12
August was sitting on the stoop at my apartment building when I got home.
“I’m in trouble,” I said. “Are you?” I sounded like a fifth grader caught skipping school.
He looked out onto the street like he was back home surveying the windswept plains. “From what I heard, it didn’t happen.”
“Howell is, if nothing else, consistent.”
“I think you’re lucky you’re not dead. You owe Howell big-time.”
“I am never going to be in that man’s debt.”
“Plus, I didn’t know what you were up to,” he said with a shrug. “Can I have a beer?”
“You could have gotten a beer at the bar.”
“I’m tired of hearing Ollie’s opinions,” August said.
“Sure.” We walked up to my apartment. It was bare, furnished only with the secondhand stuff the Company had bought before I moved in. I opened the fridge and handed him a cold Heineken.
“You can’t run, Sam,” he said, popping the little keg-shaped can.
“You should have told me that this morning,” I said.
“Your stunt set off a wildfire here. Some people wanted you put back into jail. Others took it as a clear sign that you were dirty. Howell fought for you. I thought you should know. You have one other friend than me, and that’s Howell.”
“What is Novem Soles? Howell asked me about it. It connects to Lucy somehow and the London bombing.”
“Never heard of it. And you shouldn’t be asking questions. Not today, when you’re lucky to be out of a noose.”
“Maybe this is the group that has her. I want you to see what you can find about it. Please.”
“You know I can’t share any classified stuff with you.”
“Then why are you here, August? A free beer?”
His cheeks reddened. “I am here to give you a warning,” he said. “You’re a horrible embarrassment, Sam. The cover-up that was involved in London to keep from the press that it was a CIA front that was bombed was enormous. Nearly two dozen people dead; we’re lucky it wasn’t worse. The British are furious and they’d just as soon kill you if you set foot back on their soil. And for the few that think you might be telling the truth, no one’s taking a bullet for you. I’m telling you, watch your back. Higher-ups who normally get their way have argued for you to be terminated. A hungry soul’s bound to pick up on the sentiment and will figure they might get a promotion if you conveniently disappear or die, Howell using you as bait and Howell’s defense of you be damned.”
“Has the order been issued?”
“It won’t be an order. Nothing written. Just a wish made and a wish granted. Like King Henry talking about Thomas Becket: ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ ” He finished his beer. “Watch your back, turbulent.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He pulled two phones out of his pocket, handed one to me. “Here. Only you have this number. If someone comes after you-call me. I’ll help you.”
My only friend. I didn’t want him to see the heavy swallow in my throat. “Thank you, August.”
I watched him leave, and then I went to bed. I think best in bed. I cleared my mind by paging through the thick bar book Ollie had loaned me. Every success in life was like a cocktaiclass="underline" a careful blending of elements in exact proportions, done in correct order.
I put the bar book down and I lay watching the ceiling, hatching a plan.
13
I awoke to the barest sound. I didn’t move. It was a footstep and then the slightest click of a door closing.
I was bait, and someone was hooked.
I could lay still. I could get up and see who it was. I could wait for one of Howell’s rookies to crash in the door and save my ass. But Howell, for all his warm words to me, didn’t need me alive after the bait was taken. If this was someone from the scarred man, he could dispatch me and the watchers could catch him later. I wasn’t sure the shadows were even listening to me since I’d tossed them their bugs.
Or maybe it was someone like August had said, ridding the Company of their great embarrassment.
I listened for the next footfall. Didn’t hear it. I got up from the bed with enormous care, scooted the pillow where I should be, moved on cat feet to the corner of the room behind the door.
I heard nothing else. Maybe I had dreamed the footfall. I stood in the darkness and a crazy thought wormed its way into my head: It’s Lucy, come home, finally she’s gotten away and she’s found me. It was lunacy to think it, but I did.
The air conditioner kicked on. The soft, somnolent hum masked the intruder’s movements. I had no weapons. Nothing. I waited.
I expected the intruder to kick in the door and lay a round of fire into the bed.
Didn’t happen.
Slowly-as slowly as a door opens in a nightmare that floods you with dread-the door opened. The hinges moved in silence. I waited.
No convenient glow of moonlight lit the stage for killer or victim; the dark in my bedroom was nearly total.
Then a tiny flash of light sparked, seeking the bed. A snap of silenced bullet hitting the mattress.
I slammed the door into the intruder. Hard. I heard him fall back onto the floor and in the thin gleam of light from the den window he swiveled the gun toward me. I powered my foot into his wrist and the bullet skimmed along the expensive hardwood. I kicked the gun loose, then away.
The intruder stayed as silent as his gun. No yell, no cry out. He was taller than me, and I felt hard muscle power into my chest as he drove me back into the bedroom. We landed on the bed and he, with crisp efficiency, yanked a length of sheet around my throat. I hardly heard his breathing increase in heaviness from the exertion.
He started strangling me and I seized the pillow and pressed it hard into his face. Silent standoff as the oxygen deprivation kicked in for both of us. The darkness deepened. I let go of the pillow and he tightened the sheet around me with a renewed vigor. I pile-drove fists hard and sharp into rib cage. Harder. Sixth blow I felt bone crack, and the intruder gasped and eased on the strangulation. I was sick and dizzy, struggling to breathe, but I launched myself free of the sheets and aimed a shattering kick into his face.
The intruder fell off the bed and I grabbed at the lamp. I missed, and my hand closed on the bartender’s book Ollie had given me. I slammed its five-hundred-page hardcover spine hard against the intruder’s throat and pressed downward as he struggled on the floor. He tried to kick me loose, but now I had breath and I had fury; there is a primal flutter about killing someone who comes into your house intending you harm. Awful atavistic shudders; I could feel waves of energy pouring from the ganglia at the base of my spine, that ancient seat of instinct. I gritted my teeth.
Harder. His struggles grew more frantic. I put all my weight onto the bartender’s book. I pressed my knees against him. I wanted him unconscious so he could wake up bound and answer my questions. But then I felt his windpipe break and the crack sent a sick tremble up my arms.
The kicking stopped and I yanked the book off him. The intruder said his first words, just a gurgle of breath. Maybe he called for his mama; maybe he called me a bad name; maybe he cursed whatever boss sent him to his death.
I expected Howell’s rookies to crash in if they’d eavesdropped on murder but no, no one was coming. They hadn’t put in replacement listening devices. I went and stood in the corner on my bedroom and looked at the splayed body and considered the problem. After a few moments my head was clear.
I had a dead body in my apartment. I dragged him into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the light. I eased him into the bathtub; easier to clean. Dead bodies release stuff.
I had never killed a man before. Ever. The body count on my jobs had been, well, zero. I fooled people into telling me things and then I left them. I did not kill them. I never had need.