“Konstantin Pentkovski. The man in the white shoes.”
“No . . . no . . .
nooooooooooooo
. . . please . . . no . . . I will do anything . . .
not Konstantin.
”
“You’ve heard of him.”
“
He is an assassin
. Everyone in Hollywood . . . everyone on Broadway . . . they know Konstantin.”
“He trained me.”
“You are a . . . you’re not . . . a bounty hunter? Please tell me you’re taking me to New York.”
I coughed and shook my head, my breathing shortening, the world glazed over.
There were hundreds of poisons, easy to slip in food, on the surface of cups and glasses, poisons I’d used before, poisons that had no antidote, like the slow-acting poison that had killed a Russian spy.
The latte I’d had back in Nashville. That could’ve been drugged.
I fought with the illness.
My passenger’s breathing accelerated, panic in his eyes. “Force equals mass times . . .
no, no.
”
He struggled with his binding. Struggled and yelled and cursed, his tantrum that of a three-year-old child. He did what others did, begged and offered to pay me more than the original contract. I reached for the stun gun, held it against his neck as he screamed, zapped him unconscious.
I struggled with my own pain, again chills weakening me, like a slow-acting poison.
Seconds and altitude were lost when I faded out, came back with a jerk, struggled with the plane, my battle to stay alive ongoing. It was true. Dying was a lot harder than killing. I had learned that firsthand. I looked at my unconscious passenger. I zapped him again for good measure.
Ten thousand volts made him dance deeper into unconsciousness.
The iconoclast would wake up to freezing air, the grip of gravity pulling that pedophile toward earth, his impact calculated by Newton’s Second Law: force equals mass times acceleration.
The same formula that, as I struggled with consciousness, pulled the Cessna toward the earth.
Sixteen
an unpardonable crime
Matthew snapped,
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“First you said you were in the goddamn hotel room, sleeping; now you have a new lie.”
“I told you what happened.”
“Tell me again.”
“I was sleeping, then I had to get up and go to the other side of the island, had to get rid of the stuff from this morning. Wanted to wait until the sun went down. Spread everything over eight beaches.”
“So you say.”
“Then I stopped at this place called Beehive Sports Bar, down at St. John’s Heritage Quay. It’s this place right under a huge clock tower. Then I ate and walked around, did some window shopping at the diamond stores, had a drink at Cheers, played the slots at Kings Casino before I went to the Coast.”
“It’s not adding up. Your lies make one plus one come out to three.”
“Where else would I be on this fucking island?”
Room 29, third floor, high on a hillside facing the marina. Across the way, more yachts and a two-level structure that had the Seabreeze Café, Slipway Chandlery, Dockside Liquors & Supermarket, Lord Jim’s Locker, a place that sold yachts, a little bookstore called Jo & Judy’s Delightful Bookstore, other shops and boutiques. She noticed it all because as Matthew stood off to the side questioning her like she was an Iraqi fugitive, she stared out at the shops, glass of wine in hand, and took it all in, every light in the rolling hills that surrounded the dockyard for what looked like 360 degrees, looked down at every person who walked or drove down the narrow road in front of her room on their way to the restaurants in the harbor.
She said, “You talk to me like I’m some man off the streets.”
“When I talk to you like that it’s because you’re my fucking partner and I talk to my fucking partner that way, especially when my fucking partner is fucking up.”
“I’m your wife.”
“Not during the course of this fucking conversation. Not at this moment. Me putting my dick inside you from time to time won’t change the language I choose to use while conducting business.”
“But it might change the chances of you getting to put your dick inside me from time to time.”
“What, you think you can stop me?”
“Well, I’d suggest you remember who the fuck you’re talking to.”
“I suggest you do the same.”
Silence.
He said, “So, tourists are getting robbed by masked men at gunpoint, women are getting raped by a serial rapist, and you were out until this time of the night alone, dressed like that, all by yourself?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’re a liar.”
“What is there to lie about?”
“We’ll come back to that later. Let’s get back to the job.”
“I told you, it’s done.”
“This was a simple job. Five body bags? A bodyguard left dead on the side of the road?”
“It’s done. What’s important is that the job has been completed.”
“You had a goddamn shoot-out in the middle of All Saints Road.”
“Pop a fucking Xanax and get off my back.”
Matthew gave her a cold stare. A cold, threatening stare that looked through her and at her all at once. His hands became fists. He stared at her, his jaw tight. Then he nodded and walked away. His depression; she knew that he hated when she mentioned his depression.
Matthew. Her husband. Catholic, with French-Canadian roots. Said he went to high school at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, same high school Jim Carrey went to, years after Carrey had dropped out. Matthew had dropped out too. Carrey had left to go work comedy clubs. Matthew left to work for a guy named Brick. A guy who did bad things to people for a price. A guy who had double-crossed Matthew. A guy Matthew had killed in Ottawa, left a blade running from his chest to that thing in his chest that made his blood circulate.
Nobody fucked over Matthew and lived to brag about that victory.
The television was on CNN. Matthew had been watching that when she had panicked and hurried inside the room. The talking heads on CNN stopped yapping about the American dollar being down and the yen being up and went back to yapping about a tornado that had destroyed parts of Atlanta.
She turned the television off. She called her husband’s name. He didn’t answer.
She went to Matthew, put her arms around him from behind, said she was sorry.
He said, “One more time, tell me what happened. What kept you out all night?”
Always so focused.
Instead of feeding him the same lie, she got on her knees, undid his cargo pants, reached inside, and pulled out his penis. He tried to push her away. She struggled with him, struggled until he gave in, until she had his dick in her hand. She smiled up at him, sucked him as he stood on the deck with his hands gripping the wooden rail, sucked him as people walked by down below, sucked him as she heard people in the next unit come out on their deck, sucked him as that group of people fell into conversation, sucked him as a yacht sounded its horn in the darkness, sucked him as he held the back of her neck and pushed his swollen cock down her throat, sucked him as he shivered, sucked him until he came, sucked all the questions out of his body. She sucked the hell out of him and sent him to a dreamy-eyed heaven.
