Kill Me

by Stephen White

  “They killed an innocent man to make a point?”

  “They tried to make the point in a more civil manner. You ignored them.”

  “So they killed an innocent man?”

  “His innocence was gone the moment you asked for his help.” She rolled over in my direction. Her eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them. “I told you last night: We … kill … people. You—you —hired an organization that kills people. Yes?” I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. “Well, you did. Killing is one of the things we do. It’s our business. Don’t act so surprised when we do exactly—exactly—what we advertised that we’re going to do. Don’t act so surprised when we do exactly—exactly—what you hired us to do. That kind of naïveté is a luxury you absolutely can’t afford right now.”

  “Innocent people, too?”

  “Innocent people die every day.”

  “Not on my dime.”

  “Really? Tell that to the people in Baghdad, or Kabul, or Fallujah, or Gaza. Abu Ghraib ring a bell? What about Darfur, or Rwanda? I can go on. Should I include Central and South America? Or Asia?”

  Her list gave me pause. “That’s different, and you know it. This isn’t the same thing.”

  “No? Ask the families of the victims if they agree. You’re okay splitting hairs about whose dime is whose if the dead strangers lived in another country?”

  I put my hands flat against the wall behind me. In my mind I saw Dmitri’s sun-and-alcohol carved face reflected in the rearview mirror of his cab. In the next frame I saw him dead, his sallow skin sagging. “I’m complicit,” I said, my voice no longer loud. Instead, it was hollow. I was finally recognizing the consequences of what I’d gotten myself into.

  What I’d done.

  “You bet you are,” she said. There was no compassion in her voice. No offhand in her manner.

  I was appalled, but not quite ready to accept responsibility for what had happened. “None of you ever said that anyone would be at risk except for me.”

  “You didn’t ask.” The words flew out of her mouth without any hesitation.

  She was right. I didn’t ask.

  “If I just give up? Right now? Today?”

  “No one else gets hurt.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “To reduce suspicion they may take you out in a crowd. You never know. I never know. The number of ancillary casualties isn’t … consequential to Jeffrey. It’s not always true, but sometimes numbers help disguise intent.”

  I felt nauseous.

  “Human nature,” she said, looking at me, unblinking. “It’s a funny thing. Clients ask us if their deaths will hurt. They ask about their families’ safety. About their homes. Their yachts and planes. But they never ask about strangers. How many will die. It’s a funny thing.”

  She let the words settle.

  “Problem is if I give up before I find him, Adam will get hurt, too,” I said.

  I expected to hear scorn from her in response. But I didn’t. She said, “Yes, Adam gets hurt.”

  Lizzie slid her feet to the floor and stood up. For two languid steps across the room she allowed the duvet to begin to drift behind her like some down-filled wedding veil. Then she let the hem slip away from her right hand and she continued walking in my direction.

  One more step and she was completely naked.

  She was turning the page. I felt forced to follow along. That, of course, was her plan.

  Given what had just transpired between us, given that her intent was so obvious, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was distracted by her nakedness.

  The first thing I noticed?

  Regardless of the circumstances, I’ve learned, and accepted, that I’m incorrigible about some things. Instinct is instinct: The first thing I noticed was that she had shaved her pubic hair.

  Interesting.

  I was standing against the far wall. She stopped a few feet before she got to me, and waited until my eyes moved up and found hers. Then, using her left hand, she reached up and with a swift motion curled her fingers up under her hairline and stripped her tousled hair off her head from front to back.

  She held the wig out in front of her as though she were a Sioux warrior who, having met and overpowered a bitter enemy, was presenting his scalp in honor to her chief.

  Although I didn’t know how much she was feeling like a triumphant warrior, I knew that I wasn’t feeling much like a chief.

  Lizzie’s head was as bald as a kneecap.

  I didn’t take the proffered hair from her hand, but I made an instant reconsideration of my earlier, more prurient, assessment: Lizzie had not shaved her pubic hair.

  No.

  Lizzie had sacrificed her pubic hair—and her head hair, and her underarm hair, and probably all the other hair on her body—to the noxious consequences of chemotherapy.

  The next thing I noticed? No, surprisingly enough for me, it wasn’t the shape of her breasts. The next thing I noticed was that Lizzie still had eyebrows.

  It was a stupid thing to notice, but there it was.

  How the hell could she have eyebrows?

  I opened my mouth to speak.

  She could somehow tell what part of her body I was staring at, and she could tell precisely what I was confused about. “Brow implants,” she said, shaking her head. Was the headshake an expression of dismay at herself, at her vanity, or at me? I couldn’t tell. “And the eyelashes, too. I have appearances to maintain. I’m sure you know all about that.”

  She walked past me into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  I was so stunned that I didn’t even bother to steal a peek at her departing ass.

  “Lizzie,” I said, through the door.

  “What?”

  “What work is it we have to do?”

  She didn’t answer me for about ten seconds. I’d almost accepted that she wasn’t going to answer me at all when she said, finally, “We have to find Adam. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

  The white noise of shower water splashing on limestone tiles ended our conversation.

