And Sometimes I Wonder About You

40

My father asleep in Dimitri’s room, Katrina next to me in the bed snoring so softly it sounded more like purring, and I never felt more alone in that home. I didn’t sleep at all. Even the darkness could not assuage my conflicted heart. There were three groups of killers after me or mine and three women I had feelings for. None of these people stayed in the right place or were likely to wait their turn.

I wanted to run away with Marella but that would end in tragedy, no doubt. I wanted to live happily ever after with Aura but my life was a Grimm not a grade-school fairy tale. Katrina and my father deserved each other but something in me wanted to tear them apart.

Those were the good things in my life.

Jones, Sidney-Gray, and Marella’s ex-fiancé were the slaughterhouse three; puppet masters vying for my demise with their marionettes lurching forward, wielding papier-mâché knives even as I lay in darkness.

Tomorrow, I thought, I’d turn the tables on my lovers, enemies, and blood. Tomorrow I’d begin my campaign to take back a life that other people, friend and foe alike, had gambled away.

Somewhere around 4:00 a.m. I realized that tomorrow had come.

I got out of bed, took my ice-cold shower, and shambled down the many flights to the street.

“Hey you, motherfucker... yeah you... come here!”

It wasn’t yet 5:00 and I was just passing Seventy-second and Broadway.

He was a big man, dusk-colored in the darkness of morning. Lumbering toward me he bellowed, “Stop right there!”

I had a neat.38 caliber revolver in my blue pocket but I didn’t think it would be called into service.

“Can I help you?” I asked when he came within nonshouting earshot. It occurred to me again that I had become a magnet for both love and trouble since boarding the train from Philly.

“Gimme twenty dollars,” he demanded.

“No problem,” I said. “It’s in my wallet. All you got to do is take it.”

“What?” It was both a question and a threat.

“You heard, man,” I said, getting as much derision in my voice as I could. “Even a dumb motherfucker like you understand plain English.”

His clothes, as well as his heritage, were various shades of brown. He was eight inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than I, but my hands were bigger. I held up those mitts as I had done on a block not far from there just a few nights before. The last guy was a little smarter however.

Big Brown actually threw a punch at me. I swiveled at the hip, watched the slow blow go by, and then came back with a straight right to his jaw; that set him up straight and back a full step. He was stunned but didn’t seem to know it. He looked at me as if he wanted to ask, “What just happened?”

I waited three beats and when he didn’t resume hostilities I turned to walk on.

Three steps gone I heard a rustling behind me and turned quickly in the event that the man had decided to come after me again. But this was not the case. Big Brown had slumped down on his haunches and was leaning up against a red, white, and blue mailbox at the corner.

I stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner on Thirty-fourth and ordered eggs and bacon, coffee, and rye toast. For forty-five minutes I munched and read the paper. My temple still hurt from where the Jones thug had hit me. Now there was a tingle in the big knuckle of my right hand. I wondered if my beloved honey badger felt aches and pains like I did.

At 7:00 I was in the observation room on the eighth floor of the Tesla Building. Aura had been forced to put cameras in all of the day-rate meeting rooms because various prostitutes, drug dealers, and other not-legal entrepreneurs had started to take advantage of the opportunity.

“I don’t have anything against free enterprise,” Aura said when she showed me the dozen monitors that watched as many rooms. “It’s just I don’t want to get arrested for racketeering.”

Aura had agreed to let Abe Hollyman use Suite 9 to serve me my summons. She told him that she didn’t care about me because I had illegally obtained a twenty-year lease on my suite of rooms; a lease that her bosses couldn’t break. I did have a sweet deal (pun intended) but it wasn’t illegal; I had just done a favor for the last building manager that kept him out of prison. The least he could do was give me preferential treatment.

At 8:37, manicured and still ugly, Josh Farth and two other men in hats, gloves, and sunglasses came into the room. They took out dangerous-looking pistols that had extra-long barrels and sleek designs.

It was unlikely that they’d see the camouflaged lens that watched, so I sat back and appreciated the assassins as they waited for me.

