The office wasn’t very impressive. It wasn’t big enough for nine holes of golf and you couldn’t see more than half of Ontario through the picture window. Fluorescent lights concealed behind frosted glass panels in the ceiling shone down evenly over deep black pile carpeting, a bar in one corner, an Exercycle opposite that, a combination stereo and television set built into the wall, an executive desk with a glass top, telephone intercom, standard electronic calculator and a lot of paperwork in baskets, and a dozen chairs upholstered in brown leather lined up against the wall near the door, none of them in the same league as the high-backed swivel behind the desk. The walls, paneled probably in oak, were hung with the kind of prints that people working many stories above the street seem to prefer, of mills and horses and covered bridges and fresh-faced girls in yellow sunbonnets sitting under shade trees with their skirts spread about them. Every detail right out of a cartoon in
Business Week,
with one exception: On a built-in bookshelf behind the desk, a soiled baseball from the 1968 World Series, signed by all the Tigers and looking as out of place as Huck Finn at the Inaugural Ball.
A small, compact man in shirt sleeves who had been standing at the window with his back to me turned suddenly and I saw that he was holding the box I had sent in, still open with the ring exposed. Few Detroiters could fail to recognize the broad, square face and iron-gray hair cut into a military brush that so delighted the cartoonists on the
News
and
Free Press
, or the diminutive but powerful frame of the ex-Golden Gloves champ who had gained nationwide notoriety that September day in 1936 when, as newly elected head of the Detroit local, he led a gang of steelhaulers armed with wrecking bars and wrenches into a bloody melee with strikebreakers not six blocks from where we were standing. In the years since he had been seen haranguing crowds of gibbering truck drivers in newsreels and on television, invoking the Fifth Amendment during Grand Jury probes into union racketeering, and, more recently, in a widely circulated photograph, swamping out a cell block in gray prison garb after his conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.
He had lost his temper and knocked down a minor union official caught with his hands in the till. That would have been the end of it, except Montana’s enemies got wind of the incident and someone remembered that the former boxer’s fists were still registered as lethal weapons. He was released after serving eight months of a year’s sentence, but it had taken him two years to claw his way back to the top of the union. Every day of that period was recorded in the fresh lines in his face, the set grimness of his broad mouth, the slackening of his jowls that no cartoonist had yet been able to capture.
His pale gray eyes watched me curiously for about a minute. Finally he walked over to the desk and set down the box containing the ring, next to my card, which lay face up on the blotter.
“Amos Walker,” he said, looking at me again. “I thought I knew that name. Weren’t you in on the Freeman Shanks investigation?”
“Me and everyone else but the Texas Rangers.” I wondered where he got his information. As far as the public was concerned the cops had solved the black labor leader’s killing all by themselves.
He charged the bar. I was startled by the sudden energy of the maneuver. “Scotch or rye? I don’t stock anything else.” He scooped a pair of barrel glasses out of the rack.
I asked for Scotch rocks. He nodded as if in approval, clattered two ice cubes into each glass from a bowl of them on the bar, and filled them both from the same bottle. “The bar was Bill’s idea,” he explained as he handed me my drink. “He said it was better for my image than a bottle in the desk. Maybe so, but it’s a hell of a long walk when you’re thirsty.”
I said something appropriate and sipped. It was twelve-year-old stuff. “Bill?”
“Bill Clendenan. You met him outside.”
“Your secretary.”
He laughed shortly, a pleasant barking sound. His voice was like fine gravel. “Is that what he’s calling himself these days? Well, maybe.”
I watched him, a hard man in shirt sleeves with striped tie at half-mast and cuffs turned back to expose thick forearms matted with black hair going gray. He and the baseball were two of a kind. Moving quickly, he circled behind the desk and gestured for me to pull up one of the leather-upholstered chairs. The cushions gripped me like a pudgy hand. He sat, drank just enough of his Scotch to keep it from brimming over, grimaced when it struck bottom, and set the remainder down on the glass surface of the desk, where it stayed throughout our interview. No sight is more tragic than that of a man who likes to drink having to coddle a sour stomach. The gray eyes sought mine.
“Where’s Janet?”
