Sinister Heights by Loren D. Estleman
Amos Walker is the lead character in numerous books written by Loren D. Estleman. Walker is a Vietnam veteran who was bounced from the police academy for fighting. He is a no-nonsense private detective who wades through Detroit’s lower and upper classes to find missing people, solve mysteries, and right wrongs.
As the tale begins, Amos is driving a 10-cylinder Dodge Viper that can go from 0 to 60 MPH in under 4 seconds. That is wicked fast for a non-electric car. He meets with Connor Thorpe, the head of security of the recently deceased Leland Stutch’s businesses worldwide. Connor hired Walker to track down Jerry Tindle, an accountant who stole millions of dollars from the company. Amos gives a report on his progress, after which Connor asks him to meet with Leland's widow. Amos agrees. Connor asks Amos how he could afford a Viper at which point Walker tosses the keys to Connor and tells him that the car belongs to the wayward accountant Tindle. Amos stole it out of a long-term garage where it was stored.
Although the book is set in the late 1990s, Amos refuses to use any technology beyond the telephone. He is a classic gumshoe who disdains the new stuff. As Walker eloquently opines:
“The modem hasn’t been designed yet that can slip a latch, boost a hard file, intimidate a suspect, or contuse and lacerate an uncooperative witness into changing his mind. It can’t seduce a receptionist or blackmail an accomplice, and it lacks the character needed to process a quart of gin and keep the circuits intact while the other fellow is overloading his.”
The book’s title, Sinister Heights, is a wordplay on the name of the posh neighborhood of Iroquois Heights, where Leland's widow, Rayellen, lives. Amos goes to the house and is greeted by Mrs. Myra Campbell, the middlr-aged housekeeper. Amos is brought to the gym where two young women are boxing. He’s trying to figure out where the widow is. Leland was over one hundred years old when he died, so his wife, even a second one, must be up there in age. She’s not. Rayellen isn’t yet forty-years-old.
She wants Amos to track down a possible heir to her late husband’s estate. Rayellen intends to give part of her inheritance to the offspring of her dead husband who paid child support for eighteen years but ignored the child. Rayellen believes she needs to do more.
Amos learns that fifty years ago Leland had a fling with Cecilia Willard, a receptionist at his company, that produced a daughter. Leland was married so he contested the paternity suit. He won but voluntarily paid Cecilia child support for 18 years.
Cecilia is deceased but Rayellen wants Amos to track down possible descendants so that they can get some of the huge estate. If the known heirs successfully contest the right of the new heirs from Leland’s fling, Rayellen will give them a good chunk of her inheritance of $13 million a year.
Amos gets a retainer check and heads off in his car. He is promptly pulled over by two cops, one Black, one white, who rough Amos up as they interrogate him. He was probably stopped for driving an old, beat-up Olds Cutlass in a chi-chi neighborhood. He explains that he was meeting with Rayellen Stutch which changes the Black cop’s attitude. He tells his partner to back off and let Amos go. After some macho haggling, they do.
Amos talks to Connor Thorpe and asks him for an official letter validating Walker’s work for Mrs. Stutch. Connor will get it.
Some basic digging provides Amos with valuable information. He learns that Cecilia’s daughter, Carla, married Fred Witowski. He tracks down Carla, who still lives in Detroit. She’s a retired teacher - early retirement because teaching kids with lots of needs was so stressful. She and Amos chat. Carla has a daughter, Constance, who married David Glendowning. They have a son, Matthew, who is three. David is an abuser who quickly isolated Constance from her mother.
Amos heads to Toledo where Constance lives. She’s out but David is home and not happy that someone wants to talk to his wife, even about an inheritance. David takes a few swings at Amos who knocks him out with one punch. Sometimes you just can’t reason with people.
Amos drags David into the house which he searched. It is messy, with unwashed clothes and dishes piling up. Amos figures out that Constance and Matthew left. After waking up, David confirms this and does a lot of macho strutting. He then breaks down and starts to cry. Amos has a beer.
After David finishes crying, he confirms that he has hit his wife. He alternates between saying that she needed some discipline and crying as he says that he’s a very bad person. Amos tells him that the only way he can improve things is to stop drinking - David drinks a lot - and get some help, as in counseling. David says that he can’t afford it, but Amos tells him that there are ways to fix that. Amos leaves, convinced that the wife beater probably won’t get any help but there may be a chance that he will seek counseling.
Amos figures that Constance and Matthew went to a domestic violence shelter. He checks in with one of his colleagues who tells Amos where the mother and son went. It turns out that Amos knows the head of the shelter, Iris Chapin, a woman he helped get off drugs and the street years before. He has dinner with her and is impressed with how well she has recovered from addiction. She looks like “Cleopatra after a makeover.”
Running a shelter for battered women is dangerous. Angry boyfriends and husbands routinely threaten and harass Iris. She also spends a lot of time in court as abusers try to use the legal system to get their victims back under their control. Iris was abused by her husband so she understands what her clients are going through.
