Kill and Be Killed

by Louis Begley

  You’ve got me coming fresh off a job, Martin told me. When do I start?

  How about today? I asked. It’s a little after ten. Could you be over around eleven? We’ll have a cup of coffee and talk.

  —

  The cup of coffee turned into an early lunch.

  Such a nice young lady, such a nice young lady, he kept repeating. Then he told me: I’ve got a daughter, she’s twelve, curly black hair like Miss Kerry—some Irish have hair like that—and green eyes, and I used to say to myself, I’d like her to grow up just like that young lady!

  Listening to him, measuring the depth of his emotion, and profoundly moved myself, I decided that it made no sense to limit his assignment to checking whether I was being tailed. The task that lay ahead was huge. I would undertake, with Heidi’s help, the part that had to do with locating and understanding such additional evidence of Abner’s crimes as Kerry might have assembled. Scott would give a hand too, but what he’d said about the Amazon package made me worry about constraints on him. I wanted to kill the bastard who killed Kerry myself, but to find him, I imagined, would require plumbing the world of clubs, dealers, and users, a world I knew only from books like Edward St. Aubyn’s and the movies—a world with which I hoped Martin and his partner had some familiarity and that I hoped they could access. If I was wrong about that, they’d find someone with knowledge and the right connections. The thing to do was to get them on board. Going after Abner was another matter. I had no doubt it would be a solo job, for which I was uniquely qualified.

  Martin, I said, your daughter couldn’t have a better role model. Kerry wasn’t about drugs. She was good and loving and generous and very, very bright and hardworking. Drugs were an outside force. Like a drunk who slams head-on into a careful driver. Someone gave her that injection. Against her will. Or she didn’t know what was in it. I want you to help me find whoever did it. But you’ve got to let me start at the beginning. All right?

  Yes sir! He nodded. I just can’t help myself when I start thinking about her.

  I began, as I thought I must, with our breakup over what I called my not taking energetic-enough steps to get Slobo to the hospital on time—it was important for him to understand her even better than he seemed to—and went through everything that happened since my last days on Torcello all the way to Heidi, her impending visit, and her concerns. The only piece of information I withheld was the Amazon package. I’d fill him in, I thought, but only after I’d seen Scott and figured out whether it was really necessary to go to the FBI. Martin was a former agent. The last thing I wanted was to get into some sort of crossruff between Scott’s and Martin’s loyalties.

  Let’s take this one step at a time, I concluded. First, the tail. I’ll go out this afternoon for a little walk around the neighborhood. A test run. If there’s a tail, we might consider changing my date with Heidi to a restaurant, and I’ll try to get rid of whoever it is by jumping into a taxi as I am leaving the building—

  Good plan! Martin interrupted. If you do decide to take the young lady to a restaurant and are meeting her there, which is what I’d recommend, I might have Lee wait for you with his car so there’s no time for the tail to get organized while your doorman hails the taxi.

  Fine, I replied. But for the time being let’s assume Heidi and I will have dinner here. And even if there is no tail, I would like you or Lee to follow Heidi home—she lives somewhere near Lexington and Eighty-Eighth Street—and make sure we didn’t miss anything.

  He nodded.

  Then unless something Heidi tells me changes my mind, sometime tomorrow I’ll go to see Scott Prentice in Alexandria and spend the night. You and I will get together on my return and decide how we check out the club—perhaps there was more than one—that Kerry used to go to and the people over there she hung out with. Assuming there were such people.

  Martin nodded. If you like, he said, we can do some preliminary work beginning tomorrow. We have pretty good contacts at the DEA here in New York and at the narcotics group at the NYPD.

  You’re on, I said. You can bill weekly or however it suits you best.

  —

  I’d been working on my book for about two hours after Martin left when the phone rang. I thought it might be whoever harassed Jeanette with his threatening calls. But no, it was my agent, Jane Bird, with the news that she’d gotten a miniseries offer for What We Did Together, my most recent book, a portrait of four men alongside whom I fought in Iraq.

