Swimsuit

Chapter 58

The very good-looking gentleman with the white-blond hair walked down a red, silk-lined corridor ending in a breeze-swept lobby. A stone desk rose out of the floor at the far end of the room, and a young clerk received the guest with a smile and lowered eyes.

“Your suite is ready for you, Mr. Meile. Welcome back to the Pradha Han.”

“Delighted to be here,” Henri said. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses to the top of his head as he signed the credit card slip. “Did you keep the gulf warm for me, Rahpee?”

“Oh, yes sir. We would not disappoint our precious guest.”

Henri opened the door to the luxury suite, undressed in the lavish bedroom, tossing his clothes onto the king-size bed under the mosquito netting. He wrapped himself in a silk robe and sampled chocolates and dried mango as he watched BBC World News, thrilling to the update on “the killing spree in Hawaii that continues to confound police.”

He was thinking, That should make the Peepers happy, when the door chimes announced the arrival of his special friends.

Aroon and Sakda, slight boys in their early teens with short hair and golden skin, bowed to greet the man they knew as Mr. Paul Meile. Then they laughed and threw their arms around him as he called them by name.

The massage table was set up on the private balcony facing the beach, and as the boys smoothed the sheets and got oils and lotions out of their bags, Henri set up his video camera and framed the scene.

Aroon helped Henri out of his robe, and Sakda folded the sheets over his lower body, and then the boys began the specialty of the Pradha Han spa, the four-hand massage.

Henri sighed as the boys worked in tandem, stroking across the grain of his muscles, working in the Hmong cream, rubbing away his tensions of the past week. Hornbills screeched in the jungle, and the air was scented with jasmine. This was one of the most delicious of sensory experiences, and it was why he came to Hua Hin at least once a year.

The boys turned Henri over and pulled at his arms down to the pads of his fingers in unison, did the same with his legs and feet, stroked his brow, until Henri opened his eyes, and said in Thai, “Aroon, will you bring me my wallet from the dresser?”

When Aroon returned, Henri took a stack of bills out of the wallet, quite a lot more than the few hundred baht he owed for the massage. He waggled the money in front of the boys' faces, asked, “Would you like to stay and play some games?”

The boys giggled and helped the rich gentleman sit up on the massage table.

“What games would you like to play, Daddy?” Sakda asked.

Henri explained what he was thinking, and they nodded and clapped their hands, seeming very excited to be part of his enjoyment. He kissed their palms, each in turn.

He just loved these sweet boys.

It was a true joy to be with them.

Chapter 59

Henri woke up alone, hearing the chimes, then calling out, “Come in.”

A girl with a red flower in her hair entered, bowed, and served his morning meal on a bed tray: nam prik – rice noodles in a chili and peanut sauce – plus fresh fruit and a pot of strong black tea.

Henri's mind was churning as he ate, thinking over the night before, getting ready to edit his video for the Alliance.

Taking his tea to the desk, he called up the raw footage on his laptop, scrolled through the scene of the massage. He cut away to the shots of water flowing into the soaking tub under the round eye of the skylight, putting a title over the running water, “Ochiba Shigure.”

His next scene was a loving and long tracking shot starting at the boys' innocent faces, panning down their nude young bodies, lingering on the ropes that bound their limbs behind them.

When his own face showed on the screen, Henri used the blur tool to obscure his features as he lifted and lowered the boys into the bath. This shot was a beauty.

He cut and pasted the next sequence, making sure to edit the action so that it appeared seamless: a tight shot on his hands holding down the boys' heads as they fought and floundered, the bubbles coming from their mouths, then angles on their bodies floating, ochiba shigure, Japanese for “like leaves floating on a pond.”

Next a jump cut to Sakda's slack face, droplets of water clinging to his hair and skin. Then the camera pulled back to reveal both boys lying limp on chaises beside the tub, their arms and legs splayed out as if in a dance.

A fly made a four-point landing on Sakda's dewy cheek.

The camera zoomed in, then the screen faded to black. Off camera, Henri whispered his signature line, “Is everybody happy?”

Henri ran the film again, tweaked it, and cut it to ten minutes of savagely beautiful videography for Horst and his company of pervs, a teaser to get them hot for another film.

He composed an e-mail, attached a still shot from the video: the two boys open-eyed, underwater, their faces contorted in terror.

“Offered for your viewing pleasure,” he wrote, “two young princes for the price of one.” He sent the e-mail as the door chimes rang again.

Henri tightened the sash of his robe and opened the door.

The boys burst out laughing, Aroon saying, “So, are we dead, Daddy? We don't feel dead.”

“No, you look very much alive. My two good, lively boys. Let's go to the beach,” Henri said, putting a hand on each of their slender shoulders, leading the boys out the back door of his villa.

“No games, Daddy?”

He tousled the boy's hair, and Sakda grinned up at him. “No, just swimming and splashing,” Henri said. “And then back here for my lovely massage.”

Chapter 60

Henri's well-earned holiday continued in Bangkok, one of his favorite cities in all the world.

He met the Swedish girl in the night market, where she was struggling to translate baht into euros so that she could decide whether to buy a small wooden elephant. His Swedish was good enough that she spoke to him in her own language until, laughing, he said, “I've used up all of my Swedish.”

“Let's try this,” she said in perfect, British-inflected English. She introduced herself as Mai-Britt Olsen, telling Henri that she was on holiday with classmates from Stockholm University.

The girl was striking, nineteen or twenty and nearly six feet tall. She wore her flaxen hair cut straight at the shoulders, drawing his attention to her lovely throat.

“You have remarkable blue eyes,” he said.

She said, “Oooh,” and batted her lashes comically, and Henri laughed. She waggled her little elephant, and said, “I'm looking for a monkey, also.”

She took Henri's arm and they strolled down the aisles of colorfully lit stalls of fruit and costume jewelry and sweets.

“My girlfriends and I went to the elephant polo today,” Mai-Britt told him, “and tomorrow we're invited to the palace. We are volleyball players,” she explained. “The 2008 Olympics.”

“Truly? That's fantastic. Hey, I hear the palace is really stupendous. As for me, tomorrow morning I'm going to be strapped into a projectile heading to California.”

Mai-Britt laughed. “Let me guess. You're flying to L.A. on business.”

Henri grinned. “That's a very good guess. But that's tomorrow, Mai-Britt. Have you had dinner?”

“Just little bites in the market.”

“There's a place close by that few people know. Very exclusive and a little risqué. Are you up for an adventure?”

“You are taking me to dinner?” Mai-Britt asked.

“Are you saying yes?”

The street was lined with open-air restaurants. They passed the boisterous bars and nightspots on Selekam Road and headed to an almost hidden doorway that opened into a Japanese restaurant, the Edomae.

The maitre d' walked Henri and Mai-Britt into the glowing, green-glass-lined interior, partitioned with aquariums of jewel-colored fish from floor to ceiling.

Mai-Britt suddenly grabbed Henri's arm, making him stop so she could really see.

“What are they doing?”

She jutted her chin toward the naked girl lying gracefully on the sushi bar and a customer drinking from the cup made by the cleft of her closed thighs.

“It's called wakesame,” Henri explained. “It means 'floating seaweed.' ”

“Hah! That is quite new to me,” she said. “Have you done that, Paul?”

Henri winked at her, then pulled out a chair for his dinner companion who was not just beautiful, but had a daring streak, was willing to try the horsemeat sashimi and the edomae, the raw, marinated fish that the restaurant was named for.

Henri had already fallen half in love with her – when he noticed the eyes of a man at another table fixed on him.

It was a shock, as though someone had dumped ice down the back of his shirt. Carl Obst. A man Henri had known many years ago, now sitting with a lady-boy, a high-priced, very polished, transvestite prostitute.

Henri was sure that his own looks had changed so much that Obst wouldn't recognize him. But it would be very bad if he did.

Obst's attention swung back to his lady-boy, and Henri let his eyes slip away from Obst. Henri thought he was safe, but his good mood was gone.

The enchanting young woman and the rare and beautiful setting faded as his thoughts were hurled back to a time when he was dead – and yet somehow he still breathed.

Chapter 61

Henri had told Marty Switzer that being in an isolation cell was like being inside his own bowel. It was that dark and stinking, and that's where the analogy ended. Because nothing Henri had ever seen or heard about or imagined could be compared to that filthy hole.

It had started for Henri before the Twin Towers came down, when he was hired by Brewster-North, a private military contractor that was stealthier and deadlier than Blackwater.

He'd been on a reconnaissance mission with four other intelligence analysts. As the linguist, Henri was the critical asset.

