The strategy was his idea. Instead of circumventing building security, we co-opted it. Rented an apartment ten stories above our target, using a passport I bought in the back room of a Ponce de Leon pawnshop. The building piped the lobby video cameras in with the cable TV, and I spent days logging everyone who passed.
One time I saw Vincennes half-dragging Sherry through the foyer, his fingers leaving marks on her pale arms, and put my fist through the drywall.
#
Darkness poured in the windows when I killed the living room overheads. If Vincennes was paying attention, he might notice the glow under the door go out, but it was better than stepping in with bright light at my back.
I put a gloved hand on the knob. Took a breath. Sammy was quiet in my ear, a good sign. If things looked off, he'd be squawking.
I opened the door. Nothing moved. I flowed inside, a shadow in dim light.
As I eased the door closed, it occurred to me that this was his sometimes-bedroom. Which meant it was her sometimes-bedroom too.
My hate rose like stinking black sewage.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the skyline blazed. The red beacon on the radio tower died and was reborn. City light spilled in to trace silhouettes. A desk big enough to suggest Vincennes was compensating for something. Two doors on the far wall, both closed. According to the floor plans Sammy had scored, the far one was a closet, the near a bath.
The sleigh bed was beside the window, and I could barely make out the shape of Vincennes asleep in it.
I moved on the balls of my feet, alert to every motion. He didn't so much as twitch. When I made the edge of the mattress, I lifted one of the pillows, a heavy down thing soft as falling snow. Reviewed the moves in my head: straddle Vincennes with a knee on either shoulder, use the pillow to silence his shouts and a knife-hand blow to crush his trachea. Count two hundred after the struggling stopped, get the cash, and we were clear.
I was leaning forward when the lights flickered on.
#
The motel curtains were faded plaid, the carpet dotted by cigarette burns, but the dusty sunlight through the window was holy. Outside, the breeze tossed the trees, leaves rustling, and she sighed as I slipped inside her, sighed and wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered my name, William, not Dex or Dexter or even Billy, William, two soft syllables that melted in the heat of her breath in my ear.
#
Behind me, someone spoke, but I didn't hear a word.
It wasn't Vincennes in the bed.
Sherry's face was blue. Her body was bruised. Her amber eyes were empty.
The voice behind me spoke again, and I turned.
Larry Vincennes stood in the bathroom doorway. He wore a paisley dressing robe and a contemptuous smile, held a 0.50-caliber Magnum Desert Eagle in his right hand. The pistol looked enormous in his delicate fingers.
We stared at each other for a long moment.
"Why is she naked?" My voice like rusted metal.
Vincennes smiled. "Gave her to the boys." Then he raised the gun, the dark barrel wide enough to crawl into and fall asleep forever.
I hurled the pillow as I lunged, and the roar of the Desert Eagle was a cloud of goose-down filling the room and glass from the window falling in sparkling sheets. My eyes caught every detail, the tangents of a thousand drifting feathers, the way Vincennes's robe flapped open to expose a gold necklace laying against his skinny chest, the play of his muscles as he struggled to recover from the recoil, realizing only now that his cannon was way too much weapon to fire one-handed, and I drank the panic in his eyes as he understood he wouldn't make it, and then I snapped his neck as automatic as breathing.
When the guards raced in from the hallway, I held the Desert Eagle in both hands. Squeezed once. Squeezed twice.
#
I wasn't surprised to find Sammy gone when I made it back to the penthouse.
Sammy. Always playing angles. If I was determined to quit the game over some woman, why shouldn't he make a buck on it? And if that got her raped and beaten to death, well, can't make an omelet, right?
His abandoned cigarette still smoldered in the ashtray, and I stubbed it out and stepped onto the balcony. The red light on the radio tower flared and died, flared and died, and I stood holding the gun and thinking of a patch of dusty sunlight and the hum of air conditioning.
He's gone, but Sammy never did know when to quit. I'll find him. Because he forgot one thing.
I only stopped for her.
It's like shooting pool. The cue moves, the ball drops.
Natural as breathing.
In his excellent book On Writing, Stephen King assigns his readers a task: open a new document, and, without thinking too much, begin a story. He provides a starting point, sets a minimum word count, and then sends you off to discover as you go.
I chose not to stick to the topic, but I tried the exercise, and to my stunned surprise, a story did begin to emerge, a twisted little tale of love and dependence. It was actually the very first I finished once I made the decision to leave my job and try to make it as a writer. (I’d finished plenty when I was younger, but they were all lousy.)