Black and White Ball

by Loren D. Estleman

  * * *

  It swung around the corner in a blue streak. Macklin saw the shine on the pavement, like metal where the sun hit it, and reacted simultaneously with the driver of the sports car, touching the brake pedal lightly just to slow his momentum and flirting the wheel right even as the other let his own tires slide to his right. They missed each other by inches.

  There was no time to read the plate, but he knew the car was the blue Corvette Roger had bought in Florida; in that neighborhood, where Amos Walker lived, no other explanation applied. He was too late. Again.

  He’d wasted little time in Milford. One of the suitcases Laurie had packed when she’d left him was gone from the apartment, and so her with it. The next logical place was Walker’s house. Somehow, possibly with the help of the snowstorm, he’d spirited her away from under Roger’s nose.

  But Roger had come to the same conclusion.

  When Macklin parked in front of the house, he expected to find nothing inside but a corpse, and likely two.

  Footsteps in the snow led around to the back. This time there would be no need to hoist himself through the garage window. The window in the door to the enclosed porch was broken, the hook undone and the bolt securing the connecting door to the house disengaged. Just in case Walker was still breathing and armed, he went in holding the Ruger. The detective would be expecting Roger to come back and finish the job. He might, at that.

  He’d seen everything before, studied it in order to form a more thorough picture of Walker’s character, so there was no need to linger in any room. The house was deserted, with no signs of a struggle. He reversed his steps, leaving everything as it was, and when he was sure no one was waiting for him outside he stuck the revolver in his belt under the windbreaker.

  He knew where Roger was headed. He kicked the TrailBlazer to life and made a U-turn back toward the freeway. His tires spun briefly on snow that had melted and refrozen. He drove one-handed, dialing Walker’s office line with the other on his cell. It was busy.

  HER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  She awoke from deep in a dream that took a minute to shake. In it, her father was still alive and although she knew he’d died, she’d assumed the news hadn’t reached him yet and she was agonizing over whether to tell him or just enjoy his company while it lasted. When she sat up, looked around, and remembered where she was, she was equal parts relieved and in mourning all over again. She’d been too much of late in the care of men.

  It was a funny old building, square as a barn with architectural features that must have seemed quaint even at the time of construction. The walls were wavy where the lath was wearing through the plaster, or where the plaster had shrunk to the lath, so that she seemed to be living inside a square rib cage. The sun was melting the snow on the flat roof and she heard water gushing out of the downspouts shaped like gargoyles. The tailor’s shop Walker had set her up in retained much of the character of that profession. Smooth lacquered shelves covered much of one wall to a height of four feet, stripped of the bolts of silk and flannel and wool worsted that went into the making of suits. On another wall, a paper chart displayed a spread-eagled figure that reminded her of da Vinci’s naked anatomical man, but dressed in a patchwork pattern of gray, white, and black swatches of fill material, which in turn made her think of a stylized hog in a butcher’s shop with the loins, chops, rump, shoulder, and belly marked off by dotted lines and labeled in red ink. Motes of cotton lint swam in the blade of sunlight leaking around one edge of the windowshade, getting into her nostrils and making her sneeze.

  So which was she, the kept creature awaiting slaughter or the irritant in her keeper’s nose?

  She swung her feet to the floor, which was cold and made her shiver, groped with them for her slippers, and got up to unhook her warm quilted robe from the back of a wooden chair. Every lump in the fusty old mattress had left a sore spot where it had pressed against her muscles. She put on the robe, swinging it above her head and shoving both arms into the sleeves simultaneously. Peter had always been fascinated by that. He put on his shirt and coat one sleeve at a time. He couldn’t figure out how she did it the way she did, and she couldn’t explain it.

  That was the kind of thing you remembered most often. Not the killing or the running away from killers or personal knowledge of people who killed (or even for that matter of having killed). She couldn’t get away from those things even through separation and divorce, and yet what kept coming back to her was the way she put on her robe and her estranged husband’s reaction to it. Life was absurd, and death was ludicrous.

