One More Kill by Matthew Hughes & Matthew Hughes

Author:Matthew Hughes & Matthew Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Noir Crime, Murder
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2022-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Thirty seconds later, I was out on the street, another overworked mechanic heading home after a long day of oil changes and brake relines.

I FIGURED TO SPEND up to three months planning and setting this one up. The target was not often out in the open. He spent most of his time in places where there were plenty of people, including doormen and security guards. He traveled between those places in a chauffeured car. I was not going to find him conveniently alone on a wharf or in a secluded backyard hot tub. He had several homes, but servants staffed them and I was sure they would come equipped with top-of-the-line security systems. This operation would have to be a deep penetration, behind enemy lines. But that was my specialty. Like Inspector Vidocq of the Sûreté, I was the right man for the job.

First, I set about building an intelligence file. There was a wealth of information in the business media, most of it stemming from the man’s professional role: news releases about investment decisions taken, routine filings of reports required by regulatory bodies, an occasional speech or at least an appearance at a conference—once, there was testimony before a Congressional committee holding an inquiry into the causes of the financial crisis.

None of that was much use to me. But there were snippets to be gleaned in other fields: he had a wife who was active in the arts community, serving on the boards of a major art gallery and an opera company; one of their residences—the one on Park Avenue West overlooking the park—had been featured in a glossy magazine read by the kind of people who could write a six-figure check to redecorate their accommodations; a son had married the daughter of a family of similar wealth and social status.

There was a photo. The young man looked poised, confident. For a moment I imagined him at the moment when he learned that his father had been murdered. But only for a moment, before I pushed the thought into another part of my mind and refocused on the mission. Little Tony Torres had probably had a family, too, maybe an even littler Tony who grieved for him.

When you kill people on a battlefield or along some jungle trail, very often you’re depriving someone of a father, a husband—or, these days, a wife or mother—but you can’t let it bother you. Often, when you went through the pockets of enemy dead, whether you were looking for intelligence or just for souvenirs, you would come upon pictures of women and children, sometimes older folks who must have been the parents. Most soldiers just throw them away. They’ve got nothing to do with doing your job. They belong to another world—a world in which if you and the dead guy were walking down the street and bumped elbows, you’d say, “Pardon me.”

The psychologist who had assessed me at Ranger School had used the terms “compartmentalized psyche” and “dissociative personality.” While I was researching the new operation, I looked up those terms too.

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