Killing is a profession like any job. Some practitioners are amateurs while others are more professional. Slaughtering cows, pigs, and sheep is a legal arm of the killing vocation; soldiers annihilating warlords’ encampments in Afghanistan are also allowed to massacre without legal consequences. Paratroopers, police officers, property protectors, private security forces, and presidents all have licenses to kill in a broad range of circumstances. Pest exterminators, pet owners, and prison guards are told that there are times when killing is acceptable, even humane. When it came to killing people within the parameters of the law, there was even a moderating term used — “deadly force.”

The men waiting for my appearance weren’t legal and had little concern about the law. None of them were from New York, I’d’ve bet. They’d leave no DNA or fingerprints, images of their naked faces, or signatures. Maybe they planned to kill Aura, maybe even Warren Oh, after the job with me was finished.

My death would be quick and brutal unless they felt I had information... but no; Farth was simply eliminating a rival because I had made some kind of deal with Sidney-Gray.

Competition for entrepreneurs like us in the open market is a bitch.

My heart was beating fast. Even though I was safe, forewarned, and armed on another floor, my primitive brain was fully aware that there were men close at hand that wanted to kill me. I had to exert a good deal of self-control not to go up to their floor and engage them in that battle.

When my phone sounded I jumped. I felt so intimate with my executioners that I believed they could hear me. But they just sat around the door waiting for my arrival.

“My pussy itches,” Marella said when I answered the phone. “What are you doing right now?”

“If it wasn’t life or death I’d be there rubbing ointment on that tickle.”

“You should come away with me, Lee. You know I’m the kinda woman for you.”

Maybe she was.

“Your boy from the train pulled a gun on me looking for you,” I said.

“Really?” she asked in a pedestrian, matter-of-fact tone.

“Bullets and everything.”

“Melbourne wouldn’t have had him do that. He must be acting on his own. I mean you humiliated him when you dunked his ass in the elevator.”

“I don’t know why everybody has to take everything so personal,” I said. “I mean boxers get beat up in the ring every day and they don’t go pullin’ guns on people.”

“If I had the power to love I would love you, Lee.”

That might have been the most romantic thing any woman had ever said to me.

“Look, Mar, I’m into somethin’ right now. Let me call you back.”

“All right. Don’t forget my itch.”

As soon as I disconnected the call, the phone sang out again. This time it was Aura.

“Hey, babe,” I said, hosting a completely different spectrum of emotions.

“Are you all right?”

“Lookin’ at your boy and two of his friends holding guns and waiting patiently.”

“Did you call Kit?”

“Sure did.”

Watching Josh Farth sitting there so patiently awaiting my death was unsettling. I felt that I had to do something but there was nothing to do. At almost any other time I would have controlled my anxiety by practicing Zazen breathing, counting my breaths until my thoughts released.

Instead I took a card from my pocket and entered a phone number.

The phone rang once, twice... Josh turned his head quickly... three times and he reached for his jacket pocket.

“Hello,” he said into the phone and my ear.

“Mr. Farth?” I said.

“Mr. McGill? How can I help you?”

His confederates were now looking at him.

“I’ve been considering your case and...”

“And what?”

“I don’t know if I can take it.”

“Why not?”

“It feels wrong.”

“Can I come to you and discuss it further?” he asked. “I mean I have already paid you.”

“Well... yes of course. I’ll have to return the deposit, I guess. I have a meeting set for ten. Why don’t you come up to my place about noon?”

“I’ll be there.”

At that moment there came loud knocking and a muffled voice from outside the meeting room that said something I couldn’t make out. Josh disconnected the call and all three killers got up on their feet. There was no sound for the surveillance equipment but their attention was on the door.

Josh Farth said something loudly at the door. He waited a few seconds and then said something else. One of his partners, a heavyset man wearing a bulky gray suit, moved back toward the corner farthest from the door. Josh and his other friend put their weapons on the conference table. He then said something to his fat friend in the back. After a few words back and forth the big man put his pistol down. The other friend reached for the door and opened it.

With surprising speed the fat man took up his gun again and started shooting. He shot the other man, not Farth, in the back and kept on firing. Then it was like a strong wind, a hurricane, blew into the meeting room. Josh and his big friend were hurled from the door by the hail of bullets.

All three men were dead in less than nine seconds.