Faces in the Fire (28 page)

Stan walked down the hall, purposely avoiding eye contact with the
various souls sitting idly in the rec area, pushing themselves aimlessly down the hallway in wheelchairs, staring out the doors of their cavelike rooms as he passed.

He tried to ignore these obvious things, instead focusing on the many wonderful aspects of Aspen Meadows: a dining area with dinners shared among residents; games and activities in common areas; the cute pets, of course; an activities calendar outside the main recreation room filled with things to do. This was a center for both relaxation and stimulation, the marketing people and administrators at Aspen Meadows would be quick to tell you.

The people who lived there would tell you something else. Those who could talk.

He came to his mother's room, paused, went inside. The door was open, as always. The curtains inside were pulled away from the window, the fresh flowers he sent every week in a vase on the window shelf.

His mother, in a large brown recliner, sat staring into space.

He crossed the room, put his gloved hand on her shoulder, leaned in and kissed her. “Hi, Mom,” he said, pulling one of the chairs from the small table out so he could sit on it and face her.

Her eyes, Bassett hound eyes in an impossibly sunken, bony face, turned and focused on his for a moment. It looked as if she was about to say something of great interest, but then her eyes refocused on nothingness again and she fell back into her usual thousand-yard stare.

She hadn't spoken in five years. The last two she'd been here, the bill footed by the Organization. Provided he was a good boy, and did as he was told.

He looked out the window, watched one of the groundskeepers work a weed trimmer along the base of the giant brick fence encircling the fortress.

“Just wanted to drop by, see how you're doing,” he said, still staring at the man outside. “You're looking good. Obviously, someone's feeding you.”

A voice spoke from behind him. “Yeah, my only problem is, I'm a little too good at feeding myself.” He turned, knowing he would see the smiling voice of Janna.

“Hi, Janna,” he said, standing and putting his hands in his pockets. It was a tic, another habit he'd picked up over the years. Like blowing on any drink.

Just one of the hazards of being a contract killer who murdered people with his bare hands.

She ignored his discomfort, came into the room, enveloped him in a warm hug. “You coulda called and let me know you were coming.”

“Yeah, sorry. I didn't know it was going to be today until . . . um . . . today.”

“Still flying all over the country, then?”

“Yeah, just took a small detour.” He smiled.

Every so often he took a quick flight to visit his mother, courtesy of the Organization's seemingly endless supply of counterfeit credit cards.

Just one of the benefits of being a contract killer who murdered people with his bare hands.

She patted his back, pulled away, turned to his mother. “You keep your voice down now, Cleona. Don't want to disturb the neighbors.”

Stan smiled. Part of why he liked Janna. She wasn't afraid to acknowledge the obvious or even poke fun at it. Some people would be offended by it, he supposed, but he found it refreshing in a world that tried to ignore so much.

“You gonna stay for lunch?” Janna asked. “I think it's meat mush today, instead of vegetable mush.”

“No, I don't think so. Gotta head out soon.”

“One more thing,” she said. “You think about that clinical trial I told you about?”

“Um . . . haven't had much of a chance.”

“It's a pretty exciting treatment—they've had good success, bringing people back with it.” She paused and dropped her voice a bit. “We'd be able to move Cleona. Get her out of here—Midwest, maybe even the West Coast. No one else would have to know.” Janna looked at him, intent.

Did she know his situation? If so, how? Could he trust her? He felt himself start to ask a question, but then it hit him: she was fishing. Viktor had pushed a few bucks her way, told her to try to pick him for some information, try to trip him. Classic Viktor strategy. That had to be it.

She continued to stare, her gaze asking questions he wouldn't answer.

“I'll . . . I'll think about it.”

“Okay, then. You just let me know when you're done thinking so much,” she said. “I'll leave you two.”

She backed out of the room, closing the door behind her, seeming disappointed. Probably because she didn't have any dirt she could take back to Viktor. Stan stared at the closed door a few moments, then went over and opened it again. Keeping it open felt more comfortable.

