INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  “Nothing. He will not be staying long.”

  Henri nodded and made a little bow. As he returned to the bar, the gang of young men, who had been watching them, began to shout again. Henri, now red-faced and fuming, threatened to throw them into the street. “Shut up!” He snatched up their money, slammed down a bottle, and told them to serve themselves.

  “Solange!” Henri shouted. The waitress appeared to whistles and wolf calls from the bar. “Get out!” Henri shouted. “Out!” Howling with laughter, the boys grabbed their bottle and in a slow, dramatic pantomime slouched through door, crying out in mock horror at the icy blast. Solange flung the bar rag at them. “Shut the damn door!”

  Laughing, Didier motioned for Arnaud to follow him.

  He opened a door behind the bar that led to a flight of stairs. Arnaud followed him. Up they went to a second floor hall. There were doors to rooms on either side of the passage and one at the end. That one, Arnaud thought, that will be Didier’s room.

  Arnaud could not conceal his surprise. The room at the end of the hall was warm and inviting. Thick carpets on the floor, a feather bed, and lamps with painted globes that spread a golden radiance. Spare, but rich, so rich. The room smelled of violets. The luxury nearly caused him to weep. A knock at the door distracted him.

  “Come,” Didier called. The door opened and Solange entered bearing a covered tray. The savory aroma of rabbit stew and freshly baked bread invaded Arnaud’s nostrils. His mouth began to water. He wiped saliva from his lips with his sleeve. The urge possessed him to snatch the crock that held the stew and flee with it. Surely, Didier and the girl could hear the racket his stomach was making. Solange set the tray on a table in an alcove. She went back into the hall and returned with another tray that held two glasses, slotted spoons, a dish of sugar, and a pitcher of water.

  “Merci, Solange,” Didier said.

  As she turned to leave she winked at Didier.

  “Later,” he said. “When I am ready to sleep.”

  Solange pulled a face then laughed. “Didier never sleeps.”

  To Arnaud, her laughter sounded like tinkling bells. She passed close to him. He could smell her sweat, her odor. She poked her tongue out at him and shut the door in his face. Solange smelled of violets.

  Behind him Didier laughed. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  Arnaud ignored him. “Do you live in this place?”

  “When it suits me.”

  Didier had begun to perspire. He took a towel from the wash stand and mopped his forehead and the back of his neck, before dropping into a chair at the table. “L’Émèraude.” He stared at Arnaud with feverish eyes.

  Arnaud would not have to convince Didier that they must finish the bottle. More likely he’d have to wrestle the bastard for even a drop. Arnaud smiled to himself. The witch had not said how Didier would die, but he hoped it would be painful and frightening. More than anything he wanted to see the terror in Didier’s eyes when he told him he was a dead man. When Didier was deep in the grip of the absinthe, Arnaud would beat him. He would beat him hard and long. He would make him pay for every word he had stolen.

  Didier motioned for Arnaud to sit at the table. Arnaud sat. Impatient for him to prepare the absinthe, Didier shoved the crock of stew aside.

  “I’m hungry,” Arnaud said. He sat down and pulled the crock to him.

  “Not now!”

  “Now,” Arnaud said. He set the bottle of Émèraude on the table. He shook a finger at Didier. “Do not touch it.” Arnaud ate greedily, noisily. The thick gravy and tender shreds of meat, the fresh, firm vegetables filled him with emotion. He soaked up more of the gravy with buttered bread he had no doubt had been baked that morning.

  Didier, murmuring to himself, appeared entranced by the absinthe’s luminescence. His wonder-filled eyes met Arnaud’s. “It glows as the legends say.”

  Arnaud nodded. He set two shallow glasses between them. He cracked the seal on the bottle and removed the cork. Then, placing two fingers first against the side of one glass then the other, he poured the absinthe. “Just so.”

  “You are drinking, too?” Didier asked. “You said the Émèraude was a gift for me.”

  “Do not be greedy, Monsieur. There is enough absinthe in this bottle for seven drinks. I will have three and you will have four.”

