Bonnie followed the girl into a swaying gondola shaped like a teacup, open to the sky. The girl went first. They sat side by side on a padded bench. The carny swung down a bar to lock them in their seats, then banged the door shut. After a moment the wheel began to rise.
“Why are we doing this?” her new friend asked.
“Privacy.”
“Quelle dramatic.”
“Yeah, I’m a real diva. Now let’s talk. And in case you had any doubts, this purse is locked and loaded.”
The girl seemed unimpressed. “You’re Bonnie Parker? The PI?”
“No, I’m Bonnie Parker, the brain surgeon. Who the hell are you?”
“Kyle Ridley.”
“Kyle, huh? Did your daddy want a boy?”
“Did yours want an outlaw?”
Kyle was quick. Young as she was, she knew about the original Bonnie Parker, the one who’d run with Clyde Barrow in the Depression, robbing banks and killing lawmen.
“Matter of fact,” Bonnie said, “he did.”
“From what I hear, he wasn’t disappointed.”
“Meaning?”
“You have a reputation.”
“As an outlaw?”
“Of sorts. Mind if I smoke?”
Bonnie could have used a cig herself. Right now she was jonesing for one of the Parliament Whites in her purse, but she couldn’t afford to get distracted. “Sure, light up.”
The gondola swung in the breeze. It was cooler up here, high above the midway.
“Actually,” Kyle said, “it’s a vape pen. You know, an e-cigarette. There’s no toxic output. But some people find them objectionable anyway.”
“Some people find everything objectionable. Those people can go fuck themselves.”
Bonnie studied the girl. She was small and slim, a tiny thing half-buried inside the smothering coat. Her face was impassive, hard to read. The eyes behind the big lenses in their thick rectangular frames were hooded, secretive.
The lights of the amusement area sparkled below their feet. Moonlight stippled the ocean and whitewashed the slender strip of beach.
“You smoke?” Kyle asked as she primed the e-cig with a quick puff.
“Yeah. Real cigarettes, not those bogus ones.”
“When’d you start?”
“When I was fifteen.”
“Me too. Vaping, that is.”
“Hey, it feels like we’re really bonding here. Now can you tell me why you’ve been pasted to my ass like a tramp stamp?”
“I want to hire you.”
“You couldn’t just come to my office?”
“I was watching your place earlier today, and it seemed to me the police are just a little too interested in you. I saw a squad car in your parking lot three times in three hours. It looked like they were writing down tag numbers.”
“Yeah, they’ve been riding me pretty hard lately. It tends to discourage a certain kind of client.”
“My kind, apparently.”
“I left the office a couple hours ago. Why didn’t you talk to me once I was on the move?”
“I didn’t want to get in your way. I could see you were on a stakeout. Then you followed the red Dodge Charger to the parking lot here, and on foot you tailed the guy in the raincoat to the food court.” She expelled a jet of steam. “Your technique isn’t very good.”
“No?”
“That business of pretending to read the menu in the window lacked verisimilitude. And later, when you dropped your purse so you could check me out—it was too obvious.”
“Anything else?”
The girl considered it. “The hat is a mistake. Besides being a fashion faux pas, it makes you too identifiable.”
Bonnie didn’t much care for the faux pas crack, but she let it pass. “My target didn’t identify me.”
“You were lucky.”
“Meanwhile, I figured out you were tailing me and I maneuvered you into this little tête-à-tête. What does that say about your technique?”
“I wasn’t trying to be inconspicuous. I just wanted to give you some space to do your job. As a courtesy, you understand.”
“Nice of you. Did you let me get the drop on you as a courtesy too?”
“We had to make contact eventually. I tried to approach you after you left the food court. But you stayed ahead of me.”
“Until I was behind you—and you got jumped.”
Kyle chuckled.
“Something funny?” Bonnie asked.
“I shouldn’t laugh. It’s just the whole tough-gal vibe, you know? You sound like you’re channeling Humphrey Bogart.”
“And you want me to change the channel?”
“It’s not a criticism. Really. You have a unique personal style. It’s so unabashedly retro.”
Bonnie took a moment to remind herself why she couldn’t just shoot Kyle Ridley. “Let’s try to stay on point. What do you need me for?”
The red LED on the tip of the vape pen lit up as Kyle took another drag. “I’ve gotten tangled up in a tricky situation. I think you can help me get clear of it.”
“What situation?”
“It involves lawbreaking. I assume I can speak freely?”
“Just talk.”
“For the past few months I’ve been working in the, um, transportation business. Carrying a certain item into the United States from Turkey, by way of London.”
“Heroin?”
Kyle nodded.
“You’re a drug mule?”