  This is fabulous, fabulous, she was saying, and I could picture her practically levitating in her chair from excitement. Not just because of the price you get up front but even more because of the stream of income once the miniseries takes off. And the uptick in book sales. All your book sales, not just What We Did! This calls for a celebratory lunch, and it will be my treat!

  I like Jane. Harry had put me in touch with her through the journalist wife of one of his partners. Spending a couple of hours with her over a meal suddenly seemed like exactly the right medicine for my nerves and general sense of disarray.

  You almost have a deal, I told her. But it will have to be dinner. Lunches interfere with making more money for you by writing books. And probably not this week. I may be going to D.C. tomorrow, and if I do I’ll spend the night, and I’m likely to go to Sag Harbor for the weekend. Just to see whether the house is still there.

  We do have a deal—she laughed—especially since I’ve broken up with my boyfriend and I’m once again able to make dinner dates. I’ll call you on Monday.

  The phone call had interrupted the flow of ideas, and I found I couldn’t reconnect immediately with the text. This was as good a time as any for the test walk in the neighborhood I’d mentioned to Martin. I put on my parka and told Jeanette I’d be back within the hour. The doorman on duty was a talkative Albanian I liked. I paused on the sidewalk to talk to him—and to make sure the tail didn’t miss my exit—and headed uptown. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Martin sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. When I next checked, he was walking in the same direction as I, a hundred or so yards back, along the park side of the avenue. I continued to Ninety-Third Street, where I turned east and walked into the bookshop on the east side of Madison, one that I liked because it was well stocked and, more to the point, did a good job selling my books. The owner was in and made a fuss over my long absence. When would there be a new Dana novel? I told her I was working on one and, if nothing interfered, it would most likely appear in about nine months, perhaps sooner.

  That’s a long time for your fans to wait, she complained. You’ve spoiled us, letting us have your novels more frequently.

  It couldn’t be helped, I replied. Harry’s death set me back. There was a period after it happened when I couldn’t write at all. So I went abroad and only returned a few days ago.

  So that’s why we haven’t seen you. Your uncle was such a dear old friend! she exclaimed.

  I nodded, kissed the cheek she offered, and promised to come back to sign books whenever she wanted. Martin was lounging beside the window of a men’s clothing store next door. When I caught his eye, he shook his head.

  Nothing, he told me.

  I wonder what that means, I replied. Perhaps they think they’ve got it all figured, where and how to waste me, and don’t need to bother with my comings and goings. What about this evening? Shall we stick to the plan all the same and have you or Lee be on duty by the time Heidi arrives? And follow her home? I invited her for seven-thirty, and I should think she’d go home not later than ten-thirty.

  Absolutely, he said. No change. One of us will check in once she’s inside her own building.

  —

  Seven-thirty indeed!

  I had taken Heidi at her word and asked Jeanette to be ready to have dinner on the table at eight-fifteen. That would give us, I figured, enough time before dinner for those martinis she’d said she wanted and plenty of time before and during dinner to talk about Kerry and Abner. The prospect of putting her revel
ations to use had revved me up, and finishing my novel so that it would be out of the way suddenly seemed more urgent than ever. I returned to my text, paying no attention to the hour, and stopped only a few minutes before seven. Holy God! I changed my clothes without taking a shower and rushed to put gin, vermouth, ice, and the cocktail shaker on the bar table in the library. It being a cool evening, I lit a fire and stood with my back to the fireplace, luxuriating in the heat. The pelvis Walter Reed put back together had been sending unpleasant reminders of its existence ever since my morning run. I’d been running five miles in Torcello, could it be that my six-and-a-half-mile run was too much? Should I have worked up to it gradually? The thought was unwelcome. The bastard who’d shot me had put an end to my active service. That was bad enough. Hampering harmless civilian activities was intolerable. I was sinking into a foul mood. It wasn’t lightened by the knowledge that most likely I wouldn’t have stayed in the Corps beyond the two remaining years of my engagement—not the way the war in Afghanistan was going—or that the injury was in its own way responsible for getting me to write novels and find my new life’s work.

