Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I left the parade just behind the cathedral, where a floodlight casts a giant statue of Jesus on the church’s back wall. Shadow Jesus had his arms outstretched as if asking for a hug, but I walked on by, taking the long way around until I finally got to the gate on Ursulines, buzzing myself in. The others were in the kitchen, hunkered around the table with cups of coffee so cold they had scummed over on the top.

Minka hurled herself on me, exclaiming in Ukrainian, until Mary Alice pried her off to hug me. Helen took a turn, but Nat was the most practical, shoving a hot cup of tea into my chilled hands. “Drink,” she ordered, and I raised a brow.

“What?” she demanded. “I can nurture.”

“Yes, you can,” I agreed, wrapping my numb fingers around the cup.

“Are we safe here?” Helen asked. She was clasping and unclasping her hands, as if she needed something to hang on to.

“For a little while. I had a tail but I lost him. Nielssen.”

Go bags were piled by the door along with the cat carrier. Kevin himself was in Akiko’s arms, lapping at her cup of coffee while she stared straight ahead, her expression blank. I looked at Mary Alice and jerked my head towards her wife.

“She okay?”

“I’m processing,” Akiko said in a stilted voice. “You just killed someone. They said you killed someone.”

“He was going to kill me. Actually, all four of us,” I assured her. “I mean, if that helps.”

She nodded slowly. “I think it does.”

I turned to the others. Natalie gestured towards my sweatshirt and throws.

“I like the new look. Not everybody can pull off Shitty Tourist, but you really make it work.”

“Thanks, I’m getting you one tomorrow.”

Helen fixed me a plate of food—I didn’t even bother to notice what it was. I shoveled it in while Nat kept the tea coming.

As I ate, Mary Alice looked around. “Time for a postmortem?”

“Tacky,” Natalie said.

Mary Alice’s expression was mystified. “That’s what we’ve always called it.”

“A friend is dead,” Helen reminded her. “Maybe we should just call it a discussion.”

Mary Alice shrugged but didn’t argue.

“A friend who was ready to kill me,” I corrected. I filled them in on what Sweeney had told me, and their reactions were predictable. Affronted—Helen; outraged—Natalie; and practical—Mary Alice.

The one part I left out was Helen freezing when I’d signaled her to shoot.

Natalie folded her arms over her narrow chest. “Are you sure it was necessary for you to take him out? I mean, it was supposed to be up to Helen to take the shot.”

I glanced at Helen but she said nothing. “I made a choice.”

Natalie snorted. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you poached a target.”

“No, Natalie, it wouldn’t. I have occasionally taken point on a job when it wasn’t my responsibility because—” I looked at the naked, broken anguish in Helen’s eyes and swerved from what I was going to say. “Because I made a judgment call. He was planning on eliminating all four of us. He only delayed because he was trying to get me to tell him where the rest of you were,” I finished.

“You didn’t have a choice,” Mary Alice said firmly.

“Poor dumbass Sweeney,” Natalie murmured.

Helen looked down at the ground and continued to say nothing.

Akiko roused herself when I finished. “Shorthand this for me,” she said. “Please. I want to understand.”

I wiped my mouth on a napkin and put it aside. “When we realized the organization we work for—”

“The Museum,” Akiko put in.

“The Museum.” I nodded. “When we realized the organization we work for targeted us for termination, we contacted a former associate of ours to find out why.”

“And that was this Sweeney person?” she asked.

“Correct. Our rendezvous with him was supposed to give us information about what was going on. We were careful enough to meet him in a neutral location, but it turns out we shouldn’t have trusted him at all. He came to kill us, Akiko.”

“So what happens now?” she asked. “They tried to kill you and they failed. I mean, they don’t just say, ‘Fair enough, our bad,’ and let you go home? Right?”

I heard the note of hope in her voice, and so did Mary Alice, who winced a little as she spoke. “We can’t go home again.”

“Ever,” Natalie said.

Akiko turned to her wife. “Are you shitting me? Mary Alice.”