Amos wants to talk to Constance about the inheritance but Iris thinks she’s too fragile now. Iris will work on it. After dinner, Amos goes home with Iris and you-know-what ensues.
The next morning, Constance agrees to meet with Amos. Iris isn’t sure that her client wants to get involved in the inheritance process - she is traumatized - but she will meet. Amos calls Carla, Constance’s mother, and tells her that her daughter is safe.
Amos drove to a shelter in southern Michigan where Iris sent Constance and her son. He meets them and explains the inheritance. Constance is not sure that she wants to go public in a court fight for the money, so Amos reminds her that Rayellen will share her inheritance with Constance without having to go to court.
Amos and Iris were driving Constance and Matthew back to her mother’s house in Detroit where they will stay until things are sorted out. Amos notices that a big truck is following them very closely. The truck hits Amos’s Olds and knocks it off the road. Iris dies in the accident and Matthew goes missing. Constance and Amos are shaken up.
Amos is released from the hospital and calls up Connor Thorpe to get a car. There are no cars available but Connor gets Amos a hot motorcycle to ride. Amos wants to figure out who drove him off the road so he goes to see David Glendowning, Constance’s abusive husband, who is certainly a suspect. A quick search of the premises finds David’s body, very dead, with a bullet in his head.
While Amos is analyzing the scene, a man with a pistol confronts our hero. He is a former dirty cop, Mark Proust.
The plot thickens.
Proust killed Glendowning and is about to kill Amos who happens to have grabbed the keys to Proust’s Dodge Ram truck. Amos hits the panic button on the key and the truck goes nuts with the siren blaring. Proust panics and Amos pounces. They exchange gunfire. Walker, who managed to keep his pistol, shoots Proust in the knee. Proust is whining but Amos is focused.
Walker was supposed to think that Glendowning, Constance’s abusive husband, drove the truck that knocked Amos off the road and killed Iris. The only problem is that Glendowning was dead when Amos was whacked by the Dodge Ram truck. Proust, when faced with the prospect of having Amos shoot his other knee, says that Connor Thorpe, head of security for Leland Stutch’s industries, was behind the attack. Thorpe and Walker have a long-term relationship, but Connor decided to whack his buddy, Amos, for whatever reason. Proust admits that he took Matthew, Constance’s son, away from the accident and gave him to Thorpe, again for whatever reason. Amos calls 911 to report that Proust has been shot and moves on.
Walker meets with an old friend, Ray Montana, the head of the steel haulers union, to ask for help. Montana liked the deceased David Glendowning, who was a good union organizer. Ray will see what he can do.
The Detroit mayor, Arbor Muriel, calls Amos in for a chat and reminds him that Stutch Industries and Connor Thorpe have been very generous in contributing to various Detroit projects. Amos is being warned off.
Amos figures that Connor Thorpe has hidden the kidnapped Matthew in the administration building of Stutch Industries. Amos gets a blueprint of that structure from the Detroit Building Department so he can plan his break-in to try to find Matthew.
Amos leaves the building to get some rest but he never makes it home. A Detroit police detective named Vivaldi (no relation to the composer, he says) brings Walker to the office of Mayor. The mayor is wondering why Amos was looking at the Stutch Industry blueprints. Amos doesn’t answer the questions directly.
Cecil Fish, a local lawyer who knows everyone, walks in and reminds the mayor that he has an appointment. Fish and Walker have a history of not getting along but Amos answers Fish’s questions and tells the lawyer that he’s looking for a kidnapped child. Fish finally figures out that although Connor is somewhat involved in what Amos is doing, the private investigator is not working for Thorpe now. Vivaldi escorts Walker out. They get in the elevator and the officer punches our hero in the stomach. Amos punches back, gets out of the elevator, and goes to his car which has a parking ticket on it.
Amos visits Rayellen and gives her an update, including his belief that Connor Thorpe is behind a lot of the bad things that have happened lately. Rayellen doesn’t believe that Thorpe would do such things. He’s worked for the company for decades.
Rayellen wants Walker to let the police search for Matthew in the building, but Amos knows that the police are compromised. Thorpe and his cronies run the city.
Amos wants Rayellen to fire him so that she can keep her distance for what he’s about to do to get Matthew. She does. Amos goes to a guest bedroom to catch some sleep.
After four hours of sleep, Amos is ready to take on the world. He puts his picture on a Stutch company ID he “borrowed” and is ready to go into the building where Thorpe works and where Matthew is being kept. As Amos leaves, Rayellen gives him a real kiss but our boy is too focused on the case to dally.
Since his Olds was trashed in the accident, Amos is driving the late Dave Glendowning’s truck. He meets with Ray Montana, the union organizer who is providing muscle to help Amos get the boy back from Connor. Back in the day, Ray Montana’s father, a union founder, was regularly beaten up by Leland Stutch’s goons so there’s no love lost between Ray and the company.
