Silent Thunder (3 page)

The mail was looking up. I had two checks from former clients, a fat package containing a reverse directory so I didn’t have to depend on my contact in the fire department when I had a telephone number and no name to go with it, and a certificate that entitled me to one free lesson in forensics from a correspondence school in Kansas City. I put the checks in the safe, found room for the directory in the top drawer of the desk, crumpled the certificate from Kansas City, and caromed it off Custer’s forehead straight into the metal wastebasket in the corner. A day that began with a job and no bills was better than most.

The buzzer sounded in the outer office. I waited, and when the knock came at the brain box I said it was open. In came a long stretch of black youth in gray sweatpants and a black tank top with
RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD
silk-screened across the front in dripping red letters. He had a flattop and a gold ring in one ear. With a little grunt he plunked the stack of old newspapers he was carrying onto the desk. Dust skinned out from between the pages. “Them the ones you wanted, Mr. Walker?”

I leaned forward to check the dates. “Them are those. Ten do it?” I stopped sitting on my wallet and thumbed out a bill.

He thanked me, folded it lengthwise and sidewise, and poked it into the top of his sweats. He started to leave.

“Second, Marcus.” He stopped. “How’s things at the store?”

“Things is things.”

“Ever miss Young Boys Incorporated?”

He smiled without showing teeth. “They never was no Young Boys, Mr. Walker. Well, maybe at the start, but by the time the tv and the papers heard the name and started using it, nobody else was. Same with Pony Down. What’s to call a bunch of kids running shit? No, I don’t miss it. ’Cept the money.”

“Still clean?”

He held out his forearms and turned them over.

“Doesn’t mean anything, Marcus. You always shot behind your knees.”

“You want me to strip?”

“I’d rather pass. I’ve seen some ugly things in here, but that’s one more than the landlord allows me.”

He grinned then all the way up. “You wouldn’t say that if you
seen
my knees.”

I waved at him and he left. I had pulled Marcus out of a crack house on Sherman when I was looking for another woman’s son, got him into a rehab program, and practiced a little creative extortion when he came out to snare him a job stacking cans in a party store two blocks from my building. Sometimes he scratched up old copies of the local papers from the back room for me, saving me a few hours in the Detroit Public Library. Every ten years or so I do something for someone who isn’t a client, and while it never works out, all the precincts hadn’t reported in yet on this one. I never found the son either.

I spent the morning following the Thayer killing through the papers and making notes. The
Free Press
ran the usual sidebars calling for stiffer handgun laws, the
News
made a case in favor of a get-tough-on-murder stance on the bench, and
USA Today
described the black taffeta shift Constance Thayer wore to her arraignment. One of the names connected with the story came as no surprise and I dialed a number at Detroit Police Headquarters. A woman whose voice I didn’t recognize answered on the private line.

“Lieutenant Alderdyce, please,” I said.

“You mean Inspector Alderdyce?”

I took my feet off the desk. “How come hell froze over and nobody called me?”

“The promotion came down last week. He’s testifying in court today. This is Detective Deming. Perhaps I can help.”

Another lady detective at 1300 Beaubien. It made me wonder again about the temperature down below. Aloud I said, “This is Amos Walker, a friend of John’s. He was one of the Detroit people called in to help with the Doyle Thayer Junior homicide. I thought he could tell me the name of the federal agent in charge there now.”

“I’ve heard your name.” Her tone sounded less professionally cordial, if you can trust the telephones at headquarters. “The Thayer killing took place in Iroquois Heights. That’s out of this jurisdiction.”

“Detective Deming, you know and I know and everyone but the voters in Iroquois Heights knows the cops there couldn’t tell a murder from a tufted titmouse. If you don’t, their chief does, and that’s why he called your chief.”

“Even if he did, it’s their case now. Certainly it isn’t federal. What’s
your
interest, Mr. Walker?”

I made some doodles in my pad. “The metro cops wouldn’t hear anything about the Feds clearing several hundred long tons of military arms out of a private house ten miles from Detroit, huh.”

“I didn’t say that. But I’d be interested in where
you
heard it.”

“Don’t tell me. John Alderdyce approved your promotion from Records.”

