“Of your journal. That was your last kidnapping, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you switched to homicide?”
“Assassination,” he corrected me. “Yes.”
“Your journal was ambiguous,” I said. “What was the new art? Killing mobsters? Killing incest fathers? Killing child molesters? What?”
“Ah. Because the first target fit all those criteria?”
“Yeah.”
“The target was pedophiles,” he said. “From the very beginning.”
“But you. . . practiced on. . . what?”
“Anyone,” he said. Dry ice.
“Sure. And when you were ready, that’s when you switched from your private journal to the letters to the newspapers. And it almost worked.”
“Almost? Please, Mr. Burke, don’t be ludicrous. I am universally acknowledged as the—”
“Not in the whisper-stream,” I chopped him off. “You got a higher body count. . . maybe. . . than Wesley, but so what? Every single one of his hits was bought and paid for. Someone else picked the target. Down here, there’s talk of a guy called the Trustee. Supposed to be managing a fortune some old gay guy left. . . for killing fag-bashers. And word is, this Trustee got to Wesley. And all this work, it’s his, not yours.”
“Where is this mythical ‘down here’ of yours?”—the machine not altering the sneer in his voice.
“You like ‘grapevine’ better? It doesn’t matter. Back alleys, prison tiers, waterfront bars. Crimeville, understand? Not for citizens. That’s where Wesley lives. You say his name there, people tremble. He starts his walk, somebody’s gonna die. Everybody knows.”
“Wesley is dead,” he said, repeating my line now.
“To who?” I challenged him. “He went out the way he wanted. But maybe he went someplace else. Some say he never really left. That he had some tunnel under the school, or that it was a remote-control robot’s voice the cops heard or. . . whatever. You know how people talk. You’ve got a way out of here. Who’s to say Wesley didn’t?”
“Yes. But the circumstances are—”
“And others, they say he came back.”
“From the dead?” The voice dripped sarcasm.
“Yeah. You never heard about ‘Reaching Back’ either, huh? You’re so far above us, you can’t see down through the clouds. Wesley’s alive. He can’t die. And I know that’s what you want.”
“What I want?”
“Why else all this? I’m no threat to you. You don’t bite on that Internet bait, you’re well away. Vanished. Like you did before.
“But you figured the only true test of art is immortality. Like a statue or a painting or a book that people still look at hundreds of years after it’s done, right? Your art. . . it dies with you. I don’t know how old you are, but you are going to die. And all your little ‘journals’ will end up as some cheap paperback book. There’s only one way for you to get where you want to go. And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? You need me to set up some more hits. As Wesley’s ‘agent,’ right? That makes him alive. And that makes you him.”
There was such silence I could hear heartbeats. A slow, steady thump. I was so calm I was almost comatose. Once you’re over the line, the tension stops. Maybe it was Nadine’s heart I heard. I never looked her way.
“Yes,” he finally said.
I waited. It wasn’t time yet. He wasn’t. . . exposed enough for my one strike.
“How would it work?” he finally asked me.
“There’s people I could talk to. See in person. They know me and Wesley were. . . They know I can reach him. I was—”
“You were the original suspect when my most recent. . . artistry started,” he cut in. “Why was that?”
It wasn’t time to fire yet, but I cocked the hammer. “One of the people that was killed in the drive-by. She was my woman.”
“Ah. And the police thought you were seeking revenge.”
“Yes.”
“That is your reputation. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you decipher the coding?”
“Later on,” I said. “You needed a way to justify killing a whole lot of people quickly. So the body counts would put you up there with Wesley. But you didn’t want the police making connections—you wanted to spell it out for us. And you wanted some way to say Wesley was alive too. I don’t know how you found out that Gutterball wanted—”
“He was not. . . discreet about it. I happened to access an individual he had attempted to. . . retain for that purpose.”
“And then all it took was a phone call? And some meeting in the shadows?”
“Yes. He. . . quite readily accepted that he was speaking to. . .”
“Wesley.”
“Yes.”
“So you resurrected Wesley and kicked off the killings at the same time. It was. . . brilliant. No way the cops ever make that connection. Only problem is, it trapped you too.”
“What does that mean? I am hardly the one trapped here.”
“Listen to what you just said.” I spoke quietly, willing him closer. “You couldn’t have imitated Wesley’s voice. You never heard it. Nobody’s ever really heard it. So how come Gutterball went for the whole thing unless he already believed Wesley was alive? It’s like I told you, pal. Wesley can’t die. Not down here, he can’t.”
“Ah,” he said smoothly. “So, in fact, I do not require your ‘services’ at all, do I, Mr. Burke? Let me ask you another question. . . purely for my own edification: Do you hold me responsible for the death of your. . . girlfriend? You do understand that I only executed the target. The rest was. . .”
“I understand,” I lied. “No way you could have known who else would be there.”
“Your statement does not square with other information I have unearthed about you, Mr. Burke.”
“If you were really convinced of that, why have me here?”
“Ah. Well, in simple terms—and please believe me, I do not intend to be insulting—your personal animosity, to the extent it exists at all, is of no concern to me. You are. . . powerless, shall we say. My. . . research sources are, as you so adroitly pointed out earlier, dissimilar to yours. And I concede that your. . . reputation is, to some extent, inaccurate. When I began my final. . . quest, long before I ever made contact, it quickly became apparent that you were linked to Wesley. However, it also became apparent that there was a commingling at some juncture, so that various homicides were misattributed between you.”
“What does it matter?” I asked him.
“Matter? Nothing. I was simply explaining that I have no direct method of ascertaining whether your rather legendary commitment to vengeance is valid. Regardless, I am both invulnerable as to you and needful of your. . . services, for which I am prepared to pay. Or, at least, until you so adroitly pointed out your own uselessness, I was prepared to pay. I do assume your reputation as a man-for-hire is factual. . .?”
“Yeah. It is. But I’m no hit man. Wesley—”
“Wesley was a rank amateur,” he said, his tone sounding more human now, even through the mechanical barrier. “How he achieved such. . . immortal status is beyond my comprehension. I assume it was the rather theatrical way he elected to exit which retroactively amplified his rather pedestrian accomplishments as an assassin.”
“Amateur?” I taunted him. “Amateurs do things for fun. Like you do. Amateurs call it fucking ‘art.’ Like you do. Wesley, he got paid. And he never missed. You gave Wesley a name, you got a body,” I said, echoing the Prof. “The only body they never got was his.”