  Next he placed a slotted spoon atop each glass. Didier lifted two lumps of sugar from the bowl. Arnaud pushed Didier’s hand away. “Non!” He pulled the bag of sugar skulls from his pocket. He held one up so Didier could see then placed a skull in each spoon.

  Didier lifted his sugar skull and examined it. “What is this?”

  Arnaud smiled. “The end of us.”

  Didier chuckled. “From that witch of yours, I suppose.”

  Arnaud, grinning now, nodded.

  Didier put the sugar skull back in the spoon. Arnaud lifted the pitcher of water and began to pour it, one drop at a time, over the skull.

  “You torture me.”

  Arnaud moved from one glass to the other, pouring drop by drop. “Look.”

  Didier sucked in his breath. “The color does not change! The green is even brighter.”

  “That is why,” said Arnaud, “it is called L’Émèraude. Now, let us see if the rest of the legend is true.”

  He handed the glass to Didier. Didier took the glass and lifted it to his lips.

  “Wait! We must have a toast.”

  Didier looked perplexed. “A toast?”

  “To celebrate the Émèraude and, of course, your words.”

  Didier tutted. “I will celebrate the Émèraude; the rest is tempting fate.”

  “As you wish.” Arnaud raised his glass, Didier raised his. “To the Émèraude and la petite mort.”

  The absinthe felt hot on Arnaud’s tongue. In fact, it burned. Arnaud swallowed. The absinthe slid down his throat leaving a trail of fire in its wake.

  Didier waved a hand in front of his open mouth. “What in God’s name have you done?” Didier started to say more, but ... Didier’s eyes turned a brilliant green. Arnaud rocked back in his chair. Didier chortled and pointed at Arnaud.

  “Your eyes! Look in the mirror!”

  Arnaud rose slowly. He peered into the mirror above the bureau. He started at the sight. His eyes, too, shone a brilliant green.

  The laughter caused Arnaud’s skin to tingle as if a bolt of lightning had electrified the air and caused all the hairs on his body to vibrate. He spun around. The witch sat in Didier’s seat. From beneath dark, arched brows she regarded him with eyes as pale green as the absinthe should have been. A petite emerald green hat of crushed satin with a green-and-yellow-feathered parakeet clinging to it perched atop her mass of teased white blonde hair. A green gloved hand clutched a fur-trimmed gold lamé wrap that had fallen away from her shoulder. Her skin was flawless and pale as wax. She might have escaped from the Grévin.

  Arnaud’s eyes darted around the small room. “Where is Didier?”

  A slight smiled parted her lips. Her teeth were small, sharp. Had they been so when he first met her? He couldn’t be sure. She had not smiled then and he wished she would not now.

  “You would murder the genius Didier?” The sound of her voice made Arnaud nauseous.

  “He is no genius. He is a thief.”

  “A thief? What has he stolen?” She lifted Didier’s glass and swallowed the last mouthful of absinthe. She pushed the glass at Arnaud. “More.”

  “No more. It is for Didier, as you well know.” Arnaud stopped himself. He had been so astonished by her appearance and the intensity of her presence that it had not occurred to him that this was still Didier with whom he spoke; that the Émèraude was the cause of this strange apparition. He must be careful. Didier was trying to trick him.

  “You have not answered my question.”

  “My book.”

  Her forehead creased. “What book?”

  Arnaud stroked the bottle. “L’Empire de la Mort.”

  She thre
w back her head and laughed. The sound was like shattering glass to Arnaud’s ears. When her laughter ceased, she fixed him with a fierce stare. “You claim to have written this masterpiece?”

  Arnaud drew himself up and leaned across the table. She waved him away as if he were an annoying fly.

  “I do not claim. I wrote it!”

  “Words written by a genius, not a madman.”

  Arnaud bristled. He had to remind himself again that this creature was Didier. That he was seeing Didier through the glamour of the Émèraude. Absinthe had shown him things before, but not like this ... “You stole them from me.”

  “I stole nothing.”

  Arnaud lunged across the table. He grasped a fistful of her hair; straw that felt like silk in his hands. Again she laughed at him. Her sharp little teeth gleamed. She bit him. Hard. Her teeth sunk into the flesh below his thumb. Arnaud shrieked and shook her off, bits of his skin caught in her teeth. He knocked his chair to the floor as he fled the table. The derision in her laughter scalded him as if she had flung a pot of boiling water in his face.

