Killer, Come Hither

by Louis Begley

  XIII

  I’d told my housekeeper Mary that I’d be arriving in Sag Harbor Friday evening, after the IGA had closed, and asked her to buy and put in the fridge a dozen eggs, a stick of butter, a baguette, and three low-fat Swiss yogurts. She’d done that and had put lilacs, the first of the season in the Hamptons, I supposed, in vases on the kitchen table, in my bedroom, and in the study. A quick tour of the house showed that, as usual, it was spick-and-span. That young woman was a gem. Just enough light remained for a quick look at the garden. The forsythia bushes were in full bloom; the lilacs were beginning to stir. On the surface, all was very well, but the house felt unloved and unloving, as though Harry’s unappeased ghost were abroad, and the house itself knew that a curse had been laid upon it. I renewed my resolve to lift it during the two days that followed. The car was parked in the street, where I’d left it. I put it in the garage. I didn’t particularly want to be surprised by Slobo after I went to bed and it occurred to me that even though I wasn’t locking the front door I might set the alarm, disabling the motion in the house feature. But I decided against it. If Slobo tripped the alarm when he opened the front door, the siren might scare him off. We didn’t want that. Nor, if he persisted, did we want the police barging in on us. I decided against the alarm. My light sleep had stood me in good stead at least twice, when the Taliban got inside our perimeter in Helmand, and then my fatigue had been far greater.

  The store-window dummy, whom I’d taken to calling Morris, was in the back of the Audi. Eagerness to try him out got the better of my hunger. I brought him in, dressed him in one of my blue canvas L.L. Bean shirts, and put the wig on his head. Stretched out on his side on the sofa in the studio, facing the wall, curled up under the lightweight comforter, he was a dead ringer for me. I didn’t like the expression in this particular context, but couldn’t resist it. Besides it gave me a good laugh. This unprogrammed activity completed, I returned to the schedule with which I’d acquainted Fox News viewers. I hadn’t had a bite since the tuna salad I’d eaten at the Irish pub on Third Avenue two blocks down from the gym, and I was seriously starved. My trainer, Wolf, and I had gone through a spirited hour-and-a-half session of Krav Maga, the Israeli Defense Forces form of martial arts. Try to kill me, I told him. Do it or you’re roadkill. He didn’t like that concept and went at me with all he had. We fought to a draw. The workout had been so good, I told him, that if I scraped through an appointment I had that weekend I’d treat him to the best steak dinner money could buy in New York.

  There was no one in my kitchen to say tsk-tsk. Feeling not the least bit guilty, I scrambled six eggs and wolfed them down with four pieces of buttered toast. There was more than enough bourbon in the liquor cabinet. It would have made my TV host Brennan proud to see me go at it. I’d brought the Times from the city and zipped through the first section as I drank my coffee. Only one cheerful piece of news stood out: Boris Johnson had been reelected to a second term as mayor of London. So far as I was concerned, he and Mike Bloomberg could be mayors for life. As for the rest, it confirmed the abysmal idiocy of Western involvements in the Middle East and Afghanistan, reflexive actions leading to humiliation and disaster. I decided against a fourth bourbon and laid out my equipment. The dart pistol, the darts, and the antidote went into a tote suspended from a coat hook in the front hall. Scott’s revolver had arrived in a plastic box. I didn’t know whether all fingerprints had been wiped off it, but I certainly didn’t want mine on it. For that matter, I had no idea whether it was registered and, if it was, in whose name. Perhaps it made no difference. Anyway, I wasn’t about to call Scott to inquire. I opened the box, pulled on kitchen rubber gloves, and put the revolver on a side table next to the sofa on which my friend Morris was reposing. Easy for him to grab it if his slumber was interrupted, I figured. My switchblade was in my pocket. The .45 and my Ka-Bar were in my duffel bag along with night-vision goggles. The line about choosing to give up my bedroom and sleep in the studio was bullshit: disinformation for the consumption of whoever had watched Brennan’s program and especially Slobo and his handlers.

