INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  Christine wasn’t anywhere near what anyone over the age of fourteen would charitably call conscientious; Jane knew Christine’s idea of fiscal responsibility was to occasionally check the account balance when she withdrew a larger-than-usual amount of cash from an ATM. She didn’t really even keep track of how much was in savings because, after all, Sally had no idea either account existed. And Christine never opened the monthly statements—she just threw them in a plastic grocery bag inside her stash compartment. If she was even slightly adept at using Sally’s old Toshiba netbook, Jane thought, Christine would have gone paperless.

  Meanwhile Jane had needed to buy that spy camera; she meant to leave it in place for a day in Morrison’s apartment while she watched all the footage on the original—not just the fleeting minutes she’d be able to view while Morrison (aka Moretti) showered after sex with Christine ... or, to be more precise, her, Jane—at least the last time. Jane giggled—was she a voyeur or just kinky? Was sex with Dick (as Christine thought of it—because she really only cared about landing a Mr. Rich) a threesome? A foursome if you counted Sally? Anyway, she consoled herself, she could return the camera, which would be brand-new—she doubted that Big Al’s ego was so big he’d be unable to resist watching himself for one day. And that was all she needed, she reminded herself—one day to leave the dupe in place at the penthouse and watch the footage at home—as she plunked down the cash and took the receipt from the salesman at Hammacher Schlemmer on East 57th—scant blocks from the place on Park Christine’s erstwhile fiancé was calling his home.

  So Mr. Vinny likes to read, too, does he? Jane (whose surname, Beauchamp, was straight from the pages of famed psychiatrist Morton Prince) continued watching the digital images from Moretti’s pilfered camcorder. She sat cross-legged on Sally’s spinster-sized bed, a bowl of warm Paul Newman popcorn (to keep the Sally side of her happy) between her thighs and snugged against her crotch (to keep Christine happy and under wraps).

  Moretti was sitting in Vinny’s clients’ hot seat and for the first five minutes they were shooting the breeze, but when Big Al had walked in Jane had gotten a good look at the mahogany desk: A Stephen King paperback—and well-thumbed at that—was cracked open, face down. A second book—another King collection, in fact—lay on the edge of the head counselor’s workspace and Al had been toying with it, till Vinny told him to cut it out. Yep, Mr. Vinny liked to read—short stories, anyhow.

  That cleared up one mystery—she paused the camera footage she was viewing on Sally’s Toshiba netbook and googled “Stephen King characters”—and there it was: Richard Morrison, the antihero in a story called “Quitters, Inc.” She downloaded a Kindle App (reminding herself to delete her tracks later). And in two clicks—and less than one minute—she was at location 4333 (aka page 220 according to the mighty Amazon software she’d just installed), and she was reading.

  Nice to know Mr. King had inspired good old Mr. Vinny. It looked to Jane as if the fictitious company King wrote about had been transformed—and upgraded—to become Lifespan Treatment Center where, instead of losing your cigarette jones, the company guarantee was your own suicide. Clever. Damn clever. You have to stop underestimating him, or find yourself—that is, what’s left of yourself—reposing for eternity in an urn on the Grimshaw mantel.

  Back in spy-camera land, Jane Beauchamp, third personality in a constellation of women known (mostly) to the world as Sally Grimshaw, avidly watched more captured footage.

  “I tell you, Vincenzo, of all the put-up jobs I’ve done for you, bar none—even picking off the gun-shy suicides, blasting those cafones who don’t have the goddamn decency to honor a signed contract for chrissakes—even killin’ those sons-a-bitches—none of the jobs have been as much fun as putting the sausage to this Sally chick.”

  “Hey, that’s good, cumpar’—you’ve got it. You’ve really got it down. Stayin’ in character even when we talk—”

  “—she’s got a good sense of humor too. Instead of the Richard alias, she calls me Dick when we’re makin’ it, and she calls herself all the time—and this is really funny, Christine Sizemore. You get it, Sizemore?” Al puffed his chest out. But Jane could have told him that Christine’s name was what Cleckley would have called “leakage.” Christine had named herself because Jane had actually read The Three Faces of Eve and looked the case up on the Internet. Christine Sizemore was Eve White’s real name ...

