Kill Zone (3 page)

They howled about that and sat down on opposite sides of the desk. Lounging the old way, on his long spine with the back of his bald head resting on the crown of the chair, Chilson didn't look much different. He had lost all his hair in his twenties and was still wearing amber-tinted glasses to protect his weak eyes, and give or take a line and some loose flesh under his chin he could still pass for 35 with the light behind him. He sure hadn't gained any weight.

Burlingame stuffed a pipe from the leather pouch he had carried since World War II. “You've been briefed?”

“Only up to about midnight last night,” Chilson said.

“Then you know as much as we do. We haven't heard from them since then. They're either not receiving our radio calls or ignoring them. By now they must be well into Lake Erie. Coast Guard has helicopters out, but it's a big lake and there's a fog rolling in from Canada.”

“How many hostages?”

“They claim eight hundred. No way of verifying that. Boblo doesn't keep passenger manifests. But sources here say that's about right for this time of year. They have, or claim to have, automatic and semi-automatic weapons and enough plastic explosives to blow the old tub to toothpicks. We ran a computer check to find out what's missing from the various armories in this area and came up with several possibles. I've got field men looking into those.” He got the tobacco going finally and flipped the match into a brass ashtray doing double duty as a paperweight. “They've given the Governor seventy-two hours to release ten prisoners from the Southern Michigan Penitentiary at Jackson. If this isn't done by midnight Monday—quoting here—we'll be ‘skimming blood and powdered meat off Lake Erie for six weeks.'”

“Graphic.”

“That kind never lacks for color.”

“Think they'll blow it up with themselves aboard?”

“They call themselves Siegfried. Has a doomsday quality, don't you think?”

“These ten prisoners they want sprung,” Chilson said. “Any ten in particular, or a random choice?”

“Here's the list they radioed to the Boblo dock.”

Chilson skimmed the hasty handwriting on the sheet of notepaper and handed it back. “I recognize some of those names. Are the rest of them killers too?”

“The kind we park behind bars and hope they'll die there because there's no capital punishment in this state and rehabilitation is a joke. Rape-murderers, parricides—two of them stuck up a Stop ‘n' Go in Ypsilanti, herded the employees into the back room, and shot them all in the head. They made off with forty-two dollars and change.”

“Connection?”

“The computer says no. From the gut?” Chilson nodded. “They don't want us to give in. They chose a demand they know we'll never meet so they can commit mass suicide on the six o'clock news and take along as many of the rotten fucking pig bourgeoisie vacationers as they can.”

“Sounds farfetched.”

“Five years ago it would have been. Jonesville changed all the rules. This bunch wasted one of their own just by way of demonstration.”

“Who are they?”

“The honcho calls himself Don, but go feed that into your Apple and see what comes out. It's probably phony anyway. Anonymity may be the best weapon they have.” Burlingame made a face and set the pipe in the ashtray. “What's the Secret Service want with this, anyway? Isn't protecting the President enough any more?”

Chilson scratched his chin, then drew himself upright in his chair.

“This will have to be C and D, Red. Strictly need-to-know.”

“Bill, we've called each other by our first names how long now?”

“Long enough that if the squirts up top found out, they'd have us playing checkers in the park by payday.” The Secret Service man grinned quickly. “Okay. Clarence Turnbull. Know the name?”

“Something in government.”

“And you a federal man. Well, they had to prod me too when I heard about it. Turnbull's the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. He has a daughter named Carol attending the University of Michigan. She's engaged to marry an intern at the hospital there.”

Burlingame said, “I hope this conversation isn't heading where I know damn well it's heading.”

“She called her father in Washington Thursday and mentioned that one of the things she was planning to do over the weekend was go on the Boblo moonlight cruise with her future intended. Now, it isn't definite that she's on that boat. But her father tried to reach her at her apartment after this thing broke and there was no answer.”

“Broke how? First thing I did was throw wraps on this.”

“He has a brother-in-law in the Bureau. The brother-in-law knew about Turnbull's conversation with his daughter and called him at home. When your boss found out he canned the brother-in-law for breach of security.”

“Well, we won't be able to sit on it much longer anyway.” The FBI man played with his smoldering pipe. “Siegfried doesn't know about the daughter or they'd have mentioned it. If they find out what they've got, and we'll assume they've got her until we hear different, there's no telling what direction they'll go. Makes the whole thing more delicate, but I don't see where it changes—”

The intercom on the desk razzed. He flipped the switch. “This damn well better be an emergency.”

“That's up to you.” The feminine voice coming from the speaker was cool. “A Howard Klegg to see you. He says it's about the Boblo boat.”

“Second.” Burlingame turned off the intercom. “This freedom of speech thing is getting out of hand.”

“Who's Howard Klegg?” asked Chilson.

“Well, he's not a cabinet member. He's Michael Boniface's lawyer.”

“The gangster? I thought he was in prison.”

“He is.” He hit the switch again. “All right.”

Klegg was a frail-looking 70 with thick white hair combed straight back from a high brow and cut off square at his collar. His skin had a bluish cast and was stretched to the point of translucence over high cheekbones and a patrician nose. He was very thin and his brown pinstriped suit, beautifully cut, made him look emaciated. He carried a shiny brown leather briefcase with a gold clasp.

“Mr. Burlingame.” He extended a spidery hand at the end of a bony wrist, which the FBI man clasped briefly and released. “And this would be Mr. Chilson of the Secret Service.”

The bald man recovered himself in time to shake the old hand, which was strung with wire. Klegg uncovered perfect dentures in a self-deprecating smile. “The people I represent haven't the imagination for code names and ciphers and countersigns, but their intelligence compares favorably with that of you gentlemen in law enforcement.”

They sat down, Klegg drawing up a chair upholstered in blue leather and placing his briefcase on his knees.

