He said from behind my shoulder, “Thanks anyway. I’ll pass.”
I quashed my jump reflex, took an Orangina out of the fridge, and led the way back to the living room, sitting at one end of the leather sectional. My “guest” took the chair.
“Who are you really?” I asked this man who was now looking my place over, checking out the framed photos, the old newspapers in the corner, every title of every book. I had the sense that I was in the presence of a highly observant operator.
He finally set his Smith and Wesson down on my coffee table, ten feet from where I was sitting, out of my reach. He fished in his breast pocket, took out a business card held between his fingers, slid it across the glass table toward me.
I read the printed name, and my heart almost stopped.
I knew the card. I’d read it before: Charles Rollins. Photographer. Talk Weekly.
My mind was doing backflips. I imagined Marco without the mustache, and then envisioned Charles Rollins’s half-seen face the night when Rosa Castro’s twisted body had been brought up from the deep.
That night, when Rollins had given me his card, he’d been wearing a baseball cap and, maybe, shades. It had been another disguise.
The prickling at the back of my neck was telling me that the slick, good-looking guy sitting on my sofa had been this close to me the whole time I was in Hawaii. Almost from the moment I arrived.
I’d been completely unaware of him, but he’d been watching me.
Why?
Chapter 65
THE MAN SITTING in my favorite leather chair watched my face as I desperately tried to fit the pieces together.
I was remembering that day in Maui when the McDanielses had gone missing and Eddie Keola and I had tried to find Marco, the driver who didn’t exist.
I remembered how after Julia Winkler’s body was found in a hotel bed in Lanai, Amanda had tried to help me locate a tabloid paparazzo named Charles Rollins because he’d been the last person seen with Winkler.
The name Nils Bjorn jumped into my mind, another phantom who’d been staying at the Wailea Princess at the same time as Kim McDaniels. Bjorn had never been questioned — because he had conveniently disappeared.
The police hadn’t thought Bjorn had anything to do with Kim’s abduction, and when I’d researched Bjorn, I was sure he was using a dead man’s name.
Those facts alone told me that at the very least, Mr. Smooth on my chair was a con artist, a master of disguise. If that were true, if Marco, Rollins, and maybe Bjorn were all the same man, what did it mean?
I fought off the tsunami of black thoughts that were swamping my mind. I unscrewed the top of the soda bottle with a shaking hand, wondering if I’d kissed Amanda for the last time.
I thought about the messiness of my life, the overdue story Aronstein was waiting for, the will I’d never drawn up, my life insurance policy — had I paid the latest premium?
I was not only scared, I was furious, thinking, Shit, this can’t be the last day of my life. I need time to put my damned affairs in order.
Could I make a break for my gun?
No, I didn’t think so.
Marco-Rollins-Bjorn was two feet from his Smith and Wesson. And he was maddeningly relaxed about everything. His legs were crossed, ankle over knee, watching me like I was on TV.
I used that fearful moment to memorize the prick’s bland, symmetrical face. In case somehow I got out of here. In case I had a chance to describe him to the cops.
“You can call me Henri,” he said now.
“Henri what?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not my real name.”
“So what now, Henri?”
He smiled, said, “How many times has someone said to you, ‘You should write a book about my life’?”
“Probably at least once a week,” I said. “Everyone thinks they have a blockbuster life story.”
“ Uh-huh. And how many of those people are contract killers?”
Chapter 66
THE TELEPHONE RANG in my bedroom. It was probably Amanda. Henri shook his head, so I let my sweetheart’s voice send her love to the answering machine.
“I’ve got a lot of things to tell you, Ben. Get comfortable. Tune in to the present only. We could be here for a while.”
“Mind if I get my tape recorder? It’s in my bedroom.”
“Not now. Not until we work out our deal.”
I said, “Okay. Talk to me,” but I was thinking, Was he serious? A contract killer wanted a contract with me?
Henri’s gun was a half second away from Henri’s hand. All I could do was play along with him until I could make a move.
The worst of amateur autobiographies start with “I was born… ,” so I leaned back in my seat, prepared myself for a saga.
And Henri didn’t disappoint. He started his story from before he was born.
He gave me a little history: In 1937 there was a Frenchman, a Jewish man who owned a print shop in Paris. He was a specialist in old documents and inks.
Henri said that very early on, this man understood the real danger of the Third Reich and that he and others got out before the Nazis stormed Paris. This man, this printer, had fled to Beirut.
“So this young Jew married a Lebanese woman,” Henri told me. “Beirut is a large city, the Paris of the Middle East, and he blended in fairly well. He opened another print shop, had four children, lived a good life.
“No one questioned him. But other refugees, friends of friends of friends, would find him. They needed papers, false identification, and this man helped them so that they could start new lives. His work is excellent.”
“Is excellent?”
“He’s still living, but no longer in Beirut. He was working for the Mossad, and they’ve moved him for safekeeping. Ben, there’s no way for you to find him. Stay in the present, stay with me, my friend.
