Kill and Be Killed

by Louis Begley

No, old friend, no and no. She’s terrific, sometimes I think I’ve really fallen for her, but on her end it can’t go anywhere. That’s something I’ve had to resign myself to. We just spend a lot of time together. For instance, she’s staying to dinner after our call. She’d probably be having dinner with me tonight as well, but her parents are taking her to the opera. I’ve begged off doing that.

  It beats me why she won’t go for you. I’ve got to meet her and figure it out. Maybe straighten her out. I know you’re a monster and all that, but you’re an attractive and rich monster. A lot of women would be happy to overlook your faults.

  Poor Scott! I wasn’t about to help him. Why it couldn’t go anywhere with Heidi was a subject I wasn’t going to discuss even with my best friend, the brother I would have wished to have, the man who had become my brother.

  Let’s talk about something else that’s almost as important, Scott continued, your staying alive. I don’t know what you have up your sleeve, and I’m willing to wait until tomorrow to find out. It doesn’t matter what you’ve told Abner. Don’t start thinking that there is anything you can do that will stop him from wanting you dead. He doesn’t need to have a practical reason to kill you. He’ll do it for the hell of it, because that’s what he likes to do, and because he hates your guts, just the way he got to hate Harry’s guts.

  Realizing he couldn’t see me nod, I said, I’m afraid you’re right.

  Then don’t take any chances. Stay at home. Have Feng answer the door when the doorbell rings. If you must go out, don’t get into the first cab that stops when your doorman is hailing one for you. That may be Abner’s taxi. Take the third or fourth taxi that goes by. That’s what our people do when they’re on a mission in sensitive territory. Better yet, let Feng get your car out of the garage and drive. You’ve got a replacement car now?

  I had to laugh. Yes, Mr. Mahoney, the Krohn factotum, has seen to that. It’s exactly like the old car only new.

  Then use it! I’ve already told you once: my son won’t need a dead godfather.

  —

  Hey, I said, when I called Scott the next day from the library of my apartment, I’ve put you on the speakerphone and I’m using my landline. The beautiful, elegant, and exceedingly intelligent Heidi is here. Heidi and Scott, say hello.

  He’s gone out of his mind, Heidi observed. He thinks he’s running a preschool class. Hello, Scott, this is Heidi.

  Hi, Heidi! This is Scott.

  Well done, children, I told them. Now I’m going to expose you to the new, superefficient, and possibly lawbreaking Jack Dana. As you both know, I called my friend Abner yesterday. What you don’t know, and what I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know, unless he’s got some technology that detects it, is that I recorded the conversation. Heidi, was I breaking the law?

  It depends on where he was when you called. If he was in New York or Texas, you weren’t. But if he was in another state, you may have been. But even if you were, I wouldn’t let it upset you. An estimated fifty million American men commit at least one felony per day, and most of them don’t realize it.

  No kidding! said Scott.

  I don’t give a shit, I continued. And I don’t give a shit who listens to this conversation. NSA, CIA, FBI, ABC, NBC, or CBS. Or Fox News. So here goes.

  I’d figured out how to reconnect the device on which I’d recorded Abner and me, and pressed PLAY. The quality of the recording was damn good. We came through loud and clear. Heidi listened enraptured, occasionally giggling.

  When we came to the end, Scott said, This is great, brother, and I renew my warning. This prick won’t care whether it’s useful to kill you. He’ll want to do it, as you put it yourself, for fun. Heidi, he continued, this goes back to a conversation Captain Dana there and I had yesterday: I want him to stay alive.

  I vote for that, said Heidi. Motion carried.

  All right, I replied. I want to stay alive too, and I want Abner dead or locked up.

  Amen, said Heidi. If we can nail him for Harry’s and Kerry’s murders, you might see him on a gurney, getting the long-goodbye injection. Commissioning murders through the use of interstate methods of communication happens to be a federal felony, subject to capital punishment.

  And aiding terrorism? I asked hopefully.

  Tough, said Scott.

  Heidi chimed in, Tough but potentially possible.

  To see him dead would restore my faith in the criminal justice system, I told her.

