Kill Zone

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Hello?” A fat man’s voice, thick and soft.

  “Wisner Realty?”

  “This is Maurice Weisner.”

  “I thought it was Wisner.”

  “That’s how we’re listed. I got tired of people calling me Wiener.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about some rental property you own on the lake.”

  “Call the office Monday.”

  Macklin said, “I thought this was the office.”

  “I have a line running into my home. Ordinarily I wouldn’t answer it on Saturday, but my wife’s visiting relatives and I can’t stand to let a phone ring. We close at eight Fridays. Saturdays I don’t work. I keep kosher.”

  “This wouldn’t be work. I just want to ask you about a man who rented from you recently.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t discuss my business. I’ll be happy to talk to you Monday.”

  “What’s wrong with Sunday?”

  “Sunday I’ll talk to you. But I won’t be so happy. Shalom.” The connection was broken.

  Macklin looked at the electric alarm clock the management had thoughtfully provided him with at the rate of two dollars extra per night. Ten o’clock. He set the alarm for midnight, stripped to his underwear, folded his suitcoat and pants under the mattress for pressing, climbed under the covers, and went to sleep. It was a talent he had; he could will himself unconscious at any time among any surroundings for as long as he wanted.

  He awoke fully a minute before twelve and turned off the alarm before it could begin buzzing. After splashing some water on his face in the bathroom he came back out and sat on the bed and dialed Maurice Weisner’s number again. The rental agent answered on the sixth ring.

  “Good morning, Mr. Weisner. I’m the man who called you last night. It’s now Sunday. I thought you might be willing to discuss your business now.”

  “That was just two hours ago!” The voice wasn’t as soft as it had been. “I’ve been in bed an hour. I have to be up early for church.”

  “I thought Saturday was your sabbath.”

  “It is. But most of my income comes from gentiles and I close most of my deals after services.”

  “Mr. Weisner, you sound like an ethnic joke.”

  “Just partly. I have a weak-willed mother and my son is a forest ranger in the Upper Peninsula. What is it that can’t wait until a decent hour, Mr.—?”

  “I’d rather not give my name just now. I want to ask you some questions about a man who was living in your lake cottage a few weeks ago.”

  “My firm owns sixteen lake cottages. You’ll have to narrow it down.”

  Macklin gave him the address. After a pause Weisner said, “How’d you know we own that one? We won’t be listing it until some improvements have been made.”

  “We all have our business tricks. About the renter.”

  “Just a moment. Why should I be standing here in my pajamas in the draft from the hallway answering questions from a midnight caller who refuses to identify himself?”

  “Because you own sixteen lake cottages, and your insurance company won’t pay if they all burn down and arson is found to be the cause.”

  This time the pause on the other end was much longer.

  “Mr. Weisner?”

  “I’m here.”

  “The man I’m interested in is under thirty and bleaches his hair. His name is Ackler but he might have rented the cottage under a false identity.”

  “That would be Mr. Charon.”

  “Charon with a C?”

  “That’s how he signed the papers.”

  Macklin shook his head at the paneled wall. His man was up on his Greek mythology and as original as ever. “How long did he stay and when did he leave?”

  “He moved in at the end of June and left two weeks ago. Everything was paid up in cash and the house was in good repair. I should have more renters like Mr. Charon.”

  “Any visitors?”

  “Some. I have other property on that road and sometimes when I drove past I would see cars parked out front. Oh, and he had a house guest for a few days in July. I met him briefly when I stopped in to ask if everything was all right. Blakeman. I remember the name, because I asked him if he was Jewish. You know, because of the ‘man.’ He said no.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Youngish, but older than Mr. Charon. In his thirties. Tall and blond. Real blond, not platinum like Mr. Charon. He had a scar on his cheek. The right one, I think.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Hello when I came in and good-bye when I went out. I wasn’t there long. Mr. Charon said Mr. Blakeman would be doing some fishing while he was there. He was quite the fisherman himself, Charon was. He must have had a thousand dollars tied up in equipment.”

