“So this is where you slip into your mules, sip your orange pekoe,” he said, tilting his big head toward the house. “Looks like where Hansel and Gretel’d hang out if they were Polacks.”
The place stands across the street from the city of Hamtramck, founded by Polish immigrants, but now as polyethnic as the rest of metropolitan Detroit. Even a guy named Kopernick could say Polack and still sound racist.
“I got rid of the gingerbread years ago. Ants.” I held my keys with my hand looped through the oversize ring. Old habit; I hadn’t had to use knucks in years.
He showed his lower teeth in a shark’s grin. The man was as changeless as the Pictured Rocks: the heavy handsome face under the wool-felt hat, black brows, prominent but not beaky nose, wide mouth, roomy camel’s-hair coat over pinstripes and matching burgundy shirt-and-necktie set, the way they sell them in boxes in the men’s department, Florsheims on his feet.
As usual it was the facial scar that caught my attention first, a tiny white crescent just right of the cleft in the blue chin. If he’d been hit just a little harder I could have identified the signet in the ring that made it. Which might have been hard enough to prevent whatever he’d done in response.
A crack had opened in the timetables of history, just wide enough for Detective First-Grade Stanley Kopernick to fall through into our century directly from the 1940s. No other rational explanation suggested itself.
“Well, we gonna stand out here basking in the spring weather or step inside and shake the icicles off our dicks?”
“Since you put it that way,” I said, shaking loose the key to the front door.
I snapped on the floor lamp in the living room, illuminating the tired furniture, the mild clutter, and the bits of decoration that had been in place so long I’d stopped seeing them. At least he had the grace—or whatever passed for it in him—not to comment.
“If you’re one of those cops who never drink on duty, you can watch me.” I headed for the kitchen.
He followed me. “My old man told me never to refuse free liquor. I loved my old man.”
From the cabinet above the sink I hoisted down the economy-size jug of Old Smuggler and filled two of those glasses that come free with good Scotch at Christmas. It wasn’t good Scotch.
This time he hadn’t the grace. “Save the toney stuff for the gentry, I guess.”
“I keep the high octane at the office. Get drunk at home.”
He fisted his glass and put the top half down his throat. “Boozing over the sink’s for the help.”
“Get that from the old man?”
“No, I come to it myself. He was the help.”
I let him have the only comfortable chair in the living room. He’d have taken it anyway. I found the sweet spot in the love seat, between the Bermuda Triangle in the center and the spring coiled to strike at the east end.
“This is cozy.” He shucked off his coat sitting, letting it drape itself over the back of the chair, and crossed his legs, resting his glass on his knee. A sliver of shin as white and hairless as a fluorescent tube showed above his socks. “Like a guy and his old man grabbing a beer on the corner.”
“Drop the hammer, Kopernick. I may be old enough to be your old man, but we both know you came from a spore.”
He wet his upper lip in his drink and flicked it dry with a thumb. “Scuttlebutt is you’re mucking around in the tar pits, looking for moldy old bones.”
“I like moldy old bones. It’s the bloody ones get me in trouble with cops. You’ll have to be more specific, Detective. You wear subtle like a rat in a raincoat.”
That one stung. Streaks of red came to the tops of his cheeks. That first gulp of Scotch hadn’t brought so much as pale pink. Go figure. “I’m a guest in your house,” he said. “You call me vermin?”
“I had to try. That spore dig got me zilch.”
“I don’t like rats. My first assignment when I was in the blue bag was bodyguarding Pest Control after a couple of ’em got shot at while trying to trap the buggers in vacant lots. One of the little bastards tried to run up my pants leg. I shot it off the toe of my shoe. Took a chunk off my best Thom McAn.”
I lifted my glass to my lips, watching him over the rim. His color faded. Sitting there with his legs crossed, he looked comfortable and sleepy. So does a crocodile just before it lunges.
“I won’t pump you for your client’s name,” he said. “I know how far that’d get me, and I got a good idea who it is. That was some deal you pulled off in the bank. I don’t guess she said thanks with just a fruit basket.”
That one whiffed past without me swinging at it. I said, “I was lucky. No oil tankers sank that day, and Congress was out; it was just me and Hägar the Horrible. I’ve heard from everyone but the Pope.”
“It was me, I’d of aimed higher. My old turnout sarge would of booted me from here to Flint if I shot just to wound. That was before they made us swap our heavy artillery for cap guns, to give the maggots a chance.”
