Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss by Loren D. Estleman

Then I drove home through empty polar streets with houses on both sides still wearing Christmas lights and opened a can of soup.
    My leg woke me the next morning ten minutes ahead of the alarm, but I was lying in my own bed and not a frozen parking lot, which was progress of a kind. I had coffee and painkillers for breakfast. At eight o’clock I called the Canons’ home. A baby with steel lungs wailed in the background. That was another suspectedlie laid to rest, and I resolved to give Oral the benefit of some doubt until I could question Rose in detail. She couldn’t talk right then, so I got the address and said I’d be there at nine.
    The house was a two-story frame in Oak Park with a hip roof, one of several built on a tree-lined street in the second generation after VJ Day and something of an improvement over the G.I. Bill ranches that had preceded them. A pair of mature cedars towered in the front yard, their upper branches hollowed out in a U by Detroit Edison crews to keep them from taking down wires during windstorms. Oral Canon might have done the job himself, if he was with DTE as he said and splicing technicians weren’t above that sort of work. I still had some reservations about him.
    A hand-lettered three-by-five card inserted in one of the small panes in the front door asked visitors not to use the bell. I rapped gently and waited. My breath smoked and the iron air frosted the hairs inside my nostrils. It was like breathing through fiberglass.
    “Thank you for coming, Mr. Walker. Come in and take off your coat. It must be zero.” Her husky voice was almost a whisper.
    She had blue eyes and the blackest hair I’d ever seen on an Occidental, a color combination that always puts blondes in the second rank. A crumpled red face and a full head of coarse black hair showed above a blue blanket wound into a coccoon in the crook of her left arm. The kid seemed to have his father’s complexion; but I had one more point to clear up before I stepped inside.
    “It was two below when I left the house.” I kept my voice low. “Could you describe your husband for me, Mrs. Canon?”
    Her face showed no surprise. It was oval, pale as milk, with a strong straight nose and a dimpled upper lip with edges as delicate as a ski track in fresh powder. It looked as if it would collapse if you touched it with a finger.
    “He’s a big man, like you, only heavier. Bald and sunburned. I can’t get him to wear block. My father died of melanoma.”
    “I heard he drank.”
    Her eyebrows went up, black contrails against her fair skin. “Oral? Not—”
    “Your father. Oral said he drank and your mother walked out on you.”
    “You get personal right on the doorstep, don’t you?” The whisper was harsh. The bundle in her arm stirred and opened its eyes a crack. They were blue like the mother’s, but they say that’s true of all babies. I’d never paid them that much attention. They can’t answer questions and don’t hit very hard.
    “The answers could save us both time and you money. Your husband hired me to look for a brother it turns out you don’t have.”
    “He didn’t lie.” She jiggled the baby, pulled the edge of the blanket up around its ears. “Please come inside. The doctor said a little cold air isn’t really bad, but Jeffie doesn’t know that.”
    I stepped in past her. It was the
Jeffie
that did it. She closed and locked the door.
    A heavy oaken hall tree stood to one side with a variety of outerwear hanging from it. I shrugged out of my overcoat and used a vacant hook. “You named him after Jeff Starzek?”
    “I’ve always liked the name. It has strength and tradition. You’d never believe how many babies in the maternity ward were named Joshua and Jason.”
    “Why not Oral, Junior?”
    She made a face; whether at Oral or Junior I couldn’t tell. It didn’t make her any less pretty. She wore a blue-and-white-checked flannel blouse with the tails out over black stirrup pants with her bare