Mary Alice was rubbing her hands together, the knuckles white and then red. She was one of the most accomplished killers I knew, but sitting next to her wife, she looked small, crushed down by the weight of the secret she had carried and what it was doing to them now.

Akiko persisted. “Mary Alice, look at me. What happens now?”

Mary Alice took a deep breath. “We need more information.”

“You have information,” Akiko countered. “You said they wanted you dead because you broke some code—you were killing people for money instead of on assignment.”

“But we weren’t,” Helen said in a patient tone. “That means they have bad intel on us. Somebody is setting us up.”

“So tell them the truth,” Akiko shot back. “Tell them. They will listen. They have to listen.”

Natalie sat forward, her expression sympathetic. “I know you’re having a bit of trouble with this, but they won’t listen, actually. It’s not really what they do.”

Akiko turned on her. “A bit of trouble with this? I’m having a goddamned nervous breakdown. The woman I love most in the world has—after five years of marriage—decided to finally tell me the truth about what she does. That’s five years of lies. That’s a shit-ton of lies.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Mary Alice said feebly.

“I think,” Akiko said in a voice like acid, “that ship has sailed. I am on the run for my life with a cat who hates to travel, and I don’t know when I can go home again. So fix this, Mary Alice.” She got up, Kevin struggling in her arms, and leaned close to Mary Alice. “I mean it. Fix this.”

She left us then and Mary Alice blew out a slow breath.

“She’ll come around,” I said.

Mary Alice gave me a doubtful look as Helen cleared her throat. “Alright, we need to make a plan.”

“Maybe Akiko had a good idea,” Helen said. “Maybe we should try to talk to them.”

That bought us half an hour of arguing over how exactly we were supposed to approach an organization that was actively trying to kill us. We discussed each board member at length before deciding it was pointless.

“What about the curators, then?” Mary Alice suggested. “I know we discussed it before, but maybe it’s time to circle back to the idea.”

“Not Naomi,” Natalie said. “If they’ve got bad intel about us, it must have come through Naomi’s research. She does the briefings for the board and she would have been the one to tell them we were on the take.”

“Not Naomi,” Mary Alice agreed. “But Martin?” She raised her voice hopefully.

“Martin,” I agreed. The others nodded along, and Helen produced her address book, where his number was neatly written in pencil. We drew straws to see who would call him and I lost. I ripped open a new burner and punched in his private cell number. I halfway expected it to go to voicemail, but he answered on the second ring, a little caution in his voice.

“Martin,” I said. “It’s Billie Webster.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp but not quite. “Oh my god,” he said, “give me a second. I’m in public.”

There was a muffled sound as he must have clapped a hand over his phone. Eventually I heard clinking and distant chatter, restaurant noises, and then a shift to honking horns and a faint siren.

“I’m on the street now,” he said finally. “Holy shit, Billie. Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” I told him. “I assume you know why I’m calling.”

“Yes, and I know better than to ask questions. Just tell me, are the others okay too?”

“Yes.”

He breathed a deep sigh into the phone. “Good. Listen, I can’t talk long. I don’t think they monitor my calls, but if they do—”

“I’m not asking you for anything except a bit of information,” I promised him. “A little bird told me the board had intel we were taking jobs on the side. What do you know about that?”

“Nothing,” he told me. “The board has been extremely close-lipped. You know how paranoid they are about secrecy. They’ve locked this down tight.”

“Martin,” I said, sweetening my tone to something warm and coaxing. “I know how good you are. That board doesn’t order so much as a paper clip without you knowing about it. The last thing I want is to get you into trouble,” I assured him.

He pulled in a breath. “All I know is there is a dossier that somebody in the Museum compiled on the four of you and submitted directly to the board. It didn’t come through the usual channels.”

“So it didn’t originate from Provenance?”

“If someone in Provenance put it together, it was sent up without going through the regular protocols or I would have known about it.”

“And you have no idea where it came from?”