She left him on the patio, panting and sweating, and rushed inside, hurried to the bathroom, and spit into the sink, turned on the water and poured mouthwash in a plastic cup. She gargled long enough for the liquid to burn her throat. Spat. Gargled again. Spat three times, wanted to get the taste of come out of her mouth. She didn’t mind giving a blow job but never had the taste for come. It made her retch.
Even when she spat it out, some remained, some was always swallowed.
She hated that.
When she looked up Matthew was behind her, face dark, watching her.
She said, “You didn’t come that much.”
He waited for her eyes to meet his. “Where were you all night?”
“Why didn’t you come as much as you normally do? You take all those pills that make you come like a horse. You always come more than that. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“You sure this is how you want to play this?”
“And why did it take you so long to get one?”
“Don’t think sucking my dick is going to make this problem go away.”
He walked away.
He said, “If I made you come, would you come enough?”
She cursed him, cursed and thought of the swarthy boy on the beach. She felt him inside her.
Her husband said, “You smell. You know that? I can smell you. You smell different.”
“You smell your insecurities.”
“I should stick my finger up your pussy and see if I smell the scent of another man’s dick.”
Matthew’s BlackBerry rang. He hurried and took the call, said a few words, then he hung up.
She asked, “Who is calling you at this hour?”
He nodded. “We have an unexpected meeting.”
She didn’t question where the meeting came from, just asked, “With whom?”
“The Lady from Detroit.”
“You’re joking.”
“Wants to meet up the road by the Cockpit.”
“She’s on the island?”
“In Antigua. Her grandmother and aunt have homes here. Hodges Bay.”
“That other island?”
“That’s Jumby Bay.”
“Where is Hodges?”
“North, not too far from the airport. Doctors, lawyers, Caribbean rich people live up that way.”
“Thought the Caribbean rich people live in Cedar-something by the golf course.”
“There too.”
She paused, thinking, feeling uneasy. “You knew that Detroit bitch was going to be here.”
He nodded. “I knew. Thought we would meet tomorrow sometime. She wants it now.”
Then she understood why Matthew had allowed her to do the solo job. She understood why he had come to Antigua. Detroit had hired them to do the job in London. The job she had fucked up.
She asked, “Does she want her deposit back?”
“We can’t afford to give her back her money.”
“Why not? Minus expenses.”
Her husband stood in front of her, confronting her once again. “Let’s talk about expenses.”
“What now?”
Matthew said, “We need to talk about your little shopping spree.”
She rolled her eyes and released an irritated sound. “It’s under control.”
“If it’s under control, why did somebody call the house asking if you still wanted to purchase a set of diamond mink eyelashes? Diamond mink eyelashes. Five thousand each. Ten large total.”
She sighed and rubbed her forehead but didn’t respond, not with words.
He went on, “After that phone call, I went inside your closet.”
“You broke the lock on my closet?”
“I picked it.”
“How dare you . . . that’s violating my personal space.”
“Saw all the shit you had hidden.”
“What the fuck were you doing in my closet?”
He went into his speech about the mortgage, the new Sub-Zero refrigerator that cost fifteen grand, her two brand-new vehicles, both high-end vehicles, his two vehicles, both five years old, modest and inexpensive, the insurance on their fleet of cars, ranted about how he had paid off all of her charge cards before they married only to have her sneak and get new charge cards, all of those cards already maxed out, a whopping thirty thousand in brand-new debt, and he had yet to see her buy one thing for him.
He said, “You don’t understand debt, do you?”
“Of course I understand debt.”
“I don’t think so. You had leased a Mercedes, and what did you do? You put over one hundred thousand miles on the car in two years. In two years. It’s twenty-five thousand miles around the world at the equator and you put one hundred thousand miles on a brand-new car that your lease told you was good for fifteen thousand miles a year. Then you had to pay for the overage, which came out to be about twenty thousand dollars, and what did you do? Instead of keeping the Benz you took the loss and came back home in a brand-new Range Rover, another down payment. Never mind the fact that you had a six-month-old Maserati sitting in the garage. Without talking to me, just did what you wanted.”
“It was my money, dammit.”
“Marriage means it’s
our
money. Like
your
fucked-up credit became
our
fucked-up credit.”
She sucked her lips and looked away, her autonomy suffocating.
The conversation terrified her, made her heart race, made anxiety swell inside her.
He said, “You made so many promises. If we get married then I’m going to do this, if we get married then I’m going to stop doing that. We were supposed to be a team. A team. I think you were pretending to be who you thought I wanted you to be, act right until you got what you wanted—”
“I wanted to get married, just like you.”
“You wanted the wedding, the party, the ring, the dress, to be Cinderella at the ball in front of your friends, but you didn’t want anything that came after that. You don’t want the hard part. After marriage, that’s when the relationship starts. We’re not dating anymore. We’re married. I put twenty-five percent down on a house that cost seven hundred thousand dollars. A brand-new house. You didn’t want to look at resales. You had to have a brand-new house. Your credit was so fucked-up you couldn’t afford to buy anything larger than a Dixie cup. I had to buy down the interest rate because of your credit. Then you had to have all the upgrades, had to have the hardwood floors, the leaded windows, the plantation shutters and designer curtains, had to upgrade the kitchen, had to have better carpet.”
“And you had to have the house wired for sound.”
“Which cost nothing compared to all the shit you had to have. Marble in the foyer, all the cabinets upgraded, all those overpriced closets put in by Closet World. Thirty thousand for particleboard closets.”