The Ethical Assassin

Chapter 22

THE COP STEPPED OUT of his car, shut the door, and leaned back against it. If he’d been a smoker, he’d have lit up. The car was clean; I noticed it right away. It looked newly washed, the kind of car you wouldn’t mind leaning against.

He waved me over as if we were old friends, and I obeyed the command. I wanted to run, figured I probably ought to run, but I knew I wasn’t ready for an instant metamorphosis from working teen to outlaw. Besides, Melford was nearby, and I figured I was probably safer with him lurking somewhere around here than I would be running through the trees with a cop of pretty questionable ethics on my tail.

I walked over slowly, trying to keep my head up, to smile, to look as though I’d done nothing wrong. I’d learned that much from Melford. Act like everything is cool, and maybe everything will be cool. Of course, Melford was also willing to start shooting people in the head if things ended up leaning toward the not cool.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” I said.

“Well, now,” the cop said. “If it ain’t the encyclopedia salesman. You sell any encyclopedias to them pigs?” He grinned, showing me his twisted teeth.

I recalled that I had never told the cop what I’d been selling. “I never thought to try,” I said. “I was getting out of the heat in those trees, and sort of wandered around and came out here. I was curious about what this place was, the smell and all that, so I thought I’d look around. Am I trespassing or something?”

The cop, Jim Doe by Melford’s account, squinted at me. He rubbed at his nose, and his fingernail clawed for one unconscious instant at a hard booger encrusted at the tip of his nostril. “What the hell you doing wandering in the woods when you’re supposed to be selling books? Your boss gonna like that?”

“It’s a long day,” I said. “I wanted to take some downtime before heading back on the road. You can understand the value of resting a bit before hard work, I’m sure, Officer.”

“I don’t see how trespassing on a hog lot is downtime,” he said. “In fact, it seems to me that what you were doing was breaking the law. Not a whole lot else besides, either.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t see any signs telling me I couldn’t be here.”

“I guess you didn’t see that big yellow sign saying NO TRESPASSING, did you? Didn’t see that gate that keeps folks out?”

“I came through the woods,” I said, not knowing if such a thing were possible. “Anyhow, I was just leaving. I think you can understand my mistake, can’t you?”

The sales technique didn’t seem to be doing the trick. “I’d better look around to make sure you didn’t fuck anything up. Then I’m going to take you to jail on trespassing charges.” He stepped toward me. “Now turn around and face the car. Hold your hands behind your back.”

“I don’t think this is really necessary,” I said. My voice wavered as panic began to set in.

Doe grabbed my shoulders, digging into the flesh hard enough to bruise. He twisted me around and shoved me into the side of the cruiser. If I had not yanked my neck back, my head would have slammed against the passenger-side window, and for a dizzying moment I thought I would fall down. Somehow I managed to maintain my balance, but Doe gave my head a shove, and my nose hit the window hard. The blood began to trickle out of one of my nostrils.

There was only a moment to process this pain before the next wave began. Doe slapped the cuffs down on my left wrist and then the right. The cold clamping of metal cut into me, and then a curious combination of sharp, tearing pain and a growing numbness shot up my arms.

Another claw on my shoulder, and I was spinning around again to face Doe.

“These cuffs are too tight,” I gasped. “You’re cutting off my circulation.”

“Shut your fucking hole.” Doe punched me in the stomach.

The air went out of me, and I bent over and let out an oof but then straightened myself up. Vegetable lo mein churned in my stomach. As much as it hurt, I knew that Doe had pulled his punch, and I knew I didn’t want to taste the real thing.

“Now,” Doe said, “you cut out the bullshit and tell me what you’re doing here.”

“I told you,” I said, wincing at how feeble I sounded. Blood trickled out of my nose and into my mouth. A whooshing noise roared in my ears.

“You haven’t told me shit. You keep showing up in the most fuck-all places, boy, and your story about wandering onto this property ain’t going to convince me of nothing.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“You ain’t that lucky.” Doe opened the door to the backseat. He shoved me inside, making sure to knock my head against the roof on the way in. “You’re going to sit in here while I go look around to see if I can tell what you were up to. You better hope I don’t find nothing, either, or you may be getting a better look at that there shithole.” He gestured toward the waste lagoon and then shoved the door shut.

