Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels Page 9

  “I cannot. I always order many so I never run out. They are a staple of this neighborhood, a source of inexpensive protein. I know this establishment to which you refer. The owners overcharge for everything. No one would travel that far on foot just to purchase frankfurters.” He lowered his tone, although I was the only one within earshot. “They sell cigarettes alone at a discount, which they obtain from the Indian reservation near Mount Pleasant. They pay no tax, so they charge no tax. I do not support tax fraud.”

  “Does this Luis smoke?” If he did I intended to switch to his brand. He had wind enough for the Big Bad Wolf.

  “I have never seen him do so. He probably sells them on the street for a profit.”

  I couldn’t think of any more questions. That part of town seemed a narrow slice of the universe to contain two such different merchants as Laszlo and the Sikh.

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate it if you called me on my cell the next time he comes in. There’s another one of these in it if you can fake a broken register or something and hold him ten minutes.” I laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter with my card on top of it.

  He picked up the card between a pair of slim elegant fingers and slid it between two buttons on the front of his white tunic. The twenty stayed behind. “Give it to the boy when he answers your questions, or even if he does not. Someone so young should not have to spend every night on the street.”

  I took it back and left, starry-eyed. In two days I’d encountered a pawnbroker and a convenience-store clerk who were working in war zones and willing suckers for a hard-luck story. Maybe things were looking up for the city after all.

  *

  The party store on the far corner of forever brought me back down to earth with a bang. When I entered the double-wide trailer on a block foundation there was a heated argument going on and it continued as I browsed the shelves of plastic funnels and bags of chips. The customer was Vietnamese, the proprietor was Vietnamese—tall for a Southeast Asian, with black hair in a stiff crew cut—and the topic under discussion appeared to be the denomination of the bill that had changed hands and the amount of change the customer had coming. Some things are transparent in any language.

  In a little while more change appeared, accompanied by a rattle of shrill Vietnamese on the part of the counterman. The other stuffed it in his pocket and stamped out without further discourse, jerking open the door with a clatter of bells and letting it coast shut with a pneumatic hiss. Neither man gave the impression of satisfaction. The register drawer slammed home.

  This one called for an entirely different tactic. I’d left my coat in the car, but had kept the imitation leather folder with my license and the county star. I snugged up the knot of my tie and approached the counterman with a businesslike step, forcing the bad leg to keep up with its mate. I folded the ID out of sight, flashing the metal, and asked him in rusty Vietnamese if he spoke English. I’d left most of what I’d once known clear on the other side of the world.

  “My wife. Little.” He’d changed his attitude like a reversible coat, showing me the respectful side. He was old enough to have emigrated not long after Saigon fell; uniforms and official credentials called for restraint. “Luy!” It sounded like “Louie,” and for an unreasonable split second I thought he’d said “Luis,” but then a woman came in from the back and I made the spelling adjustment in Western characters.

  This was the other half of the couple. She was shorter than her husband by half a foot and broader around the waist by the same measurement, a round little creature wearing a green apron over a print dress with her black hair bound behind her head and streaked with gray. Her face was crumpled like old cellophane but I placed her age close to his, solidly in the middle. Black eyes glittered in folds of skin that angled down away from her nose. I read her expression the same way I read Sanskrit.

  A swift exchange took place between them that left me in the dust. She seemed to speak in a mixture of different dialects, souvenirs of dozens of relocations before the big one. I’d put away the badge, not wanting to press my luck. She met my gaze. “Yes?”

  I said, “We picked up a boy a little while ago trying to lay off cigarettes from the reservation on an undercover officer. He says his name is Luis and that he bought them here.”

  I might have told her I was selling subscriptions to The Mekong Gazette for all the information seemed to have affected her. She translated for her husband, who gave me a little more, paling a shade beneath the tobacco-ivory of his face. He said something in which I clearly heard Luis.

