Man. I should not try new alcohol again. Right. Like it was the scotch’s fault. I splashed some more water on my face and looked in the mirror, barely recognizing the gray ghost with purple bags under his eyes.
I was just brushing my teeth for the tenth time when the doorbell rang. I spit quickly, then grabbing a robe answered the door.
Paris stood there with a grin and a box of Krispy Kreme Donuts. “You look like hell.”
I snatched the box and nodded. “Yeah, I just got back.”
My cousin followed me into the kitchen and started making coffee. “Wait, I know that one.” He absently tapped his fingers on his forehead, “It’s from Heathers, right?”
I nodded. For some reason lately, I could only think in movie quotes. Which was okay, because words had failed me with the only woman I’ll ever love. Oh, brother.
“Dude,” Paris said as he munched on a maple donut. “You reek.”
“If it weren’t for the donuts, I’d throw your sorry ass out of here.” He was right. I just didn’t want to hear it. The huge quantity of scotch I drank was now saturating my pores. There wasn’t enough soap in the world to get rid of it.
“Well, I’ve got some news that will cheer you up. Neil came through with the last assassin. He’s in Portland, Oregon. I booked us a couple of flights for tonight.”
Neil. Neil. My brain scrambled to pin an identity on that name. Oh yeah. Our contact at the CIA. Old friend in college who liked Air Supply. He was helping us nail the National Resources guys.
I opened one eye and squinted at him – mainly because that’s all I could manage. “That will cheer me up?” Actually, it made me feel worse as I remembered I’d promised Louis not to travel so much.
Paris seemed to sense my inner protest, “We’re only one more kill away from clearing this assignment. Then you can spend the rest of the year ruminating on how your life has become an ironic, tragic comedy.”
He rose to his feet and slapped me on the back. It felt like getting hit with a baseball bat and sounded like a sledgehammer hitting concrete. “I’ll pick you up at five. Pack for cold, rainy weather. Gin’s going to pick up Louis from school and keep him till we get back. Ciao.”
I heard the door shut – it sounded like cannon fire. I finished off the pot of coffee and the box of donuts, then took a long, hot shower. Maybe Paris was right. Getting this job done would be a huge relief. Leonie could wait. I could win her over again when I got back. At least – I desperately hoped I could.
Somehow I managed to convince myself that everything would be all right in the end. After all, the Council was likely to give us time off for accomplishing two or three years’ worth of work in just under a month. Then I wouldn’t have to shuttle Louis between Mom and Gin and I could get my head straight on Leonie.
Her image came immediately to mind. Leonie’s tall and slim body, with creamy pale skin and bright, curly red hair. Her face with its elegant, yet elfin features. And those eyes that could turn me into a slave.
But what really caused a lump in my throat was who Leonie was. Funny and smart – she didn’t put up with my crap and seemed to be the only one to see me for who I really was. With a shock, I realized that her (considerable) physical attributes came in a distant second to her personality. Another first for me.
But that would have to wait. Portland came first. I opened my suitcase and began to pack, thinking of how happy Leonie would be when I got back and she realized I really, truly loved her. In this fantasy, Louis went on to cure cancer and win the Nobel Peace Prize – which would be ironic for an assassin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Derek Zoolander: I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.
- Zoolander
My head stopped hurting by the time we landed in Oregon. As I stepped off the plane, the cool, wet air made me feel a little better. By the time we got to the Super 8 hotel, I was feeling like my old, broken-hearted self.
“Neil gave us this address.” Paris handed me a slip of paper. “He didn’t have a name, but I googled it and found out it’s a guy named Fred Costa. He lives alone. Should be pretty easy.”
I forced a grin and took another swig of water. My skin tone was starting to come back after the serious dehydration of the night before. I didn’t like the bags-under-the-eyes look.
“So,” I said. “We go tonight. Let’s get this shit knocked out.”
