David Liss - The Ethical Assassin

DESIREE STOOD BY THE PAY PHONE, running her neatly manicured but unpolished thumbnail along the receiver. She really ought to have called in by now. B.B. would be waiting. He’d be wondering and very likely worried. He worried about her easily. If she was half an hour late, he’d be a wreck when she got back. She liked to think it was just need- he needed her, and if she’d been killed in a car accident, who was going to make his dinner? But it was more than that. In his own self-absorbed way, B.B. loved her. She knew he did. And that made it harder.

She hadn’t been following the kid and his friend since the Chinese restaurant. Why bother? It was clear to her she wasn’t going to tell B.B. anything. Aphrodite seemed to like them, she had that feeling from her long-dead twin, and she especially liked the friend, Melford. That just went to show that she and Aphrodite were agreeing on things more often, because Desiree liked him, too. Following them, giving B.B. what he wanted, would feel like a betrayal, and that meant that in the end she was going to have to betray someone.

What Melford had said about sitting by idly, about winking at evil because it was easy to do so- it had felt like he was talking about her. Like he knew about B.B., what he did, what he was likely to do when the pretense of mentoring could no longer keep his desire caged; like he knew how she’d been helping B.B. peddle crank, the same poison that had nearly killed her. Of course, he didn’t know. He was talking about how he wanted to make the world safe for little lambs and piggies, and that was sweet, naïvely sweet. She’d been surrounded by the taint of crime and drugs and human destruction for so long now, the thought of involving herself in something as kind and hapless as helping animals might be just what she needed.

B.B. might not bloody his hands directly, but she knew- and she’d known all along- that his little empire had left more than a little carnage. Lives ruined, pain and suffering and death, all in the service of meth. That he’d been kind to her might make it easier to sympathize, to care, to have feelings, but it didn’t mean that what he did was right or that she ought to help him.

“Hey there, sweetness. I like what you’re wearing.”

Desiree looked over. Standing no more than three feet away was a wide man in his forties, longish beard and hair, jeans, and boots of a biker. He cradled a six-pack of Old Milwaukee under his arm.

“You about done with that phone?” he asked her. “Because I need to call my mama and tell her that I’m in love.”

“Do I look like I’m your private peep show?” Desiree said. Her voice was calm, almost absent.

“Whoa there,” he said, taking only half a step back. He raised one hand defensively and flapped up the other, since the arm was still primarily committed to holding the beer. “Don’t be so uptight, baby. Can’t a man tell you he thinks you’re pretty?”

She was out of the booth and facing him, her switchblade out, the blade extended, before she even had time to think about it. “No,” she said. “He can’t.”

“Jesus. All right.” He took another couple of steps back and gave a half shrug to tell anyone who might have witnessed the exchange that it didn’t bother him.

Desiree watched to make sure he was gone. Then she picked up the phone and started to dial the motel. She hung up before it rang. The time had come to sever ties with B.B.- now, not some point in the near future. She’d been guilty and complicit too long.

That’s what their fight last month, over the boy at the roadside, had really been about. She’d been asked to draw a line. For as long as she’d been with him, there had been a line somewhere on the horizon, and now she’d come to it, stood over it. And once you get there, she thought, you can see what’s on the other side, and you can see what you’ve left so far behind that it’s lost in the blur.

No more. She had hardly exchanged more than a few sentences with him, but she was sure that Melford had come to tell her that. Things happened for a reason, accidents were part of the order of things, coincidence a manifestation of cosmic design. It was time to move on, and maybe, she thought, to make up for her mistakes, too. There had to be balance in the universe. She’d done harm, and now she had to do good. But what, exactly? Hurt B.B.’s business, slow down his crank trade? That didn’t feel right. B.B. was what he was, and he’d helped her. She would have to find something else. She would figure it out. Or maybe she could get some help.

For the second time that day, B.B. picked up the phone with his heart pounding. In his mind he’d always imagined having a hand in the Gambler’s destruction, but in the end he would almost certainly have to skip that. Why not turn things over to the mechanisms so readily available?

The ringing ended. “Meadowbrook Grove police.”

It wasn’t him. “Chief Doe,” B.B. barked in a staccato voice, base and forceful, entirely unlike his own.

“Hold on.”

There was a brief pause. “This is the chief.”

“Chief Doe,” B.B. said in his disguised voice, “I am calling to warn you. Ken Rogers, the Gambler, is setting you up. He had your meth cook killed to frame you. He is out to get you and take over your cut for himself. You’ve been warned.”

“Yeah? Who is this?”

“Someone who works with him,” B.B. said.

“And why are you telling me this?”

The question stumped B.B. Why would someone tell Doe? “Because,” B.B. said, deciding to stick to the truth, “the Gambler’s a fucking asshole who deserves what he gets.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” Doe said.

B.B. hung up the phone. Now things would follow their course. Doe was a ruthless bastard, and he wouldn’t hesitate to take out the Gambler. He’d deny it to B.B.’s face, but that was okay. In the vacuum, Desiree would step in, and B.B. would be able to toast his success with Chuck Finn over a glass of Médoc.

Doe slowly hung up the phone.

“Who the heck was that?” Pakken asked him.

“A guy who was disguising his voice.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Pakken said. “What’d he want?”

“To tell me the Gambler is going to fuck me over.”

“You think it’s true?”

Doe pushed himself down into his chair. “I don’t think so. I mean, he would if he could, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on right now. But I’ll tell you that whatever is going on, it is highly fucked up because a disguised voice don’t mean shit to me. I recognized him.”

ON 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.