  “That’s swell, Al. And I’m glad you’re doing such a good job and you’re so much into the part, you’re even enjoying the balling, but I gotta get back to work—”

  “Sure, Vin. And you get any more hot numbers who need the Richard Morrison treatment, you let me know first—”

  “Numbers—hey. She bought into the lottery scam, no problem, right?”

  “Sure. I sent her to Loopy Louie—to his deli over on 86th, and he gave her a fake scratch ticket. His garroting days are over, and the Loop gambles like a mad bastard. He was into for me twenty grand, so he got off cheap—”

  “How much you think she’s got left?”

  “Hey, paisan, I already told ya. It was your idea about some of the suicides—the ones, that is,” he grinned, “who wouldn’t decide, with a little cash on hand, that life was suddenly worth living—and letting ‘em score phony Lotto wins. And I told ya I’d split whatever’s left with you fifty-fifty.”

  “Yeah, the Grimshaw broad, what could she spend? She owes on some shrink bills maybe, or the utilities ... whatever—the way she dresses, it’s not like she’s a shopaholic—”

  “Man, she looks good dressed up, though—you oughta see—”

  Another mystery cleared up, Jane thought, pausing the program. Christine’s scratch ticket was fake, but the neighborhood guy she bought it from (and lots of tri-state small-delicatessen dealers did such a brisk cash-on-the-barrelhead lottery business that they paid directly if the winnings were under twenty-five thousand—it was in everybody’s interest to bypass Uncle Sam and his tax agenda) owed Big Al Moretti who, apparently in addition to his other skills, was also a moneylender with interest rates that would send most people into instant cardiac arrest.

  She fingered the built-in mouse pad and Big Al and Mr. Vinny popped up larger than life. Another few seconds played and Jane said: “Another mystery cleared up, but oh my God, it’s out of the frying pan and, oh shit, directly into the fire—”

  “Take a look at this—” Big Al took off his spy gear and attached a short USB cable to Vinny’s laptop, then to the duplicate featherweight spy camera that looked to Jane like a thumb-sized electric razor and could be worn—as Big Al had—clipped inside the placket of any ordinary shirt where what was visible to the beholder seemed like any ordinary button.

  “What the hell you recording us for?” Vinny fumed, staring at the monitor.

  “You said get everything—”

  “Not us, you big lugoon—we know what we say—you’re supposed to tape her!”

  “Lemme fast forward—hang on—”

  That camcorder footage was blank, of course, and for a second Jane was not only relieved but laughing at these two incompetents’ antics. For a second. Then she heard Big Al say, “No worries, I got back up.” And the next image she saw—because, in his anxiety over Vinny’s impatience, he hadn’t turned off her substitute spy cam and it was sitting on the desk recording—was a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses—its attached UB cable, the umbilical cord sharing hidden truths.

  “Oh my God, those sunglasses,” Jane whispered. She’d seen Big Al in Richard Morrison mode wearing them pushed up on top of his head—like, she sniffed with derision, aware of Christine’s anger welling up, like he thought he was goddamn George Clooney on the set of Monuments Men directing the movie—and she’d naively figured the ex-mobster was making his idea of a fashion statement; but a pulse ticked in her throat at another memory: She’d also seen them lying, lenses facing outward, seemingly innocuously, on the custom-made mahogany bookshelf built into the elaborate headboard on Mo
rrison’s king-sized bed.

  “Wide angle, too,” Big Al said. “Check this out.”

  “Holy shit,” Vinny said. “Grimshaw? That’s Grimshaw doing a strip in that teensy black see-though chemise-thing?”

  “Uh-huh ...”

  “Something’s wrong—that can’t be her. Hey, does this thing have a zoom? Let me see her face better—”

  “It’s her—”

  “It can’t be ...” He turned quickly and rummaged a filing cabinet behind the desk and pulled a folder. “This is Grimshaw,” Mr. Vinny said, smacking a large black and white glossy of Sally, who was sitting on the chair, her eyes squinted completely shut from the flash, her hands tightly gripping her pocketbook handle, her hair a dark greasy mop that brushed the top of the shoulders on the stained turtleneck sweater she was wearing. “See? Grimshaw looks like a schizo K-mart shopper on disability ... and that chick looks like she could hang out with Brad and Angelina—and hold her own.”

