“De—cough-cough-cough—Der—”
“When you’re ready.”
For a moment or two, the man hacked, cleared his throat, and spat. “Derek,” he said, hoarsely.
“How old are you, Derek?
“Twenty-two.” He cleared his throat again.
“Been at this long?”
“About eighteen months.”
“You have a great deal to learn here, Derek, especially about women. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she’s quite bloodthirsty until she’s had coffee, and you spoiled her coffee. Explain this,” Kitt held up the tiny Cobra 9mm two-shot.
Derek exhaled, swiped his bleeding nose on his bicep, and winced when the straw in his ear knocked into his elbow. “Okay, you got me,” he said, voice raspy. “I was told to hurt her, to scare the hell out of her, not kill her. You, well, I didn’t count on you being with her; thought you were a random, but I figured it would be easy. I’d bring you down and then take care of her. Guess you showed me, huh? I wasn’t going to kill you. I don’t do that sort of thing. I don’t rape either. There’s a commandment about killing, you know, and I don’t kill. You gotta have a code to live by. You want someone dead, you call somebody else. Everybody knows I don’t rape and I don’t kill. I intimidate. I break legs and kneecaps, and dislocate shoulders, that sort of thing.”
“You’re the very model of Christianity.” Mae crossed her arms.
“Look, I sin. I’m a sinner. We’re all sinners, but I don’t kill.”
Mae squinted. “Well, I do.”
“Yeah, uh-huh, right.” Derek snorted and spat out blood. “Damn, I think you broke my nose, bro.”
“That I did,” Kitt said.
Grimacing, Derek shifted his top lip from side to side, and cast his eyes to his right, in the direction of the green plastic sticking out of his ear. “Yeah. You busted it clean, but I gotta say the thing she shoved in my ear hurts even more. I’m supposed to leave it right? That’s what you do with stuff like this, right?”
“Yes, it’s always best to let professionals handle these situations, rather than amateurs, and really, truth be told, she does kill,” Kitt tapped the end of the straw with the point of the knife he’d flicked open. “And so do I.”
Derek’s yelp of pain died abruptly. His brown eyes darted back to Kitt and his gleaming, sharp blade. “Okay. I see. You intimidate. You’re pretty good at it too. You want my attention? I’m paying attention. You want the money he paid me already? It’s in the inside pocket of my jacket.”
“I don’t want your money, or any other things you may have in your pocket, but I do want you to pay attention. Are you really paying attention?”
“I’m all ear.”
“Oh, he’s funny, Kitt.”
“She thinks you’re amusing, Derek. You know, I can kill you and it won’t hurt a bit. Would you like me to tell you how I’d do that?”
Mae exhaled. “I don’t think I like where you’re going with this, Kitt.”
“This is utterly the wrong time to tell me your question about killing the rat-arsed hipster was rhetorical. This is the wrong moment to say we should leave him here and run because you’ve had enough violence and death in your life.”
“I don’t think it’s necess—”
“Christ, Mae, the ‘we’re all sinners’ bit is absolute rot. He nearly shot me in the face. He was going to kill you. He was going to kill us both. Isn’t that right, Derek?”
Derek grinned, blood all over his teeth. “Forgive me, Father, for I have, you know, sinned.” He ran his tongue over his crimson-stained incisors, around his lips, licking at one corner as if chocolate were there instead of blood. “How’d you lose your fingers?”
Mae gaped at the young man, briefly, and shook her head. “He’s high, Kitt. You’re high, aren’t you, Derek?”
“Maybe just a tad.” Derek chuckled. “You two are spoiling it all for me. I should have been out of here by now. I’m getting all mellow and you’re fucking up my slide into joyous. Can we hurry it along?”
“In a minute. Who wanted you to kill us?”
“Honesty time? There was no us, just a...” Derek looked at Mae “...her. I don’t know you, bro, like I said, you were random, but you’re not random at all. I get you, brah.”
“So you killed Grant? Where’d you’d get the deer?”
“A guy I know. You lost your fingers working, didn’t you? I bet you’ve got some awesome stories to tell.”
