Silent Thunder (22 page)

I straightened and let my hands drop from the table. The first knuckle of my right thumb grazed the .25 in my pocket. I might have left it with Constance Thayer for all the good it was doing me there. I kept talking.

“Sturdy moving up into the big time was like a kid getting his first taste of whiskey; he liked the lightheaded feeling and wanted more. Jacking you up for all you could spare and could score from the home invasions wasn’t enough. He went to Doyle Thayer Junior, who had the collectors’ bug and the wherewithal to outbid you into next year, or for as long as he could get away with forging his father’s signature on checks. That was when one of your wind-up soldiers gossiped to Ma Chaney that Sturdy wouldn’t be around much longer.

“He was wrong. They didn’t call him Sturdy for nothing. He’d still be with us if his heart hadn’t given out while Hubert was trying to drown the truth out of him. I’ll take part of that,” I added. “If I hadn’t forced your hand by telling you I was his partner you wouldn’t have sicced Hubert on him to begin with. I thought he was safe in jail.”

Seabrook wasn’t listening. “You said Stoudenmire’s brother-in-law agreed to try to steal the plutonium. He didn’t get it, did he?”

Casually—I felt as jerky as an actor crossing a stage for the first time—I put my hands in the pockets of my jacket. The maneuver had all the unstudied naturalness of a feather dancer performing in a high wind.

“No,” I said. “He got too sick and had to leave the job before he got near the stuff. Sturdy was bluffing you right along. Me too.”

Tension came into that room like another person. The three sentries, spaced out expertly with identical fields of fire, gripped their automatic rifles so tightly they creaked. The Beretta in the Colonel’s hand lay as steady as a stone.

We were all in our places, all the lines had been spoken. It only remained for one of us to start the show.

Jerry Darling stole it. The door to the other room bumped open, so quickly he lost his balance and fell on his side. He was a mess. His head was bleeding where the butt of an M-16 had cracked it open and the blood had trickled down his neck in a forked pattern, where it vanished inside the neck of his mesh T-shirt and mingled with more blood from a tight ragged line of bullet wounds in his chest. From there it had drenched his right sleeve and hand. The revolver in it must have been slippery. It went off when he hit the floor, squirting fire and a slug that struck the furnace with a clang and a rumble, as of a theater prop man shaking a sheet of tin to simulate thunder.

Then the thunder was silenced by a louder peal of three M-16s clearing their throats in unison. Their actions rattled and their spent shells plink-plunked to the floor and smoke smudged the room’s details and Jerry’s big body jerked and twitched as if attached to three strings, his mouth falling open and his eyes rolling white.

The Colonel, who had not stopped watching me since we had entered the room, was momentarily distracted. I took the small pistol out of my pocket—.25s are barely effective at best, and when fired through fabric are useless—but even as I squeezed the trigger I knew I wasn’t fast enough. He was already firing the Beretta in my direction.

I thought.

I was too caught up in the moment to know that an army had come clattering down the stairs behind me, led by a coarse-featured black Detroit police inspector named Alderdyce and a delicately built Hispanic Iroquois Heights lieutenant named Romero and backed up by a dumpy Wallace Beery type of a federal agent who answered to Horace Livingood. The Beretta’s bullet flicked my left jacket sleeve and splintered the staircase railing an inch to the right of Romero’s right ear as he crouched and returned fire with his bone-handled service pistol. I was firing at the same time, squeezing off three rounds as fast as my trigger finger could flex and relax. The tiny automatic might have belonged to Marcel Marceau for all the noise it made in that pounding room. Four bullets, one large, three no bigger than pencil erasers, made black holes in Colonel Seabrook’s tan suit. He took two steps back, then one forward, and sprawled face down across the pool table, one hand still clutching the Beretta. The nails of his other hand made five distinct tracks in the green felt as he slid to his knees. After that there was no more room to fall and he knelt there between the wall and the table—dreaming, no doubt, in whatever time was left for dreaming, of conquest and diamonds.

The two local cops had brought reinforcements, and between their handguns and sawed-off shotguns they tore apart the three young men with assault rifles like teddy bears in a shooting gallery. It seemed the Colonel hadn’t trained them to meet armed resistance in close quarters, because later two uniformed officers were treated for minor wounds and a third for a shattered wrist, while one of the mercenaries was pronounced dead at the scene and another died on the operating table at Detroit Receiving. The last was admitted there in critical condition and upon improving was transferred to the infirmary at the Detroit House of Corrections.

