Roses Are Dead

by Loren D. Estleman

  When he looked again it was dark out. He didn’t recall having slept. He found the light and read his watch. Eight-thirty. Suddenly he couldn’t stand lying down any longer. He turned on the TV and tried to watch a movie, but the picture was full of ghost images and the sound was furred with static. He switched it off and got dressed. He decided to drive around until it was time to go to Bakersfield.

  His suitcase was in the car. He inspected his pockets for keys and wallet, felt the lining where he had sewn away another five thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties, turned off the light, and opened the door into the hallway lit only by an exit sign at the near end.

  A shadow moved and something struck him where his neck met his shoulder on the right side. There was a flare of sharp, hot pain, then paralysis, but before he could collapse, another blow caught him in the breastbone and he felt it part, like a rotted timber breaking up in deep water. Something struck his head, his stomach, his groin. He fell through the flurry, flung to right and left and back through the open door like a doll in a washing machine. Pain came up in a great curling wave of red and white and broke over his head and took him down into black.

  For a full five minutes after his man ceased to move, the young Oriental dressed all in black stood over him, breathing in short, controlled gasps that grew longer and quieter as he stayed motionless. He was small and beardless, his hair worn over his ears and blown into a ledge over his forehead in a shape like a German helmet painted blue-black, disheveled a little by his recent activity. At length he ran his fingers back through it and let the styled layers riffle back down. He was unarmed in the conventional sense; his hands were empty. From behind, his small, fine-boned figure was easily mistaken for a child’s. But his black eyes under the Mongolian mantle were ancient, and when at last he moved, turning back into the hall and leaving the door open behind him, it was with a sliding ease that did not look like movement at all.

  The car he got into and drove away from the motel lot was stolen. He had chosen it for its nondescript color and style, a vehicle in which to follow a hunted man from Los Angeles to Bakersfield and back without the man noticing. Now he returned it to within a block of where he had taken it and walked three miles back to the house he rented off the Coast Highway.

  The telephone was ringing when he let himself in. He walked past it, looked in on his parakeets singing in a cage big enough for a man to stand in before the picture window, tapped some seed from its shaker into the feeder, and folded himself into a hanging basket chair, lifting the receiver on the sixteenth ring.

  “Yes.” His voice was boyish.

  “Detroit calling Chih Ming Shang,” announced a female operator.

  He corrected her pronunciation of his name and told her to put the call through. The parakeets sang.

  Chapter Five

  The house stood on a dead-end street in Taylor, a frame building older than its neighbors but better kept, narrow, with a high peaked roof and a rectangular tongue of lawn out front bordered with whitewashed stones to discourage motorcyclists from cutting across it. Macklin left his car on the street and mounted the square concrete stoop to rap on the door. There was a door bell, but people who used it were not welcome, and their rings were not answered.

  Floorboards shifted inside and were silent, and Macklin knew he was being observed through the peephole in the center panel. Then a series of locks snapped and a chain jingled and the door opened wide. “Mac. Jesus, get inside.”

  He obeyed. The door closed and his host flipped all the locks back in place with a single downward stroke of one index finger like a pianist riffling the keys. Blue metal flashed and vanished into a pocket. The hand came back out empty. “You got guts coming here. Don’t you know you’re glowing?”

  “What’ve you heard?”

  “I heard somebody tried to fricassee your ass in Howard Klegg’s building yesterday.”

  “You hear a lot for a man that never goes out.”

  “You stay put, keep your ears unstopped, people come and tell you things.”

  They moved through a square arch into a small living room bathed in morning light. Macklin’s host was a short man with a cylindrical body sheathed in a white shirt and green work pants with a small square bulge where the gun rested in his right side pocket. He wore his brittle black hair in a tall brush flecked with gray, lengthening a face already shoe-shaped, with tired eyes and a wide mouth and a nose that was divided in the center like buttocks. His skin was naturally brown, though he was Caucasian and almost never went out into the sun. He smelled faintly of lubricating oil.

  “Figured you’d know better than to go to a place you been before,” he said.

  “I need a gun, Treat. You’re the only runner I’ve used more than once in five years and that’s as close to trusting someone as I get.”

  “I deal to Maggiore. If his name’s on this one I can’t deal to you. It ain’t ethics. I like my balls where they are.”

  “It isn’t Maggiore.”

  “You could just be saying that.”

  “I could kill you and take the gun.”

  “You only kill when someone pays you.”

  “Don’t count on it, Treat.”

  “Tough, tough, tough. Come on.”

  The little man led him down a hallway to the rear of the house, which went back for twice its length to a steep staircase just inside the door of a bedroom scarcely big enough for the bed and the staircase and started up that. “Watch your head.”