Kitt let loose a muttered string of obscene phrases before he smiled, brilliantly. It made his eyes crinkle. “Honesty time. You made a mistake, didn’t you?” he said, smile dazzling and vicious.
“Yeah, I didn’t count on you coming back.”
“Yes, there’s that.” Kitt nodded.
Derek sighed. “Last time I do something that boneheaded.”
“I mean your earlier mistake.”
Derek gave a shrug. “So, sue me for being sexist. I thought she was the housekeeper. It was ‘do the butler.’ Women usually aren’t butlers.” He chuckled lightly. “First guy dressed the part, made it easy. I followed him outside. Didn’t know I’d fucked up ’til after.”
Nausea wriggled in Mae’s stomach, wriggled and flopped like a gasping fish on the sand. She stared at Kitt, feeling dry lips part.
“Anyhow, I believe in being thorough and rectifying my errors so here I am.” Derek’s voice turned soft, sleepy until he hawked up a glob of blood and spat again. “Come on. Let’s get on with it.”
“Give me a name. Who wants her dead?”
“Who...what?” Nausea fell away into a deep hum in her ears and thrum in her chest, and Mae moved closer to Kitt. A muscle pulsed in his jaw.
“Some guy named Lou.” Derek exhaled, licked his lips, and ran his tongue around his teeth.
Kitt went on smiling coolly. “Could you be a little more specific?”
“Lou something that sounds like a girl’s name.”
“Llewelyn?” Mae muttered what Kitt already believed.
“Yeah. Lou Ellen. That’s it. So, can we get this over with now, bro? I wanna die feelin’ this buzz.”
Knife in hand, Kitt cocked his head and levelled his cold, grinning gaze on the tweed-clad, piss-poor, would-be assassin. “Well, you know, you can’t always get what you want.”
“HE WAS GOING TO KILL me and stuff me in the boot with Grant, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Kitt exhaled softly, Derek’s digital camera on his lap. “A nuisance, Mae, you’re a sodding nuisance.” He turned and stared out the windscreen.
Mae stared at him. What was the word? Compartmentalise? Yes, that was it. Cowboy hat on his head, he looked out the window, at the beautiful view of mountain and sky, unmoved by the recent violence and she was jacked up, excited, over-caffeinated—and hadn’t even had coffee. At the same time, she was mortified by what had to be bloodlust. “How do you not let this affect you?” she said.
“I’m not unaffected. I merely choose to focus on now rather than before.”
“Meaning you choose to examine your actions later?”
“Only when they involve you. Especially when they involve you.” He went on looking out at the sun and shadow play on mesas and the valley. “I know what I do is abhorrent, yet it is seldom without purpose.”
“For Queen and country.” Mae sniffed.
“You don’t believe in serving your country, protecting those you hold dear?”
“I believe in protecting those you love and protecting a common humanity.”
“Not so different really, is it?”
She mulled over his statement or suggestion and ran a finger across the stinging scratch on her cheek. It had scabbed over. “I suddenly feel as though I need to go to confession.”
“You do know a priest.”
Despite his soft, controlled breathing, Mae noticed he gripped the steering wheel tightly, squeezing the life from something lifeless. The whiteness of his knuckles showed through smears of blood and the beginnin
g of bruising.
Looking at the shortened knuckles of his stubby fingers set off a tingle that was primal, bloodthirsty, and strangely triumphant. The concoction and surge of adrenaline brought on by events in the last hour would fade, Mae knew that, but she was thinking clearly, and his knuckles, the whiteness... Even the best poker players had a tell; the whiteness was his, and she knew his detachment was tenuous. “You can’t do this, can you?”
“Do what?” His fingers loosened on the steering wheel, set the camera in the centre console, took off the hat and shoved it on the dashboard. Then he turned at last and looked at her instead of at the rocky view.
“You can’t do this without me, can you?”
Stone-faced, Kitt got out of the SUV, almost, but not quite slamming the door.
