“You all right?” Picante asked the heavy man.
The heavy man sat up, patting himself all over. “Yeah. Who the hell taught you to drive?” He ran a hand back through his disheveled black hair.
“I’ve been shot!” exclaimed the lawyer.
Picante twisted around in his seat. The lawyer had a hand to his forehead, where blood was trickling through his left eyebrow. Picante grasped the lawyer’s wrist and pulled the hand away. “You caught a pellet is all. Maybe a piece of glass. Lucky.”
“Lucky? Getting shot is lucky? Oh, God, I’m going to be sick.”
“Not in here.” Picante unclipped the Colt Diamondback from under his arm, checked the load. A siren wound up in the distance. “That asshole Maggiore. He payrolls hopheads ’cause they work cheap. Sorry, Mike. I should of seen it.”
“Sorry, hell. Just talk to Macklin.” Grinning suddenly, the heavy man struck Picante’s shoulder hard with the heel of his hand. “Jesus, it’s good to be out.”
He figured the two keys on the ring cost him thirty thousand dollars apiece.
Looking at the house objectively—the only way he looked at anything—he couldn’t see where it was worth sixty thousand. Rust had perforated the gutters and the shingles were curling. There were more surprises inside, leaky pipes and a furnace that cut in only when some fairly determined individual fetched it a smart kick, but he had missed his second-floor study and any other house in the area would have run him as much or more. Even so, he figured having to buy it back from his ex-wife had cost him an extra ten in gall.
He was forty years old and the house was everything he owned, that and last year’s green Camaro parked in the driveway. Other men his age were toting up the years between themselves and retirement. Most others in his line were dead or in jail. The rest, like him, went on working and trying not to think about diminishing returns. It was the only law they considered.
Working on not considering it, he inserted one of the keys in the front door lock and turned it. The key met no resistance and he stopped. He had locked it that morning.
He was forty and his reflexes were not what they had been. But they kicked in ahead of sluggish reason, and before the bare fact that the door was not locked had registered he was backing toward his car. He opened the door on the driver’s side without turning his back to the house and got in.
“How are you, Mac?”
Peter Macklin recognized the lean dark man in the baggy brown suit sitting on the other side and relaxed. The man had one hand wrapped around a Colt revolver resting in his lap.
“Same old Picante,” Macklin said.
“I slowed down some,” said the man. “You too.”
“Who’s inside?”
“Couple of temporaries from Cleveland. Mike’s casting his net wide these days. Maggiore’s got this area fished out.”
“I heard they were throwing him loose.”
“This morning. Klegg sprang him a day early to beat the reporters.”
“That’s good.”
“He’s grateful, Mac. That was a hell of a thing you did for him on that boat. The feds liked it too and that’s how come he’s out as agreed.”
“I didn’t do it for him.”
“He knows that. These days it’s pay-as-you-go, no blood oaths or rings to kiss. He wants to see you.”
“Tell him his invitations stink.”
Picante looked down at the Colt as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. He didn’t put it away. “Hell, Mac, it’s been a couple of years. You don’t keep track of your friends you lose them.”
“I only carry when I’m working.”
When Picante still didn’t move, Macklin opened his corduroy sportcoat slowly. The other looked and returned the gun to its holster. “Mike’s got work for you.”
“I’m not connected now. He knows that.”
“He knows a hell of a lot more than a lot of guys that didn’t spend the last three years pressing the warden’s pants. Like he knows you hire out.”
“What’s wrong with Cleveland?”
“You trust a Kelly girl to slam the back door, nothing else. There was a try on him this morning.”
“I didn’t hear.”
“Cops, they sit on things they don’t know what else to do with. He’s okay; just mad.”
“I remember you were pretty good.”
Picante uncovered his long teeth. “My guts don’t stretch that far these days. Besides, someone has to look out for Mike.”
“Tell him thanks.”
“He’s paying fifteen thousand.”
“It isn’t that. I’m through popping people I don’t know because someone else doesn’t like them.”
Picante touched his upper lip with the finger that had rested on the Colt’s trigger. “The person he wants popped is Carlo Maggiore.”
