by Paul Moomaw
I stand up, too, keeping a straight face. He is so full of himself. It will be interesting to see his expression when I kill him. “I appreciate you trusting me,” I say.
“I don’t have to trust you. I had you checked out since our first meeting.” He grins broadly. “I know where you live, what kind of car you drive. I even know your bank account number.” He pauses, stares at me with cold eyes. “So you have to understand, I will know where to find you if I have to.”
The poor fucker doesn’t have a clue. I stare at my shoes so he won’t see the contempt in my eyes. “You won’t have to,” I mutter.
“Right,” Lucero says. “You call me when you’re ready for a truck You’re sure your brother’s farm is a secure transfer place?”
“It’s in the middle of nowhere. And people up there mind their own business as long as you let them.”
As we walk toward his front door, Lucero pulls out a restaurant business card and scribbles on it, then hands me the card. “When you call, use this number.”
“It’s safer?”
Lucero laughs. “It’s my girl friend’s number. I guess it’s safe enough as long as I treat her good.” He pauses. “And as long as my wife don’t find out,” he adds, and laughs again.
He has given me what some magazine used to call news you can use. My sources did not tell me Lucero had a regular squeeze. Men like him usually don’t. They just have the occasional quickie, and then home to the wife and kids. I know about the wife. Her name is Ermalina, and she tries to be big socially. She never will, and not because Lucero is a crook. It is just that the Anglos keep a pretty high fence around their social turf, except for a few, very old Latino families, and the old-line Latinos, the ones who have been here for five hundred years, look down their noses at Mexican Americans. The Lucero kids—he has a boy and a girl, both in their teens—may do okay. They have their mother’s looks, and talk like real New Mexicans, not wetbacks.
As I drive back to the hotel, I review the supposed deal in my mind, looking for flaws in verisimilitude, and not finding any. It’s a damn good plan. It’s a shame it will never happen.
* * *
At the hotel I open my bag, remove a bottle of brandy, and pour myself two fingers, enough to wash away the aftertaste of tequila. It is a very good brandy, Remy Martin, very old, one of the small luxuries I allow myself. I am not a believer in conspicuous consumption. That is my nature, but it also goes well with my chosen profession. It does not pay to be conspicuous. I pride myself, in fact, on being a sort of Everyman, who can walk into a room of people, stay for an hour, and no one can describe me afterwards.
I pour myself a second and final drink, and make a mental note to track down the address of Lucero’s girlfriend. Lucero is fairly careless at best, and he is even more likely to let his guard down when he has his mind on fucking. If he has her tucked away someplace reasonably isolated, and if I can get myself properly organized, I should be able to combine a scouting trip with the hit itself.
Chapter 2
I met violent death the first time three days past my nineteenth birthday. The occasion was an auto accident—a murder of sorts. A father and son had slowed to turn left from a country highway. A drunk in a pickup truck struck them from behind.
We were four college students, members of the fencing team, on our way to a tournament at another school. Fencing is the only sport that ever caught my interest; even then, long before I dreamed of what my true calling would be, the combination of delicacy, precision and violence appealed to me.
The drive had been long, and a party the night before longer, and filled with chemical substances, so that my perceptions then, and my memories now, have an unreal quality. I remember staring through the windshield from the passenger seat, half dozing, into the purple dusk. It was that time, at the end of daylight, when headlights are necessary, but not sufficient. An orange blossom appeared in the road ahead, and resolved itself into a ditch-to-ditch wall of flame out of which the stark black silhouettes of spinning vehicles appeared and disappeared in a ghastly dance.
We stopped and watched, spellbound, until the fires subsided, then drove cautiously to the site of the wreck. A sedan pulled up from the other side, and two men climbed out and walked up to one of the burned-out cars. Another man, black, stood next to it.
“My baby is in there,” he said, and reached out as if to tug at the arm of one of the other men, but then did not. This was the South, and blacks did not touch whites uninvited. The white man peered through the fire-shattered window of the car.
“This one is alive,” he said. He pulled out a handkerchief that gleamed in the headlights, and tugged the door open. Then he and his companion pulled a young boy from the car.
“Careful,” the man said. “He might have a broken neck.” They carried the boy to the side of the road and laid him down gently. “Anybody have a blanket?” the man asked. “The kid’s probably in shock.”
We had blankets for the trip. Wordlessly, I went to our car and got mine, and spread it over the young body. The boy was burned, but his eyes were open, and he breathed through his teeth as he stared at me. At some point I realized he did not really see me, and at another, that he no longer breathed. I had never seen death, but I had seen enough movies. I pressed at the boy’s eyelids, trying to close them. They refused to move. Finally, I covered his face with the blanket.
We waited, I do not know how long, until police and an ambulance came. They gave my blanket back to me, and my friends and I left. I still remember, can still hear inside my head, the boy’s father, who squatted on his heels at the shoulder of the road, staring at us as we walked past.
“He was my onliest baby,” he said, and shook his head. I stopped, and looked down at him, feeling as if I should do or say something, but not knowing what.
