American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel by Loren D. Estleman Page B

almost forgotten about her. The only reminder I’d had since I’d left my number with Victor Cho at the casino in Detroit Beach was the missing section from the calendar on Hilary Bairn’s refrigerator, with her name scribbled in July. He might have gotten rid of it himself since that morning, or there might have been another notation in August that someone didn’t want the cops to see; the name Sing had excited me so much I hadn’t bothered to turn up the page. While I was waiting I tilted another inch into my glass and then into my mouth and rolled it around. It prickled my tongue like a tiny electric charge.
    “Why Detroit Beach, Mr. Walker?” greeted another Asian voice, lower register, with the accent farther back. “I haven’t been there in years.”
    I said, “I didn’t expect to find you there. The joint’s the closest one you’ve got to Bairn’s place. If you had a debt to collect, that would be where he ran it up.”
    “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Mr. Walker. I own real estate, not gambling houses.”
    “Are you saying Hilary Bairn didn’t have an appointment to see you day before yesterday?”
    “I have many appointments. I don’t keep them all personally. I maintain assistants for less important meetings.”
    “Is that what Bairn was?”
    “I don’t know the gentleman.”
    “Victor Cho tried to stall me the same way. He made a mistake. He said, ‘Who’s he?’ It’s not a common name for men. Offhand the only other one I can think of is the man who climbed Mt. Everest; but that was his last name, so he doesn’t count.”
    The pause on her end crackled with intelligence. “What is your interest?”
    “This morning I needed background for a business proposition I was handling for a client. Tonight it’s a criminal case. Bairn is being sought for questioning in a homicide.”
    “I wasn’t aware private investigators involved themselves in police cases.”
    “Interesting.”
    “Yes?”
    “That that would be the first thing you were curious about. Most people, when they hear the word homicide, want to know who was killed.”
    “The answer to that is irrelevant until I’m satisfied as to the reliability of the source.”
    I was beginning to understand her success. The vast majority of refugees who wash up on American shores vanish quickly into the soup, either dissolved into the stock or gathered in clumps with others of their nationality. Some float to the top all by themselves, others sink to the bottom and feed off the sediment. The ones who float to the top have to overcome prejudice, culture shock, barriers of language andcustom, and all the usual forces that combine to prevent overcrowding at the highest level even among the natives. Charlotte Sing had had all that to contend with as well as her gender, yet had shot straight up from the sediment; if some of it still clung to her, you needed to have faced many of the same challenges to find fault, and even then you had to allow that she thought to ask the questions most people only assume they know the answers to.
    I said, “If you don’t know who I am by now, everything I’ve heard about you is an exaggeration.”
    “It probably is regardless. These things tend to take on a life of their own.” She drew breath she didn’t need. People like her—like me, too—prefer to have people think they’re less certain than they are. “I’ve seen your military record, license renewals, marriage certificate and divorce decree, and a rather bloody swath through the local media. My privacy is more than just a comfort, Mr. Walker. Without it I can’t function. I’m not convinced I can afford to involve myself with such a colorful character. In fact, I’m convinced I can’t.”
    “It’s me or the cops. They’re not as gaudy, but their records are open to the public. And it isn’t your backyard domestic homicide. The victim’s father is a national celebrity.”
    “Would I know his name?”
    “I think you already