“We were supposed to rape her. All of us, every way possible. And then slash her. Slash her face. Make her ugly. I’m sorry.”
I maintained my expression of stern professional skepticism. But inside, something was uncoiling, something I would need to keep in check if I was going to keep my promise to Delilah. I was distantly aware of the hypocrisy of my reaction to what he had been hired for. After all, I’ve killed people for money. It’s what I used to do. I never had a problem with it, or much of a problem, anyway.
But still.
“Who was the Saudi?” I said. “What is his name?”
“I don’t know. Vincent didn’t tell us that.”
“Vincent?”
“My boss. The one you pulled from the back of the truck.”
Whether he was bullshitting me or was legitimately ignorant, I wasn’t going to learn anything more from him. It was time to go.
“You have contraband?” I asked him.
“Contraband?”
“Drugs. Weapons. You’re carrying?”
“No, man, I’m clean.”
I gestured with my head to the stone wall along the entrance to the bridge. “Put your hands on the wall. I’m going to pat you down. If you’re telling me the truth, you can walk. If you’re lying, I take you to Satory.”
He gave me a sly look, probably thinking what I really wanted was to take his contraband, not arrest him for it.
Sad, how cynical people can be.
He turned and put his palms on the wall.
“Feet farther back,” I said. “Weight on your palms. And spread your legs.”
He complied.
I watched him for just a moment, savoring what I was about to do. Then I reached one hand between his legs and took hold of his badly exposed balls, which I then proceeded to pretend were one of those apples I sometimes use to test my grip.
An apple would have done better.
When I was done, I left his unconscious body in a heap and walked away without looking back. I crossed the Pont Louis-Philippe, made a right on Voie Georges Pompidou, and five minutes later I was at the park. Delilah was waiting by the monkey bars as promised, the playground a small triangle of stillness and dark against the sounds and headlights of the streets surrounding it.
“It was what you thought,” I said. I told her what happened, and what I’d learned from the guy I’d left by the Pont Louis-Philippe.
When I was done, she touched my face, an intimate gesture I had always welcomed from her but that just then irritated me. “Thank you,” she said.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I told you, my organization—”
“Mossad. I know who you work for. Why can’t you say the name?”
“You know the name. Why do I have to say it?”
I didn’t answer. I knew I was being petty.
“Anyway,” she said, “my organization will move me to a new apartment. They’ll watch me. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be fine? Your organization wasn’t even competent enough to protect you tonight, now you’re going to be okay because they’ll watch you? Do you even believe that?”
She didn’t answer. It was maddening.
“What about the Saudi?” I said. “You think he’s going to just quit?”
“They’ll take care of him, too.” She paused, then said, “Are you interested?”
I looked at her, incredulous. “In the job? You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? A half hour ago, I had to beg you not to.”
“For you. I would have done it for you. I’m not going to be hired by your organization. Don’t you understand? I can’t modulate this shit, Delilah. Maybe you can, but I can’t. You know how hard it is to fight that part of myself, to keep him in check? Because he’s always looking for a way back in. Tonight he found a personal one, because of you. And now you’re offering a professional opportunity on top of it. What’s wrong with you? How many times do I have to tell you, I just want—”
“Out of the life, I know.”
“Then why are you trying to drag me back in? So you won’t have to leave? When are you going to be happy, when your work gets us both killed?”
“They were just punks.”