“He was my onliest baby,” he said again. He followed us with his eyes as we drove away.
Later, at the dorm of the college we stayed in, my friends tried to find a new blanket for me.
“You don’t want to sleep in something a dead nigger was wrapped in,” one of them said.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
They looked at me as if I were from another planet, but I took my blanket and made my bed. That night, I awoke from time to time, smelling the odors of fire and fear that rose gently from the brown wool fibers of the blanket. It was the beginning of an awareness that I might have a special affinity for death.
Chapter 3
The Bagel Bakery is clean and ordinary, a brightly lit place of small square tables in imitation bentwood with formica tops, and matching chairs. Its clientele mixes daily regulars and the odd visitor. The coffee is strong, the baked goods edible, and the employees so busy chatting with their familiar customers that they notice strangers only long enough to take their orders and serve them. That is why I chose it for the Wednesday meeting with Angwin. I had told him on the phone to wear something yellow, and to bring fifteen hundred dollars in cash.
“No free first consultation?” he had said, and I told him he had just had it.
When I got to the Bagel Bakery my man’s car was outside, against the yellow no-parking strip, its rear end jutting almost into the traffic lane. It had been there long enough to collect a ticket, and I knew immediately it belonged to him. It was a Mercedes Benz, a roadster, expensive but not kept up. It had a small dent in the front fender next to the sidewalk, a scratch in the driver’s door, and the weather had not been kind to the upholstery. The man would be like that, I decided—the kind who wears fifty-dollar ties that he never has cleaned, and who doesn’t keep his shoes shined. He would be coy with me, even though we both knew what he wanted. He would pay for my coffee, and be grand about it. And he would try to tell me why he wanted a murder. They always do, and I always let them, even though I know the reality will be more complicated, and I will learn that reality on my own. People who want to contract a death seldom understand their own motives.
I make an exception in m
y dealings with the underworld. There is nothing complex about the motive there. A writer, a man named Louis Auchincloss, once expressed his desire to become a stockbroker because it was clean, pure, and without hypocrisy, simply an effort to make the most money with the least work. He could have spoken the same words of organized crime. Murder there is simply business. The dark alleys of the unconscious are irrelevant.
Angwin sat in the corner, his back to the white wall of the bakery, the large front window at his right hand. He was drumming his fingers on the table and staring out the window so intently that he did not notice my approach. I was wrong about the tie. He wore a lemon yellow shirt with an open neck, and a handkerchief of a yellow that did not quite match in the breast pocket of his blazer. The coat was a Brooks Brothers hopsack, the bargain model with plastic gold buttons. He was what some people would call good looking. His hair was blonde and curly and covered his skull in a want to be Afro so tight that I knew it was a salon job. He had large blue eyes, a good nose, and one of those movie star chins with a cleft in the middle; but the overall impression was of weakness. He pouted as he looked out the window and I thought immediately, spoiled brat. He had the beginning of a jowl at the side of his jaw, and as he leaned back in his chair I could see a small pot belly under his shirt. As I approached, he lifted a cup to his lips, and the motion made it easier to see the shiny spot on the elbow of his coat that revealed how old the garment was.
“You have a parking ticket,” I said, and was faintly pleased to see him startle, so that he sloshed a bit of coffee down his chin. In these opening negotiations, every point counts. He craned to see his car, then sat back and composed himself, carefully, in the chair.
“I seem to collect them,” he said, and waved one hand toward the window to let me know it was a small thing.
I sat down and looked him over. I decided that he shaves his eyebrows in the space above his nose. The bakery was cool, but a bead of sweat rested in the middle of his upper lip.
Just like Richard Nixon, I thought. I am a great fan of Agatha Christie, and have always felt a resonance with Miss Marple, who so often achieved an insight because a villain reminded her of someone from her past.
“I suppose you’re wondering why you asked me here,” he said, and smirks.
“No,” I said, flatly. The smirk faded, then crumpled. I decided that he would be an easy person to dislike if I allowed myself to have feelings about my clients.
He fidgeted momentarily, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He pushed it across the table, managing not to glance around him as he did, but the strain of not doing it showed.
I picked the envelope up. It was sealed and taped. I sliced it open with a fingernail and looked inside. It was filled with a thick sheaf of currency and a sheet of paper. I put the envelope into my jacket pocket.
“Aren’t you going to count it?” he asked.
“I don’t need to,” I said. “I know where you live.”
Angwin looked away, then asked, “What now?”
The bakery menu stood tucked between the sugar bowl and the salt shaker.
“I eat,” I said, and picked up the menu. “That’s why I picked this place instead of somewhere more traditional, like a park bench.” I allowed myself a brief smile at my own humor.
The waitress noticed that I had gotten down to business, and tore herself away from the man she had been talking to, leaning across the counter so that their faces practically touched. I ordered a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and coffee. The bagels here are only average, but cream cheese is the same anywhere, and the salmon is excellent, one of the fringe benefits Seattle offers. My tablemate grinned and stretched, pushing his pectorals at the waitress, and asked for more coffee. She nodded without looking at him, and he slumped and patted at his hair. We waited silently while the waitress brought my coffee and refilled his.
