Kill Zone

by Loren D. Estleman

  When the waiter had withdrawn, Macklin looked around as if surveying the decor, then got the sheathed knife out of his pocket and passed it across the table. Pinelli secreted it under the tails of his blue camel’s-hair suitcoat. Leaning back: “It was of use?”

  “Molto. I thank you, my friend. I couldn’t have gotten in another way.”

  “There is one who found another. But here is your coffee.”

  Macklin searched his friend’s hawkish features as the waiter placed a steaming cup and saucer and a silver cream pitcher on the table in front of him. When they were alone again, Pinelli pushed away his plate and stretched an arm to refill his glass from the half-liter of red wine on the table. His well-tailored coatsleeve masked the play of his old muscles.

  “An assassin made his way into the manager’s apartment in River Rouge yesterday and hit him with a ball bat many times. The radio said he was pronounced dead at Detroit Receiving Hospital. That means he probably was dead when the police found him.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Macklin said after a moment.

  “I did not think it was. Why would you use a bludgeon when you had an excellent knife? Also dead men are unreliable messengers.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend, Umberto.”

  “He was not a friend. Someone who owed him a favor asked me to hire him to clean up around the store. He knew what I did before I sold clothing and this frightened him at first. I calmed him. We talked. We were friendly. We were not friends.”

  “Do the police suspect anyone?”

  “The radio did not say.”

  “That means they do.” Macklin sipped his coffee. It tasted bitter and for a moment he wished he’d let Pinelli order the cinnamon. Then he decided it wouldn’t have helped. “I know who it was.”

  “Not Ackler. Even he could not be on a boat in Lake Erie and in River Rouge at the same time.”

  “Not Ackler. If I’m right, the same man tried to kill me twice last night. He’s the reason I’m here. Have you ever heard of a pro calls himself Freddo?”

  “Only four or five,” said the other, showing the grin that Macklin never saw anywhere else except in the mirror. In the early days he had imitated everything there was to copy about the old killer, and some of the mannerisms had stayed with him, most noticeably the grin. Not humorous, it was a lightning glimpse behind the civilized mask they presented to the world. “One of the first things I taught you, figlio mio, is that the successful killer is less than a shadow, blending with the landscape like the stain of breath passing from glass. He avoids ostentation in all its forms. We will not discuss the car you drive, which we both know distresses me. These sly names, these reverse euphemisms so beloved of the men who make movies and of the children who see them, they will tangle about your limbs and make you stumble. Freddo, fah! All the art has gone out of our profession.”

  “This one is about twenty-five and blond, built like a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. He has a lazy eye. His voice is as high as a girl’s. Wears sharp suits. Drives—drove a new Cordoba, brown. Carries a .44 magnum and a .22 target gun in shoulder rigs. He had a partner he called Link. He doesn’t any more,” Macklin added.

  “You killed the partner?”

  “Yes.”

  “He had red hair and freckles, looked like that puppet on the old children’s television program? Happy something?”

  “Howdy Doody. Yes. You know him?”

  “He was what the police like to call a layoff. The man who stands at the door holding a gun on the squares while his partner goes in and snuffs the mark. You do not trust such a man alone on any but the least important contracts. That he lived so long is evidence of the decay in our work.”

  Macklin smiled at his friend’s elephantine attempt at TV crime parlance. “What about Freddo?”

  “I think I would remember such a man as you describe. He is new or an outsider. The organization is getting to be like a college football team with all this recruiting out of state. The partner was called Lincoln Washington. A black man’s name, although he was not black. A native who farmed out.”

  “Connected?”

  “In the loosest possible way. He was with the Boniface family for a time, but the old ties are not as tight as once they were. I am surprised you had not met earlier. Carlo Maggiore sponsored him back when Maggiore was just a lieutenant.”

  Macklin scowled at his reflection in the coffee in his cup.

