“Belongs to a two-year-old Mercury Cougar, silver. Registered to Peter Macklin, 10052 Beech Road, Southfield.”
“Who called it in?”
“County sheriff’s deputy out there name of Connor. That’s Charlie Only Needle Needle—”
“Yeah, yeah. You call him?”
“Not yet.”
“Well?”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Then call me.”
“’Kay.”
He hung up, shaking his head. When he got back to his chair, the Star Trek guy, in civvies now, was having a beer with his partner, who looked like a white Michael Jackson. It was still daylight out. Pontier decided in California each cop got his own secretary to fill out the reports and wondered what he was doing watching this crap while Mr. Ed was playing on HBO.
Chapter Twenty-five
“How was the party?”
“Good, the part I got in on anyhow. Answer these any way that seems right.” Burlingame deposited in front of his secretary all but a few of the letters she had had waiting for him.
In fact he had gotten home the night before just in time to kiss his daughter and granddaughter goodbye as they were leaving and help his wife clean up the mess. He had spent half of the rest of the night listening to her tell him she understood.
He went into his office, where he unlocked the top drawer of his desk and read the computer printout sheet once again. He had half hoped he’d dreamed the whole thing, but here it was by morning light, and it was no more believable than it had been at night. It was one of those times when any man over fifty thought of investing in one of those fishing caps with an ornamental beer can on the band and leaving the store to someone who could still get up in the morning without having to brace himself on the night table.
The intercom buzzed. He raised the receiver, his eyes still on the printout.
“Call on one,” Mrs. Gabel informed him.
“Who?”
“I’ll let him tell you. You wouldn’t believe it from me.”
He laid down the sheet and punched the button.
The alley behind the yellow brick building stank of rat dung and stagnant water. Macklin tugged on the handle of the scuffed-iron fire door and found it open. The only light in the entryway came from a fifteen-watt bulb that barely managed to illuminate itself. When his pupils adjusted, he pressed a button in the tarnished panel on the wall in front of him. It glimmered and after a long wait the elevator wheezed down like an old man lowering himself into a tub, and the doors trundled open. He went in gun first.
“Fieldhouse.”
Air swished. A hammer of pain struck the bone of his wrist and his forearm went numb. The 10-millimeter clattered on the floor. A foot kicked it across the elevator, where the square, graying man in the three-piece suit bent down and scooped it up. Macklin lunged for it and stopped when the bore came up to face him.
“You’re slowing down, Macklin,” Burlingame said.
Macklin placed his back to the doors, watching the two men who shared the elevator car with him. The one the FBI bureau director had called Fieldhouse was in his twenties, sandy-haired, and good-looking in a male model sort of way. His dark suit and vest fit him well, unlike his superior’s, which was starting to show strain at the buttons. Fieldhouse was rubbing the edge of his right hand. Macklin hoped he’d broken it.
He really hated elevators.
Burlingame glanced at the young agent, who pressed the elevator stop button. The car lurched to a halt between floors, and that was the first the killer realized that it had been moving.
“I’ve heard of these. This is the first one I’ve seen.” The director turned the pistol over in his hands. “I guess you won’t tell me where you got it.”
Macklin said nothing. Burlingame found the magazine release, popped it out, and worked the slide to eject the cartridge from the chamber. It made a little clattering sound on the floor. Then he returned the empty gun to Macklin, who stood there holding it for a minute, then returned it to its holster. He tugged the waist of his wool jacket down over the butt. Fieldhouse goggled.
“We’re all equal here,” Burlingame told him, pocketing the magazine. To Macklin: “You called the meeting. I’m not earning your tax dollars hanging around a building we only use for interrogations. What’s your business?”
Macklin said, “You picked the spot. I was willing to meet you in your office.”
“The lobby of the Federal Building’s full of reporters looking for another Daniel Ellsberg. One of them might recognize you on your way up. You know how it works.”
“Where’s your pipe?”
“Fieldhouse is allergic. I hear you’re running your own game now.”
The killer grinned wolfishly. “No one ever said that to me before. About running a game.”
“Fieldhouse likes that kind of talk. He grew up in front of the tube.”
“Fieldhouse counts for a lot.”
“He’s like a second son to me.” Burlingame winked at the young agent. “Put out any good fires lately? Macklin fights them in stairwells,” he told Fieldhouse. “He’s sort of an urban ranger.”
“Fire follows me. I almost got burned again last night.”
“That what happened to your coat?”
“We’re boring Fieldhouse. What do you know about what’s been going on?”
“I know you’re running scared or you wouldn’t have pulled that bonehead stunt with a pistol against two armed federal agents. What is it about you people don’t like?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
Burlingame said, “Shit. Macklin, let’s get squared around. I don’t like killers. I don’t even admire them. Last week an eight-year-old kid in Seattle blew off his brother’s face playing with a shotgun. I have less things to respect as I get older, and I don’t have any at all for a guy who does for money what any eight-year-old kid in Seattle can do without even trying. Aside from all that I don’t like you personally. But if I hung out paper on you it wouldn’t be just because I don’t like you, and I wouldn’t send in a psycho with a pregnant Ronson to do it.”
