“You also offer us yards of snow from Alberta, coins we can’t spend, and bad coffee. You’re American, too, don’t forget. So far no one’s dug a channel across the continent.”
He laughed, without the ring of irony. I started to like him; I didn’t like that. “I haven’t the science at my command, but experience tells me this man was slain with a thirty-eight—using your country’s measurements—or a nine-millimeter—using ours and on occasion yours. Mrs. Lennert, and for now we’ll pay her the courtesy of addressing her by that name, says she was in the shower and didn’t hear the shot. Do you agree with this account of the circumstances?”
“I never argue with a naked woman.”
“Are we sure it was a professional killing?”
“I wouldn’t sign a statement saying it, but it was too clean for the average civilian. No footprints, no spent shell casing, which means he probably used a revolver.”
“He had time to pick one up that was ejected from a semi-automatic.”
“He might have, if he thought it wouldn’t bounce or roll somewhere out of sight so he’d have to get down on his hands and knees and search. But if he did, it still means he was cool enough to leave the place as he found it, not counting the cadaver.”
“Pros often ditch the weapon at the scene. It would be untraceable if he’s as good as you say.”
“He couldn’t be sure he won’t need it if the getaway’s messy. He caught a break when he heard the shower running on his way in over the sill and found Lennert alone in the room, but he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t come out before he left. Another thing these boys seldom leave behind is a witness.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a boy.”
“I wouldn’t rule it out, but hit women aren’t as common as you see in the movies. The mob trains most of them, and it isn’t an equal opportunity employer.”
“So now the Mafia has come to Canada. Your country is building its wall on the wrong border.”
I played with a cigarette, not intending to light it. The local forensics team wouldn’t thank me for giving them one more clue to subtract. “Not enough outrage, Inspector. Try again. The silk shirts have had a presence here since Prohibition. Unless Lennert had something doing in that direction, I don’t like them for this. This button might have studied under them, but right now he’s got more enemies in the boardroom.”
“There’s always your client.”
“I thought of her first, but I told her I doubted he had the money with him.” I didn’t add I’d checked while the landlady was comforting the blonde outside. Lennert had a few hundred on him. They hadn’t unpacked, so the drawers were empty, and the suitcases didn’t have false bottoms. The bathroom was small enough to frisk in a couple of minutes. The woman’s shopping bag held lingerie only. The shams, pillows, spreads, and bolsters on the bed kept me busy long enough for my cheek to stop bleeding. It was like strip-searching Marie Antoinette. I put it all back together just in time to greet the inspector.
“Still,” he said, “hell hath no fury.”
“It hath in her case. Anyway, why hire me to look for her husband if she had someone else doing just that, with the bonus of taking him out when he found him?”
“Finding people is your specialty. Maybe you were the Judas goat and didn’t know it.”
“I don’t like to brag, but I know when I’m being followed. As often as I’ve been, I look for it out of habit.”
“A corporate contract, then. Or have I been reading too much John Grisham?”
“Fiat-Chrysler wouldn’t hardly stoop to throw the switch for less than a couple of hundred million. If this were my case, I’d take a look at the investors who got fleeced the most. On top of the best motive, they’re in the bracket that can afford to hire an expert. You get what you pay for, and if you’re the type that haggles, you stand a good chance of dealing with an undercover cop.”
“Can I take you at your word it’s not your case?”
“You can dip it in bronze and hang it in your office. When it comes to hunting contract killers I’m so far out of my league I can’t see the scoreboard.”
He was still holding my credentials. He looked at them again. “For a private detective, you seem to know a lot about the trade in murder.”
“I know a little bit about a lot of things.”
Car doors slammed below. That would be the morgue wagon and the boys and girls who collect butts and blood spatters. Weber gave back my folder. “Wait downstairs. We need a statement you will sign, and I’ll arrange an escort to see you don’t catch any red lights between here and the bridge. Or do you prefer the tunnel?”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet. The day I’m having, I could fall off one or drown in the other.”
THREE
“If you had your choice of any time in history to live, which would you choose?”
“You got that from a book,” I said. “Carson McCullers.”
“I didn’t say it was original to me.”
I frowned at my uninvited guest. Leo Dorfman was the lawyer people had in mind when they told lawyer jokes. He’d made himself a millionaire several times representing the kind of client the no-nukes said would be the last creatures to survive the apocalypse: cockroaches, corrupt politicians, hit-and-run drivers, serial rapists, pedophiles, stars of reality TV.
Professional killers.
Which were my personal grudge.
We’re all of us potential murderers, but pulling the trigger on a perfect stranger for a paycheck is worse than strangling women who remind you of your mother. At least there’s a personal element there.
This was no new prejudice, but it was fresh again since Toronto. That story was three weeks old and had dropped off the wire for lack of a lead.
“Humor me.” He slid his checker—black, always black—to the last rank on the board and snapped his fingers until I crowned him. He traveled with his own board and men: I don’t think there’s a way to rig the game, but if there is, he’d know how. “At my age I’m still a student of human behavior.”
