Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 18 - Nicotine Kiss Read Free Page B

and a plain gold wedding band on the usual fingers. “I’m a splicing technician. I’m supposed to be on the job now.”
    “What’s a splicing technician?” I sat down behind the desk.
    “A guy that climbs poles in a blizzard so’s you can make pop-corn in the microwave.”
    “A lineman.”
    He swiveled his eyes. “Sure, if you’re Glen Campbell.”
    That explained his coloring. The sun bounces hard off the snow when you’re thirty feet up.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Canon-with-two-n’s?”
    “You can pay your phone bill for starters. I tried to call twice, in case I dialed wrong first time. You’re disconnected. That’s why I had to take off work and come downtown.”
    I lifted the handset. I got a dial tone and hung up. “What number did you call?”
    He unbuttoned the flap over a breast pocket, drew out a narrow pasteboard slip, and handed it across to me between two fingers. The business card was soiled and fuzzy around the edges and thecorners were dogeared. I read A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS , the office number and building address, and the telephone number.
    “I haven’t had this number in two years,” I said. “It was one digit off from the Venus Escort Service. I had to keep turning away calls from the mayor.” I held out the card.
    He didn’t take it. “It was all I had. My wife’s brother sent it to her in a Christmas card. It came the day after Christmas. He never has been on time for anything except his damn drop-offs.”
    “Who’s your brother-in-law?”
    “Jeff Starzek. I figure you must know him or he wouldn’t have sent the card.”
    I fingered the worn edges. Jeff must have been carrying it around in his wallet for years. I didn’t remember giving it to him. “He say why he sent it?”
    “I don’t even know for sure it was him sent it, except Rose recognized the writing. There wasn’t a return address and the postmark just said ‘U.S. Postal Service.’ He didn’t even sign the Christmas card. All he wrote’s there on the back.”
    I turned over the business card. I’d never seen a sample of Starzek’s handwriting, but the pencil script looked like him, no frills and impossible to misunderstand:
    Rose—if you don’t hear from me by the first of the year, hire this man.

THREE
    M y leg twinged. I let it. The Vicodin had blunted the sharp point. I made a meaningless little cricket noise on the desktop with the edge of the card. Oral Canon watched me. If he’d blinked since he came in I’d missed it.
    “When was the last time you heard from him before he sent the card?” I asked.
    “First week of November. Rose invited him for Thanksgiving and he called to say he was making a run up north and probably wouldn’t be back in time. You know he’s a smuggler.”
    I nodded. “I ran into him in Grayling on the fifteenth. He said he had a load of Marlboros and another delivery to make down the Huron shoreline afterwards.”
    “Well, that’s more than he told his sister. I guess you’re an accomplice.” He got everything you can out of the word, and there’s plenty to get.
    “I just smoke ‘em. Did you file a missing-persons?”
    “I wanted to, but Rose said no. She don’t want to have to go down to Milan once a month just to see him. It didn’t do any good to tell her she’d be seeing him more often than she does now. It sure wouldn’t make her any more miserable. She’s soft on him, alwayshas been. That’s why he went bad. She as good as raised him after their mother walked out. The old man was a drunk.”
    “She didn’t do as bad a job as you think. That day in Grayling he saved my life.”
    “That how you got crippled?”
    I gave that one a pass. I’d been tested enough for one season. “I can find him, if he wants to be found. It won’t be easy. He doesn’t file flight plans.”
    He unbuttoned the other flap and smacked a roll down on the desk. Ben Franklin’s face looks swollen on the new currency.
    “I’m not angling for cash,” I said.