“I keep getting that speech. So who would?”
The director was silent.
“Come on, Burlingame. You owe me.”
“I owe you shit. The street says Boniface paid you a hundred long ones for the Boblo job. He’s getting his hearing like we agreed and we’re all back in our places just like we were before.”
Macklin reached for one of his slash pockets. Fieldhouse grabbed his arm. The killer relaxed. “Get it out yourself.”
Still holding on, the young agent burrowed his other hand into the pocket and came up with a hollow brass cylinder the size of the cap on a ballpoint pen. He patted down the rest of Macklin’s pockets and stepped back, handing the cartridge case to his superior. Macklin had gotten rid of the 10-millimeter shells on his way back to the city.
“Who’s carrying a Walther these days?” he asked.
Burlingame examined the shell. “MI-6. Scotland Yard. The Sûreté. Any collector with a line on ammunition. It’s a popular gun in a lot of places.”
“The KGB?”
“Some. The Russians have better weapons, though. Anyway, they’re CIA meat.”
“Not inside the U.S.”
“What do you know, Macklin?”
“I don’t know anything or I wouldn’t be here. But so far I’ve been jumped by an American ex-Marine, a Chinese jack-in-the-box, and a guy that dresses like the little old winemaker and fires a gun that’s most popular with foreign agents. Also, he uses exploding bullets. Not dum-dums, something more sophisticated. Also he rigged my car, which was how he really planned to get me. The shooting was just to make me forget myself; beat the bush, then spring the trap. He’s better than either of the others, a professional. I know all the pros in this area and he’s not one of them. You throw a wider loop.”
“The Russians don’t kill for sport, not here,” Burlingame said. “You have to bite them
on the butt first.”
“Before this guy the closest I ever got to Russia was a fifth of Smirnoff’s. If he is a Russian.”
“You’re working, right?”
“I’m a consultant.”
“Yeah, and Hitler was chancellor. It’s my turn to say come on.”
Macklin looked at Fieldhouse.
Burlingame stepped forward and started the car moving. “Fieldhouse, I’m parking you.”
“Sir, I’m cleared.”
“Not with our friend. It’ll just be for a half hour or so. You can go back to the office if you want.” The doors opened.
“I’ll wait.”
When the young agent had stepped out, his superior sent the elevator back up and stalled it in the same location.
“Your friend isn’t Russian,” he told Macklin. “He’s a Bulgarian and his name is Simeon Novo, or at least that’s the one he uses in his own country. When he’s there, which he isn’t often. Most of the time he’s out annulling. That’s the common accepted contemporary term for killing in the espionage racket. He’s either fifty-eight or sixty-two depending on which birth record you go by, and he’s in semi-retirement. That means he only kills one or two people a year. I’ve got a printout as long as my leg back at the office that reads like a primer on international assassination over the past fifteen years, which is when we started keeping tabs on him. The CIA probably has a better one, more thorough.”
“How come you have anything on him at all? FBI jurisdiction stops at U.S. borders.”
“Washington has a whole bureau assigned to monitor what the CIA is doing. We’ve got hackers can break into a computer file with a triple security system in less time than you can pick your nose with a nail file. It’s like sneaking a peek at your own partner’s cards, I know, but what the hell? Last year the Pentagon paid eleven hundred dollars for a staple remover that runs a buck ninety-eight in any stationery store.”
“I was right about the KGB, then. It was just a wild guess.”
“Well, maybe he’s KGB. Our information says he works just as often for the CIA. He’s what we call a Dutch door. He swings both ways. His code name on the market is Mantis.”
“Jesus.”
“Who are you working for?” Burlingame demanded.
“Myself.”
“We can always sweat Klegg. We know he’s involved, and he knows we can scrape up enough on him to keep him in court for ten years, years he doesn’t have. He’ll blow you rather than let that happen.”
Macklin looked around the car and ran his hand behind the rail on both sides.
Burlingame said, “It’s not wired. It’s the only room in the building that isn’t, and it’s why we’re here. It wouldn’t stand up in court anyway.”
“I’m working for the daughter of an old friend of Klegg’s,” Macklin said. “She’s got boyfriend trouble. He’s threatening to kill her.”
“Only she’s paying you to kill him first.”
“I’m working for her. That’s all you get.”
“Not good enough. Names.”
The killer held up an index finger. “One. Roy Blossom. A local film stud they sprang from Ypsi last month. He was in for carving his initials on a bad driver.”
“Where’s he live?”
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me at the hospital, and I didn’t feel like putting a gun to their heads.”
“We can get that information for you. If you cooperate.”
“Right now I just want to know whose list I’m on and why.”
“We’ll run Blossom through the machine and see what it spits out. Your troubles seem to have started the day you called on Klegg. If there’s a connection, we’ll find it. But you’ll have to let us know what goes on at your end.”
Macklin said, “You’re sitting on something.”
“You’re not?”
The killer leaned on the rail.
“Well, I don’t shake hands.”
“I wouldn’t anyway, with you.” Burlingame extended the magazine he’d broken out of the other’s pistol.
Macklin accepted it.