  “Huh ...”

  “Something’s wrong here,” Vinny said. “Turn that thing off,” he waved one hand over the laptop, the other, finger-scanning down the top sheet in Sally’s file. “Yeah, here it is, I knew she wrote it down.” He began punching buttons on his desk phone.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to call her shrink—Cleckley his name is, and ask him for some information on Sally Grimshaw—strictly in confidence, of course—as one psychological counselor to another.” He winked up at Al.

  “No kidding, Doc,” Vinny said.

  Oh thank Jesus, Jane thought, Big Al had turned off the laptop, but the camera still running. He’d clipped the celebrity-style sunglasses into the V of his white Jeremy Argyle shirt, and her mind roiling, she heard an interior voice say: Figures, the men’s shirt store New York Magazine called the best in New York City is, what, a three-minute stroll from Little Italy? How convenient. But, when she shook her head to clear it, she recognized that was pure defense on the part of her unconscious. It was way more important to pay attention to Mr. Vinny’s end of the conversation.

  “No kidding, Doc, and you’re sure she has at least two—and possibly three personalities, huh?” Pause. “Sure, of course, I’m familiar with Sybil and uh, Dr. Wilbur.”

  “I saw that movie,” Big Al chimed in. Vinny’s jaw clenched with irritation and he flapped an arm irascibly at the ex-mobster to shut up.

  “Yeah, but for her it’s more like Three Faces of Eve, though, you think, huh?” Pause. Jane wished she could hear Cleckley’s end of the conversation, but “Dr. Vincent” was using a tried-and-true mob gambit to give Sally’s shrink the impression he was considering the older man’s words ... listening closely. “And now, even without hypnosis, you noticed this other personality who, uh, erupted spontaneously was left-handed, but Sally is a righty. Right. Uh-huh. And what else?”

  Vinny suddenly curled his palm over the receiver. “Excuse me, Doc. I’ll be right back in one second.” He punched the mute button. “What the hell are you doing?” Al was standing on the other side of the desk making the classic up-and-down hand gesture in the region of his crotch, then spinning about-face and doing the same thing with his other palm and fingers. “I just want to know which one I slept with, so I’m trying to figure out which hand the broad used to jerk me off—”

  “Will ya just get the hell out of here, Al—” Vinny said. “Now!”

  “Sorry, Doc. There was a slight interruption here from one of the, uh, the other counselors.”

  The wide-angle lens provided a partial glimpse of the big man’s sulky retreat.

  And then, unfortunately for Jane, the tape ended.

  Earlier that day—the same late winter afternoon Jane had sat on Sally’s unmade twin bed watching Moretti’s spy cam—Dr. Cleckley discussed amalgamation and murder.

  “In the case of the woman known as ‘Sybil,’” he said, “Dr. Wilbur referred to the process as integration.” He paused. “It brings up the real threat of permanent extinction—the death of the other alters, and that can be terrifying,” his eyes locked on hers, “for everyone—even the personality that survives.”

  Jane had come dressed as herself to the one o’clock appointment: Sally’s shoulder-length hairstyle, but recently shampooed and shining; she sported Christine’s tank watch on her left wrist, and wore her form-fitting black sheath, but Jane had added a black-velvet blazer. Dr. Cleckley had recognized her at once.

  “No heart stops beating, no flesh decays, but it is—or can be—a death of sorts,” he said. “That’s why I prefer the term amalgamation, and all it implies.”

  “I wouldn’t exist,” Jane said.

  “Technically, no. But we’re agreed that neither Sally Grimshaw nor Christine Sizemore is fully functional—”

  “Christine is a lot of fun,” Jane said. “And Sally’s very emotional, very sensitive.”

  “You wouldn’t be Jane—not precisely—but you’d have their memories and the traits you find endearing in each of them. Think of it as a merger, a welding. Just like,” he said, “today you’re wearing a combination of their clothes and yours. Only, there wouldn’t be any ‘leakage,’ those random thoughts that cross over—the ideas and emotions and actions would truly be a part of the new you,” he smiled.

