American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel by Loren D. Estleman Page B

lap. He was luckyI only hit him with it once. Lots of folks died of dumb that week.”
    “It was going around,” Elron said.
    “Shut the fuck up. You wasn’t even a stain on your daddy’s underpants when all that came down.”
    “The owner was black,” I said. “But I guess some people’s rights aren’t as civil as others’.”
    Watson uncurled a hand from his mug to make an expansive gesture. He had a mermaid tattooed on the heel of his palm. “Over and done and dead. I let go of my anger when my parole came through. They had a honey of a shrink at Jackson. He put me in touch with my emotions. They flew right out between the bars. You read Jung?”
    “Young who?”
    “Carl Jung, you ignorant son of a bitch. Freud was a dirty old Kraut. When he was running around telling everybody they was motherfuckers, Jung was busy discovering the collective unconscious. We all part of the whole, starting with the monkeys.”
    “I thought that was Darwin.”
    “He was an anthropologist. I read everything Jung wrote I could get through the prison library system. I started my own outside. You want to guess how many books been written just about him?”
    “Don’t,” Elron said. “Wilson’s got a warehouse full in Sterling Heights. Costs him fifteen hundred a month just for storage.”
    I said, “You should hang out a shingle. Most cons who read inside come out lawyers. A jailhouse psychiatrist could write his own ticket in this town.”
    “Deirdre Fuller,” Watson said. “Think I had anything to do with that deal?”
    “Which deal, the killing deal or the deal you had with Hilary Bairn?”
    “He tell you about that?”
    I took another pull from my mug. I felt my nerves tamping down. “I know he stumbled into your ATM trap. You sent your boy Esmerelda to talk to him, probably with his famous black toolbox for a visual aid, and Bairn told him about his relationship with Deirdre and the trust fund she had coming. You didn’t believe him, or thought two months was too long, long enough anyway for Bairn to figure a way to cheat you out of whatever cut he offered you. Maybe Esmerelda opened his box, maybe he didn’t, but whatever he did spooked Bairn into trying to raise cash in a hurry to keep him from driving a nail through his hand.
    “Our incarceration system failed you,” I went on. “Another year or so of therapy and you might’ve developed patience. All you did was blow both your chances at a piece of a couple of million. When Deirdre found out he was using her as a fence, she broke off the engagement. They fought, she’s dead, and Bairn’s got worse problems with the law than he had with you.”
    “Bairn tell you I turned him down?”
    “I never got close enough to ask. He was the job, not the client.”
    “Know where he is?”
    I shook my head. “Neither do the cops. That’s what makes him their star.”
    Watson took his first drink. He blinked both eyes and pushed the mug away. “Strong shit. No wonder you dream funny. Okay.”
    “Okay what?”
    “Okay, I found out what I came here to find out. I got newbusiness with Bairn now his meal ticket’s getting sliced up downtown. He offered me ten percent of the two million when it came through. He started out lower, but I had Ernesto negotiate and we reached what they call accord. You’re still working if you want to know who’s still squeezing him. It ain’t me.”
    “You wouldn’t lie.”
    “What’s the point of bluffing when I got Elron in my hand?”
    The big man emptied his mug in a jerk and plocked it down on the table. It looked like a demitasse in his paw. “Jesus. Why’n’t you just chew the grounds?”
    “We got a rally to attend.” Watson slid to the end of his bench, spread his feet, and pushed himself upright. “You should consider joining the rank and file. No one should live like this.” He swiveled his yellow eyes toward Elron.
    The big man curled four fingers around the back edge of the refrigerator, took in a deep