Any Man's Death Read online

  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.”

  “I don’t work fast.”

  “Thing is, he has to be taken out before he takes out this nigger preacher that’s so loud against casino gambling. You don’t hit public figures. Press gets on the mayor and the mayor gets on the cops and then we’ll have to start throwing good people to the wolves. You got to cut this kind of thing off at the source.”

  “Also you don’t know anything about gambling and if Maggiore gets it legalized and nails down all the casinos you’re out in the cold.”

  “Hey, I never said I was a communist.”

  Macklin picked up the highball. “The White House could learn something from his security.”

  “If it was easy I wouldn’t of called you.”

  “It’s worth twenty.”

  Picante said, “Fifteen’s the offer.”

  “You got to understand Mac’s situation,” Boniface said. “Man just went through a divorce. Seventeen.”

  “No, it’s twenty.”

  “You’re not that good. I hate to say it.”

  “Get someone who is, then.”

  Boniface looked down at the dog. Al’s red-gold head was resting on his knee, eyes reduced to white slits, and in that moment dog and master looked alike. “You’re a bad boy, Mac. You’d do this one for nothing without being asked.” To Picante: “Give him ten now. The other ten when Maggiore turns up in the long term lot at Metro Airport.”

  Macklin drained his glass and set it down. It would be his last drink for a while.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Reverend Thomas Aquinas Sunsmith’s four bodyguards made Paul Ledyard feel small for only the second time in his life.

  The first time had been when he tried out for the Lions and the equipment manager had strapped him into eight sets of shoulder pads before he found a pair that wasn’t too large. At six-one and two hundred he had been the biggest man on his high school varsity squad and made all-state two years in a row, but when he took the field with the Detroit third string he had felt like an ant in a cricket hatchery. Weeks later, when he had recovered from his first and only skirmish with a right guard nicknamed Rhino, he had learned that his high school coach, a family friend, had called in a marker to arrange the tryout to demonstrate to Ledyard that pro ball was not for him. It had cost him two ribs and his classic profile. But he had gone on to college and now had in eleven years with the Detroit Police, the last two on the detective squad.

  Sunsmith’s men were as big as the Reverend himself, deep and square in blue suits whose jackets would wrap twice around Ledyard with enough material left over to make a vest. Their aftershave was strong and the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson semiautomatics they wore under their arms showed only when they stretched with their jackets hanging open. They seldom spoke in his presence. He wondered if they were any more talkative when he wasn’t there.

  It was his first babysitting job and it bored him worse than stakeout. Bodyguards saw a lot of waiting rooms; it occurred to him that people who had waiting rooms all had the same taste in magazines. He’d been all through the current Time and Newsweek, even the financial reports, for chrissake, had chuckled at all the pictures in Gentleman’s Quarterly, and knew all the floor plans in Architectural Digest by heart. One place had had Playboy, neatly bound in stiff clear plastic, but all the pictures had been taken by the same photographer, who seemed to be turned on by those goddamn legwarmers that just broke up the long clean line of a woman’s leg. USA Today was sexier. He had given up admiring the various receptionists behind their imitation wood-grain desks when they all started to look alike too in blonde hair pinned up and sprayed hard as horn and worsted wool suits and lacquered nails shaped like teardrops. They were always doing something back there, meaningless little movements, never looking up. He decided that being a receptionist was not much better than guarding bodies.

  While he busied himself drawing these conclusions, twenty-two floors up in a new skyscraper in suburban Warren, Sunsmith was twelve feet away drinking lemonade laced with vodka on the sofa inside the main office. His suit today was green, with a thin purple stripe that picked up the deep bluish tinge of his skin. The glass vanished once it was inside his big fist so that when he brought it up to his lips and then replaced it in the little recessed area on the arm of the sofa with its contents half gone he appeared to have pulled off a magic act. The soft sheen in his moist black eyes brightened when the alcohol struck bottom.

  “You mix a respectable drink, Mr. Constable. I don’t think I’ve had that combination before.”

  “Thank you. It’s my own invention. I call it a Yellow Boy.”

  Sunsmith nodded, his scalp catching the light. The man seated in the leather chair across from him was white—very—with blond hair so light it was difficult to tell where it stopped being blond and started being gray. He wore it short on top but brushed over his ears on the sides to conceal a slight tendency toward sails. His steel-rimmed glasses were tinted amber and he wore a beige sportcoat over a pale yellow shirt and canary tie. Yellow seemed to be his favorite color.

  “I see you’ve made an addition to your company,” Constable said.

  “He’s a policeman. It was either that or move my congregation to the chapel at the Wayne County Jail. The mayor wants to keep me alive.”

  “That’s odd, considering you’re on opposite sides of the casino gambling question.”

  “A martyr is hard to beat in an election.”

  Constable measured out an inch of smile and sipped at his own Yellow Boy. His office looked like a living room, with good abstract oils on the walls and floor lamps with soft white bulbs. The desk was parked in a corner by the curtained window; he never entertained from behind it. “How much this time, Reverend?”

  “That’s up to your conscience, Mr. Constable. Yours and your employer’s. Did I mention that all donations are legally deductible?”

  “Every time. I can’t help wondering what you do with the money.”

 
“The church needs a new roof and the youth center needs more room.”

  “I had your file pulled after you called for this appointment. We’ve made donations totaling sixty-three thousand dollars over the past fifteen months. That must be some contractor you’re using.”

  “Faith is expensive.”

  “I can’t help but suspect this firm is helping to finance your campaign against legalized gambling. Which I find counterproductive, seeing as how Charles Maggiore is our major stockholder.”

  “Has he complained?”

  “Rather loudly. But he hasn’t shut off your credit.”

  “That would be counterproductive.”

  “Not as much as you might think,” Constable said. “True, we benefit from the return on investments logged officially as tax-deductible charitable contributions, and your church takes in more in collections than many secular businesses in which we hold interest. But we stand to gain far more if the gambling measure is passed.”

  “The police think Mr. Maggiore is trying to have me killed.”

  “We both know they’re wrong. You don’t invest in dead men.”

  “A record of his donations would be a handy thing to reveal when the police try to charge him with my murder,” Sunsmith suggested.

  “It might be, were there such a record.”

  “Well, someone is trying to free my soul.”

  “Just who that is is as much our concern as it is yours.”

  “I hardly think that. ‘Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal.’”

  “Solomon?”

  “Longfellow.”

  Constable ran a polished nail around the lip of his glass. “Is it at all unreasonable to ask you not to persecute the measure quite so energetically?”

  “Gambling is a sin before God,” intoned Sunsmith, not smiling. “My soul is not on the block.”

  “Mr. Maggiore understands that. It’s why he trusts you to honor his investments even if they’re off the books.” Constable rose. “Will ten thousand take care of the roof?”