Swimsuit (17 page)

I
was in one of the shots, too.

“Keep those, Ben. I think they’re pretty nice. Point is, I can get to Amanda anytime, so don’t even think about going to the
police. That’s just a way of committing suicide and getting Amanda killed, too. Understand?”

I felt a chill shoot from the back of my neck all the way down my spine. A death threat with a smile. The guy had just threatened
to kill Amanda and made it sound like an invitation to have lunch.

“Wait a minute,”
I said. I put the pictures down, shoved my hands out, as if pushing Henri and his gun and his damned life story far, far
away. “I’m wrong for this. You need a biographer, someone who’s done this kind of book before and would see it as a dream
job.”

“Ben. It
is
a dream job, and
you’re
my writer. So turn me down if you want, but I’ll have to exercise the termination clause for my own protection. See what
I mean?

“Or, you could look at the upside,” Henri said, affable now, selling me on the silver lining while pointing a 9-millimeter
at my chest.

“We’re going to be
partners.
This book is going to be
big.
What did you say a little while ago about blockbusters? Yeah, well that’s what we’re looking at with my story.”

“Even if I wanted to, I can’t. Look, Henri, I’m just a writer. I don’t have the power you think. Shit, man, you have no idea
what you’re asking.”

Henri smiled as he said, “I brought you something you can use as a sales tool. About ninety seconds of inspiration.”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gizmo hanging from a cord around his neck. It was a flash drive, a small media
card used to save and transfer data.

“If a picture’s worth a thousand words, I’m guessing this is worth, I don’t know,
eighty
thousand words and several million dollars. Think about it, Ben. You could become rich and famous… or… you could die. I like
clear choices, don’t you?”

Henri slapped his knees, stood, asked me to walk him to the door and then to put my face against the wall.

I did it — and when I woke up sometime later, I was lying on the cold cement floor. I had a painful lump at the back of my
head and a blinding headache.

Son of a bitch pistol-whipped me before he took off.

I PULLED MYSELF to my feet, bumped against walls all the way to the bedroom, yanked open the drawer to my night-stand. My
heart was clanging in my chest like a fire alarm until my fingers curled around the butt of my gun. I stuck the Beretta into
my waistband and went for the phone.

Mandy answered on the third ring.

“Don’t open your door for anyone,” I said, still panting, perspiring heavily. Had this really happened? Had Henri just threatened
to kill me and Mandy if I didn’t write his book?

“Ben?”

“Don’t answer the door for a neighbor or a Girl Scout or the cable guy, or anyone, okay, Mandy? Don’t open it for the
police.
”

“Ben, you’re scaring me to death! Seriously, honey. What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’m leaving now.”

I staggered back to the living room, pocketed the items Henri had left behind, and headed out the door, still seeing Henri’s
face and hearing his threat.

That’s just a way of… getting Amanda killed… I’ll have to exercise the termination clause… Understand?

I think I did.

Traction Avenue was dark now, but alive with honking horns, tourists buying goods from racks, gathering around a one-man band
on the sidewalk.

I got into my ancient Beemer, headed for the 10 Freeway, worried about Amanda as I drove. Where was Henri now?

Henri was good-looking enough to pass as a solid citizen, his features bland enough to take on any kind of disguise. I imagined
him as Charlie Rollins, saw a camera in his hand, taking pictures of me and Amanda.

His camera could just as easily have been a gun.

I thought about the people who’d been murdered in Hawaii. Kim, Rosa, Julia, my friends Levon and Barbara, all tortured and
so skillfully dispatched. Not a fingerprint or a trace had been left behind for the cops.

This wasn’t the work of a beginner.

How many other people had Henri killed?

The freeway tailed off onto 4th and Main. I turned onto Pico, passed the diners and car repair shops, the two-level crappy
apartments, the big clown on Main and Rose — and I was in a different world, Venice Beach, both a playground for the young
and carefree and a refuge for the homeless.

It took me another few minutes to circle around Speedway until I found a spot a block from Amanda’s place, a former one-family
home now split into three apartments.

