Swimsuit

Chapter 69

Amanda opened the door, and I grabbed her, kicked the door closed behind me, and held her tight.

“What is it, Ben? What happened? Please tell me what's going on.”

She freed herself from my arms, grabbed my shoulders, and inventoried my face.

“Your collar is bloody. You're bleeding. Ben, were you mugged?”

I threw the bolts on Amanda's front door, put my hand at her back, and walked her to the small living room. I sat her down in the easy chair, took the rocker a few feet away.

“Start talking, okay?”

I didn't know how to soften it, so I just told it plain and simple. “A guy came to my door with a gun. Said he's a contract killer.”

“What?”

“He led me to believe that he killed all those people in Hawaii. Remember when I asked you to help me find Charlie Rollins from Talk Weekly magazine?”

“The Charlie Rollins who was the last one to see Julia Winkler? That's who came to see you?”

I told Amanda about Henri's other names and disguises, how I had met him not only as Rollins, but that he'd also masqueraded as the McDanielses' driver, calling himself Marco Benevenuto.

I told her that he'd been sitting on my couch and pointing a gun, telling me that he was a professional assassin for hire and had killed many, many times.

“He wants me to write his autobiography. Wants Raven-Wofford to publish it.”

“This is unbelievable,” Amanda said.

“I know.”

“No, I mean, it's really unbelievable. Who would confess to murders like that? You've got to call the police, Ben,” she said. “You know that, don't you?”

“He warned me not to.”

I handed Mandy the packet of pictures and watched the disbelief on her face change to shock and then anger.

“Okay, the bastard has a zoom lens,” she said, her mouth clamped into a straight line. “He took some pictures. Proves nothing.”

I took the flash drive out of my pocket, dangled it by the cord. “He gave me this. Said it's a sales tool and that it will inspire me.”

Chapter 70

Amanda left the living room, then came back with her laptop under her arm and holding two glasses and a bottle of Pinot. She booted up while I poured, and when her laptop was humming, I inserted Henri's flash drive into the port.

A video started to roll.

For the next minute and a half, Amanda and I were in the grip of the most horrific and obscene images either of us had ever seen. Amanda clutched my arm so hard that she left bruises, and when it was finally over she threw herself back into the chair, tears flowing, sobbing.

“Oh, my God, Amanda, what an ass I am. I'm so sorry. I should have looked at it first.”

“You couldn't have known. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.”

“That goes for me, too.”

I put the media card into my back pocket and went down the hall to the bathroom, sluiced cold water over my face and the back of my scalp. When I looked up, Amanda was standing in the doorway. She said, “Take it all off.”

She helped me with my bloody shirt, undressed herself, and turned on the shower. I got into the tub and she got in behind me, put her arms around me as the hot water beat down on us both.

“Go to New York and talk to Zagami,” she said. “Do what Henri says. Zagami can't turn this down.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. The thing to do is keep Henri happy while we figure out what to do.”

I turned to face her. “I'm not leaving you here alone.”

“I can take care of myself. I know, I know, famous last words. But really, I can.”

Mandy got out of the shower and disappeared for long enough that I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a bath towel, and went looking for her.

I found her in the bedroom, on her tiptoes, reaching up to the top shelf of her closet. She pulled down a shotgun and showed it to me.

I looked at her stupidly.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know how to use it.”

“And you're going to carry it around with you in your purse?”

I took her shotgun and put it under the bed.

Then I used her phone.

I didn't call the cops, because I knew that they couldn't protect us. I had no fingerprint evidence, and my description of Henri would be useless. Six foot, brown hair, gray eyes, could be anyone.

After the cops watched my place and Mandy's for a week or so, we'd be on our own again, vulnerable to a sniper's bullet – or whatever Henri would or could use to silence us.

I saw him in my mind, crouched behind a car, or standing behind me at Starbucks, or watching Amanda's apartment through a gun sight.

Mandy was right. We needed time to make a plan. If I worked with Henri, if he got comfortable with me, maybe he'd slip, give me convictable evidence, something the cops or the Feds could use to lock him up.

I left a voice-mail message for Leonard Zagami, saying it was urgent that we meet. Then I booked tickets for me and Mandy, round trip, Los Angeles to New York.

Chapter 71

When Leonard Zagami took me on as one of his authors, I was twenty-five, he was forty, and Raven House was a high-class specialty press that put out a couple dozen books a year. Since then, Raven had merged with the gigantic Wofford Publishing, and the new Raven-Wofford had taken over the top six floors of a skyscraper overlooking Bloomingdale's.

Leonard Zagami had moved up as well. He was now the CEO and president, the crcme de la cheese, and the new house brought out two hundred books a year.

Like their competition, the bulk of RW's list either lost money or broke even, but three authors – and I wasn't one of them – brought in more revenue than the other 197 combined.

Leonard Zagami didn't see me as a moneymaker anymore, but he liked me and it cost him nothing to keep me on board. I hoped that after our meeting he'd see me another way, that he'd hear cash registers ringing from Bangor to Yakima.

And that Henri would remove his death threat.

I had my pitch ready when I arrived in RW's spiffy modern waiting room at nine. At noon, Leonard's assistant came across the jaguar-print carpet to say that Mr. Zagami had fifteen minutes for me, to please follow her.

When I crossed his threshold, Leonard got to his feet, shook my hand, patted my back, and told me it was good to see me but that I looked like crap.

I thanked him, told him I'd aged a couple of years while waiting for our nine o'clock meeting.

Len laughed, apologized, said he'd done his best to squeeze me in, and offered me a chair across from his desk. At five feet six, almost child-sized behind the huge desk, Leonard Zagami still radiated power and a no-bullshit ca

I took my seat.

“What's this book about, Ben? When last we spoke, you had nothing cooking.”

“Have you been following the Kim McDaniels case?”

“The Sporting Life model? Sure. She and some other people were killed in Hawaii a few? Hey. You were covering that story? Oh. I see.”

“I was very close to some of the victims -”

“Look, Ben,” Zagami interrupted me. “Until the killer is caught, this is still tabloid fodder. It's not a book, not yet.”

“It's not what you're thinking, Len. This is a first-person tell-all.”

“Who's the first person? You?”

I made my pitch like my life depended on it.

“The killer approached me incognito,” I said. “He's a very cool and clever maniac who wants to do a book about the murders, and he wants me to write it. He won't reveal his identity, but he'll tell how he did the killings and why.”

I expected Zagami to say something, but his expression was flat. I crossed my arms over his leather-topped desk, made sure my old friend was looking me in the eyes.

“Len, did you hear me? This guy could be the most-wanted man in America. He's smart. He's at liberty. And he kills with his hands. He says he wants me to write about what he's done because he wants the money and the notoriety. Yeah. He wants some kind of credit for a job well done. And if I won't write the book, he'll kill me. Might kill Amanda, too.