Liquid Fear (4 page)

The collision was much more dramatic than Martin Kleingarten had planned.

The clatter of the broken glass cascading along the sidewalk and the length of the sedan was satisfying, and the snapping of a steel mullion reminded him of the time he’d been forced to break a bookie’s fingers for dipping into the till.

That was small-time mob work, steady pay but little chance for career development, and Kleingarten’s new employers had a flair for the creative. That suited Kleingarten, although the risks were a little higher. What was life without a few risks?

The sedan plowed through the interior of the restaurant and smashed the counter, breaking it from the floor and slamming it against the grill. Hot fryer oil, which had leaped in rancid arcs with the impact, rained down on the screaming customers, and those who hadn’t been lacerated with glass shards had suffered nickel-sized burns on their flesh.

One old lady, hair tinted with blue rinse, tried to raise herself on her walker, but one of its legs had been twisted in the wreck and the walker collapsed, sending her sprawling with a shriek that stood out even in the cacophony that erupted in the moments after the “accident.”

The short-order cook in the filthy apron yanked open the crumpled door of the sedan. Kleingarten smiled, the swell of his cheeks pushing up on the lenses of the binoculars. The cook’s mouth stopped in mid tirade and dropped in surprise.

No driver.

Kleingarten, who had boosted his first car at the age of eleven, could easily have started the sedan with the key, aimed the steering wheel, and let the good times roll. The American Disabilities Act required three handicapped parking spaces near the front door, none of which were currently occupied, so he’d had a large window of opportunity. To make it more of a challenge, he’d hot-wired the vehicle and left the key in his pocket, leaning a brick on the accelerator.

He swung his binoculars to the left. The Chinese woman appeared to be unhurt and was busy helping up the blue-haired lady. Good. His instructions had been to leave both women scared, and they’d been sitting far enough from the window that they were out of danger.

Kleingarten twisted the lenses to focus on the Slant.
Wendy Leng. Why are my friends so interested in you?

Her eyes had the classic Oriental shape, but her hair was brown instead of raven-black. Her teeth were small and she had a mole on her right cheek. Her eyes were light brown, unusual for an Asian, so Kleingarten figured her for a half-breed. As if “breed” meant anything these days, the way everybody fucked outside their own kind.

The Slant was cute, if you liked that sort of thing, with a rounded, flat face and mouth-sized knockers. The one who had been sitting with her, though, deserved a closer look.

She seemed a little familiar, but with her trendy haircut, big sunglasses, and bright red lipstick she was hardly distinguishable from all the other scrawny thirty-somethings who watched
Sex and the City
and took Internet tests to determine whether they were more like the slutty character or the quirky character.

“Hey, babe, what you doing after the tragedy?” Kleingarten whispered to himself.

Her forehead was bleeding from a cut, but the wound didn’t appear serious. She was also to remain unharmed, according to orders, and he was pretty sure that as long as the two targets walked out alive, he’d played by the rules.

One person, though, was not going to be walking anywhere. The man in the greasy army jacket had picked the wrong counter stool. The car’s grill had chewed him up like a piece of toast and then spat him back out.

Most of him, anyway. One khaki-clad arm still pointed in the air, a fork gripped in the bloody fist.

If Kleingarten had calculated wrong, the car might have swerved, hit a pothole, or even struck another car, which might have caused it to veer into the back booth where the Slant and the Looker had sat with their coffee cups.

He wasn’t sure his employers would appreciate the serendipity, but if they wanted it done a certain way, they should have given better instructions. And paid better.

“Inducing a state of panic” could have been interpreted in any number of ways. The Looker’s dose had been administered last week, in a bottle of Perrier. The Slant had got hers, appropriately enough, in an order of General Tso’s chicken three days ago. But they’d needed the adrenalin boost, apparently, for the stuff to take effect. Briggs had called the accident a “trigger,” the same as Roland Doyle’s trigger had been to mess with his identity and play on his guilt.

The first siren arose from the east end of town, toward Durham. Kleingarten tightened his gaze on Wendy Leng and the trendy chick one last time. The Slant had helped the blue-haired woman to the sidewalk and now rejoined her friend, who was dabbing at her wound with a napkin.

No plastic surgery would be required, but Kleingarten suspected she’d wear a little extra powder while the wound healed over the next few weeks. A looker like that was bound to be a vain bitch.

