Roses Are Dead (10 page)

“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? Free-lance 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 life-takers 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 he 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.”

“I'd give up my license to practice law to see that.”

“Coming, Donna?” Goldstick asked.

“I'll catch up with you.” She was standing close to Macklin. They glanced at Klegg, who busied himself with things on his desk. Macklin touched her elbow and they moved to the far end of the office.

“Roger told me you talked to him yesterday,” she said. “You're right. He does hate your guts.”

“Well, he hates guts. Think it worked?”

“I don't know. It's so hard to tell with him. He really is like you. Thanks, Mac. For trying.”

“The price was right.”

Her eyes were still young in the fleshy face. She took them from his and opened her purse.

“I found these yesterday when I was cleaning. I thought maybe you'd like to have them.” She handed him a small bundle of yellowed and curling envelopes bound with a rubber band. “There isn't much. You were never one for getting and writing letters.”

“You were cleaning?”

She smiled then, a little stiffly. “I'm getting neat as all hell. You wouldn't know the place. I've enrolled in a health club too. Going to see if I can take off a few pounds.” She paused. “I'm job hunting. First time in my life.”

“How's the hunting?”

“Aside from the fact I'm too old and don't have any skills, it's just peachy. The interviewers are all very courteous and polite. You never lied to me with that kind of grace.”

“I only lied to you about my work. Nothing else.”

“What about Christine?”

He looked at her. She met his gaze, then looked away.

“I found a note from her you forgot to tear up. One of these things you leave on someone's pillow. Pretty hot stuff, Mac. Is that what you liked? You never told me.”

“What's it matter, Donna?”

“Nothing. Now. I just never thought I was that dense.”

“You were that drunk.”

“I took my first drink the day I found out what you did for a living.”

“You did it to celebrate finding a reason. You'd been looking for one for years.”

Silence crackled. He remembered the bundle of letters and slipped off the rubber band. One of the older envelopes contained a fold of green construction paper pasted over with pictures of flowers cut out of a seed catalogue. Inside was a legend scrawled in purple crayon.

“‘Roses are red,'” he read.

“Roger made it for you that time you were in the hospital,” she said. “He was four.”

“I'd forgotten it.” He looked at it a moment longer, then returned it to its tattered envelope and shuffled through the rest of the stuff. He replaced the rubber band and handed back the bundle. “Keep it for me, will you? Throw it out if it gets in your way. I do a lot of moving around and it would just get lost.”

She put it back in her purse.

“I guess I should ask how you are,” she said. “But I don't care.”

“Thanks for thinking of me with the letters.”

“Where can I reach you? I mean, if Roger …”

“Call Klegg.”

When she left, the lawyer stopped straightening his desk and looked down the length of the office at Macklin. “You talked to Pontier?”

“I did. If you weren't my lawyer I'd kill you.”

“That's been said to a lot of lawyers. It's why you never pick up a paper and read about one being found in a car trunk at Metro Airport with a hole in his head. He got on to you somehow. I knew he didn't have any proof, he was acting too cagey. I didn't think it would do any harm if you talked.”

“You could have told me. I came in here wearing a gun I could have gone down a long time just for having.”

“Would you have come if I did?”

“No.”

Klegg spread his hands. “I'm in a vulnerable business. I have to put up a show of cooperation. As careful as I am there is always something a good investigator could get hold of if he digs. Up to now I haven't given any of them a reason to want to. When I do it won't be because some hoodlum I never heard of set himself on fire in my building.”

“Pontier explained that.”

“Question is did you believe it.”

“Next time tell me,” Macklin said.

The thin old man lowered himself into his chair. When he did that he seemed to grow broader and more substantial. “How's Moira?”

“I said I don't talk shop.”

“I heard you. I just want to know how she is.”

“She's in trouble deep.”

“If I didn't know that I wouldn't have had her find out the two of you exist in the same world.”

“I'm just for dusting off when you need me,” Macklin said. “Then it's back up on the dark shelf.”

Klegg wasn't listening. He cut a thin smile at one of the chairs arranged before the desk. “She used to come in and sit there while her father was interviewing a client he didn't want her to meet. Her feet barely reached the floor. I spent almost as much time with her in those days as Lou did. His wife hemorrhaged after birth and he raised her alone. If she'd had a mother she might not have had the problems she did. But she's making her way back now.” He looked at Macklin. “I want this man Blossom out of her life.”

“You mean, you want him out of his own.”

“Remember I never said that.”

“Lawyers,” said Macklin, on his way out.

In his hotel room the old man double-locked the door and inspected the room and bath for unwanted visitors. There were none. He had already checked out the view from his window and satisfied himself that there were no fire escapes or nearby roofs from which an intruder might gain entrance. He shrugged off his overcoat and hung it with his hat on a hook in the closet, then opened one of his big suitcases on the bed. From it he took a small bottle of red-and-black capsules. In the bathroom he swallowed one and chased it down with water.

Next he drew the curtains over the window, dumped the contents of the manila folder out onto the bed, and used Scotch tape to fix the dozen five-by-seven glossy photos to the mirror over the bureau in two neat horizontal rows. Most of them had been shot with a long lens, but there was one formal mug and a family portrait several years old, the latter cadged from the files of a studio photographer who owed someone a favor. The old man sat on the foot of the bed drinking the rest of his water and gazing at the pictures. Two showed the man getting into and out of his car, a silver Cougar. One included a clear view of the license plate.

Someone rapped at the door. He got up and used the peephole, lowered his bifocals to focus through it. He recognized the bellboy who had brought up his suitcases and unlocked and opened the door.

“Sir, you said to bring this up the minute it came.” The young man held out a package the size of a shirt box wrapped in brown paper and bound with string.

“Thank you.” The old man accepted the package and closed the door on the bellboy, who was staring down at the seventy-five cents in his hand.

The old man relocked the door and sat down at the secretary to tear off the wrapping. He opened the pasteboard box and separated the Styrofoam inside from a slim pistol built on a magnesium frame with a bare grip. It was a 7.65-millimeter Walther of a special design, weighing less than eight ounces. After inspecting the action he laid it aside and turned to the rest of the items in the package.

He used a penknife to pry the top off the first of the jacketed cartridges. The brass nose was hollow, lined with lead. He opened the heavy little plastic bottle he had brought and used a glass eyedropper to insert a bright wobbly silver globule of mercury in the bullet cavity. Last he lit a squat candle he had bought downtown and dropped wax into the cavity to seal it. He reassembled the cartridge, tamping down the bullet with gentle taps of a small yellow nylon-headed mallet, put down the cartridge, and selected another from the box. He spent the next half hour filling a full pistol load with mercury.

It was simple physics. Upon impact inertia forced the mercury forward, splintering the lead and the brass jacket and opening a hole in unprotected flesh large enough to let daylight through. Thus a hit anywhere in the body guaranteed a fatality from massive blood loss, if indeed it did not kill instantly. It was safer to fire than the old dum-dum, which had been known to separate in the gun's barrel and cause a backfire, and it required less charge than a magnum load, heightening accuracy.