Just Watch Me

by Jeff Lindsay

  Mom wasn’t in my crappy little room in Williamsburg. And she would never see it. She’d probably never see anything again. I was still on my knees scrubbing anyway. I hit every single inch of that floor with a good stiff brush and the strongest cleaner I could get. Just like I’d already done to the walls, the door, everything in the room. I finished up by the door so I could go out and dump the bucket in the alley. Then I put it, the brush, all my cleaning supplies into the dumpster and went back up to my room.

  I stood in the doorway for a minute, looking around the room. Except for one folding chair, the furniture was already gone. The costume rack was in storage over in Jersey City. All that was left was one suit. It was draped over a folding chair. The chair was pulled up beside the door so I could push it in front of a long mirror hung on the back of the door. I had cleaned it, but it didn’t help a lot. It came with the room, and it was just as worn as the rest of the place. There was a small suitcase and a black leather Polo briefcase on the floor beside the chair.

  I scanned carefully for anything I’d missed. Nothing. The place was clean. So clean even Mom would’ve been impressed. Every surface that might hold a fingerprint or a small smear of DNA had been scrubbed with carbolic acid and then industrial-strength cleaner. When I was done, there’d be no sign that I had ever been here. Except that the ratty little room would be cleaner than it had ever been before.

  When I was sure I hadn’t skipped anything, I stepped in, locked the door, and moved on to the next step. The last step. Because everything else was done. All the pieces were in play. It was all ready to go, the whole brilliant scheme, except for one thing:

  Me.

  I stripped, put my clothes in a garbage bag, and washed as completely as I could in the rusty little sink. I dried off and shaved in the cracked plastic mirror hanging above the sink on a nail. Then I scrubbed the sink and put the soap, towel, razor, everything into the same garbage bag and moved over to the big mirror.

  I sat in the chair to put on the suit and the black wingtips that went with it. But first I reached into the briefcase and pushed PLAY on my mp3 player. Tupac, “All Eyez on Me.” Then I opened the little suitcase, turned to the mirror, and went to work on Me.

  Every professional has rituals that go with going to work. I know; I’ve done a lot of different jobs, at least for a while. You know, as a cover for doing my real job. A pro does the same meaningless things each time, things that really don’t make sense or have anything to do with their job. They probably wouldn’t admit it, but they do it for luck. Because they can’t believe the job will come off if they don’t. So they do a few small superstitious things because they did it last time, and the time before. I do, too.

  The cleaning isn’t part of it. That’s just being careful. If I leave any clue behind, no matter how tiny, I’m leaving a way for somebody to get lucky and figure out who I am. It’s after I’ve cleaned up that the rituals start.

  The music is first. The same playlist every time. If the prep takes longer, the playlist repeats.

  When I’ve got the music going, I move to step two: the mirror. For a few minutes I just look at my face and listen to Tupac. When I have a perfect picture of who I am, I start to become somebody else.

  I’d already changed who I was a half dozen times setting this up. This time was for real. This time, it would have to be better, and it would have to last for a while. There was no way to know how long, so I had to make someone who would last. I had the tools. I’d done the research on this New Me, and I’d done the creative part, too. Filling in the blanks, like where I was from, my parents’ names, my high school, all that shit. And I’d gotten all the documents to prove it—driver’s license, passport, Social Security card, all of it. You might be surprised to learn how easy it is to get all that stuff. And if you’re willing to pay, you get documents so good that nobody could possibly know that’s not really you.

  I’d done all that. Now it was time for the final step.

  I can do makeup, prosthetics, all that. I’ve studied with the very best people I could find. There’s no point in learning from somebody who isn’t the best. And I didn’t mind paying top dollar for top talent. So I’m good at that kind of thing. But this time wasn’t about makeup. I was changing Me. Who Me actually is.

  The costume was first. As the music changed to Iron Maiden, “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” I started to get dressed. “Riley” would not normally wear a suit. This new person did, and putting it on forced me to leave Riley behind and let the new identity take over and guide my speech and movements.

  Any good actor will tell you that what you wear tells your audience a lot about who you are. It also tells you. With Monique’s help, I’d picked what I thought was the perfect suit. It was expensive, but not crazy-rich expensive. It was the best New Me could afford. I put it on slowly, watching how it hung on me. I moved my arms, my legs, my torso, and watched what happened when I did. I started to feel how somebody who wore this suit would move. It was different.

  Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” began to play. I moved in time to that for a few minutes, watching myself in the crappy mirror. When I got how I moved now, I draped the jacket over the back of the chair and picked up my tie. It was a great expression of who I was now; flamboyant but beautiful silk, hand-painted in imitation of a Gustav Klimt. I knotted it in a loose Windsor that showed a casual nonchalance mixed with superb taste. When it was tied, I reached up with my thumb and forefinger and pushed it slightly crooked. Not a lot; just enough so most women would want to reach over and straighten it.

  As I finished the tie, “Freddie Freeloader,” Miles Davis, started up. I sat in the chair and started on my hands.

