David Liss - The Ethical Assassin

She’d been with him more than a year, made herself as much a part of his life as his limbs, when over dinner she decided it was time. It was B.B.’s birthday, and he’d taken a little too much of a few bottles of red he’d been saving. Maybe she’d had a little too much, too.

“About you and your boys,” she’d said.

“Yeah?” He chewed at a piece of perfectly rare choice triple-trimmed filet mignon that she’d grilled for him. On his plate, along with a pile of asparagus, were two pools of dipping sauce- a delicate au poivre and a garlic cream.

“I just wanted to let you know that I understand, okay? I know why you do what you do, B.B., and I think it’s very brave. If you need anything, any help, you can be honest with me.”

He set down his fork and stared at her. His face reddened and veins bulged in his neck, and for a moment she thought he was going to burst, explode, throw his plate at her, order her out. Instead he let out a thick, throaty laugh. “Not you, too,” he said. “Oh, Desiree. I know that people love to imagine the worst, but I thought for sure you would understand.”

“I do understand,” she said.

“I just want to help them. I had a rough time when I was a boy, and now that I can, I want to help other boys. That’s it. I’m not a pervert. If you don’t understand that I might want to help someone without wanting to fuck them, then no one will.”

He wasn’t angry, not even sad. Mostly he seemed weary.

“Okay, B.B.,” she said. She knew better, but she nodded. He could hide his impulses from the world as long as he hid them from himself, too.

So at least she didn’t have to worry that her friend and boss and companion might go around fucking boys. He might do a lot of bad things, be a lot of bad things, but he had this in check. Even so, Aphrodite would not be appeased. Yet dead twins can rant only so much before even they give up, and her objections quieted down after the first few months. Yes, it was probably wrong to work for a man who made his money, his loads and loads of money, the way B.B. did, but someone was going to, and if she stopped working for B.B., there would be just as much trouble in the world, but no food and shelter for poor Desiree. She could hardly get a job with no high school diploma and her only prior experience being personal assistant to a criminal.

Besides, B.B. wanted her around, valued her, deferred to her opinions. She owed him her life, so she could turn a blind eye to the pleasure he took from setting his hand on a boy’s shoulder, from the way his eyes lit up when he saw one of his charity cases in a bathing suit. She could live with being his beard, his disguise to the world.

Then things took a sharp turn. Last month, they’d been driving back from a dinner meeting with a guy who ran an encyclopedia operation in Georgia. B.B. was thinking- more like half thinking- of expanding, and maybe that would have bothered Desiree if he’d been serious, but he would never expand. He made all the money he needed now, and he hated hassles; why risk new territory and cross state lines?

The meeting went badly, and both he and Desiree didn’t like the Georgia guy, didn’t feel they could trust him. Desiree felt relieved, and she suspected B.B. did as well. It was almost as though he were looking for a way to celebrate, and when they saw a kid walking along the beach, something shifted visibly in B.B.’s face.

The boy looked maybe eleven, cute, clean-cut but staggering. As if he were drunk- maybe for the first time. He had a stupid, happy grin on his face, and he sang something boisterous to himself, occasionally breaking into air guitar as he walked.

“Why don’t you stop the car,” B.B. said. “Let’s give that boy a lift.”

Desiree didn’t want to stop, but the light turned red and there was no choice. “Where do you want to give him a lift to?”

B.B. grinned at her, like whatever had broken in him must have broken in her. “Our house.”

Desiree kept her eyes straight ahead. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I’m not going to let it happen.”

B.B. bit on his lip. “What exactly are you not going to let happen?”

“B.B., let’s just forget it. Go home.”

“If I say we give the kid a lift, then that’s what we do.” His voice had turned loud. “You don’t tell me no, and he doesn’t tell me no. No one tells me no. Stop the car and sweet-talk that kid into the car, or you’ll be on the street tomorrow and whoring for crank in a week.”

“All right,” she said softly. She chose her words deliberately, because his cruelty demanded treatment in kind, and she wanted him to think, if only for a second, that he had won. “Okay, fine.” The light turned green, and she sped past the boy.

The next morning, her packed suitcase and gym bag were met with flowers and chocolates and an envelope with cash. He didn’t apologize, didn’t say he was sorry he’d tried to turn her into a pimp, but she knew he was sorry. For all it mattered. She knew she would stay, but as she unpacked, Aphrodite made it clear that this was a reprieve, not a stay. Desiree didn’t resist or disagree or shrug it off, because it wasn’t a suggestion. It was fact.

They both saw it. The urge inside B.B. was coming out, and sooner or later bad things were going to be happening under her roof. Maybe she could keep him in check, but for how long? Forever? It seemed unlikely. What frightened her, however, was not the thought that B.B. would give in to his worst self, that he would become the monster he had resisted; it was that she would lack the strength to fight him. She would convince herself that it would be worse if she wasn’t around, that she helped him from hurting even more boys. She would help him with this, like she helped him with his business. How long could a person participate in evil without becoming evil herself? Or had she been guilty the moment she’d accepted B.B.’s charity, the moment she’d chosen to stay after learning who and what he was?

She had to get out. She had to move on. Aphrodite whispered it to her in a mantra so perpetual, it was like the sound of breath. Even the I Ching couldn’t stop telling her so.

That B.B. would panic if she left hardly mattered. That she had nowhere to go hardly mattered. She had what she needed. She had money she’d saved- enough money that she could live for a year or two while she figured things out. And she had information on B.B.’s trade. Not that she wanted to extort him or threaten him, but she had a feeling that once he realized she wasn’t coming back, once he realized she was gone for good, B.B. was going to be very, very angry.

And when a man is very angry, and he has a bunch of people like Jim Doe and the Gambler working for him, things can get tricky.

THE PHONE CALL came in the middle of the night. B.B. never answered the phone himself; that wasn’t his thing. But he liked to keep the phone near his bed. It was one of those office phones with a shrill office phone ring and the multiple buttons so you could see which line was in use. They had only one line, but he liked the idea of having several.

And he liked to keep an eye on when the line was in use. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Desiree. Of course he did. He trusted her more than anyone, but why take chances?

The TV was on, but there was only snow. B.B. looked over at the digital clock: 4:32. A phone call at that hour couldn’t be anything good. He sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, which was shaped like a giraffe reaching up to eat leaves. The shade was over the tree. B.B. sat still, staring at the blue and pink of the rococo wallpaper until he heard the light tap at the door.

“Who is it?”

The door opened a crack. “It’s the Gambler.”