Roses Are Dead (20 page)

“Yeah, and Hitler was chancellor. It's my turn to say come on.”

Macklin looked at Fieldhouse.

Burlingame stepped forward and started the car moving. “Fieldhouse, I'm parking you.”

“Sir, I'm cleared.”

“Not with our friend. It'll just be for a half hour or so. You can go back to the office if you want.” The doors opened.

“I'll wait.”

When the young agent had stepped out, his superior sent the elevator back up and stalled it in the same location.

“Your friend isn't Russian,” he told Macklin. “He's a Bulgarian and his name is Simeon Novo, or at least that's the one he uses in his own country. When he's there, which he isn't often. Most of the time he's out annulling. That's the common accepted contemporary term for killing in the espionage racket. He's either fifty-eight or sixty-two depending on which birth record you go by, and he's in semi-retirement. That means he only kills one or two people a year. I've got a printout as long as my leg back at the office that reads like a primer on international assassination over the past fifteen years, which is when we started keeping tabs on him. The CIA probably has a better one, more thorough.”

“How come you have anything on him at all? FBI jurisdiction stops at U.S. borders.”

“Washington has a whole bureau assigned to monitor what the CIA is doing. We've got hackers can break into a computer file with a triple security system in less time than you can pick your nose with a nail file. It's like sneaking a peek at your own partner's cards, I know, but what the hell? Last year the Pentagon paid eleven hundred dollars for a staple remover that runs a buck ninety-eight in any stationery store.”

“I was right about the KGB, then. It was just a wild guess.”

“Well, maybe he's KGB. Our information says he works just as often for the CIA. He's what we call a Dutch door. He swings both ways. His code name on the market is Mantis.”

“Jesus.”

“Who are
you
working for?” Burlingame demanded.

“Myself.”

“We can always sweat Klegg. We know he's involved, and he knows we can scrape up enough on him to keep him in court for ten years, years he doesn't have. He'll blow you rather than let that happen.”

Macklin looked around the car and ran his hand behind the rail on both sides.

Burlingame said, “It's not wired. It's the only room in the building that isn't, and it's why we're here. It wouldn't stand up in court anyway.”

“I'm working for the daughter of an old friend of Klegg's,” Macklin said. “She's got boyfriend trouble. He's threatening to kill her.”

“Only she's paying you to kill him first.”

“I'm working for her. That's all you get.”

“Not good enough. Names.”

The killer held up an index finger. “One. Roy Blossom. A local film stud they sprang from Ypsi last month. He was in for carving his initials on a bad driver.”

“Where's he live?”

“I don't know. They wouldn't tell me at the hospital, and I didn't feel like putting a gun to their heads.”

“We can get that information for you. If you cooperate.”

“Right now I just want to know whose list I'm on and why.”

“We'll run Blossom through the machine and see what it spits out. Your troubles seem to have started the day you called on Klegg. If there's a connection, we'll find it. But you'll have to let us know what goes on at your end.”

Macklin said, “You're sitting on something.”

“You're not?”

The killer leaned on the rail.

“Well, I don't shake hands.”

“I wouldn't anyway, with you.” Burlingame extended the magazine he'd broken out of the other's pistol.

Macklin accepted it.

When the doors opened, Fieldhouse stood out of the way to let Macklin leave the car and fell into step with the bureau director. Outside, the killer turned south while the pair swung north in the direction of the Federal Building. Fieldhouse asked what happened.

“I cut a deal.”

“With
him
?” He glanced back over his shoulder at Macklin's retreating form.

“I didn't tell him everything. He doesn't know about Kurof or that we traced Kurof's partner to CIA headquarters. He thinks Mantis is with the KGB. Well, he could be right. The checkers keep changing colors.”

“But you told him about Mantis.”

“I guess you've got a right to know who's trying to kill you.”

“Can we trust him?”

Burlingame walked faster, getting his circulation pumping. The air was damp and cold, more November than October.

