Sinister Heights (32 page)

What looked like the same seniors in the same pastel sweats were sawing away at the slots with the same look of no hope on their faces. At the cashier's cage I bought two fifty-dollar chips. I waded through the sea of jangling and bing-bonging from the machines, with the odd clink of silver dollars trickling into the trays, stopped at the roulette table, and put down a chip on the black seven. When the wheel stopped at sixteen red, I put the other chip down in the same place and turned away.

“Seven, black,” said the croupier, a smooth young black woman in a stiff formal shirt and red bow tie. “Fifteen hundred to you, sir.”

The other players applauded politely.

I asked the smiling cashier to make out a check to the Iris Chapin Fund. Outside, I climbed into the first cab in line and gave the driver the address of my office.

“Any luck, mister?” he asked.

“A little.”

His eyes crinkled in the rearview mirror. “Lady smiled, huh?”

“All the time.”

And in a little while, I did too.

A Biography of Loren D. Estleman

Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.

Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once
The Oklahoma Punk
was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.

Estleman's most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980's
Motor City Blue
, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel,
Sugartown
, won the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman's most recent Walker novel is
Infernal Angels
.

Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980,
The High Rocks
was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010's
The Book of Murdock
. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author.
Journey of the Dead
, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.

Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.

Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.

Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.

Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.

Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book
Journey of the Dead
.

Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor.

Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky.

Estleman and his wife, Deborah, signing together while on a tour through Colorado in 2003.

Estleman with his grandson, Dylan Ray Brown, shown here writing an original story on “Papa's” typewriter at Christmastime in 2005 in Springfield, Missouri.