You Know Who Killed Me (22 page)

She made a half-turn to look at the river. Clouds billowed from her mouth when she spoke. “You forget how beautiful this town is, in places. They tell me this was all warehouses before I was born. Tearing them down and replacing them must have meant jobs for a lot of people.”

“About as many as lost theirs. You can hide a lot of graft under a few thousand tons of steel and cement.” I didn't turn with her. She'd put her body between me and that right-hand pocket.

“Not you and me, though. If the world weren't wicked we wouldn't be working.”

I grinned. The air froze my gums on contact. “Be vewy, vewy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits!”

She turned back, and both hands were still in their pockets. I relaxed my grip a little on the Smith & Wesson. “That was a slick piece of work today. I had the day team on you.”

“Don't put them in front of a firing squad. I had a little help from the DPW. I didn't spot the tail tonight.”

“There wasn't any. I knew where you were going. You told me, remember?”

“I wasn't sure you'd go along with it. Those unbugged fire stairs being so handy.”

“It isn't good to make such things a habit. Sooner or later somebody gets a bright idea and goes back to RadioShack.”

She stopped talking, waiting for me to ask her to the prom. I didn't ask. The little crease reappeared.

“I heard about the reward,” she said. “How'd you manage it?”

“I didn't. But you knew that. You withdrew it. Why not? You're the one who offered it in the first place.”

 

THIRTY-TWO

She didn't say anything. Her face didn't change. I'd have been disappointed in her if it had. It would have been a shame to throw away the best poker face I'd ever seen.

“I'd like a look at that Justice Department application sometime,” I said. “I bet it reads like Lewis Carroll. The best con man in the world wouldn't score better than sixty. Only a psychopath could ace it. You post a fat fee for information leading to a murder conviction, knowing it'll just bring every crackpot and get-rich-quick bum out from under his rock and gum up the works. It's practically a guarantee the investigation won't lead to the murderer.”

“Just for the sake of argument, how would I get my hands on ten thousand dollars?”

“You didn't have to. No one would ever collect. Yuri Yako looked good for a while; you made sure of that by having Roy Thompson overhear him threatening Gates's life. Or did you? Roy can't back it up or deny it, being a grease spot in a hit-and-run.”

“My, my. I'm just a little Lucrezia Borgia. What else you got?”

“An embarrassment of riches. First, you tried to pin Gates's murder on the Ukrainian mob, but when that started to peter out you loaded his computer with incriminating drug traffic. With all that and the distraction of treasure hunters calling in tips, you turned an ordinary homicide probe into a Chinese box so complicated it made the Kennedy assassination look like a slam-dunk.”

“And I did this why?”

“I'm still working on that. Right now I'm wondering how much of this you farmed out and how much of it was DIY.”

A shoe sole scraped concrete; that close to the river it sounded three feet away. A figure in a black hoodie took another step off Jefferson Avenue, spotted us, hesitated, turned, and wandered back the way he'd come, casual as any fresh-air fiend. He had a bundle under one arm, probably filled with tools.

“Came back for the rest of the fountain,” Thaler said. “This is what I left behind. I don't miss it. But I did miss the part where you said you had proof.”

“Boris Ataman.”

She said nothing. The lights might have been turned off for all I could read of her expression.

“I don't know what you offered him,” I said; “maybe a chance to sweep his record clean. These days, the feds have a lot more authority over the locals. My guess is you went down the list of known offenders at the wheel until you came across one that sounded Ukrainian. But you should have cross-checked it with RICO, because as it turned out he wasn't connected. That's when that thread ran out.”

She moved a shoulder. My hand tightened on the revolver; but it was just a shrug. “Felons break on the witness stand,” she said. “If that's all you got—” She turned toward the street.

“Did I say that? I've got another witness who can tie you to that reward offer. She's an Episcopal priest. They don't break so easy. The rest is just legwork: cracking Gates's so-called drug connection, to start.