I had been holding my hat in my hand. I leaned down and placed it on the carpet, straightened, crossed my legs, sipped my drink, and returned his gaze.
“Janet?”
He made another face. “Don’t any of you leeches play anything a way it hasn’t already been played in the movies? Let’s cut right through the bullshit. What is it, ransom or blackmail? Because if it’s blackmail I’d just as soon toss you through that window. It doesn’t bother me a bit that it doesn’t open.”
I said, “Let’s go back to the overture. Who’s Janet?”
He glared at me from under eyebrows that refused to go gray. I glared back. It was like looking at one of those cutaway models at the auto show and seeing the fan turning and the pistons pumping. “Maybe you’d better start with the ring,” he said, flicking a finger at the box on his desk. “ Where’d you get it and how’d you trace it to me?”
“It was given to me last night as a retainer for a job. I consulted an expert, who recognized the workmanship and said that it was mounted by a jeweler who works exclusively for Phil Montana.”
“This expert wouldn’t be Mike Pilaster.”
I said nothing. He waved it aside.
“What’s the job? Who hired you?”
“When you ask them two at a time, do I get a choice or what?”
“Start with who hired you.”
“Uh-uh.” I sat back and swirled my drink around in the glass, the way Charles Boyer had done in
Conquest.
The way he had done in damn near all his pictures. “Your turn. Who’s Janet?”
“Janet Whiting. Maybe you heard of her.”
Something stirred at the back of my head. “Keep talking.”
“She was in show business, kind of. Until she got hooked up with a guy named Arthur DeLancey. Could be you heard of him too.”
I didn’t answer. Arthur DeLancey was a very famous federal judge when he took off in a twin-engine plane for a fishing trip to Canada some years ago and never came back. Part of the wreckage was fished out of Lake Superior a few days after the craft was reported missing, but no bodies were ever recovered. I’d heard a couple of other things as well: That he’d been Phil Montana’s chief legal adviser until the two had a falling out during the Grand Jury thing. And that Janet Whiting had been DeLancey’s constant companion, the most famous great man’s mistress since Marion Davies.
“Let me guess,” I ventured. “The ring belongs to Janet Whiting.”
“DeLancey and I were still friends then,” Montana said with a nod. “He had his eye on a Supreme Court appointment, and the publicity about his relationship with Janet was killing him. He proposed, and I had Chester Wright whip up the ring as an engagement present. The papers were notified that he was seeking a divorce from his wife. We broke up soon after that over some bad advice he gave me, and then he was killed in that plane crash.”
“I remember you took some heat about that.”
He made a disgusted noise. “The only thing they haven’t tried to hang around my neck in the last fifteen years is the ’67 riots, and I’m sure someone considered even that. It was about that time— the time of the crash, not the riots—that my wife died. You might say Janet and I were kind of thrown together by circumstances.”
“Kind of,” I reflected.
“It wasn’t much of an affair, didn’t even last long enough to make the papers. But we parted friends. We kept in touch until I got sucked in on that trumped-up assault charge and I warned her to steer clear or take the risk of being hauled in as a material witness. The press was just beginning to leave her alone after two years. I never heard from her after that, but I fielded a few rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
It was his turn to sit back. “You can’t buy much for a dime these days, Walker.”
“I got a call from a dancer at The Crescent,” I obliged. “That’s a disco joint in a hole on Cass, run by an Arab named Krim. The dancer said her name was Ann Maringer. When I got there she told me she expected to disappear soon and hired me to find her. This made me a tad curious, but before she could say more she got her cue and asked me to meet her at her place after closing. She gave me the ring to keep me interested. By the time I got there she had blown, leaving behind a very untidy stiff. But you know most of this already, since you had Bingo Jefferson keeping an eye on her. As for my involvement, you would have gotten that from the cops.”
“My connections downtown are spotty since I got out,” he replied. “I didn’t know you were involved until you told me. I assume you’re the suspect they had in custody after Jefferson was killed.”
“And I assume that you think Ann Maringer and Janet Whiting cast one shadow between them.” I described her, right down to the borrowed blue eyes. He nodded gravely.