  Macklin did, bending almost double to clear the edge of an open trap that Treat had gone through with a bare nod of his own head. From the opening a length of naked floor stretched between sharply sloping plaster walls that met overhead, papered over with figured ballistics charts and a diagram of an antitank weapon stamped U.S. ARMY ORDNANCE TOP SECRET. A row of rifles and shotguns lined the left wall in racks, wrapped in transparent fiberglass clouded with pink cosmoline. A window in the far wall facing the street had been bricked in and paneled over, and that wall was dotted with felt-covered pegs on which rested a variety of handguns. Pieces of a disassembled machine pistol littered a stone-topped workbench against the right wall.

  “Schmeisser,” said Treat, indicating the components. “Piece of shit compared with what’s come out of Middle Europe since the war. But I got two cases of them in a trade with a Bolivian dealer and I figure I can lay them off on some survivalists I know down in North Carolina.” He sat down on a wooden bleacher seat and unlocked a drawer in the bench with a key attached to a steel case on his belt.

  “No flamethrowers?”

  “No. Shit, no. You get into that military shit, get Intelligence on your ass on top of ATF, and you’re looking down twenty to life up in Milan. I didn’t arm your shooter.”

  “Maybe you knew him.” Macklin described the man in the stairwell.

  Treat, rummaging through the deep drawer, shook his head. “He wasn’t local, or if he was he was new. I know all the ones worth knowing. Here’s what you need.” He lifted the pasteboard lid off a white Styrofoam block, removed a square pistol from the cutout, and handed it to Macklin.

  The killer turned the gun over in his hands. It was bright nickel steel from butt to barrel, seemingly all of a piece and seven inches long. He found the release catch and the magazine slithered out the bottom of the handle. It was empty. He slid it back in. “Nine-millimeter?”

  “Ten.”

  “There’s no such thing as a ten-millimeter.”

  “It’s brand-new. The army’s going to use it to replace the old Colt forty-five auto.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “Neither has the army. But it’s going to happen. It takes as much punishment as the Army Colt, but it’s lighter and packs more wallop. Even the lady dogfaces get to make like Audie Murphy.”

  “What about ammunition?”

  “I can let you have a case for cost.”

  Macklin gave it back. “I don’t like automatics.”

  �
��There’s no arguing with a brontosaurus,” Treat said. “Look over that junk on the wall.”

  He skimmed the rows of weapons and selected a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver with a fat flesh-colored grip. His fingers molded themselves around the soft rubber. “Feels like flesh.”

  “Natural rubber. I can put a different grip on it if you want.”

  “No, I like this one.”

  “There’s lots better guns than the Police Special.”

  “Not for me. How much?”

  “Six.”

  Macklin looked at him. “It was three last time.”

  “Last time you were connected. I’m going to start dealing to indies I got to charge according to risk. You say it’s not Maggiore who’s got the paper out on you. Okay, say you’re right. Maybe it’s someone else I deal to. I ain’t just jumping at shadows. You think I was born with this nose?”

  “I’ve always been curious about that.”

  “Don’t be. Met one shotgun butt, met them all. You got one hell of a nerve, haggling with a man you were threatening to kill ten minutes ago.”

  “I could still do it and save the six hundred.”

  “You won’t, though.”

  “Because we’re friends?”

  Treat rested an elbow on his workbench. “I guess you can’t call us that. We never been to each other’s place for dinner. I don’t even know if you got a wife or kids or if you bowl Tuesdays. But if you run around knocking down people that ain’t your enemies, guess what’s left.”

  “At these prices it’s hard to tell the difference.”

  “Hey, I don’t have to sell you a gun. There’s plenty of runners wouldn’t. I’m starting to hack up a doubt or two myself.”

  Macklin thumbed bills out of the emergency fund in his wallet. “All I’ve got is five hundred.”

  “Hang the gun back up.”

  He stood holding the gun. He never fondled them. “Maybe next time you’re up to your ass in enemies, you’ll remember this moment.”

  “Hey, I’m touched.” Treat fell silent, rubbing the cleft in his nose with the edge of an oil-stained thumb. Macklin wondered if that was really what had happened, years and years of rubbing it with his thumb. “Okay. But you score your own ammunition.”

  The money changed hands. Macklin kicked out the revolver’s cylinder, letting light through the chambers, and snapped it back. “Holster?”

  “Jesus Christ.” Treat flipped him a scuffed stiff black leather belt clip from the drawer.

  Macklin snugged the .38 into it and clipped it on under his shirt inside his pants. He let Treat see his wolf’s grin. “You’re really not afraid of me, are you? How come?”

  “I’m afraid of all the usual things and a couple more. But you work with tigers, you don’t let them see you back up. Use the back door, okay? I got a kid coming in for a trumpet lesson at ten.”

  He’d forgotten Treat taught music as a cover for his upstairs operation. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  “Marines on three, George,” Sergeant Lovelady reported. “A Lieutenant Wilmot in Enlisted Personnel.”

  “Take it, will you?” Inspector Pontier was reading through the John Doe autopsy report spread out on his desk. Death due to thermal trauma.

  “I think you want to hear this direct.”

  Pontier looked up at the other’s dimpled slab of a face, like a melted golf ball. He took off his reading glasses and lifted the receiver and punched 3. He listened for a few minutes, occasionally inserting a brief question. He thanked the caller and hung up. Lovelady was still in the office.

