King of the Corner (10 page)

He had heard Neal’s pickup pulling into the garage about three, then his keys hitting the kitchen table and the stairs moaning under his big feet. Later he had heard, very faintly, the metronomic stirring of bed-springs and a stifled cry from Billie, and that brought him back to the problem he’d forgotten about since supper. He had to find his own place.

He checked the alarm clock for the last time at twenty to six and got up and showered and shaved and dressed and went downstairs and made a fresh pot of coffee. At six-thirty, hearing someone stirring upstairs—it would be Billie, women in every society got up ahead of the men—he wrote a note on the kitchen pad and went out to walk around before meeting Battle.

It was a brittle early spring morning. The air was sharp and ice skinned the tops of puddles left over from the last rain. Birds strung their cold square-edged notes from branch to branch, clear enough to see. Doc could separate the songs but couldn’t identify the singers; it had always been a source of embarrassment to him, a country boy, that he didn’t know one bird from another and could barely tell a maple by its leaves or timothy from Queen Anne’s lace. Spring in all its incarnations was just a stage set for baseball.

After circling the block he still got to the open area early. The quack grass was ankle-high and the frost, thawing, soaked through his shoes when he walked around in it, kicking up no-deposit beer cans from out of state and empty Sheik boxes and plastic six-pack carriers. The last he picked up automatically and pulled apart loop by loop because he had heard somewhere that animals sometimes got their heads caught in the loops and strangled to death. A huge ring-necked pheasant took off in a burst of copper and brilliant green almost from under his foot with a noise like an outboard motor starting, actually stopping his heart for a beat. It swung into the sun lodged red as an open sore between buildings on the east side of the street and glided down into the tall grass of the adjoining lot. It was one bird Doc knew from back home and he was amazed to find it roosting here in the heart of an industrial suburb. It was as if nature had grown impatient with the whole Detroit sprawl and was reclaiming it parcel by parcel.

Doc went to the sidewalk to let his shoes dry while he waited.

He’d been there fifteen minutes and had seen perhaps as many cars when he found himself looking at Battle, staring back at him through the window on the passenger’s side of a gray four-door Chrysler LeBaron. Someday Doc would have to find out how the police managed to come up on you all at once that way in a couple of tons of automobile. The sergeant said something to the man at the wheel and got out and slammed the door behind him. He had on a charcoal double-breasted car coat on top of a gray suit and gleaming black latex boots stretched over his street shoes. The other man stayed in the car.

“Thanks for the time. How’s the job?”

“Let you know when I get settled in.” Doc gave him back his hand.

“I know what you mean. I never had one I wasn’t ready to quit after the first day.” He looked around. “I did an exchange bit with the New York Police Department last year. You don’t see unused real estate like this there. That son of a bitch in the mayor’s office here lets the neighborhoods go to hell while he throws up ugly buildings on the river to go bankrupt because nobody with a brain wants to run his business in Detroit”

“This is Dearborn.”

“Dearborn, Hamtramck, Highland Park, downriver, it’s all Detroit Except Grosse Pointe and Birmingham. They bottle their own air.”

“I’ve heard more bellyaching since I got out than all the time I was inside. Why is it if everybody I meet thinks Young is a son of a bitch he keeps getting elected?”

“I figured it out. It’s like Barbara Cartland. The lady romance writer? My wife says she never reads her books, all her friends say they wouldn’t touch ’em, but she’s like one of the five best-selling writers in the world. Somebody’s got to be lying, right? And somebody’s got to be voting for the old turd.” The two-way radio in the car spat and crackled. Battle turned his head an inch that way, listened, then turned back. Doc couldn’t hear anything intelligible through the closed window. “I wanted to talk to you without Ance around. This Starkweather Hall thing is steaming up the windows down at Thirteen Hundred. It was starting to the down when McCoy suicided; now the press won’t let go of it. My wife says my ass doesn’t look nearly as good to her with Chief Hart’s teeth marks in it.”

“Why talk to me? I barely heard of Hall.”

“The city has upped its reward offer for information leading to Hall’s arrest and conviction ten thousand. We’re targeting the leaders this season; last time it was the mules, but the junior highs turn them out like GM makes cars. With what the various parents’ anti-drug groups are putting up, that brings the ante to around a hundred thousand. That’s well inside Maynard Ance’s loop.”

