INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  I swallowed and tried to speak.

  “If I put my head through that noose again,” I croaked, “where will I end up? Or will I only die?”

  He said nothing and looked at the book sitting on the table. Clock ticking, someone cleaning up a tray outside in the hall.

  “I saw you die,” I whisper.

  He rested his head on the chair. Languid in the ancient hotel room. Car traffic drifting in from outside.

  “That was real. Why am I not dead?”

  “Your name is Portia Joyce. When you were eight, you were struck by a car. You almost died, but you had a good surgeon and they brought you into the operating room, just in time. When you were ten, you thought unicorns were real, and when no one bought you one for Christmas, you cried and cried. When you were thirteen, your mother died. When you were fifteen, you left. You waitressed some and lived in a van for a while. You send letters to your dad in Idaho, but you don’t talk about how terrible you feel about all those butterflies you killed in the jar, and how angry you are that he taught you that. But you don’t shed a tear for the people you kill.”

  He leaned forward then, putting a thumb beneath my eye. He swiped it in a semicircle, and the pad glistened in the light. He sucked it off the end of his thumb.

  “Your father hired me,” he said. He removed his thumb from his mouth with visible regret.

  “Hired you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Hired you for what?”

  “You kill people, Portia,” he whispered. “They hire me to bring them back to life. You close the jar. I open it back up.”

  “I don’t deserve to live.”

  He held his hand out without judgment, embodied the archetypal scales.

  “Do the people you kill deserve to die?”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I have a job for you.”

  “A kill target?”

  His smile widened and his third eye, opening in the pale light like a glowing coal.

  “No. We’re going to bring them back to life.”

  In Milan, I closed the bullet wound of a man assassinated for funneling money into a children’s hospital, and made his heart beat again. Past the Rhine, I brought a child back to life caught in the crossfire of a bank robbery. In Argentina, I gave breath to a fallen bull brought down in an arena. The matador who loved him paid us handsomely.

  Now, when I dream, Trine opens the lid of a Mason jar through which all the dead butterflies come pouring back out.

  BEST-SELLERS GUARANTEED

  BY JOE R. LANSDALE

  Larry had a headache, as he often did. It was those all-night stints at the typewriter, along with his job and his boss, Fraggerty, yelling for him to fry the burgers faster, to dole them out lickity-split on mustard-covered sesame-seed buns.

  Burgers and fries, typing paper and typewriter ribbons—the ribbons as gray and faded as the thirty-six years of his life. There really didn’t seem to be any reason to keep on living. Another twenty to thirty years of this would be foolish. Then again, that seemed the only alternative. He was too cowardly to take his own life.

  Washing his face in the bathroom sink, Larry jerked a rough paper towel from the rack and dried off, looking at himself in the mirror. He was starting to look like all those hacks of writer mythology. The little guys who turned out the drek copy. The ones with the blue-veined, alcoholic noses and eyes like volcanic eruptions.

  “My God,” he thought, “I look forty easy. Maybe even forty-five.”

  “You gonna stay in the can all day?” a voice yelled through the door. It was Fraggerty, waiting to send him back to the grill and the burgers. The guy treated him like a bum.

  A sly smile formed on Larry’s face as he thought: “I am a bum. I’ve been through three marriages, sixteen jobs, eight typewriters, and all I’ve got to show for it are a dozen articles, all of them in obscure magazines that either paid in copies or pennies.” He wasn’t even as good as the hack he looked like. The hack could at least point to a substantial body of work, drek or not.

  And I’ve been at this ... God, twelve years! An article a year. Some average. Not even enough to pay back his typing supplies.

  He thought of his friend Mooney—or James T. Mooney, as he was known to his fans. Yearly, he wrote a best-seller. It was a best-seller before it hit the stands. And except for Mooney’s first novel, THE GOODBYE REEL, a detective thriller, all of them had been dismal. In fact, dismal was too kind a word. But the public lapped them up.

  What had gone wrong with his own career? He used to help Mooney with his plots. In fact, he had helped him work out his problems on THE GOODBYE REEL, back when they had both been scrounging their livings and existing out of a suitcase. Then Mooney had moved to Houston, and a year later THE GOODBYE REEL had hit the stands like an atomic bomb. Made record sales in hardback and paper, and gathered in a movie deal that boggled the imagination.

  Being honest with himself, Larry felt certain that he could say he was a far better writer than Mooney. More commercial, even. So why had Mooney gathered the laurels while he bagged burgers and ended up in a dirty restroom contemplating the veins in his nose?

  It was almost too much to bear. He would kill to have a best-seller. Just one. That’s all he’d ask. Just one.

  “Tear the damned crapper out of there and sit on it behind the grill!” Fraggerty called through the door. “But get out here. We got customers lined up down the block.”

  Larry doubted that, but he dried his hands, combed his hair, and stepped outside.

  Fraggerty was waiting for him. Fraggerty was a big, fat man with bulldog jowls and perpetual blossoms of sweat beneath his meaty arms. Midsummer, dead of winter—he had them.

  “Hey,” Fraggerty said, “you work here or what?”

