The Ethical Assassin_ A Novel Part 12

Chapter 13.

DESIREE SAT ON HER BED, cross-legged, wearing only her panties and her bikini top, a gray copy of the cross-legged, wearing only her panties and her bikini top, a gray copy of the I Ching I Ching in her lap. For the past three weeks, she'd been coming to the same symbol again and again. No matter how she asked the question, no matter how she sought her answer, she kept coming back to the in her lap. For the past three weeks, she'd been coming to the same symbol again and again. No matter how she asked the question, no matter how she sought her answer, she kept coming back to the hsieh. hsieh.

[image]

She drew it on the back of her left hand with a Sharpie so she would think about it constantly. Meditate on it. When it finally faded away in the slow tide of flaking skin, she would redraw it. Last week, she had pa.s.sed a tattoo parlor on Federal Highway, and she thought about having it placed on her hand permanently, but she decided there was no point being permanent with a symbol of change.

B.B. saw it on her hand and said it looked like a bunch of lines, and she guessed they all did, but this pictogram, she knew, derived from the image of two hands holding on to the horns of an ox. It signified transformation, addressing and fixing a problem. It was her symbol. She had to fix the problem, and the problem was her life with B.B.

She was now twenty-four, and she'd been with him for three years, fixing his meals and driving his car, organizing his calendar, reserving his tables in restaurants. She bought his groceries and paid his bills, answered his door, mixed his drinks. He needed her, and she knew that, she loved that. She felt grateful, too. She'd been about as lost as you could get when he'd taken her in. He'd done it for his own reasons, to exorcise his demons, but he'd still done it.

Those first few days, weeks, even months, she'd slept lightly, watching the door handle, waiting to see B.B. slink in under cover of darkness and claim his due. Maybe not that first day, when her stench had been so bad that even she had had to breathe through her mouth not to gag, but once she'd cleaned up, got off the crank, bought some new clothes-different story then. Her old face started to come back in the mirror. Flesh grew on bone, cheeks reddened and rounded, her nose became less narrow, less sharp, her hair less brittle. She had become herself.

B.B. had told her that no matter what happened, no matter how clean, how happy, she became, she'd never stop wanting to use. The crank would always call to her. It would be a shadow that would haunt her; it was a rope tethered to her neck that would never stop tugging.

He was wrong. He was wrong because Desiree already had a shadow, she already had a tether. The crank had obscured it, hidden it-and G.o.d help her, that was what she had loved about it at first. But when she was clean, as she lay in the bed in B.B.'s Coral Gables house, staring at the endless rotation of the ceiling fan, listening to the distant sound of lawn mowers and car alarms, she found her way back to her sister.

Aphrodite had died during the procedure that had separated them. The girls hadn't reached their second birthday when they'd performed the operation, which her mother had known was complicated, which risked the lives of both girls. The doctor had urged her on, however, telling her that his university would cover the costs. It was a great opportunity for the children and for science.

They'd separated the girls, who were linked from shoulder to hip, in what the doctors referred to as a "minor" omphalopagus. Yes, the girls were joined, but mostly by muscle and vascular tissue. Of the organs, only the liver was shared, and they believed they could separate the livers with a chance that both girls would live. The doctor had been clear: It was possible possible that they would both live, likely one would die, and unlikely neither would make it. that they would both live, likely one would die, and unlikely neither would make it.

Aphrodite died. During the operation, not afterward, which maybe, the doctors had said, was better since it spared her days of painful lingering. But the prognosis for Desiree was quite good. She would have a scar for the rest of her life, and quite a large scar at that, but she would have a normal life.

Desiree learned that it was all a matter of what you called normal. Jeering in school locker rooms, every year settling into the role of de facto freak, fear of wearing a bathing suit, for example? Were these things normal? They were not, of course, beyond-the-pale odd. Lots of fat, ugly, and misshapen children had similar experiences, and they weren't ready for the sideshow, but the whole world knew about Aphrodite. They knew Desiree had been a Siamese Siamese twin. Kids at school, for as long as she could remember, would pull back their eyes with their index fingers and sing that cat song from twin. Kids at school, for as long as she could remember, would pull back their eyes with their index fingers and sing that cat song from Lady and the Tramp. Lady and the Tramp. Somehow, inevitably, they learned Aphrodite's name and asked after her as though she were still alive, still joined to Desiree. Every single year of middle and high school there was always at least one pair of kids-and once as many as four-who came for Halloween as conjoined twins. Somehow, inevitably, they learned Aphrodite's name and asked after her as though she were still alive, still joined to Desiree. Every single year of middle and high school there was always at least one pair of kids-and once as many as four-who came for Halloween as conjoined twins.