Just what age that was depended on the observer. Some people are thirty forever, but for reasons known only to him, Dorfman had stalled at eighty. He’d go on being eighty until he crumbled to dust. His face was unwrinkled, but the skin had shrink-sealed itself to bone and his hair was the color and texture of fishline, combed sideways across pink scalp. Although he was retired from daily practice, he put on a different three-piece suit every day, with a black silk knitted tie on a white button-down shirt; permanently in fashion, a stopped clock like the rest of him.
“I’m partial to the roaring twenties,” I said, blocking his next move. “My father was always talking about how much fun Prohibition was.”
“It’s overrated.” And with that I added another twenty years to my estimate of the time he’d spent on earth. “You took your life in your hands every time you drank, and the drys were worse than Hari Krishna, clustered on every corner shaking their fingers in your face.”
“Okay, you pick one.”
He jumped the man I’d just moved. “Here. Now.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“No. I’m a lawyer, don’t forget. Until you can prove to me in court that it’s possible to travel through time, I’ve got no choice but to be here, now. So I don’t dwell on it.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“I needed a subject for conversation. You won’t work for me, so I was running dry.”
“You know why I won’t.”
Everyone’s entitled to legal representation, but Dorfman had a reputation for performing as a buffer between hit men and their potential clients. A dozen investigations had failed to produce any evidence, so I hadn’t thrown him out yet; but nor would I take any job he offered.
“You’re pretty picky for a man in your tax bracket.”
I slid a checker onto a square, but kept my finger on it. “Remind me again why these visits. I ran an errand for you once, but that was before you pled
the Fifth twenty-six times in front of a grand jury. It was so long ago I forget what it was.”
“I doubt that. When Cecil Fish was the prosecutor in Iroquois Heights I came to you with a tip that he was planning to frame Joe Minuto by sneaking a rock of heroin into his coat at a wedding. You had Joe’s tailor sew up all his pockets.”
“Not original to me. Frank Costello did it first.”
“I knew Frank. I never heard that story. He was the most close-mouthed man I ever knew; and I haven’t exactly traveled among the garrulous and gregarious.”
“They’re like moths. Born without mouth parts.” I stretched and yawned; but he never took hints. I looked at my watch. “I’m interviewing a client in Birmingham in an hour.”
“You haven’t had a client there since Steve Jobs was in diapers. You think I only come here to play checkers?”
I’d been wondering when he’d come around to it. His mind wasn’t on the game or he’d have cleaned me out ten minutes ago. I made a bonehead move just to clear the board.
“A client of mine is getting a divorce,” he said, skipping over my pieces straight to the corner and scooping up the loot with the same hand.
“I don’t touch divorce. Neither do you.”
“I recommended a good gal. You want to leave your wife with nothing but her girdle, you want a broad to represent you. They go after their own like wolverines. It’s the wife he’s worried about, and that’s where you come in.”
“He wants the girdle too?”
“You better ask him. I don’t want to be disbarred for telling tales out of school this late in the game. I’d rather they earn it.”
“I won’t work for you, Leo. You said it yourself.”
“It wouldn’t be for me. This is a favor I’m doing him. Fish had a solid case against him once and I broke it over my knee. After that I had to beat the clients away with a stick.”
“What’s his name?”
He looked up from under the white awning of his brows. “If I tell you, you’ll turn down the job.”
“O.J. back in trouble already?”
“That amateur?”
* * *
He told me the name, but it meant nothing to me, and he wouldn’t be drawn out. I didn’t try; a trio of congressional committees had dashed themselves against that rock. After he folded his board and left, I called Detroit Police Headquarters. A broken windpipe came on the line.
I said, “Lieutenant Stonesmith, please.”
“If you’re reporting a missing person, she’s no longer with that detail.”
“I’m not. I heard she was back in Major Crimes.”
“She was the first appointment when they reinstated it under the new chief. You reporting a crime?”
“Maybe. I need an expert who can tell me whether it’s major.”
Wind whistled through the pipe. “You don’t call this number when you want to tell jokes, mister. Believe me, you don’t.”
“I believe you. Lieutenant Stonesmith, please.”
The phone clicked. I waited for the dial tone; but he hadn’t hung up, just put me on hold. It clicked again and a voice came on that sounded like honey boiled in Kentucky bourbon.
“Stonesmith.”
“Amos Walker, Deb. Get tired of chasing runaways and restless wives?”
“Not really, but I knew who to put back on staff, and the chief was desperate. I got a guy in the FBI. He lets me know who’s under investigation. Want a job?”
“Sounds like it’s not just the chief who’s desperate.”
“Our evidence room moves more merchandise than Costco, my best officer from the old days beat a suspect into jelly, and since cops turned into silhouette targets out on the highways and byways of this great land of ours the training course is emptier than Kmart. When I file my reports, I file my reports. They can’t even dig me up a clerk. Am I desperate?”
“You don’t want me, Deb. The last time I was in uniform I punched my way out of it in the locker room, and I was a lot less hot-tempered then.”
“Well, let me know if you find anyone dumb enough to take the oath. What’s the squeal today?”
“I need everything you’ve got on a guy named Peter Macklin.”
The silence on her end broke in half when a chair squeaked and a door clicked shut.
“All right, what’s the job?”
