Killers of a Certain Age(9)

“Doesn’t she ever want to go along?” Helen asked.

Mary Alice hesitated slightly. “She knows deep down I’m lying and I think she’s afraid to push because of what she might find out. Besides, you know my family. It wasn’t hard to get Akiko to believe she wouldn’t be welcome.”

I shook my head. “So, for the five years you’ve been married, Akiko has believed your family is too homophobic to welcome your wife into their home? And that you would just go along with this?”

She shrugged. “It’s the best way to keep her safe. The less she knows, the less trouble she can get into.”

Helen pursed her lips. “But she must think you won’t stand up for her, that you are willing to put up with whatever your family chooses to throw at you.”

“Oh, they’ve thrown a lot, including actual dishes. You should have seen the one time I tried to bring Akiko home for Christmas,” Mary Alice said with a sigh. “But maybe someday I’ll be able to tell her the truth, now that it’s finally over.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell her to start with. Kenneth knew what I did,” Helen put in.

“Kenneth was CIA. He had his own baggage,” Mary Alice said. She flushed. “I should have told her. I know I should. But I never found the right time. I mean, it’s not exactly first-date stuff. ‘Well, I’m into chamber music and intarsia knitting, and last week I poisoned the head of a multinational crime syndicate’ doesn’t quite cut it.”

“And there was no chance between first date and your wedding day?” I asked mildly.

She nibbled her thumbnail, looking guilty as hell. “I thought she might leave me. I was afraid, okay? I was worried that if I told her the things I’ve done, she might decide she couldn’t live with that. And I couldn’t live without her.”

“You should have told her,” Helen said firmly.

“I never told any of my husbands,” Natalie said.

“None of your husbands ever stuck around long enough for you to tell. You change marital partners like the rest of us change underwear,” Mary Alice retorted.

Natalie shrugged. She tended to view monogamy as a suggestion rather than an imperative—something she finally realized she ought to share with a prospective husband after divorce number two. By the time she split from the third one, she’d given up entirely on marriage and decided to keep a string of what the kids call fuckbuddies.

Natalie turned to me. “What about you? Will you miss it?”

“I won’t miss the workouts,” I said honestly. “Keeping myself in shape because my life might depend on it is getting a little old. My knees are tired.”

“What will you do with your time?” Helen asked.

I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe I’ll take up needlepoint or interpretive dance.”

Natalie shook her head. “I can’t imagine you ever not being exactly what you are. We’re all killers, but you’re the Killer Queen,” she said, lifting her glass in a toast.

The others laughed and I even managed to drink, but Natalie’s remark cut a little closer to the bone than I would have liked. Because she said what I’d already started to fear—that without the job, I was nothing.





CHAPTER FOUR


DECEMBER 1978


There are no job fairs for assassins. Recruitment is a delicate business, and Billie Webster has no idea that her number is about to be called. She is sitting in a holding cell in Austin, Texas. She has spent the night propped against the cinder-block wall, listening to the usual sounds of a city jail on a Saturday night. A prostitute has fallen asleep with her head on Billie’s shoulder, and even though she smells like body odor and weed, Billie doesn’t make her move.

She hasn’t made her one phone call because she has just broken up with the second-year law student at UT who usually bails her out and doesn’t know who else to call.

So she waits, letting the prostitute snore on her shoulder until the duty officer comes and barks out a name. “Webster!”

Billie gently moves the prostitute aside and stands. The duty officer jerks his head and opens the cell, cuffing her before taking her arm and leading her down a narrow hall. She is still dressed in the denim flares she wore to the protest, but they are stiff with blood and there are red half-moons caked under her nails. The duty officer takes her through a series of doors until they come to one marked private. He unlocks the cuffs and opens the door, gesturing for her to enter as he reattaches the cuffs to his belt.

Inside is a scarred table and a pair of chairs. A man is sitting in one, reading a newspaper as he smokes a pipe. He is dressed in civilian clothes but something about his posture says he’s spent time in uniform.

The officer jerks his head for Billie to enter. “I will be just outside, sir,” he tells the man, but he looks at Billie when he says it and she knows it’s a warning.

She enters and the door closes behind her. The man looks up and waves her over with an unexpected smile. When she gets closer, she sees that the newspaper is the funnies section.

The man chuckles a little as he folds the newspaper. “Marmaduke,” he says to himself. He watches as she sits, looking her over carefully as she returns the favor. She is dirty, her dark blond hair tangled and in desperate need of a wash. She is wearing a thin sweater and bell-bottomed jeans embroidered with palm trees and rainbows, and there is something oddly touching about the notion of this girl sitting in her dorm room, setting each little stitch. It pleases him to think of her doing something so precise. It means his instincts about this girl are right.