His unit had been resting in a safe house when their lookout was gutted outside the door where he stood guard. The rest of the team was taken captive, beaten just short of death, and locked away in a prison with no name.

By the end of his first week in hell, Henri knew his captors by name, their tics and preferences. There was the Rapist, the one who sang while hanging his prisoners like spiders, their arms chained above their heads for hours. Fire liked to use burning cigarettes; Ice drowned prisoners in freezing cold water. Henri had long conversations with one soldier, Cocktease, who made tantalizing offers of phone calls, and letters home, and possible freedom.

There were the brutes and the ones who were more refined, but all the guards were sadistic. Had to give credit where it was due. They all really enjoyed their work.

One day Henri's schedule was changed.

He was taken from his cell and kicked into the corner of a windowless room – along with the three remaining men from his unit, all bloodied, with broken bones and oozing sores.

Bright lights flashed on, and when Henri could finally see he took in the cameras and the half-dozen hooded men lined up against a wall.

One of those men grabbed his cellmate and friend Marty Switzer, pulled him to the center of the room, and hauled him to his feet.

Switzer answered their questions, saying that he was Canadian, twenty-eight, that his parents and girlfriend lived in Ottawa, that he was a military operative. Yes, he was a spy.

He lied as expected, saying that he was being treated well, and then one of the hooded men threw Switzer to the ground, lifted his head by his hair, and drew a serrated knife across the back of his neck. Blood spouted, and there was a chorus of the takbir: Allahu Akbar. Allah is great.

Henri was transfixed by how easily Switzer's head had been severed with a few saws of the blade, an act both infinite and quick.

When the executioner held up Switzer's head for the camera, his friend's expression of despair was fixed on his face. Henri had thought to call out to him – as though Marty could still speak.

There was one other thing that Henri could never forget. How as he waited to die, he felt a flush of excitement. He couldn't understand the emotion, and he couldn't put it down. As he lay on the killing floor, he had wondered if he was elated because soon he'd be free of his misery.

Or maybe he'd just realized who he really was, and what was at his core.

He got a thrill from death – even his own.

Chapter 62

Fresh tea was poured into his cup at the Edomae, and Henri came back to the present; he thanked the waiter automatically. He sipped the tea but couldn't entirely pull himself back from the memory.

He thought of the hooded tribunal, the headless body of a man who'd been his friend, the stickiness of the killing floor. His senses had been so acute then; he could hear the electricity singing in the light fixtures.

He had kept his eyes on the remaining men in his unit as they were separated from the heap. Raymond Drake, the former marine from Alabama who screamed for God to help him. The other boy, Lonnie Bell, an ex-SEAL from Louisiana, who was in shock and never said a word, never even screamed.

Both men were beheaded to exultant cries, and then Henri was dragged by his hair to the bloody center of the room. A voice came out of the darkness beyond the lights.

“Say your name for the camera. Say where you are from.”

He answered in Arabic, “I will be armed and waiting for you in hell. Send my bottomless contempt to Saddam.”

They laughed. They mocked his accent. And then, with the smell of shit in his nostrils, Henri was blindfolded. He waited to be shoved to the ground, but instead a coarse blanket was thrown over his head.

He must have passed out because when he awoke, he was tied with ropes and folded into the rear of a vehicle in which he rode for hours. Then he was dumped at the Syrian border.

He was afraid to believe it, but it was true.

He was alive. He was alive.

“Tell the Americans what we have done, infidel. What we will do. At least you try to speak our language.”

A boot struck him hard in the lower back, and the vehicle sped away.

He returned to the United States through an underground chain of friendly back doors from Syria to Beirut, where he got new documentation, and by cargo plane from Beirut to Vancouver. He hitched a ride to Seattle, stole a car, and made his way to a small mining town in Wisconsin. But Henri didn't contact his controller at Brewster-North.

He never wanted to see Carl Obst again.

Still, Brewster-North had done great things for Henri. They'd eradicated his past when they hired him, had thoroughly expunged his real name, his fingerprints, his entire history from the records. And now he was presumed dead.

He counted on that.

Across from him now, inside an exclusive Japanese club in Thailand, the lovely Mai-Britt had noticed that Henri's mind had drifted far away from her.

“Are you okay, Paul?” she asked. “Are you angry that that man was staring at me?”

Together they watched Carl Obst leave the restaurant with his date. He didn't look back.

Henri smiled, said, “No, I'm not angry. Everything is fine.”

“Good, because I was wondering if we should continue the evening more privately?”

“Hey, I'm sorry. I wish I could,” Henri told the girl with the most elegant neck since Henry VIII's second wife. “I really wish I had the time,” he said, taking her hand. “I have that early flight tomorrow morning.”

“Screw business,” Mai-Britt joked. “You're on holiday tonight.”

Henri leaned across the table and kissed her cheek.

He imagined her nakedness under his hands – and he let the fantasy go. He was already thinking ahead to his business in L.A., laughing inside at how surprised Ben Hawkins would be to see him.

Chapter 63

Henri spent a three-day weekend at the airport Sheraton in L.A., moving anonymously among the other business travelers. He used the time to reread Ben Hawkins's novels and every newspaper story Ben had written. He'd purchased supplies and made dry runs to Venice Beach and the street where Ben lived, right around the corner from Little Tokyo.

At just after five that Monday afternoon, Henri took his rental car onto the 105 Freeway. The yellowing cement walls lining the eight-laner were illuminated by a golden light, randomly splashed with spiky vines of red and purple bougainvillea and gothic Latino gang graffiti, giving the drab Los Angeles highway a Caribbean flavor, at least in his mind.

Henri took the 105 to the 110 exit at Los Angeles Street, and from there he made his way through stop-and-go traffic to Alameda, a major artery running to the heart of downtown.

It was rush hour, but Henri was in no rush. He was keyed up, focused on an idea that over the last three weeks had taken on potential for life-changing drama and a hell of a finale.

The plan centered on Ben Hawkins, the journalist, the novelist, the former detective.

Henri had been thinking about him since that evening in Maui, outside the Wailea Princess, when Ben had stretched out his hand to touch Barbara McDaniels.

Henri waited out the red light, and when it changed he took a right turn onto Traction, a small street near the Union Pacific tracks that ran parallel to the Los Angeles River.

Following the poky SUV in front of him, Henri trawled down the middle of Ben's homey neighborhood, with its L.A. hipster restaurants and vintage clothing shops, finding a parking spot across from the eight-story, white-brick building where Ben lived.

Henri got out of the car, opened the trunk, and took a sports jacket from his bag. He stuck a gun into the waistband of his slacks, buttoned his jacket, and raked back his brown and silver-streaked hair.

Then he got back into the car and found a good music station, spent about twenty minutes watching pedestrians meander along the pleasant street, listening to Beethoven and Mozart, until he saw the man he was waiting for.

Ben was in Dockers and a polo shirt and was carrying a beat-up leather briefcase in his right hand. He entered a restaurant called Ay Caramba, and Henri waited patiently until Ben emerged with his take-out Mexican dinner in a plastic bag.

Henri got out of his car, locked it, followed Ben across Traction right up the short flight of stairs to where Ben was fitting his key into the lock.

Henri called out, “Excuse me. Sorry. Mr. Hawkins?”

Ben turned, a look of mild alertness on his face.

Henri smiled and, pulling aside the front of his jacket, showed Ben his gun. He said, “I don't want to hurt you.”

Ben spoke in a voice that still reeked of cop. “I've got thirty-eight dollars on me. Take it. My wallet's in my back pocket.”

“You don't recognize me, do you?”

“Should I?”

“Think of me as your godfather, Ben,” Henri said, thickening his speech. “I'm gonna make you an offer -”

“I can't refuse? I know who you are. You're Marco.”

“Correct. You should invite me inside, my friend. We need to talk.”

Chapter 64

So, what the fuck is this, Marco?” I shouted. “Suddenly you have information about the McDanielses?”

Marco didn't answer my question. He didn't even flinch. He said, “I mean it, Ben,” and standing with his back to the street, he drew the gun from his waistband and leveled it at my gut. “Open the door.”

I couldn't move my feet, I was that stuck. I'd known Marco Benevenuto a bit, had spent time sitting next to him in a car, and now he'd taken off the chauffeur's cap, the mustache, put on a six-hundred-dollar jacket, and completely skunked me.

I was ashamed of myself and I was confused.

If I refused to let him into my building, would he shoot me? I couldn't know. And I was having the irrational thought that I should let him in.

