“Me. I was the fourth target.” I said it incredulously, but I already half believed it. I let go of him, turning away to pace.
“According to what I know, yes,” Luger replied, smoothing his shirt.
That fit with certain things, clues my subconscious had obviously picked up on. Words Thomas had spoken ran through my head, things that hadn’t made a lot of sense at the time.
I’d always wondered why he’d bothered to come by and give me answers that evening in my office kitchen, a man of secrets like him. It had been a risk, revealing himself that way.
Now I wondered if he’d originally intended me to walk away from that encounter at all. Had he changed his mind while I sat at the end of his gun? If so, why? It wasn’t my boundless charm. “And now Houdini’s taking care of unfinished business.”
“So it would seem.”
I suddenly felt the need for another drink, which I poured myself from Luger’s schnapps bottle, not bothering to offer him one. I tossed it off like a sailor and filled the shot glass again.
“So much for moderation,” Luger said with a lifted eyebrow.
“Moderation can go to hell. You just said I’ve got a contract on me from a major crime lord, a man who probably controls a billion-dollar empire. How do I fight that?”
“The princess must find a champion.”
“Cut the crap, would you? I’m no princess.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
“I’m not putting on false humility.”
“I know, but the line was far too good to pass up. Besides, you’re overly hard on yourself. What’s wrong with admitting you’re attractive?”
“Maybe I want to be taken seriously for my abilities, not the luck of genetics.”
“Aren’t those abilities the result of good breeding, too?”
“I believe people are mostly what they make of themselves, and before you bring it up, no, I don’t believe in racial determinism. I believe in free will, not merely its illusion.”
Luger saluted me with his glass. “As do I, once genetics are accounted for. So why not will yourself to believe you deserve to be loved?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
“Thanks, Obi-wan.”
“I get that one.”
“Thank God.”
“Though I always rooted for the Empire.”
“You would.”
He didn’t reply, and I didn’t speak further for some time, only sipped my schnapps and let my eyes range over some of the more disturbing fascist art on his wall. I was distracting myself with banter, but I had to pull myself together and start figuring out what to do.
This weirdo seemed to like me for some reason, so instead of trying to pick fights with him, maybe I ought to figure out how to leverage his good will.
“So…who’s the white knight? You?” I said it straight, without irony.
“I’m more like the wizard in his tower, powerful but limited, though wise. You need a knight-errant, or even a whole round table full of them. All you have to do is identify them and give them their assignments.”
“God, sometimes I hate the way you talk. Can’t you simply speak plainly?”
“It doesn’t come naturally, but I’ll try. Whom can you count on?”
“Umm…Mickey, my assistant. My mother. Uncle Sergei, who you probably know from Vyazma. A deputy sheriff and a couple of cops, probably. Thomas, perhaps – that’s the contractor’s name, what he gave me anyway. Just like you, he seems to have an irrational attraction to me.” I stopped.
“I can understand that. Any more?”
I thought. “Cole Sage, the reporter. I should have mentioned him up front. He’s a warhorse when he gets the bit in his mouth. Oh, then there’s a couple of tough guys that help me with apprehending fugitives.”
“Good. So by my count you have at least half a dozen people you can rely on. Use them.”
“To do what?”
“First, stay alive. If you die, it’s all pointless, yes? After that…do you want to live the rest of your life with a target painted on your back?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you have to take the fight to the enemy.”
I set down my schnapps, suddenly losing the desire to drink more. “To Houdini? I don’t have the muscle to stand up to someone like him.”
“Then who does?”
“SFPD, maybe…but he’s got to have people on his payroll, so I’ll have to be careful. And if I go to the PD, they’ll want to put me in protective custody, which will mean I can’t do a damn thing and everything will be in their hands. Two weeks later they’ll have gotten nowhere. At best they’ll have figured out who killed Hade, but even if they catch who did it, no contractor would ever rat on his employer. Rats don’t make it out of San Quentin.”
“Not SFPD. Who do you know that has an organization behind him bigger than any criminal enterprise? Who do even the mafias and the cartels fear?”
My eyes widened as I realized what he was getting at. “The feds.” Specifically, my brother Ron at the FBI.
“Et voila.” He performed a there-you-are gesture and smiled widely. It wasn’t a good look for him.
“But I still have no idea who Houdini is.”
“Undoubtedly the DEA has a file on him, perhaps an active investigation.”
“Yes, so if I can provide a connection to the dead woman…but it’ll be tricky. I’m assuming you want your name kept out of it. Ditto Thomas.”
“Yes, please, don’t mention me…but not because of fear of the feds. I’m more concerned with your adversary deciding to make an example of me for helping you.”
“Why won’t you speak his name?”
“Names have power, and his is one to conjure with, as they say. I prefer not to tempt the fates.”
“Yet you put yourself out for me. That’s…”
“Sweet?”
I made a sour face. “I was going to say ‘admirable.’”
“I suppose I’ll settle for that.”
