by Otto Penzler
He hadn’t much overhead. All you needed was a roof, preferably one with wheels; that way, when you got the tip a raid was coming, all you had to do was hitch up and move to another lot. Now he owned a fleet of Mustangs he hadn’t had a thing to do with in the manufacture and a house in Grosse Pointe, down the street from the Ford family itself.
“Mr. Colt? Deborah Stonesmith. I’m an inspector with the Detroit Police Department.” The tall black woman who’d rung his doorbell showed him a shield.
“You got a warrant?”
“I’m not here to arrest you. I assume you’ve heard about the recent gangland killings.”
He grinned his baggy grin, scratched the tattoo on his upper left arm. “No shit, you’re here to protect me?”
“We’ve got a car on this block, an early response team in radio contact, and a man on each side of the house. I’m going to ask you to stay in tonight. Since this business started, no more than two nights have passed between killings. This is the third since Kim Park’s.”
His smile vanished. “That pimp? What’s the connection?”
“We think someone’s out to eliminate the competition in organized crime in the area. You and Salvatore Malavaggio are the only honchos left. My lieutenant is at Sal’s place in Birmingham, explaining these same arrangements.”
“Well, I’m expecting delivery of an Airstream at my lot in Belleville, straight from the factory. I like to be there when something new comes in.”
“You can inspect your swag another time, Jeb. Either that, or we’ll send a car to follow you; for your own safety, of course.”
—
Macklin spotted the early response van first thing. The panels advertised a diaper service, a stork in a messenger’s cap with a little bundle of joy strung from its beak. There wasn’t a playset or a bicycle or anything else on the block that indicated a resident young enough to have small children. He drove past, located the unmarked car containing two plainclothesmen drinking Starbucks across the street from Colt’s house, and saw flashlight beams prowling the grounds.
A big-box department store stood near downtown, connected with a service station. He bought a two-gallon gasoline can, put in a quart from the pump, stashed it in his trunk, and entered the store. In the liquor section he put a liter bottle of inexpensive wine into his basket. Browsing in entertainment, he came upon a James Brown retrospective on CD and a cheap player. He bought them at the front counter, along with a package of batteries and a disposable lighter from the impulse rack.
The restrooms were located inside the foyer. Finding the men’s room empty, he unscrewed the cap from the wine bottle and dumped the contents down the sink. In the parking lot he opened his trunk, the lid blocking the view from the security camera mounted on a light pole, filled the bottle with gasoline, replaced the cap, wrapped it in an old shirt he used for a rag, tucked the bundle under his arm inside his jacket, slammed the trunk, got into the car, and drove away.
Three blocks from Jebediah Colt’s house, a FOR SALE sign stood in the yard of a brick split-level on a corner. The inside was dark except for a tiny steady red light.
There were no security cameras visible. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell; a househunter, hoping to catch someone at home. When no one answered after the second ring, he produced the CD player from under his coat, placed it on the doorstep, and switched it on, turning up the volume until James Brown’s lyrics were distorted beyond comprehension. He returned to the car, moving quickly now, drove around the corner, opened the gasoline-filled bottle, spilled a little onto a piece he’d torn off the old shirt, stuffed the rag into the neck, and lit it with the disposable lighter. When it was burning, he opened the driver’s window and slung the bottle at the nearest window. The security alarm went off shrilly.
The bottle exploded with a whump and the flame spread. He drove away at a respectable speed, hearing the Godfather of Soul screaming at the top of his lungs from the direction of the burning house.
Police on stakeout might ignore a house fire, expecting local units and the fire department to take care of it; but someone screaming in the flames was another story. The early response team reported the hysterical noises over the radio, and within five minutes Jeb “the Reb” Colt was a man alone.
—
The sirens started up with a whoop, loud enough to make him jump up from in front of the NASCAR channel and draw aside his front curtains. The noises were fading away. He got his nunchuks from the drawer, turned off the lights to avoid being framed in the doorway, and stepped onto his front porch.