“What’s that mean?”

The sergeant looked out across the weedy lot. His breath made a gray jet. “Everybody in the department wanted a piece of this one when it went down, on account of the chances for promotion. Not me. If I miss I’m back in General Service, counting how many states some Circuit Court judge’s brand new Jag was parted out over after it went missing. If I hit the bull’s-eye I’m just another Tom fetching back one of my own for the Man and wagging my tail when he scratches behind my ears. I kept my head low, but someone in Personnel pulled my jacket, found out my Uncle Anthony was a Mahomet bodyguard after he left wrestling, and before you can say ‘Officer down’ I’m assigned to the M-and-M detail. Special knowledge, they called it. Like I wasn’t chin-deep in textbooks sweating out the draft all the time the old man was tasting Mahomet’s soup for arsenic. I almost quit.” He looked at Doc. “Is Ance harboring Hall?”

“What?”

“It’s a sweet deal, sitting on him till the reward jacks up high enough, then turning him in and splitting it, half to go for Hall’s defense.”

“Sounds thick,” Doc said.

“I’d haul him in, only that’d be a day lost interrogating a brick when I could be shaking out buildings looking for Hall. Taber’s an easy crack but the last time a cop got an alky to talk by tanking him forty-eight hours and waving a jug under his nose the judge flushed the whole chain of evidence on account of duress.”

“But I’m a fresh parolee, and you don’t even have to tell me what would happen if I refused to cooperate in a criminal investigation.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. I could talk to Kubitski, get him to cut you some slack. You could take a trip out of the state or have a drink in a bar frequented by known felons.”

“I like it here. And the only felons I know are locked up.”

“Don’t make me use muscle, Doc. My kid would kill me.”

Doc picked up a twig that had fallen off a dead elm on the corner and used it to scrape wet grass off his left heel. It was like knocking dirt from his cleats while he thought about the next pitch. “I haven’t been working for him
that
long. I think I could be working for him ten years before he’d tell me anything like that.”

“You’ve got eyes. You’ve got ears. I’m just sweeping out all the closets. I don’t think he’s dumb enough to risk a harboring rap, but his conscience sure as hell wouldn’t stop him. Hall might try to contact him on his own. As far as he trusts anyone white he trusts Ance.” He leaned back against the Chrysler. “My spidey sense tells me you’ve already got a favor lined up.”

Doc threw away the twig, rotated his working shoulder. “What are you and your kid doing Saturday?”

R
USSELL
T
ABER SOBER WAS
a different man. Seated at Maynard Ance’s desk reading the
Free Press
sports section, he swiveled a quarter turn when Doc came in and raised himself an inch off the chair to offer his hand. Doc hesitated, then grasped it. It was wrapped in white gauze secured with adhesive tape. “I had a hundred bucks down on your first game with Texas,” Taber said. “You caught a line drive without stepping off the mound for the last out.”

“Glad I could help.”

“Help my ass. I bet on the Rangers. Who thought Detroit had anything in the bullpen?”

“I was on the d.l. with a sprained wrist for the next three games. How’s your hand?”

He looked at it. “Couple of cuts. No stitches. I don’t remember much about yesterday. Guess I slipped out of Park. You should’ve told me who you was.”

“Would it have made any difference?”

“Nah. Maynard should’ve warned you about me, about liquor and me. I’d quit, but what’d I do for an excuse then?” His truck driver’s face squinched up, as if he were staring into the sun. “How about you, still on dope?”

“I never was. Where’s Ance?”

“I took him over to the garage and dropped him off with the Coachmen. While they’re fixing the window he wants to go over a couple new features he wants them to put in. Gun portholes maybe. Said he’d catch a cab back here.” Taber was still squinting. “What’re you, six-four?”

“Six-five.”

“I’m six-two. Maynard likes to surround himself with telephone poles. Can you do anything besides pitch and steal motor homes?”

“I’m a fast learner.” Doc plucked a clean mug off a tree next to the complex coffee maker and filled it from the carafe. “Are we supposed to do anything while we’re waiting for him?”

“Waiting, that’s the job. I got plenty of experience. Twenty years sitting in a blue-and-white waiting for some puke to come along with a pinch bar and pry open some alley door. I got piles old enough to run for president.”

