The car was what they used to call a mace; Macklin was too long away from the people he once associated with to keep up on the terminology. Anyway it was a code the cops could crack, often with the cooperation of the crooks who used it.
Which was one of a host of reasons he’d dropped out of the underworld and gone solo. The colleague you confided in could have a dozen killings on his sheet and still put himself in good with the law by whispering in the correct ear.
Maybe it had always been that way. For all Macklin knew, the myth of the code of silence was a cop’s idea, made up to lull the guilty into spilling their guts to each other.
Call it what you like, the car was a ten-year-old Chevrolet Impala with a week-old title, ante-dated and distressed to show wear in the creases and present the right shade of yellow. The VIN agreed with the number engraved where the original had been filed away from the block and smeared with grease that matched the rest of the engine. Stolen in Wisconsin too long ago to interest the insurance company, it had the pedigree of a mongrel, and the color of the chalky finish was best described as sun tea filtered through bad kidneys, but the tires, brakes, and transmission were new and heavy-duty shocks installed, courtesy of a warehouse filled with unused Soviet military equipment in Kiev. With just enough rust and mud and missing a wheel cover, it was as nearly invisible as the man who drove it.
The environmental equipment, of course, was false, rigged to fool emissions tests during random stops, but doing nothing to hinder the performance. The man who’d sold it to him in Chatham said he’d bought the design from Volkswagen a week before it got in trouble. “Turns a dog of a four-cylinder into a sixty-six Mustang. Breaks my heart to let it go, tell you the truth. You bring it back in good shape, I’ll buy it back six bits on the dollar. You won’t get a deal like that in the States.”
He wouldn’t be selling it back. He’d lined up a speculator to scrap it when he was finished with it and sell it to whoever got the bid to build another bridge between Detroit and Canada.
The performance was likely as advertised, but he wasn’t impressed. High-speed chases were for cowboys. The low profile and under-the-radar history were more important to him, along with simple reliability. In his work, the real successes died in their beds without leaving a mark.
There’d been a delay—which he’d allowed for—while he waited for U.S. plates. If he was pulled over for any reason with a Canadian registration, his American license might make the authorities suspicious enough to trace it to its forger, and to determine that “Max Peters” had died at the age of two the year Macklin was born, and therefore could not have a valid Social Security Card in his name. The plates were from Nebraska, a break: The state carried no associations to most of the rest of the world. Contestants on Jeopardy routinely did not ring in when the subject came up.
It was a thin tightrope, he had to remind himself; this constant quest for invisibility. After a point, it attracted attention by its very obscurity. Personal camouflage was a must. He routinely traveled with a canceled ticket to a baseball game involving a contender for the most recent World Series in his wallet along with the obligatory ancient condom, a souvenir ballcap suitably crumpled between seats, and a few travel brochures picked up at Visitors Centers along the way: historical exhibits, natural features, and such. Of course, this required some knowledge—not too technical—of the subjects involved, or at least an expression of interest. One side of his brain must be reserved for this, keeping the other side locked in on the target his client had paid him to eliminate.
He drove on provincial roads and surface streets, always at the speed limit or just under, making only fueling stops and using restrooms where he didn’t have to ask for a key. He was hungry, having skipped breakfast, but he didn’t stop to eat. There’d be time enough for that when the job was behind him. When he worked, he preferred to keep the flow of blood to his brain instead of his digestive system. It was mid-afternoon of a gray December day when he entered Toronto and made his way to the residential section.
There was no reason to notice the car parked in front of the Cabot Inn, except that it was unnoticeable, much like his own: a forty-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass, blue and battered, with decades of grime turning the vinyl top, white originally, the color of spoiled custard. He cruised past without turning his head, but the corner of his eye snagged an impression of a well-built man past middle age climbing out of the driver’s seat, wearing a suit and topcoat as unforgettable as the vehicle. The overcast hung low enough to show that the car’s dome light didn’t come on when the door opened.
Which might have meant anything from neglect to a short-circuit; but Macklin’s own first act after obtaining the Impala was to take its dome light out of service.
He found a spot around the corner and came back on foot, giving the man time to enter the bed-and-breakfast. He wore the Airweight in a belt clip under his fleece-lined leather coat. The Cutlass’ tires were in good shape, the exhaust pipe showing no rust under a skin of dust. The driver’s door was locked; likely so was the passenger’s. Not an insurmountable problem, but getting around it might draw the attention of neighbors. He strolled on past and around the next corner, noting the plate number on the way.
The man was a non-civilian, if not precisely law. Macklin’s senses told him that. Cut and run? No. Just do the job and get out. Forget the frills; they were never strictly part of the deal. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet in case the alert sounded.