  The pistol Walker had given her lay atop the upended suitcase beside the copper desk lamp. Ugly. Not like an ungainly hunk of metal, but sleek and deadly; ugly that way, like too many of the men Peter associated with, the detective included. It sucked all the cheer out of the room.

  In the little water closet she used the toilet, a white porcelain water-guzzler that roared like a jet plane when she flushed it and practically sucked paint off the ceiling. Rosecranz had brought her a small square mirror made of polished tin, a man’s shaving accessory, with a wire bail that hung on a nail above the sink. She laughed when she saw her reflection: sheet-creases on one side of her face, her hair standing at attention on one side and sprawled flat on the other. A fright wig in a Halloween store: The Bed-Head From Hell.

  The sink had no counter, but she’d laid out her necessaries on the toilet tank. A few splashes of water and some cleansing cream smoothed out the wrinkles, but they were disturbingly similar to her mother’s; the time would come when they would not eradicate so easily. She raked out the rats with her big comb and restored her hair to shady respectability with a stiff brush and then a soft one. Her blow dryer would be more efficient, but she didn’t want to spend time washing her hair. After some hesitation over her cosmetics, she opted in favor of a light foundation, pale lip gloss, and a baby fingernail’s worth of mascara, no eye shadow. She wasn’t looking to seduce anyone.

  Not that Walker was in any way unworthy. The kind eyes in the mature face, drawn and tired but with an engaging bump in the nose and a wide mouth that fell into a grin without apparent effort, were reassuring, and he had a solid build; but he lived in Peter’s world, the one most people only heard about when they watched the news, with detachment and a kind of shuddery wonder, like at the reptile house in the zoo. She might not be able to avoid re-entering that cage, but she wouldn’t do it voluntarily.

  But she craved human contact. She changed into a winter walking suit and flats and went out to knock on Walker’s door.

  “Enter, Ziegler.”

  He was behind his desk, chewing, with a brown beer bottle in front of him and four more in a cardboard carton next to a grease-stained paper sack. The smell of cooked meat, sweet sauce, and sharp hops started the juices going in her stomach.

  “Laurie, please,” she said. “Ziegler’s starting to sound like a lion tamer. Is there any more where that came from?”

  He shoved the sack her direction. “Reuben okay? I had another choice, but unexpected company dropped in.”

  “Are you kidding? Sauerkraut was my first solid food. German farming stock, remember?”

  “Thanks. I bet myself you couldn’t go five minutes without reminiscing about the good old days in the south forty, plucking cows and milking chickens.”

  “What was the bet?”

  “Another beer.” He set aside his half-eaten sandwich, drew two bottles out of the carton with one hand, the way men did, and hoisted his eyebrows. She nodded, seating herself and reaching for the sack. She watched him remove the metal caps with an opener that looked like some kind of weapon. She was looking into the reptile house again.

  She ate sitting forward on the chair, her ankles crossed and the coarse brown napkin spread on her lap, holding the sandwich with both hands and laying it on the napkin in its wrapper when she drank. The beer was strong, almost like bitter ale. It paired with the corned beef and kraut like good red wine with prime ri
b.

  “Who was the visitor?”

  “Renaissance man. He goes by Stan Kopernick and chews glass at parties.” He picked up his sandwich.

  “From that I’d guess he’s either a crook or a cop.”

  “Could be both. After cars and empty lots, it’s Detroit’s chief export. On the other hand he could be straight as a plumb. It doesn’t make any difference, because you can be a bad cop and a good detective.”

  “Is he looking for Peter?”

  “Right now he’s looking for you.”

  She stopped eating. “Am I wanted?”

  “Billy the Kid was wanted. You’re sought in connection.”

  “In connection with…?”

  “Murder, what else?”

  She laid down the Reuben, as carefully as placing a bracelet in its case. She swallowed the lump blocking her throat. “Leroy?”

  “Not yours. One of your husband’s. That’s the prevailing theory. We’ve got a new trade agreement with Canada: The person of interest in the killing of a man named Lennert in return for a case of Moosehead and four dozen Tim Horton’s donuts.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Lennert.”

