American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

overpasses began to close over my head, my cell went off for the first time. The musicians on the NPR station I listened to for jazz were teaching themselves something progressive, and for a moment I thought the tone was part of the melody. When it continued into the deejay’s commentary, I unholstered the instrument and said “Hello” into a dead signal. A moment later I got a different sort of ring that I figured out meant I had a message. Nothing I tried could retrieve it and I’d left the manual at the office. There, the telephone on the desk was ringing.
    “I left word on your walkabout,” Darius Fuller said. “I had an easier time getting the general manager on the phone when I couldn’t put one over the plate in three games.”
    I sat down in the swivel. “I said I had one. I didn’t say I knew how to use it. What’s the emergency?”
    “That’s the word. Your two months just became two days. I had a fight with Dee-dee this morning, about you know who. She got mad and said she’s going to elope.”
    “You hired me to handle it. I ought to charge you extra for helping, the way plumbers do.”
    “This a joke to you? You got a kid?”
    “No, I’ve been a detective all my life. Why two days? You can buy a ladder at Home Depot any time.”
    “She’s got an oral exam tomorrow. I guess I should be happy she isn’t planning to give up the law and start shelling out little Dee-dees and Hilaries. I don’t feel happy.”
    “Maybe that’s the point. She’s just trying to make you madder than you were already. She didn’t look any too pleased with her future intended when I saw her last night.”
    “I’m paying you to see Bairn.”
    “If they weren’t sometimes a package deal, you wouldn’t be paying me at all. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet. Bairn’s got problems. If they’re as bad as they’re starting to look, we might get him at your price.”
    A rattling breath drew on his end. “You could be right, it could be a balk. A bluff. I can’t risk it. If they make it legal, that trust fund’s as good as in his pocket. I didn’t work my way out of the minors and get arterioscopic surgery twice to see her piss it all away on a foul ball like him.”
    “There’s also your daughter’s happiness.”
    “According to her mother, I bobbled that one a long time back. But I never heard Dee-dee complain until this morning. She asked me what right I had to give her advice on her life when I wasn’t around for most of it.”
    “Those away games are hell on family.”
    “Just between you and me and whoever’s eavesdropping on the line, it wasn’t just the away games. There’s a lot of temptation hangs around the locker room after a win. You got to have iron to resist. I used up all mine in the infield.”
    “Tell her that?”
    “I figured she had it from her mother. You going to brace Bairn?”
    “I won’t stop for coffee. With two months to payoff, he’s taking risks he might not if he knows he can seal the deal with your daughter this week. If she’s bluffing, or if he hasn’t heard from her since before you two blew up, I might get him to take less than what you’re willing to put on the table. Otherwise—”
    “You don’t need to waste time spelling it out. Get going and steal second.” The connection broke.
    I called Bairn’s line at the courier service in Mt. Clemens. It was a half hour until quitting, and if he hadn’t heard from Deirdre, I needed to get him away before he did.
    The office voice mail kicked in after four rings. I went to the switchboard, got patched through to someone in his department, and found out he’d left early. That was a bad sign. He might be having an early dinner with his fiancée.
    He didn’t answer his cell either. I clicked off at the beginning of a generic outgoing announcement and tried him at home. Someone picked up.
    “Hello?”
    I hadn’t heard him speak all the time I’d been following him. It was a tired sort of voice, not at