He turned a corner yet again, putting himself behind the inn. The antique iron trellis he expected was in place, and from its appearance almost as good as an exterior staircase. The roses that had scaled it in spring and summer were now brown-stemmed and brittle. He gripped it with both hands and tugged. It was secured to the building, the lath struts sound.
He’d seen floor plans and photographs of the building inside and out, thanks to the website maintained by the local tourist facilities: It was a nationally registered historic structure built by a nineteenth-century lumber magnate who’d destroyed all his competition and driven away his wife and daughters, then turned philanthropic as he’d neared his Maker. Most useful were the pictures taken recently, enabling Macklin to locate all the guest rooms. His scout was a deliveryman with a legitimate service, bringing a package addressed to a tenant who’d moved out a few days before. While the old woman who managed the house was looking for a forwarding address, he’d found the most recent entry in the guestbook on a podium, reading “Mr. and Mrs. George Linden,” the name Guy Lennert and his female companion were using in Canada. They were in room 203. Only one of the four windows on the second floor was lit, and it was the right one. With only Lennert’s Chrysler in the parking lot, apart from a Toyota with Ontario plates belonging to the old lady, the likelihood of anyone else staying there that time of year was slim.
You could wait to be absolutely certain; but that time never came. You had to supply your own certainty, and be prepared to correct the situation in a split second if you failed.
The thorns were the only immediate danger—a snag could slow you down or leave evidence behind in the form of torn cloth or broken skin, both loaded with DNA—but with the blooms shriveled, he could see and avoid them, memorizing where they were because he’d be moving faster when he came down. Climbing didn’t come as easily to him as in years past, but he kept in shape and got to the second floor without breathing heavily.
Someone had opened the window three inches, possibly to let steam out. He could hear a shower gushing, but the door that muffled the noise wasn’t airtight; the glass was slightly clouded. He listened, heard no sounds of movement. He peered through the gap above the sill, braced to clamber down if he were spotted; a peeping Tom rap he could beat, even a weapons charge, if he couldn’t get rid of the revolver or run fast enough.
There’d be no running yet. Lennert, looking like all his photographs in spite of his casual dress, was alone in the bedroom in his stocking feet, combing his hair in front of a mirror attached to a dresser. If Macklin had the conscience of a normal man, he’d have been comforted by the thought that the man’s last thought was making himself look good for his lady friend when she came out of the bathroom. There was a superstition even in his profession that a victim slain in terror would be waiting for revenge on the other side.
He wasn’t superstitious, and for that matter the thought didn’t occur to him. To his point of view, Lennert was dead already.
Something—possibly a faint creak caused by his weight on the trellis or a premonition—distracted Lennert from his reflection. He was turning toward the window, holding his comb like a gun, when Macklin rested the barrel of the Airweight on the sill at a slight angle and shot him in the forehead.
There was no need for a second shot for safety. The wound was square in the center and the way he fell said it all: turning a little on one foot the way a tree twists away from the last blow of the axe and tipping plank-stiff off his heels. Macklin was halfway down the trellis, moving quickly but remembering where the thorns were, before the body struck the floor.
He leapt the last three feet, bending his knees to absorb the impact, but instead of running took off at an easy lope, like a man not wanting to miss a crossing light. The revolver was still in his hand, but in the slash pocket of his jacket, out of sight yet handy if needed to clear a path. He paid attention to his peripherals for potential eyewitnesses. You couldn’t expect to eliminate a bevy of them in an open situation, but Leo Dorfman built a better defense when he knew how many to expect during Discovery; a legal process Macklin had yet to face in a long career.
He’d cased the neighborhood long-distance, identifying it as working-class, with most of the residents employed during the day; barring the odd sick-out, the risk was minimal, and it looked as if he’d caught a break. At least he saw no movement in windows.
He slowed down as he approached an old man guiding his Yorkie toward the base of a bench belonging to a bus stop, but the man’s back was toward him, and the padding of feet in the grass alongside the sidewalk didn’t turn him.
Whether the man heard the remote scream that followed, Macklin never knew. By then he was around the corner and climbing into the Impala. He started the motor and pulled gently away from the curb into a street empty of traffic. At the next corner he turned left and glanced up at the rearview mirror. The abused-looking Cutlass was parked in the same place, still minus its driver.
He dismantled the Airweight and stopped at several scenic lookouts—deserted when he visited—along Highway 401 to dump the components into Lake Ontario. After that he delivered the Impala to the scrapyard in London, then walked eight blocks and hailed the first of a succession of cabs, never riding far enough to attract the drivers’ curiosity. The last, in Sarnia, took him across the Blue Water Bridge into Port Huron, Michigan, during evening rush hour. The U.S. Customs officer compared the driver’s and passenger’s faces with their license photos and waved them through.