They took seats opposite each other at the round oak table where the old man—in semi-retirement now—conducted business. It was in the room with the bay window, so the quarters were cramped, shared temporarily with the grotesque tree, which smelled more strongly of pine than the genuine article, thanks to regular attention by way of an aerosol can. It reminded Macklin of an old car whose rearview mirror was hung with evergreen-shaped artificial fresheners; and of a childhood he didn’t care to remember.
Dorfman lifted a liter and a half of Captain Morgan’s along with his eyebrows—disconcertingly black, despite the crisp snowdrift of his hair—and when his guest shook his head, filled one of a pair of cut-crystal glasses nearly to the top and tinted it with a dollop of eggnog from a cardboard carton. He stirred the mixture with a little finger, sucked it clean, and cupped the glass between his palms, searching the contents for tea leaves and the fortunes they told.
“He’s clean, Walker is. I copped a look at the checkbook in his desk when he went to the can. I carry around more cash in my wallet.”
“You carry around more cash than anyone I’ve ever met. And there’s another book that tells a different story. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
“He took a few calls while we were playing checkers. Turned down an advance of ten thousand from a husband who wanted to know why his wife took two hours coming home from a job fifteen minutes away three times a week. It was legit. I recognized the name.”
“He could’ve taken the call anytime when you weren’t there. The fact that you were reeks.”
“Wait till I finish. While I was studying the board he made out a check for the rent on the office. I can read upside down; anyone can, in my line. It left him with a dollar-ten in the bank.”
“He’s a private cop. Lawyers are his turkey-and-trimmings. He knows you can read upside down, backward, and under water, same as him. He was showcasing for your benefit, even if there isn’t another checkbook, which there is.”
“It makes me sick he’s so straight.”
Macklin poured an inch of rum into the second glass and sipped it without mixing. He didn’t need the jolt, just time to choose his words.
“You’ve got sixty seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t smash that bottle and shove the sharp end through your throat to the spine.”
Dorfman looked up from his glass; lifted it and drank it to the bottom, working his throat twice. There was no fear in the gesture. He never drank liquor any other way, doctored or straight from the bottle. He said, “Ahh!”, thumped down the glass, and swept the pale moustache off his lip with a finger.
“You wanted a detective. You don’t want one smart enough to figure out I’m not repping Mother Teresa?” He thumped the same figure against the table, as if Walker’s face were painted on it. “This guy’s gone to jail just for keeping his trap shut. In thirty years the cops haven’t been able to pry him loose of his client’s name. I knew that going in, but I had to make sure he was the same guy I hired years ago. In order to do that I had to give him your name. If he comes back to me saying he’ll take the job, he’s not the man you want.”
“If he’s good enough, I can’t have him, and if I can have him, he’s not good enough?”
“In a nutshell.”
A door opened and shut, stirring air in the house. The old woman made a whooshing sound, followed by the noises of outerwear being skinned away.
“Go ahead and talk,” Dorfman said. “Last month in temple, Lyla told me she just cut a silent fart, what should she do? I said, ‘First of all, change the battery in your hearing aid.’ She’s a walking confidentiality clause.”
But Macklin dropped his voice. “If he’s buttoned up too tight to take the job, why are we having this conversation?”
The lawyer laughed, loudly enough for his wife to poke her head into the room. He waved her out and lowered his tone. “You’re telling me you always take no for an answer? You?”
* * *
He tried Walker’s house first. It was a little over half the size of Dorfman’s, on the Detroit side of the street that separated the city from Hamtramck, once the traditional enclave of Polish immigrants. Its lines suggested the steep-peaked homes built to shelter assembly-line workers in the early days of Henry Ford’s five-dollar-a-day wages. The garage had obviously been constructed after the house next door was razed and the two small lots combined. Once again he parked around the corner and came back on foot. A tall evergreen hedge belonging to the neighbor on the garage side provided a narrow passage where he could peer through the window without being seen. Inside were some tools and an old oil stain where a car had stood. In Detroit more than most places, the absence of a vehicle meant the owner wasn’t home.
The wooden window frame needed painting. He slid the blade of his pocketknife between it and the sill and found the latch, a swivel hook that fitted into a metal fastener screwed into the wood. He dug away spongy wood, loosening the fastener, then forced the window up with his hands, tearing free the screws.
Walker kept his garage in good order, but a rainy autumn and winter slush had tracked mud onto the floor that Macklin was careful to avoid lest he leave footprints. A side door that would lead into the house was fastened with a dead bolt. Here was a homeowner who overlooked little; but he might have gone further.
A corner of the garage served as a workshop, with a small bench and an assortment of tools; nothing sophisticated, but one can move worlds with a hammer and screwdriver. Getting around the lock without leaving a gouge or a scratch took time, but he didn’t want to put his man on his guard. At last he worked back the bolt, put away the tools, and entered a small kitchen, holding the knife with the blade exposed. He never carried a firearm except when he was working; it could not be explained away like a pocketknife in case he was caught in possession, and the knife itself was virgin. He’d killed his share of men—and women—with knives, but not with this one.