“This serviceman was getting set to muster out,” he said. “As the day got closer his correspondence with his wife got steadily more horny. In his last letter he wrote, ‘When you meet my plane you better have a mattress strapped to your back.' ‘Okay,' she answered, ‘but you better be the first man off.'”

They stopped on a corner to wait for the pedestrian signal to change. Fieldhouse was watching the director.

“Macklin's the wife,” Burlingame said.

Chapter Twenty-six

The telephone rang while the old man was packing his bags in his room. He let it jangle while he closed the bigger of the two suitcases and spun the combination dial and leaned the straps tight before setting the buckle. He had gotten rid of the Walther and the ammunition and mercury kit and was leaving with no more luggage than he had brought with him. He answered the telephone.

“This is Mr. Brown,” said the familiar voice.

“Yes, Mr. Brown.”

“It appears that delivery on the package was not accepted.”

“Impossible.”

“Not according to our man in the Federal Building. The package was seen.”

“An error, perhaps.”

“An error, yes,” said Brown. “But not our man's. Will you rectify?”

“Satisfaction is guaranteed.” He pulled his mouth down at his reflection in the mirror atop the bureau. “I will require the same arrangements as before.”

“Agreed. We also have more possible contracts for you.”

“I am coming.”

Breaking the connection, the old man regarded his image sadly. “Simeon, Simeon,” he said.

“Miss King, please. Moira King.”

“I'll see if she's in,” said the woman, and put him on hold.

Waiting, Macklin lay back on the too-soft mattress and stretched his legs under the covers. His arm hurt where he had fallen on it and his calf muscles were stiff from last night's long walk. He had made sure to put several miles between himself and the wreckage of his car before thumbing a ride.

The room was smaller than the others he had rented, a corner bedroom in a hotel converted to apartments except for space let by the day to afternoon lovers and sports fans from out of town. He had showered down the hall and slept two hours, waking by his inner clock to call the telephone offices where Moira worked.

“I'm sorry, Miss King didn't report to work today.”

“Is she sick?”

“I'm not permitted to give out information about employees.”

He worked the plunger and dialed her apartment. He let the telephone ring twelve times, then hung up. After a moment he kicked aside the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. He was having trouble coming fully awake. In earlier times he would open his eyes to the same thought he had gone to sleep with, his blood glowing like neon gas in his veins. He missed that, and in missing it he acknowledged a thing he had been refusing to recognize for many months. Now it was there, like Red China. He reached for his clothes.

The sky was overcast, that glistening purplish gray that paint always turns when improperly mixed. The cold had sharpened its teeth since his morning meeting with Randall Burlingame. He zipped up his jacket and took his place inside a glassed-in DSR bus stop next to an Errol Flynn gang member in a purple satin jacket and a fat black woman in a cloth coat cracking sunflower seeds between her dentures and spitting out the shells. The Flynn smelled of body odor and pomade. Do it in Detroit, the billboards said.

When the bus came finally he took the backseat, the one directly over the engine that was hard on the back because of the vibration. Because of that he had it all to himself, the whole width of the bus, with a clear view of the aisle and a short hop to the rear exit. He had been doing these things so long he no longer thought about them, like closing the cover on a book of matches before striking one.

He got off in Redford Township with sharp pains bolting across his lower back, a character in a cartoon shooting stars and little forks of lightning out of the place where it hurt. He shifted the gun to a more comfortable spot. It got better as he walked. His calf muscles ached, but that was all right. They felt tight and ready for anything.

No one was following him, he was sure of that. After parting with Burlingame he had pulled out a couple of tricks to shake any agents the FBI man might have planted on him, and he had long ago discouraged the tail Inspector Pontier had tried to pin on him. It bothered him, though, that he had failed to spot the old man on his back the night before. The others had been easy to nail because they tried so hard to be inconspicuous. The old man
was
inconspicuous. It was the first requirement of the professional “touch”; instinct and reflexes came second and third. You saw old men like him everywhere. Picking him out from the rest was like tracking a drop of fresh water across the Great Salt Lake. Or maybe Macklin was losing his eye along with his energy. In his business it was one of the natural causes.