  Macklin asked a few more questions, garnering little more information. Finally he said, “Well, thank you, Mr. Weisner. I don’t think I’ll be bothering you again.”

  “I think I’ll call the police now.”

  “Tell them someone stole the radio out of your car. They’ll come quicker.”

  After hanging up, Macklin set the alarm for 6:30 A.M. and switched off the bedside lamp and lay thinking for a while before he dropped off. His last thought was that Blakeman didn’t sound like an alias.

  CHAPTER 17

  Gordy Charles Maggiore’s leviathan bodyguard and manservant, rapped softly on his employer’s bedroom door and when there was no answer opened it and stood over the bed, blocking out the light from the unshaded window. Maggiore, a light sleeper since the New York gang wars of the seventies, stirred and sat up, rucking back the black velour sleep mask he wore over his eyes and screwing up his face in the morning bright. He had on a chinstrap to keep his neck from sagging and gray silk pajamas. “What time is it?”

  “Seven o’clock, Mr. Maggiore.”

  “Seven! Damn you, Gordy, I said ten.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Maggiore. You told me to interrupt whatever you was doing when that Freddo called.” He pronounced the name as if it belonged to a corn chip. Gordy had been raised in South Dakota and didn’t speak a word of Italian.

  “He still on the line?”

  “Yes sir. Calling collect from Port Huron.” The big man drew a black satin dressing gown from one of the room’s two walk-in closets and held it, lining out, while Maggiore stuck his feet into his slippers and then rose to let Gordy help him into the gown.

  “I didn’t even know there still was a seven o’clock in the morning.” Leaning automatically toward the hump on his right shoulder, the Sicilian passed through a small dressing room into a parlor containing a lot of green chintz and a French telephone and took the receiver off the hook. The mansion had eight bedrooms and not an extension in any of them. He considered the instrument an invasion of privacy.

  “Say it,” he told the mouthpiece.

  “No.” Freddo’s voice sounded far away.

  “That isn’t what I wanted to hear.”

  “I made two tries. The first time cops got in the way and the second time there were witnesses hanging from the trees. He knows I’m on his case now.”

  Maggiore cursed. “So why call me?”

  “Just checking in. I didn’t want you finding out he was still kicking and then sending in a back-up for me to trip over.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Bet you told Macklin the same thing.”

  Maggiore wished the killer would watch his mouth on the wire. Every week he had men in to inspect the telephone for taps and every other week they found one. “Where is he now?”

  “Getting gassed up across the street from his motel. I’m calling from the motel cafeteria. I can see his car through the front window.”

  “Who you riding with?”

  “Link Washington.”

  “Christ, I wouldn’t hire him to empty bedpans.”

  “He takes orders. Guys like that are getting hard to find.”

  Tell me about it. “Okay, stay on him. He won’t give you f
our shots.”

  “You said before he wouldn’t give me two.”

  “So he’s slipped. He made his bones when you were still shitting yellow. Remember that.”

  “All that means,” said Freddo, “is that he’s old.”

  “You should live to be so old.” Maggiore hung up.

  Gordy had started the shower in the huge bathroom off the master bedroom and slipped away discreetly. Maggiore stood under the scalding spray for five minutes, turned it off, stepped out of the stall, and admired his trim figure in the fogged mirror that covered one wall as he toweled and powdered himself, calculatedly ignoring the hammocks of aging flesh that dangled under his arms, his shriveled penis, and the lump of malformed bone on his shoulder that had won him the nickname Quasimodo in high school until the boy who had first called him by it was found with his skull crushed by a rock behind the gym. At 50 he was satisfied that he could pass for much younger.

