Swimsuit (16 page)

A boot struck him hard in the lower back, and the vehicle sped away.

He returned to the United States through an underground chain of friendly back doors from Syria to Beirut, where he got new
documentation, and by cargo plane from Beirut to Vancouver. He hitched a ride to Seattle, stole a car, and made his way to
a small mining town in Wisconsin. But Henri didn’t contact his controller at Brewster-North.

He never wanted to see Carl Obst again.

Still, Brewster-North had done great things for Henri. They’d eradicated his past when they hired him, had thoroughly expunged
his real name, his fingerprints, his entire history from the records. And now he was presumed dead.

He counted on that.

Across from him now, inside an exclusive Japanese club in Thailand, the lovely Mai-Britt had noticed that Henri’s mind had
drifted far away from her.

“Are you okay, Paul?” she asked. “Are you angry that that man was staring at me?”

Together they watched Carl Obst leave the restaurant with his date. He didn’t look back.

Henri smiled, said, “No, I’m not angry. Everything is fine.”

“Good, because I was wondering if we should continue the evening more privately?”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I wish I could,” Henri told the girl with the most elegant neck since Henry VIII’s second wife. “I really
wish I had the time,” he said, taking her hand. “I have that early flight tomorrow morning.”

“Screw business,” Mai-Britt joked. “You’re on holiday tonight.”

Henri leaned across the table and kissed her cheek.

He imagined her nakedness under his hands — and he let the fantasy go. He was already thinking ahead to his business in L.A.,
laughing inside at how surprised Ben Hawkins would be to see him.

HENRI SPENT a three-day weekend at the airport Sheraton in L.A., moving anonymously among the other business travelers. He
used the time to reread Ben Hawkins’s novels and every newspaper story Ben had written. He’d purchased supplies and made dry
runs to Venice Beach and the street where Ben lived, right around the corner from Little Tokyo.

At just after five that Monday afternoon, Henri took his rental car onto the 105 Freeway. The yellowing cement walls lining
the eight-laner were illuminated by a golden light, randomly splashed with spiky vines of red and purple bougainvillea and
gothic Latino gang graffiti, giving the drab Los Angeles highway a Caribbean flavor, at least in his mind.

Henri took the 105 to the 110 exit at Los Angeles Street, and from there he made his way through stop-and-go traffic to Alameda,
a major artery running to the heart of downtown.

It was rush hour, but Henri was in no rush. He was keyed up, focused on an idea that over the last three weeks had taken on
potential for life-changing drama and a hell of a finale.

The plan centered on Ben Hawkins, the journalist, the novelist, the former detective.

Henri had been thinking about him since that evening in Maui, outside the Wailea Princess, when Ben had stretched out his
hand to touch Barbara McDaniels.

Henri waited out the red light, and when it changed he took a right turn onto Traction, a small street near the Union Pacific
tracks that ran parallel to the Los Angeles River.

Following the poky SUV in front of him, Henri trawled down the middle of Ben’s homey neighborhood, with its L.A. hipster restaurants
and vintage clothing shops, finding a parking spot across from the eight-story, white-brick building where Ben lived.

Henri got out of the car, opened the trunk, and took a sports jacket from his bag. He stuck a gun into the waistband of his
slacks, buttoned his jacket, and raked back his brown and silver-streaked hair.

Then he got back into the car and found a good music station, spent about twenty minutes watching pedestrians meander along
the pleasant street, listening to Beethoven and Mozart, until he saw the man he was waiting for.

Ben was in Dockers and a polo shirt and was carrying a beat-up leather briefcase in his right hand. He entered a restaurant
called Ay Caramba, and Henri waited patiently until Ben emerged with his take-out Mexican dinner in a plastic bag.

Henri got out of his car, locked it, followed Ben across Traction right up the short flight of stairs to where Ben was fitting
his key into the lock.

Henri called out, “Excuse me. Sorry. Mr. Hawkins?”

Ben turned, a look of mild alertness on his face.

Henri smiled and, pulling aside the front of his jacket, showed Ben his gun. He said, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Ben spoke in a voice that still reeked of cop. “I’ve got thirty-eight dollars on me. Take it. My wallet’s in my back pocket.”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“Should I?”

