A radio squawked. “Man down in the main terminal. Ground level. I repeat. Man down.”
“She’s wearing a burlap sack over her head.”
The uniformed officer removed the burqa from my head and shoulders.
I stared at the burlap sack in his hand. Bold print declared, Pioneer Brand, Idaho Potatoes, 100 lbs. “That’s not a burqa,” I said as confusion engulfed me.
I glanced around. Trains? Union Station?
A second cop walked over. “The victim was talking to that nun over there. Looks like this woman,” he said, pointing at me, “knocked the nun down, then stabbed the guy.”
“What’s your name?” I was asked.
The first cop lifted me to my feet. “Do you know your name?”
I said nothing.
“Sylvia?” I heard a voice call out.
Frank shuffled toward us.
“She lives across the street with me at the homeless shelter.” Frank tugged at his unwashed beard. A tattered herringbone overcoat snugged tight around his rotund middle. “She just got out of the nuthouse.”
“Liar.” I spun toward him. “Why are you saying that?”
Frank continued, “We were in the shelter, watching the inauguration on television. President Bekkar was taking the oath. Then Sylvia ran out.”
“According to the victim’s ID, he’s Dr. Truman North,” one of the cops said. “Psychiatrist.”
My mind reeled. No, no, no—not Dr. North. President Bekkar. Couldn’t they see?
“He’s her doctor,” Frank said. “I told him she stopped taking her medicine.”
“North refuses to go to the hospital,” the other policeman said, “without talking to his patient first.”
I squinted at the officer. “Dr. North’s here?”
He nodded and walked me over to a gurney. I stared down into North’s blue eyes and said, “I’m a hero. I killed the Islamo-fascist president.”
“No, Sylvia.” North paused to catch his breath. “You didn’t kill the president.” Racking coughs overcame him. “You stabbed me.”
“No, I—”
“We’ve got to go,” a paramedic said.
“You stabbed me,” North said again. His eyes rolled back in his head as his jaw went slack.
“No.” I shook my head. “I would never do that. I—”
Paramedics rushed North’s gurney toward the ambulance. Blood seeped through the blanket that covered him.
My God, what did I do?
Drip…drip…drip.
It’s almost four years later now. Dr. North made me see that I didn’t kill any president. Instead, delusional, I stabbed North. I understand what happened—my break with reality—and I’m all better.
Gray clouds coat the sky with a steady drizzle, and I listen to the relentless drip…drip…drip of rain off the nearby eaves.
Funny how some things never change.
I stand at the rope line waiting for President Izaan Bekkar to swing through his campaign stop in Fairfield, Virginia. Television vans line the street awaiting his arrival. A petite blond in a short skirt and matching jacket advances to the rope line and thrusts her microphone in front of the man next to me.
“After a controversial presidency, President Izaan Bekkar is determined to run for a second term. Sir, how did you feel four years ago when President Bekkar revealed he was a Muslim?”
“Being a Muslim didn’t bother me,” the man says. “Man has a right to his own religion, so long as it doesn’t get forced on anybody.”
“President Bekkar has said that if he wins, he’ll be sworn in on the Quran. Does that bother you?”
“No. Why should it? He’s been a damn good president.”
I step away, fearing the reporter will approach me. Fools. Every one of them is too stupid to be afraid. They don’t understand agendas. I understand. I see the truth.
I also know habit.
I’ve watched footage from all of Bekkar’s campaign stops. He always starts on the left, shaking hands with his supporters as he moves right. I chose this spot well. He’ll come directly to me. He’ll like my burqa.
I wore it for him.
Beneath it, I grip the knife.
DAVID J. MONTGOMERY
David writes for several of the country’s largest newspapers as a book critic, but we won’t hold that against him. Recently he’s begun producing fiction the rest of us can critique, discuss…and enjoy. Because he’s good. One of the most prolific and respected reviewers of thrillers in the business, he not only has an eye for writing, “Bedtime for Mr. Li” demonstrates he has a pen for it as well.
