Kill Me (27 page)

FIFTY-TWO

She was still asleep just before eight the next morning.

I’d been awake for almost an hour and had already walked over to Pearl Street where I picked up some takeout food for breakfast, a few newspapers, and most important, some organic berries, and a large quantity of coffee.

The tiny kitchen in my friend’s flat faced east and the morning light was brash and brilliant. In some soft, ironic homage to my aneurysm and to hyper-spiritual Boulder, I made a conscious effort to try to let the morning rays invigorate me and heal me in ways that had nothing to do with an infusion of vitamin D. Just in case that didn’t work, I guzzled coffee and forced myself to eat spoonfuls of yogurt that I didn’t really want. I also took a handful of pills that my various doctors had prescribed.

Headaches had become a constant companion, but my nausea was under control for the moment. That was good. I knew I couldn’t count on the respite for long, but I was grateful for it while it lasted.

I had arranged my growing collection of mobile phones — by then numbering three; Lizzie hadn’t asked for hers back — into a triangle on the counter in front of me after I’d methodically set them all to vibrate.

The headlines of the local papers, along with a good proportion of their front pages, were focused on another apparent attack by the sniper who authorities feared was targeting travelers on Colorado’s main route into the mountains. This second shooting appeared to have been as random as the first. A twenty-eight-year-old woman, the mother of two, had been standing, or crouching, outside her car examining a flat tire on her Chrysler minivan at dusk on the eastbound shoulder of I-70 just west of Genesee.

The location was familiar to anyone who made the drive from the urban communities along the Front Range into the Rocky Mountains. I-70 was the primary pathway to skiing, to hiking, to fishing. The section of the highway near Genesee was bordered on both sides of the interstate by woods. The steep, tree-lined slopes offered a hundred places for a resourceful sniper to set up a secret blind.

The story in the paper was full of details. The slug had caught the victim in the neck, just under the chin. She’d died instantly. Although a few local residents reported to the investigators that they’d heard the retort of the shot echoing off the cliffs, no witnesses had come forward to point the authorities to any particular location in the narrow valley.

At press time, the cops still hadn’t determined where the shot had originated, though they were focusing their efforts on the south side of the road.

I made a mental note to talk with Thea about her plans for driving between Ridgway and Denver.

As I dug into the sports section of
The Denver Post,
one of the cell phones, the “Ob-la-di,” began to dance around on the granite counter, announcing, “It’s me, it’s me!” Next to it, I noticed the red light on my BlackBerry was flashing. I had an e-mail.

The caller ID screen identified the caller on the
“Ob-la-di”
phone: Mary. That was good. I wasn’t prepared to talk with Thea right then.

“Hi, boss,” Mary said.

Her voice was cool and unenthusiastic. Something else, too. The “something else” made me wary. “What’s up?” I asked. While I spoke, I thumbed the trackwheel to bring up the e-mail on the BlackBerry. The message was nothing but a Web link. I clicked on it. Something from Google News.

Slowly, the page started to load.

Mary said, “I just got a strange call from … you know, that … person we know with the old BMW bike. You with me?”

What? Why is she talking like this about her cousin?
Something had to be wrong. Seriously wrong.

“Yes, I’m with you.”

“Well, that person was just watching the local news thing on cable in the city. You’ve seen it?”

“I know what it is.”

TAXI DRIVER EXECUTED read the headline that was emerging on my BlackBerry.

My eyes were riveted on the device in my left hand. Mary continued to speak into my ear. “Turns out that a cabdriver was murdered last night near the Hudson River up around 151st Street. It’s in West Harlem, an industrial area, the place Columbia’s considering for its second campus.”

The details she provided about the neighborhood were Mary’s police background talking. I said, “Okay.” While I was listening to her I was simultaneously reading the same story on my BlackBerry, so I was prepared to hear what she said next.

“The cops are calling his killing an execution, not a robbery. Single shot to the head, and they found a fat wad of bills still in his pocket. No attempt to hide his body. You had told me yesterday about that cabbie who was so nice to you, and I …”

The fat wad of bills probably included two hundreds and a fifty with my fingerprints on them.
The news Mary was imparting was monumental, of course, but I felt calm.
Maybe too calm,
I thought.

“Did they give a name for the man who was killed?” The moment I asked Mary the question, the screen on the BlackBerry revealed Dmitri’s long Ukrainian last name.
God.

“The vic’s first name is the same first name as the name of the driver in the story you told me on the plane.”

I tried to digest Dmitri’s tragedy for a moment and tried to understand what might have happened to him.