Mae watched him move around the bonnet, head along the footpath, and pause at the low wall. Sunrays turned his hair dark ginger. He stood in a scenic tourist overlook park, casually taking in the breathtaking vista of the mountains, mesas, the Rio Grande, all bathed in oranges, pinks, and soft mauve of the late afternoon sun. Then he bent forward and vomited. Twice.
When he straightened, he wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. Hands in trouser pockets, he continued along the path, as if he hadn’t been sick.
Mae sighed, rummaged in her handbag, and climbed out of the Volvo.
From this height, the river in the valley below sat in violet shadow that reminded Kitt of a bruise, the sort that he’d find on his ribs and back later. The valley around the river stretched out wide, filled by reddish-pink, orange and painted mesas, deep green piñon trees, the Sangre de Cristos Mountains a hazy, black-and-blue as the rising moon peeked over snowy caps. The temperature was dropping. In half an hour, it would be colder and dark.
Kitt turned away from glowering at nature’s splendour and took the tissue Mae had thrust beside his ear.
“You have a bit of sick on your chin.”
He wiped his chin, balled up the tissue in his fist, and turned his face from side to side. “Did I miss anything?”
Mae shook her head, licked her bottom lip, smiled, and began laughing.
“You think it’s funny I had sick all over my chin?”
“I think it’s funny that I make you sick.”
“You get a thrill from my vomiting?”
“Yes.”
“No, you don’t.” He looked at her. “Ah, yes, you do.” With a shrug, he shoved the tissue into a pocket. “Why?”
“It’s weirdly...flattering and somewhat endearing because it means I know how much you love me. I also know how scared you are, and that’s funny be—”
“My fear is amusing?”
“I’m amused because I never would have survived that business with Caspar’s trust and the Mafia. I couldn’t have done it without you. And now, you can’t do this without me.”
“There are times, Mrs Valentine, when you have the strangest sense of humour.” He shut his eyes for a moment, opened them, settled what he knew was a peevish gaze on her, and said, peevishly, “No, I can’t do this without you because somehow you’re part of it.”
Mae’s smile was positively sunny.
“Are you enjoying this?”
All sense Mae had of triumph evaporated. Tingle gone, her strange reality crashed into place. “Oh, yes. Finding Grant dead made me feel alive. Killing two people last summer made me feel alive, the same way hearing you break Derek’s nose and neck made me feel alive. Is that what it is, is that why you do it, the lying, the killing? Because it’s exhilarating, something that really lets you know how alive you are? However sick it may be, I’m enjoying it.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am, and see? This is what I meant when you proposed. I truly liked that you broke his nose and broke his neck. I enjoyed watching you shove him into the boot with a dead man, particularly when I was supposed to be dead in that boot with Grant, and that is why I said no. Well, part of why, but you knew I would turn you down. You knew what I was afraid of, and you counted on my refusing your proposal.”
“Did I?”
“I think deep down you wanted me to say no, so that you could let me go and pretend it was my choice to walk away.”
His cool detachment had returned. “You didn’t say, no, Mae, you said you would consider a very long engagement. That’s not no. And you do not enjoy those things any more than I do.”
“You’ve never taken pleasure in your job, in say, stabbing a pen into a Mafia accountant’s hand after he tried to have someone you love killed?”
“I think this may be your trouble. Enjoyment and satisfaction are not the same thing; a sense of gratification is different to enjoyment. Shoving a Montblanc pen through Ernst Largo’s greedy little hand last summer was immensely gratifying.”
“Thank you for the clarification.”
“My pleasure.”
She tucked back a wisp of hair that had come undone from her tidy French braid. “If you don’t enjoy it, then why do you do it? Why do you do work that puts you in a position where you might have to kill? Or be killed if you don’t kill first?”
Kitt regarded her for two seconds and smiled ever-so-faintly. “I come from a family with a highly developed social conscience, one that instilled the value of giving back, of community, of service, of social justice. Like Taittinger, only...genuine. When you’re born into this world with more wealth and comforts than you could ever need you have a moral responsibility, an obligation to give to others less fortunate, to look after them, to share your wealth, and not merely in a financial philanthropic capacity.”
