Sinister Heights (11 page)

It didn't mean anything. It's a popular color and there are more American-made cars in the city than anything else except one-way streets and liquor stores. Just because I was brought up on Steve McQueen movies I took several shortcuts and a couple of long ones, nicked a yellow light on Michigan, and looked for the car. It wasn't there.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

As it happened I didn't get the chance to bet on the black seven or any other number. A squirt in a ballcap was waiting in my reception room to deliver a summons on behalf of a deadbeat dad I'd flushed out of a woodpile six months before, and I was on the telephone with a lawyer all afternoon getting out of it. His fee ate up what I'd earned on the job. No one sues you over the cases you can't close. It's hell on incentive.

I got to the restaurant ten minutes late, but still ahead of Iris. That much about her hadn't changed. An aristocratic hostess seated me out of the main traffic path and a chirpy young waitress wearing a necktie with Yosemite Sam on it brought me a double Scotch. I was stirring the ice when Iris drifted in.

The clientele was mostly the MTV generation, black-dyed hair and clothes from the Morticia Addams line, so she didn't turn as many heads as she would have among the general population, but she didn't slip in under the radar either. She wore a cherry-red blazer with suede pumps to match, an ivory silk skirt, and a turban that might have been made from the same bolt of cloth, at one time available only to members of the Egyptian royal family. She didn't wear a blouse. The dusting of freckles slightly lighter than her medium-brown skin spilled like gold dust into the shadow where the blazers lapels met. I knew where it ended, but that had been a long time ago, when there were still canals on Mars. She looked like Cleopatra after a makeover.

I rose and she made a little purring growl deep in her throat and hugged me tight. She wore no scent, which didn't mean she had none. She smelled as clean as Kilimanjaro.

Keeping her hands on my upper arms, she pushed back for an objective view. “You haven't aged a minute. What's your secret?”

“Choosing liars for friends. You look like a new car.”

“Today I feel like an '83 Pacer. My past came up in the deposition. It was like drowning and seeing my life flash in front of my eyes. It got an X rating.”

“I think it's NC-17 now.”

“Who gives a shit? I spent most of it in sweaty little rooms filled with smoke. I ought to look like a Virginia ham.”

“I just came off four hours with a lawyer. That makes me an all-day sucker. What are you drinking?”

“Whatever's open. In a bowl.”

I caught the waitress' eye while Iris was seating herself and ordered another double Scotch. When we were alone, Iris placed a red handbag on the corner of the table. It made a thump.

“That sounds heavier than a twenty-five,” I said.

“Thirty-two. I traded up after Mr. Chapin. I've got CCW permits in Michigan and Ohio. My life's been threatened so many times I just tell the cops to use the same report and plug in new names. When I bother to call them at all.”

“Husbands?”

“Wives, too. I don't counsel battered men but I refer them to people who do. Then there are the women who start remembering all the sweet little things once they've healed up. To hear them tell it I've broken up more happy homes than I did when I hooked. I don't keep a cat anymore. They nailed one to a tree in the yard and wrung the other's neck and threw it through my bedroom window.”

“Why do you stick?”

“Why do you? That's not a razor scratch on your cheek. Looks like someone's class ring.”

“Hood ornament. I got lost and wandered into Iroquois Heights.”

She shuddered, without affectation. “Aunt Beryl used to tell us horror stories about that place, just to keep us on John R. I hoped when. Detroit started sweeping the ordnance off the streets they'd pick there to blow it up.”

“It would take at least that. The dirty cops need somewhere to go, and the Heights is as far as their beer bellies will take them.” I swirled my cubes around the glass. “How is old Beryl? Is there an alumni newsletter?”

“I heard she's in a nursing home, in Lansing. Probably organizing the geriatric talent and smuggling in Viagra to keep up the demand, among other things. Word gets around. It's a small community and getting smaller. AIDS scared off all the customers with anything to lose. What's left is barely human and not quite animal. I got out under the wire.”

