16 Hitman (6 page)

His face looked pretty hard for an English teacher. It occurred
to me if I were in his class I sure wouldn't wanna be late with a
book report. "Yeah. That's clear."

"Good. I'm going to get into a taxi. If you follow me, I'll kill you."

He stepped out in the street and hailed a cab. It went to the
corner, turned down Second Avenue.

Another taxi came by and I got in.

I didn't say, "Follow that cab!"

I let it take me home.

ALICE WAS SHOCKED. "You saw him."

"Yes."

"You know who he's going to kill."

"Yeah, but he didn't kill him"

"Not yet.'

"He says he doesn't want to kill him."

"If he doesn't want to kill him, why is he following him?"

"It's his job."

"It's his job to kill him."

I frowned. "Yeah. But-"

"But what?"

"It's my job to stop him."

"And you did that?"

"Not really."

"I didn't think so.You didn't do anything, did you?"

"No, I didn't. But in a way I did."

"How do you mean?"

"I think just being there is enough. Just the fact that I'm there,
a witness, seeing what's going on, is enough of a deterrent to keep
him from doing it. So, as long as I'm following him, I can prevent
him from doing the job."

"That's one way." Alice added chopped garlic to whatever she
was cooking on the stove. It was some lamb dish or other, and I'm
sure she didn't know the name of it. Alice doesn't cook from
recipes. She makes what she calls a mishmash, inventing as she
goes. It's always delicious.

Alice was cooking late tonight because she didn't know when
I'd be home. Usually, when that happens, we order out. I think
tonight she was cooking because she was nervous and wanted
something to do.

"What do you mean, that's one way?"

"There's another way."

"What?"

"Go to the police."

"I've been to the police."

Alice set the wooden spoon on the edge of the saucepan,
turned to face me. "Oh, come on, Stanley. What do you mean,
you've been to the police? You fed MacAullif a bullshit story, got
MacAullif to trace a name. At the time you had no hard information. Now you do.You know who the guy's going to kill."

"I don't know for sure."

"Oh, come on. Is it the guy or isn't it?"

"It's the guy."

"Do you know his name?"

"Yes"

"What is it?"

I hesitated.

"Right," Alice said. "If you told me, you'd have to kill me."

"Actually, if I told you, he'd have to kill me."

"That isn't funny, Stanley. It's way beyond funny. These are
people you should not be mixed up with. If there's any way out,
you should take it"

"For instance?"

"I said if. I didn't say I knew one."

"I'm open to suggestions"

"I told you. Go to the police."

"And tell 'em what? That the English teacher they've already
checked out now has a specific target in mind?"

"Tell MacAullif the whole thing from beginning to end. Leave
nothing out. And for god's sakes, don't say hypothetical."

"What?"

"The minute you say hypothetical, he thinks it's all bullshit. You
gotta level with him. This is what happened, this is what I did, I
may have broken a few statutes along the way; if so, I gotta take my
lumps, but I'm trapped, I can't get out, and I don't want anyone to
be killed."

"You want me to turn myself in?"

"I'm not saying turn yourself in. I'm saying get yourself off
the hook."

"By turning myself in."

"Well, if you wanna argue semantics"

"Semantics"

Alice dropped pasta into boiling water, added a little salt. The
tiniest of distractions, yet it totally threw me. Not that I wasn't
thrown already.

"What do you know now that you didn't know before?"
Alice said.

"What do you mean, before?"

"Before you took the job."

"I know the mark's name and address."

"That is a fairly important piece of information"

"I also know the hitter's not going to pop him there."

"Hitter?"

"Yeah. It's better than hitman. Nonsexist."

"Stanley. I'm not in the mood."

"What about wine and candlelight?"

Alice groaned. "You're impossible."

"I'm not impossible. I'ni joking bravely in the face of death. I'm
not happy with the current situation, and I would love to get out
of it any way I could. Short of making a full confession and doing
time. The point is, the guy's safe for tonight. The shooter's not
going to take him out in his apartment"

"Shooter?"

