By that time the elder behind the wheel was already in action. He threw the limousine into reverse and rammed the smaller car behind, popping the hood and flushing a shower of steam from the radiator. The Reverend’s forehead struck the back of the front seat with a noise like a basketball bounding off a padded wall. Reacting more slowly, the driver of the damaged Buick reversed, then braked squealingly when a city garbage truck came trundling up the alley behind it and stopped with a hydraulic whoosh. The cab doors flew wide and a black man bounded out each side bearing a weapon whose long straight clip advertised it as an automatic. The elder seated next to the driver flung open his door and strained out, twisting to free his 9-millimeter from under his coat. One of the blacks, big and bulgy-muscled with his hair cut like a crazy Indian’s, sprayed the rear of the Buick in a short burst that sounded like one long report. The elder swore later he saw the bullets come splattering out roman-candle fashion as they shattered the taillights and pounded across the lid of the trunk. Quickly the elder laid his own weapon in plain sight on the Buick’s roof and threw up his hands.
The elder driving the limousine froze with his hand inside his coat, staring through the windshield at the tired face of the man from the van and the muzzle of the shiny revolver in front of it. The man’s attention was entirely on the driver. “Shoot him, for chrissake,” the driver said, just loud enough for the elder seated next to him to hear.
His partner said, “Fuck you.” He was looking beyond the man, at the woman in a jumpsuit standing on a step-plate or something on the other side of the van with her arms resting on the roof and her hands wrapped around the butt and forepiece of an automatic pistol. Her light hair was pinned behind her head, and rising head and shoulders above the van like she was she looked ten feet tall.
It took almost five minutes to get the four bodyguards and Sunsmith out of the cars and disarmed and herded into their prearranged places, the Reverend and one of his men in the van with Macklin guarding them and the other three into the garbage truck’s empty dump-box under Deac’s gun. Sunsmith came out hugging the box he had carried out of the shop and Ski took it away from him, suspecting it contained a weapon. He whistled when he saw the scarlet robe and slipped it on over his blue turtleneck and gray cords. It hung in drapes from his slender frame and flapped about his heels as he mounted the driver’s seat of the truck carrying his MAC-10. The Reverend lunged for the box after it was torn from his arms, only to howl and stagger back into the arms of one of the elders when Deac slashed the muzzle of his own pistol down the side of the Reverend’s skull, opening a cut four inches long that dumped blood into his left eye. He rode sitting on the floor in the back of the van with a wad of silk handkerchief pressed against the wound. Carmen drove point with Ski following in the truck.
The van had no side windows in back and an opaque curtain separated the prisoners from the front and the view through the windshield. Macklin’s head and torso blocked the rear windows as he sat on a low kitchen chair facing front with the hand holding the magnum resting on his knee.
The two vehicles circled blocks designated earlier to throw off the prisoners’ sense of direction, went through a private parking lot, and stopped finally behind the empty building off Jefferson. An eight-foot board fence cut off the view of the river and of the Renaissance Center rearing glitteringly above the charred brick rat-infested buildings of the warehouse district. The fence had no proper gate, but Macklin and his male partners had fashioned one out of scrap lumber and an old storm door, which Ski jumped out of the truck to secure before the prisoners were allowed to alight. Ski and Deac prodded the newcomers into single file and started them toward the open back door. There Sunsmith got his first clear look at the woman standing beside it.
“Carmen?”
She said nothing. Deac grasped Sunsmith’s shoulder and shoved him forward with a grunt. The Reverend stumbled, dropping his bloodied handkerchief. The cut on his forehead had dried into a blackened crust.
Macklin mounted the stairs first and stood on the landing while Sunsmith ascended, followed by the elders with Deac and Ski bringing up the rear.
“Take off that damn robe,” Macklin barked.
Ski shrugged and let it slide into a heap in the dust and rat-droppings on the floor.
A third of the way up, the elder immediately behind the Reverend turned and hurled himself against the elder behind him. The column started to topple. Cursing, Deac threw a shoulder between the shoulder blades of the elder in front of him, bracing up the avalanche of bodies. The elder who had caused the trouble stared for a moment at the muzzle of Ski’s automatic trained at him from the foot of the stairs, then turned around. The procession resumed.
When they were all in the hallway outside the empty dance studio, Deac strode past the three elders at the end of the line, swung his free fist low into the troublesome bodyguard’s midsection, and swept the automatic hard alongside his head. The elder started to collapse. Deac grabbed the front of his shirt, popping a button, threw him up against the wall, and swept the automatic back the other way. The elder’s cheek split open. Macklin watched.
Sunsmith lurched forward, stopping when Macklin’s magnum came level with his own throbbing temple. “He’ll kill him!”
Macklin let Deac strike the unconscious bodyguard once more, bloodying his lip. “Take him inside,” he said then.
Deac held his weapon poised for another swing. Macklin had to repeat the command before he lowered it. He bettered his grip on the elder’s shirt and dragged him through the open door of the studio. The injured man’s heels left twin black streaks on the linoleum in the hallway.
The others followed at a prod from Ski.