“Keeping busy with the day job, Mom,” he said, sinking into the chair again. “Places to go, things to see, people to do.”

He smiled at his joke, but his mother's stare remained steady. She hadn't moved since he entered the room.

“Heading out to the West Coast in a few days, do some more business out there. Then I'm off for another month or so. Rinse and repeat.”

A small table sat next to her chair. A pen. Some napkins. An empty glass.

A cat wandered into the room from the outside hall, came to where Stan was sitting, brushed against his pants. He bent and stroked its fur as he looked at his mother.

She was still in there somewhere, the woman who had raised him. The woman who had held him and read Dr. Seuss, the woman who had herded him to piano classes, the woman who had later herded him to weekly counseling sessions to talk about what therapists alternately described as OCD, social disorder, paranoia, or a heady mix of all of the above.

Good old Mom.

“I'm sorry about Grandpa,” he said suddenly, not sure why. He hadn't spoken to her about his grandfather since she could actually hold up her end of the conversation, hadn't spoken to any of the therapists or counselors or social workers about it ever. “I figured it out after him, you know. Why it happened. How it happened. Too late, I know.”

The cat abruptly gave his leg one last brush and ran out into the hallway again. His head still down, Stan heard a scribbling sound. He lifted his head, saw his mother writing something on a napkin with the pen. It was a number: 1595544534.

He took the napkin, looked at her. This was the first human movement he'd seen from her in . . . months. Had Janna started her on the new drugs, secretly?

Within moments, she had returned to her usual statue state. Her dry eyes stared straight ahead, as if taking in something she found slightly disappointing.

Stan ran a hand through his hair before he stuffed the napkin into his pants pocket. So she'd scribbled on a napkin. Like that meant anything. Probably just the misfiring of a brain warped by disease, numbers left over from some scrambled past.

Still, she had moved. On her own. He pulled his chair toward her, leaned in close, close enough to smell the scent of her breakfast. Oatmeal, he guessed. Grain mush, as Janna might call it.

She stared, a bit of drool pooling at the corner of her mouth. He wiped at the drool, the wetness of it feeling odd through the latex gloves, like gelatin.

“You even alive?” he asked, whispering. He licked his lips, then: “Am I?”

She didn't answer.

Yeah, he was doing all this to keep his mother in the thin, hovering zone between life and death. And really, how much of a line was it?

For that matter, how much of a line was it for him? He'd been a zombie for a couple years now, allowing himself to be controlled by his own pity and a Russian mobster starting to build a network on the North American
continent.

He could kill himself, avoid killing other innocent lives. If he wanted his own mother to die. Or at least finish dying.

But he couldn't do that. Even now, so many years after his grandfather, so many sleeping pills and painkillers later, he couldn't dull that gnawing hole deep inside. Not now. Not ever.

He'd killed one person he loved. And God knew he couldn't repeat it.

This was his circle of hell, and he was confined to it until the bitter end. No magic tricks to make him disappear, no easy way to slide off this mortal coil.

His thoughts returned to Janna. Maybe she was telling clever lies. Or maybe, just maybe, Janna
did
know something of his situation, and was offering a way out.

In either case—devious turncoat or a naive dreamer—Janna was dangerous. He liked her, but he'd have to make some calls, see if he could get her removed from the staff. He could do that, through the Organization. Make things like that happen. Maybe it would even be a smart move. If she were working for Viktor, he would immediately see that Stan wasn't going to fall for any poisoned bait.

He stood, turned to the door, and left without looking back at his mother.

Yes, he was a zombie. And zombies fed on the living. Always.

8.

The flight to Seattle was uneventful enough, and this time his Handler met him at the airport. Always much better that way. It wasn't the end of the world when he met Handlers at restaurants or bars or other locations after checking in at the hotel, but it was always much . . . cleaner . . . to just start the whole job from the airport. The dynamic didn't shift that way; the Handler felt comfortable being a driver, and Stan felt comfortable being a rider. Meetings in other places led to small talk and conversations, which led to the Handlers asking questions, which led to people seeing things no human should.

