“Your skills, Edward, they’re in serious decline. You used to be such an efficient killer.” Stanton took the last bite of his fish sandwich and pushed it aside.
“The guy ambushed me. I got the fuck out.”
“Perhaps it’s a precipitous drop in your testosterone level. I’d have it checked. You’re going to lose your charter membership in Bullies of America.”
“She was dead when I left.”
“Well, she wasn’t dead enough, Runyon. Her Prince Charming saved her and took her away.”
Runyon’s green aloha shirt was rumpled, but the burn in his eyes still simmered. An injured bull, more dangerous than a healthy one.
They were at an all-night Burger King, Dixie and Twenty-seventh, on the fringes of Coconut Grove. A booth in back. Except for the Asian kid mopping the floor, the place was empty. It was three in the morning. Runyon halfway through his second double cheeseburger and down to slurping the foam at the bottom of his chocolate shake.
“You’ve played one round of golf too many, Edward. Lost your edge.”
Runyon drew a breath and said, “I know when I’ve killed someone.”
“My source tells me otherwise. Security tapes show her walking out with her arm over the shoulder of a tall sandy-headed fellow.”
He folded three more fries into his mouth.
“You’ve got a spy at the hospital?”
“This is my hometown, Runyon. Sixty years, you make friends.”
“The sandy-haired asshole is the one who ambushed me.”
“His name is Thorn. I’m told he’s the woman’s boyfriend.”
Runyon swallowed the last pinch of burger, wiped his lips on the paper napkin, missing a trickle of grease at the corner of his mouth.
“If she’s still alive, then I’ll just have to kill her again, and her boyfriend.”
“How many would that make for you, Edward? Adding it up over the years. Do you keep count?”
“What do you care?”
“Just curious. It’s a lot, isn’t it? So many, you can’t remember.”
“I remember fine.”
“Forty-odd years, a handful a year, that could be over a hundred.”
Runyon pushed the food away and glanced at his reflection in the glass.
“You going to finish your fries?”
“I try to imagine how it is to be someone like you, Runyon. Blameless and self-certain. Triggerman for presidents.”
“Prisses like you never get it.”
“Oh, yes, I know all the clichés. You’re on the frontline defense for democracy. Without you and your black-ops comrades, we wouldn’t have burgers and fries. The only reason we enjoy the pampered life we do is because animals like you are prowling the perimeter.”
Runyon picked at his mustache, eyeing King with a shadow of disdain.
“How many have I done?” Runyon said. “Face-to-face, it’s not that many. Ten, fifteen. Other things I was involved in, bigger operations, that kicks the number up. But I don’t keep track of those.”
“You’re amazing, Edward.”
“Numbers don’t mean shit. It’s the fucking target that matters. Kill the right guy, you could be tipping the balance, save a million lives.”
“Is that how they brainwash you? Get together on weekend retreats, sit around in a circle, and tell each other lies about how many lives you’ve saved?”
Runyon wet his finger and ran it around the inside of the empty box of fries. Getting his salt quotient.
“Here’s what you really want to hear,” Runyon said. “I get off on it. That creeps you out, doesn’t it, old liberal pussy like you? All these years, taking someone down still gives me a hard-on.”
Runyon grinned. He sucked his finger clean and dabbed it into the box for the last grains.
“I called Caufield earlier. Warned her we’re in over our head.”
Runyon met Stanton’s eyes in the window.
“You stupid fuck. You don’t play footsie with that woman. I met rattlesnakes I trusted more.”
“She’s giving us a bit more time to set things straight before she calls for reinforcements.”
“Don’t call her anymore. You want to talk to somebody, talk to me.”
Edward turned the gaudy diamond on his finger. His eyes were as bitter and gray as thawing ice.
“You underestimate me, Runyon. I know you’ve been calling her, too. You want me to have no contact so you’ll be in full control. Well, forget that. I have as much at stake in this as you. I’ll consult with Pauline whenever I like.”
Stanton King smiled. He couldn’t help himself. All evening he’d been in a buoyant mood. An old weight finally lifting. He’d been thinking of Hotei, the happy Buddha, his arms thrown skyward in hilarious celebration. His large ungirdled belly jutting out. So absurd, all of it. Casting aside all his cares. What did any of it matter? The sins of Stanton’s youth, the even more egregious sins of his nation’s leaders, a poisonous boil that festered silently and out of sight for lo these many decades had been revealed by a random snapshot taken at a cosmically inappropriate split second. A wonderfully absurd coincidence.
A chance for Stanton to make amends in the twilight of his life for the one horrendous misstep he’d made forty years before. Let it all pour forth, let Humpty Dumpty come crashing.
“Tell me something, King. Nineteen sixty-four, that operation, I always thought it was suspicious, a guy like you, all-American Joe, apple cheeks, mixed up in that. Soon as you came into it, that operation started to stink.”
Stanton’s smile backed down.
He glanced over at the Asian kid tirelessly mopping the floor. The lad was going to run his own Burger King franchise one day. America was still grinding on, full of dreams and dreamers. Optimists, true believers.
“You’re right about one thing, Edward. Murdering eight men, women, and children for a political pipe dream, yes, I’d say that smells. Even after all these years, it still reeks.”
Runyon snapped the lid off his shake and tipped it up for a last swallow.
Digging the cell from his pocket, Stanton dialed Friendly Cab.
When the dispatcher answered, Stanton said, “Nelson, it’s me again. You talk to him yet? Find out anything?”
“I was just dialing you,” Nelson said.
“What do you have?”
“This is gonna cost you extra, Mr. King. Double what we said.”
“Yes? And why’s that?”
“I know where Snake is going to be in about five minutes. The exact address. And the other guy you mentioned, too.”
“Thorn?”
“Same place,” Nelson said. “What’s it worth to you?”
Stanton shut the phone and looked at Runyon and smiled.
“You ready to ride?”
“You’re not going to check in with your boss lady first?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not? I’ll tell her where we’re headed. Make her feel better.”
“Don’t do it, Stanton. The less she knows, the better.”
Stanton smiled. He opened his phone and punched in Pauline’s number. It rang twice and there she was. Stanton feeling a ripple of the old power. People like Caufield taking his calls again. Just like the old days.
Up in the dark attic. Aiming through the slats. The pool, the patio spread before her. A possum waddled from the woods. It snuck along the edge of the water, had a sip, waddled on.
From her sniper’s lair, she’d brought down a handful of birds. Late one night she winged a rat and watched it crawl away to die. She’d nailed half a dozen cats, sent them yowling. Sharpening her aim. Sharpening.
She steadied on the gray possum, its hairy back.
Beside her the nest was quiet. The paper wasps were at rest.
Plonk, plonk, plonk. Two out of three found flesh. The possum jerked. It skidded forward on the flagstone. Then pushed itself up on its tiny feet and toddled toward the safety of the woods. Plonk and again plonk.
Its back legs failed, but it dragged itself on. Dragged itself on toward the dark woods.
She lowered the Walther Red Hawk, went back to her rocker. Sat.
Killing was no longer the point.
Stinging was.
Sting as she’d been stung.
The prick, the stab, the throb of pain. Sting, sting, as she was stung. There were worse fates than dying.