The Ethical Assassin

Chapter 18

EVERY TIME WE WENT OUT on the road, we ended up in a motel near a Waffle House. Maybe Florida law stated that motels had to be built near a Waffle House. Anything, I was coming to understand, might be as true as anything else. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I thought I should eat something, so after I got out of the Gambler’s room I headed over. It was probably where most of the bookmen would be eating- including, I hoped, Chitra, who I had not forgotten seemed to think I might be cute.

The Waffle House sat on the other side of the highway off-ramp, and to get to it you had to cross an empty lot full of sandy dirt and thorny weeds and huge, undulating fire-ant mounds. Fat crickets and toads the size of my thumbnail hopped out of my way as I walked slowly, making certain I didn’t step in anything that would bite me. Litter from the highway punctuated the field, and there were piles of broken green and brown beer bottle glass, and a run-down wooden shack about as long and as wide as three Jiffy Johns placed side by side. I decided to plot a course far around it in case a derelict had set up camp there.

I had nearly reached the Waffle House when I heard footsteps behind me. Ronny Neil and Scott.

They both wore newish 501s and button-downs- Scott’s was a pale, faded yellow of a heavy cotton weave, far too hot for this weather. Ronny Neil’s was white, but with stains the color of Scott’s shirt under his arms. Both wore old pattern ties that had certainly belonged to their fathers, though Ronny Neil’s was wide and short enough that it might have been his grandfather’s.

“Where you going?” Scott said.

“Breakfast,” I told him.

“Is that fucking right?” Ronny Neil asked.

I kept walking.

“Didn’t you hear him?” Scott asked. “He was talking to you.”

“How rude of me,” I said. “Yes, Ronny Neil, it is, in fact, fucking right.”

“You watch your mouth,” Ronny Neil said. “And I’ll tell you something else. You ain’t as smart as you think you are.”

“Look, I’m going to get something to eat,” I said, trying to soften things up a little.

“So are we.” Scott flashed a crooked grin. “Why don’t you buy us some breakfast?”

“You can buy your own breakfast,” I told him.

“You being a cheap Jew?” Scott asked me. “Is that it? Pinching your pennies?”

“I’m not the one asking for a free breakfast.”

Ronny Neil smacked me in the back of the head. It happened so fast that someone looking might not have been sure it had happened at all. But there was no mistaking the sting. Ronny Neil wore a ring on his finger, maybe not turned around, but he knew how to smack ring first. It hit me in the skull with a sharp crack that brought tears to my eyes.

I went stiff with disbelief and anger. I was out of high school. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. Despite the long hours and grueling conditions, and aside from the money, I had loved selling encyclopedias because it put me beyond high school. No one could see that I used to be heavy, that I used to be easy pickings. All they could see was the new Lem, fit, slim, good at selling. Now, with Ronny Neil and Scott, the feeling of powerlessness so infuriated me that it took all my will to keep from lunging at one of them. Both of them. Lunging haplessly and ineffectively, no doubt, but I wanted to lunge all the same.

“I keep a Buck knife in my pocket,” Ronny Neil told me. “Now, my brother’s in jail for armed robbery, and I have two cousins in there, too. One for grand theft auto and another on manslaughter, though it was really murder and he got pleaded down. That’s what happens on a first offense, which my killing you would be. You think I’m afraid to sit a few years in jail, you go on and try me.”

“You think maybe you want to buy us some breakfast now?” Scott lisped.

“Yeah,” Ronny Neil said. “You ready to buy uth some breakfath?”

When we walked into the Waffle House, there were already groups of bookmen in some of the booths. Under certain circumstances- the post-sales pool gatherings, mostly- the bookmen could be a gregarious lot, but for the most part we stuck to our own groups. The Ft. Lauderdale crew socialized with the Ft. Lauderdale crew and Jacksonville with Jacksonville. No particular reason for it, and it wasn’t a segregation in any way promoted by the crew bosses. But there was an inherent competitiveness among the crews, and no one ever got too friendly.

People glanced at us as we walked in, offered a few friendly nods, but no waves, no one shouted, “Hey, come over here and join us.” All of which was fine by me. I didn’t need my humiliation to go public.

They led me to one of the booths and pushed me in. Scott blocked me, and Ronny Neil sat across. He immediately picked up a laminated menu and began to study it intensely.

“Most important meal of the day,” he said. “There’s a lot of people don’t know that.”

The waitress, a plump blonde in her late twenties, came by and began to put down the table settings.

