Kill Me If You Can (10 page)

Marta had a
rule when on a job: Never leave an impression that can’t be forgotten, controlled, or erased. Part of that meant never taking a taxi to a contract killing. Cab drivers remembered too much. She walked from the hotel to Times Square, then blended into the evening rush hour and caught the downtown number 1 train to Sheridan Square.

Once out of the rush-hour mob, she had to watch her movements. Her determined stride turned into a casual saunter. She strolled along Christopher Street, gawking at store windows, looking more like a sightseer than a murderer on a mission. She headed north on Bleecker, where the street was wider and the stores and restaurants not nearly as funky.

At the corner of Bleecker and Perry, she stopped to look in the window of Ralph Lauren, checking the glass’s reflection for tails. Those moron cops might follow her, looking for payback. But she was clear, so she headed west on Perry, a tree-lined residential street dotted with classic West Village brownstones and town houses.

She walked slowly past Matthew Bannon’s building, then doubled back and walked past it again. Five stories. Bannon’s apartment was on the top floor. Compared with some of the other buildings, this one looked secure. But she’d faced tougher.

She climbed the six steps and tried the front door. Open. She stepped into the vestibule, where the security kicked up a notch—a closed-circuit camera and a heavy brass plate protecting the inner door from being jimmied.

The doorbells were clearly labeled. She pressed apartment 5,
BANNON.

There was no answer, but then the inner door was opened.

A man came through, African American, early thirties, about six foot six, with a thick bull neck and a square head that was shaved clean. He barely looked at her, just pulled the inner door shut and quickly left the building.

She rang Bannon’s bell a second time. Still no answer. She rang all the bells. Someone would buzz her in and she’d wait for Bannon in his apartment.

She held the thumb latch on the inner door and waited for the buzzer. Through the glass, she could see the door to apartment 1 open. A man stepped out—blond buzz cut, baby blue eyes, wearing faded jeans and a gray muscle shirt that left no room for the imagination.

He smiled and opened the front door.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

A gentleman, Marta decided. And from what she knew of American accents, his was not from New York. He was from one of the southern states. Alabama, or maybe Mississippi.

“I’m looking for Matthew Bannon,” she said.

“He’s not here,” the southern gentleman said. “But surely you must have figured that out when he didn’t answer the second time you rang. Now, are you gonna keep ringing all the bells till you find someone dumb enough to let you in? Because we don’t rent to stupid people. So, take a hike, Blondie.”

Marta’s Bottega Veneta bag was hanging from her shoulder. She pressed it to her side with her upper arm until she could feel the Glock against her ribs.

Her face remained icy calm. “I’m one of his teachers at Parsons,” she said. “Can you tell me where to find him? I have his final paper. I wanted to give him his grade.”

The man from apartment 1 relaxed a little. “Oh, so you’re an art teacher.”

Marta gave him her most seductive smile. She had been on the cover of German
Vogue
four times. This guy would be easy. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Professor Mueller.”

“So, then, Professor,” he said, still filling the doorway, “how do you feel the Dadaist movement affected the growth of postmodernism in twentieth-century America?”

“Fuck you,” Marta snapped.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s pretty much how I feel about Dada. But I’m a big fan of those dogs playing poker. Now, get out of here.”

Marta hated quick hits. This one wasn’t researched, wasn’t planned, but the Russians were in a hurry to find Bannon. If she was going to be waiting for him in his apartment when he got home, she’d have to kill the asshole blocking the door.

She ran through the scenario in her head. T
urn toward the outer door, take the gun from my bag, spin around, shoot him between the eyes, drag his body inside, clean up, go up to the fifth floor, and wait for Bannon.
The guy in the muscle shirt would be collateral damage. Tough luck, pal. You asked for it.

She turned to the front door, one hand on the clasp of her black bag. And then she saw him.

The first guy, the one with the shaved head, who looked like he was in a hurry to go someplace, hadn’t gone anywhere. He was standing outside sucking on a cigarette.

She removed her hand from the leather bag. Killing one person was manageable. Killing two was messy. Too messy for Marta.

She opened the front door, and the black guy with the cigarette grunted a polite but detached New York hello. The white guy followed her out of the building and stood at the top of the front steps.

“Happy trails, Professor,” he said.

She walked down the steps and onto Perry Street.

She’d be back. To kill Matthew Bannon and the redneck bastard from apartment 1.