“None,” he said grimly. “And believe me, I’ve dug. Nobody is supposed to be able to do an end run around Naomi or me, but it looks like they did. Billie, I can’t tell you anything more—”

He was winding down, so I cut in quickly. “Is there any chance of calling this off?”

“Billie—”

“We’re not dirty, Martin. You know that,” I said.

“Of course I know it,” he said, indignant. “But you know what the board is like. If they rescind an order, it would be admitting they’re wrong. And you know how much they hate being wrong. Besides”—his voice dropped and he sounded regretful—“they would want proof that the four of you are clean.”

“There’s my word,” I told him.

“Billie, that’s not good enough.”

“It would have been forty years ago,” I said. He didn’t respond to that, but he didn’t have to. Times had changed and I could swear on a stack of Bibles but it wouldn’t make a difference. “So what now?”

He hesitated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but they know you’re in New Orleans. It will be more than my job if they ever find out I warned you, but they’re sending Nielssen. If you can, you have to get out of there.”

“Our paths have already crossed,” I said. “And Sweeney decided to pay us a visit too. I guess he thought he could collect on that bonus.” I didn’t mention that we’d called Sweeney ourselves. It wouldn’t do much for Martin’s confidence at that point.

He drew in a shaky breath. “Shit, shit, shit. And you’re sure you’re okay?”

“For now.”

“And Sweeney and Nielssen?”

“Sweeney is leaking blood into Jackson Square and Nielssen couldn’t find his ass with both hands and Google Maps. We’re fine.”

He laughed, but it was small and forced. “So, I guess Sweeney was your little bird?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That won’t be the end of it, you know. They’ll keep sending people until someone succeeds. They won’t stop, Billie. Not until they eliminate all four of you. You have to know that.”

“So it’s either us or them is what you’re saying.”

“No,” he replied, his voice grave. “I’m saying it’s them. I know the Museum isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still an elite organization. They know what they’re doing, Billie. And there are only four of you. Without resources.”

“Well, it sounds less than ideal when you put it that way,” I said.

He sniffed hard. “Billie—”

“It’s okay, kid,” I said. “This is where I say it’s been nice knowing you and you tell me that you can’t risk talking to me again because they’ll come after you too.” I rattled off a number. “That’s an answering service I use for emergencies.” Not so much an answering service as Max, a phone sex operator in Scottsdale who was happy to collect a little extra money just for letting me have the occasional use of one of her lines. “If you ever need to get in touch, leave a message at that number. I’ll call in once a week, okay?”

I heard a noise like a sigh down the line, and I didn’t know if he took the number or not. “Good-bye, Martin. Thanks for everything.” Before he could answer, I hung up the burner phone. I told the others what he’d said—and more importantly, what he hadn’t.

“So we don’t know who put together the dossier on our ‘activities,’ ” said Natalie, making air quotes with her fingers.

“Nope,” I replied. “And we don’t know why the board has gone so hard, so fast.”

“What do you mean?” Helen had been sitting quietly, hands tucked between her knees, but she stirred to life to ask the question.

“I mean, a kill order is extreme. Why not haul us in to question us? Or send someone else to do it?”

“The Museum is an international organization of assassins,” Mary Alice put in dryly. “They’re not exactly known for giving people the benefit of the doubt.”

“Of course they do,” Natalie said. “Nobody is targeted without extensive research from the Provenance team. Months, sometimes years of surveillance and intelligence work go into each hit. But somebody gives them a piece of paper saying, ‘Oh, the old bitches aren’t playing nice,’ and suddenly they put us in the crosshairs? That’s insane.”

“It does seem a little premature,” Helen agreed. “They might have done as Billie suggested and at least asked us.”

“Because we’d just roll over and tell them if we were on the take?” Mary Alice was skeptical. She turned to me. “Call Naomi.”

“She’s Provenance,” Natalie protested. “For all we know, she’s the source of the dossier.”

“Martin doesn’t think so,” I said, putting out my hand for Helen’s address book. I punched in the number and waited.

