Signwave

by Andrew Vachss

  Johnny didn’t say a word as I reacquainted myself with that sharply accurate steering, tapped the brakes a few times to see how they held, even cranked open the sunroof. He didn’t start to act nervous until we were going fifty or so, but when he saw me move the shift lever back up to neutral, then push forward and up to get into fourth, he let out a breath.

  “It’s perfect,” I told him, as we were returning to the house.

  “Well, it’s kind of drab,” he said, apologetically. “That’s the original color, but you’d think a French vehicle would have more choices than gray or black. And it’s got rust spots in a number of little places. But, mechanically, it’s good as new.”

  “Sure feels like it.”

  “This one’s a survivor,” Martin told me. Meaning, not a restoration, just a well-maintained car that probably had outlived its owner. “We bought it from a lady whose husband kept it going all these years. For next to nothing. She seemed more concerned that it go to a good home than about getting a price—not that it would be worth much, anyway. This isn’t exactly a collectible.”

  “I never got that collecting thing,” I told him. “But keeping a good piece of machinery running, that makes sense.”

  By then we were back inside.

  Johnny looked up from a cup of whatever Dolly had brewed for him. “You like it?” he asked me.

  “It’s a swell car.”

  “It’s yours,” Johnny said.

  “What?”

  “A little thank-you gift,” he said, winking at me.

  Smart move. “Thank-you gift for what?” was out of Dolly’s mouth before his eyelid went back up. So she hadn’t known what her two friends had been arguing over before she decided I’d be a good arbitrator.

  “Dell helped us pick up some tools we needed.” Johnny tried his best, but it wasn’t going to fly. I could have told him that.

  By the time the whole story was told, and retold, working backward, Dolly wasn’t exactly overjoyed, but she was sort of okay with it.

  Sort of. “I wouldn’t expect him to say anything,” she said, jerking her thumb in my direction, as if anyone didn’t know who she meant. “But, Johnny, Martin…you didn’t think I’d be interested?”

  “They probably thought you’d be too interested,” I said.

  “We’re all grown men,” Johnny said. “We can make our own decisions.” Another mistake. Well, he brought that one on himself.

  Martin stepped in to protect his partner. “Do you really like the car, Dell?”

  “It’s a thing of beauty.”

  “Then it’s settled,” he said, getting up to make a run for it. “The papers are all in the glove box.”

  Naturally, they made out the bill of sale to Dolly. For five hundred dollars.

  —

  “It’s like having a better version of my motorcycle,” I told my wife, half forcefully holding her on my lap.

  “But…”

  “Really, Dolly. It’s no light catcher. No eye catcher, either—nothing to make it stand out. Anyone who sees it, they’d think it was one of those little sedans every company makes now—they pretty much all look alike.

  “Plus, it’s quiet, and I could probably go an easy couple of hundred miles without needing more gas. Your Subaru, everyone around here knows it. And I don’t much like driving it, either. Ever since you had that special seat put in—”

  “What?”

  “Honey, I practically had to force it on you, didn’t I?”

  “You did. I would have been perfectly happy with—”

  “The doctor said you were getting mid-back pain from that old fall you took, little girl. This one, it’s set up for you…just you. I have to make fifty different adjustments whenever I use it.”

  That wasn’t much of an overstatement. The Corbeau was a beautiful piece of work, with exactly the right kind of support—it had both back and side bolstering, and the headrest was positioned perfectly. It held Dolly in the right position even when she got a little enthusiastic behind the wheel, and it was as comfortable as an easy chair.

  “That was awfully sweet of them, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess it was. But I don’t think they expect us to start exchanging gifts.”

  “I’ll make them something,” my wife said, cutting her eyes at me in case I wanted to be stupid enough to argue with her.

  I didn’t.

  —

  “She’s not…whatever she was.” The severe woman’s voice, burner cell to burner cell.

  “We’re together now. You understand?” she went on, in case I missed what she was really telling me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Be very sure,” she said. “Those shares, they’ve all been sold. Back to the fund, which still hasn’t shown a profit.”

  “I am very sure,” I told her.

  —

  I felt nothing.

  Not in my mind, not in my body. My heartbeat was measured and slow, my eyes were clear, and my hands without tremor.

  Back to what I was trained to be. The zen of violence is to be calm, but never relaxed—to reach that state of being where you sense everything and feel nothing.

  When this man of unknown motivations had warned my Dolly against “going around half cocked,” he was already dying. He didn’t know that. How could he? A man doesn’t know he has prostate cancer until some test warns his doctor, and the biopsy comes back bad.

  Not all biopsies come back bad. But all autopsies do.

  I couldn’t allow anyone to even so much as speculate that Dolly was connected to Benton’s death. It had been months before he left town on one of those “business trips” he’d dutifully report to the IRS.

  “No assassin allows the client to set a time limit.” Olaf’s voice. “Listen!” he whispered. “Logic must rule. If a client knows when and where the target will be killed, that client can have another man waiting…to clean up any loose ends.

  “But even if the client is not planning to destroy any evidence that might surface later, even if the client is simply hiring a contractor, ‘assassin’ and ‘impatient’ are an inherent contradiction.”

