Motor City Blue (8 page)

“What’s the Kramer killing?”

“Maybe the cops haven’t released his name. They found him imitating a spare tire in the parking lot at City Airport this morning. He had a hole in his head the size of the Windsor Tunnel.”

“I was just talking to the city editor. He said that unless the mayor sticks his Size Nine in his mouth again, tonight’s front page is going to be all state and national.”

I gave that a couple of seconds. Then, “Keep scratching, newshawk.” I pegged the receiver before he could ask any questions. But as I stepped aside for the delinquent who was waiting to smash the telephone I thought up some questions of my own.

The address he’d given me on John R—a street named, along with Williams, after the city’s first mayor, who left no other legacy—belonged to a large, neat-looking brick house with a fenced yard that even under a pile of snow looked as if it complied with the antiblight ordinance, no matter how many others it might ignore. A big, square man, black, in a green polar coat with a fur-lined hood, was busy shoveling out the front walk when I let myself in through the picket gate. When he saw me he stopped shoveling and straightened to his full height, which turned out to be a lot fuller than I’d expected. If he was less than six foot six I had shrunk.

He wasn’t ready yet for the River Rouge scrap heap, but his best days were forty years behind him. His skin was the faded gray of old age, and where scar tissue had not formed there was not an inch of it that wasn’t cracked and squeezed into dozens of sharp creases like a crumpled sheet of foil that’s lost its shine. What I suppose he called a nose had been bent and straightened out so many times that now it was just something on his face. His shoulders were broad and square and he had no waist to speak of. He wouldn’t be any harder to stop than a runaway oil tanker.

“You got business, mister?” Nobody had ever punched him in the throat. He had plenty of volume but there didn’t seem to be any anger behind it, just suspicion.

“I do if you’re in charge.” The way he peeled back his hood on one side and cocked a cauliflower ear in my direction told me he hadn’t heard. He wouldn’t, at any normal level. Now I understood why he shouted. I repeated it, louder this time. His eyes narrowed as far as they were able.

“You a cop?”

I shook my head. “Just a guy.”

“Miss Beryl, she don’t do no business this time of day.”

“I’m here on another kind of business.”

He jerked a gloved thumb back over his shoulder. “See the lady. I just shovels snow and turns back cops.” As if to prove it he resumed his labors, taking forty pounds at a swing. I sidestepped the flashing blade and mounted the stoop.

A doe-eyed black maid answered the bell. I flashed my license for the third time that day, minus the badge this time, and asked for the lady of the house. She wasn’t impressed. Confronted with a faceful of door, I was about to try again when it opened back up and I was ushered inside. I gave the maid my coat and hat and she blew. If she could speak at all I didn’t hear it.

I was marooned for a time in the middle of a bourgeois little salon or family room or whatever the architects and real estate agents are calling the living room this season, complete with a baby grand piano in one corner and rows of leather-bound books arranged in unread elegance behind glass. Three arched doorways led into adjacent rooms and a thickly carpeted staircase wound toward the second story a short hike from the entrance. A Presto log burned blue in the fireplace. In another minute I expected Perry Como to stroll in singing “Home for the Holidays.” I wasn’t so far off.

“Mr. Walker?”

The beige carpet beneath my feet was so deep I hadn’t realized I was no longer alone until I heard the voice behind me. I turned to face the same arch of the same doorway I’d seen when I’d looked in that direction before. Her head didn’t start until two feet below that point. She was pink and fluffy and squeezed into a pink and fluffy dress that fit her like the casing of one of those tiny, expensive sausages they sell in the chain stores in packages of six that nobody ever buys. She had bluish hair carefully brushed and sprayed into soft-looking waves that framed a round, pink little face with a round, pert little nose and round, bright little eyes that sparkled from the depths of her plump flesh like glass buttons machine-punched into a throw pillow. Her Cupid’s-bow mouth was fixed in a rouge-tinted smile of greeting as she approached with dainty steps, making a journey out of the few yards that separated us.

I admitted to the Walker part but said I wasn’t so sure about the mister. Up close I caught a scent, or rather the impression of a scent, of delicate toilet water, or maybe it was just her.

“I’m Beryl Garnet.” A plump, moist little hand slid into mine, fluttered there for an instant, and was gone.

