Internecine Read Online Free PDF

balcony. Like I said, I live in a security building.
    He was just
there,
filling air that had been tenantless a moment before, a black silhouette through the sheers of my Odelay drapes. He appeared like a ghost, ninja-quiet, unmoving. I thought I was freakingout or hallucinating until he tickled the sliding door (silently defeating the Sentry lock there, too) and stepped inside.
    Oh christ, this one was wearing a black ski mask.
Black everything else, and what looked like dancing shoes. He stepped over the inert form of Celeste like it was no big deal. When he spotted the open case on the table, he muttered
goddammit to hell
and immediately slammed it shut.
    Then he saw me, across the room, as if for the first time, as if I was the least of his worries.
    “Lucky you,” he said.
    I can spin-doctor verbal pitches like a fighter pilot doing Immelman turns. I can go silver-tongued with zero prep and talk nearly anyone into nearly anything; it’s part of my job. I can commiserate with clients and give voice to their inarticulate objections with the psychiatrist’s trick of prompting trust. I am extremely skilled, verbally. And right now I couldn’t dredge up a thing to say. At least half of my body was still convinced I was dead, and seeing all this from the ceiling, or a tunnel of light. I was mute with fear, and it was embarrassing.
    The intruder stooped to pick up something behind my Donatelle quilted pillowback sofa. Celeste’s hand. He held it gingerly between two fingers, like dead vermin from a trap, turning it this way and that. He, too, wore surgical gloves, snugged into the wristlets of a black, military-style brigade sweater. He emitted a tiny
humph
and walked to the kitchen to drop the hand into my vegetable-washing sink, the smaller one that was part of the marble butcherblock centerpiece. He rinsed off blood and something that smeared like lampblack, and dried his still-gloved hands on a paper towel from a chrome spindle I’d bought at Smarter Image.
    He stood looking at the case again, and shaking his head. “What a classic,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Are you shot?”
    I shook my head no, rattling my forebrain.
    “Are you sure?”
    I shook my head yes.
    “Are you
mute,
or something?”
    Getting my voice to work was like trying to crack ice with a banana. I forced out a dry croak. “No.” I swallowed. It hurt. “I’m not.”
    “Fucking amateurs.” I didn’t know whether he meant me or the still-motionless Celeste, or both of us. “Bet this was all a big surprise for you, am I right?”
    I nodded again. “You could say that.”
    “Oh, I
could?
That’s priceless. You’re all tied up in a chair with a soon-to-be corpse in your lap, and do you
really
want to play stupid games? Maybe you should just go back to nodding, ace.”
    “She’s not dead,” I said.
    He nodded, now. Better answer; no drama. He stepped toward her and pulled his own silenced automatic from a spine holster. The gun was black, the rig was black; I didn’t even register it. He gave her two shots to the head, point-blank. The gun made a coughing sound like someone punching a cardboard box, one-two. The body on the floor jigged with the hits, expelled its final breath in a watery gasp, then settled, as though deflating.
    “She’s dead now,” he said. “For sure.” He moved closer, gun in hand, hands on knees, leaning down to inspect me. “She hit you in the head?”
    I nodded. “Why?”
    “Because your forehead is the color of a pluot.”
    “A what?”
    “Pluot. You know—plum and apricot, a hybrid. Fruit. Look it up.”
    No, I didn’t know that.
    “You got anything to drink around here? I’m as dry as sand. Sure you do.” He rummaged around inside my refrigerator (a KitchenAid double-wide in stainless steel that cost over four thousand bucks, new, and was mostly for show) until he found a bottle of sparkling apple juice. “You?”
    “No, I’m good,” I said, as though deferring another drink at a