The Ethical Assassin

I hadn’t wanted to see it before, but there it was. It was ideology. The one thing about which Melford hadn’t lied. We see what we think is there, not the truth. Never the truth.

“This is bullshit,” I said with a kind of indignation I didn’t know I could summon. But it was bullshit. That was the thing. It was unadulterated, cosmic bullshit.

Doe studied me for a moment and then turned to Melford. “You come to me. You tell me you can hook me up. Now I better not find out that you’ve been fucking with me.”

“I’d never fuck with you, Jim.”

“Don’t sweet-talk me, asshole.”

“Then how about this? I want my cut, so I’ve got no reason to fuck with you.”

“You sure he’s got it?”

“Can’t be sure of anything in this crazy world. Some people think the lunar landing was a hoax. Of course, that wasn’t really in this world.” He paused and observed Doe’s expression. “I’m pretty sure he’s got it.”

“Okay,” Doe said. “Let’s take it outside.”

“What happened to feeding him to the pigs?” Melford asked.

“I have a better idea.”

With the glare of the sun in my eyes, they marched me toward the waste lagoon. I could barely breathe for the fear and the stench, and I thought that I did not want to die with the smell of shit in my nostrils. I didn’t want to die at all, but I knew that as options tightened, goals grew more meager.

I knew Doe and the gun were maybe ten feet behind me, I could hear him walking with his wide, awkward gait. Melford was between the two of us, I suspect because whatever deal he and Doe had struck, there was no trust there.

Doe told me to stop at the lagoon’s edge, where the stakes in the dry earth marked the perimeter and the flies buzzed a greedy, manic hum. A single black mangrove tree, its roots gnarling into the pond, provided a modicum of shade.

Doe told me to turn around. The two men stood next to each other, but only for an instant. Doe gestured at Melford with his gun. “Go stand over there a little ways. I want to be able to keep my eye on you.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Fucking shit, no. I’ll trust you when I got my money and I never hear from you again. Until then, I figure you’re about to double-cross me. That’s how you survive in this game.”

“Does that mean I should figure you’re about to double-cross me as well?” he asked.

“Just stand on over there and stop pissing me off.”

“Always good advice when talking to an armed man at the shore of a waste lagoon,” Melford said. He took a few long strides over toward where Doe had been gesturing, so now he was the third point of an equilateral triangle. Doe probably figured he could keep an eye on Melford from there, but not shoot him accidentally if he needed to fire at me. Something like that.

I tried to resist making eye contact with Melford. The powerless rage I felt at that moment was so great that I couldn’t endure looking at the source of those feelings. I had broken into a criminal’s hotel room, I had gone snooping around Jim Doe’s backyard, I’d been in a raid on an animal test facility, I’d faced Ro

Despite my wishes, I made eye contact anyhow. A flash of something impish crossed his face. And he winked at me and with one finger pointed toward the ground.

I felt the thrill of exaltation. A sign, though an unclear one. The wink I understood- a universal sign, after all. But what did the ground mean? What did any of it mean? Had Melford screwed me over or not? If he hadn’t, what was I doing here? What was he pla

“How you like that shithole?” Doe asked me.

“Compared to other shitholes, or compared to, I don’t know, an orange grove?”

“You think you’re mighty tough, don’t you?”

I had to stifle the urge to laugh. Doe was buying the tough thing. That was something. Not much, but something. “I’m trying to make the best of a difficult situation,” I said.

Melford cocked his head slightly. The impish look, the winking companion, was gone. He looked like a bird studying human commotion from a distance, studying it with an amalgamation of curiosity and obliviousness. In the sunlight, he looked slightly less hellish than he’d appeared in the pig shed, but only slightly. Now he was only cadaverous and mean.

“I always wanted to see someone drown in a pool of shit,” Doe said. “Ever since I was a little kid.”

“You also wanted to see someone get eaten by pigs. I guess life is all about making choices.”

“It looks to me like I’m going to get at least one wish. Now, before we even start negotiating, I want you to step on in there. Wade in until you’re about waist deep. Waist deep in the waste.” He laughed at that.

I looked at the lagoon. I wanted to stay alive, unpunctured by bullets, but there was no way I was going in there. No way. Besides, once I did, I was nothing more than the walking dead. I’d never be able to escape. I had to get away, but if I did that now, I’d be dead in seconds. The determination to die on the run faded like a drop of food coloring in a still lake. I would go along with what they asked. I would stall for what time I could get, and each second I would hope for something, some miracle, maybe in the form of a county police car or a helicopter or an explosion or something.

“Come on,” Doe said. “Move.”

“Wait a second,” Melford interjected. “Let’s give him a chance to answer some questions first.”

Doe whipped around to look at Melford. For an instant, I thought fists would fly. “You getting soft on me?” He narrowed his eyes, daring Melford to piss him off.

“It’s not my softness you want to worry about,” Melford explained, “it’s the bottom of the lagoon. It’s all settled shit in there, and there’s not going to be a solid bottom. It could suck him in before we know what happens, and then we get no answers. No answers, no money.”

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” He gestured toward me with the gun. “Now get the fuck in there. I wa

“But that’s exactly why I shouldn’t go in there,” I said, making a lame stab at deploying my sales technique. Doe only looked back at me with disgust.

I looked at the waste lagoon, seething and clotted, as devoid of life and light as a black hole. I needed to go to Columbia, I needed to have sex with Chitra, I needed to live outside of Florida. I couldn’t die in a pool of pig excrement; it was too pathetic. Yet the only way I could think of was a tactic from the book of a third-grade prankster. It was absurdly stupid, but it was all I had, so I took a crack at it.

“Thank God,” I said, pointing to behind Doe. “It’s the county cops.”

Doe spun his neck around, studied the emptiness. I didn’t have time to turn to see what Melford was doing because I was already charging Doe. I had no idea what I was going to do even if my charge was successful. If I managed to knock Doe down and took his gun, I’d still have Melford to deal with. I would face Melford, I decided, when I had to face Melford. I’d have to get that far.

I guessed I was ten long strides from Doe, and I had covered two of them before Doe realized how idiotically he’d been duped. He turned and looked at me. He began to draw his pistol.

At three steps he was raising it. I was going to be shot. I wouldn’t even be halfway toward tackling him before I was gu