We must’ve been sitting in that rental car for hours, watching Vic’s house. It was kind of cute – not at all what I expected for a male assassin, but who knows how people think? I sure didn’t have a clue what was going on in Leonie’s mind. Okay, enough of that. Get the job done and then I can get her to tell me what was going on.
At 11:30 p.m., the final light went out in Fred’s house. Paris and I slipped up to the house a half hour later. Picking the lock on the back door was pretty easy. That’s just plain sloppy. A good assassin would be more conscientious of his security. Oh well, in a few moments it wouldn’t matter anyway.
We moved quietly through the house, trying to locate our (hopefully) sleeping Vic. The inside of the house was even more feminine than the outside. Everything in every room screamed that a woman lived there. I whispered my concerns to Paris, but he just shrugged. As we approached the bedroom, I prayed silently that there wouldn’t be a Mrs. Vic in bed with Fred.
This worry proved needless, as we found him snoring away on a mattress on the floor. Paris pulled out his l.e.d. penlight to confirm the kill by locating the Woody Woodpecker tattoo. We’d been so freaked about the last two jobs we wanted to make this one work.
He’d just flashed the light on when I noticed there was no tattoo. Of course, Fred woke up and noticed that there were two men, dressed all in black, shining a flashlight on him. I aimed my gun at him.
“Who are you? What do you want?” A clearly terrified Vic scrambled to a sitting position clutching his sheets as if they would protect him against bullets. That was funny.
Paris growled (which made me look at him in surprise), “Are you part of National Resources?”
The man’s face screwed up in confusion. “No. What’s that?”
“Are you Fred Costa?” I asked in exasperation.
He nodded, “Yeah. Who are you?”
Paris turned to me, “I don’t think this is the guy.”
I kept my eyes trained on Fred. “He must be the guy. Our source gave us this address. You googled him, for christsake.”
Paris shook his head. “He doesn’t have the tattoo.”
I was getting annoyed with this line of conversation. “We didn’t check Garth for the tattoo, and we took care of him.” I watched Vic to see if the name Garth caused any recognition. But Fred just sat there with a blank look on his face.
“Who the hell is Garth? What tattoo?” Vic whined.
Paris never lowered his flashlight, keeping the Vic completely in the dark as to what we looked like. “It’s not him,” he said simply.
I thought about this for a moment. There was no way I wanted to gun down an innocent man. However, I was just one step away from being able to focus on Louis and Leonie. Family had to come first.
“Don’t,” Paris said quietly.
Fred was beginning to whimper now. “Is this because of that prank with the donkey and mayonnaise? Because if it is, I’ll never do it again! I promise.”
I was just about to ask him what he was talking about when I remembered I was on a job.
“Look!” I shouted at Paris. “Our connection gave us this address. He said this was the place. We can’t worry about whether or not he has the right tattoo. Let’s finish this and move on!”
I kept the gun leveled and snapped off the safety. The click seemed to drive Vic mad.
“No! Please! It’s not me! It’s a mistake!” he pleaded. I rolled my eyes. Like I haven’t heard that one before.
“Please!” Vic continued. “It must’ve been the previous owner! I�
�ve only lived here a couple of weeks!” He closed his eyes and flinched. Like that too would protect him from bullets too.
Paris pushed my arm down. “Wait. Let’s hear what he has to say. I really think we might have the wrong guy.”
I rolled my eyes and agreed. Paris confirmed the address with Vic, who nodded as vigorously as a man who has just gotten a call from the governor at the last minute.
“Yes! That’s right.” He nodded like a nervous bobble head doll. “But I just moved here. The house has been on the market a long time. The previous owner moved.” A strange look came over his face. “Wait! I still get the other guy’s mail! I’ll show you!” He started to get out of bed and I raised the gun again, stopping him mid-way.
“Just tell us where it is. We’ll get it,” Paris said calmly.