Macklin scratched his ear.
CHAPTER 2
Caroline Vetters, aka Lynn Venters, Cheryl Lynn, Carol Vintner, Paula Gaye—where’d that come from?—Carolyn Vetter, and Carole Ayn Vetters, was black and frowzy-looking, with a flat nose and beestung lips and welts under both eyes and a shaggy natural that looked tinted red in the black-and-white photograph. Priors said she had been arrested four times for solicitation for purposes of prostitution, twice for carrying a concealed weapon (served nine months in the Detroit House of Corrections the second time), once for attempted murder, charges dropped before trial. From front and side she might have been any one of a hundred women Inspector George Pontier saw lugging wash to the laundromat on Watson every day on his way to Detroit Police Headquarters; even he had to admit that a lot of black women of her age and station looked alike. And maybe it had nothing to do with race. Take ten bottle caps in ten colors and hit them all the same number of times with the same hammer and try to tell them apart. This particular bottle cap was thirty-six years old and wouldn’t have to worry about being thirty-seven.
He looked up at Sergeant Lovelady’s broad mealy face hovering over his desk. “What was the weapon and what did she use in the attempted?”
“Handgun, the CCWs,” Lovelady said. “First one was German make, a real suicide special. She was lucky she got caught before she ever tried firing the thing. Other was S&W, a .32 with a history, only she was pulling ten days for solicitation the time it was fired into the ceiling at a stop-and-rob over by Ypsilanti. She used a sticker in the attempted, on her boyfriend. Allegedly,” he added, deadpan.
Pontier wondered which was alleged, the attempted murder or the boyfriend. He put down the photo circular from Records and picked up the weapon recovered from the woman’s body at the church. It was a Colt .357 magnum with nickel plating and an alligator grip. The serial number over the trigger guard had been cut out neatly in a rectangular piece with a jeweler’s torch or something equally precise. He stroked the gouge with his thumb. “She came up in the world some toward the end.”
“It’s a pro piece for sure. A little loud.”
“They like it that way sometimes. How they coming with the autopsy report?”
“Typing it up now. Lab says she had enough amphetamines in her plumbing to light up the Penobscot Building.”
“Pump her up and shove her in shooting. Throw her away with the piece, there’s plenty more where they came from. Christ.” He stroked his moustache with an unselfconscious movement. He looked tall and slim even seated behind the desk, bald, with his graying fringe blown out professionally and light gray eyes that glittered in the varnished mahogany of his face. The commissioner liked his looks, and lately it seemed that he had appeared on the TV news more often than the mayor. “Sunsmith show yet?”
“Outside.”
“‘Kay. You get an address on Caroline Vetters, run it in here. We find out where she went to the can this year and who with, I bet we turn up somebody connected.”
“Dese guys?” Lovelady laid a finger alongside his pitted nose, bending it over.
“Them to start. And probably to finish. Christ, we were just gett
ing shut of them and then this casino gambling thing comes along. Be a hell of a thing we let all these street soldiers run around popping each other over dope when there’s another racket just laying around waiting for muscle. Anyway, taking Sunsmith out would shake up the organization against gambling. Who else if not dese guys? Shoo him in here.”
He had on a lavender suit tailored out of a light soft material that hung like good drapery—a big man, six-three and broad enough to make an operation out of getting both shoulders through the door. His shaved head was shadowed like his chin. He took Pontier’s hand in a palm that could wrap itself twice around the inspector’s and lowered himself gracefully into a steel chair that creaked.
“Coffee, Reverend?” The inspector took his own seat behind the desk.
“If you have Sweet ’n Low.”
Christ, he weighed three hundred easy. Pontier looked at Sergeant Lovelady, who turned and trundled out to get the coffee, himself almost as wide as Sunsmith but six inches shorter, firm and fat, with bowl-cut red hair and a complexion like rare hamburger.
“You hired Caroline Vetters?” started Pontier.
“She said her name was Lucinda. No, I didn’t hire her.”
