Any Man's Death Page 8

  “You got out of it, though. I don’t plan to make it my life’s work either.”

  “That’s where you’re smarter than your old man. After thirty-five the pace gets to you. You start living to work instead of working to live, studying up, exercising, trying to put back what you lost getting older. Sooner or later it’s all got to catch up.”

  Roger tapped some ash into the tin tray on the table. “I don’t know if I can get close enough to do Sunsmith now. That was a mistake, trying to hire on. I didn’t figure him to make me so early.”

  “See, that’s where some advice would of helped. Think he’s pegged you?”

  “He isn’t sure. All he’s got to go on is my sheet and that’s just dope. But if his bodyguards make me inside of range they’ll blow me down and cry over me later. I sure won’t be able to get in, do him and get out again.”

  “You passing?”

  “Not if you’ve got any ideas. I need the cash and the hit will look good on my résumé.”

  Picante drained his glass and signaled the waiter for a refill. He raised his eyebrows at Roger, who shook his head and pointed at his water glass. He was working on his vices. With that thought, he crushed out the cigarette and didn’t light another.

  After the waiter had gone: “Let me work on it. I’m not in a position to just unplug one shooter and plug in another. You’re still living in the same place?”

  Roger nodded. “I got to ask a question.”

  “Why Sunsmith?”

  “Right. I mean, your boss doesn’t want to see gambling made legal on account of that’d firm up Maggiore, and Maggiore’s job is what he’s after. Knock down Sunsmith and there’s no one to stand in the way of the casinos.”

  “You think it’s that easy, how come Maggiore hasn’t knocked him down before this? That fight’s been going on for months.”

  “Well, he’s been busy with those gunrunning charges and all.”

  “Uh-uh. He clears the way for casino gambling, he gets all the backing he needs to blow the feds’ case out of the water. Sunsmith dead is the last thing he wants. That’s the mistake the Romans made with Christ. They should of bought him off. Only Maggiore tried that and Sunsmith just took the money and kept on. He gets dead, gambling goes down big so he didn’t die in vain.”

  “I think I’m getting it,” said Roger after a minute. “It makes my head hurt.”

  Picante grinned, showing his long teeth with a pea crushed between two of them. “The old double backspin. Just because I settled down don’t mean I stopped putting heads in fruit baskets.”

  “So why hire me? I mean, Boniface’s on good terms with my dad, isn’t he?”

  “Let’s just say prison mellowed Mike.” Picante drank Dago red. “He don’t know what’s good for him no more.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The officer who came for Carmen was young and not bad-looking, with blond hair in need of trimming and a ginger moustache that was like a transparency on his bland face. If he shaved it off, no one would notice until he pointed it out. He had made a suit out of a blue navy blazer with brass buttons with anchors on them and a pair of blue wool trousers and he drove an unmarked gray Chrysler without chrome. On their way down Woodward Carmen noticed other cars slowing down as they drew near. They wouldn’t have been much more obvious in a blue-and-white.

  At 1300 Beaubien she was escorted to an office partitioned off behind amber pebbled glass, where an older fat man in a yellow sportcoat asked her to sit down and offered her coffee in a Styrofoam cup, which she accepted. Then he excused himself and left her alone to drink it. The walls were tacked all over with typewritten sheets and the metal desk was a jumble of manila file folders holding up a plastic coffee mug whose angle suggested it was stuck fast to the folder on top. A framed photograph of an attractive black woman in her forties occupied the only clear corner of desk. Carmen could hear conversation buzzing in the squad room over the top of the partition.

  After a few minutes she was joined by a tall bald black man with a moustache that would certainly make a difference if he shaved it off, who introduced himself as Inspector George Pontier and sat down behind the desk. He extracted the mug with a little tearing sound of paper, put it away in a drawer, and rearranged the clutter to give him an unobstructed view of his guest. He had gray eyes.

