Shit. He’d had a hard-on against that picture ever since he’d dumped a bushel investing in Battlefield Earth, thinking he couldn’t go wrong with Travolta and science fiction. After Independence Day, even turkeys like Starship Troopers made money. It was the one time he fell under Lansky’s curse. Old Midas-Touch Meyer, who never lost a penny on any dishonest enterprise, took a bath back in the fifties when he bought a company that made TV sets and tried peddling them to bars the same way he’d done with slot machines and hootch. The sets turned out to be lemons, and the competition from established companies like Philco and Admiral was too stiff. Lansky cut his losses and went back to dope and horse parlors. That made sense to Maggiore. Legitimate business was just a scary proposition.
He hit the power button and closed his eyes. Something whooshed and he thought it was just another goddamn special effect, he’d hit the wrong button. It wasn’t Independence Day, though. Someone was coming at him from the middle of the picture tube, carrying something that gleamed in the lamplight. Then the clouds broke and he knew it was the reflection of someone striding in from the balcony behind his chair, but his reflexes were gone. An upside-down face, haggard-looking and unshaven, came down from the ceiling and he smelled stale sweat.
“Thing about throats,” Macklin said, “they’re always in the same place.” He jerked the big blade across Maggiore’s Adam’s apple.
Macklin waited until the fountain of arterial blood subsided, then checked for a pulse he knew wouldn’t be there. He used a clean cotton cloth on the Buck knife’s handle and let it roll out of the material onto the carpet. On his way out of the room he avoided stepping in the big stain. He didn’t want to have to get rid of another pair of shoes.
Carlo Maggiore had risen as high as he had despite being Carlo Maggiore. Everything he’d done right he’d learned by watching Mike Boniface, his mentor and the only one of the old dons for whom Macklin had felt anything like loyalty. Mike had believed in safes and telephones. He’d always said, “Have ’em both, but don’t use ’em for anything that counts.” A quick search of the office connected to the master bedroom, done in dark oak and blue leather, with real books on the walls, turned up a floor safe in the kneehole of the desk. Macklin ignored it—he wasn’t any kind of pete man, had trouble enough with combination locks when he knew the numbers—and removed all the drawers from both sides of the desk, laying them side by side on the floor. One of them contained a 9-millimeter automatic, but it didn’t interest him any more than the contents of the others and he left it where it was.
The deep drawer designed to hold files on the bottom right side was ten inches shorter than the others, a dummy. He got down on the floor, reached into the recess where the drawer had been, and groped until he found a handpull. The panel came off with a tug and he laid it aside and dragged out bricks of currency until the compartment was empty. He didn’t count bills, just glanced at the numbers on the paper bands and did the math in his head. A little less than three hundred thousand dollars. It wasn’t as much as he’d hoped—Boniface had kept as much as half a million on hand, for a getaway stake—but with what he had in Swiss accounts it was enough to interest a top lawyer in the case San Antonio would build against him. Maybe. Nothing was certain short of killing, and you couldn’t kill everyone.
He took off his Windbreaker, laid the bricks inside it, zipped it up, and tied the open ends into a knot. He wiped his prints off the removable panel and the drawers, but didn’t replace them. Let the cops think robbery was the motive. Then he picked up his bundle by the knot and left.
A funnel-shaded lamp was burning above the front door. He found the switch, flipped it down with his hand wrapped in the cloth, waited a beat, then flipped it up and down quickly. He held the door open a crack and watched as a pair of headlights blinked on, then off, fifty yards down the driveway, but he didn’t come out until the car slid under the port and he recognized the driver in the light from the house. Then he went out and climbed in on the passenger’s side.
Laurie watched him sling the bundle into the backseat. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
She turned on her lights. “No more secrets.”
“No more secrets.”
She drove away at legal speed.
A Biography of Loren D. Estleman
Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.
Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once The Oklahoma Punk was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.
Estleman’s most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980’s Motor City Blue, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel, Sugartown, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman’s most recent Walker novel is Infernal Angels.
Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980, The High Rocks was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010’s The Book of Murdock. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author. Journey of the Dead, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett
Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan
Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image
Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren
Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993
Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book Journey of the Dead
Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor
Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, signing together while on a tour through Colorado in 2003
Estleman with his grandson, Dylan Ray Brown, shown here writing an original story on “Papa’s” typewriter at Christmastime in 2005 in Springfield, Missouri
Estleman with his granddaughter, Lydia Morgan Hopper, as he reads her a bedtime story on New Year’s Eve 2008. Books are among Lydia’s favorite things—and “Papa” is quick to encourage this
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, with the late Elmer Kelton and his wife, Anne Kelton, in 2008. Estleman is holding his Elmer Kelton Award from the German Association for the Study of the Western
Estleman in front of the Gas City water tower, which he passed by on many a road trip. After titling one of his novels after the town, Estleman was invited for a visit by the mayor, and in February 2008 he was presented the key to the city
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Loren D. Estleman
Cover design by Rebecca Lown
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3484-5
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY, 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
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