“How you doing this morning, darling?” Ronny Neil asked.

“Just fine, baby.”

It was going to be one of those god-awful polite exchanges, full of empty endearments, and somehow that infuriated me more than my near abduction. “Only two,” I said to her. “I won’t be staying.”

“Yeah, you will,” Scott said.

“No, I won’t. Get up and let me out of here.”

“Don’t mind him,” Ronny Neil said to the waitress. “I think he’s forgotten what my good friend Buck told him.”

I shook my head. “Scott, get out of my way.”

“Just sit and shut,” he said.

“Juth thit and thut,” Ronny Neil echoed.

I turned to the waitress. This was a big and enormously dangerous gamble, but I couldn’t live with myself if I backed down now. I was done with backing down, at least for the moment. “Call the police, please.” I hardly wanted the cops around, but I wasn’t in Meadowbrook Grove, so it was worth at least conjuring the idea of law enforcement.

Her eyes narrowed. “You serious, hon?”

I nodded. She nodded back.

“Now, hold on,” Ronny Neil said. He held his hands up in the air in the universal gesture of lighthearted surrender. “No need to get all threatening on me. We’re just having some fun.” Then, to Scott: “Get your fat ass up. Can’t you see he’s trying to get out?”

I pushed my way out and past Scott, avoiding eye contact with the waitress or any of the other bookmen. I didn’t know how they read this exchange, and I didn’t want to know. Instead, I turned to Ronny Neil. “Don’t fuck with me.” I said it quietly and slowly.

Maybe if it had been a movie, something dark would have crossed his face. He would have recognized he’d gone too far, and he would have winced, pushed himself back into the padding of the booth. That was the myth: Bullies are cowards, and if you stand up to them, they’ll back down. It was the most insidious of fables, of course. It was the lie that parents told their children because they liked to tell it to themselves; it was an excuse to avoid the social awkwardness of getting involved, of standing up for their kids, of facing the bullies’ parents, surely as frightening and unhinged as their issue.

Ronny Neil turned to Scott, and the two of them snickered.

“I guess we’ll just see you later, then,” Ronny Neil said.

Inside the Waffle House, everything had been cold with air-conditioning and vibrant with energy. There had been loud conversations, music, the sizzle of the grill, the ring of the cash register, the clink of coins dropped on a table for tips. Outside, the world was hot and still and sticky. I trembled in tight little spasms, fight or flight pounding through my system, but it had suddenly become distant, as though the conflict with Ronny Neil and Scott, then telling the waitress to call the police, were a vague memory or a story I made up.

There would be consequences. I knew it. I knew that my situation had grown almost inconceivably dangerous. This was no longer a matter of boys calling one another names or the occasional fingers flicked hotly against earlobes. This was deadly and dangerous. Anything could come at any time and from anywhere.

I squinted across the parking lot and saw Chitra making her way toward the restaurant. She walked with her head down, slightly slouched, and her gait tended to be a bit shambling. It was quite possibly unsexy, but I found it remarkably endearing- and therefore utterly sexy. Funny how that worked.

She caught my eye and smiled. “Oh, you’ve eaten already?”

I was sure she was looking for company, and I might have been as acceptable a companion as any of a dozen others. Or I was nearly sure, because Melford had said she’d thought I was cute. “No,” I said. “There’s an IHOP about a quarter mile up the road. Let’s go there?”

“What’s wrong with the Waffle House?”

“I can’t believe that’s a serious question,” I said with a forced grin. I didn’t want to tell her about Scott and Ronny Neil. I didn’t want to look weak in front of her. And I didn’t want to have to explain what it was all about. I didn’t know what it was all about.

Chitra didn’t actually say that she wanted to go down the road, but somehow we were walking there, keeping to the ragged side of the street, trying not to stray too much into the weeds unless a car or a mammoth truck came barreling past. Every ten paces or so, I would sneak a look at her profile, angular and dark and breathtakingly beautiful. A couple of times she caught me, gave me a half grin, and then looked away. I didn’t know how to take it, but I had a feeling that maybe those little half grins would be enough to get me through this mess.

Inside the restaurant, which smelled deeply of maple syrup, we sat down and watched our waitress place before us coffee in thick white cups with droplets spilled over the side. It felt like permission to start talking in earnest. I didn’t know what I had to say.

“This is the first time we’ve been alone since last week,” Chitra said.

That sounded promising. “I guess it is.” Think of something clever. Something witty and seductive and disarming. “It presents all kinds of opportunities.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Such as?”