  “It was kind of you to come down,” he said. “I’d have been glad to talk to you in your home.”

  “I prefer visiting to being visited. This way I can get up and leave when I feel like it. It was kind of you to send someone,” she added, softening the effect.

  “Did the officer tell you what it was about?”

  “Just my relationship with the Reverend Sunsmith. Is he all right? There hasn’t been another attempt on his life.” Her tone didn’t change.

  “No, he delivered two sermons this morning without interruption. The taxpayers will get the bill for that. The Russian ambassador had less security when he came through touring the auto plants.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  Pontier watched her. High cheekbones, good copper coloring going gold, no blusher, dark eyes contrasted against the tawny fall of hair to her shoulders. The cream blouse she was wearing was right for her and a thin gold necklace lay on her collarbone. She looked thirty but he knew she was older than that. “What is your relationship with the Reverend?”

  “He’s a friend. Also I donate to his church.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I’m a religious woman. I come from a religious country. And I believe in what he’s doing.”

  “His faith is a far cry from Roman Catholicism.”

  “I left the Church when the current Pope ascended. It was hard to see God with him standing in the way.”

  That part sounded genuine enough. He thought he was beginning to read her, but he wasn’t sure. “May I ask how long you’ve been associated with Sunsmith and how much you’ve donated?”

  “I don’t see why not. I record it when I make out my taxes. I attended one of his services for the first time about six months ago. I made a small donation then and I’ve been contributing ever since. It’s up around a quarter million now. I’m sorry I don’t have the exact figures with me, but you didn’t say what you wanted when you called.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I have a lot more.”

  “What is it about the Reverend that inspires your faith?”

  “He believes in what he’s saying.”

  “That’s the reason?”

  She changed positions. She had on tan poplin slacks that gave up a view of her slim ankles and bare feet in gold sandals when she crossed her legs. “Where I come from the Church is just another branch of the government. The padres are tools of the state to be used or discarded depending on their power to manipulate the people. Some of them here are no better. Not the Reverend. Oh, I know, he dresses like a clown and he loves to show off. But when the fire is on him it consumes him and everyone near him. It isn’t an act. Why are you asking me these questions? Does it have something to do with the people who are trying to kill him?”

  He touched his moustache. “Are you opposed to legalized gambling in the city of Detroit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some people, the mayor included, welcome the idea. They think it will create jobs, bring in revenue.”

  “The classified section is full of jobs if anyone wants one badly enough,” she said. “I’m not just saying that because I have money now. My father was a poor man, and he wasn’t too proud to do anything honest that would feed and clothe his family.”

  “Excuse me, but we’re discussing Sunsmith, not your father.”

  “I’m not finished. Gambling is legal in my country. It brought in las turistas, mucho dinero. My father tried to get a job working for the casinos—busboy, bellhop, anything. They laughed at him when he applied, the norteamericanos who owned the gambling business. They said the Americans who came down there to spend money didn’t want to be bothere
d by a lot of little brown greasers jabbering at them in pidgin English. If they wanted that they’d hire a bus and tour the villages. All of the employees came down from the north with the equipment, they said, and then they threw my father out into the street.”

  She caught herself snapping her consonants and relaxed. Pontier watched the elegant foreign-born widow creep back in. “It would be the same here,” she said. “Ask Atlantic City how many new jobs there are there now, them with their crooked little maze of holding corporations leading back to the underworld and double the crime rate they had before the casinos came. I’ll put my faith in the Reverend’s pink robes.”

  The inspector smiled at the picture of his wife on the desk. Do you believe this? Aloud he said, “I don’t think you contribute to Sunsmith’s church because you like his sermons. I think you’re investing in him like he’s a business and he’s turning it back in a cash profit under the table and off the books while you declare the principal as a legitimate tax deduction. That’s what I think.”

  “Inspector, I have millions. I pay more to lawyers to keep down my taxes than you pay in taxes. Why would I want to become involved in anything as complex as that?”

