Free Jitterbug by Loren D. Estleman Page A

ink stains on her hands were any indication. No pen had been found containing ink to match, and no recent documents on which she had written her address. He couldn’t help thinking that the reason she had been writing, and the fact that the killer appeared to have taken the pen and document with him when he left, were central to the solution. He wondered if she was ordering something. Posing as a salesman was one way to get inside a strange door.
    OST
    He said it aloud: “Oh ess tee .”
    The photographer had been unable to coax any more letters out of the other part of what she had written; the pictures had nothing to add to that part of the paper in Zagreb’s hand. He produced another fold of newsprint from his inside breast pocket, his makeshift notebook, spread it out on the corner of the desk, and made a list:
    MOST
    HOST
    GHOST
    POST
    POSTER
    ROSTER
    NOSTRIL
    After that he went blank. None of the words helped. He refolded the sheet and returned it to his pocket. Maybe something better would occur to him when his brain was fresh. He wondered if Walters, the Hamtramck detective who had presided over the initial investigation, had had any luck canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses. He called the Hamtramck PD, but got only a desk sergeant who told him Walters wouldn’t be in until 8:00 A.M. tomorrow. Zagreb’s Wittnauer said it was ten past one. He rang off without saying good-bye.
    He walked back to his apartment. He’d let the others have the car and his own vehicle, a 1939 Plymouth coupe, was in storage. The garage fees were less than he would have spent on gasoline and oil and tires even if he had the ration tickets, and between his rent and the mortgage payments on a house he was no longer living in he had barely enough left to buy cigarettes and groceries. Anyway, he did some of his best thinking when he was walking. Just now he was thinking that for all the good his thinking was doing the City of Detroit he might as well enlist in the navy. No one expected you to use your brain when you were swabbing a deck.
    At Fort he stopped and waited for the light to change, he didn’t know why. There were no cars in sight, not another person on the street. If it weren’t for the lights he saw in several of the buildings, he might have thought a blackout was in effect. He wondered if the end of the war, if it ever ended, would bring back the city’s nightlife, or if people would grow accustomed to early evenings, cheap novels printed on coarse paper, and necessities doled out by a stern bureaucracy. Already the days of neon lights in Cadillac Square and weekend jaunts to Windsor seemed part of a past so remote it might have been something described to him by his grandfather.
    While he was waiting he shook a Chesterfield out of the pack and rattled the remaining contents. Only two more. He couldn’t remember if there had been another unopened pack in the carton that morning or if this were the last. He glanced at the Cunningham’s on the opposite corner, willing it to be open. The CLOSED sign was in the door. There was a light in the display window to discourage burglars, beyond which he could see part of the magazine rack and, tantalizingly, rows of crisp cigarette cartons in front of the pharmacy counter. He sighed and returned the unlit cigarette to the pack. He needed one to put himself to bed, another to wake himself up in the morning, and a third with his coffee.
    He looked again at the drugstore window. The light had changed, but he’d lost interest in it. One of the glossy magazine covers in the rack was partially obscured behind a Revlon lipstick display on an easel in the window. All he could read were the last three letters of the magazine’s name: OST.
    He recognized the typeface and the distinctive style of the cover illustration. There was no need for a closer look, but he crossed the street and stood in front of the window, leaning close and cupping his hands around his eyes to block the glare from