The Ethical Assassin

by David Liss

  The woman said nothing.

  “I can promise you,” I continued, “I would never do or say anything to let him know you’d helped me. But the thing is, if he knew you spoke to me, he wouldn’t have to know what you said, would he? I mean, you might tell him that all you did was give me cookies and a drink and smile at my questions, right?”

  “That’s right,” she said slowly.

  “That’s all he would get from me, if it came down to that, though I’m sure it wouldn’t. So, since I’m here, and he’s not going to find out anything about what was said, there isn’t anything wrong with answering just one more question, is there?”

  “I guess not,” she said.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I told her, as though this argument had been hers all along. “Do you know if there was a woman in her forties or early fifties who might be a regular visitor at Karen’s trailer?”

  Vivian nodded. “Probably her mother,” she said. “If it were anyone, it would be her mother, the whore. She sometimes comes for a visit. Karen says she comes without calling, just pops in without knocking, like she’s trying to catch her daughter at something. That would probably be it. They’re both whores,” she added thoughtfully.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks so much. You’re really going to help me crack my case.” It sounded pathetic, but it seemed to soothe her.

  “Well, you can come back anytime if you just want to talk, a polite young man like you. I’m happy for the company. Ever since my Rita went missing, I’ve been so lonely.”

  My first thought was that there was another dead person in Meadowbrook Grove, but something told me I was wrong. “Your poodle?” I asked.

  Her eyes brightened. “Do you know her?”

  She sounded as though we were at a party and she mentioned someone who might run in the same circle I did.

  “No, I just noticed all the poodle pictures.”

  “Oh, yes. She disappeared a few months ago. I’m just so broken up about it. She was so beautiful. Not one of those tiny toy poodles, either, but a proper standard poodle. Black with a white patch on her head so she looked like she was wearing a hat. Such a sweet girl, my Rita. She always loved to play with the little children around here. And she loved fruit. You know, strawberries and grapes and bananas. All the kids knew it and would bring her fruit to eat. She was so happy and fat. I just wish I knew what happened to her, where she is now.”

  Her eyes were watering, and I turned away. “I’m very sorry she’s disappeared,” I offered.

  She sniffled. “You’re very kind.” And she surprised me by giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  ***

  Melford had agreed to hang back two or three trailers down, but when I came out of Vivian’s house, I saw no sign of him. My stomach churned, only a little at first, but as I walked closer to where we’d started and still couldn’t find him, the idea of being trapped in that trailer park alone, where Jim Doe might easily find me at any moment… well, none of that sat well.

  I went back almost precisely to Karen’s trailer, but I realized that was a terrible idea, so I moved again toward Vivian. Still no Melford. The sweat now came streaming off me, and the hog lot smell began to give me a headache.

  I began to walk the dusty streets back toward the Kwick Stop. Once I was there, I would at least be out of Doe territory. It was like walking through a minefield, and I expected some kind of boom with each step. Every time I heard the rumble of a car behind me, an invisible fist squeezed my heart. Every grasshopper disturbing the weeds, every lizard darting to safety. It was all terror.

  But I made it to the convenience store without incident, and as I approached I noticed a familiar-looking car in the parking lot. It was Melford’s Datsun. The car pointed away from me, so I could see only the back of his head- and the back of the person in the passenger seat.

  It took an instant to see that it was the mysterious woman who worked for our unknown enemy. It was Desiree.

  Chapter 27

  AT THAT MOMENT, I believed my best option would be to run away. Away from Melford, away from Jacksonville – away from all of it. At least I told myself it was the smart thing, since I found it easy to ignore all of the difficulties bound up with fleeing. It didn’t matter, anyhow. I was beyond smart. Way beyond smart. I was well into pissed off.

  I went over to the car and rapped on the driver’s side. Melford rolled down the window. “How’d it go?”

  “You fucking shit,” I said.

  His eyes widened. “That bad?”

  “You were supposed to wait for me.”

  “And I did. Right here.”

  “No, you were supposed to wait for me in the trailer park.”

  Melford’s face crinkled in puzzlement. “Why would I do that? I would just be drawing attention to myself. We agreed to meet here.”

  That wasn’t how I remembered it at all, but Melford recalled the conversation with such conviction that I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake. He, after all, was the one used to formulating covert plans, cooking up schemes. Maybe I’d heard what I’d wanted to hear since I didn’t like the idea of him leaving me all alone.

  “What’s this?” I asked, gesturing with my head toward Desiree, who had been smiling agreeably at me the whole time.

  “You remember Desiree,” Melford said.

  “Of course I remember her. What’s she doing here? What are the two of you doing sitting so cozily together?”

  “Excuse us,” Melford said to her. He got out and led me about fifteen feet away, over toward a pair of newspaper vending machines. “So, what did you learn?”

  I figured I would hold off for the moment with the Desiree issue, since arguing with Melford probably wouldn’t get me anywhere. I told him what Vivian had said, that the older woman was likely Karen’s mother.

  “It looks like she went over there at the wrong time,” Melford said. “Doe clearly had his reasons for wanting to keep the deaths secret, so he killed her as well.”

  “What reasons are that?”