When the doors opened, Fieldhouse stood out of the way to let Macklin leave the car and fell into step with the bureau director. Outside, the killer turned south while the pair swung north in the direction of the Federal Building. Fieldhouse asked what happened.
“I cut a deal.”
“With him?” He glanced back over his shoulder at Macklin’s retreating form.
“I didn’t tell him everything. He doesn’t know about Kurof or that we traced Kurof’s partner to CIA headquarters. He thinks Mantis is with the KGB. Well, he could be right. The checkers keep changing colors.”
“But you told him about Mantis.”
“I guess you’ve got a right to know who’s trying to kill you.”
“Can we trust him?”
Burlingame walked faster, getting his circulation pumping. The air was damp and cold, more November than October.
“This serviceman was getting set to muster out,” he said. “As the day got closer his correspondence with his wife got steadily more horny. In his last letter he wrote, ‘When you meet my plane you better have a mattress strapped to your back.’ ‘Okay,’ she answered, ‘but you better be the first man off.’”
They stopped on a corner to wait for the pedestrian signal to change. Fieldhouse was watching the director.
“Macklin’s the wife,” Burlingame said.
Chapter Twenty-six
The telephone rang while the old man was packing his bags in his room. He let it jangle while he closed the bigger of the two suitcases and spun the combination dial and leaned the straps tight before setting the buckle. He had gotten rid of the Walther and the ammunition and mercury kit and was leaving with no more luggage than he had brought with him. He answered the telephone.
“This is Mr. Brown,” said the familiar voice.
“Yes, Mr. Brown.”
“It appears that delivery on the package was not accepted.”
“Impossible.”
“Not according to our man in the Federal Building. The package was seen.”
“An error, perhaps.”
“An error, yes,” said Brown. “But not our man’s. Will you rectify?”
“Satisfaction is guaranteed.” He pulled his mouth down at his reflection in the mirror atop the bureau. “I will require the same arrangements as before.”
“Agreed. We also have more possible contracts for you.”
“I am coming.”
Breaking the connection, the old man regarded his image sadly. “Simeon, Simeon,” he said.
“Miss King, please. Moira King.”
“I’ll see if she’s in,” said the woman, and put him on hold.
Waiting, Macklin lay back on the too-soft mattress and stretched his legs under the covers. His arm hurt where he had fallen on it and his calf muscles were stiff from last night’s long walk. He had made sure to put several miles between himself and the wreckage of his car before thumbing a ride.
The room was smaller than the others he had rented, a corner bedroom in a hotel converted to apartments except for space let by the day to afternoon lovers and sports fans from out of town. He had showered down the hall and slept two hours, waking by his inner clock to call the telephone offices where Moira worked.
“I’m sorry, Miss King didn’t report to work today.”
“Is she sick?”
“I’m not permitted to give out information about employees.”
He worked the plunger and dialed her apartment. He let the telephone ring twelve times, then hung up. After a moment he kicked aside the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. He was having trouble coming fully awake. In earlier times he would open his eyes to the same thought he had gone to sleep with, his blood glowing like neon gas in his veins. He missed that, and in missing it he acknowledged a thing he had been refusing to recognize for many months. Now it was there, like Red China. He reached for his clothes.
<
br /> The sky was overcast, that glistening purplish gray that paint always turns when improperly mixed. The cold had sharpened its teeth since his morning meeting with Randall Burlingame. He zipped up his jacket and took his place inside a glassed-in DSR bus stop next to an Errol Flynn gang member in a purple satin jacket and a fat black woman in a cloth coat cracking sunflower seeds between her dentures and spitting out the shells. The Flynn smelled of body odor and pomade. Do it in Detroit, the billboards said.
When the bus came finally he took the backseat, the one directly over the engine that was hard on the back because of the vibration. Because of that he had it all to himself, the whole width of the bus, with a clear view of the aisle and a short hop to the rear exit. He had been doing these things so long he no longer thought about them, like closing the cover on a book of matches before striking one.
He got off in Redford Township with sharp pains bolting across his lower back, a character in a cartoon shooting stars and little forks of lightning out of the place where it hurt. He shifted the gun to a more comfortable spot. It got better as he walked. His calf muscles ached, but that was all right. They felt tight and ready for anything.
No one was following him, he was sure of that. After parting with Burlingame he had pulled out a couple of tricks to shake any agents the FBI man might have planted on him, and he had long ago discouraged the tail Inspector Pontier had tried to pin on him. It bothered him, though, that he had failed to spot the old man on his back the night before. The others had been easy to nail because they tried so hard to be inconspicuous. The old man was inconspicuous. It was the first requirement of the professional “touch”; instinct and reflexes came second and third. You saw old men like him everywhere. Picking him out from the rest was like tracking a drop of fresh water across the Great Salt Lake. Or maybe Macklin was losing his eye along with his energy. In his business it was one of the natural causes.
The security system in Moira King’s apartment house was a joke. There was no intercom, just an electronic lock; anyone in any of the apartments could open the front door to a visitor he couldn’t see. Macklin studied the row of buttons in the foyer, selected one whose number placed the resident on an upper floor facing away from the door, and pressed it. A moment later a burring buzz sounded. He opened the door and entered.
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