Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection (23 page)

“That was an oversight. We’ll correct it while we’re here.”

“What did you mean when you said it was a big club?” LeJohn pressed me. “Who else is looking for Corcoran?”

I replayed the scene in my office. Lieutenant Winkle grunted. “Monroe Boyd and Little Delbert Riddle,” he said.

“I had one or both of them in here half a dozen times when I was with C.I.D. Extortion, suspicion of murder. Nothing stuck. So they’re jobbing themselves out now. I’ll put out a pickup on them if you want to press charges.”

“They’d be out the door before you finished the paperwork. I’ll just tack the price of a new old desk and a picture frame on to the expense sheet. The bullethole’s good for business.”

“How’d they know you were working for Mrs. Corcoran?” Stendahl asked.

“The same way you did, maybe. Only they were better at it.”

He stood. “We’ll need whatever you’ve got on them in your files, Lieutenant. Walker, you’re out of it.”

“Can I report to Mrs. Corcoran?”

“Yes. Yes, please do. It will save us some time. You’ve been very cooperative.”

He extended his hand. I went on crushing out my cigarette in the ashtray on Winkle’s desk until he got tired and lowered it. Then I left.

Millicent Arnold owned a condominium off Twelve Mile Road, within sight of the glass-and-steel skyscrapers of the Southfield Civic Center sticking up above the predominantly horizontal suburb like new teeth in an old mouth. A slim brunette with a pageboy haircut answered the bell wearing a pink angora sweater over black harem pants and gold sandals with high heels on her bare feet. Charlotte Corcoran might have looked like her before she had lost too much weight.

“Amos Walker? Yes, you are. My God, you look like a private eye. Come in.”

I kept my mouth zipped at that one and walked past her into a living room paved with orange shag and furnished in green plush and glass. It should have looked like hell. I decided it was Millie Arnold standing in it that made it work. She hung my hat on an ornamental peg near the door.

“Charlotte’s putting herself together. She was asleep when you called.”

“She seems to sleep a lot.”

“Her doctor in Austin prescribed a mild sedative. It’s almost the only thing that’s gotten her through this past month. You said you had some news.” She indicated the sofa.

I took it. It was like sitting on a sponge. “The story hangs some lefts and rights,” I said.

She sat next to me, trapping her hands between her knees. She wasn’t wearing a ring. “My cousin and I are close,” she said. “More like sisters. You can speak freely.”

“I didn’t mean that, although it was coming. I just don’t want to have to tell it twice. I didn’t like it when I heard it.”

“That bad, huh?”

I said nothing. She tucked her feet under her and propped an elbow on the back of the sofa and her cheek in her hand. “I’m curious about something. I recommended Reliance to Charlotte. She came back with you.”

“The case came down my street. Krell said she was referred to him by one of his cash customers.”

She nodded. “Kester Clothiers on Lahser. I’m a buyer. I typed Charlotte’s letter of reference on their stationery. The chain retains Reliance for security, employee theft and like that.”

“I guess the hours are good.”

“I’m off this week. We’re between seasons.” She paused. “You know, you’re sort of attractive.”

I was looking at her again when Charlotte Corcoran came in. She had on a maroon robe over a blue nightgown, rich material that bagged on her and made her wrists and ankles look even bonier than they were. Backless slippers. When she saw me her step quickened. “You found them? Is Tommy all right?”

I took a deep breath and sat her down in a green plush chair with tassels on the arms and told it.

“Wow,” said Millie after a long silence.

I was watching her cousin. She remained motionless for a moment, then fumbled cigarettes and a book of matches out of her robe pocket. She tried to strike a match, said “Damn!” and threw the book on the floor. I picked it up and struck one and held the flame for her. She drew in a lungful and blew a plume at the ceiling. “The bastard,” she said. “No wonder he never had time for me. He was too busy making himself rich.”

“You didn’t know about his testifying?” I asked.

“He came through with his child support on time. That’s all I heard from him. It explains why he never came by for his weekends with Tommy.” She looked at me. “Is my son in danger?”

“He is if he’s with his father. Boyd and Riddle didn’t look like lovers of children. But the feds are on it.”

“This is the same federal government that endowed a study to find out why convicts want to escape prison?”