He took a quick swallow and put the cup down jerkily, so that it clacked against the saucer.
When the waitress returned with my order, Angwin tried once more. She was wearing long, dangling earrings, cloisonné peacock feathers that swung and caught the light as she moved.
“Great earrings,” he said. “Really sexy.”
“Yeah. My husband thinks so, too,” she said, and walked away. She returned to her position behind the counter, and I could see her nod toward our table and roll her eyes as she resumed her conversation with the man seated there. I was doubly irritated, first because jerks do that to me, and more important, because Angwin’s behavior made the waitress and her friend pay more attention than I would like.
My bagel was already split I cut the halves carefully into quarters and coated them with cream cheese. Then I divided the salmon into four parts as equal as possible—it was difficult because the slices were irregular—and covered the cheese with the fish. Angwin watched me silently, his eyes following every move, as if he had nothing in the world more important to do.
“Your a real neat freak, aren’t you?”
I ignored the remark and finished layering the fish, then took a bite, and gazed at him as I chewed. He was correct that I like order. My life contains structure. I live alone, and have done so since the death of my late, unlamented father. I have no relationships that might make unpredictable demands on me. For the same reason, there are no women in my life, except for one who satisfies my sexual needs at irregular intervals and otherwise stays out of my business. On Mondays I walk to a small Mexican restaurant on the north slope of Queen Anne Hill and have carne asada, which they prepare better than I could. On Tuesdays I walk to a little bistro on Queen Anne Avenue and have beef stew. Wednesdays I walk down the hill to the Seattle Center, ride the monorail to Westlake Shopping Mall, descend to the tunnel, and take the free bus to the Asian district for sushi. And on Thursdays I walk again to the Seattle Center and eat at a small Thai place snuggled into the corner of a parking lot. The rest of the time I cook for myself, and I am an excellent cook. I vacuum on Monday, dust and wax on Wednesday, and wash my clothes on Thursday. Every Friday I walk to the Queen Anne Hill Post Office to get my mail, which I do not care to see more than once a week.
A neat freak? I think of it as precise. Precision and predictability are important in my work.
“Tell me what you want from me,” I said.
Angwin paused and rubbed his hands together nervously. “There’s a piece of paper in the envelope,” he said.
“I saw it.”
“On the paper is a list,” he added after a pause.
“Get to the point,” I said. The words came out with a snap,and I could hear that I was getting impatient with this man. I took a silent breath and pushed the feeling away.
Angwin spread his hands out, palm up. “There are five names on the list,” he said. “The people I represent would like to see them removed.” He put his hands together and slumped back in his chair.
“Why?” I asked.
Angwin ran a fingertip around the rim of his cup, then picked the cup up and drank. He replaced the cup, more quietly this time, and took an audible breath, then leaned forward.
“The deal is this. The people I represent all had money in the market. When the balloon popped, they took baths, like everybody, but worse. Most of them had a lot of their money in one place, and so they lost bags of it. Then they had to watch the big buck guys who were running things cash in and split before things fell apart. Almost everyone I represent has tried to get what’s coming to them legally, and gotten nowhere. So they decided to form a cartel of their own, to make sure that if they couldn’t have a nice retirement, neither could the assholes who ripped them off.”
Angwin paused and took another swallow of coffee. “The ass-holes in question are on that list,” he said, and sat back once again.
I pulled out the envelope and removed the sheet of white paper. As Angwin said, there were five names, each with the name of a city following. Two or three I recognized vaguely, and assumed they had been in the news
.
“If you want, I can give you a rundown right now on what each of them did,” Angwin said.
“Anything I need to know about them, I’ll find out for myself,” I said. “If I take the job.” That is the way I prefer it. What the client tells me is always colored by anger, or fear, or wishful thinking. I looked at the list again.
“These are the cities they live in?” I asked, and Angwin nodded. I look down the list again. four were men. The fifth was a woman.
I tapped the line her name appeared on.
“I charge more for women,” I said.
Angwin flinched back abruptly, as if I had poked him with a finger.
“Why?” he asked.
I could not answer. I was not even sure what gave me the impulse to tell him that, given that I had never killed a woman to begin with.
“It ought to be the other way around,” he said. “A man would be harder.”
“I never haggle.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking.
I left him to his silence while I finished a second quarter of bagel.
“Tell me about the woman,” I said.
Angwin tilted his head and smirked again. “I thought you liked to find these things out for yourself,” he said. I looked at him silently, and finally he shrugged and sighed.
“She’s an exception,” he said. He turned his gaze to the traffic. I waited.
“It’s personal,” he finally said to the window.
“Personal how?”
Angwin spun back to face me. “What do you care? She’s on the list. That’s all you need to know.”
“But it isn’t all I want to know,” I said. I looked at the list again. “Katherine Danner. A girl friend who left you?”
Angwin squirmed like a naughty child. “She’s my sister,” he muttered. “The only person she ever ripped off is me, as far as I know. You could say adding her to the list is my finder’s fee for tracking you down and hiring you.”