The walnut paneling would never be the same, along with every eardrum on the premises.

When the shooting stopped, someone had to ram a shotgun butt through two of the windows to let the smoke out. In the clearing air, a Detroit uniform pried a white and quivering Mark Proust’s fingers loose from the back of the overstuffed chair, behind which he had taken cover. When he let go the chair listed toward one corner where a leg had been shot away. A spring tore loose from the riddled fabric.

“Caramba
,” said Romero, standing among the flung and spraddled bodies. “For this I could have stayed in Havana.”

T
HE LIVING ROOM
of Ernest Krell’s home, large and sunken and lighted through amber panels instead of windows, looked dim and remote, like an Egyptian tomb that had remained unchanged throughout the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the life of Christ, the Middle Ages, two world wars, and the entire career of Mason Reese. The walls were still burled walnut and I didn’t much care for them because they reminded me of the paneling in Mark Proust’s basement. Krell’s Korean War portrait hung above it all, a proud flag on a ship in drydock.

Leslie Dorrance sat on the chalk-colored sofa reading my typewritten report. His horse face looked comforting, like a homely aunt’s when you’ve had enough of city lights and bottled blondes. His legs were crossed in expensive brown pinstriped trousers ending in ribbed socks and the inevitable thick-soled loafers with tassels. Krell stood at the mantel in another of his black suits, this one with orange stripes to match his sunset-colored tie, clasped with the bit of shrapnel. The sharp creases in his face made it look as if it had been assembled from squares of pale metal. He never sat. I decided either his old hip wound made sitting uncomfortable or he liked people to compare him to the figure in the painting.

Constance Thayer was seated across from me with her legs crossed in a chair that matched the sofa. She had on a lightweight green summer dress and white pumps and her hair appeared rich brown in that light. She looked as if she’d gotten a good night’s sleep. Well, so had I: fourteen hours, after spending all of Monday and a big slice of Monday night with cops. Today was Wednesday.

Dorrance read the last page, flipped back a couple and reread something, then closed the report. His eyes were bright. “This can all be substantiated?”

I nodded. “The cops have a deathbed testimony from the young man who died at Receiving, and the man I shot at Ma Chaney’s has agreed to turn state’s evidence to help truss up Proust and the other Iroquois Heights officials involved. With the Colonel dead there’s no one left to be loyal to.”

“Of course I don’t approve,” Dorrance said. “Many other lawyers would have quit the case when they found out their client had hired an investigator behind their backs a second time. However, for the first time in my life I wish we had a shorter court date. I’d like to try this before a jury while the news reports are still fresh in their minds.”

“They’ll be fresh enough. The nuke angle scares a lot of people. As indirectly as Doyle Junior was involved in this mess, the fact that he was interested in obtaining plutonium to arm his pet Polaris missile has got to make whoever shot him look great by comparison.” I was looking at Constance as I spoke. She was busy lighting a cigarette.

Krell cleared his throat. The noise reminded me of an M-16. He rested a hand inside his coat, and
that
reminded me of an M-16. My ears were still ringing. “I knew Seabrook socially,” he said. “Old soldiers, you know. He always seemed quite rational. I can’t believe he had any faith in his scheme.”

I moved a shoulder. “People are unhinged on the subject of nuclear arms, like I said. He was like a kid who watches television and thinks you can make anyone do whatever you want just by waving a gun at him. It’s never an either/or proposition when it comes to blackmailing governments. Something would have come along. That’s what the people who worry about the ozone and the population problem and the atomic bomb never understand. Something always comes along.”

“Like you,” said Dorrance.

“Something else if not me. There’s a natural balance to these things.”

The lawyer rolled the report in his hands absently. “Do you think the Chaney woman would testify that Thayer came to her to buy the Polaris? That connection needs shoring up.”

“If you meet her price.”

“I’m sure I can swing immunity.”

“She’s got that now. Macomb County’s case against her fell apart when her people spirited all those weapons and explosives out of the farmhouse right under the sheriff’s nose.”

“Will
you
testify?”

“No.” This time Constance and I were looking at each other. Her face gave up nothing.

