The Trashman Read online

  But now that that bait was out there, I wasn’t leaving without that license, no matter what it took. I just didn’t want him to know that.

  “I might want it back, sure, depending on the strings that come with it.”

  “Does it?” Keel said, sounding genuinely surprised. “Given that the alternative is your death, I would have thought the answer was an unqualified yes.”

  “There are worse things than death.”

  “Oh no, Mr. Steed, on that point you are wrong. I am obscenely wealthy, you see, yet all of my immense wealth cannot add one extra second of time to the span of my life. No matter how many zeroes are added to my bank accounts or how much my stock portfolios increase in value, I shall leave this mortal coil at the same precise moment as if I were penniless.”

  “A penniless man who’s starving and can’t afford doctors might disagree.”

  “You surprise me, Mister Steed. I did not take you for the philosophical sort.”

  “Me, either.”

  “You do understand my meaning.”

  “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. What does any of this have to do with me getting my license back?”

  “How much clearer do I have to be? I want for you to work for me now.”

  “See, that’s where the problem comes in. I have no clue who you are, where I am, or what it is you want me to do, so accepting your offer’s gonna be tough. Maybe you’re a pedophile who gets his rocks off watching little kids die or something sick like that, and if you are, then kill me now and get it over with. Because the instant I find that out, you’re dead.”

  “Until you have agreed to work for me, I cannot help you with more about my identity than my name, nor give you our current location. The last part of your implied question, however, what it is I wish you to do, that I can answer. I want you to do what you’ve been doing for the last nine years.”

  “Kill people?”

  “I was warned that you are blunt. Yes, I want you to kill people…among other things.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “That’s all I can say.”

  “I like it when people are blunt, too; it lets you know where you stand, and if I don’t like women playing coy, I sure as hell don’t like it from you. But leaving aside the obvious questions of ‘why me,’ which I think I can guess, and what ‘other things’ means, you should know that I can be circumspect when I have a good reason.”

  “And now?”

  “You haven’t given me a good reason.”

  “Nor do I wish to. When speaking with me I do not want circumspection; I demand total forthrightness, and if that comes with hard edges, then so be it. One does not reach my station in life without being cut by a few hard edges. Business is not for the weak.”

  “I’ve had my share of cuts, but mostly from women, not from business.”

  “Yes, ahem, quite so; I’m sure. I presume Miss Delvin is among them?”

  I wondered how Dawn got injected into this. I tried to adopt my poker face, but desire for a cigarette flared. Up to now the game had been interesting, but this guy was getting on my nerves. If he was a guy…my skin burned like I was being stung by fire ants, an instinctual warning system I’d developed over the years. What was stranger was his total lack of an aura, like the lizard-man delusion back at the resort. Was he one of them?

  Then I shook my head. Them? Was I seriously considering the possibility that man-sized lizards existed? Absolutely nothing made sense.

  “Listen,” I said, with enough irritation to provoke a reaction, “this witty repartee might be cute to you, sitting in this mausoleum like Sydney Greenstreet obsessing over a statue, but I’ve got a beach full of pretty girls to ogle. Get to the point or have your goons put me out of my misery.”

  I watched him carefully as he laughed, or rather, what I could see of him, mostly just the back of his head and neck and the tops of his shoulders. When people shout or laugh, it requires movement of their chest, which leads to vibrations of their whole body. He remained completely still, like a mannequin.

  “And people say I’m a dinosaur!” he said. “Sydney Greenstreet, ogling pretty girls…ha! You do say the most interesting things, Mister Steed, but don’t you know it is no longer allowed to notice whether a woman is attractive, or even if she is a woman? Even I, as staid as I am, know that.”

  “Who cares what I say in here? Or is this place bugged?”

  “Of course it is. I record every word spoken in this house. But I sense your impatience and, as much as I am enjoying this conversation, let us get down to business. As I mentioned earlier, I want to hire you—”

  Without warning I jumped out of the chair and walked quickly around the desk, unsure what I would see, a dummy, maybe, or some sort of robot? With rich people you could never tell, but the reality shocked me, and I was shocked that I was shocked; it takes a lot to do that.

  It was a dead guy, but that wasn’t a big deal, since I’d legally been turning live people into dead ones for the last nine years. No, what caused me to blink and flare my nostrils wasn’t the pallor of his skin or his glassy fisheyes, it was the realization that whoever he’d been in life, the guy was now taxidermied.

  Like my ex-wife, he was cold, stiff, and dressed in a suit that made mine look like prison garb. His came from a famous tailor on Saville Row and had to cost north of $100 grand. I knew that because I’d once been measured for a similar getup by the same tailor. Once he had my measurements, he priced mine at $65 g’s. I’d had the money, good Shooters with their own franchise could do very well, and I did, but I didn’t order the suit because I couldn’t think of when I would ever wear it. I paid the $2000 fitting fee and left.

  Now I could only stare down at the creepy dead guy with his well-applied undertaker’s makeup and wonder what the hell was going on. My hand trembled slightly as I picked up the box of Cohiba cigarettes and shook one out, and that irritated me. I hated not being able to control physical reactions to my emotions.

