The Ethical Assassin

“That’s very flattering,” she said. “It’s really incredible that you trust me so much, B.B. But I need to think about it.”

“Okay,” he said. And he fell into silence again.

Desiree had no desire to think about it. B.B.’s idea of cleaning the stain off his soul was to hand the dirty work to someone else and just take the profits. Ever so slightly, she shook her head. She didn’t want him to see it, but she felt she needed to offer the universe a gesture. Her decisions were getting easier all the time.

Chapter 15

THE ALARM WENT OFF AT SEVEN A.M. Normally, after hanging out by the pool, people would begin to drift off to sleep between one and two, and hardly anyone was left by three. That meant you could get four hours of sleep easy, which Bobby said was all you needed. He ought to know. He was always among the last to leave the pool area, and he never once looked tired. I couldn’t remember ever having seen him yawn.

I had grown used to the fatigue in the way you might grow used to having a tumor on the side of your face- you never forgot about it, but not forgetting about it didn’t mean you were actually thinking about it. I woke up each morning exhausted, fuzzy, slightly dizzy, and the feeling never quite went away.

Bobby tended to breeze into our room about twenty after seven, swinging the door wide and bounding in like a character in a musical about to break into song. He would make sure everyone was awake and chitchat with whoever had been the first to shower and was by then usually dressed, since they had to rush if four people were going to get showered and have breakfast in time for the prep meeting at nine.

As it turned out, I was the first to hit the showers, though I was the last to go to bed- bed being a euphemism for a spot on the floor. I’d crawled into the room just before five in the morning, undressed quietly, and gone to sleep in the space between the television and the doorless closet, resting my head on a dirty undershirt. No one had left me a spare pillow.

I’d slept, I was almost certain of it, but it had been a fitful sleep in which I dreamed, mostly, of lying awake on the floor and trying to sleep. At least I hadn’t dreamed about selling books, and it was the first time in weeks that I could say that. And I hadn’t dreamed about Bastard’s and Karen’s bodies, which was some kind of mercy.

When the alarm went off, I jumped up as only someone who’s had chronically little sleep can, and headed for the bathroom. By the time I showered and put on my other pair of khaki pants, a light blue button-down and a narrow tie, noontime sun yellow, I was feeling almost like myself again. I could forget what happened in the trailer, the evening with Melford, and the events back at the trailer. I could almost forget that I had been involved in a double murder, a third murder implicating a crooked cop and the head of the company for which I worked.

I sat on the bed, staring at my vaguely trembling hands, trying to summon the desire for breakfast, when the door opened and Bobby came bobbing in.

“Up first, and I’m not surprised,” he said. “Glad to see it, Lemmy. I scoped out today’s area already, and I have a moochie spot for you. But you’ve got to promise me a double. You’re getting out there by eleven this morning. You’ll have twelve hours. You think you can promise me a double? At least, that is. A double at least.”

“I can try,” I said lamely.

“Hell, he’s too tired,” Scott said. He was lying on the bed, shirtless, and his pale gut and pale tits were hanging out at us. “I don’t know how much sleep he got last night. Maybe you should give that moochie area to someone else, Bobby. Someone who ain’t go

Bobby gri

“Now, how’s that go

Bobby shook his head. “A good bookman can sell anywhere. And when Lemmy came up, he didn’t get the cream, just like none of the green guys get the cream. You didn’t get any special treatment when you came up.”

“And I still don’t,” he mumbled.

“That’s where Lemmy proved himself. You want a share of the mooch, you have to show me you deserve the mooch.”

“All he done was get lucky,” Scott said. “Ain’t nothing but a rich Jew that wants more money for hisself.”

“C’mon, Scottie,” Bobby said. “Lemmy’s a good guy.”

“Yeah, good at what? Butt fucking, I guess,” said Ro

“Define ‘good,’ ” I said.

“Holy bananas, you guys are cranky this morning,” Bobby said. “But I’m glad you’re dressed, Lemmy. The Gambler wants to see you.”

Ro

“What’s the Gambler want with him?” Ro

Bobby shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to take that up with the boss yourself, Ron-o.”

Ro

“Bringing him in to what?” Bobby demanded.

“I don’t want him talking to the Gambler,” Ro

The fact that I didn’t want to talk to the Gambler either didn’t seem to count for much. I felt a wave of dizzying panic. Had the Gambler somehow learned that Melford and I had been hiding in the closet? He had the checkbook, which meant they knew someone from the company had been there, and by now he’d probably figured out that the someone in question was me.

“Let’s go, Lemmy,” Bobby said. “Don’t want to keep the big boss man waiting.”

“He gets too cozy with the boss,” Ro

“Does that count as being good or bad at butt fucking?” I asked.

“Oh, don’t be that way, Ronster.” Bobby put a hand to my shoulder and led me out the door.

I couldn’t believe he was going to leave it at that. Maybe he thought that if he came down harsher on them, it would be worse for me. Maybe he thought that leaving it alone wouldn’t affect how many books were sold. Maybe he was off on Planet Bobby and didn’t understand that Ro

Was such a thing possible? Had Bobby skated so blithely through life with his salesman grin and good cheer that he didn’t know what it meant to be picked on, to be humiliated by bigger or meaner guys who got their rocks off by reminding you that you walked around unscathed at their pleasure? Was Bobby like Chitra, insulated from the cruelty of the world, not by his looks but by an impenetrable armor of optimism and generosity?

If that was the case, it meant that Bobby and I lived in entirely different places- the same to an outside viewer, but utterly unalike to our particular perspectives. Where I saw danger and menace, Bobby saw only i

What if Bobby lived in this wondrous world precisely because he believed in it? I had seen how Melford had defused a certain whumping the night before in the bar, but he’d done it consciously. What if Bobby did that sort of thing all the time, only he didn’t know he was doing it? He assumed the best in people, and he got kindness and leeway in return.

If that was true, it meant that I was in some way responsible for Ro