Killer Move

“That’s not who I meant.”

“The guy,” she said. “What did he look like?”

“Slim. Strong in the upper body. Early fifties. Ed Harris with hair.”

“His name is John Hunter,” she said. “I don’t know what he told you, but you’d be wise to disregard it. He just got out of a stretch in jail for murder.”

“He’s already killed again,” I said. “So that doesn’t tell me much I didn’t know.”

“Look, I don’t have the details, but I know he’s a very bad man.”

“Says who?”

“One of the people who employed me.”

“Employed you to fuck me up? Why would I trust them? Or you?”

She pulled out her cell phone. Hit a few buttons, waited, and then held it out to me. “Recognize this guy?”

I saw the face of a middle-aged man, not too slim, dark hair swept back. “David Warner.”

“No. He’s an actor. His name is Daniel Bauman.”

“Well, he’s the guy I met in—”

“I know.”

I opened my mouth, shut it again. I realized that Steph and I were in Krank’s pretty often—and it was all too possible that a stooge could have been told to go there, perhaps even night after night, and wait until a chance came to talk to me: at which point I could be lured on the promise of the sale of an expensive house. It was bait I’d be bound to take.

After which . . . everything else followed.

The actor calls the office. He gets Karren instead of me, plays that out for the initial assessment (about which he doesn’t care), then insists on dealing with me direct. This appeals to my vanity and I’m ready to be convinced to come out to the house, prepared to be left waiting and eventually stood up—setting me up for photographs that make it look like I’ve been peeping at my coworker . . . except that the photos hadn’t actually been taken that night but several days before. In preparation.

“How do you know this guy?”

“I hired him. Have I just watched you work out why?”

“To pretend to be David Warner, to provide a window during which my whereabouts were unknown and in which I could have taken those pictures of Karren White.”

“Good for you. I’d get Bauman on the phone to confirm all that to you, but he’s not picking up. Which is . . . worrying me a little.”

“Who are you? And don’t give me more of the Jane Doe crap—I don’t care about your name. I mean what are you?”

“I’m administrative support,” she said. “Edge work. Cleanup where required.”

“Are you some kind of cop?”

She laughed, a short, sad sound. “No. Ex-army. Left with skills that aren’t valued in civilian life. I bummed around for a while, getting in trouble. Then I was recruited for this.”

“Which is what?”

“I get paid to provide a buffer between certain situations and the real world. Containment, and holding up the scenery. Once in a while I play a part, like being a waitress at some lame-ass restaurant for hicks made good. Have you really got no better idea of what’s going on?”

“I got modified,” I said.

“Bingo.”

“Then what?”

“The plug got pulled.”

“And you don’t know why that happened, or why Cass got killed or by who, and that’s why you’re scared.”

She cocked her head. “Well, well. Maybe you aren’t that dumb at all.”

“Oh, I’m dumb enough. But here’s something else you don’t know. The guy who coldcocked me? He showed me an old photo of a bunch of people. One of them is now dead. Tony and Marie Thompson were in the picture, too. He evidently wants to talk to them real bad. I think maybe he’s on the way to do it right now.”

The woman blinked.

“Sorry,” I said, with bitter satisfaction. “Should I have mentioned that before?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Ten minutes later we were driving fast back up toward St. Armands Circle. She’d made me wait in Cass’s apartment while she went out onto the walkway and made a call. I heard her raise her voice. I gave it another minute and went out. She was gripping the railing, looking down over the entropy spreading over the courtyard below.

“I don’t need this shit,” she said. “I could just vanish, right now.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Expiation,” she said. “Heard of the concept?”

“No.”

She smiled in a sour, unattractive way. “Not much call for it in the condo-selling business, I guess.”

“You want me to Wikipedia the word? Or you could just drop the condescension and talk in straightforward sentences. We asshole Realtors can do that at least.”

“I’m done with this,” she said. “I thought I’d be okay with it, but I’m not. It’s wrong. And for that, and for other sins to be taken into consideration, I have not yet done what I should have, which is bug the fuck out.”

“So just tell me what the—”

“I’m not telling you shit. I’m going to kick you up the chain of command, and then I’m done.”

She parked on the Circle, in one of the spaces around the central park. She started to walk away, and I, good local citizen that I am, noticed that she hadn’t remembered to pay for parking even though there was half an hour before restrictions ended. I told her so.

She smiled in possibly her most patronizing way yet. “I have immunity,” she said.

I’d assumed that once we got here we’d be heading to the Columbia (perhaps because I’d seen the place in the picture the man with the gun had shown me), but in fact she set off across the central area.

“Jonny Bo’s?”

She didn’t answer. She strode across the road and straight over to the restaurant. She didn’t enter the sidewalk cafe area, however, but went around the side, toward the staircase up to the restaurant—where Steph and I had our anniversary celebration what seemed like a month before. There was a young woman standing behind the welcome desk at the top. She appeared not to recognize the woman I was with, at first, and started fretting about reservations. The woman just pushed right past her.

“Hey—”

“Drop it, babe.”

“Hang on, shouldn’t you be working here tonight?”

“I resigned. Didn’t I say?”

It was early yet for the first sitting, and the restaurant was only half-full—couples looking at menus and trying not to whistle between their teeth at the prices. The person I still half thought of as a waitress, Jane Doe, whatever her name really was, wove straight across the room and into the corridor leading to the restrooms. She walked past both without slowing, however, making for a door at the end, which I hadn’t even noticed before. There was no marking on it, not even a sign saying private, which figured. Say nothing, and most of us are too dumb to question anything. There was a little keypad on the side panel, painted in the same color as the wall. The woman rapidly tapped out a six-figure number, and the latch clicked.

On the other side was a narrow staircase, turning sharply to the right. I followed her up, but abruptly stopped halfway when I saw her reach into the back of her jeans and pull a handgun out from under her shirt. Something happened to her posture, too, becoming looser, rangier, as if readying for sudden decisive action. I let her go up the last set of stairs by herself.