A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
Read A Smile on the Face of the Tiger Online
Authors: Loren D. Estleman
Tags: #FIC022000, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Loren D. Estleman
All rights reserved.
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press, Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017.
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: September 2000
ISBN: 978-0-446-93125-0
Contents
THE AMOS WALKER NOVELS
A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
The Hours of the Virgin
The Witchfinder
Never Street
Sweet Women Lie
Silent Thunder
Downriver
Lady Yesterday
Every Brilliant Eye
Sugartown
The Glass Highway
The Midnight Man
Angel Eyes
Motor City Blue
THE DETROIT NOVELS
Thunder City
Jitterbug
Stress
Edsel
King of the Corner
Motown
Whiskey River
THE PETER MACKLIN NOVELS
Any Man’s Death
Roses Are Dead
Kill Zone
OTHER NOVELS
The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association
Peeper
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes
Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula
The Oklahoma Punk
WESTERN NOVELS
White Desert
Journey of the Dead
City of Widows
Sudden Country
Bloody Season
Gun Man
The Stranglers
This Old Bill
Mister St. John
Murdock’s Law
The Wolfer
Aces & Eights
Stamping Ground
The High Rocks
The Hider
Billy Gashade
Journey of the Dead
NONFICTION
The Wister Trace: Classic Novels of the American Frontier
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
General Murders
The Best Western Stories of Loren D. Estleman
(edited by Bill Pronzini and Ed Gorman)
People Who Kill
For the Paper Tigers:
Goodis and Woolrich and Dewey and Kane,
Hamilton, Prather, McCoy, and Spillane;
Marlowe, McGivern, Miller, McBain,
and hundreds of others, too many to name.
The author wishes to thank the staff of John
King Books for a cook’s tour of
one of Detroit’s best institutions.
Although the personnel herein represented are
fictional, this store is a most agreeable fact.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four shots ripped into my groin, and I was off on the biggest adventure of my life …
But first let me tell you a little about myself.
—Max Shulman,
Sleep Till Noon
(1950)
I
thought I’d never see her again. But never is longer than forever.
The beveled-glass door of the downtown Caucus Club opened just before noon and drifted shut against the pressure of the closer, the way things move in dreams and deep water. While that was happening, Louise Starr stood in the electroplated rectangle of light wearing a white linen jumpsuit with matching unstructured jacket and a woven-leather bag on one shoulder. She had kept her pale-gold hair long, against the helmeted utilitarian fashion; in another six months most of the women who glanced up from their menus and kept on looking would be wearing theirs the same way.
She had lost weight. She hadn’t needed to, but the loss hadn’t done her any harm, just trimmed her down from a steeplechaser to a racer. I guessed tennis or badminton, although it might have been the white outfit that suggested it. I couldn’t see her in leotards and a sweatband at Bally’s with her hair in a ponytail. In any case the progressive-resistance machines would have surrendered without a struggle.
Inside the entrance, she paused to adjust her pupils to the muted light, then spoke to the man at the reservation stand, a plump sixty with a silver hairpiece and the knowing eyes of a vice cop. He nodded, body-checked the young waiter who stepped forward to offer assistance, and led the way to the corner table where I sat fighting a fern for my drink. In three-inch heels, she managed to stand a full head taller than her escort without towering. She was five-eight in her bare feet. I had seen her barefoot. I rose.
“I’m afraid our brunch has turned into plain old lunch.” She leaned across the table and kissed my cheek. When she straightened she left behind a light trace of foxglove. “I had no idea the entire state of Michigan was under construction.”
“Roadwork is our fifth season. How was your flight?”
“High. Which is what I intend to get as soon as possible. What are you drinking?” She got rid of her bag, slid out her chair, and sat down before the headwaiter could get his hands on it.
“Chivas.” I sat.
She wrinkled her nose. She’d acquired little creases at the corners of her eyes since the last time we’d seen each other. They suited her, like everything else with which she came into contact. The eyes themselves were violet. “Bacardi, straight,” she told the waiter. “We’ll order food later. Unless you’re famished.” Her brows lifted.
“I had a big breakfast.”
“When did this start?”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t reformed. I missed supper last night.”
“A tail job?” The waiter had dematerialized, but she lowered her voice anyway.
“Novocaine. I broke a tooth on a fist.”
“Business or personal?”
“It was an affair of honor. My family tree came up.”
“You ought to consider another line of work.”
“Do you think this one was my first choice?”
The waiter brought her Bacardi in a square glass with a thick bottom. “What should we drink to?”
“Telephones and airplanes.”
We clinked glasses. She sipped, set hers down, and sat back. She wore a tiger-eye on a thin chain around her neck and earrings to match. No other jewelry. I remembered she was allergic to gold. “You look good, Amos. Gray is your color.”
“I’m not wearing gray.”
“I know.”
I drank. “Are we going to be that kind of friend that exchanges over-the-hill gifts on birthdays?”
