Black and White Ball

by Loren D. Estleman

  She was sitting up in a vinyl recliner when I came to visit, in a thin cotton flower-print gown with a sponge-rubber blanket spread over her knees. She wore no makeup, but her face looked fresh and her hair was arranged simply but neatly.

  “I guess my bathing-suit days are over,” she said.

  “Paint over it, or get a tattoo. It could be worse. I’ve got the same hole in the same place, and that was a lot more serious.”

  She smiled. “What is it about having a procedure that makes everyone want to compare it to theirs?”

  I gave her a stuffed giraffe from the gift shop. “I wanted something more aggressive, but they were out of tigers. Flowers are for funerals. I figured you’d had your fill of both.”

  She wrapped her arms around the giraffe and hugged it to her chest. “So who killed Roger, you or Kopernick?” Not me, her face seemed to plead.

  “It was almost a dead heat. The M.E. dug a thirty-eight out of his liver and a forty-five from the pericardial sac surrounding his heart. Either way he was dead, but the bigger slug won the race. That makes eight for him.”

  “Still. You killed him if he didn’t.”

  “You could put it that way, yes.”

  “I guess you get used to it.”

  “Sure. After ten years it doesn’t wake you up more than six times a night.”

  Her face had grown less tight when I’d tagged the cop for Roger’s death, but her eyes were opaque. I read what was behind that, and was grateful for it. I hadn’t known what to do with the rest of the information. “They found something else. His heart was already damaged, from some old illness. You remember he staggered. Any way you look at it he was dead where he stood.

  “Your shot split a button on his coat,” I added. “You made Annie Oakley look like Mr. Magoo.”

  The line softened a little, no more. I’d have to show her the button to convince her, and then she’d suspect I faked it.

  “How’d Kopernick get there so fast?” she asked. “He couldn’t have heard the shots all the way from downtown and gotten there in that time.”

  “Oh, that. He sent you a souvenir. I’m playing Santa Claus today. It’s not as pleasant to hold as a stuffed toy.” I slid a stiff fold of paper from my inside breast pocket, snapped it open, and laid it in her lap.

  She picked it up and looked at the Biblical terminology spelled out in Tudor script. “The only Latin I know is pig.”

  “It’s a warrant authorizing Kopernick to search the tailor’s shop in regard to a person of interest in a homicide investigation: You. I’d consider changing my brand of perfume. You left a trail all the way from your house in Southfield. Barry Stackpole warned me about the cranial capacity of Neanderthal Man. He didn’t say he had the nose of a bloodhound. Anyway he was on his way to serve it when the fireworks started.”

  “Am I under arrest? Is there a police guard outside my door?”

  “He gave it to me as a keepsake. Canada’s satisfied Roger killed Lennert: He operated the same as his father, and the State Department’s happy no one has to make travel arrangements for him. I doubt Kopernick bought it, but he’s got enough on his plate here at home: seven drive-by shootings just this past weekend, a holiday season best. The way he sees it, your ex-husband-elect will wade through mud one time too many and get himself stuck.”

  “Someone paid to have Lennert killed.”

  “Remote-control killers are slippery as hell. In all the time they’ve been in business, the law’s nabbed only two, and that was seventy years apart. With the only official witness chilling in the Wayne County Morgue, the record stands. It’d be awkward to bring forth another witness under the circumstances. Imagine the embarrassment if Macklin were to show up and turn state’s evidence.”

  “So I can go home?”

  “I don’t see why not, when the docs say it’s okay. I’ll close out my room in Milford and tell Ralph the Realtor to expect a call from you. I can pack the things you left in my building and send them on.”

  “You can, but you won’t. A girl has to have some secrets.”

  I moved a shoulder. I wanted out of there. The place had that nothing smell of a modern hospital: no alcohol or carbolic or sour effluvia of the human condition. When the odor alarm sounded, an army of orderlies and candy-stripers charged through with spray bottles, wet-vacs, and kitty litter, with an ionizer chaser. It wasn’t of this earth.