  —

  I wasn’t going to risk my Peugeot being spotted.

  Even if nobody paid it much attention, Los Angeles is a car culture, and every fool walks around with a cell-phone camera. The license plate alone could give away too much.

  So I drove down to Sacramento and borrowed a generic Toyota from whoever left it on the street, then I switched its plates with another Toyota’s a few miles south.

  Why anyone would order a prostitute from a Web site was almost beyond my imagination. But I had learned there were people who trusted “The Internet” with unrestricted idolatry.

  And centuries before there was an Internet, there were always those so certain they could turn any situation to their advantage that they never concerned themselves with risk.

  For them, everything was a sure thing.

  The other side of that coin had always been there, too: those who were only truly themselves when they took risks.

  All idols—even reflections in a mirror—share one characteristic: they demand sacrifice.

  No elaborate ruse was required. My cyber-ghost accessed the target’s computer with the ease of an apex predator—at one with the environment that held both him and his food supply in eternal suspension.

  The target was in Los Angeles for less than an hour before he ordered off the pull-down menu, methodically placing his checkmark under the choices offered under the “preferences” tab.

  Very conventional choices, all well within his belief system. Countless young, blond, toned, do-whatever girls were within miles—perhaps even blocks—of his hotel.

  They weren’t all as young, or young-looking, as the target wanted. And they weren’t all blondes. But they all had given up on whatever dreams brought them to this City of Seconds.

  No more waiting to be “discovered” for these girls. Even the ones who looked twelve years old
had already aged out. The porn industry likes to talk about its “shining stars,” but never reveals that they all lose their light. And drop from the night sky.

  What gets used will always get used up—the only variable is how long that takes.

  The feeder stream that carried them in would eventually reverse itself—dreams travel much faster on the way down. At some point, they all exchange their never-happen fantasies for the always-would reality. Juggling pulled-pin grenades, promising themselves that they’d go back home as soon as they caught enough cash in one hand before the grenade exploded in the other.

  If there was one acting skill they mastered, it was lying to themselves.

  —

  The doorman greeted me with a “Welcome back, sir.”

  He’d never seen me before, but I wasn’t carrying any luggage, so he played it safe, assuming I’d checked in before his shift had started, gone out, and was just now returning. I confirmed that impression by walking up from the same side as drop-off cars would exit, waving a languid hand over my shoulder to dismiss whatever limo had dropped me off.

  In the lobby, there was no security to bypass other than the quick eye-scan to see if the man in the gray alpaca suit and black silk shirt with designer sunglasses was important enough to warrant a personal greeting as he passed through the entrance to the elevators, casually holding up a room-key card.

  Poseurs were far more common than the real thing, and sophisticated staff pride themselves on being able to tell the difference.

  So the key card was enough to get me to the elevators, but not enough to merit that personal greeting. Even my gelled and spiked corn-silk-yellow hair and the prominent mole on my left cheek didn’t merit a second glance.

  This staff would never fail to recognize a genuine cinema star, and the town was supposedly full of major character actors. But they wouldn’t need facial-recognition skills to pick out the real deal. One thing they knew for sure: no truly major player would ever be unaccompanied.

  —

  When he looked through the peephole in the door to his suite, the customer wasn’t surprised to see me.

  Not me, personally, just the package he’d been expecting. Well dressed, properly groomed, my face unsmiling but not threatening. I was just a man on business, perfectly in tune with the hotel’s ambience.

  The Web site had told him that the girl he ordered was “too fresh” to be allowed out unless there was a “chauffeur” sent to look the setup over first. The girl was just another variety of room service—higher-priced, sure, but still no more than a finger-snap away. The client had already placed his order, and paid through a cleared credit card. Tips were “welcome”—there was no need to spell out “in cash.”

  Anyone who used the “catering” Web site would be informed that the chauffeur’s task would be to check the premises—not just the living room, the whole suite—to make certain the client was alone, then punch a button on a cell phone to summon the merchandise.

  As soon as she arrived, the chauffeur would go downstairs and wait in the car until the client was fully satisfied. He’d paid for a three-hour “unit,” but if he decided he wanted to extend, he knew how to contact the service provider without going near a phone.

  —

  The dead man ushered me inside.

  As he closed the door, I shot him in the back of the head. The quieted round—a .22 short with some powder removed—passed soundlessly through the hand-turned barrel of the tiny pistol. He might have made some noise falling against the door if my grip on the back of his shirt collar hadn’t prevented any such possibility.

  I used that same collar to haul his body into the jet-nozzle bathtub, placing him so he was lying on his back. I removed his wallet—the kind you carry in the inside pocket of your jacket—his wafer-thin oversized watch, and some cash from his slacks.

  Then I put another round into each eye, draped a paper stencil over his forehead, sprayed a burst of blue paint to create a ♀ symbol, pulled off the stencil, plastic-pocketed it with the little can of paint, and walked into the unused bedroom.