  Or so I thought. As I stepped away from the door I heard her call out, “You don’t know everything. Not even close. Don’t think you do.”

  “That’s not one of my current delusions,” I said. I mumbled the words under my breath, not anticipating that she really gave a shit.

  A moment later, the door swung open. Steam was filling the bathroom behind her. She looked like she was emerging from the depths of some dark, cloudy place.

  She was still naked.

  Some women are uncomfortable being naked. Caught suddenly without a stitch of clothing, those women can’t seem to find a pose that feels natural. They don’t know what to do with their hands, or the best way to balance their weight. On one leg? Both? Hip thrust out? Not?

  Cover this? Cover that?

  Lizzie wasn’t one of those women. As uncomfortable as I was being out of control? That’s how comfortable she was being naked.

  “What did you say?” she said.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Don’t you get it? It’s not important.”

  It was to me. And seconds after she returned to the bathroom, I thought I might have just discovered a way to find out the answer to my question.

  I used the newest of my mobile phones to call LaBelle at my office.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Caller ID doesn’t say you. Caller ID says ‘Out of Area.’ Where’s your phone? Are you out of area?”

  “I’m close enough. Good morning, LaBelle.”

  “So that’s how it’s going to be?”

  “Yes, LaBelle. That’s how it’s going to be.”

  “Good morning. Now, ” she said. Used in the manner she had just used it, the “now” was an entire sentence for LaBelle. From experience, I knew that with the particular inflection she’d employed the word constituted a prelude to an admonition that I should take seriously. “Don’t want to hear you been driving any of those cars of
yours on I-70. You understand what I’m saying? You going up to Ridgway, there are other ways to get into those mountains. You use one of them, you hear?”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s awful what’s happening.”

  “285? That’d work, except for that storm that might be coming up from the south. Coal Creek Canyon up to the Peak to Peak? That new road out of Central City to I-70—I hear it’s very nice. You want more alternatives, I can get those for you.”

  “I do understand, LaBelle. How are you?”

  “Mmm, mmm, mmmm,” she said. “A young woman like that? Two kids? Who would do something like that? Just pick a woman off on the side of the road. Those poor kids. What is wrong with this world?”

  The water in the shower was still splashing loudly against the tiles, but I knew that it wouldn’t provide me cover for long.

  “I know, I know. I need a favor.”

  “What can I do?” she said, sensing my urgency. If I were standing beside her desk, I knew that I would have just watched her pull a pencil out of the nest of hair above her right ear. She would have the pencil tip poised a centimeter or two above the steno pad on her desk.

  “I need for you to cross-reference two databases. One is of physicians who are board-certified in oncology. Limit it to the U.S. I don’t know who does the certification, but it shouldn’t be hard to find out. Define the certification as generally as you can—use all the oncological subspecialties, too, if there are any. The other list is of physicians who are board-certified in neurology. If there are subspecialties there, include those as well. Specifically, I want all the names, if any, that show up on both lists. Addresses and phone numbers if you can get them.”

  She made a dismissive sound. “Those folks you’re looking for? They would be the ones who spent way too long in school, you know that? Need to spend more time in the world. On the streets. With the people.”

  I laughed. “I hear you. As soon as you can, okay?”

  “No problem. Assuming I can get hold of the data in digital form, I should be able to cross-reference them and get you the information before lunch. E-mail the names to you?”

  “No, send me a general e-mail of some kind. If you do end up having names for me, say that the data I’ve been looking for is in. I’ll call you for the details. If not, tell me you’re still waiting.”

  “Why all the drama?”

  “I’ll explain later. One more thing?”

  “Shoot.” She caught herself. “Ba-ad choice. Go on, now.”

  “Do a search for me. LexisNexis, Google, whatever. There was a murder last night in New York City. A cabdriver. First name Dmitri. Up near 150th Street in West Harlem. Manhattan. Got all that?”

  “Uh-huh, I got that. I’m getting older, but I’m not getting any slower. You can talk as fast as you want.”

  LaBelle made me smile. “Next step is complicated. Find out what you can about his family. Who he’s been supporting. People he’s responsible for, that kind of thing. We’re going to be setting up a trust to help out.”

  “We are?”

  “Yeah, we are.”

  “I’ll do the other thing first. Then I’ll get you the lowdown on Dmitri, so we can set up that trust.”

  “You’re a doll.”

  “I am that. Lord knows I am that,” she said. “The man who gets to crawl into bed after I warm the sheets … now that is one fortunate, fortunate man. Mmm, mmm, mmm.”

  The bathroom door opened. Lizzie stood in the doorway. This time she had a caramel-colored towel wrapped around her body. Her exposed flesh glowed slightly pink and glistened softly, as though she were illuminated from within by the light of a dying candle.

  “Who’s a doll?”

  “Thea,” I said, without even a hint of hesitation. I killed the call.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “The wife. I remember her.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  I used the microwave to reheat some of the coffee that I’d bought earlier that morning and gave Lizzie a cup. She sat beside me in the kitchen and cradled it in both hands, but didn’t bring the mug near her face.