Walker and Montana wait until dark. With the sun down, Amos heads off to break into the building. His fake ID gets him in but he has to knock out a curious security guard who’s working inside and asking too many questions.
Stutch Industries now makes steel for General Motors and the factory complex is hot and noisy. Amos knocks out another guy and begins searching for Matthew. Looking at the blueprints, Amos learned of a secret room near Thorpe’s office. Matt is there. Amos rescues him. Thorpe shows up with a guard with a shotgun. So much for careful planning.
Thorpe and the guard take Amos and Matt to the security office, which looks like a drab bunkerwith lime-colored walls. Thorpe looks like a broken man. He was behind the accident and the death of David Glendowning. Connor, always loyal to the company, was trying to keep any nuisance heirs away from grabbing part of the estate so that there would be more money for Leland Stutch’s real relatives. After he couldn’t stop Walker from finding the heirs, Thorpe had Matthew kidnapped. He wanted a $10 million ransom. Connor is not a good person.
Amos manages to grab Thorpe who is calling for help. The guard with the shotgun, Andy by name, comes in and fires at Amos, but since it’s a shotgun and he’s far away, our hero is OK. Amos shoots Andy who drops his weapon. Just as things calm down, all hell breaks loose outside of the building. Ray Montana and his muscle men are storming the building with big trucks and loud guns.
Thorpe is in rough shape. He fell and hit his head somewhere along the way. He won’t tell Amos how to get out of the building so Amos figures it out himself and exits the premises. Once he’s outside, he sees a scene from a bad horror movie - big trucks driven by big men knocking things down and terrifying anyone who’s in the area.
The steel-making factory is destroyed. Someone did something to make it catch fire. Ray Montana’s guys are having fun getting back at a company that was very bad to organized labor over the decades.
Amos meets up with Ray and they drink Bushmill’s from the bottle. Ray figures that he’ll have to appear before a congressional committee to explain what happened but he thinks that may be fun.
Amos heads to Rayellen’s house to ditch the stolen truck and report to the Widow Stutch. He has a few pieces of buckshot in him but he’s tough. He also doesn’t think that Connor Thorpe was the one really behind the inheritance scenario.
Amos tells Rayellen that the boy is safe and that Connor and guard Andy are probably dead in the collapsed plant. Amos asks Rayellen some tough questions about where she was at certain times when bad things were happening. He is suspicious of her.
The long-time housekeeper, Maya Campbell, walks in with a gun. As it turns out, she is the illegitimate daughter of Leland Stutch, who had a decades-long affair with Myra’s mother, who was also a housekeeper. Leland was a pig to his mistress and to her daughter. He demeaned them constantly. Now Maya wants to carve out a big piece of the inheritance, the $10 million that Thorpe wanted. It turns out that she and Thorpe had a relationship.
Rayellen distracts Campbell so Amos has a chance to get his pistol. Myra shoots at him and misses. Walker shoots back and doesn't miss.
Walker ends up in the hospital where they pull buckshot out of his back and hip. The press is covering the destruction of the Stutch Industries plant as a labor strife gone bad. Connor Thorpe and guard Andy survived. Myra Campbell’s death is being investigated, but Rayellen has enough clout to convince the cops that Amos’s returning fire was self-defense, which it was.
Lots of police show up to interview Amos in the hospital, including Detective Vivaldi who slugged him earlier. Connor Thorpe is being charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the case of David Glendowning. Walker isn’t worried about all of the police activity. He’s been there before.
Rayellen is vacationing in Florida. She sent Amos a generous check for his services. He puts it in the bank, takes out $100, and goes to the local casino where he wins $1500 at roulette. He writes a check to the Iris Chapin Fund, which was set up to honor Iris who died in the accident. She ran a successful domestic violence shelter and helped many women get out of abusive situations.
On to the next case.
Bob’s Take
Amos Walker is a classic private investigator who has his own code and set of rules. He’s a lot like the Spenser books by Robert B. Parker, although Spenser is more literary and less violent. Spenser has a real girlfriend while Amos seems to avoid any serious relationships.
Like Parker, Loren D. Estleman is a prolific author. The first Amos Walker book came out in 1980. The 29th Walker book was recently published.
Estleman is a very good writer. His prose is succinct and sparse and he has a way of crafting interesting descriptions of all sorts of things. His approach is almost over-the-top, but it works. The books are relatively short, which fits his terse writing style.
The books embrace a classic Motown setting. Walker frequently muses about the trials and travails of Detroit. He references rampant government corruption, crooked developers, and the fading and transformation of a major American city. I lived north of Detroit in the late 1960s and I recognize a lot of the references he makes to things that went on and went wrong in the life of the city.
We named the dog we got in 1992 Amos. He wasn’t a private eye. Here’s our Amos, a patriotic pooch.