“Both witnesses are in protective custody,” I added; “in case you were worried.”

She showed her teeth. “WitSec?”

“Nope. Local. You don't put chickens in a pen owned by the fox.

“It almost worked,” I said. “You made two mistakes, not counting the big fat one at the beginning. Just to sweeten the pot, you tried to fob me off on little Michel. You knew about his Ritalin, which I'm guessing is where you got the drug idea, and I told you what he said about finding his father's murderer. His ambivalence. But all he wanted was for it to be over.”

“You said two mistakes.”

“You said something in that stairwell in the federal building that bothered me. You said, ‘The Gates case was no way to finish out the old year.' But the cops couldn't fix time of death either side of midnight in that chilly basement. Only his killer would know he died before the new year.”

She turned her head, said something under her breath that made a jet of bitter vapor. She looked back at me. “Are you wearing a wire?”

“No. You can check me, but please make it quick. I don't handle the cold as well as I used to.”

She stepped closer then, fixed her eyes on mine. She shook her head. She could read pupils too. “Go for a walk?”

“Sure.”

We took the walkway along the river, just two friends out for a stroll, chins tucked into their chests against the cold. The lights of the Ambassador Bridge were strung like pearls in a black void. Cars crawled over it, a flatbed truck probably carrying steel coils to one of the auto plants. They were only a few blocks away. Another world.

“It doesn't matter now if this goes public,” she said. “It did then, which is why people died. We're encouraged to develop individual sources. You can interpret that pretty widely, but I might have strayed a few yards off the reservation.

“I won't go into how I came to select Donald Gates,” she continued. “His job, of course, was the first criterion. His church service entered in; he was an earnest do-gooder, ripe for the you-can-help-your-country speech. My idea was to bring those cameras at traffic lights into the national database: which plate numbers kept coming up at which hours near subversive cells. It was a safe way to identify persons of interest without putting a deep-cover op in jeopardy. By now everyone's an expert on the leaks in the system.”

“It wasn't such a bad idea,” I said, “if you put aside the First and Fourth Amendments.”

“We did that years ago. Anyway, Gates didn't have any qualms; I said I picked him well. But then the story broke about NSA surveillance of domestic telephone conversations, that shitstorm, so I pulled the plug. They threw the IRS director under the bus; what chance would a junior deputy marshal have? Only Gates didn't want to stop.”

“Why would he? He had a mindless job, and he'd seen too many spy movies.”

“The problem was I'd never told my superiors about the operation. Then I made another in my long string of spectacular mistakes: I told Gates it was all my show when I shut it down.”

I stopped walking and faced her. “That's like a married man dumping his mistress.”

She nodded. She was looking at the river. “They always threaten to tell the wife. I went to his place New Year's Eve to try to talk some sense into him, wave the flag, the greater good. He started to dial nine-one-one.”

“So it was a passion killing.”

She looked at me. “Even pros panic. They're human. You should know that. I saw your medical record.”

“The difference is I was the only one I almost destroyed. You put a car at his house the day before, probably with a parabolic mike; Henty said V-A-L was among the plate numbers blocked out for law enforcement use. You heard the Gates's plans for New Year's Eve. You knew he was going to join her at the party later, and that he'd be in the house alone. If you didn't think your conversation would end in killing, you wouldn't have taken that precaution.”

“No. Remember, only he and I knew about our arrangement. I told the surveillance man it was a need-to-know assignment and that the reasons fell above his pay grade. The Service gives you all the vocabulary you need for any situation. I needed to talk to Gates without risking his wife overhearing the conversation.”

“You could have done that without laying so much groundwork. He worked alone in that computer room, and there were a half-dozen other places you could have braced him for a quiet talk. His basement in the suburbs was ideal for swallowing a gunshot.”