  “Neither did Macklin, probably, apart from what he learned from doing his homework. The M.O. matched his as well as it matched a couple of dozen others, but apparently he’s the one with the quickest access to the border.”

  “Why couldn’t it be a Canadian?”

  “Don’t say that where they can hear you. There aren’t any hit men in Canada. They have to smuggle them in like cartons of Marlboro.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me. They’ve got even more wide-open spaces than we do. Up there you can’t reach all your enemies with a left jab. You need firepower, and someone who knows how to direct it, and why can’t he be somebody who says ‘aboot’ instead of ‘about’? But just now Uncle Sam wants to keep all the friends he’s got. So Peter Macklin squiffed Guy Lennert and his ex-wife-in-waiting shinnied down a drainpipe soon after, so she must know something. That’s how attorneys general think, everything fitting tight with a snap, like Legos. Stonesmith isn’t buying it and neither is Kopernick; but until the president appoints one of them to head up the Justice Department, they’ve got their marching orders. Kopernick gave me twenty-four hours to hand you over.” He glanced up at the wall clock. “Minus fifteen minutes now. You needed the sleep.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  He finished eating and sat back cradling his second beer in both hands. “Not if I can wrap up Roger on that same schedule. He learned the business at his old man’s knee, by observation if not by tutoring. A good federal prosecutor—and we have one here, the same woman who sent up a mayor for twenty and change—can rig him for it, based on similarity of method. Enough anyway to give the Canadians cause for extradition.”

  “But if he’s innocent—”

  “Of what, this particular murder and guilty of a bunch more, not counting attempted extortion and intent to kill his stepmother, you?”

  The phone rang on his desk. He sat forward, put down the bottle, and looked at the caller ID. “Finish your lunch. You don’t want to greet your husband with sauerkraut on your breath.” He lifted the handset.

  * * *

  Peter wasn’t speaking loudly, he never did, but she recognized the voice if not the words. She knew it better than her own: not harsh, but not gentle either. It was quiet but electric. It always made her think of a powerful engine at idle.

  “It’s my business line,” Walker said. “That means it’s going to be busy from time to time. Yeah, she’s here. Even sitting ducks have wings, so we used ’em. If—”

  The voice cut across his. Walker sat up straight.

  “When?” He breathed, nodded. “Yeah, he’ll be coming this way now. Sure I’m armed; we both are. Where are y—”

  He hung up. “He was on a cell. Either it dropped him or he dropped me. Roger knows you cleared out of Milford. Macklin passed him driving away from my house in a blue Corvette.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “None at all.” He stood and felt for the short-barreled revolver in the clip holster behind his back. “We’re going to your room.”

  “Why mine?”

  “Because it’s the one with a fire escape.”

  ME

  TWENTY-NINE

  She didn’t give me the trouble I was prepared for; dithering over her personal effects or messing with her outfit. If I’d thought about it at all I wouldn’t have wasted the preparation. I’d seen enough to know better.

  She wrapped herself in the heavy coat, tugged on the beret without monkeying with the angle, and slid the Luger into the saddle pocket on the right side. By then I’d raised the shade and with some elbow grease and an old-man grunt wrenched the window loose of ten years of paint and six hours of snow and ice and threw up the sash. She slung a long leg over the sill and with the slight assistance of a hand on the small of her back stepped onto a fire escape that hadn’t been inspected since an honest man was in Congress. A woman in a million, a custom original and not another item off a conveyor belt. Guys like Macklin had all the luck, and none of the smarts necessary to capitalize on it.

  “Hang on tight,” I said, joining her on the landing. The heaps of snow had melted, hanging icicles off the edges as far as the first floor, but the iron rail was clammy and the grid underfoot as slick as soapy glass. Our breath smoked in the thin brittle air. The light ground breeze was stiff at forty feet above the sidewalk; it set the whole assemblage swaying, chafed my skin, and made my eyes water. My fingertips began to lose feeling, and we hadn’t descended a step.