Jason Ryder: a hit man you wouldn’t mind having a beer with. Certainly, it would have to be a casual drink—you wouldn’t want to get mixed up in his business—but it you could talk to such a man, wouldn’t you? In a world of uncertain moral landscapes, an antihero like Ryder is an intriguing figure from beyond the pale, but not beyond redemption. Just don’t say anything bad about the Lakers around him.
BEDTIME FOR MR. LI
Jason Ryder sat slumped behind the wheel of the rented Ford, watching the raindrops chase each other down the windshield. He’d been sitting there for over an hour already and his ass was starting to go numb. On the radio was a playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Portland Trailblazers, with the Lakers ahead by three in the fourth quarter. Listening to basketball on the radio was like watching a porno movie with the picture turned off, but he had to make do.
Ryder had been on the job for a week already, enough time to make him more than a little antsy. He was never one to hurry—he was nothing if not meticulous, an essential requirement for success in his line of work—but that didn’t mean he wanted to waste time, either. There were places he’d rather be than the front seat of an ’06 Taurus, and things he’d rather do than drink lukewarm McDonald’s coffee while watching a middle-aged Chinese man negotiate with hookers.
Officially, Li Jinping held the position of Cultural Attaché in the Washington, D.C., embassy of the People’s Republic of China. He spent his days overseeing the loan of endangered giant pandas to various zoos across the United States, as well as organizing tours of the Shanghai Acrobats and Beijing Opera.
Unofficially, Li was a colonel in the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army—PLA—and the head of all human intelligence gathering operations in the United States. In other words, he was China’s top spy in North America.
Li wasn’t a very good spy—he had only successfully recruited one American: a disgruntled line cook working in the White House mess—but that never dampened his enthusiasm for the job. He fancied himself as the Chinese James Bond, despite his receding hairline and expanding waistline. He would likely have been fired for incompetence long ago, had he not gotten lucky during his previous posting in Beijing, a posting that had allowed him to gather some juicy intel on select Politburo members and high-ranking officials in the Party.
Li loved life in the U.S. He ate like a trencherman and drank like a sailor. He had not one but two mistresses—in addition, of course, to his doting wife back home in Beijing. He was the very picture of ill health, but he didn’t care. He was master of his domain in Washington and would only leave when he dropped dead of the inevitable heart attack.
If only Li Jinping were a better spy. Or perhaps if he had been more modest in his appetites. Or, most of all, if he hadn’t hired a room service waiter at the Beijing Hilton to secretly take pictures of the vice chairman of the National People’s Congress while he was rendezvousing with his much younger boyfriend, a gymnastic star predicted to make a fine showing at the Olympics. But he had. And that was why he was going to die.
Jason Ryder didn’t really care about the reasons. Li Jinping’s misdeeds, outsize appetites and poor judgment were of no concern to him. He could have been screwing the giant pandas instead of renting them out to American zoos and Ryder still wouldn’t have cared. He had only one reason to kill Li—and it came with five zeros after it.
The vice chairman had also promised a bonus of an additional $50,000 if Li’s elimination could be handled in a particularly embarrassing way, but Ryder hadn’t quite figured out how to handle that one yet. He’d been giving it some consideration, however, and had purchased a size XXL pair of frilly undergarments from a plus-size women’s store at the mall. He didn’t relish the prospect of undressing Li in order to paint him as a cross-dresser—but when the time came, he thought he’d be able to persuade himself with the hefty bonus. Even so, he was keeping an open mind to the possibilities, just in case a better opportunity presented itself.
Ryder didn’t anticipate that Li’s removal would be particularly difficult. For a man in the intelligence business, Li was surprisingly dumb, taking unnecessary risks seemingly at every turn. He failed to take even the basic precautions to guard his identity or his person. Ryder was surprised that he hadn’t yet seen Li appear on CNN as a talking head, commenting on how it had grown increasingly difficult to conduct military espionage in a post-9/11 United States. The guy was that obvious.