“Shit!” She swept the back of her mittened hand across her eyes. As far as I could see it came away dry. “You know, if I were a man, and not a woman trying to prove she could get along against all that testosterone, I'd've run it past the brass, and they'd give me the go-ahead. They have precedents: RICO, national security. Then when it blew up they'd use the game plan they always use, stirring up dust until it all went away. See, I was still thinking like a city cop.”

“What about Yako?”

“He was easy. As a witness under our protection, he had old friends anxious to make contact. One anonymous phone tip, and no more liability.”

“He was no loss, but Roy Thompson was just an ordinary Joe who might have testified he never heard Yako threaten to kill Gates. That one was cold-blooded.”

“I don't guess I can sell you that one as blind luck, but it was. The locals should have locked Ataman up and broken the key off in the lock the second time they arrested him for Grand Theft Auto and reckless driving. Sooner or later he had to kill someone. It just happened to be Thompson.”

“Too thin.”

“The Ukrainian connection. I couldn't believe my luck. But that's all it was, blind dumb luck. Roy Thompson just happened to be standing in front of it.

“It wasn't worth killing him,” she went on. “Eyewitness testimony? You know how well that stands up during cross. I won't say I wasn't relieved when he was run down, and that it took one more lowlife off the streets; I mean Ataman. But I'm no serial killer. I'd sooner face the music.”

I thought about that. It was the one bit of stupid coincidence every case needed to convince the skeptic. But I bought it like I bought Grand Circus Park. At this point I couldn't believe anything she said.

“What the hell happened to you?”

She looked down at her feet. Kicked an imaginary can.

“I don't know, Amos.” She looked up. “That's a lie. I know. I didn't leave the department just because of the opportunity for advancement. I was sick of Detroit. I thought it was the dirtiest, most corrupt place on earth. Then I got to Washington. All those gray little people playing with the fates of ordinary folk like the gods on Olympus.”

I fixed on her eyes. “Maybe you didn't go there to kill him. I think you didn't, that you hoped to sway him with words. On the other hand, you didn't go there
not
to kill him. But that's something the defense and prosecution can work out. My job's done.”

I saw it then. I'd struck a nerve, like tuning a piano and plucking the key I wanted. Her gun arm tightened.

“Don't,” I said.

It made her hesitate. “For old times' sake?”

“For old times' sake, I'm telling you there's a DPD sniper posted on the Joe Louis roof with a night scope. The second you draw that piece will be your last.”

Her eyes flicked that direction, but of course she didn't see anything; not until she looked in my eyes again.

All the air went out of her then. She nodded. “Henderson. John wouldn't go with anyone less. So what now?”

“Walk away. He's got orders only to shoot if you draw your gun.

“You won't get far,” I said. “Just far enough so I don't see it.”

She turned, her hands still in her pockets, and walked away. I watched the pale back of her long coat until darkness swallowed it. Just at the last second a trick of reflected light bathed her in government green.

 

THIRTY-THREE

Ray Henty heard it all without interrupting. He had the cover off the 1966 Fairlane in his carriage house workshop and rubbed at the primer with a chamois cloth, removing dirt and the ragged edges of the original paint until it glowed as pink as a rose. When I finished he broke two cans of Stroh's out of the refrigerator and handed me one.

“The union wants me to run for sheriff,” he said, popping the top on his. “I thought about it. I'm still young enough to have some ambition. But it's too close to the top. That's where it all floats.”

“You can't retire on an open case. I know you.”

“The way you knew Mary Ann Thaler? Thanks, Amos. I should be a good host and let you finish that beer. Right now I can't stand the sight of you.”

“It had to be a city man on that roof. You'd have had to ask for cooperation, and that'd be too many who knew.”

“You made the same mistake she did.”

“I hoped she'd give herself up, plea to Man One. That might not have been on the table after the press got wind of it.”

“Bullshit.”

“She saved my life a couple of times. Maybe two murders wiped all that out, I don't know.”

“I do. They did.”

“She might still come in.”

He set down his can, picked up the cloth, and went back to rubbing. I put my can down unopened and left.