Kill Me (25 page)

I’d actually had him leave me two blocks from the intersection that Mary had indicated was near where her cousin lived, and I’d walked the final distance over to find Julio’s, which turned out to be a bodega with a few old rusty steel tables out front where locals drank coffee and argued and gossiped.

I went inside and bought a bottle of Gatorade to sip to try to restore some electrolyte balance in my brain so my neurotransmitters had a prayer of firing when I needed them to. I carried the unnaturally blue potion outside and planted my butt at one of the battered tables where I listened to a spirited discussion about how the cops had handled a hit-and-run at the corner the night before.

Not well, was the consensus.

I heard the old BMW motorcycle long before I saw it coming. The percussion of the Bavarian motor rumbled in gorgeous bass echoes off the brick and stone buildings. Mary’s cousin rolled to the curb, spotted me — I’m certain I was the only stranger at Julio’s — and held a helmet out in my direction. The fact that she’d shown up on the bike was a surprise, even though it shouldn’t have been, and I knew I had a decision to make. My old, reliable suitcase wasn’t going to be making this trip to the airport; there was no room. I made my decision, smiled at Mary’s cousin, and climbed onto the back of the bike with my carry-on slung over my shoulder.

My old suitcase, full of all the clothes I wasn’t wearing, stood upright where I’d left it beside the table at Julio’s. Somebody in the neighborhood, I was sure, would put the stuff to good use.

I pulled the proffered helmet onto my head. The thing fit me like I was doing a modeling session for a designer of bobblehead dolls.

Mary’s cousin watched me, bemused, as I tried to tighten the chin strap. She said, “My brother had a big head.”

She’d said it affectionately. “Mary says he was a special guy,” I said.

“You know how he died? A friggin’ waste.”

Before I could think of something to say that would honor his sacrifice, she kicked the bike into gear, pulled out into traffic, and we were off, zooming down the streets of Brooklyn, doubling back the way I’d just come with Dmitri toward Teterboro in New Jersey. Despite the events of the day, I felt the familiar rush that comes along with the dawn of a new adventure. I had a big smile on my face and was more than prepared to end up with a few bugs crushed on my teeth.

FORTY-NINE

Once we were back in the skies over Colorado, I stepped up into the cockpit and asked Mary to wait until the last possible moment and then modify our flight plan to land at the Jefferson County Airport, across the metro area from our usual home field at Centennial.

Just a precaution.

At my request, she agreed to arrange for a private hangar and twenty-four-hour armed guards for the plane. I asked her if the plane was due for any work. She assured me that it had just undergone a major overhaul and that we were almost a hundred flight hours away from any required scheduled maintenance. If anything came up unexpectedly, she promised to monitor the repairs herself.

Thea and the girls were up in the mountains at our home in Ridgway, which was just as well. I was desperate to be with them every moment I could, but I recognized that prudence demanded I keep my distance. I didn’t know what the Death Angels would do next. I did know that I didn’t want Thea or Cal or Haven to be any part of it.

Giving in to my paranoia, I left the Prius where it was and called a taxi to take me down the turnpike to my friend’s flat in Boulder. On the way, I phoned the detectives I had spread out around the country looking for any sign of Adam. I wasn’t surprised that they had nothing new to report.

I climbed into bed in Boulder between seven and eight, rationalizing my premature fatigue by reminding myself that it was after nine back East. I was sound asleep when the phone rang. Not just asleep, but I was already deep into that REM fog that accompanies the most convoluted of dreams, and at first the sound of the ringing phone became just another stimulus for my brain to insert into the extremely flexible confines of my nocturnal musings. Soon enough, though, I stumbled reluctantly from dreamland to a vague state that left me quasi-awake, at best. I recognized that a phone was ringing, and that the phone was not in my dreams but was in the physical space where I had been —
what?
— sleeping.

I admit that I failed to recognize exactly where I was at that moment. My first guess was that I was in a hotel, and I grabbed for the ubiquitous bedside phone.

There wasn’t one.

My mind allowed me to consider the alternatives.

Cell phone?

I fumbled to find a switch and flicked on the bedside light. Three phones, not one, littered the surface of the bedside table.

I mumbled, “Shit,” and grabbed one, punched a key, and held it to my ear. “Hello,” I mumbled.