  She didn’t get indignant or make her eyes round and protest her innocence. He gave her that much.

  “Because the more money you have the more you want, and especially when you come from a country where the government owns everything and you don’t want this one to own anything more than you figure it has coming,” he said. “Because avoiding taxes is as American as Elvis. You’re not the first one of Sunsmith’s suckers I’ve talked to this morning, Mrs. Thalberg. I know the scam.” Which was untrue. Lovelady hadn’t been able to locate Philip Constable yet and he was still tracking down the others on the list.

  “Suckers?”

  “The Reverend doesn’t pull in that much, not enough to satisfy as many businesses and individuals as he’s connected with and the amount of money they have to invest. Excuse me, donate. He’s siphoning off cash from the later donors to satisfy the original donors at the top of the pyramid. Which is good for them but not so good for the latecomers at the bottom. When it all caves in, as it has to sooner or later, they’re the ones who will get squashed the worst. Where do you figure in there, Mrs. Thalberg?”

  She flicked something off the crease of her slacks with a buffed nail. “You’re building an impressive pyramid of your own,” she said. “Guesses on top of guesses. This sounds more like a case for Fraud, not Homicide.”

  “I don’t care who he’s screwing out of their money. I couldn’t care less if you paid your taxes in dollars or toothpicks or not at all. It’s no skin off my nose if gambling passes or it doesn’t, although if it does I’ll just be dealing with a different class of scroat. But I’m no financial genius, and if I’ve figured out Sunsmith’s game by what little I have to go on, someone else must have too. If that someone else is the sort that would hire a killer to balance his books, then I care. I’m paid to.”

  “You suspect me?”

  “If you can show me a reason why I shouldn’t, it would make my job a lot easier.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  He shook his head without taking his eyes off her. She smirked.

  “Because I look innocent?”

  “Because I think that if you wanted to kill someone you’d do it yourself.” He rose. “I’m just pulling in all the checkers, seeing if one of them wants to jump on any of the others. Thanks again for coming down, Mrs. Thalberg.”

  After a second she stood. “You have an odd style, Inspector.”

  “The deputy chief thinks so, too. Sergeant Lovelady will see you get home.”

  She hadn’t seen him move toward the intercom, but when she turned, the fat detective in the yellow coat was holding the door. She looked back.

  “Is it just in the movies that the detective tells the suspect not to leave town?”

  “Pretty much. But if you’re planning any long trips I’d appreciate your telling me where you can be reached.”

  She said she would.

  On their way out, Carmen and Lovelady passed a man in early middle age being ushered into the squad room between two police officers in uniform. The man barely glanced at her with tired eyes and then the three went through another door that swung shut behind them. She would have thought nothing of it, except Sergeant Lovelady paused to watch the procession.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Peter Macklin.” It came out automatically. Then, as an afterthought, he placed his shoulder between her and the door through which the trio had gone and put a hand on her elbow, steering her toward the corridor.

  “Who did he kill?”

  The fat man looked at her blankly.

  “It was a joke,” she said.

  He escorted her out.

  CHAPTER 13

  An hour after the late service on Sunday morning, Sister Mercer tried to hang herself from the light fixture in her bathroom, but the generally poor construction of the apartment building saved her when the fixture came loose along with four square feet of plaster and she fell to the floor, striking her head on the base of the toilet. Sister Asaul, whom the Reverend had sent to stay with her, was in the kitchen drinking coffee at the time and investigated the noise and called the Reverend and an ambulance, in that order.

  Sunsmith beat the paramedics to the scene in a red velour jogging suit that he had bought at the beginning of his new fitness campaign and stayed with Mercer, holding her hand and murmuring soothing phrases, while Asaul kept damp the cloth on her forehead. The four elders and Sergeant Twill, who was spelling Paul Ledyard that Sunday, let the attendants and a uniformed officer through and the officer wrote down in his pad that Sister Mercer had slipped on a wet spot on the bathroom floor. Asaul and the Reverend had agreed on that point before she dialed 911. After that he followed the ambulance to Detroit Receiving in his limousine.