Anger flared through him, the type of anger that was riskier than any crime he could commit. He could have scared them the old-fashioned way, stalked them from a distance, figured out their patterns, then jumped them one at a time in some dark alley or parking garage, get a little action as he—

No. With DNA tests, you couldn’t do hands-on work anymore. Why, just squirting a little harmless sperm in a stranger was enough to get you two dimes in Raleigh’s Central Prison, and if she happened to stop breathing on you in the middle of getting acquainted, you’d find yourself on the skinny end of the needle.

Risks were one thing, but fatal consequences were another. No snatch on Earth was worth a death sentence.

Of course, after the number he’d done on that hooker in Cincinnati last night, any other charge at this point would be a bonus prize. And it’s not like she’d taken his kill cherry, either.

More people emerged from the carnage: a stooped-over man with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, a fat woman in a “Git ‘r Done” T-shirt far too small for her wobbling breasts, a boy in camo hunter’s pants with what appeared to be ketchup staining the front of his gray sweat jacket.

The cook, having overcome his shock at finding an empty driver’s seat, had collected a fire extinguisher and was hosing down a grease fire that had erupted above the grill. The oily smoke curled from the shattered entrance.

Though the rubberneckers arrived under the guise of good intentions and a helpful spirit, Kleingarten knew the truth in their sorry hearts: they were hoping for a little peek of blood, something they could tell their spouses about over dinner while waxing philosophical about God’s random hand.

Fuck God. Religion was just another calculated risk, a sucker’s bet. For Kleingarten, all the religion he needed was a Glock semi and a pile of unmarked bills. The kind of stack his employers had mailed to a Burlington post office box, the address of a fictitious consulting business Kleingarten had launched a decade ago after leaving the security industry and becoming an entrepreneur.

He’d be picking up his next stack that afternoon, in person from Briggs, the down payment on a little job involving one Dr. Alexis Morgan of the UNC medical faculty.

The lone siren amplified and now was joined by others. The wailing chorus pulsed off the surrounding buildings and meshed in the urban valley around him. From behind the tinted window of his Nissan Pathfinder, where he’d slipped after launching the unmanned auto, Kleingarten could track the approach of emergency vehicles.

He should leave the scene, but where was the joy in creating a masterpiece if the end result couldn’t be savored? Sure, the crash would make the newspapers, and already a Channel 3 TV van was zooming into the parking lot, nearly outpacing the first ambulance.

But this was reality TV at its finest, with all the color and drama of life even when viewed through a tinted windshield.

He let the binoculars rest against the steering wheel. These days everybody had a cell phone that took pictures and, since the documented beating of Rodney King had created a self-made homeless millionaire, all those budding Jerry Springers and Geraldo Riveras out there were itching for their turns. So a low profile was the next best thing to invisible.

The Looker in the fringed leather jacket had regained her composure, and she leaned against one of the cars parked in front of the restaurant.

His employers were aware of the parking setup, almost as if the entire lot was some kind of oversized game board, the cars and people nothing more than set pieces. They’d assured him the Slant and the Looker would have their regular Thursday breakfast at the Over E-Z Waffle House, they’d take a booth near the back, and the late-model Ford Escort would be parked and pointed in a direct path to the window. Little had been left to chance, which had taken some fun out of the job, although the whole game was just weird enough to keep him playing along.

He thought of them as “employers” in plural form because, even though all his communication had been with the same prick on the phone—through cryptic text messages or directly from the mouth of that eggheaded asshole Briggs—he believed some type of group or organization was behind the orders. Maybe more than one. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He couldn’t imagine one person rigging such an elaborate prank. A jilted lover, somebody still stewing because the Slant had clamped her legs shut and cut off the Bamboo Express? Or maybe the Looker was doing another dude on the side?

No, jealousy led you to act quickly and irrationally. Hell, women in general made you do that. But these folks—

Kleingarten checked his wristwatch. Seven minutes had passed. Soon emergency response would give way to an investigation. Even the cops, as stupid as they were, would figure out the unoccupied car hadn’t started itself and shifted into “Drive.”

But he still had a few minutes, plus he was sporting a stolen license plate that some harebrained mall shopper probably hadn’t even noticed was missing. He wielded the glasses again.

