David Liss - The Ethical Assassin

But I was close to that kind of trouble now. Wasn’t that what I’d learned from Melford, what I’d learned to put into practice that night with Ronny Neil? It wasn’t really a matter of how much trouble you were in, but how you tried to get out of it. I had to do something other than sit in the motel room. I might have done that last week, but not any longer.

I stayed off the roads. I tried to stick to backyards, ignoring the itch of insects and the various crawling, hopping, scurrying, and slithering noises of the animals I startled from either sleep or their rounds. I had to be careful of domestic animals, too. Frantic barking would draw attention. I knew from my late night rambles selling books, those long hours after dark when I was trying desperately to bag one more shot at a sale before it was time to go home, that dogs barked and owners ignored them. At least they did at nine-thirty. But at close to two in the morning, they might pay a bit more attention to furious barking.

When I turned onto Bastard and Karen’s street, I stuck close to the trailers, trying to keep out of the light. It had been there all along: the box of files in the trailer with “Oldham Health Services” written along the side. It held the key to everything- to why Melford had killed them and what he was hiding from me.

I felt a strange, almost giddy excitement. Once I read through those files, I would finally know. I would finally know who Melford really was, what he was after. And I would know if he really intended to let me out of all this unharmed.

I looked around the back of the trailer and saw that the door leading to the kitchen was open. No sign of a car or of flashlight beams inside. I went up to the door to listen. No sound.

It was stupid. Idiotic. I knew it, but I went inside anyhow, because I had to see.

I turned on the flashlight for a quick scan. It was cheaply built, and the light slouched out anemically, but I still caught a glimpse of something on the kitchen floor.

I supposed I ought to be getting used to death, but the sight of the body hit me like a punch in the gut. I took a staggered step back and hit the kitchen counter.

I turned the feeble light on the figure again to be sure. But there was no mistaking it. In the distorting yellow of the flashlight beam, I saw the face of the man who’d been in the Gambler’s room, the one in the linen suit, the one who’d looked as though he hadn’t been paying much attention. The one I believed to be B. B. Gunn.

His face was well bloodied, but I couldn’t tell how he had been killed. In fact, I was largely past concerning myself. I turned to rush out the door, but a flashlight, much brighter than my own, hit my eyes. I couldn’t say I was particularly surprised. In a way, it seemed inevitable.

I stopped in my tracks. The light was too bright for me to see who held it, but I knew. It could be only one person.

“Well, well, if it ain’t the hirer of private detectives,” Jim Doe said.

I stared at him. How could he have known that?

“You stupid fucking shit,” he said with a slight cackle. “You go to find out a thing or two about B.B., and you hire a buddy of mine to do it. Didn’t you think for a minute that a guy who lives in Meadowbrook Grove might know me? But I guess it don’t matter, because it seems to me like you are under arrest for murder.”

There was a second, maybe two seconds, before I acted, but I thought of lots of things in those couple of seconds. I thought about how unlikely it was that Doe would shoot me, an unarmed encyclopedia salesman. Doe wanted to keep attention away from himself, not draw attention closer. Considering that our earlier encounter had been observed by Aimee Toms, the county cop- the county cop who had warned Doe to stay away from me- a shooting now would only draw the kind of scrutiny Doe could not afford. On the other hand, Doe might easily shoot me and make me disappear. And if that happened, I would never see Chitra again.

So I ran.

THE PUNK RAN. Well, what had Doe expected? That he would sit there and say, “I guess I got no choice but to come with you and probably get killed”? He was a fast runner, too. Doe wasn’t about to chase after him. Christ, with the pain in his nuts he could barely walk, let alone run. He tried to pursue, made it maybe a hundred feet before he had to stop. As it was, he felt like he might faint. Or puke.

Well, let him go. It wasn’t like Doe needed to arrest someone for B.B.’s murder. He could just toss the body in the waste lagoon. Probably better that way, anyhow.

Now, bent over, breathing in hard, painful bursts, hands on his knees, Doe spent a minute just trying to clear his head, get the swirling black things out of his vision. The problem now was going to be getting rid of B.B., and it was pretty much Doe’s problem alone. Earlier that night his phone had rung, and on the other end a disguised voice, his second of the day- but Doe had known without a doubt that it was the Gambler’s punk asshole Ronny Neil- had told him he’d better get over to Karen’s trailer. There was a surprise waiting there.

He couldn’t fault the little shit for being dishonest. B.B.’s dead body was a surprise all right. He’d been worked over good, too- beaten so that his legs were like jelly and his head half caved in. One of his eyes, bulging wide open, was half out of its socket. They’d killed him good and proper.

No message, no instruction, but Doe didn’t need to be told what it meant or what he needed to do. The Gambler had taken B.B. out, which was only right. If anything, Doe was relieved that the Gambler had stepped up to the plate. Like he’d said before, there were bigger things involved here, certainly bigger than his ego. There was money, and even if B.B. hadn’t been fucking with the Gambler, he’d been slipping up right good. Still, this body presented some real problems, the first being that the freaky cunt would think that Doe had done it. They’d dumped the body on Doe’s turf just to make trouble for him, to make sure he knew this was the Gambler’s show.

Doe didn’t care. Doe didn’t care who called the shots as long as the shots got called and as long as the money came with it. The Gambler thought he had some tough-guy shit to prove, that was just fine. He thought he needed to put the pressure on Doe, say come up with the money or an explanation, that was fine, too. Doe didn’t get to where he was by not being able to deal with the pressure.

He’d do what the Gambler wanted as a show of good faith, so he’d get the message that things were working and there was no point in messing up an orderly system. The Gambler would have to understand that this operation worked because it was under the radar. It worked because no one was paying attention to them. That had always meant small crews, limited exposure, and no bloodbaths. Four people had died this weekend, and that was plenty. No way the Gambler was going to take him out. Even so, he might get cut out or cut back or slighted. Begging to remain in good graces might be beneath his dignity, but if it meant cash, then Doe would deal with it for now.

All of which meant getting to the bottom of this shit. And that was fine, too, because Doe knew what was what now. He knew why the kid had squealed on him to the Gambler, and he knew where the money was. It was now that simple. Find the kid, find the money.

IHAD NEVER BEEN, by track team standards, an especially fast runner. I did better in longer races, but even in those I’d win only rarely. Still, I would do well once in a while with the five-hundred-meter. With half marathons the point wasn’t to win, but to finish. But if I hadn’t been the fastest runner in the county, or even at my own school, I was a hell of a lot faster than an aging, out-of-shape, crooked cop with a bad haircut.