Black Cat Weekly #86

Chapter 7-1

byIt felt funny working in his own city. Like walking into a restaurant with a home-cooked meal or watching a movie on your phone in the cineplex. But work was work, and some things just couldn’t be helped. Regardless, the same precautions were necessary. Equivalent patterns must be followed. Corresponding habits adhered to. Carruthers always stayed in a Hilton the night of, and for starters, that wasn’t changing no matter the location.

“First time in Columbus?” the valet said as Carruthers handed him the keys to his silver Accord in the pull-through outside the lobby.

“First time in a while,” he lied. “I hardly recognize it.” The Accord’s Illinois plates would come back to an empty Chicago brownstone if anyone checked; he didn’t think they would.

“A lot’s changed. My dad says it’s the 14th biggest in the country now. No more Cowtown.”

“No more,” Carruthers said in agreement.

The young man tore the ticket along the dotted lines and handed him half. “Can I get someone to help with your bag?” Early twenties, clean-cut, a workout type, wearing tan shorts and a red shirt with close-cropped dark hair and the whitest teeth Carruthers thought he’d ever seen.

May I, Carruthers thought to himself. He smiled politely and said he was fine.

Inside, people swirled across the lobby in frantic undercurrents of activity. A gathering of staff management professionals was beginning tomorrow in the convention hall across the street and the early evening check-in crush was underway. It was a good thing he planned ahead.

As always, Carruthers had considered and rejected the idea of a disguise, even something as simple as sunglasses. People thought his line of work required over-the-top skills, and to a degree that was true. But one of the main things going for him was a basic quirk of anatomy: his smooth, bland face was as distinguishable as a pebble on the beach. You’d seen one, you’d seen them all.

“Did you find us all right?” the clerk asked after he presented himself at the front desk.

“Thanks to my phone,” Carruthers said, lightly.

“I’d be lost without mine?”

She might have been the valet’s twin; young, trim, and pert, with the same mouthful of teeth as white as new chinaware. Carruthers took comfort in understanding that, at his age and with his appearance, he was invisible to her, no more noticeable than a blurry figure in the background of a group photo.

“Just one night?”

“That’s right.”

“Room 217?” She handed him a registration form and his keycards. “Can I make you a dinner reservation someplace? Or do you have plans?”

“I’ll see what strikes my fancy. It’s a pleasant day for a walk.”

“It certainly is!”

Once in his room, Carruthers placed his beige suitcase on the bed, slipped off his shoes, and did his ten-minute stretching routine, concluding with the usual finger exercises on the roll-up piano keyboard facsimile he carried everywhere. Going up and down a couple of octaves beforehand always helped.

Finished, he sat down on the bed, turned on the TV, and located a news station that served as little more than background noise while he checked his email and text messages. When he was done, he called his wife and chatted for a while. Before hanging up, he reminded her to put the cat’s medicine in the wet food since it had to be taken with a meal. After saying goodbye, he set the phone on silent, placed it in the top dresser drawer alongside his socks, lay down on the bed with his arms by his sides, and shut his eyes.

* * * *

The sky was hinting at dusk when he awoke. He didn’t bother to check the time; he knew he had been asleep just over fifty-eight minutes. He went into the bathroom, ran cold water, and splashed his face. He dried as carefully as if he were using the hand towel to daub paint. Finished, he went back into the room and opened his suitcase.

He looked at his options and thought about the swirl of people in the lobby. Satisfied with his read of the prevailing dress code, he traded his long-sleeve button-down blue Oxford for a red golf shirt and donned a lanyard with a convention badge identical to the ones being distributed at check-in. He double-checked the name he’d chosen in the unlikely event someone addressed him. He put his shoes back on and practiced on the keyboard one last time. Finished, he retrieved his wallet and watch from the nightstand, checked that he had his room keycard, checked again, opened the door, and stepped into the hall.

He’d been right about the walk. Still early June, the heat of the day was quickly dissipating and it was comfortable and relaxing out. Free of the hotel, he removed and pocketed his lanyard, then strolled down the sidewalk into the neighborhood they called the Short North, pleasantly surprised at how crowded the artsy district was. He and his wife really needed to come down here more often—it’s not like they lived all that far.

He looked approvingly at the number of restaurants with kitchens open past ten o’clock; no more rolling up the sidewalks at six in this town. He stopped to consider a series of abstract oil paintings in a gallery’s windows. He admired the wrought-iron arches lined with white lights that crossed over the street at regular intervals like a series of circus illuminations.

