The Ethical Assassin

Toward the middle of the room, one of the pens contained a wooden chair, the sort of thing you might see in an old schoolhouse, the kind that had been standing since the fifties or longer. I had seen such things at my own high school, weird aberrations among the metal-and-plastic hybrids that dominated, alone and out of place like a Neanderthal among Cro-Magnons.

Doe opened the gate and shoved me inside, then latched it closed again with me inside. There was something comical in this. The gate wasn’t four feet high, and it wouldn’t have taken much of an effort to get out, but then it was latched for the pigs. Somehow I was troubled by the indignity of his thinking I required no more safeguards than the pigs.

“All right, then,” he said. “Looks like you ain’t going anywhere for a while, so I figure we can have ourselves a little talk.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. My voice wavered, but under the circumstances I thought I did the tough-guy thing pretty well. There was even a kind of pleasure, a satisfaction, in acting tough, in projecting swagger even while still. I understood now why people did it.

Doe studied me for a moment. “What you probably know, what you probably don’t need me to say, is that I want to know where my money is.”

“I figured that out,” I said.

“I bet you did. So, where is it?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head.

“The thing about pigs,” Doe said, “is that they’ll eat anything. And they love the taste of blood. They just love it. And these here pigs haven’t been fed so good lately, so they’re mighty hungry. If I tied your leg to that there chair and cut it open, those pigs are go

“I never wondered that,” I said.

“I have- wondered what it would be like to watch it happen. I might just find out, too, if I don’t get my money.”

I took a deep breath. “Listen, I don’t really know what’s going on here. I know you had something going on with the Gambler and probably Bastard and the guy in the linen suit-”

“Sounds to me like you know a whole hell of a lot.”

“But that’s about it. And, look. I know that Bastard is dead and the Miami Vice guy is dead. I’m guessing your money is lost or there’s only one person who might have it: the Gambler.”

Doe thought about that for a minute. “It crossed my mind, but he says you told him I was hanging around before Bastard got killed. I think you wanted him to figure I took the money, and that means you’ve been ru

“Listen to me. I don’t have anything to do with this. I’m just trying to make it through this weekend. I have no interest in turning you in or anything like that. Just let me go.”

Doe laughed. “Ain’t no chance of that until I find out what happened to the money. So, tell me this. What was going on with you and Bastard?”

“Me? Nothing. I never met him before I knocked on his door the other night.”

Doe shook his head. “I don’t buy it. There was something with the two of you. And you been asking about him. Even those morons at County think you had something to do with him. You’d still be there if I hadn’t convinced one of Karen’s neighbors to call in and say they were still alive.”

Doe had called. At the time, I had thought it was Melford who’d rescued me, but it was Doe. “Well, gosh. Thanks.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you knew him and had something going with him. Something to do with that missing money. Now, you want to tell me the rest?”

And that was when I realized that all of this was because of Melford. Melford had pla

I’d thought he was my friend for trying to help me get the checkbook back, but Melford was so meticulous, he would have gotten rid of the checkbook after he’d killed his victims. The budding friendship with Desiree now struck me as implausible, too. They’d hit it off immediately, despite the fact that she worked for B. B. Gu

Something shifted inside of me. I was willing to be dignified in the face of adversity when I was the victim of a psycho cop, but not when I was the victim of a double cross. There was no way I was going to let Melford get away with it. Doe might have been disgusting, but Melford, I now saw, was diabolical.

“All right,” I said. “I think I have it figured out. I think I finally understand. There’s this guy, a strange-looking tall guy with white hair named Melford Kean. He set this whole thing up. He killed Bastard and Karen and then took the money, and for the past two days he’s been making it look like I did it. But it was him. The whole time, it had to have been him. Look, I don’t like you, and I don’t want to help you, but this guy has screwed me over, and I’ll help you get him and your money. All you have to do is let me go.”

“So, this guy Melford Kean has the money,” Doe said.

“That’s right.”

“And you’ll help me find him.”

“I will.”

“And when I find him, I’ll get my money?”

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t think it’s that hard to understand.”

“It ain’t hard to understand your words,” Doe said. “Just why I should be expected to believe such a bullshit story.”

“Why can’t you believe it?” I asked, almost pleaded. I was sure I would be able to save myself with this, or at the very least buy some time in which Aimee Toms might save me or I might think of something.

“Mostly,” Doe explained, “because Kean’s been working with me.”

And there he was, walking out of the shadows, gri

“Do you really think I’m strange looking?” Melford asked. “First you tell people I’m gay, and then you tell them I’m fu

And in the dimness of the pig barn, under the flashing vents, he looked more than strange: He looked vampiric. His hair stood out, his face was long and pale, and his eyes were wide- not childlike wide, but insane wide. How had I not noticed it before?

“How could you do this to me?” I cried out. I felt the urge, almost unbearable, to leap up and rush him, but Doe’s gun kept me in place.

“You want me to explain myself to you when you were just about to sell me out? That’s pretty hypocritical, don’t you think? Look, I went to Jim when I realized there was money missing, and he and I have been tracking it since yesterday. And our efforts led us to you. I thought you were clean at first, but then all the evidence pointed to your outsmarting me and getting the money out of the trailer. I think you’d better start talking.”

Melford somehow believed, truly believed, that I had the money. Maybe he thought the encyclopedia business was all bullshit, or maybe he found out that I hadn’t told him about the Gambler. Maybe because he played and manipulated and lied, he thought everyone else did as well, and that my complaints and fears and hesitation had all been in the service of tricking him. And maybe he’d killed Bastard and Karen for no more complicated reason than he wanted money, and now he was willing to kill me to get it, too.