Young Lady Yosemite brought Iris her drink and waited while she read the menu. Iris had developed fine lines around her eyes and a crease at one corner of her mouth that I might have mistaken for a dimple if I hadn't known her when she didn't have it. Apart from that she could have passed for ten years younger than she was. It had been nothing but gale-force winds for her since bloomers, and all they'd managed to do was wear her smooth, like a ship's figurehead carved from amber.

“I'll have the rib-eye,” she said. “Blood rare, with a baked potato.”

“What dressing would you like on your salad?”

“Iceberg lettuce?”

“Romaine.” The waitress sounded offended.

“No salad then. If I get the craving I'll munch on a dandelion in the parking lot.” She handed back the menu.

I ordered fettuccini and another Scotch. When the waitress left I said, “Tough day in court?”

“No serious complaints. When they're suing me they're not throwing their wives and sweethearts through glass doors.” She smiled; “You'll make it up to her. You've always been generous to working girls.”

“You haven't seen me when I'm going my own expenses.”

That made it business. She sipped her drink, set it down, and folded her hands on the table. She wore no rings or other jewelry except a tiny gold heart on a chain around her neck, an old trinket I remembered well. “I'm not sure I can give you Constance Glendowning. Two weeks ago she couldn't face anything in pants. Last week she started to thaw toward the son of a bitch that put her in the shelter to begin with.”

“It happens.”

“It shouldn't. Not since Betty Friedan. She's got an education, computer skills. They need updating, but she isn't one of those Depression wives who can't balance a bloody checkbook without running back to Andy Capp. What do you think of this?” She touched a finger to the crease at the corner of her mouth.

“It makes you look a little like Drew Barrymore.”

“Thirty-six months ago I looked like Freddy Krueger. Mr. Chapin threw an ice-crusher at me. Three thousand bucks' worth of oral surgery. He's still paying it off; that was part of the settlement. When he pays. I'll go back to him, too, someday. With a chainsaw.”

“I didn't know they still made ice-crushers.”

“Back then I didn't know they still made Chapins. Now I know it's a growth industry. Anyway, a few days ago, Constance finally started to get angry—partly for what Glendowning did to her, pardy because of what he might have started doing to her son if she didn't get out when she did. I'd like that to continue. Your taking her to see someone about an inheritance might set her back.”

“He's Glendowning's son too.”

“Well, you know what the man said when his neighbor tried to stop him from shooting his ducks: ‘They're my ducks.'”

“Glendowning isn't in this.”

“Not the point. She's living in the present finally, thinking about the future. You're talking about taking her back to the past. Now that I've said that I'm sure I can't give her to you.”

“This accreditation you've got,” I said. “That make you her legal guardian?”

“It doesn't have to, Amos. The house is built to last. And I've got friends on the local Domestic Violence Unit. Those cops are like dogs: One year there is like seven anywhere else on the force.”

We were still looking at each other when the waitress came with bread. She set down the basket noiselessly and retreated without a word.

I said, “The inheritance is from Leland Stutch.”

The ice-crusher had killed a nerve or something; that corner of her mouth remained motionless while a twitch shot through the rest. She raised her glass and took another sip. The effort of moving slowly would have been less plain to someone who didn't know her.

“Those lawyers take their time when it comes to making someone else rich,” she said finally. “How long's he been in the ground?”

“It isn't even the lawyers' idea to include Constance in the circle. Stutch's widow hired me to find her and her mother. It seems the old pirate had a late-life fling and sprouted a whole new limb on the family tree.”

She made that same cockeyed twitch. “That's the problem with having too much money for too many years. You get to thinking you're outside the reach of the laws of nature. How much are we talking about?”

“How many zeroes does it take to make it all right with you?”

“Go to hell. If it's just four it means a whole new life for Constance and Matthew, separate from Glendowning's. Money buys everything.”