"You didn't like hitter."

"I don't like shooter."

"How about shitter? Combination of the two."

"Stanley."

"So he's safe tonight. And he's safe tomorrow morning, too,
because our hitman has school."

"If he's for real."

"So I have until class lets out at three forty-five."

"To go to the police?"

"Actually, I'm doing cases for Richard"

"Until three forty-five? When you pick up the hitman at
school?"

"No, he picks me up at the office"

"What?"

"He doesn't want me going near the school. So he's coming by
the office instead"

"What if he doesn't show?"

I sighed, said nothing.

"Stanley."

"I know, I know. I gotta go to the cops"

"You'll talk to MacAullif?"

"I'll talk to MacAullif."

"Before three forty-five?"

"Yeah"

"What about your cases?"

"I'll fit it in between my cases."

"You won't let Richard talk you out of it?"

"I'm not even dealing with Richard. I get beeped by
Wendy/Janet."

"Okay. When you talk to MacAullif, remember one thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't use a hypothetical."

"SUPPOSE I GAVE YOU ANOTHER NAME."

"Have you got another name?" MacAullif said.

"Suppose I did."

"This is a hypothetical?"

"No. This is a let's-suppose."

"What's the difference?"

"Semantics."

"You're really pissing me off."

"You should talk to my wife."

"What?"

"I'm a walk in the park. Get my wife in here and see how long
you last."

"What's your hypothetical this time?"

"My hypothetical is a let's-suppose."

"This is the name of the hitman?"

"Not necessarily."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sayin' it is, and I'm not sayin' it isn't. But it just might
be a major player in this little drama"

"Major player?"

"One of the two main participants."

"Are you talking about the whacker or the whackee?"

"That sounds like self-abuse."

"Good. If the hitman offs himself, it's a suicide, and I don't have
to find a perp."

"That isn't what I meant."

"I know what you meant. I just can't believe you've regressed
to adolescent masturbation jokes"

I got a name, MacAullif. And I really need it traced before
three this afternoon."

"Why?"

I took a breath. "I'm in trouble. I need help. I think I'm in over
my head. By three o'clock this afternoon I need to know if there's
any reason under the sun why anyone would be interested in
Victor Marsden of East Eighty-ninth Street"

"He's the victim?"

"Not yet."

"Say I do this for you.You gonna tell me what's up?"

"When I can."

"When's that?"

"I don't know. Alice says I should tell you now. Only problem
is, I don't wanna go to jail. And you probably don't either."

"Good guess"

"Would you like me to tell you everything-including the part
that could be considered quasilegal-in order to better allow you
to extricate me from the unfortunate situation in which I now find
myself ?"

"You do and I'll kill you"

"Not you, too"

"Your life has been threatened?"

"Only in jest. I hope."

"If your life has been threatened, it's something else. Do you
have any reason to believe that this person means to do you
harm?"

I took a breath. It would be so easy just to say, "Yes. I'm scared
to death. The guy's a wacko whacker who's having far too much
fun with this assignment. Who might easily knock me off just to
test his reflexes"

Only that wasn't the case. Martin Kessler posed no threat to me
as long as I didn't cross him. Which was all well and good, except
my job was to cross him.

"You're sweating," MacAullif said.

"It's hot."

"I'm a sergeant. My office is air-conditioned." MacAullif
cocked his head. "Has this guy threatened your life? Is that why
you're sweating?"

"I wish it were that simple."

"It is that simple. There's the good guys and the bad guys.You
line up on one side or the other. At the end of the day you tally
the score. If you align yourself with the bad guys, don't expect to
score very high."

"Where did that analogy come from?"

"Damned if I know. Some guy puttin' together some task force
or other, trying to hearten the troops. It's a bunch of bullshit, but
what do you expect from a dumb cop."

