I slept until the afternoon the next day. After renting a car—I didn’t want to violate zoning ordinances by trying to park my trailer on a residential street—I drove to where she was staying and knocked on the door.
“Cy!” She actually looked happy to see me. Was this a trap? I was used to traps.
“Come in.” Ronnie pulled on my sleeve and, once I was inside, stuck her hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out Sartre. She knew where I kept her. She knew that I’d brought her. Maybe there was something to the idea of fate after all.
“I need to talk to you,” I said as I followed her into a large sunroom. We sat on the couch, facing each other.
“Okay. But first I have to tell you something.” She took a deep breath. “Sartre just peed on me.”
I looked down at her T-shirt and saw a large, spreading yellow stain. I think the pig winked at me.
Ronnie jumped up and ran out of the room. I toyed with suggesting she just take off her shirt, but thought maybe we should talk first. In a minute, she returned with a fresh shirt and Sartre wrapped up in a towel.
“I gave her a bath.” She patted the little rodent’s head. Sartre really looked pissed. Her fur was fluffed out, giving her the appearance of being much larger than she was, and the way her hair was askew gave her an angry look.
“Okay. So, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” Ronnie said with a grin. “I should have introduced you to Drew. I should have e-mailed you and explained when I didn’t at the house. The thing is”—she chewed her lip adorably—“you are a dick and an asshole.”
I nodded. “I know. You are absolutely right.”
“And you make me so angry I want to kill something,” she continued, without understanding the irony of her words. And why would she? I’d never told her.
“I’m not sure I can forgive you. Which is in direct conflict with my feelings for you.”
I looked at her. “Why would you have any feelings for me? I don’t deserve them. I treated you badly, thought I had you all figured out. I’m just here to apologize.”
I stood and Ronnie grabbed my hand, pulling me back down to the couch. “That is exactly what I wanted to hear.”
“It is?”
“Yes. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I’ve realized that, in spite of my better judgment, I’m in love with you, Coney Bombay.”
My head felt light and dizzy. It was a strange feeling when someone you loved told you they loved you too. My heart tightened in my chest, and I was worried about having a heart attack.
“What did you want to tell me?” she asked sweetly.
Oh. That. Now that she loved me, I didn’t really want to tell her.
“The truth,” I finally said. “I want you to know who I really am.”
Ronnie shook her head. “I’m not pigeonholing you. And we have our whole lives to learn about each other.”
Something in her light tone made me almost chicken out. But I was here and I had to say it.
“I’m an assassin.”
She laughed. That was unexpected.
“No. Seriously. That’s what I do. Or did, rather. I don’t do it anymore.”
Ronnie’s mouth formed a perfect O. “You’re serious?”
I nodded.
“You mean you aren’t an overeducated carney?”
“No, I’m those things too. It’s just that I also used to kill people.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Define ‘used to.’”
I guess if I was going to tell her everything, I should be completely honest. “As in up until a few weeks ago.”
Ronnie got up and left the room. She was gone so long I was starting to think I should find the door on my own with my wet pig in tow.
Just as I was about to get up, she came back in carrying a bottle of red wine and two glasses. “I’m lousy at opening these things. Do you think we’ll need another bottle?”
I poured. “No, one bottle should do it.” And then I told her the story of my family and what the Bombay family business was all about.
Veronica listened carefully; her face did not betray one iota of emotion. Perhaps she had distanced herself, listening academically to what I had to say.
As the words came out of my mouth, I felt something strange. My shoulders started to relax. Tension flowed out of my arms into the sofa. I realized that I’d never told another non-Bombay about this. And what a burden it had been to carry it around all these years.
That was good. But the jury was still out on how Veronica would take the news. There was no guarantee she wouldn’t throw me out on my ass. I didn’t think she’d call the police. At least, I hoped she wouldn’t.
We finished the bottle as I finished my story. I took a deep breath and waited for her to speak.
“That is so interesting,” Ronnie said finally. “I mean, that really appeals to the anthropologist in me. And if I look at it that way, it doesn’t bother me.”
“It doesn’t?”
She shook her head. “At least, not yet. Give me a few days.”
“Oh.” What else could I say?
“You only killed bad people, right?” The ring of hope in her voice was unmistakable.
I nodded. There was no point in telling her that I might have killed someone who didn’t deserve to die. The cousins and I had vowed that we didn’t want to know the truth about that, and I felt comfortable in my ignorance.
“Did you kill Dekker?”
“No. I couldn’t do it. But I did drive him to thoughts of suicide.” I told her the story of how I kept him alive as my own imprisoned therapist.
Ronnie snorted. “Oh, my God. That is the funniest thing I ever heard! Did you really do that?”
Okay. So it was all out there. And she took it well. But I still felt very uneasy.
“I shouldn’t have accused you of anything,” I started. “I was the one who pigeonholed you. I should have asked you—”
Ronnie silenced me with a kiss. She stood and started to pull me upstairs. I followed. Even though she hadn’t fully processed everything and was very likely in total shock, I wasn’t about to turn her down.