They called him Bleach, after all. He liked things clean.

Clean or not, though, he was also tragic. Who was that mythical Greek guy? Well, yes, Midas; he was obvious, and Stan had read many accounts and translations of Midas's exploits over the past couple years. (Reading was one of the things you could reliably do while hiding in hotel rooms. When you weren't otherwise occupied chugging sleeping pills, that is.) But he was now thinking of the guy who constantly rolled a rock uphill. Sisyphus, maybe? Always he moved uphill.

His Handler was quiet, simply nodding when he recognized Stan coming out of the Jetway. The Handler didn't offer his hand for a shake. Good. Even with his gloves on, it made him uncomfortable, itchy, to touch the skin of others.

He rarely had to search for his Handlers, he knew, because the Organization gave them photos of him ahead of time, along with explicit instructions on where to take him and when. Ignore those instructions, and the Handlers would receive a visit from less savory members of the Organization. Maybe even a return visit from Stan himself.

He followed the Handler to a white sedan double-parked outside. They opened the doors and slid inside without a word. As the Handler wheeled onto the street, Stan saw a newspaper folded on the dash. He picked it up, looked at the Handler.

“Thought you might like something to read on the way,” the Handler said without taking his eyes off the road. “Your first time in Seattle, I'm guessing.”

“Yeah, thanks.” He unfolded the paper to look at the front page.
August of 2001 Hottest on Record
, the headline said. He glanced at the article, scanning the various atrocities August had inflicted upon the fine Seattle landscape.

“Even the weather's going down the drain,” he said, not fully realizing he'd spoken out loud until the Handler answered.

“Just twenty months late. Or eight months late, depending on your point of view.”

He looked at the Handler. “I don't follow.”

“Y2K. Everybody thinking the world was going to end when we rolled to a new century. 'Cept it wasn't really the new century—2000 was the
last
year of the
twentieth
century. New century didn't start until this year.”

Stan smiled. “Well, we still have four months left in 2001. World might end yet.”

The Handler turned and looked at him for the first time. “I'm starting to think that would be the best news we could get,” he said.

Stan sighed, folded the newspaper again, and threw it on the dash. “Amen, brother. Amen to that.”

9a.

His target was holed up at a ratty old hotel in an area the Handler told him was called Fremont. They passed through a bit of a historic district on the way. Stan noticed faded paint on the sides of brick buildings: ads for nonexistent drinks, signage for meat packing plants that were now homes for shops and restaurants.

The Handler wisely parked in an alley around the corner from the hotel, and Stan got out to walk. This Handler, whatever his name was, didn't follow. Good. No replay of the incident with the kid.

Humidity and heat combined to make the air feel heavy, and after the quick walk to the front door, he felt his longsleeved shirt clinging. He liked to wear long sleeves, because they drew less attention to the gloves—thin driving gloves, unless it was an assignment day like today. Then he switched to latex. They were disposable, and that was important for these projects; the thought of reusing gloves after an assignment seemed wrong. Backward. Sickening, in a way.

At the front door of the hotel, he retrieved the small envelope he'd folded and tucked away in a back pocket. The envelope, which held two keys, had been part of his most recent delivery packet.

He picked one key at random and tried it in the protruding lock of the oak door. No go. He fished out the other key and tried it, feeling it slide home and turn as a bird twittered from one of the floors above. Birds in the city—not pigeons, but real songbirds of some kind. Maybe seeking shelter from the oppressive heat in the shade of the eaves. He liked that.

Inside, he moved confidently, striding across a lobby that smelled oddly of limes and urine. The decay inside said it wasn't just on the wrong side of the tracks, but nowhere in sight of them.

He passed the elevator doors and took the stairs. Always, he preferred the stairs.

On the fifth floor he surveyed the area for a moment before walking down the hallway. Ten yards down, he came to the door marked 534.