James Patterson - Swimsuit

I unlocked the heavy-duty dead bolts on my front door and let the man in. He locked the door behind us.

I put my briefcase down on the cement floor, said “Have a seat,” then headed into the kitchen area. Perfect host, I called out, “What can I get you to drink, Marco?”

He said from behind my shoulder, “Thanks anyway. I'll pass.”

I quashed my jump reflex, took an Orangina out of the fridge, and led the way back to the living room, sitting at one end of the leather sectional. My “guest” took the chair.

“Who are you really?” I asked this man who was now looking my place over, checking out the framed photos, the old newspapers in the corner, every title of every book. I had the sense that I was in the presence of a highly observant operator.

He finally set his Smith and Wesson down on my coffee table, ten feet from where I was sitting, out of my reach. He fished in his breast pocket, took out a business card held between his fingers, slid it across the glass table toward me.

I read the printed name, and my heart almost stopped.

I knew the card. I'd read it before: Charles Rollins. Photographer. Talk Weekly.

My mind was doing backflips. I imagined Marco without the mustache, and then envisioned Charles Rollins's half-seen face the night when Rosa Castro's twisted body had been brought up from the deep.

That night, when Rollins had given me his card, he'd been wearing a baseball cap and, maybe, shades. It had been another disguise.

The prickling at the back of my neck was telling me that the slick, good-looking guy sitting on my sofa had been this close to me the whole time I was in Hawaii. Almost from the moment I arrived.

I'd been completely unaware of him, but he'd been watching me.

Why?

The man sitting in my favorite leather chair watched my face as I desperately tried to fit the pieces together.

I was remembering that day in Maui when the McDanielses had gone missing and Eddie Keola and I had tried to find Marco, the driver who didn't exist.

I remembered how after Julia Winkler's body was found in a hotel bed in Lanai, Amanda had tried to help me locate a tabloid paparazzo named Charles Rollins because he'd been the last person seen with Winkler.

The name Nils Bjorn jumped into my mind, another phantom who'd been staying at the Wailea Princess at the same time as Kim McDaniels. Bjorn had never been questioned – because he had conveniently disappeared.

The police hadn't thought Bjorn had anything to do with Kim's abduction, and when I'd researched Bjorn, I was sure he was using a dead man's name.

Those facts alone told me that at the very least, Mr. Smooth on my chair was a con artist, a master of disguise. If that were true, if Marco, Rollins, and maybe Bjorn were all the same man, what did it mean?

I fought off the tsunami of black thoughts that were swamping my mind. I unscrewed the top of the soda bottle with a shaking hand, wondering if I'd kissed Amanda for the last time.

I thought about the messiness of my life, the overdue story Aronstein was waiting for, the will I'd never drawn up, my life insurance policy – had I paid the latest premium?

I was not only scared, I was furious, thinking, Shit, this can't be the last day of my life. I need time to put my damned affairs in order.

Could I make a break for my gun?

No, I didn't think so.

Marco-Rollins-Bjorn was two feet from his Smith and Wesson. And he was maddeningly relaxed about everything. His legs were crossed, ankle over knee, watching me like I was on TV.

I used that fearful moment to memorize the prick's bland, symmetrical face. In case somehow I got out of here. In case I had a chance to describe him to the cops.

“You can call me Henri,” he said now.

“Henri what?”

“Don't worry about it. It's not my real name.”

“So what now, Henri?”

He smiled, said, “How many times has someone said to you, 'You should write a book about my life'?”

“Probably at least once a week,” I said. “Everyone thinks they have a blockbuster life story.”

“ Uh-huh. And how many of those people are contract killers?”

The telephone rang in my bedroom. It was probably Amanda. Henri shook his head, so I let my sweetheart's voice send her love to the answering machine.

“I've got a lot of things to tell you, Ben. Get comfortable. Tune in to the present only. We could be here for a while.”

“Mind if I get my tape recorder? It's in my bedroom.”

“Not now. Not until we work out our deal.”

I said, “Okay. Talk to me,” but I was thinking, Was he serious? A contract killer wanted a contract with me?

Henri's gun was a half second away from Henri's hand. All I could do was play along with him until I could make a move.

The worst of amateur autobiographies start with “I was born?,” so I leaned back in my seat, prepared myself for a saga.

And Henri didn't disappoint. He started his story from before he was born.

He gave me a little history: In 1937 there was a Frenchman, a Jewish man who owned a print shop in Paris. He was a specialist in old documents and inks.

Henri said that very early on, this man understood the real danger of the Third Reich and that he and others got out before the Nazis stormed Paris. This man, this printer, had fled to Beirut.

“So this young Jew married a Lebanese woman,” Henri told me. “ Beirut is a large city, the Paris of the Middle East, and he blended in fairly well. He opened another print shop, had four children, lived a good life.

“No one questioned him. But other refugees, friends of friends of friends, would find him. They needed papers, false identification, and this man helped them so that they could start new lives. His work is excellent.”

“ Is excellent?”

“He's still living, but no longer in Beirut. He was working for the Mossad, and they've moved him for safekeeping. Ben, there's no way for you to find him. Stay in the present, stay with me, my friend.

“I'm telling you about this forger because he works for me. I keep food on his table. I keep his secrets. And he has given me Marco and Charlie and Henri and many others. I can become someone else when I walk out of this room.”

Hours whipped by.

I turned on more lights and came back to my seat, so absorbed by Henri's story that I'd forgotten to be afraid.

Henri told me about surviving a brutal imprisonment in Iraq and how he'd determined that he would no longer be constrained by laws or by morality.

“And so, what is my life like now, Ben? I indulge myself in every pleasure, many you can't imagine. And to do that, I need lots of money. That's where the Peepers come in. It's where you come in, too.”

Henri's semiautomatic was keeping me in my seat, but I was so gripped by his story that I almost forgot about the gun. “Who are the Peepers?” I asked him.

“Not now,” he said. “I'll tell you next time. After you come back from New York.”

“What are you going to do, muscle me onto a plane? Good luck getting a gun on board.”

Henri pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket, slid it across the table. I picked it up, opened the flap, and took out the packet of pictures.

My mouth went dry. They were high-quality snapshots of Amanda, recent ones. She was Rollerblading only a block from her apartment, wearing the white tank top and pink shorts she'd had on when I met her for breakfast yesterday morning.

I was in one of the shots, too.

“Keep those, Ben. I think they're pretty nice. Point is, I can get to Amanda anytime, so don't even think about going to the police. That's just a way of committing suicide and getting Amanda killed, too. Understand?”