The concierge at the Four Seasons — Jennifer, so-eager-to-assist-me, Morgan — knew the cabbie’s name and his cab number. How did she know? I’d told her. The doorman who handled the luggage exchange at the curb undoubtedly knew all about Dmitri, too. Anybody who had been watching my things being loaded into his cab from the sidewalk on 58th Street would have been able to see the cab number displayed so boldly on the ornament on top of his taxi.

Dmitri could have been followed from that point on. Easily. First, back to the deli where I was waiting for him. Then over the bridge to Brooklyn to see where he’d dropped me off.

From there, if they’d wanted to, they could have followed me on foot over to Julio’s bodega.

But why would they kill him if they’d followed him and knew precisely where he’d gone?

Why kill him if they did indeed trail me all the way to the bodega?

There was only one conclusion:
They must not have followed Dmitri from the hotel.

No, they must have found Dmitri by backtracking. They’d used the information I’d provided to the concierge to track Dmitri down later so they could find out exactly where he’d taken the luggage, whether he’d reconnected with me, and if he had, where precisely he’d taken me next.

Why?

The night before, even before Lizzie’s arrival, the Death Angels knew I was back in Colorado. The only conclusion that made any sense was that they had decided to talk to Dmitri because they were trying to discover the identity of anyone who might be part of my support network in New York.

I had to assume that Dmitri would have told them everything. In his shoes, I certainly would have.

Then, to cover their tracks, the Death Angels had killed him. They’d made certain his body would be discovered. They had then sent me the e-mail announcing their work. Why?

They wanted me to know what they had done.

I said, “You know what you have to do next, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“Spare no expenses. None. Security comes first, for everyone you think might need it. Everyone. Err on the side of caution. All expenses will be reimbursed, but given the circumstances I don’t think you should use …”

“Whose security comes first?” Lizzie asked from behind me.

I covered the microphone. “It’s a business thing. Can you give me a second?” I faked a smile.

She said, “Of course.” But she looked offended.

She also looked sexy as hell. Her hair was flying every which way, her eyes were much brighter and clearer than they’d been the night before, and she was wrapped in the duvet that we’d slept under.

Yes, slept. We’d just slept.

She was holding three of the four corners of the duvet together under her chin. The skin on her exposed arms and shoulders was the shade of pale pink that illuminates the lowest clouds on the eastern horizon during those special sunrises that happen only one morning in a thousand.

I waited until she’d retreated back into the bedroom and had closed the door behind her.

“I understand,” Mary said, either ignoring the interruption or assuming I wouldn’t tell her anything about it. “Will you need it yourself?”

She meant the plane. “Maybe, if I get word about Adam. But there’s no … no news yet. I’ll let you know. Take care of the other thing first. That’s your priority, okay? Family.”

“Yeah. Family.”

Was there sarcasm in her “Yeah”? Or irony? I couldn’t tell.

She killed the call.

FIFTY-THREE

I stepped into the bedroom and leaned against the wall near the bathroom door. The drapes were still drawn from the night before and the room was dark and chilly. Lizzie was curled up on the bed, facing away from me, the duvet wrapping her as though she were the sliced apples inside a crepe. She didn’t look toward me when she said, “If you want this to turn out for the best — for you, for Adam — you’re going to have to trust me. I know that’s not easy for you, but I’m not sure you have a choice.”

I’d already decided to tell her what had happened to Dmitri. I’d start the trust thing there. “A cabdriver helped me get out of the city yesterday. He was a good guy. Last night, he was murdered up in West Harlem. Your friends sent me the news in an e-mail. A fucking e-mail.”

My words tasted bitter from the guilt and anger I was feeling. My tone, I’m sure, conveyed any bitterness that my words lacked.

After a long pause she sighed deeply, as though the air in her lungs was toxic and she had to expel every last molecule before she could continue. There was no surprise, no dismay, in her manner when she spoke.

“Look, I’m sorry. I am. But you need to get some distance. Step back. It’s a message,” she said. “That’s all.”

I raised my voice, and the intensity I forced into it shocked me. “That’s all? A message? Jesus Christ. He was a nice man, a generous man. He helped me. He trusted me. He was kind to me when I puked in the goddamn gutter. He was an immigrant trying to make a life for his family. A fucking message? The poor guy was brutally murdered.”

She didn’t buy into my intensity. In a voice that a teacher might have used to explain long division to an arithmetically challenged pupil, she said, “He wasn’t murdered. He was executed. The difference is significant. They’re telling you not to seek any help. Not to spread suspicion or alarm. They’re announcing the consequences if you do.”

“What?” I was shocked. I should have been beyond shock, but I wasn’t.