My curiosity was overriding caution big-time, but I wanted to satisfy my curiosity with a gun in my hand. My well-oiled Beretta was in my nightstand, and I was confident that once I was inside with this character I could get my hands on it.

“You can put that thing away,” I said, shrugging when he gave me a bland, you-gotta-be-kidding smile. I opened the front door, and with the McDanielses' former driver right behind me, we climbed up three flights to the fourth floor.

This building was one of several former warehouses that had gone residential in the past ten years. I loved it here. One unit per floor, high ceilings, and thick walls. No nosy neighbors. No unwanted sounds.

I unlocked the heavy-duty dead bolts on my front door and let the man in. He locked the door behind us.

I put my briefcase down on the cement floor, said “Have a seat,” then headed into the kitchen area. Perfect host, I called out, “What can I get you to drink, Marco?”

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 biographer, 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.

Leonard Zagami had moved up as well. He was now the CEO and president, the crcme de la cheese, and the new house brought out two hundred books a year.

Like their competition, the bulk of RW's list either lost money or broke even, but three authors – and I wasn't one of them – brought in more revenue than the other 197 combined.

Leonard Zagami didn't see me as a moneymaker anymore, but he liked me and it cost him nothing to keep me on board. I hoped that after our meeting he'd see me another way, that he'd hear cash registers ringing from Bangor to Yakima.

And that Henri would remove his death threat.

I had my pitch ready when I arrived in RW's spiffy modern waiting room at nine. At noon, Leonard's assistant came across the jaguar-print carpet to say that Mr. Zagami had fifteen minutes for me, to please follow her.

When I crossed his threshold, Leonard got to his feet, shook my hand, patted my back, and told me it was good to see me but that I looked like crap.

I thanked him, told him I'd aged a couple of years while waiting for our nine o'clock meeting.

Len laughed, apologized, said he'd done his best to squeeze me in, and offered me a chair across from his desk. At five feet six, almost child-sized behind the huge desk, Leonard Zagami still radiated power and a no-bullshit canniness.

I took my seat.

“What's this book about, Ben? When last we spoke, you had nothing cooking.”

“Have you been following the Kim McDaniels case?”

“The Sporting Life model? Sure. She and some other people were killed in Hawaii a few? Hey. You were covering that story? Oh. I see.”

“I was very close to some of the victims -”

“Look, Ben,” Zagami interrupted me. “Until the killer is caught, this is still tabloid fodder. It's not a book, not yet.”

“It's not what you're thinking, Len. This is a first-person tell-all.”

“Who's the first person? You?”

I made my pitch like my life depended on it.

“The killer approached me incognito,” I said. “He's a very cool and clever maniac who wants to do a book about the murders, and he wants me to write it. He won't reveal his identity, but he'll tell how he did the killings and why.”

I expected Zagami to say something, but his expression was flat. I crossed my arms over his leather-topped desk, made sure my old friend was looking me in the eyes.

“Len, did you hear me? This guy could be the most-wanted man in America. He's smart. He's at liberty. And he kills with his hands. He says he wants me to write about what he's done because he wants the money and the notoriety. Yeah. He wants some kind of credit for a job well done. And if I won't write the book, he'll kill me. Might kill Amanda, too.

“So I need a simple yes or no, Len. Are you interested or not?”

Chapter 72

Leonard Zagami leaned back in his chair, rocked a couple of times, smoothed back what remained of his white hair, then turned to face me. When he spoke, it was with heartbreaking sincerity, and that's what really hurt.

“You know how much I like you, Ben. We've been together for what, twelve years?”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Fifteen good years. So, as your friend, I'm not going to bullshit you. You deserve the truth.”

“Agreed,” I said, but my pulse was booming so loudly that I could hardly hear what Len said.

“I'm verbalizing what any good businessman would be thinking, so don't take this wrong, Ben. You've had a promising but quiet career. So now you think you've got a breakout book that'll raise your profile here at RW and in the industry. Am I right?”

“You think this is a stunt? You think I'm that desperate? Are you kidding?”

“Let me finish. You know what happened when Fritz Keller brought out Randolph Graham's so-called true story.”

“It blew up, yeah.”

“First the 'startling reviews,' then Matt Lauer and Larry King. Oprah puts Graham in her book club – and then the truth starts leaking out. Graham wasn't a killer. He was a petty thug and a pretty good writer who embellished the hell out of his life story. And when it exploded, it exploded all over Fritz Keller.”

Zagami went on to say that Keller got late-night threats at home, TV producers calling his cell phone. His company's stock went down the toilet, and Keller had a heart attack.

My own heart was starting to fibrillate. Leonard thought that either Henri was lying or I was stretching a newspaper article beyond reality.

Either way, he was turning me down.

Hadn't Leonard heard what I said? Henri had threatened to kill me and Amanda. Len took a breath, so I seized the moment.

“Len, I'm going to say something very important.”

“Go ahead, because unfortunately, I only have five more minutes.”

“I questioned it, too. Wondered if Henri was really a killer, or if he's a talented con man, seeing in me the grift of a lifetime.”

“Exactly,” Len said.

“Well, Henri is for real. And I can prove it to you.”

I put the media card on the desk.

“What's that?”

“Everything you need to know and more. I want you to meet Henri for yourself.”

Len inserted the flash drive, and his computer screen went from black to a shot of a dusky yellow room, candles burning, a bed centered on a wall. The camera zoomed in on a slender young woman lying belly-down on the bed. She had long, pale blond hair, wore a red bikini and black shoes with red soles. She was hog-tied with intricately knotted ropes. She seemed drugged or sleeping, but when the man entered the frame she began crying.

The man was naked except for a plastic mask and blue latex gloves.

I didn't want to see the video again. I walked to the glass wall that looked straight down the well of the atrium, from the forty-third floor to the tiny people who crossed the plaza on the ground floor below.

I heard the voices coming from the computer, heard Leonard gag. I turned to see him make a run for the door. When he returned a few minutes later, Leonard was as pale as a sheet of paper, and he was changed.

Chapter 73

Leonard dropped back into the seat behind his desk, yanked out the flash drive, stared at it like it was the snake in the Garden of Eden.

“Take this back,” he said. “Let's agree that I never saw it. I don't want to be any kind of accessory after the fact or God knows what. Have you told the police? The FBI?”

“Henri said that if I did, he'd kill me, kill Amanda, too. I can't take that chance.”

“I understand now. You're sure that the girl in that video is Kim McDaniels?”

“Yeah. That's Kim.”

Len picked up the phone, canceled his twelve-thirty meeting, and cleared the rest of his afternoon. He ordered sandwiches from the kitchen, and we moved to the seating area at the far side of his office.

Len said, “Okay, start at the beginning. Don't leave out a bloody period or comma.”

So I did. I told Len about the last-minute Hawaiian boondoggle that had turned out to be a murder mystery times five. I told him about becoming friends with Barbara and Levon McDaniels and about being deceived by Henri's alter egos, Marco Benevenuto and Charlie Rollins.

Emotion jammed up my voice box when I talked about the dead bodies, and also when I told Len how Henri had forced me into my apartment at gunpoint, then showed me the pictures he'd taken of Amanda.

“How much does Henri want for his story? Did he give you a number?”

I told Len that Henri was talking about multimillions, and my editor didn't flinch. In the past half hour, he had gone from skeptic to inside bidder. From the light in his eyes, I thought he'd sized up the market for this book and saw his budget gap being overwhelmed by a mountain of cash.

“What's the next step?” he asked me.

“Henri said he'd be in touch. I'm certain he will be. That's all I know so far.”

Len called Eric Zohn, Raven-Wofford's chief legal counsel, and soon a tall, thin, nervous man in his forties joined our meeting.

Len and I briefed Eric on “the assassin's legacy,” and Zohn threw up objections.

Zohn cited the “Son of Sam” law that held that a killer can't profit from his crimes. He and Len discussed Jeffrey MacDonald, who had sued his ghostwriter, and then the O.J. book, since the Goldman family had claimed the book's earnings to satisfy their civil suit against the author.

Zohn said, “I worry that we'll be financially responsible to each and every one of the victims' families.”

I was the forgotten person in the room, as loopholes and angles were discussed, but I saw that Len was fighting for the book.

He said to Zohn, “Eric, I don't say this lightly. This is a guaranteed monster bestseller in the making. Everyone wants to know what's actually in the mind of a killer, and this killer will talk about crimes that are current and unsolved. What Ben's got isn't If I Did It. It's I Damn Well Did It.”

