Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 16 - Poison Blonde Read Free

and followed. I wanted a look at what was in the envelope.
    Muñoz’s megastar employer was staying at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, for the very good reason that after three decades of recovery from the riots, Detroit had yet to harbor a hotel where the silverfish didn’t have a key to the executive floor. When the Toyota turned west on Fort, I thought that was where she was headed. When she swung north on Grand and made a left on the Dix Highway I was sure of it. Then she made another left onto Vernor and we entered a foreign country.
    DelRay—the old Hungarian section southwest of downtown—had been going steadily Mexican since the 1990s. Carnicerías and Mexican restaurants had opened in former pastry shops and Gypsy storefronts, and on Cinco de Mayo the streets teemed with pretty señorítas , well-kept children in native dress, and mariachis. It was February, and only the Spanish signs and one old woman in a head scarf carrying home a sackful of freshslaughtered pollo identified the area apart from the many other neighborhoods trying to make the long slow climb from hookshops and crack houses toward lower-middle-class respectability. The current mayor’s face smiled out from a ragged poster carrying the legend Vota ¡Si! por Detroit.
    The Toyota turned down a side street and parked in a lot next to a building with a sign on it warning drivers in Spanish and English that it was for residents only. It was the sort of building that had been new when sharing the same roof with a few dozen other families was considered novel and suspiciously European; its sandstone corners were worn round as loaves of bread and the arched windows near the roof appeared to be holding up their skirts to avoid contact with the three rows of prosaic rectangles beneath their feet. But a decade ago the whole thing had been headed toward demolition, and most of the glass panes had only recently taken the place of weathered plywood.
    I drove past, turned around in the driveway of a Queen Anne house with a scaffold in front, and parked across the street from the apartment building. The Toyota was still there. Its driver was not.
    It was a clear winter night, no snow, but the moon was as bright as halogen. My breath smoked in the splintery air. On my way to the front door I made a detour and peered through the rental car’s windows front and back. There was no sign of the manila envelope on any of the seats.
    A Mexican in his forties, built close to the floor but powerfully, opened the gridded-glass door when I thumbed the buzzer marked SUPERINTENDENTE. He had on a navy sweat suit and black work shoes, but his face belonged between a sombrero and crossed bandoliers. It was broad and brown and wore two heavy black bars, one above the eyes, the other under the nose. He combed his thick black hair straight back without a part.
    “ ¿Habla inglés? ” I asked. I hoped the answer was sı . I’d exhausted my high school Spanish.
    “A little.” It came out flat even with the accent.
    I gave him a glimpse of the sheriff’s star the county wasn’t using anymore. “Caterina Munoz.”
    “You don’t look like a Caterina Munoz.”
    “I’m laughing inside. Sixty, five-two, a hundred and sixty, red hair. She came in a minute ago. Which apartment?”
    “You ain’t no deputy.”
    “Neither was Alexander Hamilton.” I stretched a bill between my hands.
    He looked at it, then at me. “Fourteen C. By the elevator.”
    I gave him the ten-spot. He folded it into quarters, spat on it, and flicked it at my chest. It bounced off and landed at my feet. “There ain’t no fourteen C. There ain’t no elevator either.”
    I stepped back in time to avoid picking glass out of my face.
    I stood there sucking a cheek, then picked up the folded bill, wiped it off against the doorframe, and went back to the car. The wave of honesty that had begun to wash over the working class threatened to put me out of business.
    Ten minutes later I was still sitting behind