Sugartown (23 page)

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Gervais said. “We’ve been on him like shit on a statue because he’s been smuggling art treasures out of Europe against their laws and without paying duty. Today’s the day Tommy and I were fixing to arrest him. Imagine our surprise when we walked in and found just you holding hands with Mighty Joe Young in the bedroom. There could be something for Detroit Vice in that.”

“We’re just good friends,” I said. “Rynearson knew you were coming. That’s why he powdered.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe not.” Mulholland gripped the arms of his chair. “He might have felt the heat and got out just under the wire. Lucky for him.”

“We’ve got a leak, Tommy,” Gervais said quietly.

“We don’t know that.”

“We don’t know,” he agreed. “But we know.”

I said, “I thought you G-men were untouchable.”

“G-men.” Gervais smiled. “No one’s called us that since Machine Gun Kelly. We’re about to move on some feds who have been peddling stolen Lincoln Continentals in Mexico City for two years. They won’t touch anything but new Mark IVs. Bring them a Marquis with fifty miles on the speedometer and they’ll spit in your face. We’re untouchable, all right. Like Mae West.”

“Am I supposed to know this?”

“Who cares? I’m leaving the Bureau end of next month. I’ve got my thirty in.”

I switched back to the main line. “So Rynearson got a telephone call, or a heliograph, or a note strapped to a pigeon’s leg, probably sometime between when he and Paul turned in last night and midnight when the guard changed. He burned his files to protect himself from getting hanged in some cell or shivved in a shower room in case he didn’t get clear, and went south. He’d need cash. Why’d he leave the five grand behind?”

“He thought it was marked,” Gervais suggested. “Any clerk with a black light under the counter could get him slammed. He’d have had plenty green he could count on in the safe for case dough. What I’d like to know is what all this has to do with Russian writers.”

“Me too. It seems like one too many holes for one old queen to have his nose in.”

Gervais picked up the jade lighter, sprang the little rod. “Some things don’t change. You’d think a guy with his money could afford a better way to get that little dart under your skin.”

“You don’t tamper with something that works,” I said.

“That’s another thing I’d die happy knowing. What he thought you could give him that was worth juicing you and keeping you juiced.”

“Maybe he wanted to find out how much I knew about his operation. Panic.”

“Five foreign government agencies didn’t panic him. The FBI and the CIA didn’t panic him. One local snooper with a toy badge panicked him. Interesting.”

I got the weak look on my face and knocked some ash off perversely onto the Persian rug.

Mulholland said, “He’s jerking us around. Let’s take him down.”

“It’s a thought.”

“First let’s get some cops,” I said. “I’ve been assaulted and held against my will for two days and pumped full of drugs. I’ve got charges to prefer.”

“Against who?” the gray-haired agent wanted to know. “Sweetness there in the bedroom?”

“Him to start. Rynearson when you get him.”

“Get him how?”

“You’re the one with the Washington training. Put him on your Most Wanted list.”

Gervais smiled. “They don’t go on that list until we know where they are. Keeps the record tidy.”

“Whatever. I want cops.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Am I busted?”

He patted his breast pocket. “We’ve got warrants for all occupants of this address. Untangling the mess could take a week. Meanwhile you’ll be in federal custody. Incommunicado.”

“At the end of the week I talk to the press. I hear they get nasty in D.C. when they read about clandestine operations on the comics page. Nasty enough to forget thirty years of loyal service to the Bureau.”

“Don’t do it, Walker. You’re a kid and I’m a book of matches. They don’t go together.”

“It’s a two-fisted fed,” I marveled. “I thought that got buried with J. Edgar.”

“Hoover.” He wrinkled his freckles. “I bet I blew two weeks in Bermuda on snap-brim hats on the off chance he’d pop in or I’d get my picture in the papers and he’d see it. He was a twerp, but at least he knew how to throw a blanket over a thing so it would stay. When the press came sniffing into his office he tossed them releases and they went out wagging their tails. Then the wimps took over and now we’ve got to worry about what the papers and TV are saying. Tommy can have it, I’m getting out.”

I rested my head against the tall back of my chair and closed my eyes. “Whatever beef the feds have with Rynearson, I’m a vegetarian. We can’t help each other.”