Zohn wanted more time to explore the ramifications, but Leonard used his executive prerogative.

“Ben, for now, you're Henri's anonymous ghostwriter. If anyone says they saw you in my office, say you came to pitch a new novel. That I turned it down.

“When Henri contacts you, tell him that we're fine-tuning an offer I think he'll like.”

“That's a yes?”

“That's a yes. You have a deal. This is the scariest book I've ever taken on, and I can't wait to publish it.”

Chapter 74

The next evening, in L.A., the unreality was still settling in. Amanda was cooking a four-star dinner in her minuscule kitchen while I sat at her desk working the Internet. I had indelible pictures in my mind of the execution of Kim McDaniels, and that led me to multiple Web sites that discussed personality disorders. I quickly homed in on the description of serial killers.

A half-dozen experts agreed that serial killers almost always learn from their mistakes. They evolve. They compartmentalize and don't feel their victims' pain. They keep upping the danger and increasing the thrill.

I could see why Henri was so happy and self-satisfied. He was being paid for doing what he loved to do, and now a book about his passion would be a kind of victory lap.

I called out to Mandy, who came into the living room with a wooden spoon in her hand.

“The sauce is going to burn.”

“I want to read you something. This is from a psychiatrist, a former Viet Nam vet who's written extensively on serial killers. Here. Listen, please.

“ 'All of us have some of the killer in us, but when you get to the proverbial edge of the abyss, you have to be able to take a step back. These guys who kill and kill again have jumped right into the abyss and have lived in it for years.' ”

Mandy said, “But Ben, what's it going to be like to work with this? creature?”

“If I could walk away from it, Mandy, I'd run. I'd run.”

Mandy kissed the top of my head and went back to her sauce. A moment later, the phone rang. I heard Mandy say, “Hang on. I'll get him.”

She held out the phone to me with a look on her face that I can describe only as one of pure horror.

“It's for you.”

I took the phone, said, “Hello.”

“So how did our big meeting in New York go?” Henri asked me. “Do we have a book deal?”

My heart almost jumped out of my chest. I did my best to keep calm as I told him, “It's in the works. A lot of people have to be consulted for the kind of money you're asking.”

Henri said, “I'm sorry to hear that.”

I had a green light from Zagami, and I could have told Henri that, but I was looking at the twilight coming through the windows, wondering where Henri was, how he'd known that Amanda and I were here.

“We're going to do the book, Ben,” Henri was saying. “If Zagami isn't interested, we'll have to take it somewhere else. But either way, remember your choices. Do or die.”

“Henri, I didn't make myself clear. We have a deal. The contract is in the works. Paperwork. Lawyers. A number has to be worked up and an offer made. This is a big corporation, Henri.”

“Okay, then. Break out the champagne. When will we have a solid offer?”

I told him I expected to hear from Zagami in a couple of days and that a contract would follow. It was the truth, but still my mind was reeling.

I was going into partnership with a great white shark, a killing machine that never slept.

Henri was watching us right now, wasn't he?

He was watching us all the time.

Chapter 75

Henri hadn't given me my final destination when he mapped out my drive, just said, “Get on the Ten and go east. I'll tell you what to do after that.”

I had the papers in my briefcase, the contract from Raven-Wofford, the releases, signature lines with flags marked “sign here.” I also had a tape recorder, notepads, and laptop, and in the zipped pocket at the back of the briefcase, right next to my computer's power pack, was my gun. I hoped to God I would get the chance to use it.

I got into my car and headed out to the freeway. It wasn't funny, but the situation was so weird that I wanted to laugh.

I had a contract for a “guaranteed monster bestseller,” what I'd been looking for and dreaming about for years, only this contract had a very literal termination clause.

Write it or die.

Had any author in modern history had a book deal attached to a death penalty? I was pretty sure this was unique, and it was all mine.

It was sunny, a Saturday in mid-July. I set off on the freeway, checking my rearview mirror every minute or so, looking for a tail, but I never saw one. I stopped for gas, bought coffee, a doughnut, got back on the road.

Fifty miles and an hour later, my cell phone rang.

“Take the One-eleven to Palm Springs,” he said.

I'd put another twenty miles on the odometer when I saw the turnoff for the 111. I took the exit ramp and continued on the highway until it became Palm Canyon Drive.

My phone rang again, and again I got directions from my “partner.”

“When you get to the center of town, turn right on Tahquitz Canyon, then a left on Belardo. Don't hang up the phone.”

I made the turns, sensing that we were near our meeting spot, when Henri said, “You should be seeing it now. The Bristol Hotel.”

We were going to be meeting in a public place.

This was good. It was a relief. I felt a burst of elation.

I pulled up to the hotel, handed my keys to the valet at the entrance of this famous old luxury resort and spa, known for its high-end amenities.

Henri spoke into my ear. “Go to the restaurant out by the pool. The reservation is in my name. Henri Benoit. I hope you're hungry, Ben.”

This was news.

He'd given me a last name. Real or fictitious, I didn't know, but it struck me as an offering of trust.

I headed through the lobby to the restaurant, thinking, Yes. This was going to be very civilized.

Break out the champagne.

Chapter 76

The Desert Rose Restaurant was situated under a long blue canopy near the swimming pool. Light bounced off the white stone patio, and I had to shield my eyes from the glare. I told the maitre d' that I was having lunch with Henri Benoit, and he said, “You're the first to arrive.”

I was shown to a table with a perfect view of the pool, the restaurant, and a path that wound around the hotel and led to the parking lot. I had my back to the wall, my briefcase open by my right side.

A waiter came to the table, told me about the various drinks, including the specialty of the house, a cocktail with grenadine and fruit juice. I asked for a bottle of San Pellegrino, and when it came I slugged down a whole glass, refilled it, and waited for Henri to appear.

I looked at my watch, saw that I'd been waiting for only ten minutes. It seemed at least twice that long. With an eye on my surroundings, I called Amanda, told her where I was. Then I used my phone to do an Internet search, looking for any mention of Henri Benoit.

I came up with nothing.

I called Zagami in New York, told him I was waiting for Henri, got a crackly connection. I killed another minute as I filled Len in on the drive into the desert, the beautiful hotel, the state of my mood.

“I'm starting to get excited about this,” I said. “I'm just hoping he signs the contract.”

“Be careful,” said Zagami. “Listen to your instincts. I'm surprised he's late.”

“I'm not. I don't like it, but I'm not surprised.”

I took a bathroom break and then went back to the table with trepidation. I was expecting that while I was gone, Henri would have arrived and would be sitting across from my empty chair.

I wondered whether Henri was donning a new disguise, whether he was undergoing another metamorphosis – but the seat was still empty.

The waiter came toward me again, said that Mr. Benoit had phoned to say he was delayed and that I was to start without him.

So I ordered lunch. The Tuscan bean soup with black kale was fine. I took a few bites of the penne, ate without tasting what I imagined was excellent cuisine. I'd just asked for an espresso when my cell phone rang.

I stared at it for a moment, then, as if my nerves weren't frayed down to the stumps, said, “Hawkins” into the mouthpiece.

“Are you ready, Ben? You've got a little more driving to do.”

Chapter 77

Coachella, California, is twenty-eight miles east of Palm Springs and has a population of close to forty thousand. For a couple of days every year in April, that number swells during the annual music festival, a mini-Woodstock, without the mud.

When the concert is over, Coachella reverts to an agricultural flatland in the desert, home to young Latino families and migrant workers, a drive-through for truckers, who use the town as a pit stop.

Henri had told me to look for the Luxury Inn, and it was easy to find. Off by itself on a long stretch of highway, the Lux was a classic U-shaped motel with a pool.

I pulled the car around to the back as directed, looked for the room number I'd been given, 229.

There were two vehicles in the parking lot. One was a late-model Mercedes, black, a rental. I guessed that Henri must've driven it here. The other was a blue Ford pickup hitched to an old house trailer about twenty-six feet long. Silver with blue stripes, air conditioner on top, Nevada plates.

I turned off my engine and reached for my briefcase, opened the car door.

A man appeared on the balcony above me. It was Henri, looking the same as the last time I saw him. His brown hair was combed back, and he was clean-shaven, wore no glasses. In short, he was a good-looking Mr. Potato Head of a guy who could morph into another identity with a mustache or an eye patch or a baseball cap.

He said, “Ben, just leave your briefcase in the car.”

“But the contract -”

“I'll get your briefcase. But right now, get out of your car and please leave your cell phone on the driver's seat. Thanks.”