“Think of me as your godfather, Ben,” Henri said, thickening his speech. “I’m gonna make you an offer —”

“I can’t refuse? I know who you are. You’re Marco.”

“Correct. You should invite me inside, my friend. We need to talk.”

“SO, what the fuck is this, Marco?” I shouted. “Suddenly you have information about the McDanielses?”

Marco didn’t answer my question. He didn’t even flinch. He said, “I mean it, Ben,” and standing with his back to the street,
he drew the gun from his waistband and leveled it at my gut. “Open the door.”

I couldn’t move my feet, I was that stuck. I’d known Marco Benevenuto a bit, had spent time sitting next to him in a car,
and now he’d taken off the chauffeur’s cap, the mustache, put on a six-hundred-dollar jacket, and completely skunked me.

I was ashamed of myself and I was confused.

If I refused to let him into my building, would he shoot me? I couldn’t know. And I was having the irrational thought that
I
should
let him in.

My curiosity was overriding caution big-time, but I wanted to satisfy my curiosity with a gun in
my
hand. My well-oiled Beretta was in my nightstand, and I was confident that once I was inside with this character I could
get my hands on it.

“You can put that thing away,” I said, shrugging when he gave me a bland, you-gotta-be-kidding smile. I opened the front door,
and with the McDanielses’ former driver right behind me, we climbed up three flights to the fourth floor.

This building was one of several former warehouses that had gone residential in the past ten years. I loved it here. One unit
per floor, high ceilings, and thick walls. No nosy neighbors. No unwanted sounds.

I unlocked the heavy-duty dead bolts on my front door and let the man in. He locked the door behind us.

I put my briefcase down on the cement floor, said “Have a seat,” then headed into the kitchen area. Perfect host, I called
out, “What can I get you to drink, Marco?”

He said from behind my shoulder, “Thanks anyway. I’ll pass.”

I quashed my jump reflex, took an Orangina out of the fridge, and led the way back to the living room, sitting at one end
of the leather sectional. My “guest” took the chair.

“Who are you really?” I asked this man who was now looking my place over, checking out the framed photos, the old newspapers
in the corner, every title of every book. I had the sense that I was in the presence of a highly observant operator.

He finally set his Smith and Wesson down on my coffee table, ten feet from where I was sitting, out of my reach. He fished
in his breast pocket, took out a business card held between his fingers, slid it across the glass table toward me.

I read the printed name, and my heart almost stopped.

I knew the card. I’d read it before: Charles Rollins. Photographer.
Talk Weekly
.

My mind was doing backflips. I imagined Marco without the mustache, and then envisioned Charles Rollins’s half-seen face the
night when Rosa Castro’s twisted body had been brought up from the deep.

That night, when Rollins had given me his card, he’d been wearing a baseball cap and, maybe, shades. It had been another disguise.

The prickling at the back of my neck was telling me that the slick, good-looking guy sitting on my sofa had been
this
close to me the whole time I was in Hawaii. Almost from the moment I arrived.

I’d been completely unaware of him, but he’d been watching me.

Why?

THE MAN SITTING in my favorite leather chair watched my face as I desperately tried to fit the pieces together.

I was remembering that day in Maui when the McDanielses had gone missing and Eddie Keola and I had tried to find Marco, the
driver who didn’t exist.

I remembered how after Julia Winkler’s body was found in a hotel bed in Lanai, Amanda had tried to help me locate a tabloid
paparazzo named Charles Rollins because he’d been the last person seen with Winkler.

The name Nils Bjorn jumped into my mind, another phantom who’d been staying at the Wailea Princess at the same time as Kim
McDaniels. Bjorn had never been questioned — because he had conveniently disappeared.

The police hadn’t thought Bjorn had anything to do with Kim’s abduction, and when I’d researched Bjorn, I was sure he was
using a dead man’s name.

Those facts alone told me that at the very least, Mr. Smooth on my chair was a con artist, a master of disguise. If that were
true, if Marco, Rollins, and maybe Bjorn were all the same man, what did it mean?