I leered charmingly. “Parents play some awful tricks on defenseless babies, don’t they?”

Her laughter tinkled as if the tin and crystal pendants of a Chinese mobile dangled in her throat. “You’re perfectly awful, Mr. Walker. And perfectly correct. But then I haven’t met anyone named Amos in over forty years.”

“My father named me after half a radio show.”

The pendants stirred again. “Shall we sit down?”

We should and did. Beryl Garnet assumed a ladylike little pose on the edge of a Louis XIV or some such number chair with her tiny hands folded in her lap while I foundered in a maroon overstuffed sofa. By the time my keel had righted itself the maid was standing over me. The vow of silence was broken. Did the gentleman wish a cup of coffee? I looked at the two white cups painted with tiny flowers steaming on the silver tray in her hands, decided I couldn’t get enough grip on one of them to lift it without shattering it, and said no thanks. It should have been tea in the first place. My hostess fluttered a hand and the maid glided off.

“May I smoke?” I kept away from my pockets. I’d been caught once too many times with a Winston in one hand, a flaming match in the other, and a big fat No staring me in the face.

“Try one of these.” She opened a hand-worked wooden box on the glass coffee table between us and held it out. “They’re Turkish.”

I selected one of the oval cylinders arranged inside and lit up. The tobacco had been mixed with shredded fiber from some sultan’s flying carpet. By the time my match was ready for it, a glass ashtray had appeared on the arm of the sofa. The maid seemed to operate by remote control.

It looked as if it was up to me to open. I was gearing up for, it when the floor shook and a Great Dane the size of last month’s utility bill came bouncing into the room through the arch to my right and planted its huge paws on my shoulders with the light touch of a pair of battering rams. My teeth ground halfway through the cigarette. Through the smoke a great square head with hornlike ears and ivory teeth bared in a blue-black muzzle breathed hot air into my face with a taint of stale meat. Its growl was a dynamo rumbling deep in its powerful chest.

“Ulysses! Down!”

The weight lifted suddenly from my shoulders, leaving only its ghost behind as the blood rushed in to fill the dents. The great beast turned a bobbed tail on me and went over to its mistress, its head lowered for petting. It planted its feet carefully this time, like an elephant testing the ground before trusting its weight to it.

“You bad dog,” she said, but it didn’t sound as if she meant it. She scratched behind its ears. It closed its eyes and gave vent to a long, groaning sigh, like a record winding down. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the last time I fell off the wagon. From snout to truncated tail it stretched four feet and stood a yard high at the shoulder, with almost two feet of that gobbled up by its chest. From there its underside swept back up in a graceful scoop to taut flanks and narrow hips and muscular haunches, between which its nub of tail moved from side to side with a measured beat as its mistress’ pudgy fingers stroked the sensitive hollows behind its skull. Even when it wasn’t moving, its muscles seemed to throb and ripple with restless power beneath a thin coat of flesh and short hair the color of gun bluing.

“You mustn’t let Uli frighten you, Mr. Walker,” she said, staring into the dog’s nut-brown eyes as with both hands she smoothed back the seams that ran down both sides of its neck. “He’s really very gentle. He wouldn’t hurt anything larger than a rabbit. Would you, dear?” Ulysses craned forward to lick her ear with a tongue like a wet facecloth.

“Does that go for the guy that looks like Kong and talks like Willie Best out front?”

That took a moment to seep through. Then she laughed that tinkly little laugh again. “You mean Felix. Yes, he’s harmless. If you believe what he says, he’d have been the world heavyweight champion in 1936 if they hadn’t forced him to throw his biggest fight. If they did, it was the only time he was ever paid for something he did all the time unintentionally and for free.”

While she was talking, a slender black girl with very closely cropped hair drifted down the stairs, smiled at me dazzlingly, helped herself to a cigarette from the box on the table, and retreated back to the second story. I watched her openly. Anything else would have been ludicrous, as she was wearing a pair of rubber shower clogs and nothing else. Her skin was deep brown with a purplish tint. She had conical breasts and round, firm buttocks and a pubic patch that grew wild over her small mound, untouched by any razor. As she walked, the loose clogs came up and slapped the soles of her feet, but aside from that she made no sound at all. The dog watched her movements with a bored expression. Naked females were nothing new to him.

