"While you're at it," Patrick said, "figure on a lot of money for me, too."
"You'll get it, and part will be for protecting me. You are not to mention my name to whoever you hire. Don't even hint of my involvement at any time, to anyone. AISO, the fewer details I know, the better except I must be told a date at least two weeks ahead."
"So you can have an alibi?"
Cynthia nodded. "So I can be three thousand miles away."
3
"Take however long you need," Cynthia had told Patrick Jensen. But it was almost four years certainly longer than Cynthia had intended before the irrevocable steps were taken.
The intervening time passed quickly, however particularly for Cynthia, who was climbing the promotion ladder at the Miami Police Department with exceptional speed. Yet neither Cynthia's successes nor the passage of time tempered the hatred she felt toward her parents. Nor did it diminish her need for revenge. From time to time she reminded Jensen of his commitment to her, which he acknowledged, insisting that he was still looking for the right guy someone resourceful, ruthless, brutal, and dependable. He had not, so far, appeared.
At times, in Jensen's mind, the whole concept seemed eerie and unreal. As a novelist he had often written about criminals, but all of it was abstract no more than words on a computer screen. The true darkness of crime, as he saw it then, was in a world that belonged to others a whole different brand of people. Yet now he had become one of them. Through a single crazy act he had committed a capital crime and, in that instant, his formerly law abiding life was gone. Did others enter the underworld in that same headlong, unplanned way? He supposed many did.
As time passed, he sometimes asked himself, What have you become, Patrick Jensen? And answered objectively, Whatever it is, you've gone too far; there can be no turning back.. . Virtue's a luxury you can't afford anymore . . . There was once a time for conscience, but that time has gone . . . If someone ever discovers and discloses what you've done, nothing nothing at all will be forgotten or forgiven . . . So survival is all that matters survival at any cost. . . even at the cost of other lives. . .
All the same, Jensen was still haunted by that sense of unreality.
In contrast, he was sure, Cynthia had no such illusions. She possessed an inflexibility that never abandoned a target. He had seen that trait at work, knew that because of it he would not escape his mission as Cynthia Ernst's surrogate executioner, and that if he failed her, she would keep her promise and destroy him.
In essence, Jensen came to realize, he was no longer the same person he had once been. Instead he had become a self-protective, ruthless stranger.
* * *
Despite the delay in her primary objective, Cynthia had taken care of a secondary one by using her senior rank, plus some biased research and use of old records, to thwart Malcolm Ainslie's promotion to lieutenant. Her motives were clear enough, even to Cynthia. After a childhood of what amounted to complete and utter rejection, she was determined that no one no one would ever reject her again. But Malcolm had, and for that, she would never forget, never forgive. Eventually, after the long delay in her final reckoning with Gustav and Eleanor Ernst, Cynthia decided she had waited long enough. She conveyed her impatience to Patrick during a weekend in Nassau, Bahamas, where again they were registered at separate hotels, Cynthia at the luxurious Paradise Island Ocean Club.
After a long and satisfying morning of sex, Cynthia suddenly sat up in her bed. "You've had more than enough time. I want some action, or I'll take some." She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "And trust me, sweetheart, you won't like the kind of action I have in mind."
"I know." Jensen had been expecting this kind of ultimatum for some time and asked, "How long do I have?"
"Three months."
"Make it six."
"Four, beginning tomorrow."
He sighed, knowing that she meant it, aware also that for reasons of his own the time had come.
* * *
Jensen had produced one more book, which, like the two preceding it, was a failure compared with his earlier bestsellers. As a result, the publishers' advances Patrick received for all three books, which he had spent long ago, were not earned out and no more royalty payments were forthcoming. The next step was predictable. His American publishing house, which during his successful years paid him handsome advances against books not yet written, declined to do so anymore, insisting instead that he submit a finished manuscript before any contract was signed and money changed hands.
This left Jensen in a desperate situation. During the preceding few years he had not moderated his expensive living habits, and not only were his current assets nil, but he was deeply in debt. Thus the possibility of receiving two hundred thousand Dollars to hire a killer of which Jensen intended to keep half, plus a similar sum he envisaged for his own services was now urgent and attractive.
Through a series of coincidences, he moved closer to finding his man. These coincidences, initially unconnected to Patrick, involved the police, a group of disabled veterans from Vietnam and the Gulf War, and drugs. The vets, who had suffered wartime wounds that confined them to wheelchairs, were once mired in a postwar life of drugs, but had kicked the habit and were now anti-drug crusaders. In the uneasy, mixed-race area where they lived between Grand Avenue and Bird Road in Coconut Grove they had declared a private war on those who sold drugs and helped ruin the lives of so many, especially young people. The group's members were aware that others in their community were trying to fight drugs and traffickers, but mostly not succeeding. However, the vets in wheelchairs were succeeding and, in their special way, had become vigilantes and undercover police informers.
Paradoxically, their leader and inspirer was neither a military veteran nor a reformed drug user, but a former athlete and scholar. Stewart Rice, age twenty-three, sometimes known as Stewie, had suffered a fall four years earlier while climbing a sheer mountain face, leaving him permanently paralyzed below the waist and confined to a wheelchair. He, too, felt strongly about young people and drugs, and his alliance with the vets resulted from shared opinions and the camaraderie that people in wheelchairs feel instinctively for each other.
As Rice expressed it to newcomers to the group, which had begun with three Vietnam vets and expanded to a dozen, "Young people, kids, with whole bodies and active lives, are being destroyed by the drug scum who should be in jail. And we're helping put them there."
The wheelchair group's modus operandi was to collect information about who was dealing, where, when, how often, and when new supplies were expected, then pass all that information anonymously to the Police Department's anti-drug task force.
Rice again, speaking with a trusted friend: "Those of us in chairs can move around where the drug action is, and hardly anyone takes notice. If they think about us at all, they figure we're panhandling, like all those guys on Bird Road. They believe that because our legs are paralyzed or our arms don't work, we're that way, too, in our heads especially the druggies and dealers who've destroyed the few brain cells they once had."
At the police end, anti-drug task force members were skeptical when the informational phone calls began calls Rice always made himself, using a cellular phone to avoid tracing. Immediately after a tip-off, whoever answered would demand the caller's identification, but "Stewie" was the only name Rice gave before hanging up quickly. But soon, after discovering the information was usable and dependable, a call beginning, "This is Stewie," was greeted by, "Hi, buddy! What you got for us?" No tracing was attempted. Why spoil a good thing?