  Jeanette came in and asked whether she should bring in her tray of canapés. Smoked salmon, she told me, and egg salad. I looked at my watch. Seven thirty-seven.

  Please do, I said. I’ll try to leave one or two for the young lady.

  Enjoy! I can make some more.

  There was no reason not to have a drink to go with the canapés. I made one carefully, following Harry’s recipe. Five-sixths gin straight out of the freezer, one-sixth vermouth freshly extracted from the fridge, and an almost transparent lemon peel. Pour frigid liquor into crystal wineglass to chill it. Place ice cubes in shaker, add the gin and vermouth, shake vigorously, pour liquid back into wineglass, twist lemon peel, and introduce into liquid. The recipe was foolproof. Raising the glass to my lips should have made Heidi appear like a genie out of a bottle. No dice. I eased myself into an armchair near the fire, pressed the on button of the CD-player remote—I remembered having inserted a recording of Dido and Aeneas—and bit into a second egg-salad canapé. She’d show up all right; the only question was when, and the answer wasn’t all that important. Jeanette had made a chicken sauté that could be kept waiting. So could I. Except for the four hours spent at my desk revising the draft of my novel, it had been and would continue to be a hell of a day: the futile exercise I’d gone through with that nice Martin Sweeney on the lookout for a nonexistent tail; the prospect of the time Scott and I would spend planning, to borrow a locution or two from my least-favorite secretary of defense, for unpleasant and dangerous knowns and for known and unknown unknowns, including the implications of the faux Amazon package; and now the need to face disclosures Heidi had up the sleeve of whatever elegant jacket she had donned. On the CD, Dido was crying her heart out:

  When I am laid, am laid in earth,

  May my wrongs create

  No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;

  Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

  Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

  I found tears were rolling down my cheeks for her and the self-absorbed and heartless Aeneas and for every stupid slob who breaks the heart of someone he loves. In the suicide letter Slobo had forced him to write, Harry planted a clue that he’d hoped would bring down the House of Abner: he enjoined me to search the family Bible. I had been slow on the uptake, but finally the import of the clue—Matthew 7:7, “seek, and ye shall find”—penetrated my thick skull. When I took my great-grandfather’s Bible off the shelf and opened it to that chapter and verse, there it was, staring me in the face: the sheets containing the road map to Abner’s criminal empire. Harry hadn’t been wrong to count on me to remember that much of the Gospels. We’re not much good at forgetting, in our family.

  So it wouldn’t have surprised Harry, it might even have struck him as singularly fitting, that I also recall Matthew 8:22, and what Jesus said to the disciple who asked, after the command to depart had been given, for leave to bury first his father: “Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.” If that wasn’t the most brutal affirmation ever uttered that life must go on, I’d like to know one that beat it. There was no doubt that when Jovan—or whatever his real name was—came after me, I’d kill him, and I’d do whatever it took to make him talk before he died and give me the man who killed Kerry. But was I obliged to go looking for Jovan? And, by the way, how was I to go about it? Or the guy who murdered Kerry? Two needles in a haystack, unless there was only one needle, and Jovan had killed her. The FBI, the Treasury, and I’d forgotten what other agencies of our brilliant government had been trying for over a year to nail Abner based on the information I’d handed them on a silver platter. According to Scott and Simon, they hadn’t gotten very far. Was it my destiny to be their truffle hound? To sniff out and feed evidence to them, regardless of the cost to me? Fuck that. Just between you, gentle reader, and me, I’d done more than enough for my country in a war I loathed but fought because it was my country’s war and because in my ironic hypereducated family my great-grandfather, the abolitionist, my grandfather, my father, and I have stood with Stephen Decatur and never failed to raise our glasses to our country or spill our blood for her, right or wrong. Uncle Harry didn’t lack for patriotism either—he just wasn’t cut out to be a warrior. My family! That was a sick joke too. Only I was left. Wasn’t it about time I packed it in? For instance: why not take my beautiful and apparently very available agent Jane out to dinner or—better yet—invite her to Sag Harbor for the weekend and screw the daylights out of her, instead of getting sloshed waiting for Kerry’s lesbian pal? The pal who, I was beginning to suspect I would discover, if I kept on peeling the rotten onion, had been sleeping with her.