Even so, the job had to be handled carefully. There was always significant risk involved in eliminating an official of a foreign government; a risk made even greater when the individual was a member of the clandestine community. Ryder was unaware of the identity of the client who had hired him, but even if he had known that he was a senior member of the Chinese Politburo, it wouldn’t have changed the equation any. Just because one man in the PRC government wanted Li dead didn’t mean they would turn a blind eye to his murder. All the more reason to make his death appear to be something it wasn’t.
Ryder had been tracking Li’s activities and movements for over a week now. He’d had what turned out to be a golden opportunity to complete the job two days before, but he hadn’t been ready to pull the trigger. Li had met his number-two mistress, an exotic dancer at a gentleman’s club just over the D.C. border in Arlington, at a run-down hotel on Capitol Hill. Ryder had followed them into the lobby where he observed them having a heated disagreement of some sort. The girl had stormed away in anger, leaving Li to head for the elevators by himself. Ryder assumed that Li was going to make use of the room one way or another, a fact apparently confirmed when a busty blonde decked out in whore’s garb arrived thirty-five minutes later and headed up to Li’s floor.
Patience was something Ryder had amassed in abundance over the years, so he wasn’t overly concerned about the missed chance. He was, however, starting to get a little annoyed that he was missing the Lakers in the playoffs. But he knew there would be another opportunity. Li just couldn’t help himself. The man seemed to attract compromising circumstances like Lindsay Lohan attracts paparazzi.
The trail that evening had brought Ryder to the parking lot outside a Szechuan restaurant in northwest D.C. One of the area’s frequent summer squalls had risen up awhile before, pelting the car with a torrent of rain. Ryder welcomed the weather, as it provided excellent cover for his activities. No one was likely to linger in the parking lot and wonder why the man in the dark sedan had been sitting there for the past hour.
Li had gone in alone, but Ryder’s quick peek in the front door while studying the menu had revealed that he was not dining solo. He had a woman with him—yet another too-tall, too-obvious blonde who would surely tower over the diminutive Li like an NBA all-star. Clearly the man liked his women large and blond—and for sale.
After he spotted Li with the pro, Ryder wondered if being found dead with a hooker would be enough of an embarrassment to earn the bonus payment. Of course, that would require him to eliminate the woman, as well, something he wasn’t willing to do. A working girl has a hard enough life without some random guy offing her because she signed on for a trick with the wrong john. Ryder was a man of flexible ethics, but even so there were lines that he drew, and that was one of them.
Still, the situation presented potential opportunities. If Li took the girl back to another anonymous hotel for a quick wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, the circumstances would be ripe for action. All Ryder would have to do was wait for the pro to leave, then he could dispatch the target at his leisure. Two nights before, under similar circumstances, Li had stayed the rest of the night after his date left. Apparently he didn’t mind staying in less-than-luxury accommodations, even though the mere thought of what the sheets were like made Ryder’s skin crawl.
Ryder was in the middle of trying to decide if he needed to relieve himself bad enough to urinate in an empty coffee cup when the door to the restaurant opened and Li and the woman emerged. Ever the gentleman, Li opened an umbrella to shield himself and hurried ahead, leaving his companion to fend for herself. Li’s Corvette was parked four cars away from Ryder, but the Chinese spy never even glanced in the direction of the Ford. Ryder shook his head. The man’s tradecraft was appalling. It was surprising that nobody had eliminated him before. Li was so careless it seemed a miracle he hadn’t been killed simply by accident.
Li climbed behind the wheel of the Corvette and was joined a few moments later by the blond prostitute, now dripping wet and complaining loudly. Ryder couldn’t hear all of what she was saying, but it sounded like she was cursing Li for the lazy, inconsiderate bastard he was. Ryder doubted that Li’s understanding of English was enough to appreciate the nuances of fine swearing, but even if he did, he seemed like the kind of guy who would probably find it a turn-on.