  “Did I not forbid you to smoke?” he said. Traces of irritation filtered into his heretofore friendly tone. Being so close, I could hear that the voice came from somewhere near his lips.

  “Since you’re dead, I’m gonna assume it won’t bother you too much.”

  “If you light that cigarette, I will have you removed from my home.”

  It was bizarre arguing with a dead guy, but I usually recover from surprises pretty fast…not counting Dawn Delvin and Lizard-men. The hardest part was not being able to read body language and facial clues, skills in which I’d trained in to become an expert.

  “I should be so lucky,” I said. I flipped open my vintage Zippo and fired up the smoke. Inhaling a lungful, I exhaled it directly at the corpse’s face. No coughing, even after a month.

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “You are as advertised, Mr. Steed. A charming yet an abrasive man with all of the foul habits and mannerisms to be expected from such. You think that your skill set allows you to be rude in polite company.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No. Fortunately for you, you’re not in polite company. Now, please sit back down so we can resume our conversation.”

  “Who told you all that?”

  “Are you challenging that it’s the truth?”

  “Just the opposite, I go out of my way to be abrasive and I enjoy my foul habits and bad manners far more than I should.”

  “And you do them so very well.”

  “Thanks. So, since you dodged the question of who told you all that, are you gonna tell me what’s going on, or do we keep playing these word games?”

  “For the third time, I am trying to hire you, but you are making it exceedingly difficult.”

  “What’s a dead guy need with employees?”

  “If you are paid in cash at triple your previous rate, then what do you care?”

  He had a point; having lost my license to kill and with my bank balance declining every day, money in my pocket was money in my pocket, and I couldn�
��t be too choosy where it came from. When I’d estimated how long my savings would last, I hadn’t expected to still be alive after four months. But the triple-scale offer set off fresh warnings in my brain, and I didn’t need my instincts to hear them.

  “It can’t hurt to listen.”

  “Good. Please use the ashtray on the desk for your cigarette.”

  Sure enough, an amber glass ashtray sat on the far end of the desk. The wily bastard had known all along that I’d fire up the smoke, so that meant the whole “disgusting habit” shtick was either part of the whole charade or to let me think I’d won a point. I slid it closer and flicked off the ashes. I finished the cigarette in four deep drags, then crushed it out. Keel was good.

  “So how do I get my license back?’

  “The same way you got it in the first place, by killing those I want killed.”

  “The way I got it in the first place? I got it because I was in the room.”

  “No, Mister Steed, you got it because I supplied the money to fund the LifeEnders mercenaries. You were in the room because I paid for you to be there.”

  Shit. That could only mean one thing, and I knew what he wanted me for now. But I decided to play out the charade anyway, to give me time to think.

  “So, you’re the Wizard of Oz and I’m the Tin Man, is that it?”

  “No, not the Tin Man, or the Cowardly Lion. You have heart and courage, of that there is no doubt.”

  “So, you’re going to hand me a diploma?”

  “If you say no to my offer, that might be more appropriate.”

  “How do you think I’m gonna answer that question?”

  “I do not presume to read your mind, nor do I wish to. You’re going to have to say it, Mr. Steed. Do you want your license to kill back or not?”

  “Yes, I do. But the president himself couldn’t make that happen, I violated federal law and if I’m back on U.S. soil, then I could wind up in prison before the day is out. But you already know that.”

  “I do. But I am not the president.”

  “Exactly.”

  “In this matter, I have more influence than he does.”

  What could I say to that? The president of the United States was the most powerful person on Earth, and yet while I couldn’t read the unmoving face, the trace inflections in Keel’s voice were a different matter. He believed what he was telling me.

  “What about my franchise?”

  “That I’m afraid, I cannot restore to you, nor would I even if I could. To the world at large, you violated the terms of that contract and should be made to pay a price. The restoration of your license would negate the kill contracts taken out on you by LEI, but if your franchise were restored, you would be made whole again. Should that happen there would be no penalty for breaking trust with the terms of your license agreement, and therefore federal law. As I’m sure you can see, it would be setting a terrible precedent.”

  I did see it; I just didn’t like it. But the part about getting my license back and not being hunted anymore, that part I liked.

  “So, you want me to be a Shooter again, except doing it for you, is that the deal?”

  “Yes, in broad terms. But now we have reached a point where I can go no further without your answer. You know enough to make what I feel must be an easy decision, since at its essence it’s a decision between life and death, but to divulge more without your agreeing to my terms in writing would be foolish.”

  “You won’t at least tell me the type of targets I’ll be tracking?”

  “That would be unwise of me.”

  “But I get paid triple the previous contract rates?”

  “That is correct, and with frequent bonuses.”

  Keel was right, his proposal was deliverance being handed me on a silver platter. There would be conditions, of course, probably ones I didn’t know about and wouldn’t like, yet we both knew my answer would be “yes” and there seemed no reason to delay, other than me still having no idea who he was, whether or not this was all some elaborate hoax stage-managed for my humiliation, and not having a lawyer to look over the contract. Then, considering I take pride in being an avowed narcissist, I said something truly inane.