“Traffic. Good-bye, Mr. Walker. Remember, we’re only a phone call away.” This one had a way of hanging up delicately that was worth any sweaty male sergeant’s slam-dunk in my face.

Cops. Way back when, I had entertained the idea that the women would change things downtown, but when you mix fresh water with salt you still can’t drink it.

Iroquois Heights was growing; noxious weeds generally do little else. It had a brand-new school, construction had begun on a civic center to incorporate all the city offices under one roof for the first time, and there was the usual talk of building a domed stadium where a dozen sports could be played indoors on artificial turf. Athletes of the future will be known by their silver skins and white eyes, like aquatic lizards that spend their entire lives in subterranean pools and never see sunlight. The well-heeled local citizenry, who had fled Detroit to avoid having their skulls cracked open and their pockets picked, would be emptying their wallets for that project for years to come, and the mayor and the city council wouldn’t even have to raise a lead pipe.

The Thayer home was a large brick colonial occupying four acres at the end of a cul-de-sac, surrounded by great oaks planted in martial rows and black with shade. That was as much of it as I saw, because a seven-ton truck with a square silver grille blocked the entrance to the street facing out. Its box took up the entire street.

I parked against the curb, got out, and waited, smoking, with my back against the Chevy’s roof. If what Krell and Mrs. Thayer had told me was true and it wasn’t just someone moving into or out of the neighborhood, I wouldn’t have to wait long. In any case the day was warm and I could do worse than lean there listening to a squirrel perched high in one of the oaks chattering angrily at the big metal thing spoiling its view of the acorns below.

After a couple of minutes a young man in a brown leather jacket and jeans came my way along the sidewalk in front of the Thayer house. They had progressed from the old days of Robert Hall suits and skinny ties, but they hadn’t gotten it right just yet; the jacket was brand new and the jeans were pressed. His hair was black and fashionably long, although long wasn’t the fashion that season. And no one but a Fed strolls quite that way, as if he’s got no place to be and all the time in eternity to get there.

“Hi,” he said, when he got within earshot. “Are you looking for an address?”

“Thanks, I found it.”

He scratched his ear. It stuck out a little, even under the hair. If he cut it short the way they were wearing it now he’d have looked like Norman Rockwell’s favorite PFC. He said, “I think it must be the wrong one.”

Behind him, the truck lurched on its springs, as if something heavy had been lifted into the box. He didn’t flinch or offer any other indication that he was aware of it, I had to hand him that. They’re calling it “plausible deniability” in Washington now. If Noah Webster were alive he’d commit suicide with a rusty infinitive.

“Who’s quarterbacking today?” I asked.

“Quarterbacking?”

“Calling the plays. Barking the show. Dealing the aces. Warping the speed. Beam me up, Scotty. I want to talk to your leader.”

“I’m afraid you’re a little out of your neighborhood.”

“You said it, brother.” I snapped away the butt and took out one of my cards. He made a little move toward his jacket while I was fishing for it, then scratched his shoulder when I didn’t haul a sawed-off out of my wallet. I hadn’t thought anyone was still wearing those underarm rigs; in warm weather they’re a little less comfortable than a chastity belt. I scribbled a name on the back of the card and held it out.

He took it and read both sides. “Is this supposed to mean something?”

“Not to you. Show it to your boss. I’ll wait. Coffee? No, thanks, I just had lunch. It’s sweet of you to ask.”

I watched him study the choice. He was going to go on running the bluff. Then he wasn’t. You can read these younger field men like a blackboard menu. He turned around and walked behind the truck.

When he came back he had someone with him, and this model was off the old line. He was a stout number with narrow lapels, a thin black tie on a white shirt through which I could make out the scoop neck of his undershirt, and a snapbrim hat whose brief brim had seen all of its snap. It was on the back of a big head of curly gray hair and under it was one of those rubber faces that you just know got that way by being rubbed a lot. He had a paunch and didn’t care who knew it, and a smile with his mouth slightly open and no teeth showing. He was born too late to be played by Wallace Beery, which was a shame. He was carrying my card.

“Know this person well?” he asked me without preamble, waving it.

“Not very. I did a job for him a couple of years back.”

“Official?”

