by Paul Moomaw
“She has a different last name. Is she married?”
“Divorced,” Angwin said. “Handled her own. She’s a lawyer, works downtown. She doesn’t need the income; she’s just big on the work ethic thing, my sister is.” He paused. “I guess you want to know why I put her on the list,” he began.
“Because you want her dead, obviously.”
“And there’s a good reason for that.”
“Your motives are your concern.”
“Good,” Angwin said. “Just a business deal. Like fixing the plumbing or repairing the roof.”
“Or demolishing the house.”
He laughed. “Good one,” he said. He dug into his jacket again and retrieved a photograph, snapshot size, in color. “This is her,” he said.
I slid it into my shirt pocket without looking at it. Prospective clients always give me photographs, and I never study them at the time. I prefer to get to know the victim and form my own image, so that when I look at the picture, it tells me more about the client who chose it than it does about the victim. Then it was my turn to gaze out the window as I thought about whether to take on Angwin’s list.
Even though Angwin lived in Seattle, the targets did not, I thought, then corrected myself. One does, but I could cross that bridge when I came to it. I would be bending a rule, not breaking it. And the task looked challenging. Serial killing. I had never done that before. I would be like a suitor on a quest, with money for the prize instead of a princess. Suddenly another image popped into my head and I almost chuckled. In my memory I was watching Alec Guinness in an old English movie called Kind Hearts and Coronets, killing off the heirs to a fortune that he is last in line for. I took a deep breath and decided I would take the job. I waited a moment longer, but even my inner scold was silent.
“Very well,” I said. “This is how it will work. Each assignment will cost forty thousand dollars, paid in advance.” I looked at him, and he did not blink.
“There’ll be enough money for all of them,” he said. “The group I speak for is pretty big, and they all still have a little cash for important things. How long is this all going to take?”
I slipped the envelope back into my pocket, along with the photograph of Angwin’s sister. “I don’t work to schedule,” I said. “It will take as long as it takes. When I have finished with one, I will be in touch with you again as soon as I have time for the next.”
“How will we know you did the job?”
“I can assume that each one will make at least the local papers. It will be up to you to see the stories.”
Angwin frowned, then sighed and twisted the frown into an unconvincing smile. “I guess you set the rules.”
“That’s right. Sometimes I change them, too. Be aware of that.”
“As for time,” Angwin said, “there’s no big rush.” Yet another smirk. “I handle the fund, and the longer this takes, the better the float for me.”
I pulled out a card holder, took out one of the cards and handed it to him. “The check should be sent to the address on this card, made out to the person named.”
Angwin held it up.
“Lucifer Cain, Solutions, Incorporated,” he said. “St. Paul, Minnesota.” He gave me a knowing look. “I don’t suppose that’s really your name.” He shrugged and tucked the card into his pocket.
I was disappointed by his lack of perceptiveness. Lucifer and Cain. A small joke, but not so subtle that a person of average intelligence would not catch it. I have other identities as well, all documented with Social Security Cards, drivers licenses and passports. Some come from the Mob and others I have picked up myself over the years after I learned how easy it is if you have some connections and a little money. One I even got from CIA. I never have to be the same man twice in a row. On some jobs I become a complete chameleon, using one name for a plane flight, another for a hotel reservation and a third when I approach my target. Sometimes I wonder if the phony personalities are like a cat’s nine lives, and if I run out it will be the end of me.
Lucifer Cain is a constant, however. All payments are made to his account in Minnesota. Cain then sends a check to Grass Valley Human Resources Development of Tacoma, Washington, which cuts a check in the same amount and mails it to David Hummer. He deposits it in his account in Seattle and then makes regular cash withdrawals low enough to fly under the radar of the IRS. He gives that money to Daniel Harms who deposits it in his money market checking account. They are all me, of course. It is a cumbersome system and not completely foolproof, but it puts some distance between me and the person paying me, and allows early warning bells to go off if someone starts snooping.
Angwin stared for a moment out the window, then turned back to me.
“Do you like your work?” he asked.
I could have taken the time to answer, to explain that the killing is not the point. It is the stalking, and the planning that goes before, the reaching of that point where the kill is unstoppable. It is one of the only positive things I learned from my father, who often took me hunting, whether during season or on one of those frequent times when he had a whim to poach a deer. He was an excellent hunter, and I learned early to avoid displeasing him and earning a fist to the head because of making a sound or an awkward move. Then I aped the skills he had until I was almost as good as he.
But Angwin was not worth all those words.
“To paraphrase Dr. Jonson,” I said, “no man but a fool ever killed for anything but money.”
“Whatever,” Angwin said. He rummaged inside his blazer, retrieved a business card and tossed it onto the table. “That’s me, officially,” he said. I was inclined to ignore the card, but finally picked it up on the principle that anything can come in handy. It was cream colored, and a little smudged. His name appeared in large red block print, accompanied by the words “Systems Design and Maintenance.”
“You work with computers?” I said.
Angwin nodded. “Networks and systems. I’m damn good at it, too. Problem is, so are twenty thousand other guys around Puget Sound.” He shrugged. “It’s a living.”
