just for the novelty of it I told the truth, that the Glendowning party was in line for an inheritance and if she preferred to be the one who did the calling she could reach me at that number or the office later. I left the usual references—police, lawyers, a couple of state legislators not yet under indictment—and threw in the name of a social services caseworker from a child-abandonment job, to knock the sharp corners off the testosterone; but she stepped all over the names, insisting someone had given me the wrong number, said goodbye, and went away with the connection.

  I got out of the robe and into the shower, scraped off the Cro-Magnon growth of the night, put on a suit fresh from the cleaners, and drove to the office, where I sat around making a good impression on the walls until the telephone rang at ten.

  “Amos?”

  That Jamaican lilt sent me way back. I felt the outer layers of shell dropping off like something I didn’t need anymore, or hadn’t yet needed then; or maybe I was just coming down from a hot flash.

  “Iris?”

  “Only to you. I’m Mrs. Emory Chapin to everyone else. You need to work on your people skills. You didn’t make a hit with Ms. Stainback.”

  “If she’d let me get as far as knowing her name was Ms. Stainback I’d have sent flowers.”

  “That’s what I mean. She isn’t the type that appreciates them.”

  “To hell with her, then. You got married, I heard. The name wasn’t Chapin. And it was Kingston town, not Monroe.”

  “Kingston. Roger Whittaker’s the only one who calls it Kingston town. Charles died; leukemia. I won’t discuss Emory. I only wear the name because if he heard what it’s connected with now he’d have a stroke. And how are you? Still single and mean as a sewer cat?”

  I didn’t deny either assumption. I’d known Iris when she worked the streets for a needleful of Mexican brown; any secrets we had were new since then. “How long have you been running a shelter?”

  “Two years. Five years before that running errands and observing while I waited out accreditation. I saw things I never saw in a crackhouse. I thought I was a tough little street rat before I got this gig. I can’t blame Ms. Stainback for being the way she is. I’d have got that way myself if I didn’t know there was more to the world than this. What do you want with Constance Glendowning?”

  That was Iris: business up front, no sitting around chewing over old times and Ferris wheels. I told her what I’d told the other woman. “It isn’t a cover,” I added. “There’s serious money involved.”

  “Money’s always serious. I’m giving a deposition in Detroit today, and I’m late. Where would you like to take me to dinner?”

  “Ms. Stainback might not approve.”

  “To hell with her, to quote a wise old sage. Make it some place that serves steak without a pile of underdone Brussels sprouts on the side. I gave up vegetarianism when I gave up Mr. Ghapin.”

  “Smoking or no?”

  “No. The son of a bitch may drive up my cholesterol, but he won’t give me cancer. I’ve had my fill of hospitals after Charles.”

  I said there was a place I hadn’t tried down the street from the MGM Grand. “It should be quiet. People who lost the rent don’t whoop it up. We can meet there.”

  She got the name of the restaurant and the location and said six-thirty. “If you get there early, go down the street and put down fifty for me on seven.”

  “Red or black?”

  “What you think?” She could still put on the Twelfth Street twang when she wanted to. “Don’t bring flowers.”

  “How about a Hummel?”

  “What’s a Hummel?”

  “A kewpie doll with a pedigree. Bum joke. Will I know you?”

  “You’re still a detective, right?”

  When we were through talking I sat thinking for a little while, about a Detroit with an annual homicide rate approaching four figures and a man in the mayor’s office that had cost the city a million dollars to redecorate to his taste. There’d been plenty of work in those days, with cops moonlighting as contract killers and jealous wives looking for their husbands with magnums in their handbags. When I’d had enough nostalgia I called to reserve a table for two in nonsmoking and did a little investigative work not related to the Stutch case until noon. Then I went out looking for a place that served underdone Brussels sprouts for lunch. I had a hankering.

  When I came out picking my teeth a caramel-colored Chevy was parked behind my Cutlass on the street with someone smoking a cigarette on the passenger’s side. The visor was down and I couldn’t see his face. It was only worth noticing because I sometimes do that when I’m watching for someone and I want the idly curious passersby to think I’m waiting for the driver to come back from an errand.

