She was a doozy, and Mr. Ogg had good reason to dislike her
, I thought.
"Look, I'm running late. Can we wrap this up?" she said.
"As you wish it." My hand clutching her death sentence emerged from my pocket.
Her last utterance was, "Hey, is this some kind of a sick joke?"
Clearly it wasn't.
I
better come clean. Holes—big, ragged holes—exist in my Swiss cheese memory. Call it convenient amnesia, if you like. Whatever. But understand I have to live with myself, and I can't be preoccupied by a conscience racking me with guilt and anguish. The next frame I can summon up was me scuttling into a different yellow-top taxi (Mr. Ogg owned a fleet of them), and it whisked me out of her neighborhood. This cabbie also belonged to the Laconic Men's Club, and that suited me. My mood was anything but chatty.
I arrived at Mr. Ogg's Taj Mahal and found him enthroned in a burgundy brocade armchair. After he ponied up the rest of my fee (another tax-free grand) we talked, him first.
"How do it go down, Tommy Mack?"
"Bloody."
His aviator shades bobbed with a sagacious nod. "They always do, kid, but are you good?"
"Good enough."
"Splendid. Here's the key thing to keep in mind:
It's just business.
Nothing personal. Never overlook that part."
"Uh-huh."
"Here: take a look at this." He pulled up his polo shirt. A wormlike scar stitched his lizardy skin an inch above his navel. "She did that. The crazy bitch shot me."
"Sorry, but you've lost me."
"Her button man came gunning for me."
"She paid to get you killed?"
"That's what I'm saying, but it's business. What you did was tat for tit, so to speak."
"Did you lose the cops' phone number?"
His head arched back as he blurted out a hyena's cackle for a laugh. "The cops are clowns."
"Your business is like that, huh?"
"My business is about profits, and this is how I do it."
I took in his Italian marble floor, the unread first editions gleaming on his library shelves, and out the spotless bay window at his koi pond in front of his terraced floral gardens. I’d eaten snacks in his chef’s kitchen gleaming with enough polished granite to erect an art museum. All he needed for the crowning touch was a stuffed boar's head mounted over the granite mantle and a Seth Thomas clock ticking away on the mantle. "You must be good at your business."
The blind Mr. Ogg snorted in disgust. "All these fancy trappings bore the living shit out of me. I'm downsizing, and it's overdue."
"You're giving all this up for what exactly?"
"My new domicile will be a bungalow."
Young, I was also impetuous. "You must be nuts, plain and simple."
Unruffled, he smiled, no teeth. "Things kept plain and simple please me."
Before long, I gleaned the actual strategy for his scaling back was his gambit to drop off law enforcement's radar screen. He strove to be the quietest, most invisible of dons, a monkish recluse who abhorred any publicity. D.C. was never a mobbed up town since the feds made their main headquarters downtown, and their pall was cast over the suburbs. But the audacious Mr. Ogg operated in those shadows, running his rackets—dogfights, prostitution, and of course, the truckloads of narcotics—and piling up his ill-gotten gains.
A
few days later, Mr. Ogg made his pitch to recruit me to be a cog in his outfit. My smashing triumph in
New
Yvor
City
had been my initiation rite.
"If you've got the fire, kid, I've got the work," he told me.
"Time out here. What do you see in me? An underprivileged, stupid ghetto kid beholden to a rich fool like you to drive around a pimpmobile, strut with swagger, and flash his gold? Is that it?"
"Don't get so bent. This is a job offer. Point blank. If you like it, welcome aboard. If you can't dig it, forget what I said, step off, and don't gaze back. No hard feelings go either way."
"I'm not 18 until next May."
"All the better since you minors catch a big break."
"If I'm collared, do you have the juice to spring me? I ain't big on pulling any hard time in a federal prison and playing some big ass con's bunk bitch."
"I take care of my own. Ask around if you like. That's my reputation. I've got lawyers up the wazoo. They're the best and brightest, and they score me results. My success follows a basic formula: always keep a low profile. That's the main thing, besides heeding the bottom line, I've learned."
"Fine, I'll do it. Right now I'll grab my power mower and head on home."
"Ditch it. You've moved up in the world. I'll hire a spic to tend to my yard work. It's time for you to wrap your mind around the new lofty challenges awaiting you."
I grinned in relief. "I sure do like the way you think and talk, Mr. Ogg."
That's how I took up my present vocation. Grave doubts had crept in as the long shadows do at the day's end, and I sensed that scary, exhilarating changes were stirring to alter my middle-aged life.
"Y
our list is a skimpy one, sweetheart."
I redirected the map light and took back the yellow legal pad from Esquire. My short list of possible suspects who knew Gwen Ogg and killed her shook out like this:
Watson Ogg (uncle)
Rita Ogg (sister)
Boyce Randall (boyfriend?)
"Boyce Randall, what about him?" asked Esquire.