The waitress sauntered by and dropped the check on the table. Angwin picked it up. “My treat, even if you did invite me,” he said. He studied the bill, and spread money on the table. It was for the exact amount, with no tip. I pulled two dollars from my wallet and dropped it at my place.
“Why leave a tip? The service sucked.”
“I waited tables once,” I said.
As I followed him to the door, I saw that I was correct about another thing. His shoes were poorly cared for, run down at the heels, and strangers to polish.
On the sidewalk, he turned to face me.
“Do you think people have souls?” he asked. “Or do they die and that’s that?”
I did not bother to answer, and doubted that he expected me to.
“I’ve never even looked at a corpse before,” he said. His eyes were suddenly wide, and through them I saw the frightened boy who hid inside. Then he turned and walked toward his car, which had collected another parking ticket.
* * *
I went home and settled myself in front of the big window, cradling a cup of tea on my knee. I stared out the window for a few moments, feeling oddly unsettled. Then with a sigh of exasperation at making a liar of myself, I reached into my pocket and withdrew the photograph of Angwin’s sister, telling myself it was only curiosity. I held the picture in my left hand and took a sip of tea from the cup in my right. The face that looked out of the photograph touched me immediately, although I could not begin to say why. The hair was dark, coppery red, short and curly. The features were smooth, and the eyes were large, dark brown, and wide, more with skepticism than wonder. Her face was attractive, nothing special, but I was drawn back repeatedly to the eyes. I felt myself responding from some inchoate place inside, some tiny group of cells that never fully developed.
I put the picture back into my pocket and finished my tea. Then, without my willing it, fingers reached
into the pocket and pulled the photo back out, and I found myself looking at that face again. I stood up and walked to the dining room, and tossed the picture onto the table. It landed face down, and despite myself, I reversed it and had another look before I told myself, “Stop that,” and walked away.
Chapter 4
I have tracked down Lucero’s girlfriend, whose name is Lupe. She lives in a gated community called Bodega Estates. Bodega means basement, but the development clings to the steep sides of Sandia Crest, high enough that it looks down on the terminal of the giant tram that carries people from the edge of Albuquerque to the top of the mountain. Lupe’s place, a two-story fake adobe with a flat roof, sits at the highest point of the neighborhood. To reach it on the sneak I park my rental car away from the stone and stucco wall that surrounds the development and boasts several surveillance cameras. To avoid them I am forced to scramble up the steep near-cliff above her house, where there is no wall, then slither down into her back yard, which snuggles up against the rock. I have done it three times now, and it still makes my bowels clench. Years ago I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco to Sausalito.
Walking back, I passed a man who sat huddled against one of the bridge towers. He had the desperate look of someone who had decided to take the bridge up on one of its most celebrated aspects—providing a gate to the next world by way of a leap to the water far below. After I passed him I walked to the edge of the bridge, looked down from behind the safety of a sturdy railing. I knew right away that no matter how badly I wanted to die, I could never do it jumping. I am too afraid of heights. It was one of those small epiphanies that come occasionally. I had not known that I was afraid until that moment. I grew up in mountain country, and I don’t remember fearing high places as a child; but during my adult years, that part of me must never have been tested until the evening on the Golden Gate. I have since gotten the fear under control the way I have other weaknesses that might get in the way of my work. Still, it has taken a deep breath and a mental order to calm myself each of the three times I have made the climb to Lupe’s house. I wait there now, in the dark. Lucero has not been here this week, but I am sure he will come. Then I will kill him.
Lupe is a surprise. I expected a young, high class chippie, with legs and breasts, and filmy clothes to show them off. Lupe looks to be in her forties. She is dark, and plain, and a little overweight. Her clothes are plain as well, and a little tight, not in a seductive way, but like someone who has added pounds and not bothered to buy a new wardrobe. She has a grown son and daughter who came to see her last night and eat the dinner she prepared for them. I could not hear them talk, but their faces and comfortable gestures showed the affection they have for each other.
Headlights flash, and a car curves up and around the road to the house. It pulls into the driveway and stops. Lucero gets out. He is alone. The window I am looking through offers a direct view of the dining room and, through a wide double door opening, the living room beyond that, where I can see the back of Lupe’s head as she divides her attention between a game show on a giant, wall-hung television screen and something blue and yellow that she is knitting. She rises and opens the front door for Lucero. He hugs her perfunctorily with one hand and offers her a bottle of wine with the other. She leads him into the dining room, motions toward the table, and walks into the kitchen. Lucero sits down at the table, sags into a chair, in fact. He looks tired and worried. He should be worried, of course, but he cannot know that. Lupe returns with the wine and two clunky glasses made of some kind of blue pottery. She disappears again into the kitchen and comes back almost immediately with a large casserole. One half of the dish is filled with enchiladas, rolled and covered with chile and cheese bubbling from the oven. The other half is stacked with tamales, still in their corn husks.
I am hungry. I have had nothing to eat since early afternoon. I have learned that eating a meal can leave me sleepy, especially as I grow older. I cannot afford to be sleepy; but I have trouble looking at anything but the food on the table. I realize that I am cold, too—a combination of my empty stomach and the chill desert air.