  A few blocks later I spotted a caramel-colored Chevy in my rearview mirror, three lengths behind and a lane over. There was no passenger and the driver’s face was just a blank oval in front of the headrest.r />
  It didn’t mean anything. It’s a popular color and there are more American-made cars in the city than anything else except one-way streets and liquor stores. Just because I was brought up on Steve McQueen movies I took several shortcuts and a couple of long ones, nicked a yellow light on Michigan, and looked for the car. It wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  As it happened I didn’t get the chance to bet on the black seven or any other number. A squirt in a ballcap was waiting in my reception room to deliver a summons on behalf of a deadbeat dad I’d flushed out of a woodpile six months before, and I was on the telephone with a lawyer all afternoon getting out of it. His fee ate up what I’d earned on the job. No one sues you over the cases you can’t close. It’s hell on incentive.

  I got to the restaurant ten minutes late, but still ahead of Iris. That much about her hadn’t changed. An aristocratic hostess seated me out of the main traffic path and a chirpy young waitress wearing a necktie with Yosemite Sam on it brought me a double Scotch. I was stirring the ice when Iris drifted in.

  The clientele was mostly the MTV generation, black-dyed hair and clothes from the Morticia Addams line, so she didn’t turn as many heads as she would have among the general population, but she didn’t slip in under the radar either. She wore a cherry-red blazer with suede pumps to match, an ivory silk skirt, and a turban that might have been made from the same bolt of cloth, at one time available only to members of the Egyptian royal family. She didn’t wear a blouse. The dusting of freckles slightly lighter than her medium-brown skin spilled like gold dust into the shadow where the blazers lapels met. I knew where it ended, but that had been a long time ago, when there were still canals on Mars. She looked like Cleopatra after a makeover.

  I rose and she made a little purring growl deep in her throat and hugged me tight. She wore no scent, which didn’t mean she had none. She smelled as clean as Kilimanjaro.

  Keeping her hands on my upper arms, she pushed back for an objective view. “You haven’t aged a minute. What’s your secret?”

  “Choosing liars for friends. You look like a new car.”

  “Today I feel like an ’83 Pacer. My past came up in the deposition. It was like drowning and seeing my life flash in front of my eyes. It got an X rating.”

  “I think it’s NC-17 now.”

  “Who gives a shit? I spent most of it in sweaty little rooms filled with smoke. I ought to look like a Virginia ham.”

  “I just came off four hours with a lawyer. That makes me an all-day sucker. What are you drinking?”

  “Whatever’s open. In a bowl.”

  I caught the waitress’ eye while Iris was seating herself and ordered another double Scotch. When we were alone, Iris placed a red handbag on the corner of the table. It made a thump.

  “That sounds heavier than a twenty-five,” I said.

  “Thirty-two. I traded up after Mr. Chapin. I’ve got CCW permits in Michigan and Ohio. My life’s been threatened so many times I just tell the cops to use the same report and plug in new names. When I bother to call them at all.”

  “Husbands?”

  “Wives, too. I don’t counsel battered men but I refer them to people who do. Then there are the women who start remembering all the sweet little things once they’ve healed up. To hear them tell it I’ve broken up more happy homes than I did when I hooked. I don’t keep a cat anymore. They nailed one to a tree in the yard and wrung the other’s neck and threw it through my bedroom window.”

  “Why do you stick?”

  “Why do you? That’s not a razor scratch on your cheek. Looks like someone’s class ring.”

  “Hood ornament. I got lost and wandered into Iroquois Heights.”

  She shuddered, without affectation. “Aunt Beryl used to tell us horror stories about that place, just to keep us on John R. I hoped when. Detroit started sweeping the ordnance off the streets they’d pick there to blow it up.”

  “It would take at least that. The dirty cops need somewhere to go, and the Heights is as far as their beer bellies will take them.” I swirled my cubes around the glass. “How is old Beryl? Is there an alumni newsletter?”

  “I heard she’s in a nursing home, in Lansing. Probably organizing the geriatric talent and smuggling in Viagra to keep up the demand, among other things. Word gets around. It’s a small community and getting smaller. AIDS scared off all the customers with anything to lose. What’s left is barely human and not quite animal. I got out under the wire.”

  Young Lady Yosemite brought Iris her drink and waited while she read the menu. Iris had developed fine lines around her eyes and a crease at one corner of her mouth that I might have mistaken for a dimple if I hadn’t known her when she didn’t have it. Apart from that she could have passed for ten years younger than she was. It had been nothing but gale-force winds for her since bloomers, and all they’d managed to do was wear her smooth, like a ship’s figurehead carved from amber.