“Janet was in trouble. She dropped out of sight last year, about the time DeLancey’s heirs started legal proceedings to have him declared legally dead in order to benefit from his will. I had men out looking for her, but nothing turned up until she was seen dancing at The Crescent. I figured she was in Dutch and sent Bingo to look after her until I could get out from under all this strike crap. That was last night. When you showed up with the ring I thought you were in on the snatch and were holding me up.”
“Any idea who killed Jefferson or why the woman vanished?”
“If I had I wouldn’t have agreed to see you, ring or no ring.”
“Jefferson tried to mug me for the sparkler,” I said. “Why?”
He looked genuinely surprised. “I didn’t tell him to do anything like that. It must have been his idea. Did he have his baseball bat?”
“For a while.” I drained my glass, placed it on the edge of the desk, got up, and reached down to pick up my hat. I missed the first time. I’d forgotten about not having had lunch. “You’ve given me a lot of information, and maybe I owe you this.” I adjusted the brim. “The money you paid Franklin Detwiler to skip town after he let Jefferson take his place didn’t take. He and his girlfriend were picked up by the cops at Metro this afternoon on their way to California. You’d better get ready for visitors.”
He cursed. “They were here once today already. I said I didn’t know what Jefferson was doing over there at that time of night. Now I suppose I’ll have to throw them the truth.”
“That works sometimes. What sort of heirs?”
He had been brooding. “What? I’m sorry.”
“You mentioned that Judge DeLancey’s heirs were maneuvering to have him declared legally dead. What sort of heirs?”
“His wife Leola. A fourteen-carat bitch. One stepson, Jack. Hers from another marriage; I don’t remember his last name. He’s your age, or maybe a little older. They were living together last I heard. I’ll have Bill get you the number. What will you do now?”
“If I can, find Ann Maringer, or Janet Whiting, or whoever. I’ve only used up one day of my three-day retainer. Which reminds me.” I picked up the box containing the ring, replaced the lid and the rubber band, and dropped it back into my coat pocket. I hesitated. “It’s none of my business. Was the assault charge really trumped-up?”
The lines around his mouth tightened. “Thirty years ago, even twenty, it would never have come to trial. Back then a bust in the nose was something between men. That was before everyone got so concerned with stamping out violence. Television programming is too brutal. War isn’t worth fighting. We’re breeding a nation of innocents who have forgotten how to make fists. Meanwhile, that tiny percentage that feels no compunction about using violence watches. And waits.”
“I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“I had eight long months to do it in,” he said.
“Some of your supporters seem to hold the same opinion. That was some tussle out in the parking lot this morning.”
He sneered. “Dissidents, they call them. I call them a royal pain in the ass. I’m busy trying to settle our differences with the steel mills reasonably and they’re out busting heads. You know what they’re so worked up about? Voluntary overtime. Cost of living increases. Money, for chrissake! Forty years ago we fought for survival. This bunch would kill for another coffee break.”
“You went to prison over a money dispute,” I reminded him.
“That punk I decked was stealing from the union. No one does that while I’m in charge. Not one Goddamn pencil. What’s your fee?”
I picked up his drift finally and told him. He considered.
“I’ll pay double to have Janet back in one piece. And to have the man who murdered my friend and bodyguard.”
“No thanks, Mr. Montana.” I buttoned my coat. “In this business, a man has to have certain rules. The first is one case, one client. Thanks for the drink.” I paused at the door and went back. He looked up at me, gray eyes unblinking. “Do you know anything about a blond guy in a checked coat who’s been shadowing me?”
“No. Is there any reason I should?”
“None I can think of. Except that he wasn’t following me until after I spoke with your secretary over the telephone.”
“I’ll have the phones checked out,” he said.
“There’s that.”
Bill Clendenan was sitting at his desk when I came out. His intercom buzzed and Montana told him to give me the surviving DeLanceys’ number. He found it in his Rolodex, wrote it out on a three-by-five card, and handed it to me without looking at me or speaking. I thanked him graciously. He said you’re welcome and kindly go to hell. The speaker was playing “Give My Regards to Broadway.”
The thunderhead was still an ominous mass over the river when I hit the lobby. Despite the filters the air was hot and heavy, like a hand reaching from the darkness to grasp and smother. My ears wanted to pop.