Pontier hesitated. “At the church you said—”
“The ladies in the choir are not hired. They donate their time and voices to the service of God.”
“They’re not paid?”
“Ours is not a wealthy parish.” He made a forlorn gesture with a plump hand wearing a large diamond. “She reported to practice last Tuesday when Sister Vernal was called away on a family matter. I’ve said that three times now.”
“Sister Vernal told you she was called away?”
“No, Sister Lucinda did.”
“You didn’t check?”
He smiled for the first time, two rows of big teeth glittering like an old Buick grille. “You mean why didn’t I suspect Sister Lucinda of lying to cheat the church out of peace and contentment?”
“You’re a public figure, Reverend. Public figures have enemies. Especially those who involve themselves in local politics. You should know. We’ve tried to reach Vernal Brooks; her phone doesn’t answer and no one’s seen her since last Monday when she complained to her landlady about a stuck window. We checked out the apartment. Her clothes are there. No Vernal. I’m betting she’s as dead as Lucinda.”
“Then God rest her.”
“You don’t seem very upset.”
Sergeant Lovelady came in then with the coffee and four packages of Sweet ’n Low. Sunsmith tore them open daintily with his big fingers and emptied all of them into the Styrofoam cup. “I don’t know her that well,” he said, dusting off his palms. “The devout life is demanding. Only a few can sustain it. There is a turnover.”
“Any ideas on why Caroline Vetters tried to kill you?”
“The devil has pawns everywhere.”
“How about threats? Received any lately?”
“Your men asked that already. Sister Asaul is bringing in the file.”
“What’s in the file?”
“Threatening letters, offensive telephone messages. Faith attracts nearly as much darkness as it does light.”
“So does politics. Do you suspect anyone specific of the attempt yesterday?”
“Sister Lucinda acted alone. It’s my regret that I was not able to turn her from the devil’s path before it was too late.” The gesture this time was genuinely sad and oddly beautiful, considering his proportions.
Pontier played with a ballpoint pen, clicking the point in and out. “I can’t help noticing that your faith isn’t strong enough to exclude four bodyguards with permits to carry concealed weapons. You’ve got two former Detroit Police officers, a retired professional wrestler, and an ex-Lions tackle. What are they, apostles?”
“I’m told I present a large target. Darkness,” he repeated.
“You’ve refused protective custody. Preventing the next attempt would be a lot easier if you were straight with me about who’s trying to kill you and why.”
The chair groaned as Sunsmith leaned forward, placing his great lavender-covered forearms on the desk. His candle-black eyes shone flatly. “God is a mystery with no one solution,” he said. “Sometimes it’s necessary to bargain with Satan in order to do the Lord’s work. May I go? I have a fund-raiser.”
Pontier nodded and placed his hand in the Reverend’s paw as its owner rose with none of the noises a big man usually makes fighting gravity. The inspector said, “Sergeant Twill and Officer Ledyard will be joining your company, in plainclothes. The commissioner and I would be grateful if you didn’t leave them behind in the confessional or something.”
“My church doesn’t believe in confessing.”
The inspector bit back his reply. When Sunsmith had left, Lovelady said, “What’s that mean about bargaining with the devil?”
“Only that the separation of church and state is a joke.” Pontier inserted his pen inside Sunsmith’s empty coffee cup and tilted it toward him. He hadn’t even seen him drinking from it.
Al was the golden retriever’s name. In spite of it, the dog was an effeminate-looking animal, all long silken red-gold hair and narrow head and back and large dark glistening eyes like Sal Mineo’s. Watching Boniface stroking the dog, Macklin found himself wondering who had really ordered the job done on Mineo. He didn’t believe that prominent people ever wandered innocently into trouble. They paid people to do that for them. Sitting, the dog leaned all its weight against its master’s legs. If Boniface stirred in the big easy chair the dog would go sprawling. Trust.
“You’d of visited me in the can if they let you, wouldn’t you, boy?” Boniface was saying. “Sure you would. My fucking daughter only came twice.”
Picante, coloring a glass of water with bourbon from the drink cart near the window, said: “She came other times. You wouldn’t see her.”
