Black and White Ball

by Loren D. Estleman

  He wouldn’t still be there. Why should he? Even blackmailers took time off. But I didn’t tarry. I flipped the cigarette into the gutter after one puff and mounted the steps to the front porch, where a row of bleeding hearts had bled out their lives in pots on the railing. Their shriveled blooms dangled over the sides like shrunken heads.

  The door wasn’t locked; that would have been redundant. It led into a foyer that no longer bore any resemblance to the ground floor of a private house. A partition had been built a few steps in, studded with labeled brass mailboxes and a circular mesh grid assigned to each. Another door, this one with a Judas window, separated me from the rest of the house.

  I’d rehearsed and discarded several cover stories during the drive there. If she was as cagy as Stonesmith let on, none would get me past the door. If she heard me out and turned me down flat, I could opt out. Provided this client let me.

  A card next to 310 read L. ZIEGLER. Macklin had told me to look for his wife under that name. I pushed the button.

  “Who is it, please?”

  A voice just above middle register, not more than the usual challenge in it.

  “Amos Walker, Ms. Ziegler. I’m a private investigator.”

  A brief pause.

  “Is it about my husband?”

  So much for the incognito. I wondered why she bothered.

  “I’m here on his behalf.”

  “Did Leo Dorfman hire you?”

  “No, I’m working directly for Macklin.”

  “Are you here to kill me?”

  She might have asked if I had a package to be signed for.

  I grinned at the intercom. “Why would a plumber pay someone else to fix the drain?”

  More dead air. “Hang on.”

  Something buzzed and the door went clunk. I swung it open and climbed a steep staircase between lime-green walls.

  There was a window at each end of the hall on her floor with the kind of view they sell in the Home Décor section at Target: barber poles, bike racks, front porches, and bandstands. All the ice cream trucks were in mothballs until April. I pushed the button next to 310 and looked at a .32 pistol.

  It was a Davis with a light wood handle and a brushed-steel finish and nested nicely in her right hand. It was a slim hand, the nails unpainted but neatly rounded. They belonged to a smallish ash-blonde with her hair cut at an angle with her jaw, cloudy blue eyes, and good skin. She looked younger than her picture; too young for me, and for that matter her husband. Her quilted robe matched her eyes. A pair of slightly darker open-toed slippers poked out from under the hem. Those nails too were tended and not painted. She had long slender feet with high arches, a feature often neglected by good-looking women.

  That she had tensile strength was something sensed rather than seen, and probably inherited, a kind of confidence in her bearing. It had nothing to do with the gun; most women, in fact, and as many men, are as nervous behind one as they are in front of it.

  “Unbutton your jacket,” she said.

  I did.

  “Turn around and lift the tail.”

  I did that. When I was facing her again she said, “Where’s your gun?”

  “Downstairs in the car. I’ve been to Milford before. I’ve never had to shoot my way out.”

  “I suppose you have an ID of some kind.”

  I unshipped the folder, taking my time. The little pistol stayed level and she’d given herself plenty of room to move. Her eyes stayed on my face for another beat, then flicked to the license and the sheriff’s star for a nanosecond.

  “Is that real?”

  “The license is. The badge cost me six box tops.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Wrong crowd. Too young. The badge means nothing. The county hands them out like party favors when you serve papers to people who don’t want them.”

  “Are you always this funny?”

  “Funnier, usually. Do you want to shoot me here or wait till you get home?”

  “I am home.”

  “Lady, you’re killing me. Whoops. Poor choice of words.”

  Something tugged at the corners of her lips. It didn’t stay long. She’d picked up that trick from her husband. Picked up more than that, probably. I’d never seen anyone more comfortable with death in her hand.

  She moved for the first time since she’d opened the door: Thumbed the safety catch on, slipped the pistol into a blue quilted pocket, stepped back to let me pass. As I did I caught a tinge of scented soap and warm skin. I seemed to be spending a lot of time lately interrupting women in the shower.

  It was a pleasant living room, lit from behind a soffit and by a winter sun as murky as dishwater. Red and yellow lozenges decorated a rug that fell two feet shy of the walls, leaving the floor exposed, eight-inch maple planks fitted as tight as when they were laid. There were books and magazines on an apostrophe-shaped coffee table with three legs. The walls were painted in semi-gloss eggshell, bouncing light evenly around the room.

  She sat in a space-age wing chair upholstered in red leather, crossing her legs. I perched on the edge of a sofa covered in something smooth and porous decorated with rectangles.

  “What’s on Peter’s mind?” she said. “I expected to hear directly from Dorfman before this.”

  “This doesn’t have to do with the divorce. I’m supposed to keep you alive until Macklin can defuse a threat against your life.” I told her the rest. Her expression didn’t change until I mentioned Macklin’s son.

  “Roger? We’ve never met. All I know about him is what Peter told me. He was pretty sure he’d gotten the boy free from mob influence.”

  “Maybe he was. Maybe he’s right. But Peter got himself free too—without changing his occupation.”

  “Roger’s a grown man now. I think he’s a year older than I am. Do you think he resents me?”