As a consolation prize, I stepped up and kissed Luger on the cheek. “Thank you.” That was all he was going to get in the physical department, but the man was taking risks for me – or for himself, one could argue, as a route to my gratitude. Still, the gesture seemed little enough.
He brightened and kissed my hand in return. “Bitte schön.”
“Yeah, butter churn yourself.” In spite of everything, I said it with a smile. Whatever Luger was, he knew how to act like a gentleman, and that was something unusual in this ever-coarsening day and age.
The ride home was short and uneventful, and for the first time in a while I put Molly into the house’s cramped one-car garage, where Madge should have been. This fact only increased my pain, a combination of shame, regret and anger that had settled into my bones and made me ache.
No lights showed in the windows, by which I assumed my mother was still mad at me. Or perhaps she was simply passed out on a friend’s sofa or in someone’s bed. When she got this way, she wasn’t too particular about with whom she slept.
I hoped she stuck with her old friends-with-benefits. I don’t think I could handle meeting another new boyfriend who would be lucky to last three months.
Or girlfriend. Once in a while she seemed to want to shock me by switch-hitting, but I never let her see it get to me. In that way Starlight was the eternal teenager, endlessly testing the limits of those who loved her.
Meh, and whatever.
My shower and bed called to me, so I locked the house up tight, fed the dogs and Snowflake, and then retired to my room.
When I stepped out of the shower, I about jumped out of my skin when I saw Thomas sitting in my bedroom chair, my traitorous cat lying contentedly in his lap.
“We really need to talk about some boundaries,” I said, snatching a towel and wrapping it around my torso.
“I never understood why a woman with whom one has been intimate fee
ls the need to cover up.”
“And I never understood why being intimate with a woman makes a man think he can barge into her house without even a knock!”
Thomas waved his fingers. “I have to keep in practice, though I have to say, your locks aren’t much of a challenge. You don’t even have an alarm system.”
“Those Pekes are the best alarm system ever. How the hell do you get past them? They’re usually the barkiest creatures on Earth.”
“Personality and charm, I suppose. That and half a fresh-cooked chicken breast for each. Did you know Pekingese were bred to be carried in the sleeves of the Chinese imperial family?”
“Yes, I do. You and my mother should get together and talk dogs sometime.”
“That might be fun.”
“What do you want, Thomas?”
“I’d like to hear about your conversation with Luger.”
“Jealous?”
“Mildly.”
“He was a perfect gentleman, which is more than I can say about you.”
“I apologize, but given the danger you’re in, I’m prepared to offend you further for the sake of security.”
“That’s what the TSA people say whenever they grope me.” I slipped on a robe and threw myself on the bed. Snowflake deserted Thomas and jumped across to me, which allowed me to forgive him with head scritches. “How much am I worth, by the way?”
“More than you can imagine.”
“I mean, how much did you give up when you voided your contract?”
Thomas let his head fall slowly back to stare at the ceiling. “In pure dollar terms? Half a million.”
“Half a million! Holy Krishna!”
“It was the first contract I’ve ever abrogated. Didn’t do my reputation any good, though the fact that I returned the advance and retired three of four targets anyway will allow me to recover, I’m sure.”
“Did you get your money’s worth?”
He lowered his head to glare at me. “Is that a trap? If I say yes, you say I’m making a whore of you. If I say no, I’m devaluing you. Either way, you’re a commodity.”
“So I’m not?”
“Not to me.”
“You were paid to kill me, Thomas.”
“Before I knew you. When you were just a name. You were presented to me as a dirty ex-cop, no better than the criminals you took down or shook down.”
“I suppose Houdini had to assuage your code of ethics.”
“I suppose he did.”
“He played you.”
“Getting played seems to be going around.”
I blushed, remembering handing over Madge. “Fair point. But you backed out. I still don’t know why. And don’t say love at first sight.”
He shrugged. “I researched you. The internet makes it so easy these days, but I also chatted up people who knew you. Clients. Cops. Criminals. Cole Sage spoke highly of you. Even those who hated you most didn’t think you were dirty. And once you pushed me to my limits, driver to driver, I knew you were something special.”
“Yeah. I almost had you a couple times.” I found myself warming to this tale. It was my kind of story, about a man finding attraction in my skills, my accomplishments and my character, not some nebulous artsy perfume-commercial ambience in praise of beauty. I put my elbow on the bed and my head on my palm, stretching out with a coy smile. “Tell me more.”
Thomas leaned forward, ostensibly to stroke Snowflake, but I felt a buzz building between us.
Oh, Buddha. I knew where this was heading, but at least it was now half-familiar territory, far less risky and more satisfying than my hour with Luger.
I swallowed, throat suddenly dry. “The first time we…we were together, you told me I didn’t understand, and I saw something in your eyes. Something that frightened me. No, worse. Something that terrified me. I’ve never felt that way before. That’s why I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I chalked it up to my own fear of flying, too damn much intimacy too fast, but…”
He dropped his eyes. “You know what it was.”
“I think so.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“Yes, I do.”
A long moment of silence hung between us, until finally Thomas spoke. “Go ahead, then.”
