The Ethical Assassin

What troubled me about this idea, truly troubled me, was not so much that I had to shoulder the blame for Ro

Surely Melford couldn’t be the only person thinking about this stuff. He’d mentioned Marx and Marxists, but there had to be others- philosophers and psychologists and who knew what. If I had been on my way to Columbia, instead of being on my way to see the Gambler, the dead-body-hiding and evidence-concealing Gambler, I might have a hope of finding out someday. But unless the sample volume of the Champion Encyclopedias I carried around with me took up the issue, I’d probably not find out anytime soon.

Chapter 16

WE WALKED ALONG the motel balcony as if it were the corridor to the electric chair. At least I did. The morning was bright and su

“So, what does the Gambler want with me?” I ventured.

“I guess you’ll find out soon enough,” Bobby said. “I sort of figured you’d know.”

Fat chance. I was about to ask something paranoid and foolish: Did he seem angry when he asked you to get me? Did he say that he found something, perhaps? Something in a checkbook he took from a dead person’s trailer? I choked back all those questions. What would Melford do? I wondered. Melford, I decided, would tell himself that the Gambler was not about to kill me, not when there were half a dozen people who knew I was going into his room. Melford would figure that the Gambler was looking for information. Melford would see this as an opportunity to get some information for himself.

We were only about four doors down from the Gambler’s room, so I stopped. “What’s the Gambler’s deal, anyhow?”

Bobby stopped, too, but reluctantly. He looked at me and looked at the Gambler’s door, as though he couldn’t believe I was in one place and not the other. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he works for this company Educational Advantage Media, right? But they’re not part of Champion Encyclopedias. How does all of this work?”

“There’s no time for a civics lesson, Lemmy. The boss man is waiting.”

“Come on,” I said, trying to sound relaxed. “I just want to know how all of this works.”

“You want to know now?” But he must have decided it would be more expedient to answer than argue, so he pursed his lips and emptied his lungs. “Educational Advantage Media contracts with Champion, okay? They contract for various cities and their surrounding areas, and in Florida, they contract for Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Gainesville. That’s why we go to those places over and over again.”

“Who owns Educational Advantage Media? The Gambler?”

Bobby shook his head. “No, but he’s high up, maybe even the number two guy. The boss is a guy named Gu

“So is this guy, you know, okay?”

Bobby shrugged. “Probably. I guess. I’ll tell you one thing, though.” He looked around conspiratorially. “He’s got this woman who works for him. She’s kind of hot, and she always wears a bikini top, but she’s got this nasty scar down her side, like she was in a motorcycle wipe-out or something. It’s really pretty ugly, but she loves to show it off. I don’t want to judge someone for being unfortunate or anything, but ouch. Don’t show the world. You know?”

I said I knew, though I didn’t know at all.

“Okay, enough piddling.” Bobby clapped his hands together with cheerful finality. “Let’s go see the boss.”

The Gambler sat at the peeling particleboard desk in his room, looking over some credit apps. He wore greenish-tinted chinos, a white oxford with no tie, and brown loafers. He had perched on his nose a pair of glasses that made him look like a nineteenth-century accounting clerk, an effect only increased by his hair, straight and thick and just a tad long. All he needed was a high collar and some muttonchops.

“Sit,” the Gambler said. He gestured with his head to a chair by the window.

I walked over and sat. The chair rested on thick wooden legs and was upholstered with a leather worn so thin that it threatened to burst like a soap bubble. My heart thumped violently, and my hands shook. I stared up at my boss, having no idea what to expect. I probably should be trying to think of what sorts of things the Gambler might ask so I could come up with good answers, but I couldn’t think clearly. Everything swirled around me in gray eddies.

“You can leave us alone now,” the Gambler said to Bobby.

“Okie.” Bobby bounced on his feet, almost a heel-clicking salute, and then walked out.

The Gambler continued to peer at the paperwork, gazing over his perched glasses. What were they there for if not for reading?

“How have you been, Lem? Everything all right?”

“Terrific,” I said, though I didn’t sound terrific. I sounded like I knew I was in trouble.

“Terrific, huh? I guess we’ll see.” He stared at me until I looked away. “You know, Bobby says you’re a born bookman. A real power hitter. You got that grand slam that fell through a while back, didn’t you?”

“That was me.”

“Shame about it. I mean, you do good work, you should get your reward, right? A more experienced bookman might have seen those guys for deadbeats, but you can’t blame yourself for not knowing what only years on the job can teach you.”

“I guess not.” I hadn’t been blaming myself, and I couldn’t think of what a more experienced bookman might have picked up on. Sure, Galen had lived in a relatively run-down place, but he’d had a pretty nice truck, his wife had some decent jewelry. His friends all looked okay, too. None of them were going to be extras on Knots Landing, but nothing suggested that they were off to the welfare office the next day, either.

“But I’m more concerned about this,” the Gambler said. He now held up a credit app: Karen’s. Not that I could read it from across the room. But I knew what it was. “Bobby tells me you got all the way through and they balked at the check. Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“That shouldn’t happen.”

“I know.”

“You get that far, you should close. You should have been closing the minute you walked through that door. The check should have been a formality, not a deal breaker. You understand what I’m saying?”

The Gambler’s voice remained calm through all of this, but there was an urgency there, too, a kind of growing gravity. And anger, too, maybe.

“I understand what you’re saying. The words, the ideas behind the words. The whole thing.” I had the distinct feeling that I was talking too much, but I didn’t know what he wanted from me, and my mouth switched into ru

“If you understood,” the Gambler answered, “then we wouldn’t be having a talk about this bullshit, would we?” He smiled thinly. “So I want you to tell me what happened with these people. You had them, they filled out the app, they were ready to go, and then what?”