Then there was her mother, who always claimed to have favored Aphrodite. Even before she was out of elementary school, Desiree had begun to wonder if it was true, if it was just something hurtful to say, but wondering that, even believing that, didn't diminish the sting. Her mother loved to cry, to hold her head in her hands and say, "Oh, why wasn't Aphrodite spared?"

And there was Aphrodite herself. Desiree started hearing her voice around her twelfth birthday. Her mother was out of town that week, gone to Key West with a new boyfriend, though the relationship-big surprise-never went anywhere but the emergency room. Even calling it a voice was suggesting too much, she supposed. Aphrodite was there, a presence, a sensation, a compulsion, even a stream of intuitive information. When she met someone and she took an instant like or dislike, she could feel her twin's push or pull.

At first it had been welcome, a balm in the loneliness of her life, but by the time she was fifteen, things had begun to change. She met people who didn't care about her scar, who wanted to hang out, listen to tunes, smoke cheeb. Aphrodite didn't like these people, but they liked Desiree plenty. Then Desiree discovered that crank made Aphrodite's voice quiet. It stung at first, made her nose burn with such incendiary pain that she snorted up water and blew it out like a whale. The next time it didn't burn so much. The time after that, if it burned, she didn't notice.

That was how it went until B.B. had found her. Or she had found him. He was driving on the Ft. Lauderdale strip, stopped in his Mercedes at a light with the top and windows down and Randy Newman blasting as if it were Led Zeppelin.

This guy had what she needed: cash. She needed cash because she needed to shoot up so f.u.c.king bad that it killed her. Once it had jolted her from the normal world to a place of power where she could do anything, say anything. She felt whole and finished, no longer subject to the whims of her mother or teachers or dead twin.

Now it was something else. The crank still lifted her up, no doubt about it, but not to such heights. And the lows-the lows were more than she could ever have imagined. Under the earth lows, buried under your grave so you were scratching the bottom of your own casket lows. She was dry and evacuated, a squeezed-out and tattered sponge, and she would do anything to get back up, if only she could begin the cycle again. Even go over to a stranger on the Ft. Lauderdale strip. Whatever restraints had once governed her routines had been eroded by endless fatigue and sleeplessness, as far back as she could remember, which wasn't very far since her memory didn't work so well in those days. A low level of panic hummed perpetually just under her consciousness. Her mouth felt dry no matter how much she drank, and she never felt hungry no matter how little she ate.

For all that, she'd never done anything quite like this before. She f.u.c.ked and sucked for crank, but always guys she knew; but the more she thought about it, the more she saw that it didn't matter. It was just a few minutes. Of what? s.e.x? Big deal. They tried to make a big deal of s.e.x, but it was nothing. A few minutes, and she'd have some money and she could score.

Even then, with the pound of need and terror in her ears, she could hear her sister's m.u.f.fled voice. She couldn't make it out, but she knew it was there, a distant pleading. But the guy, he seemed like he would go for it. He was nicely dressed, hair neatly combed, neatly dyed. He had a few pieces of tasteful but expensive jewelry-her time in the p.a.w.nshops had taught her to tell the difference. He didn't look like just another rich Florida doctor or lawyer or real estate developer in a convertible. He was that other kind. He had the mark, the sign, the vibrating tone audible to crankheads and dogs. He lied on his tax return, cheated on his wife, f.u.c.ked over his partners. Something. The guy in the Mercedes was crooked, and he had money.

She walked over, smiled at him. She used her best smile, which was radiant. At least it had been once. If she'd known how she looked-cancer thin, sunken eyes, thin lips, red welts on her face and hands-she never would have offered, never would have thought anyone would want her. But she didn't know, so she smiled, and he turned to her.

"I'll blow you for ten dollars, sweetie," she said.

He started to roll up his window-a defense of minimum value with the convertible's top down-and she pulled away from the rising gla.s.s, about to swear. Then he stopped. The window came back down.

"What are you using?"

"f.u.c.k you," she said, starting to turn away-but slowly. She knew they weren't done.

He took out a twenty and showed it to her. "What are you using?"

She paused. She could hear Aphrodite, the voice that had been m.u.f.fled and muted for years. She could hear it now, hollow and echoing, the trickle of distant water in a cave. A feeling so strong that she could almost sense the words: Don't tell him. Don't tell him. And that was why she told him. "Crank," she said. And that was why she told him. "Crank," she said.

