Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  He had chosen the Royal Suite to host the meeting. It had two bedrooms, three bathrooms, two lounges and a French balcony. An expensive outlay—there was little change from five thousand euros for one night—but Victor had many requirements that only this particular suite could meet.

  The adviser entered the suite first. He was a slim man in his midforties with tanned skin and long graying blond hair that was slicked back from his forehead and curled at the nape of his neck. He had a confident, professional manner, neither offering his hand in warm greeting nor displaying any trepidation. It took a certain presence of will to show so little when meeting with a contract killer for the first time.

  Heloise Salvatierra walked behind him. She looked like a celebrity traveling incognito, with large sunglasses hiding her eyes, and a wide-brimmed hat, which she removed as soon as she was through the door, releasing a lot of glossy black hair over her shoulders. The sunglasses were taken off next, and Victor saw the curiosity in her eyes. There was no fear—she was used to dealing with dangerous individuals—but the curiosity gave way to unease. Victor was not who she had expected.

  “You’re not as I had imagined.”

  Victor said, “I can see that.”

  “I mean, you don’t look very scary.”

  “That’s kind of you to say.”

  “I’ve known many killers,” Heloise said. “So I know when I’m wasting my time. But with you I can’t tell.”

  He saw this too but didn’t comment. It was not his nature to feel challenged, and not his nature to feel the need to accept a challenge.

  Heloise reacted to his lack of reaction with more curiosity, but it wasn’t easy to see. Her face didn’t move a lot. Her eyebrows remained perfect frozen arches. She was tall and thin, but her proportions were imbalanced by breast and posterior augmentation. Her nose was straight and delicate. Her lips were full and her teeth even. Her cheekbones were prominent and her jaw defined. Each feature was perfect on its own but the overall face was piecemeal. The surgeon had done a fine job, but she could not be shaped into someone she wasn’t. And no surgery could soften the strength in her gaze.

  Victor said, “Let’s take a seat.”

  He gestured to one of the lounge areas and led the client and her adviser to where two blue upholstered armchairs faced a matching sofa across a coffee table. Like the rest of the suite, the room was lavish in decoration and impeccable in taste. Even Heloise, who no doubt was used to the best that life could offer, seemed impressed. Which was one of the several necessities the suite afforded.

  The only thing in the room that disturbed the carefully chosen aesthetic was a red North Face rucksack that rested against the wall by the door.

  Victor took a seat on the edge of the sofa. They sat opposite him. The light from the French doors behind him was in their eyes, which was how he wanted it. Heloise sat on the chair to his right. Lavandier took the other.

  He seemed more relaxed, whereas it took Heloise a moment to sit comfortably in her dress, which didn’t offer a lot of room to maneuver.

  Victor didn’t begin the conversation and neither did Heloise. They looked across the table at each other, she trying to read him from appearances alone and he letting her try. She would realize it was a fruitless exercise before too long. He checked his watch.

  Lavandier took this as a cue to open proceedings, although it hadn’t been. “Thank you for agreeing to meet us.”

  “No problem,” Victor said. “I appreciate your coming all the way to me.”

  Heloise said, “It’s really not that much bother when you have a private plane.”

  “I can imagine it affords a certain amount of freedom to travel.”

  “Shall we make small talk or talk business?” she asked.

  “I have the suite until tomorrow, so it’s entirely up to you.”

  Heloise sat back in the armchair, and Lavandier spoke for her. “We requested this meeting because we don’t do things by halves. We know of your broker, but we do not know you.”

  “I’m afraid that’s unavoidable,” Victor said.

  Heloise said, “How many men have you killed?”

  “I don’t think that’s particularly important.”

  She was undeterred. “A dozen? More?”

  Victor shrugged, dismissive. “One or two.”

  She recognized the understatement. “What’s your success rate?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Who was your last target?”

  “A man.”

  Heloise sighed, frustrated.

  Lavandier said, “Would you tell us about one of your more challenging assignments?”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  “We came all the way from Guatemala to find out more about you,” Lavandier replied. “So maybe you could help us out in that regard. You agreed to meet us, after all.”

  Victor said, “I’m not prepared to discuss any of my previous contracts or personal history, and I won’t tell you my favorite color.”

  Heloise shook her head. “We’re wasting our time here.”

  “But rest assured,” Victor continued, “your knowledge of me is greater than the majority of my previous clients’ just by nature of this meeting.”

  “Well,” Heloise said, “you should know I don’t make a habit of meeting hit men.”

  “Duly noted, but you should know I’m not fond of that term.”

  Heloise’s nod said I don’t care.

  “You understand our problem,” Lavandier continued.

  “How so?”

  “Inasmuch as we cannot hire someone without first knowing if they can do what is needed.”

  Victor said, “You may take my word for it.”

  Heloise regarded him from beneath her frozen eyebrows. “Duly noted.”

  Lavandier smiled and held open his hands. “It seems we have an impasse.”

  “I thought we might have one,” Victor said, then added: “Do you mind if I take out my phone?”

  Heloise said, “Should I?”

