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Authors: Loren D. Estleman
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that wasn’t what was bothering me.
Matador hadn’t changed the guard after all. That meant he intended for me to see them, which meant either he was trying to throw some kind of scare into me or he had a stealth crew staked out somewhere else, to pick me up in case I ducked the first team. I couldn’t figure out why he’d want me scared, and in any case I’m easier and less expensive to scare than the situation seemed to demand. So the bottom line was if the surveillance broke off for any reason, someone in the ranks was going to be reminded that matador is Spanish for more than just a killer of bulls.
A lot of Gilia’s money was being spent to find out what became of Jillian Rubio. A lot more was being spent to find out what the detective found out at the very moment he found it out.
It seemed like one more angle than the case should have; especially a case that had started out with an employee accused of simple disloyalty and snaked its way into a jungle filled with mosquitoes and guerrillas and red-hot pennies and poison. It was time to go back to the well.
NINE
I f there are any conservationists out there interested in preserving the physical evidence of what made Detroit Detroit, they’d better rope off a piece of the warehouse district today, because tomorrow there will be condominiums or a casino standing on top of it.
It’s shrinking faster than the Brazilian rain forest, this homely stretch of riverfront with its acres of crumbling warehouses, tangled miles of narrow-gauge track, and columns of cold smokestacks. Bricktown bulldozers are snorting in from the west and River town backhoes are scooping out basements from the east, busy making the neighborhood safe for knickknack collectors, penthouse playboys, and blackjack dealers. The landscape is as bleak and hostile as they get, full of gaunt shells with empty windowpanes like missing teeth, and inside them rats and termites, but while they stand it’s still possible for anyone who cares to go down and see the exposed living organs of an American industrial city. I don’t imagine there are many who do.
A pair of large black Detroit police officers in leathers and earflaps lowered their hands to their belts as I approached the barricade, leaving their cigarettes to smolder between their lips. I guessed the sergeant was the one with the words, so I showed him my ID, folding back the part with the badge, which wouldn’t have impressed him, and said I was working for Gilia. He had
a thick black moustache that looked as if it had been poured while molten and hardened in the Arctic air off the river.
“You with the band?” This came from his partner, a slightly younger version of his superior, with humorous eyes and only his lower teeth open to view. I’d been wrong again.
“Just a jobber,” I said. “I’m checking in.”
Somewhere down the decaying length of dead-end street an electrocuted cat sang out its anguish. It stood my scalp on end. The sergeant with the poured moustache rubbed his nose with a leather-sheathed finger. The officer with the humorous eyes went on watching me through the smoke rising from the end of his cigarette. I figured either they were wearing earplugs under their flaps or they’d gotten used to the noise.
I pointed with my chin. “Spanish invention, the guitar. Took two hundred years to become the most important folk instrument in the world.”
The cop with the words spat a flake of tobacco from between his lips without dislodging his cigarette. “How about that.”
“Then they had to go and add electricity.”
“My kid plays guitar,” he said. “But then whose kid don’t? They’re doing what you call a sound check, for a video. No Gilia today. You ought to know stars don’t stand around freezing off their famous asses till showtime.”
“They told me at the Hyatt she’s here.”
“I guess that’s why you had to fight your way through the crowd.” We were the only things breathing within a block
Matador hadn’t changed the guard after all. That meant he intended for me to see them, which meant either he was trying to throw some kind of scare into me or he had a stealth crew staked out somewhere else, to pick me up in case I ducked the first team. I couldn’t figure out why he’d want me scared, and in any case I’m easier and less expensive to scare than the situation seemed to demand. So the bottom line was if the surveillance broke off for any reason, someone in the ranks was going to be reminded that matador is Spanish for more than just a killer of bulls.
A lot of Gilia’s money was being spent to find out what became of Jillian Rubio. A lot more was being spent to find out what the detective found out at the very moment he found it out.
It seemed like one more angle than the case should have; especially a case that had started out with an employee accused of simple disloyalty and snaked its way into a jungle filled with mosquitoes and guerrillas and red-hot pennies and poison. It was time to go back to the well.
NINE
I f there are any conservationists out there interested in preserving the physical evidence of what made Detroit Detroit, they’d better rope off a piece of the warehouse district today, because tomorrow there will be condominiums or a casino standing on top of it.
It’s shrinking faster than the Brazilian rain forest, this homely stretch of riverfront with its acres of crumbling warehouses, tangled miles of narrow-gauge track, and columns of cold smokestacks. Bricktown bulldozers are snorting in from the west and River town backhoes are scooping out basements from the east, busy making the neighborhood safe for knickknack collectors, penthouse playboys, and blackjack dealers. The landscape is as bleak and hostile as they get, full of gaunt shells with empty windowpanes like missing teeth, and inside them rats and termites, but while they stand it’s still possible for anyone who cares to go down and see the exposed living organs of an American industrial city. I don’t imagine there are many who do.
A pair of large black Detroit police officers in leathers and earflaps lowered their hands to their belts as I approached the barricade, leaving their cigarettes to smolder between their lips. I guessed the sergeant was the one with the words, so I showed him my ID, folding back the part with the badge, which wouldn’t have impressed him, and said I was working for Gilia. He had
a thick black moustache that looked as if it had been poured while molten and hardened in the Arctic air off the river.
“You with the band?” This came from his partner, a slightly younger version of his superior, with humorous eyes and only his lower teeth open to view. I’d been wrong again.
“Just a jobber,” I said. “I’m checking in.”
Somewhere down the decaying length of dead-end street an electrocuted cat sang out its anguish. It stood my scalp on end. The sergeant with the poured moustache rubbed his nose with a leather-sheathed finger. The officer with the humorous eyes went on watching me through the smoke rising from the end of his cigarette. I figured either they were wearing earplugs under their flaps or they’d gotten used to the noise.
I pointed with my chin. “Spanish invention, the guitar. Took two hundred years to become the most important folk instrument in the world.”
The cop with the words spat a flake of tobacco from between his lips without dislodging his cigarette. “How about that.”
“Then they had to go and add electricity.”
“My kid plays guitar,” he said. “But then whose kid don’t? They’re doing what you call a sound check, for a video. No Gilia today. You ought to know stars don’t stand around freezing off their famous asses till showtime.”
“They told me at the Hyatt she’s here.”
“I guess that’s why you had to fight your way through the crowd.” We were the only things breathing within a block
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