Hour of the Assassin

by Matthew Quirk

  She ate a piece of orange. Images from last night crowded into Nick’s mind, dark snapshots from the scene of Widener’s death. He thought of Emma Blair. He knew that talking to Karen about her now wouldn’t go over well, but he had to find some way to understand what was happening.

  “I need to ask you something,” he said. She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, the concern coming back.

  “What is it?”

  “Did Emma Blair know Malcolm Widener?”

  “Nick, please.” She put her hand on the counter. “Can you just drop this Emma thing? It’s bad enough you’re always going out there, hung up on it, talking to people about your ex. But at least leave me out. I’m so damn tired of it.”

  “Karen, it’s important. I may have found something.”

  She looked at him sharply, then sighed. “Why are you asking about her and Malcolm?”

  “Did he know her?”

  “Yes. Their families were close. He was like an older brother to her, back in school at least. I can’t imagine they talk anymore, though. Different paths.” She put her hands on both sides of the coffee cup. “I think Malcolm was in love with her back then, actually. Like every other guy in her life.”

  “Would she have gone to him for help?”

  “Recently?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think they were close like that anymore, not unless it was something specific.”

  “Do you talk to Malcolm?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and raised his hand. “That’s it.” He had already asked her a dozen times about Emma and why she might have been so worried when she came to Nick for help. He glanced out the window and saw a sedan parked across the street. He put down the orange and moved closer to the panes.

  “What is it?” Karen asked.

  “Nothing.”

  She slid her cup away, ceramic scraping against the countertop, and faced him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know you, Nick. I can tell when you’re . . .”

  Lying? Hiding something? But she didn’t go that far.

  He hated deceit, with Karen most of all, but he wasn’t going to drag her into this, not after what had happened to Emma, and to him.

  “I’m just working too many nights,” he said. He looked back to the window and watched the car pull away.

  Nick’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at the screen. It was a message from Delia: Call me.

  “Sorry, I need to take care of this,” he said, and walked toward the front door. He was just out of the kitchen when he heard a tearing sound. He turned and saw Karen unzipping his bag, about to see the knife.

  “Stop!” he shouted. The command echoed through the kitchen.

  She froze.

  “What?” she said, and pulled her hands back. “I just need a charger.”

  He always carried one. She eyed him, then glanced down at the bag. The zipper was only open a few inches.

  “I have gear in there. It’s dangerous.”

  “Then why is it in the house?” she said, raising her palms. “What is going on with you these days, Nick? Why are you obsessed with that woman?”

  “She asked for my help. That’s it. I take that seriously.”

  “The police can handle that. You knew it bothered me, you going out looking for her all the time. It’s pretty simple, Nick, between the two of us. You pick your wife.”

  “It’s not that, Karen.”

  She held her hand up. “Whatever it is, I don’t need you snapping at me. I have to get ready for work, and I just need a break. Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. He didn’t argue, didn’t press. The kindest thing he could do right now was leave her alone and keep all of this away from her. “I’m going to head out.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded.

  22

  Nick pulled out and parked down the street, still watching the house. He wanted to make sure no one was coming for him while Karen was home.

  He lifted the smartphone and started a secure call to Delia.

  “Nick?”

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Alexandra Hart. I have her license plate.”

  “How’d you find her?”

  “You were right about the cameras. The lady from the bakery let me check out her security footage. I got the tag on Hart’s car and a half-decent shot of her.”

  “I thought I told you to keep your head down.”

  “I was getting cookies. It just came up.”

  Nick smiled. Everyone in that neighborhood loved Delia. An Ethiopian family ran the bakery and made some of the best Italian pastries Nick had ever tasted.

  “You should be able to do a public records search on the plate number,” he said. “That will give you an address or a name.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nick saw Karen walking out to her car. She pulled out, heading in the other direction. He took a last look at the house and the front walk where Emma had approached him.

  Now at least Nick understood the connection between him and Malcolm Widener. They both knew Emma. She might have gone to Widener for help, too. She might have told him more than she told Nick. Maybe that was why someone had decided to get rid of Nick and Widener in one go. Somehow, they were both too near to the secret she kept. There were a dozen other possibilities, but it was a start.

  Delia called back a few minutes later with an address on Capitol Hill.

  “I’ll keep looking,” she said, “and try to find her real name based on that. What are you up to?”

  Nick was already driving. “I’ll go say hello.”

  23

  Gray walked through David Blakely’s underground garage, past the Mercedes SL and the Audi. The door to the house opened ahead of him. David stood wearing a Georgetown Track T-shirt damp near the neck from exercise.

  He waved Gray in.

  “You’re clean?” David asked.

  “A hundred percent.”

  David worked his secure phone as they passed the theater, went down a long hall, and turned right into a gym. The house was a modernist masterpiece in glass and concrete, all hard edges, set on a steep hill in the woods overlooking the Potomac.