The security system in Moira King's apartment house was a joke. There was no intercom, just an electronic lock; anyone in any of the apartments could open the front door to a visitor he couldn't see. Macklin studied the row of buttons in the foyer, selected one whose number placed the resident on an upper floor facing away from the door, and pressed it. A moment later a burring buzz sounded. He opened the door and entered.

Moira's was the corner apartment on the second floor. He rapped on the door, waited, rapped again. When no one answered the second time he tried the knob. It turned all the way around and the door opened in. Something spread its dark wings inside his chest.

He brought out the 10-millimeter, stood to the right of the door near the knob, and gave it a push. The waiting gunman smart enough not to fire directly through the doorway would choose to pierce the wall on the side near the hinges.

There were no shots in either location. He fixed his grip on the gun, filled his lungs, and hurtled through the opening, pivoting to flatten out against the wall inside the apartment. He was alone in the living room.

It was messy but in good condition. The sofa was unfolded and the bedclothes were rumpled, tangled. A throw pillow lay on the carpet at its foot. A woman's tailored blue jacket drooped over the arm. The coffee table supported a smeared glass and an ashtray heaped with butts among the dog-eared magazines. Nothing appeared damaged or violently dislodged.

Still holding the gun, he walked over to the kitchenette and stretched to look beyond the four-foot counter that separated it from the living room. The floor was clean.

He thought he smelled something familiar. Then he wasn't sure. Rooms where women slept provided a combination of smells that were always foreign to him. He went into the bathroom. The smell was stronger there, a dank sharp musty odor that was like no other. He knew it now.

Something that looked brown in the sunlight sifting through the silver lace curtains over the window spotted the ivory-colored tiles at his feet. He touched one of the spots with the toe of a shoe. It smeared glutinously.

The curtains were drawn in front of the bathtub, opaque pink plastic with blue fish printed on them. Stepping back, he leveled the pistol along his hipbone and stretched out an arm to slide them apart with a rattling of plastic rings. The movement disturbed a double handful of fat flies, one of which lighted on his cheek next to his nose and had to be brushed away with the barrel of the gun.

His killer's stomach did a slow turn when he looked down and saw why the flies were there.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Feliz Suiza closed the door of the office safe on the morning receipts and went back out into the shop to draw the blinds and turn off all the lights but those in the display window.
My shop
, he always called it, never just “the shop.” It was the first thing he had ever owned. A small, very black Cuban with flat features cracked many years beyond his bare forty-two from cutting cane in the hot sun, he had come over on the Freedom Flotilla with his son Tranquillo, who was now a bullpen pitcher with the Detroit Tigers. Tranquillo had used his contract money to finance the shop with the National Bank of Detroit and give it to his father. Feliz had a photograph of his son in his baseball uniform taped to the cash register, and whenever someone came in to pawn a typewriter or redeem a saxophone he would point to it and urge the customer to remember the name Tranquillo Jesus Suiza come playoff time next year.

He was open every day but Holy Sunday and made good money, more than he had ever seen from his laborer's wages, but the habits of a lifetime broke with difficulty and he always took an hour's nap precisely at three. He was on his way to his cot in back when someone banged on the front door. He ignored it and continued walking, but as the banging went on he muttered an oath in Spanish and went back and raised the blind over the door, calling, “We close. Come back later.”

The man on the other side of the glass didn't turn away. He was much older than Feliz, owlish-looking in funny round glasses and a little hat with a yellow feather in the band. A slight pot webbed in a green sweater swelled out through the opening in his topcoat.

“I called you before,” the man shouted back, pudgy hands cupped around his mouth. His eyes went from side to side, comic-sinister. “About a gun.”