He saw an orange glow three blocks away and lights going on in his neighbors’ houses. Shrugging, he swung the chuks together in his fist and turned to go inside. Someone stood between him and the doorway. The heel of a hand swept up, driving bone splinters from his nose into his brain.
—
Miriam Brewster switched off the flatscreen and turned to Malavaggio, leaning back in his desk chair with his pudgy hands folded across his broad stomach and his lids drifted nearly shut. He looked like a toad. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”
“The arson? Insurance job, probably. Guy can’t keep up his mortgage, he torches the place for case dough.”
“I mean Jeb Colt.”
“One cracker more or less don’t mean much to the world.”
“You must have squirreled away plenty before you went to prison. Six hits in ten days, all professionally done. That doesn’t come cheap, even on double-coupon days.”
“Even so, I arranged a discount. Why pay for finished work? What’s he going to repossess?”
She made him stop before sharing any details.
—
Macklin had several ways of knowing when someone had entered his house when he was gone. Whoever it was, cop or killer, had stumbled on the one least subtle, forgetting which lights he’d left on and which he’d turned off. He didn’t even have to stop his car. The windows told him everything.
In the crowded parking lot of a cineplex, he used his burn phone one last time to call Leo Dorfman.
“How’d he know where I live?” he asked.
The lawyer didn’t ask who. “I never told him; but his outfit’s got its thumbs in lots of places, why not realty agencies?”
“I need to have been somewhere else when most of those packages were delivered.”
“Most, or all?”
“All would look like planning. I can tell ’em I went to the movies for the others.”
“Okay.”
The parking lot exit passed over an ornamental bridge leading to the highway. Macklin threw the phone out the window into the swift little stream.
Dorfman would take care of the cops; if it was cops. If it was a killer, all he had to do was cut off the source of income.
—
Salvatore Malavaggio snipped the end off a crisp Montecristo, got it going with a platinum lighter, and blew a smoke ring at the acoustical ceiling in his home office. It had been a good first week out of stir. The Russian, the black, the Jew, the Mexican, the chink, and the hillbilly were gone, leaving a void only an experienced don could fill. His former associates would know the truth. There would be some resistance, but he’d struck too fast and too deep not to have put the fear of Sal into them all. Even Miriam, as cold-blooded a dame as he’d known, had looked at him with new respect after the mug shots of all six rivals appeared on the TV report capping recent events.
There was only one Mafia. There was no room in it for Slavs, coloreds, kikes, greasers, chinks, or inbred morons. Those outsiders only got such big ideas when the Sicilians became careless and gave incriminating orders direct to unreliable street soldiers instead of going through buffers. Malavaggio had used Dorfman, never laying eyes on this Macklin, who was familiar by reputation. The law, too, would know what happened, but it could never prove a connection, no matter what the chump said when he was arrested.
Which was how they’d done things in the old country. Omerta wa
s for equals only.
From now on, if you couldn’t point at that island off the toe of the boot and name the birthplace of every one of your ancestors, you’re just the guy we send out for coffee. Napolitano? Ha! Calabrese? As if! Sola Siciliana, per sempre.
Something clinked in the next room: Miriam, setting down the latest of who knew how many glasses of his best grappa. He hoped she wasn’t turning into a lush. She needed all her senses to get the Supreme Court to act and return La Cosa Nostra to its days of glory.
And he’d saved himself a hundred grand.
Something stirred in the connecting doorway.
“Counselor? Thought you went home.”
“She did. I waited to make sure she didn’t come back for something she forgot.”
Malavaggio didn’t recognize the man coming in carrying a revolver. They’d never met face-to-face.
Rogue: Leo Skorzeny
Car Trouble
JAS. R. PETRIN
JAMES ROBERT (JIM) PETRIN (1947– ) ranks among the most popular and prolific writers of recent years to appear in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, where his first story, “The Smile,” appeared in 1985. Since that time he has contributed more than seventy stories to the publication.