Lupe takes two plates and silverware from a sideboard and lays them on the table, then sits down across from Lucero. He grabs a tamal, pulls off the husk, and wolfs it down. He repeats the process with two more, and my stomach growls. Then he rises, places two tamales on Lupe’s plate, and serves her two or three enchiladas. He does it neatly, with no fuss, and Lupe smiles appreciatively. A gentleman, I think. It forces me to revise my opinion of him a little. He serves himself and sits down again, and they begin to eat, focused on the food, not speaking. The comfort between them is palpable. They could be any middle-aged, happily married couple. At one point, when Lucero reaches for another tamal, Lupe places her hand on his, and he takes her fingers and kisses them.
I rise and stretch cramped muscles, then settle down again to watch them finish their meal. I am getting colder, and also beginning to feel the need to piss. They empty the casserole—Lucero has eaten most of it—and Lupe rises and begins to clear dishes from the table. Lucero pushes himself back and pats his stomach, a well-fed burgher, then stands up as Lupe walks into the kitchen. He takes both wine glasses and the bottle and moves into the living room, forcing me to shift again to gain a view through a different window. He sits down on the sofa, which is turned so that he is half facing me. Lupe enters the room and picks up the knitting that she had left on the sofa. She tosses it onto the coffee table, and sits next to Lucero. He pours wine into both glasses and hands her one. Then he settles back with a comfortable smile and puts an arm around her shoulder.
I prepare to wait, hoping they are not settling in for a long movie. The urge to piss grows so strong that it makes my teeth ache. I crouch quietly until the couple’s eyes seem firmly fixed on the television screen, then risk standing up and finding a patch of shrubbery to empty my bladder into. Relieved, I return to my station outside the window and wait.
It must be a movie. Nearly two hours pass before Lucero reaches for the remote on the coffee table and switches the television off. He and Lupe rise and she goes to the kitchen and turns out the light there, then passes through the dining room and flips that light off as well. She goes back to Lucero and they walk to a hallway that is partially visible from the window. They stop in front of a door, and Lucero gives Lupe a hug and a kiss that is not at all passionate. She smiles, opens the door, and steps into the room beyond. Then Lucero walks down the hall to a second door, opens it, and disappears inside another room. Separate bedrooms. This is some affair. Lucero is destroying any image I have had of him as a swaggering gangster.
I wait another hour, then make my way across the rocks to the rear of the house, where there is a tiny back yard separated from the hillside by a retaining wall. The utilities are buried in this development, but the Qwest telephone box perches on the back wall, near a corner of the house, with conduit running up to it from the ground. I rip the cable loose, then walk to the back door. I have tested the latch on two previous nights and found it unlocked. Lupe apparently trusts the gates to keep her secure. I hope it will be the same with Lucero there, and it is. The brass handle on the door turns with a barely audible click, and the door itself moves inward with no sound at all. I step inside and close the door behind me, then feel my way across the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the hallway. I place my fingertips against the wall and let them guide me forward. They brush past Lupe’s door. It is closed. I do not need fingers to tell me Lucero’s door is open. I can hear his breathing, heavy and harsh, not quite a snore, but loud enough to fill the room. I slip inside. Lucero is sleeping face up, his body dimly illuminated by a night light. I wonder if he fears the dark. I free my gun and gently release the safety. The pistol is an old Ruger target job, .22 long caliber. I dislike silencers. They are bulky and awkward, and not as effective as murder shows would have you believe. The Ruger does not need one. It is heavy and still has a tight action, and makes very litt
le noise, especially when the muzzle is pressed against the soft tissue of a body. I push the gun into Lucero’s flesh, just below the sternum, angled so that the bullet will tear into the heart. Lucero flinches and his eyes open, so that he has a split second to see that he is about to die before I pull the trigger. I fire two quick rounds and his body jerks, then sags back into the bedding. His eyes are still open, but he is already dead. I think of Lupe, and brush his eyelids closed with my fingers. Then I reach into a pocket and pull out the message I am supposed to leave. Sometimes the wise guys want a death to look like an accident. Other times, they want the right people to know, or at least be able to guess, why the person died. This is one of those cases. The message is an old 45 rpm record, a single of Frank Sinatra singing “Chicago.” I suppose that is wise guy wit.
I toss the record onto Lucero’s body and turn to the door. Lupe is standing there, her eyes wider than Lucero’s were before I closed them.
“Why?” she says.
“Business,” I reply.
She steps into the room and stops again.
“I know he could be a bad man, but he was good to me. My husband got killed working for him, and he saw to it that I was taken care of, that my kids got a good education and a little money to start life on.” She gazes down at Lucero’s body, shakes her head slowly back and forth, and looks at me again. “We were never lovers. But we got to be friends. He trusted me.
He even listened to advice from me. He felt safe here.” She shivers slightly and looks at Lucero again. “Too safe, I guess.”
“You couldn’t know.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
My head shakes back and forth, telling me what the answer is before I know it consciously.
“I’m not going to kill you.” I walk past her to the bedroom door and out. She follows me all the way to the kitchen. As I open the door to the back yard, she says, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll call the cops?”