  “One for you,” he told the sergeant. “Checking out the military first was an okay idea. Stiff’s dental chart kicked out Corporal Keith Alan DeLong, Marine Reserve, three years in West Germany, one week apiece in Beirut and Grenada. Qualified on .45 auto pistol, M-l, M-16 assault rifle, BAR, bazooka—”

  “Flamethrower?”

  “Also tripod machine gun and antitank weapons. He seems to have had trouble communicating. Negro male, twenty-eight. Last known occupation, construction worker. Last known address, 1809 Livernois, Detroit, apartment 36. Get someone over there.” He tore the page of notes off his pad and handed it to Lovelady. “Feed him into the machine and Telex Washington. Anything on the cigarette lighter?”

  The other shook his head. “Serial number burned off. No recent breakins reported at any of the Guard armories in the state. Hell, you can buy the things surplus from any licensed dealer, not to mention any runner who can go the rent on a warehouse.”

  “Flamethrowers, Christ. What’s wrong with a Saturday-night special?”

  The telephone burred. Pontier speared it and waved at Lovelady, who went out, drawing the door shut behind him. The deputy chief was on the line.

  “You still running down that arson thing?” Piped-in music floated in the background.

  “It’s not just arson now, Chief. It’s starting to look like a professional hit that backfired, excuse the expression.”

  “If he killed himself it isn’t homicide, technically. Nor even attempted, without someone to sign a complaint. You’re backed up, George. Kick it back to Arson and move on.”

  “Give me a week, can you? My guts are grinding on this one. Howard Klegg’s in up to his sheepskin. You know how long he’s been stuck in our side.”

  “Howard Klegg?

  Christ, thought Pontier, and explained who Howard Klegg was.

  Music played. “Can you ring in organized crime? The mayor likes organized crime. The president hates it and it means millions in federal allocations.”

  “If I’m right about Klegg being involved I won’t have to do any ringing.”

  “One week. You get anything solid let me know. The chief will want to call a press conference. You’ll take part, of course.”

  Press you, Pontier thought.

  After the deputy chief broke the connection, Pontier buzzed Lovelady’s desk. “I forgot to ask,” he said when the sergeant answered. “What’ve you got on Klegg’s associates and those eyewitness descriptions?”

  “Couple of matches and three maybes. I’m waiting on the FBI for the rest.”

  “Light a fire under them, can’t you?”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “Politicians,” spat the inspector. “They’ve all got watches that run ahead of their brains.”

  “They got brains?”

  Pontier told him to get to work. He returned to the autopsy report, caught himself humming the tune he had heard playing in the deputy chief’s office, and stopped. He hated canned music more than he hated politicians and Mob lawyers.

  Chapter Six

  Brown was appalled at the Oriental’s lack of size. “Why, he’s just a boy!”

  “He’s thirty-seven,” said the other spectator.

  They watched the two men on the mat bowing to each other. The Oriental, half his opponent’s size in a white pajama outfit knotted with a plain cord, appeared impatient with the polite opening ceremony. When it was finished and the other man started to circle he launched himself from a standstill, arching his back and driving a pointed bare foot at the end of a straight leg at the man’s solar plexus. His opponent dodged late but quickly, catching a glancing blow under his right arm. He spun and lashed out but kicked only empty air as the smaller man ducked, driving in low with his arm stiff. Again he missed the pressure point but drew a satisfying grunt as his bent knuckles found the larger man’s ribs.

  For a while they circled each other, feinting and drawing back. Then the larger man moved, pivoting on the ball of his left foot and swinging the right high at his opponent’s head. Instead of ducking, the Oriental snatched the flying ankle and pulled, at the same time stepping in and hooking a leg behind his opponent’s stationary one. Falling, the man twisted to put his hands under him. But the smaller man straightened him with a stiff backhand swipe across his midsection and, in a series of moves too fast for the pair watching to follow, scissored at him with hands and
feet until the man lay in a heap on the mat, his chest pumping. The Oriental turned away. Hissing like a reptile, the man on the floor sprang to his feet and threw himself at his opponent’s back. The other spun suddenly and jabbed straight out at shoulder level and the hiss turned into a loud croak and the larger man folded up and lay on the mat, rolling from side to side with his hands clutching his throat and his mouth open wide and making no sound.

  “Call the paramedics,” Brown said calmly.

  His companion hurried off to comply. The gymnasium was large and high-ceilinged, with natural light sifting through frosted panels and glimmering on the varnished floor beyond the edges of the mat. Without looking back at his beaten foe the Oriental crossed noiselessly through a door into the locker room. Brown followed him inside without pausing to knock. He was a broad man but not fat, built like a professional wrestler with shoulders that strained the material of a suit that otherwise hung on him like sacking. His square face was doughy-pale, divided exactly in half by a line of blue beard and topped by thick dark graying hair that he combed back with his fingers. His eyes were cod-colored.