  —

  I slept hard, and might have slept through any visit Slobo chose to make, and certainly past eight, if Mary hadn’t called to ask whether everything at the house was as I wished. Had I changed my mind and would let her work at the house today? I said she was a love but I could manage just fine provided she didn’t mind if the house was a mess when I left for the city on Sunday. Reluctantly I got up, made a pot of strong coffee, drank most of it, went back upstairs, got into my running togs, and put the switchblade in the pocket of my windbreaker. I was almost out the front door when I realized I shouldn’t leave Morris on the sofa, or, for that matter, the revolver on the table. What if Slobo came to reconnoiter while I was out? Cursing, I took apart the installation in the studio and stowed the dummy in a downstairs coat closet that I didn’t think would be of interest to my Serb guest. That done, I got the car out of the garage, pulled down the garage door as Harry always did because he thought leaving it open looked untidy, and drove to the ocean.

  It was a perfect beach day: sunny, windless, and fresh, with the car’s thermometer showing sixty-two, and I was surprised not to see any cars at the Gibson Lane entrance. I locked the Audi, did some stretches, and ran east. The bourbon I’d consumed had left no trace, no lingering headache, no suspicious taste in my mouth. Since I had plenty of time, I decided I’d go as far as the East Hampton main beach. Round-trip, that made almost twelve miles. I intended to call Sasha and ask to have dinner with her, but I didn’t think I should disturb her before ten-thirty. Trying hard to be polite as I ran, I nevertheless scattered congregation after congregation of seagulls. Soon, I thought, it would be time for plovers, the elegant tiny birds that nest in the dunes and sprint along the water’s edge, haughtily indifferent to intruders like me. Perhaps they’ll be there already next weekend, I thought, when Kerry will come here with me. We’ll run Saturday and Sunday, first thing in the morning. These thoughts of happiness to come were interrupted by an aura that told me of a presence close by of someone I had neither seen nor heard. Without slowing down, I turned and saw him, perhaps a hundred paces behind me. It was he. No question about it. Same silver-gray running suit, same ski mask. Bozo-on-the-Beach redivivus! Or rather, as I was now certain, Slobo. This was not the encounter I had imagined or prepared for, but a great sense of relief came over me, bordering on exultation. Why not conclude it here and now, on this glorious strand that had been Harry’s? I grasped the switchblade and, palming it unopened, turned and dropped into a crouch. With my other hand, I scooped up just enough sand to throw into Slobo’s eyes when he closed in.

  Come on, you son of a bitch, I yelled, let’s do it!

  He stopped too, yelled back something I couldn’t understand, and reached into the pocket of his hoodie. I wondered whether it would be a knife or a gun. If it was a gun, he and his employer were right, I was dead meat; if a knife I thought it more likely that I’d eat him for my second breakfast. It was neither: he brought out a stick of chewing gum, peeled it, stuck it in his mouth, put the crumpled wrapper back in his pocket, and gave me the finger. The fuckhead liked that gesture. Then, with a lightness of step and speed that were astonishing for someone of his size and heft, he sprinted up the dune and out of sight. I didn’t follow. Either it was a stupid-ass ambush, one that would have allowed him to jump me from the back, or an invitation to a wild-goose chase. There is a road that services the houses sitting behind the dune. Doubtless he had a car parked on it. In this early season, many of these summer residences were likely to be empty even on Saturday. He would have found one with no sign of life in it, used the terrace or a gazebo as a stakeout, and rushed from there to the beach when he saw me. Since I’d given no sign of walking into whatever trap he had intended, in all likelihood he was already in his car, savoring the prospect of the visit that I was now sure he’d pay me later in the day or at night. What was the point of harassing me on this beach this morning o
r weeks ago when I first saw him? I’d no idea. Perhaps he thought he’d psych me out.

  No longer carefree, I completed my run, drove home, and called Sasha. She was free, brushed aside my offers to take her out to the American Hotel or the Thai restaurant, and invited me instead to dinner at her house.

  Seven, she said. I know it’s early for you, but I’m a country mouse.

  I told her she had a deal.