“You’re saying it. I’m hearing it. So far that’s all.”

“Call Louise Starr at the Westin.”

Gervais jerked his chin at Mulholland, who rose and started down the spiral staircase.

“He’ll be a good field man when they get him away from the idiot box,” Gervais said. “He feeds suspects their rights even when no one else is around to hear.”

I said nothing, got another Winston going off the butt of the first, and flicked the stub into a silver saucer with Arabic writing on the bottom. I swallowed some smoke, coughed. It burned my stomach wall and I remembered I hadn’t had solid food in forty-eight hours.

After a few minutes the young agent returned. He bent his head next to his partner’s and murmured.

“Well, you gave it your best shot, Walker,” said Gervais, when Mulholland straightened. “The lady doesn’t know you.”

“Like hell. I figured you to be ahead of stunts like that. Cops don’t whisper when a witness’ story goes sour. They laugh in his teeth.”

“Think you know us, do you?”

“I’ve got barely enough gray cells left to know my name, Gervais. I came here two days ago expecting to stay ten minutes. I got the full Frankenstein treatment. Anything you and Uncle can do to me can’t start to compare with how I spent this weekend. You’ve got my key out of here. Maybe you’ll let me use it, maybe you’ll lose it in the system and I’ll be appealing a false arrest beef into middle age. All we’ll wind up doing is burning each other’s daylight.”

He still had the trick lighter in his hands. He fiddled with it, pressing the sprung rod back into the case and letting it snap out again. Finally he put it down on the table.

“You talk a good talk. I’d like to catch you when you’re a hundred percent. Put this stuff back in your pockets, shamus. The money too. It makes my fingers burn.”

I got up and did that, leaving the keys and the lighter for evidence or whatever. The weight of the gun on my belt corrected my shaky balance. “How about a lift?”

Gervais glanced at Mulholland’s stiff face and laughed. “I can’t figure out whether this son of a bitch has more sand in him than a camel’s udder or he’s still doped. I have to go in and stand on someone’s carpet for all this anyway. Downtown? Police impound’s closed until tomorrow.”

“St. Clair Shores. If it isn’t too far out of your way.”

“Anything for you. Maybe you want to stop someplace for a bite?”

“I don’t know. How hard do you bite?”

“It’s never been measured.” His face now didn’t look as if it would support a smile.

He got to his feet with none of the noises a fattish man usually makes in the process and told Mulholland to hold the fort and watch Paul while he was gone. Turning to me: “Unless you’d rather have Tommy for company.”

I considered the young agent’s stony expression, then shook my head. “I’m afraid he
would
bite.”

Downstairs I put on my hat. It felt tight around my swollen skull. “Why do you call him Tommy?” I asked Gervais.

“I had a no-good dog by that name once.”

The car was an unmarked green Granada. He drove with one thumb on the bottom of the steering wheel and never missed a light. As he drove he made chewing motions with his jaw. I figured I knew what he was chewing.

“I could pin a tail on you or tap your phone, but that never buys anything from guys like you,” he said. “I could make a call and get your ticket yanked —”

“Been done,” I said.

“— but all that would buy me is someone’s yanked ticket. All I can do is slam doors. Someday you’ll have so many in your face you won’t be able to investigate the inside of a Dixie cup. Uncle has a bad disposition and a long memory.”

“Every P.I. walks that tightrope.” I sat on my spine in the passenger’s seat with my knees up and my hatbrim resting on the bridge of my nose.

“Not without a net or a balancing pole, like you.”

“No one’s going to dance or cry if I fall.”

When we were past the city limits I directed him to a street two blocks over from Karen’s place and had him let me out on the corner.

“Shamus.”

I bent and looked in at him through the open window.

“Aw, fuck it,” he said, and drove off, almost taking my head with him.

It was a long walk. It was the Trail of Tears, the Burma Road, the Selma-to-Montgomery march laid end to end. It was two blocks. I leaned on corner lightpoles while my knees wobbled to a standstill, looking all ways to make sure Gervais wasn’t shadowing me. The gun got very heavy behind my hip. The noise of cars swishing down the street hurt my ears. The bright sunlight hurt my eyes and the odor of the lake was sharp in my nostrils. I felt torn from the womb. I opened a door and climbed another set of stairs — the world was full of them — and finally I stood on the narrow runner in front of Karen’s apartment. I was the soldier returning from the front, Ulysses back from his cruise, Moses casing Jerusalem. I squashed out the cigarette I’d been chewing and used the little brass knocker. It sounded loud enough to wake King Duncan.