“Okay! It’s on the dining room table. I just sorted it to send back to the post office.” A glimmer of hope shone in Fred’s eyes. I nodded to Paris, who handed me the flashlight and left to retrieve the mail, while I kept my gun trained on Vic.
This was turning into a major disaster. How did things get so out of hand? Paris and I needed to do more research if this was true. The Council would be pissed if they thought we broke in and almost killed the wrong man.
Paris came back into the room. In the dim light I could make out that he had a stack of bills. These, he tossed onto the bed and Fred greedily snatched them up.
“See!” He held them up to us. “This is what I was talking about!”
Paris took back the flashlight and leaned forward to inspect the mail. Vic scrambled back to what he thought was the safety of the headboard. I watched him with amusement.
“Oh no.” Paris said softly, and I realized we must’ve had the wrong guy.
“So, who is it? What name is on there?” I asked, the gun still trained on Fred.
Paris snatched up the mail and stuffed them into his coat pocket. “Tell no one of this!” He snarled at the man on the bed. “Tell no one, or we will come back and finish it.” Then he dragged me from the room, out of the house and down to the car.
“Whoa, slow down.” I protested. “We don’t want to attract attention.”
Paris was driving at least forty miles over the speed limit. His face was pale, and he’d broken out in a sweat, which wasn’t a good look for him, by the way.
“Hey,” I said slowly, trying to be encouraging, “it happens to everybody. Neil didn’t know the other guy moved. It’s just a simple mistake.”
Paris turned and looked at me as if he wanted to say something. In fact he looked at me longer than I was comfortable with, considering he was driving. He said nothing until we got back to the hotel.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked as we stripped out of our gear.
Paris looked like he was going to be sick. Obviously this affected him more than I thought. Of course he’d be upset. We’d just broken into the home of an innocent man, scared the bejesus out of him and fled with little or no information on what to do next. Since I was the new, improved, humbled Dak, I tried a different approach.
“It’s all right. That guy didn’t see us. We’ll find the real guy and blow a hole in him – ” I held my hands out a foot apart “ – this big.”
He shook his head, despite my quote from Parenthood. Okay. Maybe I should just let him deal with it in his own way. My phone started vibrating on my hip.
“Hey! It’s Leonie.” I declared. Maybe things were looking up. I flipped the phone open to talk to her.
“Hello?” I asked as casually as I could. Paris started shaking his head vigorously. What a dork. He could at least concede me this small victory. No, he has to muck it all up with his depression on the gig.
“Dak,” Leonie began, “I’m so sorry for how I acted at Crummy’s. I’ve been an idiot. I do want to keep seeing you, it’s just . . .”
Paris was now doing some kind of charades thingy. He was hopping up and down giving me the ‘kill’ sign by dragging his finger across his throat. Geez. You’d think our crisis at work could wait till I reconciled with my girlfriend.
“Is this a bad time?” Leonie asked, and I realized I was giving Paris too much of my attention.
I turned my back to him. “No, this is the perfect time. I’ve been thinking about you a lot and wanted to talk to you.” I left out the word ‘desperately.’
Paris walked over to his coat and pulled the bills from Vic’s place out of his pocket. He fairly bounced up to me and tried shoving them under my nose. Couldn’t this wait?
I pushed his hand away. “Sorry for my distraction, Leonie. Paris and I are on a job right now, and for some reason he won’t leave me -” I shoved him backwards onto one of the beds - “alone.”
She sighed. It was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. “Look, the fact is, there’s been some stuff going on in my professional life that I need to reconcile. But I shouldn’t have pushed you away like that. You . . . you mean a lot to me, Dakota Bombay. And I want to be with you.”
My heart obediently exploded on the spot. I felt like I was superhuman . . . like I could fly around the ceiling if I wanted to. “Leonie – that’s wonderful! I feel the same way about you. When I get back, let’s talk. Please?”
She laughed and I felt a surge of adrenalin. “Of course. Where are you?”
Paris grabbed my phone hand and pulled it back. I thought about killing him on the spot. As I put the cell back to my ear he shoved the bills right under my nose.
