“An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.”
– VOLTAIRE
A number of years back, I scored a strange assignment: a young, idealistic senator from the Midwest. I have to admit, it took me by surprise. Anderson seemed like a good guy. That was, until I read the dossier.
Senator William Anderson was a sinner in saint’s clothing. How he managed to keep everything under wraps, I’ll never know. Actually, calling him a sinner is a bit of an understatement.
Do you remember that Stephen King book about the guy who could see the future? He saw that the guy running for president, a guy everyone loved and respected, was going to become a ruthless dictator responsible for the deaths of millions…in the future. In the end he decided he had to kill this man before he took office and tossed the nation into chaos and death.
It was kind of like that. Anderson wasn’t just into hookers, corruption and graft. It was much worse. The man had scams in third-world countries that would make you commit suicide. I won’t go into a litany of his crimes here. Suffice it to say that the man was a monster.
However, he was a beloved public figure. So his death had to be out of my normal scope. I managed (I can’t tell you how) to break into his house and discover he had a bum ticker. Missi drugged his toothpaste so that when he went to sleep that night, he went to sleep forever. It was clean and it was quick. And it looked like natural causes.
That was how I killed Senator William Anderson.
“Wow,” was all Ronnie said when I told her. “Wow.”
When she didn’t speak for an hour, I collected Sartre and let myself out, carefully locking the door behind me.
Back in my trailer, I lay on my bed and cried. It was the first time I could remember doing that. I didn’t just cry because I’d probably lost Ronnie and my chance at true love forever. I cried because I’d killed all those people since I was fifteen. I cried because my wanker brother was dead. I even cried because, in a couple of years, even Sartre would leave me. That’s right, I premourned her death.
The sobbing shook my whole body, and after a few hours every muscle, even the one that controlled my thumb, ached. After splashing cold water on my face and taking some ibuprofen, I went to bed and slept.
I don’t know how long I was asleep. I didn’t feel very rested, but someone was pounding on my door. I threw on some clothes (you can’t have a good long cry with clothes on) and opened the door to find my mother standing there.
“Squidgy!” She hurried into the trailer and shut the door. “You look like hell! Are you all right?”
“How did you find me?” I asked as I opened a Diet Coke and offered it to her. I poured myself one.
“Oh, we still have our ways,” she said. “What happened here? Is Sartre all right?”
I nodded. “Nothing, Mum. I just got dumped by a woman I thought I had a real thing with because she found out I killed her idol. How are you?”
Mum reached up and gingerly touched my swollen face. “You’ve been crying! I’ve never known you to do that over a girl!”
“Yeah, well, she was special.”
“Why did you tell her you killed whoever it was you killed?”
It was a fair question. “Because she had to know. Because I’m an idiot.”
I sat there while my mother made me breakfast. She sat and watched as I ate.
“Why did you ask me to bring in Veronica Gale, Mum?”
She looked as though she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“There’s more to this than the council let on. I didn’t bring up my suspicions to the cousins, if that’s what you are worried about.”
Her face softened. “You got the assignment because I thought you were ready for it.”
“What the hell does that mean? How was I ready for it? I kept Dekker alive to listen to my rants on Veronica! Clearly I wasn’t ready for another assignment.”
Mum nodded. “Which is why you were selected. We chose you to test because we knew you would fight us. We didn’t ask you to kill Veronica-just to bring her in for questioning.”
“What the hell?” My head ached as if I had a hangover. I tried to focus. Mum waited patiently.
“You wanted us to quit! You wanted out too!” I slapped the table.
She nodded. “Yes, we did. You got it!”
“You played us!” It wasn’t Ronnie who had manipulated me-it was my mother! “Why?”
Georgia Bombay sighed heavily, and I saw for the first time that she was old. “You know, my generation tried to get out of the business before you were born.”
Suddenly I was wide-awake. “You never told me. What happened?”
“Oh…” She waved her hand dismissively. “We were children of the sixties-very antiestablishment. The council represented the Man. We didn’t want to kill. We wanted peace.”
An image of the council members as hippies invaded my brain. I shuddered.
“Unfortunately, as you know, our parents’ generation was much more hard-core. They came from the generation of the Great War between good and evil. Everything was black-and-white to them. They were convinced that carrying on the tradition was their way of saving the world.”
“Damn. I would’ve liked to see you take on the council.” And I wanted to too. That had to be something to see.
“We have it somewhere on film. I think Pete kept a copy. The council recorded everything back then. They were pretty paranoid.”
I took a moment to wrap my mind around this. It was an incredible shock.
“But our folks wouldn’t hear of disbanding the organization. They didn’t want to kill us either, so they agreed to pretend it never happened if we went back to work. Which we did.”
“I can’t believe this.” I really couldn’t. “So you set us up to bring down the company.”
“Yes! And it worked brilliantly too! I’m quite the actress, wouldn’t you say? York wanted to hold out a little longer-you know, add some more drama to make it fun. But Pete couldn’t hold off anymore.”
Make it fun? Okay. I could understand that.
“And it was fun finally giving it all up once and for all. Well, except for when Missi electrocuted us. That sort of sucked, dear.”
I grinned. “I guess it sort of did.” So it was all a ruse. How about that. Who would have thought my mother was capable of such surprises?
“Well, I really should be going, honey. They are all waiting for me.”
“Who is?”
“The rest of the council. We’re heading to Greenland to tell our parents.”
I frowned. “What if they don’t like the idea?”
She smiled. “Well, I guess they will just have to stay at that nursing home then, won’t they?” With a wink, she was gone.