I walked up the street listening for the approach of a car or the sound of Italian loafers slapping the pavement.

Maybe Henri was watching me now, disguised as a vagrant, or maybe he was that bearded guy parking his car. I walked past Amanda’s
house, looked up to the third floor, saw the light on in her kitchen.

I walked another block before doubling back. I rang the doorbell, muttered,
“Please, Mandy, please,”
until I heard her voice behind the door.

“What’s the password?”

“ ‘Cheese sandwich.’ Let me in.”

AMANDA OPENED the door, and I grabbed her, kicked the door closed behind me, and held her tight.

“What is it, Ben? What
happened?
Please tell me what’s going on.”

She freed herself from my arms, grabbed my shoulders, and inventoried my face.

“Your
collar
is bloody. You’re
bleeding
. Ben, were you
mugged?
”

I threw the bolts on Amanda’s front door, put my hand at her back, and walked her to the small living room. I sat her down
in the easy chair, took the rocker a few feet away.

“Start talking, okay?”

I didn’t know how to soften it, so I just told it plain and simple. “A guy came to my door with a gun. Said he’s a contract
killer.”

“What?”

“He led me to believe that he killed all those people in Hawaii. Remember when I asked you to help me find Charlie Rollins
from Talk Weekly magazine?”

“The Charlie Rollins who was the last one to see Julia Winkler? That’s who came to see you?”

I told Amanda about Henri’s other names and disguises, how I had met him not only as Rollins, but that he’d also masqueraded
as the McDanielses’ driver, calling himself Marco Benevenuto.

I told her that he’d been sitting on my couch and pointing a gun, telling me that he was a professional assassin for hire
and had killed many, many times.

“He wants me to write his autobiography. Wants Raven-Wofford to publish it.”

“This is unbelievable,” Amanda said.

“I know.”

“No, I mean, it’s
really
unbelievable. Who would confess to murders like that? You’ve got to call the police, Ben,” she said. “You know that, don’t
you?”

“He warned me not to.”

I handed Mandy the packet of pictures and watched the disbelief on her face change to shock and then anger.

“Okay, the bastard has a zoom lens,” she said, her mouth clamped into a straight line. “He took some pictures. Proves nothing.”

I took the flash drive out of my pocket, dangled it by the cord. “He gave me this. Said it’s a sales tool and that it will
inspire me.”

AMANDA LEFT THE LIVING ROOM, then came back with her laptop under her arm and holding two glasses and a bottle of Pinot. She
booted up while I poured, and when her laptop was humming, I inserted Henri’s flash drive into the port.

A video started to roll.

For the next minute and a half, Amanda and I were in the grip of the most horrific and obscene images either of us had ever
seen. Amanda clutched my arm so hard that she left bruises, and when it was finally over she threw herself back into the chair,
tears flowing, sobbing.

“Oh, my God, Amanda, what an
ass
I am. I’m so sorry. I should have looked at it first.”

“You couldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

“That goes for me, too.”

I put the media card into my back pocket and went down the hall to the bathroom, sluiced cold water over my face and the back
of my scalp. When I looked up, Amanda was standing in the doorway. She said, “Take it all off.”

She helped me with my bloody shirt, undressed herself, and turned on the shower. I got into the tub and she got in behind
me, put her arms around me as the hot water beat down on us both.

“Go to New York and talk to Zagami,” she said. “Do what Henri says. Zagami can’t turn this down.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The thing to do is keep Henri happy while we figure out what to do.”

I turned to face her. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“I can take care of myself. I know, I know, famous last words. But really, I can.”

Mandy got out of the shower and disappeared for long enough that I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a bath towel, and
went looking for her.

I found her in the bedroom, on her tiptoes, reaching up to the top shelf of her closet. She pulled down a shotgun and showed
it to me.

I looked at her stupidly.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know how to use it.”

“And you’re going to carry it around with you in your purse?”

I took her shotgun and put it under the bed.

Then I used her phone.

