I looked at the ID: BLOCKED CALL. Barry left fewer tracks than a seaplane.
“Cremation service,” I said, setting the sack of sandwiches between him and the screen. “You’ll be getting them soon enough.”
“Waste of energy. My old man worked ten years with the fire department. Burned to death in an arson fire during the riots. One pile of ashes in the family plot is more than enough.”
We sat. I got the brass knuckles I used for an opener out of a drawer, pried the tops off two bottles, and slid one his way.
“Here’s to crime. I’d be out of a job otherwise.” Holding the bottle by the neck between thumb and finger, he tilted it and dumped half the contents down his throat. He had a delicate belch for a big man. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand he said, “I didn’t think you could top that deal on I-seventy-five. I nearly tanked your pet PhD for obstruction when we pulled him over in your car. A bust like that could get me some ink in the student paper at Wayne State. They’d be calling me Professor down at Thirteen Hundred.”
Dr. Chuck hadn’t told me about that, but I’d been in a hurry to get back to Milford. “He’s an amateur Indiana Jones, unlocking the mysteries of old Detroit. I wasn’t using it, so I thought it might help him get around to more explorations.”
“A pain in the ass is what he is, him and his whole tribe. Most of them places are posted. Between the scrap rats and the urban explorers, B-and-E’s getting to look like the penny arcade. What were you using for wheels while he was out joyriding in that bucket of rust? Nobody’s seen you here or at your crib in days.”
“You mean you and your partner haven’t. We’ve established I can scrape you off my heel any time I take the whim.”
The point was to get him sore enough to forget all about smelling Laurie Macklin’s perfume; but cops don’t get mad the way you and I do. They’ve been called coppers and flatfeet and pigs and worse, and all it does is make them yawn. If you really want to know what gets their whiskers, take a swing at one. It’ll make you a dash-cam celebrity overnight.
He stirred finally, reaching for the sack on the desk. “What the hell, I got four weeks. Corned beef, you said?”
“Reuben, actually.”
“Better do meatball. I like Kraut but it don’t like my gut.” He stuck a paw inside the sack and lifted out one of the wrapped sandwiches. “You’re not hungry?”
I shook my head and drank beer. “It’s a little early for me. I’ve got a string of calls to make and might not get the chance to go out later.”
“Christmas cards, you said.”
“That too. Also I haven’t changed the oil in my electric razor since Labor Day.”
“Take my advice. Don’t eat Hockeytown meatballs cold. They squash the leftovers and use ’em for pucks.” He buried his face in the sandwich, catching the dripping sauce in the wrapper. The small white cicatrix on his chin twitched as he chewed. It fascinated me. “The lady lieutenant’s getting impatient. Seems the brass in Ottawa is cranking up the heat on the U.S. State Department about an American lifetaker breaching the borders. The State Department’s cranking up the heat on the U.S. Attorney General, the AG’s cranking up the heat on the FBI, and as you know the DPD’s been wearing the feds like a coat since all them rape kits went past their sell-by date a few years back.”
“I thought they’d closed that investigation.”
“Just pulled the door to. Macklin’s an old Combination man, made in Detroit like cars used to be, and that Lennert deal up north had him all over it. Just between you, me, and this here sandwich, Stonesmith dropped the ball when she pulled the surveillance from his soon-to-be ex; thought the divorce took her off the A-list. When she dusted soon after, that was a red flag. Could be coincidence, but I’ve swung court-ordered search warrants on less than that. If she’s gone back to him, there’s a harboring rap we might use to get her to spill what she knows, and if she didn’t, we still want to talk to her, because she cleared out of Southfield in a hurry and that’s probable cause to can her as a material witness. These clam babies tend to open up when they get a whiff of the air down at County.”
I turned my bottle around in the permanent ring on the desk. “Hear, hear, Detective. If you’re practicing this speech on me and my opinion counts.”