“I’m telling you about this forger because he works for me. I keep food on his table. I keep his secrets. And he has given me Marco and Charlie and Henri and many others. I can become someone else when I walk out of this room.”
Hours whipped by.
I turned on more lights and came back to my seat, so absorbed by Henri’s story that I’d forgotten to be afraid.
Henri told me about surviving a brutal imprisonment in Iraq and how he’d determined that he would no longer be constrained by laws or by morality.
“And so, what is my life like now, Ben? I indulge myself in every pleasure, many you can’t imagine. And to do that, I need lots of money. That’s where the Peepers come in. It’s where you come in, too.”
Chapter 67
HENRI’S SEMIAUTOMATIC WAS KEEPING me in my seat, but I was so gripped by his story that I almost forgot about the gun. “Who are the Peepers?” I asked him.
“Not now,” he said. “I’ll tell you next time. After you come back from New York.”
“What are you going to do, muscle me onto a plane? Good luck getting a gun on board.”
Henri pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket, slid it across the table. I picked it up, opened the flap, and took out the packet of pictures.
My mouth went dry. They were high-quality snapshots of Amanda, recent ones. She was Rollerblading only a block from her apartment, wearing the white tank top and pink shorts she’d had on when I met her for breakfast yesterday morning.
I was in one of the shots, too.
“Keep those, Ben. I think they’re pretty nice. Point is, I can get to Amanda anytime, so don’t even think about going to the police. That’s just a way of committing suicide and getting Amanda killed, too. Understand?”
I felt a chill shoot from the back of my neck all the way down my spine. A death threat with a smile. The guy had just threatened to kill Amanda and made it sound like an invitation to have lunch.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I put the pictures down, shoved my hands out, as if pushing Henri and his gun and his damned life story far, far away. “I’m wrong for this. You need a b
iographer, someone who’s done this kind of book before and would see it as a dream job.”
“Ben. It is a dream job, and you’re my writer. So turn me down if you want, but I’ll have to exercise the termination clause for my own protection. See what I mean?
“Or, you could look at the upside,” Henri said, affable now, selling me on the silver lining while pointing a 9-millimeter at my chest.
“We’re going to be partners. This book is going to be big. What did you say a little while ago about blockbusters? Yeah, well that’s what we’re looking at with my story.”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t. Look, Henri, I’m just a writer. I don’t have the power you think. Shit, man, you have no idea what you’re asking.”
Henri smiled as he said, “I brought you something you can use as a sales tool. About ninety seconds of inspiration.”
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gizmo hanging from a cord around his neck. It was a flash drive, a small media card used to save and transfer data.
“If a picture’s worth a thousand words, I’m guessing this is worth, I don’t know, eighty thousand words and several million dollars. Think about it, Ben. You could become rich and famous… or… you could die. I like clear choices, don’t you?”
Henri slapped his knees, stood, asked me to walk him to the door and then to put my face against the wall.
I did it — and when I woke up sometime later, I was lying on the cold cement floor. I had a painful lump at the back of my head and a blinding headache.
Son of a bitch pistol-whipped me before he took off.
Chapter 68
I PULLED MYSELF to my feet, bumped against walls all the way to the bedroom, yanked open the drawer to my night-stand. My heart was clanging in my chest like a fire alarm until my fingers curled around the butt of my gun. I stuck the Beretta into my waistband and went for the phone.
Mandy answered on the third ring.
“Don’t open your door for anyone,” I said, still panting, perspiring heavily. Had this really happened? Had Henri just threatened to kill me and Mandy if I didn’t write his book?
“Ben?”
“Don’t answer the door for a neighbor or a Girl Scout or the cable guy, or anyone, okay, Mandy? Don’t open it for the police.”
“Ben, you’re scaring me to death! Seriously, honey. What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’m leaving now.”
I staggered back to the living room, pocketed the items Henri had left behind, and headed out the door, still seeing Henri’s face and hearing his threat.
That’s just a way of… getting Amanda killed… I’ll have to exercise the termination clause… Understand?
I think I did.
Traction Avenue was dark now, but alive with honking horns, tourists buying goods from racks, gathering around a one-man band on the sidewalk.
I got into my ancient Beemer, headed for the 10 Freeway, worried about Amanda as I drove. Where was Henri now?
Henri was good-looking enough to pass as a solid citizen, his features bland enough to take on any kind of disguise. I imagined him as Charlie Rollins, saw a camera in his hand, taking pictures of me and Amanda.
His camera could just as easily have been a gun.
I thought about the people who’d been murdered in Hawaii. Kim, Rosa, Julia, my friends Levon and Barbara, all tortured and so skillfully dispatched. Not a fingerprint or a trace had been left behind for the cops.
This wasn’t the work of a beginner.
How many other people had Henri killed?
The freeway tailed off onto 4th and Main. I turned onto Pico, passed the diners and car repair shops, the two-level crappy apartments, the big clown on Main and Rose — and I was in a different world, Venice Beach, both a playground for the young and carefree and a refuge for the homeless.
It took me another few minutes to circle around Speedway until I found a spot a block from Amanda’s place, a former one-family home now split into three apartments.