“She brought that prick she’s living with. Guy makes jewelry for a living, you believe it? I don’t mean he’s a jeweler, he makes that turquoise Indian crap you see at all the street fairs. Wears tie-dyed shirts like it’s still sixty-eight, for chrissake, and one of them little beards like Maynard G. Krebs used to wear. Dobie Gillis, you remember that show? The reruns were always on when that kike bastard Morningstar had paper out on me and I couldn’t go out in the street. He respected the sanctity of the home, that Jew did, I’ll say that. Not like these fuckers now, blow off the back of your head in your own living room with your kid on your knee.”
As he spoke, he tightened his grip on Al’s neck. The dog yipped and rolled its eyes over white at its master, who resumed stroking its fur gently. Al leaned back against his legs. Picante brought over the drink.
“I got to take this stuff slow,” said Boniface. “I had a guard smuggling in Haig & Haig the first year but they fired him. My first wife must be spinning in her grave. Two years dry is longer than we were married.”
Macklin sipped his highball and looked out the window across from the sofa he was sitting on. That floor of the Pontchartrain Hotel presented a view of the skyscrapers downtown and beyond them of the housing developments spreading as neat as pieces on a board to the horizon.
Boniface said, “Klegg didn’t want us meeting here, public place like the Ponch. But, shit, you won’t get caught, and even if you do you’ll just say you were here paying your respects. I trust you like I trust Picante there. We’re family.”
“Except Mac quit the family,” Picante pointed out.
“Well, the prodigal son, then. What was he going to do, go on working for that fucking hunchback, after Maggiore hung out paper on him? I should of made Picante capo in my place,” he confided to Macklin, “only that would of meant war in the ranks. Maggiore was senior. Who knew the little shit was going to turn over on me like he did?”
Macklin said nothing. Boniface’s mouth had grown foul in prison. Macklin missed the quiet son of Alberto “the Pope” Boniface and his old-world manner. The present incarnation had
been talking ever since Macklin had entered the suite.
Picante said, “The feds are moving in on Maggiore.”
“Not fast enough. When the prick gets nailed I want it to be me holding the hammer. The hammer being Mac here. The can cost me my place in line. Mac’s going to make room.”
“I’m independent now. I said that up front.”
“Business is full of wildcats. Specialization’s got it by the balls. You want someone popped you got to know up front does he get a bullet in the head or a blowtorch shoved up his ass, and then you got to go down the list till you come to someone who specializes in guns or torches. You’re maybe the last general practitioner in the business. Also I know you’ll do it right, on account of your own score with Maggiore.”
“He tried to have me killed. If I made a business of squaring things with everyone who wanted me dead I’d die of old age still owing.”
“I wasn’t talking about the contract.”
Sunlight coming through the window found pouches in Boniface’s otherwise puffy face and glistened unhealthily on his penitentiary pallor. He was looking at Macklin in a way nobody else had ever looked at him but one other person, now dead. But for Picante, who didn’t have the look, Boniface was the only man living who wasn’t afraid of Macklin.
“My ear’s on the ground, even in the can,” Boniface went on. “Your boy’s a Maggiore mechanic. Pulled off a couple of touches now and he’s not bad. Prick like the hunchback makes a plumber out of your son, it’s like someone fucked your daughter in your own house, am I right?”
Macklin set down his glass with one sip gone. “The deal always was we stayed out of each other’s personal lives.”
“Fuck the deal. That went down the toilet when you quit.”
“Your boy—Robert?” said Picante.
“Roger.”
“He’s a write-off. He’s tasted blood and even if you get him out he’ll be like a sheep-killing dog you got to keep chained up. Question is, does Maggiore get away with it?”
“You mean like an eye for an eye?”
“Revenge stinks for business.” Boniface scratched under the dog’s chin. “Quit trying to bring Mac’s blood to a boil. You’ll be all day breaking the crust. No. I’m just saying you might get a boot out of this one, on top of the money. I don’t care how it gets done so long as it gets done quick.”
Roses Are Dead Page 22
