A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (29 page)

“Lowell Junior was a victim of his own lies too,” she said. “Will he survive?”

“His hanging, yeah. I don’t know about the lies. You can put that in the preface. It’ll help flesh out the book.”

“You think all I care about is the book.”

“Give me back the briefcase and I’ll apologize.”

She shook her head. “That would be like killing Gene Booth all over again. He wanted to set the record straight. That’s why he sent back the check.”

“Don’t pay any attention to anything I say. My ribs hurt and I’ve got a black eye on top of a black eye that was the black eye to end them all in the first place. You’ve got a publishing house to launch. It’s okay if you do it on top of a few corpses. They won’t mind. Booth would sure as hell mind your saying it was all for him, though. I didn’t spend much time with him, but what I spent bought me plenty.”

“There’s no moral law against doing something for someone and yourself at the same time. It will be a dignified promotion. I’m thinking of approaching Maya Angelou to write an introduction.”

“She’ll sell fifty thousand copies,” I said. “Breaking the Clifford story just before publication will move another half million.”

“Just
before. If it breaks too soon, it will be old news months before we can get the book into production. I have to ask you for Duane Booth’s original police report.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“I thought you and I were beyond deals, Amos.”

“No good,” I said. “Some women can get away with the look. Not you.”

“What look?”

“A torn slip and a broken bottle. You’re too refined to trade a night in Hazel Park for services.”

“That’s a crude way to put it. I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Okay. Let’s just say I was off the clock. The police report’s promised to someone else. In my work you have to put up information in return for information received. I stonewalled two police departments to hang on to it.”

“Am I allowed to ask who?”

“I think that’s
whom
.” When her face didn’t change I said, “You know him. Barry Stackpole.”

“Oh, Barry. Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I’ll talk to him.” She looked at her wristwatch, a tiny one with an amber face on an alligator strap. “I need time to return my rental. We’ll have to say good-bye here.”

She kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were cool and the foxglove scent was there. “Thank you for everything. Don’t you dare come through New York without calling me.”

After she left I browsed among the exhibits, but they weren’t doing anything for me. I got my car out of the lot and drove to the post office, where I bummed a priority envelope and slipped into it the police report Eugene Booth’s brother Duane had written on the 1943 riot before he changed his mind and filed another. I tore a sheet out of my notebook and started a note to Barry about Louise Starr, then crumpled it up; Barry’s a big boy. I sealed the flap, addressed the envelope to him, paid the postage, and gave it to the clerk.

I had the afternoon ahead of me. I’d cleared the entire day for the museum. I smoked a cigarette until the meter ran out, then started the motor and drove to the Corner to watch Detroit lose one more time in the old ballpark.