“There isn’t one yet. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Unless I don’t know you the way I think I do, there isn’t one.”
“Now I’m curious. What have you got on him?”
“Not a damn thing, that’s the problem. Come down here. This is better in person.”
FOUR
The only thing feminine about Deborah Stonesmith’s office was a spray of flowers on her desk, and it wasn’t for looks. The scent battled the fetid stench of rot from inside the walls.
Thirteen Hundred Beaubien, the traditional home of the Detroit Police Department since 1922, had been in a state of near-condemnation for most of the century, a victim of municipal looting from the mayor’s office all the way down to pest control. The upper floors were an uninhabitable mix of asbestos, black mold, and rats the size of toy poodles. Homicide had fled to the old Third Precinct, leaving the ancient pile to assorted felonies—some of which included homicide.
The flowers fell short of the mark. They put me in mind of a funeral service I’d attended many years ago, in a place thousands of miles away, in a musty tent.
Stonesmith had a private life, but you wouldn’t know it to look around the place where she worked. The walls were blank, the nasty government green making a bilious haze through several coats of taupe. No snapshots, no plucky cat posters, not even the obligatory academy class photograph. Nuns kept gaudier quarters.
Her desk was orderly, stacked with urgent papers closest to hand, less pressing files next to it, and a steel mesh wastebasket for the rest. It would be cleared by quitting and new stacks waiting for her in the morning.
She caught me looking. “I’m a file clerk, not a cop. I keep a record of hits-and-runs, drive-bys, and bloody domestic dust-ups to pass along to the chief so he can say violent crimes are down—not counting murder. We had sixteen last weekend, and that’s not this year’s record.”
“How do you stand it?”
“I call in sick those days captains’ bars are handed out. It’s one step too close to the top when the voters turn the rascals out of office. I got a kid in medical school and another starting kindergarten.”
She didn’t look old enough even for the toddler. The lieutenant was a tall trim-sailed woman with a cinnamon-toast complexion, brown eyes clear as planets, and a profile cadged off the tomb of an Egyptian queen. She liked big hair, hoops in her ears, and dusky-rose business suits with skirts.
I sat facing the desk and accepted the coffee she shoved my way in a blue-and-gold DPD mug—the kind they sell for souvenirs in the lobby. I’d swiped a couple in interrogation. She brewed it herself, in a Bunn with her name Dymo-labeled on it, so it actually tasted like something that came from a bean. “I got steered to this client,” I said. “Leo Dorfman at the wheel.”
“Shit. Is he still alive? Of course he is. I get a brimstone whiff whenever the gates of hell swing open. I haven’t had one since Castro kicked.”
“You wonder why they bother to put up gates. What’s it say on Macklin’s sheet?”
“Hasn’t got one, apart from questioning; which happened maybe once, before I made the CID. Most of the time Dorfman was already here when Macklin showed. Showed,” she repeated. “I reviewed the file after you called. He’s a virgin as far as bracelets are concerned. Turned himself in whenever he found out we were looking for him, for Man One or better.”
“When did perps start making better citizens than everyone else?”
“About the time we started putting cops on Candid Camera instead of the bad guys. I’d tag him tomorrow if I had a print, even a partial. DNA’s too much to wish for.”
&
nbsp; “Serial?”
“Serial killers I can feel for. They’re like a natural disaster, no one’s fault except maybe rotten parenting. A man who’d cap someone he didn’t know just to make rent is worse than an animal. They only kill to survive. I’d trade half my pension to clock him on just one stiff. It would clear the books on a couple of dozen.”
“The mob?”
“Where do they all get their start? But he went indy a long time ago.”
“Risky. It isn’t just the aggrieved party who runs the chance of hooking up with an undercover cop.”
“He covers the spread. He presents his bill before getting into specifics: Everything you own.”
“Who’s that desperate?”
“People who are unlikely to undergo a change of heart and holler cop. He has them bring in their income tax forms going back three years, bank statements, investment portfolios if any, the equity on their mortgage. Then he takes half up front, in cash. This is all snitch stuff, hearsay. A jury can’t buy it, but any cop can, on the faith of his gut.”
I rolled the mug between my palms. “How does he know the bills aren’t marked, or their serial numbers recorded?”
“I’ve worked that angle, too, but I haven’t been able to track down his laundry service. On his terms, he could clear a nickel on the dollar and still make out.”
“Weapon of choice?”
“So far it doesn’t look like he uses poison.”
“Now you’re pulling my leg.”
“How do you think he’s lasted this long? By the time we sort through the gunmen, garroters, and skullbenders and decide it isn’t a specialist, the case is as cold as Jimmy Hoffa’s dick. When it’s bullets he does lean toward revolvers. They don’t jam as often as a semi-auto and don’t leave shell casings behind. Not that he carries the piece more than a couple of blocks, but it slows us down.”
“Stab in the dark. Thirty-eight?”
“Uh-huh. I was wondering when you were going to get around to Toronto, but it’s slim. That’s their baby unless and until something breaks over here. We got the report on the old man you spotted outside the window. He didn’t see anything. He says. We don’t hold the monopoly on noninvolvement, or murder for hire, despite what you read in their brochures.”
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