The ambulance crew debarked and sprinted to the front of the crumpled Escort, rolling latex gloves up to their wrists. The TV van screamed to a stop and a camera operator got out, one of those shaggy-assed, bearded hippies who always seemed to get the easy gigs. A chick with the same hairstyle as the Looker exited the passenger door, checking her reflection in the side mirror.

Seeing the video camera, the Slant covered her face and lurched away, apparently peering between the cracks of her fingers. Shy, paranoid, or something else?

His employers must have had a reason for targeting the pair. It wasn’t his job to know, only to follow instructions, however bizarre. But he had to admit, this situation was far more interesting than shattering a kneecap or arranging a drop for a heroin import.

The Looker seemed none too eager to make the six o’clock news, either, and the pair slipped away from the other victims, who appeared prepped for prime time. The gathered throng, including those who had gotten out of their cars when the ambulance blocked the lot exit, also wanted a piece of the action, the latest crazy move on God’s pecker-headed checkerboard.

He grinned at the notion. Games of chance, games of risk. He had a feeling his employers weren’t ready to cash in their chips just yet, that they wanted another few spins of the roulette wheel. He focused the twin lenses as the Slant and the Looker got behind the wheel of a faggoty new Volkswagen Beetle that was as silver as an alien’s anal probe—and parked outside the lot, where they weren’t hemmed in by the ambulance.

He noted the tag number. His memory wasn’t eidetic, but when he put his mind to it, a brief series of symbols was no challenge.

Martin Kleingarten started his SUV, pulled out slowly so as not to arouse any notice in the chaos, and took the rear exit, wondering how long he’d have to wait before his employers called again.

If they wanted the two women scared shitless but still breathing, Kleingarten was the man for the job.

And if they wanted to drop that “breathing” part, why, he could oblige them on that as well.

He whistled as he drove away, a man who loved his work.

Call 911. Don’t call 911?

The body in the bathroom was cold, and even the world’s fastest ambulance would prove useless. But if Roland didn’t call right away, the suspicion would build, because the desk clerk would be able to confirm the time of the wake-up call.

Roland knew he was innocent (wasn’t he?), but the fact remained that he was behind a locked door with a dead woman in his motel room. Worst of all, he couldn’t account for a period of time that could range from hours to days. Maybe even weeks.

Roland glanced at the wallet lying on the bed. He couldn’t even prove his identity, at least not immediately.

How do you tell the cops you’re not David Underwood?

Wrestling his trembling legs into his pants, he collected the rental-car keys, painfully aware of all the surfaces he had touched. It was only when he found himself thinking about wiping down the doorknobs, the phone handset, and the light switches that he realized he was planning to flee.

A glance at the clock showed it was nearly ten. The maid would be by any minute, knocking on the door and reminding him to check out. Roland considered calling the front desk and putting another night on David Underwood’s credit card.

That would buy him some time to think. But he couldn’t stay in the room while a stranger’s body went through the early stages of decomposition a mere ten feet away. A soft gurgle echoed off the tiles in the bathroom, gastric acid settling inside livid flesh.

Had he touched her? Had sex with her? Not likely, since he’d awoken wearing his briefs. Then again, he had no idea how long she had been dead. He might have killed her two days—

No, he hadn’t killed anyone.

Right, David?

“I’m not David.” His own voice sounded alien to his ears. The name sounded vaguely familiar, like a character from a cancelled television show.

Or college. Most of college had been one long blackout. But that wouldn’t explain why he was here now with a corpse.

Possibilities ran through his head, and he pictured himself in a night club, buying her a drink, flashing that salesman’s smile. He might have asked her back to his place (“Short on charm but long where it counts, babe”), but even the friendliest woman was reluctant to go solo with a man she’d only just met. Serial-killer movies and Facebook perverts had all but snuffed out the chance for random hookups.

If she were a professional, then Roland had definitely fallen off the wagon and probably bumped his head in the bargain. She might even be someone he knew, maybe an old friend or previous encounter, or someone he’d met through one of the online dating sites.

Roland lifted the water glass from the nightstand and sniffed for lingering signs of liquor. Only the crisp smell of chlorine from municipal water treatment.