  “Not know that name,” she said. “Not sell illegal cigarettes.” She swept a hand toward cartons of Viceroys and Lucky Strikes on shelves behind her.

  “I can come back with a warrant.”

  This time she didn’t consult. Her chin rose. “Find nothing.”

  Her pidgin was broad even for summer stock. It can be an impenetrable screen. I let a little silence crawl past on its knees and elbows. A customer came in and went straight to a glassed-in cooler where the cheese was kept. It wasn’t Luis. I blew air and tugged loose my tie. I tried to look tired. It wasn’t hard.

  “Yeah, we were pretty sure he was stalling us. We had to run it out. It’s Arabs working the smuggled-smokes circuit these days, not you people. They funnel the profits direct to Al-Qaeda.”

  “Ah.” The magic name sparked a dual reaction. The wife had followed the rest well enough, the first slip in character she’d shown. She nodded animatedly. “We good Americans. God bless U.S.A.”

  I nodded too, gravely. We were pulling each other’s leg so hard it was a miracle we didn’t all stand lopsided.

  “He seemed to know your establishment,” I said. “Maybe you’ve seen him in here, maybe with somebody, or maybe you heard him mention a name, someone he hangs with.” I gave her the boy’s description. I’d repeated it so many times it didn’t sound like him anymore.

  “Hang?”

  “Keeps company with. What we call known associates. Criminal types mostly. Somebody’s financing him—giving him money to buy the merchandise he sells on the street. It isn’t terrorists because we froze all their assets.” I was plagiarizing now from Mary Ann Thaler. “If we can link him to some high-profit racket, we’ll be halfway home to taking those cigarettes out of circulation.”

  I was laying it on with a paver, and there were holes in it you could drive through with a wagon and team, but she didn’t even ask what a character with a county badge was doing monkeying around with national security. Well, no one knew anymore where the boundaries were. For her and her husband, here was a chance for a diversion while they found a safe house to store the contraband.

  Every penny they skimmed off the tobacco tax went into their own personal lockbox, not the Middle East. Everybody wants cheaper cigarettes. You don’t have to turn coat to fill the demand. They had another rapid parlay, both of them nodding like they were bobbing for apples. She cut him off in midstream and turned her glittering eyes on me.

  “Johnny Toledo. Scrap man, very bad.”

  Velly bad, yes; and velly good. It was progress, if only a little. Luis was the boy I wanted. I grunted; I was barn-theater material myself.

  “We know Johnny, all right. That wheelchair hasn’t slowed him down any. We’ll check him out. This Luis have a last name? Homeland Security says we can’t book ’em as John Does no more. The ACLU makes a stink and we have to let ’em go.” I almost blushed saying it. Just because someone drops her verbs and articles doesn’t mean she’s more gullible than a native.

  It flew, though; it was Homeland Security that closed the deal. The two words drifted to the top of the torrent she aimed at her husband, who paled some more. For them it was the NVA, the SS, and the KGB all rolled into one. They were very anxious to get rid of me. If they weren’t so afraid of the Patriot Act they’d have stopped to consider why they were expected to know the full name of a casual customer.

  “Luis Quincy Adams,” she said. “Like sixteenth president.”

&
nbsp; I repeated it. It sounded too made-up not to be genuine.

  “You’re good citizens,” I said. “You might want to think about studying a little more American history before you take the test.”

  We parted with anxious smiles all around. Mine was tight with shame. I didn’t like that it was as easy as that, or what I’d used to make it so.

  I wound up the Buick and shipped off. I wondered if Barry Stackpole’s computer voodoo could dig up contact information on Luis Quincy Adams. There weren’t likely to be two people in Detroit with that name. It wasn’t the kind of alias that would occur to someone living in the inner city.

  While I was waiting in an inside lane for a light to change, Luis of the Flying Feet slouched through the crosswalk, hands in the pockets of his red jersey jacket. His head of brown curls stirred casually in the wind. Nothing about him said he’d run the race of his life within the hour. I resented him for that.