  Arnaud lay on the bed nursing his hand. An armoire and a section of wall blocked his view of the table. Thank God, she had not followed him. He examined the bite. It still bled. And the pain. He was near the door. He should leave. But what of his book? His revenge? How had this happened? He started to roll off the bed. No! He could not leave the Émèraude.

  There was no question that Didier would drink the entire bottle. But he might not use the poisoned sugar. The Émèraude was more powerful than he remembered when the witch had given him a taste. Didier might succumb before he finished. Arnaud licked his lips. She said he could have three glasses and remain unharmed. The fourth glass would carry the fatal dose. The bottle held seven glasses. He’d had one glass and look what had happened. He looked around the room. There was nothing there that should not be there. Despite the initial euphoria and the following hallucination, his mind was clear. He should go. He must go. He heard the clink of metal on glass. Didier was preparing more absinthe. He should go. He heard the scrape of the stopper being pulled from the Émèraude. Arnaud stood up. He peered around the edge of the wall.

  “Ah, there you are. I thought you’d run away.”

  Arnaud stood frozen in place. The creature that spoke to him now was neither Didier nor the witch. The man was skeletal. Skin stretched taut over bone. Hair of no particular color, a forgettable beige, long and ragged. He, too, had wax-like skin, paler even than the woman. His fingernails were stained. But it was his eyes that kept Arnaud pressed against the wall. One eye was the same iridescent green as the Émèraude; the other pure white, the pupil the size of a pinprick. For the first time it occurred to Arnaud that what he was seeing was real and not an absinthe-fueled hallucination. That somehow Didier had been spirited away by these devils.

  The white eye unnerved him, but he could not move. The gaunt man smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth. He held up a glass of the glowing Émèraude. Arnaud glanced at the bowl of sugar skulls; three remained. The gaunt man tilted the glass gently from side to side. Something within the absinthe seemed to gather itself into a form of sorts, then dispersed into a cloud of gold within the green.

  “I don’t like to drink alone.”

  Every nerve urged Arnaud to flee. The white eye blinked slowly. Arnaud stepped away from the wall, the door. He approached the table cautiously. He hovered just out of reach of the glass. Through a slender gap in the heavy velvet curtains shone the lights of the dance hall across the street. The gaunt man pulled the velvet curtains away from the window just enough that Arnaud could peer down at a corner of the street. Illuminated by a streetlight, a figure passed and was gone. Don’t be a fool, Arnaud told himself, that is still Paris out there, still Montmartre. I am still Arnaud.

  “Sit down.” The gaunt man tipped the glass at Arnaud’s chair, which, Arnaud saw, he had righted. “I don’t bite.” Pleased with his little joke, he laughed, a girl’s high-pitched giggle. He set the absinthe at Arnaud’s place. Cautiously, Arnaud slid into the chair.

  Arnaud held the glass in both hands, held it beneath his nose. Wormwood, anise, fennel. All familiar. He smelled it again. A memory. How could he smell a memory? Of what? Arnaud touched the surface of the liquid with his tongue. It burned. Glimpses of the memory teased him.

  “What have you done with Didier?”

  “You are here to murder him, yes?”

  Arnaud set his glass down. He looked warily at the gaunt man.

  “How do you know that?” he asked before he could stop himself. This was Didier he was talking to.

  “If you plan to poison him with this elixir, he will die a happy man.” The gaunt man smiled. The white eye held Arnaud captive. “Is this what you want?”

  “No.”

  “Do you not want him to suffer for what he has done to you?”

  Arnaud nodded.

  “He has condemned you to obscurity, my friend. Your name will never be known. Never be spoken. If you are remembered at all, it will be as a traitor to your master. A pretender whose arrogance blotted out his reason, who was so great a fool he thought he could steal fire from a god.”

  Arnaud was on his feet in an instant. He seized the bottle of Émèraude, ready to crush the gaunt man’s head. It was all he could do to return it to the table.

  The gaunt man smiled. If a corpse could grimace. “Another glass?” Arnaud looked away. He poured the absinthe.

