Known to Evil

41

Hush likes his steaks rare to bloody, and so I made a reservation at a steak house at the upscale mall on the southwestern arc of Columbus Circle. The young hostess walked me to a booth in a dark corner of the airy restaurant. The ex-hit man was there before me, lounging thoughtfully behind a glass of tap water, no ice.

"LT," he said in greeting.

I shoved in opposite the most excellent assassin in New York history. He was a plain-looking white man of average height and build with medium brown hair and darker brown eyes. He didn't make much of an impression except for his deep voice. But that wasn't much of a distinction because he rarely spoke.

I was always a little uncomfortable around Hush-maybe more than a little. He knew a thousand ways to kill a man and dozens of techniques to make the body disappear. He was the classic cold-blooded killer who seemed to the world to have no heart or conscience.

Outside of his wife, I was the only person to know both his true name and his professional history.

"Hush," I said.

"You look tired, LT."

"Work's aplenty."

"I ordered you a Wild Turkey and a rib eye," he said. "They're coming."

"Thanks for meeting me on such short notice."

"All I had was a simple day of airport runs," he said.

After retiring from the killing trade Hush became a limo driver for an elite company that sometimes needed bodyguarding along with a driver's license. I really don't know why he even had the job. Hush didn't need the money.

I took the faxed photograph of the dead man and pushed it across the table. Hush laid a hand down on the face as a woman's voice said, "Wild Turkey neat."

She was a young blonde with a severe hairdo that would have been right at home in the conservative part of the sixties. Her makeup was perfect, and even though she was plain you could see that she would make an impact wherever she went.

"Thank you," I said.

As she left, Hush lifted his hand and looked at the picture. Then, with a single digit, he pushed it back across to me.

"I've been informed that he's in your old profession," I said.

"Adolph Pressman. A hack. Okay for a bullet in the back of the head, but no good at all for something that requires finesse. Looks dead."

"Somebody blindsided him while he was killing a girl."

"Sloppy."

We paused on that word for a few moments and the severe blonde came back with our orders.

That finished, I asked, "Well?"

"Adolph, he's kind of like, what do you call it? A spoke in a wheel, if the wheel is a society of killers. Well… not a society really because none of them know each other. The only really dangerous part is the hub-a man named Patrick."

"Patrick what?"

Hush shook his head and stuck out his lower lip.

"All I can tell you is that going after Patrick is not for the faint of heart."

"I have never fainted in my life."

Hush smiled and sipped his water.

"Tamara wants to move back up to New York," he said.

I had all the information I needed. If Hush had known where I could find Patrick he would have told me. I could have left right then, but it just wouldn't be friendly to use somebody like that. Besides, I was hungry.

Tamara was Hush's wife. She's a black woman, young and plain-looking but with a spirit that could fill the sails of a three-master. She and their son, Thackery, had been moved to an island off the South Carolina coast after their lives were threatened by Hush's enemies.

"Tired of the country life?"

He gave me a queer glance and then nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "Thackery's got himself a little southern drawl and she hates it."

I was thinking many things. First among these was that Tamara would probably be safe. Hush was out of the business and the only man who had ever threatened her was long dead.

"When are they coming back?" I asked.

It was then that our chopped salads arrived.

By the time we'd grazed our way through the roughage, our rib eyes were served. While eating we talked mostly about sports. Hush liked the team sports, but I was a one-on-one man. We could still converse, though.

It wasn't until we were in the middle of our coffees that he said, "What makes you think that she's coming back?"

"The simple fact that you said she wanted to," I answered. "That, and I know she and Thackery are the foghorns to your lost humanity."

A man can get used to anything. If one day he found himself coming awake in a lion's den, any sane man would be petrified. Absolute fear would govern his mind for many minutes-possibly for hours. But if the lion didn't attack him, and enough time passed, normalcy, or its near cousin, would return. If days were to pass and some kind of truce were evident, the man might learn to communicate with the king feline. Given time, his fear might abate completely.

But he'd still be in close proximity to a murderous carnivore.

"You think you know me?" Hush asked. There was no friendliness in his tone.

I remembered the first time I'd heard a lion in the zoo roaring at feeding time. The fear I felt was something preverbal, older even than the human breast in which it resided.

"What do you want me to say, Hush?"

His ageless brow creased.

"What?" he asked.

"I assume that Tamara will come back if she wants to," I said, possibly hiding the primal fear I felt. "She's your wife, but she can make up her own mind. That's all I meant."

For a long, hard minute the killer, alongside the man, stared at me. It was like watching war.

Finally he cleared his throat.

"Sorry, LT," he said. "You know, sometimes I fall into an old rut. It's how I was trained."

Me on my tightrope and him in his turret. That line from a poem I'd never write flitted through my mind.

"She's comin' back next week," he said. "I got a place for her on Fifth Avenue, down around Ninth. She told me that she wants your number."

I was the one who saved her when she and Thackery had been kidnapped.

"She can call me anytime," I said. I was born in the lion's den, a fool in spite of my sensible fears.

"Maybe we can all get together some night," he suggested.

"That sounds real good."