The Ethical Assassin: A Novel (13 page)

In fact, the moment the car crossed the George Washington Bridge, I knew that New York was the place that I must have always known about in the hidden recesses of my mind. Maybe I had already absorbed New York from television and movies. I must have seen the city depicted on the screen countless times, but it never signified much of anything but some kind of foreign and urban landscape. In reality, on the ground, with the noise and people and the gum-stained sidewalks littered with trash and teeming with the homeless, it seemed to me something else entirely. I had discovered the anti-Florida.

“Columbia’s all right,” Andy had assured me, “and if that’s the only place you can get in, fine. But it shouldn’t be your first choice. Harvard should be your first choice.” He folded his arms authoritatively, though the closest he’d ever been to Harvard was Logan Airport to change planes.

As it turned out, it didn’t much matter, since Yale, Harvard, and Princeton all said no. Columbia said yes, as had, improbably, Berkeley and my safety: the University of Florida. When I received the admission on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I ran to tell Andy, who was resting on his recliner in the family room, watching golf on television.

“Columbia,” he observed. “At least that’s something after getting the thumbs-down from Harvard and Yale.”

“I just can’t believe it,” I said. I paced around, too excited to hold still, even for an instant. “Man, living in New York. It’s going to be so cool.”

Andy’s face went long, a sure sign things were about to turn sour. He shook his head as he geared himself up to piss on my cornflakes. “You might want to think twice about this. University of Florida is a good school. If you go to New York, you’ll probably get mugged.”

“There’s millions of people. They can’t all get mugged.”

“Some people will, but you won’t? Is that it? What, you think you’re exempt?”

“I don’t think it’s worth worrying about.”

“Well, I got a pretty good education at U of F,” Andy said. “What’s good enough for me isn’t good enough for you?”

“I don’t want to go to Florida. I want to go to Columbia. You’re the one who told me I should go to an Ivy.”

Andy shrugged and looked over my shoulder to watch someone miss a three-foot putt. “And it was a fine idea. And you did try. I’m just saying that you may not want to go to Columbia. Harvard or Yale, sure. But they already said no. Maybe they saw something in your application and they realized you’re not Ivy material. Isn’t it kind of beneath your dignity to let Columbia have you as sloppy seconds?”

“That is so far beyond stupid that I don’t even know the word for it.”

“If you had a better vocabulary, maybe Harvard would have let you in. I think a state school education is much better. You don’t want to become an Ivy League snob, do you?”

There was no way I was going to let him talk me out of it. The thing about Columbia was that no one would know me there. Unlike the University of Florida, Columbia would not have anyone from my high school or my neighborhood. Most people, when I told them where I was applying, thought I meant South Carolina. When I got there, I would no longer be the loser who had once been fat—I would be whoever I said I was. It was not only an escape from Florida, it was a clean break, maybe the cleanest break I would ever get, could ever hope for. And I knew I wasn’t going to squander it.

The day of graduation, while I’d been drinking orange soda with relatives at my house before going out with friends, one of whose cousins was having a party, Andy took me aside.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been looking over the application material for Columbia. Maybe this isn’t the best time, but I don’t see how you can afford it. Even with the financial aid and the loans, you’re going to need another seven thousand dollars a year. That’s almost thirty thousand dollars. Where are you going to get that?”

I looked at the floor. “You said you’d help me out.”

“And I have, haven’t I?” I didn’t ask how, since it would invariably turn into a “food on the table, clothes on my back” kind of thing, and I wasn’t interested. “Come on now, Lem. I’m not your father. Your father is off smoking wacky weed and chasing topless natives. Uga buga,” he added, bulging his eyes. “Maybe he should pay for it. Have you even asked him?”

“I don’t know how to get in touch with him.”

“So, you want me to pay for you when you haven’t even asked your father?”

“You said you would help,” was the best I could manage. It was my graduation, and Andy dropped this bomb as if he’d been saving it for the maximum effect.

“Come on, now. University of Florida is fine.”

“I’m not going there,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. “I’m going to Columbia.”

Andy smiled and shook his head. “Then I guess you have a lot of money to make this summer, don’t you?”