  “Not anymore,” Larry said. “Pay me up.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, fat ass. Pay up!”

  “Hey, don’t get tough about it. All right. Glad to see you hike.”

  Five minutes later, Larry was leaving the burger joint, a fifty-dollar check in his pocket.

  He said aloud: “Job number seventeen.”

  The brainstorm had struck him right when he came out of the restroom. He’d go see Mooney. He and Mooney had been great friends once, before all that money and a new way of living had carried Mooney back and forth to Houston and numerous jet spots around the country and overseas.

  Maybe Mooney could give him a connection, an in, as it was called in the business. Before, he’d been too proud to ask, but now he didn’t give a damn if he had to crawl and lick boots. He had to sell his books; had to let the world know he existed.

  Without letting the landlord know, as he owed considerable back rent, he cleaned out his apartment.

  Like his life, there was little there. A typewriter, copies of his twelve articles, a few clothes and odds and ends. There weren’t even any books. He’d had to sell them all to pay his rent three months back.

  In less than twenty minutes, he snuck out without being seen, loaded the typewriter and his two suitcases in the trunk of his battered Chevy, and looked up at the window of his dingy apartment. He lifted his middle finger in salute, climbed in the car, and drove away.

  Mooney was easy to find. His estate looked just the part for the residence of a best-selling author. A front lawn the size of a polo field, a fountain of marble out front, and a house that looked like a small English castle. All this near downtown Houston.

  James T. Mooney looked the part, too. He answered the door in a maroon smoking jacket with matching pajamas. He had on a pair of glossy leather bedroom slippers that he could have worn with a suit and tie. His hair was well-groomed with just the right amount of gray at the temples. There was a bit of a strained look about his eyes, but other than that he was the picture of health and prosperity.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Mooney said. “Larry Melford. Come in.”

  The interior of the house made the outside look like a ba
rn. There were paintings and sculptures and shelves of first-edition books. On one wall, blown up to the size of movie posters and placed under glass and frame, were copies of the covers of his best-sellers. All twelve of them. A thirteenth glass and frame stood empty beside the others, waiting for the inevitable.

  They chatted as they walked through the house, and Mooney said, “Let’s drop off in the study. We can be comfortable there. I’ll have the maid bring us some coffee or iced tea.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting your writing,” Larry said.

  “No, not at all. I’m finished for the day. I usually just work a couple hours a day.”

  A couple hours a day? thought Larry. A serpent of envy crawled around in the pit of his stomach. For the last twelve years, he had worked a job all day and had written away most of the night, generally gathering no more than two to three hours’ sleep. And here was Mooney writing these monstrous best-sellers and he only wrote a couple of hours in the mornings.

  Mooney’s study was about the size of Larry’s abandoned apartment. And it looked a hell of a lot better. One side of the room was little more than a long desk covered with a state-of-the art computer station and a multifunctional printer. The rest of the room was taken up by a leather couch and rows of bookshelves containing nothing but Mooney’s work. Various editions of foreign publications, special collectors’ editions, the leather-bound Christmas set, the paperbacks, the bound galleys of all the novels. Mooney was surrounded by his success.

  “Sit down. Take the couch,” Mooney said, hauling around his desk chair. “Coffee or tea? I’ll have the maid bring it.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Well then, tell me about yourself.”

  Larry opened his mouth to start, and that’s when it fell out. He just couldn’t control himself. It was as if a dam had burst open and all the water of the world was flowing away. The anguish, the misery, the years of failure found expression.

  When he had finished telling it all, his eyes were glistening. He was both relieved and embarrassed. “So you see, Mooney, I’m just about over the edge. I’m craving success like an addict craves a fix. I’d kill for a best-seller.”

  Mooney’s face seemed to go lopsided. “Watch that kind of talk.”

  “I mean it. I’m feeling so small right now, I’d have to look up to see a snake’s belly. I’d lie, cheat, steal, kill—anything to get published in a big way. I don’t want to die and leave nothing of me behind.”

  “And you don’t want to miss out on the good things either, right?”

  “Damned right. You’ve got it.”

  “Look, Larry, worry less about the good things and just write your books. Ease up some, but do it your own way. You may never have a big best-seller, but you’re a good writer, and eventually you’ll crack and be able to make a decent living.”

  “Easy for you to say, Mooney.”

  “In time, with a little patience ...”

  “I’m running out of time and patience. I’m emotionally drained, whipped. What I need is an in, Mooney, an in. A name. Anything that can give me a break.”

  “Talent is the name of the game, Larry, not an in,” Mooney said softly.

  “Don’t give me that garbage. I’ve got talent and you know it. I used to help you with the plots of your short stories. And your first novel—remember the things I worked out for you there? I mean, come on, Mooney. You’ve read my writing. It’s good. Damned good! I need help. An in can’t hurt me. It may not help me much, but it’s got to give me a damn sight better chance than I have now.”

  Larry looked at Mooney’s face. Something seemed to be moving there behind the eyes and taut lips. He looked sad, and quite a bit older than his age. Well, okay. So he was offended by being asked right out to help a fellow writer.

  That was too bad. Larry just didn’t have the pride and patience anymore to beat around the bush.

