Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  It was quite conceivable that one day, and maybe soon, the Wraith would have Heloise’s ear while she became deaf to Lavandier’s loudest protestations.

  Then, should the Wraith decide he had something to gain in the revelation of Lavandier’s duplicity, Lavandier would be the one zip-tied to a chair and peering through swollen eyes as his love stalked closer with nails gleaming.

  The Frenchman felt cold.

  It was rare for him to miss the picturesque banality of Normandy, but now he longed to have another chance at picking apples.

  Lavandier’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He was due to meet one of his escorts, who was no doubt asking where he was, why he wasn’t there, when he would be coming. . . . Loath as he was to keep such a delicious creature waiting, he had to attend to this more pressing matter. Whatever his insatiable levels of lust, work had to take priority. He reminded himself his lust could be sated only because of the wealth work afforded him. For a horrifying instant, he imagined himself poor and driven insane with unfulfilled desires.

  He drove back to the casino and was met by El Perro as he stepped out of the elevator, who was typically curt and brutish and led Lavandier into the suite to where Heloise stood with her back to the room. She was never facing him as he arrived. He was never that important.

  She didn’t turn around, but asked, “How did it go?”

  “He’s a difficult man to converse with.”

  A vague response, with more subtext than insight, and it worked, because she turned around. Always Lavandier had to fight for her attention.

  “Explain,” she ordered. “If you would be so kind.”

  Heloise’s voice had a warm softness to it that belied her unmistakable strength, her casual barbarism always ready to be unleashed.

  “He was curt with me,” Lavandier said. “He was annoyed that you required an explanation for Diaz’s death after our previous assurance he would be left alone.”

  “I pay him,” Heloise said, “so his annoyance means nothing to me.”

  Lavandier inclined his head. “I passed on those sentiments.”

  “Good,” she continued. “So how are his preparations going?”

  He refused to kill you for me, Lavandier did not say.

  “He is confident Maria will soon be dead,” Lavandier did say.

  Heloise said, “Do you share his confidence?”

  “I do.”

  “Perhaps his confidence was an illusion.”

  “No, my dear. I would know if it was. I know how such men think. I know how to handle men like him.”

  El Perro, standing guard on the periphery of the room, felt the sudden need to clear his throat.

  Lavandier sneered at him, then said to Heloise, “I advise we trust in our decision to hire him.”

  She was happy with this, or happy enough to end the discussion, which she signified by turning back to the window, back to the city and all of its unfulfilled promise. What she saw with those big, beautiful eyes, Lavandier would never know. He would weep upon her death, he was sure.

  Heloise then approached her pet and touched his arm. “Would you ever put me at risk?”

  “Never. I would die for you.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t deserve such devotion.”

  El Perro said, “You deserve everything.”

  She gripped his arm in a long, lingering squeeze, as if she were so impressed by his strength that she couldn’t let go. All part of the act, of course, but men like El Perro needed their power acknowledged to feel powerful. Heloise played him as she played them all, Lavandier thought. She made El Perro feel strong, valued, even loved, and in turn he would do anything for her. Lavandier was a different but equally basic animal she had tamed by playing on his unquenchable lust. She had no need to play anyone—she paid her people well, after all—but loyalty could not be bought. She knew that better than anyone.

  El Perro said, “If I may speak freely, I advise against continuing to use this Wraith. Foreigners cannot be trusted.”

  Lavandier knew the last sentence was directed at him as well.

  Heloise said, “Do you have so little faith in my judgment?”

  El Perro bowed his head. “My apologies.” He left.

  He was naturally insulted that Heloise had brought in an outsider to kill her sister. He saw it both as an acknowledgment of his limitations and a dishonor. Nothing would make him happier than serving up Maria’s head to Heloise. Nothing would make El Perro happier than making Heloise happy.

  It was a frustration to Lavandier that he could not manipulate El Perro. He could not make him an ally, because whatever the Frenchman’s skills with words, whatever his cunning, nothing he could say or do would override El Perro’s love of Heloise, and it was that love that made him hate Lavandier with such passion.

  Heloise said, “I’m going to bed. Please see yourself out, Luis.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and left him alone.

  The effect was almost instantaneous and, as was common in such moments, he turned to his phone and his list of messages. As expected, his date was making it explicitly clear she was awaiting him.

  I know the name of your favorite escort and how much you pay her to make you squeal on your hands and knees.

  Lavandier sighed. The moment was passing at an exponential rate.

  A court jester, he had thought of himself. Rich, powerful, but at the beck and call of Heloise Salvatierra, dancing on the end of her strings. His tongue remained inside his mouth only because she wanted it there. It was her will. That wasn’t the life of casual decadence he had envisioned for himself. Working a few hours each week was no compensation for perpetual fear. Had he been gray when Manny had been patron?

  This was not what he had signed up for and it was not sustainable.