  I gave him the corner, then wheeled around it across the outside lane, nicking the light, but for once not causing inconvenience for other motorists; I’d seen block parties with more auto traffic. I felt light of heart. Second shots don’t come along every day, and now I had horsepower.

  FOURTEEN

  I had the speed now, but he had the agility. I had to play this one with surgical gloves.

  For all the ease of his slouching gait, Luis was spooked, which on top of the necessary caution that went with his everyday circumstances gave him second sight; he looked around frequently. So far, though, he was thinking in terms of pedestrians. That would change the moment he suspected I’d switched to a different method of transportation. I gave him a full block, cruising at a walking pace to avoid overtaking him and forcing him into evasive action.

  It needed better planning. Few people in Detroit pay much attention to posted speed limits, and fewer still drive very far below them. Most who do are trolling for a drug deal or a few moments of companionship or setting up a drive-by shooting.

  When the traffic picked up a little I put on more gas. I was counting on the protection of the herd to pass him and set a trap.

  As I drew abreast of him I turned my head the other way, as if I were looking for an address. What I saw out the tail of an eye made me envious. He hadn’t even sweated through his jacket, on a mild day with a marathon behind him. He did glance at the car, and I had a few choice names for Ernst Dierdorf for not setting me up with a beige Volare or something similarly invisible. A car town is a car town is a car town. Boys are born there with a full knowledge of cylinder displacements and compression ratios; they recognize a muscle car no matter how much it needs paint, and they pay attention to it and who’s driving. But as he came into the rearview mirror he’d gone back to studying people on the street. The flushed face he’d seen chasing him must not have borne much resemblance to the one behind the wheel.

  Halfway up the next block I found a loading zone in front of a textile warehouse and slid into the curb. I’d parked the .38 in the glove compartment when I’d taken off my coat. I got it out, dragged myself slowly over the gearshift knob in its console, and hunched down in the passenger’s seat, resting my other hand on the door handle.

  There followed an anxious wait. I didn’t have a mirror on that side, and wasn’t sure how much time to give him before deciding he’d reversed directions or stepped through a doorway.

  I’d about given up on him when he came inside my periphery, hands still in his pockets and moving at that deceptively slow clip. I knew from experience he had the reflexes of a rabbit. I let him have two beats, then flung open the door.

  It caught him by surprise. He unpocketed his hands and threw them out in front to brace himself against the top of the frame and prevent a collision. I buried the muzzle of the revolver in his ribs.

  “A moment of your time, Luis.”

  The Olympics needed him; the Tigers could use him at first base. He shucked out of his jacket in less than a second, slung it around my gun hand, and jerked it to the side. I’d had the foresight not to rest my finger on the trigger or I’d have fired a stray shot into God knew who. By then he’d left his wardrobe behind and was running full tilt down the sidewalk without a backward glance. Doing that had cost him ground before. He learned as fast as he moved.

  I swirled my arm free of the jacket, threw myself back at the helm, banging an ankle on the shifting cane, and hit the accelerator, spinning the wheel away from the curb. My rear tires spun, snatched hold of the asphalt, and catapulted the car forward, drawing an answering shriek of rubber from an SUV that had been coming up in that lane. By the time the driver thought to stand on his horn I’d cleared twenty yards.

  When Luis spun right on his heel into a side street, I was ready for him, bumping over the curb and fishtailing for traction with all the street signs facing the wrong direction. I lost the rest of my luck when a police cruiser came into view crossing at the end of the short one-way block. It hesitated, then threw on its lights and siren and turned my way.

