The Ethical Assassin

by David Liss

  “Let’s talk about Lionel Semmes,” she said.

  I felt myself suck in a breath. Not out of recognition, but out of exasperation. Lionel Semmes? There was yet another player in all this? How deep did all this go? “Who is that?”

  Toms sighed. “You might know him as Bastard.”

  “Oh, Bastard. Right. What about him?”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Well,” I said thoughtfully, “I tried to sell him some encyclopedias, but he and his wife didn’t want to buy. I remember him because I don’t usually spend so much time with a family without making a sale. Plus he was kind of intense and creepy.”

  “And?”

  I shrugged. “That’s all. I don’t know anything else. Why?”

  “Bastard wasn’t married, but he and his girlfriend are missing. No one has seen them since Friday night. As best we can tell, you are the last person to see them alive. That might or might not on its own make you a suspect. But then I find you at Bastard’s place of work being hassled by Jim Doe, Bastard’s employer. And then you were going around to Bastard’s neighbors asking questions about him. You can see how my mind is working here, can’t you?”

  I suddenly felt dizzy. At the time, I had suspected the canvass of the neighbors to be a colossal mistake. Now I knew it. Why had Melford insisted I do it? I couldn’t help but hear the echoes of Chitra’s doubt in my head. Had he wanted me to be seen?

  “I never did that,” I lied.

  “We have neighbors who say they saw you yesterday, asking questions about Bastard and Karen. At least they say they saw someone who fits your description. We can do a lineup if that’s what you want, but I think we both know what the lineup will show.”

  “Do a lineup,” I said with a shrug. I could think of nothing to do but bear down, act tough. I had to choke back a little smile because I could feel it happening to me the way it happened to the others. Here I was, nothing more than a suspect, but the system was already turning me into something else, something more badly socialized. If I stayed in prison long enough, I might even turn into something dangerous.

  “We searched his trailer,” Aimee said. “We found blood samples.”

  I studied her. She did not mention having found a dead guy with a comb-over, so I could only assume that Doe had removed him.

  “We found lots of fingerprints, too. I suspect that some will be yours.”

  “I already told you that I tried to sell them books. Of course some will be mine.”

  She shrugged. “And what about the blood? Any thoughts?”

  “Not really. No one was bleeding while I was there.”

  “It could be theirs. Could be you killed them and cleaned up, but made mistakes.”

  “That’s crazy. Why would I kill them? I don’t know them. How would I have gotten rid of the bodies? I don’t even have a car.”

  “My guess is that you had help. I’m also guessing that whoever did it might have dumped the bodies in the waste lagoon, and as soon as we have enough evidence for a warrant, we’ll find out. It would explain what you were doing there.”

  “Officer, you saw me. Did I look like I’d just hauled two bodies into a seething pile of pig crap? I was a little beaten up and a little bloodied, but I wasn’t covered with sweat.”

  “Whatever,” she conceded. “The truth is, we don’t know. We’re working on theories. That blood might have been from Bastard and Karen. It might not. Karen’s mother hasn’t been seen for a couple of days, so she might have killed them.”

  Karen’s mother, I thought. The third body.

  “There are other possibilities,” she said. “Bastard was into stealing pets. The blood might be animal blood.”

  “He was into stealing pets?” I tried to sound both surprised and disgusted. “What for?”

  “Hell if I know. We had a bunch of complaints about it, but we couldn’t really prove anything. I talked to him myself, but…” She shrugged. “A lot of people were sure it was Bastard, but without evidence there wasn’t anything we could do. And if he was keeping any evidence he might have at his girlfriend’s trailer, in Doe’s jurisdiction, we were pretty well blocked since Bastard worked for Doe.”

  “So you let him get away with it?” I asked. “He was taking people’s dogs and cats, and you just let him do it?”

  “Like I said, there wasn’t much we could do legally- not without proof.”

  “That sounds pretty lame to me.”

  “Can we stick to the point here?”

  “I guess so. It just seems kind of odd to me is all.”

  “The problem is not that dogs and cats are missing. It’s that people are missing and might be dead. And I think you know something about it.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. Should I have a lawyer?”

  “You’re not under arrest,” she said.

  “Then can I go?”

  She appeared to be pondering this question when there was a knock at the door.

  She excused herself and came back a minute later, shaking her head. “We just got a call that Bastard, Karen, and Karen’s mother checked in. They’re visiting relatives in Tennessee. I guess Karen called a neighbor who told her that everyone thought she was dead, and so she called into the police station.”

  Melford strikes again, I thought. I tried not to smile. “So if they’re not dead, there’s no murder, and you no longer have to protect me from being wrongfully prosecuted.”

  She winced. “Sure sounds that way, doesn’t it. But I have to tell you, I’m not convinced you’ve been honest with me. I don’t know what you’re up to, but take it somewhere else. I don’t want it going on around here.”

  I didn’t say anything. There was no percentage in denying it again, and I didn’t want to nod as though she were right. “I guess I’ll go, then. But maybe you should take that pet business more seriously.” Why was I getting into this instead of getting the hell out of there?

