She had three rooms and a bath in the back half of a house on Farnum. I carried the table inside and set both pieces down in the middle of a room full of cartons and furniture. She added the box of books to the pile. “Thank you, Mr. Walker. You’re a nice man.”
“Mrs. Shinstone,” I said, “Can you tell me why Blum might have been killed by the same gun that killed Manny Eckleberg?”
“Heavens, no. You said he was killed by a gun from his collection, didn’t you?” I nodded. “Well. I guess that tells us something about the original murder then, doesn’t it? Not that it matters.”
She let me use her telephone to call my service. I had a message. I asked the girl from whom.
“He wouldn’t leave his name, just his number.” She gave it to me. I recognized it.
This time it rang fourteen times before the voice came on. “What’ve you got for me, Mississippi?” I asked.
“They’s a parking lot on Livernois at Fort,” he said. “Good view of the river.”
“No more parking lots. Let’s make it my building in half an hour.”
I broke the connection, thanked Mrs. Shinstone, and got out of her new living room.
The sky was purpling finally when I stepped into the foyer of my office building. A breeze had come up to peel away the smog and humidity. I mounted the stairs, stopping when something stiff prodded my lower back.
“Turn around, turkey white meat.”
The something stiff was withdrawn and I obeyed. The lanky gun broker had stepped out from behind the propped-open fire door and was standing at the base of the stairs in his summer running outfit and alligator shoes. His right hand was wrapped around the butt of a lean automatic.
“Bang, you dead.” He flashed a grin and reversed the gun, extending the checked grip. “Go on, see how she feels. Luger. Ninety bucks.”
I said, “That’s not a Luger. It’s a P-38.”
“Okay, eighty-five. ’Cause you discerning.”
“Keep the gun. I’m getting my fill of them.” I produced my half of the two hundred I’d torn earlier, holding it back when he reached for it.
He moved a shoulder and clipped the pistol under his tank top. “He goes by Shoe. I don’t know his right name. White dude, big nose. When he turns sideways everything disappears but that beak. Tried to sell me the tommy gun and some other stuff on your list. Told him I had to scratch up cash. He says call him here.” He handed me a fold of paper from the pocket of his shorts. “Belongs to a roach hatchery at Wilson and Webb.”
“This better be the square.” I gave him the abbreviated currency.
“Hey, I deal hot merchandise. I got to be honest.”
They had just missed the hotel putting through the John Lodge and that was too bad. It was eight stories of charred brick held together with scaffolding and pigeon splatter. An electric sign ran up the front reading O L PON C. After five minutes I gave up wondering what it was trying to say and went inside. A kid in an Afro and army BVD undershirt looked up from the copy of Bronze Thrills he was reading behind the desk as I approached. I said, “I’m looking for a white guy named Shoe. Skinny guy with a big nose. He lives here.”
“If his name ain’t Smith or Jones it ain’t in the register.” He laid a dirty hand on the desk, palm up.
I rang the bell on the desk with his head and repeated what I’d said.
“Twenty-three,” he groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Second floor, end of the hall.”
It had been an elegant hall, with thick carpeting and wainscoting to absorb noise, but the floorboards whimpered now under the shiny carpet and the plaster bulged over the dull oak. I rapped on twenty-three. The door opened four inches and I was looking at a smoky brown eye and a nose the size of my fist.
“I’m the new house man,” I said. “We got a complaint you’ve been playing your TV too loud.”
“Ain’t got a TV.” He had a voice like a pencil sharpener.
“Your radio, then.”
The door started to close. I leaned a shoulder against it. When it sprang open I had to change my footing to keep my face off the floor. He was holding a short-barreled revolver at belly level.
A day like this brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “Detroit iron.”
“You’re the dick, let’s see your I.D.”
I held it up.
“Okay. I’m checking out tonight anyway.” The door closed.
I waited until the lock snapped, then walked back downstairs, making plenty of noise. I could afford to. I d had a good look at Shoe and at an airline ticket folder lying on the lamp table next to the door.
I passed the reader in the lobby without comment and got into my crate parked across the street in front of a mailbox. While I was watching the entrance and smoking a cigarette, a car parked behind mine and a fat woman in a green dress levered herself out to mail a letter and scowl at me through the windshield. I smiled back.
The streetlights had just sprung on when Shoe came out lugging two big suitcases and turned into the parking lot next door. Five minutes later a blue Plymouth with a smashed fender pulled out of the lot and the light fluttered on a big-nosed profile. I gave him a block before following.
We took the Lodge down to Grand River and turned right onto Selden. After three blocks the Plymouth slid into a vacant space just as a station wagon was leaving it. I cruised on past and stopped at the next intersection, adjusting my rearview mirror to watch Shoe angle across the street on foot, using both hands on the bigger of the two suitcases. He had to set it down to open a lighted glass door stenciled ZOLOTOW SECURITIES, then brace the door with a foot while he backed in towing his burden.
I found a space around the corner and walked back. Two doors down I leaned against the closed entrance to an insurance office, fired a Winston, and chased mosquitoes with the glowing tip while Shoe was busy striking a deal with the pawnbroker.
He was plenty scared, all right.
It was waiting time, the kind you measure in ashes. I was on my third smoke when a blue-and-white cut into the curb in front of Zolotow’s and a uniform with a droopy gunfighter’s moustache got out from behind the wheel.
The glass door opened just as the cop had both feet on the pavement. He drew his side arm and threw both hands across the roof of the prowl car. “Freeze! Police!”
Empty-handed, Shoe backpedaled. The cop yelled freeze again, but he was already back inside. The door drifted shut. A second blue-and-white wheeled into the block, and then I heard sirens.
A minute crawled past. I counted four guns trained on the door. Blue and red flashers washed the street in pulsating light. Then the door flew open again and Shoe was on the threshold cradling a Chicago typewriter.
Someone hollered, “Drop it!”
Thompsons pull to the left and up. The muzzle splattred fire, its bullets sparking off the first prowl car’s roof, pounding dust out of the granite wall across the street and shattering windows higher up, tok-tok-tok-tok-tok.
The return shots came so close together they made one long roar. Shoe slammed back against the door and slid into a sitting position spraddle-legged in the entrance, the submachine gun in his lap.
As the uniforms came forward, guns out, an unmarked unit fishtailed into the street. Lieutenant Alderdyce was out the passenger’s side while it was still rocking on its springs. He glanced down at the body on the sidewalk, then looked up and spotted me in the crowd of officers. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Mainly abusing my lungs,” I said. “How about you?”
“Pawnbroker matched the guns this clown was selling to the hot sheet. He made an excuse and called us from the back.”
I said, “He was running scared. He had an airline ticket and he checked out of the hotel where he was living. He was after a getaway stake.”