The Ethical Assassin Read online

  “Sure. Fair,” he agreed. He looked up at the ceiling and let out a long sigh.

  “How about you, Karen? Do you think you would be able to tell me if you lose interest in these valuable educational tools that will improve the quality of your children’s lives?”

  She exchanged a look with her husband and then reached over to the counter for a pack of Virginia Slims and a cherry red Bic. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, then. You guys ready?” Just another gratuitous yes question.

  “We said we’re ready,” Bastard grumbled toward the ceiling.

  I nodded in the kindly but authoritative way Bobby had taught me and reached into my bag for the first brochure, a glossy, colorful little booklet with a couple of well-groomed, successful-looking kids spread out on a carpeted floor with their books. These were kids like they would never raise, in all likelihood never know. These were the kids they wanted instead of the ones they had. And that made Bastard and Karen the perfect candidates for me.

  Bobby had taught us that there was pretty much no way to sell books to comfortable suburbanites. It had taken me a while to understand, but I understood now. Karen and Bastard looked at their first pamphlet and soaked in their first glimpse of the future of their children, and they saw what they were supposed to see- a different life. The kids in the pamphlets weren’t the ignorant, ill-behaved, destructive children of ignorant, ill-behaved, destructive adults. They weren’t living in trailer park squalor, but lounging in affluent suburban bliss. They laughed and played and learned, their inner potential and outer grooming nurtured by unceasing exposure to wonderful tomes of secret knowledge. The ability to discover the five principal exports of Greece or the social structure of bonobo groups or the mysterious history of the Mayan Empire would make everything different. The mere proximity to books that contained these glorious facts and more meant the difference between success and failure.

  I managed a quick peek at my watch. Almost seven-thirty now. I was confident that by ten o’clock these people would be financing a $1,200 set of encyclopedias.

  ***

  The resistance, not surprisingly, came from the aptly named Bastard. I made it through the bonus books- the handbook of emergency health care, the field guide to local wildlife, the compendium of educational games for kids- but hadn’t yet reached the presentation of the sample volume of Champion Encyclopedias when I’d had about all I could take of Bastard. He interrupted me, made fun of the books, imitated my voice, tickled his wife, tried to tickle me once, got up to make a sandwich.

  “Now,” I said, holding up the children’s history of the United States, “you can see how this is the sort of book your children would find educational and would improve their understanding of American history, can’t you?”

  “Yeah,” said Karen.

  Somewhere along the way, consumer longing had taken the place of blank apathy. The rugged skepticism on her face had smoothed away, and her lips had parted not in preparation to object, but in slack acquisitive desire.

  “You think they’ll ever have a woman president?” Bastard asked. “I bet she’ll be a real honey. With big knockers. Great big knockers, man. Bigger than Karen’s, anyhow.”

  “And you understand, don’t you, that an improved understanding of American history will be of use to your children?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Karen said, jamming a cigarette, smoked down to the scorched filter, into the makeshift ashtray- the bottom third of a torn-open Pepsi can, whose jagged edges she avoided with grace. “There’s all kinds of tests in school where they have to know those things, and that book would help them get better grades.” She’d learned along the way that I liked to hear concrete examples of how the books would help, and she was now working hard to come up with good ones.

  “But will it get them dates? That’s what I want to know,” Bastard said. “Maybe if I’d known all about Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross, I’d have gotten laid more in school.”

  I’d been working against it since I’d started the pitch, but there was only so much cheer I could maintain. It was just common sense that I wasn’t going to make the sale without Bastard, and I wasn’t going to get Bastard without breaking him. I had to do something, so I reached for a move Bobby had told me about. It had sounded so brilliant when he’d explained it, I’d been looking for an opportunity to try it.