“What is it, Klegg?” Burlingame demanded. “I haven't seen you since your client's trial for narcotics smuggling. That was what, two years ago?”

“Eighteen and a half months. Mr. Boniface has counted every day, I can assure you.” The lawyer glanced pointedly at the pipe in the ashtray, whose smoke was worming past his nose. Burlingame left it where it was.

Klegg shrugged and waved away the smoke. “I'll make this brief. My client and his people are aware of the situation, of the demand made by the terrorists, and of their threat in the event it isn't carried out by midnight Monday. We know also that Carol Turnbull is aboard, and we know who her father is, naturally.”

“We don't know that much,” Chilson said. “That she's aboard, I mean. Is this new intelligence?”

“It's an assumption based on information available to us.”

“I'd be interested in knowing who made it available.”

Klegg's dentures shone. “Ethics, Mr. Chilson.”

“I heard something about being brief,” grumped Burlingame.

“Just so. Getting to the heart of the matter, Mr. Boniface is prepared to place his not inconsiderable resources at the service of the authorities in expediting this situation.”

The FBI man said, “Again. In English.”

“I believe it's standard practice in these cases to attempt to trace the criminals involved through underworld contacts. I submit that my client is in a position to do this with results more satisfactory.”

“In return for which,” said Burlingame, “what?”

“Early parole.”

“You know that's out of my hands even if I agreed.”

“I also know that a recommendation for leniency from the man who convicted my client can influence the parole board. Mind you,” Klegg added, “I'm not requesting a full pardon. Only the opportunity for Mr. Boniface to return to society and begin picking up the pieces of his life.”

“Your client is scum, counselor. I spent a good part of my career putting him where he is and I'll need a lot more than a foggy promise of cooperation before turning him loose.”

The lawyer's paper-thin eyelids drooped. “And if I said we could identify one of the terrorists?”

Burlingame laughed nastily.

“Let's hear what he has to say,” said Chilson.

“He's blowing smoke.”

“You can check this out,” said Klegg. “Last week, the Detroit police pulled a charred corpse out of a car found torched in an empty lot off Eight Mile Road twenty hours after the car was reported stolen. The dead man had been shot in the head.”

The FBI man nodded. “I read about it. He's a John Doe.”

“The car answered a witness' description of the vehicle in which a man claiming to be with the musicians' union picked up Jack DeGrew, who played bass viol with Chester Crane and his Whoopers, the previous afternoon. Something about a performance DeGrew had played for below union scale, according to the witness. Crane's band is on the captured boat, I believe.”

He coughed delicately. Burlingame moved the ashtray containing his fuming pipe to the other side of the desk.

“The bullet to the head wasn't unique,” Klegg continued. “The burned body was. Organization contract killers like to have their victims identified as an object lesson. Independents without protection prefer to cover their tracks. There aren't many independent professionals in this area, and there is only one who fits the description our witness provided.”

“Who is …?” the FBI man prompted.

The lawyer sat back, displaying his dentures.

Burlingame knocked out his pipe. “I'm not saying I buy any of this. In any case, reciprocation on my part would depend on results. Are you offering me the killer's name?”

“I think we agree that that alone wouldn't free my client. I'm just confirming his ability to aid in this matter. We—that is, my client—would of course provide the personnel.”

“You want me to grant official status to a criminal body?”

“No deputizing or anything like that. We're offering competent civilian service in return for what we request.”

“No wildcatting? Your people would work closely with ours?”

Klegg fingered the knot in his silk tie. “‘Wildcatting,' as you term it, is what gives us our special advantage. I'm hardly suggesting something without precedent, Mr. Burlingame; consider the late Messrs. Luciano and Giancana.” He rose, lifting his briefcase. “I'll be outside admiring your attractive secretary while you gentlemen discuss the propositior. Without meaning to rush things, I'll just point out that you have but sixty-three and one-half hours left.” He went out.

After three minutes they called him back in.

The Visitors' Room at the Milan Federal Correctional Facility was bland but not unpleasant, with beige walls, freshly waxed linoleum, and a printed list of rules posted within view of the bare table in the center with a chair on either side. A guard opened the door for a middle-aged man whose startlingly black hair and denims made him look years older than he was, then closed it behind him, the guard remaining outside but watching through the gridded glass in the door. Howard Klegg was seated at the table, looking as he had earlier that morning in Randall Burlingame's office.

“It's on, Michael,” he said.

Michael Boniface nodded, lowering his bulk into the other chair. “Get me Macklin.”

CHAPTER 5

Peter Macklin hated small towns.

They weren't as bad as they once were. Strange faces no longer drew much attention now that people were moving every few years. But the old posse-consciousness still lingered in these tight communities, and you could never predict what a bystander was going to do when you made your move. That crowd-fear factor he relied upon in the cities was an empty equation once the population dipped below twenty thousand.

It didn't help that he had had to do most of the groundwork on this one, letting his face and figure become familiar to the residents of this farming village forty miles west of Detroit while he nailed down his subject's routine. The advance man they had sent had made perhaps two trips, staying a couple of hours each time, and evidently decided that because the subject did roughly the same things at roughly the same time both days, the rest of his week was identical. Three pages into the briefing packet, Macklin had broken out his walking boots.

Which was nothing new. He had two telephone lines running into his Southfield home, one of which was unlisted, and every time that one rang—never more than once a month, and it was often silent for six—he knew he was in for more work than he had been the time before. The professionals were getting scarce in his end of a business so caught up in corporate image and the Dow Jones average that the people in the front offices liked to forget they sometimes needed men like him. When they made contact, it was with a kind of repugnant awe that assumed he was an evil sorcerer who neither required nor welcomed outside help. They knew nothing of the role teamwork played in committing a successful murder.