Had I gone too far? Had I been cheeky? Too suggestive? I needed to make a quick recovery. “For conversation. I mean, not to be critical of anyone, but you’re not like the other book people.”

“Neither are you.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“How do you mean?” She smiled slyly at her coffee cup.

My cheeks burned. “You just seem, you know, more together than a lot of the others. You’re going to a women’s college and all.”

She gave me a look of pleasant surprise. I’d scored a point, thanks to Melford’s sensitivity training.

“I expect it will be a friendlier place for me than the world of book sales,” she said.

“I’ll bet. You know, I never asked you. How does someone like you end up here?”

She shrugged, maybe not very comfortable with the question. “Summer came around and I needed extra money, and more than I could make working at a store in the mall.”

“I know how that goes.” I had already told her about my quest to raise money for Columbia.

“I wish I could have taken a year off like you. My father owns a dry-cleaning business, and he had a problem with his crooked landlord, and that ended up with my father having some debts. But he refuses to let me offer him any money from my college account. So I’m trying to earn extra cash and take the burden off them.”

I laughed. “I have the opposite problem. My parents have the money, but they won’t give it to me.”

“Well, believe me. I have problems of my own with my parents. They think I’m far too American, they hate the way I dress, the music I listen to, my friends, my boyfriend.”

I took a casual sip of my coffee and forced a smile that must have looked grotesque. I felt like I was trying to get the corners of my mouth to touch each other somewhere behind my head. “Yeah?” I somehow managed.

Her eyebrows knit together. “Ex-boyfriend, really. Mostly. Anyhow, people in my family are pretty good about getting, you know, feelings about people. My father had a feeling about Todd. My boyfriend.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I said. “Mostly.”

She gave me one of those sly, sideways looks. “Right. Ex-boyfriend. Try telling him that. Things in that department haven’t been so smooth. Anyhow, my father was sure that Todd was bad news, and he wouldn’t let up about it.”

“You said those feelings run in your family. Didn’t you have a feeling about Todd?”

“Yes,” she said. “I did.”

“But you had a different feeling.”

“No, I also had a feeling he was bad news. But sometimes a girl likes a little of that. Maybe,” she said, “in your own way, you’re sort of bad news, too, Lem.”

The waitress arrived just in time to keep me from trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about. I could instead occupy myself with figuring out what to eat for breakfast. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know how to order breakfast, not if I was going to be a vegetarian. And when had I decided to become one? I didn’t even know, but it seemed to me odd now to think of eating meat, and I figured it might be best to hold off until I had a chance to think things through a little more. So I ordered oatmeal to play it safe, and I asked the waitress to keep milk and butter out of it.

Chitra ordered a cheese omelet.

“Are you a vegetarian?” she asked once the waitress had gone.

I don’t know why, but I blushed. Given her discussion of her attraction to guys who were bad news, a category to which I now inexplicably belonged, I didn’t know why my possible vegetarianism was so touchy. But it seemed to be. “Sort of, maybe. I’m pretty new to it, but my friend Melford, who you met- he’s been trying to talk me into it. And I guess once you hear certain things about how animals are treated, it’s hard to go back to pretending you don’t know.”

“Then don’t tell me,” she said. “I enjoy chicken too much.” Maybe I looked disappointed, because she smiled at me and shrugged. “How long have you been a vegetarian?”

“Not long,” I said.

“How long is not long?”

“Since last night.”

She laughed. “Anything special happen last night? You didn’t meet a nice vegetarian girl, did you?”

And there I was thinking I couldn’t get more nervous. “Not really. I mean, no. No girls. I was just talking to Melford, and he has all these arguments. They’re very convincing.”

“So is Melford,” Chitra observed. “I didn’t talk to him long, but I could tell he’s very charismatic. You get to talking to him, and you feel like you’ve known him a long time, and it’s easy to open up. I said some things to him, and maybe I should have kept quiet.”

Like finding me cute, I thought. In fact, I almost said it, but I caught myself in time. I wanted her to like me, not to see how clever I could be at her expense. “Yeah, he’s charismatic.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Not that long,” I said.

“Longer than you’ve been a vegetarian, I hope.”

“A bit longer,” I said, trying to sound playfully casual but hating the half lie.

“He’s very likable,” she said. “But, to be honest, I sort of didn’t like him anyway. I mean I did, but I didn’t trust him. I don’t know, I don’t want to be down on your friends or anything, but if you don’t know him that well, I thought maybe you might want to be careful, because the truth is, as far as feelings about people go, I had one about Melford.”

