Джордж Хиггинс: The New Black Mask (No 4)

“My boy Tommy turned seven last week,” Charlotte Corcoran told the wall across from her. “It’s the first birthday I missed.”

Her speech had an east Texas twang. I twirled another chair to face hers and sat down. The connecting door clicked shut discreetly behind Krell. It was the only noise he made exiting. “Tell me about your husband,” I said.

She snicked some ash into a tray on the chair next to her and looked at me. Seeing me now. “I could call him a monster. I’d be lying. Before this the worst thing he did was to call a half hour before supper to say he was working late. He did that a lot; it’s part of why I divorced him. That’s old news. I want my son back.”

“What’d the police in Austin say?”

“They acted concerned until I told them he’d been kidnapped by his father. Then they lost interest. They said they’d put Tommy’s picture on the bulletin board in every precinct, and maybe they did. They didn’t give it to the newspapers or TV the way they do when a child’s just plain missing. I got the same swirl of no action from the police here. Kidnapping’s okay between relatives, I guess.” She spat smoke.

“Skipping state lines should’ve landed it in the feds’ lap,” I said.

“I called the Houston office of the FBI. They were polite. They test high on polite. They said they’d get it on the wire. I never saw any of them.”

“So far as you know.”

It was lost on her. She mashed out her butt, leaving some lipstick smeared on the end. “I spent plenty of time at Police Headquarters here and back home,” she said. “They showed me the door nice as you please, but they showed me the door. They wouldn’t tell me what they’d found out.”

“That should have told you right there.”

Her expression changed. “Can you find them, Mr. — I’ve forgotten.”

“Walker,” I said. “A lot rests on whether they’re still here. And if they were ever here to begin with.”

“Frank was. My cousin Millie doesn’t make mistakes.”

“That’s Millicent Arnold, the relative you’re staying with?” She nodded. “I’ll need a picture of Tommy and one of Mr. Corcoran.”

“This should do it.” From her purse she drew a five-by-seven bureau shot and gave it to me. “I took it last summer on a trip to Corpus Christi. Tommy’s grown several inches since. But his face hasn’t changed.”

I looked at a man with dark curly hair and a tow-headed boy standing in swim trunks on a yellow beach with blue ocean behind them. “His father didn’t get that build lifting telephone receivers.”

“He worked out at a gym near his office. He was a member.”

I pocketed the photograph next to the Reliance report and stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll be in.”

Krell was on the intercom to his receptionist when I reentered his office. I waited until he finished making his lunch reservation, then:

“How much of a boost can I expect from Reliance on this one?”

“You already have it,” he said. “The situation is—”

“Delicate, yeah. I’ll take my full fee, then. Three days to start.”

“What happened to professional courtesy?”

“It went out of style, same as the amateur kind. What about it? You’re soaking her five bills per day now.”

“Four fifty.” He adjusted his tie clasp. “I’ll have Mrs. Marble draw you a check.”

“Your receptionist has access to company funds?”

“She’s proven herself worthy of my trust.”

I didn’t say it. My bank balance was stuck to the sidewalk as it was.

The report had Mrs. Corcoran in contact with a Sergeant Grandy in General Service, missing persons detail. I deposited half of the Reliance check at my bank, hanging on to the rest for expenses, and drove down to Police Headquarters, where a uniform escorted me to a pasteboard desk with a bald head behind it. Grandy had an egg-salad sandwich in one hand and a styrofoam cup of coffee in the other and was using a blank arrest form for a place mat. He wore a checked sport coat and a moustache healthy enough to have sucked all the hair from his scalp.

“Corcoran, yeah,” he said, after reading my card and hearing my business. “It’s in the works. You got to realize it don’t get the same priority as a little boy lost. I mean, somebody’s feeding him.”

“Turn anything yet?”

“We got the boy’s picture and the father’s description out.”

“That’s what you’ve done. What’ve you got?”

He flicked a piece of egg salad off his lapel. “What I got is two Grosse Pointe runaways to chase down and a four-year-old girl missing from an apartment on Watson I’ll be handing to Homicide soon as she turns up jammed in a culvert somewhere. I don’t need part-time heat too.”

We were getting started early. I set fire to some tobacco. “Who’s your lieutenant?”

“Winkle. Only he’s out sick.”

“Sergeant Grandy, if I spent an hour here, would I walk out any smarter than I was when I came in?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay. I just wondered if you were an exception.”

I was out of there before he got it.

On the ground floor I used a pay telephone to call the Federal Building and explained my problem to the woman who answered at the FBI.

“That would be Special Agent Roseman, Interstate Flight,” she said. “But he’s on another line.”

I said I’d wait. She put me on hold. I watched a couple of prowl-car cops sweating in their winter uniforms by the Coke machine. After five minutes the woman came back on. “Mr. Roseman will be tied up for a while. Would you like to call back?”

I said yeah and hung up. Out on Beaubien the sidewalks were throwing back the first real warmth of spring. I rolled down the window on the driver’s side and breathed auto exhaust all the way to my office building. You have to celebrate it somehow.

The window in my thinking parlor was stuck shut. I strained a disk heaving it open a crack to smell the sweet sun-spread pavement three stories down. Then I sat down behind the desk — real wood, no longer in style but not yet antique — and tried the FBI again. Roseman was out to lunch. I left my number and got out the Reliance report and dialed one of two numbers for the firm where Frank Corcoran worked in Austin.

“Great Western.” Another woman. They own the telephone wires.

I gave her my name and calling. “I’m trying to reach Frank Corcoran. It’s about an inheritance.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Corcoran is on indefinite leave.”

“Where can I reach him?”

“I’m sorry.”

I thanked her anyway and worked the plunger. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s basic to try the knob before you break out the lockpicks. I used the other number, and this time I got a man.

“Arnold Wilson, president of Thornbraugh Electronics in Chicago,” I said. Thornbraugh Transmissions on Livernois put out the advertising calendar tacked to the wall across from my desk. “We’re building a new plant in Springfield and Frank Corcoran advised me to call Great Western for financing. Is he in?”

“What did you say your name was?” I repeated it. “One moment.”

I had enough time to pluck out a cigarette before he came back on the line. “Are you the private investigator who spoke to my partner’s secretary about Mr. Corcoran a few moments ago?” His tone had lost at least three layers of silk.

“What’s the matter,” I said, “you don’t have any walls in that place?”

I was talking to myself. As I lowered the dead receiver I could hear the computers gossiping among themselves, trashing my credit rating. The laugh was on them; I didn’t have one.

My next trip was through the yellow pages. There were at least fifty public gymnasiums listed within a half hour of downtown Detroit, including Southfield, any one of which would suit Corcoran’s obsession with a healthy body. We all have our white whales. I made a list of the bigger, cleaner places. It was still long. Just thinking about it made my feet throb.