“Ndiaye.” The voice that answered was clipped and none too friendly. I identified myself and waited. A TV was playing in the background and I heard theremin music.

“Is that Midsomer Murders?” I asked politely. “Old Barnaby or new?”

“New,” she said shortly. “You watch English murder shows?”

“Well, sometimes I need inspiration for work,” I said. “I’m pretty pissed they thought of using a wheel of cheese to kill somebody before I did.” She didn’t laugh, and any thought I had of bonding with her over cozy village homicide fell flat.

“Why are you calling me?”

“Because I need some information and you’re the only person I can ask,” I said.

“I am not having this conversation,” she said. But I could hear the episode still playing in the background. She hadn’t hung up yet, which meant she was listening.

“Naomi, I know there’s a dossier on us and I have a good idea what it says. I just want to know why the board decided that was worth a kill order instead of bringing us in alive for questioning.”

She made me wait a good bit before answering. “I’m on medical leave, you know. I’m not supposed to be getting stressed.”

“Well, if the idea of four women being targeted for something they didn’t do stresses you out, good news. You can help fix it,” I replied. I heard the clinking of a spoon and a bowl. “Are you eating?”

“Pho. It’s all this baby wants.” The spoon clinked again. “Alright. Pick one.”

“Pick one what?”

“One question. You can ask about the dossier, the kill order, who has been sent after you. But only one. That’s all I have time for because I’m hanging up in fifteen seconds.”

I thought fast. We had a good idea of who had been sent after us—basically anybody who wanted to collect a bonus. What we needed to know was if there was a way to call the order off.

“Ten seconds,” she said, her voice muffled—from the noodles probably.

“Is there a way to rescind the order?” I asked.

“Nope.” She slurped another spoonful.

“That’s it? Just ‘nope’? We’re under a death sentence?”

“Pretty much.” She paused. “Can you go into hiding?”

“For the rest of our lives? No, thanks. I’d rather handle this. Why are they so set on terminating us instead of letting us clear our names?”

She paused. “You know what a gibbet is?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A gibbet? Kind of like a cage on a pole? The law set them up at crossroads and used them to hang murderers, pirates, sheep thieves. And they left them there, chained up and rotting, for everybody to see while they went about their business. You know why?”

“To discourage other people from committing similar crimes,” I finished.

“Exactly.”

“So they want to make examples of us?”

“More that they want to make everybody else too afraid to ask questions. They want to be left in peace, and you four are in danger of rocking the boat.”

I gripped the phone. “Left in peace to do what?”

“You’re well past your fifteen seconds,” she said. I didn’t answer and she sighed. “I heard a rumor. Someone is on the take, arranging murders for pay. I don’t know who. But they’re determined to cover it up. If word gets out, the entire organization is in jeopardy.”

“Bullshit. We didn’t know anything about that before they decided to come for us.”

“Billie,” she said patiently. “Think.”

“The only reason to come for us—” I broke off. “Holy shit. They’re going to blame it on us and let whoever is actually responsible walk free.”

“Well, it took you a minute, but you got there in the end,” she said. “You’re expendable to the board. Whoever is arranging the freelance hits isn’t, so the board has decided to protect them.”

“Why?”

“They could be too highly placed to lose. They could be blackmailing the board. They could have cut the board in on the hits. Those are just the first possibilities that come to mind. I could think of about a dozen more.”

“And none of it matters because we’re still under a termination order,” I finished. “Who is it? Who is arranging the freelance hits?”

“I already told you, I don’t know. It could be a member of the board.”

“It could be someone from Provenance,” I said, my voice heavy with insinuation.

I heard the sound of a spoon dropping into an empty bowl. “You want to accuse me of something, go right ahead. I’m done with this conversation. Your time is up.”

I related what she’d told me to the others. Mary Alice sat with her head in her hands while Helen covered her mouth and Natalie swore up a blue streak.

