Read American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel for Free Online Page B

grew heavy on the vine.
    The hall door opened and shut and then John Alderdyce, inspector in charge of Homicide, slid in like a lake freighter from the little breezeway that separated the kitchen from the living room where the dead slumbered; or so I thought, and my confirmation had just arrived. The tidy bachelor’s kitchen was packed to capacity now.
    I hadn’t seen John in months. If he’d changed at all it was in the direction he’d been going since puberty, bigger and harder and dressed more carefully than the governor, in wine-colored summer worsted with spectators on his feet and a gray silk figured tie on a shirt of the same shade. Hisface was made from scrap iron and bitumen, black and angular, and the whites of his eyes burned like hearts of fire deep in their sockets. They went from Gumby to the Mexican and finally to Burrough. To him I was dust in a corner. He was as good a friend as I had. “Press?” he asked.
    “Not yet,” said the detective. “It went out as a disturbance complaint. I talked to the neighbor. Got it when you need it.” He patted the breast pocket of his Palm Beach suit. Next to Alderdyce’s it looked like molded plastic.
    “Show me.”
    Burrough gave the uniforms the stay-put look and led the way out of the kitchen.
    They were gone five minutes. The Mexican checked his watch six times and Gumby redistributed his weight twice, creaking like a gallows. The building shuddered when the elevator trundled up and down the shaft. Bairn’s neighbors were coming home, changing clothes, and going back out to try their luck at the MGM Grand and Motor City casinos and the Indian trap in Greektown.
    I had a sudden thought and looked at the refrigerator. The thickset uniform saw the movement. He was twice the cop his partner was, but he’d probably finish out his service in the blue bag, because everyone knew Mexicans are hardworking and as slow as the tide. I turned it into a full rotation, as if I had a stiff neck, and went back to counting the specks on the tabletop. I’d seen what I’d expected to.
    Alderdyce and Burrough came back and the inspector scraped back a chair and sat down across from me and slid aside my effects to lay his forearms on the table. He looked at me then for the first time, but spoke to the detective. “Who hit him?”
    “Me, Inspector. He was being an asshole and I didn’t want Officer Ransom to get himself in trouble.”
    So Gumby’s name was Ransom. I thought I might need it if the feds recommended a clean sweep at the top and he got promoted.
    “Break his nose next time. He won’t file.”
    “Hello to you, too, John,” I said. “Can I bum a cigarette?”
    “Those things’ll take ten years off your life.”
    “Just the lousy ones at the end.”
    “Try the patch?”
    I shook my head. “Couldn’t keep it lit.”
    “You see, Inspector?” said Ransom.
    “I’ve seen.” To me: “Well, I finished quitting, so you can tell your lungs to hold their water. Who’s paying?”
    “Nobody. I came to see a friend.”
    “You told Burrough on the phone you represented someone with a proposition.”
    “The proposition was a beer, and the someone was Anheuser-Busch. We joke like that all the time.”
    “You’re usually funnier than that.”
    “Thanks. I never thought you were listening.”
    “What’s the name on the lease?” he asked Burrough without lifting his eyes from mine.
    “Hilary Bairn.”
    “Where’d you two meet?” he asked me.
    “Some bar.”
    He twitched a little finger wearing his University of Detroit class ring; all the others had grown too thick to fit. “You need to be careful where you go in this town with that much cash on you.”
    “I figure I’m in the same boat with it or without it.”
    “It’s your money?”
    “It’s my pocket.”
    “We’re supposed to report this kind of thing to the IRS. It could put you in a higher tax bracket.”
    “I’d like to be in a bracket. Last year I didn’t even file a