THERE WAS NO ANSWER at Floyd Orlander’s number in Romulus. I hung up the pay telephone on the ground floor of 1300, got into the Renault parked in the blue zone, and sat there listening to my sweat break the surface while I thought about what to do next. A uniform driving a blue-and-white made that decision for me when he pulled alongside and gave me one of those cop looks. I started up and left the space.
Marianne Motors kept its administrative offices on two floors of the National Bank Building, five sides and twenty-two stories of gray stone overlooking Cadillac Square. I used a city lot and rode an elevator trimmed in brass to the seventeenth. I hoped the ride would give me time to think of a question to ask Alfred Hendriks that he hadn’t answered that morning, but they don’t make elevators that slow.
The doors shuttled open and I stepped out just in time to throw my arms around two hundred hurtling pounds.
The man’s momentum would have carried me back into the car if the doors hadn’t closed. I slammed up against them, jarring loose my grip, and he went down on one knee, then sprang back up, pivoted away from me, and scooped a short-barreled .32 revolver out of a flap holster. I gave him the edge of my hand where his neck met his shoulder. The gun thumped the carpet.
He whirled on me. I reached under my coat and he took two steps backward. His gun arm hung limp at his side. He had on a gray uniform and a cap with a shiny visor.
Behind him, Richard DeVries had another man in uniform lying on his back in the reception area with a size fifteen shoe on his chest. A revolver like the one on the floor dangled upside-down by its trigger guard off the ex-convict’s index finger. The other man’s holster was empty.
“Richie,” I said.
It took him a second to respond. He didn’t look at the gun in my hand. He was wearing the suit I had first seen him in, wrinkled now after its soaking and a worse fit than it had been to begin with. The guard on the floor had a black bruise down the side of his face and the uniform of the one I had disarmed was hanging on by a button and one epaulet. DeVries’s tie was crooked.
“I axed them to take me to see Hendriks. I got this for an answer.” He waggled the gun on the end of his finger. It looked like a charm off a bracelet.
I moved into the room, holding out my free hand. I covered the guard standing by the elevator. “That’s a parole violation, Richie. I’ll take it.”
He made a graceful little movement and the grip was in his hand with the barrel pointed at me. I stopped.
“Nobody’s called me Richie since I went in.”
“That’s what Davy’s father called you. I talked to the Jacksons today. He doesn’t hate you for what happened to Davy. The mother’s a different story.” Keep him talking.
“She never did like me.”
“Call the police.”
This was the guard I’d hit. Out of the corner of my right eye I saw a stack of platinum hair and two eyes showing over the top of a doughnut-shaped reception desk to my right. She wasn’t going to move or call anyone. “Someone probably heard the noise and called them already,” I told DeVries. “If they find you with that gun you’ll go back to finish out your sentence. That’s if they don’t come off the elevator shooting.”
“Man, I don’t like being muscled around. I had enough of that.”
“Getting killed is worse.” I was watching his big finger on the trigger of the .32. I wondered if when it moved I would have time to empty the .38 into him before he shot me. It would take at least that.
“The parole cop told me nobody was waiting to give me nothing on the outside. He didn’t say I couldn’t axe for nothing.” He dangled the gun again and held it out.
While I was stepping forward, a man came through a door on the other side of the reception desk and took it. I covered him. Without taking his eyes off me he rotated the revolver one-handed, dumping the cartridges out onto the carpet, and laid it on the desk. Then he walked past me, picked up the gun the vertical guard had dropped, unloaded it the same way, and returned it to its owner, who was starting to get back the use of his hand and arm. The whole thing took less time than it takes to describe. I might have dreamed it.
“I’m the security chief here. Please let him up.”
DeVries glanced down at his foot on the horizontal guard’s chest, grunted, and removed it. The other guard came over and gave his partner a hand up.
“They played partners on us, Mr. Piero,” the second guard said.
“I saw the last part of it. Get out.”
He gaped. “You mean, out?”
“Out of the room. Although out of the building has occurred to me. You might want to move before I give it more thought.”
“What about this guy?” The man from the floor spoke out of the good side of his face.
Under the security chief’s scrutiny I remembered the gun and holstered it under my coat.
“Take the stairs,” he said.
When they had gone through the fire door, one helping the other, the chief turned to the blonde still hunkered behind the desk. “Take a break, Christine. I’ll watch the phones.”
She stood, looked at DeVries and me, tugged down the hem of her charcoal jacket, and slid out of the doughnut. I pressed the button for the elevator.
Mr. Piero waited for the doors to close on her. He was a small narrow party with white hair and a black pencil moustache. In a blue suit and black knitted tie on a white shirt he looked like a dashboard Cesar Romero.
“No police,” he said. “Doesn’t do to have them come wailing up to the office with guns and bullhorns. It makes the investors nervous.”
“That why you play it safe behind the door?” I asked.
It rocked him like moonlight on flat water. “Who are you?”
“Name’s DeVries,” the big man broke in. “Hendriks knows me. I seen him on TV this morning.”
I said, “They got TV in the Alamo?”
“I’m lucky I got a toilet. I seen it in a bar.”
“Bars are hard on paroles.” I handed my ID folder to Piero. “I’m representing Mr. DeVries. Sometimes he forgets. I’d like a minute of Mr. Hendriks’ time if he didn’t bail out when the ceiling fell in.”