Some drugs are odorless and tasteless…

He tossed the inch of clear liquid into his dry mouth, working it down his throat, and replaced the glass, studying it for fingerprints. He wiped it with one of his socks, which was silly because his prints were all over the room. But this was one little detail he could control.

It was now two minutes after ten. He eased toward the bathroom door. Leaving more fingerprints, he reached inside and probed for the light switch. When he touched it, the phone rang, causing his heart to skip a couple of beats.

Four rings later, the sound abruptly died, and the ensuing silence, marred only by the muted whisper of traffic outside, was almost as jarring.

Roland peeked around the doorjamb as if respecting her privacy. Her left foot was nearest to him, toenails painted dark burgundy. Her legs were shaven, the skin smooth and unmarked. The robe had ridden up to just under the tuck of her buttocks, and her thigh was shapely, though the portion against the floor was heavy and blotched by lividity.

Farther up, near her waist, the robe was soaked with blood. In the greasy yellow light above the bathroom sink, the blood appeared crusty and brown. It was difficult to tell how long she had been dead without a closer examination.

He sniffed. No taint of decay filled the air, although the bathroom smelled faintly of mildew and cheap shampoo. The shower head leaked, creating an arrhythmic tick that measured its own time.

Roland glanced at the sink countertop. No sign of toothbrushes, razors, floss, aftershave, or the other usual detritus of the traveler. No clues.

Her face was turned away from the door, toward the tub. The hand nearest Roland was curled as if gripping an invisible ball. The fingers bore no rings. Her hair trailed in unkempt, luxuriant locks over her shoulders, though the blackness had lost a little of its natural luster and resembled a wig.

Eyeing the toilet, wondering if he’d be able to step over her if he needed to vomit, he edged toward the tub. Careful not to touch her, he knelt and peered under the folds of hair at her face. Her eyelids were sunken and grayish purple, mouth parted, lips gone pale.

Good. Never seen her before.

She appeared to be a few years younger than he was, but the bottle had aged him fast and he hadn’t spent a lot of time looking in mirrors lately. She was made up, the fake eyelashes a little exaggerated.

Her right hand, dangling on the rim of the bathtub, appeared to be pointing. It was most likely an act of rigor, tendons shrinking and tightening in decay. But Roland found himself looking at the back wall of the shower stall, in the direction of the finger.

Faint soap letters were scrawled in the shower residue: “C-R-O.”

Cro. Crow. Cro-Magnon. Crocodile Fucking Dundee.

The letters might have been there for weeks. In a low-budget motel, the shower might only get a good scrubbing twice a year. Some guest could have been playing a joke, goofing around, leaving a message for a spouse.

Sure, and some guest might have left a dead body in the bathroom for Roland to find upon awakening. Roland was grasping for bizarre explanations because he didn’t like the simplest one. Then again, he always looked for someone else to blame, no matter what the problem.

Unwilling to explore the body, both because of revulsion and a fear of leaving trace evidence, he glanced around the bathroom to see if he’d left any sign of his stay. For all he knew, she might be lying on top of one of his razor blades, a brand advertised to bring the girls up close and personal.

In any case, she certainly wasn’t carrying identification, since she appeared to be naked beneath the robe. Another theory that Roland didn’t have the stomach to confirm.

Instead, he left the ceramic-tiled tomb and retreated to the relative sanity of the sleeping area. He checked the closet but saw no purse, underwear, or clothing. No lipstick, no condom wrappers, no high heels.

Ten minutes had passed since the ringing of the telephone, and though his mind still ran frantic loops, his hands no longer trembled.

He was slipping into his shirt when the knock came. The interior of the bathroom was hidden from view of the front door. Roland glanced once behind him to reassure himself of the bathroom’s angle and cracked the door, making sure his foot was planted firmly behind it.

A Hispanic woman, wearing blue jeans and a white uniform shirt with a towel draped over one shoulder, gave him an uneasy smile. She stood before a cart that held the tools of a maid’s trade: stacks of folded linen, spray bottles, mop, toilet brush, and a bucket of gray water that smelled of pine cleanser and bleach. She’d obviously expected to find an empty room and had given a perfunctory knock out of habit.

The woman pointed at her wrist, though she wore no watch, and said, “Time for checkout?” in a thick accent. A question, with the tone of one who had learned the hard way the customer was always right.

