Little Black Dress (Peter Macklin Novels)

by Loren D. Estleman

“I’m not invisible. If he wanted to take me out, he could do it anytime, anonymously, from ambush. He doesn’t know who I might tell about meeting him at the Alehouse. He’d be making himself a suspect.”

  She tried to read his expression in the light mounted outside her mother’s front door. It was hard enough to read in broad daylight, and fifty more years of marriage wouldn’t improve that. It was the first opportunity she’d had to talk to him about the meeting he’d agreed to with Benjamin Grinnell; her mother had ridden in the backseat during the drive back to her house from the Bread Basket.

  “He knows for sure I know,” she said. “Mother, too.”

  “There were parking attendants and customers who could have overheard. He wasn’t whispering. You’re not in danger.”

  “Because we’re women?”

  “Women haven’t been off-limits for years. Maybe never. He needs Pamela; she makes him look legitimate. You’re her daughter, so he can’t afford to have anything happen to you.”

  “You’re her son-in-law. Does that count?”

  “Up to a point. Right now I think he wants to know how much I know about him and what he’s up to. That’s why I brought up Canada and his real name. I’m pretty sure he won’t try anything until he finds out how much I know.”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “I don’t have a crystal ball.”

  “You told him almost everything you know with those two questions.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  “Maybe Mother put him up to it. She doesn’t trust you.”

  “Maybe, but he didn’t suggest a meeting until after I broke the ice.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “As little as possible, until I find out what he’s up to.”

  “It sounds like two alley cats circling each other in the dark. Then they fight to the death.”

  “Rarely. Usually one of them has enough and runs away.”

  “I didn’t see anything about him running away in that stuff Loyal Dorfman dug up.”

  “There weren’t any murders, either. Whatever he is, he’s not a killer.”

  “Would you say I’m a killer?”

  “You absolutely are not.”

  “I killed a man.” She whispered it.

  “He was going to kill you.”

  “Grinnell probably thinks you’re going to kill him. He must, if he knows anything about you at all.”

  “I don’t know what he knows. He and I are in the same boat when it comes to that.”

  “Don’t go,” she said. “I don’t care what he’s up to. If I knew it was going to come to this I never would’ve asked you to find out.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  She hesitated for the first time in the conversation. “Do you have a gun?” She mouthed the question, not making a sound.

  He nodded; or she thought he did. It was hard to tell in the dim light with moth shadows fluttering across his face. In any case she knew the answer.

  “Bowling Green,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “All I wanted was to buy my grandfather’s farm. I was safe there.”

  “You’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She shook her head. “Nobody’s safe.”

  They were in each other’s arms briefly. Their kiss was hard and short. Then he stepped off the porch and got into the car.

  “I bought that black dress for a party,” she said.

  She couldn’t tell if he’d heard. He started the motor and backed out into the street.

  The Alehouse occupied one of several plants that had discharged sludge into the Maumee River for fifty years, stood empty for twenty-five, and then been gentrified into lofts and restaurants and community playhouses. In the Popsicle light of a neon sign shaped like a tilted mug spilling foam, BUCKEYE GLASS co. could still be read in faded letters on a concrete soffit below the flat roof. The river, abused and reclaimed by turns, soughed along behind the building, shucking reflected light like scales.

  Macklin parked in an unlighted corner of the lot with the car pointed toward the street, opened the trunk, lifted the hatch that covered the spare tire in its well, and scooped the Dan Wesson .38 from its hiding place inside the rim. The optional four- and six-inch barrels were there as well, in their Ziploc bag. He left them there, stuck the revolver under his belt in the small of his back, felt to make sure his sport coat hung over it without snagging, and went inside. He was fifteen minutes early, and a little surprised not to find Grinnell waiting for him. It put him more on edge, rather than less. In the business they shared, eleven o’clock always meant 10:45 at the latest.

  At that hour on a Saturday night the bar was packed and noisy. He asked his harried young host for a table for two in the dining room. The young man led him to one near the windows looking out on the river, but Macklin pointed to one in a corner.

  “Most people prefer the view.”

  Macklin looked at him. The young man shrugged and carried the menus to the corner table.

  The Alehouse was a brewpub. From his seat, Macklin could see the beer-making operation through a glass wall, the gleaming copper-plated cooker and the elaborate pipework and the metal ladders the modern-day brewmeisters climbed carrying their sacks of barley and hops. The history printed on the back of his menu told him the place had brewed beer all through Prohibition for the Detroit Purple Gang, and that the equipment was a faithful, if scaled-down, reproduction of the original. A pen-and-ink drawing of a machine gun-toting character in a fedora with one foot propped on the running board of a bug-eyed sedan decorated the front of the menu. Macklin wondered what the half-life was of a criminal stigma before it became a selling point.

  “Am I late? I was under the impression I was a bit early.”

  Macklin had seen Grinnell coming from across the room, a trim man fighting middle age with a crisp walk, wearing the hand-crocheted open-weave sweater he’d had on earlier, over a button-down white Oxford shirt and pleated slacks. He looked like an instructor at a state university hoping to look like a Harvard professor. It was a neat bit of double subterfuge, fully appreciated only by another who’d lived life in imitation of something else. He rose and shook Grinnell’s hand. If the man was armed, he’d put it in the same place Macklin had, behind his back and out of sight.