  In fact, it suited me to have dinner at Sasha’s house: since I wouldn’t be using my car, and planned to get to her place through the garden gate, Slobo—probably staked out this time in a parked car—would not be able to tell for sure whether or when I had left my own house, where I had gone, or when I had returned. The days were already long. I could be easily having dinner in the kitchen without electric lights, so that the house being dark would not necessarily indicate that I wasn’t there. The studio was another issue. If I was at home, I would have almost certainly turned on a reading lamp there. But that was a light Slobo wouldn’t be able to see from the street, or through Harry’s fence and hedge enclosing the garden if he tried to snoop in the back alley. As for Sasha’s dinner being early, that was fine too. I was impatient for the bastard to strike. If nothing happened during the afternoon, for instance during my supposed nap, he’d attack at night. We’d meet after I came home. The early dinner would shave an hour or two from the wait for the moment that would decide my fate and his. I showered and dressed, got at the IGA oranges and grapes for tomorrow’s breakfast, carried them home, and went out again, this time for a sandwich. When I returned, I checked carefully for signs of an interim visit. It was as I had expected. Nothing had been disturbed. I transferred the .45, the dart pistol and its accessories, and the Ka-Bar knife to the studio, and put them on the desk. I had borrowed from Kerry a voice recorder she sometimes used to dictate time sheets at her apartment. Not knowing whether it was fully charged, I plugged it into the surge-protector strip under the desk, connected my laptop alongside it, and got to work. I was writing the first of the four portraits of men in my platoon in Fallujah who didn’t make it. They were to be my new book. I worked steadily until six.

  Kerry had told me that the Western Industries program in Edgartown called for a Saturday cocktail hour on the porch of the Harbor View Hotel. It seemed to me that there could be no objection to a hotshot lawyer’s receiving a phone call while those festivities were in progress. If I was wrong, she wouldn’t answer and I’d leave a message. But she answered almost immediately, sounding anxious and relieved.

  Wait one second, she whispered over the roar of the party. I’m moving to where there’s less noise.

  When she spoke again, it was to ask: Are you all right? I’m worried sick.

  I told her that I was fine and unworried, that I was going to dinner at Sasha’s, and that I was making plans for our runs on Gibson Lane Beach, as well as for indoor activities that might turn out to be even more pleasurable. Next weekend, I specified. Please don’t develop any impossible-to-break business engagements. Not even for the greater glory of Western Industries or Jones & Whetstone.

  You make a joke of everything, she scolded gently, but this isn’t a laughing matter. Have you seen him?

  In a manner of speaking, yes, but nothing happened, I answered, and I want you to stop fretting about it. All will be well. I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow. And don’t forget we have a date tomorrow night and every night next week.

  She had a hundred recommendations for how I should be careful and should call her before going to sleep, no matter how late it was. I promised to do both.

  I decided to leave the dart pistol, the darts, and the antidote in the half-open drawer of the desk in the studio, but moved the .45 and the Ka-Bar back to the tote in the front hall. Then I grabbed a can of WD-40 oil in the garage, and carefully sprayed the front door hinges. When I tried it, the door opened and shut with no more noise than a knife going through butter. After going back and forth about it in my mind, I reinstalled Morris on the studio couch, with Scott’s revolver within his reach. There was no way of foreseeing how his presence would play out. There was a slight chance that Slobo might be fooled, with consequences if I wasn’t there I couldn’t foresee. In the worst case, Morris would only puzzle Slobo, or perhaps put him in a rage because he’d think I was fucking with him. The truth is that I didn’t care. These tasks done, I took a shower, got dressed, and went over to Sasha’s through the garden gate, the switchblade in the pocket of my jacket, and an orchid plant I’d bought on my way home from lunch in my hand. I had left the front door unlocked. That was how Harry had always done it, that is what I’d said on Fox I’d do, and that is what Slobo had every right to expect.