  I let out a sigh. “You know what,” I said. “Clearly these materials are not for you. Bastard, I asked you to let me know if you weren’t interested, but it seems like you haven’t been honest with me. It’s okay that you’re not interested. These materials won’t appeal to every parent- some are just more education oriented than others- and that’s fine. I only wish you hadn’t let me sit here for so long, wasting all of our time.” Then I began to gather my things. Not slowly so as to seem like I wanted to be pulled back, but with the wooden determination of a lawyer who’d just lost a trial and wanted to get the hell out of the courtroom.

  “Wait,” said Karen. “I’m interested.”

  “What the fuck,” Bastard said. “Let the little shit go.”

  “Bastard, apologize,” the wife ordered. “I want them.”

  “What the fuck for? The girls?” he sneered.

  “We’ll send them.” Her voice sounded small, pathetic. Then something shifted, and she sounded hard. “Apologize, or I swear to Christ, I’ll tell him everything.”

  I didn’t know who the “him” might be, but I knew it wasn’t me. And I was beginning to get the sense I’d walked into the middle of something and my best bet was to cut my losses and get the hell out. With stoic calm, I placed the last book into my bag and stood.

  “Bastard, do it!”

  He let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Lem. Okay? It’s not that I’m not interested. I just don’t like to sit still for so long. Go easy on me, buddy. Show us the rest.”

  “Please stay,” said Karen. Her voice had become small, the voice of a child begging for education. Please, sir, may I learn some more?

  I nodded slowly, a sage weighing his options. I’d been willing to bail, but now I saw this was a clear victory. The real trick was to keep from grinning. They’d begged me to stay. They might as well just take out the checkbook now and save everyone the time.

  ***

  By a quarter to ten, I’d spread everything out on the table right next to the wrecked soda can crammed full of lipstick-ringed cigarette butts. It was all there- the books and brochures, the pricing sheet, the payment schedule, and, of course, the credit application, the all-important app. Karen had taken out the checkbook for the down payment: $125. Like my own mother, fastidious before the tranquilizers, she filled out the receipt portion prior to writing the check, and she did it with torturous slowness. I wanted it in my possession. I wanted it done. Until they handed over the check, there was always the chance they’d back out.

  I didn’t want to let it get to where the check might break the deal. I’d closed this deal before even mentioning the check. I had Karen hungry, starving for these books. I’d broken Bastard, who now sat without making a sound other than a strangely wheezy breathing, as though he were winded from the act of respiration itself. He looked at me with big, moist eyes, hoping for approval. And I shoveled the approval out in spades.

  Karen pressed down one pink-tipped finger and tore the check along the perforated edge, then held it out to me. She might have set it on the table, but she wanted me to take it from her hand. I’d seen it before; it always happened late in the sale. Encyclopedia sales had allowed me to shed my high school skin, my loser skin, and turn into something else, something that some women found even a little sexy- because I had power. The bookman has power the way a teacher or a political candidate or the lead in a production of Our Town has power. It’s the power of the spotlight. I was young and had energy and enthusiasm, and I had come into her home and given her reason to hope. She didn’t exactly want to sleep with me and didn’t exactly not want to. I understood it with absolute clarity.

/>   I had just about put my fingers on the check when I heard the front door open. I didn’t turn around, in part because I wanted that check and in part because I’d trained myself not to look at visitors, not to listen to phone calls. This wasn’t my house, and it wasn’t my business.

  I didn’t stray from the check grab. At least not until I saw Karen’s eyes go wide and her face go pale and her mouth form into the comical surprise of an O. At the same moment, Bastard toppled over along with his chair, felled by an invisible punch, a punch that left a gaping hole, a dark and bloody hole, in the middle of his forehead.

  Now I heard it. A puffy squeak of air, and Karen fell over, too. Not the whole chair, just Karen, out of her seat and onto the floor. The second shot hadn’t been as neat as the first, and above her eyes it looked as though someone had smashed her with the claw end of a hammer. Blood began to pool around hair on the beige linoleum floor. The air was full of something sharp and nasty. Cordite. I didn’t know what cordite was, I couldn’t even remember how I knew the word, but I knew that’s what I was smelling. The stink assaulted me, along with the horrible understanding. Two shots had been fired, two people hit in the head. Two people had been murdered.