The Corvette pulled out of the parking lot and Ryder followed at a discreet distance. Even though there were only ninety seconds left in the basketball game, he turned the radio off. Now that he was actively working, Ryder wouldn’t allow himself any distractions. He’d just have to rely on the Lakers to win it on their own.
Sure, Ryder could probably tailgate Li from one side of D.C. to the other and the spy would never even notice. But the hooker likely had some street savvy, so there was no reason to push it. At any rate, the trip ended up being a short one, as less than ten minutes later they pulled into the parking garage adjacent to a large, but shabby-looking hotel not far from the White House.
Li was no big spender, that was for sure. Apparently the PLA didn’t give its spies an expense account. It was all good news for Ryder’s purposes. Crummy hotel meant crummy security, high turnover of guests and no questions asked. Things were looking good. If all went as planned, he’d be able to complete the job and get out of Washington in time to watch some basketball.
The Corvette’s doors opened and Li came spilling out. He stumbled as he walked across the parking garage, catching hold of the girl in order to stay upright. The alcohol he presumably drunk with dinner was catching up with him. Ryder half expected the girl to roll him right there and beat feet down the exit ramp. But apparently there was still honor among whores, if not thieves, and she instead led him to the elevator.
Ryder climbed out of his car, then leaned back inside to grab a small black duffel bag from the floorboards on the passenger side. The bag contained all the equipment he would need to complete the job—including the size XXL women’s lingerie. Just thinking about it made Ryder shudder a little.
The elevator bell dinged loudly and the doors slowly slid open. There was no way Ryder could ride up in the elevator with them, so he waited at a reasonable distance while Li and his date stepped aboard and the doors closed behind them. He then hurried over to punch the button for the next car. He didn’t have long to wait, and the second bay of elevator doors opened and he climbed aboard.
Stepping out onto the lobby level a minute later, Ryder scanned the large, poorly lit room, searching for Li. He spotted him weaving his way across the threadbare carpet to the registration desk. You know a hotel
has open-minded standards when the desk clerk doesn’t even bat his eyes when a guy shows up for what is clearly a sex-for-hire assignation. The clerk just took Li’s credit card, typed for a couple minutes on his keyboard and handed over a room key.
The next part was going to be tricky. Ryder needed to learn what room Li was staying in, without connecting himself to Li in anybody’s minds. That left out the obvious solutions, like walking up to registration and asking, “Say, which room did you just give that guy?” Fortunately, Ryder had an alternate plan.
Seeing that Li and the girl were heading for the bank of elevators just off the lobby, Ryder walked past them to the nearby stairs. After Li punched the up button and waited for the elevator to arrive, Ryder opened the door leading to the stairs and jogged up the first two flights. The hotel had eight floors, so if the clerk had assigned Li a room on the top level, Ryder was probably going to be in trouble. But assuming that the law of averages gave him a good shot for a lower floor, he had a decent chance of success.
Emerging onto the third-floor landing, Ryder sucked in air and tried to slow his breathing. Two flights shouldn’t have winded him already, but clearly he hadn’t been hitting the gym often enough. He watched the illuminated numbers above the bank of elevators. One of them was fixed on eight, so that couldn’t be Li. There was no way he could have risen to the top floor already. The other was on four. As Ryder watched, it switched to five. A few seconds later, it was still frozen on the number five. That was it.
Ryder returned to the stairs and started jogging up again. He arrived at the door marked five and paused again to suck in air. He tried to calm his breathing as he opened the solid metal fire door as quietly as possible. He peeked out the door and looked to the left. Nothing. He looked to the right. Again, nothing. Could he have miscalculated? Another look to the left. Still nothing.
Then Ryder heard a loud, feminine giggle come from somewhere to his right. Emerging into the corridor from the stairwell, Ryder saw that the hallway made a sharp turn about fifty feet to his right, just out of sight from where he was standing a moment before. He hurried down the corridor and peered around the bend.
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