David Liss - The Ethical Assassin

The unnaturally bright fluorescent lighting in the store made me feel as if I were onstage or caught in a police searchlight, which was a particularly unhappy metaphor. Getting out of there, escaping the lights, the bad pop, the freakish customer and clerk, took on a kind of urgency. I would gladly have stolen the ginger ale if I’d thought I might get away with it. The Kwick Stop, never the sort of place where I felt comfortable, now seemed too small, and it was getting smaller. I didn’t want to leave the ginger ale, and I didn’t want to say anything to the counter girl. It also seemed a foregone conclusion that the man with the Confederate hat wouldn’t much like a kid with a northern accent and a tie telling him he had to hurry it up. But I was thirsty and my stomach lurched violently, so I twisted open the cap and took a drink. It did make me feel a little better. Less like puking, anyway.

“You can’t drink that before you pay for it,” the Confederate man told me. He grinned broadly, exposing a mouth full of wild and white teeth. “It’s called stealing, and we got laws about that here.”

Only now did I recognize him. The guy from the Ford pickup outside of Bastard and Karen’s trailer. The split-level haircut was tucked under his hat, but it was the same guy. An icy terror burst in my chest and radiated out to my limbs. But what the hell was I going to do? Run? The guy had seen me go into a trailer where two people were murdered.

The nausea, I realized, most likely stemmed from my desire to suppress the one obvious fact in all of this- once those bodies were found, the cops were going to come looking for me. No matter what the assassin had told me, no matter what sweet lies he tried to conjure, I knew full well that I would be their prime suspect. It wasn’t a matter of maybes or ifs. They would want me. APB on Lem Altick. Take no chances with Lem Altick, boys, he’s probably armed and dangerous. The only question was if my being totally innocent would save me.

I walked up to the counter and put down a dollar. The soda was seventy-nine cents.

“Wait your turn,” the girl told me. “Can’t you see that there’s people ahead of you?”

“There aren’t people,” I said. My voice sounded edgy and nervous, and I wished I would shut up. “There’s person, and he’s not buying anything.”

“You being rude to this little girl?” the Confederate asked.

“Rude as in pushy?” I asked. “Or rude as in trying to stick my hand down her shirt?”

“Boy, you don’t know who you’re messing with,” the Confederate said.

But I did. I knew I was messing with a guy who wouldn’t give a second thought about sucker-punching me and kicking my head when I was down. Still, I was apt to run my mouth. The thing I’d learned over the years was that the only power I had against someone like this was in mouthing off. It didn’t keep me from getting my ass kicked. It might even promote an ass kicking, but at least I got to perpetuate the stereotype of weak kids being verbally dexterous.

But this wasn’t high school, and I’d already learned tonight that the stakes were higher than a few bruises and a dose of humiliation. It was time, I decided, to show some deference.

“I didn’t mean to be pushy,” I said quietly. “I just want to pay.”

“It ain’t time for you to pay. You think you go walking around here in your tie and your fancy briefcase and you don’t have to wait on line? You think you’re somehow better than us?”

The math, science, and language arts curricula had been pretty weak, but the one thing I’d learned back in middle school was that accusations of thinking I was better than someone else were a prelude to violence. Some asshole revving his engine, in the process of convincing himself or witnesses or God that the ass kicking he was about to unleash was utterly righteous.

I needed to cool things down, but it was hard to figure out my next move when my brain was spinning with terror. There was a tiny hamster wheel of fear clacking around, and I just couldn’t get my thoughts to settle. So I said what was probably the worst thing I could have. I said, “ ‘We.’ ”

The Confederate angled his head and stared. “What?”

It was an out-of-body experience. I saw myself speaking, and I had no power to stop.

“You meant, ‘You think you’re better than we. ’ We is a subject. ‘We are here.’ Who is here? We are. Us, on the other hand, is an object, the recipient of action. ‘ Bob gave the ball to us. ’ Who gave the ball? Bob, the subject, did. To whom did he give it? Us, the object.”

A stupid smile flattened out across my face.

The Confederate stared as though I were a formaldehyde freak behind Coney Island glass. The girl behind the counter took a step back. Her eyes went wide and she half raised her hands as though to protect her face from the coming blast.

The blast never came. Outside the store, Bobby’s Chrysler Cordoba pulled gloriously, miraculously, into the parking lot. The most fortunate timing in the history of the world- far better luck than my nearly eighteen years had led me to expect or even hope for. “That’s my ride,” I said, as though we’d been hanging out, talking sports.

The Confederate didn’t say anything. I looked to the counter girl, but she would not meet my eyes. Nothing to do but forget the soda, so I put it down on a pile of Coors cases and began to head for the door.

“You leave now, and you’re stealing.” It was the counter girl. Her voice had grown small, and her hands, which now hung limp by her side, trembled just a little.

I stopped. “Then let me pay,” I said.

“You gotta wait your turn.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

Now the redneck bent toward me. He wasn’t unusually tall, just under six feet, and he had maybe an inch or so on me, but he bent forward like a giant stooping to offer advice to a midget. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “Correcting me?”

I turned away, hoping to God that Bobby could see me, would come to my rescue if he spotted trouble. Feeling the burn of the redneck’s eyes, I picked up the soda and took the dollar out from my pocket. I put it back on the counter. I didn’t care that they were assholes, and I didn’t care about the change. I cared only about getting out of there.

I turned away and pushed open the door, which chimed merrily along with the sound of my laughter, unhinged with giddy disbelief.

I had survived a double murder, I had survived an interview with the killer, I had survived a sure beating by a redneck whom I had insulted. I ought to have felt some measure of relief, but a churning dread burned away at my stomach. I had survived only that moment, and plenty more moments were coming.

NO ONE ELSE was in the car yet, which was some small comfort since it was a two-door and I hated being crowded into the backseat. In the months since I’d signed up, I’d become Bobby’s biggest earner, and that meant I received certain trivial privileges, like good pickup times and the moochiest neighborhoods.

“You don’t look so hot,” Bobby said. “You blank?”

I shook my head and then peered into the store to make sure we weren’t in any trouble. The Confederate had gone back to flirting with the counter girl, and appearances suggested I’d been more or less forgotten.

“No, I scored.” I opened my bag and handed Bobby the paperwork. “I almost got a double, but it didn’t pan out.”

Bobby smiled. “Hell, my man. You scored two days in a row. You’re on fire.” Pronounced, for sales motivation effect, “fie-yah.” “Just stay pos, keep thinking pos thoughts. It’s the pos attitude that will get you the double or triple tomorrow.”