David Liss: The Ethical Assassin

“But will it get them dates? That’s what I want to know,” Bastard said. “Maybe if I’d known all about Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross, I’d have gotten laid more in school.”

I’d been working against it since I’d started the pitch, but there was only so much cheer I could maintain. It was just common sense that I wasn’t going to make the sale without Bastard, and I wasn’t going to get Bastard without breaking him. I had to do something, so I reached for a move Bobby had told me about. It had sounded so brilliant when he’d explained it, I’d been looking for an opportunity to try it.

I let out a sigh. “You know what,” I said. “Clearly these materials are not for you. Bastard, I asked you to let me know if you weren’t interested, but it seems like you haven’t been honest with me. It’s okay that you’re not interested. These materials won’t appeal to every parent- some are just more education oriented than others- and that’s fine. I only wish you hadn’t let me sit here for so long, wasting all of our time.” Then I began to gather my things. Not slowly so as to seem like I wanted to be pulled back, but with the wooden determination of a lawyer who’d just lost a trial and wanted to get the hell out of the courtroom.

“Wait,” said Karen. “ I’m interested.”

“What the fuck,” Bastard said. “Let the little shit go.”

“Bastard, apologize,” the wife ordered. “I want them.”

“What the fuck for? The girls ?” he sneered.

“We’ll send them.” Her voice sounded small, pathetic. Then something shifted, and she sounded hard. “Apologize, or I swear to Christ, I’ll tell him everything.”

I didn’t know who the “him” might be, but I knew it wasn’t me. And I was beginning to get the sense I’d walked into the middle of something and my best bet was to cut my losses and get the hell out. With stoic calm, I placed the last book into my bag and stood.

“Bastard, do it!”

He let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Lem. Okay? It’s not that I’m not interested. I just don’t like to sit still for so long. Go easy on me, buddy. Show us the rest.”

“Please stay,” said Karen. Her voice had become small, the voice of a child begging for education. Please, sir, may I learn some more?

I nodded slowly, a sage weighing his options. I’d been willing to bail, but now I saw this was a clear victory. The real trick was to keep from grinning. They’d begged me to stay. They might as well just take out the checkbook now and save everyone the time.

By a quarter to ten, I’d spread everything out on the table right next to the wrecked soda can crammed full of lipstick-ringed cigarette butts. It was all there- the books and brochures, the pricing sheet, the payment schedule, and, of course, the credit application, the all-important app. Karen had taken out the checkbook for the down payment: $125. Like my own mother, fastidious before the tranquilizers, she filled out the receipt portion prior to writing the check, and she did it with torturous slowness. I wanted it in my possession. I wanted it done. Until they handed over the check, there was always the chance they’d back out.

I didn’t want to let it get to where the check might break the deal. I’d closed this deal before even mentioning the check. I had Karen hungry, starving for these books. I’d broken Bastard, who now sat without making a sound other than a strangely wheezy breathing, as though he were winded from the act of respiration itself. He looked at me with big, moist eyes, hoping for approval. And I shoveled the approval out in spades.

Karen pressed down one pink-tipped finger and tore the check along the perforated edge, then held it out to me. She might have set it on the table, but she wanted me to take it from her hand. I’d seen it before; it always happened late in the sale. Encyclopedia sales had allowed me to shed my high school skin, my loser skin, and turn into something else, something that some women found even a little sexy- because I had power. The bookman has power the way a teacher or a political candidate or the lead in a production of Our Town has power. It’s the power of the spotlight. I was young and had energy and enthusiasm, and I had come into her home and given her reason to hope. She didn’t exactly want to sleep with me and didn’t exactly not want to. I understood it with absolute clarity.

I had just about put my fingers on the check when I heard the front door open. I didn’t turn around, in part because I wanted that check and in part because I’d trained myself not to look at visitors, not to listen to phone calls. This wasn’t my house, and it wasn’t my business.

I didn’t stray from the check grab. At least not until I saw Karen’s eyes go wide and her face go pale and her mouth form into the comical surprise of an O. At the same moment, Bastard toppled over along with his chair, felled by an invisible punch, a punch that left a gaping hole, a dark and bloody hole, in the middle of his forehead.

Now I heard it. A puffy squeak of air, and Karen fell over, too. Not the whole chair, just Karen, out of her seat and onto the floor. The second shot hadn’t been as neat as the first, and above her eyes it looked as though someone had smashed her with the claw end of a hammer. Blood began to pool around hair on the beige linoleum floor. The air was full of something sharp and nasty. Cordite. I didn’t know what cordite was, I couldn’t even remember how I knew the word, but I knew that’s what I was smelling. The stink assaulted me, along with the horrible understanding. Two shots had been fired, two people hit in the head. Two people had been murdered.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. I’d been accepted into Columbia University, but my parents had refused to pay. I was raising money, that’s all. I just wanted money for college. None of this had anything to do with me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing it away. But it wasn’t going anywhere.

I turned around.

ONLY A FEW DAYS before I came to town with the bookmen, Jim Doe had been getting restless. He’d told himself to lay off; the risks just weren’t worth it. But then he’d be in his prowl car, watching the drivers go by, sometimes too lazy to stop an asshole going ten or even fifteen miles over the limit. Doing that, he’d get horny as hell. Just something about sitting there, the radio on low volume with the Oak Ridge Boys or Alabama warbling out their bullshit, the smell of Burger King French fries congealing, the sharp tang of chocolate and Rebel Yell coming from his spiked bottle of Yoo-hoo. It reminded him of exactly what he knew he oughtn’t do. It was instinct, after all. You couldn’t ask a wolf to stop being a wolf. He saw a sex-red sports car that looked damn near perfect, and Doe set those lights flashing and the siren wailing. The sound alone gave him a monster stiffy, and he felt like he was seventeen again.

I can sense the grumbling. How, you are wondering, do I know all this? Am I secretly Jim Doe in addition to being Lem Altick? Is this a multiple-personality story?

It’s not. But the events of this weekend were significant in my life, just about as significant as it gets, and I’ve invested massive quantities of time in talking to the survivors, the people who escaped, the people who evaded the cops, the cops they evaded, those who went to jail, and those who avoided jail. I’ve talked to them all. I’ve synthesized it. So I feel I have a reasonably good idea what was going on in Jim Doe’s head.

Besides, you’ve read those memoirs; you know the ones I mean. The poor Irish childhood ones where the writer recalls with preternatural clarity which hat his aunt Siobhan wore to his seventh birthday party and what the cake tasted like and which relative gave him the orange for a present and which the hard-boiled egg. I’m not buying it. No one remembers that kind of detail. It’s all creative license to flesh out a true story. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s my story, and I’m going to tell it the way I want to tell it.