The Ethical Assassin: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

one pink-tipped finger and tore the check along the perforated edge, then held it out to me. She might have set it on the table, but she wanted me to take it from her hand. I’d seen it before; it always happened late in the sale. Encyclopedia sales had allowed me to shed my high school skin, my loser skin, and turn into something else, something that some women found even a little sexy—because I had power. The bookman has power the way a teacher or a political candidate or the lead in a production of Our Town has power. It’s the power of the spotlight. I was young and had energy and enthusiasm, and I had come into her home and given her reason to hope. She didn’t exactly want to sleep with me and didn’t exactly not want to. I understood it with absolute clarity.
    I had just about put my fingers on the check when I heard the front door open. I didn’t turn around, in part because I wanted that check and in part because I’d trained myself not to look at visitors, not to listen to phone calls. This wasn’t my house, and it wasn’t my business.
    I didn’t stray from the check grab. At least not until I saw Karen’s eyes go wide and her face go pale and her mouth form into the comical surprise of an O. At the same moment, Bastard toppled over along with his chair, felled by an invisible punch, a punch that left a gaping hole, a dark and bloody hole, in the middle of his forehead.
    Now I heard it. A puffy squeak of air, and Karen fell over, too. Not the whole chair, just Karen, out of her seat and onto the floor. The second shot hadn’t been as neat as the first, and above her eyes it looked as though someone had smashed her with the claw end of a hammer. Blood began to pool around hair on the beige linoleum floor. The air was full of something sharp and nasty. Cordite. I didn’t know what cordite was, I couldn’t even remember how I knew the word, but I knew that’s what I was smelling. The stink assaulted me, along with the horrible understanding. Two shots had been fired, two people hit in the head. Two people had been murdered.
    I wasn’t supposed to be here. I’d been accepted into Columbia University, but my parents had refused to pay. I was raising money, that’s all. I just wanted money for college. None of this had anything to do with me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing it away. But it wasn’t going anywhere.
    I turned around.

Chapter 3
    O NLY A FEW DAYS before I came to town with the bookmen, Jim Doe had been getting restless. He’d told himself to lay off; the risks just weren’t worth it. But then he’d be in his prowl car, watching the drivers go by, sometimes too lazy to stop an asshole going ten or even fifteen miles over the limit. Doing that, he’d get horny as hell. Just something about sitting there, the radio on low volume with the Oak Ridge Boys or Alabama warbling out their bullshit, the smell of Burger King French fries congealing, the sharp tang of chocolate and Rebel Yell coming from his spiked bottle of Yoo-hoo. It reminded him of exactly what he knew he oughtn’t do. It was instinct, after all. You couldn’t ask a wolf to stop being a wolf. He saw a sex-red sports car that looked damn near perfect, and Doe set those lights flashing and the siren wailing. The sound alone gave him a monster stiffy, and he felt like he was seventeen again.
    I can sense the grumbling. How, you are wondering, do I know all this? Am I secretly Jim Doe in addition to being Lem Altick? Is this a multiple-personality story?
    It’s not. But the events of this weekend were significant in my life, just about as significant as it gets, and I’ve invested massive quantities of time in talking to the survivors, the people who escaped, the people who evaded the cops, the cops they evaded, those who went to jail, and those who avoided jail. I’ve talked to them all. I’ve synthesized it. So I feel I have a reasonably good idea what was going on in Jim Doe’s head.
    Besides, you’ve read those