The Ethical Assassin

Chapter 26

MELFORD HAD BEEN DRIVING in silence, and I was paying him very little attention. Mostly I was trying to come up with ways to convince myself that my run-in with Bobby wouldn’t end in disaster. It was only once we’d pulled into Meadowbrook Grove that I snapped out of my fog.

I stared at the trailers, the ragged lawns, the empty lots. “What the hell are you thinking? We need to stay away from this place, not go back to it.”

“Your plan of avoidance sounds fine in theory, but the truth is that we need to figure out what is going on. And to do that, we have to learn who that third body in the trailer was. As near as I can tell, the only lead we have is going to be what the neighbors can tell us. So you’re going to go into salesman mode, only instead of selling worthless encyclopedias, you’re going to ask about Bastard and Karen and who might have been by to see them last night.”

“Should I also ask them if they’ve seen anyone who looks exactly like me fleeing the scene of the crime?”

“Relax, Lemuel. No one saw you.”

“If it’s so relaxing, why don’t you do it?”

He shook his head. “Me? I stand out too much. Dig my crazy hair. You’ve been in this neighborhood before. Besides, you’re the salesman. This is your territory.”

There was no way to fully express the degree to which I did not want to do this thing. “What if that cop drives by and notices me? Should I explain to him that it’s my territory while he punches me in the stomach?”

“It won’t happen. I’ll be keeping a lookout. If anything goes wrong, I’ll grab you and we’ll take off. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

I then leveled my most compelling argument. At least most compelling to me. “But I don’t want to do it.”

“And I don’t want us to get fucked, Lemuel, but we very well may if we don’t take charge of the situation. Believe me, I don’t like this any better than you do, but Jim Doe is now on to you. And whoever sent that woman we saw at lunch is on to you. We’ve got to take action instead of sitting around and waiting for everything to catch up to us.”

I knew he was right. I hated it, but Melford was right. There was no getting around this. I couldn’t simply recede and think that, well, maybe things might have been different if I hadn’t gone to jail for multiple homicides. I had to do this.

“So what do I tell people?”

“I don’t know. But if you can convince people to spend a ton of cash on books they don’t need or want, how hard can it be to get them to gossip?”

He had a point.

“One more thing,” he told me. “It’s not going to happen, but let’s just say things go totally haywire.”

“Shit,” I began.

“Let’s say things go completely nuts,” he continued, “and you end up with Doe again.”

“Screw this,” I said. “I’m not going.”

“It’ll be fine. I’m just giving you worst-case scenario advice. If you end up with him, and you’re in some kind of danger, hit him in the balls.”

“You think that’ll hurt?”

“Trust me, smarty pants. He’s had some testicular distress recently, so he’s going to be extra sensitive. Give him, you know, a good smack to the nuts. It should make all the difference.”

“And you know this how?”

He smiled. “Because a friend of mine recently had cause to smash him in the nuts,” he told me. “Now enough with the questions. Get going.”

It all felt too familiar. Hot, covered with a slick of sweat, the plankton coating of grime on my tongue, standing at a door, ready to knock, the sickly smell of pig shit wafting through the air. Only this time I wasn’t trying to make money, I was trying to get information- information wanted by an assassin, not me.

I stood on the stoop of the trailer several doors down from Bastard and Karen’s. I’d already had one no-answer, two suspicious doors closed hastily in my face, and one veiled threat from an exceptionally short and obese man in boxers and a sleeveless T-shirt. Then there was number five. The day before, it had been dark and empty when I’d passed by. This afternoon, I could see lights on in the living room and hear the hum of the window-unit air conditioners. A woman in her sixties opened the front door but refused to open the screen, as though that would somehow protect her. Her hair, dyed to the color of yellow grapefruit, was cut short and permed into a dense jungle of cheerlessly fisted loops. She wore thin sea green sweatpants and a University of Florida T-shirt on which a saucily agitated gator charged forward.

“Hi. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about your neighbor over there, Karen.”

“I don’t want to buy nothing,” the woman told me.

“I’m not selling anything, ma’am.” I said, noting how odd it felt to mean it this time. “I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me. You’d be willing to do that, wouldn’t you?”

“I told you, I ain’t buying,” she said, and began to shut the door.

Part of me was content. I might go back to Melford and say that no one would talk to me, then we’d get into the Datsun and cruise out of Meadowbrook Grove forever. But that other part of me, that niggling part, knew that Melford would send me right back out, to another part of the trailer park, this one maybe closer to where Doe kept his police station.

So I said, “Hold on.” A clever little lie occurred to me, and I figured I had nothing to lose. “Ma’am, I’m really not selling anything. I’m a private detective.” Private detectives were on the brain, after all, following my conversation with Chris Denton. So why not?

She looked at me, this time more kindly. “Really?” Her eyes were wide with wonder.

“Yes, ma’am.” It was incredible to me. This being assertive business actually paid off.

“Like Cannon?” she asked.

I nodded solemnly. “Exactly like Cannon.”

“Not exactly. We’ll have to fatten you up first.” She opened wide the screen door.

Her name was Vivian, and she sat me at a padded card table in her kitchen and served me a can of Tab and supermarket-brand frosted oatmeal cookies that she daintily placed on a layer of paper towels.