“You hadn’t yet decided. You took me right here in my own room, on my own bed, and you still weren’t sure you wouldn’t kill me when we were done. That’s what I saw.”
“That’s what you saw.” Thomas hung his head. “I’m sorry. I’m not who you think I am.”
“I have no idea who I think you are. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a gentle soul, not a killer. So how do I reconcile these two Thomases?”
He rubbed his hands together, long fingers sliding past one another, and I imagined them touching me. “Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions.”
“That sounds like a quote.”
“Kierkegaard. I always took it to mean that people will do anything to achieve significance. Charge a machinegun nest to save their fellow soldiers. Expend a lifetime trying to cure one obscure disease. Sublimate themselves to slavish work in hopes their children will become notable. Fly themselves and hundreds of innocents into skyscrapers. Assassinate someone famous. Blow up a school.”
“You make it sound like all those acts are morally equivalent.”
“Not in value, but perhaps in intensity, in significance, which was, I think, what Kierkegaard was getting at. That the magnitude of one person’s effect on the world was the measure of things, not whether it was good or evil.”
“That’s utterly cynical. I hate it.”
“I don’t think he meant that was the way things should be, only that they are. An observation, not a proverb.”
“So that’s your defense? You were looking for significance?”
Thomas sighed, an expulsion of breath so long it seemed never to end. “I still am.”
I couldn’t help letting a bit of derision slip into my tone. “So I’m supposed to be, what, your shrink? Your validation? Your savior?”
“Not in the sense you mean. Only that my feelings for you have given me a new perspective.”
“Which is?”
“That maybe there’s more to life than getting paid for a job well done.”
“In my experience, that’s half of it. The rest is…”
“The cream in the coffee? The icing on the cake? The sugar in the tea?”
“The job is a living. The rest is a life,” I said. “Why do you think I race cars? Play poker? Skydive? Chase criminals?
“I understand the high, believe me. It’s something we share.”
“But I’m still not sure what you were getting at when you told me to look for who wanted to hurt me. Not with you paying me to investigate my own murder. Which, by the way, seems solved.”
“Not by a long chalk.”
“Odd expression.”
He waved. “Common back home. You Yanks would say ‘long shot.’”
“But we know who tried to kill me. Houdini.”
“I assume so, but it’s not like my contract came with a signature at the bottom. These things are handled anonymously, through cutouts and drop boxes. If you ever want to be safe, though, you either have to bring down Houdini or make a deal with him.”
“No way I’m making a deal with him.”
“I thought you’d feel that way. So in the short term, you might want to help identify the other contractor…the one that missed. Take him or her out of the picture.”
I shivered, my mind shying away once again from the idea that someone genuinely wanted me dead. “Back to the ‘who wants to hurt me’ question…”
“That’s the wild card in the mix.”
“Funny you should put it that way. The dead woman was a small-time poker pro out of Seattle. My working theory is that someone hired her to set me up for a big loss.�
��
“Not all that big. Twenty grand is significant, but not life-crushing for someone like you.”
“Maybe it was just the first step. But Thomas, I have bigger things to worry about.”
“I suppose you do, though not right at this moment.”
“What’s right at this moment?”
“This.” Thomas reached out to me then, and I didn’t resist, nor did I bother to fix it when my towel came loose, leaving me as exposed as I ever allow.
When he slid onto the bed to place his hands on me, that chemistry I knew so well took over again, pouring its libation through my veins and pooling in parts of me that wouldn’t be denied.
Oh, hell. Once a man decides not to kill you, he gets a free pass to funland, right? That’s what I tried to tell myself as my nerve endings told me to shut up and enjoy it.
Chapter 6
Half an hour later Thomas and I lay sated beside each other. He seemed fresh, but I felt like a wrung-out rag. Snowflake eyed us from the top of my tall chest of drawers. I’d forgotten to kick him out. I wondered what he made of our gymnastics.
“That was good,” I said.
“Nearly English in its understatement.”
“That was awesome, dude.”
“There’s the American woman I know.”
“Stay away from me?”
“The Guess Who was addressing the Statue of Liberty in that song, did you know that? Protesting the Vietnam war.”
“Damn pansy Canadians. I did know that, actually. I picked up a lot of music trivia from Mom and Dad. Rock and roll was one of their shared passions.” I rolled over and buried my head on his shoulder. “Are you staying?”
“If you like.”
I mimed trying to make up my mind, index finger to my lips, and then nodded. “I like.”
“Good thing you don’t snore.”
“How would you know?”
He kissed me. “Good night, Cal.”
“Good night, John-boy.”
Morning’s light brought no mother home. Probably sleeping it off wherever she was. I wasn’t worried. Sometimes she disappeared for days, and since she refused to carry a cell phone, I’d gotten used to it. If necessary I’d go by in person to some of her closer friends, all of whom lived within a mile or two.
Slipknot: A Private Investigator Crime and Suspense Mystery Thriller (California Corwin P. I. Mystery Series Book 3) Page 5