One part of me was screaming, Get out of here. Jam on the gas and go. But an opposing inner voice was insisting that if I quit now, nothing would have been gained. Henri would still be out there. He could still kill me and Amanda at any time, for no reason other than that I'd disobeyed him.

I took my hand off my briefcase, left it in my car along with my cell phone. Henri jogged down the stairs, told me to put my hands on the hood. Then he expertly frisked me.

“Put your hands behind your back, Ben,” he said. Very casual and friendly.

Except that a gun muzzle was pressed against my spine.

The last time I turned my back to Henri, he'd coldcocked me with a gun butt to the back of my head. I didn't even think it through, just used instinct and training. I sidestepped, was about to whip around and disarm him, but what happened next was a blur of pain.

Henri's arms went around me like a vise, and I went airborne, crashing hard on my shoulders and the back of my head.

It was a hard fall, painfully hard, but I didn't have time to check myself out.

Henri was on top of me, his chest to my back, his legs interwoven with mine. His feet were hooked into me so that our bodies were fused, and his full weight crushed me against the pavement.

I felt the gun muzzle screw into my ear.

Henri said, “Got any more ideas? Come on, Ben. Give me your best shot.”

Chapter 78

I was so immobilized by the takedown, it was as if my spinal cord had just been cut. No weekend black belt could have thrown me like that.

Henri said, “I could easily snap your neck. Understand?”

I wheezed “yes,” and he stood, grasped my forearm, and hauled me to my feet.

“Try to get it right this time. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Henri cuffed me, then yanked upward on the cuffs, nearly popping my shoulders out of their joints.

Then he shoved me against the car and set my briefcase on the roof. He unlatched the case, found my gun, tossed it into the footwell. Then he locked the car, grabbed my case, and marched me toward the trailer.

“What the hell is this?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

“You'll know when you know,” said the monster.

He opened the trailer door, and I stumbled inside.

The trailer was old and well used. To my left was the galley: a table attached to the wall, two chairs bolted to the floor. To my right was a sofa that looked like it doubled as a foldaway bed. There was a closet that housed a toilet and a cot.

Henri maneuvered me so one of the chairs clipped me at the back of my knees and I sat down. A black cloth bag was dropped over my head and a band was cinched around my legs. I heard a chain rattle and the snap of a lock.

I was shackled to a hook in the floor.

Henri patted my shoulder, said, “Relax, okay? I don't want to hurt you. I want you to write this book more than I want to kill you. We're partners now, Ben. Try to trust me.”

I was chained down and essentially blind. I didn't know where Henri was taking me. And I definitely didn't trust him.

I heard the door close and lock. Then Henri started up the truck. The air conditioner pumped cold air into the trailer through a vent overhead.

We rolled along smoothly for about a half hour, then took a right turn onto a bumpy road. Other turns followed. I tried to hang onto the slick plastic seat with my thighs, but got slammed repeatedly against the wall and into the table.

After a while, I lost track of the turns and the time. I was mortified by how thoroughly Henri had disabled me. There was no way around the bald and simple truth.

Henri was in charge. This was his game. I was only along for the ride.

Chapter 79

Maybe an hour, hour and a half, had gone by when the trailer stopped and the door slid open. Henri ripped off my hood, and said, “Last stop, buddy. We're home.”

I saw flat, uninviting desert through the open door: sand dunes out to the horizon, mop-headed Joshua trees, and buzzards circling on the updraft.

My mind also circled around one thought: If Henri kills me here, my body will never even be found. Despite the refrigerated air, sweat rolled down my neck as Henri leaned back against the narrow Formica counter a few feet away.

“I've done some research on collaborations,” Henri said. “People say it takes about forty hours of interviews to get enough material for a book. Sound right?”

“Take off the cuffs, Henri. I'm not a flight risk.”

He opened the small fridge beside him, and I saw that it was stocked with water, Gatorade, some packaged food. He took out two bottles of water, put one on the table in front of me.

“Say we work about eight hours a day, we'll be here for about five days -”

“Where's here?”

“Joshua Tree. This campsite is closed for road repairs, but the electric hookup works,” Henri told me.

Joshua Tree National Park is eight hundred thousand acres of desert wilderness, miles of nothing but yucca and brush and rock formations in all directions. The high views are said to be spectacular, but normal folk don't camp here in the white heat of high summer. I didn't understand people who came here at all.

“In case you think you can get out of here,” Henri said, “let me save you the trouble. This is Alcatraz, desert-style. This trailer is sitting on a sea of sand. Daytime temperatures can climb to a hundred and twenty. Even if you got out at night, the sun would fry you before you reached a road. So, please, and I mean this sincerely, stay put.”

“Five days, huh?”

“You'll be back in L.A. for the weekend. Scout's honor.”

“Okay. So how about it?”

I held out my hands, and Henri took off the cuffs. Then he removed the cinch around my legs and unshackled me.

Chapter 80

I rubbed my wrists, stood up, drank down a bottle of cold water in one continuous swallow, those small pleasures giving me a boost of unexpected optimism. I thought about Leonard Zagami's enthusiasm. I imagined dusty old writing dreams coming true for me.

“Okay, let's do this,” I said.

Henri and I set up the awning against the side of the trailer, put out a couple of folding chairs and a card table in the thin strip of shade. With the trailer door open, cool air tickling our necks, we got down to business.

I showed Henri the contract, explained that Raven-Wofford would only make payments to the writer. I would pay Henri.

“Payments are made in installments,” I told him. “The first third is due on signing. The second payment comes on acceptance of the manuscript, and the final payment is due on publication.”

“Not a bad life insurance policy for you,” Henri said. He smiled brightly.

“Standard terms,” I said to Henri, “to protect the publisher from writers crashing in the middle of the project.”

We discussed our split, a laughably one-sided negotiation.

“It's my book, right?” Henri said, “and your name's going on it. That's worth more than money, Ben.”

“So why don't I just work for free?” I said.

Henri smiled, said, “Got a pen?”

I handed one over, and Henri signed his nom de jour on the dotted lines, gave me the number of his bank account in Zurich.

I put the contract away, and Henri ran an electric cord out from the trailer. I booted up my laptop, turned on my tape recorder, gave it a sound test.

I said, “Ready to start?”

Henri said, “I'm going to tell you everything you need to know to write this book, but I'm not going to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, understand?”

“It's your story, Henri. Tell it however you want.”

Henri leaned back in his canvas chair, folded his hands over his tight gut, and began at the beginning.

“I grew up in the sticks, a little farming town on the edge of nothing. My parents had a chicken farm, and I was their only child. They had a crappy marriage. My father drank. He beat my mother. He beat me. She beat me, and she also took some shots at him.”

Henri described the creaking four-room farmhouse, his room in the attic over his parents' bedroom.

“There was a crack between two floorboards,” he told me. “I couldn't actually see their bed, but I could see shadows, and I could hear what they were doing. Sex and violence. Every night. I slept over that.”

Henri described the three long chicken houses – and how at the age of six, his father put him in charge of killing chickens the old-fashioned way, decapitation with an axe on a wooden block.

“I did my chores like a good boy. I went to school. I went to church. I did what I was told and tried to duck the blows. My father not only clocked me regularly, but he also humiliated me.

“My mom. I forgive her. But for years I had a recurring dream about killing them both. In the dream, I pinned their heads to that old stump in the chicken yard, swung the axe, and watched their headless bodies run.

“For a while after I woke up from that dream, I'd think it was true. That I'd really done it.”

Henri turned to me.

“Life went on. Can you picture me, Ben? Cute little kid with an axe in my hand, my overalls soaked with blood?”

“I can see you. It's a sad story, Henri. But it sounds like a good place to start the book.”

Henri shook his head. “I've got a better place.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

Henri hunched over his knees and clasped his hands. He said, “I would start the movie of my life at the summer fair. The scene would center on me and a beautiful blond girl named Lorna.”

Chapter 81

I constantly checked the recorder, saw that the wheels were slowly turning.

A dry breeze blew across the sands, and a lizard ran across my shoe. Henri raked both hands through his hair, and he seemed nervous, agitated. I hadn't seen this kind of fidgety behavior in him before. It made me nervous, too.

“Please set the scene, Henri. This was a county fair?”

“You could call it that. Agriculture and animals were on one side of the main path. Carnival rides and food were on the other. No breadcrumbs, Ben. This could have happened outside Wengen or Chipping Camden or Cowpat, Arkansas.

“Don't worry about where it was. Just see the bright lights on the fairgrounds, the happy people, and the serious animal competitions. Business deals were at stake here, people's farms and their futures.

