The Ethical Assassin

In the bathroom, I discovered the Gambler used cheap disposable Bic razors, off-brand shaving cream, and Crest. But I discovered little else except that he took three prescription medicines, none of which I’d ever heard of.

This was turning out to be a big bust. But then I saw it, hiding in plain sight. Hell, it was so obvious that it was a miracle I saw it at all. Right in the middle of the glass table toward the back of the room, next to the clean ice bucket with fresh plastic liner. His date book.

It would have everything in there. It was one of those date books that was about as broad as a paperback novel and almost as long. It had a little clasp and pockets on the inside and outside jackets. The pages were disposable, to be replaced each year, and there were too many of them shoved into a small ring, which made it hard to turn them. As I flipped through, I began to see that this wasn’t the gold mine I’d been hoping for, it was a barely legible scribble mine. Each spread of two pages represented one week, and there was an entry for at least one day each week, generally more. The problem was that the entries didn’t mean anything to me. “Bill. 3:00. Pancake.” Somehow this tidbit didn’t exactly clarify things.

Then I noticed that one name appeared over and over again: BB. “Expect BB call PM.” “Get instructions BB.” “BB 9AM De

Bobby had mentioned Gu

Nothing to do now but make a clean getaway and I’d be home free. I parted the curtains slightly and looked out as best I could. The angle left a lot of room for blind spots, but I felt moderately comfortable that I could escape unseen, so I opened the door and stepped into the light and heat.

As it turned out, there had been a pretty serious blind spot. Standing fifteen feet down the balcony, hands in his pockets, was Bobby.

Chapter 23

DESIREE STOOD BY THE PAY PHONE, ru

She hadn’t been following the kid and his friend since the Chinese restaurant. Why bother? It was clear to her she wasn’t going to tell B.B. anything. Aphrodite seemed to like them, she had that feeling from her long-dead twin, and she especially liked the friend, Melford. That just went to show that she and Aphrodite were agreeing on things more often, because Desiree liked him, too. Following them, giving B.B. what he wanted, would feel like a betrayal, and that meant that in the end she was going to have to betray someone.

What Melford had said about sitting by idly, about winking at evil because it was easy to do so- it had felt like he was talking about her. Like he knew about B.B., what he did, what he was likely to do when the pretense of mentoring could no longer keep his desire caged; like he knew how she’d been helping B.B. peddle crank, the same poison that had nearly killed her. Of course, he didn’t know. He was talking about how he wanted to make the world safe for little lambs and piggies, and that was sweet, naïvely sweet. She’d been surrounded by the taint of crime and drugs and human destruction for so long now, the thought of involving herself in something as kind and hapless as helping animals might be just what she needed.

B.B. might not bloody his hands directly, but she knew- and she’d known all along- that his little empire had left more than a little carnage. Lives ruined, pain and suffering and death, all in the service of meth. That he’d been kind to her might make it easier to sympathize, to care, to have feelings, but it didn’t mean that what he did was right or that she ought to help him.

“Hey there, sweetness. I like what you’re wearing.”

Desiree looked over. Standing no more than three feet away was a wide man in his forties, longish beard and hair, jeans, and boots of a biker. He cradled a six-pack of Old Milwaukee under his arm.

“You about done with that phone?” he asked her. “Because I need to call my mama and tell her that I’m in love.”

“Do I look like I’m your private peep show?” Desiree said. Her voice was calm, almost absent.

“Whoa there,” he said, taking only half a step back. He raised one hand defensively and flapped up the other, since the arm was still primarily committed to holding the beer. “Don’t be so uptight, baby. Can’t a man tell you he thinks you’re pretty?”

She was out of the booth and facing him, her switchblade out, the blade extended, before she even had time to think about it. “No,” she said. “He can’t.”

“Jesus. All right.” He took another couple of steps back and gave a half shrug to tell anyone who might have witnessed the exchange that it didn’t bother him.

Desiree watched to make sure he was gone. Then she picked up the phone and started to dial the motel. She hung up before it rang. The time had come to sever ties with B.B.- now, not some point in the near future. She’d been guilty and complicit too long.

That’s what their fight last month, over the boy at the roadside, had really been about. She’d been asked to draw a line. For as long as she’d been with him, there had been a line somewhere on the horizon, and now she’d come to it, stood over it. And once you get there, she thought, you can see what’s on the other side, and you can see what you’ve left so far behind that it’s lost in the blur.

No more. She had hardly exchanged more than a few sentences with him, but she was sure that Melford had come to tell her that. Things happened for a reason, accidents were part of the order of things, coincidence a manifestation of cosmic design. It was time to move on, and maybe, she thought, to make up for her mistakes, too. There had to be balance in the universe. She’d done harm, and now she had to do good. But what, exactly? Hurt B.B.’s business, slow down his crank trade? That didn’t feel right. B.B. was what he was, and he’d helped her. She would have to find something else. She would figure it out. Or maybe she could get some help.

For the second time that day, B.B. picked up the phone with his heart pounding. In his mind he’d always imagined having a hand in the Gambler’s destruction, but in the end he would almost certainly have to skip that. Why not turn things over to the mechanisms so readily available?