He does find time to write for other magazines and for anthologies, for which he has written a broad range of crime fiction. Much of his work has been produced for audio books and television films. Petrin’s stories have been short-listed for numerous awards and he has won several others, most notably the Arthur Ellis Award (the Canadian equivalent of the Edgar) for Best Short Crime Fiction on two occasions.
Although many of his stories are stand-alone tales of crime and mystery, often with a humorous undertone, one of Petrin’s most popular series characters is Leo Skorzeny, known to his friends (and others) as “Skig.” He is a Shylock, a moneylender at usurious rates, who is so tough that no one dares to fail to pay him what he’s owed. There is a bit of softness to him, however, that puts him into the rogue category rather than filling the role of villain.
Born in Saskatchewan, Petrin now lives with his wife, Colleen, at Mavillette Beach, on the Gulf of Maine, in southwest Nova Scotia.
“Car Trouble” was originally published in the December 2007 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.
CAR TROUBLE
Jas. R. Petrin
“THIS TIME,” Skig said, “tell you what. Try not to make it stand up at the back, some kind of antenna sticking outta my head.”
“It’s just the way your hair goes, dear. Nothing I can do. You should be glad to have hair on the top of your head. Some men your age are ready for a comb-over.”
“When I’m ready for it, shoot me.”
Every month they exchanged this banter. Leo Skorzeny sitting on a straight-back chair in Eva Kohl’s kitchen, a sheet around him, snippets of his stiff, iron-gray hair on the floor. Eva, retired from hairdressing maybe ten, twelve years now, click-clicking away with her scissors.
“Tell me about that new car you’re buying,” Skig said. He shifted his weight, trying to ease the pain in his gut.
She laughed. Took a playful snip at the empty air.
“Not buying—leasing. The way they explained it to me, Mr. Skorzeny, it’s cheaper.”
“Smaller payments.”
“That’s right.”
“That don’t mean it’s cheaper. The long run.”
“For me it is. It really is. The salesman told me I’m perfect for a lease. I put on hardly any mileage—mostly just shopping.”
“You bargain down the suggested retail?”
“The what?” She stopped snipping, puzzled.
“The price.”
“No. I thought I explained. I’m not buying, I’m leasing.”
Skig closed his eyes, held them shut a second, opened them.
“You got a good trade?”
The snipping started again. “My old car still runs well. They’re giving me two thousand dollars for it.”
“Your old car’s like new. Why not keep driving it?”
“It isn’t all that good. And I feel like a change. Anyway, I’ve made up my mind. I’m signing the papers this afternoon.” She ran the trimmer over his neck, cold steel humming against his skin, then handed him a fan-shaped hand mirror. She held a second mirror behind his head, left, then right. “How’s that?”
“Perfect,” Leo said, “as always. That’s why I come to you.”
“Don’t kid. You come here because I’m cheap. And I’m only just down the street from you.”
Before he left, Skig got the name of her dealership.
—
He trudged heavily back along the sidewalk, one hand under his billowing sports coat to brace the pain there low in his gut. He would get his car out of the garage, head down to the quack’s office, and collect the bad news sure to be waiting for him. All those tests last week. The quacks liked to tell him how lucky he was, that he should be dead by now. Yeah, right. How lucky could you get?
Skig lived in an old made-over filling station, bought years ago as an investment. He’d converted the office area to a few livable rooms after Jeanette died—couldn’t stay in the house and didn’t know why. Or maybe he did. Sensing her presence there was still too much for him, and at other times it was just too empty.
He crossed the large graveled lot, his front yard, fumbled a key out, and heaved open the repair bay door, all blistering paint: no power assist on this baby, built before the friggin’ flood. He backed the Crown Vic into the lot, got out, and hauled the big door down, locked it, then eased back in behind the wheel. He rolled off along Railway Avenue at a sedate five clicks under the limit, windows open to blow the stink off. The Crown Vic still reeked after running off the jetty into the harbor one time, but Skig had no interest in replacing it. Why bother if you were one church service shy of a planting, the way he saw it.
The clock on the dash said two fifteen. Time enough for that one small matter before he had to be at his appointment.