Getting through airport
security at JFK turned out to be a snap. For me. I breezed through with my multimillion-dollar carry-on.

Katherine, on the other hand, got caught red-handed, carrying a five-ounce tube of toothpaste into a three-ounce world.

She was stopped by a TSA screener—a chunky Hispanic woman wearing a government-issue white shirt, black pants, blue latex gloves, a gold badge, and a name tag that said
MORALES.

“I’m going to have to confiscate this,” the screener said, pointing at the toothpaste.

“I know the three-ounce rule,” Katherine said. “And yes, this is a five-ounce tube. But it’s more than half empty. There’s maybe only two ounces left.”

“I appreciate that, Miss,” Morales said, “but you really
don’t
know the rule. All liquids, gels, and aerosols must be in three-ounce or smaller
containers.
Larger containers that are half-full or toothpaste tubes that are rolled up are not allowed on the aircraft.”

“You’re joking,” Katherine said.

“Miss, we do not joke here.”

“For God’s sake,” Katherine said, “what do you think I’m going to do with half a tube of toothpaste? Blo—?”

I clamped my hand on Katherine’s mouth before she could say the four words that would land us both in jail—
blow up the plane.

Katherine pulled away. “Matt, what the hell are you doing?” she barked as two more security screeners stepped in and flanked us on both sides.

“I’ll tell you what he’s doing, Miss,” Morales said. “He’s saving your ass. Now, unless you want to miss your flight to Paris, you’d be smart to toss that toothpaste in that bin and be on your merry way.”

I squeezed Katherine’s arm gently. “Please,” I said. “I promise I’ll buy you toothpaste in Paris.”

“This is Tom’s of Maine,” she said. “They won’t have it in Paris.”

“I’ll buy you French toothpaste. They make the best in the world.”

“This one is called Tom’s Wicked Fresh and it’s all natural and it keeps my breath fresh for hours. It’s the only one I use.”

I leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “You may find this hard to believe, but we are about five seconds from being arrested, strip-searched, and thrown in jail for the night. I’ve never asked you to do anything for me on blind faith, but I’m asking you now. Please, please, please, give the nice lady your toothpaste, don’t utter another word, and I promise you that tomorrow morning we will be checking into our hotel, racing up to our room, peeling off our clothes, snuggling under the sheets, and I will kiss you over and over and over, even if your breath smells like a Paris sewer. Please?”

She tossed the toothpaste in the bin.

“Have a nice flight,” Morales said.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing my head. “Thank you.”

Morales smiled. She knew what I was thanking her for.

I only wished I could have told her that she might have saved the world from Tom’s toothpaste but she missed the guy who was leaving the country with a bag full of diamonds he stole from a dead Russian.

“Let’s find a
bar,
” I said as I propelled Katherine as far from security as I could. “I need a drink.”

We found a little place close to our gate that served burgers and beer. I had one of each. Katherine didn’t want either, so she decided to backtrack to the Starbucks we had seen as we walked through the terminal.

I sat at a small table, munching my burger, which was not hot, sipping my beer, which was not cold, and staring at the LCD flat-screen TV over the bar. It was tuned to a local news station. The sound was muted, and I was too far away to read the closed captioning.

I was just starting to unwind from the toothpaste incident when I gagged so badly I almost puked my burger and beer all over the table. I wasn’t choking on the mediocre airport cuisine. What made me want to throw up was what I saw on the television screen.

Me.

Me at Grand Central, holding a black medical bag with a bank of lockers behind me.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Holy shit, what?” Katherine said, sitting down at the table with a grande cappuccino and a blueberry muffin.

She sat facing away from the television.

“Holy shit, I need another beer,” I said, jumping up and heading for the bar. I got there just in time to read the tail end of the closed captioning:
…wanted for robbery.
They flashed a phone number.

And then they cut to a commercial.

I looked around the bar to see how many other people had caught it. A dozen, maybe more. What else do people sitting around an airport bar do but stare at the TV? Hopefully they wouldn’t look up at me.

I tucked my chin down, put one hand over my eyes, and studied the floor tiles as I walked back to the table where Katherine was sitting.

“Where’s your beer?” she said.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “You know what I really need?”

“No.”

“A hat.”

I lifted the somewhat faded, definitely broken-in Yankees cap off her head. I put it on mine. It didn’t fit.