  “And it’s permanent, you say?”

  “Absolutely—in the hypnotic state all three alters will fuse.”

  “What should I call myself?”

  “Whatever you like,” Dr. Cleckley said.

  There was a huge crash. The front door to Sally Grimshaw’s tawdry railroad-style apartment flew open. In the light of the fourth floor hallway’s naked bulb, Christine S. Beauchamp could see the silhouettes of two tall figures. She sat very quietly, very still in the dark. After she’d seen what there was of Moretti’s amateur camcorder footage, she’d guessed this would happen and she was ready.

  “Empty,” Big Al said.

  “She’s here, all right,” Vinny said. “These old dumps always have those steel police bars that fit into slots on the floor—and it’s not in place, so she’s here.”

  They ran noisily through the living room, heavy shoes thudding against the wooden boards, guns drawn.

  When they reached the threshold of the bedroom, she switched on the sun-bright Petzl headlamp she’d rushed out to buy on Third Avenue an hour ago, just before twilight.

  Startled—wildly blinking—each man stopped and instinctively threw a hand up to shield his eyes from the glare.

  In one swift, elegant movement she pivoted and, crouching low at the same time, fanned the trigger, firing rapidly. Then, lightning-quick, she switched the gun to her left hand and shot again. Both Lifespan Treatment counselors were dead. “‘Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?’” she laughed. “‘You know what, Sundance, the rest of the world wears bifocals, but I’ve got vision.’”

  Back in early December when Sally signed the contract, Mr. Vinny had told her that between the guaranteed painless suicide Sally wanted so fervently, and the hit on the abusive husband his Italian-American lady client needed so desperately, Lifespan was providing satisfaction for everyone concerned: It was good business, it was the smart money. “Everybody wins,” he’d grinned. Correction, she revised, almost everybody wins.

  Mr. Vinny and Big Al Moretti lay dead and bleeding on the floor of the threadbare apartment one Sally Grimshaw had leased. Sally was gone, Christine was gone. Jane was gone now, too. From the ashes, only the woman who’d never existed and no one had ever met—Christine S. Beauchamp—lived to build another day.

  FRIENDS FROM WAY BACK

  BY DENNIS LAWSON

  The apartment building smelled like curry. The air was so thick with it that I was afraid it was sticking to my clothes. I was patient enough to listen outside Jack’s door for a few seconds. Someone was strumming an acoustic guitar inside. That was a good sign. There was a six-pack of Rolling Rock in my left hand and a bottle of Seagram’s Seven in my right. I stuck the whiskey under my
arm and knocked.

  The strumming stopped, a few seconds passed. “How did you find me?” Jack asked from behind the door, probably watching me through the peephole.

  “Nice to see you, too. Are you going to let me in?”

  The door opened as far as the chain would allow. Jack was dressed in a tank top, camouflage shorts, and black sneakers. Around his neck, he was wearing a hemp necklace with a seashell. “Did Snyder send you?”

  “I’m here to help you,” I said in a low voice. “No one sent me. I’m sticking my neck out here and I’m already starting to regret it.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  He let me in.

  I assumed the place had come furnished, since there was a couch, two chairs, a coffee table, and a long television stand complete with TV. Seemed like a lot of stuff to haul for a guy in hiding. Jack and his band rented a house together in Wilmington, but he’d been crashing down here by the University of Delaware in Newark since Rachel Prescott had gone into a coma. There wasn’t much else: a boom box beside the television, some CDs, an empty pizza box, and a guitar on the floor. Nothing on the walls. And it was dark—the hall light was on, but the lights were off in the living room.

  “I figured you could use a drink or two,” I said. I stuck the beer and whiskey on the coffee table. A cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray. Beneath the smoky smell, that curry was leaching in. And Jack had the same body odor that he had when we were teenagers. I lit a cigarette to help keep those smells down.

  “Any word on Rachel?” he asked.

  It made sense that he didn’t know. Her family was rich, and they were really stepping on the news coverage.