Roland managed a return smile, though his lips felt numb and paralyzed with shock. “Slept late,” he said, faking a yawn. “Give me ten minutes. I need a quick shower.”

The woman nodded and looked at a piece of notebook paper taped to her cart, then at the room number. “Okay, Mr. Underwood. But you tell the desk.”

She said “desk” as if the destination was some sort of principal’s office for wayward adults.

“No desk,” Roland said, the smile frozen on his face. He was hiding a corpse, but he could lie with his eyes and his face and his hands and his heart. Some habits never died.

“
Por favor
,” he said in bad Spanish, and he actually winked. He lifted a hand and realized it was still covered by the sock. He worked it like a puppet, grinned like an idiot, and then removed it. Digging into his wallet—
David’s
wallet, he chided himself—he pulled out a ten-dollar bill and held it toward the maid.

She shrank back as if it were the badge of a U.S. Immigration Service agent. She glanced from the office below back to the money. “I want no trouble.”

“Neither do I, but I don’t want to meet my wife at the airport smelling like a pig.”

“The desk finds out, I have trouble.”

“My wife can be trouble, too.
Mucho
bad.”

The maid hesitated, as if calculating the risk and mentally converting the dollars to pesos. “You hurry?”

“Five minutes, I promise.”

Roland was sickened by the look in the woman’s eyes and was ashamed how cheaply she could be led into conspiracy. But he was quite possibly a murderer, and bribery was several notches down the moral scale.

She took the bill and secured it in her pocket. Roland wondered if, when the police interrogated her, she would tell them about the money. He figured its DNA and fingerprint evidence would never enter a courtroom. He only hoped she had a green card, for her sake.

“Five minutes?” she asked, glancing at the office again and the omnipotent front desk that was hidden behind its tinted glass.

“Cross my heart,” he said, declining to complete the last half of the promise. He closed the door, found that sweat had stained the underarms of his shirt, and wondered if five minutes would be enough.

Even if he mustered the will to touch the body, the maid would find it whether it was tucked in the closet or hidden under the bed. He considered turning on the taps in the bathtub and locking the door, letting the maid assume he was showering. That might buy him an extra half an hour.

But minutes meant nothing in the face of eternity. In recovery from alcoholism, Roland had practiced principles of rigorous honesty and self-examination, including a core commitment to purposely harm no one.

Somewhere in the space of maybe three days, he had not only traveled five hundred miles but had lost his identity. Or maybe he hadn’t lost his identity at all, but found it.

If I’m David Underwood, who the fuck was Roland Doyle?

As he gathered his belongings and wiped down the telephone with the sock, he realized the police would be looking for David Underwood, not Roland Doyle. The world believed David had rented this room, and the police would put out an All Points Bulletin not for Roland, but for his spontaneous alter ego.

Despite the roiling of his gut and his hop-scotching pulse, he found comfort in the idea that David would be the fall guy. The latest contestant to suit up and show up for the Blame Game.

The car keys jingled in Roland’s jacket pocket. He pulled out the orange plastic vial and gave it a shake as he held it up for inspection. It contained maybe eight pills. A plain white label bore bold print that read simply, “D. Underwood. Take one every 4 hrs. or else.”

Or else what?

LSD? A kick-ass barbiturate? Diazepam?

And, the bigger question, how many of them had he taken? Enough to blot out a murder?

He shoved the vial back in his pocket. Two minutes until the maid returned.

Run now, sort it out later
.

That’s what drunks and cowards did.

That’s what Roland Doyle had always done.

Familiarity gave him comfort.

A drink would offer even more comfort.

He slipped his bare feet into his Oxfords, gathered his laptop and satchel, and took a final look at the bathroom. Hand in sock, he twisted the door handle, exited the room, and hurried along the balcony, hoping that bastard David had left him the right car key.

The outside surroundings were urban, but rounded hills and a river bordered the low buildings, a series of steel bridges glistening in the morning sun. The air smelled of coal smoke and chemicals. He recognized the city now as definitely Cincinnati, its Revolutionary War roots giving way to redevelopment, the arts, and young corporate professionals.

And the occasional surprise corpse.

He picked out the car and slid behind the seat.

Sitting on the dash in front of the speedometer was a handwritten note. It said, “Or else you’ll remember.”