Eventually, after another block or so, Carruthers selected a place to eat that seemed neither too full nor too empty. He went inside, was seated at a booth, and ordered a hand-crafted IPA and a hamburger made from locally sourced beef. The sandwich was too expensive but he didn’t complain. He ate a couple of the wedge fries it came with—organic, dredged in sea salt and dill from the restaurant’s rooftop—to be courteous. He lowered the beer to just above glass half-full. He watched the Indians on one TV over the bar and the Reds on another. He finished eating in seventeen minutes and left two bills, a ten and a twenty, after catching the server’s eye.

Outside, he walked three blocks north. At First Street, he crossed over and strolled two blocks east. The beige Impala was right where he left it two hours earlier at the second parking spot down from the alley.

Carruthers entered the car’s code from memory and waited for the door to unlock. He reached in and popped the trunk. He walked back, found the envelope with the Impala key nestled under the black nylon bag, took it out, and closed the trunk. He walked back to the driver’s door, got in, started the engine, lowered the windows to take advantage of the evening breeze, and performed a serviceable K turn.

At the light he turned right, pulling into traffic. A block up he braked to let a party of jaywalking convention-goers cross to the west side of the street. Two of them, a man and a woman, hadn’t bothered to remove the ID badges hanging around their necks. It was a type of forgetfulness, a lack of self-awareness, that Carruthers envied at times.

He reached his destination twenty minutes later. He was just under a minute early. Night had fallen in earnest. The house sat on the west side of the reservoir, looking out over water ridged with small, insistent ripples, like tiny shards of broken glass. The peeping of frogs filled the air. The driveway, slowly sloping upward, was long with a slight curve halfway along. He parked just short of the range of floodlights triggered by a motion detector. The resident had pulled both cars into the garage and shut the doors as instructed.

Carruthers killed the engine, palmed the key, and popped the truck. He got out and shut the door of the Impala with a click, hardly a slam but not bothering to soften the sound either. He knew from experience it was the extremes that gave you away. He walked around to the rear of the car and raised the trunk door. He reached down, unzipped the black nylon bag, put his hand in, and felt for the Beretta. He ran his right hand up and down its length, making sure he’d fastened the suppressor correctly. He had.

Satisfied, he set the g*n down in the trunk, zipped the bag shut, and picked up the small plastic grocery bag beside it in his left hand. With his right, he picked up the g*n again, closed the trunk, and walked around the car and toward the front door.

The house, a tiered pile of glass and timber and river stones, was hidden away behind giant southern magnolias on this side of the water, though Carruthers knew it commanded an unimpeded view of the reservoir itself. Now the motion detector lights blazed on, and he watched his shadow, small and compact, as he advanced. It didn’t matter. The window of time where he cared about detection had passed, like the last glimpse of a face before it vanishes below the surface of a river.

* * * *

He found them in the living room, on the couch, a bottle of Dom Perignon open on the glass-topped table in front of them next to a pair of half-sipped, cut-glass flutes. Red lipstick smeared the rim of one. The music coming from hidden speakers was soft and jazzy. It sounded synthetic. Tan curtains shielded the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the water, as instructed.

The couple wasn’t in flagrante delicto, but pretty close. The man—fighting a spare tire, full face, head of just-receding gray hair—pulled away as he eyed Carruthers with a look of barely concealed anticipation. As he did, he glanced not so surreptitiously at the brick of a watch encircling his left wrist.

For her part, she gave a soft sigh of complaint as her partner pulled away, then sat up, gasping, as she spied the intruder. The woman young enough to be the man’s daughter or a niece, no more. Carruthers got it. He could see the problem. A second later her heavily made-up eyes widened at the sight of the Beretta, like iron filings blooming outward from magnetic force.

“What—who the hell are you?”

She turned to the man beside her, her face entreating him to join in her concern. But he gave away nothing, and instead pushed her hands away.

“Took you long enough,” he said to Carruthers, rising languidly and moving past the coffee table.

“What’s going on?” the woman said, eyes darting in panic between Carruthers and the man as she scrambled to button her gauzy blouse currently open to her navel.

“I’m sorry,” the man said. “I asked you. I begged you.”

“Asked me what?”

“I gave you a chance—you can’t deny it. Lots of them. I told you this had to end. It was never meant to last.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

“Make what harder,” the woman said, starting to rise as, just for a moment, anger replaced the fear in her eyes like cream clouding coffee. But before she fully stood, Carruthers interrupted her.

“Dining room,” he said, raising the g*n barely an inch.

It had the desired effect. The woman stayed frozen in position, half up and half down, until he repeated the command.

“Now,” Carruthers said.

“Mike—please. What’s happening?”

“Just do as he says.”

“Why? Who is he? Tell me what’s going on.”