Kill Me

by Stephen White

  She wasn’t amused. “Maybe my assessment of the ratio of penis to brains in your case needs some adjusting.”

  “I like you, Lizzie.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Now there’s a question,” she said.

  I waited fifteen seconds for a better answer than I’d gotten the last time. She wasn’t about to provide one.

  “You like me, too, don’t you?” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  I waited some more. She didn’t bite. I don’t know how my therapist did it. How he always waited for the silence to end.

  “Are you with them right now?” I asked her, suspecting something.

  “With whom?”

  “With their team? Are you still with them? Or have you gone out on your own? Have you quit?”

  She ignored my questions. “That little space in the closet in my apartment? Where you hid? Funny story. It was originally built as a combination jewelry vault/safe room for a woman from Paris who owned my apartment in the early nineties. She had a vision of America as a very dangerous place, and wanted a nook where she could hide if someone invaded her home. When she sold the place and moved back to France, a couple moved in and the man had all the cameras installed. He was a Venezuelan diplomat at the UN, and he was a dedicated voyeur who was into watching his wife with other men. He’d go back into that little room and watch his wife with men that she’d picked up and brought home. They didn’t last too long as a couple, apparently. She got the apartment in the divorce and told me all about it after she sold it to me. I invited her back to the apartment with me and she showed me the room, all the electronic toys. She’d left all the equipment in place. I’ve updated some of it.”

  The story Lizzie was telling was interesting—I had to give her that—but I wasn’t about to be distracted by it. “Do they know you’re sick?”

  She wasn’t knocked off balance at all by my change of focus. “My colleagues? Yes, of course.”

  “Do they know you’ve reached a threshold event?”

  I counted to ten before she answered me.

  “No.”

  “And you don’t want them to?”

  “I didn’t call to talk about me.”

  “Do they know where you are right now?”

  “I’m not required to check in with them. It’s not that kind of an organization. I have responsibilities. I’m expected to fulfill them, that’s all. My free time is my free time.”

  She didn’t know that I knew about the midnight movers who’d carried boxes and suitcases from her flat. Or maybe she did. The newsstand man had probably told her.

  “I assume that you’re not permitted to make social calls to clients,” I said. “There have to be rules.”

  “Of course there are rules. But you may assume what you would like.”

  “Is this a social call?” I asked.

  “Next,” she said. “Move on.”

  “You’re a physician. That’s your job with … them?”

  “Yes. Among other things, I analyze end-of-life thresholds. It takes someone with a medical background, obviously. We deal with lots of technical information. Labs. Scans. Pathology reports. Doctor-speak.”

  “Do you provide end-of-life services, too?”

  “Next question.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Your specialty?”

  “What?”

  She was wary that I was asking what form of life-taking was her specialty.

  “Your medical specialty?” I said, clarifying.

  “Oncology at first. But it wasn’t right for me. I burnt out after a few years, did another residency, became a neurologist.”

  “Lot of irony there. Hippocratic irony. And burning-out-on-oncology-and-then-getting-breast-cancer irony.”

  “Hippocratic irony? You think I’m doing harm by what I do? That’s an interesting perspective from one of our … clients.”

  She had me there. “Maybe,” I mumbled. “But considering your life now? Yeah, I see irony.”

  “Life is full of irony.”

  “You don’t practice anymore?”

  “No. In a strange way, I feel like I do more good now. This seems like a better job for me. A better fit.”

  I softened my voice. I wanted her closer so I did what came naturally for me. I started flirting. “But you’re not just a doc; you also frisk people in Town Cars.”

  “Only the cute ones.”

  “And you take clients out for fine lunches at Papaya King.”

  “Only the really cute ones.”

  I did like her. God, I liked her.

  “Tell me something. Do they know where you are right now? Did those two guys show up at your place looking for you, or looking for me?”

  “Two different questions.”

  “Answer either one.”

  “I do my job.”

  “That’s not an answer to either of them.”

  “Don’t be so picky,” she said.

  “Okay, tell me this: Would they hurt Adam? Or my girls?” I said.

  “What? No! Absolutely not.”

  She sounded shocked at the question. I felt a wave of relief that she sounded shocked.

  “You’re sure? Not for leverage? Not to be punitive? I crossed some line by tracking you down. You made that pretty clear when we were talking on the sidewalk outside of your building.”

  “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you did it. Found my home. I’m pretty careful.”

  “I’m pretty resourceful. Tell me again: They wouldn’t do anything to my family?”

  “Hurting clients’ families? We’d be out of business in a heartbeat. You’re much too savvy not to see that. That’s not how it works.”

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”

  “I do find it interesting that you didn’t mention Thea on your list of family concerns.”

  I had. Thea was one of “the girls.” But I didn’t want to go there. “I’ll settle for the ‘no.’ Thank you.”

  Lizzie pushed me. “Thea? Your wife? Remember her?”

  I still didn’t want to go there with her. Thea and the kids were mine. All mine. They had changed my life. I changed the subject. “How does it work? At the end?”

  Without a moment’s deliberation, she said, “Once the end is in sight, you shouldn’t be buying any green bananas.”

