The Ethical Assassin: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

memoirs; you know the ones I mean. The poor Irish childhood ones where the writer recalls with preternatural clarity which hat his aunt Siobhan wore to his seventh birthday party and what the cake tasted like and which relative gave him the orange for a present and which the hard-boiled egg. I’m not buying it. No one remembers that kind of detail. It’s all creative license to flesh out a true story. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s my story, and I’m going to tell it the way I want to tell it.
    So back to Jim Doe and the red sports car.
    The driver wasn’t as good-looking as Doe had been hoping, but she was in her twenties. Early thirties at the most. She had big, curly blond hair, which he liked, and she was dressed kind of sexy in one of those collarless T-shirts that the women had all been wearing since Flashdance. None of that compensated for her big nose and fat lips, all smashed against her face, and her eyes, which were too small for her head. Still, he’d stopped her. Might as well see what was what.
    It was already getting dark. He ought to be over at Pam’s place by now. It was Jenny’s birthday, and he guessed he should go by and bring her something. She was four now, and she’d known what a birthday was for a couple of years, and it would probably be a big deal if her father didn’t get her a present. He’d hear about it from Pam if he didn’t show. Not only that, he’d have to hear it from that fucking bitch Aimee Toms.
    Sooner or later he’d see Aimee out at the Thirsty Bass or the Sports Hut or the Denny’s, and she’d come sit down and look oh-so-sad and smile a little and tell him how disappointed Jenny had been on her birthday that her daddy didn’t get her nothing. She had that attitude. All the assholes at the sheriff’s department had it, but Aimee had it most of all. She turned up her nose at him. Aimee—turning up her nose at him. Unbelievable. If she knew so much, how come she looked like a dyke? Answer that one.
    So she’d come over, her linebacker shoulders all squared off, and she’d shake her head or maybe his hand. She wasn’t trying to tell Jim what to do. Of course it was awkward, but she was Pam’s friend and a cop, and she knew how it was for both of them. Lots of cops got divorced, but the children—the children were the important thing.
    Maybe if someone ever got drunk enough to get her pregnant, she’d know if children were important or not. Of course, Doe didn’t much like to think about that time he had been drunk enough to go after her, when he’d grabbed her ass and started singing, “Amy, what you gonna do?”—that god-awful Pure Prairie League song. She had just wiggled out of his grasp like she was the queen of England. Or because she liked women, he supposed. Like Pam. Aimee was probably getting it on with his ex-wife. What kind of a crazy world was this, anyhow?
    So if she tried any of that, Jim knew how he’d handle himself. Pretty simple, really. He’d take out his gun and blow the back of Aimee’s head right off. Bam! Just like that. Oh shit, Aimee. Where’s the back of your head? Let’s you and me try to find it together. You know, as Pam’s friend and as a cop.
    Getting sneered at by Aimee Toms—nothing but a county cop who thought she could push him around. Doe was chief of fucking police here. And mayor. How much money was she taking in? Maybe thirty a year if she was lucky—if she took a little on the side, which she would never do, of course, because that would be wrong. Let Pam be her little dyke friend. She could be Jenny’s father and save him the trouble.
    When he got done with the driver, Doe figured he’d go by the drugstore and get Jenny something. A doll or some Play-Doh. Really, he just wanted to keep Pam from snapping her turtle mouth at him and Aimee from giving him that pitying look that was going to lose her the back of her head one of these days. Truth was, he couldn’t much stand Jenny, with her hugging his leg