  “Look, we’ve got robbery and drugs and murder and rape aplenty to keep us busy. Missing doggies and kitties are pretty low on the list of priorities.”

  “So a guy like Bastard can do what he wants so long as he denies it?” I applauded myself on the clever use of the present tense.

  “Basically, yeah. Besides, next time you wander over to the hog lot, take a look inside. When you see how those pigs are treated, maybe you’ll get a new perspective. I mean, how different are they from dogs and cats, except they’re not cute and cuddly, right? So if it’s no big deal to kill one, why not the other?”

  It was a good question, but I suspected Melford would say she was answering it the wrong way.

  ***

  Only once I got outside did I wonder how I was going to get back to the motel. I went back in and told the cop at the front desk that I needed a ride.

  “This isn’t a taxi service,” he said.

  “Well, I didn’t ask to be picked up and taken here on charges of killing people who aren’t dead, so maybe someone can give me a lift back.”

  “This isn’t a taxi service,” the cop said.

  I conceded the point, told him I understood it was a police station, and asked if I could be put in contact with an actual taxi service.

  “I’m not a phone book,” the cop said.

  “Can you please tell me how I can get a cab?”

  The guy shrugged, reached behind his desk, and handed me a yellow pages and then pointed to a pay phone. At least I had some coins so I didn’t have to hear how the cop was not a change machine.

  With the cab on its way, I returned the phone book and went to wait outside. Five minutes later, the cab showed up. I told him to take me to the bus station, where I hoped I might still be able to catch Chitra. I slunk into the backseat and leaned against the torn leather, closing my eyes, almost ready for sleep.

  When I felt the car slow down, I opened my eyes again, but we weren’t near the bus station yet. Instead we were on the grassy roadside- a ten- or fifteen-foot patch of crabgrass and weeds that
separated the road from the algae green canal. I saw flashing blue and red lights as the cab pulled over. The car behind us was navy and white, and I recognized the stretch of road. We were in Meadowbrook Grove, and I watched Doe get out of his car and swagger over toward me.

  Chapter 36

  DOE SAUNTERED OVER TO THE CAR, licking his lips. He was enjoying this. He peered at the cabbie for a minute. “You know you were speeding?”

  “No sir, I wasn’t. I know this is a forty-five zone, and I was going forty-five.”

  “You were going forty-seven,” Doe said.

  The cabbie laughed. “Two miles an hour. You’re gonna write me up for that?”

  “Don’t matter,” said Doe. “That’s the limit. The limit ain’t a rough estimate. It’s the limit. It’s the speed over which you don’t ever go, not a speed you try to stick to.”

  “That ain’t right,” the cabbie said.

  “Take it to court.” He grinned at the driver.

  He went back to his car and wrote up the ticket. He returned and handed it over. “I’ll advise you not to speed anymore in my town.”

  The cabbie said nothing.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Doe said, “you know you got a wanted criminal in the backseat?” He rapped on the window with his knuckles. “Hey there, friend. You’re under arrest.”

  ***

  This time, at least, he didn’t bother with the handcuffs. He just put me in the back of the car. The whole thing had been a disaster. I kept telling the cabbie to call the police, and the cabbie kept saying that this guy was the police. “The county,” I said. “Call Officer Toms at the sheriff’s department and tell her that this guy arrested me.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you want,” the cabbie said while Doe led me away.

  “I just told you what I want,” I shouted, but after Doe locked me away he went back for a few more words to the cabbie, and I somehow didn’t think the message would get through.

  Now, in the back of Doe’s police car, which smelled of stale French fries, Yoo-hoo, and sweat, I glanced out the window, watching the bleak scrub brush on the empty lots pass by. I could hardly feel the air-conditioning in the back, and the sweat was rolling down my sides.

  Not that my comfort much mattered, since I might very well be dead soon. I considered this idea with a measured calm, though calm might be putting it too strongly. Resignation, maybe. I ran over all the possibilities I could think of- Doe would arrest me, question me, hand me over to the Gambler, torture me, let me go, all of it- but I kept coming back to one inevitable conclusion: It seemed pretty likely that Doe would kill me. Sure, there were reasons why it would be ill-advised. Aimee Toms had her eye on the situation and all that sort of thing. But if Doe killed me and hid the body, it would look like I’d just taken off. It was what I’d been planning on doing anyhow. As long as they never found a body, Doe would be off the hook.

  So, it wasn’t as though I were trying to convince myself that everything would be all right. I didn’t believe everything would be all right. I thought it extremely unlikely that everything would be all right. But there was a calm nevertheless, like I imagined what a soldier must feel before he went into a hopeless battle, or a fighter pilot on realizing that he’d been critically hit and that he was going down with the plane. So, here I was. Crashing.

  ***

  Doe drove to the hog lot. No surprise there. He parked the car around the back, where it would be invisible to any but the most diligent search party, and then he shoved me, still unhandcuffed, toward the pig warehouse.

  Maybe I should make a break for it, I thought. I’d already outrun Doe once, and he walked like a man who had trouble moving- legs wide apart, ambling, slow. But there was too much open space, and we were too far from anyone who might see or hear my efforts to escape. Doe would have an easy shot at me if he wanted. A more heroic man might have tried to overpower the cop, but I knew that would only end badly, if not laughably. So I allowed myself to be pushed forward, and I waited for an opportunity and hoped for a lucky break, or at least the ability to comport myself in a respectable way.