He studied her for a minute longer and then unlocked the doors with a flick of his finger. "Get in," he said.

She got in. Why not? He was okay looking for an older guy. Probably clean, certainly rich. That other thing-the vibrating something that told her she might die, might end up dumped in a vacant lot, tossed off an airboat into the Everglades-that didn't matter right now. The need called to her, the need. The need. Ripping her in half, pulling her, crushing her, knocking her off her feet and dragging her through the dirt. So she got in.

But the man in the Mercedes didn't want a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. He wanted to clean her up.

B.B. never came for s.e.x. After a couple of months, by which time Desiree had become a kind of live-in maid, it was clear that he wasn't going to. He didn't like women. He didn't look at them when they pa.s.sed on the street or in the mall, not the charming or the cute or the beautiful. The s.l.u.tty and the s.e.xy he looked at, but not with desire. It was more like a vague hostility, or maybe amus.e.m.e.nt.

At first she a.s.sumed he was gay, which was okay by her. She'd known plenty of queens on the street, and even if she hadn't, she'd spent too much time as the object of derision to judge anyone for being in any way different or out of step with the idea of normal you got on TV. Still, it never rang true. B.B. didn't much look at men, either. Not even those who were both beautiful and obviously gay.

It was entirely possible that he was as.e.xual, but Desiree's gut and Aphrodite's voice doubted it. He was maybe as.e.xual and maybe not, but he was something else, too. Something the twins could not put their respectively fleshly and ephemeral fingers on. There was a blankness to him. He seemed in a daze half the time. He'd rescued her, but he never acted like the sort of person who would rescue a drug addict. Only when he was doing charity work with one of his kids did he come fully alive. Or sometimes when he was watching a boy. They'd be in a restaurant or walking on the beach or shopping, and his pupils would dilate and his posture would grow straighter without getting stiff, and he would flush a healthy pink, as if he were in love. Each time he seemed to fall in love.

Once she brought it up. Only once. Because the thing of it was, there was something almost admirable about B.B.'s desire for boys. He wanted to be with them-she could see that. On the street, she'd seen men who went for boys, for girls, for children so young that they didn't know what s.e.x was. They were predators, monsters, and she regretted not having killed them all. B.B. was like them, but also not. He turned his desire into charity; he hid from the world, maybe even from himself. Instead, he helped them. If there was a way to be admirable in such a desire, surely this was it.

She'd been with him more than a year, made herself as much a part of his life as his limbs, when over dinner she decided it was time. It was B.B.'s birthday, and he'd taken a little too much of a few bottles of red he'd been saving. Maybe she'd had a little too much, too.

"About you and your boys," she'd said.

"Yeah?" He chewed at a piece of perfectly rare choice triple-trimmed filet mignon that she'd grilled for him. On his plate, along with a pile of asparagus, were two pools of dipping sauce-a delicate au poivre and a garlic cream.

"I just wanted to let you know that I understand, okay? I know why you do what you do, B.B., and I think it's very brave. If you need anything, any help, you can be honest with me."

He set down his fork and stared at her. His face reddened and veins bulged in his neck, and for a moment she thought he was going to burst, explode, throw his plate at her, order her out. Instead he let out a thick, throaty laugh. "Not you, too," he said. "Oh, Desiree. I know that people love to imagine the worst, but I thought for sure you would understand."

"I do understand," she said.

"I just want to help them. I had a rough time when I was a boy, and now that I can, I want to help other boys. That's it. I'm not a pervert. If you don't understand that I might want to help someone without wanting to f.u.c.k them, then no one will."

He wasn't angry, not even sad. Mostly he seemed weary.

"Okay, B.B.," she said. She knew better, but she nodded. He could hide his impulses from the world as long as he hid them from himself, too.

So at least she didn't have to worry that her friend and boss and companion might go around f.u.c.king boys. He might do a lot of bad things, be a lot of bad things, but he had this in check. Even so, Aphrodite would not be appeased. Yet dead twins can rant only so much before even they give up, and her objections quieted down after the first few months. Yes, it was probably wrong to work for a man who made his money, his loads and loads of money, the way B.B. did, but someone was going to, and if she stopped working for B.B., there would be just as much trouble in the world, but no food and shelter for poor Desiree. She could hardly get a job with no high school diploma and her only prior experience being personal a.s.sistant to a criminal.

