TEN

It wasn’t the first time I’d come to myself with nothing but a scrap of rug between my back and the floor; I’m a charter member of that club. But it was a first for my floor, not counting the couple of times I hadn’t made it from bottle to bed. That made it convenient to the bathroom. I took care of the nausea that always follows like a beer chaser and ran cold water on a washcloth to poke at my jaw. I had a lump there the size of a damaging hailstone and a corker of a plum-colored bruise, but my molars were sound. Barry’s light leg kept him from bracing himself for a true Tommy Hearns.

I found a dented sofa cushion on the floor where he’d slid it under my head before he left. That was something to build on in case I missed the friendship. Just then the possibility seemed remote.

The ice in my drink had melted a little, not enough to indicate I’d been out more than a few minutes. I tried medicating the bruise from the inside, but the stuff tasted like Mercurochrome. It really had been squeezed from a bagpipe. I dumped it and what was left of Barry’s drink in the kitchen sink, swallowed four aspirins, and turned in. The throbbing kept me awake for an hour, but the long, long day won out at the finish.

I came back around in sunlight with my head tucked under one wing like a cormorant. A pulsing pain bounced like a tennis ball between my sore jaw and my stiff neck. My tongue felt like rock wool. I’d had worse mornings. I got up and drank glass after glass of water, then scrambled eggs and chewed them on one side. I found relief from the dull ache in the roots of my teeth by letting hot black coffee pool for a couple of seconds there before swallowing. I’d definitely had worse mornings.

Someone who sounded like he was trying very hard not to sound like Chuck Norris answered at the federal building when I dialed the number from my uneasy chair back at ringside. He handed me off to a woman who peeled the foil off Mary Ann Thaler’s name, then let me sit in on part of a Toby Keith concert before the line clicked and Thaler came on. “Want to surprise anyone who calls?” I said when she knew who I was. “Put on Dixie Chicks.”

“I’ll suggest that, right after I give notice. What sort of phone are you using? You sound like you’re talking through a mattress.”

“I stopped a line drive with my chin. Did you know the DPD’s full of leaks?”

“Why should it be any different from the roof? I’ve got a list-a Ballista buddies from the time period you want. It reads like the Palermo phone book, but there aren’t many women on it. I don’t suppose you have a fax machine yet.”

“I can’t afford to feed one. Is there a Marcine on it?”

“Marcine Marie Logan, U.K., naturalized U.S. citizen, age eighteen at the time of the report, known to subject socially. Why’d I stick my neck out if you already have this stuff?”

“I don’t. I’m working the same neighborhood only in a different decade. Who else?”

“It’s a big list, I said. Even if I took out all the Sam Pickleses, Jo-Jos, Jellies, Big Boogers, and—my favorite—Danny Dogs, the Ding-Dong Don—I’d be on the horn through lunch.”

“I remember Danny. He wasn’t always Ding-Dong. He got the clap, lost his marbles, thought he was Chuck Yeager, and broke the sound barrier sailing off the top floor of the Ferry Company warehouse. He might’ve had a little help with the launch.”

“What is it with racket guys and STDs? Don’t they ever use protection?”

“Only when they start their cars. Can you give me just the women?”

“That’s easy. Mob’s got a bulletproof glass ceiling. Not many X chromosomes on the payroll, only between the sheets. Frances Elizabeth Donella, age sixteen at the time of the report, known to subject socially. He should’ve been picked up for statutory rape.”

“She sounds like the one Joey threw over Marcine for. Who else?”

“Iona Bernadette Cuneo Ballista, wife. Daughter of—”

“Check. Who else?”

“Lee Tan.”

“Lee Tan? How’d a Lee Tan get in there?”

“Suspected business associate, it says here. ‘See separate file.’ ”

“That’d be the Hong Kong connection. Old Joe Balls had the Asian heroin market all sewed up here, but the bottom fell out after the local black gangs crawled in bed with the Colombians. They sold it the way it came in Grosse Pointe and Bloomingham and stepped on it and sold it as crack on the West Side. Took about a week for the whole area to go on the cocaine standard.”