  “Drugs.” Melford shrugged, as though the topic bored him. “Doe’s got some sort of scheme going on, and he’s more afraid of an investigation that will unearth his operation than he is of linking himself to homicides. And that, my friend, is good news.”

  “Tell me how a crazy cop who deals drugs is good news.”

  “Look, Doe and his friends hid those bodies. They don’t seem so bright, and I’m sure they left an evidence trail a mile long. If the bodies do show up, the evidence will lead back to them, not to us. At that point they can’t very well say that no, they didn’t kill Karen and Bastard, it was probably a salesman who did that- they only buried them. Doe and his friends have plenty to lose. And what that means, Lemuel, is you are in the clear.”

  “What are you saying? That I can just walk away from this?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I’m going to give you a ride back to wherever you want, and as far as I’m concerned, you can go back to your life. You keep quiet about everything you saw, stay away from that cop, and all will be fine.”

  “But what about this money they’re all looking for?” I asked. “They’re not going to forget about it, and as long as they think I have something to do with it, aren’t they going to keep after me?”

  “Forget the money,” he said, not for the first time. “It doesn’t matter. They sent Desiree to follow you, but she’s going to tell them you have nothing to do with the money. Trust me. She’s on our side, and even if she weren’t, she’d have no reason to tell them you ripped them off when you didn’t. They’ll have to look somewhere else.”

  I sucked in air through my teeth. Could it really be true? Had these assholes, for stupid and ill-advised reasons of their own, protected us from scrutiny, all to conceal their sordid little drug deals? I could hardly believe it.

  If I were honest with myself, I would have admitted that my relief was marbled with disappointment. I hadn’t liked the terror of being arrested, I hadn’t liked b
eing slapped around by Doe, but I liked the feeling of being a part of something, and Melford had made me feel it was something important, something more than murder. In a couple of days I would be home, I would quit selling encyclopedias, and everything would be back to where it was. And I would still need $30,000 to get to Columbia next year.

  ***

  Desiree stepped out from the passenger side of the car. She was wearing the same jeans as before, but instead of the see-through shirt and dark bra, she wore a butter yellow bikini top.

  She had a nice body, there was no denying it, voluptuous and trim all at once, and under normal circumstances my biggest problem would be how to avoid staring at her breasts. But right now I had to figure out how to avoid staring at her scar. It was huge, unlike anything I’d ever seen before, running from her shoulder, down her side, and disappearing into her pants. It covered most of her side under her arm and nearly half her back.

  It wasn’t just that it was unusual. I remembered what Bobby had told me: The Gambler’s boss, Gunn, had a woman with an enormous scar working for him. Desiree worked for B. B. Gunn. Melford had been sitting companionably in his car with a woman who worked for the enemy- the big enemy.

  Not looking at the scar was incredibly difficult. It was as though it had its own gravity, pulling in my eyes. I decided to conceal my discomfort by asking about it.

  “Can you tell me about your scar?” I said.

  I regretted the words the minute they came out. This was life and death, here. She wasn’t just an attractive woman with large breasts, a butter yellow bikini, and a scar the size of a hand towel. She was some sort of agent of evil. Wasn’t she?

  She looked over at me and smiled. “Thank you for asking.” Her voice was sweet and vaguely vulnerable. “Most people think it’s polite to ignore it, pretend they don’t see it. This is where my sister was before they separated us.” She ran her left hand along the scar, grazing it with the tips of her unpolished fingernails. “She died.”

  “I’m sorry.” I felt stupid saying it.

  Desiree smiled sweetly again. “Thanks. You’re very kind. You and Melford are both very kind.”

  “So,” I said, rubbing my hands together, “what can we do for you this time?”

  “Mostly,” she said, “I came to see Melford. I want to hear more about helping animals.”

  ***

  I sat in the backseat, sidekick status withdrawn, instantly converted to third wheel. I felt sullen and rejected- and cramped, shoved back there as I was into the too small space designed for Japanese children, not American teens and a library load of tattered paperback books. When I asked where we were going, he explained, not very helpfully, that we were driving around. He wanted to keep me busy and away from Doe until my pickup time.

  It was hard to hear everything from the back, but I could see that Melford had Desiree enthralled. She sat up front beaming at Melford as if he were a rock star, as though she had a crush on him. I didn’t like her fawning all over him, and I didn’t like that I didn’t like it. I recognized that churning, uneasy feeling working its way through my chest as jealousy, but jealous of what? Did I want the sexy half Siamese twin, or did I hate having to share Melford?

  Once again, I felt I was missing something, maybe everything. Why didn’t Melford want to know more about her before inviting her into the car? It seemed to me that the superassassin might be less detail oriented in his work than it had at first seemed.

  After about twenty-five minutes on the highway, Melford pulled off and stopped at a 7-Eleven, saying he was thirsty and had to wash up. When he walked away, I felt a sickening panic set in. I didn’t want to be left alone with Desiree. I had no idea who Desiree really was, other than an employee of B. B. Gunn. I didn’t know what she wanted.

  But Desiree showed no signs of finding the situation awkward. She turned around and grinned at me conspiratorially. “I think he’s so sexy.”