  I remembered from my intrusion into her flat that she drank tea, not coffee. “You prefer tea,” I said. “Sorry.”

  She said, “This is fine.” But she still didn’t drink from the mug.

  I decided to share the suspicions that had been growing since I’d cowered in her safe room the previous afternoon, seen the medical supplies, and read the files. “Those two guys in your apartment? They weren’t looking for me, were they? They were looking for you.”

  “Yes, they were looking for me,” she said. It was a simple declaration on her part, but I could tell she wasn’t planning to go any further with the disclosure.

  I mimicked my shrink. “Go on.”

  To my surprise, she complied. She said, “They’d been trying to reach me … to discuss some things. My loyalty, I think. I wasn’t responding to their messages. I’m sure that they didn’t know you were in there. If they thought you were …”

  I waited for her to finish that thought. She didn’t. I asked, “Were they there to … kill you?”

  “Maybe. Could have been that, but probably not. Unless all other remedies have failed, home ground is sacred, remember? Maybe they wanted to protect me—insulate me—because you’d managed to penetrate my security. But the odds are they wanted to take me elsewhere, probably to stage something convincing. I didn’t especially want to find out exactly what they wanted, which is why I left after I reported the contact with you.”

  “Why did you report the contact?”

  “I had to assume they were tailing you, that they saw us talking. If I wanted some time, I had no choice.”

  “Your breast cancer has relapsed, I take it? Those files in the closet? Those are all your aliases?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. I didn’t know what the shrug meant.

  “You’re treating yourself?”

  “I have some outside help, consultants, but yes. For now.”

  “The other Death Angels? They don’t know about it?”

  “They know about the diagnosis, of course, and they know all about the first round of treatment I went through. I found the lump over three years ago. The initial treatment—lumpectomy, chemo, radiation—was successful and the disease had been in remission for almost two years. Until yesterday, I was thinking they didn’t know about the relapse or about how far the disease had spread. Now? I’m not so sure. I’ve been careful. I know how they collect medical data about clients. Information about the progress of my disease is not available through any of those channels.”

  “You’re a … client?”

  “All of the employees are clients. It’s … required.”

  “The man in your apartment. The one who thought something was missing? He was looking for meds, wasn’t he? He was surprised that there weren’t pill bottles, or … what?”

  “Probably,” Lizzie said.

  “What if they know about your aliases?” I was thinking about the medical files I’d read while hiding in the safe room in her closet.

  “They don’t.”

  I didn’t think she sounded totally confident.

  “Do they know you’re here?” I asked. “With me? Right now?”

  She inhaled some of the steam that was rising from her mug and shook her head. “I don’t think so. They lost track of me the night before when I left the apartment after you’d showed up outside. I can’t think of a single reason for them to suspect I’m with you.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  She raised those implanted eyebrows. “Me, too.”

  I went to the refrigerator and returned with a carton of plain yogurt and some washed raspberries. The yogurt wasn’t part of my morning grocery run; it belonged to my host. I checked the expiration date before I set it in front of her, along with a spoon. “The berries are organic,” I said. “How many of you are there? I’ve met six, altogether.�
��

  “Thank you.” She dropped a few berries into the yogurt. “That’s unusual. A typical client will meet only three or four at the most. Six is a lot.”

  “I suspect that I’m more annoying than the typical client. That probably accounts for the higher number.”

  “That’s true, you are.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “You’ve met less than a third of the group.” She paused. “I think I’ve only ever met half. We compartmentalize.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot more manpower than I thought there would be. Much more than I expected. I thought you guys would be lean.”

  “Most of the time the numbers are unnecessary. During peak times? We need everybody. But there’s no natural flow to this work. Nothing’s predictable. There’s no Christmas rush we can count on. No Augusts off. And, let’s face it—we can’t just recruit temps to help us through the inevitable rush. The business is lucrative, but the expenses, especially the staff expenses, and the intelligence costs, are high. Collegial trust takes on a whole different meaning when the work you do every day constitutes a capital offense.”

  I stood up and turned my back so she couldn’t see my face. “Your offices on Park Avenue were cleared out.”

  She waited until I turned toward her before she responded. “You knew about those? We suspected you might—I thought you might. You are good. Bravo.” She feigned some applause and blew me a kiss before she ate a few spoonfuls. Each spoon was graced with a solitary raspberry. “It means nothing that we moved out. And it means little that you know we were there. At the first whisper of any indication that our cover has been blown, we’re able to vacate a location in twenty minutes. Less even. As long as it’s large enough, we can use space in just about any configuration. Uptown, Downtown—doesn’t matter. We either rent furnished or rent the furniture through a shell. We don’t keep any paper records. None. Not an address, not an appointment. Our phones are all cellular. Our computers are all notebooks that run on wireless networks or Wi-Fi. The password protection is state-of-the-art. Our financial records are offshore and are indecipherable without access codes. Client medical records are deleted when they’re no longer needed. If anybody tampers with anything in one of our machines, all the data gets bleached beyond NSA standards. Backup files are encrypted and completely hidden.”