  Two pieces of luggage. Both Tumi, each marked with “GBB” in red on a raised portion designed for such personalization. The gusseted black leather oversized attaché case would fit any airline’s definition of “carry-on” and slide under any seat in First Class. No waiting in Baggage Claim for Mr. Benton. And no chance of the airline’s sending checked luggage to some other destination.

  The larger bag didn’t interest me. I just wanted to make sure the carry-on had a portable computer of some kind.

  It did. As well as one of those phones that allow connection to the Internet.

  I knew the cops would call it an “execution-style” killing. And at least one of them would tip the press about the blue symbol on his face. That would start another round of gossip about the Manson Family giving birth to a second generation.

  Even experienced investigators couldn’t ignore the possibility of a group of psychos. L.A. was never short of cults, usually led by a mind as dream-killed as an aged-out porn star.

  Crazy people could be clever enough to think that taking the dead man’s wallet would delay an ID.

  Of course, it wouldn’t—he would have paid for the room by credit card. But I wanted the cops to have every possible excuse to do a forensic examination of his laptop.

  —

  The corridor was soundless.

  I knew its thick carpeting would mask footsteps, or even a service cart, so I scanned carefully with an extendable dentist’s mirror before I stepped out, checking that the “Do Not Disturb” placard was still in place over the doorknob in the same motion.

  The security camera wasn’t an issue—a quick spritz of fog-colored paint had made any kind of ID impossible, even if someone was watching in real time. Not much chance of that—this wasn’t a casino.

  I walked up three flights of stairs, checked the elevator buttons, hit an unlit one with a latex-covered knuckle, and took an empty car down to the first floor.

  The same doorman greeted my exit as sincerely as a mortician’s grief. I kept walking for a few blocks until I was satisfied nobody was interested.

  —

  I was in the right neighborhood for a leisurely walk.

  And dressed for my surroundings. To any watcher, it would appear as if the limo had dropped me off in front of one of the buildings, and I wanted to grab a smoke before I entered my studio’s headquarters, or my agent’s offices. The slabby cell phone shielded my face as I…

  Anyone taking a look would fill in that blank themselves, depending on who they were. Or thought they were.

  Turning the corner brought me to the verge of another world, a world I needed to look over until I could stabilize pattern recognition. By the time I retrieved the car from the parking garage, I was wearing orange-lensed HD sunglasses, a banana-yellow tank top, and an L.A. Clippers adjustable ball cap. I carried the alpaca jacket, silk shirt, and tie in one hand, rolled together.

  I paid the cashier on the way out. If she noticed anything, it would have been a man with a black eye patch and a white sweatshirt with “13 ½” silk-screened in red across the chest.

  Two blocks later, the eye patch and sweatshirt were under the front seat.

  —

  The drive to Sacramento took me deep into the darkness I needed.

  I pulled off the road, checked the undisturbed little markers I’d left, and got to work. The Walmart box cutters made short work of the alpaca suit and every other item I’d been wearing—I’d brought a half-dozen with me so I wouldn’t have to spend time changing blades.

  The torn strips went into a hole I’d already trenched out, along with the shoes and socks I’d worn into the hotel.

  Then I coated it all with what légionnaires dryly called “flambé” in places where they spread it over humans like jam on toast. It burned perfectly, but didn’t send up smoke. I refilled the hole, tamped it down with my hands, and stirred until it was indistinguishable
from any of the surrounding dirt.

  I removed the barrel of the little pistol, pressed one end tightly against a cube of steel, then emptied the vial of acid into it. When the hissing stopped, I used a sculptor’s hammer to turn it into a shapeless lump.

  That lump flew out the passenger-side window as I drove toward the Oregon border, where I left the “borrowed” car in an empty garage.

  —

  By the time I returned to our cottage, I was back to where I’d started.

  But I’d learned a lot since then. More than enough for me to revisit the man I’d once been all the time.

  My hands were clean. There was no back-trail.

  Just one more tile was needed to turn the whole mosaic into a single black slab.

  —

  I made four passes in my little Peugeot before I was certain. Leaving some lights on didn’t tell me the house was occupied, but the figure moving around on the second floor was perfectly backlit.

  Only one way to make certain I could rewrite the ending originally plotted by another.

  I parked the Peugeot in the dark part of the huge yard. Then I walked to the front door and pushed the pale-pink illuminated button with my silk-wrapped thumb before I returned the pocket square to the lapel of my charcoal suit jacket.

  That jacket was a masterpiece. It not only held my flat semi-auto without showing, it had room in the sleeves for those foam-cushioned wraps people with tennis elbow wear—the kind that looked like a honeycomb of little protective pads. Mine were different. Scalpel-cutting into each pad to extract the foam and insert precut pieces of lead had taken a long time. Elbow strikes rely on bone to cut flesh; now one from me would break any bone it hit.

  Sixty seconds was running in my head. If he didn’t come to the door by…

  The door opened. It was the man I’d hoped for—the man in Conrad’s photo array. Even if he had company, they’d never be able to tell the police any more than what time the doorbell had sounded.

  “Mr. Fairmount? Please excuse me for using that name, but Mr. Benton said it would be the only way to assure you that I was working for him. My bona fides, if you will, sir.”