Nothing. I tried a second phone. The screen on that one was lit — a good sign. It read, “Out of area.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“I’m tired,” she said. “But I can’t sleep. Did I wake you?”

Lizzie.

My eyes found the digits on the alarm clock by the bed.

I decided I was in Boulder. Eight forty-seven in Colorado meant 10:47 on the East Coast.

“No,” I said. “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

“You’re cute,” she said. “Sometimes.”

I rolled over onto one side and propped myself on an elbow. “I don’t feel too cute. Quite a day we’ve had. Or a couple of days.”

“You could say that. You all right?”

“I’m confused, troubled, too, but … yeah, okay. You?” I said. I was trying to force myself to be alert, to put some defining parameters on the circumstances I was in, but I was still recovering from the depth of my slumber and the edges of my reality were more than a little blurry.

“Things have become more complicated than I’d like,” she said. “But … life is like that sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.” I laughed.

Her voice turned serious. “I have some advice for you.”

“I’m all ears.”

“No, you’re not. You like to think you are, but you’re not all ears at all. From what I’ve seen, you’re mostly brain and penis, but since I’m an eternal optimist, I’m going to give you the advice anyway.”

I laughed. “Should I be insulted by what you just suggested?”

“Hardly,” she said. “And I didn’t really suggest anything. I just describe what I see. Truth be told, I suspect that the ratio between brain and penis is much more favorable for you than it is for most men.” Her voice had turned husky and I let it soothe me like an open palm rubbing lightly on the flesh of my back.

“Is that necessarily good? Are we talking big brain, small penis? Or vice versa?”

She laughed that time. Then she grew quiet.

I wanted her to keep talking. Her voice was like music to me. “Tell me,” I said, using yet another line that I’d co-opted from my shrink.

“Tell you what?” she asked, obviously inexperienced with the open-ended nature of the psychotherapy “tell me” prompt.

“Your advice.”

“You’re not at home, are you?” she asked.

“No, given the events of the last couple of days, it didn’t feel particularly prudent.”

“Hotel?”

“It’s not important.”

“You don’t want to tell me? That’s fine. But you’re right; it doesn’t matter. Something you should know about us: We wouldn’t fulfill our obligations to you in your house. That’s off-limits. You’re safe at home. Your family is safe there, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Unless you become homebound, of course. Then …”

“Of course. You promise?”

“I promise.”

I fought an urge — the instinct of an eight-year-old — to add, “Cross your heart and hope to die?” But it was the wrong thing to ask in so many ways. Instead, I tried something more mature, more rational. “Why?”

“Why what? Why are you safe there?” she said. “Or why should you trust me?’

“Both.”

“I’m not supposed to tell you any of this, but think about it. Initially, clients routinely express their desires that their homes not be violated to fulfill contracts. It’s understandable. We put a tremendous amount of care into developing the end-of-life strategies that we employ. Based on client queries during enrollment, we’ve developed guidelines. Limits to what we’ll do to accomplish our goals. We don’t skimp on our resources there. Homes are inviolate.”

“Okay. Then
why
should I trust you?”

“I think I’ve proven myself to you.”

“That’s
if
I should trust you. Not why.”

“Nice,” she said.

It was a compliment. I said, “Thank you. Now please tell me why.”

“Why?” she mused, more to herself than me. “Maybe you touch something deep inside me. Maybe you’re a note in the melody to my favorite song. Maybe … because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Maybe?”

“Best I can do on short notice. I’ll get back to you when I have a better answer.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“Something else. What you did today with your plane? Changing airports, moving it around? New hangar? All that security you’re paying for?”

“Yeah?”

“Not necessary. And even if it was necessary, it wouldn’t be sufficient. You couldn’t hide a Gulfstream from the group, not in a million years. The company is way too resourceful for that. Fact is, nobody in the organization is going to bring your plane down. The group tends not to sacrifice any assets that are more valuable than a car. Your plane is safe.”

“Client relations, once again?”

“Partially. Client satisfaction is the heart of our business. But bringing down a multimillion-dollar plane isn’t necessary to do our work, and would inevitably involve investigative agencies like the NTSB, or the FAA — these days, maybe even the clowns at Homeland Security — that no one is eager to have curious about our endeavors. Our clients would rightfully balk at the waste and the unnecessary risk that might be posed to their families and colleagues if we started bringing down aircraft. The bottom line is that people don’t sign up with us in order to have their most valuable assets plundered. They sign up for peace of mind that they won’t have to spend the end of their lives with physical or mental limitations that they are unwilling to tolerate.”