I wasn’t going to cry, despite the watering of my eyes and the growing mass in my throat. This wasn’t Kevin Oswald from gym class knocking me hard in the locker room so I fell backward over the bench and smashed my head into Teddy Abbott’s locker. This was a cop clearly operating outside the law, possibly guilty of murder, who was intent on doing something really terrible to me. I concentrated on licking away the salty blood that trickled slowly out of my nose and settled on my upper lip.

I tried to wiggle, but it hurt too much, and my hands felt like overfilled hot-water bottles, ready to burst. I wondered if the cuffs were going to do any permanent damage, and I wondered if permanent damage was even something I needed to be concerned about. Just what were the chances that I would have the opportunity, say, ten years from now, to rub my wrists and think that the old cuff injury was acting up again?

Where the hell was Melford? Surely he would take a little time off from tending to the livestock to come back to rescue me. Melford would not be intimidated by a little thing like going up against a policeman. He had removed himself from the ideological state apparatus, or so he claimed, so he would have no compunction about sneaking up on a cop and bashing in his head. That’s what I was hoping, because I also had to wonder if Melford would take advantage of the opportunity and leave me holding the bag for everything that had happened.

I looked out the window and saw Doe walking slowly, legs wide like an old-time cowboy, toward the barn. Was Melford still in there, making clucking noises while casting hog chow to diseased pigs? Or was he at that moment planning a covert attack? Had he covered himself with leaves and twigs and taken a slow crawl along the ground so he could leap up and slit the cop’s throat?

I didn’t want to be party to another murder, particularly a policeman’s murder. Though I was now well convinced that Doe was the kind of guy who needed killing, the kind of person I would gladly sacrifice to save a dog of even moderate bravery, I still had more significant qualms about murder than Melford did. I sure as hell didn’t want to be a fugitive from a cop killing. Doe could be a baby raper, but if he was killed, every cop in the world would pursue the murderer with unceasing rage.

All of that became irrelevant, because just then I saw another cop car coming down the dirt road and out of the thick of pine trees. That meant Melford was now outnumbered. Doe had backup, and the cops back at their station knew about the call. If something happened to these guys, we would be world-class fugitives.

Then I noticed something about the second cop car. It wasn’t navy blue like Doe’s; it was brown. Instead of CITY OF MEADOWBROOK GROVE along the side, it had GROVE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. I glanced over at Jim Doe, who had also turned to look at the car, and even from the distance I could see him mouth a single syllable. It looked a lot like “Shit.”

Doe started power-walking back to his car, one arm swinging hard, one hand pressed to the crown of his hat to keep it from falling off. The brown sheriff’s department car pulled directly in front of Doe’s, and a woman came out, dressed in an unflattering brown uniform.

It was hard to say what might have been flattering on her. She wasn’t ugly, but she was stocky and rugged, with a mannish build and a slightly flattened-looking face. Her short, walnut-brown hair was pulled back into a sensible ponytail- the sort that wouldn’t get in your face while hopping fences and darting into alleys in pursuit of bad guys.

She glanced at Doe and then into the back of Doe’s car, making eye contact with me for a moment. She then reached into her own car to pull out her radio mike.

“Hold up there,” I could hear Doe say, though his voice was muted by the glass of the car. With one hand still on his hat, he speed-waddled toward her. “Let’s just hold up a second.”

The woman put the mike back. I suspected that it might have been a bad move, but I wasn’t about to start shouting or knocking on the window with my skull. I couldn’t even decide if the presence of this new, potentially uncrooked cop was good news or bad news.

“No need to call in nothing,” Doe said, slightly winded from his jog. He offered a smile certainly meant to be friendly, but it looked grotesque to me. “What’s the hurry, Aimee?”

She glanced at me. I tried to plead with my eyes. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“I don’t like it when a lady swears,” he told her.