Besides, B.B. wanted her around, valued her, deferred to her opinions. She owed him her life, so she could turn a blind eye to the pleasure he took from setting his hand on a boy's shoulder, from the way his eyes lit up when he saw one of his charity cases in a bathing suit. She could live with being his beard, his disguise to the world.

Then things took a sharp turn. Last month, they'd been driving back from a dinner meeting with a guy who ran an encyclopedia operation in Georgia. B.B. was thinking-more like half thinking-of expanding, and maybe that would have bothered Desiree if he'd been serious, but he would never expand. He made all the money he needed now, and he hated ha.s.sles; why risk new territory and cross state lines?

The meeting went badly, and both he and Desiree didn't like the Georgia guy, didn't feel they could trust him. Desiree felt relieved, and she suspected B.B. did as well. It was almost as though he were looking for a way to celebrate, and when they saw a kid walking along the beach, something shifted visibly in B.B.'s face.

The boy looked maybe eleven, cute, clean-cut but staggering. As if he were drunk-maybe for the first time. He had a stupid, happy grin on his face, and he sang something boisterous to himself, occasionally breaking into air guitar as he walked.

"Why don't you stop the car," B.B. said. "Let's give that boy a lift."

Desiree didn't want to stop, but the light turned red and there was no choice. "Where do you want to give him a lift to?"

B.B. grinned at her, like whatever had broken in him must have broken in her. "Our house."

Desiree kept her eyes straight ahead. "No."

"No?"

"No. I'm not going to let it happen."

B.B. bit on his lip. "What exactly are you not going to let happen?"

"B.B., let's just forget it. Go home."

"If I say we give the kid a lift, then that's what we do." His voice had turned loud. "You don't tell me no, and he doesn't tell me no. No one tells me no. Stop the car and sweet-talk that kid into the car, or you'll be on the street tomorrow and whoring for crank in a week."

"All right," she said softly. She chose her words deliberately, because his cruelty demanded treatment in kind, and she wanted him to think, if only for a second, that he had won. "Okay, fine." The light turned green, and she sped past the boy.

The next morning, her packed suitcase and gym bag were met with flowers and chocolates and an envelope with cash. He didn't apologize, didn't say he was sorry he'd tried to turn her into a pimp, but she knew he was sorry. For all it mattered. She knew she would stay, but as she unpacked, Aphrodite made it clear that this was a reprieve, not a stay. Desiree didn't resist or disagree or shrug it off, because it wasn't a suggestion. It was fact.

They both saw it. The urge inside B.B. was coming out, and sooner or later bad things were going to be happening under her roof. Maybe she could keep him in check, but for how long? Forever? It seemed unlikely. What frightened her, however, was not the thought that B.B. would give in to his worst self, that he would become the monster he had resisted; it was that she would lack the strength to fight him. She would convince herself that it would be worse if she wasn't around, that she helped him from hurting even more boys. She would help him with this, like she helped him with his business. How long could a person partic.i.p.ate in evil without becoming evil herself? Or had she been guilty the moment she'd accepted B.B.'s charity, the moment she'd chosen to stay after learning who and what he was?

She had to get out. She had to move on. Aphrodite whispered it to her in a mantra so perpetual, it was like the sound of breath. Even the I Ching I Ching couldn't stop telling her so. couldn't stop telling her so.

That B.B. would panic if she left hardly mattered. That she had nowhere to go hardly mattered. She had what she needed. She had money she'd saved-enough money that she could live for a year or two while she figured things out. And she had information on B.B.'s trade. Not that she wanted to extort him or threaten him, but she had a feeling that once he realized she wasn't coming back, once he realized she was gone for good, B.B. was going to be very, very angry.

And when a man is very angry, and he has a bunch of people like Jim Doe and the Gambler working for him, things can get tricky.

Chapter 14.

THE PHONE CALL came in the middle of the night. B.B. never answered the phone himself; that wasn't his thing. But he liked to keep the phone near his bed. It was one of those office phones with a shrill office phone ring and the multiple b.u.t.tons so you could see which line was in use. They had only one line, but he liked the idea of having several. came in the middle of the night. B.B. never answered the phone himself; that wasn't his thing. But he liked to keep the phone near his bed. It was one of those office phones with a shrill office phone ring and the multiple b.u.t.tons so you could see which line was in use. They had only one line, but he liked the idea of having several.

And he liked to keep an eye on when the line was in use. It wasn't that he didn't trust Desiree. Of course he did. He trusted her more than anyone, but why take chances?