“I was fourteen,” he continued. “My parents were showing exotic chickens in the fowl tent. It was getting late, and my father told me to get the truck from the private lot for exhibitor's vehicles, upfield from the fairgrounds.

“On the way, I cut through one of the food pavilions and I saw Lorna selling baked goods,” he said.

“Lorna was my age and was in my class at school. She was blond, a little shy. She carried her books in front of her chest, so you couldn't see her breasts. But you could see them anyway. There was nothing about Lorna I didn't want.”

I nodded, and Henri went on with his story.

“That day I remember she was wearing a lot of blue. Made her hair look even more blond, and when I said hi to her, she seemed glad to see me. Asked me if I wanted to get something to eat at the fairgrounds.

“I knew my father would kill me when I didn't come back with the truck, but I was willing to take the beating, that's how crazy I was about that beautiful girl.”

Henri described buying Lorna a cookie and said that they'd gone on a ride together, that she'd grabbed his hand when the roller coaster made its swooping descent.

“All the while I felt a wild kind of tenderness toward this girl. After the ride,” Henri said, “another boy came over, Craig somebody. He was a couple of years older. He looked right past me and told Lorna that he had tickets to the Ferris wheel, that it was unreal how the fairgrounds looked with the stars coming out and everything lit up down below.

“Lorna said, 'Oh, I'd love to do that,' and she turned to me, and said, 'You don't mind, do you?' and she took off with this guy.

“Well, I did mind, Ben.

“I watched them go, and then I went to get the truck and my beating. It was dark up in that lot, but I found my dad's truck next to a livestock trailer.

“Standing outside the trailer was another girl I knew from school, Molly, and she had a couple of calves with show ribbons on their halters. She was trying to load them into the trailer, but they wouldn't go.

“I offered to help her,” Henri told me. “Molly said, 'No, thanks. I've got it,' something like that, and tried to shove those calves up the ramp by herself.

“I didn't like the way she said that, Ben. I felt she had crossed a line.

“I grabbed a shovel that was leaning against the trailer, and as Molly turned her back to me, I swung the shovel against the back of her head. There was the one loud smack, a sound that thrilled me, and she went down.”

Henri stopped speaking. A long moment dragged on, but I waited him out.

Then he said, “I dragged her into the trailer, shut the tailgate. By now she'd started to wail. I told her no one would hear her, but she wouldn't stop.

“My hands went around her neck, and I choked her as naturally as if I was reenacting something I'd done before. Maybe I had, in my dreams.”

Henri twisted his watchband and looked away into the desert. When he turned back, his eyes were flat.

“As I was choking her, I heard two men walking by, talking. Laughing. I was squeezing her neck so hard that my hands hurt, so I adjusted my grip and choked her again until Molly stopped breathing.

“I let go of her throat, and she took another breath, but she wasn't wailing anymore. I slapped her – and I got hard. I stripped off her clothes, turned her over, and did her, my hands around her throat the whole time, and when I was done, I strangled her for good.”

“What went through your mind as you were doing this?”

“I just wanted it to keep going. I didn't want the feeling to stop. Imagine what it was like, Ben, to climax with the power of life and death in your hands. I felt I had earned the right to do this. Do you want to know how I felt? I felt like God.”

Chapter 82

I was awoken the next morning when the trailer door rolled open, and light, almost white sunlight, poured in. Henri was saying, “I've got coffee and rolls, for you, bud. Eggs, too. Breakfast for my partner.”

I sat up on the foldaway bed, and Henri lit the stove, beat the eggs in a bowl, made the frying pan sizzle. After I'd eaten, we began work under the awning. I kept turning it over in my mind: Henri had confessed to a murder. Somewhere, a fourteen-year-old girl had been strangled at a county fair. A record of her death would still exist.

Would Henri really let me live knowing about that girl?

Henri went back to the story of Molly, picked up where he'd left off the night before.

He was animated, using his hands to show me how he'd dragged Molly's body into the woods, buried it under piles of leaves, said that he was imagining the fear that would spread from the fairgrounds to the surrounding towns when Molly was reported missing.

Henri said that he'd joined the search for Molly, put up posters, went to the candlelight vigil, all the while cherishing his secret, that he'd killed Molly and had gotten away with it.

He described the girl's funeral, the white coffin under the blanket of flowers, how he'd watched the people crying, but especially Molly's family, her mother and father, the siblings.

“I wondered what it must be like to have those feelings,” he told me.

“You know about the most famous of the serial killers, don't you, Ben? Gacy, BTK, Dahmer, Bundy. They were all run by their sexual compulsions. I was thinking last night that it's important for the book to make a distinction between those killers and me.”

“Wait a minute, Henri. You told me how you felt raping and killing Molly. That video of you and Kim McDaniels? Are you telling me now you that you're not like those other guys? How does that follow?”

“You're missing the point. Pay attention, Ben. This is critical. I've killed dozens of people and had sex with most of them. But except for Molly, when I've killed I've done it for money.”

It was good that my recorder was taking it all down because my mind was split into three parts: The writer, figuring out how to join Henri's anecdotes into a compelling narrative. The cop, looking for clues to Henri's identity from what he told me, what he left out, and from the psychological blind spots he didn't know that he had. And the part of my brain that was working the hardest, the survivor.

Henri said that he killed for money, but he'd killed Molly out of anger. He'd warned me that he would kill me if I didn't do what he said. He could break his own rules at any time.

I listened. I tried to learn Henri Benoit in all of his dimensions. But mostly, I was figuring out what I had to do to survive.

Chapter 83

Henri came back to the trailer with sandwiches and a bottle of wine. After he uncorked the bottle, I asked him, “How does your arrangement with the Peepers work?”

“They call themselves the Alliance,” Henri said. He poured out two glasses, handed one to me.

“I called them 'the Peepers' once and was given a lesson: no work, no pay.” He put on a mock German accent. “You are a bad boy, Henri. Don't trifle with us.”

“So the Alliance is German.”

“One of the members is German. Horst Werner. That name is probably an alias. I never checked. Another of the Peepers, Jan Van der Heuvel, is Dutch.

“Listen, that could be an alias, too. It goes without saying, you'll change all the names for the book, right, Ben? But these people are not so stupid as to leave their own breadcrumbs.”

“Of course. I understand.”

He nodded, then went on. His agitation was gone, but his voice was harder now. I couldn't find a crack in it.

“There are several others in the Alliance. I don't know who they are. They live in cyberspace. Well, one I know very well. Gina Prazzi. She recruited me.”

“That sounds interesting. You were recruited? Tell me about Gina.”

Henri sipped at his wine, then began to tell me about meeting a beautiful woman after his four years in the Iraqi prison.

“I was having lunch in a sidewalk bistro in Paris when I noticed this tall, slender, extraordinary woman at a nearby table.

“She had very white skin, and her sunglasses were pushed up into her thick brown hair. She had high breasts and long legs and three diamond watches on one wrist. She looked rich and refined and impossibly inaccessible, and I wanted her.

“She put money down for the check and stood up to leave. I wanted to talk to her, and all I could think to say was, 'Do you have the time?'

“She gave me a long, slow look, from my eyes down to my shoes and back up again. My clothes were cheap. I had been out of prison for only a few weeks. The cuts and bruises had healed, but I was still gaunt. The torture, the things I'd seen, the afterimages, were still in my eyes. But she recognized something in me.

“This woman, this angel whose name I did not yet know, said, 'I have Paris time, New York time, Shanghai time? and I also have time for you.' ”

Henri's voice was softened now as he talked about Gina Prazzi. It was as if he'd finally tasted fulfillment after a lifetime of deprivation.

He said that they'd spent a week in Paris. Henri still visited every September. He described walking with her through the Place Vendôme, shopping with her there. He said that Gina paid for everything, bought him expensive gifts and clothing.

“She came from very old money,” Henri told me. “She had connections to a world of wealth I knew nothing about.”

After their week in Paris, Henri told me, they cruised the Mediterranean on Gina's yacht. He called up images of the Côte d'Azur, one of the most beautiful spots in the world, he said.

He recalled the lovemaking in her cabin, the swell of the waves, the wine, the exquisite meals in restaurants with high views of the Mediterranean.

“I had nineteen fifty-eight Glen Garioch whisky at twenty-six hundred dollars a bottle. And here's a meal I'll never forget: sea urchin ravioli, followed by rabbit with fennel, mascarpone, and lemon. Nice fare for a country boy and ex-Al Qaeda POW.”

“I'm a steak and potatoes man myself.”

