Nobody Dies For Free Read online

  He drove the whole way from Wisconsin to Boston, enjoying the feel of the new Lexus as it rolled over the highways like a marble on a silk tablecloth. He spent his first week in Boston sleeping in hotels while he renewed his acquaintance with the city, relearned the major routes, and looked for more permanent lodgings. Money was not an issue; he had enough left from France to start off in the upper-middle class lifestyle and go from there, assuming he would hear from Mr. Nine in the near future.

  It would not be a house, Monroe decided immediately upon beginning his quest. One man did not need that much space. An apartment would do, a nice penthouse, a beautiful blank canvass of a residence that he could furnish to his personal tastes. He intended to keep it simple at first.

  He found a suitable place, a top-story penthouse with a poetic view of a large park, and managed to fill it with furniture, probably more than one man needed as he soon found that he rarely occupied any spot other than one large armchair, his bed, and the kitchen chair that quickly became his default perch for breakfast. He rarely watched television, except for the news. Having spent too many hours in front of a monitor and keyboard when still with the CIA, he avoided the computer. He filled his afternoons with reading, reacquainting himself with the classics—everything from Chaucer to the middle of the twentieth century, trying to alternate between the major canon material like Shakespeare and the joyously pulpy stuff like Chandler and Fleming. On most evenings, he ventured out into the city and experimented with different restaurants: Italian, Japanese, Thai, Greek, American, fusion styles. He ate a bit of everything, except French food, for that might bring up memories of Genevieve and rob him of his appetite.

  He worked too on honing the skills he had long ago acquired, but which had been mostly dormant in Paris and had come back to the surface only briefly during the hunt for al-Hamsi. He found a nearby shooting range and got to know his Glock quite intimately. He took the Lexus beyond the borders of the city and found empty rural roads on which to drive too fast and make dangerous turns in preparation for times when he might be pursued or have to do the chasing himself. On other days, he went out into the city, chose a person at random, and followed them as long as he could while still being certain that they had taken no notice of him and became not the least bit suspicious. With most subjects of such exercises, he stayed on the trail for hours without obstacle. Richard Monroe was finding that he was still quite good at what he did. But he knew that practice runs were only empty exercises. The real test would come when Mr. Nine called. The only real proof of skill was survival when the odds were at their highest against you. Monroe looked forward to the day the game became real again, the time the stakes went high once more.

  After several weeks of settling in, he decided that he missed human contact and socialization. He suddenly wished to meet his neighbors, perhaps find a friend or two, and maybe even the company of a lady, though nothing too serious. That had never been his style, except for the one moment that had lasted five too-short years.

  The complication, he realized, was that anyone he met would inevitably express curiosity about his line of work. He needed a cover story, a faux profession. It had to be realistic but uninteresting, something that would satisfy the question’s asker without exciting them and increasing the curiosity. In other words, an accountant would be appropriate though perhaps too boring, while a private investigator would be too attention-grabbing. Something in the middle was what he needed.

  ***

  “So what is it you do, Rick? For a living, I mean.”

  By the time the question was finally asked, three weeks after Monroe had begun setting up his new life in Boston, he had an answer ready.

  “I’m a marketing consultant,” he said before taking another sip of his red wine as he reclined on the couch with the redhead.

  “All right,” she said, and Monroe saw that it had worked. ‘Marketing consultant,’ sounded moderately impressive but vague enough that the questioner was unclear what to ask about it, how to turn it into a point of conversation. Good.

  Her name was Theresa O’Rourke and her hair was as red as her Irish name would suggest. She was about thirty-five, Monroe estimated, although he would not ask. She was tall, appropriately curved in all the right ways, and had a brain of the artsy variety, although some business sense had crept in there somewhere along the line. She ran an art gallery. A week earlier, Monroe had gone shopping for something to decorate the penthouse. The owner of the gallery where he’d made his first purchase was ten years older than him and solidly married, but his charm had its effect on her and she got ideas about matching him up with one of her younger colleagues. So Monroe had been invited to a dinner party and accepted despite the fact that his instincts screamed, “set-up!”

  But the food had been excellent and the conversation had a few peaks of wit before plunging down into pretentiousness. It had worked out well though, for by the time the talk had fizzled, he already had Theresa interested and she followed him back to his place, her hybrid trailing his Lexus all the way home.

  She liked the apartment, but said it needed a little more stuff, a point against which Monroe could not argue. They talked a bit, he poured the wine, and he worried about upsetting her if she stayed the night and he later had to tell her he was not ready for anything serious again. But he pushed the worry aside, determined to enjoy the evening, and was just about to lean in and kiss her when the cell phone in his jacket, which was hung on the back of a nearby chair, began to have a fit.

  He had to answer. Who had his number? The woman who had held the dinner party certainly would not call so soon to see how he and Theresa had gotten along, and he had not made many other acquaintances in Boston yet, and it was late in the evening now, so it had to either be some cold-calling sales pitch, or it was Mr. Nine.

  “Excuse me just a moment,” Monroe said, sliding away and getting up. He reached into the jacket, took out the phone, glanced at the display and saw this: IX

  Nine!

