Chrissie nodded. “If Patrick calls, I’ll tell him you’re a pain in the ass to be around, but otherwise you’re doing as you’re told — watching TV, reading books, doing nothing remotely interesting.”
After breakfast, I packed my bag and called a cab. When it arrived, I was standing in the hallway, ready to go. Chrissie was with me, silent. I breathed in deeply, summoned up every ounce of courage I had, and asked, “When I’m finished, can I take you out to dinner somewhere nice?”
I fully expected her to say no.
Instead, she approached me, brushed a finger against my face, briefly kissed me on my cheek, looked at me in a way that was undeniably meaningful, and whispered, “Yes.”
I was in heaven.
Two minutes and thirty-nine seconds later, as my cab pulled away from the safe house, that feeling vanished, because Trapper called again and said, “We must meet tomorrow. Alone. I will call tomorrow at ten p.m. with precise instructions. If you bring anyone with you, I will kill them just before I kill you.”
Chapter 5
The real name of the Indian man who called himself Trapper was Sahir.
It means “magician.”
Sahir had often wondered how his parents could have known that their newborn son would develop into someone who would excel in trickery. Perhaps they hadn’t known and it was mere luck that his name had matched his subsequent hobby, or maybe he’d unwittingly developed his talents to give meaning to his identity. He’d never asked his parents for their opinion on this, and now he’d never know, because his father had been shot in the head, and his grief-stricken mother had thrown herself off a sheer face of the Guru Shikhar mountain.
That had happened one year ago, and it had left Sahir alone in the world. He had no siblings, and his extended family had turned their backs on him in disgust after his parents had decided that their wealth should be inherited by their only son. But being alone had never bothered Sahir because he liked being the gray man; the person who could move unnoticed amid throngs of people and do things that they would least expect.
Now was going to be one of those times, for the benefit of his amusement and the nearby homeless amputee war veteran who was lying on a sidewalk, fruitlessly begging for a few dollars.
Sahir was sitting at a table in an alfresco D.C. café, wearing a silk shirt, expensive slacks, and shoes, sipping black tea, and enjoying the early morning sunshine wash over his smooth skin. He fit in here because every table around him was occupied by other rich people who looked good on the outside, though they didn’t appear to share Sahir’s inner sense of calm. To him, they seemed brash, angry with life, and they spoke only in negatives. As a child, Sahir had heard about the American Dream and had marveled at the notion that an entire nation could have a collective notion of happiness. It had made him envious and confused, because in India there are so many different visions of success. But now that he was in the States, he decided that if the American Dream was true, the people around him hadn’t experienced it yet.
One tall and well-groomed man, three tables away from Sahir, seemed particularly affronted with life. He was talking loudly to four friends, all of whom — like him — were wearing thousand-dollar suits and watches that would have cost ten times that much. He was using racist language to declare that D.C. was going to shit because liberal jerks on Capitol Hill wanted all American cities to turn into faggoty, tree-hugging social experiments.
Sahir decided that the man was a pernicious idiot savant, because he was clearly gifted at garnering wealth but had a mental blind spot when it came to the joy that can be derived from being compassionate. That meant Sahir had to punish him.
Sahir finished his tea, left a tip on the table for the waiter, and moved to the angry man, who was now jabbing his finger on the table in time with each embittered word he spoke.
“Sir, I would like to perform a trick and was wondering if you’d participate?”
The man looked flummoxed. “A trick?” He glanced at his friends before returning his gaze to the Indian. “You’re joking me, right?”
Sahir smiled in a confident yet respectful way. “I am an amateur magician.” He waved his hand in a flourish. “I need a participant and an audience to practice my craft.”
One of the man’s female friends giggled and said, “Go on, Carl. Sounds fun.”
No doubt Carl didn’t agree. “You live here?”
“No, sir. I’m visiting your country, and when I’ve finished doing so, I will return to my country and will never bother you again.”
The woman was now laughing and said, “Come on, Carl, he’s obviously not one of them guys you’re talking about. Give it a go.”
Carl looked cornered. “What do I have to do?”
Sahir smiled wider. “Simply stand in front of me and extend your hand.”
“Err, okay.” Carl did as Sahir requested.
Sahir withdrew a dime, placed it in the palm of his hand, and showed it to Carl’s friends. “Please don’t take your eyes off the coin.” Sahir moved his hand slowly, keeping it flat so that the coin was visible right up until the moment he embraced Carl’s hand. He asked Carl, “Can you feel the dime?”
Carl nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
“Excellent. I’d like us to shake hands and then, after the count of three, quickly turn our hands flat so that your friends can see our palms.”
It happened exactly as Sahir had requested, and Carl’s friends gasped when they saw the coin had vanished.
Carl rubbed his head, dumbfounded. “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s some trick.”
Sahir bowed and said, “My sincere gratitude.” He walked to the homeless man, who was forty yards away and out of sight of Carl and his friends, and dropped Carl’s Rolex watch and wallet in the man’s lap.
Sixty minutes later, he entered a tiny rental apartment in D.C.’s Upper Northwest. The place was clean and pleasant, but also cheap, nondescript, and one of many in the block. Unlike Sahir, who’d chosen the accommodation because it was discreet, occupants of the other apartments had a tight budget in common, but otherwise they were a diverse bunch of tourists, summer students, and employees on temporary assignment to the capital. Most of them took no notice of each other, and the only person Sahir had spoken to was his neighbor — a young and pretty Argentinian woman called Isabella, whose parents had paid for her to come to the States to improve her perfectly adequate English, when in fact she seemed to spend most of the day in her apartment smoking weed. Isabella thought Sahir was a PhD student from the Bengal Engineering and Science University who was participating in a Georgetown University summer semester. She had no inkling that her neighbor might be a man capable of murder.
He entered the kitchen and opened a bag of masala peanuts while listening to Mr. Conrad and The Excellos sing “I’m Dissatisfied” on a CD he’d earlier purchased from the blues section of a record store because he wanted to understand how it was possible for American musicians to be unhappy in the land of hope and glory.
Six spiced peanuts, juggled high into the air before landing in quick succession in his mouth, abated all feelings of hunger, and he moved to the living room, opened a trunk containing chains, ropes, saws, shackles, and a razor wire whose sole purpose was to garrote a man, and withdrew a leather pouch containing sterilized needles of varying widths. He pulled out one that had been used by early-twentieth-century Quaker explorers to insert stitches into the paw of an injured tiger, and thrust the needle through the same palm that had earlier held the dime. Avoiding bones and veins was key, and as Sahir saw its tip emerge through the top of his hand, he imagined an audience who would be disgusted yet fascinated by what he’d done but wouldn’t see the real reason behind the grotesque act, which was to increase his pulse rate to that of a frightened animal, sweat, and appear to everyone that he was a victim of his own machismo when in truth he was calculating facts about his emotionally vulnerable audience so that he could use their secrets against them.