“Cozy. Reminds me of the night I spent in an airport waiting room when all the runways were socked in.”
I stood next to Laurie Macklin in the doorway, reviewing my pied-à-terre for an indefinite period. I’d spread my sleeping bag on squares of peel-and-stick linoleum and under it chipboard, stacked some books next to it and tins of deviled ham, canned tuna, and baby potatoes on the exposed two-by-fours that kept the sloped roof from collapsing like a fort made of sofa cushions; four plastic jugs of drinking water on the floor. A faux Tiffany lamp that had been rescued from above someone’s pool table hung from a stiff cord above the sleeping bag. Someone had installed a two-burner electric range, a microwave oven big enough to heat up one bagel at a time, and a toilet and triangular sink enclosed in a hinged screen that belonged to the Ikea dynasty. Some kind of light, from the moon or a streetlamp, filtered in through a window wedged in the triangle of the north wall.
It wasn’t a hovel, unless that was what you wanted. Add chairs, a sofa, tables, a proper bed, bookshelves, bright wallpaper, curtains, some wall art, and Architectural Digest wouldn’t exactly sniff at it. But if you wanted a place to be temporary, I’d taken all the right steps. This wasn’t home. It was a hunting camp, to be exited as soon as I’d taken my trophy.
Which was Laurie Macklin, in the condition in which I’d found her. The room was directly above hers. A brace-and-bit might have come in handy, to drill a hole in the floor; but as it was I could hear most of what went on below. She’d been watching the Food Network, and the soufflé recipe had come through clear enough to try it for myself, if I knew how to crack an egg.
“I had a better billet in Cambodia,” I said, “in a bamboo hut, including an eight-hundred-dollar Japanese stereo system I bought for sixty bucks from a tunnel rat. But of course there was a war going on.”
“How’d you know how much to pack?”
“Your husband asked me the same question; but he was just making conversation.”
She turned toward me. She had on the sweater and slacks she’d changed into from her robe a couple of hours earlier. The varicolored light from the glass-shaded lamp found tiny fissures in the corners of her eyes. It was one of those flaws I look for in women. When I couldn’t find them, I wondered how much money had gone into getting rid of them and where it had come from.
“You saw him since we met?” she said.
“He invited himself into my house. He has a habit of doing that, whether I’m there or not. I can keep mice out but not him.”
“I don’t suppose he mentioned me.”
“Mrs. Macklin, you’re the only person he talks about except his son.”
She hugged herself. The room was a little chilly at that, heated by only a square register in an aluminum duct running up the wall opposite the door. “Fathers and sons. What is it about them, and why can’t they get along?”
“The Greeks had a theory. Then too there’s the you-broke-my-mother thing.”
“I never met Roger. I wanted to go to Donna’s funeral, but Peter said no. He was right, I guess. It would be like inviting her to our wedding.”
“Just as well you didn’t hook up. No one should know more than one killer, even socially.”
“By that I take it to mean you’ve known more than your share.”
“I’m not sure they hand out shares. If they do, I guess I’d have the corner. Most killers turn out to be a disappointment; like when you meet a celebrity you’ve heard about all your life. The conversation’s limited. Anyone can be famous, and killing’s a snap. Ask any goldfish.”
“Why do you do what you do?”
“Why did you marry Macklin?”
“I probably wouldn’t have, if I’d known what he was.”
“If I’d known what the work’s like, I’d have become a telephone lineman. I’d be just as obsolete now, but I’d probably have all my teeth.”
“If you didn’t slip.”
“Still better than killers.”
“So what’s the procedure? Do I bang on my ceiling with a broom handle when I’m in distress? Maybe in some kind of code, so if it’s just one of my neighbors complaining about a loud TV you can roll over and go back to sleep?”
“A scream should do it. I’ll probably hear anything unusual. The house is solid, but they saved a bunch of bucks when they finished the attic.” I stamped a heel on the ply. “I could pretty much map your movements when I was up here unpacking. You flushed the toilet twice—ran water in the sink both times, I’m happy to say—opened the refrigerator once, poured something fizzy into what was probably a tall glass, from the time it took, clunked in two ice cubes, and surfed through about seventeen channels before you found one worth looking at; only you switched off just when the hostess turned on the oven.”
“I can’t say I’m happy about that—not the cooking lesson, just a stranger knowing I don’t cook and that I wash my hands after I pee.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m the place where secrets go to die.”
“I only heard a board or two creak up here.”
“That’s as much as you can expect to hear when Walker’s on the job. Stealthy is my middle name.”
“You don’t have a middle name. I looked up your investigator’s license on the Lansing site.”
“I can’t say I’m happy about that—not the no-middle-name thing. Nobody uses them except angry mothers. I don’t care for strangers knowing I don’t have one.”
“I can keep a secret same as you. So do I entertain you or what? I’m new to this bodyguard business.”
“You can make up your own rules. The protocol’s all on my side. If you’re still alive when I punch out, I came through on it. You don’t even have to know I’m in the same zip code. I should warn you: Bodyguards have a nasty habit of shooting last.”
“Encouraging.”
“It gets worse. Some people think it was a Secret Service slug that killed JFK. He got caught in the crossfire.”
“Everybody killed JFK. Frankly, I felt safer when I was with Peter.”
“You were, but I can’t get that close.”
She turned my way, and the murky blue eyes took on a new layer of haze. “If that’s your idea of seduction, you’re rusty.”
“I had those kinds of ideas yanked out with my wisdom teeth, Mrs. Macklin. Call my cell when you’re planning to leave the house. I’ll try to stay out of your hip pockets even then.”
My supper was deviled ham, eaten straight from the can with a spoon, with a mineral water chaser; I’d been in too much of a hurry to get to the apartment after the Peter Macklin delay at home to stop for bread. The attic room hadn’t been advertised as nonsmoking, but there was a smoke detector screwed to a rafter. I dismantled it, letting its innards dangle, cracked the window in the north wall, and smoked until I got sleepy, stretched out in the sleeping bag unzipped all the way in case I had to break out of the chrysalis in a hurry, with the Chief’s Special in easy reach on the floor.
I put out the cigarette and drifted off to the soothing strains of The Golden Girls chirruping up through the floor from the apartment below; every minute of every day an episode is playing somewhere. I doubted Mrs. Macklin was a fan, but the prattle of mature women wrestling with post-menopausal sex is like white noise for the troubled; and one-half of a couple going through the clinical practice of separating for life was trouble enough, without the killing-threat thing.
That was just projection, maybe. For all I knew, the Ohio farm girl who’d married a Detroit killer-for-hire (I’d looked her up, too, through an acquaintance with twenty-first-century connections) was having the time of her life breaking all bonds to the underside of existence as we know it and exploring the world on top. She was on the left side of thirty, after all, with two-thirds of her life left to play out.
But you don’t get those cloudy eyes in the maternity ward. Those you had to earn.