Henri laughed, said, “You just haven't had a real gastronomic tour of the Med. I could teach you. I could take you to a pastry shop in Paris, Au Chocolat. You would never be the same, Ben.

“But I was talking about Gina, a woman with refined appetites. One day a new guy appeared at our table. The Dutchman – Jan Van der Heuvel.”

Henri's face tightened as he talked about Van der Heuvel, how he had joined them in their hotel room, called out stage directions from his chair in the corner as Henri made love to Gina.

“I didn't like this guy or this routine, but a couple of months before I'd been sleeping in my own shit, eating bugs. So what wouldn't I do to be with Gina, Jan Van der Heuvel or not?”

Henri's voice was drowned out by the roar of a helicopter flying over the valley. He warned me with his eyes not to move from my chair.

Even after the silence of the desert returned, it was several moments before he continued his story about Gina.

Chapter 84

I didn't love Gina,” Henri said to me, “but I was fascinated by her, obsessed with her. Okay. Maybe I did love her in some way,” Henri said, admitting to having a human vulnerability for the first time.

“One day in Rome, Gina picked up a young girl -”

“And the Dutchman? He was out of the picture?”

“Not entirely. He'd gone back to Amsterdam, but he and Gina had some strange connection. They were always on the phone. She'd be whispering and laughing when she spoke with him. You can imagine, right? The guy liked to watch. But in the flesh, she was with me.”

“You were with Gina in Rome.” I prompted him to continue with the main narrative.

“Yes, of course. Gina picked up a student who was screwing her way through college, as they say. A first-semester prostitute from Prague, at Universitr degli Studi di Roma. I don't remember her name, only that she was hot and too trusting.

“We were in bed, the three of us, and Gina told me to close my hands around the girl's neck. It's a sex game called 'breath play.' It enhances the orgasm, and yes, Ben, before you ask, it was exciting to revisit my singular experience with Molly. This girl passed out, and I loosened my grip so that she could breathe.

“Gina reached out, took my cock in her hand, and kissed me. And then she said, 'Finish her, Henri.'

“I started to mount the girl, but Gina said, 'No, Henri, you don't understand. Finish her.'

“She reached over to the bedside table, held up the keys to her Ferrari, swung the keys in front of my eyes. It was an offer, the car for the girl's life.

“I killed that girl. And I made love to Gina with the dead girl beside us. Gina was electrified and wild under my hands. When she came, it was like a death and a rebirth as a softer, sweeter woman.”

Henri's body language relaxed. He told me about driving the Ferrari, a leisurely three-day ride to Florence with many stops along the way, and about a life he believed was becoming his.

“Not long after that trip to Florence, Gina told me about the Alliance, including the fact that Jan was an important member.”

The travelogue of Western Europe had ended. Henri's posture straightened, and the tempo of his voice changed from languid to clipped.

“Gina told me that the Alliance was a secret organization composed of the very best people, by which she meant wealthy, filthy rich. She said that they could use me, 'make use of my talents' is the way she put it. And she said that I would be rewarded handsomely.

“So Gina didn't love me. She had a purpose for me. Of course, I was a little hurt by that. At first, I thought I might kill her. But there was no need for that, was there, Ben? In fact it would have been stupid.”

“Because they hired you to kill for them?”

“Of course,” Henri said.

“But how would that benefit the Alliance?”

“Benjamin,” Henri said patiently. “They didn't hire me to do hits. I film my work. I make the films for them. They pay to watch.”

Chapter 85

Henri had said he killed for money, and now his story was coming together. He had been killing and creating films of these sexual executions for a select audience at a premium price. The stagelike setting for Kim's death made sense now. It had been a cinematic backdrop to his debauchery. But I didn't understand why Henri had drowned Levon and Barbara. What could possibly explain that?

“You were talking about the Peepers. The assignment you took in Hawaii.”

“I remember. Well, understand, the Peepers give me a great deal of creative freedom,” Henri said. “I picked Kim out from her photos. I used a ploy to get information from her agency. I said I wanted to book her and asked when would she be returning from – where was she shooting?

“I was told the location, and I worked out the rest: which island, her time of arrival, and the hotel. While I was waiting for Kim to arrive, I killed little Rosa. She was a tidbit, an amuse-bouche -”

“Amuse what?”

“It means an appetizer, and in her case, the Alliance hadn't commissioned the work. I put the film up for auction. Yes, there's a market for such things. I made some extra money, and I made sure the film got back to the Dutchman. Jan especially likes young girls, and I wanted the Peepers to be hungry for my work.

“When Kim arrived in Maui for the shoot, I kept watch on her.”

“Were you going under the name of Nils Bjorn?” I asked.

Henri started. Then he frowned.

“How did you know that?”

I'd made a mistake. My mental leap had connected Gina Prazzi to the woman who'd phoned me in Hawaii telling me to check out a guest named Nils Bjorn. This connection had apparently struck home – and Henri didn't like it.

Why would Gina betray Henri, though? What didn't I know about the two of them?

It felt like an important hook into Henri's story, but I gave myself a warning. For my own safety, I had to be careful not to tick Henri off. Very careful.

“The police got a tip,” I said. “An arms dealer by that name checked out of the Wailea Princess around the time Kim went missing. He was never questioned.”

“I'll tell you something, Ben,” Henri said. “I was Nils Bjorn, but I've destroyed his identity. I'll never use it again. It's worthless to you now.”

Henri got up from his seat abruptly. He adjusted the awning to block the lower angle of the sun's rays. I used the time to steady my nerves.

I was swapping out the old audiotape for a new one when Henri said, “Someone is coming.”

My heart started tap-dancing in my chest again.

Chapter 86

I shielded my eyes with my hands and looked in the direction of the trail stretching through the desert to the west, saw a dark-colored sedan coming over a hill.

Henri said, “Right now! Take your things, your glass and your chair, and go inside.”

I did what I was told, hustled back into the trailer with Henri behind me. He unhooked the chain from the floor, put it under the sink. He handed me my jacket and told me to go into the bathroom.

“If our visitor gets too nosy,” Henri said, hiding the wineglasses, “I may have to dispose of him. That means you'll have witnessed a murder, Ben. Not good for you.”

I squeezed into the tiny washroom, looked at my face in the mirror before flicking off the light. I had a three-day beard, rumpled shirt. I looked disreputable. I looked like a bum.

The bathroom wall was thin, and I could hear everything through it. There was a knock on the trailer door, which Henri opened. I heard heavy footsteps.

“Please come in, Officer. I'm Brother Michael,” Henri said.

A woman's authoritative voice said, “I'm Lieutenant Brooks. Park Service. This campsite is closed, sir. Didn't you see the roadblock and the words 'Do Not Enter' in giant letters?”

“I'm sorry,” Henri said. “I wanted to pray without being disturbed. I'm with the Camaldolese monastery. In Big Sur. I'm on retreat.”

“I don't care if you're an acrobat with the Cirque du Soleil. You have no business being here.”

“God led me here,” said Henri. “I'm on His business. But I didn't mean any harm. I'm sorry.”

I could feel the tension outside the door. If the ranger used her radio to call for help, she was a dead woman. Years ago, back in Portland, I'd backed my squad car into a wheelchair, knocked over an old man. Another time, I put a little kid in my gun sights when he'd jumped out from between two cars, pointing a squirt gun at me.

Both times I thought my heart couldn't beat any harder, but honest to God, this was the worst.

If my belt buckle clanked against the metal sink, the ranger would hear it. If she saw me, if she questioned me, Henri might feel he had to kill her, and her death would be on me.

Then he'd kill me.

I prayed not to sneeze. I prayed.

Chapter 87

The ranger told Henri that she understood about desert retreats, but that the campsite wasn't safe.

“If the chopper pilot hadn't seen your trailer, there would be no patrols out this way. What if you ran out of fuel? What if you ran out of water? No one would find you, and you would die,” Lieutenant Brooks said. “I'll wait while you pack up your gear.”

A radio crackled, and I heard the ranger say, “I got him, Yusef.”

I waited for the inevitable gunshot, thought of kicking open the door, trying to knock the gun out of Henri's hand, save the poor woman somehow.

The lieutenant said to her partner, “He's a monk. A hermit. Yeah. He's by himself. No, it's under control.”

Henri's voice cut in, “Lieutenant, it's getting late. I can leave in the morning without difficulty. I'd really appreciate one more night here for my meditation.”

There was silence as the park ranger seemed to consider Henri's request. I slowly exhaled, took in another breath. Lady, do what he says. Get the hell out of here.

“I can't help you,” she said.

