Roses Are Dead

by Loren D. Estleman

  Brown ate only vegetables, having forsworn meat in 1962, and studied his guest. Mantis had spread out the dozen shots of Macklin he’d found in the folder and gazed at them on the tablecloth as he chewed. His shoulders were rounded under the green sweater and he was bald to his crown, from which he grew his dull gray hair straight down and cut it off square at his collar. He drew out another typewritten sheet and read it, his eyes light and humorous behind the bifocals.

  “Who is this woman Moira King?”

  “Right now she’s our only link to Macklin except Howard Klegg, and the police are watching him too closely,” Brown said. “He moved out of his house in Southfield some weeks ago, and we haven’t his current address. I doubt he’s using it. Two separate attempts on his life have put him on his guard. He’s a difficult man to kill at any time, but now he’ll be doubly so.”

  “I am your last best hope.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”

  “Of course you would not.” The old man went on looking at him over the tops of his spectacles for a moment, then returned his attention to the sheet. “He has business with this Moira woman?”

  “They are in contact.”

  “They are friends, lovers, what?”

  “There is a connection. That’s all you require.”

  Mantis slid everything back into the folder and held it out across the table. “I am not the man for you, Mr. White.”

  “Brown.”

  “You want one of these young lizard-eyed animals from Moscow, a robot in his twenties with his head full of Marx and Lenin that you can point like an arrow and know he will fly true and hit his target and obligingly destroy himself in the process. I would give you a list of names, but the list is always changing, as you can imagine. Instead I will thank you for the trip and for this excellent meat loaf—except for the rich seasoning—and go back home to Sofiya.”

  Brown didn’t take the folder. “What do you want, Mr. Mantis?”

  “Just Mantis, please.” He laid the material between them on the table. “Information, Mr. Brown. Meat for the skeleton. When you have told everything I will decide how much I require and forget the rest. That I have attained this age in my profession is sufficient evidence of my powers of forgetfulness.”

  “Insubordination!” shrilled Green.

  “I am not a subordinate.” Mantis continued to watch Brown, who was staring thoughtfully at his plate.

  “It’s a clear violation of policy,” he said then. “But I have latitude.”

  He spoke for ten minutes while the old man ate slowly and made no interruption.

  When he was finished, Brown said, “How soon can you act?”

  “A week perhaps.” Mantis selected a warm roll from the basket on the table and tore it in half.

  “That’s too long. Macklin may have made his move by then.”

  “Not if he is the professional you have described. These matters require time. One does not …” He paused, made an exasperated face, and put down the roll half with which he had been sponging orange sauce from his plate. He bounced up and down on his chair, slapping an ample flank significantly while the others stared.

  “Cowboy!” supplied Green finally.

  “Da. One does not cowboy. It is this that has cost you two men. A man is not a target silhouette. If you are to penetrate his skin, you must wear it first. A week is the bare minimum. More if you want it to look like something other than murder.”

  “That’s not important,” said Brown.

  “Excellent.” Mantis popped the rest of the soaked roll into his mouth. “You know, the more I eat of this the better I find it. Does Miss Anya serve seconds?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Oral sex, he was sick of it.

  Cranking the Moviola a little faster, the man seated behind the glass-topped desk shook his head at the tiny naked figures jerking and bobbing through the machine. He could never figure out how a copulating couple managed to kiss so ardently after just having had their mouths full of each other’s genitals. He stopped cranking and drew over his memo pad and wrote: “Sam—Whatever happened to the good old missionary position? FYI, The Joy of Sex, diagram G-12.”

  He had never seen a copy of The Joy of Sex and didn’t even know if that was how the diagrams were labeled. But the director would get the idea.

  His intercom buzzed. He pressed the speaker button. “Yes, Angel.”

  His secretary’s name was Pamela. He never let her forget that she had once appeared in films under the name Angel Climax. Coolly she replied: “There’s a Mr. Macklin here to see you. Shall I send him in?”

  He felt his blood drain into his feet.

  “Mr. Payne?”

  “Tell him I’m not in. I’m on vacation.”

  There was a pause. “He heard that, Mr. Payne.”

  He looked around the office for any exits he might have missed in four years in residence. In his late forties, Jeff Payne wore muttonchop whiskers and had his graying blond hair tinted and teased into curls to cover the thin spots. He jogged, stopped eating a dish as soon as it turned up on the cancer list, counted his cholesterol, and only went out with women under twenty-five. He hadn’t celebrated a birthday in eleven years. He was contemplating his third-floor window when Macklin came in.

  “Oh, hello, Mac.” His eyes went automatically to his visitor’s hands. They were empty. He felt himself starting to fall in on himself with relief.

  “Jeff, I’m working for me now,” said the killer. “Even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t come at you through your secretary.”

  “Hell, Mac, you didn’t think I was afraid of that.” He started to rise but couldn’t find the bones for it and stretched out his hand sitting. Then he remembered the other’s aversion to the gesture and let it drop. His palm left a wet mark on the desk’s glossy surface. “Have a seat. How’ve you been?”

  Macklin remained standing. “How’s the dirty picture game?”

