The Epicure's Lament (34 page)

“So what's all this to you?” Shlomo asked, as if he were following both my spoken and my internal ratiocinations.

“He's a child molester, Shlomo. At some point in his long and scummy life, he's going to molest a child. At least one. That's not enough of a reason?”

“What child in particular, is what I'm wondering. My hunch is this is personal for you. You aren't the type who condones killing for any reason, you said that last time. Is this because he's married to the broad who dumped you to fuck your brother? Whatever, what do I know. Or give a fuck about, for that matter. This is just idle curiosity here.”

“I hate child molesters,” I said. “The particular kid's name is Bellatrix Whittier, but he could molest anyone.”

“Same last name as you,” he pointed out offhandedly.

“Not my daughter, technically,” I said. “Listen, you can move into the gatehouse on my property. It's empty at the moment, but it would be easy enough to make it habitable. I'll charge you whatever rent you're paying to live with Maggie the Cat at the Shady Rest here.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why offer me a house? What's in it for you?”

“I just thought you might prefer to live elsewhere.”

“Altruism don't exist anywhere in the animal kingdom. What do you want out of letting me live there?”

“Maybe you'll keep an eye on Bellatrix. From a distance.”

“Where will you be while my so-called eye is on the kid?”

“I might have to go away for a while.”

He puffed at his cigar for a moment.

“This is very messy and not my usual thing,” he said when his head was enveloped in smoke. “I don't like it. A hypothetical scumbag.”

“Well, I think it's more expedient not to wait until he molests someone. Afterward, of course, you should stay right where you are and deflect all inquiries. Have an alibi, that sort of thing.”

“I know how to do my fuckin’ job,” he said.

“All the information you need is in this envelope,” I said. “Once you agree, I'll give it to you. Memorize what the paper says, then burn it.”

“I know how to do my fuckin’ job,” he repeated.

There was a silence. I watched his face as he sorted it all out.

He cleared his throat. “You have only his wife's word, though,” he said. “Your sister-in-law the therapist never confirmed this, and no one else seems to know either. And his wife is now sleeping with your brother, not with you, if I got this all straight.”

“Right,” I said. “You're right, of course. But I know what I know. And I want him dead because I absolutely believe he's going to wreck at least one little girl's life, whether or not it happens to be Bellatrix.”

I was a little taken aback by the urgency that overwhelmed me as I said this.

“That wife of his coulda made up the whole thing to make him look bad for her own reasons,” said Shlomo. “She sounds like the kind of fucked-up bitch who would. Sounds like she needs whacking herself.”

“Don't whack Stephanie, please,” I said.

“Well, sounds like she needs it.”

“Don't.”

“Don't worry. No payee, no whackee, that's my motto.” He made a blunt fricative sound intended as laughter and sucked on his cigar for a moment. “So they're divorce lawyers. They're lower than hit men. Lower than Rochelle down there. Foxes in the henhouse.”

“Well, divorce is only part of what they do,” I said. “But if he were to be, for example, shot in the back of the head in broad daylight in his office, one of his former clients might very well be suspected.”

Shlomo and I exchanged a level look. He tapped the wet end of his cigar against the arm of his chair. “This is all very iffy. This is not even something I would have taken on back in the day. I don't like it. He hasn't done a fuckin’ thing.”

“What do you care what he has and hasn't done? Since when do you require concrete proof of slimebag behavior? And why are your sensibilities so delicate all of a sudden? Were you always this squeamish? Maybe that's why you were mediocre.”

“Whaddya mean, I was mediocre? I was one of the best.”

“You didn't kill me, did you?”

He sighed so hard I felt a gust of cigar-laden air against my face. “I let you go, you retard. I thought you deserved a medal for shtupping my fat cousin, not a bullet in the head for preferring that other girl. I let you go. You're alive because I had qualms. I had qualms about you same as I have qualms about this pal of yours right now.”

“What were your qualms about me? I was guilty of what Tovah said I was guilty of.”

“You were a wet-eared pup, and I never sent an innocent babe to the deep.”

“What happened after I disappeared?” I asked. “I've always wondered.”