  David shut and locked the gym door behind them. Bloomberg played on one TV, CNN on another. A third showed financial data streaming down over a black background.

  David crossed his arms. Gray had never seen him out of a suit and was surprised by his strength, the muscles of his arms standing out like steel cables.

  “Everything is set with Averose’s computers?”

  “Yes. No snags.”

  He and David had planned for every eventuality, even Averose’s escaping Widener’s house alive. They had all the leverage they needed on him, and his fleeing, his last desperate moves, only made him look guiltier.

  Gray didn’t think Averose would approach the police, not with all the evidence against him, and that wasn’t in Averose’s nature. But he and Blakely had sources inside law enforcement. They would hear if he made an approach. There were ways to get to him even if he went that route.

  “Where does he go next?” David asked.

  “He’ll try to find Alexandra Hart. That’s the only connection between him and us. She’s not at the apartment.”

  David scrolled on his phone. He turned it to face Gray and tapped the screen. A video played. It was security camera footage showing the interior of a luxury apartment.

  Gray watched as the woman who went by the name Alexandra Hart strode out of the bedroom toward the front door with a large purse over her shoulder. Once she’d been an actress, but now she worked for David Blakely as a kind of spy. She had a talent for gaining people’s trust.

  David paid her through one of his shell companies, part of a network of dark-money groups and political action committees and limited liability compa
nies that made up his political machine. He had put her up in that apartment.

  Gray looked up from the phone. “When was that?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Is she going to be a problem?”

  “Maybe. After the news breaks about what happened to Widener, she’ll know what she’s a part of. It all depends on how strong she is, how much pressure she can handle.”

  “Does she need to go away?”

  David considered it. “We’ll see. She comes and goes. She tried to call me. I’ll talk to her and get a feel for it. She’s too smart to go against us.”

  David’s phone buzzed. He held up his hand and stepped to the side to check a message.

  Blakely could make Alexandra disappear. He could make anything go away. That was the source of his power and the reason why his candidates always won. He was so much more than a fixer. He was a kingmaker. Because he kept their secrets. He could make the past vanish, or he could use it as a weapon to destroy his opponents. That was why he kept a woman like Alexandra on retainer. She was able to get close to anyone, become their best friend, their fantasy, whatever it took. David’s work wasn’t blackmail but its opposite: loyalty and protection.

  Gray was fascinated by it, studied it, wanted a piece of it for himself. He had once questioned how much money one man could possibly need, how many houses were enough. But that kind of wealth wasn’t about luxury; it was about power, like David had, the absolute power to do whatever you want, take whatever you want, free from consequence.

  He watched David at work, standing by a bench. Nick Averose was just another task to be handled by dawn, taken coolly, step by step.

  Blakely had his army of eight-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorneys, his fortresses built from nondisclosure agreements, decades of carefully collected secrets. He could pressure or buy anyone’s silence. He had his allies high in every media empire who could help him kill a story or turn one against an adversary.

  As a last resort he had Gray, the human delete key. Because some people won’t play the game. People like Malcolm Widener, who could never be brought to heel. Or Emma Blair, the woman who had started all of this, who had threatened to topple the empire David Blakely had built over the past twenty-five years.

  Gray pictured her as clearly as if she were in the room with them now. She probably stood five-five in her bare feet. One fifteen on the scale. But she had nearly broken his goddamn nose when he came for her.

  Emma Blair. Malcolm Widener. At times the threat alone would be enough to silence someone, and at times only the knife would do. Some refused to compromise. That made it hard to survive in this town.

  David slipped his phone into his pocket and turned back to Gray. “What’s next?” he asked. “I’ve got to get moving.”

  “Averose will do anything to find Alexandra Hart. We can use her.”

  “To flush him out?”

  Gray nodded. “As soon as you find out where she is, let me know. I’ll stay close, keep my eye on her. And if she sees anything, have her call me, send up a flare. But I have other ways to get to him. I’ll handle this.”

  “Whatever you do, we need it clean.”

  “It will be.”

  24

  Nick stood watch around the corner from the address Delia had given him, eyes out for white dogs and Alexandra Hart.

  He had already circled the apartment building twice. He scanned the windows and watched as a UPS deliveryman entered the lobby. Only one apartment on the third floor appeared to have someone at home, and it was on the far right, the end unit. Given the size of the building, he guessed the apartment Delia had given him, 304, was probably in the middle, where he saw only darkness and drawn blinds.

  Nick kept his head up, confident, as he climbed the stoop of the building and slipped through the door as the UPS guy left. He crossed the worn linoleum floors. It had once, probably half a century ago, been a high-end building. Now there was no doorman to question him, just the call box outside the main entrance.

  He took the elevator to the third floor and turned left. Hers was the second apartment down. He walked up to it and knocked, then knocked again, though he didn’t think anyone was inside. If she opened the door, he would start with questions. He felt his pulse quicken, tick by tick.