  The Wraith’s refusal was disappointing, but he had not been so rash as to wager his future, his survival, on one assassin’s duplicitousness, or lack thereof. Since when did hit men have honor, anyway? Lavandier considered a new weakness: was he even less honorable than a hired gun? Pah. Who cared? The single greatest weakness was loyalty. It provided no benefit to the loyal servant, only to the master. Loyalty was the acknowledgment, acceptance, and, worst of all, pride in subservience. By that definition, Lavandier had no loyalty and was buoyed in that freedom from metaphysical bondage.

  But he loved Heloise. Adored her. Worshipped her. He reveled in her company. He would do anything for her. Except for anything that he already didn’t want to do. He would not allow her to lead him to annihilation. He had worked hard to ensure he wouldn’t have to work hard. He couldn’t let anyone take that away from him. As a boy, he had thrown tantrums when asked to pick apples so his mother could bake delicious treats for him. Always inside him had been the compelling urge to do nothing. His father had chastised him for his lack of drive, for his staggering and deliberate inertia. That same father had worked hard all his life, had never seen retirement, and had died of a stroke, still toiling.

  Lavandier was grateful for his father’s work ethic because it meant there had been a little inheritance and a beautiful cottage left to him, mortgage-free. He had sold it within a week, banking the proceeds and using them to fund a hedonistic dalliance around the world. How Lavandier had become mixed up in the drug trade, he couldn’t quite remember, but while there had never been any desire to snort or inject or swallow chemicals acquired from strangers, he saw that desire in others and he saw how little work the dealers had to do, and a glorious future revealed itself to him. He invested the last remnants of his inheritance and never looked back. Until now, of course.

  The Wraith had refused to kill Heloise, but it was far from over, because he had another potential solution to his problem now that there was a second hired gun in Guatemala. Lavandier would give the Russian time to acclimatize, time to settle in, and make the same proposal
.

  If he too refused, then there was one final play the Frenchman could make. A last resort, but preferable to the inevitable, grisly alternative. What did they call it?

  Ah yes, Lavandier realized, they called it “scorched earth.”

  • Chapter 56 •

  Being poor sucked. It sucked even worse to be poor in a poor country. Which was why Petra was working as hard as she could. She had two regular jobs—washing dishes in a nice restaurant downtown and delivering mail and parcels for a courier company—and still she had nowhere near enough to pay her rent, buy food, and save up to move away. She took every other job she could, as and when they appeared. Seasonal or temporary gigs. Maybe laboring on a construction site; sometimes picking fruit on a plantation. She had done stints as a waitress. She had shined shoes. She would do whatever it took to get out. Except work for the cartels.

  That was her limit. She wouldn’t sell her soul just to leave. She couldn’t do that to herself or her country. Some childhood friends had earned a fortune as traffickers or gunmen, and all were dead. She had promised her dying mother she would never do anything illegal, which was why she was so surprised and stammering when she was stopped on her way home from a night shift by an American DEA agent.

  “I work alongside your police forces,” the American told her.

  He spoke Spanish well, and didn’t come across as arrogant, as she imagined an American would. He flashed some ID. Petra didn’t really see it, but she was too nervous, too intimidated to ask to see it again.

  “Don’t worry,” the agent said in a soft tone. “This isn’t about anything you’ve done.”

  “I’ve done nothing,” Petra was quick to say.

  “Which is why it isn’t about you. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Okay,” Petra said, still unsure and still nervous, feeling as if she were guilty of something. Anything.

  The American asked, “You’ve been working tonight?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “At the restaurant?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You have a lot of jobs,” the agent said. “I respect your work ethic. Hard work gets you all that you want.”

  Petra shrugged. She didn’t care what this man thought of her, she just wanted the conversation to be over as fast as possible. She wanted to get home to her rented room and watch sitcoms until she fell asleep on the sofa bed. She had only eight hours before she was back to work, delivering the mail.

  “Tell me about your other jobs,” the American said.

  He smiled at her, trying to make her feel better. It worked, to an extent. He looked decent and honest. He looked like a nice person doing a tough job. Someone respectful and to be respected.

  The American had dark hair and a deep tan, so he had been in the country a long time. For as long as Petra could remember, Americans had been in Guatemala. The War on Drugs had been raging for decades and would keep on raging as long as the drug trade was some people’s only hope of climbing out of poverty. Petra wouldn’t follow that route, of course, but she understood the appeal. Maybe if she had been able to afford medicine her mother would still be alive. She tried not to think about such things; she didn’t want to cry in front of this stranger, this official.

  “What about my jobs?” she asked.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he said. “I’m paying. Something to eat, maybe? Whatever you like.”

  “No,” she said. “I never drink coffee, and I’m not hungry. I need sleep. Just sleep.”

  “I’ll try to be quick, then. You work as a courier, yes? You also do casual jobs as and when they come in. Tell me about those.”

  “About picking coffee beans?”