“Someone caught it on a bad day,” I said.

“How much to go on with the investigation, Mr. Walker?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Corcoran. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

She smiled then, a little.

“What progress have you made?” asked Millie.

“I’m chasing a lead now. If it gets any slimmer it won’t be a lead at all. But it beats reading bumps.” I got the package of prints out of my coat pocket, separated the original of Corcoran and Tommy from the others, and gave it back to Mrs. Corcoran. “I’ve got twenty-five more now, and at least that many places to show them. When I run out I’ll try something else.”

She looked at the picture. Seeing only one person in it. Then she put it in her robe pocket. “I think you’re a good man, Mr. Walker.”

Millie Arnold saw me to the door. “She’s right, you know,” she said, when I had it open. “You are good.”

Attractive, too.

There was a gymnasium right around the corner on Greenfield. No one I talked to there recognized either of the faces in the picture, but I left it with the manager for seed along with my card and tried the next place on my list. I had them grouped by area with Southfield at the top. I hit two places in Birmingham, one in Clawson, then swung west and worked my way home in a loop through Farmington and Livonia. A jock in Redford Township with muscles on his T-shirt thought Corcoran looked familiar but couldn’t finger him.

“There’s fifty bucks in it for you when you do,” I said. He flexed his trapezius and said he’d work on it.

I’d missed lunch, so I stopped in Detroit for an early supper, hit a few more places downtown, and went back to the office to read my mail and call my service for messages. I had none and the mail was all
bills and junk. I locked up and went home. That night I dreamed I was Johnny Appleseed, but instead of trees every seed I threw sprang up grinning Monroe Boyds and hulking Delbert Riddles.

My fat photographer neighbor greeted me in the foyer of my building the next morning. He was chewing on what looked like the same Marlboro remnant and he hadn’t been standing any closer to his razor than usual. “Some noise yesterday,” he said. “Starting a range up there or what?”

“No, I shot a shutterbug for asking too many questions.”

I passed him on the stairs, no small feat.

With my gun drawn, I entered my office, felt stupid when I found it unoccupied, then saw the shattered glass from the poster frame and felt a little better. I swept it up and called my service. I had a message.

“Walker?” asked a male voice at the number left for me.

“Tunk Herman, remember?”

“The guy in Redford,” I said. “Yeah. That fifty still good?”

“What’ve you got?”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about that dude in the picture, so I went through the records of members. Thought maybe his name would jump out at me if I heard it, you know? Well, it did. James Mul-doon. He’s a weekender. I don’t see him usually because I don’t work weekends except that one time. I got an address for him.”

I drew a pencil out of the cup on my desk. It shook a little.

It was spring now and no argument. The air had a fresh damp smell and the sun felt warm on my back as I leaned on the open-air telephone booth, or maybe it was my disposition seeping through from inside. Charlotte Corcoran answered on the eighth ring. Her voice sounded foggy.

“Walker, Mrs. Corcoran,” I said. “Come get your son.”

“What did you say? I took a pill a little while ago. It sounded—”

“It wasn’t the pill. I’m looking at him now. Blond and blue, about four feet—”

The questions came fast, tumbling all over one another, too tangled to pull apart. I held the receiver away from my ear and waited. Down the block, on the other side of Pembroke, a little boy in blue overalls with a bright yellow mop was bouncing a ball off the wall of a two-story white frame house that went back forever. While I was watching, the front door came open and a dark-haired man beckoned him inside. Corcoran’s physique was less impressive in street clothes.

“Tommy’s fine,” I said, when his mother wound down. “Meet me here.” I gave her the address. “Put Millie on and I’ll give her directions.”

“Millie’s out shopping. I don’t have a car.”

“Take a cab.”

“Cab?”

“Forget it. You’ve got too much of that stuff in your pipes to come out alone. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

It was all of that. The road crews were at work and everyone who had a car and no job was out enjoying the season. I left the engine running in front of the brick complex and bounced up the wrought-iron steps to where Millie’s door stood open. I rapped and went inside.
Charlotte Corcoran was sitting on the sofa in the robe and nightgown.

“That’s out of style for the street this year,” I said. “Get into something motherly.”

“Plenty of time for that.”