  He kept his movements slow and obvious, removing a mobile from his inside jacket pocket. He looked at Heloise for a moment.

  “Would you mind moving your head a little to the right?”

  “Yes, I would mind. What is this?”

  Victor said, “Your choice,” and spent a moment operating the phone’s touch screen. He then checked his watch and waited.

  Lavandier watched him. Heloise watched him.

  Victor waited.

  A church bell chimed as the time reached seven p.m. It chimed again.

  On the third chime, Victor tapped the phone’s screen.

  • Chapter 12 •

  The chime hid the sound of a gunshot.

  A subsonic round, fired by a suppressed rifle fifty-eight meters away, on the far side of the street. Still loud, even with the reduced muzzle report and the lack of sonic boom, but unnoticed and unheard in the echoing of a chiming church bell.

  The bullet struck its mark a split second after leaving the weapon, having passed through the open French doors above Victor’s head and traveling at a downward trajectory that took it within centimeters of Heloise’s left ear.

  The red North Face rucksack was filled with sand that trickled in a hiss from the bullet hole and onto the floor.

  The thunk of impact startled Lavandier, but Heloise was already reacting to the whizz of the round passing by her. Her adviser was slow to understand, but Heloise knew exactly what had happened. She was on her feet and out of the perceived line of fire.

  “You tried to kill me.”

  She hiked up her dress, and from under the hem drew a small nickel-plated pistol from an inner-thigh holster. She aimed it at Victor.

  “We agreed to no weapons.”

  She said, “We agreed to a lot of things.
Like no partners with rifles.”

  Victor said, “I have no partner. I don’t play well with others.”

  “Who took the shot?”

  “I did.”

  “Who hired you to kill me?”

  “No one,” he answered. “And you’ll remember I asked you to move your head a little to the right.”

  She said, “Explain yourself before I shoot you dead.”

  “This is Spain,” Lavandier said, gesturing for calm. “We can’t do that kind of thing here and expect to walk away. There are rules here.”

  “Stay out of this, Luis,” Heloise told him without taking her gaze from Victor. “The grown-ups are talking.”

  Lavandier sat cowed.

  Heloise said to Victor, “I told you to explain yourself.”

  “You may not have said so in our prior communications, but you came here to get a measure of me. You came here to find out more about me. As you said: you don’t know me. I’m a private person, Miss Salvatierra. I’m not prepared to share details about who I am or what I’ve done. Hence, we were going to have a problem. Therefore, and I hope you’ll forgive my impertinence, I prepared a demonstration instead. To expedite the conversation, if you will.”

  She glanced at the phone in Victor’s hands. “You took the shot.”

  He nodded. “There’s a museum across the street, and it’s sadly not tall enough for what I needed, but there are apartments farther away. The angle isn’t ideal, but thanks to the large balcony and French doors this suite offers, it let me set up a rifle in one of said apartments, aimed this way. The weapon is hooked up to an automated rig. I zeroed the rifle manually, of course, but the rig is controlled wirelessly with my phone. Look.”

  He turned the phone around and held it up so she could see the screen and the zoomed-in image of the suite from the rifle’s perspective. A camera was part of the rig. Heloise looked at herself.

  “It’s touch activated,” Victor said. “I would show you, but we’d need to wait half an hour for the next church bell. Unless you want someone to report the sound of a gunshot.”

  “Which was why you were so very particular about the time of the meeting.”

  Victor inclined his head. “I believed it would suit both our agendas to demonstrate what I can do, instead of explain what I’ve done.”

  Lavandier, now caught up, said, “We’re leaving,” and stood. “No one puts my patron at risk like this. You should know there will be severe repercussions for your arrogance. Come, Heloise. Let’s take our leave of this circus act.”

  He made toward the door, but Heloise hadn’t moved, although the small pistol was no longer pointed at Victor’s head.

  “Not so fast, Luis,” she said. “I’m unharmed.”

  He stopped, surprised but obeying, and she approached the red rucksack. “May I?” she said to Victor.

  “Be my guest.”

  She knelt down and worked her index finger and thumb into the bullet hole. It took her a moment to locate the bullet and prize it free.

  “It’s real,” she said.

  “Of course,” Victor replied.

  She stood and presented it to Lavandier. “Imagine if this had been meant for someone else? The war would be over.”

  Lavandier whispered, “I don’t trust him” in Spanish, into her ear, but Victor had no trouble reading his lips.

  Heloise’s response was also a whisper, and even easier to read. “I don’t care.”

  She returned to Victor and holstered the small pistol. “I’m at war with a rival cartel. It’s been going on for some time, and there are no signs it will end soon, if ever. I have legions of sicarios. They are loyal and they fight tirelessly on my behalf, but they can’t get close to my rival, which is why I need a man like you to do what they cannot. I want you to kill the head of the rival cartel, which will bring the war to a conclusion.”

  “I figured as much.”

  Lavandier stood silent, arms now folded across his chest.

  Heloise continued. “The head of the cartel is well protected and smart, and though I am loath to admit it, commands even more loyalty than I do. There will be an army between you and your target.”

  “No one is bulletproof,” Victor said.

