Page 5 of Safe Enough

We were in Switzerland, which made the banking part easy. I stuck with her, supportive, and watched her get her fat pink paws on two hundred thousand US dollars, crisp new bills from some European country’s central reserve. She gave them to me and started to explain where her husband would be, and when.

“I know where he is,” I said. “I have a rendezvous set up. For me to get paid.”

She giggled at the irony. Guaranteed access to the victim. She wasn’t dumb. That was the single greatest strength of Ryland’s idea.

We went for a walk, alone, on a snow-covered track rarely frequented by skiers. I killed her there by breaking her fat neck and leaving her in a position that suggested a slip and a fall. Then I took the train back to Essen and kept my rendezvous with the husband. Obviously he had gone to great lengths to keep our meetings secret. He was in a place he wouldn’t normally go, alone and unobserved. I collected my fee and killed him too. A silenced .22, in the head. It was an article of faith for people like Ryland and me. If you get paid, you have to deliver.

So, two fees, and all those steel units cascading down to fractious heirs that would be calling me themselves, soon enough. All the money, mine.

It went on like that for two years. Check the microfilm. Check the papers. North America, Central, South, all over Europe. Cops in a lather about anarchists targeting rich couples. That was another strength of Ryland’s idea. It rendered the motive inexplicable.

Then I got an offer from Brazil. I was kind of surprised. For some reason I imagined their divorce laws to be old-fashioned and traditional. I didn’t think any Brazilian guy would need my kind of help. But someone reached out to me and I ended up face to face with a man who had big units from mineral deposits and an actress wife who was sleeping around. The guy was wounded about it. Maybe that’s why he called me. He didn’t strictly need to. But he wanted to.

He was rich and he was angry, so I doubled my usual fee. That was no problem. I explained how it would work. Payment after the event at a discreet location, satisfaction guaranteed. Then he told me his wife was going to be on a train, some kind of a long private club-car journey through the mountains. That was a problem. There are no banks on trains. So I decided to pass on Ryland’s trick, just this one time. I would go the traditional single-ended route. The old way. I checked a map and saw that I could get on the train late and get off early. The wife would be dead in her sleeper when it rolled into Rio. I would be long gone by then.

It was comforting to think about working the old way, just for once.

I spotted her on the train and kept well back. But even from a distance I saw the ring on her finger. It was a gigantic rock. A diamond so big they probably ran out of carat numbers to measure it with.

That was a bank right there, on her finger.

Traceable, theoretically, but not through certain parts of Amsterdam or Johannesburg or Freetown, Sierra Leone. Potentially a problem at customs posts, but I could swallow it.

I moved up the train.

She was a very beautiful woman. Skin like lavender honey, long black hair that shone, eyes like pools. Long legs, a tiny waist, a rack that was popping out of her shirt. I took the armchair opposite her and said, “Hello.” I figured a woman who sleeps around would at least give me a look. I have certain rough qualities. A few scars, the kind of unkempt appearance that suggests adventure. She didn’t need money. She was married to it. Maybe all she needed was diversion.

It went well at first and I found a reason to move around the table and slide into the chair next to her. Then within an hour we were well into that train-journey thing where she was leaning left and I was leaning right and we were sharing intimacies over the rush of the wind and the clatter of the wheels. She talked about her marriage briefly and then changed the subject. I brought it back. I pointed to her ring and asked her about it. She spread her hand like a starfish and let me take a look.

“My husband gave it to me,” she said.

“So he should,” I said. “He’s a lucky man.”

“He’s an angry man,” she said. “I don’t behave myself very well, I’m afraid.”

I said nothing.

She said, “I think he wants to have me killed.”

So there it was, the opening that was often so hard to work around to. I should have said, “He does,” and opened negotiations. But I didn’t.

She said, “I look at the men I meet and I wonder, is this the one?”

So then I got my mouth working and said, “This is the one.”

“Really?” she said.

I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“But I have insurance,” she said.

She raised her hand again and all I saw was the diamond. Hard to blame myself, because the diamond was so big and the stiletto’s blade was so slender. I really didn’t see it at all. Wasn’t aware of its existence until its tip went through my shirt and pierced my skin. Then she leaned on it with surprising strength and weight. It was cold. And long. A custom piece. It went right through me and pinned me to the chair. She used the heel of her hand and butted it firmly into place. Then she used my tie to wipe the handle clean of prints.

“Goodbye,” she said.

She got up and left me there. I was unable to move. An inch left or right would tear my insides out. I just sat and felt the spreading stain of blood reach my lap. I’m still sitting there, ten minutes later. Once I could have shot you in one ear and out the other from a thousand yards. Or I could have brushed past you in a crowd and you wouldn’t have known your throat was cut until you went to nod your head and it rolled away down the street without you. I was the guy you were worrying about when you locked your doors and posted your guards and walked upstairs to bed, only to find me already up there before you, leaning on the dresser, just waiting in the dark.

I was the guy who always found a way.

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