Chapter Thirty-six
Man: How you doing, Keaton?
Keaton: I can’t feel my legs…Keyser.
—THE USUAL SUSPECTS
So this was what it was like. I listened to Ronnie breathing beside me and sighed. If she woke up and decided she never wanted to see me again, at least I had this moment. I rolled over and watched the sun set lower in the sky. I wanted every late afternoon to be like this.
“Hey.” Ronnie tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to face her, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes.
“Hey. How are you handling this?”
“Aside from the dream I had where you had a contract to take out an evil capybara, I’m okay.”
“Really?” It was amazing how much hung in the balance of that one word.
“Really.” She kissed me and climbed out of bed, starting to put her clothes on.
“Why are you putting your clothes on?” Why was she putting her clothes on? Maybe she didn’t accept this like I thought.
“Don’t be so paranoid!” Ronnie laughed as she threw my shirt at me. “Sartre and I are starving.”
We made our way down to the kitchen and in moments we had a buffet of unrelated food, from cheese to Jell-O. Sartre had blueberries.
“So, you are okay with this?” I asked again, in danger of becoming annoying.
She nodded. “If I look at it from a scientific viewpoint, yes. And it helps that you only killed really bad people and have retired from the business altogether.” She popped a grape into her mouth.
“I didn’t expect it, is all. I thought you’d go through the roof.”
Ronnie thumped me on the chest. “That’s because you pigeonholed me.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” We continued eating.
“So, are you ever going to tell me who killed Kennedy?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“No, I can’t do that. I had to sign a confidentiality oath in my own blood when I was five.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really?”
I nodded.
“Wow. But there really was a conspiracy, right?”
I laughed. “Yes. While there isn’t always a conspiracy, there was in that case.”
Ronnie cocked her head to one side. “I bet you think I’m a real idiot over the whole Senator Anderson thing, don’t you?”
I stiffened. “No. I don’t.”
She waved me off. “I mean, when you gave me that file listing all the horrible things Anderson had done, I was really mad at you. But I did some more digging and found out you were right. I guess I didn’t look hard enough because I didn’t want to believe that he’d really had a heart attack.”
“Ronnie—”
“And the ridiculous lengths I went to in order to find his killer! And I was part of that weird group! We were so sure we were going to bring the senator’s killer to justice!” She laughed again. “I mean, how do you bring something like heart disease to justice?”
“Ronnie.” Something in my voice must have told her to stop, because she did. “You weren’t wrong. Senator Anderson was killed for selling a list of CIA agents to Iran.”
“What?” She slammed her hand down on the table, causing Sartre to jump. “Oh, my God! I was right!”
“You were right.”
She started pacing wildly around the kitchen. “Oh, my God! He really was murdered! I can’t believe it! Well, actually that is a relief, because I thought I might be nuts.” She continued her inane prattle as she prowled around the room.
“And I bet you know it because you are in the business! Talk about weird shop talk! Can you tell me who did it?”
I nodded.
“Really? ‘Cause you can’t tell me about Kennedy! Really? Wow! This is like The X-Files!” She paused for a second, and I wondered if I would need a geek intervention here. “So, who was it? Who killed Anderson?”
The woman I loved looked at me with eyes shining, as if she had discovered the tomb of Jesus Christ.
“Me.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
“An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.”
—VOLTAIRE
A number of years back, I scored a strange assignment: a young, idealistic senator from the Midwest. I have to admit, it took me by surprise. Anderson seemed like a good guy. That was, until I read the dossier.
Senator William Anderson was a sinner in saint’s clothing. How he managed to keep everything under wraps, I’ll never know. Actually, calling him a sinner is a bit of an understatement.
Do you remember that Stephen King book about the guy who could see the future? He saw that the guy running for president, a guy everyone loved and respected, was going to become a ruthless dictator responsible for the deaths of millions…in the future. In the end he decided he had to kill this man before he took office and tossed the nation into chaos and death.
It was kind of like that. Anderson wasn’t just into hookers, corruption and graft. It was much worse. The man had scams in third-world countries that would make you commit suicide. I won’t go into a litany of his crimes here. Suffice it to say that the man was a monster.
However, he was a beloved public figure. So his death had to be out of my normal scope. I managed (I can’t tell you how) to break into his house and discover he had a bum ticker. Missi drugged his toothpaste so that when he went to sleep that night, he went to sleep forever. It was clean and it was quick. And it looked like natural causes.
That was how I killed Senator William Anderson.
“Wow,” was all Ronnie said when I told her. “Wow.”
When she didn’t speak for an hour, I collected Sartre and let myself out, carefully locking the door behind me.
Back in my trailer, I lay on my bed and cried. It was the first time I could remember doing that. I didn’t just cry because I’d probably lost Ronnie and my chance at true love forever. I cried because I’d killed all those people since I was fifteen. I cried because my wanker brother was dead. I even cried because, in a couple of years, even Sartre would leave me. That’s right, I premourned her death.
