The Ethical Assassin: A Novel (24 page)

Chapter 24

O
N THE BALCONY,
standing in Bobby’s massive shadow, I watched a wounded palmetto bug the size of an egg limp toward the Gambler’s door and force its way in through the crack. I’m sure there was something very clever I might have said to Bobby to defuse the situation, to make it disappear in a puff of smoke, but I didn’t know those words.

“Bobby,” I said. My voice felt heavy and stupid. “What’s new?”

“What were you doing in there?” he asked me, pointing to the Gambler’s room.

The words just tumbled out of my mouth. “The Gambler asked me to get something for him.” Why not? Bobby was already puzzled about my earlier meeting.

He continued to stare. “Shouldn’t you be out selling?”

I shrugged. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? But you know. The Gambler and all. Anyhow, what are
you
doing back here?”

“I just needed to get some Tums,” he said absently. “My stomach’s bothering me.”

“Hope you feel better. I’ll see you at the pickup later, okay?” And I dashed off, leaving him in what I hoped would be a state of such perplexity that he wouldn’t say anything to the Gambler before the end of the weekend.

Back in my own room, still shaken from my run-in, I stared at the information I’d copied down and tried to figure out what I was going to do with it. Then, all at once, I knew.

I took out the yellow pages and flipped through it in search of “Private Investigators.” Nothing, but I was redirected to “Investigators.” There were perhaps two dozen listings, but only three ads. I wanted someone who had taken out an ad, because I couldn’t risk some small-timer running a scam—not the way I was planning on handling this. After examining the ads, I went with Chris Denton Investigations. The quarter-page ad featured the silhouette of a man crouching and taking a picture with a telephoto lens. The text assured me that Chris Denton excelled in surveillance, criminal investigations, check-mates (which I assumed had nothing to do with chess), preemployment screening, process serving, employee fraud, missing persons, child custody evidence, contested wills, and loss prevention, whatever that was. More to the point, he could do background checks and record retrieval, which I guessed might be exactly what I wanted.

It was a local number, so I didn’t need my phone card, yet it didn’t seem like a good idea to me to talk in the room, thereby leaving evidence of the call on my bill. So I wrote the information on the same sheet of paper on which I’d copied everything from William Gunn’s business card and headed outside. I’d seen a phone booth behind the motel, where the parking lot met the highway, so I strolled over to the phone booth.

A shrill voice answered on the first ring. “Denton.”

Here I was mouthing off to Officer Toms about gender equality, and it had never occurred to me that Chris Denton might be a woman. “Oh,” I said stupidly. “I thought you would be a man.”

“I am a man, you asshole,” the voice shot back. “I’m a man who sounds like a woman, okay? Everyone thinks I’m a woman on the phone. Can we move the fuck on?”

“Yeah, sure. Sorry.”

“Don’t sorry me, douche. Just state your business.”

“Okay, can you do a background check on someone for me?”

“How’d you get my number?” he asked.

“From the ad in the phone book.”

“Did the ad say I could do background checks, Sherlock?”

“It might have alluded to something like that.”

“Then you’ve got your fucking answer, don’t you? Look, I’m just finishing up some paperwork. Be at my office in an hour.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m sort of in a tight spot, and I need to do this over the phone.”

“You gonna shove my fee through the phone, too?”

“I’ll give you a credit card number. You can run it first, if you like, just to make sure everything is legit.”

“Can I now?” he snorted. “Thanks so fucking much for the permission. Okay, give me what you have.”

I read him the info off my piece of paper. “I’m looking for anything in the public domain about this guy. Does he have a criminal record? Are there any press articles about him? That sort of thing.”

“Fine,” Denton said.

“I need it pretty fast.”

“Said the priest to the whore. How fast?”

“Today fast,” I said.

A brief pause. “I need four or five hours, but a rush job will cost you. Two hundred.”

It was more than I wanted to spend, and certainly more than I wanted to put on my credit card. I knew I was going to get it from Andy. Even if I told him in advance, gave him the money in advance (which I wouldn’t do, since the last time I did that, he claimed I hadn’t given him anything when the bill came), he’d still give me a hard time, tell me I was wasting his credit (as though credit were like the elastic on a pair of briefs that could get stretched out). But the money had to be spent, so I read him the credit card information and hung up.

When I turned around, Melford’s car was parked directly in front of the booth. I hadn’t seen him pull up. “Howdy, stranger,” he said through the rolled-down window.

The truth? I was happy to see him. Clearly he’d had no problems with Doe and made a clean escape. But that didn’t mean I was ready for more adventures. “No thanks,” I told him.

“We’ve been through this,” Melford said with mock gravity. “Let’s cut to the place where you get in the car.”