  She’d made me laugh. I didn’t think it was possible right then.

  “That’s not what I meant. When the time comes, how do they—or you—do it?”

  She grew quiet for a long moment. I could sense the pounding in my heart as I waited for her reply.

  She said, “They’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt you once. They’ll hurt you well. One moment you’ll be sick, and alive. The next moment you’ll be dead. Any problems you have will go away. Any problems you’ve caused us will go away.”

  The words weren’t surprising but hearing them spoken aloud was stunning.

  “Why are you helping me?” I asked again. “Today? Why?”

  “Who says I’m helping you?”

  “You helped me earlier. I want to know why.”

  “I helped you?”

  What? “Are you saying you weren’t helping me when I was in your apartment? In that closet?”

  She didn’t reply.

  The doorbell rang in my friend’s flat.

  FIFTY

  I’d never heard the sound before. I thought it was the doorbell; it was definitely a doorbell-like sound—an intrusive, electronic, metallic ding-ding-dong . My pulse jumped. I felt the raw horsepower that comes from a sharp spasm pumping adrenaline into my blood.

  “Someone’s at the door,” I said. I doubt I managed to keep the panic out of my voice.

  “You expecting someone?” I initially thought she was buying into my alarm. When she added, “Room service, perhaps?” I knew she wasn’t. In addition to the subtle mockery, there was a message in her tone: She was telling me that she kne
w about the white-gloved guy at the Four Seasons.

  And that she did think I was in a hotel.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  “I’ll hold on. Go check and see who it is. Get rid of them.”

  “This isn’t a setup? It’s not those two boys from your apartment?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of. I certainly didn’t send them.” She paused and pondered. “No, I’m sure it’s not them. They wouldn’t use the bell. They’d pick the lock, or knock down the door, depending on their mood.”

  That made perfect sense. The realization that those two wouldn’t use the bell calmed me. If they were in Boulder to pay me a visit, they wouldn’t knock. If they were looking for me, odds were that I would never hear them coming. I’d awaken to find one of them pinning my arms to the bed, the other one pressing a gloved hand over my mouth.

  “Go see who it is. Tell them to go away,” Lizzie said. “You and I aren’t done talking.”

  Phone still at my ear, I walked from the bedroom to the front door and gazed out the peephole into the hallway. A girl, maybe ten years old, maybe twelve, stood staring at the door with an odd smile on her face. I looked left and right as far as the peephole would allow; the hallway around her was empty.

  Girl Scout cookies? What time of year do they do that? Isn’t nine o’clock a little late for cookie sales?

  I cracked the door about six inches and leaned my head toward the opening so I could camouflage my nakedness. The phone was still at my ear. I opened my mouth to say, “Can I help you?” but before I’d uttered a sound, the little girl took one quick glance up at my face, giggled, and skipped toward the stairs twenty feet away. I watched her turn the corner and disappear down the staircase.

  “That’s exactly how it will happen,” Lizzie said into my ear, her voice suddenly alive with the provocative timbre of a storyteller. “Just like that. You’ll open the door—literally or figuratively—just a tiny bit. Your guard will be down, just a smidge, and then …”

  She appeared at the top of the stairs where the girl had vanished seconds before. Without pausing, she turned down the hall toward me. She was winded—from exertion or anticipation, I didn’t know—her chest visibly rising with each breath. I could hear the crackle of each exhale through the telephone speaker at my ear.

  A soft, deep-purple skirt, made of something like Ultrasuede, hugged her hips and followed the contours of the firm muscles on the front of her thighs. A pale gray turtleneck—I was guessing cashmere—fit her upper body like a second skin. Her nipples were erect and stood out, at least to me, like beacons in an ocean mist.

  She was pale. Oh so pale, the pallor of her skin only a bare hue away from the tint of her sweater.

  “… Something you don’t expect. Someone you don’t expect,” she went on, continuing to walk slowly toward me, one hand by her side, empty. The other hand held a phone to her ear. “Someone who doesn’t threaten, who raises no alarm, or maybe—maybe—just a little … alarm.”

  I allowed my left hand, the one cradling the phone, to descend from its perch by my face.

  She mirrored me, dropping her phone to her side, too.

  “But the alarm will arrive too late, or you won’t recognize it until it is too late,” she said, staring directly into my eyes. Freezing me. “Too late. The awareness of your imminent passing will be a fleeting thought, though. You won’t suffer the torment of any prolonged fear. You won’t anticipate your near death for long enough to inspire any despair. That part is a gift. That … is our parting gift.”

  Parting gift? She made my murder sound like the consolation prize on a game show.

  “Are you here to kill me?” I asked her. The words tasted funny—odd funny, not humorous—as I spit them from my lips.

  She laughed. “Hardly.” She was standing in front of me by then. She leaned her head into the gap in the doorway, and she raised herself on her toes, and kissed me on my lips. She lingered there for a second, long enough for me to know that the kiss wasn’t a mere greeting. Once our lips were separated by a centimeter or so, she said, “If I was here to kill you, you would already be dead.”

  She placed a boot against the door and pushed it open. I watched as her eyes tracked a line from my knees back up to my face. She grinned. “I now have a more accurate way to calculate that ratio.”