  “If you want him to suffer, cut off his fingers.” The gaunt man laid a butcher’s cleaver on the table between them. The edge of the blade shone. There was no mistaking its sharpness. “If he has no fingers, he cannot write.”

  Arnaud looked into the white eye. For a split second the gaunt man was gone and Didier sat there grinning at him. Arnaud seized the cleaver with one hand and Didier’s wrist with the other. He brought the knife down hard on Didier’s hand. He severed four fingers, the little finger hung by a shred of skin. Blood everywhere. And then the pain. Arnaud screamed. It was his hand from which the fingers were cut. His hand that bled like a river on the damask tablecloth. He ripped the cloth from the table. The tray and Émèraude crashed to the floor. Arnaud wadded the cloth around his hand. The pain was excruciating. He retrieved the absinthe and one-handed removed the stopper, upended the bottle, and poured the liquor down his throat. Immediately, the pain disappeared. It was then that he realized the gaunt man had gone. He let the Émèraude fall, and watched as the last of the absinthe trickled out. Like a genie escaping its bottle, a green mist formed and hovered over him. Arnaud gasped. The undulating cloud drew itself over him like a quilt, warming him, numbing him. He could not escape it now, nor did he want to.

  The sun rose bright above the fields, bathing all of Paris in an early spring light. He stood over the coffin of his friend, who had more than once declared that when he died he wanted no priest mumbling over him. So the job had fallen to Rene. “Friends,” he said, to the crowd that huddled around the grave in the chill air. “I beg you to remember Arnaud Didier as the genius he was, and not the madman he became.”

  SLAY IT FORWARD

  BY ADRIAN LUDENS

  Next Week

  The professional assassin known as By the Books crouches with his gloved finger on the trigger. A trickle of perspiration tickles the small of his back, but he ignores any urge to move or react. He’s waiting for his target to leave her townhouse and step out onto the sidewalk. When the woman makes her appearance, just as she’s done at this time every day this week, he squeezes the trigger. Through the scope he sees what looks like a poppy blossom on her kneecap. She staggers and collapses. People instinctively clear away from her. They know who she is, what she has done. Already they realize what’s happening.

  The woman turns and begins to crawl—painfully, he hopes—up the steps toward her townhouse. He gives her time, allows her a glimmer of hope. Then he centers the crosshairs on the back of her rotten melon head. He clears his mind of past jobs. Forgets all
the other lives he’s claimed. The slate is wiped clean. By the Books conjures up a single image: a baby.

  He’s never met this innocent. But he knows its story. This baby’s drunken mother put the baby in her oven and cooked her like one would a roast turkey, only with less care and preparation. This woman, according to prosecutors, wanted to get back at her estranged husband for saying he would take her to court for custody of their child. Her defense in the courtroom came down to blackout drunkenness. She had no recollection of the events of that evening. Reasonable doubt, her attorney said. Someone else could have broken in to her townhouse and done the deed. This woman’s attorney told the jury there was no indisputable proof, and certainly no mother would do that to her child. His client went free just in time for happy hour.

  This same woman now reaches for her doorknob.

  The passersby have mostly stopped, but no one steps forward to help. A faint breeze carries the tantalizing odor of curried beef to his nostrils. By the Books decides he’ll have Indian for dinner at the same moment he squeezes the trigger again. The woman who cooked her baby collapses in a puddle of her own tainted brain matter. Her shooter sees fragments of bone, blood, and hair slide down her still-closed door. He hears fragments of scattered applause as he disassembles his charcoal-colored tool of justice.

  He knows the police and paramedics won’t break any records with their arrival time. This movement that he is a part of has spread like wildfire. By the Books will be at least three miles away by the time the first paramedic kneels at the dead woman’s side. A police officer will ask questions, seek witnesses. No one will speak.

  By the Books has received payment for more hits than he’d care to remember, but he won’t see a penny for this job. It’s a freebie, a service in the interest of the public. Bless the Idea Man, By the Books thinks.

  Four Weeks Ago

  “You look like James Garner. Anybody ever tell you that?” The Wild Card mixes himself another whiskey sour and flops back down in his hardwood deck chair.