There were pictures of poodles everywhere- on the walls, in frames on the counter. I counted at least a dozen. But there didn’t seem to be a dog around, though the place had the wet smell of dog hair.

“Oh, that girl was always a slut,” Vivian said thoughtfully. “Just like her mother. Whores, the two of them. And into drugs, too.”

“What sort of drugs?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t know that,” she said with a cluck of her tongue. “I hardly even know what people today take. In my day, we just drank, you know. The other things, like reefer and such, were for coons.”

“Raccoons, ma’am?” I asked.

She giggled and waved a hand at me as if we were old joking pals. “Oh, you stop.”

“What about the man she was seeing?” I ventured. I liked the way it came out, all TV and professional sounding. “Are you familiar with him?”

“You mean that Bastard fellow? Oh, yes. I didn’t much care for him. Not a nice man. You could tell by his name. Not a proper nickname, I don’t think.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “Nice people have nicknames like Scooter or Chip.”

“That’s right. I heard he was into drugs, too. And I heard he was selling them with-”

And then she stopped. She stopped, she looked around the trailer, and she flipped at the metal ring on the top of her can of Tab.

“Go on,” I urged.

“It don’t matter. But she and her boyfriend were into drugs all right. And that’s why her husband took her kids away, because she was hooked on something, and they say she was letting that Bastard fellow have his way with one of the girls.”

“Ma’am,” I said evenly, “tell me more about the business with the drugs. Does this have anything at all to do with the police chief, Jim Doe?”

Vivian looked down. “Oh, no. Not that I heard nothing of. I got nothing bad to say about Jim Doe. He’s always been nice to all of us. Except for the smell that comes over from his pigs there, he’s done nothing but good here. I’ll tell anyone that.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Just one more question.” I was beginning to feel my audience straining, and I wanted to get out before I frightened her too much.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think we done enough questions today. I think maybe it’s time for you to go.”

“Just one more,” I urged.

“No,” she said. Her face had grown pale and her skin slack.

“All right.” I stood up. “Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m sorry if you feel like talking to me might get you in trouble with that policeman.”

The woman said nothing.

“I can promise you,” I continued, “I would never do or say anything to let him know you’d helped me. But the thing is, if he knew you spoke to me, he wouldn’t have to know what you said, would he? I mean, you might tell him that all you did was give me cookies and a drink and smile at my questions, right?”

“That’s right,” she said slowly.

“That’s all he would get from me, if it came down to that, though I’m sure it wouldn’t. So, since I’m here, and he’s not going to find out anything about what was said, there isn’t anything wrong with answering just one more question, is there?”

“I guess not,” she said.

“You’re absolutely right,” I told her, as though this argument had been hers all along. “Do you know if there was a woman in her forties or early fifties who might be a regular visitor at Karen’s trailer?”

Vivian nodded. “Probably her mother,” she said. “If it were anyone, it would be her mother, the whore. She sometimes comes for a visit. Karen says she comes without calling, just pops in without knocking, like she’s trying to catch her daughter at something. That would probably be it. They’re both whores,” she added thoughtfully.

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks so much. You’re really going to help me crack my case.” It sounded pathetic, but it seemed to soothe her.

“Well, you can come back anytime if you just want to talk, a polite young man like you. I’m happy for the company. Ever since my Rita went missing, I’ve been so lonely.”

My first thought was that there was another dead person in Meadowbrook Grove, but something told me I was wrong. “Your poodle?” I asked.

Her eyes brightened. “Do you know her?”

She sounded as though we were at a party and she mentioned someone who might run in the same circle I did.

“No, I just noticed all the poodle pictures.”

“Oh, yes. She disappeared a few months ago. I’m just so broken up about it. She was so beautiful. Not one of those tiny toy poodles, either, but a proper standard poodle. Black with a white patch on her head so she looked like she was wearing a hat. Such a sweet girl, my Rita. She always loved to play with the little children around here. And she loved fruit. You know, strawberries and grapes and bananas. All the kids knew it and would bring her fruit to eat. She was so happy and fat. I just wish I knew what happened to her, where she is now.”

Her eyes were watering, and I turned away. “I’m very sorry she’s disappeared,” I offered.

She sniffled. “You’re very kind.” And she surprised me by giving me a kiss on the cheek.

Melford had agreed to hang back two or three trailers down, but when I came out of Vivian’s house, I saw no sign of him. My stomach churned, only a little at first, but as I walked closer to where we’d started and still couldn’t find him, the idea of being trapped in that trailer park alone, where Jim Doe might easily find me at any moment… well, none of that sat well.

I went back almost precisely to Karen’s trailer, but I realized that was a terrible idea, so I moved again toward Vivian. Still no Melford. The sweat now came streaming off me, and the hog lot smell began to give me a headache.

I began to walk the dusty streets back toward the Kwick Stop. Once I was there, I would at least be out of Doe territory. It was like walking through a minefield, and I expected some kind of boom with each step. Every time I heard the rumble of a car behind me, an invisible fist squeezed my heart. Every grasshopper disturbing the weeds, every lizard darting to safety. It was all terror.

But I made it to the convenience store without incident, and as I approached I noticed a familiar-looking car in the parking lot. It was Melford’s Datsun. The car pointed away from me, so I could see only the back of his head- and the back of the person in the passenger seat.

It took an instant to see that it was the mysterious woman who worked for our unknown enemy. It was Desiree.