Twenty minutes later he let himself back out the way he’d come, re-engaging the bolt and using the knife to re-seat the window latch, which was altogether more difficult than loosening it had been, and far from perfect. But who apart from a raging paranoid made a daily check of every possible point of entry?
He might have spared himself the trouble of a search, for all he learned of value. A drinking man, Walker, with a half-empty bottle of Old Smuggler in the cupboard above the sink and a lingering iodine odor of Scotch in a glass in the basin. No sign of recent visitors in the living room or bedroom, and all the indications of a man who lived alone and had done so for some time: Only one comfortable chair, overstuffed and worn, a bed with one pillow, basic cable on an old CRT TV set, quite a few books—the man liked John O’Hara—the local cable listings with some movies circled in pencil. No firearms on the premises, but there was a gun-cleaning kit inside the nightstand. The place was no tidier than it had to be, but most of the dishes were washed and the bed was made.
The commute was short to an Edwardian building on Grand River, the downtown corridor, with gryphon-shaped waterspouts and an ancient superintendent with a White Russian accent, mopping the pattern off the linoleum in the foyer. He paid no attention to the visitor who glanced at the snap-letter directory, then started upstairs.
A door with A. WALKER INVESTIGATIONS lettered in black on yellow pebbled glass was unlocked. He paid no attention to the furnishings of a stale waiting room, knocked on a door marked PRIVATE a couple of times, waiting in between, then used his knife to slip the spring lock. The two olive-drab file cabinets were locked, a squat safe too, but he wasn’t looking to uncover the man’s professional secrets. A charmless desk delivered the usual pencils, paper clips, dust bunnies, and a checkbook that confirmed Dorfman’s account of the finances of a business hanging on by its eyebrows. No names of apparent clients. A careful man, at least where work was concerned.
Which was what Macklin had set out to learn.
Walker had doodled on a yellow legal pad, among notations scribbled in a kind of
bastard shorthand intended for his eyes only. To the visitor it was just scratches. The wastebasket gave up nothing of value. If he’d kept any record of the assignment that had put him and Macklin in the same building in Toronto at a key moment, it would be locked up; again, it was of no real interest.
He lifted the pad and held it close to his eyes; made out a couple of capital letters followed mostly by lowercase characters that resembled a cardiogram: “De … St…” Holding it away, he looked again at the doodle. A face, female from the long lashes and curve of the lips, under an old-fashioned cap with a police shield. He remembered the circled listings in Walker’s cable TV guide: He Walked by Night, The Racket, Suddenly. Nothing filmed later than 1955, all featuring police officers who wore such caps. A crime-movie buff.
“De … St…” A woman in a police cap.
Deborah Stonesmith, detective lieutenant, Detroit Major Crimes. Macklin knew the name, although they’d never met face-to-face. He let himself back out, locking the door behind him.
* * *
His personal car, which he never used for work, was a maroon Chevrolet TrailBlazer, a model the company had discontinued, but there were many still on the road. There in the snow belt, driving an ordinary passenger car was almost a conspicuous act. The engine was a standard six-banger, with all the environmental equipment intact. There was no reason to try to outrun pursuit when he wasn’t on business, and certainly no wisdom in raising red flags on computers in squad cars. If he were pulled over and taken in for questioning, Leo Dorfman was a better getaway than the fastest car on the road. He parked six blocks from 1300 Beaubien, fed the meter, and wandered the neighborhood on foot until he spotted the well-used Cutlass.
He used his narrowest blade to slip the lock on the street side of the two-door. The glove compartment carried most of the usual items—minus, of course, the gloves. A seam underneath the lid hadn’t come from the factory. He ran his fingers around the edge, found the small catch, and looked at a Luger with a handle worn almost smooth. He checked the magazine, saw it was fully loaded, slapped shut the extra compartment, and crawled onto the floor of the backseat to wait, holding the pistol loosely to keep his fingers from cramping.
ME
NINE
The man in the backseat didn’t tell me to resist any more stunts like the one I’d tried with the lamppost. Evidently he knew enough about me to know it was unnecessary.
“Gun,” he said.
“In the safe at the office. Carrying a piece into the cophouse just makes them mad.”
“You’d better be a fast draw if you’re lying.”
“Is that my spare piece you tickled me with? I thought of finding a better hiding place, but the last time I did that I could only remember where I used to put it.”
“Don’t kid me it won’t fire. It wouldn’t be worth keeping as a spare.”
“You’re Macklin.”
“Where can we talk?” He’d withdrawn the gun and sat back a little, but it would still be handy.
This was encouraging. People who are planning to kill you don’t usually engage you in conversation. The chatty villains you see on the screen are rare in life, for obvious reasons.
“We can pull over anywhere,” I said.
“I mean face-to-face. The answers you get looking at the back of a man’s head don’t count.”
“A restaurant, then.”
“I know you’ll feel safer in public, but you might get ideas. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble just to have to kill you.”
“I don’t like to cause inconvenience. My office is close.”
“Not bad. It’s the only one occupied on the top floor.”
“You can put away the gun,” I said.
“When you put away the car.”
