Totally Killer

by Greg Olear

  With a final drag, she flicked the butt into the street, pivoted neatly on one heel, and strutted through the front door. She expected the uniformed doorman to stop her, but he didn’t—the Yalies were smart enough to let a hot chick in unmolested. She made her way up to the second floor and found the main bar. There were plenty of people there—older men, mostly, in Brooks Brothers’ best, and the occasional pants-suited older woman; not at all the company a white-trash graduate of the Missouri public school system was accustomed to keeping—but still room at the bar. She found a stool, sat down, and produced another Parliament from her silver cigarette case. The bartender lit it for her with a match from a Yale Club matchbook.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Bacardi and Coke,” she said.

  He mixed the drink with a flourish and set it down before her on a linen cocktail napkin. It was as big as three rum-and-Cokes from Phoebe’s—and there was even a bit extra on the side, in a separate glass.

  “Put that on my tab, Timmy,” came a man’s voice from behind her. “And bring me a Jameson, neat.”

  The newcomer slid onto the stool next to Taylor. The remains of his hair were blond and curly, and slicked with pomade. He wore a blue pinstripe suit over a periwinkle shirt and Yale necktie. He wasn’t handsome in the conventional way, but there was a we’re-both-in-on-the-same-joke twinkle in his eye that she found attractive. And he was young—no older than twenty-five. She had no idea, as he sat down, that this well-groomed chap was someone she already knew.

  “You clean up nice, Schmitty.”

  “Trey? Holy shit. I didn’t recognize you without the baseball hat.” Her heart sank. The jig was up—she’d been recognized, and by our annoying downstairs neighbor, no less. Of all the bum luck, to meet this jackass—this jackass who went to Delaware—at the Yale Club. She took a sip of her rum-and-Coke. “Thanks for the drink, Trey, but I’m afraid I’m meeting someone.”

  “Indeed,” Trey Parrish said. “You’re meeting me.” He took the whiskey from the bartender. “Delilah.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  This blew her away. Trey could have sprouted wings and flown out the window and she wouldn’t have been more surprised. “You? You’re Dan?”

  “The Quid Pro Quo invitation you got in the mail didn’t have a stamp on it,” he smirked, obviously pleased with himself. “And AK-47 told you you’d been recommended. Didn’t you ever wonder who hooked you up? Moi, that’s who. And dude, you are so making me look good. The Director digs you big time.”

  She was expecting him to touch her leg—it would have been natural, especially for a guy who had been openly working her for months, and she wouldn’t have minded one bit—but Trey didn’t. He was all business.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Taylor drained the rest of her rum-and-Coke in one stiff swallow, poured in the sidecar, and finished that, too. “AK-47. Asher Krug. Clever.”

  “I do enjoy the nicknames.”

  “Speaking of nicknames, when do I contact…Little Check?”

  “We’ll rendezvous in the Main Lounge in half an hour,” said Trey, glancing at his Longines watch. “Then he’ll take you to his room. Here. Take this.” He handed her what looked like a tube of mascara.

  “Do I need a touch up?”

  “Hardly. Open it…but don’t touch the tip, unless you’re sick of living.”

  She unscrewed the tube and pulled out what should have been the crooked gizmo to apply eyeliner, but what was a small hypodermic needle. “What’s this?”

  “Ethyl dimethylphosphoramidocyanidate.”

  “I had to ask.”

  “Cold Ethyl, we call it. You know that song? By Alice Cooper?” Taylor did not know the song, so Trey pressed on. “It’s a lethal nerve agent—developed in Langley, battle-tested in Iraq. One jab with that, you’re dead in three to five minutes, depending on how much you weigh.” He took the opportunity to admire her from toe to head. “You might be dead in two.”

  “Far out.” She screwed the needle back into the tube. “Totally James Bond.”

  “More like Maxwell Smart, if you ask me.”

  “That makes me Agent 99.”

  “You put 99 to shame, Delilah. Little Check is a lucky man. In one respect, at least.”

  Taylor simpered. She always did, when men complimented her looks.

  “He’s a voracious man with voracious appetites,” said Trey. “Each time we engage him, we provide him with…female entertainment. Like throwing the dog a bone. You’re the latest—and the last—in a long line of bones. But you don’t need to actually, you know, do anything with him. Just get him undressed. It’s easier for the cleaners if he’s naked.”

  “The cleaners?”

  “These guys are the best, Schmitty. Wait till you see. When they dispose of a body, I mean, they dispose of a body. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I just can’t believe you’re Dan. I mean, in the building, you’re so…”

  “Square. I know. And I apologize. Part of my cover. If I talk about the consulting firm a lot, maybe people won’t realize that I spend most of the time sitting in the apartment playing Prince of Persia. One of the perquisites of my line of work. Lots of free time. Pink slips don’t come off the assembly line, right?”

  “Well, you had me fooled.”

  “What can I say? I’m good at what I do. Once you get him with this,” pointing at the mascara tube, “knock three times on the door to the adjoining room, and there I’ll be. You ready?”