“I ain’t one of your urban explorer pals. I don’t come to this dump to admire the crown moldings. You pulled a boner when you tapped the lieutenant for dope on Macklin. That put you into the orbit of an international homicide investigation. Personally I don’t give a rat’s ass if we extradite him to them hosers in Ontario. They don’t reciprocate when a death-penalty state asks for the same thing, on account of they think everybody should have a crack at old age, even a baby-killer. What I think doesn’t blow up anybody’s skirt downtown. Stonesmith says fetch, I fetch.”
He took two more bites, obliterating two-thirds of the sandwich, mopped his lips with a brown paper napkin, crumpled the sandwich inside the paper, and stood, dumping it and the napkin back into the sack. He glanced at the electric wall clock that had come with the office. “It’s ten A.M. You got till ten A.M. tomorrow to produce Laurie Macklin or provide us with a current address. If you do that and she hasn’t pulled another dust job, you won’t have to take her place in the eight-by-ten. They don’t serve deli in the cafeteria. What the chefs do to that roadkill venison the sheriffs give out makes Spam seem like prime rib.”
I grinned at him. “Do you rehearse this stuff or make it up on the fly? I ask because the Rotary Club invites me to its annual dinner every year and I’m running out of excuses not to share all my trade secrets over the sherbet. I can refer them to you.”
Still nothing. He was as easy to rile as a loaf of bread. “Don’t waste your time trying to duck the leash again. As of this morning we’re double-teaming you on all three shifts. Two cars apiece, no waiting. You’re an expensive guy to have around.”
I followed him out at a safe distance. Watching through the crack in the hall door I thought he paused outside the former tailor’s shop before taking the stairs. I couldn’t tell if he’d sniffed the air and I didn’t know if it was enough to swing a court-ordered search warrant.
The phone was ringing when I pulled my head back in.
“Why the delay?” Barry asked, as soon as I picked up. “I thought you wanted this pronto.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world now. I just found out I’m the grand marshal in a police parade.”
“Stonesmith?”
“Her pet Neanderthal.”
“Kopernick? I heard he’d transferred. Don’t underestimate the species. They had bigger brains than us. So is it a wash?”
“You got the picture?”
“A good one. He took out a passport, and these days it has to be in your name. I guess he’s outsourcing mayhem abroad.”
I told him as much about the case as I could afford. Barry’s goodwill goes only so far before you have to cough up something he can play with. “He’s been hanging around Milford. I wanted to circulate the picture there, get a line on his migratory pattern, but I can’t do that now without an official escort.”
“Just you? The town isn’t that small. It would take a week.”
“I just thought of something. You going to be around for a while?”
“I’m always around, pal.” He clicked off.
I pushed down the plunger and made a call. The dial tone purred four times. I was getting jumpy when Dr. Chuck came on.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I was up to my elbows in some interesting trash in Hudson’s basement. That’s all that’s left of the place.”
“How many of you are there?”
“That I know personally? Eight or ten, counting me. What’s up?”
I told him.
“Milford? Where’s that?”
I told him that, too.
“I don’t know. Not much pickings in those little burgs.”
“My client’s got deep pockets. I can finance a month’s exped
ition here in town.”
He liked that fine. I told him to stand by and called Barry back. “Can you run off ten prints of that photo?”
“As many as you need. I don’t have to go to Photo Shack.”
I gave him the rest and got the urban explorer back on the line. He repeated Barry’s address and said he’d round up his crew. When we were finished I dragged over the sack and unwrapped the meatball sandwich while it was still warm. I was suddenly hungry.
THEM
TWENTY-SEVEN
Change of plans.
There would be no payoff to worsen the sting. New dynamic. Laurie’s murder would have to take place without Macklin bearing witness.
Three different parties came out of the house while Roger was watching, spaced ten to twenty minutes apart. One was the wrong age, two the wrong sex. The last, a coot with dirty gray hair coiling out from under his stocking cap, galoshes unbuckled and jingling, slopped around behind the building, came out with a snow shovel, and started in on one of the piles in the little lot marked RESIDENTS ONLY. Roger decided to check inside.
There was a buzzer in the shallow foyer. None of the slips next to the buttons said Laurie Macklin; but he’d already connected her to L. Ziegler in 310.