  No response. He didn’t know how much time he had. A last knock, and then he pulled his entry set from his pocket, drawing a snakelike W pick and a tension wrench. He raked the lock toward him, bouncing the tumblers, and it let go on the third scrape.

  He twisted it open with the wrench and stepped in.

  A combined living room and dining area stood straight ahead, and a hallway on the side led to what looked like a couple of bedrooms. Oversaturated travel photos—Morocco, Indonesia—covered the walls. He was looking for shots of her, to confirm this was the right address, the right woman. He was looking for mail, to get a name.

  A low throaty sound came from one of the rooms. A white cat slipped around the corner and twined between his ankles.

  Classic guard cat behavior. He had noticed white hairs on the hem of Alexandra’s dress and was relieved that she didn’t have a dog, raising hell and barking.

  “Who is she, huh?” he whispered, and went toward the open living area. The kitchen was a small alley. If the mail wasn’t piled beside the front door it would usually be on the table or counter. People rarely had their act together enough to get mail to a desk.

  He approached a two-seat dining table, bare except for an empty mug, with a faint lipstick stain on the tan ceramic. He touched the side, felt the last trace of warmth. A half hour, maybe?

  When he turned, he saw it: a letter torn open at one end, tossed in the corner of the counter next to the toaster oven.

  Clara Marzetti.

  Same address.

  It was from Comcast, a bill.

  “Clara Marzetti,” he said, and took in the room. He walked through the living area, scanning for any photos of the woman he knew as Alexandra Hart.

  Nothing. He went down the hall. The door to the first bedroom was halfway open. He memorized the angle out of habit, so he could replace it exactly as it was. On certain jobs, Nick would carry a small bag of dust to cover up his tracks after he left.

  The door’s hinges squealed as he pushed it. The room was furnished with cheap bookshelves and a couch. He looked at a mark in the carpet, a long depression. It might have been from the support of a foldout bed. The cushions on the couch were stuffed in at odd angles, replaced in a rush, and on the side table there was an envelope that someone had used to leave a note. The words were scribbled in red ink.

  Clara—

  Had to run. Thank you for everything.

  —Ali

  A few quarters and dimes lay on the side table. He knelt over the wastepaper bin and pulled out two crumpled receipts, both for payments with cash. He put them in his pocket, then stood still.

  The front door creaked open.

  25

  He stole to the left and pressed against the wall beside the light switch. That kept him out of view of anyone passing in the hall. The door to the room was still open.

  A woman’s shoes clicked along the hardwood floors, louder and closer with each step. The figure passed the door, and, looking over his shoulder, he saw her from the back: chestnut hair, tall and thin.

  That wasn’t Alexandra Hart. She crossed toward the other bedroom, then made a few kissing noises as she murmured something to the cat.

  Claws skittered across the hardwood, growing louder. The cat peered through the open door. He ducked back, and it raced toward him, entering the room and looking his way with a purr.

  “Patches!” she called.

  The woman he knew as Alexandra Hart must have been staying here as a guest. She’d used the name Ali on the note. So now he had simply broken into a bystander’s apartment. He wouldn’t confront her. She wasn’t the one who had wronged him, and he wasn’t about to scare an innocent woman or have her raise the alarm.

 
But if she came in, he would have a serious problem.

  The cat pressed against his ankles.

  Click click click. The footsteps were quieter now, muted by distance and a rug from the sound of it. She was in the other bedroom. He looked around the door frame—clear—then slipped into the hall and made for the living room. He was halfway across it, hoping to get to the front door, when he heard her coming back.

  She would see him in an instant. He cut right into the kitchen and heard a tapping sound, typing on an iPhone, just around the corner. She took another step into his field of view. He was looking right at her, though she was oblivious, staring at the screen.

  The muscles in his chest tightened.

  She walked away.

  He shot toward the door, then paused. The phone was sitting on top of a set of low shelves, plugged into a charging cable, the display still glowing. It sounded like she was near the bedrooms.

  He turned back and tapped the contacts button on the phone. He glanced down the hall and could see her shoulder through an open door. He scrolled through the names in her phone address book, looking for Alexandra. Only one entry matched—Ali Waldron—and Nick memorized the associated cell phone number.

  Footsteps coming toward him. He was in the open, nowhere to hide.

  “What’s that, girl?”

  She crouched over the cat near the closest bedroom, and Nick slipped out the front door. He went down the hallway, back to the elevator, that name seared in his mind. There was a good chance he had found out Alexandra’s real identity, but where was she?

  He stopped and waited for his pulse to come down. Then he turned, marched back to the apartment door, and knocked three times.

  26

  As Nick waited outside the door, he felt like he had a “guilty” sign hanging around his neck. But this was worth the risk. This woman might know where to find Alexandra or Ali or whatever name she would use next, and he wasn’t leaving any answers behind.

  There were a dozen pretexts, a dozen people he could impersonate. But as he thought them through, they all seemed too contrived, too unlikely.