  “Hello,” he answered the call.

  “Sorry to call so late, Monroe,” said the voice of the old soldier. “It’s time. Here’s what I need you to do. Get your gun and pack for a few days on the road. If it’s longer, you can always buy more stuff as you go. Get in your car and take the King’s Highway south. Once you’re on the road, you can put the phone on speaker-mode and I’ll brief you as you drive. In the car, I can be sure you’re alone. Now ditch the girl and get going, Monroe.”

  “How did you know I was…?”

  “Educated guess,” Mr. Nine said, and he hung up.

  “You’re about to send me on my way, aren’t you?” Theresa asked, already rising from the couch. “You’re eyes went urgent as you took that call.”

  “I’m sorry,” Monroe said, “I really am, but business, you know.”

  “Another time, then,” she told him as she brushed a strand of red hair back from her cheek and kissed him once, lightly, before walking out the door.

  Monroe wasted no time once he was alone. Packing rapidly was a skill common to all agents, spies, and similar men. The case was ready in minutes, the Glock loaded and snug in the shoulder holster, and Richard Monroe was out the door, still in the suit he had worn to dinner, pulling on a recently purchased trench coat as he went. He ticked off the mental checklist as he took the elevator down to the garage. Gun, spare ammo already in the car, clothing, toiletries, phone, cash, keys. All set. The game was on, it seemed, and Monroe’s face lit up like that of a kid on Christmas morning.

  ***

  The King’s Highway, a historically significant route, begins in Boston, runs down through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and finally ends in Charleston, South Carolina. As Monroe began his trek, he turned the phone to its speaker setting and placed it on the seat beside him, eager for Mr. Nine to call back, burning to know what the job was.

  Monroe drove south. Traffic was light at such a late hour and the roa
d went by quickly, smoothly under the wheels. Finally, after his anticipation had grown to a raging fever, the phone buzzed and Monroe reached over to answer the call. The voice came through and the exchange began, between two men, one driving, and the other just a ghost-like voice in the night.

  “Tell me, Monroe,” Mr. Nine said, “what do you know about assisted suicide?”

  “It’s been a rather controversial topic in recent decades,” Monroe answered, “brought to the forefront of current affairs by men like Jack Kevorkian. Personally, sir, I have no issue with the idea as long as it’s not done lightly. If some poor soul’s terminally ill and wants to end it all before the pain gets too unbearable, who am I to argue with such a personal decision?”

  “I’m inclined to agree, but sometimes such things can get a bit different in the more shadowy sectors of society.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Imagine, if you will, a sort of Dr. Kevorkian with a high-powered sniper rifle?”

  “A bullet instead of the usual injection of lethal drugs, you mean?”

  “Precisely,” said Mr. Nine.

  “Unorthodox, I suppose,” Monroe said, “and sure to raise even more controversy, but is it really so different than the drugs, despite the surface violence of such a method, never mind the mess that would need cleaning up after the deed was done?”

  “Well Monroe, have you ever heard, in your time in the community, mention of a man known as Simon Scythe?”

  “I can’t say I have, sir, but a moniker like that must obviously be a code and not a legal name.”

  “Precisely; we have no idea what his real name might be, or his age or race or background. In fact, his very existence is only a theory, but a crack in that mystery may have recently appeared…and that’s where you come into it.”

  “Keep going, sir. You’ve got my full attention, except the ounce of care needed to keep the car on the road.”

  “There have been over a dozen cases over the past decade or so which seem to point to the existence of what you might call an assassin for hire who kills the person who paid him rather than a target separate from the commissioner of the task. Now bear in mind that proof is sparse, but we do have this: various cases of a person suddenly being picked off by a sniper, usually in a public place, while in most cases there wasn’t much to be found in the way of a motive for anyone to want them dead. Also, there was depression or some other form of mental illness in many of the victims and each one recently had a large sum of money slip out of their possession. To give you a few examples, a man going through a divorce he did not want, who was by all accounts of those who knew him despondently heartbroken, is shot on the courthouse steps a moment after the divorce was made official by the judge. A terminally ill athlete who hadn’t told anyone about his imminent death is gunned down on the field after scoring a game-winning goal, going out on top for certain. I could list a few more fairly mundane examples, happening in locations all over the United States, and we don’t know if there have been more cases like this in other parts of the world. Still, a sniper blowing away college jocks, accountants, and housewives wouldn’t really concern the top intelligence agencies, but we believe Simon Scythe, as one of the FBI’s clever boys nicknamed him, had his hand in the Thomas Wakatu affair. You do recall that, don’t you, Monroe?”

  “Yes, sir,” Monroe answered, ticking off the pertinent details from memory. “Wakatu was prime minister of a small African nation, assassinated during a diplomatic visit to the United States three years ago. His death set off a nasty little revolution in his country, a complete coup if I recall correctly. Lots of death, some heat here for our Secret Service not managing to prevent it. And you think this Scythe fellow was involved?”