  Taylor took Trey’s arm. He led her down a corridor and into the Main Lounge, all leather chairs and bookcases and tall windows. It was surprisingly bright, on account of the gleaming white marble walls that made it feel like the inside of a venerable bank. She half expected to see J. P. Morgan smoking a Cohiba.

  “Here we are.”

  Taylor spotted Little Check right away. He was alone, tucked in a corner, his back to one of the windows, nursing a glass of what appeared to be scotch. He was sixty-eight years old, according to his dossier, and looked every bit of it; the armor of shiny hair on his misshapen pate, while vibrantly black, did not suggest youth. His face was pudgy and toad-like, with prominent jowls. Gin blossoms dotted his eyes. By far his most distinguishing features, however, were his eyebrows: black as the ace of spades, so large they were practically square—Ernest Borgnine to the ninth power.

  Trey led her by the elbow across the room. When they approached the table, Little Check rose—the moniker did not suit him, as he was neither short nor svelte—and extended his plump paw. “Dan, my good friend.”

  “Evening,” said Trey, shaking hands. “This is Delilah.”

  “A pleasure,” said Little Check, his accent two parts Eton and one part Dracula’s Castle. He studied her eyes for a few beats, all the while holding her hand. Then he glanced at her sideways. “You don’t know who I am?”

  Flushed, Taylor glanced at her handler for prompting.

  “No,” said Dan. “She doesn’t.”

  “Brilliant. I’m Jan.”

  Little Check—Jan—pulled out a chair. “Do sit, won’t you?”

  Taylor, always a sucker for chivalry, plopped her ass down.

  Dan did not. Instead, he said something in an unfamiliar, guttural language—probably Hebrew, although Taylor didn’t recognize it. Warrensburg, Missouri, was not exactly Haifa West.

  Jan contemplated what he’d been told and nodded. Then Dan delivered what she supposed were instructions. The only words she could make out were “Los Cristos.”

  Little Check did not seem pleased. He scowled his contact for a moment, then said, in English, “Well, if you say so.”

  “I say so,” Dan said. “And with that, I’ll take my leave. Be good, you two.” And he glided off, leaving Taylor and her pink slip alone.

  “Have you eaten, my dear?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I could really go for a drink. What are you having?”

  He
gave his glass a shake. “Laphroaig,” he said, and after noticing her confused look, he added, “It’s scotch. From the Islay region of Scotland. Would you like one? I can summon the waiter.”

  “It’s kind of stuffy in here.” Taylor placed her hand ever so gently on his knee. “Why don’t we go back to your room?”

  “Thatta girl.” He laughed, an almost volcanic burst of joviality. “Let me settle up.”

  Taylor watched him sign for the drinks. Jan was not an attractive man, not by a long shot, but he possessed an innate charisma, a magnetism as strong, in its own way, as Asher Krug’s. This was a dynamic, virile man. A man of power. Which was probably why they wanted him dead.

  She took his arm, and they headed to the elevator bay in the lobby.

  “Are you in town for long?”

  “Hardly,” Jan chuckled, although there was nothing funny about this that Taylor could see. “I got here an hour ago, and I’m leaving at first light.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the yacht.”

  “The yacht?”

  “It’s not as impressive as it sounds.”

  “I don’t even have my own apartment,” Taylor said. “And you have a yacht. Why are we roughing it at the Yale Club when we could be on your yacht?”

  “Point taken. But at the moment, she’s off the coast of the Canary Islands, alas.” Jan’s eyes achieved the naughty look of the child with his hand in the cookie jar. “May I tell you a secret?”

  “Please.”

  “No one even knows I’m here. They fetched me from my yacht, and they’re returning me to my yacht. Not even the crew knows I’ve gone.”

  “Sounds like quite a trip. I hope it was worth it.”

  He gave her a once-over that sent shivers down her spine—in a surprisingly good way. “That remains to be seen.”

  They were in the elevator now, just the two of them, climbing slowly and loudly to the top floor.

  “Do you know why they call them the Canary Islands?”

  Taylor figured it was a trick question, but she played dumb. “Because of the canaries?”

  “No. Because of the dogs.”

  “The dogs?”

  “There’s a reason Spain is no longer a superpower.” He laughed again, too loudly, as the elevator stopped, and they alit. “You’re quite lovely, you know.”

  “Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”

  They were now in front of a door that read HENRY STIMSON SUITE.

  “Flattery,” he said, with a pleasant wag of his stumpy finger, “will get you nowhere.” Winking, he produced a key from his jacket. “This is us.”

  As soon as the door was closed, Jan jumped her, kissing her with the same urgency with which he laughed. Taylor returned the kiss with similar gusto. They collapsed onto the tastefully duveted king-size bed, pawing each other.

  You might think Taylor would have been repulsed by such a grizzled, toadish man. Not so. She was attracted to his charm, to his charisma, to his money—but mostly to the fact that in a few hours, he’d be dead. She couldn’t get that idea out of her head, and it electrified her like nothing ever had. She was not required to sleep with him, as Trey had made clear. It would have been easy to strip him down, roll him on his belly for a massage, and introduce him to Cold Ethyl before things got heated. But Taylor did not even consider not nailing the guy—even in her diary, she did not entertain the possibility. After all, it’s one thing to be the first to have sex with someone; quite another to be the last. For her, the bang was part of the bang.