“Forget it,” I told him. “I’ve seen people killed, I’ve broken into buildings, I’ve been harassed and hurt by cops and nearly arrested. And you know what the worst thing is? You hung me out to dry, Melford. You were going to let me go down for your crimes. So, if you think I’m getting back in that car with you, you’re crazy.”

“I hung you out to dry?” he asked. “Lemuel, I was right there, every step of the way. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.”

“Yeah, what were you going to do about it?”

“Who do you think called the sheriff’s department in the first place?” he asked. “You think that nice lady cop just happened to show up? I knew getting someone from the county cops would defuse the situation, so I got them there. I’d have put a bullet through Jim Doe’s head if I had to, but I was hoping to avoid it. I thought you’d want me to avoid it.”

“Wow, that’s kind. No one’s ever refrained from killing a cop for me before.”

“Look, you were in a tight spot, I don’t deny it. But we’re already in a tight spot. You didn’t choose to get into this, and I’m sorry that you’re in it, but you are. You are just going to have to accept that. And when things got hairy, I got you out, didn’t I? You were in trouble, and I fixed the situation. Right?” He grinned at me. “I did, didn’t I?”

He did, but I didn’t quite want to admit it yet, even though I was pleased, maybe even delighted, that I no longer had to believe Melford had betrayed me. The truth was, the Gambler and Jim Doe were looking at me now, and they’d be looking at me regardless of whether or not I was spending time with Melford. Going it alone just didn’t make sense—not when having Melford around would actually keep me safer.

More out of frustration with myself than Melford, I kicked at the dirt and then walked around to the passenger side. “I’m not happy about this.”

“What can you do? You can either watch the world come tumbling down on your ass or you can get the hell out of the way of the rubble.”

“Keep the aphorisms coming. They’re cheering me up.”

Melford studied me, looked me up and down. “You’re very cynical. On the other hand, you’re also perfectly presentable. All washed up, blood off your face. I’m glad to see you’re ready to go.”

“Go where?”

“To play detective.”

Chapter 25

H
IGH NOON
was on the TV, but B.B. didn’t much feel like watching it. He could remember once liking that movie, thinking that Gary Cooper was cool and efficient, bucking up to do what he had to do, but now it seemed dull. Cooper was old compared with his earlier movies, as tired and irrelevant as his character. And as westerns went, it didn’t stack up against the really good ones. Now,
Shane.
That was a movie.

Feeling good about himself, his future, his phone call, B.B. strolled over to the closet to examine himself in the full-length mirror—not out of vanity, but to make sure his linen suit wasn’t too wrinkled. Always the problem with linen. “Wear it once and throw it in the trash,” Desiree liked to say. He’d been keeping on his sunglasses, even inside, since calling Doe, but now he removed them. The suit looked good, and the black T-shirt, too—crisp and right around his neck. He hated a T-shirt with a sagging neck. The hair was okay. A bit long in the back and thinning in the forehead, but that was that. The leather brown color was more real than nature herself.

He did a half turn to make sure his ass didn’t look big. When he moved he caught a glimpse of the phone on the nightstand. The one on which he’d placed his defining call to Doe. The one on which Desiree hadn’t called him. Where in the hell was she? What was she doing?

Now that his revenge against the Gambler was in play, he needed her to keep an eye on things, make sure all went as he intended. He supposed that maybe if the kid kept moving, she might not have had a chance to check in yet, but he didn’t quite buy it. Nor did he believe that something had happened to her. Not Desiree. No, she was punishing him. She was still angry with him over that business with the boy.

All he’d wanted was to help him, give him a ride, a good meal at the house, and then get him to wherever he wanted to be. How could it be that even Desiree doubted his motives, that even she saw something sinister where there was only kindness? And what would she say about his wanting to taste wines with Chuck Finn? He shook his head. No, his plan was perfect. Get rid of her by promoting her. It would be a hard transition, but he’d live with having to pick up his own dry cleaning. Hell, maybe he could give Chuck a little part-time work as a valet.

Everything was on the verge of falling apart, and everything was on the verge of being fixed. How ironic and how pleasant that it all hinged on doing to the Gambler what he ought to have done two or three years ago.

Just like that, there he was, only for a second, back in his Las Vegas apartment, falling back hard, knocking his head against the wooden frame of his futon, blood from a cut on his forehead dripping in his eyes, blood from his nose dripping into his mouth. Above him, broom handle brandished like a Homeric warrior, the Gambler squinted in joyless intensity.

For too long he’d held off on dealing with the Gambler, who now was making money, enjoying power, and oblivious to the fact that he lived by B.B.’s grace. No more of that. Doe would solve the problem, and if he dug his own grave in doing so, then B.B. could live with that.