"I never met or saw the dude. Mr. Ogg mentioned him in the same breath as Gwen once, and I believe he could be her boyfriend."
"Were Gwen and he madly in love, or did they fight tooth and nail?"
"I don't know. Right now I've just got the name to go on."
We rode, me at the helm, in the coupé through
Old
Yvor
City
's murky backstreets. I had to avoid colliding with the dark suits in Mr. Ogg's outfit that he'd paid to do a piece of work on me. Prior to tonight, I'd always played the hunter, and inverting the roles to play the quarry griped me.
"I'd say Boyce Randall did it," said Esquire. "Affairs of the heart fire the dark emotions to boil over in murderous rage."
"Gwen wasn't killed in an act of passion. Shot assassination-style is a premeditated move."
"Randall still gets my vote."
"All right, we'll go after him first."
"Of course the older sister Rita looks good for it, too. Sibling rivalry fuels lots of hate and rancor. Did they quarrel?"
"Beats me. I never saw them together."
"Did either say catty things about the other?"
"They're high-strung ladies, Esquire. Enough said."
"Then again there's Mr. Ogg. Even you said he has the inside track."
I lifted my eyes to the coupé's roof liner. "You're a big help to me."
"Call me your sounding board. How do you plan to hand over Gwen’s killer to the police?"
My headshake dismissed his question outright. "No cops. I settle this my own way. What did you tell young Hermes about tonight?"
Esquire hefted his bullish shoulders. "I texted him that I had to help a straight friend. He should do okay on his own." The large Esquire squirmed in the coupé's seat. "This upholstery blows chunks. It feels like I'm sitting on a patch of steel wool. Bring your coupé by the shop for the day, and I'll put you in primo sheepskin that feels plusher than wearing your favorite jeans."
"These seats will do me fine."
"You're almost hopeless."
"Then I'd make for a lousy trainee upholstering car seats, wouldn't I?"
"Notice that I said
almost
. When I get done with you, you'll be a champion trimmer."
"How's the pay?"
"Money isn't everything. There's lots to be said for taking pride in your craftsmanship."
"So the pay isn't so great. Maybe I can live with that."
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked.
"Capital idea. Match me up, too."
"Where is your dashboard lighter?"
"It was broken when I bought the coupé. Use my lighter."
We lit up our Blue Castles, and the mood fell solemn before he threw me a curveball.
"Do they ever shriek out in your dreams, sweetheart?"
I played dumb. "They…?"
"They—the targets you go after out there."
"Oh. Them." My head wagged in the negative. "Very seldom."
"How do you kill them?"
"Trade secret."
"Can the crap, sweetheart. I'm being serious here."
The big man was toe-the-line business, and I gave him as much as I felt comfortable with sharing. "I usually rig the death scene as a hold up or a drug buy gone south. The police aren't so stupid to think there's so much violence, but they never go beyond the routine investigation since the marks I kill are less than model citizens. The homicide detectives don't pursue the cases because nobody living cares if they ever get solved."
"Did you know any of the targets?"
"A few were my casual acquaintances. Why do I get this third degree from you?"
"Because I'll miss you terribly if you go to prison, or worse."
"I've been at it since age 18, and I just turned 54. That's well over a quarter-century, and you can't argue with that track record."
"Do the math. It stands to reason the odds must be catching up with you."
"I use a repeatable process, and it curbs the risks slim to nil."
"Uh-huh."
"I've also got resources like an army of criminal lawyers."
"You don't after Mr. Ogg exiled you. You're on your own."
It was true; I didn't have the security blanket of his lawyers anymore. If I ever got collared, I'd end up with a lethal IV tapped into my arm's big vein to become my dying sight. "Thanks for the grim reminder."
"Sometimes it takes a big man to deliver the cold, hard truth."
My sardonic grunt acknowledged him.
"You know, I also once killed a man, sweetheart."
My visceral reaction of horror collapsed my tail-hole shut. If you'd heard his flat tone on top of seeing the pile-drivers he carried for fists, you'd've done the same thing. I wanted to laugh at my rampant paranoia. He and I were longtime friends, and I'd little to fear from him.
"Are you burning up with curiosity, sweetheart?"
My head shook. "No sir, it's none of my business."
"Of course I might be messing with you."
"Well then, I'll ask you if you really are a killer."
"Ask the dice, sweetheart."
"What's that quip supposed to mean?"
"Simple. Who knows what any of us really are?"
I scowled at his oblique references. "Give me the digest version."
"He was a redneck on top of a gay basher, and I didn't get his name. What was the point? He roughed up young Hermes, and it all enraged me, so I paid said redneck a visit. We exchanged heated words. The possibility never occurred to him we 'fags' have tender feelings and short fuses, and he ignited mine."
"Oh boy."
"Oh boy is right. I tore the redneck limb from limb. Literally. Why do you think I've stayed silent about your dark shit?"
I drove us in stunned silence before he continued.
"The blood red stigma of Cain stains us both."