I was shocked.

“They’re making it clear that the end is coming. For you. They’re asking you not to hinder their work. Not to interfere. Not to risk others. Not to force them to risk others.”

“They killed an innocent man to make a point?”

“They tried to make the point in a more civil manner. You ignored them.”

“So they killed an innocent man?”

“His innocence was gone the moment you asked for his help.” She rolled over in my direction. Her eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them. “I told you last night: We … kill … people. You —
you
— hired an organization that kills people. Yes?” I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. “Well, you did. Killing is one of the things we do. It’s our business. Don’t act so surprised when we do exactly — exactly — what we advertised that we’re going to do. Don’t act so surprised when we do exactly — exactly — what you hired us to do. That kind of naïveté is a luxury you absolutely can’t afford right now.”

“Innocent people, too?”

“Innocent people die every day.”

“Not on my dime.”

“Really? Tell that to the people in Baghdad, or Kabul, or Fallujah, or Gaza. Abu Ghraib ring a bell? What about Darfur, or Rwanda? I can go on. Should I include Central and South America? Or Asia?”

Her list gave me pause. “That’s different, and you know it. This isn’t the same thing.”

“No? Ask the families of the victims if they agree. You’re okay splitting hairs about whose dime is whose if the dead strangers lived in another country?”

I put my hands flat against the wall behind me. In my mind I saw Dmitri’s sun-and-alcohol carved face reflected in the rearview mirror of his cab. In the next frame I saw him dead, his sallow skin sagging. “I’m complicit,” I said, my voice no longer loud. Instead, it was hollow. I was finally recognizing the consequences of what I’d gotten myself into.

What I’d done.

“You bet you are,” she said. There was no compassion in her voice. No offhand in her manner.

I was appalled, but not quite ready to accept responsibility for what had happened. “None of you ever said that anyone would be at risk except for me.”

“You didn’t ask.” The words flew out of her mouth without any hesitation.

She was right. I didn’t ask.

“If I just give up? Right now? Today?”

“No one else gets hurt.”

“If I don’t?”

“To reduce suspicion they may take you out in a crowd. You never know. I never know. The number of ancillary casualties isn’t … consequential to Jeffrey. It’s not always true, but sometimes numbers help disguise intent.”

I felt nauseous.

“Human nature,” she said, looking at me, unblinking. “It’s a funny thing. Clients ask us if their deaths will hurt. They ask about their families’ safety. About their homes. Their yachts and planes. But they never ask about strangers. How many will die. It’s a funny thing.”

She let the words settle.

“Problem is if I give up before I find him, Adam will get hurt, too,” I said.

I expected to hear scorn from her in response. But I didn’t. She said, “Yes, Adam gets hurt.”

Lizzie slid her feet to the floor and stood up. For two languid steps across the room she allowed the duvet to begin to drift behind her like some down-filled wedding veil. Then she let the hem slip away from her right hand and she continued walking in my direction.

One more step and she was completely naked.

She was turning the page. I felt forced to follow along. That, of course, was her plan.

Given what had just transpired between us, given that her intent was so obvious, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was distracted by her nakedness.

The first thing I noticed?

Regardless of the circumstances, I’ve learned, and accepted, that I’m incorrigible about some things. Instinct is instinct: The first thing I noticed was that she had shaved her pubic hair.

Interesting.

I was standing against the far wall. She stopped a few feet before she got to me, and waited until my eyes moved up and found hers. Then, using her left hand, she reached up and with a swift motion curled her fingers up under her hairline and stripped her tousled hair off her head from front to back.

She held the wig out in front of her as though she were a Sioux warrior who, having met and overpowered a bitter enemy, was presenting his scalp in honor to her chief.

Although I didn’t know how much she was feeling like a triumphant warrior, I knew that I wasn’t feeling much like a chief.

Lizzie’s head was as bald as a kneecap.

I didn’t take the proffered hair from her hand, but I made an instant reconsideration of my earlier, more prurient, assessment: Lizzie had
not
shaved her pubic hair.

No.

Lizzie had sacrificed her pubic hair — and her head hair, and her underarm hair, and probably all the other hair on her body — to the noxious consequences of chemotherapy.

The next thing I noticed? No, surprisingly enough for me, it wasn’t the shape of her breasts. The next thing I noticed was that Lizzie still had eyebrows.

It was a stupid thing to notice, but there it was.

How the hell could she have eyebrows?

I opened my mouth to speak.

She could somehow tell what part of her body I was staring at, and she could tell precisely what I was confused about. “Brow implants,” she said, shaking her head. Was the headshake an expression of dismay at herself, at her vanity, or at me? I couldn’t tell. “And the eyelashes, too. I have appearances to maintain. I’m sure you know all about that.”