“Oh?” My casual oh.

“I had a feeling that he’s bad news himself. But in a real way. Not like with Todd, who could end up in jail as easily as community college. Or with you, in your interesting kind of messed-up way. I mean real bad news.”

There was so much to say, really, that I hardly knew where to begin. Her sort-of-ex-boyfriend who might end up in jail. Did I ask why? How, precisely, was I interesting and messed up? Beyond all that, she had pegged Melford. Did she have these vibes like, oh, maybe he might have just killed some people?

“What does that mean, exactly? Real bad news?”

She held up her hands. “I’m sorry I said anything. It’s not my business. I worry, is all.”

I couldn’t help but smile. She was worried about me.

I picked up a packet of sugar and began to tug lightly on the opposing corners. “Since we’re talking about trust,” I said, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up.”

“Oh?” She leaned forward, and her large eyes grew larger.

She liked me. She had to like me. She was flirting with me. Wasn’t she?

“The thing is…,” I began. I tugged on the sugar packet again, this time almost hard enough to rip it and send sugar sprawling over the table. That would be bad. “The thing is, I kind of get the feeling that Ronny Neil is interested in you.”

“Ronny Neil Cramer,” she said wistfully. She put a hand to her chin and let her eyes roll upward in delight. “Chitra Cramer. Mrs. Ronny Neil Cramer. What colors do you think for my bridesmaids?”

“You’re teasing me,” I observed.

“Can you seriously think that I would need to be warned off a fellow like that?”

“I don’t know. I figured, you know, you’re not American, and he’s such an American type. He might not be as obvious to you as he is to me.”

“Mmm,” she said.

“Have I offended you?”

She said nothing for a moment. Then, a massive, dazzling smile, white against the vibrant red of her lips. “No. Not at all. I only wanted to make you squirm a bit.”

On the way back to the motel, Chitra kept glancing over at me and grinning in a way that felt absolutely wicked. It was driving me crazy in virtually every way.

“What exactly is so funny?” I finally said.

“I grew up in a family of lapsed Hindus,” she said. “My parents aren’t religious, and we ate fish and chicken, but never red meat- out of habit, I suppose. I’ve never had a hamburger.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’ve never had one. Do you think I should?”

“Well, they taste good, but as a new vegetarian, I can’t really endorse a move like that.”

“You know what?” She was now twirling a little strand of hair above her right ear. Her ears were unusually small. “I think we should go out for hamburgers.”

“Except that I’m a vegetarian. You’re forgetting that part.”

“I’ve never had one, and you’re not supposed to have them. That’s what will make it fun. Don’t you find the forbidden exciting?”

I could think of no way to tell her that I’d had enough of the forbidden in the last twenty-four hours to last me some time. “Hamburgers aren’t forbidden to me. I’ve given them up.”

“Well, now you’re challenging me, aren’t you? I’m going to make it my mission to cause you to lapse.”

“I have pretty good willpower.”

“We’ll see.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that everyone has a breaking point.”

“Not me,” I told her. “Once I decide to do something, that’s it.”

“Oh? Suppose I offered to sleep with you if you eat a hamburger?”

I stopped in my tracks.

She let out a laugh, playful and strangely innocent. “I’m not actually offering to sleep with you,” she said, not stopping so that I had to dart to catch up. “I’m just making a point. You think you have an iron will, but we’ll see.”

“You’re assuming I want to sleep with you.” I had no idea why I would say such a thing, but I felt exposed.

“I suppose I am,” she said.

I had no response, and we walked for a moment in strained if amicable silence. I decided it was time to change the subject and raise the question I’d wanted to ask. It needed to seem casual, relaxed. “So, what’s it like being in the Gambler’s crew?”

She studied me as we walked. “Why?” Her voice was strangely flat.

“No reason. I’m just wondering. I work for a nice guy, but you work for the big boss. I was wondering what it was like.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s pretty much the same as anyone else’s. Or maybe I haven’t been around long enough to know.”

“Is he always like he is in the meetings? You know? So vibrant?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does he ever talk about his own boss?”

There was a pause now. A long one. An unnaturally long one, as if she were trying to think about how best to answer. “Why are you asking me all of this?”

“I’m a curious guy.”

“Well, there are better things to be curious about.”

“Like what?”

“Like me,” she said.

And that pretty much killed my line of questioning.