“Personal.”

“I’d like to know what it was.”

“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be worth a dime in the field.”

He waited, not too long. Then he stuck out a big soft paw, which I took. “Horace Livingood, ATF. Want to see the ID?”

“Naw. Want to see mine?”

“What’s the point? In this town they can stamp you a bronze star while you’re inside getting a tan. What can we do on you, Walker?”

“I’m working for Mrs. Thayer’s attorney. I’d like to get a look at what you’re carrying out of the basement. I already know some of it.”

“That’s classified,” piped up the younger man.

“Excuse my rotten manners. This is Agent Pardo. He’s new and thinks secrets should stay secret. I’m not so sure he’s wrong.”

“If you feel that way,” I said, “you ought to camouflage the truck. Bounce it off a couple of dozen Edison poles, spray graffiti on it, and pile color
TV
sets and stereos in the back. They’d just think you were with the cops.”

“I met some of them. Well, if this guy thinks you’re straight up I guess I’d be an asshole not to.”

I said nothing.

“Of course, you could be lying.”

“I lie a lot,” I concurred.

“I could call and verify.” He rubbed his face with one hand, proving my guess right. Then he shook a Cigarillo out of a pack that had character and lit it with a Zippo. “Let somebody who hasn’t got in his thirty do that. Those Washington switchboards are a pain in the ass.”

Pardo said, “Mr. Livingood, I have to report this.”

“You do that, Victor. Well, come take a look at the inventory. You’ll think you died and went to Fort Dix.”

He went back behind the truck. Agent Pardo and I followed.

Just like that.

T
HE HOUSE WAS ONE
of the few in that section of Iroquois Heights without a fence or a wall to keep strangers out of the yard. It didn’t need one. As we drew near the truck’s open trailer, two men in blue government-issue Windbreakers came out of the walkout basement door carrying a clapboard crate with
C-4 EXPLOSIVES
stenciled on it in English, French, and Spanish. A dozen others were stacked inside the trailer. On the grass awaiting its turn for loading lay a .50-caliber machine gun with a perforated jacket, its disassembled tripod next to it.

Someone had pried two boards off the top of the crate. As it came past, Agent Livingood lifted something out of the inside and cradled it along his forearm. It looked like a Flit gun.

“Ever see one of these?”

“Pocket rocket,” I said. “I carried them in Nam.”

“Not like this one. Catch.” He flipped it at me.

Reaching for it I damn near slapped it over the roof. It weighed less than a plastic toy.

“Not a speck of metal in it,” he said. “Even the charge is C-4 plastic, enough to take out this side of the street once it’s armed. You might as well send any old bazookas you’ve got lying around to the Smithsonian. You could carry this aboard any commercial airliner in the world in your overcoat pocket, walk right through those detectors that go off when a kid’s braces pass through, and never hear a peep.”

“Real progress. Next we’ll be boarding them naked.” I returned the weapon. It didn’t look any more sinister than a skyrocket.

He stroked it. “What do you suppose a rich kid wants with a play-pretty like this?”

“Maybe when your old man’s finished building everything up before you were born, knocking it down’s all that’s left. You want to put out that weed?” A length of ash from his Cigarillo had dropped onto the rocket’s nose.

“Don’t sweat it. This stuff’s more stable than the currency.” But he spat out the little cigar and squashed it underfoot.

“What’s left inside?”

“Mr. Livingood.” Pardo sounded like an assistant principal.

The older man ignored him. “Not much. Just the entire Albanian armory and an Afrika Korps armored halftrack. You said you’re working for the wife?”

“Her lawyer.”

“That twerp.”

“You met him?”

“He tried to pump me about this operation, but he wouldn’t let me question Mrs. Thayer about her husband’s little arsenal. I told him to do what you might expect me to tell him to do. I’ll be hearing from Washington about that any time now. Everybody’s got friends in Washington but me. Funny, ain’t it?”

“Hilarious.”

“I don’t mean that, I mean, all this heavy iron and the rich little turd gets it the old-fashioned way, from his wife.”

“I guess he couldn’t get the howitzer upstairs.”

“Oh, you heard about the howitzer?” His eyes were alive in the rubber face.