  Everybody’s hands tell a story. Even the way you clip the nails is different depending on where you come from, what you do, what you think of yourself. Are they clean or dirty? Chewed or manicured? Square cut or round? I trimmed my nails neat but short. From my makeup kit I got a small bottle of blue stain. I worked it into the heel of each hand. Then I scrubbed at it until it was just barely visible. It looked like what a draftsman’s hands might show after hours of leaning on a drawing or plan as he worked.

  From the top tray of the little suitcase I pulled a signet ring. Nothing outrageous, a class ring from a pretty good prep school. Again—Monique’s suggestion. Her brother went there. I don’t think I would have thought of a class ring or known about this school. It’s not my world. It is hers, or it was before she moved into mine. I put the ring on the pinky of my left hand as Yo-Yo Ma came on, playing the Prelude to Bach Cello Suite #2 in D Minor.

  I finished my hands in just another minute and stood up. I looked in the mirror for the first two suites. I studied New Me. One tiny flaw, no matter how small it seemed, and the entire job could be torpedoed. So I looked hard. Everything seemed perfect—but seemed was not enough. It had to be perfect. Two more minutes of hard inspection. If there was any kind of flaw in my appearance, I couldn’t see it. And if I couldn’t, the odds were very good that no one else would, either. People see what you tell them to see. I was sure they’d see what I wanted them to this time.

  Okay. Time for the last ritual.

  I sat in the chair, opened the briefcase, and took out two photographs. They looked like they had been printed by a computer, and they had been. They were securely stored on several flash drives and on a cloud account so I could always access them. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, took a couple of slow, deep breaths. Then I opened my eyes and looked down at the first picture. It showed a young boy, nine or ten years old, and a man in his thirties. They were playing catch in a well-kept yard. Behind them, down a hill, you could see green, rolling countryside.

  Off to one side, just visible in the photo, was a large house. Victorian architecture, two stories, with a couple of cupolas and a front porch, with a strip of gingerbread trim running above it. A 1992 Cadillac Eldorado sat in the driveway.

  The
music changed to Barbra Streisand singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I shuffled up the second picture. It showed a woman of around forty. Her face was careworn, and her hair was a bit wild, but she was smiling. I sat and looked at the picture until I could hear her voice again. “We are living the life,” she would say. And I would smile back and say, “We sure are.”

  The music switched one last time: Alice Cooper, “Vengeance Is Mine.” I felt my breathing slow, and I kept all my focus on the picture.

  The song ended. The sudden silence was a little bit of a shock, like waking up too quickly. I took a deep breath and stood up. One final scrub of the area, getting any tiny traces I might have left. Then I looked in the mirror one last time. You maybe couldn’t name anything specific, but the face was subtly different. The way I held my head, the movement of my eyes, all changed.

  Riley Wolfe was gone.

  I smiled. It was a good smile: worldly, amused, guardedly friendly, and not at all like Riley Wolfe. “Baa,” I said. I looked at the smiling reflection for a moment. Then I switched off the smile, spun away from the mirror, and headed out the door.

  Showtime.

  CHAPTER

  9

  The ballroom of the midtown hotel was crowded, packed with Manhattan’s wealthiest, most socially exclusive set. They wore fabulous clothing and immorally expensive jewelry, displayed glittering wit, and walked around smug with the knowledge that they could painlessly write huge checks to whatever the noble cause was this evening. It was why they were here, of course: to write checks. Most of them could not have said what the noble cause was tonight—in fact, it was a foundation for fostering war orphans—but they came anyway. That was partly because they believed they should write those checks, some from desire to do good and some because their accountants suggested it. They also came because everyone else in this dazzling stratum of society would be there, and they knew from experience that the surest way to get yourself talked about was to be absent from an event when the other check-writers gathered. Because in spite of their wealth—or perhaps because of it—very few of them would overlook a chance to snipe from behind. The shots could be lethal—and, occasionally, even true.

  From the outside, though, it was a world of glamour and privilege. Any ordinary person looking into the room would have been struck dumb with longing to be included in such a magnificent company, and at the same time crushed by the knowledge that it could never be, for these people were clearly the top of the food chain, the glitterati, the richest and most accomplished people in the greatest city in the world.

  While most normal human beings would have been thrilled to be in such company, would have traded ten years of their life to belong, to be welcomed into this group, on this bright and wonderful evening, Katrina Eberhardt Hobson was not normal, and she was definitely not thrilled. She felt no elation at having a well-earned hereditary place among these fabulous people. In fact, she had reached a point where she hoped they would all spontaneously combust so she could go home and take off the expensive heels that were pinching her feet and change into equally expensive slippers. She would gladly have traded ten years of her life to be almost anywhere else. Because Katrina was bored. Hugely, monstrously, totally, and completely bored. So bored that her head was pounding, and her hands ached from being clenched; so bored her mouth hurt from constant fake smiles, her teeth ached from grinding, and her throat hurt from stifling screams of frustrated, soul-crushing tedium she had endured for over two hours now.