“I told Tovah what she needed to hear. I was gonna make you a deal when you made it for yourself and got outta town. I watched you go. I saw how scared you were. But I didn't accept payment, 'cause I didn't deserve it. I told Tovah it was on the house, I couldn't touch her money.”

“You let me go,” I said. “Sure, you keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel less mediocre.”

“I could get you right now, though,” he said. “Now you're a proper scumbag.”

“Don't do me any favors. Listen, are you in or not?”

He looked at some arbitrary point outside his window. “This is murder of an innocent human being you're talking about,” he said.

I sighed, yawned, waggled my foot, shifted in the armchair, trying not to stir up any dust. Shlomo was not jumping eagerly at my offer, as I'd envisioned. These objections he was raising were tiresome and immaterial, and I had a lot to do and limited time left.

“Here's an opportunity for you to rid the world of one last scumbag, which you once told me you saw as your duty and calling, provided the money was right,” I said.

“I believe I mentioned I'm retired,” he said.

“You mentioned it,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “I'm retired.”

“So you say,” I said.

“I have a tidy sum in the bank as well.”

“But ten grand more can't hurt.”

“Ten grand more,” he said with a slight sneer, “is not gonna make or break me, believe me.”

“Ten grand is a lot of money,” I said. “You don't fool me. I think you see exactly what I'm saying.”

“What I see is that you want me to come out of retirement to whack an innocent man when I don't need the money.”

“I saw it in his eyes,” I said flatly. “You have one day to give me your answer.” I got up to go.

“Not sure about the gatehouse offer,” he said. “In terms of being linked to you. They might put two and two together… defeats the whole purpose. I ain't in this to get caught.”

“This is not a negotiation we're engaged in; I'm hiring you for a specific job. I want you nearby, keeping an eye on Bella-trix. If you're as good at your job as you say you are, then you'll erase your tracks, you'll have an alibi, you'll do whatever hit men do so they don't get caught. Or maybe you can't do it. Maybe you're not as good as you think you are.”

Shlomo brushed this remark away in midair as if it were a mosquito. “And maybe you're a shithead,” he said.

“If this is too much of a stretch for your abilities, just say so and I'll ask another hit-man acquaintance. Someone a little more up to the task.”

Shlomo stared fixedly at a spot above my head, his face twitching with rodent cunning.

“Living near you,” he said, “I don't like it. I don't wanna be running into you all the time, having to make small talk, yadda yadda, nice fuckin’ day, lovely fuckin’ sunset. Fuck that.”

“I believe I mentioned I'll be going away,” I reminded him, inwardly clacking my heels together with glee. Victory was mine. “You will never see me again except once more, because you're coming for Christmas dinner tomorrow to meet the family, so they know who you are.” Let him see for himself the high ceilings, intact plaster moldings, and fireplaces in airy rooms, the view down the lawn to the river, the ivy-covered brick-walled little garden in back. He'll be a hog in heaven there, live out his days in cozy splendor instead of in this dump.

I handed him the envelope I'd brought.

He opened it and glanced at the sheet of paper on which I'd written some information about Bun and the lease I'd drawn up
for the gatehouse from a blank form I'd bought at a stationery store. He folded them and put them back, then counted the money that was there.

“Doesn't seem like such a negligible amount when you actually have it in your hands, does it?” I said.

“You couldn't jack up the price a little for inflation?” he wheedled.

“Take it or leave it,” I repeated. “Here's the key; it's up to you to fix it up. I've done my part, now you do yours. I trust you, Shlomo. I don't know why.”

“I don't know why either,” he said. He boggled his eyes at me, and we shook hands.

I went out the way I had come in, without encountering the bewitching Rochelle, who was vacuuming the house's nether regions by the sound of things. Outside, it was already dark night, even though it wasn't four-thirty yet. This time of year, it always seems to be dark. Next order of business was to drive over to Marie's and borrow her roasting pan. The roasting pan at Waverley had been used as a sled thirty years ago by little Hugo and left outside to rust. No one roasted anything when I was a boy except beets and turnips, and those didn't require a pan big enough for the largest game birds and cuts of beef and lamb. And I saw no point in buying a new roasting pan when Marie had a perfectly good one I could borrow. Also, as it happened, I had a thing or two that I wanted to say to Louisa.

