EIGHTEEN

“Marcine Logan,” I said.

Aunt Lee nodded without speaking.

“Why include her? She was sharing his bed too.”

She held up a hand, stopping her niece in midtranslation. Once again she spoke in English. “She was assertive, that one, more intelligent than Joey, although perhaps not as wily as Joey’s father, the one they called Joe Balls. Of course, she was quite young. She would be approaching her middle years now. I shouldn’t want to do business with her without my young men from Hong Kong. I miss them the most. The majority of the world’s population goes to its grave never having known a man who would die for them, let alone seven. Dead now, every last one, although only one for my sake. Three were slain during the gang wars in San Francisco. Tiananmen Square claimed the rest.”

“Freedom fighters?”

“Fighters against freedom. The Shining Path never forgets an injury.”

“Aunt Lee, you never told me there was so much bloodshed.”

“I didn’t think you could handle it, child. I’ve learned as much as any of us this day.”

“Not to break up a tender moment,” I said, “but why would Marcine throw in with the cops?”

“I don’t know that she did, only that she must have had a clear understanding of Joey’s affairs. I said she was intelligent. At that time, before they had Arab fanatics to occupy their days, the authorities were putting all their machinery behind the destruction of what they considered organized crime. I saw what was happening and slipped out under the wire. Any smart, ruthless woman would have done as I did. Marcine was both. I saw that on the acquaintance of seconds. But then unlike Joey I was observing her from the neck up.” She sighed, a sibilant outtake of breath. “So many corpses at the bases of cliffs, and not one of them thought to apply the power they held between their legs.”

Her niece’s cheeks stained darker. “Aunt Lee, I’ve never heard you speak so.”

The aunt went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “How did the Donella woman meet her end?”

“She was garroted.”

The smile turned down briefly.

“What?” I asked.

“Only that someone is trying very hard to assign this murder to the Combination. The current generation has refined its tactics and the last one to use the old is growing feeble.”

“The same thought occurred to me.” I stood. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“Was I of assistance?”

“Actually, you made things worse. If Frances wasn’t the snitch, I need another reason why someone put her in the river.”

“You said she’d done a lot of living since Joey. If that means what I think it does, several solutions suggest themselves.”

“The timing stinks for every one. Did you happen to know a Detroit Police detective named Randolph Severin?”

“I met a number of them on several occasions. It never seemed necessary to commit their names to memory. Was he with Narcotics?”

“Homicide. According to the department, Joey came close enough to put himself in Severin’s wheelhouse. He’s the one slapped the cuffs on him for dynamiting that reporter’s car. The informant was his, but he wouldn’t give me the name. I didn’t really expect you to remember him. I’m just casting a wide loop.”

Her niece rose, frowning. “I have to drive Mr. Walker back to his car. I won’t be long. Do you need anything?”

“Just a few moments with my eyes closed.” And she closed them as if we were no longer in the room.

*   *   *

Lee drove most of the way back to the office in silence, without committing any infractions. “You violated our agreement.”

“I wanted to see her reaction when I dropped it in her lap.”

“Did she pass?”

“I didn’t expect any scenery-chewing. Do you know why Candid Camera went off the air?”

“I never saw the show. I heard about it. Kind of a reality program?”

“Yeah. We used to watch it to wind down from massacring Indians. The reason it went off the air is ordinary people stopped falling apart when they realized they’d been hoaxed. We all got too guarded after the rotten events of the Sixties. Reading people isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

“It wasn’t easy containing myself. I didn’t want to upset Aunt Lee.”

“Her being so high-strung and all.”

“Do you really think she’s evil?”

“I said she was wicked. It isn’t quite the same thing.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“If there’s a heaven I don’t see her in it.”

“She’s never apologized for her past, but I know she’s not capable of murder.”

“Sure she is. We all are.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“I got out of Cambodia alive.”

We cruised through another block. “What’s a garrote?”

I told her.

“I thought it was something like that,” she said. “I must have read it somewhere or seen it in a movie. She’s right, you know, about the strength it would take. I’ve had patients who could barely walk but who fought like tigers when they thought I was hurting them. Hollywood makes strangling look too quick and easy.”

“Getting it right would take too much time and film. Theaters survive on popcorn sales between shows. A bullet’s so much more practical, like the one somebody put in Randolph Severin’s head.”

We were approaching a yellow light. She hit the brakes. Another set screeched behind us. The driver leaned on his horn. She turned her head my direction. “You left out the graphic details before. Why spare her and not me?”

“You seemed okay with garroting, which seems worse. Anyway I’d already made up my mind she had no hand in that. I had Severin all wrapped up for Donella until that happened.”

“What do the police say?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that. They’ll have found him by now, but I don’t know how long it will take before Detroit has it. It happened outside their jurisdiction.”

“You saw it?”

“I came close. He was still warm when I got there.”

“You didn’t report it?”

“My civic spirit has some holes in it, especially when I’ve just shaken myself free of the cops.”

The horn blasted again. She glanced up at the green light and we resumed moving. “How’d I do that time?”

“I wasn’t testing. Sometimes you have to talk about a case with someone besides yourself and the police.”

“I wish I believed you. I’m beginning to think I misjudged your character.”

“I’m glad that didn’t happen when you had me in your chair.”

There were fewer cars in the part of the lot closest to the office, which had closed for lunch. I got out next to my Cutlass. When I turned back to thank her for the ride and the introduction she was already rolling.

I tamped out a cigarette and knocked it against the back of the pack, watching her swing out into the street without looking my way. When I lit up and ground the starter, Barbara Lynn came on the radio singing, “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.” Life’s like that sometimes.

East of Dearborn the traffic picked up on the other side of the median. The afternoon rush hour started earlier all the time; it was only a question of months before it overlapped with the one in the morning, like baseball and hockey seasons. By the time I got to the Detroit city limits it couldn’t have gotten any slower without going backward. A tractor-trailer lay on its side on the berm on the westbound where there was no curve or grade to explain it, a state police prowler had bagged a twofer farther on, a pair of vans probably speeding in tandem, and the usual innerspring mattress lay in the passing lane on that side, backing up the exodus all the way to Livernois. The smell of carrion had brought out helicopters from every radio and TV station in the area. It was a day like all the rest.

I picked up a prowler of my own ten blocks from the office, a Detroit unit. I eased up on the pedal even though I wasn’t breaking the law any more than the next guy, but he stayed with me all the way without turning on his flasher or siren, and when I swung into the little lot where the attendant sat in his shack wearing the same clothes every day the prowler waited until I was in a slot, then stopped perpendicular to my trunk to block me from backing out.

I finished a cigarette and put it out in the tray while the uniform slid out from under the wheel, approached the driver’s side between me and the panel truck parked next door, tapped on my window, and made a cranking motion with his free hand. The other rested on the butt of his sidearm in its holster.

“Mr. Walker?” He had one of those ageless freckled faces like Martin Milner in Adam-12. “I’m Officer Goetz. Inspector Alderdyce sends his compliments and asks if you can join him at headquarters.”