  Pinelli reached across the table and patted his friend’s hand. “Do not waste time wondering why you are being stalked, Pietro. Perhaps some pinball capo caught you looking at his favorite whore. Just watch your back and your front as always and be prepared like the snake with two heads to strike in both directions at once.”

  “Thank you, Umberto. You are a good friend.”

  He withdrew his hand. “I am old and too free with advice. You have learned what you set out to know?”

  “I’ve made a start. I know the name of the man who hired Ackler and I have descriptions of the other terrorists, if I can separate them from the descriptions of the petty thieves and unemployed Ford and GM workers who did business with the man.”

  “That is not enough.”

  “I know. That’s the other reason I’m here. I’m a killer, not a detective. I don’t know what to do next.”

  Pinelli drained his glass and mopped his lips with a linen napkin, shaking his great silver head slowly. “My words must ever be the same, mi amico. Give it up and come to work with me. With my knowledge of fabrics and your talent for persuasion we will sweep up, as they say.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  The big old man moved a shoulder.

  “You won’t help me?”

  “I cannot. I am no more detective than you, and when you get to be my age you will learn not only that you do not know everything, but that you have forgotten most of what you did know. It is most distressing.”

  Macklin glanced at his watch. “I have thirty-six hours.” Before rising, he leaned across the table and kissed the big gold ring on the old man’s left hand. The old-world gesture pleased Pinelli. “Arrividerci, padre mio. Don’t let your enemies see your back.”

  “I would welcome nothing less. It is the way lions die. Addio, Pietro.”

  Macklin walked back to the clothing store and climbed into the Cougar. The engine turned over a dozen times without starting. Cursing, he got out and flung open the hood. While he was examining the ignition wires a man in a blue uniform appeared at his side and placed an item the size of a quarter and shaped like a black asterisk on the cowling over the fan. “This might help.”

  It was the rotor from the Cougar’s distributor. A thrill of electricity shot up Macklin’s spine. He shouldered the uniformed man in the chest and spun to the right away from him. Another officer in uniform was standing on that side with the fender between them and his service revolver drawn.

  Macklin’s own gun was jerked from its holster then and a hand slammed him forward so that the radiator punched him in the stomach and he sprawled face down across the engine. White fire licked up his side. His legs were kicked apart and he was frisked and cuffed and something was said to him that he couldn’t hear for the pain pounding in his ears. But it didn’t matter. He knew his rights.

  CHAPTER 21

  “This isn’t a police station,” Macklin said.

  The scout car had stopped in a playing card-size parking lot behind a yellow brick building with a scuffed-iron fire door in back stenciled NO ADMITTANCE. He was hustled out of the back seat, still cuffed, and, while the partner held the door open, he was shoved inside by the officer who had drawn on him earlier. The dark interior smelled of stale cooking grease. That put them near a kitchen.

  “Oh, we’re moving up,” responded the officer who had held the door. “Next month we’re getting an unlisted number.” He stabbed a wall button worn concave and it glowed sullenly behind a cross-hatching of greasy thumbprints. Behind the wall an elevator car clanked and wheezed to a
halt. While they were waiting for the doors to open, one of the officers released Macklin’s wrists from the handcuffs. Then the doors gave way with a grating noise and he collided with the back wall. The doors closed.

  Another button was punched and the car shuddered and began to rise. The light inside was strained through a cake of grime on the overhead fixture and it was a few seconds before Macklin realized that the officers hadn’t entered with him. He peered at the man with whom he was sharing the car. Tall and strongly built, he wore a three-piece suit tailored to draw attention away from his paunch. He had a broad hard face and a high forehead topped by close-cropped hair with a pale reddish tint. His hands were in his pockets and he wasn’t smoking, but the car smelled of pipe tobacco. The man gave Macklin the perfunctory glance of a fellow passenger, then took a hand out of one of his pockets and pushed another button. The car stopped with a sinking sensation of inertia. The doors remained closed, and when Macklin looked up at the old-fashioned indicator he saw that they were stuck between the sixth and seventh floors.