  “I’ll have the rib-eye,” she said. “Blood rare, with a baked potato.”

  “What dressing would you like on your salad?”

  “Iceberg lettuce?”

  “Romaine.” The waitress sounded offended.

  “No salad then. If I get the craving I’ll munch on a dandelion in the parking lot.” She handed back the menu.

  I ordered fettuccini and another Scotch. When the waitress left I said, “Tough day in court?”

  “No serious complaints. When they’re suing me they’re not throwing their wives and sweethearts through glass doors.” She smiled; “You’ll make it up to her. You’ve always been generous to working girls.”

  “You haven’t seen me when I’m going my own expenses.”

  That made it business. She sipped her drink, set it down, and folded her hands on the table. She wore no rings or other jewelry except a tiny gold heart on a chain around her neck, an old trinket I remembered well. “I’m not sure I can give you Constance Glendowning. Two weeks ago she couldn’t face anything in pants. Last week she started to thaw toward the son of a bitch that put her in the shelter to begin with.”

  “It happens.”

  “It shouldn’t. Not since Betty Friedan. She’s got an education, computer skills. They need updating, but she isn’t one of those Depression wives who can’t balance a bloody checkbook without running back to Andy Capp. What do you think of this?” She touched a finger to the crease at the corner of her mouth.

  “It makes you look a little like Drew Barrymore.”

  “Thirty-six months ago I looked like Freddy Krueger. Mr. Chapin threw an ice-crusher at me. Three thousand bucks’ worth of oral surgery. He’s still paying it off; that was part of the settlement. When he pays. I’ll go back to him, too, someday. With a chainsaw.”

  “I didn’t know they still made ice-crushers.”

  “Back then I didn’t know they still made Chapins. Now I know it’s a growth industry. Anyway, a few days ago, Constance finally started to get angry—partly for what Glendowning did to her, pardy because of what he might have started doing to her son if she didn’t get out when she did. I’d like that to continue. Your taking her to see someone about an inheritance might set her back.”

  “He’s Glendowning’s son too.”

  “Well, you know what the man said when his neighbor tried to stop him from shooting his ducks: ‘They’re my ducks.’”

  “Glendowning isn’t in this.”

  “Not the point. She’s living in the present finally, thinking about the future. You’re talking about taking her back to the past. Now that I’ve said that I’m sure I can’t give her to you.”

  “This accreditation you’ve got,” I said. “That make you her legal guardian?”

  “It doesn’t have to, Amos. The house is built to last. And I’ve got friends on the local Domestic Violence Unit. Those cops are like dogs: One year there is like seven anywhere else on the force.”

  We were still looking at each other when the waitress came with bread. She set
down the basket noiselessly and retreated without a word.

  I said, “The inheritance is from Leland Stutch.”

  The ice-crusher had killed a nerve or something; that corner of her mouth remained motionless while a twitch shot through the rest. She raised her glass and took another sip. The effort of moving slowly would have been less plain to someone who didn’t know her.

  “Those lawyers take their time when it comes to making someone else rich,” she said finally. “How long’s he been in the ground?”

  “It isn’t even the lawyers’ idea to include Constance in the circle. Stutch’s widow hired me to find her and her mother. It seems the old pirate had a late-life fling and sprouted a whole new limb on the family tree.”

  She made that same cockeyed twitch. “That’s the problem with having too much money for too many years. You get to thinking you’re outside the reach of the laws of nature. How much are we talking about?”

  “How many zeroes does it take to make it all right with you?”

  “Go to hell. If it’s just four it means a whole new life for Constance and Matthew, separate from Glendowning’s. Money buys everything.”

  “It will be more than four. If she wants to get a blood-and-tissue test and take it to a jury, it could be seven, but Matthew will be out of college when it’s finished, by which time all the lawyers will be up to their briefs in Porsches. It might be seven anyway. Stutch made most of his principal when the IRS was still a gleam in Woodrow Wilson’s eye.”

  Our meals came. Iris made a test cut on her steak to make sure the blood was running and shot the waitress a smile from the hip, which sent her away on a pink cloud. She’d forgotten my drink and didn’t give me the chance to remind her. There was a lesson in that, but I’d hang on to it the same way I remembered my high school French. Anyway the fettuccini was good.