  I fidgeted with an empty plastic cassette holder I’d found on the floor. “I’m not sure you’re his type. Being female and all.”

  “You don’t think he’s gay, do you?”

  “Well, I did kind of assume it. But look, that’s not important. Who are you, anyhow?”

  “Why do you think he’s gay? Because he’s a vegetarian?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I don’t care if he’s gay or he isn’t. I was just letting you know that you may not be his type. But we can discuss that once you tell me why you’re following us around. Melford might not care, but I do.”

  “It’s so wrong,” Desiree said, “to just assume things about people, to label them based on appearances. I’ve worked so hard at trying to understand my real self. I’ve been reading about auras and reincarnation and using the I Ching. And you? Boom. You decide he’s gay.”

  “Look, it’s not a big deal to me. I was just saying.”

  “Have you even asked him?”

  “No, I haven’t asked him, because I don’t care.” My tone was growing increasingly shrill. “I haven’t asked him what his favorite color is, either.”

  “Why are you getting so worked up about this?” Desiree asked.

  Melford came out of the store, a bottle of water in one hand, his keys in the other.

  “Lem thinks you’re gay,” she told him when he opened the door.

  Melford settled behind the wheel and pivoted around to me. He grinned broadly. “A lot of people think that, Lemuel. I wouldn’t sweat it. But you don’t have anything against gay people, do you?”

  “No,” I blurted. “That’s not the point. I want to know who Desiree is and what she’s doing following us around.”

  “What does that have to do with my sexual orientation?” Melford asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I.” My voice came out high-pitched.

  Melford glanced over at Desiree. “Lem has a valid question. Who are you, and why are you following us around?”

  “Me?” she said. “Some very bad people asked me to keep an eye on you, Lem, find out if you were up to anything improper.”

  “And is he?” Melford asked.

  “Not as near as I can tell. But I’ll have to keep following him to be sure. Unless”- she glanced at Melford-“someone distracts me.”

  ***

  Information came out slowly over a leisurely drive up and down the highway. Desiree worked, as I’d already suspected, for B. B. Gunn, who was centered near Miami and who used both the hog trade and the encyclopedia business as some sort of front for selling drugs. Desiree seemed eager to avoid getting too specific. She made it clear that she wanted to leave B.B., but while she didn’t want to betray him, she’d reached the conclusion- thanks, in part, to the I Ching and in part to Melford- that she needed to make amends for her involvement in such an enterprise. For some time now she’d been looking for something, she said, some kind of meaning, and at the Chinese restaurant she’d become increasingly convinced that Melford’s interest in kindness to animals might be what she sought. I had no idea if her conviction would strengthen or waver when she discovered the project involved killing people.

  “So, what do animal rights people do?” she asked. “Blow up slaughterhouses and things?”

  Melford shook his head. “For the most part, no. The principal arm of the movement is a loose affiliation of activists collectively known as the Animal Liberation Front. The thing that makes it work so well is that to be a member of this group, all you have to do is espouse its values, take action, and attribute that action to the ALF. No training camp, no indoctrination, no oath of loyalty. On a small scale, they generally vandalize fast-food restaurants or hunting shops, anything to throw a monkey wrench, even a tiny one, into the machinery of animal misery. But more sophisticated operations involve things like rescuing lab animals or breaking into research or farming facilities to take pictures and expose their cruelty.”

  “I don’t know,” Desiree said. “It sounds sort of weak. Do you really want to dedicate your life to pestering people t
o stop doing what they’re never going to stop doing anyway? Maybe you should take stronger action. Beat up some fast-food executives or something.”

  “The ALF believes that its people must never harm anyone, not even the cruelest of animal tormentors, since their core belief is that human beings can live their lives without harming any creatures.”

  I tried not to react when I heard this.

  “They can’t take down someone really nasty?” Desiree asked.

  Melford shook his head. “Anyone who would do that, who would even be suspected of thinking about that sort of thing, would be shunned by the organization and the entire animal rights movement. They’re all about saving lives, even human lives. Though property is always a legitimate target.”

  “I respect that,” she said.

  “There are those, however,” Melford went on, “who take action when the ALF won’t, who believe that violence is, under extreme circumstances, a necessary evil. The core of the animal rights movement never condone this sort of thing, not even in private, I suspect.”

  “That sounds about right to me,” Desiree said. “It doesn’t make any sense to support the idea of protecting the rights of all beings if you then start picking and choosing. Otherwise, we’re all like people in a restaurant, picking from the tank which fish we want to eat.”

  Melford smiled. “That’s right.”

  Desiree smiled at this lie, as if she were so happy to have Melford’s approval. The crazy thing was, I knew how she felt. And I knew he was lying to her. So what did that say about the ease with which I’d come to value his opinion? If I didn’t know from personal experience, the personal experience of seeing him kill two people, I would never suspect he was lying. I suddenly felt distinctly uneasy, like I wanted to get out of the car. Like I wanted to get away.

  “Can I ask a question?” Desiree said.

  “Of course.”

  “What about medical research? I mean, it may be unpleasant to use animals as test subjects, but we get results. And isn’t it important to find cures for diseases?”