  “You look like a detective,” Macklin said then. “But you don’t dress like one.”

  “Thanks, I’ll consider that a compliment. My tailor picks out the colors and fabric. I just go there at the time we set and put on what he tells me to. I could give you his name.” His eyes traveled down and up the killer’s casual attire.

  “Would he tell me who you are?”

  “Sorry. My name’s Burlingame. My friends call me Red. You can call me Mr. Burlingame.”

  “I’ve heard of you. I’ve never seen your picture.”

  “I have other men stand in front of cameras for me. Hoover and I used to fight about that a lot. He liked publicity. But you never know when you might have to go back into the field.” He put a hand to the peeling yellow fiberboard that paneled the car. “Believe it or not, this is one of the better downtown hotels. The fanciest places always seem to have the worst service elevators.”

  “I know the building,” Macklin said.

  “I thought you might. We own this one. We use it for interrogation when we don’t want to run the press gauntlet at headquarters.”

  “You always use the elevator?”

  “Only when I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  “I never heard of an FBI chief conducting interrogations.”

  “Normally I don’t. But you’re a hard man to pin down. You managed to shake two of my best agents twice. I don’t mind telling you what a blow it is to the Bureau’s pride to have to ask the local police to put out an APB on your car.”

  “I’m surprised they agreed.”

  “Oh, we’re on much better terms since Hoover died. The old fart would never cooperate with the locals and got zilch back. He didn’t care. He wanted a national police force with himself as chief. Why’d you kill the old man in River Rouge?”

  Macklin said nothing. His face suddenly felt as if it were wearing an ice mask.

  Burlingame unbuttoned his coat and spread it. “I’m not wired. Neither is the elevator. Anything you say in here stays in here. So long as I like what I hear,” he added, and smiled sheepishly. “That rhymed, didn’t it? Sorry.”

  “Is that why I’m under arrest?” He’d thought they’d traced him from the accident in Port Huron.

  “Oh, you’re not really under arrest. That was just for anyone who happened to be watching. The Detroit Police couldn’t care what happens in River Rouge if it doesn’t tie in with something of theirs. We’re still a provincial people after all.”

  “I haven’t killed anyone in River Rouge lately.”

  “We have witnesses. You were seen entering and leaving the building and talking to the victim less than an hour before the body was found. That’s about as close to the well-known smoking gun as I’ve seen in thirty years of investigations.”

  “The witnesses are wrong.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.” Burlingame produced a blackened briar and a disreputable-looking pouch from a bulging vest pocket and filled the bowl. “I’d offer you a cigarette but I gave them up when the current surgeon general took office.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “You’re lucky.” He struck a match on the fiberboard. “I don’t think the witnesses were mistaken. I think they saw you. I just don’t think you did it.” He puffed the tobacco into life.

  “Must be my stalwart profile.”

  “Leave the snappy patter to the experts, Macklin. Our information is you’re basically humorless. No, the Rouge murder wasn’t your style, too spontaneous. The killer used a weapon that was already on the scene. You don’t shit without casing the toilet for three weeks first.”

  Macklin made as if to stretch his legs, moving a little closer to the elevator’s control panel. If there was space enough between the seventh floor and the top of the car, if he could get the doors open and hoist himself up. Just thinking about it made his side ache. He had a dozen years on Burlingame, though. If there weren’t any agents or officers posted on the next floor. “You sound like my biographer,” Macklin said.

  “You’re in a business that draws attention. Who killed him if not you?”

  “Why should you care? It’s not federal jurisdiction.”

  “Not officially. But ever since Howard Klegg visited my office yesterday morning, everything that involves you interests us. Stay clear of those buttons; I’m armed.”

  The killer moved away and leaned back against the tacky railing. “You’re the one with all the experience in investigation. You tell me who killed him.”

  “I think it was the man who’s been following you since you left Charles Maggiore’s sweet little cottage in Grosse Pointe yesterday. The one who looks like he should be crawling out of a grave on the cover of an old E.C. comic book. Am I right?”