“It’s way too small for your big head,” she said.

“Well, let’s buy one that fits,” I said.

“As soon as I finish,” she said, picking up her muffin and biting it.

So we sat and talked. And then it happened again. My picture flashed on the TV screen.

I didn’t try to read the closed captioning. I just kept my head down until Katherine polished off her cappuccino. Then we walked over to Hudson News. Katherine checked out the magazines, and I went to the gift shop.

I was about to buy a Yankees baseball cap when I saw the berets.
Absolument,
I thought.
Très français and a much better disguise.
They had two colors—brown or red. I settled on brown.

I moved over to the sunglasses rack and picked out a pair of mirror-lens wraparounds.

Then I found Katherine. “What do you think?”

She laughed out loud. “What happened to the baseball hat?”

“I’m an artist. We’re going to France. I definitely need a beret. And sunglasses,” I said, putting on my shades. “Is this perfect or what?”

“Or what,” said Katherine. But she was grinning.

Dinner was served
about an hour into the flight to Paris.

“At long last,” I said. “Fine French cooking. Maybe we should eat and critique our dinners.”

I had the beef goulash; Katherine opted for the herbed chicken.

“Bland, dry, overcooked,” she said after a few bites. “One star, and that’s only because I’m an easy marker. How about you?”

“Four stars,” I said.

Katherine threw me a look.

“I think it’s the ambience,” I said, kissing the back of her neck. “And the company, of course.”

As soon as the trays were cleared, we turned out the overhead lights and raised the armrest between our seats, and Katherine curled up against me, wrapped in a blanket and my arms.

She zonked out in minutes. I couldn’t sleep.

I loved this woman. What was I dragging her into?

If that toothpaste incident had escalated one more notch, Katherine’s behavior might have branded us as troublemakers, but my carry-on bag would absolutely have landed us both in jail.

What was I thinking? What had I gotten her involved in? Was I crazy? The questions were bouncing around in my brain like a beach ball at a rock concert.

Somewhere along the way I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up till we were on our final approach to Orly airport. Looking out the window, we could see the lush vineyards and tiny red-roofed farmhouses that dotted the French countryside.

“I can’t believe you’re actually taking me to Paris,” Katherine said, still snuggled up against me.

“Believe it,” I said. Then I kissed her.

She pulled away fast. “Matt, no. I have horrible morning breath.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Your breath smells Wicked Fresh.”

She punched me in the shoulder. “Matthew! You are so totally lying.” God, I loved this woman.

The plane parked on the tarmac, and one of those big mobile lounges off-loaded the passengers and drove us to the terminal. All around me people were speaking French. The signs, the sounds, even the music piping through the PA, were French.

I took off my sunglasses and my beret. I was thousands of miles away from New York, where my picture was being flashed on a TV screen every ten minutes. I felt safe. Nobody would be looking for me here.

The Artist Known
as Leonard Karns had a nearly pathological crush on Katherine Sanborne, and that was just one of the reasons he hated that muscle-bound, no-talent Matthew Bannon. Bannon and the professor were an item. No doubt about that. But now Karns had a way to get back at both of them.

God, he despised Bannon and Sanborne. For one thing, they were into Realism, even into portraits. Karns
hated
portraits. “If that’s all you’re going to do,” he said one day in his Group Critique class, “you might as well work at a carnival.” One girl left the room in tears.

Karns was a Big Bang! artist. Big Bang! was the new, hip abstract painting for the twenty-first century. Big Bang! surged with energy and exploded with color. The imagery emanated from computer technology, quantum physics, genetics, and other complex contemporary issues. That, as far as Leonard Karns was concerned, was art.

Losers like Matthew Bannon were stuck in time, painting variations on pictures that had been done years ago and sucked even back then.

Karns was sitting in his pathetic apartment, thinking about Bannon, when his picture suddenly flashed on his TV, and the announcer said he was wanted for robbery.

And there was a reward.

He dialed the number on the TV screen and got a recording. A Detective Rice told him to leave his information and said that his call would be returned as soon as possible.

“I know the guy you’re looking for,” Karns said into the machine. “The robbery suspect. I saw his picture on TV. He goes to art school with me. I also know where he lives. Call me.”

Karns gave his name and phone number. He was about to hang up when he had to add a delicious afterthought. “Plus, the guy is a total fraud as an artist.”