He found the lot on Robie, not a first-rate dealership, but not too scuzzy a place. The showroom supported a colossal roof-mounted sign that said HAPPY DAN DUCHEK’S AUTO WORLD, with two sculpted Ds each the size of a grand piano. Another, smaller, sign said WE’RE NOT HAPPY UNTIL YOU ARE! “Right,” Skig muttered as he turned in. He rolled slowly between two rows of gleaming new cars. Bigger than it looked from the street. There was even a detailing shop at the back for well-heeled car enthusiasts, Happy Dan covering all the angles. Skig saw movement in the next row over. An extremely pretty young woman, dressed for the office, talking heatedly with her hands to a young man in sagging-butt pants who stared back at her with lifeless eyes.
“Don’t argue with that one, dear,” Skig cautioned her under his breath, looking for a place to park. Something familiar about the guy.
He found Happy Dan in the manager’s office. Shiny hair. Smile on him like it was wired there. Dan had just unwrapped a tuna sub on his desk and was holding out a coffee mug to the extremely pretty young woman Skig had seen a moment ago. She must have nipped inside while he was parking, now in the process of pouring Dan a fill of seriously black joe from a steaming Pyrex pot. Dan didn’t look too happy with her. The guy with the sagging pants was nowhere in sight.
As he stepped into the room, Happy Dan met Skig’s gaze, his open face brightening in cheery lines. “Good afternoon, sir. Welcome. Time for a new car?” He showed even white teeth.
“Name’s Leo Skorzeny,” Skig said flatly. “You heard of me?”
Happy Dan raked his memory. Concentrated. Then something clicked and his smile wilted. He set his mug down. “Yes, I’ve heard of you.”
“We need to talk.”
Leo then stared at the extremely pretty young woman until she took the hint and stalked out of the room, carafe in hand, trailing an aroma of burnt coffee.
Happy Dan edged around a filing cabinet and took up a defensive position behind his desk.
“We were trading stor
ies about vacation resorts,” Happy Dan said, with a nervous stab at affability. Silk tie. Gel in his hair like it was spooned on. “You see, I just got back from Aruba, and—”
“What I really come to see you about was the hose job you’re planning to do on a nice old lady, Mrs. Eva Kohl, supposed to come in here later today an’ sign some papers.”
“Mr. Skorzeny, we don’t—”
“Sit down,” Skig said.
Happy Dan looked uncertain for a second, then sat. Skig lowered himself into the visitors’ chair. Jeez, his gut hurt.
“The lady’s a friend of mine. I want her treated right.”
“Mr. Skorzeny, I assure you—”
Skig’s shoulders moved, his big hands on the heavy desk, trapping Happy Dan against the wall. Dan’s jaw sagged. Disbelief on his face.
Skig said, “There’s not a car salesman alive wouldn’t hose a woman like that, unless he’s a saint, and you got no halo floatin’ over your head.” He watched Happy Dan turn purple. “Here’s what you do. You come down fifteen hundred on the MSRP—cash-back covers that—an’ you give her three, not two, for the trade, which is more what it’s worth. That’s forty-five hunnerd, good for ninety bucks off the monthly payment, an’ you still do okay. An’ don’t suck it all up with some BS prepping fees, like you polished the mirrors or something, or I’ll be back here for more negotiating. You getting all this?”
Sweat droplets gleamed along the hairline of Dan’s spiffy do. He managed a bob of his head. Skig held him there a few more seconds, scrutinizing the Aruban tan for signs of perfidy. Satisfied that there were none, he yanked the desk back and heaved himself to his feet.
“An’ make sure she gets the free gap insurance the leasing company likes you to forget about,” Skig said, not looking back, moving on out the door.
—
The clinic’s parking lot was jammed as usual, the waiting room packed with distressed humanity. But there had been a cancellation, and Skig’s name came up quickly. Shown to a room the size of a large closet, he waited until the quack breezed in. Not his usual quack. A specialist. Like most specialists, this guy had the charm of a forensic pathologist.