  Something gonged off metal, throwing sparks that burned the back of my hand where I gripped the rail. The bark of the report came behind it like an afterthought. I went into a crouch, dragging Laurie down with me by the arm, and groped behind my hip for the Chief’s Special.

  “Keep coming, Walker. You, too, dear stepmom.”

  I edged an eye around the pipe frame enclosing the landing on three sides. I saw someone I knew and someone I’d never met. The stranger stood in the entrance of the alley that ran behind the building, using the other’s shoulder as a gun rest. Dr. Chuck, Detroit’s answer to Indiana Jones, was standing with his back strained into a C, with his narrow trunk thrust forward and a rictus of pain pulling his mouth all the way to the corners of his jaw. His stringy whiskers bristled straight forward from his tilted-back chin and his long black hair spilled over the other man’s shoulder behind him. They were about the same age, but the gunman’s neat haircut, clean-shaven face, and tailored peacoat assigned them to different worlds. His semi-automatic had a brushed finish and reflected no light.

  Chuck’s voice was as strained as his position. “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. I came—” A gust of air shot from his lungs in a gray jet. Roger Macklin—it could only be him; most of my enemies are closer to my generation—had jerked at the arm he’d twisted behind his hostage’s back.

  “—to bring me one of the prints you got from Barry,” I finished. “Does it do him any justice?”

  Roger turned the pistol, pressing the muzzle against Chuck’s temple. “Do what I said or I’ll blow his brains out his ear!”

  I couldn’t take good aim without making myself a clear target. I tightened my hold on Laurie’s arm, making her gasp, and fired at the ground. A piece of asphalt jumped up from the floor of the alley. I fired twice more; anything to bring out the reserves.

  Something new inserted itself. Roger crossed his ankles and dipped a knee, as in genuflection. Then he straightened, his gun pressed tight to Chuck’s temple. His wrist tensed.

  The shot made me jump. The ones you fire yourself seem to make almost no noise at all. The unexpected ones are as loud as Resurrection. I looked at Chuck. He was standing under his own power, no longer a captive. From the corner of my eye I saw Laurie Macklin’s profile, arm extended, the wicked shape of the German gun. She�
�d had a clearer shot than I did.

  I couldn’t tell where she’d clipped him, or if she’d drawn blood at all and had just taken a piece out of Roger’s coat. It was enough to startle him into releasing his grip. Chuck ran for the street, wobbling on his legs and holding his sore left arm with his right hand; ran for maximum yardage, but Roger had dropped him like a bad debt. The pistol rapped again. Laurie shuddered; I felt it clear through the arm I was holding. She sagged against me.

  I lowered her to the platform. However badly she was hit, she was better off there. I rose from my crouch and squeezed the trigger, aiming for the thickest part of Roger’s body.

  The report echoed—I thought. Anyway I heard two shots.

  The young killer took his time falling. He hung there for the season, trying to bend over backward with both arms spread-eagled and the square pistol hanging limp as a sock from his right hand, then his knees twisted and he twirled down to the pavement like a rope falling into a loose coil. His body humped once, then flattened exactly parallel with the ground.

  It wasn’t until he’d fallen out of my line of sight that I saw Detective Stan Kopernick standing on the sidewalk, big as thunder with his camel’s-hair coat spread wide and both hands wrapped around a black Army .45, a horse pistol that was entirely in proportion with the rest of him. On the other side of the street, a maroon SUV stood at the curb, its tailpipe leaking gray smoke thick as cream. I couldn’t make out the driver’s face, even though it was turned this way, and the vehicle was new to me, but I had a strong hunch who was driving.

  * * *

  She’d taken a slug in the thigh. The surgeons at Detroit Receiving, our go-to place for gunshot wounds, stabbings, and generic bloodshed of all kinds, said one centimeter to the left and it would have nicked the femoral artery and she’d have died on the fire escape before I could finish dialing 911. As it was they held her a week and prescribed six months of physical therapy.