The sobbing shook my whole body, and after a few hours every muscle, even the one that controlled my thumb, ached. After splashing cold water on my face and taking some ibuprofen, I went to bed and slept.
I don’t know how long I was asleep. I didn’t feel very rested, but someone was pounding on my door. I threw on some clothes (you can’t have a good long cry with clothes on) and opened the door to find my mother standing there.
“Squidgy!” She hurried into the trailer and shut the door. “You look like hell! Are you all right?”
“How did you find me?” I asked as I opened a Diet Coke and offered it to her. I poured myself one.
“Oh, we still have our ways,” she said. “What happened here? Is Sartre all right?”
I nodded. “Nothing, Mum. I just got dumped by a woman I thought I had a real thing with because she found out I killed her idol. How are you?”
Mum reached up and gingerly touched my swollen face. “You’ve been crying! I’ve never known you to do that over a girl!”
“Yeah, well, she was special.”
“Why did you tell her you killed whoever it was you killed?”
It was a fair question. “Because she had to know. Because I’m an idiot.”
I sat there while my mother made me breakfast. She sat and watched as I ate.
“Why did you ask me to bring in Veronica Gale, Mum?”
She looked as though she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“There’s more to this than the council let on. I didn’t bring up my suspicions to the cousins, if that’s what you are worried about.”
Her face softened. “You got the assignment because I thought you were ready for it.”
“What the hell does that mean? How was I ready for it? I kept Dekker alive to listen to my rants on Veronica! Clearly I wasn’t ready for another assignment.”
Mum nodded. “Which is why you were selected. We chose you to test because we knew you would fight us. We didn’t ask you to kill Veronica—just to bring her in for questioning.”
“What the hell?” My head ached as if I had a hangover. I tried to focus. Mum waited patiently.
“You wanted us to quit! You wanted out too!” I slapped the table.
She nodded. “Yes, we did. You got it!”
“You played us!” It wasn’t Ronnie who had manipulated me—it was my mother! “Why?”
Georgia Bombay sighed heavily, and I saw for the first time that she was old. “You know, my generation tried to get out of the business before you were born.”
Suddenly I was wide-awake. “You never told me. What happened?”
“Oh…” She waved her hand dismissively. “We were children of the sixties—very antiestablishment. The council represented the Man. We didn’t want to kill. We wanted peace.”
An image of the council members as hippies invaded my brain. I shuddered.
“Unfortunately, as you know, our parents’ generation was much more hard-core. They came from the generation of the Great War between good and evil. Everything was black-and-white to them. They were convinced that carrying on the tradition was their way of saving the world.”
“Damn. I would’ve liked to see you take on the council.” And I wanted to too. That had to be something to see.
“We have it somewhere on film. I think Pete kept a copy. The council recorded everything back then. They were pretty paranoid.”
I took a moment to wrap my mind around this. It was an incredible shock.
“But our folks wouldn’t hear of disbanding the organization. They didn’t want to kill us either, so they agreed to pretend it never happened if we went back to work. Which we did.”
“I can’t believe this.” I really couldn’t. “So you set us up to bring down the company.”
>
“Yes! And it worked brilliantly too! I’m quite the actress, wouldn’t you say? York wanted to hold out a little longer—you know, add some more drama to make it fun. But Pete couldn’t hold off anymore.”
Make it fun? Okay. I could understand that.
“And it was fun finally giving it all up once and for all. Well, except for when Missi electrocuted us. That sort of sucked, dear.”
I grinned. “I guess it sort of did.” So it was all a ruse. How about that. Who would have thought my mother was capable of such surprises?
“Well, I really should be going, honey. They are all waiting for me.”
“Who is?”
“The rest of the council. We’re heading to Greenland to tell our parents.”
I frowned. “What if they don’t like the idea?”
She smiled. “Well, I guess they will just have to stay at that nursing home then, won’t they?” With a wink, she was gone.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Blue Raja: Your boy’s a limey fork-flinger, Mother. What will the bridge club say?
Blue Raja’s Mother: You need more forks?
—MYSTERY MEN
My cell rang the moment the door closed. The caller ID said, Veronica Gale, 27, grad student at the University of Iowa, a bit anal-retentive about anthropology. I didn’t know how Missi did that.
“Hello.” I didn’t really know what to say. Me! The man who always had something pithy to say.
“Why did you leave?”
“You weren’t speaking.” To me that seemed like a demand to get out of her life forever. But maybe that was just me.
“Where are you now?” She sounded a little frantic. Was she worried I had left the state? That would be nice.
I gave her directions and, to my surprise, she hung up on me. Ten minutes later I was not so surprised when she knocked on my door.
“So this is where you live?” She wandered around, opening cupboards and poking into things. “It’s nice.”
I Shot You Babe Page 20