I walked up the street listening for the approach of a car or the sound of Italian loafers slapping the pavement.
Maybe Henri was watching me now, disguised as a vagrant, or maybe he was that bearded guy parking his car. I walked past Amanda’s house, looked up to the third floor, saw the light on in her kitchen.
I walked another block before doubling back. I rang the doorbell, muttered, “Please, Mandy, please,” until I heard her voice behind the door.
“What’s the password?”
“ ‘Cheese sandwich.’ Let me in.”
Chapter 69
AMANDA OPENED the door, and I grabbed her, kicked the door closed behind me, and held her tight.
“What is it, Ben? What happened? Please tell me what’s going on.”
She freed herself from my arms, grabbed my shoulders, and inventoried my face.
“Your collar is bloody. You’re bleeding. Ben, were you mugged?”
I threw the bolts on Amanda’s front door, put my hand at her back, and walked her to the small living room. I sat her down in the easy chair, took the rocker a few feet away.
“Start talking, okay?”
I didn’t know how to soften it, so I just told it plain and simple. “A guy came to my door with a gun. Said he’s a contract killer.”
“What?”
“He led me to believe that he killed all those people in Hawaii. Remember when I asked you to help me find Charlie Rollins from Talk Weekly magazine?”
“The Charlie Rollins who was the last one to see Julia Winkler? That’s who came to see you?”
I told Amanda about Henri’s other names and disguises, how I had met him not only as Rollins, but that he’d also masqueraded as the McDanielses’ driver, calling himself Marco Benevenuto.
I told her that he’d been sitting on my couch and pointing a gun, telling me that he was a professional assassin for hire and had killed many, many times.
“He wants me to write his autobiography. Wants Raven-Wofford to publish it.”
“This is unbelievable,” Amanda said.
“I know.”
“No, I mean, it’s really unbelievable. Who would confess to murders like that? You’ve got to call the police, Ben,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“He warned me not to.”
I handed Mandy the packet of pictures and watched the disbelief on her face change to shock and then anger.
“Okay, the bastard has a zoom lens,” she said, her mouth clamped into a straight line. “He took some pictures. Proves nothing.”
I took the flash drive out of my pocket, dangled it by the cord. “He gave me this. Said it’s a sales tool and that it will inspire me.”
Chapter 70
AMANDA LEFT THE LIVING ROOM, then came back with her laptop under her arm and holding two glasses and a bottle of Pinot. She booted up while I poured, and when her laptop was humming, I inserted Henri’s flash drive into the port.
A video started to roll.
For the next minute and a half, Amanda and I were in the grip of the most horrific and obscene images either of us had ever seen. Amanda clutched my arm so hard that she left bruises, and when it was finally over she threw herself back into the chair, tears flowing, sobbing.
“Oh, my God, Amanda, what an ass I am. I’m so sorry. I should have looked at it first.”
“You couldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”
“That goes for me, too.”
I put the media card into my back pocket and went down the hall to the bathroom, sluiced cold water over my face and the back of my scalp. When I looked up, Amanda was standing in the doorway. She said, “Take it all off.”
She helped me with my bloody shirt, undressed herself, and turned on the shower. I got into the tub and she got in behind me, put her arms around me as the hot water beat down on us both.
“Go to New York and talk to Zagami,” she said. “Do what Henri says. Zagami can’t turn
this down.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. The thing to do is keep Henri happy while we figure out what to do.”
I turned to face her. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“I can take care of myself. I know, I know, famous last words. But really, I can.”
Mandy got out of the shower and disappeared for long enough that I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a bath towel, and went looking for her.
I found her in the bedroom, on her tiptoes, reaching up to the top shelf of her closet. She pulled down a shotgun and showed it to me.
I looked at her stupidly.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know how to use it.”
“And you’re going to carry it around with you in your purse?”
I took her shotgun and put it under the bed.
Then I used her phone.
I didn’t call the cops, because I knew that they couldn’t protect us. I had no fingerprint evidence, and my description of Henri would be useless. Six foot, brown hair, gray eyes, could be anyone.
After the cops watched my place and Mandy’s for a week or so, we’d be on our own again, vulnerable to a sniper’s bullet — or whatever Henri would or could use to silence us.
I saw him in my mind, crouched behind a car, or standing behind me at Starbucks, or watching Amanda’s apartment through a gun sight.
Mandy was right. We needed time to make a plan. If I worked with Henri, if he got comfortable with me, maybe he’d slip, give me convictable evidence, something the cops or the Feds could use to lock him up.
I left a voice-mail message for Leonard Zagami, saying it was urgent that we meet. Then I booked tickets for me and Mandy, round trip, Los Angeles to New York.
Chapter 71
WHEN LEONARD ZAGAMI TOOK ME on as one of his authors, I was twenty-five, he was forty, and Raven House was a high-class specialty press that put out a couple dozen books a year. Since then, Raven had merged with the gigantic Wofford Publishing, and the new Raven-Wofford had taken over the top six floors of a skyscraper overlooking Bloomingdale’s.
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