  “We’re both early,” Macklin said. “The traffic wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

  “Remind yourself of that in an hour, when you’re stuck in a jam heading out of town. Are you eating?”

  “No, but go ahead and order. All you had was half a carrot cake.”

  “I ate at home earlier. What will you drink?”

  “Gin highball.” He hated gin. He could nurse it for an hour.

  When a waitress appeared, wearing an old-fashioned bartender’s striped shirt with sleeve garters, Grinnell gave her the menus and ordered the gin highball and a Scotch and soda for himself.

  “Belated congratulations on your marriage,” he said when she left. “You have a beautiful and intelligent wife.”

  “She takes after her mother.”

  Grinnell accepted that as a compliment to himself. “Pamela’s been good for me. I led a rootless life before her. But I suppose you know that.”

  Their drinks came. When they were alone again, Grinnell lifted his. “To the ladies.”

  Macklin sipped his gin. The bartender had mixed it with Canada Dry. He was used to Vernor’s, but he welcomed the flatter agent. It would slow his consumption that much more.

  “I won’t ask your methods,” Grinnell said. “My naturalization is a matter of public record. Anyone can find out my birth name. The question is why.”

  “You overplayed your hand. You were so dull you made yourself interesting.”

  “Laurie put you up to it, I suppose. The cub protects the sow.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Would you be insulted if I said I didn’t believe you?”

 
; “You overplayed it again. If I would be, you couldn’t ask that question without insulting me.”

  “Suppose I didn’t care.”

  “Everything all right with your drinks?”

  Neither of them looked at the waitress. Grinnell said, “Fine, fine,” and she coasted over to the next inhabited table.

  “Macklin isn’t an uncommon name,” Grinnell said then. “I didn’t make any connections at first. A man I used to work for had an associate in Detroit. This fellow employed a man to clean up messes. That man’s name was Macklin. I never heard his Christian name. Men in that line of work usually pick up a colorful moniker, Icepick Pete or Mack the Smack, but I never heard that either.”

  “Those nicknames are usually invented by newspaper reporters. If he was any good, he never made the papers.”

  “I assume he was good. Otherwise, he’d be dead or in prison by now.”

  “You don’t know he isn’t.”

  Grinnell drank. “Suppose we turn over a card.”

  “I used to work in Detroit,” Macklin said. “I retired at forty.”

  “How did you manage that? I didn’t think Detroit offered a package.”

  “It gets easier when you outlive your employers.”

  “Ah.”

  Macklin took another swallow. “Your turn.”

  “I may give you information you already have.”

  “If you do, I’ll tell you.”

  Grinnell shook his head, smiling. “That’s just a cheap way of drawing a card you don’t have coming.”

  “I’m tired of talking about cards.”

  “So am I.” He turned his glass around in its wet ring on the napkin. “I shaded the truth some when I said I used to work for that man I told you about, the one who knew the man in Detroit. I answer to his son, but technically he’s still my boss.”

  “In Toledo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Toledo’s Joe Vulpo’s town.”

  “Detroit was Mike Boniface’s.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “After that it was Carlo Maggiore’s,” Grinnell said. “He was killed last year in L.A.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Grinnell lifted his glass, then sipped. “I guess that means I’m up. When I told you I was a facilitator, I wasn’t lying. I go out ahead and make sure things go smoothly for those who come after.”

  “What happens then?”

  “Things go smoothly,” he said. “Most of the time, anyway.”

  “When was the last time they didn’t?”

  Grinnell shook his head again.

  “Another question,” Macklin said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with our agreement.”

  “I’ll have to be the judge of that.”

  “Are you wearing a wire?”

  Grinnell’s left eye twitched. Macklin was pretty sure he’d surprised him. “I’m not, but of course I could be lying. Are you?”

  “Same answer.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Grinnell spat. He shoved his glass off the edge of the table.

  It burst into pieces when it struck the hardwood floor. A piece of glass or a drop of liquid hit Macklin’s pants leg. Heads swiveled their way from the other tables. The waitress, waiting for someone’s order at the bar, looked, then signaled the bartender. He disappeared behind the back bar, then came out and handed her a broom and dustpan and a towel. She hastened over. Grinnell and Macklin watched each other in silence.

  “Accident? Anyone splashed?” The waitress looked from one man to the other.

  “My fault,” Grinnell said. “We’re both okay. I’m very sorry.”

  “No problem. I’ll get you another drink.” She squatted and used the broom like a whisk, then mopped up the spill with the towel. She left carrying it and the broom and the laden dustpan.

  Grinnell said, “Sorry about the outburst. Obviously, if one of us were lying, we’d be up to our necks in civil servants by now.”

  “Does that mean we can stop talking in code?”

  “Better than that. We can start talking.”

  The waitress brought him another Scotch and soda. He handed her a five-dollar bill.

  She held it as if she didn’t know what it was. “That’s not necessary, sir. Replacements are on the house.”

  “A good policy. There’s another five coming if you can manage to ignore us until last call.”