“We’re in Oregon - Portland actually.” I said as I finally looked at the envelopes. Time seemed to freeze as I saw the name on the bills of the guy who we were supposed to kill.
In my ear, the phone went dead, and I understood why. Typed neatly across the envelopes was, over and over again, the name Leonie Doubtfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Steve McCroskey: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.
- Airplane
I slumped to the floor, still holding my cell phone. Paris took it from me and closed it.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said slowly. My voice sounded like it was really far away – like I was a demented ventriloquist. Thoughts played bumper cars in my head. I have to kill my girlfriend. I took an assassin to a family barbeque. This was the conflict of interest from hell.
This went on for some time, with variations on the same theme. I didn’t move from the floor. Eventually, in the background I felt the shadow of my cousin moving around the room, but I wasn’t really aware of anything. Every time I settled on a thought, it hurt too much to pursue. Leonie was the enemy. And I was supposed to kill her.
We’d killed her colleagues. I was pretty sure she knew that now. I was also pretty sure it would be difficult for our relationship to bounce back from that.
I became aware that Paris was lifting me off the floor, which was good, because I’d lost all feeling in my ass a long time ago.
“Dak.” He shook me gently. “Dak!” He shook a little harder. “Snap out of it, man!”
“Why? Why did it have to be her?”
Paris shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a cruel joke. You finally grew up and fell in love, and now you have to kill her. It hardly seems fair.”
There was no way out of this. If we failed to complete the mission, the Council would kill us. Those were the rules. Rules I’d grown up believing in. Rules I now wanted to blow up inside a Mickey Mouse costume.
“We don’t have to figure this out right now,” Paris said, trying to be helpful. “And our plane leaves early in the morning. Let’s get some sleep.”
He held an open hand out to me. There, on his palm, were two sleeping pills. I took them eagerly. There was no way I could sleep otherwise.
I dreamed I was playing tic-tac-toe with Leonie. No matter how many times we played, neither of us could win. And we couldn’t stop playing because the Council would shoot us if we ended the game. We kept trying different things, but
it was no use. Then, just as I came up with a strategy to win the game – one that couldn’t possibly exist, I might add – Leonie pulled a gun on me, shooting me six times. As I fell to the floor, I said, “Rosebud.”
In the morning. I was still tired, but not sure it if was residual from the sleeping pills or my bone-crushing depression about Leonie.
“We have to talk about this,” Paris said after we went through airport security. “How do we know she isn’t waiting outside the airport with a shotgun?”
I froze. I hadn’t thought of that. Could she do it? Could she kill me? The answer, though terrifying, filled me with a weird relief. Of course she would. She’d have to do it to save herself. I’d want her to. I envisioned myself gallantly blowing my own head off to save her the agony of doing it herself. My last gift to her. Ooh. If they ever make a movie of my life, the most important thing (besides the fact that Matt Damon would play me, of course) would be to include that line.
I shook my head. What was wrong with me? I didn’t want to die. Louis needed me. That little boy shouldn’t have to go through losing both his parents in a few short months.
Another thought popped into my head, making me break out in a cold sweat. What if Leonie tried to kidnap Louis – to make a deal? How well did I really know her, after all? Not well - since I missed the fact she was an assassin for a competing agency.
“Where are you going?” Paris asked quietly.
I looked around and realized I was walking toward the ticket taker. Only they hadn’t called for us to board yet. Sheepishly, I sat back down.
“You don’t think she’d try to take Louis, do you?” I murmured.
Paris shook his head, “Honestly? I have no idea.”
In spite of my cousin’s apprehension, I felt ashamed of myself. Leonie wouldn’t hurt Louis. But she might kill me out of self-preservation.
Paris said, “I called Liv to pick us up. She’s going to have Gin check out the airport to make sure Leonie isn’t around.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but changed his mind.
Greatest Hits Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-4) Page 36