  We all fell silent. Worried that Scott might leave us, I said, Let’s talk quickly about some logistics. Here is what I would like to do, subject to your agreement. I’d like to email to each of you, at your private addresses, Kerry’s file and her letter to me. The idea is obviously that if I’m not around, either one of you will be able to deliver this stuff to Ed Flanagan. D’accord?

  Yes, said Scott.

  Yes, except I count on you to be here.

  Heidi gave me a dig in the ribs as she said that.

  It would be good to meet with Ed Flanagan on Thursday, I continued. Can you arrange that, Heidi? I’m sure you can get through to him more easily than I. And will you attend the meeting and bring the file you have?

  Certainly, she said. I’ll let you both know what I work out.

  How about you, Scott? OK to send the file to your private email address? Will you attend the meeting?

  Yes, but I can only be at the meeting with the U.S. attorney if it’s after two p.m.

  Noted, said Heidi.

  Finally, I’m going to make sure that each of you can have access to Mail Boxes, Etc., on East Eighty-Sixth Street and take possession of the original of Kerry’s file. I’ll get that done tomorrow.

  They say you were a hell of a good platoon commander, said Scott. I see what they mean. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Susie will pray for you—I’ll tell her that once more you’re putting yourself in harm’s way.

  XIV

  I’ve got a couple of guys downstairs, Abner said. All I have to do is whistle, and they’ll come up and kill you. While I watch, fuckhead. Then they’ll put you in a body bag, and, believe me, nobody’ll ever find you. Whoosh! Fucking war hero, third-rate novelist, and pain in the ass. But it’s too easy. You’ll be dead by the end of the day, fuckhead, that I guarantee, but first you’ll have a surprise. Ha! Ha! Ha!

  The laughter sounded at once insane and genuine, with nothing forced about it.

  Suddenly he sang: I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you fuckhead you! Dead, dead, dead. Killed by you’ll never guess who.

  Simon Lathrop was right. This son of a bitch’s library was like the Met’s medieval armor section. Dummies in full suits of armor, their visors lowered. In the corners, and displayed cunningly on the walls, were maces, flails, halberds, crossbows, daggers, estocs, and two-handed swords. Grab a flail, I thought, and beat the bastard to death. Crush his bones and don’t spare his face. Then bring them all in: the fucking bodyguards and the secretary outside the door, platinum-blond Mrs. Abner Brown, the sons if they’re in the house, the cook, the butler, and whoever, and say, Look, here he is, the Lord of Evil, look at him, beaten into a pulp. Then let them call the cops or call them yourself. Unless the bodyguards decide to take you out. With a flail in one hand and an estoc in the other, even in your condition, you’ll do some real damage before they shoot you. And afterward? With his crimes documented by Kerry, and by Harry before her, with the murders he’s commissioned, let them try to get a New York jury to convict me. And if they do convict me, if that’s the price of turning him into a bloody pulp, so be it! The price is right.

  The temptation was strong, my hands were sweating, but I controlled myself.

  Don’t worry about me, I told him. I had fun killing Slobo and Jovan and the nice fellow with a crossbow on Torcello, and I’ll have fun with your surprise. Hey, you want to do some reading? I promised to let you see Kerry’s files. Here they are. Nuts, I should have brought copies for your wife and sons too. They’ll love reading about you. You know what? It’
s I who will see you dead. You won’t survive this stuff.

  Brown hadn’t moved from behind his huge mahogany partner’s desk since I was ushered in. I walked over and dumped the contents of the two Redrope file folders I’d brought with me on the desk. It was as though he hadn’t noticed, sitting there seemingly frozen. Then something must have stirred inside him. He reached for the thicker file—the one Kerry had sent to me—put on his reading glasses, and began going through it. Almost immediately, a flush came over his normally pale face. Except for the motion of his fingers turning pages, he was perfectly immobile. Since it didn’t look as though he’d interrupt his reading to ask me to sit down, I plunked myself down on the leather sofa placed to the right of his desk against the library bookshelves. There were magazines on the chinoiserie lacquer coffee table—Weekly Standard, Human Events, and the American Conservative, and off to the left ARTnews.

