The Ethical Assassin: A Novel by David Liss Page B

out of bed.
    From the steps, Bobby leaned over to peer into the kitchen window. He pressed hard against the thin glass, and I was sure he would go crashing through.
    “Christ,” he said. “Either they’re not home or they’re dead.”
    I laughed and then realized Bobby hadn’t said anything funny, so I stopped. Together we walked back to the Cordoba, where I slouched in the front seat, breathing in fear and indescribable relief while we headed out for the next pickup.
    The inadequate air-conditioning washed over me, and I tried to recede into the freshly washed leather. I wanted to pass out and I wanted to weep and, on some level, I wanted Bobby to hug me. But Bobby busied himself by fiddling with the radio stations, finally settling on Blue Öyster Cult, but somehow the song’s insistence that I refrain from fearing the Reaper didn’t make me feel much better.
    “A single isn’t bad,” he said, maybe thinking that I probably needed a good pep talk. “Not bad for a day’s work. You’re still in the game, but a double’s better, right? . . . Huh? But you’ll get a double tomorrow. You’re a power hitter, Lem. You’re doing great.”
    If I hadn’t been numb from having witnessed a double homicide, I felt sure that Bobby’s pos comments would have perked me up. I hated the way I lapped up Bobby’s praise, as if being a good bookman, selling a set of books to people who would never use them and couldn’t afford them, were worth a pat on the head. Good doggie, Lem. But I loved it. Two people dead, holes in their heads, blood and brains on the peeling linoleum, and I still sort of loved it.
    The other three guys in the Ft. Lauderdale crew—Ronny Neil, Scott, and Kevin—piled one by one into the backseat, each at his own pickup stop. They all harbored resentment against me, since Scott was both fat and unimpressed by conventional ideas of personal hygiene, and he crammed the rest of them in tight. I, meanwhile, basked in legroom and relatively sweet air.
    Kevin was a quiet guy, a bit short and stocky, but affable in a self-contained way. It was easy to forget he was around, even on long road trips. He laughed at other people’s jokes but never told his own. He always agreed when someone said he was hungry but probably would have starved to death before suggesting we stop to eat.
    Ronny Neil and Scott, on the other hand, were not so retiring. They had joined up together and were like wartime buddies who enlisted from the same town and were assigned to the same platoon. Their friendship consisted, as near as I could tell, of Ronny Neil hitting Scott in the back of the head and calling him a fat asshole.
    Ronny Neil thought of himself as being strikingly handsome, and maybe he was. He had a sharply detailed face with big brown eyes of the sort that I thought women were said to like. His straight, straw-colored hair came down to his collar, and he was deeply muscled without being bulky. Not like there was time to lift weights while we sold books, but I did on occasion catch him doing push-ups and sit-ups around the motel room. On those days that I managed to get up early enough to take in a run before the morning meeting, Ronny Neil would earnestly advise me to take up lifting weights instead of doing pussy exercises. But, he would muse, if there was one thing a Jew ought to know how to do, it was run fast.
    Each time he picked someone up—at the designated convenience store—Bobby would take the guy around to the back of the car and open the trunk to shield their conversation from the rest of the crew. Once they entered the car, you couldn’t ask if they’d scored or blanked. You couldn’t ask how they did. You weren’t allowed to tell stories about anything that happened to you that day unless the story was in no way related to scoring or blanking. Bobby and the other bosses knew there was no way to keep people from talking about it. If someone hit a triple or a grand slam—sometimes even a