David Liss: The Ethical Assassin

So back to Jim Doe and the red sports car.

The driver wasn’t as good-looking as Doe had been hoping, but she was in her twenties. Early thirties at the most. She had big, curly blond hair, which he liked, and she was dressed kind of sexy in one of those collarless T-shirts that the women had all been wearing since Flashdance. None of that compensated for her big nose and fat lips, all smashed against her face, and her eyes, which were too small for her head. Still, he’d stopped her. Might as well see what was what.

It was already getting dark. He ought to be over at Pam’s place by now. It was Jenny’s birthday, and he guessed he should go by and bring her something. She was four now, and she’d known what a birthday was for a couple of years, and it would probably be a big deal if her father didn’t get her a present. He’d hear about it from Pam if he didn’t show. Not only that, he’d have to hear it from that fucking bitch Aimee Toms.

Sooner or later he’d see Aimee out at the Thirsty Bass or the Sports Hut or the Denny’s, and she’d come sit down and look oh-so-sad and smile a little and tell him how disappointed Jenny had been on her birthday that her daddy didn’t get her nothing. She had that attitude. All the assholes at the sheriff’s department had it, but Aimee had it most of all. She turned up her nose at him. Aimee- turning up her nose at him. Unbelievable. If she knew so much, how come she looked like a dyke? Answer that one.

So she’d come over, her linebacker shoulders all squared off, and she’d shake her head or maybe his hand. She wasn’t trying to tell Jim what to do. Of course it was awkward, but she was Pam’s friend and a cop, and she knew how it was for both of them. Lots of cops got divorced, but the children- the children were the important thing.

Maybe if someone ever got drunk enough to get her pregnant, she’d know if children were important or not. Of course, Doe didn’t much like to think about that time he had been drunk enough to go after her, when he’d grabbed her ass and started singing, “Amy, what you gonna do?”- that god-awful Pure Prairie League song. She had just wiggled out of his grasp like she was the queen of England. Or because she liked women, he supposed. Like Pam. Aimee was probably getting it on with his ex-wife. What kind of a crazy world was this, anyhow?

So if she tried any of that, Jim knew how he’d handle himself. Pretty simple, really. He’d take out his gun and blow the back of Aimee’s head right off. Bam! Just like that. Oh shit, Aimee. Where’s the back of your head? Let’s you and me try to find it together. You know, as Pam’s friend and as a cop.

Getting sneered at by Aimee Toms- nothing but a county cop who thought she could push him around. Doe was chief of fucking police here. And mayor. How much money was she taking in? Maybe thirty a year if she was lucky- if she took a little on the side, which she would never do, of course, because that would be wrong. Let Pam be her little dyke friend. She could be Jenny’s father and save him the trouble.

When he got done with the driver, Doe figured he’d go by the drugstore and get Jenny something. A doll or some Play-Doh. Really, he just wanted to keep Pam from snapping her turtle mouth at him and Aimee from giving him that pitying look that was going to lose her the back of her head one of these days. Truth was, he couldn’t much stand Jenny, with her hugging his leg and clinging and her “Daddy Daddy Daddy.” Pam was getting older, but she still had a decent face, okay tits, and an acceptable if ever-spreading ass, and the kid had Chief Jim Doe for a daddy, so why was his own daughter so damn repulsive? And they needed to stop feeding her whatever it was they fed her, because it was chock-full of ugly and she was turning into a pig. A man who’d been around could tell it like it was, and Doe knew that fat and ugly was an evil combination for a girl.

Doe climbed out of the cruiser and stood there for a moment, peering over at the driver behind his mirrored sunglasses. He wanted to get a better look and let her take in the sight of the big, bad cop who had her in his crosshairs. He knew what he looked like. He never missed the surprised little smiles. Well, hello, Officer. Like one of those male strippers they had for bachelorette parties. So what if he had a little gut now? Women didn’t care about things like that. They cared about power and swagger, and he had plenty of those.

When Doe walked over to the window of her Jap sports car, she pressed her lips together in a smashed, fat little smile. Hello there, good-looking. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

Doe hitched up his belt, which he liked to do so they could see all the stuff- the gun and the cuffs and nightstick- it was like Spanish fly. He took off his wide-brimmed brown hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He put the hat back on and shot her a smile. He knew his teeth were perfectly white, despite the fact that he didn’t brush as often as he ought to. And maybe they were a little crooked, but it was the sort of thing only he would notice because he was so hard on himself.

“License and registration, ma’am?”

She had them ready and handed them over. “Can you tell me what this is about? I’m sort of in a hurry.”

“I sure got that impression, way you was driving,” Doe said. “Lisa Roland from Miami, huh? Miami ’s pretty far away.”

“I was visiting a co-worker who moved up here. I was just heading over to the highway.”

They always wanted to tell their life story, like they wanted his approval or something. “Why’re you in such a big hurry to get home, Lisa? You don’t like this part of the state?”

“I just wanted to get home, is all.”

“You like all them hotels and tourists in Miami?”

“It’s where I live.”

“You got a boyfriend back there waiting on you? Is that it?”

“Look, what is this about?”

“What is it about? Lisa, you know you was speeding?”

“I don’t think I was.”

“You don’t, huh? Well, it so happens I got you on the radar gun going a pretty good amount above the speed limit.”

“You must be mistaken.” She bit her lip, looked to her side, behind her. She must have been nervous about something. If she hadn’t been speeding, then why was she so nervous?

“Must I, now? Well, if I am, I don’t know about it.”

“Come on, Officer. It just so happens that I’d been looking at my speedometer, and I was sticking very closely to the fifty-five mark.”

“I got you at fifty-seven, Lisa.”

“Fifty-seven. Christ. I mean, come on. I can’t believe you would even stop me for going two miles above the limit.”

“Well,” he said, taking off his hat again and giving his forehead a wiping, “way I see it, the speed limit is the limit. That don’t mean it’s the speed you want to be sort of near. It means that’s the fastest you can go. The limit. Now, if you have a water heater and it says that you can’t put your water over two hundred degrees or it will explode… what you gonna do? Let it get to two hundred and two and then say you were only two degrees over? I think if it gets to one ninety-five, you’re going to do everything you can to put things right. Speed limit’s the same, in my view.”

“Don’t those radar detectors have a margin of error to within a few miles per hour?”

“I guess they might,” Doe told her, “but it happens that within the limits of Meadowbrook Grove, the speed limit is forty-five miles per hour. It’s clearly posted on the roads, ma’am. So you were not just over the limit, you were well over.”

“Christ,” she said. “Meadowbrook Grove. What the hell is that?”