  In the waiting room outside Emergency, being stared at by others sitting vigil on loved ones consigned to the facility’s aspirin-bottle interior, Sunsmith decided he needed more cash. The referendum to place casino gambling on the November ballot was just three weeks and two days away, and in his desk at the rectory were the results of a private poll that stated more than thirty percent of the voters in Detroit were undecided as to how they would vote on the measure. In three weeks the attempt on his life would be forgotten along with all its publicity dividends, and he was too big a target to risk inviting another. When Asaul had called with the news about Mercer he had thought for a split second about turning her suicide attempt to political advantage, then decided that the whole thing about Roger Macklin was too indistinct to serve him much good, and anyway, female members of a holy man’s entourage who tried to hang themselves raised unhealthy speculation in the jaded minds of the public.

  He needed open-air rallies and commercial spots on radio and television and full-page ads and prime-time telethons to hammer home the abysmal sin of government-sanctioned gambling. Such things were expensive, and as long as he had to keep funneling new investments back to the original investors, the upkeep on the church and his own Sunday morning cablecast would continue to eat up the difference. Taking on new investors only compounded the problem, and yet he had to do that in order to satisfy the later investors when they grew impatient waiting for returns on funds already in the hands of their predecessors. It was like turning the handle of a winch attached to a golden chain that got heavier and harder to pull with each turn, but that if he let go of it would whirl around and take off his head on the backlash. What he had to do was propose something that would loosen the current investors’ pocketbooks, something sweet enough to overcome all their doubts and suspicions and sweep away the gambling threat on a tide of paper currency.

  At the end of an hour an emergency nurse came out to inform Sunsmith that Sister Mercer appeared to be out of danger, but that the doctor wanted to admit her overnight for observation in case of a concussion. The Reve
rend agreed distractedly. By then he had begun putting together his plan to run for the United States Congress.

  On Monday morning, Pontier found Randall “Red” Burlingame, Michigan regional director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, tuning up his blue Ford Escort with a Sears kit in the driveway of his brick ranch-style in suburban Farmington. The square, graying redhead looked older and softer in old green workpants and a white sweatshirt grown ratty at the ends of the sleeves, and when he bent over the engine to secure the wing nut on top of the air filter, Pontier saw that he was balding at the crown. At length Burlingame straightened, wiped off his hands on the last clean spot on a gray rag crumpled on top of the radiator, and got in on the driver’s side to start the engine. It took off immediately and ran smoothly until he cut the ignition.

  “Fuck certified mechanics,” he said, climbing out. “Excuse my French. Garage wanted to soak me fifteen bucks for what I just did in five minutes.”

  “That IRS report,” Pontier reminded him.

  “Inside.” Burlingame slammed shut the door and the hood, stuffed the greasy rag into a hip pocket, and led the way into the house through the side door in the cluttered garage. In the kitchen, he took a can of Budweiser out of the refrigerator and offered it to Pontier, who declined. It was ten A.M.

  The FBI man shrugged and popped the top. “Grace took our granddaughter shopping. She starts school in the fall.”

  “I didn’t know you had a grandchild that old.”

  “She isn’t. Grace is the one going to school.” He drank. “She’s forty-nine and she wants to learn how to type and take dictation. I’d be worried she was planning to divorce me, except with her fat thumbs she’ll never graduate.”

  They passed through a small dining area and down two steps into a living room done in cool colors with a sliding glass door opening onto a backyard secluded from the neighbors by a bank of Scotch pines. Burlingame sat his guest in a green vinyl La-Z-Boy and went through another door, to return a moment later carrying his beer and a thick gray cardboard folder secured with a wide rubber band. He dropped it into the inspector’s lap.