Page 81 of Kill For Me Kill For You
The waiter took an order for herbal tea for Billy – chamomile. Amanda ordered a glass of water and cup of coffee. The place was lined with booths, and a local radio station played rockabilly over their heads. There were enough people around to make a low-volume conversation pretty much private. Or as private as any conversation could be in the heart of Manhattan.
The waiter brought Amanda’s coffee and water for both of them. It took another minute before he returned with Billy’s tea. In that time, they said nothing. Billy stared out of the window, keenly alert whenever he heard a siren. In this town, on Thanksgiving Eve, people were partying, which meant a lot more sirens than usual. He also took the time to look around the diner. Giving every customer the once-over. Making sure they were sufficiently far away, or at least otherwise engaged, so he could talk safely.
Amanda poured sugar into her cup. She had given it up before Jess was born, but every now and again she needed a hit. Especially when the coffee had been sitting in a bun flask long enough to grow a skin. She didn’t want to be here. Her thoughts flitted to her car, still parked a few blocks from Quinn’s house, and how she wished she’d parked closer.
‘Okay, you deserve some answers to your questions. I want to give you those answers because I need your help. I know we’re both looking for the same woman. We have a common goal. If at the end of this conversation you want to walk away, that’s fine. No hard feelings. Is that agreeable?’ he asked.
There was a commanding tone in his voice, but only now and then. Like he was aware of it and so used it sparingly.
Amanda nodded. She wanted to keep her tongue behind her teeth for now.
‘Good. I’ll talk first. Then I need you to tell me what happened to you. I know some of it already, or I can guess, but you have specifics that might help me. Helpus, I mean.’
Amanda said nothing.
‘My wife was found dead in her office two years ago. Her name was Lucille, or Luce – that’s what I called her. We’d been married fifteen years. We’d been together for another ten years before that, but she always said she could never marry a marine. Didn’t want to be one of those wives wondering if some day she was going to be handed a folded flag as they lowered my coffin into the dirt. We married the same year I retired. That’s why I got out of the service, really. By that time, it didn’t matter if I got a pay check. Luce was always great with computers and money. She worked in investment-capital groups all over the city. Knew it all. I confess that most of that stuff went over my head, but it didn’t matter. Luce earned good money of her own. Everything was great, until one day she got a call from a guy about investing in an app. I didn’t know what an app was – but she did. It was some kind of courier service for food. She left her job and went in with most of our savings. Six months later her partner, Jerry Gould, wanted to sell to one of the big tech firms. Luce said no – if they waited it out, they could make ten times that number in another twelve months.
‘I never liked Jerry. He had gambling problems. Always broke. His behavior grew more erratic, and he got into debt with the wrong people. The kind of people who break your legs if you miss a payment. Luce told him she would help him with the money, but he needed to see a counselor and get his life together.’
A cop car flew past the window with its siren blaring. Billy paused, took a sip of tea and waited until the noise had died down, and the buzz of conversation started up again in the diner.
‘He took the money, and a week later asked for more. Luce said no. The next night the cops found her body in the office. The place had been trashed. She was shot twice in the chest. Twice in the head. They tried to tell me it was a professional burglary gone wrong. Can you believe that bullshit? It wasn’t a professional burglary – it was a professional hit. Jerry sold the company for six million dollars before Luce was even in the ground. He never came to see me to pay his respects – didn’t go to the funeral. Never shared a dime of that money with me, like he was supposed to. I was her surviving spouse and entitled to her shares. I didn’t want it, anyway. It was blood money. I knew it was him, but the cops said he had an alibi that held up, and there wasn’t enough to charge him.’
Billy paused, picked up his cup.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Amanda.
His cup halted, inches from his lips as she spoke. As if those words had caught him off guard. It was the right thing to say, she was sure of it, but in the circumstances perhaps he had not expected common courtesy.
‘Thank you,’ he said, then cleared his throat and continued.
‘I kind of went to pieces for a while. My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist who gave me pills, but I didn’t take them. I’ve watched too many marines go down that road and they never came back. Counseling looked like an option. Group therapy. I tried it for a while. I found an online support group and that helped. Knowing that there are people who have been in your kind of situation and have come out the other side, well, it gives you some hope. Then I got talking to a new group member, Felicia. She joined a month after me. Her husband’s killer had been acquitted on some kind of legal technicality. A faulty search warrant, or something. She wanted the man who killed her husband dead on a slab and said she couldn’t find peace until that day.’
Amanda swallowed. Tried not to show any reaction. She took a long drink of water. Her grip on the pocket knife began to relax.
‘We talked online, in a side chat. Privately. And we got to know each other. It felt like I was talking to someone who understood me. Someone going through the same kind of pain, with no resolution – no closure – no justice. After a month, she sent me a gift. A movie on DVD.Strangers on a Train. I’d never seen it. I watched it, and she called me afterward. She told me we should do what those guys did in the movie – exchange murders. She would kill Jerry, and I would kill the man who’d murdered her husband.’
He stopped talking and looked at Amanda. She felt as if he was staring right through her eyes, gazing all the way into the back of her skull. It wasn’t uncomfortable. There was a kindness there. An easy, shared understanding of a wound they each had suffered.
‘Felicia and I met the day after that phone call. And we talked. Got to know each other. And we discussed how it could be done – swapping the murders. Couple of days later, I got home from my regular Friday night bowling league and she called me and said to turn on the TV. Jerry was missing and there was an appeal on the local news. She said he wasn’t missing – she had killed him. And now it was my turn.’
His brow furrowed and he took up his spoon and slowly stirred his tea, gazing into the dark liquid.
‘She gave me the name and address of the man who’d killed her husband – said it had to be done that night, before the cops found Jerry Gould’s body and hauled me in as a suspect. I still had my old service weapon, so her plan was I knocked on the man’s front door, put two in his head soon as he opened it.’
Removing the spoon from the tea, he set it down on the table, wrapped both hands around the cup for warmth and brought it to his lips, but he didn’t drink. He just held it there, looked out the window and said, ‘I couldn’t bring myself to knock on his door. I just stood outside his house, frozen.’
‘You didn’t kill him?’ asked Amanda.
Shaking his head, Billy said, ‘I’ve seen action in God knows how many countries. Pulling a trigger is not a big deal for me. In the military, it was different. It was combat. There was an enemy and I had my orders. This felt all wrong. I just turned and left.
‘I called Felicia, to tell her I couldn’t do it, but she didn’t answer the phone. I went to her place and it was cleaned out. All the internet articles about her and the trial of her husband’s killer vanished the same day. I didn’t know what to think at first. Maybe she was just cutting ties, but I knew it was more than that. Then I saw a news report on Jerry Gould. He had been found alive, after being locked in a janitor’s closet in his building with no cell phone for two days. A cleaner found him Monday morning. He was dehydrated, but otherwise alive and healthy. She’d only pretended to kill Jerry, to get me to kill someone for her.’
Amanda said nothing. She didn’t want to give anything away that could get her into trouble. This could all be a set-up. Maybe this guy worked with Naomi. She was forcing herself to think like this – making sure she wasn’t conned a second time. And while it was good to be skeptical, she knew, in her bones, that this man was telling the truth.
‘Did you go to the police?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know much about criminal law, but I know if I went to the police and showed them our message history the first thing they would do is arrest me for conspiracy to murder. It wouldn’t matter to them if they never found Felicia. Last contact I had with Felicia was when she gave me the name and address of the man she wanted me to kill. That was a month ago. I’ve been going slowly crazy trying to find her.’