“Sure you can. Just one night is all I ask.”

“Your gas tank is full?”

“Yes. I filled up before I drove into the park.”

“And you have enough water?”

The refrigerator door squealed open.

The ranger said, “Tomorrow morning, you're outta here. We have a deal?”

“Yes, we do,” Henri said. “I'm sorry for the trouble.”

“Okay. Have a good night, Brother.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. And bless you.”

I heard the ranger's car engine start up. A minute later, Henri opened my door.

“Change of plans,” he said, as I edged out of the washroom. “I'll cook. We're pulling an all-nighter.”

“No problem,” I said.

I looked out the window and saw the lights of the patrol car heading back to civilization. Behind me, Henri dropped hamburger patties into the frying pan.

“We've got to cover a lot of ground tonight,” he said.

I was thinking that by noon of the next day, I could be in Venice Beach watching the bodybuilders and the thong girls, the skaters and bikers on the winding concrete paths through the beach and along the shore. I thought of the dogs with kerchiefs and sunglasses, the toddlers on their trikes, and that I'd have huevos rancheros with extra salsa at Scotty's with Mandy.

I'd tell her everything.

Henri put a burger and a bottle of ketchup in front of me, said, “Here ya go, Mr. Meat and Potatoes.” He started making coffee.

The little voice in my head said, You're not home yet.

Chapter 88

The kind of listening you do when interviewing is very different from the casual kind. I had to focus on what Henri was saying, how it fit into the story, decide if I needed elaboration on that subject or if we had to move along.

Fatigue was coming over me like fog, and I fought it off with coffee, keeping my goal in sight. Get it down and get out of here alive.

Henri backtracked over the story of his service with the military contractor, Brewster-North. He told me how he'd brought several languages to the table and that he'd learned several more while working for them.

He told me how he'd formed a relationship with his forger in Beirut. And then his shoulders sagged as he detailed his imprisonment, the executions of his friends.

I asked questions, placed Gina Prazzi in the time line. I asked Henri if Gina knew his real identity, and he told me no. He'd used the name that matched the papers his forger had given him: Henri Benoit from Montreal.

“Have you stayed in contact with Gina?”

“I haven't seen her for years. Not since Rome,” he said. “She doesn't fraternize with the help.”

We worked forward from his three-month-long romance with Gina to the contract killings he did for the Alliance, a string of murders that went back over four years.

“I mostly killed young women,” Henri told me. “I moved around, changed my identity often. You remember how I do that, Ben.”

He started ticking off the bodies, the string of young girls in Jakarta, a Sabra in Tel Aviv.

“What a fighter, that Sabra. My God. She almost killed me.”

I felt the natural arc of the story. I felt excited as I saw how I would organize the draft, almost forgot for a while that this wasn't some kind of movie pitch.

The murders were real.

Henri's gun was loaded even now.

I numbered tapes and changed them, made notes that would remind me to ask follow-up questions as Henri listed his kills; the young prostitutes in Korea and Venezuela and Bangkok.

He explained that he'd always loved film and that making movies for the Alliance had made him an even better killer. The murders became more complex and cinematic.

“Don't you worry that those films are out in the world?”

“I always disguise my face,” he told me. “Either I wear a mask as I did with Kim, or I work on the video with a blur tool. The software that I use makes editing out my face very easy.”

He told me that his years with Brewster-North had taught him to leave the weapons and the bodies on the scene (Rosa was the one exception), and that even though there was no record of his fingerprints, he made sure never to leave anything of himself behind. He always wore a condom, taking no chances that the police might take DNA samples from his semen and begin to link his crimes.

Henri told me about killing Julia Winkler, how much he loved her. I stifled a smart-ass comment about what it meant to be loved by Henri. And he told me about the McDanielses, and how he admired them as well. At that point, I wanted to jump up and try to strangle him.

“Why, Henri, why did you have to kill them?” I finally asked.

“It was part of a film sequence I was making for the Peepers, what we called a documentary. Maui was a big payout, Ben. Just a few days' work for much more than you make in a year.”

“But the work itself, how did you feel about taking all of those lives? By my count, you've killed thirty people.”

“I may have left out a few,” Henri said.

Chapter 89

It was after three in the morning when Henri told me what fascinated him most about his work.

“I've become interested in the fleeting moment between life and death,” he said. I thought about the headless chickens from his childhood, the asphyxiation games he played after killing Molly.

Henri told me more, more than I wanted to know.

“There was a tribe in the Amazon,” he continued. “They would tie a noose high under the jaws of their victims, right under their ears. The other end of the rope was secured around the tops of bent saplings.

“When they cut off a victim's head, it was carried upward by the young tree snapping back into place. These Indians believed this was a good death. That their victim's last sensation would be of flying.

“Do you know about a killer who lived in Germany in the early nineteen hundreds?” Henri asked me. “Peter Kurten, the Vampire of Düsseldorf.”

I had never heard of the man.

“He was a plain-looking guy whose first kill was a small girl he found sleeping while he robbed her parents' house. He strangled her, opened her throat with a knife, and got off on the blood spouting from her arteries. This was the start of a career that makes Jack the Ripper look like an amateur.”

Henri described how Kurten killed too many people to count, both sexes, men, women, and children, used all kinds of instruments, and at the heart of it all, he was turned on by blood.

“Before Peter Kurten was executed by guillotine,” Henri said to me, “he asked the prison psychiatrist – wait. Let me get this right. Okay. Kurten asked if, after his head was chopped off” – Henri put up fingers as quotation marks – 'If I could hear the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck. That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.' ”

“Henri, are you saying the moment between life and death is what makes you want to kill?”

“I think so. About three years ago, I killed a couple in Big Sur. I knotted ropes high up under their jaws,” he said, demonstrating with the V between thumb and index finger of his hand. “I tied the other end of the ropes to the blades of a ceiling fan. I cut their heads off with a machete, and the fan spun with their heads attached.

“I think the Peepers knew that I was very special when they saw that film,” Henri said. “I raised my fee, and they paid. But I still wonder about those two lovers. I wonder if they felt that they were flying as they died.”

Chapter 90

Exhaustion dragged me down as the sun came up. We'd worked straight through the night, and although I heavily sugared my coffee and drank it down to the dregs, my eyelids drooped and the small world of the trailer on the rumpled acres of sand blurred.

I said, “This is important, Henri.”

I completely lost what I was going to say – and Henri prompted me by shaking my shoulder. “Finish your sentence, Ben. What is important?”

It was the question that would be asked by the reader at the beginning of the book, and it had to be answered at the end. I asked, “Why do you want to write this book?”

Then I put my head down on the small table, just for a minute.

I heard Henri moving around the trailer, thought I saw him wiping down surfaces. I heard him talking, but I wasn't sure he was talking to me.

When I woke up, the clock on the microwave read ten after eleven.

I called out to Henri, and when he didn't answer I struggled out of my cramped spot behind the table and opened the trailer door.

The truck was gone.

I left the trailer and looked in all directions. The sludge began to clear from the gears in my brain, and I went back inside. My laptop and briefcase were on the kitchen counter. The piles of tapes that I'd carefully labeled in sequence were in neat stacks. My tape recorder was plugged into the outlet – and then I saw the note next to the machine.

Ben: Play this.

I pushed the Play button and heard Henri's voice.

“Good morning, partner. I hope you had a good rest. You needed it, and so I gave you a sedative to help you sleep. You understand. I wanted some time alone.

“Now. You should take the trail to the west, fourteen miles to Twenty-nine Palms Highway. I've left plenty of water and food, and if you wait until sundown, you will make it out of the park by morning.

“Very possibly, Lieutenant Brooks or one of her colleagues may drop by and give you a lift. Be careful what you say, Ben. Let's keep our secrets for now. You're a novelist, remember. So be sure to tell a plausible lie.

“Your car is behind the Luxury Inn where you left it, and I've put your keys in your jacket pocket with your plane ticket.

“Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing. I called Amanda. I told her you were safe and that you'd be home soon.

“Ciao, Ben. Work hard. Work well. I'll be in touch.”

And then the tape hissed and the message was over.

The bastard had called Amanda. It was another threat.

Outside the trailer, the desert was cooking in the July inferno, forcing me to wait until sundown before beginning my trek. While I waited, Henri would be erasing his trail, assuming another identity, boarding a plane unhindered.

I no longer had any sense of security, and I wouldn't feel safe again until “Henri Benoit” was in jail or dead. I wanted my life back, and I was determined to get it, whatever it took.

Even if I had to put Henri down myself.