The next day I called the admissions office at Columbia and arranged for a deferment. And then I began doing research. How was I going to save $30,000 in a year? It didn’t take me long to realize sales was my best bet. And encyclopedias looked like just the thing to make it happen.

Chapter 11

T
HAT’S REALLY ODD,”
Melford said. “Just not the sort of thing you expect.”

Death and darkness hid her features, but I could tell the third person was an older woman with a short, fiercely coiled perm. She wore tight jeans and an open blouse, which seemed to me the same color as the darkness. Her heavy tongue protruded from her gaping mouth, like a cartoon creature caught in midstrangle. From the marks on her neck, I guessed that strangling was the way it happened.

“Who is she?” I managed.

“Beats me. But I’m thinking that this is the woman we saw when we drove by before.”

“Well, what happened?” I hated how it came out like a whine, but I thought myself entitled. It was bad enough to have witnessed two murders that day, to have been close enough to smell the blood as it came out of Bastard’s and Karen’s respective heads. Now here was another. I wasn’t built for this sort of thing, and the truth was that I had to work very hard if I was going to keep from falling apart. I didn’t even know what falling apart would constitute, but I was pretty sure I’d know it when I saw it.

Melford shook his head. “I’m guessing the cop killed her.”

“What?”

“Who else? We saw him with her. Now she’s dead, just a few feet away from where it happened. Why would the cop leave her alone at the crime scene, where the murderer might get her? And since we know the murderer didn’t get her, we have to assume the cop did.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense.”

Melford was about to say something, but he stopped himself when we both heard the sound of wheels on dirt outside and the hum of a motor and then the cutting of a motor.

He shut off the penlight and moved over to the window. “Boogers,” he whispered. He then turned to me. “Okay, listen up. The bad news is that there’s two guys out there, and one of them is the cop. Out of uniform, but the cop. Now, don’t panic. They’re in a pickup, and they came with their headlights off, so I doubt this is official police business. We hide, and everything will be fine.”

My four beers churned violently, grappling back up to my throat with little acid hooks.

I let Melford pull me by the arm into the smaller bedroom and then to a closet against the far wall—the kind with the folding slatted doors. And it faced out to the kitchen, so we had a decent view of the action. But that wasn’t what I noticed about this bedroom. What I noticed was that there was nothing in here but boxes. Some had old shirts and torn jeans sticking out, some were file boxes, but most of them were sealed shut. One of them had
OLDHAM HEALTH
written along the side with a thick black marker. The walls were bare except for a two-year-old puppies and kittens calendar stuck on October.

This wasn’t a kid’s room. This wasn’t even a room that had once been a kid’s room and now was something else. No kids lived here. So why had Karen and Bastard lied to me?

The back door banged open, and I could see, obstructed by the slats, two figures enter, one of them swinging a small flashlight around. It was too dark to see much more than that.

For a moment I felt a fresh wave of panic. What if they had come to look for something—something that might just as well be in a closet as anywhere else? The thought made me have to piss fiercely, and I clenched my teeth as I tried to force back the urge to void my bladder.

At least there was Melford. Melford still had his gun. Melford wouldn’t let us get taken. That was the measure of how much my life had changed in the past twenty-four hours. I was now depending on someone to shoot my enemies for me.

“Fucking hell,” one of the guys said. “You’ve got a lot of dead people in here, Jim.”

“I know it.”

“Jesus, look at them. It was some cold mother that took them down.”

“Looks like.”

“And you’ve got no ideas?”

“I ain’t got the first fuck of an idea. I mean, it’s gotta be about the money. But who? Shit, don’t no one know nothing about it but us, those of us in on it. Bastard’s been talking, which is the only thing I can figure.”

“I guess. But, hell.”

“That’s about right.”

“Shit. Fucking Bastard. With Frank taking off last month, you’re fresh out of chemists. B.B. isn’t going to like that.”

“Yeah, I’m working on it. But I ain’t gonna put an ad in the paper.”

“Jim, what the fuck was Bastard doing over here anyhow?”

“I don’t know.” There was something hard in the voice.

“You figure he was boffing that skank? Shit, maybe a couple of years ago, but she was like a fucking corpse, man, all that crank she was doing. I’d sooner fuck some old grandma.”