I won’t say I wasn’t stirred. I’ve slept with women who didn’t move like that when they were fully clothed. But drinking’s the only vice I indulge in before noon. I reached over and stubbed out what was left of my cigarette and hoped to hell my hand wasn’t shaking as noticeably as it seemed.

Beryl Garnet looked amused. She was still scratching Ulysses, who was sitting beside her chair now and, it appeared, studying my throat closely. “Don’t let Iris embarrass you,” she said. “She’s new. They’re like children at that stage, always trying to shock the grownups. I’ve found that if you ignore them when they do something outrageous, they soon become embarrassed themselves and stop.” She let her hand drop back into her lap. The Dane swung its mammoth head in her direction, looking for more attention; when none came it got up, stretched, its bones cracking, and trotted out the doorway through which it had entered.

“You’re dying to know what a sweet little old lady like me is doing running a whorehouse.” She brushed fussily at the dog hairs adhering to her pink skirt. “When you’re my age you’ll realize that you don’t get to be a sweet little old anything without seeing a lot of life whether you want to or not. My husband was a pimp. In some circles that’s considered an insult, but it never was in our house. The money he made doing what he did best gave us both a very handsome living and I saw no reason to give it up just because he died. It pays better than Social Security, and if I have to spend a night in jail now and then, those are the chances I take, like falling out of bed and breaking my hip. Only it’s less painful and in the long run much more rewarding. But listening to an old woman’s prattle won’t help you find the girl you’re looking for, will it?”

My hand stopped halfway to the pictures in my pocket. “Who talked?”

The Cupid’s-bow took an adorable dip. That was the word, adorable. “You did, Mr. Walker. You told my maid you were a private investigator. They’re nothing new here. We average two or three a year, hired by some father or mother or uncle or grandparent who hasn’t seen Suzy since the senior prom. They usually come during business hours, though, so that if nothing comes of it the trip won’t be a total waste and they can charge it to expenses. Sometimes I can help them, sometimes not. If it weren’t for runaways, I’d have to advertise under Help Wanted. I don’t get many calls from placement services.”

“How about her?” I gave her the graduation shot. She fished out a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses and peered at it as if it were a doubtful twenty. Almost immediately she broke into a smile. A real smile this time, showing a row of perfect teeth molded and matched by a dental technician’s patient hand.

“That’s Martha.” She handed it back. “A lovely girl. I knew she belonged to somebody.”

“Martha Burns?”

She nodded. “You’ve done your homework.”

“Someone’s been doing it for me. Is she here?”

“Heavens, no. Not since early February. She left on Groundhog Day. Don’t ask me why I remember that.”

“Did she say where she was headed?”

“No again. Girls in this business seldom leave forwarding addresses. Or their right names, for that matter.”

“Tell me a story.” I got out my notebook and pencil.

She removed her glasses and put them away. The sparkle in her eyes had changed. “No, you start. My girls call me Aunt Beryl, Mr. Walker, because I look after them. I wouldn’t want to turn any dogs loose on them. Especially not on Martha. I have to know why you want her.”

I gave her my spiel, minus names and specific places. She watched me the way an auditor studies the books.

“Have you ever considered grifting, Mr. Walker?” she asked when I had finished. “We get a lot of confidence men here. Most are like you, polite and youthful-looking and brimming with sincerity, but you’ve got something most of them haven’t. I think it’s the brown eyes. They make me think I can read your mind. Anyway, I’ll take the chance.”

She talked. I wrote.

“S
HE SHOWED UP
on my doorstep December twenty-eighth.”

The old lady folded her pink, useless-looking hands and stared at me with her brilliants, waiting for me to ask the question. When I didn’t, she continued as if I had. “I know it was the twenty-eighth because that’s the only slow day we get during the holiday season, midway between Christmas and New Year’s. ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ is a nice song, Mr. Walker, but that’s all it is. If everybody who sang it meant the words, I’d be working for the Post Office come December. Right away I could see she was a young lady. That seems to be a dirty word among women these days, but there’s an art to looking like you belong everywhere you’re seen without becoming part of the scenery. She had that. She had a great deal more, not that it did me any good.”