“Those shit-licking bastards,” she finished. “What if some of the work we did was part of this freelance bullshit? Someone could have been using us to carry out their dirty little side jobs like we were common hit men.”

It was all too easy to see how it might have been done—money changing hands, dossiers prepared. The board would be briefed on the prospective targets and the field agent assigned. Once it was passed down to us, we’d have no way of knowing if the job was clean or not. We put our faith in Provenance and the board to identify the appropriate targets. Every piece of information, every decision, every action, was a link in the chain we forged together. Any corruption in that chain was unthinkable.

“Not exactly what we signed up for,” Mary Alice said.

“I always told myself we were making the world better, safer,” Helen said finally.

“And we did,” I told her. I looked around at their devastated faces. “Look, I know it feels like a betrayal—”

“Feels?” Natalie’s voice rose.

“It is a betrayal,” I corrected. “But whatever we may have done, it was inadvertent. We believed in the organization. We trusted them. If we’ve made mistakes in who we took out, we can deal with that later. Right now the problem is the board. They’ve decided to make scapegoats of us to save whoever is behind all of this. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

We looked at each other, and we knew this decision was going to be bigger than the four of us.

We summoned Akiko and Minka and brought them up to speed. I ate a cinnamon bagel while Natalie pulled hers to pieces, making little bagel pellets with the insides and flicking them around the room.

“Could you not?” Mary Alice asked, shaking one out of her hair and flicking it back.

“I’m just fidgety,” Natalie said. “I don’t like being on this end of things.”

I looked around the table. “We’re going to be on this end of things forever unless we take control,” I said. “We’ve never been marks before, but we’ve also never had to decide on a target before. That’s always been decided for us. For better or worse, we’ve always been the instrument and not the musician. We don’t choose the tune. And you two,” I said, eyeing Minka and Akiko, “have no idea what it’s like to get your hands dirty.”

Minka gave me a cool look. “I maybe know better than you think.”

“Maybe you do, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is uncharted territory for all of us. We have two choices. One, we can walk away right now. We can get Minka to forge new papers for each of us. This is a big world and with the right documentation, we can disappear. We can start new lives and just let this one go.”

“And do what?” Natalie asked. “I’m broke. Thanks to the board, my pension blew up somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.”

“Mine too,” said Helen. “After the illness, Kenneth didn’t leave much.”

Mary Alice and Akiko didn’t speak, but the look they exchanged suggested they weren’t much better off.

“We could get jobs,” I pointed out.

“Doing what?” Natalie demanded. “We’ve spent forty years assassinating people, Billie. It’s all we know how to do, and you can’t exactly find clients for that on LinkedIn.”

“I think Craigslist would be a better place to find clients,” Helen put in.

I held up a hand. “I’m just saying, we can try to walk away.”

“Okay, and what would that be like?” Natalie asked. “We’d spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, wondering if we’ve been made, if today is finally the day when somebody gets to cash in a nice fat bonus check for bringing back our hides.”

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” I said. “If it were up to me, we’d already be working up a plan to take out the board and end this. But I don’t think this is something we should rush into. We can take a day to sleep on it—” I started.

“I’m in,” Mary Alice said firmly.

To my surprise, Akiko spoke up. “Me too.”

“Really?” Mary Alice asked, sounding hopeful. Akiko didn’t return her smile, but it was a start.

“Alright,” I said, tallying. “That’s Mary Alice and Akiko in.” I looked around. Minka nodded and Natalie grinned and sat up straight. “What’s the expression the kids use? ‘Hells yeah’? Well, hells yeah. I don’t know how many years I’ve got left and I’ll be damned if I spend them looking over my shoulder for whichever goon the board decides to send next. Besides, we’ve got a score to settle.”

I looked at Helen. She opened her mouth and closed it again, nodding. She might be less than what she had once been, but she was still worth a hell of a lot.

I closed my eyes and inhaled, holding it for a count of six. I exhaled slowly and opened my eyes. “Then it’s unanimous. The Board of Directors is going to die.”