The Ethical Assassin

The sudden and inexplicable appearance of Otto Rose was, by any standards B.B. could think of, bad news. Bad news because no one but Desiree was supposed to know where B.B. was. Bad news because Otto Rose was standing there, watching him mentor, watching him dine with an eleven-year-old boy in an expensive steakhouse, a bottle of Saint-Estèphe opened and two glasses, one for an underage boy. Bad news because Otto might be a business friend, but he was the kind of friend B.B. would love to shed. Bad news because there was no reason in the world why Rose should want to find him unless it was bad news.

“Hello, young man,” Rose said to Chuck. His West Indian accent came out thick and chunky, full of island hospitality and humor, the way it always did when he cranked up the charm. He set his hand on the bottle of Bordeaux. “Can I pour you some more wine, or has Mr. Gu

Chuck held on to his breadstick and looked up at Rose, not quite making eye contact, but he didn’t say anything. B.B. expected as much. South Florida might be diverse- there were Cubans and Jews and regular white people and Haitians and West Indians and regular black people and all sorts of South Americans and Orientals and who the hell knew what else- but the fact was none of them wanted anything to do with any of the others. White kids clammed up around black people. Black kids clammed up around white people. B.B. had seen it a million times when mentoring, and if you were going to mentor, you had to understand these things.

Rose, however, was undeterred. “I am Otto Rose. What is your name, young sir?” He stuck out his hand for shaking.

Chuck appeared to know he was trapped, and being trapped, he chose to forge ahead. “I’m Chuck,” he said in a steady voice. The handshake looked firm and unafraid.

“And Mr. Gu

“He’s my mentor,” Chuck said. “He’s been very nice to me.”

“And this is a fine restaurant for mentoring,” Rose said, the humor percolating just under the surface of his voice. “And nothing goes with mentoring like a glass of wine.” He picked up Chuck’s glass and gave it a good sniff with his eyes closed. “A Saint-Estèphe?” he asked as he put down the glass.

“Wow.” Chuck’s eyes went wide. “You can tell that from the smell?”

“I read it on the bottle.”

B.B. saw that the retirees in the restaurant were looking over at them. They didn’t like the big, bald black man standing around. The waiters were eyeing them as well, and it would only be a moment until one of them came by to ask if the gentleman wished to join their table. B.B. would be fucked if Rose said he would, so it was time to snip this one in the bud.

B.B. pushed himself out of the chair and away from the table, rising with Miami Vice poise. He might be half a foot shorter than Rose, but he held his own next to the guy. B.B. knew who he was, knew what he commanded, knew that there were people all over the state who would shit in their pants if they heard B. B. Gu

“Excuse me for a moment,” he said to Chuck. “I’ll be back as soon as I take care of some grown-up business.”

“Okay,” Chuck said. There was something forlorn in his voice.

B.B. knew instantly that Chuck might be a mature kid, he might be a spunky kid with a good sense of humor and the will to rise above the misery of his life, but he didn’t want to be left alone. He wanted, maybe above all things, companionship, and that was but one more reason to be pissed off at Otto Rose for showing up like this and fucking up his di

“Follow me,” B.B. said to Rose. It was time to establish the pecking order in his barnyard. Rose thought he was clever, finding out where B.B. was eating, making sly little insinuations about Chuck. But now it was Rose following while the alpha male led.

They stepped outside, and the temperature rose by nearly thirty degrees in an instant. It was humid and sticky, and the sounds of cars off I-95 hissed past.

Desiree was out there, leaning against B.B.’s convertible Mercedes, arms folded over her breasts. She wore moderately, though not obscenely, tight Guess jeans and a lavender bikini top. The pink of the massive scar along her side glistened in the neon light of the restaurant.

Rose broke out into a gregarious grin. “Desiree, my darling. How are you, lovely?” He leaned over and rested a hand on her scar, as he always did, just to show that it didn’t trouble him, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I didn’t see you on the way in.”

Desiree allowed herself to be kissed, but her lips were pressed tight into a cynical little smile. “Sure you did, though you made a pretty good show of acting like you didn’t.”

He pressed a hand to his heart. “You hurt me when you say such things.”

B.B. couldn’t be bothered to let this play out. “If you saw him coming in, why the hell didn’t you stop him?”

She shrugged. “What for? You’d have come out, and we’d be right where we are now.”

What for? Jesus, did he have to spell it out for her? It was mentoring time. She knew perfectly well he didn’t want to be bothered while mentoring. She knew, and she’d let Rose in because she was still angry with him. It had been a month, and she was still angry, and it was starting to make B.B. crazy. She was his assistant, and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to think about what life would be like without her, but life with her was starting to be a problem.

“Okay,” B.B. said. He took an authoritative suck of air. “Let’s make this fast.”

“Of course. You have that young man in there.”

“I’m mentoring him,” B.B. said.

“Oh, I am certain of it. I see he likes breadsticks.”

Fuck if B.B. was going to take this kind of thing from Otto Rose. “What do you want? How did you know I was here, and what is it that can’t wait until morning?”

“You’re easier to find than you think,” Rose said, “and as to why it can’t wait, I think you’ll be happy I did. Number one, I’ve just received a tip. There’s a reporter in Jacksonville.”

“They’ve got a newspaper there,” B.B. said. “And TV stations, last time I checked. Of course there are reporters.”

Rose let out his island laugh. “There’s a reporter there out to do a story on your crew.”

“Shit. From where?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if the reporter plans to observe or if there’s someone on the inside already who is a reporter undercover. I don’t know what this person thinks he knows, but there’s probably more of a story there than he realizes.”

B.B. bit his lip. “Okay, we’ll take care of it. What’s number two?”

“You know the legislature is taking up that bill in the next session to severely limit door-to-door sales. I’ve just received word that if I go against it, I am going to face severe fund-raising problems. Now, you know I want to help you out, B.B. I’ve always stood up for you, always valued our relationship. But it’s going to cost me to go against this bill, and if it’s going to cost me, I’m going to have to make up that cost somewhere.”

“He wants another donation,” Desiree said. She’d been doing a lot of that sort of thing lately, stating the obvious as though B.B. wouldn’t have understood what Rose meant without her help.

“Christ, Otto, can’t this wait?”

“I came to see you about the reporter, but since I was here, well, it seemed like as good a time as any. Of course, I know you were busy mentoring. If you would rather mentor than take care of business, that is your own concern. Still, I am not entirely certain you want the business community to learn just how important this mentoring is to you.”

Fuck if here wasn’t Rose putting on the squeeze, trying to use his charitable nature against him. A man wanted to help out the unfortunate, and he had to answer to one opportunistic cynic after another. And the thing was, Rose put all that work into crime prevention, after-school programs for the kids in Overtown, but no one could say anything about that because he was black and those kids were black, and all of that meant that Rose was a saint. So now he had to stand out here, talking bullshit with a state legislator while Chuck sat by himself at the table, his friendly mood deteriorating with each minute.