Something—something bad—had evaporated, fled his body. It had been weeks, maybe months, since he’d felt this energetic. B.B. replaced the sunglasses, stepped outside the room, and gave his eyes a minute to adjust to the blazing sun. It was another scorcher today, close to triple digits and humid enough for fish to swim through the air. Reflected light shot off the cars in the parking lot. With one hand to his forehead, he gazed across the courtyard and at the mostly empty pool. This wasn’t much of a vacation motel—the guests were people who stopped for the night out of desperate fatigue. Still, the owners, a bunch of Indians, like more and more hotel owners these days, optimistically kept the pool up, waiting for that better class of clientele that would surely arrive when Ganesha so ordained.

Right now, the only adult by the pool was an enormous woman in a lavender one-piece, a year or two on either side of forty, lying with shades over her eyes, chewing gum, smiling into the heat. B.B. gave a slight sympathetic shake of his head. The poor pathetic thing, a baking seal with a bleached blond bob, legs like condoms overfilled with curdled milk. Across the pool from her, playing loudly, were two boys he’d seen before. The two aimless, neglected boys who, if left to follow their sad course, would lead empty, disappointed lives. These were boys, he knew, in need of mentoring.

Part of him felt he ought not to be looking for new mentees. He had Chuck Finn waiting for him at home, after all. But he was here, and the boys were in need of a guiding adult presence. It would be wrong, selfish, to fail to do what he could.

B.B. crossed the parking lot and shuffled over to the woman on the chaise longue and blocked her sun. She lowered her sunglasses and squinted up. He smiled his most ingratiating smile. “Excuse the interruption,” he said, “but are those your boys?” Of course they weren’t, but B.B. knew the drill. Show her some respect, and she’d defer to his charitable impulses.

“They bothering you, too?” She wrinkled her nose as though she had to sneeze.

He shrugged. “I’m just wondering.”

“They ain’t mine,” she told him. “I wouldn’t let my boys act that way if I had any. I think they’re with their father, and I saw him leave early this morning in his truck. Left them alone, I guess. He was kind of cute,” she added thoughtfully.

This was all good news. No parent around to impose misguided values on the children. No hypocritical guardian of right and wrong to impose the pinched morals that denied boys what they needed.

“I’ll go talk to them,” B.B. told her brightly, as though volunteering to do the dirty work. “Ask them to quiet down.”

“Kind of you.”

An awkward pause. “I like your sunglasses,” he told her, not able to think of anything else to say.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you get back to your sunning.”

“You bet.”

Though B.B. couldn’t see her eyes, he felt sure they were closed now, and the gum chewing resumed with its lulling bovine rhythm. He stayed a moment longer than necessary, staring in train-wreck style at the folds of fat emerging from under her white suit. Her breasts were surprisingly small considering her magnitude. It must be hard on a woman, he thought, to be so massive and not even have the bust to show for it. Still, there were some men who found obese women attractive. It was a funny world.

B.B. strolled over to the boys, who were playing at the other end of the pool. They splashed around the deep end but seemed capable-enough swimmers. They darted back and forth, up and down, while talking about a comic book character called Daredevil. From what B.B. could tell, this Daredevil was blind and so sounded like a low-rent sort of superhero.

“How you young men doing today?” B.B. asked. He sat on a chaise across from them and smiled a new smile, the one that he knew neglected, aimless boys—boys in need of a role model—found reassuring.

“Fine,” one said, and the other echoed in mumble. The older one, who was probably about twelve, was blond and tan and fit, with firm pecs, a flat stomach, and tight little arm muscles. His nose was a bit too long and too narrow for him to be truly handsome, and he had a bit of a receding chin, but he didn’t look weak for it. No, with his trim, lithe physique, he wasn’t the kind of young man who took crap from bullies. The other boy, much darker and covered with unsightly freckles, was probably closer to nine. He was thinner, less graceful.

B.B. cracked his knuckles and leaned forward. “You like this blind superhero, huh?”

“Yeah,” said the blond kid. “Daredevil.”

“It’s a shame,” B.B. observed. “The way they force that stuff on you. You can’t turn on kids’ programs anymore without seeing someone in a wheelchair or on crutches or missing an arm or doing sign language like a monkey. And now they’re giving you blind superheroes? They want you to look up to some blind gimp beating up on bad guys with his cane?”

The blond kid didn’t say anything. The younger one said, “I’m sorry.” He said it very quietly, and he held his head so far down that the water bubbled around his lips.

“And the Hulk,” B.B. said. “Half the time he’s a loser egghead, and the other half he’s a big green moron. What the heck is that?”

“I don’t know,” the little kid bubbled.

“Now Superman,” B.B. said. “There’s a superhero for you. He’s smart and strong, and he’s that way all the time. He
pretends
to be a dweeb, but that’s only to put people off guard. And Batman. You know why I like Batman? Because he’s really a regular guy. He doesn’t have any superpowers. He’s just a man who wants to do the right thing and uses the resources he has to help him do it. And he’s got Robin to help him. He’s Robin’s mentor. I like the way they work together, the way they learn from each other. That’s how it is between a mentor and the boys he helps.”