  “It’s possible,” Mr. Nine said. “We had inside information at the time that Thomas Wakatu was acting quite strangely, angrily, depressively even. We actually had a close watch on him when he arrived because we thought there might be a possibility of suicide with collateral damage: a suicide bombing or some such mess. But as it turns out, somebody else did the job for him. So there we have the problem, Monroe: if Simon Scythe just went around killing those insignificant civilians who wanted off the merry-go-round of life, men in my profession wouldn’t much need to worry about it, but if he’s willing to insert himself into political affairs, as the Wakatu shooting seems to suggest, then his existence becomes more problematic.”

  “But, sir,” Monroe asked, “if he presumably killed Thomas Wakatu three years ago, why are we paying so much attention to him now? It seems like a long delay, even if there was a lot of red tape in the way. Why not go after him sooner?”

  “We did, of course,” Mr. Nine answered, “but the damn scoundrel was untraceable. Nobody could figure out where the victims heard about him and once the job was done they were all too dead for us to ask them. They must have paid him in cash, because all the money was always withdrawn instead of being routed anywhere. Simon Scythe has been, for all intents and purposes, like one very deadly ghost. But now, he seems to have made a mistake. The bastard’s botched a job! He’s missed! And we’ve been lucky enough to isolate the person we think he was hired to kill but didn’t quite finish off.”

  “And has this person admitted to hiring him?” Monroe asked.

  “No,” Mr. Nine said. “In fact, she doesn’t even know there are suspicions about it. As far as she knows, the police don’t have a clue as to who shot her.”

  “And I suppose that’s where I come in,” Monroe guessed.

  “Certainly,” Mr. Nine confirmed. “You start with this woman, see if you can figure out if she really did manage to hire this Scythe, and then use whatever information you get there to find out who he really is, hunt him down, and get rid of him.”

  “No arrest requested, sir?”

  “Monroe, you know perfectly well that I didn’t bring you back into the game to arrest people. That’s what the publicly known agencies are for. Find the son of a bitch and put a bullet in his brain and get him off the scene for good.”

  Monroe sighed. He didn’t really enjoy killing, but he understood. “So where do I find this survivor, sir?”

  “You’re not far away,” Mr. Nine said. “You’ll find the young lady in New Haven, Connecticut. She’s in a physical rehabilitation facility, just transferred there today after a week’s stay in the hospital following the shooting. There are police on the premises, too, since her case is under investigation. But I place little trust in the local cops. Part of your job will be to protect her in case Simon Scythe, assuming this is his work, makes a second attempt at fulfilling the contract. While you’re doing that, dig and see what else you can learn.”

  “And what’s the woman’s story?” Monroe asked.

  “Angela MacIntyre,” Mr. Nine began, “age twenty-nine, daughter of wealthy parents, recently finished her college degree in theatre arts…and yes, I realize she’s a bit old to be graduating now…it seems she took most of her twenties off from school to try to succeed as an actress, sans the formal education. Anyway, she withdrew nearly twenty-five thousand dollars from her savings, most of which was put there by her parents and not earned herself, twelve days ago. Then, seven days ago, she was exiting a café several blocks from the apartment she began renting not long ago with a roommate, when a shot came from somewhere across the street and several stories up, and struck her in the right shoulder. That was a very inaccurate occurrence if it was indeed the so-called Simon Scythe who pulled the trigger, but everything else fits. So we’re sticking with the assumption, until you find out otherwise, that it was indeed him. The victim, of course, insists that she was indeed a victim and claims to have no idea why anyone would want to put a bullet in her, lethally or otherwise. And that is what we have so far.”

  “But excuse me, sir, “Monroe said. “Why wouldn’t he take a quick second shot? If he’s normally so accurate, and he’s always managed to avoid even being seen, which means he probably has good escape routes worked out well in advanc
e of a hit, he could easily have shot twice and still made it out of his nest before the police arrived.”

  “Monroe, I don’t have an answer to that,” Mr. Nine admitted.

  “Fair enough,” Monroe said. “Now, as for the other obvious question: what’s my cover? Obviously I won’t be marching in there and saying, ‘Good morning, Miss MacIntyre, I’m Richard and I’m going to kill the man you hired to kill you.’ So who am I when I get there and why will this woman even want to give me the time of day?”

  “You’ll be her shrink, of course,” Mr. Nine said. “That would seem to be the best way to get her to talk to you, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, sir,” Monroe countered, “it absolutely would not! That strategy needs to be reversed. The minute one thinks someone’s there to probe their mind, they shut up about it, especially if they’ve done something wrong. On the other hand, if someone’s poking about their body and that makes them uncomfortable, they’re more likely to resort to thinking, and perhaps talking, about things of a spiritual or intellectual or otherwise mental nature. A psychiatrist will get nothing, assuming this woman has things to hide. I need something that will put me into physical contact with the patient.”

  “Fine,” Mr. Nine said. “I will now text you the address of both the rehabilitation facility and the post office half a mile away from it. You will reach New Haven, get a room, and get a few hours’ sleep. In the morning, go to the post office and pick up a package waiting for you under your real name. Inside it, you’ll find the credentials to get you into the place and close to Miss MacIntyre. Good luck, Monroe.”