The TV was on, but there was only snow. B.B. looked over at the digital clock: 4:32. A phone call at that hour couldn't be anything good. He sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, which was shaped like a giraffe reaching up to eat leaves. The shade was over the tree. B.B. sat still, staring at the blue and pink of the rococo wallpaper until he heard the light tap at the door.

"Who is it?"

The door opened a crack. "It's the Gambler."

"f.u.c.k." He picked up the handset and punched the b.u.t.ton to switch over to the right line. He always kept the phone on one of the dead lines, since he liked the feeling of pushing the b.u.t.ton when he took a call. It made him feel like he was an executive. Which he basically was, just an unconventional sort of executive.

"So, what's the status?" he asked the Gambler. "Everything in line?"

There was a pause. It was the sort of pause that B.B. did not much like.

"Not really." The voice was flat. "Wouldn't be calling now if it were."

"What does that mean?" He looked over at Desiree, who was leaning against the door with her arms folded, studying him. She wore a white bathrobe and probably nothing else underneath. A lot of guys, scar or no, would find that pretty s.e.xy, he figured. And the fact that it might be kind of s.e.xy seemed, for an instant, kind of s.e.xy. Then the feeling pa.s.sed.

"It means," the Gambler told him, "that there's a serious problem, the sort I may not be able to get resolved."

B.B. hated having to talk in code on the phone, but even though there was no evidence the feds gave the slightest s.h.i.t about his dealings, you had to a.s.sume they were listening, which meant you had to spend a lot of time talking around the issue, and that got awkward when you didn't even know what the issue was.

Who needed these ha.s.sles? Wasn't all of this supposed to be ha.s.sle free? Not really, but it was supposed to be easy, and he guessed it was. B.B. had inherited his hog lot outside Gainesville from his father's father, a red-faced old man with wisps of white hair that stuck out of his head as though they'd been rammed in by a vengeful enemy. He was so ornery that he was like a parody of an ornery old man, cursing and spitting tobacco in a rage and slapping away kind hands, grandchildish hugs, bologna sandwiches-anything anyone might offer. Visits to the farm had been an unrelenting torment. The old man would put him to work shoveling hog s.h.i.t, mopping up pools of hog p.i.s.s, dragging dead hog carca.s.ses by their hooves.

If he even gestured toward an expression of complaint, his grandfather would tell him to shut the f.u.c.k up and smack him in the head, sometimes with his hand, a few times with a mostly empty sack of feed, once with an old-fashioned metal lunchbox. There were other punishments, too, in the empty barn, when B.B. broke "the farmer's code," a fluid list of regulations that had been omitted from the Poor Richard's Almanac. Poor Richard's Almanac. B.B. never learned the code, understood its rules or parameters, but a few times a year his grandfather would come up on him, looking especially tall and dirty. He'd spit a wad of dip in B.B.'s direction and tell him he'd broken the farmer's code and he needed to be mentored in the old barn. He had no idea what the word meant, had no idea what it was to mentor a boy. He was a monster, and by the time B.B. became old enough to make decisions for himself, he vowed never to see the old man again. B.B. never learned the code, understood its rules or parameters, but a few times a year his grandfather would come up on him, looking especially tall and dirty. He'd spit a wad of dip in B.B.'s direction and tell him he'd broken the farmer's code and he needed to be mentored in the old barn. He had no idea what the word meant, had no idea what it was to mentor a boy. He was a monster, and by the time B.B. became old enough to make decisions for himself, he vowed never to see the old man again.

Then, ten years ago, the old man died. He'd reached ninety-seven, kept alive by free-floating Achilles-like wrath and a similarly quasi-divine hatred of do-gooders, women, television, politicians, corporations, changing fashions, and a world turning ever more youthful while he turned ever older. B.B.'s own father had died long before in a drunken and c.o.ke-fueled motorcycle accident, the helmetlessness of which smacked of suicide. After his grandfather's death came the registered letter from the lawyer telling him he'd inherited the farm, and at just the right time, too, since things had not been going so well for B.B. in some of the various careers he'd been trying on, including car salesman, unlicensed real estate agent, landscaper, security guard, and a stint as a Las Vegas poker player.