“I didn’t start nothing.”
“What’s your business with Mr. Hendriks?”
“My client thinks he knows him. I want to ask him if that’s true.”
Piero returned the folder. “References?”
I gave him a couple of names and numbers. He used the telephone on the reception desk. While he was talking I asked DeVries what happened.
“Woman gave me the stall. I lost it I guess. I ain’t used to dealing with them. She had a button under the desk.”
“Next time they’ll come in with howitzers. You’d better let me drive.”
The security chief cradled the receiver. “You check out. I suppose I owe you something for talking your client out of chewing up my men.”
“You need new men,” I said.
“You take what’s available when you’re starting out. Hendriks isn’t here. The Detroit offices are just a blind to pacify the mayor. Mr. Marianne and the other executives put in three or four hours a week here and spend the rest of their time at the downriver plant.”
I said, “Hendriks was here when I called this morning.”
“Christine probably rerouted the call. Unless they recognize your name the secretaries are programmed to say they’re unavailable. You’d be surprised how many crank calls a fledgling automaker gets. Every backyard crackpot thinks he’s solved perpetual motion.”
“How do I get into the plant?”
“The big man stays home, right?”
DeVries opened his mouth. I nudged his ankle with a toe. It was like kicking a goal post. “I work solo. Today was just a coincidence.”
Piero thought about it. “Use my name. If I take an angry call from downriver you didn’t get it from me.”
“Thanks.”
“Save it. We needed the field test. There are bugs to be worked out; two in particular.”
“Don’t be too tough on them. The state just pulled the cork on my client after twenty years. He’s eager.”
“I’d hate to see him excited.”
On the sidewalk in front of the bank building I asked DeVries how much play there was in his parole officer.
“Some. He got me a job behind the bottle counter at Kroger’s starting Monday. I gets to quit if they whips me.”
“Good. I’m thirsty.”
We took a back table in the Pontchartrain bar. No one was at the piano and we shared the place with a pair of businessmen on the stools and a bald bartender in a red jacket. He brought us two beers and ghosted off. It was as cool as a mineshaft in there.
“It’s him okay.” DeVries inhaled half the contents of his glass and set it down. “He had this way of grinning in some other direction when he was talking, like he was laughing at you. I seen it again this morning. He’s the one set me up to fire that place.”
“Wonder what happened to the blonde?”
“Blowed away on a cloud of psychedelic shit, probably. Wasn’t her behind the desk up there. Too young.”
“I got Hendriks on the telephone this morning. He says he never heard of you.”
“I bet that knocked you flat on your ass.”
“He says he was studying in England at the time of the riots. It’s something that can be checked.”
“Check it?”
“I will. Point is he had an answer for everything.”
“Nobody that didn’t do nothing has an answer for everything.”
I dissected that, then nodded. “It bothered me too. Also he got your name wrong and I didn’t like that. It was like he had his lines down cold.”
“Squeeze the son of a bitch.”
“Couple of other things to run out first. I’ve got a line on the cop who arrested you and I found out what ‘redstick ranger’ means.”
“That’s what Hank Wakely said the dude said when they was fixing to stop us on the road.”
“Firemen’s jargon. Did Hendriks or whoever he was have anything to do with the fire department in your time?”
“Search me. Be funny, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Hysterical. That’s the trouble with the detective business. The answers ask their own questions.”
“What’d the cop say?”
“I haven’t been able to get him yet. I figure he’ll have more to contribute about the case than I can get from either downtown or the newspapers. Once they’ve got a suspect in custody they don’t bother reporting all the loose ends. But they remember them. I hope.”
“Wrong tree,” he said. “Hendriks’ the one we want to work on. He’s got the money.”
I drank some beer. “You’re paying me to do the digging. Whatever I churn up won’t help you if you break somebody’s neck. Didn’t prison teach you anything besides license plates?”
“I know. I just seen him on TV and couldn’t think of nothing else. Guess I’m glad you come in when you did.”
“You need to blow it off.”
“What I need’s a woman. Saltpeter’s wearing off.”
I gave him five twenties. “I cashed your check this morning. Look at their teeth first. If they don’t take care of them they’re just as careless other places. How long’s it been since you played ball?”
“Gave it up nine years ago. Wasn’t no point. It was like playing with kids and it only made me think what I missed out on.”
“You can only sing that song so long.”
“I sung it till I don’t feel it no more. Hell, I’d be retired now anyway. Just another jock selling subscriptions to Sports Illustrated.”
“Take yourself over to the Y and shoot a few hundred baskets. Even if it doesn’t make you feel better, you’ll be too tired to think about taking away people’s guns and baseball bats.”
“I’m too dark for the Y. They can’t see me in them dim lights.”
“That’s changed. Not as fast as the world, but then we’re all running to catch up. Why should you be any different?”
“Maybe I’ll do it.”
“Just watch your head on the hoops.” I started to leave money for the beers. He held up a palm the size of a skillet and laid down a five-spot.
“Beer’s went up.” He stood. “Where’d you hear that about teeth?”
“The army.”
“Someone told it to me my first week in slam. Think thev’s anything to it?”
“Nothing else I heard in the army was, except keep your butt down and never volunteer. But it’s a comfort.”