A pause. Then, “Just shut the fuck up, and help me with this shit.”

“Uh-oh.” A laugh. “You weren’t dipping your wick with that, were you? I’ll tell you what. I got a couple of grandmas I could introduce you to.”

“You want to stand around talking shit all night, or you want to get this done?”

I had been watching through the slat, totally absorbed, as though I were not in a mobile home closet, but in a theater watching the most compelling movie I’d ever seen. I felt strangely calm, outside of myself. And then I didn’t feel calm at all. I didn’t feel like I was in a theater. I felt hot and cramped and about as terrified as I’d ever felt in my life.

It was because I realized I knew both men. The cop, Jim, was the guy I’d seen at the convenience store, the one who’d given me a hard time about the ginger ale, the same bucktoothed man from the Ford who’d been hassling me outside the trailer. With the possibility of being arrested for murder, I’d managed to anger the crooked chief of police.

The other guy—I couldn’t see him well enough to take a look, but I knew the voice. I was sure I knew the voice. From somewhere. I
knew
that other man.

I watched as they laid out a sheet of plastic on the floor and then picked up the body of the older woman and rolled her up. The cop grabbed one end, the familiar man the other, and they hauled her out of the house.

We listened to the near silence punctuated only by the occasional grunt or curse and then the thud of something heavy landing on a flatbed. They were back in a few minutes.

“Shit,” the cop said. “The other two are gonna be messy. Wish I brung some gloves or something.”

“Fuck me,” said the familiar-sounding man. “Someone sure plugged those assholes. Look at the shots. Neat and clean. Looks like they were executed.”

“Who died and made you a law enforcement official?” the cop asked. “You been watching too much TV.”

“You sure you didn’t hurt your leg?” the other one asked. “Looks like you’re having trouble walking.”

“I told you, I’m fine.” The voice terse, grim.

“I heard you suck in your breath a second ago, too, like you were in pain.”

“Forget it. Jesus.”

They laid out another sheet of plastic and then lifted Karen’s body. The cop complained about getting whore brain on his hands, and he wiped it off on his knee while they rolled up the body and hauled it out.

They were panting hard when they returned. “Fucking Bastard,” the cop said. He kicked the body, not too hard. Then he kicked him again. It sounded like someone kicking a sandbag. “I don’t know what the fuck he did, or who shot his sorry ass, but I figure he deserved it.”

“Yeah, well,” the other one responded. Then a pause. “You think whoever did this got the money?”

“You know, I never even thought of that, you dumb shit.” He let out a derisive snort. “You think I give a shit about them being dead? It’s the money. I’ve already looked through here and been over to his place. Tore it up, but I couldn’t find jack. Not even any sign of what he was up to.”

“You still think he had something going on the side?” he asked. He then turned away from me, and I couldn’t quite hear what he said next, but I was sure it contained the word
Oldham.

“Had to have been something,” the cop said. “I know how much he made, and he had way too much cash, getting his wallet all fat. I just can’t figure he made
that
much money doing that bullshit. But I figure he meant to rip me off, disappear with the money. And since I looked everywhere else, I have to figure he was hiding it in the waste lagoon.”

“You can’t be serious,” the other man said. “You’ve got to be dry-humping me. How in hell are we going to find it there?”

“I don’t know. There must be a way to drain it or drag it or something. Jesus. I sure wish we didn’t have to haul this dead asshole. He don’t even deserve to be dumped by me.”

“Let’s just do it,” the other man said. “No room for blanking out here.”

And it must have been the term
blanking out,
because I suddenly recognized the second man. It was the Gambler. The Gambler, who ran the door-to-door Champion Encyclopedia operation for the state of Florida. The encyclopedia guru himself was in the trailer, removing the bodies of people Melford had killed. At least, Melford had killed most of them.

Melford shoved me. I must have been making noise, because he flashed a look, visible even in the near total darkness. I got hold of my breathing.

They grabbed Bastard and hauled him out, and when they returned they were gasping for air. There was the
glug-glug
of someone drinking from a bottle. Now they had a bucket and mops and paper towels and a bottle of Formula 409. They still didn’t turn on the lights, but they set up a couple of flashlights and got to work erasing all evidence of Melford’s crime. It took more than half an hour before they were done.