  I wasn’t supposed to be here. I’d been accepted into Columbia University, but my parents had refused to pay. I was raising money, that’s all. I just wanted money for college. None of this had anything to do with me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing it away. But it wasn’t going anywhere.

  I turned around.

  Chapter 3

  ONLY A FEW DAYS before I came to town with the bookmen, Jim Doe had been getting restless. He’d told himself to lay off; the risks just weren’t worth it. But then he’d be in his prowl car, watching the drivers go by, sometimes too lazy to stop an asshole going ten or even fifteen miles over the limit. Doing that, he’d get horny as hell. Just something about sitting there, the radio on low volume with the Oak Ridge Boys or Alabama warbling out their bullshit, the smell of Burger King French fries congealing, the sharp tang of chocolate and Rebel Yell coming from his spiked bottle of Yoo-hoo. It reminded him of exactly what he knew he oughtn’t do. It was instinct, after all. You couldn’t ask a wolf to stop being a wolf. He saw a sex-red sports car that looked damn near perfect, and Doe set those lights flashing and the siren wailing. The sound alone gave him a monster stiffy, and he felt like he was seventeen again.

  ***

  I can sense the grumbling. How, you are wondering, do I know all this? Am I secretly Jim Doe in addition to being Lem Altick? Is this a multiple-personality story?

  It’s not. But the events of this weekend were significant in my life, just about as significant as it gets, and I’ve invested massive quantities of time in talking to the survivors, the people who escaped, the people who evaded the cops, the cops they evaded, those who went to jail, and those who avoided jail. I’ve talked to them all. I’ve synthesized it. So I feel I have a reasonably good idea what was going on in Jim Doe’s head.

  Besides, you’ve read those memoirs; you know the ones I mean. The poor Irish childhood ones where the writer recalls with preternatural clarity which hat his aunt Siobhan wore to his seventh birthday party and what the cake tasted like and which relative gave him the orange for a present and which the hard-boiled egg. I’m not buying it. No one remembers that kind of detail. It’s all creative license to flesh out a true story. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s my story, and I’m going to tell it the way I want to tell it.

  So back to Jim Doe and the red sports car.

  ***

  The driver wasn’t as good-looking as Doe had been hoping, but she was in her twenties. Early thirties at the most. She had big, curly blond hair, which he liked, and she was dressed kind of sexy in one of those collarless T-shirts that the women had all been wearing since Flashdance. None of that compensated for her big nose and fat lips, all smashed against her face, and her eyes, which were too small for her head. Still, he’d stopped her. Might as well see what was what.

  It was already getting dark. He ought to be over at Pam’s place by now. It was Jenny’s birthday, and he guessed he should go by and bring her something. She was four now, and she’d known what a birthday was for a couple of years, and it would probably be a big deal if her father didn’t get her a present. He’d hear about it from Pam if he didn’t show. Not only that, he’d have to hear it from that fucking bitch Aimee Toms.

  Sooner or later he’d see Aimee out at the Thirsty Bass or the Sports Hut or the Denny’s, and she’d come sit down and look oh-so-sad and smile a little and tell him how disappointed Jenny had been on her birthday that her daddy didn’t get her nothing. She had that attitude. All the assholes at the sheriff’s department had it, but Aimee had it most of all. She turned up her nose at him. Aimee- turning up her nose at him. Unbelievable. If she knew so much, how come she looked like a dyke? Answer that one.

  So she’d come over, her linebacker shoulders all squared off, and she’d shake her head or maybe his hand. She wasn’t trying to tell Jim what to do. Of course it was awkward, but she was Pam’s friend and a cop, and she knew how it was for both of them. Lots of cops got divorced, but the children- the children were the important thing.