“I heard they let you go.”

Taber moved his shoulders. “This Willie took a run at me when I walked in on him during a stickup at a stop-and-rob on Chene. Shooting team never found a gun.”

“Willie?”

“Them people got no imagination when it comes to naming their kids.”

He went back to the sports section. Doc drank coffee and looked out at the dirt parking lot. The sun was well up now, and little curls of steam were coming off the patches of frost. A Volare hatchback with a wrinkled right fender pulled up next to the health spa canopy and a slim blonde got out, tugged down her short leather jacket, and went up the brief flight of steps carrying a gym bag. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had long legs in tight white jeans and knee-length suede boots with fringes. She unlocked the door with a key and went inside.

The coffee had a metallic taste. Doc set down the mug. “Okay if I step out for a half-hour?”

“Suit yourself. I’m just here to watch the phone.” Taber was doing arithmetic with a pencil in the margin by the box scores.

The sign on the door under the canopy read OPEN 10 a.m. TIL MIDNIGHT. It was a few minutes after eight. Doc pushed the button with his thumb. A bell jangled deep inside. After a moment a woman’s voice said, “Come back later.”

He rang again.

Footsteps scuffed carpeting. The opaque curtain over the pane of glass in the door parted an inch, then closed. The door opened against a chain. He saw part of a face.

“We don’t open for two more hours.”

“I may be busy then. I’ve got cash,” he added.

The door closed. He thought it was a rejection. Then the chain rattled and the door swung wide. He stepped inside around the blonde. She shut the door and replaced the chain. She was a foot and a half shorter than Doc, which surprised him; her proportions were those of a much taller girl. She had removed the leather jacket and was wearing one of those red printed handkerchief blouses tied under her breasts. She had an athletic build, but her face was pocked all over like a golf ball under heavy makeup. He couldn’t guess her age.

“Massage is thirty dollars.”

He produced his wallet and gave her a twenty and a ten. In the narrow, yellow-painted entryway she leaned through a square hole cut in the wall that reminded him of the registration desk at the Independence Motel. A buzzer sounded and she opened a door next to the hole and held it for him. “The sauna’s not ready yet,” she said. “Put your valuables in this and keep it with you.” She handed him a flat blue canvas bag the size of a pocketbook with a key attached to the zipper, then took a thick white folded towel off a shelf and gave him that. “The showers are in there. When you’re through, wrap yourself in the towel and come back here.”

“I took a shower this morning.”

“It’s required.”

He went through the open door she’d indicated into a room with a low Formica-topped bench and metal lockers against one wall. One of the lockers had a combination lock; the others were just latched. When he unzipped the bag to put his wallet and watch inside he found a small padlock. After determining that the key fit the lock, he stripped and put his clothes in the locker and secured the door with the padlock and stepped into the cavernous shower room to the left. As he lathered himself with liquid soap from the dispenser he had an idea the blonde was watching him somehow. The thought of it gave him an erection. He hoped he’d be able to get through the massage.

He rinsed himself, toweled off, wrapped the towel around his waist kilt-fashion, and found her waiting for him when he went back out. He was sure then that she’d been watching him. She led him to a curtained opening, held the curtain aside for him, and followed him through. They were in a small square room with a padded table and a bench with plastic bottles on it. Pink recessed lighting illuminated the mirrors on the walls and ceiling. “Hand me the towel.”

When he complied, standing before her naked, she gave him a quick appraising glance that told him nothing. “This is how it works,” she said. “I make my living entirely off tips. A plain massage will cost you another thirty dollars.”

“I only have twenty.”

“Visa and MasterCard are okay.”

“I don’t have a credit card. I guess you’ll have to give me back my money.”

“I can’t. I already rang it up.”

“Well, I didn’t pay thirty bucks just to take a shower.”

She chewed the inside of a cheek. “Okay, twenty. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Who’d I tell?”

He unzipped the bag and gave her a bill. She directed him to lie facedown on the table and went out through the curtain. When she returned a few minutes later, he saw in the mirrors that she had changed out of the blouse, jeans, and boots into a black teddy and high-heeled slippers. She had high pointed breasts and muscles in her buttocks like a dancer’s.