To my surprise, since things rarely go as I want them to, she was there alone; Marie was out somewhere with the girls. “Last-minute shopping at the mall,” said Louisa, looking a little put out. She had beads of sweat on her creamy brow, and her red locks were blowsy around her face, curling like a medieval cherub's. “I said I wanted to go too, but she told me someone had to stay here to be here when the UPS guy comes with some package from her parents.”

“Can't he just leave it inside the door?” I asked sympathetically, bustling behind her into the house.

“I know!” she cried as I followed her into the kitchen. “That's what I was thinking. But she said she doesn't trust them to leave it.” While she futzed with something on the stove, a pot whose contents didn't smell entirely promising (a cross between pea soup and some species of curry), I looked curiously around. Shlomo's hooch had wetted my thirst.

Louisa added darkly, “She's being controlling, as usual.”

“Trouble in paradise?” I clucked with avuncular dismay.

“Oh, you don't know the half of it. I'm sending out applications to schools right now and she won't give me any time to work on my personal essay.”

“What's it about?” I asked, cheerful suddenly, having come across a bottle of fine vodka in the freezer. I splashed some into a glass with casual grace. “Your moment as a heroic antiter-rorist whistle-blower? That's what I'd write about if I were you, especially in this current climate. There's not a school in the country that wouldn't give you a full scholarship, with a convertible and all the champagne you could drink for four years.”

“Ha ha,” she said bitterly. “Actually, it's sort of about that, I guess. The theme is the individual's personal responsibility in everyday politics. I've decided to major in political science. Who needs French literature? What does it have to do with anything?”

“Vero might have an interesting answer to that question,” I said, “but I'm sure you and I would both disagree with it, each for our own reasons.”

“But,” she went on forcefully, not listening to me, “do you know, every day I wonder whether I did the right thing. Not in turning him in, I don't mean that. But running away. What am I doing up here? He might not have done anything to me.

Anyway, he's probably in jail by now. Meanwhile, my sister is driving my mother crazy and my father is working himself to death.” She looked close to tears.

“Run out of town on a rail,” I said. “I know the feeling.”

“Think you'll ever go back?”

“It's too late for me,” I said. “You can go back, though.”

For some reason, she burst into tears at this. I did the only possible gentlemanly thing: I set my glass down, stepped forward, and took the distraught maiden into my strong manly arms. She sobbed moistly against my shoulder, stepped back, blew her nose into a hankie she whisked from inside her sweater sleeve, and smiled at me.

“Ecch, sorry,” she said. “I might be premenstrual or something. I'm not always like this. Something you said just got to me.”

“Listen,” I said, “I'm here to borrow the roasting pan. This is the official reason for my visit. But there's another reason. I want to make myself very clear, because we'll never talk about this again, and neither one of us will ever say anything to anyone about what I'm about to tell you, do you understand?”

“I hope this isn't about something like blowing up the library,” she said, rolling her eyes, which were still wet. “Because I can't promise not to tell on you, you know that.”

“I promise, it's nothing like that. I have something to tell you, and you have to hear me out and not say anything until I've finished, and not get shocked or fly off the handle before you've heard the entire case I'm about to present; otherwise I'm not going to tell you any of it. All or nothing. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal,” she said without hesitation (that's my girl!), so I told her about what I knew about Bun Fox. I told her only the things she strictly needed to know. I did not implicate Stephanie or reveal that I had fucked her or that she had told me about Bun's proclivities, just that I knew what they were and had no
doubt whatsoever. I told her I had to tell her because I wasn't going to be around to protect the girls.

I could tell that she was shocked, but as I had expected, she was weighing the implications instead of reacting emotionally.

“Bun Fox loves Evie and Isabelle,” she said when I had finished.

“Loves them?” I asked coldly.

“Well, he's really good with them. When the Foxes are here he reads to them and tells them stories.”

“Don't ever let him in a room alone with either of them again. I mean it. If he goes off with one or both of them, you go too, I don't care what kind of excuse you have to make or what else you're supposed to be doing.”