“Can’t say I care for that term. I prefer to be called a drug courier. I’ve done six trips, plus a dry run. This was going to be my last time. At ten fifteen AM I walked off the plane at Newark with two kilos on me.”
“And then?”
“I lost it.”
“Yeah, I’m always losing stuff, too. I lost a hairbrush, still can’t find the damn thing.”
“You know what I mean. I got jacked.”
“In the airport?”
She nodded. “Long-term parking.”
“That sounds like more than just bad luck.”
“I don’t know what it was. It could have been a random mugging. Or it could have been someone from another organization who got wind of what I was carrying. Whatever the real story is, the son of a bitch took my carry-on, and I lost the haul. All of it.”
“What about your employers? They know about this?”
“No. I was supposed to take the product directly to my contact. That’s our usual routine. Instead I went home, threw together some clothes and all the cash I had, and got out. Took my car but left my phone behind, in case he could track it.”
“You don’t trust him to take your word for it that you were mugged?”
“He won’t care about that. I lost the shipment. That’s all he’ll need to know. Excuses won’t cut it.”
“What will he do to you?”
“Kill me. What else?” Her voice was flat, a dry monotone.
“You sound pretty sure of it,” Bonnie said.
“I know the type of people I’m dealing with.”
“Might have been better not to go into business with them.”
“Yes, well, you know what they say about twenty-twenty hindsight.”
Hindsight wasn’t the issue. Simple common sense should have shown Kyle Ridley all the ways her business arrangement could go wrong, with results ranging from a prison cell to an unmarked grave. But it was a little late for that lecture.
“By now, of course, he’ll be looking for me,” Kyle added.
“Him and the rest of the crew.”
“No, I don’t think so. He’ll want to handle it on his own. He won’t want his superiors to know there’s a problem.”
“And you think he can find you.”
“He can find me.” Still no emotion. “He’s not dumb, and he’s incredibly tenacious. As long as I’m in the tri-state area, I’m at risk.”
“Then go someplace else.”
“I will, eventually. But all I have on me is a hundred dollars. I can’t get very far on that. And even if I could leave, I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
“They spread their net that wide?”
“They’re national. International. The Dragusha family. Heard of them?”
“Albanian mob.” Bonnie frowned. “So what is it you need me to do, exactly?”
“I thought that was obvious.” She drew vapor into her mouth, let it rest there for a moment, then blew it out in a swirling cloud. “I need you to kill him.”
Bonnie took in the remark without particular surprise. “Because you heard I do that kind of thing, huh?”
“I know all about your unadvertised skills. I know your rep as a hitman—or hit woman; I’m not sure of the preferred terminology. And I know what you charge. Three thousand up front, and thirty down the line.”
“You seem to know all about everything.”
Kyle nodded, taking it as a compliment, which it wasn’t.
Bonnie looked down. The Ferris wheel had stopped, with their gondola at its apex. From this height it was impossible to make out individual figures in the crowd below. There were only drifts of movement, ripples of shadow, like crisscrossing currents in a stream.
“Just out of curiosity,” she asked, “how am I supposed to get paid? You told me you’ve only got a hundred bucks to your name.”
“A hundred on me. But there’s fifty thousand dollars in a safe deposit box. In cash.”
“How’d you get fifty grand?”
“I made six trips, counting today’s. I was paid for the first five. I made ten thousand per trip. You do the math.”
“Ten g’s per trip? That sounds high.”
“It’s what I’m worth,” Kyle said with a kind of childish pride.
“In that case, you shouldn’t have wasted time at your apartment. You should have gone straight to the safe deposit box and cleaned it out. By now you’d be halfway to Florida.”
“I can’t go to the bank. My handler in the organization helped me set up the account. One of the clerks is always watching me when I open the box. If I tried to clean it out, my handler would have been notified before I even had a chance to leave. But once he’s been eliminated, it’ll be clear sailing.”
“Don’t kid yourself, slugger. Nothing about this is clear sailing.”
“You have no reason to refuse. The money is good, and after all, it’s what you do. You are an assassin, right?”
“Hey, ixnay on the sassinsay. There’s people around.”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
“I was. Not your ordinary kind, though. I only went after the bad guys. I had, you know, standards.”
Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you using the past tense?”
“Because whatever I might or might not have done in the past, I’m not doing it anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That part of my life is over. Finito. Kaput.”
“You’re saying you quit?”
Bonnie nodded. “Cashed out. Retired.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll make it simple for you. Bang-bang go bye-bye.”
Kyle was staring at her with the first real emotion she’d shown, an expression of horror that was almost comical. “You can’t be serious.”
“Afraid I am, kiddo. You’ll need to find yourself another hitter, because Bonnie Parker is officially out of the game.”