  “I have just the thing,” said Jan, breaking the embrace. He opened a sideboard. Taylor expected sex toys, or a video camera, maybe even a midget in bondage gear, and was relieved when he produced a black bottle, two glasses, a dish of sugar cubes, and a slotted silver spoon.

  He held up the bottle. “Do you know what this is?”

  She didn’t.

  “Absinthe. The stuff Van Gogh was blind on when he hacked off his ear.”

  Taylor had heard of absinthe from her art history class. The Green Faerie, as it was called, was big with depressed French aesthetes between the wars, but not yet with American expats in Prague. That wouldn’t happen for a few more years. “I thought it was illegal.”

  “To make, yes. The prohibition dates to the war. Fortunately, there are bottles in cellars here and there that have survived. Quite rare, and very expensive. This is one of them.”

  Jan poured the bright emerald-green liqueur into the glasses, filling each about a third of the way. “You know how many living people have tasted real absinthe? Not many. Welcome to the club.”

  Now thoroughly impressed, Taylor reached for the glass.

  “Not yet, my lovely.”

  Jan put the slotted spoon over the glass—it stretched across it perfectly, as if designed for that purpose—and piled sugar cubes atop it. Then he dripped Evian water over the sugar cubes, until the glass was almost full. In a minute or two, the drink changed color—the emerald hue was now a milky, whitish green. If an opal were green, it would look like absinthe.

  “Now, we drink.”

  She clinked glasses and sipped. It tasted like Jägermeister—shots of which she’d consumed more than she cared to remember, back in college—but less syrupy, and it gave her an instant and unprecedented buzz. “Wow. That’s nice.”

  “Quite.”

  Taylor slid closer and rubbed his shoulders, finding there more tension than she’d expected. “Hard day at the office?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Let’s see if I can help you relax.”

  There was the possibility that the Little Check would be unable to perform. He was not a young man, and he’d consumed who knows how much scotch before the glass of absinthe. Or it might be that the sex would be over lickety-split. Or that his codename referred to his penis size. Or some combination thereof. But lo, Little Check proved a giving and able lover, despite his physical shortcomings. The intercourse went on…and on…and on, like some X-rated Big Red commercial. Fifty-three minutes, the guy lasted—she timed it. And Taylor enjoyed it so thoroughly that she was still raring to go fifty-three minutes later. None of his seventy-six predecessors had close to this kind of stamina. Even Asher couldn’t hold out for that long.

  She remarked on it, as they lay in bed, smoking a postcoital cigarette.

  “I wish I could take credit,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “A friend of mine is a chemist at Pfizer, out at Sandwich. He developed this drug that enhances the sexual experience for men.”

  “Is it, like, ground up rhino bones or something? I think you can get that in Chinatown.”

  “Sildenafil is the scientific name. They’re still working out the kinks. When they perfect the formula, they’ll patent it and sell it as an impotence cure. Fountain of youth in a little blue pill, for old farts like me.”

  “Absinthe, sildenafil…you’re, like, the crown prince of awesome drugs. Anything else you got behind the counter? Birth control pills for men, maybe?”

  That laugh again. “That’s still in development.”

  She sat up and reached for the nightstand, where the fake mascara tube lay next to her cigarette case. She rested her cigarette in the ashtray’s groove, picked up the mascara tube, and unscrewed the top.

  “I want you to know,” she said, “that you are the best lay I’ve ever had.”

  “Oh, come.”

  “I mean it,” she said. “I’m not just saying it. I mean it with all my heart.”

  Holding the needle in her left hand—she held it behind her back, so he couldn’t see, although he was not paying attention—she caressed his face with her right hand and kissed him greedily on the mouth. When she saw that his eyes were closed, she jabbed the needle into his upper thigh.

  “What the…” Jan swatted at the wound, as if shooing a mosquito.

  Taylor moved in for a closer look.

  “Who sent you?” he asked, between cries of pa
in he tried to suppress. “MI5? Mossad? KGB?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Taylor said.

  Then his body began to flail around, and foam drizzled from his mouth, and he was unable to speak. Sixty-three second later—she timed this, too—all movement ceased. She found this so erotic that for a fleeting moment she entertained necrophiliac thoughts—“Cold Ethyl” is a song about sex with a dead girl, after all—before remembering that there was a living, breathing man in the next room who would certainly indulge her carnal desires.

  Taylor got dressed, retrieved her cigarette from the ashtray, and took a long drag. She went to the door that led to the adjoining room, unlocked it from her side, and knocked three times.

  There was the sound of the lock, and then the door opened to reveal Trey Parrish, can of Budweiser in hand.

  “Took longer than I thought,” he said. “I was starting to worry.”

  “When do the cleaners get here?”

  “We don’t have to wait for them. In fact, it’s better if we leave before they arrive. Can I give you a lift?”

  Taylor gave him her best come-hither look—the prelude-to-a-kiss equivalent of a Rob Dibble fastball right down the middle. “Only if you come up for a nightcap.”