For years I’d paid a derelict five bucks to protect my car from vandals like him while it was parked in the empty Cold War gas station across from my building. He’d been shoved out by a pub-style restaurant, but when that failed another homeless entrepreneur had shoved in, hiking the price to ten. Detroit abhors a vacuum.
Holding my Luger inside the slash pocket of a leather windbreaker, Macklin stayed close by my side crossing the street and then the foyer. I got my first good glimpse of him through the corner of my eye. He was about my height, built slighter but not slight, and his profile belonged on the Before side of an advertisement for a male makeover. An ordinarily observant person could forget what he looked like while he was still looking at him. I’m an experienced detective; I held the image until he stepped behind me to climb the stairs.
Rosecranz, the troll who kept the building from sliding into its foundation, knelt on a step halfway to the second floor, scraping petrified gum off the underside of the banister with a stone chisel. He got up to let us pass.
“Is it Leap Year already?” I said.
Macklin and I mounted the last flight without a word.
“Was that necessary?” he said when we reached the top.
“He’d have been suspicious if I didn’t say anything. Also I got the satisfaction of hearing your sphincter squeak when I opened my mouth.”
“You take chances, Walker.”
“Yeah, but you don’t.”
He confirmed that by throwing me up against the hallway wall and holding me there with a shoulder while he frisked me. All he got was my keys and wallet, and he returned those.
I put my suit back into order and opened the unlocked door to the little waiting room. The only thing waiting there was a ladybug, and it was more interested in the museum-quality copy of Midwest Living it was crawling across to pay us any attention. Well, I’d hardly expected the U.S. Cavalry; but a man can hope.
He’d relocked the door to the confession box. A tidy man, Macklin. No archaeologist would find a footprint to show he’d set foot on earth, not in a million years or ten minutes.
Inside the office, he waved me into the swivel behind the desk with the barrel of the Luger, then slid the magazine out of the handle and worked the cigarette-lighter action, kicking the cartridge out of the chamber onto the floor. He laid it atop a file cabinet outside my reach sitting and tried to move the customer’s chair closer to the desk, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Bolted,” he said. “If I hadn’t checked the place out I’d expect a gun strapped in the kneehole on your side.”
“I’m surprised you missed the bolts. I’ve got a thing about visitors invading my space, especially when they come here straight from Coney Island with a bellyful of chili and onions. You’d just kill them, I guess.”
He sat. “You know me better than that. Lieutenant Stonesmith wants my head on a plate, but she wouldn’t lump me in with Jeffrey Dahmer.”
I looked at the pad by the telephone and a doodle I hadn’t realized I made, of a female face wearing a police cap. “Sigmund Freud, then. I wondered how you got from Leo Dorfman to Thirteen Hundred. You don’t have much practice in taking no for an answer, do you?”
“I do. You’d be surprised if I told you how many people try to dicker me down.”
“I doubt it. I hear all the time what happens to people who go to cut-rate killers. They almost always turn out to be undercover cops.”
He let that line of conversation wither on the vine. Head on, his face was scored deeply from the corners of his nostrils to the corners of his slightly wide mouth. The nose was average like the rest of him, neither big nor small, as straight as it needed to be, and his dark hair was thinning on either side of the widow’s peak. The eyes were the giveaway: pale and colorless, shallow as plastic discs, giving up only reflected light. You saw them in cops who should have retired years ago and in psychiatrists whose patients were cases only, no longer people.
And killers.
I slid open the belly drawer—he didn’t flinch, but then he’d know what it contained—broke open a pack of cigarettes, tilted it his way. He shook his head, a millimeter each direction. I struck a match off an old burn-canal on the desk and got one going.
It was
my turn not to talk. I pushed myself away far enough to sit back and cross my legs, gripping the top ankle the way Brits do in spy novels. I could feel my heart banging all the way down the bone.
He drew a fold of stiff shiny paper from an inside pocket of the windbreaker and put it on the desk within my reach, standing it up like a tent. I dragged on the cigarette, laid it in the tray, scooped up and snapped open the paper. It was good photo stock, the image laser-printed in color. I admired a fresh young face above the roll of a white turtleneck sweater, looking out a window white with frost, cleared as by the heel of a hand in a circle that framed the face, like a halo in a Renaissance painting, a steaming mug nestled between two slim white hands. She wasn’t looking at me or anything in particular, and probably not at whoever had taken the picture.
It might have been a model shot for a fashion magazine, but the legend printed out above and below belonged on a wanted poster.
“Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“You got a hundred grand?”
“Ask me a question I’ll answer.”
“Email, I’m guessing. Any idea who sent it?”
“One.”
“‘Just because she doesn’t want to live with you doesn’t mean you don’t want her to live.’ Is that true?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t.”
“Have you warned her?”
“If I did, she’d clear out, and force the issue. Right now she’s safe, until he has my answer. Just when he wants it is up to him. He didn’t leave contact information, only that ‘more soon.’ If she moves out, he’ll know the answer, and it’s out of my hands.”
“I guess paying the ransom’s not an option.”
“You know the playbook. It’s just an installment. And it wouldn’t guarantee anything. I’m used to final resolutions.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Keep her alive until I can work things out on my end.”
Black and White Ball Page 5