“What are you, my minister? I don’t give a rat’s shit bag puss fuck tit what you like. I want to know what’s going on here.”

“Got me a trespasser,” Doe said. “That’s all. Maybe more than one. Still got to check out the grounds. And this here is Meadowbrook Grove’s jurisdiction, not to mention my own personal property. So if you don’t mind staying out of our business, I promise not to stick my nose in yours.” He unveiled another grin. “Nope, I won’t stick nothing in your business.”

She met his gaze. “Jim, you know perfectly well you can’t order a county cop out of a municipality, and if I think you might be up to something, I can have a look around. It’s a little something called ‘probable cause’- a concept pretty well-known among cops. And let me tell you, that sad-looking boy in your car, licking the snotty blood off his face, gives it to me.”

Doe turned away from her, pressed one finger to his left nostril, and blew out a wad of snot onto the ground. “You want to play hardball with me, sugar?”

“What I want is to know what’s going on. So how about you stop jerking me around.”

“Maybe you want to jerk me around a little?” Before the county officer could speak, Doe let out an exasperated sigh and pointed toward the hog lot. “I came to check on my property, and I happened to notice this suspicious-looking fellow prowling around, looking to break in, I guess. What should I have done? Called the police?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s what you should have done. Get him out of that car.”

“I don’t much like the tone of your voice.”

“You’re not going to like the tone of the county jail, either. Get him out of there.”

He put his hands on his hips. “What crawled up you? Is this because I forgot Jenny’s birthday? Is that what this is about? Because if Pam told you to give me a hard time about that, why, that’s nothing but harassment, is what that is. I might file me a complaint.”

“You don’t want to play it this way.”

“I don’t understand why you folks at County don’t have more respect for your fellow law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions.”

“We have plenty of respect for other law enforcement officers,” she told him. “We just don’t respect you. Get him out of there now, unless you want me to radio for backup. Because if that happens, things are going to get ugly.”

“It got ugly the minute you showed your face,” Doe mumbled.

He opened the door and yanked me out, sending another wave of pain through my arms. “Don’t make me mad,” he whispered, hardly more than a hot breath, into my ear. “Don’t think for a second you’re getting away with anything. I know who you are, boy.”

The other cop gave me an appraising, almost sympathetic, once-over. I couldn’t figure out my move. Cops were no longer my friends, but I had to believe that she would be a better bet than Jim Doe, a better bet by a long stretch. Frankly, at that moment I believed I’d be willing to face charges and trial and testify against Melford if I could get away from Jim Doe. Maybe not very loyal, but I hadn’t seen Melford running to my rescue, and I wouldn’t be involved in any of this if Melford hadn’t killed Bastard and Karen for reasons he still wasn’t talking about.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” swore the county cop, looking at my bloodied nose.

“I found him that way,” Doe said.

She ignored him. “What’s your name, son?” she asked, even though she was still in her twenties, possibly even early twenties, and had no business calling me “son.”

“Lem Altick.” No point in lying when she could, and certainly would, pull my license.

“What were you doing here?”

I told her the same story I’d told Doe, about looking for shade and then just wandering around in the absence of NO TRESPASSING signs. It found a more sympathetic audience with her, perhaps because of the blood.

“You resist the man in any way?” She gestured toward Doe with her head.

“No, ma’am. I explained myself like I did with you.”

“Turn around,” she told me.

I did.

“Jesus fuck,” she whispered. “Take those off of him now.”

“I got a right to handcuff a perp.”

“Doe, I’m going to count to three, and if those cuffs aren’t off, then you’re going to be the perp here.”

He grumbled but took out his keys and unlocked the cuffs, getting in a few rough jerks while he fumbled to fit the key in the lock.

“What a bullshit move, putting them on too tight. What, did you knock his head against the door when you put him in the car, too?”

It had been a rhetorical question, but I answered for Doe. “Yes, ma’am, he did. Punched me in the stomach, too.”

“This fucker is lying,” Doe said as the cuffs came off.