  I tossed back what was left of the martini and started fixing a refill. Great gods of gin, I genuflect to you! While I was shaking the martini shaker as furiously as I would Jovan if I had him by the scruff of the neck, the answer issued forth from my subconscious like thunder: “Avenge not yourselves!” What? I could have died laughing. Thanks a lot, Saint Paul! If that’s what you believed, what you wanted to write to the Romans, that was a nice formulation. But don’t dish that bullshit to me. It doesn’t cut it. I, blasphemous Jack Dana, proclaim to the four winds that vengeance is mine and not the Lord’s, and it is I, Jack Dana, who will repay.

  —

  I heard the doorbell dimly through the pleasant gin-induced haze. Had I dozed off? It wasn’t impossible. My wristwatch read eight thirty-seven. Nice work, Miss Heidi Krohn! Screwing up Jeanette’s plan to get away early and see her sister. I scrambled to my feet and headed for the front door. Jeanette had gotten there first and was taking Heidi’s coat, a black form-hugging velvet number, and propelling her in my direction. Jeanette held a bunch of yellow roses.

  They’re for you, Jack, Heidi said to me, but they need water, so I’m entrusting them to Mrs. Truman. Kerry told me Mrs. Truman’s name. Will Mrs. Truman, will you, Jack, forgive me for being so late? I couldn’t resist walking home from the office, and then walking here. I’d been preparing for a deposition and badly needed to clear my head.

  This was, I realized, coming from Heidi, a fulsome apology, one I should accept with good grace. I also realized that she had brought the same flowers, yellow roses, that I had given to Kerry when I returned from the Mato Grosso, the first time I went to dinner at her apartment. A weird coincidence or a fiendish signal that she really knew and remembered everything about Kerry and me, down to the smallest details?

  We were missing you, I said, but now that you’re here, everything is Zen. Come, you have a lot of catching up to do in the martini department.

  She sat down in an armchair facing mine, on the other side of the fireplace, stretched out her legs, and examined the surroundings with great interest.

  This is a beautiful room, she said. Exactly as Kerry described it. She talked about your uncle’s fine book bindings. Do you mind if I take a closer look? I have a bibli
ophile grandfather. Books and bindings mean a lot to me.

  After I had given her the drink and we had both sat down again, Jeanette brought in the roses and put the vase on the library desk. I found it impossible to play dumb.

  It was very kind of you to bring flowers, I told her. Neither Jeanette nor I have gotten used to my being back in the city, so these must be the only flowers we have right now in the apartment. Yellow roses. They’re among my favorites, and I can’t help wondering whether this is a confluence of our tastes, a charming coincidence, or a sign that you know that I brought just such a bouquet to Kerry the first time she invited me to dinner. Her apartment, by the way, was full of tulips! The first tulips of the season, it seemed to me.

  She laughed. The last hypothesis is the right one. I knew. Shall we say that I’m still establishing my credentials?

  If that’s the purpose, I answered, you may rest your case, and I’ll make a confession. It makes me just a little uneasy—not enough to upset me—to have you know all about Kerry and me, everything that Kerry had learned about me included, and to know so very little about you.

  She laughed again. Give it time, Captain. Getting to know people takes time, more time than is needed for a quick recon job. Reconnaissance is your specialty, isn’t it? Force reconnaissance at that! But I have to stop this. I find I am flirting with you, and that is not a part of my battle plan. Do you think I might have another one—she pointed to the shaker—they’re delicious.

  Yes, you may, I said, if you will allow me a personal remark. Your velvet coat is stunning. Just like everything you wear. Have you a grandfather couturier to balance the bibliophile?

  She had on what my mother would have called a little black dress if only it had been black. As it happened, it was made of burgundy silk.