  “How’s Rosecranz?” she asked.

  “Swell. He’s just glad we didn’t shoot up his foyer.” I watched her. “He been in?”

  She knew I wasn’t talking about Rosecranz. She shook her head.

  “I wouldn’t blame him,” I said. “For that. There’s a whole shift at Thirteen Hundred that does nothing all day but review surveillance tapes from Receiving. Every inch of footage Macklin shows up on is an inch closer to the house of doors. Every time they see him they get madder and madder. Someday mad enough to hang something on him under the heading One Size Fits All.”

  “He stands for everything you hate. Why did you take the job? I don’t believe for a minute you were afraid he’d kill you if you refused.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that. At my age you’ve gotten used to breathing.”

  “You did it for me. To protect me. Why else would you leave a place where you were safe and go out on the hunt for the man who wanted me dead?”

  “Safe.” I laughed. “What’s that?”

  Outside the window, snow sifted down fine as flour. They were predicting a white Christmas for the first time in years. I buttoned my coat and turned toward the door.

  “Do you think we should have hooked up?” she said. “You and me?”

  “You and I,” I corrected. “Don’t talk like a hick. And no. Apart from the fact that you weren’t born when I hung out my shingle—with all that entails—sooner or later we’d have fallen out over my career choice, or my working hours, or your clumsy grammar. Find yourself a farm boy with an inheritance, preferably one whose parents are terminal. Grow corn instead of corpses. When you see a hired killer or a private cop—you can spot them by now, I’m sure—cross the street. I’ll put that on a sampler and send it to you for a wedding present.”

  THIRTY

  It was coming on half-past eleven on a Tuesday morning, too late for breakfast and too early to drink. So I bought a hip-pocket bottle of Bushmills from a drugstore and put in at a greaseburger palace to fill the vacuum the hospital had left in my nasal passages. It was one of those places where they took your name and when your order was ready and if the traffic wasn’t heavy they brought it to your table. I’d drawn coffee from the machine and was stirring in a slug of Irish when a kid came by with my basket of cholesterol. He wore a clip-on necktie with the ends tucked under his apron. That made him the boss.

  “You can’t drink that here, mister. Not in the open. We don’t have a license.”

  I pointed my chin at the front window. “What’s that across the street?”

  “An empty building.”

  “Look again.”

  “Okay, a blind pig.”

  “Right. It doesn’t open up until the legitimate joints close; and then, boy, it’s open wide. Which one do you think the cops will bust first at election time?”

  He let the basket drop six inches and went back behind the counter. That was his knockout blow.

  I ate without tasting and drank without raising so much as a buzz. It felt like I’d been neutered in some way. I bussed my table, flipped a mental coin between office and home and drove to the office.

  This time there were a couple of letters among the junk under the slot. I carried them to the desk and was slitting one of the envelopes when the door to the waiting room opened and closed with a hiss of air leaking from the pneumatic tube. I’d forgotten to switch on the buzzer. I told the shadow on the other side of the opaque glass to come in.

  I didn’t recognize him at first. He’d scraped the thistle off his chin, caught his hair into a ponytail, and changed from his Dumpster
-diver uniform into a clean WSU sweatshirt and a pair of jeans without a rip in them. No overcoat; millennials won’t have ’em.

  “Not enough for the orals,” I said. “Not quite. You need a jacket with patches on the elbows and a bulldog pipe.”

  Dr. Chuck’s laugh was shaky. He was still going through the aftershock. “Even the dean dresses this way. You’re behind the times, Mr. Walker.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The rest of the time I’m behind the eight-ball.”

  His brow puckered. What I’d said meant as much to him as cuneiform; but he let it slide.

  “You might as well know I finish what I start, even if it’s too late.” He took a four-by-six manila envelope folded up the middle from a back pocket and laid it on the desk.

  I put the knife back to work and pulled out a sheet printed on glossy computer photo stock. Roger Macklin’s gray-blue eyes looked dead in the blowup from a passport shot. In person they’d danced with psychopathic light. I put it down, swiveled, opened the safe, and took a small brick of cash out of the strong box.