  “No more than a hundred grand’s worth, if it isn’t just a dodge. Your husband thinks he wants to squeeze him for abandoning his mother, then torture him by killing you.”

  “Some abandonment. My lawyer’s using the settlement Peter made on her as a basis for negotiation.”

  “You’re a cool customer, Mrs. Macklin. Most women would at least blink when told they’re a target. Most men, too. Some in Macklin’s own line of work.”

  “I’ve had practice.” She dandled a foot, her first sign of agitation. If that’s what it was. You can read anything into body language. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll arrange my own protection.”

  “Leroy.”

  “What?” But she’d heard me. Her face paled around the edges.

  “Something Macklin said to tell you, if you turned me down.”

  “Did he tell you what it means?”

  “No.”

  “Then it means nothing.” Her color had come back.

  “Okay.” I stood.

  Her gaze followed me up. “You don’t put up much of a fight.”

  “I don’t want the job. He didn’t give me the choice of refusing.”

  “How much was he offering?”

  “He mentioned an amount. I used it as a basis for negotiation.”

  She rose. “Thank you, Mr. Walker. I’m not a fool. I know when I’ve been warned.”

  “I can recommend some people who specialize in this kind of work.”

  “That’s kind of you, but I have a network of my own. It might surprise you the contacts one makes when she’s married to a man like Peter.”

  “I’ll leave this just in case.” I got out a card and laid it on the tripod table.

  “Incidentally, I’m Lauren Ziegler here. My maiden name is Ziegenthaler. I don’t enjoy entertaining the police.”

  “I thought it was something like that.”

  I saw something as I crossed in front of the window looking out on the street, or thought I did; a movement near the gazebo in the park. I didn’t turn my head to confirm it. It may be the work, but when I feel someone’s watching me I’m right more often than I
’m wrong.

  And I knew then this wasn’t going to be a job I could get fired from so easily.

  TWELVE

  I didn’t glance toward the park on my way back to the car. I knew what I’d seen, and even more what I’d felt, and there was everything to lose by spreading it around.

  I drove aimlessly, admiring the Victorian and Edwardian houses in the neighborhood, the frozen American flags hanging as stiff as galvanized sheets from their staffs, counting the bicycles and basketball hoops. A nice community, on the surface. In ancient times and in other places the city fathers had erected walls around them to keep things that way.

  When I got tired of that I ate a sandwich in a tavern in the little downtown area, a place with pewter steins on a shelf above the bar, drank two beers, and went back to the car to light a cigarette. Then I drove back to the park, this time along the street on the other side. The slots were deserted that time of day at that time of year, and I had my choice. I finished smoking and ditched the butt when I got out.

  The grass was still green; the light snow covering had insulated it from the cold without killing it, but it crunched underfoot like the fake kind they put in Easter baskets. A set of footprints showed clearly going in the opposite direction from mine. I’m no Daniel Boone, but the temperature was climbing above freezing so they couldn’t have been there more than a few minutes, and the same tracks, roughly a man’s size ten, had been made in the paper-thin layer of frost that slicked the wooden planks that made up the floor of the gazebo.

  The man who belonged to them had stood for a while in front of the railing across from the window I’d passed in front of; he’d changed positions a few times, overlapping his own prints, before turning and leaving.

  That was as much as I could get. Whether he’d just looked or took time to take some more pictures—possibly of me—I could only guess. I had to guess he’d brought his camera, but it didn’t matter either way. I’d been made, or would be soon.

  Well, it had to happen sometime. An invisible bodyguard isn’t much of a deterrent. I’d just hoped, if the job came about, I’d be settled in and ready before I got famous. Now I’d run out of time.

  I was still employed, whether Laurie Macklin approved or not.

  The Chief’s Special rode heavy next to my right kidney. It wouldn’t be back in the safe or in its other place in the niche under the glove compartment for a while. Apart from the change of clothes and indestructible provisions I keep in the car for emergencies, it was as much luggage as I’d had the opportunity to pack.

  He’d go straight to Macklin, his son or whoever he was if not him, probably upping the ante, and when that didn’t work he’d be back here to prove he wasn’t out just for fun. Whatever I thought of professional killers, or for that matter the women who put up with them, standing pat wasn’t an option.

  I left the car where it was, crossed through the park on foot, and buzzed 310 again from the foyer.

  She was expecting me. Probably she’d seen me from her window coming across the street. “What now?”

  I wasn’t alone. A woman with the face of a born widow, sour and suspicious, was unlocking the mailbox next to hers. Her cloth coat smelled like onions. The ear nearest me was cocked forward like a German shepherd’s.

  “Another minute of your time,” I said into the speaker.

  “What difference would another minute make?”

  “Maybe none. Maybe plenty.”

  “Come ahead, then.”

  This time I didn’t see the pistol, but her right hand rested in the pocket of the blue robe. She had the door open just wide enough for me to see that.

  I said, “I think you’d better tell me about Leroy.”

  HIM

  THIRTEEN

  The important thing to remember was not to treat the mark different from all the others.