  The ratio?

  “Penis to brain?” I said.

  “That one,” she admitted. “You going to invite me inside, or what?”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Lizzie was sitting on the sofa in the front room of the apartment. I was a foot away from her. In order to disguise my ratio from further view, I was wearing a robe I’d found in the closet. We both had our feet up on my friend’s coffee table.

  Lizzie obviously knew all about my Boulder subterfuge.

  “So you know about Dr. Gregory, too?” I asked her.

  The corners of her mouth turned up in response to my question. “Of course. The guy keeps crappy notes, by the way. Hardly anything in them. If I’d done that when I was practicing …” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Hope you’re not paying him too much.”

  I wondered if she was teasing me. I thought she was. Something told me she knew exactly how much I was paying my shrink. “Have you spoken with him? Has anyone from your … firm?”

  She found that question amusing, too. She shook her head. “When the time comes, maybe. But no, not yet.”

  “He’s a funny guy. Ethical, maybe to a fault. I don’t think he’ll talk to you. He’s been in some strange legal situations before.” I knew all that because I’d Googled him before I made the first call to Boulder to set up that initial session. For a small-town shrink he’d crossed paths with a lot of odd characters, and found himself in some precarious places that had left his name in the public record.

  One thing I liked about him? He’d absorbed some significant penalties for doing what he thought was right.

  She shrugged. “He’s a father, right? He has a little girl?”

  “I don’t know about that. He’s never said anything about his family. I haven’t looked into that part of his background.”

  She was surprised to hear me admit that. “Well, we have, and he is,” she said. “A father. He’s married to a prosecutor. His wife is chronically ill? Did you know that?”

  “No. What does she have?”

  “MS. Given their personal circumstances, he might not have a whole lot of compassion about your decision to enlist our help.”

  “Then again, he might.”

  “You never know,” she said.

  “I’ll be surprised if it’s the case with him.”

  “Whatever. He and his wife have a girl who’s just a little bit younger than Berkeley. Her name is Grace.”

  Why would that kind of detail be important to the Death Angels? I felt a chill, and didn’t allow the thought to go any further. “So?”

  “Jeffrey always says that—”

  “Who’s Jeffrey?”

  “The man you had lunch with at Nobu. It’s not really his name, of course. We use code names for each other like we’re the Secret Service or something. I find it all kind of silly. But I’m a lone voice. A lone female voice, I might add. The boys in the band do like their intrigue.”

  “Jeffrey’s the comic?”

  “He can be funny sometimes. Don’t underestimate him. It would be a mistake on your part.”

  I made a dubious face.

  “In any way,” she said.

  I sighed involuntarily. “What’s your code name? Is it Lizzie?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Before? You were telling me something that Jeffrey always says.”

  “Yes, I was. Jeffrey always says that if a person has kids, and that person is unwilling to tell you something you really want to know, then you’re not asking the right way.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “How callous i
s that?”

  “Pretty callous,” she admitted. She touched my knee. She didn’t squeeze it, though. It was just a slice of comfort. A lover’s idle caress. I recalled the texture of the touch from her hand on mine on the plastic tabletop at Papaya King.

  She said, “Something to remember about us? Something always to remember about us?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I said, “Yes?”

  “We kill people,” she said.

  I must have looked at her as though I didn’t want to believe her, because she said it again. “We do. Not too often. But when we have to, we kill people. It’s not a good line of work for the squeamish or the faint of heart. Rest assured, our operations staff is neither squeamish nor faint of heart.”

  At that pronouncement, I stood and stepped away from the couch toward the windows. There was a small break in the trees that allowed me to see the tops of Boulder’s Flatirons and enough moonlight to see shadowed places on the faces of the vaulting rocks.

  “You warned me,” I said. “You told me I’d reached the threshold.”

  She shrugged.

  “I suspect you weren’t supposed to do that.”

  She shrugged again.

  “Are you on the operations staff, Lizzie?”

  “Don’t … go there.”

  “Okay. Then how about this: You saved me today, in your apartment. I have two questions about that. How did you know I was there?”

  “That’s one.”

  “The second depends on your answer to the first.”

  “Lewis, and Gaston,” she said.

  “I know who Gaston is. The doorman. Lewis, I’m guessing, is the newsstand guy?”

  “Yes. In New York City, you don’t buy as much loyalty for a few hundred dollars as you might think you do. Gaston gets more than that from me in tips every month. Lewis keeps the change every time I buy magazines. If the total comes to twelve dollars; I give him twenty, or even thirty. It adds up.”

  “Especially from someone who buys magazines every day.”

  “Lewis talks too much.”

  “Maybe. But I bet it buys you a lot of loyalty.”

  “I don’t know about ‘a lot.’ But it buys me more than you were able to rent for a few hundred dollars. Gaston was seriously offended that you didn’t sweeten his pot, by the way. I rent Gaston. I suspect someone else could outbid me for his services if they were so inclined. That was a serious judgment error on your part, not finding out what the price was to outbid me. When you really want to succeed at an auction, you have to be prepared to bid your passion.”