  She’d had four glasses of a truly appalling pinot grigio, and that hadn’t helped the headache, and she’d even spent twenty terrible minutes listening to Samantha Perkins, who was the most god-awful gossip in New York and always knew the salacious details of every sordid affair, and the only result was that Katrina was a tiny bit drunk, increasingly homicidal, and now aware that the graybeard CEO of a major bank was having an affair with a much younger foreign investor—a male investor. Katrina longed with all her soul to run from the ballroom, flee for her sanity, her very life—but she could not. Her husband, Michael, was on the board of directors of this foundation, and because he was in Zurich on business, it was Katrina’s duty to attend and represent him.

  It was not the first time. Michael was often away on business. And when he was home, she rarely saw him, either. Of course, he was a busy man, and an important one. But when Katrina had married him, she’d been led to expect a little more, and she couldn’t help but feel a kind of sour disappointment with her marriage every now and then. And she did resent covering for him like this, just a little bit. But she had been raised in an old-money family who taught her that social responsibility was part of the deal. On top of all that, Michael did so much charity work, and nearly all of it for kids, so she couldn’t really justify feeling any resentment at all toward him. For the most part, she kept the fake smile in place and carried on.

  “Noblesse oblige,” she whispered to herself. Just a reminder that she had to keep up appearances, no matter how desperately she wanted to throw her painful shoes at somebody and run from the room.

  She thought about getting another glass of wine, decided it was a bad idea, and twitched her painful false smile back into place. Soon it would be time for the dreadful meal—a warm and limp salad, choice of unthinkable fish or inedible beef or vegan, whatever that would turn out to be. And then a series of soul-crushingly earnest speeches crafted to make the checks a little bigger. Katrina knew the whole program by heart. She had grown up wealthy and married even more money, and in her lifetime, she had attended hundreds of events just like this one—thousands of them—and they never varied, except for a few dull details. Tonight was no different.

  —except for one small thing. Tonight there was actually a brief moment of interest in the program, one little thing that kept her in the ballroom when her entire being was screaming to be back in her big old house: the silent auction. Oh, there had certainly been silent auctions before. Most of the charity events had them, and Katrina had quite often bid on something, just because that, too, was part of her job. But tonight . . . Tonight some lunatic had donated an item that made Katrina quiver, and even drool with lust. Tonight, some incredibly lucky soul would bid on, and win, a perfectly gorgeous Hans Hofmann painting.

  And Katrina was going to be that lucky soul even if she had to murder everyone else in the room.

  The painting was a fantastic splash of primary colors, a swirl of rigid shapes and ragged edges, titled Ad Astra, and Katrina wanted it on her wall at home more than she wanted to breathe. So she would stand here with her fake smile and her aching head and her throbbing feet. She would endure Samantha’s dreadful leering stories and the nauseating dinner and the painful speeches. And as her just reward for suffering through all this terrible inhuman suffering, she would damn well go home with Ad Astra.

  Finally, after four more conversations she couldn’t remember two minutes later, with people who were even less memorable, she heard a large silver bell ring three times, the PA crackled, and the announcement she’d been waiting for came.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the silent auction is now open for bids.” There was a bit more, a reminder to be generous and so on, but Katrina didn’t hear it. She was already moving at full speed across the room to the table that held the clipboard with the bid sheet for Ad Astra. Behind the table, the painting was displayed on an easel. An armed security guard stood to one side—this painting was not the only valuable item on display.

  In spite of her haste, Katrina was third in line, and she waited impatiently as the first two bidders dithered, nibbled at the pencil, looked at their bank balances on their smartphones, and finally, with horrid, deliberate sloth, slowly wrote down their bids. When they had finally finished, Katrina lunged for the clipboard and quickly read the first two bids—both insultingly low for such a treasure, in her opinion, both well under seven figures. Katrina smiled. If this was an example of what the other bids would
be, the Hans Hofmann was as good as hers. She reached for the pencil where it lay on the table, frowning as she considered her bidding strategy. Huge bid now to frighten away the competition? Or something small and then come back later, at the last minute, to enter the final winning bid?

  But before she could decide, a soft and confidently amused voice murmured from just behind her, almost in her ear, “It’s a fake, you know.”

  Katrina jumped. She’d been concentrating so completely that she hadn’t heard or sensed anyone moving that close. Holding the clipboard like a shield, she spun around.

  A man stood there with a cheerful, almost mocking smile. A good-looking man, in an understated way. He had a gleaming shaved head and a neat beard, and he wore a suit that Katrina was quite sure came from a Savile Row tailor. On an impulse she didn’t understand, she reached out and touched the lapel of his suit. “Richard James?” she blurted.

  The man lifted an eyebrow in surprise, then said, “Ah. The suit? I thought you meant me. No, actually, it’s from Henry Poole, just a few doors down Savile Row.”

  Katrina frowned. “You don’t have an accent.”

  The man laughed, a very pleasant sound, Katrina thought. “It’s a relief to hear that. I’ve been told for the last few years that I did have an accent—a bloody Yank accent. I’m just back from a stint in London.”

  Katrina found herself liking this man, and as she realized that, she remembered what had started their conversation. “Why do you say this painting is a fake? It certainly looks like a Hans Hofmann to me—an absolutely gorgeous Hans Hofmann.”

  He nodded. “You have a good eye—but it’s a very good fake,” he said.