  Expressionless, Abner’s face was turning a deeper red. Would the bastard really have a stroke? None of the endless garbage extolling his good works that I’d plowed through on Google mentioned heart disease. He’d thrown his money at cancer and diabetes, but no mention of Abner and Linda Brown cardiology clinics. There was always the first time. If he just kept reading!

  I didn’t think there was any immediate likelihood of his stopping. That’s all right; I was in no hurry. Feng was parked a couple of doors up from Abner’s building, just in case, he said, I was too tired to walk home. I’d left Harry’s huge beat-up leather briefcase made for him by I couldn’t remember who in London with Abner’s doorman, a florid Irishman who I decided—based on nothing other than his fine brogue and the way he said, Brown, penthouse apartment, sir, but please see first those fellows over there who’ll check you out—wasn’t one of Abner’s goons. I’d better be right, since at the bottom of the briefcase were my .45 and my iPhone. The “fellows over there,” exact replicas of the security guys I’d met at Abner’s building in Houston when I visited him a year and a half ago, led me into a room off the lobby equipped with a metal detector, asked for my name, checked it against a paper, and then asked for the last four digits of my social security number. When I told them I didn’t know it, they looked at each other unsmilingly.

  Jeez, said the taller one, who had about an inch on me. Please wait here.

  “Sir” apparently was not part of their lingo, not for types marked on their document for careful vetting.

  After what must have been a telephone consultation, the taller one reappeared from an inner room and asked for my birth date and year of graduation from college. As I was able to supply those, he invited me to pass through the metal detector and patted me down.

  What’s in these files, he asked, pointing to the Redropes I’d put on the table next to the metal detector.

  Dynamite, I told him.

  Is this supposed to be a joke? he asked.

  Find out for yourself, I answered, don’t you have an explosives detector?

  The guy had no sense of humor. He passed his gizmo over the files, and asked, OK to open them?

  Sure, I said, I’m bringing them for your boss’s amusement.

  Clearly, the guy didn’t like me. He opened the files, passed them through the metal detector, and said, Good to go.

  The shorter guy took me to the elevator, which, it turned out, served only the penthouse, and told me not to touch any of the buttons. We’re sending you up.

  Yup, sending me up. Or setting me up. Or preparing to put me down. I now wondered whether these clean-cut former noncoms were the guys who’d kill and bag me if he whistled. Why not? It takes all kinds to field this man’s army. I hoped they wouldn’t take it too hard if I deprived them of this choice bit of fun.

  Abner was past crimson. He’d reached the color of a rich burgundy. I saw that he’d worked his way through the file Kerry had sent to me and started on the one she’d sent to Heidi. That one was prefaced by Kerry’s analysis of the underlying documents with references to the sections of the U.S. criminal code Abner and his companies had violated and applicable penalties.

  When he spoke to me, the words—Fuck you!—came out as weird loud rales.

  Cool it, Abner! I laughed. You should know that when I talk to the prosecutors tomorrow and deliver these files I’ll mention something neither poor Harry nor Kerry knew about: your Amazon venture! The perfect channel for distribution of everything that’s illegal, from cash through drugs through counterfeit medicines. And ten dozen other rackets I can’t think of. You put the guys who operated Silk Road on the darknet to shame. Compared with you, they’re real pikers!

  Abner didn’t respond at first. Just sat there glowering, making those funny crackling noises as though he were gasping for breath. But perhaps that was my imagination. After a few minutes, he got up, crossed the large room to where I was sitting, and lowered himself into a club armchair kitty-corner from me. By some miracle of his physiology, his face returned to its normal pasty pale.

  I should have fired that pansy uncle of yours the moment I saw he was too big for his britches. Stopped doing what I said. Started telling me what to do. That’s not what I was paying him to do. Nothing’s worse than a lawyer with a swollen head and loose lips. I don’t need people to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. The great ideas, the concepts, are mine. Nobody else’s. There isn’t my equal in this whole country, perhaps in the whole world. Only I have the genius of invention, the clarity of vision, and the will to make my vision the reality. I inherited money and a small business from my father. He had inherited from his father, and so on back to the beginning of nineteenth century, when my people came over from the Midlands and Sussex. They worked hard and saved. They didn’t ask for alms. They didn’t wait for the government to bail them out. What they wanted, they took. They kept the bloodline pure. No fucking Irish or Jews. Only good English and German stock. With what my father left me, I built a fortune second to none in this country—Forbes and Bloomberg get it wrong—I’m richer than Buffett, smart guy by the way, and that clown Bill Gates. Only Carlos Slim is in my league. Steve Jobs? An appliance salesman. Did I accomplish that by listening to Harry Dana? Hell no! I listened to my demon, my own genius.