  The waitress complied.

  The man seated on the passenger’s side of the Ford Crown Victoria touched the arm of the man behind the wheel, who said, “Yeah,” and held out his hand for the camera.

  The driver’s name was Barlow, and he was a sergeant with the Armed Robbery Task Force, recruited personally from highway patrol by Lieutenant Farrell McCormick shortly after the lieutenant’s own transfer from the Pickaway County Sheriff’s Department. Barlow had come with a jacket full of commendations and a dislike for public attention, both important points to Captain Prine, who’d come to the detail with neither. No one else in the detail had logged more hours on stakeout than the sergeant.

  He balanced the telephoto lens on the edge of his window, which when Grinnell entered the Alehouse he’d raised to the level where he could shoot straight and comfortably when his subject came out. The instrument was new, a digital model with an ultraviolet lens, and would have set him back two months’ pay if it didn’t belong to the State of Ohio.

  When Grinnell emerged alone, Barlow took several shots of him descending the short flight of steps to the parking lot. Columbus already knew what Grinnell looked like; he was merely establishing the location, with the camera providing an automatic time stamp. He watched Grinnell climb up into his rented four-wheeler and pull out into the street, but did not start the car to follow.

  His partner said nothing. The young man, whose name was Freeland, was new to the ARTF, a former third-grade detective with the city police in Sandusky who’d come to the capital with a letter of recommendation from a state senator—a longtime Prine ally—and had the virtue of keeping his mouth shut pending explanation. Barlow had an idea he’d work out if he could keep his ambition in check.

  Grinnell had been gone three minutes when another man came outside, looked around, and trotted down the steps. It seemed that his gaze had lighted on the Crown Victoria for a half beat, and the sergeant, who had parked under the scaffolding of the warehouse undergoing renovation next door, shrank back into the shadows that filled the car; but after that infinitesimal pause the man behaved as if the car were invisible.

  Barlow recognized him from the restaurant in Myrtle, where he’d had to set up surveillance on foot because there was no unobtrusive place to park within sight of the entrance, and leave the camera and Freeland down the street. The man’s face was as unfamiliar as it was unremarkable, but there had been conversation between the two while they were waiting for their vehicles and Barlow had memorized the features of the two women who joined them after a few minutes. The women had then gotten into the stranger’s car and Barlow had had to sprint for the Ford in order to follow Grinnell. There was no sign of either of the women at the brewpub.

  Barlow took three quick shots of the man walking and, as he pulled out of his slot, two of the Michigan license plate, a standard issue with no commemoratives. The car was the last model of the Mercury Cougar, a forgettable design with a reliable plant under the hood.

  He didn’t follow the car. After the taillights winked out behind the corner of the warehouse, he broke the disc out of the camera and fed it into the scanner built into the onboard computer. Technology he didn’t understand would whisk the jumble of pixels to Columbus, where whoever had the duty could deal with the Secretary of State’s office in Michigan and match the car to the man. He plopped the camera onto Freeland’s lap, turned the key, and went in search of Grinnell.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Who’s Myrtle?” Francis Spain asked.”I thought the manager’s name was Pam.”

  “Pamela.” His publicist, Becca Jacobetti,
sighed genteely, using only her nostrils. She was a trim ash-blonde who wore designer glasses in pewter frames and a steel-colored suit with a shimmer that in another time, on a man, Spain would have called sharkskin. He wondered, if he used the description in a book, if his readers would consider him old hat. “It’s a what, not a who. It’s the name of the town where we’re going.”

  They were cruising west on I-80 in a champagne-colored stretch limo with beige leather upholstery and a dwarf bar built into the passenger door. The driver, an eyebrowless wonder named Kevin, wearing an electric-blue blazer, had picked them up at Toledo Express Airport. Sixteen-city tour, a fortune spent on first-class fare and hotel suites, and Kevin had to meet them with Spain’s name written in black Magic Marker on a piece of corrugated fiberboard torn from a carton. He’d had half a mind to ignore it and call a cab, but Becca had walked right up to the man and handed him her garment bag.

  And now he found out that one of the sixteen cities was Hooterville.

  “I was told Toledo,” he said. “That’s the other way.”

  “Greater Toledo. These days, readers go out to the suburbs. There’s nothing like a roomy bookstore in a shopping center on a rainy Saturday. They line up like poor people.”

  “The sun is shining. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Relax, Francis. You saw the Times list. Number Two ain’t shabby.”

  “That fucking Grisham. When’s he going to take a break, give someone else a shot?”

  “I’ve represented writers who’ve been waiting their whole careers just for a review. You cracked the list with your first book. By the end of this tour you’ll be locked in for life.”

  “I can live without their reviews. Last week Danielle Steele called me ‘the ten-thousand-and-first monkey.’ I don’t even know what that means.”

  Becca smiled briefly, then pursed her lips. “It’s a literary reference. A mathematical one, actually. You know: If you leave ten thousand monkeys in a room with ten thousand word processors, sooner or later one of them will write a novel.”

  “I knew it was some sort of slam. I didn’t see Mistral’s Daughter on the syllabus at Princeton.”