I felt a rush of pain as the blood began to flow. It stung horribly, and I winced as my eyes watered, but I was determined to show nothing more than the wincing. I kept my hands behind my back, not wanting to see them until the pain dissipated.

“It sure doesn’t look that way, Jim. I’m going to have to bring you up on charges.”

But she didn’t move. She didn’t go to cuff him. Instead, she smiled thinly and stared at him, waiting to see how he planned to take it.

“Is this because I wouldn’t fuck you?” he asked. “Is that what this is about? It’s just that I don’t like women without titties.”

“Unless you have something useful to say that would make me view this matter in a better light, I’m going to have to take you over to the station.”

I didn’t know I was going to say it until it came out. “I don’t want to press charges.”

The cop turned to me so fast, I was surprised her hat stayed on her head. “Why in hell not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t want any trouble. I don’t live near here, and I wouldn’t be able to come back for the trial or anything. And I guess I was trespassing, even if he got a little mean about it. I’d just as soon forget the whole thing.”

Doe grinned at me as though we were co-conspirators. Or something else. As though he hadn’t been appeased, and this effort to get on his good side would only hurt me in the end.

Still, it was the right move. Best to let the whole thing disappear. Get the cops and the courts and maybe the media involved, I might end up in jail. Way things were now, it might just turn out okay. It was a long shot, but it was something to hope for.

“You sure about that?” she asked.

I nodded.

She turned to Doe. “This is your lucky day. Why don’t you get on out of here.”

“Why don’t I get on out of here?” he asked, scratching his head. “Let me think about that one. How about this? Because it’s my fucking land. How about you get out of here?”

“Do us both a favor and take a hike. And let me be clear about something. If anything happens to this boy, Jim, anything at all, I’m coming after you, so I suggest you be careful.”

“I ain’t never seen a woman with such small titties,” he answered, and then got into his car. The engine came on with an angry growl, and the car pulled out at about fifty miles an hour.

The county cop watched it go. “I ought to give him a speeding ticket,” she said. “See how he likes it.” The she looked over at me. “So, what were you doing here?”

“Just like I said,” I told her. “I was wandering. I sort of plan to quit selling encyclopedias when I get home, and I didn’t have the energy to work today. So I was walking along, and I came here.”

“Come on, there must be more to it than that. You smoking pot or something? I don’t care. I just want to know.”

I shook my head. “Nothing like that. I was walking is all.”

She shook her head. “Fine. Let me give you a ride.”

I thought about the offer for a minute. Melford was back there somewhere, but what had he done for me but hang me out to dry? Either he hadn’t seen what was going on, which showed he couldn’t be trusted to watch my back, or he had and decided not to help me. Either way, I figured I ought to have no problem washing my hands of him.

For want of anyplace else to go to, I asked her to give me a ride to the motel, then I climbed into her car, fully aware that sitting in a cop car, front seat or back, was just about the last place I wanted to be. As we pulled out along the pine-lined road, and I caught a glimpse of Jim Doe’s car hidden behind a few trees, I knew taking the ride had been the smart move.

The cop, Officer Toms according to her badge, decided the silent treatment was the best way to go. She handed me a tissue for my nose, which had already stopped bleeding, but I dabbed at it anyhow because it seemed the polite thing to do. Finally, without turning to look at me- though she might have given me a sidelong glance behind her mirrored sunglasses- she said, “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“What makes you think that?” I tried to keep my voice steady.

“Because you were the victim of an asshole cop’s brutality, and now you’re happy to forget it ever happened. In my experience, only people who are afraid of the law are content to look the other way when a cop steps over the line.”

I shrugged, and then the lies started flowing. I’d never been a saintly paragon of truth, but I wasn’t a habitual liar, either. Still, it was getting to be pretty easy. “I’m scared of the guy. I’d rather he forgot I exist. I’ve got nothing to gain by trying to beat him in some legal contest. All I wanted was to get away from him, which I did thanks to you.”

“What’s he up to, anyhow?”

She had a distant tone in her voice. I knew she wasn’t talking to me, so I didn’t have to tell her that he was up to hiding dead bodies and searching for a whole bunch of money.