“That was a lovely speech.”
“I thought so too. You can blame my mother for my ideals or blame the Kennedy era. She was in the Peace Corps and Médecins Sans Frontières.”
“Your mother was American?” Mae plopped down on the low wall, eyes scrunched up, head shaking at his revelation. “Jaysus, you certainly pick the oddest times to tell me about yourself. A philanthropic capacity. Janey Mack, you think you’re Batman, don’t you?”
“Well, I know I’m not James Bond or Julius Taittinger, Batman’s parents were dead, and you simply assumed mine were.”
“As you wanted me to.” She looked at him, eyes still scrunched. “I’m not going to ask. I’m not going to be enticed by titbits about you. Rather than discuss your family, your grandiose ideas about saving the world, and having to think about what that really means, distract me, redirect my attention instead of contradicting me, instead of reminding me.”
“You want a kiss and a cuddle? You do recall I was just sick in the bushes, don’t you?”
“Do I look like I give a damn?”
He reached out and yanked her into his arms. For a long time, he held her, and she held him, propped him up, actually, and didn’t even know. Crows caw-cawed and hopped about the great rocks on the other side of the wall they stood beside.
She sighed into his chest, fingers stroking the hair at the back of his head. “I don’t give a damn. In fact, I don’t seem to have any remorse about what just happened to us. Twice, I’ve watched you break a man’s nose, and today I’ve watched you break a man’s neck. I have no remorse in seeing you do it. I wanted you to do it. Is it easier breaking a nose or breaking a neck? Tell me.”
“I didn’t break his neck. I severed his spinal cord. He’ll be a paraplegic for the rest of his miserable life—if he doesn’t freeze to death in the Beetle’s boot first.”
“Was that easy to do? Sever his spinal cord, I mean.” She pulled back and stared at him, awaiting a reply.
He let her go. “Mae.” Kitt regarded her for a long, long moment as well, and cursed himself for being a quixotic, bloody, goddamned fool, for being a ruinous, bloody, goddamned professional fixated on finishing his goddamned bloody foolish job. Years ago, when he’d first rented the flat she owned, when he’d detached a retina and been confined to sit immobile on his arse all day, she’d arrived on his doorstep with coffee and a tray of Chelsea buns.
That morning, he should have shut the door in her face, but he hadn’t, which made him wholly responsible for her confusion, for her anguish, for her erroneous delight.
He smiled, very softly. “I’m sorry. I am sorry for all of this, for what you’ve been witness to. I never should have let it get this far.” He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. “I should have let you go.”
She sat on the wall and smiled back, just as softly. “I should have walked away.”
He had a seat beside her and took her hand. “You’re half-frozen.”
“Am I?”
Kitt took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “You shouldn’t be part of this. Any of it. Killing is an awful thing. It’s much easier to vomit.”
She laughed and then sighed, heavily, looking out over the valley, his jacket warm and damp with perspiration.
Kitt swung his legs up, and lay knees up, on top of the wall, cold stone a makeshift ice pack for the hot flame in his back, his head in Mae’s lap.
Her fingers moved through his hair, brushing out tiny, sandy bits of mortar. “You live in another world. If I want to be with you I’d have to live in that beautiful, horrible, and fascinating world too. Do you see? I’m fascinated by you, by what you do, by the mechanics of it, by what it is that makes you do what you do, and I wonder what that says about me?” Her sigh had a tinge of remorse to it. “I think I took on the position to spite you. When you died, I was so angry, I took the position because had you been alive you would have told me—no, you would have demanded that I do no such thing.”
“I fascinate you?”
“That’s what you take away from what I’ve just said?”
“I fascinate you.” Kitt pulled her fingers from his head. He kissed the centre of her palm and laid her hand on his chest, right over his heart, his hand on top of hers.
She heaved another sigh and gazed down at him. “You’re the most fascinating man I’ve ever known.”
“More fascinating than Caspar?”
“Is that important?” She pulled her hand from his chest, lifted his head from her lap, and rose, gently settling his skull on top of the wall. “Is that important, Kitt?”
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