  Maybe if someone ever got drunk enough to get her pregnant, she’d know if children were important or not. Of course, Doe didn’t much like to think about that time he had been drunk enough to go after her, when he’d grabbed her ass and started singing, “Amy, what you gonna do?”- that god-awful Pure Prairie League song. She had just wiggled out of his grasp like she was the queen of England. Or because she liked women, he supposed. Like Pam. Aimee was probably getting it on with his ex-wife. What kind of a crazy world was this, anyhow?

  So if she tried any of that, Jim knew how he’d handle himself. Pretty simple, really. He’d take out his gun and blow the back of Aimee’s head right off. Bam! Just like that. Oh shit, Aimee. Where’s the back of your head? Let’s you and me try to find it together. You know, as Pam’s friend and as a cop.

  Getting sneered at by Aimee Toms- nothing but a county cop who thought she could push him around. Doe was chief of fucking police here. And mayor. How much money was she taking in? Maybe thirty a year if she was lucky- if she took a little on the side, which she would never do, of course, because that would be wrong. Let Pam be her little dyke friend. She could be Jenny’s father and save him the trouble.

  When he got done with the driver, Doe figured he’d go by the drugstore and get Jenny something. A doll or some Play-Doh. Really, he just wanted to keep Pam from snapping her turtle mouth at him and Aimee from giving him that pitying look that was going to lose her the back of her head one of these days. Truth was, he couldn’t much stand Jenny, with her hugging his leg and clinging and her “Daddy Daddy Daddy.” Pam was getting older, but she still had a decent face, okay tits, and an acceptable if ever-spreading ass, and the kid had Chief Jim Doe for a daddy, so why was his own daughter so damn repulsive? And they needed to stop feeding her whatever it was they fed her, because it was chock-full of ugly and she was turning into a pig. A man who’d been around could tell it like it was, and Doe knew that fat and ugly was an evil combination for a girl.

  Doe climbed out of the cruiser and stood there for a moment, peering over at the driver behind his mirrored sunglasses. He wanted to get a better look and let her take in the sight of the big, bad cop who had her in his crosshairs. He knew what he looked like. He never missed the surprised little smiles. Well, hello, Officer. Like one of those male strippers they had for bachelorette parties. So what if he had a little gut now? Women didn’t care about things like that. They cared about power and swagger, and he had plenty of those.

  When Doe walked over to the window of her Jap sports car, she pressed her lips together in a smashed, fat little smile. Hello there, good-looking. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

  Doe hitched up his belt, which he liked to do so they could see all the stuff- the gun and the cuffs and nightstick- it was like Spanish fly.
He took off his wide-brimmed brown hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He put the hat back on and shot her a smile. He knew his teeth were perfectly white, despite the fact that he didn’t brush as often as he ought to. And maybe they were a little crooked, but it was the sort of thing only he would notice because he was so hard on himself.

  “License and registration, ma’am?”

  She had them ready and handed them over. “Can you tell me what this is about? I’m sort of in a hurry.”

  “I sure got that impression, way you was driving,” Doe said. “Lisa Roland from Miami, huh? Miami ’s pretty far away.”

  “I was visiting a co-worker who moved up here. I was just heading over to the highway.”

  They always wanted to tell their life story, like they wanted his approval or something. “Why’re you in such a big hurry to get home, Lisa? You don’t like this part of the state?”

  “I just wanted to get home, is all.”

  “You like all them hotels and tourists in Miami?”

  “It’s where I live.”

  “You got a boyfriend back there waiting on you? Is that it?”

  “Look, what is this about?”

  “What is it about? Lisa, you know you was speeding?”

  “I don’t think I was.”

  “You don’t, huh? Well, it so happens I got you on the radar gun going a pretty good amount above the speed limit.”

  “You must be mistaken.” She bit her lip, looked to her side, behind her. She must have been nervous about something. If she hadn’t been speeding, then why was she so nervous?

  “Must I, now? Well, if I am, I don’t know about it.”

  “Come on, Officer. It just so happens that I’d been looking at my speedometer, and I was sticking very closely to the fifty-five mark.”

  “I got you at fifty-seven, Lisa.”