  The American shook his head. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He withdrew a piece of printer paper, which he unfolded and showed to Petra.

  “Do you recognize this yacht?”

  Petra nodded.

  “Why do you recognize it?”

  Petra swallowed. Her throat was dry. “I sometimes work as cabin crew. In the kitchens, mostly, to clean up. I sweep the decks too sometimes. Stuff like that.”

  “Do you know who owns the vessel?”

  Petra hesitated. “A rich lady.”

  “Do you know why she’s rich?”

  Petra didn’t want to admit it, but she feared being caught in a lie. She nodded. It would be silly to pretend otherwise.

  “Good,” the American said. “You can help me.”

  She didn’t want to know but couldn’t help but ask, “How?”

  “When are you working next on the yacht?”

  “I don’t know. I just get a call when the lady wants to take the boat out.”

  “You get some warning though, don’t you?” the American asked. “You can’t just drop everything at a moment’s notice. So how much warning do you get?”

  “A few days. Maybe a week. Depends on how long she wants to go sailing for. It’s the recruitment company that calls. Maybe you should be speaking to them instead. I can you give you their number and you can go—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said in a tone that said more. “Next time you get such a call I want you to call me straightaway. Soon as you hang up with them, you dial my number. Okay?”

  He offered a scrap of paper with a handwritten telephone number. Petra felt compelled to take it.

  “Straightaway,” the American repeated. “Can you do that?”

  Petra thought for a moment, because she didn’t want to lie. She wanted to think and decide and then speak the truth. That was how she had been raised and that was how she wanted to live her life.

  “You know what kind of work I do, don’t you?” the American asked. “You know about the drugs, about the cartels. You know my government sends people like me down here to try to help tackle the traffickers. I’m here to help make your country a better place.”

  “I know.”

  “So, you’ll call me?”

  She thought hard about the implications of her response. She had always known who owned the yacht. Maria Salvatierra was famous. Everyone recognized her face. Everyone knew her name. Petra had gasped when she had found out who she was working for, which hadn’t been until she had already agreed to wash up over a weekend excursion. Then it was too late. She had no choice but to work. She could have declined the next offer when it came through, and she heard her mother’s words in her head, but she accepted anyway. She could justify it to herself. She wasn’t helping the cartel by scrubbing pans and sweeping decks. She had no blood on her hands.

  Maybe giving this DEA agent information would result in Maria’s arrest. Petra would lose her job working on the yacht as a result. Her dreams of a better life far away from here would be stalled.

  Some things were more important than dreams, however.

  “I will,” she said, and meant it.

  “I want you to keep this between us, just you and me. Is that okay? If you tell anyone else . . . well, let’s just say it could be very bad for you farther down the line. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “I do. I won’t say anything. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good. I want to be able to trust you, Petra.”

  “You can trust me.”

  • Chapter 57 •

  Graceful, he was not. Neither was he fast nor agile. He was awkward and slow, but on land only. In water, Constantin glided. His long limbs worked in harmony, his arms slicing a path that his legs propelled him along, smooth and easy. The swimming pool was outdoors, shimmering under the hot sun. He swam whenever he could, both to keep fit and for pleasure. He took little pleasure in life, but there were things that provided small release from the unrelenting agony of existence.

  He counted no lengths, but swam many kilometers before the serenity was ruined. First it was th
e noise, sporadic and isolated, muted by the water and his earplugs. Then that noise grew with an escalation that could not be dampened. He exited the pool before the irritation could grow too intense and perhaps lead him to do something he wouldn’t regret but would pay for nonetheless. He used the chrome ladder to climb out into the morning—he would struggle without it—and almost collided with one of the stunted noisemakers.

  It was a hideous thing, small and chubby. The fat head tilted backward so its tiny eyes could gaze up to meet Constantin’s own far above. The creature stood as if frozen, blocking Constantin’s way.

  A man rushed into proximity, taking the thing’s hand and pulling it out of the way, mumbling apologies.

  “Drown it,” Constantin said in his native Czech. “For your benefit and its own.”

  The man shrugged his incomprehension and couldn’t get away fast enough.

  In his room, Constantin showered with a degree of awkwardness he was used to, lowering his chin to his chest so the spray could reach the top of his head. He thought of life. He thought of death. He thought about why he was in Guatemala and the futility of his presence here, of all presence.

  Constantin’s tastes were modest. That he enjoyed so little meant he required little. Somewhere to lay his heavy head was as much as he wanted out of a hotel room. The decorations were immaterial. He cared as much for the trappings of wealth as he did for anything else. He chose the hotel because it was the largest in Guatemala City, so it provided the most anonymity. It could have been the most expensive hotel or the least, and he wouldn’t have minded either way. He had picked this hotel because it was old, because it was part of no chain. The locks were operated with magnetized key cards, but the windows opened. An independent hotel was a rare thing, and was becoming ever rarer.