“Hard to tell with just the flashlight,” the cop said, “but I think that’ll do her. I’ll come back in the morning and do a quick run-through in the light.”

“If that fucker was screwing us over and the money’s gone, we’re going to be in some deep shit. B.B.’ll be in a fucking rage.”

“Fuck that asshole. And fuck Bastard. Fuck me!” This last he cried out as if in sudden pain.

“You know, if your leg is bothering you, it’s best to see a doctor. Why put it off?”

“Shut the fuck up about the doctor. I’m fine.”

“I just think it’s best to be safe. Hey! Take a look at this,” the Gambler said. “Karen’s checkbook.”

Melford gave me a gentle tap on the back. I must have been making noise again.

“You figure she had anything in her account?” the cop asked.

“Says here the balance is almost three thousand. How did an ugly-ass skinny-skank rotten-cunt-smelling whore like that get three thousand dollars? I guess it won’t hurt to write out a check, though. Make up for some losses. Maybe I can get that numbnuts Pakken to do it. He won’t know any better, which will help him get away with it, and it shouldn’t be a problem anyhow if he goes across the county line, I figure.”

And they left.

We remained in the closet for a good fifteen minutes. They’d done a decent enough job of cleaning up. At least, Melford’s penlight didn’t pick up any sign of the blood. I figured the FBI could probably scare some up. They had crime labs for stuff like that. But you had to be looking for blood, and if there were no bodies, why would you look?

“All right,” Melford said. “Let’s get the hell on out of here.”

It wasn’t until we were back in his Datsun that we dared to talk about it.

“I’m fucked,” I said. And I felt fucked. I felt like I was about to fall into the chasm. I felt like I was falling through the sky, just waiting for the impact of when I hit earth.

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah? Why not?” I heard my voice getting shrill. “Why aren’t I fucked? Tell me why I’m not fucked?”

“Because the guys who have the evidence against you are high-powered felons, that’s why. High-powered felons don’t seek out the law, Lemuel. They avoid it. They’re not going to investigate. They won’t even look to see who the checks are made out to.”

Except that the Gambler would notice the check to Educational Advantage Media. He would see it in a heartbeat, and he would know who was there. But would the Gambler think it anything but a coincidence? He barely knew me by sight, but he wouldn’t imagine that I’d had anything to do with this. Still, it scared the hell out of me. And I dared not say anything about the Gambler to Melford. Melford might think I was too weak a link, affiliated as I was to one of these high-powered felons. He might, quite possibly might, kill me just to be safe.

And there was something else, something that made no sense. “They weren’t married,” I said aloud.

“What?”

“The people you killed. Bastard and Karen. They weren’t married. And they didn’t have kids.”

“Yeah, well, I could have told you that,” Melford said.

“So why did they lie to me?”

“I don’t know. Something crazy is going on. Something bigger than I realized.”

“Why would the cop be hiding the bodies you killed? And what were they talking about? Bastard’s business on the side? What is that? And the missing money?”

“Dunno,” Melford said.

“What about Oldham Health?” I asked. “They had some mugs and stuff. Bastard told me he didn’t know anything about it, but I kind of got the sense he was lying.”

Melford shook head. “I don’t know anything about it.”

I looked over at him. Melford was lying, too. I couldn’t say how exactly I knew, but I knew. We’d been talking about some heavy stuff all night, but there was something in Melford’s voice that I hadn’t heard, some kind of tension. Whatever Bastard had been involved with, Melford knew exactly what it was.

“The other guy who was with the cop,” Melford said. “I wonder who that was.”

I didn’t say anything. My heart pounded and my head throbbed. I felt the urge to confess, as if it were all somehow my fault, but I kept it quiet.

“Probably just some goon.” Melford saved me by answering his own question. “I’ll tell you what, though. We have to find out who that woman was, the third body.”

“Why do we care?” I asked.

“Because if things don’t go our way and they decide they want to risk bringing the law into all of this and the cop finds us and wants to arrest us, we’re going to want some leverage. If we can expose them, then maybe we can reach some sort of understanding.”