Carmen had appeared atop the stairs on the end of the episode. She confronted Macklin outside the door. “Did you have to do that?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Guns are just a prop if you don’t use them.”
“When I said no killing I didn’t mean it was okay to turn a healthy man into a vegetable.”
“He’ll be all right.”
“Will that man you killed last night be all right?”
“That didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“You bastard.” Her dark face flushed. “You made me an accomplice to a murder just to protect yourself. Did you think I’d go to the police when this was finished?”
He said, “I’m not so great in bed I thought it would hold you if you got second thoughts.”
She raised a hand as if to slap him. Then she lowered it.
“A man’s life is worth more than a roll in the hay,” she said evenly.
“It’s worth the going price for cartridges. In this case, though, it’s worth a hundred thousand dollars.” His voice was low and steady. “Don’t look at me like I’m shit. You’re in it for what Sunsmith fleeced you out of. Every time you pick up a gun or pay for one to be picked up you’re a killer. That’s what they’re for. If it’s for money you’re a paid killer. We come from the same litter, you and I.”
“Mother of God. Haven’t you ever done anything for someone’s life? Killing, is that the only thing you’re good for?”
He stepped away from the door. “They’re waiting the dance.”
“Mother of God.” She crossed herself and went inside.
A uniformed officer with an academy haircut peered at Pontier’s badge and moved a sawhorse to let him into the alley. The inspector walked past the bullet-punched Buick and the pale limousine, almost stepping on the photographer stretched out on his back trying for a dramatic angle, and went into the building, where Sergeant Lovelady was in conversation with a gray-haired Korean he could have worn on his keychain.
“Kwan Duc, Inspector,” Lovelady said. “He’s Sunsmith’s tailor. He heard the shots, but by the time he got up the balls to go downstairs everybody was gone.”
“You always that slow, Mr. Duck?”
“Duc,” the tailor corrected h
im. Pontier couldn’t see any difference in the way he pronounced it. “I here five year. Where I from, shots come, you don’t run that way.”
“Your English stinks for someone who’s been here that long.”
“I thank.” The Korean’s face was smooth.
Lovelady said, “Sunsmith picked up a robe he had ordered, then left with his bodyguards. The shots came right after.”
“He have an appointment?”
“He was expected.”
“I don’t get it. Why’d they take the bodies?”
“Maybe there weren’t any. No sign of blood.”
“Reverend good customer,” Kwan Due said. “Hard to fit.”
Pontier scratched his moustache. “Please don’t say it was a snatch.”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“I go now?”
Lovelady held up an index finger. “Kwan Duc had a visitor day before yesterday. Tell the inspector.”
“White elder. Strange. He want pick up Reverend’s robe. Reverend he always pick up his own self.”
“Would you know his face if you saw it again?” asked the inspector.
The Korean moved a shoulder.
“Show him the books. Jesus,” Pontier added, “here we go again, up to our asses in reporters.”
“We shouldn’t of yanked Sunsmith’s protection.”
“We didn’t, we’d have another cop funeral to go to. This was pro start to finish. Make sure he looks at those books.”
“I got a pension says the guy ain’t there.”
“I wish to hell you’d quit talking about your retirement. I’m starting to think about going with you.”
Outside, the photographer was trying to take a picture of his own reflection in the limousine’s windshield.
CHAPTER 22
When Ski and Deac got back from ditching the van and garbage truck not far from where they had been stolen, Macklin had finished cuffing Sunsmith and his bodyguards to the brass barre. The manacles were a new type made of plastic as hard as steel with combination locks that thanks to employees of Hermann’s had never arrived at Detroit Police Headquarters where they were intended. The blinds were drawn over the windows, and the harsh overhead light drew deep shadows in the faces of the five men sitting on the floor with their legs sprawled out in front of them and their hands raised almost in an attitude of prayer.
“Look right natural, don’t they?” suggested Ski.
“My people are looking for me.” Sitting with his jacket unbuttoned and salmon-colored shirt leaking from under his vest all around, great head sunk into his collar, the Reverend bore no small resemblance to a painted turtle. “You can’t hold me long.”
“Two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Sunsmith’s head swiveled toward Carmen, standing with her back to one of the shaded windows. She had laid her MAC-10 on the ledge. She went on.
“On a conservative estimate, I figure you’re worth twenty thousand per day every day you’re out and about. That includes legitimate collections on top of your little investment scam. You owe me two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars less the seed money you turned back. That’s, let’s see—”
“Eleven days and six hours,” Deac said.
Everyone looked at him. He dipped his mohawked head in mock embarrassment. “I was studying for my CPA when I quit to join the N.A.L.”
“We’ll say eleven days and give you the benefit of what you returned,” said Carmen. “That’ll get you out on election day. Of course, it won’t leave you any time to campaign against gambling.”
Ski said, “I vote we don’t feed him. I’ll take twenty pounds in the pool.”
“That’s hard blubber,” Deac put in. “I’ll take ten.”
“Watch the hallway,” Macklin told Deac. “I don’t want any derelicts wandering up here.”
Deac went out carrying his automatic. He closed the door behind him.
Macklin said, “We’ll feed him. Not what he’s used to, but we’re on a budget.”