“It will be more than four. If she wants to get a blood-and-tissue test and take it to a jury, it could be seven, but Matthew will be out of college when it's finished, by which time all the lawyers will be up to their briefs in Porsches. It might be seven anyway. Stutch made most of his principal when the IRS was still a gleam in Woodrow Wilson's eye.”

Our meals came. Iris made a test cut on her steak to make sure the blood was running and shot the waitress a smile from the hip, which sent her away on a pink cloud. She'd forgotten my drink and didn't give me the chance to remind her. There was a lesson in that, but I'd hang on to it the same way I remembered my high school French. Anyway the fettuccini was good.

“I'll talk to her,” Iris said between bites. “I'll call you. If she agrees to a meeting I want to be there. Leland Stutch. I'll be damned. If that creep husband tries to come in for any part of it, I'll put Mr. Chapin farther back in the line for that chainsaw.”

“How long's the line?”

“Amos, you can't see the end.” She buttered her baked potato. “Did you get a chance to play that number at the Grand?”

“I got hung up, sorry.”

“Just as well. I'm lucky at roulette; it makes up a little for the rest of my life. If I hit it big I might retire. Where would the women go then?”

“To you.”

“I wouldn't count on it. There's no telling how long this humanitarian streak will last. Prostitution didn't take. I crapped out on paradise, and you know what happened when I went for the white picket fence and two-point-five kids. Who was it said you can only go so far in one direction?”

“I think it was Columbus.”

“Yes, and look at all the trouble he caused. What about you? When you put in for your license, did you think you'd still be doing the same thing all these years later?”

“I didn't think about it. It beat where I was when I got the idea.”

“I'll bite. Where?”

“In a hole, avoiding a flame-thrower.” I twirled my fork in a pile of pasta. “Maybe when Constance's ship comes in she'll make you a donation.”

“No, they only remember me when they go back to their men and wind up in the hospital. It's my fault for making the sons of bitches mad.” She lifted her glass. “Self-pity. Who else if not us?”

I lifted my glass. It was empty.

When the check came she asked if I was going home.

“Probably. I'm not as lucky as you at roulette.”

“Can I go with you?”

I hesitated, then continued counting out bills. “How do you feel about dust? The maid didn't show up this year.”

“Just as long as the sheets are clean.”

I overtipped the waitress in spite of the dry spell. On the way home with Iris close beside me, defying the seatbelt law, I checked the mirror for caramel-colored Chevies. She was right. I'd been going in one direction too long.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

“I know what I
said
, Mrs. Stainback. Listen to what I'm saying now. Well, ask her to come to the phone.” Iris looked up at me. “I never let calls go through to residents. It's a decision I defend in court three or four times a year.”

“Bill of Rights,” I said. “What a bother.”

“I'm peddling survival, not liberty.” She bent her head to the receiver. “Hello, dear. How are you? Yes, I really want to know. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't.”

She was sitting in the easy chair in the living room, wearing one of my shirts and nothing else. The tails came to mid-thigh. With her legs crossed, the long muscle in her right thigh stood out like insulated cable; all those trips up and down courthouse steps made owning a Stairmaster redundant. Her naked feet were long and slim, with high arches and clear polish on the nails.

She smiled thanks when I set a saucer of buttered toast and a mug of black coffee on the table beside the telephone, but she wasn't there. She was in the shelter in Monroe, telling Constance Glendowning about the Stutch inheritance, telling the story in detail as I'd told it to her and as if Constance hadn't heard it from her mother all the time she was growing up. All those depositions had trained her to park the emotions around the corner; she might have been discussing the previous fiscal year with her accountant.

I sat on the end of the old sofa that retained most of its stuffing, drinking coffee and admiring the view. She was wearing her hair short again, nearly as short as it had been when we'd met. It made her look younger than she'd looked in the turban. She'd grown leaner in the years since I'd last taken inventory, but not thin; last night had been like wrestling a mountain cat, only without as much bloodshed. The scratches would heal.

The receiver went into its cradle. “You heard?”