  —

  Coming home from Sasha’s, I entered the house through the front door, paused, and listened carefully. The house was still as a tomb. But there was something else. I have a very keen sense of smell, permanently sharpened, as apparently it often happens, by hepatitis I caught as a boy during a family vacation in Turkey. The odor I was detecting of unwashed underclothes, stale sweat, and tobacco could have only one source. I took off my shoes, reached for the Ka-Bar and the .45, and slipped them into my waistband. My night-vision goggles were also in the tote. I put them on and sniffed again. Mixed with the stench I’d identified was a separate smell, that of turpentine, the same odor as in Sasha’s studio where we had looked at her new work and had drinks before dinner. The two came from the same direction, from the hallway and the dining room. Noiselessly—the oak floors in Harry’s house did not creak—I followed. The French windows in the dining room that gave on the garden, which I had shut before leaving the house, were open. Pistol in hand, Ka-Bar in my waistband, I stepped through them and advanced slowly toward the studio.

  He’d left the door open and in the moonlight that flooded the studio through the skylight I could see him distinctly. The same silhouette: without a doubt the man I had twice seen on the beach. For this occasion, he’d exchanged his silver-gray outfit for black. A black jean jacket, black jeans flaring over black engineer boots, and a black ski mask made of some shiny fabric. He must have just arrived. Legs wide apart, a round leather body blackjack perhaps a foot long in his right hand, a can of turpentine in the other, he stood before the sofa, apparently bemused by the recumbent figure.

  You sleep, dead meat, he finally uttered, you sleep good? I help sleep better!

  With that, he raised the blackjack and brought it down on Morris’s head with measured force that I judged would not have broken my skull but would have left me out cold much longer than required for his project. I’d fooled him! It helped that my dummy friend’s head was some kind of solid rubber. What Slobo was up to became plain when he unscrewed the top of the can and began to squirt the liquid on the huge Turkish kilim. Pax, Ian Fleming! The men dispatching hardened criminals aren’t all deviant geniuses. This idea was so simple and so stupid. A banal accident: the bestselling author and decorated former Marine officer John Chilton Dana died of burns and asphyxiation in a conflagration that consumed with devastating speed the secondary residence he maintained in Sag Harbor, New York, the scene also several months earlier of the suicide of his uncle, Harold Chilton Dana, a prominent New York attorney. The interesting question was how Slobo intended to start the fire. I didn’t think it would be a lighted match or his Zippo lighter, although I was sure that as a heavy smoker he owned one. More likely, he had thought of an electric short. The whack he’d given my double on the sofa gave him plenty of leisure to work on that one. Killers for hire often have another profession. Perhaps in some early avatar, before hooking up with Karadžić, he’d been an electrician. But really, it was so too bad! Hard luck on Slobo! I wasn’t going to give him a chance to show his stuff by completing that phase of his assignment. My assignment, as I now saw it, was to give him an opening to attack, and to make him think he’d nailed me. I stuck the .45 in my waistband out of sight and snug against my spine and drew the Ka-Bar.

  All right,
Slobo, I called out. Stop messing with my rug. And drop the blackjack.

  He wheeled around, dropping the can but not the club. With his free hand he snatched the ski mask off his head and threw it on the ground as well. It was the face I had seen on Scott’s computer, now contorted in a snarl that bared his teeth.

  Fuck you, dead meat! he spat out. You try get me! You think you make fool of Slobo! I beat shit out of you. I make you crawl in your shit till you beg to be dead.

  You wanted to butcher my uncle? I returned. I think I’ll start by cutting you.

  He advanced on me with the speed I had already observed and aimed a blow at the side of my head. The Krav Maga session with Wolf had not been a waste of time. I ducked under his arm, and lunging from the side cut him on his right arm, the arm that wielded the blackjack.

  You like that? I asked. You want more? You’re a dead duck, Slobo Milić. The feds know who you are. For you there’s no way out. You’ve got a one-way ticket to the electric chair. Now drop the fucking blackjack.

  His answer was to charge me. I pivoted and escaped the full impact, but the pain of the glancing blow to my shoulder blade was extreme, making me wonder whether he’d hit Harry with that thing. In such a case, I couldn’t blame Harry for not wanting to take more blows. I retreated toward the desk. The arm I had cut was bleeding heavily enough for drops of blood to drip down the sleeve of Slobo’s denim jacket, but he rushed me again, aiming a wild haymaker once more at the side of my skull. This time I ducked successfully and cut him again, thrusting the Ka-Bar into his forearm.