“I had the same training. But you’re not here to compare vermin.”
He tugged his lower lip back up over his teeth. I relaxed a little then. When he got serious he was almost affable. Almost everything about him was opposite to everyone else I’d known. “You know I worked the April Goss case.”
“Hard not to. There weren’t any tankers going down then either.”
“Yeah. You might say it’s what made me. I happened to wander in front of a camera first day of a deal that just kept on playing and playing. You can bust your ass every day for years, keep your nose clean as morning dew, and never draw a glance from the top if you don’t catch a break like that.”
“It’s Detroit,” I said. “Not Santa’s workshop.”
“You’re telling me.” He tossed off the rest of his drink, leaned forward and thumped the glass down on the coffee table. He stayed in that position, elbows resting on his knees with his hands dangling between them, his face close enough to mine to smell the heather on his breath. “You’re expecting the layoff speech, but I’m gonna surprise you. How’d you like a little help from the department?”
I played for time. I didn’t care for what was happening. Once a predator goes against nature, you can never see Animal Planet the same way.
“Maybe I was wrong about Santa.”
“That a yes or a no?”
“It’s a give me a minute while I count my fingers.”
“You don’t trust me. I got over that a long time ago.” He dry-washed his palms. They made a sound like someone sanding a floor. “Things are getting stale: Shootings on the west side, domestic beefs downriver, junkies making off with tip cups from Starbucks. Same shit every day, only different people. You can’t make sergeant on that. This bird Corbeil’s guilty as O. J.; you know it, I know it—hell, little sis knows it, she just hopes to stir up enough dust to get him a ride down to County for the scenery change. CONVICTED MURDERER GETS SECOND CHANCE: The press’ll eat it up, they’re as bored as I am counting bullet holes. This town hasn’t seen a good legal drama since we put away the mayor.”
“Meaning you get to step back up to the plate.”
“I got the suit all picked out,” he said. “Charcoal gray, amethyst stripes: conservative but smart. Last time I gave testimony in this case was in the old blue bag. So what’s the verdict?”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
He made a new face. “I wish just once when a guy gets the blow-off somebody’d tell him he’s getting the blow-off. I’d buy that guy a box at Comerica Park.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m still processing ‘amethyst.’”
He showed his teeth again. “I flipped through GQ in Supercuts. They didn’t have any Guts ‘n’ Glory.”
“Thanks for dropping by, Detective. I don’t get the chance to entertain very often.”
“I don’t doubt it, the liquor you stock.” Big and solid as he was, he slid from that deep chair and into his coat all in one smooth oiled motion.
After he left I picked up the phone, then put it back down. I got up and opened the front door in time to see him start his engine and swing into the street. A man with his unlikely grace was capable of creeping back up the front steps without making a sound and eavesdropping through the keyhole; in this game a little paranoia is as useful as a lot of curiosity.
On the way back through the living room I picked up my glass with the idea of freshening my drink, but changed my mind when I got to the sink and dumped what was left of it down the drain. I could feel that steak sandwich wallowing in the puddle in my stomach. I rinsed out the glass, filled it with tap water, washed the taste of Old Smuggler out of my mouth, and went back to the telephone.
“Miss me already?” Barry sounded bright as Christmas morning. I decided he really had given up drinking.
“Guess who dropped in for tea?”
“Since you sound like a record winding down, I’d say it’s a cop.”
“Not just any cop.” I told him about Kopernick.
“Man, when you go fishing for clients you ought to stick to fresh water. Those bottom-feeders don’t make good eating.”
“I’m thinking of doing all my banking from home from now on. That’s what got me into this mess.”
“How’d he put it? I’m guessing out in the open. Kopernick’s idea of a veiled threat is to tell you your shoe’s untied and knee you in the face when you bend down.”
“He offered me the use of the department.”
I heard a long low whistle on his end. It could have been the connection. “Any signs of a stroke?”
“His kind doesn’t have strokes. They give ’em. He says he wants another turn at bat on the Goss case. Not getting enough love from the chief.”
“Horseshit. He wants to install a cookie in your hard drive. That means—”
“I know what it means. I saw it in Wired at Supercuts. They were out of Horse ‘n’ Buggy. I’m tempted to take him up on it.”
“You’re right. He does give people strokes.”
“Not this time. I can bake cookies too.”
“Oh. Risky. Did you call me to come looking for you when you disappear?”
“I called you to find out what kind of jam he’s in.”