Free Angel Eyes by Loren D. Estleman

around their holes. Farmers would be corraling the livestock. Their wives would be hurrying to get the wash off the line, if any were left who didn’t own electric dryers. In the city we sit still and let the people who get paid for it do what has to be done. Like me. I climbed into my car and swung my nose west. There was no sign of my shadow, which meant exactly nothing.
    The downtown branch of the Detroit Public Library in Centre Park occupies the site of the only execution under American Law to take place in Michigan. The spectacle of wife-murderer Stephen G. Simmons swinging from the end of a rope in the presence of a festive crowd and a lively band on September 24, 1830, led to the abolition of capital punishment sixteen years later. For some reason the executed party was on my mind as I entered the stone building and crossed from old habit to the microfilm room, where they keep the photographed copies of the News and Free Press going back to their founding.
    The News carried an impressive spread on Judge Arthur DeLancey the day he was given up for dead. The front page featured pictures of the wreckage of his airplane and of the Judge himself in happier days, looking dignified and concerned in crisp white hair and handsomely creased face inclining to the oriental and a three-piece suit, no carnation. The names of the pilot and aide who were lost with him were mentioned. I didn’t recognize them. Inside, two pages were devoted to his controversial career. A photograph showed him whispering into Phil Montana’s ear during the Grand Jury investigation. The labor leader had dark hair back then, but DeLancey’s was already white. It happens earlier to some of us, as I well knew. Another caught him at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, his coat over one arm and his wife Leola on the other. He looked weary. She, taller and thin as befitted a former fashion model, with graying hair skinned back and clasped behind her neck, was facing the camera with a tight-lipped smile, as warm as a mortician’s handshake. The caption said that they had just arrived from a trip out West, where he had spent much of his time fishing and exploring. His reputation as an outdoorsman had been part of his legend.
    In a third picture, he was sitting in a restaurant booth with Janet Whiting, the woman responsible for much of the controversy that had surrounded him. I recognized the three-quarter view of the woman I knew as Ann Maringer, looking elegant in a fur stole thrown back on her bare shoulders and a shift that looked as if it had been pieced together from two sheets of muslin and probably ran into three figures. In black and white her eyes lost some of their innocence, but she still resembled a Barbie doll. They were holding hands, which may have explained why he appeared uncomfortable. The picture would have been taken after their affair became common knowledge.
    The text dwelt on his rise from part-time truck driver and charter member of United Steelhaulers while attending law school to his appointment to the federal bench, glossing over his brief and rather tepid career as a union mouthpiece. I grew bored with it quickly and switched to the microfilmed Free Press account.
    This time there was no feature stuff. An exclusive photo taken the day of the ill-fated flight posed DeLancey, in old clothes, Windbreaker, and peaked cap, in front of the twin-engine Cessna with his aide and the pilot. The former, a pudgy, balding youth named Pelke, appeared to have reached an uneasy truce with his outdoorsman’s outfit. The pilot was wiry and capable-looking in a quilted jacket and canvas trousers and appeared familiar. I squinted at his narrow, dark face, at his hooked nose and large black eyes and glossy black hair, read his name, Lee Collins, squinted at his face again, and sat back and wished for a smoke.
    If Lee Collins and Krim, the Arab who ran The Crescent, weren’t the same man, they were brothers. Either way it was worth looking into.

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