  “In another year I can sue you for accusing me of being in it. Hard-core is out. There’s no money in stag parties and old men in raincoats. This is the age of cable and videocassettes, software and soft porn. More story, fewer orgasms. Today’s hip married couple wants something to get the juices flowing after the kids are in bed, but they want to think they’re being enriched too. Hell, I burned five miles of mask-and-black-socks footage last month to make room in the warehouse for the new stuff. Nowhere to lay it off.”

  “Who’s financing this big changeover?”

  Payne, who had been warming to his own enthusiasm, felt the fear creep back in. “Is that why you’re here? They always used to spot me at least a week before sending in the team.”

  “No. I told you my business isn’t with you. I need a line on a model or an actor or whatever you’re calling them now. He appeared in some films locally a couple of years ago.”

  “That’s forever in this business.” The other relaxed a little. Not completely; he had been given his entire operation five years earlier for services rendered and rumor had it Macklin was responsible for the vacancy in management. “The burnout factor’s pretty high when you have to get it up on demand.”

  “He’s between films, been there for sixteen months. He may be just getting back into it.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Roy Blossom.”

  “Know his screen name?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Johnny Wadd. Will Hung. Peter Prong. Back then they didn’t exactly want their baptismal handles up in lights. I used to go with an actress called herself Joy Trail.”

  “I didn’t think to ask. Last time I saw one of the things the actors weren’t using any names at all.”

  “Those were good days. There wasn’t any art to the things but they had a raw vitality you don’t see today.”

  “Jeff, I could stand here all day reminiscing about the golden age of skin flicks.”

  Payne got the hint. He pressed the intercom button and asked Pamela to look up Roy
Blossom in the talent file.

  “I got a short here’s got to be shot all over again,” said Payne while they were waiting, slapping the Moviola. “They’re always going down on each other, plenty of wet close-ups. I’d have to unload it on a Woodward Avenue grindhouse to get anything back on my investment. Care to see?”

  “No.”

  They waited some more. When the intercom buzzed Payne jumped on it.

  “No Blossom,” reported the secretary. “I’ve got a Bliss and three Blooms.”

  “Thanks, Pam. Sorry, Mac.”

  “Where else would he apply?”

  “I can give you some names. But we’re the biggest in town. If he’s making the push to get back in, we’d have his résumé on file.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Jeff. You didn’t see me.”

  “See who?”

  After Macklin went out Payne gave the Moviola crank a few more turns, then pushed away the machine and sat back, feeling wrung out. He made a mental note to borrow some money to pay off his debts.

  Macklin used a telephone inside a service station to dial Howard Klegg.

  “I expected you to call before this,” said the lawyer.

  “I’ve been busy. Anything yet on who signed the paper on me?”

  “No. I told you, Boniface came up empty. How’s it going with Moira?”

  “I’m not into talking about my work with anyone who happens to ask.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ve got a meeting in my office with your wife and her lawyer tentatively set for three this afternoon. Can you make it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Klegg paused. “Can you come early, say two?”

  “How come?”

  “Not over the phone.”

  Macklin watched the fat woman cashier make change for a customer. “What’s it going to be this time, a bomb? Or is that too run-of-the-mill?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Macklin!”

  “Two o’clock.” He broke the connection.

  He was there at one. The stairwell still smelled of burning trash and the fireproof paneling was scorched and bowed slightly outward. He climbed the three flights with his gun in his hand, making sure the hallway was deserted before he put away the weapon and swung the door wide.

  Klegg was out to lunch. His secretary, a trim woman of forty with tawny hair caught with combs behind her ears and a white ruffled blouse under a tailored tan jacket, told Macklin he could go into his office and wait. Her face betrayed no memory of the commotion surrounding the killer’s last visit. He let himself into the sanctum.

  “Mr. Macklin.”

  He tore the .38 out from under his sport coat. A black man with a graying fringe was sitting behind the lawyer’s desk with his hands flat on top. He had gray eyes and wore a suit that fit him well.

  “Put it up.”

  This was a different voice. Macklin shifted his attention slightly left, to a revolver of the same make and caliber in a fat hand belonging to a broad man wearing a yellow sport coat in need of a press. His face was flat and pockmarked and he wore his red hair in a bowl cut.

  Macklin said, “Uh-uh.”

  The man behind the desk lifted one of his hands, palming a leather badge folder. “I’m Inspector Pontier. That’s Sergeant Lovelady, my partner. When Klegg made the appointment for two I said to the sergeant you’d be here at one. We’ve been waiting since noon. This is why your city income tax is so high. I don’t guess you have a permit for that gun.”

  Macklin said nothing. He and Lovelady watched each other. The sergeant’s eyes might have been two more pits with paint on them.

  The black man gestured with the folder before putting it away. His partner hesitated, then elevated his barrel. Macklin kept his level.

  “You First,” Pontier said. “It’s a game most of us quit playing after we get our first hard-on. The cops and robbers business is just grown-up kid stuff. It’s okay, Sergeant. Mr. Macklin is a professional. He doesn’t shoot police officers.”