Karen came to the door in curlers and a fuzzy pink bathrobe. She was a more beautiful sight than the Statue of Liberty. She took one look at me and said eek.

“You’re making me blush,” I said, and fell on her.

H
ER BEDROOM LOOKED DIFFERENT
by daylight. The bay window was very bright and the colors in the room were cheerful and a stuffed rag doll with yarn for hair sat on a chair next to the bureau staring at me with the unblinking fixity of someone’s brat watching someone else eat in a restaurant. It was the only thing little girl-like about Karen and I didn’t like it. But the bed was comfortable and the eggs I was cleaning off the tray balanced on my lap had been laid in heaven.

Karen occupied a chair beside the bed with her elbow propped on her knee and her chin in her hand. She had taken out the curlers and changed into a scarlet blouse and black skirt. Without make-up she looked sixteen.

“But why didn’t you tell the FBI about the cross?” she asked.

I put down my fork and studied her. “I guess someone’s been talking in his sleep.”

“I couldn’t help overhearing with you lying on top of me like a load of bricks in the doorway. I won’t ask about the carnival.”

“Don’t. The cross had nothing to do with why they want Rynearson. It would have led to questions my client doesn’t want answered. You have to know where to stop when you’re talking to cops.”

“To me too, apparently. I don’t know anything about this cross other than that you’re looking for it. Is it full of diamonds or what?”

“I was told it wasn’t worth a lot. Not enough to do what Rynearson did to me to try to find out where it is. It isn’t even why I was there. That was a different case. I thought.” I sipped coffee and reached unconsciously for a cigarette before I remembered I wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Here.” She tossed my wrinkled pack onto the tray.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Just habit. Who helped you drag me in here?”

“Not you, that’s for sure. You were looking for the cross when you found that man dead in Hamtramck, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it mean that it has something to do with this other case too?”

“Beats me. I’ll have to throw everything I know about both of them into a bucket and shake it and see what comes out. What’d you use, a block and tackle?”

“For what? Oh, that. You keep changing the subject. I’ve helped bigger men than you into hospital bathrooms. I thought you were drunk until I got your shirt off —”

“Sex fiend.”

“—and saw those marks on your wrist. I still think I should make an appointment for you with our toxicologist.”

“Thanks, I’ve seen enough white coats for this lifetime. Speaking of which, when does the old lady get sprung?”

“Tomorrow, why?”

“I don’t want to waste a trip when I go to visit her.”

“I didn’t know you’d hit it off that well.”

“Little old ladies love me. It’s my honest face.”

She studied me. A question fluttered around the corners of her mouth. She shooed it away. She reached out and stroked my cheek. “It can use a shave.”

“I’d cut off an ear trying to scrape my chin.”

“Just stay put.” She got up and went out. I finished my coffee. She came back carrying a razor and a shaving cup and brush. I said, “I hope you borrowed that from a neighbor.”

She pasted my mouth shut with lather.

Later she brought in my clothes on a hanger and hung it on the back of the chair she’d been sitting in. “I pressed the suit and rinsed your shirt. Don’t expect that kind of service on a regular basis. Your gun’s in the living room. What are you doing?”

I had peeled back the blanket and swung my feet to the floor. “It’s called getting out of bed. I’m starting to be pretty good at it. Next week I plan to try walking.”

She stood between me and the clothes. “You’ve had only six hours’ rest. You’ll run out of gas before you get outside.”

“Lady, I’ve been running on fumes since I got away from Rynearson’s.” I tickled her. When she squealed and jumped I got my pants off the hanger.

“Don’t call me lady, you lunk. It makes you sound like a taxi driver.”

“I’ve driven taxis.” I put on the pants. “You don’t see many ladies through that little window. It’s not a word I throw around.”

“Are you paying me a compliment? I can’t ever tell with you.”

I scooped her up. We kissed. She said, “I guess you are.”

I brushed her cheek with my fingertips. “I’d stay, but the meter’s running.”