He tried a couple of buttons, but no one buzzed back. The lock was a slip latch; a common design flaw in automatic locks. He sneezed it open with a piece of plastic he carried in his wallet.
The same dodge got him inside 310. There were clothes hanging in the closet, with empty spaces on the rod; that was inconclusive. On the floor stood two suitcases, a large and a medium, with a gap between them, where a third bag might have stood that was smaller yet, an overnighter.
Next he’d checked the bathroom. More spaces among the bottles on the counter, no toothbrush or toothpaste in the medicine cabinet.
Five minutes after letting himself in he’d come galloping downstairs and didn’t slow down until he was behind the wheel. There would be no fresh picture to tack to his final ransom demand. Satisfaction would have to come with shedding blood only.
“Walker.” It came out between his teeth as he stuck his key in the ignition.
But he started up gently and didn’t spin rubber peeling away from the curb. With the place so quiet under its fall of snow, any show of haste on the street would draw too much fire. At the entrance to I-96 he waited, fingers drumming the wheel, while a double-bottom semi made its wide sloppy swing onto the ramp coming from the other direction, then fell in behind, passing it across the V where the acceleration lane merged with the freeway. By then there’d been enough traffic to warm the asphalt, melting the snow and ice, and he drove east toward Detroit at the customary ten miles above the limit. But on Sunday he had enough room between himself and the cars up ahead to free the magnetic box that held his High Standard from under the passenger seat and switch to the .44 barrel one-handed.
* * *
Macklin was watching the weather reports on TV when the phone rang in his condo in Warren. No greetings were exchanged, but he recognized the voice of his fat FBI contact.
“Dade County, Florida. He registered it under his own name. Two thousand thirteen Corvette, blue in color.”
What else would it be blue in? Macklin thought, writing down the registration number. He hung up without having said a word.
He’d left the TrailBlazer in the private carport he’d paid for, but enough snow had drifted in to cover the windshield. He started it up and switched on the defroster, using the washer-wipers to clear away the rest.
He’d memorized the address he’d been given a few days earlier. It belonged to a quonset-like truss building in Belleville, close enough to Detroit Metropolitan Airport for jetliners to crisscross the sky above it with white trails, turning it into a tic-tac-toe board. A nearly constant roar of air traffic shook its metal walls as planes took off in a convict line; the blizzard had grounded them and they were playing catch-up. It was painted snot-green, with a wooden sign running the width of the frontage facing the road, reading ACE’S BODY SHOP. Another sign, in faded red Sharpie on tacked-up white foamboard, said HONK TO ENTER. He braked in front of a garage door with frosted glass panes and did as directed.
After a moment something clunked, ice broke with a pop, and the door rose slowly as smoke, on chains and rollers that clanked and clattered loud enough to drown out the air traffic directly overhead. Inside, a square scow of a Cadillac Eldorado thirty years old with a dull gold finish perched on a lift and a showroom-quality Dodge Viper with easily eight coats of hand-polished paint—the kind that changed color according to the light—was parked on rubber pads on the concrete floor on the other side. There was just room enough to ease the TrailBlazer between them and get out.
The place smelled of grease, steel tools, and kerosene from a heating stove the size of a refrigerator venting smoke outside through a pipe. The air was warm. A dark dumpy man, young-old, in stained Carhartt coveralls and a flat-topped once-white cotton beanie like house-painters wore, lowered the door at the touch of a button. Coveralls and the man inside them were indescribably filthy. He wiped his hands on an equally filthy rag, with no apparent effect on his black-stained fingers, and switched off a boombox radio wrapped in protective silver duct tape in the middle of a hoarse screaming aria from the ghetto. He’d had it cranked up loud enough to be heard above the soaring jets, and after that the noise of the turbines was almost pleasant.
“Ace?” Macklin asked.
“There ain’t one. But ‘Schuyler’s Body Shop’ don’t track. You Peters?”
“Yeah.”
“Who sent you, Billings?”
“There ain’t one.” No irony rang in his tone. “Dorfman.”
