Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

A tear arced down her cheek. “Uh-huh.”

“I’ll get my things together.”

“Not permanently. It’s not permanent.”

“Just enough for us to catch our breath. Get some perspective back on each other.”

“And for you to kill some people.” She looked away when he tried to meet her eyes.

He packed in twenty minutes, amazed at how little he had amassed over the years that he held to be essential. His laptop, some clothes, a few toiletries. Dray followed him silently from room to room like a heartsick dog, but neither of them spoke. With a stack of shirts draped over his arm, he stood in the threshold of Ginny’s room. Moving out of the house where his murdered daughter grew up seemed to constitute some formal trespass, and he feared the unknown emotional consequences it might bring.

As he loaded up his car, Dray watched him from the porch in her bare feet, shivering. The after-scent of a neighbor’s barbecue lingered in the air, smoky and domestic. He finished and walked over and kissed her. Her mouth felt both moist and dry.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” He cleared his throat once, hard. “We have a little over twenty grand in our savings account. I’m gonna take out five probably, soon. But don’t worry, I’ll leave the rest until we figure out what to do.”

“Of course. Whatever.”

He got in his car and shut the door. The clock on the dash read 12:01. Dray knocked on the window. She was shivering hard now, her whole body shaking.

He rolled down the window.

“Damn it, Timothy.” She was crying now, openly. “Damn it.”

She leaned over, and they kissed again, a quick one on the mouth.

He rolled up the window and backed out into the street. It wasn’t until he turned the corner that he remembered it was Valentine’s Day.

TIM WAS WAITING in his car across the street with a brick of hundreds in his lap when the manager shuffled inside the four-story building on the corner of Second and Traction, holding a cluster of keys on a jail-style ring and a steaming double-cupped coffee bearing the ubiquitous Starbucks logo. As part of the rejuvenation push for downtown, the civic promoters had given a face-lift to economy housing. This area of Little Tokyo housed artists, recovering druggies, and other people at the fringe of economic sanity. In a building like this, Tim could pay cash up front without raising any eyebrows. Plus, since it was a subsidized property, all utilities would be included with the rent; that would leave him fewer paper trails with which to contend.

The plates on his car-good through September-he’d pulled from a smashed-to-hell Infiniti at Doug Kay’s salvage yard. During his years in the service, Tim had been particularly good about routing seized and totaled vehicles to Kay, precisely so he could cash in on a favor like this if the shit hit. His tires had been replaced by the previous owner-they were a widely used Firestone brand, nothing factory-specific and traceable.

A new Nokia cell phone bulged in his shirt pocket. He’d rented it just up the street, in a shop where little English was spoken. He’d plopped down a healthy security deposit and paid out two hundred in cash for a month of unlimited domestic minutes, and because of this, the wizened, diminutive store owner had been less meticulous about eyeing the false name with which Tim had signed the contract. International calling was restricted. Tim selected the option to block Caller ID on outgoing calls.

The J-town crowd was mixed, Caucasian and East Asian, with a few blacks thrown in for good measure. Tim could dissolve right into the melting pot here and benefit from the kind of who-gives-a-shit anonymity to be found only on downscale city blocks.

Tim crossed the street in a jog, lugging his first load of clothing, and slipped through the building’s front door. The manager-gay, going by his right-ear pierce and JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS T-shirt-an ex-aspiring actor from his upright carriage and stagy comportment, fussed with the locks to the manager’s office while juggling his coffee and pinching a stack of mail between his elbow and love handle. He finally found the correct key, shoved open the door with a knee, dumped the mail on the desk, and collapsed into a stuffing-exposed office chair as if he’d just braved Everest’s north face without oxygen.

He mustered a smile when Tim entered, turning down the volume on a small-screen TV that took up half his desk. A KCOM Menendez brothers retrospective flickered on silently. “Can’t resist true-crime stories,” he stage-whispered.

“Neither can I.”

The drab room, in all likelihood a converted janitor’s office, had been livened up with a few framed headshots on the walls. Beside a toothy Linda Evans, John Ritter gazed out with woeful earnestness. Next to them hung a few more posed eight-by-tens of actors Tim did not recognize, but who he guessed were former stars by their exuberant use of exclamation points and trite exhortations about following dreams and staying real. The photos were all signed with Sharpie pens, the inscriptions made out to Joshua.

Joshua followed Tim’s eyes to the photos and shrugged, feigning diss-missiveness. “A few colleagues of mine. From my days on the stage.” He flared his arms, theatrically but with an element of self-deprecation that Tim appreciated. “I bowled them over at the Ahmanson with my Sancho Panza.” He seemed disappointed by Tim’s blank look. “It’s a supporting role in a musical. Never mind. What can I help you with?”

Tim adjusted his armload of shirts and the bag slung over his shoulder. His coiled laptop cable was sticking out of his back pocket. “I saw from your sign outside you have apartment availability.”

“Apartment availability. Yes, well. So formal.” When Joshua smiled, Tim realized he was wearing lip gloss. “I can rent you a single on the fourth floor for four twenty-five a month. To be honest, it could use some freshening up, maybe a throw rug or two-let’s make it four even.” He shook a jeweled finger in Tim’s direction jokingly. “But I’m not going any lower.”

“That’ll be fine.” Tim set down his things and counted twelve hundreds on the desk between them. “I assume this will cover the first and last months and the security deposit. Fair?”

“Fairer than springtime. I’ll get the paperwork together-we can deal with it later.” Joshua slid out from behind the desk as Tim gathered up his possessions. “I’ll show you the apartment.”

“The key’s fine. I can’t imagine the place has got too many bells and whistles that need explaining.”

“No, no, it doesn’t.” Joshua cocked his head. “What happened to your eye?”

“I walked into a door.”

Joshua returned Tim’s gentle smile, then grabbed a key from a pegboard hook behind him and offered it across his desk. “You’re in 407.”

Tim shifted his shirts so he could take the key. “Thank you.”

Joshua leaned back in his chair, knocking the John Ritter frame askew. He adjusted it quickly, then stopped, embarrassed. A can of shaving cream fell from Tim’s unzipped bag and rolled across the floor. Weighed down with his things, Tim made no move to pick it up.

Joshua smiled sadly at him. “It wasn’t supposed to work out like this, was it?”

“No,” Tim said. “I suppose not.”

•The key fit a Schlage single-cylinder knob lock. There was no dead bolt, but Tim didn’t mind, since the door was solid-core with a steel frame.

The square of the room had a single large window that overlooked a fire-escape platform, bright red and yellow Japanese signs, and a busy street. Aside from a few worn patches, the carpet was in surprisingly good shape, and the alcove kitchen came equipped with a narrow refrigerator and chipped green tile. All in all, the place was bare and a touch depressing, but clean. Tim hung his four shirts in the closet and dropped his bag on the floor. He removed his Sig from the back of his pants and placed it on the kitchen counter, then pulled a small tool kit from his bag.