  “An in, huh?” Mooney finally said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather do it your way?”

  “I’ve been doing it my way for twelve years. I want a break, Mooney.”

  Mooney nodded solemnly. He went over to his desk and opened a drawer. He took out a small, white business card and brought it over to Larry.

  It read:

  BEST-SELLERS GUARANTEED

  Offices in New York, Texas, California,

  and Overseas

  The left-hand corner of the card had a drawing of an open book, and the right-hand corner had three phone numbers. One of them was a Houston number.

  “I met a lady when I first moved here,” Mooney said, “a big-name author in the romance field. I sort of got this thing going with her ... finally asked her for ... an in. And she gave me this card. We don’t see each other anymore, Larry. We stopped seeing each other the day she gave it to me.”

  Larry wasn’t listening. “This an editor?”

  “No.”

  “An agent?”

  “No.”

  “Publisher, book packager?”

  “None of those things and a little of all, and a lot more.”

  “I’m not sure ...”

  “You wanted your in, so there it is. You just call that number. And Larry, do me a favor. Never come here again.”

  The first thing Larry did when he left Mooney’s was find a telephone booth. He dialed the Houston number and a crisp female voice answered: “Best-sellers Guaranteed.”

  “Are you the one in charge?”

  “No, sir. Just hold on and I’ll put you through to someone who can help you.”

  Larry tapped his finger on the phone shelf till a smooth-as-well-water male voice said: “B.G. here. May I be of assistance?”

  “Uh ... yes, a friend of mine ... a Mr. James T. Mooney—”

  “Of course, Mr. Mooney.”

  “He suggested ... he gave me a card. Well, I’m a writer. My name is Larry Melford. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what Mooney had in mind for me. He just suggested I call you.”

  “All we need to know is that you were recommended by Mr. Mooney. Where are you now?”

  Larry gave the address of the 7-Eleven phone booth.

  “Why don’t you wait there ... oh, say ... twenty minutes and we’ll send a car to pick you up? That suit you?”

  “Sure, but ...”

  “I’ll have an agent explain it to you when he gets there, okay?”

  “Yes, yes, that’ll be fine.”

  Larry hung up and stepped outside to lean on the hood of his car. By golly, he thought, that Mooney does have connections, and now after all these years, my thirteenth year of trying, maybe, just maybe, I’m going to get connected, too.

  He lit a cigarette and watched the August heat waves bounce around the 7-Eleven lot, and twenty minutes later a tan, six-door limousine pulled up next to his Chevy.

  The man driving the limo wore a chauffeur’s hat and outfit. He got out of the car and walked around to the tinted, far backseat window and tapped gently on the glass. The window slid down with a short whoosh. A man dressed in black with black hair, a black mustache, and thick-rimmed black shades looked out at Larry. He said, “Mr. Melford?”

  “Yes,” Larry said.

  “Would you like to go around to the other side? Herman will open the door for you.”

  After Larry had slid onto the seat and Herman had closed the door behind him, his eyes were drawn to the plush interior of the car. Encased in the seat in front of them were a phone, a television set, and a couple of panels that folded out. Larry felt certain one of them would be a small bar. Air-conditioning hummed softly. The car was nice enough and large enough to live in.

  He looked across the seat at the man in black, who was extending his hand. They shook. The man in black said, “Just call me James, Mr. Melford.”

  “Fine. This is about ... writing? Mooney said he could give me a ... connection. I mean, I have work, plenty of it. Four novels, a couple of dozen short stories, a novella—of course I kn
ow that length is a dog to sell, but ...”

  “None of that matters,” James said.

  “This is about writing?”

  “This is about best-sellers, Mr. Melford. That is what you want, isn’t it? To be a best-selling author?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Then you’re our man and we’re your organization.”

  Herman had eased in behind the wheel. James leaned forward over the seat and said firmly, “Drive us around.” Leaning back, James touched a button on the door panel and a thick glass rose out of the seat in front of them and clicked into place in a groove in the roof.

  “Now,” James said, “shall we talk?”

  As they drove, James explained, “I’m the agent assigned to you, and it’s up to me to see if I can convince you to join our little gallery. But, if you should sign on with us, we expect you to remain loyal. You must consider that we offer a service that is unique, unlike any offered anywhere. We can guarantee that you’ll hit the best-seller list once a year, every year, as long as you’re with us.

  “Actually, Mr. Melford, we’re not a real old organization, though I have a hard time remembering the exact year we were founded—it predated the Kennedy assassination by a year.”

  “That would be sixty-two,” Larry said.

  “Yes, yes, of course. I’m terrible at years. But it’s only lately that we’ve come into our own. Consider the bad state of publishing right now, and then consider the fact that our clients have each had a best-seller this year—and they will next year, no matter how badly publishing may falter. Our clients may be the only ones with books, but each of their books will be a best-seller, and their success will, as it does every year, save the industry.”

  “You’re a packager?”

  “No. We don’t actually read the books, Mr. Melford, we just make sure they’re best-sellers. You can write a book about the Earth being invaded by giant tree toads from the moon, if you like, and we will guarantee it will be a best-seller.”