“We need you,” Dorrance said.

“It’d be just hearsay. I’ll sign an affidavit if you want but I won’t go to court.”

“Why not?”

“Let it go, Leslie,” said Constance. “Mr. Walker’s made up his mind.”

“Well, I wish I knew what was going on.”

“If you did you wouldn’t,” I said.

I wanted to leave then, but Mrs. Krell came in with a tray of lemon cookies and set it on the coffee table. For once I wasn’t hungry enough to eat one. They reminded me of M-16s.

After she went out, Krell said, “I think I’d better absent myself as well. I hope to work with Thayer Industries in the future and I want to avoid any suggestion of conflict.”

I said, “The old man got to you, didn’t he?”

He colored. “I have an organization to support. I can’t drift from one client to the next like you.”

“Don’t explain. I sold out more cheaply than you did.” I stood. “Good luck in court, Mr. Dorrance.”

He got up and shook my hand. “Will you send me a bill?”

“It’s been paid.”

I left. Constance Thayer and I hadn’t exchanged as much as a word.

The morning was sun-drenched and already sultry. The air was thick with pollen and smelled heavily of blossoms. It did nothing for my dull headache.

Lieutenant Romero was leaning against the Mercury. Today it was beige poplin, with a red-and-white silk tie on a white shirt and the cocoa straw hat, adjusted at a jaunty angle to allow for the fat bandage on his right ear. I’d heard they’d pulled enough wood-splinters out of it to reconstruct the staircase banister in Proust’s basement.

“Your service told me you’d be here,” he said. “You look like my ear feels.”

“I feel like your ear looks. How’s Pollard?”

“Pulling desk duty until his arm heals and hating it. You can’t break as many heads from behind a stack of arrest reports.”

Pollard had been one of the officers wounded during the fight. “How’d you talk him into coming along on a raid of Proust’s house?” I asked.

“At first, of course, we didn’t know that’s what it would turn out to be. When we got there I promised to shoot him if he didn’t go in with us. He believed me. It must have been the hot blood.”

“He believed you because you meant it.”

“Maybe. I’m not Colonel Seabrook.”

“You were at my office early?”

“We were waiting in the empty one next door when Hubert—that was his name?—let himself into the office across the hall. We could’ve taken him then, but where I was born we wait for the big fish. There was also a question of jurisdiction, not to mention the fact that the only charge we had to hold him on was breaking and entering a vacant office, which we were guilty of ourselves. I put a note on your door for the others when we left to follow. I knew there would be others,” he added with a straight face.

“Good thing you waited for them before going in.”

“I had disciplinary problems as I said.” He took a long cigar out of the lacquer case.

I lit it. “What happens now?”

“Proust has resigned to devote time to his defense. City Prosecutor Fish has appointed Chief of Detectives Frank Knowles to fill in as acting police chief until a permanent chief can be assigned. Knowles is a good policeman by Iroquois Heights standards. You’d have to know him a long time to realize he’s crooked.”

“You mean deputy chief.”

“The chief retired. According to the boys on the third floor, it happened right after he invited Proust to his house and took a typewritten resignation and his service revolver out of his bathrobe and said either Proust’s signature or his brains would be on the sheet in five minutes.”

I grinned. “It’s a good story.”

“I wish it were true.”

“So who’s the new chief of detectives?”

“Not me. The talk is it will be Lieutenant Reuben Zorn.” He saw my face change. “Know him?”

“I knew him when he was a sergeant. I’d have bet then he’d wind up on charges, but that was before I knew how bad things were in the Heights. Are you sticking?”

“Someone has to. If I can stay honest I might be chief myself after another few shake-ups.”

“I think you will.”

“Be chief?”

“Stay honest.”

He showed me his white teeth briefly. We shook hands and got back into our cars.

I drove back to the office. Unlocking my door I said hello to a sign painter lettering
DR. W. W. JOHNSTONE ASTROLOGICAL PROJECTIONS
on the door across the hall. I picked up my mail from under the slot, carried it into the private office, and dumped it on the desk. I didn’t pass any customers. It was too early for a drink so I filled a glass from the tap in the water closet and swallowed its contents in a lump. Then I sat down and called my answering service. One of the messages was from a Mr. Livingood. I called him.