  “No, no! You don’t owe me a thing. It was a misdeal.”

  I finished counting, put back some of the bills, and pushed the rest his way. “You came through, you and your fellow explorers. If he’d come at our flanks instead of launching a frontal assault, I might not have known who he was until it was too late. At the very least you earned combat pay. Sorry I dragged you into it.”

  “I’m not. It made me a hero with my friends, and gave me an end for my thesis. Next time you’ll see me I’ll be wearing that jacket and smoking that pipe.”

  “Just don’t jump into any basements without looking first.” I jerked my chin at the stack of cash. He lifted his shoulders, twisted his head this way and that on his neck, picked it up, and folded it into the pocket he’d taken the envelope from.

  “You’ve got my number for next time,” he said.

  I grinned at him. If I told him I’d thrown it away he’d just give it to me again.

  * * *

  I read both letters twice and didn’t retain a line; I had only the vaguest picture of the acquaintances who’d sent them. I poked them back into their envelopes, locked up the rest of Macklin’s retainer, and closed up.

  My wipers carved wedges in the snowfall and went back each time for a fresh load. Most of the cars I met had their lights on, some not. There’s a rumor going around town that using them speeds up the process of depreciation. I gave them plenty of distance. I was in no hurry. I was just going home to an empty space.

  The house was getting shabby. It had taken a few days and nights under another roof to see that. I’d thought it was comfortably lived-in, no showplace but good for a friendly game of bridge, if I played and if I had three friends. I should hire a decorator, preferably one who pranced a little and knew sixteen shades of white by their first names. I put that at the top of the list after the phone bill and an oil change and my dead molar. And making it to Easter with the lights on.

  For what it was, that house, it was me: some books, old snapshots in drawers, an heirloom clock, high school junk, a college diploma, my army discharge, and a certificate of marriage that had expired ahead of the Soviet Union. Not much; just the sum total of me.

  So I didn’t welcome the addition of an uninvited party to my living room.

  It was still snowing briskly and the sun had retired behind a ceiling as dark as a killer’s heart. The room was dim, but I spotted a shadow in my one-and-only easy chair that didn’t belong there when someone wasn’t sitting in it. I reached behind my back, in the movement remembering I wasn’t carrying now. I seldom need to shoot my way into my own house.

  Clothing rustled. The floor lamp next to the chair came on. Peter Macklin lowered his hand to his lap next to its mate. There was no weapon in either one. He wore the leather windbreaker, slacks, plain shoes, a little darkened from walking through snow. I’d never seen him wearing anything different.

  “I think I owe you something,” he said.

  “Not a cent. That last installment more than covered the rent on the room in Milford and my rate for the extra couple of days. We’re square. I wouldn’t know what to do with that hundred grand you offered.”

  He knew that for a lie, but he didn’t call me on it. Even a cold fish like him didn’t go around asking to be insulted.

  “I see it differently,” he said. “You did for me what I didn’t want to do, not counting seeing Laurie killed. I’d have done it,” he added, “killed my son. But no man should have to live with that. It’s worth more than what I hired you for.”

  “You knew he had a heart condition. You read his medical file.”

  “I knew it when it was diagnosed. I’d hoped to capitalize on it, but you got there first.”

  “Next time drive faster.”

  “I’m not complaining. As a matter of fact that’s why I’m here.”

  “If you owe anyone it’s Stanislaus Kopernick, Detective First Grade, Detroit Homicide. The post office says you shouldn’t send cash through the mail, but in this case it’d be the smart thing to do. The FBI’s watching both of you.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time I did that. But I don’t pay a cop to do my job for me. I saw the autopsy report. Doesn’t matter. You went against my wishes; I should kill you for that on principle. I won’t. If you hadn’t, I’d be either Ivan the Terrible or Henry the Eighth. Maybe both. I wouldn’t care for either one.”