“I was in training then. Who’d’ve thought those would be the good old days?”

“Any others?”

“That’s it for women. You’re putting a lot of store in your female-snitch theory.”

“It’s a place to start. I’ll come by for the rest in case I stall. Can you get me a twenty on Donella and Tan?”

“No dice. Your solid’s run out.”

“Can I establish a line of credit?”

“With your rating?”

I felt my face get more haggard. “You’re a twenty-minute egg, Marshal Thaler.”

“Don’t take too long getting around to picking up this list. If they find out I’ve got it and who it’s for, they’ll reassign me to the air service. What are the odds I’ll get Hawaii and not North Dakota?”

“I hear the Dakotas are nice this time of year.”

“It wouldn’t be this time of year.”

I started to say something else, but I was speaking to an empty line.

*   *   *

There wasn’t a Frances Donella in the directory. I hadn’t expected there to be for several reasons, one being that if she’d stayed single she wouldn’t advertise the fact to a predatory world. I tried Information, but the near-comatose party at the switchboard couldn’t find her, listed or unlisted. There was a column of Lee Tans and I tried them all. All but two who answered were men, one of the women spoke next to no English, and the other sounded older than a thousand-year-old egg. I didn’t ask either of them if she’d dealt dope in the ’80s. All the globe-trotting involved would have been a young woman’s game, and that second voice hadn’t been young even all those years ago; I’d come to be a connoisseur of women middle-age on up. There’s a lot of dickering even in controlled substances, and the owner of the first voice wouldn’t have had the necessary language skills.

All this was theory, of course, just like the female-snitch angle. I wrote a question mark next to both names, along with one that hadn’t answered. Detective work always begins with the metropolitan directory, but it almost never ends there.

More than ever I missed Barry Stackpole’s cooperation. He’d have an entire file case on the U.S.–Asian heroin racket, with a drawer on Detroit subdivided by known dealers and a fat folder labeled TAN, LEE. Maybe it was a good thing in the long run. I’d become so dependent on him when the official sources were closed, I ought to have his name lettered on my office door.

Then again, I needed a Ouija board to make contact with all the friends I had left.

I had a little more luck with the Iroquois Heights book, and a nice surprise. It’s a slim pamphlet about the size and thickness of an auction catalogue. I don’t know if it’s separated from the Detroit-area listings by the Heights’ choice or by Detroit’s. No Lee Tans or Frances Donellas, but there was an M. Logan listed on Ottawa Place, a residential street located just off the main gut, a comfortable commute on foot to and from Iona’s Simple Solutions; although from the look of Marcine’s heels I doubted she went more than twenty yards on foot in any direction.

It needed confirmation, but I didn’t call the number. The decorating firm didn’t open for another hour, she’d still be at home if she wasn’t a work freak, and I had nothing else to do all day but abuse my lungs with nicotine and probe at the knot on my jaw. I’m a work freak by necessity. I shaved and dressed and coaxed my Cutlass back from the dead.

Ottawa Place was a cul-de-sac. It didn’t have to be, but dead-ending the street had landlocked the adjoining property, forcing the owner to sell it to the city for a bargain price. It was pretty, as those graft jobs often are, with tame trees and all the addresses stenciled on the curbs and square patches of lawn unencumbered by miniature windmills, iron jockeys, and other affronts to the antiblight ordinance: L-shaped ranch-styles, Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs with low-pitched roofs and carports, and the house belonging to the address I’d found in the directory, a graceful stack of pre-aged brick built on two levels with Palladian windows, a covered arch opening onto the front door, and a slipper-shaped convertible parked face out in an open garage on the lower level. The car’s yellow finish with black trim reminded me of a flashlight I’d once owned.

A stern sign warned the owners of the cars parked on the street that they had to move them to the opposite side between the hours of six P.M. and six A.M., a regulation drafted to discourage late-night dog-fighting, a colorful part of the recent local heritage. As a consequence there was plenty of space, and I turned around at the end of the street and found a spot with a straight shot at the Logan house next to a Neighborhood Watch sign with a picture of Boris Badenov. People hurrying to work generally ignore the cars parked on their side. I killed the engine and switched on the radio for company.