“We’ve been trying to get a search warrant on that lot for months,” she told me, “but I think he’s got connections at the courthouse. The judges keep telling us there’s no probable cause. But I sure as hell don’t think he’s doing nothing more than raising hogs.”

I was about to say something nondescript, like “I wouldn’t know about that,” but I thought better of it. Instead I opted for a Melfordian strategy. “Well, what do you think he’s up to?”

She turned her head, but her eyes were invisible behind the glasses, so her face was illegible to me. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just making conversation with the nice police officer who rescued me.”

“Good for you,” she said.

“Good for me what?”

“Police ‘officer.’ Mostly I get police ‘woman,’ like I’m Angie Dickinson or something.”

“True equality can only be achieved through gender-sensitive language,” I told her.

She glanced at me again. “Right you are.”

I’d never seen a car drive away skeptically before, but that’s how Officer Toms did it. One last dubious glance, and she eased her cruiser away. And there I was, back at the motel. It was a few minutes before two now, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Then a remarkable idea occurred to me. I could sleep. I could go back to my room, sleep for hours, and then wake up in time to hoof it over to the Kwick Stop and claim to have blanked. I could make the tedium of the day disappear, get some sleep, and remain hidden from rednecks, crooked cops, and compassionate assassins. Opportunities like that didn’t come along every day.

I climbed the stairs to my room, already full of sleepy satisfaction. I passed Lajwati Lal, Sameen’s wife. She wheeled her cleaning cart along the balcony, her face impassive, hard, and lined. But she smiled at me when I passed by, giving her a little wave.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Lal,” I said, thinking myself enlightened because I cast a friendly greeting at an immigrant busy toiling over a stranger’s bed.

She nodded agreeably in my direction. “I hope you’re staying out of trouble.”

My stomach flipped. What could she know? “Trouble,” I said, my voice a rasp.

“My husband told me about those very wicked boys,” she said with a sympathetic smile.

I let out my breath. “He was great to help me.”

“Oh, yes. He fancies himself a real hero with his cricket bat,” she said. “But I think he only wanted an excuse to teach those fellows a lesson.”

I asked her to thank him again for me. Once inside my room, I turned up the air conditioner and sat on the edge of the newly made bed. The stillness, the dark of the room with its reddish orange curtains drawn- all of it felt too luxurious for words. I would at last sleep.

After splashing water on my face and rubbing off the last of the blood, I was happy to see I didn’t look like someone who had been beaten up. A little red but nothing more. I lumbered over to the bed and lay down, fully dressed, arms stretched, ready to fall asleep. Then I sat upright. How could I afford to sleep when I was a potential murder suspect? If I were arrested, tried, and convicted and had to spend the rest of my life in jail, I’d spew curses at myself forever for having squandered this time. Time I could have used for… For what, exactly?

For trying to figure out what the hell was going on, I supposed. Melford seemed absorbed by the mystery of the third dead body, but that bothered me less than it did him. I was more troubled by the Gambler’s involvement in all of this. Of course, I knew about the Gambler’s involvement and Melford did not. Best not to think about Melford too much, since for all I knew he was sitting in the back of Jim Doe’s police car with a bloody nose and his hands cuffed tight behind his back.

I, however, was at the motel, and the Gambler was not. It occurred to me that being here at the motel presented a golden opportunity.

I stood up and headed out of my room, very slowly. Down the hall I saw Lajwati’s cleaning cart and no sign of Lajwati herself. I walked slowly along the balcony, trying to look anything but furtive and probably failing miserably. When I got to the cart, I saw that luck was on my side- or perhaps fate was simply setting me up for an even greater tumble. There, hanging on a hook on the side of the cart, were the extra pass keys, the ones Ronny Neil and Scott had stolen in order to wreak havoc. I could take one and Lajwati would never notice- or, at the very least, never suspect me.

I heard the sound of running water coming from the open room, and when I peered in, there was no sign of Lajwati herself- except for one small, white-sneakered foot protruding from the bathroom. She was in there, scrubbing with the water running. With a casual swipe, I took one of the keys and kept on walking.

