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with a noise like a train crash. Locks snapped, chains jingled.
    Moving casually, I descended the stairs and rounded the corner to where I’d left my car, fired up a weed, and drove around to the front of the building, where I parked across the mouth of an alley and sat there with the engine running, smoking, waiting. I turned on the radio and listened to the noon news. The President was vacationing in California. Eleven United Steelhaulers’ members were on their way to jail after rioting outside the Renaissance Center, where Phil Montana kept his headquarters, that morning. The cold front was heading south. The Pistons were on a jet to L.A. to take on the Lakers. Everyone was going somewhere but me. There was no mention of the Jefferson killing. I turned it off and sat waiting, smoking.
    A Checker cab stopped in front of the building and blew its horn. I took one last drag and screwed out the butt in the dashboard ashtray. She came out a minute later, wearing a long coat and boots and a hat like Ingrid Bergman wore in Casablanca and lugging the suitcase. The driver got out and manhandled the case into the trunk, opened the rear door for her, climbed back under the wheel, and spun rubber getting away from the curb. I gave him a block before pulling out to follow.
    On Woodward I thought he’d made me. The third time he checked his rearview mirror I fell back and swung east on Warren, then burned up the pavement on John R getting back. Then I hung a left onto Kirby and stopped at Woodward just as he was cruising past. I flipped down my visor to keep his passenger from getting a good look at me and hoped he wouldn’t recognize the car.
    By this time I had a fair idea of their destination. I took my time easing into the northbound lane and was two blocks back when they hit the west ramp of the Edsel Ford. Traffic on the expressway was heavy; I managed to lose myself in the press of vehicles for the half hour it took us to get to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. At American Airlines I parked in a space for the handicapped while the cabbie was unloading her suitcase in front of the terminal, watched as he pulled away, and legged it to catch up with her in the crowd.
    A voice like the oxygen feed in a fish tank announced over the P.A. that American Flight 527 to Los Angeles was now boarding at Gate 17. That’s when I spotted her, moving along with the line toward said gate, arm in arm with a tall black man who I’d have bet Ann Maringer’s diamond ring answered to Franklin Detwiler.
    I was trotting in that direction when Lieutenant Fitzroy’s partner Sergeant Cranmer stepped out of a group clustered around the security arch, flanked by a pair of uniformed officers, flashed his badge, and took the couple away without even giving them a chance to reclaim their luggage.

5
    I GOT BACK TO MY CAR just as a big cop was coming up the aisle wrestling his citation pad out of his hip pocket. He stood chewing gum and watching me through the blank lenses of his dark glasses as I pulled out. I was making myself very popular with the authorities today.
    No one was waiting to take advantage of my considerable services as I walked through the shallow outer room to my office and unlocked the door. The blinds were drawn, casting a gray haze over the desk and filing cabinets that came with the rent, the telephone that rang only when I wasn’t there, the safe my late partner had bought to store valuables in and that usually contained my laundry, and the general appearance of competition the Pinkertons didn’t lose much sleep over. So much of the lettering A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS had flaked off the outer door that the pebbled glass looked like a flea’s dance chart. It wasn’t much better with the lights on, but it was where I made my living, or tried to.
    “You May Have Already Won,” gushed the only letter in the slot. I laughed nastily and flipped it into the green metal wastebasket on my way to the desk. Sitting down, I dialed my