I don’t have FM, and the pickings were lean. I browsed among right-wing talk shows, programs of Afro-Cuban jazz, oldies, oldies, oldies, hip-hop, country, hip-hop, country hip-hop, one lone liberal talk show loaded with static, and WJR, the all-commercials-all-the-time station, then snapped it off and listened to a morning TV news host chirruping through some open window telling me I could lose weight by pouring my cereal into smaller bowls. I flipped my visor down between me and the sun in the east, slid lower in the seat until my head rested against the back, and caught up on my smoking. I had both side windows open for the cross-draft and a parabolic patch of shade that in fifteen minutes would be a sweet memory. It was 8:30 by the dashboard clock and the weather guy had told me between pitches for bottled water and Sleep Number beds that the temperature at Metro Airport was eighty-five.

The lull between Detroit-bound commuters and the stiffs who worked locally ended just before the half hour. I wound up the window on the driver’s side against the wallop of their passage, watched a slightly chubby blonde in a pink kimono and mules to match trying to wheel an empty trash can up her driveway while holding down her hem against the slipstream—a Vargas Girl moment—and saw a kid on a Segway make a nifty maneuver to avoid becoming a casualty of Overcaffeinated Motorist Syndrome. He turned the scooter in a circle and dismounted to give the driver the international sign of disapproval. As far as stakeouts go it was sweeps week.

The shade and traffic were gone along with my third cigarette when Marcine Logan came out her front door.

The sight made me grateful for something about Iroquois Heights for the first time, even if it was just a telephone book. She cherry-picked her way down a flagged flight of steps in a pair of red leather heels to the open garage. A long skirt, red also, gave me a flash of bare tanned thigh where a button-up slit was unfastened. The ends of a filmy red scarf floated outside the open neck of a white silk blouse. She carried a portfolio case open at the top, with double handles, and her golden-ash hair was pinned back loosely, tendrils riding the air. Kimono Girl had shown a lot more with less effect. Marcine was a treat at any age, but at forty-six she was vintage wine beautifully kept.

It was two minutes shy of nine o’clock. Either she was a valuable worker with special privileges or she had something on the boss.

Probably it was a little of both. Employers like Iona Cuneo usually found a way to get rid of chiselers with no redeeming qualities.

The yellow sports job started with a pleasant grumble and left the garage, the overhead door unfolding behind it. I slid down farther as she turned into the street, started the 455 with the somewhat louder treble of twin glass packs, then sat up and followed two blocks behind. I knew where she was going, with a two-point margin allowed for error; if I was wrong and I lost her, a vehicle like that wasn’t hard to pick up again in a city of pickups and town cars with little variety in between.

She didn’t have any surprises for me that morning. She turned into a parking garage with the entrance and exit in plain sight, came out on foot a few minutes later across from where I’d double-parked, swinging the portfolio and cracking her heels on the sidewalk toward Iona’s Simple Solutions, where she went in and let the glass door glide shut behind her without stopping to look around.

When a space opened up I moved into it. Parking on that street was two hours and ruthlessly enforced. I was in for a long day of shuttling from one slot to another. Since I seldom know when I’m going to be forced to sit still for hours, I keep a store of energy bars and water in the car and a big empty coffee can for comfort. I fed the meter, walked to the end of the block and back to work the stiffness out of my joints, took off my coat and folded it on the backseat, and made myself at home in the passenger’s seat in front. Passersby rarely give someone sitting there a second look, assuming he’s waiting for the driver to come back from some errand.

I didn’t know what I was waiting for or what I expected to see. Sometimes the work’s like fishing, without the amenities.

I’d been there about an hour when I turned the radio back on to catch the news. The River Rouge police had recovered a woman’s body found floating near the Ford plant early that morning. She was identified as Frances Elizabeth Donella, forty-four, of Detroit. The Detroit Police Department was assisting with the investigation.

It took me a second to remember where I’d heard the name before. Then I ground the starter and swung back toward the big city, busting some lights along the way.