“Carmen, you’re not a kidnapper,” Sunsmith said.
“Pulling off a kidnapping makes me one. It’s a lot of bother, though. I’ve got better things to do than babysit you and the Marx Brothers there for the next eleven days.”
“Bitch.” The elder with the split cheek and swollen lip got the word out muffled.
“Let us go now and we’ll forget about it. Only someone’s got to pay for the car your friends shot up.”
“I forgot that,” she said. “We’ll credit it to your account. Two hours off for the car.”
“I never cheated you out of a cent. I’ll show you my books.”
Macklin said, “Ski.”
The slender black man stepped forward and twirled the combination dial on the handcuff securing the elder farthest from Sunsmith to the barre. The cuff sprang open. Ski stepped back. Warily the bodyguard got to his feet, the empty manacle dangling.
“That’s my Carmen.” Sunsmith looked expectantly at Ski, who gestured with his automatic from the elder he had freed to the door leading to the hallway. The elder walked in that direction. Ski followed him out. The door was still drifting shut when everyone in the room heard the burp. The door closed, then opened and Ski came back in alone. A thread of smoke curled out of the automatic’s barrel.
“Bastards!” Fresh blood erupted from the newly opened cut on the injured elder’s lip.
“‘That’s my Carmen,’” mocked Carmen.
White showed around the Reverend’s waxen black eyes. They closed and his chin sank farther into his collar. His lips were moving.
“What’s he saying?” Macklin asked Carmen.
Her profile was taut against the sunlight leaking in around the windowshade. “‘The Lord is my shepherd.’”
“‘I shall not want,’” said Ski, grinning.
“What do you want?”
Half an hour had passed since Ski had come back into the room without the first elder. No one had spoken since Sunsmith had finished the Lord’s Prayer. He was looking at the floor, and for a moment no one was sure he had spoken at all. Now the great head came up. “What do you want?”
“What do I want,” Carmen said to Macklin.
“Two hundred eighteen thousand dollars,” he said. “That’s after taking out what he paid you back and two thousand to fix the car. I know where you can get it done for a grand.”
“No, we’ll be fair. I think he carries his checkbook in his left inside breast pocket.”
Ski stepped forward, felt inside the Reverend’s coat, and removed a slim checkbook bound in alligator covers. A gold pen was clipped to it. “What good’s it?” Ski asked. “He’ll just stop payment.”
“No, he won’t,” said Macklin.
Sunsmith raised his eyes to the killer’s. “I know who you are.”
“The devil?”
“I should have turned your son over to the elders when I had him in my church.”
“What?”
Carmen said, “Unshackle him so he can make it out.”
“What about my son?” Macklin unbelted the magnum.
“I’m not making out any checks,” Sunsmith said.
“Ski!”
At the command from Macklin, the black killer lifted his automatic off the window ledge and started to undo the handcuffs of the elder who was now farthest from Sunsmith. The elder cursed and tried to slide the cuff down the barre away from Ski, who leveled the automatic’s muzzle at his face. He stopped struggling. The manacle opened.
Carmen and Macklin watched the Reverend’s face as the bodyguard was pulled to his feet and propelled toward the door. The features might have belonged to a corroded idol, stony but eaten away around the eyes and mouth from wind and rain. In the hallway they heard the elder’s footsteps shuffling rapidly, starting to run, terminated by a short gargling burst and then, again, the closing of the door. The elder with the battered face whimpered.
CHAPTER 23
Thursday night, Ch
arles Maggiore, acknowledged czar of organized criminal activities throughout Detroit and its suburbs and as far south as Toledo, urinated standing up for the first time since he was shot. A one-hundred-pound blonde nurse named Mindy supported his weight with her arm around his waist and one of his arms across her shoulders and said encouraging things while he trickled into the bowl and then shook off without help. He told her he hadn’t felt that proud of himself since his potty training.
Gordy was standing inside the door to the corridor when they emerged from the bathroom. In his black suit surrounded by the pastel walls and holding a bouquet of peonies he looked like Boris Karloff in the scene with the little girl in Frankenstein. The nurse gasped.
“It’s okay, he’s housebroken.”
She helped the patient into bed and left, closing the door behind her.
“Shove the posies,” Maggiore said. “You bring the paper?”
The big man produced a rolled-up copy of the five-star edition of the Detroit News from his hip pocket and lumbered forward to hand it to his employer. Maggiore unrolled it and skimmed the columns under the black headline, then demolished the first section searching for the rest of the story. Finally he shoved the whole mess into a pile on the floor.
“Fucking feds,” he said. “Be like them to snatch the fat bald black bastard off a public street and make a friendly witness out of him.”
“I don’t think it was them.”
“Well, who else would want him in cold storage?”
“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t make the papers if the feds done it. Not the front page, anyhow.”
“Sure it would. They never tell the local cops anything. I bet that psalm-singing nigger’s talking to a steno and a tape machine right now. Hanging me out to dry on that tax thing so he can walk and go right back to talking down gambling tomorrow. I never should of listened to Constable when he came to me with the deal. If I didn’t need the grease to fight that gun-running rap I never would of.”
Any Man's Death Page 13