I fought off the tsunami of black thoughts that were swamping my mind. I unscrewed the top of the soda bottle with a shaking
hand, wondering if I’d kissed Amanda for the last time.

I thought about the messiness of my life, the overdue story Aronstein was waiting for, the will I’d never drawn up, my life
insurance policy — had I paid the latest premium?

I was not only scared, I was furious, thinking,
Shit, this can’t be the last day of my life. I need time to put my damned affairs in order.

Could I make a break for my gun?

No, I didn’t think so.

Marco-Rollins-Bjorn was two feet from his Smith and Wesson. And he was maddeningly relaxed about everything. His legs were
crossed, ankle over knee, watching me like I was on TV.

I used that fearful moment to memorize the prick’s bland, symmetrical face. In case somehow I got out of here. In case I had
a chance to describe him to the cops.

“You can call me Henri,” he said now.

“Henri what?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not my real name.”

“So what now, Henri?”

He smiled, said, “How many times has someone said to you, ‘You should write a book about my life’?”

“Probably at least once a week,” I said. “Everyone thinks they have a blockbuster life story.”

“ Uh-huh. And how many of those people are contract killers?”

THE TELEPHONE RANG in my bedroom. It was probably Amanda. Henri shook his head, so I let my sweetheart’s voice send her love
to the answering machine.

“I’ve got a lot of things to tell you, Ben. Get comfortable. Tune in to the present only. We could be here for a while.”

“Mind if I get my tape recorder? It’s in my bedroom.”

“Not now. Not until we work out our deal.”

I said, “Okay. Talk to me,” but I was thinking,
Was he serious? A contract killer wanted a contract with me?

Henri’s gun was a half second away from Henri’s hand. All I could do was play along with him until I could make a move.

The worst of amateur autobiographies start with “I was born… ,” so I leaned back in my seat, prepared myself for a saga.

And Henri didn’t disappoint. He started his story from
before
he was born.

He gave me a little history: In 1937 there was a Frenchman, a Jewish man who owned a print shop in Paris. He was a specialist
in old documents and inks.

Henri said that very early on, this man understood the real danger of the Third Reich and that he and others got out before
the Nazis stormed Paris. This man, this printer, had fled to Beirut.

“So this young Jew married a Lebanese woman,” Henri told me. “Beirut is a large city, the Paris of the Middle East, and he
blended in fairly well. He opened another print shop, had four children, lived a good life.

“No one questioned him. But other refugees, friends of friends of friends, would find him. They needed papers, false identification,
and this man helped them so that they could start new lives. His work is excellent.”

“
Is
excellent?”

“He’s still living, but no longer in Beirut. He was working for the Mossad, and they’ve moved him for safekeeping. Ben, there’s
no way for you to find him. Stay in the present, stay with me, my friend.

“I’m telling you about this forger because he works for me. I keep food on his table. I keep his secrets. And he has given
me Marco and Charlie and Henri and many others. I can become someone else when I walk out of this room.”

Hours whipped by.

I turned on more lights and came back to my seat, so absorbed by Henri’s story that I’d forgotten to be afraid.

Henri told me about surviving a brutal imprisonment in Iraq and how he’d determined that he would no longer be constrained
by laws or by morality.

“And so, what is my life like now, Ben? I indulge myself in every pleasure, many you can’t imagine. And to do that, I need
lots of money. That’s where the Peepers come in. It’s where you come in, too.”

HENRI’S SEMIAUTOMATIC WAS KEEPING me in my seat, but I was so gripped by his story that I almost forgot about the gun. “Who
are the Peepers?” I asked him.

“Not now,” he said. “I’ll tell you next time. After you come back from New York.”

“What are you going to do, muscle me onto a plane? Good luck getting a gun on board.”

Henri pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket, slid it across the table. I picked it up, opened the flap, and took out the
packet of pictures.

My mouth went dry. They were high-quality snapshots of
Amanda,
recent ones. She was Rollerblading only a block from her apartment, wearing the white tank top and pink shorts she’d had
on when I met her for breakfast yesterday morning.