Angel Eyes
Loren D. Estleman
To my mother and father, for all the right reasons
A Biography of Loren D. Estleman
T
HE
C
RESCENT WAS
a cellar place on Cass, established before Michigan outlawed public dining and drinking below ground level. A door with an iron grille left over from Prohibition led down a short flight of steps into a bin full of noise and smoke, in the center of which a half-naked pubescent blonde was shaking her various appendages to the disco beat while lights changed her exposed flesh from green to orange to blue and back to green. The music sounded like an old lady shaking her teeth in a glass.
In the absence of a hostess I groped my way along the buzzing concrete floor until I found an empty table and ordered a double Scotch. Ringside, the light show cast ghastly hues over glistening male faces wreathed in marijuana smoke, their watery eyes following the dancer’s bumps and grinds, white-tipped tongues sliding along fat, grinning lips. On the outer fringe, almost in darkness, a couple of guys were kissing at a table.
The gyrating blonde’s was one of only two white faces in the room; the other belonged to me. But hers wasn’t the face I’d been told to look for, so when the waiter returned I asked him if he’d seen Ann Maringer.
“Lots of times,” came the sullen reply. “She works here.”
I looked up at him. He was a big black with lumpy shoulders under his red uniform shirt and a shot of gray in his gnarled black hair. His eyes, bright white semicircles beneath an apish brow, had the slightly knocked-out-of-focus look you sometimes see in boxers who stayed too long in the ring. I said, “Have you seen her tonight?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Me and the Wayne County Sheriffs Department.” I flashed the buzzer the department had forgotten about, carefully lest the sight of it empty the room; it was that kind of place. He squinted at it a moment, then jerked a broad flat thumb over his shoulder. As he did so, the light show died, to be replaced by a single baby spot that washed the empty platform in powdery blue. The tiny electrified combo hurled itself into the first three beats of a fresh piece. A new dancer took up the position.
“Just don’t bust her in front of the clientele,” the waiter advised. “The boss don’t like scenes.”
“No busts. Just talk.”
He nodded solemnly and moved off into the gloom with the ponderous grace of an aging elephant.
She was a blonde, like her predecessor, but that was where the similarity ended. She was thin, almost bony, and her hair, unlike the other’s stringy, waist-length locks, was done up frothily on either side of her head like water boiling around the base of a fall. The style had been popular about the time the first dancer was born, which tied in with this one’s apparent age. She wasn’t too old to be wearing her brief costume of spangled fringe with a bare midriff, but the dance she was doing fit her the way a screw top fits a bottle of champagne. Still, she gave it something it hadn’t had originally, moving with a controlled fever that suggested a lifetime spent undulating to sour, secondhand arrangements played by sullen, third-rate bands. The overhead spot painted hollows beneath her eyes and in her cheeks, accentuating her gauntness.
I concentrated on the music. Somewhere under all that crap, a strain or two from the old Sinatra hit “Angel Eyes” struggled toward the surface from time to time, only to be put under again by the pounding drums and snarling electric guitars. But she knew it was there, and that was all that counted.
The music ended abruptly and she was left in darkness to find her own way down to the floor. There was no applause. I was wondering if I was supposed to meet her in the dressing room and where that might be when she appeared at my table, still in costume.
“Amos Walker?” Her voice was low-register, not quite husky. When I stood: “You’re better-looking than I’d hoped. I was expecting Mike Hammer.”
“Disappointed?”
She smiled briefly, without committing herself. Away from the stage, her face was hard, its natural angularity heightened by sharp creases beneath her eyes and at the corners of her thin mouth. But the eyes themselves were large and blue and child-like, untouched by time and experience. Against the life-map of her face they looked like fresh replacements. The tune she danced to had been no random choice.
Her baby blues swept the immediate vicinity, taking in the black faces that were turned in our direction. “Let’s find a booth. This is worse than being on stage.”
We wedged ourselves into a coffinlike cubicle near the door, upholstered in slippery vinyl and illuminated not at all by a tiny electric lamp posing as a candle on the burn-scarred table. The bruiser who had waited on me earlier lumbered forward out of the shadows. She ordered vodka neat. I asked for a refill and a flashlight. He left with an expression that told me he’d heard that one before.
“Nathan Washington gave me your card,” Ann Maringer said. “He says you stick like nuclear fallout.”
“He ought to know. I’m still dunning him for what he owes me on that tail job I did for him last year.”
