Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 17 - Retro by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page B

on my hands I untangle another ten or twenty feet. Do you do divorce work?”
    “Every time I get the urge I slam a car door on my hand and it goes away. My tag’s missing persons. Like Delwayne Garnet?”
    He accepted the prod with a forgiving smile. “Mr. Garnet is no longer missing. He never was, actually. He’s been observing the statutes and paying the taxes of Canada right here in town for more than thirty years. That’s how we found him, by accessing the tax rolls in Ottawa.” He twitched an elbow toward a computer console on a stand. “He uses the name Lance West, as you suggested.”
    “Where’s he using it?”
    He slid open the deep drawer of the desk with a toe, dumped the ball of wire inside, and kicked the drawer shut. Then he spun his chair and lifted a marbled gray cardboard folder off a neat stack on a credenza under the window. “His address is on the first page,” he said, turning back and holding it out. “He works at home.”
    It was printed in boldface. “Where’s Yonge Street?”
    “Just round the corner. I wouldn’t be surprised if I passed Mr. West every day on the street. Shall we bill you, or would you rather leave a check with the receptionist?”
    I read the report in my car. Lance West, 52, was employed by Lost Galleon Entertainment, publisher and distributor of a line of graphic novels, which Llewellyn Hale had described as “Comic books with a glandular condition”; complex stories of conflicted superheroes, disgraced police officers, and other societal misfits pitted against even worse antagonists in stories told through panels, speech balloons, and spelled-out soundeffects. Personal details were sketchy. There was no mention of marriages, children, or club memberships. But then all I’d authorized Loyal Dominion to do was find Garnet/West. A run through court records hadn’t turned up so much as a ticket for jaywalking, much less making or detonating bombs. International flight to avoid prosecution seemed to be the universal cure for political principles.
    The Yonge Street address belonged to the second story of a building containing a seafood-and-pasta restaurant. I found a spot across the street and got out with the urn under my arm to read the menu posted in the window. It was placed conveniently next to a door with a gridded glass, behind which a flight of narrow steps led to the next level. The specialty of the house was ravioli cooked in squid ink. I should have packed a lunch.
    A narrow alley separated the building from a stationery shop next door. I took it around to the back, where three cars shared a hundred square feet of brick paving with a pair of locked Dumpsters, and looked up at the second-floor windows. There were four, including two half-size crankouts that would probably belong to bathrooms. The square butts of air conditioners stuck out of the others. No easy exits there. An accommodating town, Toronto. I liked it more the longer I stayed.
    The door to the front stairs was unlocked. The well had been painted recently, a pleasing shade of teal, and I breathed through my mouth to avoid taking in fumes. The steps creaked. There was nothing I could do about that. I missed my .38. Most serious injuries take place on staircases, particularly when there are felons at the top.
    I made it to the landing without taking on any fresh holes. The place appeared to be in the middle of a spruce-up; a wainscoted hallway stretching to my right glistened with fresh varnish, but the floral runner looked as if it had been pressed between the pages of a book for sixty years. The jury was still out on the vintage bowl fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Theywere either part of the retro remodeling craze or left over from when they were new.
    There were two doors, paneled and painted, with numbers in scrolled brass fixed with brads to the center. The number on the second door was the one I was interested in. I used the section of wall between for a shield and knocked.
    “Who is