  “What do you know about him?” Macklin asked quickly.

  “Only that he arrived at Maggiore’s before you did and left right behind you. We thought at first you were working together, but that was before we found out you’re a loner. You’re standing on a rug and your boss is holding on to one end of it. And I know why.”

  “My boss is Michael Boniface.”

  “That’s why.” Burlingame stabbed a blunt finger at him. “Maggiore doesn’t take to the idea of going back to being a lieutenant. Who would? But if you pull off this Boblo thing and Boniface walks that’s exactly what will happen. There’s still a lot of loyalty to the old man among the family, so Maggiore can’t just refuse to go along with the deal. What he can do is pull in a mechanic from outside the organization to skag you. The deal falls through, Boniface stays behind bars, and Maggiore’s feet stay on Boniface’s desk.”

  “Complicated.”

  “It’s simpler than it sounds. How do you think he got where he is? In New York he had a history of having to go take a leak just about the time a lifetaker was coming into the restaurant to ventilate the men he was having dinner with. He’s a corporate survivor just like any rising young executive you read about in the Wall Street Journal.”

  “So why kill someone in Rouge?”

  “That wouldn’t be part of the plan. Since you were there earlier, I would consider it a judgment call. The spook was following your tracks and got carried away.”

  Burlingame paused to bat smoke away from his face. The ventilator wasn’t working properly and the car was filling with haze. Macklin’s eyes were starting to fill. The FBI man put his pipe back in his mouth and blew up some more clouds.

  “Why don’t you help me with this next part, Macklin? We’re supposed to be working together. What did the man tell you before he was killed?”

  “We’re working parallel. It’s not the same thing as together.” He made as if to scratch his nose, rubbing his right eye with a knuckle.

  “Don’t be a damn fool. Two men digging separate holes take just as long getting to China as one. We’re fucking around with eight hundred lives here. But I guess that doesn’t mean much to a murderer.”

  “You’ve never k
illed anyone?”

  “Actually, no. My last field job was the Brink’s robbery.”

  “No one ever killed anyone on a job you assigned?”

  “What’s the matter, you never split a hair?” Burlingame smiled a small fat man’s smile, the equivalent of Macklin’s lupine grin. “Okay, we’re both killers. The Justice Department and the Sicilian Boy Scouts have enjoyed a long and profitable partnership. We don’t call you rats any more and you don’t call us G-men. So what are we fighting about? Let’s pool what we have.”

  “You first.”

  “Uh-uh. It’s my elevator.”

  Macklin sniffled discreetly. His eyes were running into his nose and mucking up his thoughts. After a moment he said, “Put out that grease fire, will you? You’re giving the walls cancer.”

  Burlingame knocked out the pipe against the railing, showering sparks to the grimy floor. He crushed out the live ones with the sole of a black wingtip. Macklin said, “I bet you get a lot of answers that way. Gas them out.”

  The FBI man shrugged.

  Macklin told him what he’d learned since talking to the apartment house manager in River Rouge, including his conversation with Daniel Oliver Ackler’s former landlord in Port Huron and what Audrey Fardle had told him outside David Blakeman’s pawn shop on Gratiot. He left out Freddo’s two attempts on his life and the collision and his interview with the organist at the Peacock’s Roost. The story was easier to tell without the options.

  “Okay, that’s the Reader’s Digest verson,” said Burlingame, when it was finished. “Let’s hear the uncondensed one.”

  The killer folded his arms and crossed his ankles, half-sitting on the elevator’s railing. Burlingame fingered his cooling pipe and nodded.

  “My turn. I could have saved you a lot of time and maybe a couple of cracked ribs if you’d come to me at the beginning like I asked Klegg. Yeah, it’s the way you move, like you’re carrying raw eggs in your pockets. I cracked three of my own playing football in college and I moved the same way for two weeks.”

  “What color shorts have I got on?”