She walked past me into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

I was so stunned that I didn’t even bother to steal a peek at her departing ass.

“Lizzie,” I said, through the door.

“What?”

“What work is it we have to do?”

She didn’t answer me for about ten seconds. I’d almost accepted that she wasn’t going to answer me at all when she said, finally, “We have to find Adam. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

The white noise of shower water splashing on limestone tiles ended our conversation.

Or so I thought. As I stepped away from the door I heard her call out, “You don’t know everything. Not even close. Don’t think you do.”

“That’s not one of my current delusions,” I said. I mumbled the words under my breath, not anticipating that she really gave a shit.

A moment later, the door swung open. Steam was filling the bathroom behind her. She looked like she was emerging from the depths of some dark, cloudy place.

She was still naked.

Some women are uncomfortable being naked. Caught suddenly without a stitch of clothing, those women can’t seem to find a pose that feels natural. They don’t know what to do with their hands, or the best way to balance their weight. On one leg? Both? Hip thrust out? Not?

Cover this? Cover that?

Lizzie wasn’t one of those women. As uncomfortable as I was being out of control? That’s how comfortable she was being naked.

“What did you say?” she said.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Don’t you get it? It’s not important.”

It was to me. And seconds after she returned to the bathroom, I thought I might have just discovered a way to find out the answer to my question.

I used the newest of my mobile phones to call LaBelle at my office.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Caller ID doesn’t say you. Caller ID says ‘Out of Area.’ Where’s your phone? Are you out of area?”

“I’m close enough. Good morning, LaBelle.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be?”

“Yes, LaBelle. That’s how it’s going to be.”

“Good morning.
Now,
” she said. Used in the manner she had just used it, the “now” was an entire sentence for LaBelle. From experience, I knew that with the particular inflection she’d employed the word constituted a prelude to an admonition that I should take seriously. “Don’t want to hear you been driving any of those cars of yours on I-70. You understand what I’m saying? You going up to Ridgway, there are other ways to get into those mountains. You use one of them, you hear?”

“I know,” I said. “It’s awful what’s happening.”

“285? That’d work, except for that storm that might be coming up from the south. Coal Creek Canyon up to the Peak to Peak? That new road out of Central City to I-70 — I hear it’s very nice. You want more alternatives, I can get those for you.”

“I do understand, LaBelle. How are you?”

“Mmm, mmm, mmmm,” she said. “A young woman like that? Two kids? Who would do something like that? Just pick a woman off on the side of the road. Those poor kids. What is wrong with this world?”

The water in the shower was still splashing loudly against the tiles, but I knew that it wouldn’t provide me cover for long.

“I know, I know. I need a favor.”

“What can I do?” she said, sensing my urgency. If I were standing beside her desk, I knew that I would have just watched her pull a pencil out of the nest of hair above her right ear. She would have the pencil tip poised a centimeter or two above the steno pad on her desk.

“I need for you to cross-reference two databases. One is of physicians who are board-certified in oncology. Limit it to the U.S. I don’t know who does the certification, but it shouldn’t be hard to find out. Define the certification as generally as you can — use all the oncological subspecialties, too, if there are any. The other list is of physicians who are board-certified in neurology. If there are subspecialties there, include those as well. Specifically, I want all the names, if any, that show up on both lists. Addresses and phone numbers if you can get them.”

She made a dismissive sound. “Those folks you’re looking for? They would be the ones who spent way too long in school, you know that? Need to spend more time in the world. On the streets. With the people.”

I laughed. “I hear you. As soon as you can, okay?”

“No problem. Assuming I can get hold of the data in digital form, I should be able to cross-reference them and get you the information before lunch. E-mail the names to you?”

“No, send me a general e-mail of some kind. If you do end up having names for me, say that the data I’ve been looking for is in. I’ll call you for the details. If not, tell me you’re still waiting.”

“Why all the drama?”

“I’ll explain later. One more thing?”

“Shoot.” She caught herself. “Ba-ad choice. Go on, now.”

“Do a search for me. LexisNexis, Google, whatever. There was a murder last night in New York City. A cabdriver. First name Dmitri. Up near 150th Street in West Harlem. Manhattan. Got all that?”

“Uh-huh, I got that. I’m getting older, but I’m not getting any slower. You can talk as fast as you want.”

LaBelle made me smile. “Next step is complicated. Find out what you can about his family. Who he’s been supporting. People he’s responsible for, that kind of thing. We’re going to be setting up a trust to help out.”