The Ethical Assassin

For want of anyplace else to go to, I asked her to give me a ride to the motel, then I climbed into her car, fully aware that sitting in a cop car, front seat or back, was just about the last place I wanted to be. As we pulled out along the pine-lined road, and I caught a glimpse of Jim Doe’s car hidden behind a few trees, I knew taking the ride had been the smart move.

The cop, Officer Toms according to her badge, decided the silent treatment was the best way to go. She handed me a tissue for my nose, which had already stopped bleeding, but I dabbed at it anyhow because it seemed the polite thing to do. Finally, without turning to look at me- though she might have given me a sidelong glance behind her mirrored sunglasses- she said, “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“What makes you think that?” I tried to keep my voice steady.

“Because you were the victim of an asshole cop’s brutality, and now you’re happy to forget it ever happened. In my experience, only people who are afraid of the law are content to look the other way when a cop steps over the line.”

I shrugged, and then the lies started flowing. I’d never been a saintly paragon of truth, but I wasn’t a habitual liar, either. Still, it was getting to be pretty easy. “I’m scared of the guy. I’d rather he forgot I exist. I’ve got nothing to gain by trying to beat him in some legal contest. All I wanted was to get away from him, which I did thanks to you.”

“What’s he up to, anyhow?”

She had a distant tone in her voice. I knew she wasn’t talking to me, so I didn’t have to tell her that he was up to hiding dead bodies and searching for a whole bunch of money.

“We’ve been trying to get a search warrant on that lot for months,” she told me, “but I think he’s got co

I was about to say something nondescript, like “I wouldn’t know about that,” but I thought better of it. Instead I opted for a Melfordian strategy. “Well, what do you think he’s up to?”

She turned her head, but her eyes were invisible behind the glasses, so her face was illegible to me. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just making conversation with the nice police officer who rescued me.”

“Good for you,” she said.

“Good for me what?”

“Police ‘officer.’ Mostly I get police ‘woman,’ like I’m Angie Dickinson or something.”

“True equality can only be achieved through gender-sensitive language,” I told her.

She glanced at me again. “Right you are.”

I’d never seen a car drive away skeptically before, but that’s how Officer Toms did it. One last dubious glance, and she eased her cruiser away. And there I was, back at the motel. It was a few minutes before two now, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Then a remarkable idea occurred to me. I could sleep. I could go back to my room, sleep for hours, and then wake up in time to hoof it over to the Kwick Stop and claim to have blanked. I could make the tedium of the day disappear, get some sleep, and remain hidden from rednecks, crooked cops, and compassionate assassins. Opportunities like that didn’t come along every day.

I climbed the stairs to my room, already full of sleepy satisfaction. I passed Lajwati Lal, Sameen’s wife. She wheeled her cleaning cart along the balcony, her face impassive, hard, and lined. But she smiled at me when I passed by, giving her a little wave.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Lal,” I said, thinking myself enlightened because I cast a friendly greeting at an immigrant busy toiling over a stranger’s bed.

She nodded agreeably in my direction. “I hope you’re staying out of trouble.”

My stomach flipped. What could she know? “Trouble,” I said, my voice a rasp.

“My husband told me about those very wicked boys,” she said with a sympathetic smile.

I let out my breath. “He was great to help me.”

“Oh, yes. He fancies himself a real hero with his cricket bat,” she said. “But I think he only wanted an excuse to teach those fellows a lesson.”

I asked her to thank him again for me. Once inside my room, I turned up the air conditioner and sat on the edge of the newly made bed. The stillness, the dark of the room with its reddish orange curtains drawn- all of it felt too luxurious for words. I would at last sleep.

After splashing water on my face and rubbing off the last of the blood, I was happy to see I didn’t look like someone who had been beaten up. A little red but nothing more. I lumbered over to the bed and lay down, fully dressed, arms stretched, ready to fall asleep. Then I sat upright. How could I afford to sleep when I was a potential murder suspect? If I were arrested, tried, and convicted and had to spend the rest of my life in jail, I’d spew curses at myself forever for having squandered this time. Time I could have used for… For what, exactly?

For trying to figure out what the hell was going on, I supposed. Melford seemed absorbed by the mystery of the third dead body, but that bothered me less than it did him. I was more troubled by the Gambler’s involvement in all of this. Of course, I knew about the Gambler’s involvement and Melford did not. Best not to think about Melford too much, since for all I knew he was sitting in the back of Jim Doe’s police car with a bloody nose and his hands cuffed tight behind his back.

I, however, was at the motel, and the Gambler was not. It occurred to me that being here at the motel presented a golden opportunity.

I stood up and headed out of my room, very slowly. Down the hall I saw Lajwati’s cleaning cart and no sign of Lajwati herself. I walked slowly along the balcony, trying to look anything but furtive and probably failing miserably. When I got to the cart, I saw that luck was on my side- or perhaps fate was simply setting me up for an even greater tumble. There, hanging on a hook on the side of the cart, were the extra pass keys, the ones Ro

I heard the sound of ru

I went around to the side of the motel to the Gambler’s room. There was no one around and no sign of lights on in the room. To be safe, I knocked and then ducked around the corner to watch. But the door didn’t open. I went back, looked both ways, and stuck the key in the door.

It worked. I’d been half hoping it wouldn’t. If the key had failed me, I could tell myself I’d done my level best but the black bag operation simply wasn’t in the cards. Now I had no choice but to go forward. I sucked in my breath and pushed open the door.

And that was it. I’d broken into the room of a dangerous criminal. I couldn’t imagine having done this twenty-four hours earlier, but twenty-four hours earlier I’d been a different person, living a different life.

I looked around the Gambler’s room. Lajwati had already cleaned here, too, which was good since it meant I didn’t have to worry about her barging in. It also meant that I didn’t have to be paranoid about putting everything back exactly as I found it. Things would have been moved anyhow, giving me the freedom to look around as I pleased.

But what was I looking for? Some clue to who the Gambler really was, why he would be involved in covering up a triple homicide.

His burgundy garment bag was entirely unpacked, but I went through it anyway. Nothing. He had a few shirts and pants hung up and a pile of dirty laundry shoved in the bottom of the closet. I poked at it with my shoe, in case his dirty underwear was meant to disguise something of consequence, but a little shifting around revealed nothing. I went through the drawers, carefully lifting the undershirts, T-shirts, briefs, and socks, but found nothing of interest there, either. Nothing under the newspaper on the nightstand. A whole lot of nothing.