  “Target practice. That’s all they are.”

  The man who’d taught him that—who’d taught him everything he knew that he hadn’t learned from experience—was long dead, by his own protégé’s hand, but the proof of his words was in the way he’d died. In the end, Macklin’s mentor was target practice, nothing more. Anger, anguish, sorrow, pride, all the things that came with betrayal, were unnecessary distractions. Macklin had disposed of him like tissue.

  He assembled a file as he had with all the others, from family albums, medical reports, school yearbooks—

  Roger’s first tooth.

  He peeled it from the adhesive Donna had used all those years ago to add it to the scrapbook, rolled the jagged little thing between thumb and forefinger and stuck it back down. It was just an exercise, repeated many times, and each time it was connected to a dead man. He placed little store in psychic vibrations. Personal contact brought him that much closer to the target.

  Seated in the Warren living room with the blinds drawn, he paged through the big three-ring binder, removing those items he considered useful and laying them side by side on the coffee table: Roger’s kindergarten photo, smiling with lips pressed tight in the garish cowboy shirt his mother had picked out for the all-important session; a snap of a somewhat sullen adolescent sorting through a handful of pebbles on the shore of Lake Superior; a graduating high-school senior wearing his first suit and tie, good-looking enough but not as handsome as his smug expression seemed to announce. A grainy telephoto shot, this time in a different suit and dark glasses, hands folded at his waist at his mother’s graveside. A contact had smuggled that one out of the MacNamara Federal Building in Detroit.

  The rest—including the medical file, which included only information gathered during the marriage—had come to him in a thick padded envelope ten days after Donna’s funeral, by way of the same legal firm she’d retained to represent her in the divorce. There had been no note included other than a letter typed on the firm’s stationery, explaining their late client had made arrangements to send the material to him upon her death.

  There would be no sentimentality involved. It was her way of reminding him of what he’d thrown away, grinding guilt in with her heel. It said a good deal about her, about her inability to let go of a grudge, and of her lack of understanding of the man with whom she’d spent seventeen years of her life. He’d put aside any regrets in the relief of their parting at last, and with so few ramifications; her attorney, in his greed to own a substantial part of the money Macklin had made from fulfilling mortal contracts, had neglected to report what his client had told him to the police. In the end, all it had cost was money. Replacing it had been no challenge. His services were always in demand.

  True, he’d still felt some responsibility for Roger, and when he learned that Macklin’s former employers had chosen his son to fill his vacancy (their faith in genetics was almost touching), he’d risked death to turn him from that path. That settled—or so he’d hoped—he’d ignored his own instincts and attended Donna’s burial, exposing himself to police and FBI photographers and expanding his official file. When Roger responded by trying to knock him down, Macklin knew he’d discharged all his responsibilities, with interest.

  Not because of anger. He’d learned early to keep uncontrollable emotions in a kind of lock box. And certainly not because of pain. However adept his son was with edged and percussion weapons, his idea of hand-to-hand combat was a John Wayne–style roundhouse right at an obliging chin. Macklin had seen it coming like a slow-moving truck. He could have ducked it entirely, let the young fool stumble and fall on his face in front of an audience of mourners, but out of some lingering sense of—what, paternal debt? More likely it was to avoid a long, drawn-out campaign of unresolved revenge—he’d let the blow glance along his jaw, leaving a colorful bruise but no real discomfort. It gave satisfaction to the boy and closure to the man.

  Or so he’d thought.

  If Macklin had a professional failing, it was that he assumed everyone who thrived in his occupation avoided human feelings like the flu. When he learned through the grapevine that Roger had resumed doing we
t work, he assumed that time and experience had taught him to leave things as they lay beside his mother’s plot and get on with business.

  Macklin’s own contacts in law enforcement had been of the same opinion. Their superiors had dared to hope that Roger would now “turn” and inform on his father. Cops on the beat and agents in the field had picked him up and used all their psychology, but were neither disappointed nor surprised when he laughed in their faces. But when the transcripts reached Macklin, he read between the lines and knew nothing had changed.

  When Laurie told him that Roger had called asking after Peter, and that she’d said they were separating and seeking a divorce, he’d suspected the worst.

  Which was what had happened.

  Their decision to end the marriage was mutual, and far from rancorous. Macklin’s courtship intentions of leaving the Life behind him had failed; it would not leave him. He hadn’t expected her to live with that truth. Who would, having the ability to choose? He did not. And he was grateful for the warning, although he wished she’d been more circumspect about their situation.

  But it would have been unreasonable to expect otherwise. She hadn’t had his practice in the art of dissembling, or for that matter the need to study. He’d dug this hole and now it was up to him to get her out of it.

  After the email came demanding ransom in return for sparing her, he’d wasted time ticking through his list of enemies. Most he’d killed, which was what you did with enemies rather than collect them like autographs. Some were in prison, and would be until they left in boxes or in wheelchairs with oxygen tanks onboard. While that wouldn’t have stopped them from hiring out the work, he rejected that explanation.