I noticed how adroitly MacAullif had led the conversation away
from the topic of my telling all. I wondered if Alice would appreciate the significance of the timely digression. Except I knew she
wouldn't. She'd say, "Bullshit. He pulled that on you because you
weren't straight with him." The fact he didn't want me to be
straight with him would get lost in the shuffle.

"Can you run the name?"

"Of course I can run the name. I have nothing else to do. I sit
here all day long, waiting, hoping you will show up in my office and
give me some work. The five open homicides-make that sixthe six open homicides I am supervising can pretty much take care
of themselves, seeing as how we have made no arrests and have no
one to interrogate. Oh, wait a minute, that's not a good thing, is it?
Since the commissioner tends to view arrests as progress. And lack
of them as-wait a minute, I've almost got it-lack of progress.
Which tends to make the commissioner grumpy.

"But now all that is solved. I can tell the commissioner the
reason we haven't arrested anyone is because I was busy running
security checks on schoolteachers for a private eye"

Luckily, I got out of there before MacAullif spontaneously
combusted from an overdose of irony.

RICHARD ROSENBERG WASN'T HAPPY. "I hear you're still
working for your client."

"Who told you that?"

"Wendy or Janet. I'm not sure which. Says you can't work a full
day and you're turning down cases."

I'd turned down one case to go see MacAullif. I'd kept in most
of them. The one in New Jersey was out of the way. I'd never have
fit it in.

"I didn't have time to go to Jersey."

"You had time to go to Brooklyn."

"I was in Queens. They're neighbors, you know."

"So what are you doing here when you could be in Jersey?"

"I had a case I did yesterday. I wanted to tell you about it."

"What case you did yesterday?"

"Woman with the dead child."

"Oh, that. I'm kicking the case."

"What? A medical malpractice resulting in death?"

"Be a tough one to prove"

"You're kidding."

"It's a high-risk medical procedure. Things go wrong."

"This is more than a medical malpractice, Richard. The doctor
committed an illegal act against the patient's will."

"That's what's gonna be hard to prove."

"What?"

"It's a he-said, she-said. Patient says the doctor acted against her
will, doctor says he didn't."

"Did you read the case?"

"Of course I read the case. It was a breech birth with
complications."

"It was a breech birth with tangled umbilical cord. A cesarean
was not only indicated, it was imperative."

"Says who?"

"Says me and the whole damn AMA. If you can find one
doctor who says a cesarean shouldn't be performed under those
circumstances, I'll buy you dinner."

"Hey, I'm a lawyer. I can find a doctor who'll say anything. And
this doctor will say there was no indication of fetal distress until the
baby was delivered."

"How do you know that?You haven't even taken his statement."

Richard smiled. "Because any doctor crooked enough to withhold a cesarean under those circumstances is certainly crooked
enough to lie about it. If I understand your scribbled notes correctly, the doctor didn't perform a cesarean because he was prevailed upon by a friend of his not to."

"That's right"

"Because his friend was a producer who wanted to use the
woman in porn flicks."

"Not porn. Skin flicks. Soft-core."

"Doesn't matter. The attorney for the defendant will say she's a porn actress, and I'll be in the embarrassing position of having to
point out the difference. Then we'll have a he-said, she-said
between an accredited physician and a welfare mother who acts in
sex films."

"There were nurses involved."

"Sure. Who want to keep their jobs. Who should they align
themselves with? Gee, I'm a registered nurse. What's my best
strategy? Keep my mouth shut and pretend nothing happened, or
testify against a reputable surgeon and get transferred to another
hospital where no one wants to work with a tattletale? Stanley, you
see the world through rose-colored glasses. That are half full. I'm
not a do-gooder, a white knight on a steed, a crusading attorney
attempting to right the wrongs of the world. I'm out to make
money.You know my ads on TV? They're not free. They have to
pay for themselves by bringing in enough business to make it
worthwhile. I'm sorry if that offends you, but it also pays you."

"But-"

"Doctors pay a fortune in malpractice insurance. You know
what that means? That means they don't have to settle. That means
they can afford to fight. If I go after a doctor, I want to have the
goods."