“That’s his problem. Or yours.” She took a cigarette from my proffered pack and let me light it. The glow of the flame was kind to her, softening her bony features and doing wonderful things with her eyes. A man could fall in love with eyes like those. As I lit one for myself I wondered how many had.
She watched me through the smoke. “You work late Sundays. I didn’t expect anyone to answer when I called your office at ten.”
I said nothing, particularly about falling asleep over a game of solitaire. She took my silence for professional ethics.
“You were a cop?”
I nodded. “In the service. The instructors in the Detroit Police training program didn’t like me, so I went to Vietnam to forget.”
“I’ll bet. You drowned your sorrows killing the same people we’re making instant citizens out of now.”
I let that one drift. I was watching her replacement on stage, a gangling black girl with the vertebrae of a snake, cavorting to something that didn’t sound much like “Up a Lazy River” anymore.
“So how come you’re a private eye?”
My eyes were still ringside. “How come you’re a dancer?”
She laughed shortly. “Because I find my home life a lot more comfortable with the electricity on. I’m conducting an interview here. The least you could do is pay attention to my questions.”
“What do you want to know?” I asked irritably, looking at her. “I’m bonded. My fee is two hundred fifty a day plus expenses. Sometimes grief is all my clients buy. I don’t guarantee even that, but I do promise a day’s work for a day’s pay, which means I don’t belong to a union.” She flinched at that. I didn’t find out why until later. “Nate Washington told you I’m reliable or I wouldn’t be here,” I continued. “If you’re shopping, my office hours are in the Yellow Pages.” I started to rise. She put out a hand to stop me. There was a diamond ring on the engagement finger that would choke a goat.
The waiter brought our drinks and withdrew, ignoring the silence that was the fanfare of his occupation. When he had passed beyond earshot:
“My, you’re hot-headed,” she said. “You’re just like—never mind. I didn’t mean to sound like I was grilling you.” She watched with approval as I took my first sip, advertising my intention to remain. “What are the odds of finding someone who’s missing? Intact.”
“That depends on how long he’s been gone and whether he wants to be found. Generally, I prefer it when they don’t.”
“Why?”
“Deliberately vanishing means giving up your identity. Most people aren’t prepared to go that far. They’ve got hobbies, interests, needs they can’t abandon. With today’s technology a competent investigator should be able to pick up a trail within a few days in most cases. Unless the FBI or the CIA or some other federal agency is involved in the disappearance, in which case he ought to have something in an hour or two. The more tightly the cloak-and-dagger boys try to pull wraps over something, the easier it is to uncover. It didn’t used to be that way, but we only get one J. Edgar Hoover to a century.”
“And if they, want to be found?”
“Then we’re talking kidnap, which is a different story. Abductors don’t place much store in their victims’ needs or interests, and unless they leave behind a button or a broken shoelace or a ransom demand I’ve got nothing to go on. Besides, that’s a police matter, and they have strange ways of showing their appreciation for my help. Of course, all this is academic if the missing party’s been gone longer than a few months. I once found a girl who hadn’t been seen in nearly a year, but that was a fluke and my client wasn’t at all happy with what I brought back.”
She nodded, but understanding fell short of her eyes. Looking at the rest of her, it was hard to believe they were the ones she’d started out with. While listening she had held her cigarette upright between long-nailed fingers, blowing across the glowing end. The ash was an inch long before she tapped it into a cheap tin tray. Then she started in all over again.
I said, “You haven’t touched your drink.”
“It’s only club soda.” She touched her lips to the glass and set it back down with a grimace. “Part of my job is to mix with the customers and get them to buy me drinks.”
“It’s that kind of place, is it?”
“I’ve never worked in any of the other kind.”
“Would you rather?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “My feet wouldn’t hurt any less than they do here.” Her eyes leaped from the cigarette to me. “Look, if it bothers you I’ll pay for the drinks.”
“I never let a woman pay the tab. I’ll put it on my expense sheet.”
She laughed again, a low, throaty sound that stirred something in me I hadn’t realized was still there. Suddenly she flipped a switch and broke the circuit.
“If you could start looking for the missing party before it came up missing, what would be your chances then?”
I hesitated. “Better, I would think, without speaking from experience. They don’t usually make appointments.”
“Until now.”
I smoked and watched her. The amplified music thundered along the floor, vibrating our glasses on the table. She took hold of hers for the first time and drank deeply. She grimaced, as if she wished it weren’t just club soda.