“They’re DC,” the blond kid said.

Something twisted in his gut. Something ugly and mean and judgmental was now stomping toward him like an ogre. “What does that mean?” He felt his face grow hot. Were these kids calling him a queer?

“We don’t read DC comics,” the boy said. “We read Marvel. DC is, you know, stupid.”

Okay, they weren’t calling him a queer. Just stupid. Well, that was fine. Kids often had this notion that adults were somehow dorky or clueless. He could live with that for now. Let them spend some time with him and they’d know better.

“Yeah?” B.B. asked. “So, who else do you like?”

“I like Wolverine,” the boy said defiantly. “I read mostly
X-Men.
”

“That’s great,” said B.B., who lamented a world in which kids read a comic book called
The Ex-Men.
What was going on, exactly? Blind guys and transsexuals? “Listen, I was thinking about heading out to get some ice cream. You boys like ice cream?”

“Ice cream,” said the beautiful blond kid with an unmistakable note of caution in his voice. A sort of “Who wants to know?” kind of tone.

The thing you had to remember, though, was that these were
kids,
and they had thoughtless, neglectful parents, the sorts of parents who instilled fear in their kids because they couldn’t be bothered to teach them how to distinguish between dangerous strangers and kind people who wanted only to help. They knew adults often told them not to do things, but they also knew that adults often had their heads up their asses. The trick was to get them to see that the “Don’t go off with strangers” rule didn’t apply here,
couldn’t
apply here, not when this stranger had their best interests at heart. Once you broke down those barriers, you were home free. “There’s an IHOP down the road. I thought you boys might want to get an ice cream with me.”

“Really?” the little kid asked. “What flavor?”

“We’re not supposed to,” the older boy said, looking at his brother rather than B.B. “Our dad said we had to stay here. And he says we shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

There it was, regular as clockwork. “I’m sure your dad means that you shouldn’t talk to bad men. I can’t imagine why he would have any problem with you talking to a nice man who wants to buy you ice cream. Anyhow, my name is William. Everyone calls me B.B., and I work with young men like you every day. I’m a mentor.”

They didn’t say anything.

“We’re even staying at the same motel,” he continued. “I’m over in room one twenty-one. What are your names?”

“I’m Pete and he’s Carl,” said the little one.

“Pete and Carl. Well, it looks like we’re not strangers anymore, don’t you think?”

“I want strawberry ice cream,” the little one said. He nearly sang it. Too loud for B.B.’s taste. The last thing you wanted was a bunch of meddlers getting involved in what they didn’t understand. “I don’t like chocolate.”

“Forget it.” His brother shook his head. “I can ask my dad when he gets back tonight.”

“Tonight?” B.B. asked, letting the judgment and incredulity seep into his voice. Caution was one thing, but they were standing in their own way. When was the next time they were going to meet someone who was willing to help them, to make them feel important and special, in control of their own destinies, if not their lives, at this moment? “You want to wait until tonight? I’m going for ice cream now. It’s hot, and I want ice cream, but I can wait a few minutes if you want to run upstairs and get changed. How fast you think you can be ready?”

“Five minutes!” the younger one said.

“Wow, that’s fast.” B.B. grinned. “You think the Ex-Men could get ready that fast?”

“Even faster!” the little kid shouted.

It was hard to keep a little triumph from creeping into his smile. Jesus, he was on a roll.

“I don’t think we should go,” the older one said.

B.B. shook his head sadly. “Well, if your brother wants to go by himself, that’s okay, too. You sure you want to stay alone?”

Doubt stretched its shadow across his face. His feet twirled anxiously in the water. He bit his lip. “We’re not either of us going?” It was a question, not a statement.

“Just because you don’t want ice cream doesn’t mean your brother shouldn’t enjoy it. I think it’s wrong to deny things to other people because you don’t want them yourself. That’s what they call being selfish, Carl.”

“Yeah,” his brother agreed.

“I don’t know,” he said again, which was not exactly a yes, but certainly a retreat from “We’re neither of us going.” B.B. was gaining momentum; he could feel it. The thing here, he knew, was to go with the flow, to keep it outside of his head. If he thought too much about it, if he concentrated too hard, he would say the wrong thing and blow it. Stay in the zone.

“What’s going on here?” the sunbathing woman asked. She now stood directly behind B.B., hands on her massive hips, sunglasses propped on her head. Her exposed brown skin glistened with suntan oil. Glimpsing her over his own sunglasses, he was struck by the prettiness of her eyes. Not that B.B. went for fat bossy cows, but still, there was no denying it—they were stunningly green, healthy-lawn green, emerald green, tropical fish green.