  After a space the sergeant returned his weapon to a clip under his left arm. Macklin hung on another moment before he started to feel silly, like the only person with his clothes on in a nudist camp, and leathered his own. Pontier spoke again.

  “Don’t blame Klegg. He knows an accessory rap would be just the hole we’d need to get in with both hands and start digging. It isn’t easy being a crook at his level. You can’t just run when things fall in and you never know when things are going to start falling. Sit down.”

  “Thanks, I sat in the car on the way here.”

  Pontier made a shrug. “They used to say the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. It’s still true a lot of the time. Problem is you can’t always spot him. But the minute I saw that burned body at the bottom of the stairs the other day I said to myself, this one’s coming back. Lawyers don’t get much off-the-street trade and justice isn’t dispensed in one day. Also people don’t change lawyers unless they do something really stupid like grabbing the judge’s necktie in court. It’s human nature. So I knew you’d be back.”

  “That your evidence?”

  “Well, there’s a little more to it, like a clear match between eyewitness descriptions and the picture and stats in your FBI file. Hell of a time prying that away from the Feds. They don’t like to admit they employ killers from time to time. You did an impressive job aboard the Boblo boat last August.”

  “I was out of town last August.”

  “On Lake Erie, to be precise. Anyway, that one’s closed. Nobody alive to file a complaint. All I’m interested in is what you did to Keith DeLong to make him so mad at you.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “His name was in the Free Press this morning.”

  “I’m self-employed. I don’t get much time to read.”

  “Self-employed at what? Freelance camera repair? We checked with Addison Camera. You quit first of September.”

  “I’m a human relations consultant. I solve people’s personal problems for a fee.”

  Pontier and Lovelady laughed together. The sergeant’s bray fairly shook the new window in its frame.

  “What wasn’t in the Freep this morning,” went on the inspector, suddenly deadpan, “is that after his discharge from the Marines and while he was laid off from his construction job, DeLong filed an application for employment with a mercenary recruitment office the FBI has been trying to shut down for eighteen months. Things have been calm for a while and his application wasn’t processed. What we have is a man trained by the government to kill, who is looking for similar work on his own and not having a hell of a lot of luck. Now, what fraternal organization with a five-letter name beginning with M might find his talents worthy of exploiting?”

  “Get to the point, Inspector.”

  “The point is you don’t quit places like Addison Camera that are affiliated with this organization I’m talking about. If you try they get awful mad.”

  Macklin leaned his hands on the desk.

  “I’m not saying I was anywhere near here when DeLong fried himself,” he said. “But if I were, am I under arrest for watching him do it?”

  “I’m not saying you were anywhere else,” said Pontier. “But if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be a material witness to an attempted homicide.”

  “You don’t have enough to take me into custody.”

  “I could take you down just for carrying that peashooter.”

  “You could try.”

  Lovelady made a noise.

  Pontier said, “You lifetakers make my ass ache. You think you’re the only ones cross that line. How many is it now, Sergeant?”

  “Six.”

  “When I met him it was four,” he told Macklin. “He’d’ve made lieutenant long before this if he didn’t have so many notches on his department piece. When I took over the squad I asked for the personnel file on every plainclothesman on the force. When I finished reading Lovelady’s I put in for him first. I.A.D. stuck him under hack for three bad shoots, but h
e managed to squeak through with restricted duty and two suspensions without pay. I wanted at least one man on the detail who could work a trigger without stopping to wonder what would happen to him afterwards. So don’t go huffing and puffing around him. He’s got a shield and you don’t and that’s the only difference between you.”

  Macklin took the sergeant’s measure. Lovelady’s face gave up as much expression as the plate of cottage cheese it resembled.

  Pontier got to his feet. “We’ll leave it there for now,” he said. “I promised Klegg we’d be gone before he got back from lunch. Oh, you wouldn’t know anything about a young Chinese man who was found dead in Westland day before yesterday.”

  “I don’t know any live Chinese.”

  “Okay. It’s just that he was shot twice with a .38, and the Westland Police are having the same trouble identifying him that we had with DeLong.”

  “I’m not the only one in Detroit carries a .38.”

  “No. But you use it more than most. I was just asking. We’ll talk again.” He moved toward the door. Lovelady stepped over to open it.

  Macklin said, “Aren’t you going to warn me not to leave town?”

  Pontier chuckled.

  Out in the hall, Lovelady said: “It didn’t work. He ain’t some kid we jerked down for stealing tape decks from cars.”

  “With those guys you can’t ever tell.” Pontier rang for the elevator.

  “I don’t look the part. You can take one look at me and know I never fired my piece off the police range.”

  “You’re closer to it than the killer cop I modeled you after.”

  “I thought you made him up.”

  “No, he’s real.”

  The elevator doors opened and they stepped aboard. “How come he ain’t on the detail?”

  “Killing’s easy. It’s the not killing takes brains and guts.” They descended.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I think we’ve made real progress,” Klegg announced, rising from behind his desk and shaking hands with Goldstick. “That nonsense about the hundred thousand dollars was the only real stumbling block.”

  Goldstick smiled. “Judge Flutter will turn cartwheels when he hears.”