I felt my face get tired at the sound of the voice behind me. I turned around slowly. Millie Arnold was standing on the blind side of the door in a white summer dress with a red belt around her trim waist and a brown .32 Colt automatic in her right hand pointing at me.

“You don’t look surprised.” She nudged the door shut with the toe of a red pump.

“It was there,” I said, raising my hands. “It just needed a kick. I had to wonder how Boyd and Riddle got on to me so fast. They couldn’t have been following Mrs. Corcoran without Stendahl and LeJohn knowing. Someone had to tell them.”

“It goes back farther than that. I made two calls to Texas after spotting Frank at the mall. The first was to his old partners. I can’t tell you how much they appreciated it. If I did I’d be in trouble with the IRS. Then I called Charlotte. Throw the gun down on the rug, Mr. Walker. It made an ugly dent in my sofa when you were here yesterday.”

I unholstered the .38 slowly. It hit the shag halfway between us with a thump. “Then, when Mrs. Corcoran arrived, you talked her into hiring the biggest investigative firm you knew. You figured to let them do the work of finding Corcoran. It probably meant a discount on Boyd and Riddle’s fee.”

“It also guaranteed me a bonus when Frank got dead,” she said. “Krell giving the case to you threw me, but it worked out just fine. When I got back from shopping and Charlotte gave me the good
news I just couldn’t wait to call our mutual friends and share it.”

“My cousin,” said Mrs. Corcoran.

Millie showed her teeth. Very white and a little sharp. “You married a hundred-thou-a-year executive. I’d have settled for that. But if it wasn’t enough for him, why should what I make be enough for me? I met his little playmates that time I visited you in Austin. I remembered them when it counted.”

“What happens to us?” I asked.

“You’ll both stay here with me until that phone rings. It’ll be Boyd giving me thumbs up. I’ll have to lock you in the bathroom when I leave; but you’ll find a way out soon enough. You can have the condo, Charlotte. It isn’t paid for.”

“The boy had nothing to do with Corcoran’s scam,” I said. “You’re putting him in front of the guns too.”

“Rich kid. What do I owe him?”

“They won’t hurt Tommy.” Mrs. Corcoran got up.

“Sit down.” The gun jerked.

But she was moving. I threw my arm in front of her. She knocked it aside and charged. Millie squeezed the trigger. It clicked. Her cousin was all over her then, kicking and shrieking and clawing at her eyes. It was interesting to see. Millie was healthier, but she was standing between a mother and her child. When the gun came up to clap the side of Mrs. Corcoran’s head I tipped the odds, reversing ends on the Smith & Wesson I’d scooped up from the rug and tapping Millie behind the ear. Her knees gave then and she trickled through her cousin’s grasp and puddled on the floor.

I reached down and pulled back her eyelids. “She’s good for an hour,” I said. “Call nine-one-one. Give them the address on Pembroke.”

While she was doing that, breathing heavily, I picked up the automatic
and ran back the action. Millie had forgotten to rack a cartridge into the chamber.

Approaching Pembroke we heard shots.

I jammed my heel down on the accelerator and we rounded the corner doing fifty. Charlotte Corcoran, still in her robe, gripped the door handle to stay out of my lap. Her profile was sharp against the window, thrust forward like a mother hawk’s.

There was no sign of the police. As we entered Corcoran/Muldoon’s block, something flashed in an open upstairs window, followed closely by a hard flat bang. A much louder shot answered it from the front yard. There, a huge black figure in an overcoat too short for him crouched behind a lilac bush beside the driveway. His .44 magnum was as long as my thigh but looked like a kid’s water pistol in his great fist.

“Hang on!” I spun the wheel hard and floored the pedal.

The Olds’s engine roared and we bumped over the curb, diago-naling across the lawn. Del Riddle straightened at the noise and turned, bringing the magnum around with him. I saw his mouth open wide and then his body filled the windshield and I felt the impact. We bucked up over the porch stoop and suddenly the world was a deafening place of tearing wood and exploding glass. The car stopped then, although my foot was still pasted to the floor with the accelerator pedal underneath and the engine whining. The rear wheels spun shrilly. I cut the ignition. A piece of glass fell somewhere with a clank.

I looked at my passenger. She was slumped down in the seat with her knees against the dash. “All right?”