  “What about Dawn Delvin?”

  “What about her?”

  “Any chance you’ve got a job for a female with a talent for wrapping men around her little finger?”

  “Sign your name, and you’ll find out.”

  The contract was under a large desk calendar, with a silver fountain pen to one side. In bold blue ink I saw a figure filled in as a monthly salary, which meant that I got paid whether I pulled the trigger that month or not, and it really was triple what I’d been making as a franchise owner. It was a lot of money.

  I signed.

  “Mister Steed, you read my mind.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, you did. Now that you have signed the contract, I will waste no time in offering Miss Delvin employment.”

  Somehow, that bothered me more than anything he’d said so far. Once again, my internal danger alarms told me I was missing something important. But I couldn’t think of any reason to object to him agreeing to my request.

  “You should have led with that.”

  “And miss our delightful conversation? Perish the thought. Now, welcome to Special Assignments Division, Mr. Steed. Or may I call you Arthur?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. I prefer Steed, but I sometimes go by Duncan,” I said.

  “Steed it is. My assistant will provide you with the keys to your condominium, your car, and your credentials, which I believe you will find are as you left them. There is a substantial signing bonus already in your bank account.”

  For once my fat yap was stunned shut. I had my life back, except for my franchise, but considering I’d violated the one inviolable rule of Shooters, it was more mercy than I could ever have expected. Far more. Too much more, because being in the room only excused so much.

  “Thank you, that’s very generous of you. But why? Who do I have to kill?”

  “Ah, at last we are down to details. Let me tell you about Special Activities Division.”

  Chapter 11

  Keel’s house could have come straight from a BBC series about stuffy aristocrats in Victorian England, except the servants dressed more like extras from a Martin Scorsese movie, not a house staff run by a butler. The paneled walls and flooring were all dark-stained wood—oak, mostly—but inlaid with cherry, mahogany, and walnut, and gleaming like an ad for furniture polish. I couldn’t tell who kept the place so clean, though, since I didn’t see any housekeepers, just the bent-nose boys in their black suits with bulges under the armpits. They might have been the models for a pair of cast iron bookends I’d seen once, and if the stuffed guy in the office really was their father, neither resembled him. That made me shudder, imagining what mom must have looked like.

  When I emerged into the wide, high-ceilinged hallway, both turned to me in the classic funeral director’s pose with their hands folded one over the other in front of their crotches. When I tried to engage one of them in small talk, he only grunted. When I asked which way to the front door, he nodded with his head.

  “Now that we’re one big happy family, I’d love to stick around and chat with you boys,” I said, “but I need some air.”

  In my business you don’t turn your back on potential enemies, even in the house of your new employer, so I paused a minute to study the bigger of the two brutes standing guard outside Keel’s office. Through slits of animosity I saw the eyes of a scavenger, not a predator, and even though he stood two inches taller than my six feet, and outweighed me by 70 pounds, I knew that Keel was right, I could take him, if it came to that. As for the smaller guy, I’d say his expression reminded me of a musk ox, but that might be an insult to the ox.

  You could have driven a tractor down the main hallway, it was so wide, ending in a six-sided foyer with a 15-foot ceiling and stained glass in every direction, like some mediev
al chapel. It harkened back to the English manor house feel of the place. Then I opened the iron-bound, six-inch-thick wooden front door, which was straight out of Downton Abbey, to see an entirely different vista that could only be somewhere in old Florida near Apalachicola or Louisiana bayou country.

  Dead Mr. Keel was full of surprises. Instead of rolling green hills and well-tended shrubbery, the estate sat in the middle of a swamp. The yard was studded with ancient, moss-hung oak trees that led to an impenetrable curtain of tangled jungle less than three hundred yards from where I stood on a wrap-around porch three steps above the ground. A gravel driveway made a semi-circle from whatever road disappeared into the distance on the right. As might be expected, flies and mosquitoes swarmed to investigate the new source of food: me. I lit a cigarette more in self-defense than because I needed the nicotine, hoping the smoke might discourage the nasty bloodsuckers. Black Cuban tobacco had a very strong odor.

  “So, you accepted his offer, did you?” said a female voice off to my left. A voice I’d hoped never to hear again. I knew that disapproving, British-accented lilt all too well. It belonged to my ex-wife, Cynthia Witherbot.

  “And you know that how?” I said, turning her way. “Come to think of it, what the fuck are you doing here?”

  She raised her eyebrows. Most people wouldn’t have thought much about it, but I knew from first-hand experience how much condescension she could pack into that simple expression.

  “I am glad to see you too, Steed. I know that because you are still alive,” she said. “Had you declined, you would not have walked out of that room, you would have been carried out.”

  “And my body fed to the worms and gators, I presume?” I pointed with my cigarette toward the swamp.

  “They’re not picky eaters.”

  “So, you know Keel, huh? Why does this not surprise me?”

  “What can I say, Steed? Powerful men want me near them, and Keel is very good to me.”

  “He’s pretty chummy for a corpse, I’ll give him that much.”

  “You should have met him when he was alive.”