I went around to the side of the motel to the Gambler’s room. There was no one around and no sign of lights on in the room. To be safe, I knocked and then ducked around the corner to watch. But the door didn’t open. I went back, looked both ways, and stuck the key in the door.

It worked. I’d been half hoping it wouldn’t. If the key had failed me, I could tell myself I’d done my level best but the black bag operation simply wasn’t in the cards. Now I had no choice but to go forward. I sucked in my breath and pushed open the door.

And that was it. I’d broken into the room of a dangerous criminal. I couldn’t imagine having done this twenty-four hours earlier, but twenty-four hours earlier I’d been a different person, living a different life.

I looked around the Gambler’s room. Lajwati had already cleaned here, too, which was good since it meant I didn’t have to worry about her barging in. It also meant that I didn’t have to be paranoid about putting everything back exactly as I found it. Things would have been moved anyhow, giving me the freedom to look around as I pleased.

But what was I looking for? Some clue to who the Gambler really was, why he would be involved in covering up a triple homicide.

His burgundy garment bag was entirely unpacked, but I went through it anyway. Nothing. He had a few shirts and pants hung up and a pile of dirty laundry shoved in the bottom of the closet. I poked at it with my shoe, in case his dirty underwear was meant to disguise something of consequence, but a little shifting around revealed nothing. I went through the drawers, carefully lifting the undershirts, T-shirts, briefs, and socks, but found nothing of interest there, either. Nothing under the newspaper on the nightstand. A whole lot of nothing.

In the bathroom, I discovered the Gambler used cheap disposable Bic razors, off-brand shaving cream, and Crest. But I discovered little else except that he took three prescription medicines, none of which I’d ever heard of.

This was turning out to be a big bust. But then I saw it, hiding in plain sight. Hell, it was so obvious that it was a miracle I saw it at all. Right in the middle of the glass table toward the back of the room, next to the clean ice bucket with fresh plastic liner. His date book.

It would have everything in there. It was one of those date books that was about as broad as a paperback novel and almost as long. It had a little clasp and pockets on the inside and outside jackets. The pages were disposable, to be replaced each year, and there were too many of them shoved into a small ring, which made it hard to turn them. As I flipped through, I began to see that this wasn’t the gold mine I’d been hoping for, it was a barely legible scribble mine. Each spread of two pages represented one week, and there was an entry for at least one day each week, generally more. The problem was that the entries didn’t mean anything to me. “Bill. 3:00. Pancake.” Somehow this tidbit didn’t exactly clarify things.

Then I noticed that one name appeared over and over again: BB. “Expect BB call PM.” “Get instructions BB.” “BB 9AM Denny’s.” This was surely something, I thought. I checked the back of the date book, which had an alphabetized section for addresses. It was pretty well maxed out, so I concentrated on the Bs but found nothing that looked right. Then I checked the front and back pockets, overflowing with business cards. Anything, I thought, with the initials B.B. But nothing. Salesmen, lawyers, real estate agents, doctors, appointment cards. It was all crap. I was putting them back, trying to remember the right order, when one card grabbed my attention. It read, “William Gunn, livestock wholesaler.”

Bobby had mentioned Gunn as the owner of Educational Advantage Media. So what was with the livestock? There was nothing else in the book to suggest that the Grambler had anything to do with livestock. Jim Doe, however, did. Then there was the name. William Gunn. B. B. Gunn, I thought. An inevitable nickname- as inevitable as the Gambler’s. I ran over to the desk, took out a motel pad and pen, and copied the information. I put everything back carefully, then did a quick run-through to make sure all was as I’d found it.

Nothing to do now but make a clean getaway and I’d be home free. I parted the curtains slightly and looked out as best I could. The angle left a lot of room for blind spots, but I felt moderately comfortable that I could escape unseen, so I opened the door and stepped into the light and heat.

As it turned out, there had been a pretty serious blind spot. Standing fifteen feet down the balcony, hands in his pockets, was Bobby.