  He paused, perhaps waiting for me to comment. I said nothing. While he spoke, I wondered what had happened to Abner’s foul mouth and then realized that I was for the first time hearing him such as he must be at innumerable board of directors’ and trustees’ meetings and when he stirs the poisonous brew of his politics. A minor Texan orator!

  He spoke again. There’s more I will tell you, Dana, but perhaps you’d like tea and cake. Or my favorite, pecan pie. My chef makes the best pastry in the world.

  Yes, thank you, I answered.

  First intelligent thing I’ve heard you say.

  He picked up the telephone on the side table next to his armchair and spoke into it. Eileen, Mr. Dana here and I will take tea. We’ll want pecan pie and pound cake.

  Bang. Abner hung up.

  Harry Dana and that Jew girl sidekick of his had the presumption to think they discovered a criminal empire I was running and Lord knows what else. In your ignorance, you’ve taken the bait. It’s no criminal empire they came across but a paradigm for liberty, for raising the mighty structure of a capitalist enterprise to an empyrean height, for the exercise by a great man of his divine creative will. Iranian or North Korean sanctions! The stifling skein of regulations that Lilliputian legislators, regulators, and bureaucrats wind around our banking and financial systems, the Luddite imbecile environmental regulations, the metastasizing cancer of our tax system—I could go on—is it criminal to shake off their shackles? On the contrary, it is the exercise of virtue, the duty of the great free individual—the complement to my political action, which has only one goal: restore the free rein of the great individual! But could your pansy uncle or his Jewess acolyte grasp even for a split second the grandeur and rightness of my actions? They couldn’t. With their pismires’ view of the world, they deserved only one fate: to b
e crushed beneath the foot of a great man. Such was their fate, and so it was accomplished.

  You know, Abner, I said mildly, I’ve actually read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. At prep school. When I was fifteen. I thought then she was preaching nonsense and I think so now. Only fools and teenagers take that stuff seriously.

  Are you stupid enough to think I was ever taken in by that Jew commie? I am talking to you about American freedom. The freedom of our forefathers. The freedom of a man like me to build and to create, to brush aside with indignation the bonds fashioned by the Lilliputians in government, in Congress—and to live! To take the best the world has to offer. Look around you! The armor and arms you see here are the finest in the world. The books on the shelves are all the rarest of first editions—but I don’t collect first editions for bindings and rarity. The books themselves must be masterpieces. At the summit of intellectual and literary attainment. You’ve seen my bronzes in Houston. They’re good, but that’s only a hobby. On the walls of this apartment, and in my homes in Houston, in Dark Harbor, and in Cap Ferrat are paintings by the greatest masters. They are their finest paintings, groundbreaking, seminal, coveted by the most important museums. My taste is unerring, and my passion for art has never abated. When a work brought into my presence meets my exalted standards, a tremor passes through my body, and I get a hard-on. It tells me to buy, and it has never failed me. Perhaps you are beginning to appreciate, you deranged and misguided fool, the stature and the quality of the man you have tried so hard to destroy.

  I don’t know how much longer he would have harangued me in this manner if the door had not opened. Eileen entered followed by a butler in a black suit wheeling in the tea table.

  Shall I pour the tea for you, Abner, and for Captain Dana? she asked in her sweetest tones.

  He nodded, whereupon Eileen, having ascertained that I take my tea plain—no milk, no lemon, and no sugar—handed me my cup.

  Staffordshire bone china, she pointed out helpfully. The entire service was in the family of the dukes of Devonshire, Captain Dana. Abner bought it from the estate of the eleventh duke. He does love and understand fine china!