  I was driving a vehicle that wasn’t registered in my name. Sorting it out would take most of the day and void whatever free hand I had. Whoever had pinned a tag on me, Thaler or Hornet, would be back on my rear bumper with an open tail I couldn’t shake with a shovel. I threw the Buick into reverse before the wheels stopped rolling, forcing a gasp and an ominous shudder from the transmission. The car wasn’t built that would put up with much of that. I roared backward around the corner, one arm on the back of the seat and watching through the rear window, dead into the path of the same SUV I’d made acquaintance with previously. The driver was still shaken from the earlier incident, picking his way forward nervously, and had time to swing out of the way into the opposite lane. No other cars were coming in either direction, but it was a costly day for Goodyear. I banged into first and set fire to some more.

  Motor City cops are almost impossible to lose; they share the same DNA with their units. I never put more than a block between us, and they would be on the air for help from up ahead. I had stop sticks in my future and a bad time with the license review board in Lansing.

  I was going in the direction of home. The plan was to make it far enough around some handy corner to ditch the car and take off on foot. They’d trace it to OK Towing & Repair, but Ernst had more pull with the police department than I had. He’d once told me he’d agreed to replace the windshield on an official car and lose the record; something about a precinct commander accidentally blowing a hole through it when he was taking his sidearm off cock. With brass in the picture they might predate an auto theft report. They might even forget to process fingerprints.

  As a plan it was worse than Ruby Ridge, but it was all I had, and I wouldn’t have time to mop up before bailing out.

  Lucky breaks are rare, and cost you all the ones you have coming when things turn bad. The old woman in the market and the Sikh in the convenience store had broken the budget. I made the turn I needed to set up the plan and slammed into the trunk of a neutral-colored, anonymous-looking sedan that was moving slowly, looking for the private detective who’d given it the slip that morning.

  I wasn’t belted. The steering column hit my chest with the force of a three-pounder. My lungs didn’t have the chance to reinflate before the police cruiser screamed around the corner and struck the Buick from behind.

  The bad dreams would stop now for sure. But what good are they if they don’t protect you from what’s going to happen anyway?

  FIFTEEN

  They were waiting for me when I came back from X-ray.

  Not the officers who’d rear-ended me; I’d been told they were still being treated for cuts and abrasions and under observation for possible concussion.

  Not the two men I’d rear-ended, either; one was a candidate for whiplash, the other had a broken nose caused by overeager deployment of an air bag. Hospital staffs are hell for gossip.

  No, these were two different officers with the Detroit Police Department, uniforms from Traffic Safety armed with note
books to pump me for details about the accident. They were polite and businesslike. They always are at that stage of an investigation. Cops only yell and throw chairs at persons of interest on TV, where the forty-minute guarantee of a conviction never fails. I told them everything I could—about the accident. No murders came up during the conversation.

  I had a sore chest and a stiff neck, and someone was studying a set of eight-by-ten glossies for evidence of broken ribs and a cracked sternum. Sometimes the risk is equal even when the basic safety equipment isn’t in place.

  They thanked me and left, but lying on my gurney in a toy paper gown I was aware of a lingering presence outside the door of the room. They were waiting on orders whether to charge me with fleeing and eluding, reckless driving, reckless endangerment, and driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Nothing would be overlooked when personnel were involved.

  I should have been concerned, and I was, but only on a remote level. I was shot full of painkillers, and for the first time in what seemed months the ghost of the slug that had torn through my leg was in hibernation. I could use a smoke. One of Luis Quincy Adams’ Indian-reservation cigarettes would do.

  Lieutenant Hornet came in looking like a fat kid with an ice cream cone. He had on a sport coat and slacks that matched in everything but color, texture, and style. His shirt puckered where the seams were fused rather than stitched and his necktie had run out of steam just above the fourth button after the lap around his neck. “You look like—”

  “I was shit by a pigeon,” I said.

  “Hey, that’s not bad.”

  “I got it from one of yours. The one who put me in this mess.”

  “Well, we all got to take responsibility for our own messes. You got a jim-dandy. We can bung you up for ninety days rock-bottom, then kick it over to the state police. Hope you like security work.”

  “A private license isn’t as brittle as you think.”

  “It breaks pretty easy with two law enforcement agencies tugging on both ends.”