I didn’t call the cops, because I knew that they couldn’t protect us. I had no fingerprint evidence, and my description of
Henri would be useless. Six foot, brown hair, gray eyes, could be anyone.

After the cops watched my place and Mandy’s for a week or so, we’d be on our own again, vulnerable to a sniper’s bullet —
or whatever Henri would or could use to silence us.

I saw him in my mind, crouched behind a car, or standing behind me at Starbucks, or watching Amanda’s apartment through a
gun sight.

Mandy was right. We needed time to make a plan. If I worked with Henri, if he got comfortable with me, maybe he’d slip, give
me convictable evidence, something the cops or the Feds could use to lock him up.

I left a voice-mail message for Leonard Zagami, saying it was urgent that we meet. Then I booked tickets for me and Mandy,
round trip, Los Angeles to New York.

WHEN LEONARD ZAGAMI TOOK ME on as one of his authors, I was twenty-five, he was forty, and Raven House was a high-class specialty
press that put out a couple dozen books a year. Since then, Raven had merged with the gigantic Wofford Publishing, and the
new Raven-Wofford had taken over the top six floors of a skyscraper overlooking Bloomingdale’s.

Leonard Zagami had moved up as well. He was now the CEO and president, the crème de la cheese, and the new house brought out
two hundred books a year.

Like their competition, the bulk of RW’s list either lost money or broke even, but three authors — and I wasn’t one of them
— brought in more revenue than the other 197 combined.

Leonard Zagami didn’t see me as a moneymaker anymore, but he liked me and it cost him nothing to keep me on board. I hoped
that after our meeting he’d see me another way, that he’d hear cash registers ringing from Bangor to Yakima.

And that Henri would remove his death threat.

I had my pitch ready when I arrived in RW’s spiffy modern waiting room at nine. At noon, Leonard’s assistant came across the
jaguar-print carpet to say that Mr. Zagami had fifteen minutes for me, to please follow her.

When I crossed his threshold, Leonard got to his feet, shook my hand, patted my back, and told me it was good to see me but
that I looked like crap.

I thanked him, told him I’d aged a couple of years while waiting for our nine o’clock meeting.

Len laughed, apologized, said he’d done his best to squeeze me in, and offered me a chair across from his desk. At five feet
six, almost child-sized behind the huge desk, Leonard Zagami still radiated power and a no-bullshit canniness.

I took my seat.

“What’s this book about, Ben? When last we spoke, you had nothing cooking.”

“Have you been following the Kim McDaniels case?”

“The
Sporting Life
model? Sure. She and some other people were killed in Hawaii a few… Hey. You were covering that story? Oh. I see.”

“I was very close to some of the victims —”

“Look, Ben,” Zagami interrupted me. “Until the killer is caught, this is still tabloid fodder. It’s not a book, not yet.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Len. This is a first-person tell-all.”

“Who’s the first person? You?”

I made my pitch like my life depended on it.

“The killer approached me incognito,” I said. “He’s a very cool and clever maniac who wants to do a book about the murders,
and he wants me to write it. He won’t reveal his identity, but he’ll tell how he did the killings and why.”

I expected Zagami to say
something,
but his expression was flat. I crossed my arms over his leather-topped desk, made sure my old friend was looking me in the
eyes.

“Len, did you hear me? This guy could be the most-wanted man in America. He’s smart. He’s at liberty. And he kills with his
hands.
He says he wants me to write about what he’s done because he wants the money and the notoriety. Yeah. He wants some kind
of credit for a job well done. And if I won’t write the book, he’ll kill
me.
Might kill Amanda, too.

“So I need a simple yes or no, Len. Are you interested or not?”

LEONARD ZAGAMI LEANED back in his chair, rocked a couple of times, smoothed back what remained of his white hair, then turned
to face me. When he spoke, it was with heartbreaking sincerity, and that’s what really hurt.

“You know how much I like you, Ben. We’ve been together for what, twelve years?”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Fifteen good years. So, as your friend, I’m not going to bullshit you. You deserve the truth.”