  He padded naked into the dressing room, where Gordy had laid out his clothes on the upholstered bench, and put on a yellow sportcoat over a black polo shirt and matching cords and slid suede moccasins onto his bare feet. On his way out through the bedroom, he tugged a drawer out of the bureau and untaped an alligator holster containing a short blue semiautomatic 7 mm. pistol of Italian make. He broke out the clip for inspection, made sure there was a round in the chamber, holstered it and snapped the holster on to a special strap woven into the lining of his jacket so that it fit into the inside pocket. He buttoned the jacket and looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror on the door to see how it hung. It hung well, concealing the weapon even when he raised his arms. All his clothes were tailored to accommodate either a gun or a thick wallet. He was the only man he knew in his position who owned a gun; most of his colleagues preferred to hire others to carry them. But Maggiore had lived through some bad times and knew that in such times the only things a man could truly count on were a good eye and a steady hand.

  He hadn’t worn the gun in months. No one knew he had one, not even Gordy. He always felt a little ridiculous carrying it, like some snake-eyed thug in a George Raft movie. But he knew Macklin never felt that way, and if Freddo went on missing opportunities there would be nothing else to stand between Maggiore and Michael Boniface’s loyal hammer.

  Freddo pegged the receiver on the pay telephone next to the cash register, clattered a nickel onto the counter for a foil-wrapped mint from a bowl of them next to the toothpicks, winked at the fat woman cashier, and left the motel cafeteria, swaggering a little. Despite a couple of false starts, he was already thinking beyond Macklin to the bonus he would surely get for the job and what he would buy with it. Maybe a sportier car. The Cordoba was all right for comfort and style and power, but it looked dull. If Macklin could get away with driving a silver Merc there was no reason for Freddo to maintain the traditional low profile.

  That car was still parked at the pumps across the street. The uniformed attendant had finished filling the tank and had the hood up to check the oil. Macklin had gone around the side to use the men’s room. That was one of the first things to go, the bladder.

  The middle-aged killer was easy. He had proved that by letting Freddo get so close on two separate occasions. Freddo wondered if this was age or the fact that the competition was softer in Macklin’s time. Maybe a little of both. He had suspected it long before this job; if Macklin were as good as everyone claimed he’d be drying the moss on his back on the Riviera by now, fat and retired with a wife half his age. It was a young man’s game, this business of killing. Freddo had no intention of staying in past 35—by which time, of course, he would no longer have to.

  He had left the brown car at a meter around the corner from the service station with Link Washington asleep on the passenger’s side. After cruising through motel parking lots looking for Macklin’s car they had taken turns sleeping and watching it throughout the night in case Macklin broke, and while Freddo felt refreshed after a total of three hours’ rest and a shave and sinkbath in the same public restroom where Macklin was now wringing his mop, Washington had squirmed all night and not slept a wink. He was making up for it now, for he didn’t stir as his partner opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel. He slumped with his knees above the dash and his chin on his chest, his freckles dead brown against his pasty face.

  “Rise and shine,” said Freddo, starting the engine. “Plenty of lonely spots on the expressway between here and Detroit. They get a lot of accidents there; one more won’t even wrinkle the weekend stats. C’mon, Link. You’re driving.” He pushed a hand against Washington’s shoulder.

  The other man’s head slipped sideways and came to rest against the window. A dot of scarlet appeared at the corner of his mouth and melted down his chin. Freddo saw the rest of the blood then, soaking the front of Washington’s rough Mackinaw and curtaining his neck from a clean line across his throat that opened neat as a pocketbook as his body settled.

  “The trick is to bunch up the collar of his coat before the first spurt,” explained the man in the back seat. “Otherwise it gets messy.”

  Freddo had quicksilver reflexes. Instead of turning immediately, he slung his right hand under his left arm and pulled at the butt of the .44 magnum. Before he got it clear of his coat, a fist seized his hair and yanked his head back hard enough to pop roots. Something hard and sharp prodded his jugular. A pair of tired eyes filled the rearview mirror.

