The Ethical Assassin: A Novel by David Liss Page B

here, you keep quiet about what you saw, and no one will ever find this gun, no one will know you were here, and there will be no problem for either of us. I’m not looking to frame you, just to keep you from reporting to anyone what you saw. So if you decide you want to go to the police, they’ll get an anonymous tip about you, Lemuel Altick, and discover the hidden location of this gun, which will mark you as the killer. On the other hand, if you accept that there are bigger things at play here than you can understand—and accordingly keep quiet—the police will never link you to what happened here today. Now, you can see I’m being fair about this, so keep that in mind if you have any moral qualms. Believe me, these were bad, bad people, and they had it coming. So, are we cool here?”
    I nodded slowly, thinking for the first time that the assassin was probably gay. He wasn’t effeminate or anything like that, but there was something about him, about the way he moved and spoke, that seemed full of unarticulated significance. Then a little voice inside me said that it didn’t matter if he was gay. It didn’t matter if he liked to do three-ways with proboscis monkeys. I had to stay focused if I was going to avoid getting killed. And now I had a new problem: Maybe he really would let me live, but only so he could frame me for murder.
    I looked up, and he was shaking his head. “I really wish you hadn’t stumbled into this. What’s a clean-cut kid like you doing selling encyclopedias? You going to college?”
    I swallowed hard. “I’m raising money. I got in, but I can’t afford it, so I deferred.”
    He pointed at me. “Quick! What’s your favorite Shakespeare play?”
    I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation. “I’m not sure. Twelfth Night, maybe.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Why?”
    “I don’t know. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s really kind of cruel and creepy. The play’s villain is the guy who’s actually just trying to restore order.”
    “Interesting.” He nodded thoughtfully. Then he waved a hand in the air. “Who cares, anyway, right? Shakespeare’s overrated. Now Milton. There’s a poet.”
    The fear, which I had done a reasonable job of pushing back for a while, was now so intense that it flashed around me like electricity in a Tesla ball. Crazy people ranted like this before they killed you, didn’t they? That’s what I’d learned from the movies. Even if I was misreading those signals, I had just seen two people killed. Every time my attention shifted to something else, every time I tried to comfort myself with the realization that the assassin probably wouldn’t strike again, that knowledge came back with a gruesome thump. Two people were dead. Forever. Whatever Bastard and Karen had done, they didn’t deserve to be gunned down like animals.
    Even so, with the sadness that crept over me at the thought of the indelible cruelty of murder, I felt the beginnings of something—admiration, maybe, though that wasn’t quite right—for the man who had done the killing. The assassin terrified me, but I also wanted his approval. I knew it made no sense, but I felt I had to earn his trust, which was why I spoke out.
    “There’s something else,” I said with deliberate slowness, a hopeless effort to control the trembling in my voice. “Besides Shakespeare, I mean. A guy saw me go in here.”
    He arched an eyebrow. “What sort of guy?”
    “Just a guy. A creepy redneck.”
    “When?”
    “Three hours ago, I guess.”
    The assassin waved his hand dismissively. “Forget it. He won’t remember who you are, what you were doing here, any of that. He’s not going to give you trouble. And if he does bring in the cops, tell them that you tried to sell them some books, it didn’t fly, and you took off. There’s nothing to link you to these guys, to suggest you had a motive. Nothing like that.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “If the cops come to see you, say