American Detective: An Amos Walker Novel Read Online Free

it. It contained a gold watch with a blue dial and a link band, too heavy for the feminine wrist. She snapped the lid shut without comment and slid it into her purse, woven white leather with a rolled handle. The meal finished in silence. When the check came, he paid for it with a card, got up finally to kiss her, signed the receipt, and wentout past the bar with her on his arm. A light scent of sweet almonds came behind her.
    I paid for the beers and stood outside the entrance from the parking lot tapping a cigarette on the back of the pack as Bairn and Deirdre separated, he to the left, she to the right, toward an emerald Mini Cooper with a white convertible top. I made up my mind to let Bairn go, trotted to my car, and followed the smaller vehicle. That watch had me curious. Several blocks ahead, Bairn’s Aztek turned onto the expressway headed home, but Deirdre continued past and swung south on Beck Road. Her father had said she clerked in a law office in Westland but kept an apartment in Ann Arbor, where she’d entered the law program at the University of Michigan last fall. She took I-94 west in that direction. She exited in Ypsilanti.
    In Depot Town, a Bohemian neighborhood of pubs and curiosity shops that had sprung up around the old train station, we parked on gravel and I watched her trot around the corner of a pawnshop. I had my hand on the door handle to follow her on foot when she turned in at the pawnshop door. I settled back and cracked a window to smoke.
    Just as I poked the stub out through the crack she came back out, cork heels clocking, both hands on the purse held in front of her and a pinched look on her face. She underhanded the purse into the Mini Cooper’s passenger seat, got in, ground the starter, and sprayed gravel backing around and powering out into the street. The driver of a light pickup chirped his brakes to avoid getting clipped and made a mincing little noise with his horn.
    I didn’t follow Deirdre. Instead I got out and went into the pawnshop. A buzzer sounded when I opened the door. There were bars on the windows and the counter had a steel cageon top with a gate that slid to one side to allow the free exchange of goods and currency. You can tell a lot about an enterprise from its fixtures. This one was tricked out like Jackson State Prison.
    The man behind the counter was a young Arab with a blue chin. I didn’t mess around with a story or the honorary sheriff’s badge. Pawnshop clerks have heard them all and seen every star and shield. I poked a twenty-dollar bill through the cage. He didn’t look at it, only at me. His face assumed a patience of biblical proportions.
    “A light-skinned black woman was just in,” I said. “Buy anything from her?”
    “No.” He snatched the bill from between my fingers before I could exert counterpressure. From there on in it was up to my personal charm—and whatever else I had in my wallet.
    “Why not?”
    He said nothing.
    I blew out air. “You guys. Why do you have to make it a chore? A couple of bars doesn’t make you a hard guy. A monkey’s got those.”
    He reached under the counter and clonked a Glock on top. It had a brushed-metal finish and black composition grips.
    I showed him my ID. “I’m working for her father. Darius Fuller, maybe you know the name. Follow sports?”
    His face changed then. You could have knocked me over with a mortar. It was like watching the toughest head on Rushmore crack a grin.
    “I was in the bleachers when he threw the no-hitter,” he said. “No joke, that was the Fuller Brush Man’s little girl?”
    “If you’d bought the watch you’d have a souvenir.”
    The face shut back down. “The price tag was still in the box. Whoever lifted it was too dumb to tear it in half.”
    I put away the ID folder. “Thanks, brother.”
    “Famous men’s kids. You know?”
    “She wasn’t the one who lifted it. If it makes any difference.”
    He thought about that. “It checks. She seemed madder about it