“No. I’m sorry. You really do look fabulous. Men still age beautifully while women just fall apart. You’d think after what’s happened these past twenty years things would change.”
“That won’t float either. You know you’re beautiful because every day strangers stop you on the street to tell you. You didn’t need to come all the way out here to hear it. How are things in publishing?”
“Worse than ever. Three one-million-dollar advances went out last Christmas for books that didn’t even make the list in the
Phoenix Sun.
Returns are running around eighty percent. All the big houses have pulled in their horns.”
“Things can’t be too bad if they flew you first class.”
“How did you know I flew first class?” She smiled then. The sun came through the stained-glass partition behind her. It was probably coincidence. “Did you call the airport?”
“You were late. I can’t afford the Caucus Club.”
“Admit it, you were worried about me. I’m not with the firm anymore. I have my own company now. I thought you might have heard.
Publishers Weekly
gave me two pages last month.”
“I dropped my subscription.
Soldier of Fortune
offered me a telephone shaped like a Claymore for signing up.”
“What’s a Claymore?”
“An explosive device. So is hanging out your own shingle in a bear market. What happened on the job?”
“You know Eddie Cypress?”
It wasn’t a name I expected her to drop. It was like seeing Princess Di spit on a commoner. “Just what was on CNN. Glad Eddie never worked Detroit that I heard. He killed fifteen men on contract and the feds let him walk for turning state’s evidence against Paul Lippo for ordering one hit.”
“Court TV
fell in love with Glad Eddie and so did the talk shows. He goes to a better barber than most hit men and doesn’t have a cauliflower ear. The publisher told me to put in a bid for his memoirs. I told him I didn’t offer money to terrorist organizations or cheap hoods. He fired me.”
“That what it said on the pink slip?”
“The official reason was insubordination. I could have gone to NOW or Fair Employment Practices and sued to get my job back. I didn’t. I was thinking of quitting long before Glad Eddie. Getting canned meant I could raid the inventory without guilt. I signed two
New York Times
bestsellers and a Pulitzer Prize winner right out from under them. They cried salty tears and threatened to sue me for industrial espionage.”
“Congratulations. Want me to write
my
memoirs?”
“True crime’s dead. Newspaper-clipping hacks and the Simpson case killed it. I wouldn’t take a chance on it even if you weren’t kidding. I need a detective.”
“The last time you hired me it didn’t turn out the way you wanted.”
“If that’s true I don’t remember. What I remember is you delivered.”
My glass was sweating on the polished tabletop. The ice cubes had melted. The restaurant was ducted for air conditioning, as was the rest of the Penobscot Building, but it wasn’t scheduled to be turned on for another week; the summery weather in late May had taken the whole southern part of the state by surprise. I signaled the waiter and asked Louise if she wanted a fresh drink. She shook her head and the waiter went back for another Scotch. I was getting the kind of service I never got alone.
“I raised my rates,” I said. “You might have to hike up the cover price on your books.”
She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands. “I’ll let you in on a secret: Book prices rose ten years ago when the cost of paper went up. Paper came down, books didn’t. I’ll fold your fee into the profit.”
My drink came. I raised it. “Here’s to the lending library.”
“Libraries? Love ‘em. Guaranteed sale.” She lifted hers.
When she set it down the playfulness was gone. “I’m in a bind. I guess you could call it a book bind. One of my bestsellers isn’t selling as well as expected. The other’s blocked, he says, and the Pulitzer winner never cracked the list on his best day; I only signed him for the prestige, and as the man said, you can’t eat that. To hedge my bet, I put the rest of my money on an old warhorse. The warhorse jumped the stall.”
“I can’t boost sales and I’m not a psychiatrist, so breaking the block is out too. It has to be the warhorse.”
“His name is Eugene Booth. He was big in the fifties. PBO’s.”
“What’s a PBO?”
“Paperback original. Two bits a pop, sleazy cover art, cheap paper. Dames, gats, stiffs, striptease. He and his colleagues corrupted a generation.” The creases deepened at the corners of her eyes. Aside from that her face was solemn.
“I read one or two when I was a kid. I thought he was dead.”
“So did everyone else, until he sued a fly-by-night California publisher last year for bringing out a new edition of one of his early novels without permission or payment. The wires picked up the story, and suddenly he was hot again. An entire generation has grown up since he lost his last contract. He’s part of that whole tailfins-Rat-Pack-lounge-lizard-swingers revival. Three of his titles are in development in Hollywood right now. I saw it coming the day the story broke. I tracked him down through a friend with the Associated Press and signed him over the telephone.”
“He’s still writing?”
She shook her head. “He’s seventy and in poor health. He hasn’t written a word in forty years. Even in his heyday he had a reputation as a drunk. He missed deadlines, reneged on contracts, submitted unpublishable copy and had to be browbeaten into rewriting it. In nineteen fifty-nine he assaulted an editor in a New York office. That was the last straw. When he sued the publisher in California he was living on Social Security and minimum wage, managing a trailer park in Belleville. That’s near Detroit, isn’t it?”