“’Kay. I got to be careful. One more drop and they carry me out of the pen feet foremost.”
Macklin inclined his head toward the Viper. “Chop shop?”
“Strictly up-and-up. What’d I say? Two rackets makes twice as many ways to take a fall.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
Schuyler stuffed the rag in a hip pocket and rolled a red-enamel tool cart away from the wall next to a workbench littered with tailpipes and things. He grunted with the effort; the drawers were plainly loaded down with hardware. “ATF spooks all got bad backs,” he explained.
This exposed a metal heat register that didn’t belong in a building with a freestanding stove. The man knelt, took hold of it with both hands, and lifted it free. From the space between walls he drew a rusty green toolbox and banged it to the floor.
His customer studied the revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, and suppressers in the box, then selected a Ruger New Model .357 Magnum, the Blackhawk, and a box of shells. Schuyler directed him to test-fire it into a seat cushion from a 1950 Oldsmobile, torn and leaking horsehair. Macklin timed it to coincide with a jet taking off directly above the roof. He pronounced the trigger pull satisfactory and the sight straight. This time there was no dickering; he hadn’t time. He paid for the weapon and left, bound north to I-96 and then west toward Milford.
The private cop lived in a one-story dump on the Detroit side of Hamtramck, square except for an attached garage that had probably been added since it was built sometime during the Industrial Revolution. With fresh snow heaped all around and on the roof, all it lacked was gingerbread. A small Christmas tree stood unlit on a table in a front window.
Roger parked around the corner, lopsided on a granulated pile pushed up by a city plow, and made his way back on foot, the High Standard tucked in the reinforced pocket he’d had built into his peacoat. No light showed through any of the windows, but it was a sunny day. He peered through a garage window, cupping his hands around his eyes. No car was parked inside.
He went around to the narrow backyard, which faced the blind wall of a house fronting on the next street over. This place was nearly identical to Walker’s, but no garage. There was no car in the driveway it shared with its neighbor next door. The drive had been shoveled. Most likely everyone w
as at church; it was that kind of neighborhood.
The snow soaked his trousers as far as his calves, but he waded through it, mounted a step, peered through the small square single-paned window in a door to what looked like a shallow back porch that had been walled in and roofed to shelter an automatic washer and dryer, another afterthought. The door rattled loosely when he tugged on the knob. It would be fastened with a hook, but a strip of half-round dowel prevented him from sliding his piece of plastic through the seam and lifting it out of the eye. He looked around, drew his pistol, pushed in the pane with an elbow, crooked his free arm inside, found the hook, and freed it.
The unheated back room was musty-smelling, with an underlay of detergent and bleach. A dead bolt secured the door to the house. He was less handy with a set of picks than with his plastic strip, but after five minutes and curses beneath his breath the two times he dropped one of the tools the bolt slid into its socket with a chunk.
There’d been noise, so he exploded through the door, wheeling right and left gripping the High Standard in both hands. A little linoleum-paved kitchen and breakfast nook yawned back, empty.
The same with a living room, decorated once by someone but that had the air of a place where no one had actually looked at the wall art and knickknacks in years. Freestanding bookshelves, a couple of dirty ashtrays, a TV and cable box, the midget tree hung with cheap ornaments, an overstuffed chair and sofa, side table ringed all over on top like the Olympic flag, and in the air a tired blend of stale cigarettes and old cooking odors from the kitchen.
In the little bedroom an unmade bed, more books, and a plain dresser. He opened a closet with two suits hanging inside and a pair of brown shoes. His man would be wearing the black. Roger left the drawers alone. Walker and Laurie wouldn’t be hiding in the drawers.
He let himself out the way he’d come, holding the pistol down behind his hip in case anyone was looking. No one was.
He had one more place to check.
Cranking the ’Vette around the corner onto Joseph Campau, Hamtramck’s main stem, he hit a patch of ice and slued across the dividing line, barely missing the fender of a maroon TrailBlazer coming his way in the lane opposite, causing the driver to brake and cheat the other direction; but Roger turned into the skid without braking, corrected his course, and drove on, not looking back.
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