This last had involved long and delirious runs under casino lights that obscured the difference between night and day, drunkenness and sobriety, winning and losing. He now remembered hyperbolic laughing, raking piles of chips toward his chest, and he remembered that the next day he'd mysteriously have no money. But those weren't the memories that came to him most often. When he thought of Vegas, he thought of the shirtless Greek he owed (and still owed) $16,000 sending a thug to beat him so hard with a broom handle that his ribs still ached when he sneezed more than ten years later. He thought of his shameful retreat from town, sitting on a bus and disguised as an Eastern Orthodox priest, the only plausible costume he could get on short notice. It was that or flee town as a pirate or a mummy.

With no other options, he took on hog farming. It paid the bills, though barely, but it stank and filled him with a vile repulsion toward animals, animals that stank and shat and demanded food and bellowed in pain and misery and deserved to die as punishment for being alive. And the land itself-that G.o.d-awful farm with its memories of his f.u.c.king grandfather, for whose sake alone he sincerely hoped there was such a place as h.e.l.l. The barn by its simple proximity so disturbed his sleep that he convinced a trio of potbellied and thick-forearmed locals to take it down for him. He paid them in beer and a whole roasted pig.

Going back to the farm, working his grandfather's lots, had been degrading, a waking nightmare, but he'd been broke, beyond broke, and the farm kept him afloat. There was money for food and a roof over his head and occasionally the wines he'd learned to love in Vegas.

Then this guy he almost knew-spoken to a few times in a local bar, a friend of one of the men who had taken down the barn-a biker in a gang called the DevilDogs, came to see him one night. How would he feel if a couple of the boys set up a small lab on the property? No one would know, since the smell of the pigs would hide the smell of cooking meth. B.B. wouldn't have to do anything except keep quiet, and he'd get $1,000 a month.

It was a good deal. After a month or so of not wanting to know about it, B.B. began to hang out with the meth cooks, learn how they did it, learn how easy it was to turn a few hundred dollars' worth of over-the-counter cold medicine into speed so potent that it made c.o.ke look like a watery cup of Maxwell House. Then the guys who worked the lab were busted while distributing. He figured they'd roll on him, but they never did. He figured other guys from the operation would come by and take over the lab, but they never did. There it was, a fully operational moneymaking machine on his property. He'd be crazy to ignore it.

The problem was, B.B. hadn't known the first thing about distributing drugs. Had no idea how to go about it. He couldn't see himself on the corner, wearing a trench coat, psst pssting to any skinny, trailer-trashy redneck with an oversize shirt and a dull look in his eyes. He continued to make the meth-not large quant.i.ties, only an ounce or two a month while he got the hang of it. It seemed like a good idea to keep the quant.i.ties small, since making meth when you didn't know what you were doing was like holding a jar of nitroglycerin on a roller coaster.

He made it and he stored it. Just a hobby, really, like putting ships in a bottle. It took only a couple of days of work, and then there it was, this lovely yellow powder. He got better, more confident, made more, learned how to dispose of the waste, which was so toxic that it ate through the ground. Within a year, he had thousands of dollars' worth of stuff and no idea how to unload it.

When he read in the business section of a local newspaper that Champion Encyclopedias was looking for someone to run an operation in the state, it all began to come together for him. He convinced them he was an entrepreneur, that he could run the book business as well as he ran his "agricultural concern"-his term. But enthusiasm was wasted on them. They cared no more for his ac.u.men than his crew chiefs cared for the ac.u.men of new bookmen. You hire everyone you can, you cast them to the waves, and you see who's still floating.

This happened three years after Vegas, and when B.B. met with the top crew chiefs in the state, he knew one of them. A guy by the name of Kenny Rogers, called himself the Gambler. He didn't recognize B.B., but B.B. recognized him. The Gambler was the thug who'd beaten B.B. with the broom handle in his Vegas apartment. B.B. down on the ground, hands over his head, the sounds of the neighbor's dog barking, the neighbor's TV turned up loud to pretend he couldn't hear, and B.B.'s own sobbing filling his ears.

B.B. had been thinking only of revenge, of exorcising his demons, when he'd hired the Gambler. Let him work for B.B. Let him think he was doing a great job, in on the deepest secrets of the organization, part of the whole planning process. B.B. was keeping the Gambler close, figuring out where and how he would get even, make things right in the universe. As time went by, however, the revenge never happened. The Gambler made B.B. money, way too much money to remove him so thoughtlessly, and the greater truth was that if B.B. did take revenge, then he would no longer have the pleasure of antic.i.p.ating the sweetness of payback. So B.B. had kept the Gambler where he was and occasionally thought about what he might do to him.

Things had gone so well for so long, he should have expected something like this.

"Can you get me the thing I asked for?" B.B. said. He tap tap tapped a pencil on the night table.