David Liss - The Ethical Assassin

“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.

THAT’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.