I thought she sounded like a spokesperson on an infomercial.

“What if I drove a Maybach, or a Ferrari?” I said, trying to be funny. “Those are expensive cars. Trashing something like that would be a travesty.”

She wasn’t amused. “Maybe my assessment of the ratio of penis to brains in your case needs some adjusting.”

“I like you, Lizzie.”

“I know you do.”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Now there’s a question,” she said.

I waited fifteen seconds for a better answer than I’d gotten the last time. She wasn’t about to provide one.

“You like me, too, don’t you?” I said.

“Maybe.”

I waited some more. She didn’t bite. I don’t know how my therapist did it. How he always waited for the silence to end.

“Are you with them right now?” I asked her, suspecting something.

“With whom?”

“With their team? Are you still with them? Or have you gone out on your own? Have you quit?”

She ignored my questions. “That little space in the closet in my apartment? Where you hid? Funny story. It was originally built as a combination jewelry vault/safe room for a woman from Paris who owned my apartment in the early nineties. She had a vision of America as a very dangerous place, and wanted a nook where she could hide if someone invaded her home. When she sold the place and moved back to France, a couple moved in and the man had all the cameras installed. He was a Venezuelan diplomat at the UN, and he was a dedicated voyeur who was into watching his wife with other men. He’d go back into that little room and watch his wife with men that she’d picked up and brought home. They didn’t last too long as a couple, apparently. She got the apartment in the divorce and told me all about it after she sold it to me. I invited her back to the apartment with me and she showed me the room, all the electronic toys. She’d left all the equipment in place. I’ve updated some of it.”

The story Lizzie was telling was interesting — I had to give her that — but I wasn’t about to be distracted by it. “Do they know you’re sick?”

She wasn’t knocked off balance at all by my change of focus. “My colleagues? Yes, of course.”

“Do they know you’ve reached a threshold event?”

I counted to ten before she answered me.

“No.”

“And you don’t want them to?”

“I didn’t call to talk about me.”

“Do they know where you are right now?”

“I’m not required to check in with them. It’s not that kind of an organization. I have responsibilities. I’m expected to fulfill them, that’s all. My free time is my free time.”

She didn’t know that I knew about the midnight movers who’d carried boxes and suitcases from her flat. Or maybe she did. The newsstand man had probably told her.

“I assume that you’re not permitted to make social calls to clients,” I said. “There have to be rules.”

“Of course there are rules. But you may assume what you would like.”

“Is this a social call?” I asked.

“Next,” she said. “Move on.”

“You’re a physician. That’s your job with … them?”

“Yes. Among other things, I analyze end-of-life thresholds. It takes someone with a medical background, obviously. We deal with lots of technical information. Labs. Scans. Pathology reports. Doctor-speak.”

“Do you provide end-of-life services, too?”

“Next question.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Your specialty?”

“What?”

She was wary that I was asking what form of life-taking was her specialty.

“Your medical specialty?” I said, clarifying.

“Oncology at first. But it wasn’t right for me. I burnt out after a few years, did another residency, became a neurologist.”

“Lot of irony there. Hippocratic irony. And burning-out-on-oncology-and-then-getting-breast-cancer irony.”

“Hippocratic irony? You think I’m doing harm by what I do? That’s an interesting perspective from one of our … clients.”

She had me there. “Maybe,” I mumbled. “But considering your life now? Yeah, I see irony.”

“Life is full of irony.”

“You don’t practice anymore?”

“No. In a strange way, I feel like I do more good now. This seems like a better job for me. A better fit.”

I softened my voice. I wanted her closer so I did what came naturally for me. I started flirting. “But you’re not just a doc; you also frisk people in Town Cars.”

“Only the cute ones.”

“And you take clients out for fine lunches at Papaya King.”

“Only the really cute ones.”

I did like her. God, I liked her.

“Tell me something. Do they know where you are right now? Did those two guys show up at your place looking for you, or looking for me?”

“Two different questions.”

“Answer either one.”