  “You’re a lot closer to bleeding to death like your friend there than you are to pointing that cannon and squeezing the trigger,” said a calm voice in his ear. “Take it out the rest of the way and toss it back here.”

  When Freddo hesitated he got another yank. He howled and pulled desperately at the gun, snagging and tearing the lining of his coat with the hammer, and flipped it over the back of the front seat. The heavy weapon bounced off the rear cushions and thudded to the floor.

  “Now the other one.”

  “There isn’t any—” His hair was pulled again and he gasped. The pointed thing nicked his flesh. He thrust his other hand under his right arm for the .22 long pistol he carried for close work. At the same time he jammed his heel down on the accelerator and threw the automatic shift into drive with his right hand.

  The car shot forward across the intersection, shearing paint and metal off its left side on the thick bumper of a stake truck making a right turn. The enraged whomp of its horn shivered the Cordoba’s window. Freddo spun the wheel and the car swung left, tires shrilling. Macklin lost his balance and sprawled across the back seat. He looked at the fistful of torn hair he was still holding and shook it off his palm. Freddo had the .22 out now and was steering wildly with one hand, the car slewing from side to side down the street, as he brought the gun around. Macklin lunged up on his knees on the hump of the driveshaft, seized Freddo’s wrist, and twisted it. The revolver went off with a nasty flat loud crack. The bullet grazed the windshield and whanged around inside the car, skinning fabric off a padded window post and gouging glass out of the rear and left rear side windows before burying itself in the back of a seat. Macklin twisted again and the gun dropped to the floor.

  Just then the world came to an abrupt stop with a horrendous wham and the heavy framework of the seat caved in Macklin’s ribs and his fingers sprang loose from Freddo’s wrist and the back of the rear seat came forward and pounded Macklin’s back with the hearty violence of a long-lost friend and he fell in a tangle of too many limbs to be all his. Something hissed, like air escaping a torn lung. A piece of shattered glass dropped with a loud clink.

  After a long time Macklin shook himself free of the dream he was having and sat up. He moved each arm and leg separately. No loose bones rattled or sloshed. Pain lanced his left side when he took in air, but that was no problem, he’d cracked ribs before. The back seat seemed a lot closer to the front than it had been. A man with no head was sitting on the passenger’s side in front. Through a round hole in the windshield with the glass chain-mailed all around
, Macklin saw what looked like a clump of carroty hair perched on the hood. The glass had finished what Herb Pinelli’s knife had started. The hood was folded back almost against the windshield and an expanse of warped green metal blocked out the rest of the view behind a cloud of steam from the Cordoba’s smashed radiator. The car had rammed the back of a parked delivery van.

  The driver’s seat was empty. Macklin hoisted himself forward, sucking in air against the stabbing in his side, and peered at the floor under the wheel. Freddo wasn’t there either. The door on that side yawned open on twisted hinges.

  Freddo. That was all Macklin had been able to learn about the young man who had tried twice to kill him, the name he traveled under. The redhead he had surprised asleep in the car after letting himself out the window of the service station restroom and doubling back around the block had told him that much, then tried for a .45 Army semiautomatic pistol on his hip—a .45 auto, for chrissake—and Macklin, reacting too quickly, had slashed his throat with a single sideways jerk. A man could be too fast, he thought sourly, even in this business.

  A crowd was starting to gather around the car. Blocks away a siren wound up and grew louder with each whoop. Ignoring the faces craning in through the shattered windows, Macklin kicked Freddo’s big .44 under the back seat and groped between the cushions until he found the knife he’d dropped. He sheathed it under his coat and got out, tilting the driver’s seat forward and wrenching the door open farther against the spavined frame.

  “Mister, you all right?”

  A bearded man wearing a billed cap and gray coveralls with Bob stitched in red across a breast pocket full of pencils was standing in front of him. Macklin placed him as the driver of the van. The beard looked artificial against the pallor of his face. He’d seen the decapitated head on the hood.

  Macklin nodded and walked around him. A hand closed on his right arm.