Crime Machine

34

LLOYD KREEGER WAS TALKING TO him, but Papa was not paying a huge amount of attention. He was writing a murder story in his head. Setting pen to paper had never interested him, but he took an authorial pleasure in the orchestration of violence. His victims and perpetrators may have been real people, but they had no more knowledge of his intentions than characters in a book.

“Here’s my proposal,” Lloyd said. “Why don’t you do this?” The old man was in the rocking chair, rocking in a manner that Papa would have described as overwrought. Obsessive, even.

Papa was lying on the couch, flat on his back with his feet raised at one end. It was his belief that this posture offered certain cardiac benefits. “I had a proposal for you once, Lloyd.”

“It’s not the same. That was just a business proposition. This is—”

“What’s your idea, Lloyd?”

“You could secure me somehow in the bathroom. Leave me enough food so I wouldn’t starve. A mattress. And you could arrange it so someone was alerted two days later. Doesn’t have to be the law. Just someone who will let me out.”

Papa was outlining in his head a very different scenario. The old man lying in bed asleep. Nikki sneaks in, dead quiet, and shoots him under the jaw. Does it in such a way that it could be suicide. Of course, that would require that the weapon be left behind.

“Are you listening?” Lloyd stopped rocking. “It would give you time to get away. Lots of time. Two days, you could be in Paris, Rome, Mumbai—how’s anyone going to catch you?”

An amateur—your average spouse-killer, say—would put the gun in the deceased’s hand. No, thanks. Papa had a rule never to leave a gun behind. He was not a superstitious man, but he had an almost mystical relationship with the Browning HP nine-millimetre, and he was not about to hand one over to the enemy.

A typed suicide note? That would raise immediate suspicion. On the other hand, that could be exactly the point: make it look like some amateur was trying to make it look like suicide. Layers within layers.

“What I’m saying is, it’s not essential to kill me.”

Papa turned his gaze from the ceiling to Lloyd. “Nobody said anything about killing you.”

“You killed Henry. Why would you kill him and not me?”

“Henry made threatening remarks.”

“That’s highly unlikely. Henry was the most gentle man I ever met.”

“Maybe that’s what got him killed.”

“Well, now you’re contradicting yourself.”

“Life contradicts itself all the time. Rosy sky at dawn, lightning at noon. Snow in the middle of May. A quiet postal employee suddenly slaughters his colleagues. A mother kills her daughter. Any man who speaks the truth is going to contradict himself.”

“One minute Henry’s making threatening gestures, the next minute he’s too gentle to live. Why can’t you just admit you killed him? Clearly you’re not ashamed of it.”

“I never killed anyone.”

Papa liked the idea of the inept amateur up to a point. But what if they bought it? It was boring; there was no wit to it. Suppose Nikki were to put a different gun in his hand, some run-of-the-mill street weapon. The cops would know pretty fast that it wasn’t the murder weapon. Then it would look really amateurish.

“… could alert my lawyer two days later. You’re safely out of the country.”

“We’re not worried about getting out of the country.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“We’re not.”

What would make it really clever, what would make people sit up and take notice, would be if Nikki didn’t leave any gun. She could make it look like a suicide in every way but not leave the gun. Then—assuming the cops wouldn’t theorize that some thief came in later and stole it—they would have to know the whole scene was constructed. Designed. You go to all that trouble and then you undercut it. They couldn’t ignore that. They would know this was a crime with an author—a controlling but invisible hand—and intelligence outside it, beyond it, directing the whole thing. And yet above it.

Lloyd was still talking, trying to force alternate endings.

“Lloyd,” Papa said, “I’m not going to kill you.”

When Papa asked Nikki to meet with him alone, in the basement, she knew what was coming.

“You’ve been with us a while now, Nikki.”

“It doesn’t seem that long.”

“That’s good. The time’s going fast?”

Nikki shrugged.

They were each sitting in an armchair angled toward the basement fireplace. Like an old married couple, Nikki thought.

“Do you see yourself ever going back to your former life?” Papa didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the flames.

“Never. Hustling again? No way.”

“You want to stay with the family?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve never been this happy in my entire life.”

“To stay with the family, you have to be loyal to the family. Loyal to the family above all else.”

“I know that. I’m loyal.”

“Nothing comes before the family. Not love, not hate, not the law. The family always comes first.”

“Cool. That’s exactly how I feel.”

“Are you ready for an assignment?”

“I’m ready.”

“Mr. Kreeger is not part of the family. He is an enemy of the family. A danger to the family. As soon as we leave this place, he’ll go straight to the police and give them everything they need to put all three of us away for a very long time—possibly for life. The time will come—and it’s going to come soon—when he will have to be killed. Are you prepared to do that?”

“Oh, man, I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Well, not a hundred percent. I don’t want to get in over my head. I don’t want to make a mistake, mess everything up.”

“It’ll be for the safety of the family. Lemur was going to do it. He volunteered, in fact. But Lemur’s not with us anymore. Jack could do it, obviously. Or I could. But I’d like you to do it. That way your loyalty is proven, and you have a home for life.”