minutes. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
“You’ve been wasting gas. Your boss isn’t the only client I’ve ever had. His name never came up.”
“I hope not, for your sake. Who lives in the dump?” He inclined his modest afro toward the building I’d just left.
“What if I told you it’s a reporter I know?”
He looked at me for the first time. “I’d say it’s a sad day for a certain peeper,” he replied after a moment.
“Like I said, I don’t work exclusive. The deal was your boss won’t see his name in the paper. Until that happens I visit who I want. Take that back to Grosse Pointe.”
I spun rubber on Rosa Parks to get him out of there before Barry left the building. On West Forest I lost him, but picked him up again on Woodward and from that point on he was a bumper sticker. He was good. I grabbed a light breakfast at a lunch counter—don’t laugh, it’s your language too—and at eight sharp was parked on Watson kitty-corner from George Gibson’s apartment when the subject in question stiff-legged it out the door and hobbled down the street with the aid of his canes toward the nearest bus stop. He was a skinny, white-haired little guy with a determined face that looked ten years older than it was. I laid aside the morning Free Press I’d been reading (there was nothing in it about Francis Kramer, but then I hadn’t expected there to be, considering the lead time involved) and swung out into the main gut, where I rolled along discreetly amid the congealing traffic until he reached his destination, then double-parked next to a van in a loading zone and waited for the DSR to pick him up. It was only fifteen minutes late, just enough time for me to check my mirrors and determine that Wiley’s bilious economy job was gone. Which meant that he’d either swallowed the line I’d offered or gone back to confirm the old man’s suspicions.
When the bus pulled out with Gibson on it I drove past it and was waiting across from the unemployment office when he got off and went in to pick up his check. My Nikon was on the seat beside me with a telephoto lens, but it might as well have been one of those toys you crank to deliver a picture that develops in minutes, too dark and primarily green, for all the chance I got to use it. He stayed between the sticks on his way out of the office and through a brief shopping trip downtown without the slightest indication that he could get along without them. When he returned to his apartment a little before ten I kept going. Maybe this time my cynicism was misplaced. Maybe he was a straight guy with a streak of hard luck. And maybe the mayor voted Republican in the last election.
7
M Y OFFICE IS A third-floor wheeze-up in one of the older buildings on Grand River, a pistol-shot from Woodward. The last time I scrubbed it, the pebbled-glass door, which always reminds me of the window in a public lavatory, read A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS in flecked black letters tombstoned tastefully across the top and in need of touching up. The man from whom I inherited the practice, who had himself inherited a bullet meant for me, used to call it APOLLO CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS , after the Hellenic god who brought light to the darkness, but I changed it after I got fed up with taking calls from people who wished to speak with “Mr. Apollo.” It’s a pleasant enough little burrow, and while the place has never seen a featherduster or broom with bristles stiff enough to reach into the corners, let alone the Silver’s touch, it has everything a P.I. requires, including a file cabinet with the worst dents shoved up against the wall, a backless sofa suitable for snoozing one off, and a desk with a bottom drawer deep enough to store a bottle of Hiram Walker’s upright, suitable for tying one on. I admit it’s a hike south from my dump near Hamtramck, but then the internal combustion engine has spoiled us all for those copper towns in the upper peninsula whose residents
“You’ve been wasting gas. Your boss isn’t the only client I’ve ever had. His name never came up.”
“I hope not, for your sake. Who lives in the dump?” He inclined his modest afro toward the building I’d just left.
“What if I told you it’s a reporter I know?”
He looked at me for the first time. “I’d say it’s a sad day for a certain peeper,” he replied after a moment.
“Like I said, I don’t work exclusive. The deal was your boss won’t see his name in the paper. Until that happens I visit who I want. Take that back to Grosse Pointe.”
I spun rubber on Rosa Parks to get him out of there before Barry left the building. On West Forest I lost him, but picked him up again on Woodward and from that point on he was a bumper sticker. He was good. I grabbed a light breakfast at a lunch counter—don’t laugh, it’s your language too—and at eight sharp was parked on Watson kitty-corner from George Gibson’s apartment when the subject in question stiff-legged it out the door and hobbled down the street with the aid of his canes toward the nearest bus stop. He was a skinny, white-haired little guy with a determined face that looked ten years older than it was. I laid aside the morning Free Press I’d been reading (there was nothing in it about Francis Kramer, but then I hadn’t expected there to be, considering the lead time involved) and swung out into the main gut, where I rolled along discreetly amid the congealing traffic until he reached his destination, then double-parked next to a van in a loading zone and waited for the DSR to pick him up. It was only fifteen minutes late, just enough time for me to check my mirrors and determine that Wiley’s bilious economy job was gone. Which meant that he’d either swallowed the line I’d offered or gone back to confirm the old man’s suspicions.
When the bus pulled out with Gibson on it I drove past it and was waiting across from the unemployment office when he got off and went in to pick up his check. My Nikon was on the seat beside me with a telephoto lens, but it might as well have been one of those toys you crank to deliver a picture that develops in minutes, too dark and primarily green, for all the chance I got to use it. He stayed between the sticks on his way out of the office and through a brief shopping trip downtown without the slightest indication that he could get along without them. When he returned to his apartment a little before ten I kept going. Maybe this time my cynicism was misplaced. Maybe he was a straight guy with a streak of hard luck. And maybe the mayor voted Republican in the last election.
7
M Y OFFICE IS A third-floor wheeze-up in one of the older buildings on Grand River, a pistol-shot from Woodward. The last time I scrubbed it, the pebbled-glass door, which always reminds me of the window in a public lavatory, read A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS in flecked black letters tombstoned tastefully across the top and in need of touching up. The man from whom I inherited the practice, who had himself inherited a bullet meant for me, used to call it APOLLO CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS , after the Hellenic god who brought light to the darkness, but I changed it after I got fed up with taking calls from people who wished to speak with “Mr. Apollo.” It’s a pleasant enough little burrow, and while the place has never seen a featherduster or broom with bristles stiff enough to reach into the corners, let alone the Silver’s touch, it has everything a P.I. requires, including a file cabinet with the worst dents shoved up against the wall, a backless sofa suitable for snoozing one off, and a desk with a bottom drawer deep enough to store a bottle of Hiram Walker’s upright, suitable for tying one on. I admit it’s a hike south from my dump near Hamtramck, but then the internal combustion engine has spoiled us all for those copper towns in the upper peninsula whose residents
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