  “She’s going to be okay, by the way. The staff at Receiving’s had plenty of experience with wound trauma.”

  “I know, but thanks.”

  It struck me then his work came with a heavy overhead. Just maintaining the lines of communication ate up much of the capital.

  I said, “I didn’t do it for you. If I had any say you’d be on your way to Toronto right now in a wagon with a cage in it. I don’t like killers. I don’t do favors for them. How’s that for principle?”

  “Black and white, to the end; so that’s it?”

  “To whatever end.”

  He was silent. The light shining down carved grottos in the ordinary face. “I can’t decide whether you’re courageous or stupid. Most of the men in my line would kill you just for saying what you said. You know enough about me to know I don’t need a gun to do it.”

  I ran a hand over my scalp, back to front, against the grain. My hair crackled with static electricity. Suddenly I didn’t care what he did. I’d had a bellyload of the underbelly and no belly for more.

  “I’m no hero,” I said. “I’m no dunce either. What I am is tired. I’ve been bullied, shot at, called a killer—when I’m just an amateur—had my house and my office broken into and my personal stuff pawed through; but for me that’s just another day at work. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the job description, only nobody ever gave me one. One day I answered an ad on the back of a matchbook and now here I am, square in the middle of a life of romance and adventure. It gets old, and I’m getting old with it. I don’t bounce back like I did when I was fifty. When I’m seventy I’ll just lie where I land, like a bag of mush.” I waved a hand. “Take it as you please, Mr. Macklin. All part of the service. Just take it and go.”

  “You came close to scotching the job in Toronto.”

  That shook me to the floor. It was as near as he’d come to confessing to Guy Lennert. I said nothing. My voice would quaver if I tried. He was a beast of prey. Once they sense fear they react from instinct, without control. They tear out your throat before they know what they’re doing.

  He said, “I know you don’t like the comparison, but we have one thing in common. Neither of us likes to leave a job unfinished.”

  He stood, without using his hands for leverage. He kept them free for other things.

  “We’re not square,” he said. “Not yet. You trade in information. I’m not going to talk myself into a life sentence, but I can settle your curiosity as to the other.”

  * * *

  After he left, I felt hot
and thought I’d caught fever. I flung up the window in the living room and stuck out my head, turning my face up to the snow, falling now in soft flakes that slid down my cheeks like chilled tongues and hung on the end of my nose. By the time they trickled down inside my collar they’d become something nasty, something that lived in the clammy cold under a rock.

  I left the window open for the clean cold of the air it let in, went into the kitchen and opened the bar. Something lay bound in a white handkerchief next to the bottle of Old Smuggler in the cabinet above the sink. I took it down and unwrapped a shiny revolver with a deep belly and a narrow cardboard box of cartridges. It was a Ruger Blackhawk, the .357 Magnum, good for piercing rhinoceros hides and Wells Fargo trucks. An antiseptic-looking card block-printed in soft pencil read:

  Clean. I fired it once, into a seat cushion.

  Of course he knew my unlicensed Luger had been confiscated by the police after Laurie Macklin dropped it in the alley. I’d never know who’d told him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The living room in Farmington Hills looked pretty much the same: red candles blushing in green holders, the cardinal painted on a glass lit from inside, the lamp splashing light straight up onto the ceiling. Still no tree. Today she’d tied back the drapes on the big window to show off a neighborhood in monochrome: white drifts, naked black branches, a sky the color of granite. The clouds were pregnant with more snow.

  “So it’s McBride again,” I said.

  Karen nodded, smiling over her drink. “I didn’t think you’d miss the name on the mailbox. I had it painted over the day after I got the news about Guy. Does that make me hard-hearted?”

  “No. That doesn’t.”

  We were seated as before, the sling chair for her, the gray love seat for me, with the glossy coffee table separating us like a black lagoon. It might have been last week all over again, except this time I’d turned down her offer of a drink. I didn’t plan to be there long enough to finish it. At that it seemed as if the world had gone all the way around the sun since I’d been there last.