  Doe took out a set of keys and shoved one into the padlock on the door. It opened, blasting us in the face with heat and stench. I winced but watched as Doe didn’t. He was used to it, I thought. Or he just didn’t care.

  Doe pushed me inside the building and through the narrow corridors separating the pens. I had seen it before, of course, but now, in the dim light of the pig warehouse, with the low and despairing grunts of the animals around me, I felt a new and sharper sense of pity. Maybe it was identification. The pigs backed away from us, and the slow movement of the exhaust fans strobed their movements.

  Toward the middle of the room, one of the pens contained a wooden chair, the sort of thing you might see in an old schoolhouse, the kind that had been standing since the fifties or longer. I had seen such things at my own high school, weird aberrations among the metal-and-plastic hybrids that dominated, alone and out of place like a Neanderthal among Cro-Magnons.

  Doe opened the gate and shoved me inside, then latched it closed again with me inside. There was something comical in this. The gate wasn’t four feet high, and it wouldn’t have taken much of an effort to get out, but then it was latched for the pigs. Somehow I was troubled by the indignity of his thinking I required no more safeguards than the pigs.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Looks like you ain’t going anywhere for a while, so I figure we can have ourselves a little talk.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. My voice wavered, but under the circumstances I thought I did the tough-guy thing pretty well. There was even a kind of pleasure, a satisfaction, in acting tough, in projecting swagger even while still. I understood now why people did it.

  Doe studied me for a moment. “What you probably know, what you probably don’t need me to say, is that I want to know where my money is.”

  “I figured that out,” I said.

  “I bet you did. So, where is it?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head.

  “The thing about pigs,” Doe said, “is that they’ll eat anything. And they love the taste of blood. They just love it. And these here pigs haven’t been fed so good lately, so they’re mighty hungry. If I tied your leg to that there chair and cut it open, those pigs are gonna be on you like a bunch of sharks. They’re gonna be sticking their snouts in the wound, pushing it open, lapping it up. Next thing you know, that whole leg is gone, but they’re gonna keep eating. They’re like piranhas on land. You ever wonder if you’d even be able to feel pigs eating your nuts if you’d already had to live through them eating your leg?”

  “I never wondered that,” I said.

  “I have- wondered what it would be like to watch it happen. I might just find out, too, if I don’t get my money.”

  I took a deep breath. “Listen, I don’t really know what’s going on here. I know you had something going on with the Gambler and probably Bastard and the guy in the linen suit-”

  “Sounds to me like you know a whole hell of a lot.”

  “But that’s about it. And, look. I know that Bastard is dead and the Miami Vice guy is dead. I’m guessing your money is lost or there’s only one person who might have it: the Gambler.”

  Doe thought about that for a minute. “It crossed my mind, but he says you told him I was hanging around before Bastard got killed. I think you wanted him to figure I took the money, and that means you’ve been running some sort of scam on us.”

  “Listen to me. I don’t have anything to do with this. I’m just trying to make it through this weekend. I have no interest in turning you in or anything like that. Just let me go.”

  Doe laughed. “Ain’t no chance of that until I find out what happened to the money. So, tell me this. What was going on with you and Bastard?”

  “Me? Nothing. I never met him before I knocked on his door the other night.”

  Doe shook his head. “I don’t buy it. There was something with th
e two of you. And you been asking about him. Even those morons at County think you had something to do with him. You’d still be there if I hadn’t convinced one of Karen’s neighbors to call in and say they were still alive.”

  Doe had called. At the time, I had thought it was Melford who’d rescued me, but it was Doe. “Well, gosh. Thanks.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you knew him and had something going with him. Something to do with that missing money. Now, you want to tell me the rest?”

  And that was when I realized that all of this was because of Melford. Melford had planned it all along. The fingerprints on the gun, which he claimed he would never use. Sending me to ask questions about Bastard in Meadowbrook Grove, so witnesses would report that I’d been hanging around, asking questions about a guy the cops suspected had been killed. Had he even somehow arranged for me to sell encyclopedias at Karen’s house? I couldn’t see how such a thing would be possible, but Melford was a mastermind. Anything was possible.

  I’d thought he was my friend for trying to help me get the checkbook back, but Melford was so meticulous, he would have gotten rid of the checkbook after he’d killed his victims. The budding friendship with Desiree now struck me as implausible, too. They’d hit it off immediately, despite the fact that she worked for B. B. Gunn. Now I realized it wasn’t despite the fact, it was because of it. He kept telling me to forget about the money, and now I knew why- because he had it himself. I had been an idiot. All the talk of prison riddles and animal rights and ideology had been a smoke screen. Why hadn’t I listened to Chitra? She’d seen it, and I hadn’t.

  Something shifted inside of me. I was willing to be dignified in the face of adversity when I was the victim of a psycho cop, but not when I was the victim of a double cross. There was no way I was going to let Melford get away with it. Doe might have been disgusting, but Melford, I now saw, was diabolical.