  “You’ll take the job?”

  “Do you agree to the terms presented by my broker?”

  Heloise nodded. “Money is no object. Double your fee. Triple it. I don’t care. Do this, and you’ll be wealthier than you could ever imagine.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Victor said. “I’m very particular about how I work. If I do this, I do it my way, at my own pace. I’ve had clients interfering in the past and I won’t tolerate it here. Also, I don’t want any surprises. I don’t want to find out the target has government protection and you failed to tell me.”

  Lavandier, following his boss’s decision whatever his own reservations, said, “You’ll know as much as we do, I assure you.”

  “I work alone,” Victor said. “Which means no one else is involved in any capacity. No sicarios backing me. You might think it’ll help, but they’ll only cause problems. You’re hiring me to do what they can’t, remember.”

  “Whatever you wish,” Heloise agreed.

  “And no one else like me hired to do the same job. You may want to double your odds of getting the job done, but I don’t want anyone else getting in my way. These are my conditions and they are nonnegotiable.”

  Heloise said, “You have my word.”

  “Do you have a time frame in mind?”

  Lavandier looked to Heloise, who nodded for him to answer.

  He said, “The sooner this is done, the better, but we appreciate these things take time to do properly. We don’t want to put you under any pressure. We don’t want you to rush. Fast work is rarely good work.”

  “Very generous of you, and I agree with the sentiment.”

  “Well,” the Frenchman said, “I think we all understand one another. So, do we agree on terms? Do we have a deal?”

  “Based on what we’ve discussed, I’ll take the contract. Please pass everything you know about the target to me at your earliest convenience. I’ll make my way to Guatemala once I know more, but you won’t know when I set off nor when I’m in country. You won’t know when I’ll initiate events nor by which method. I will make those decisions myself and act according to my own designs. I may contact you for additional information as and when I deem it necessary, so I will need a direct line.”

  Heloise said, “Luis will give you his personal cell. You may contact him any time, day or night, and he will do anything and everything to assist you.”

  Lavandier didn’t react, but that only told Victor he had not previously agreed to such an arrangement. It also told Victor that Lavandier would do whatever he was told without complaint or argument.

  “The only assistance I’ll need will be information.”

  Lavandier tilted his chin downward. “My bread and butter.”

  Heloise said, “We will have a dossier finalized within the next few days. Rest assured it will contain everything you could possibly want to know about the target. You see, I’m in a unique position to help in this regard, because the person I want you to kill for me is my sister.”

  • Chapter 13 •

  Heloise Salvatierra and Luis Lavandier reconnected in the hotel lobby with their security detail, who outnumbered guests two-to-one. The hotel staff didn’t know who the men were or how to handle them, but upon arriving Lavandier had given the flustered manager a month’s salary in cash just to look the other way for a few minutes. So the security detail had loitered in the lobby, pacing about and unnerving the well-to-do guests.

  They were not professional bodyguards, but they were experienced gunmen with skills and loyalty that had been proven time and again working for the cartel. However, they had been ch
osen because they had passports and because they had been convicted of no crimes. Transatlantic travel was not something any of them were used to, and as Heloise had to cross borders on occasion, it was essential to have at least some of her legions of sicarios with the documents and clean sheets to accompany her.

  The men were agitated. Even when they did travel abroad with Heloise, it was to Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, or Colombia. Never farther afield. Never across oceans. They didn’t know what she was doing or whom she was meeting. This was all new for them, but they did what they were told without argument or complaint. Their agitation was not helped by the fact they were unarmed.

  They had flown on a private jet, which provided much freedom to flout laws and regulations, but they couldn’t stride around Madrid with their AKs. They had wanted to, of course, but orders were orders. They hadn’t expected the meeting to last more than a minute or so, and it was unprecedented for Heloise to ever be out of sight. If something went wrong upstairs, they would know fast, because Lavandier had a radio with him and the head of the security detail had one too. But what then? They were all tough, hardened sicarios, but fists were no replacement for guns.

  If anything happened to their boss, worse would happen to them.

  Their relief was palpable when Heloise and Lavandier exited an elevator, and that relief was purely for Heloise. None of the sicarios had any love for Lavandier, and their respect was limited, given he was an outsider.

  Heloise barely made eye contact with her men as she headed outside with Lavandier at her side, and the sicarios fell into position surrounding her. A limousine was waiting, and Lavandier tipped the valet.

  No sicarios joined them in the limousine. They rode ahead and behind in Range Rovers.

  The limousine had been rented for the day. It had been difficult to arrange because there was only one rental company in the city that hired out armored vehicles. Even away from home, away from the war, Heloise would not ride inside any vehicle that could not stop at least a 7.62-mm rifle round. Lavandier wasn’t sure about the proliferation of assault rifles in Madrid, but given the difficulty in finding an armored limousine, he didn’t imagine drive-bys and ambushes were all that common. He had spent so much time in the civilized war zones and failed states of Central and South America that it was now hard to remember a time when he had traveled without a heavily armed escort. Once, a seat belt and an airbag had been more than enough protection. Simpler times, never to be repeated.