Swimsuit

  “Tell me.”

  “No better time than now. No better place than this.”

  Chapter 95

  THE HOTEL LOBBY GLOWED. I’m not one of those guys who studies the “House Beautiful” channel, but I knew luxury and comfort, and Amanda, prancing in place beside me, filled in the details. She pointed out the Mediterranean style, the archways and beamed ceilings, the plump sofas and logs burning in a tiled fireplace. The vast, rolling ocean below.

  Then Mandy warned me — and she was serious.

  “If you mention what’ s-his-name, even once, the bill goes on your credit card, not mine. Okay?”

  “Deal,” I said, pulling her in for a hug.

  Our room had a fireplace, and when Mandy started tossing her clothes onto the chair, I pictured us rolling around in the king-size bed for the rest of the afternoon.

  She read the look in my eyes, laughed, and said, “Oh, I see. Wait, okay? I’ve got another idea.”

  I was becoming a big fan of Mandy’s ideas. She stepped into her leopard-print bikini, and I put on my trunks, and we went out to a pool in the center of the main garden. I followed Mandy’s lead, diving in, and heard — I couldn’t quite believe it — music playing underwater.

  Back in our room, I untied the strings of Mandy’s swimsuit, pushed down the bikini bottoms, and she climbed up on me, her legs around my waist. I walked her into the shower and not too many minutes later we tumbled onto the bed, where goofiness became heart-pounding lovemaking.

  Later we napped, Mandy falling asleep while lying on my chest with her knees tucked up along my sides. For the first time in weeks, I slept deeply without my eyes flying open at some bloody nightmare.

  At sundown, Mandy slipped into a small black dress and twisted up her hair, making me think of Audrey Hepburn. We took the winding stairs down to the Bella Vista and were shown to a table near the fire. There was marble underfoot, mahogany-paneled walls, a billion-dollar view of whitecaps below, and a glass-paned ceiling showing cobalt twilight over our heads.

  I glanced at the menu, put it down when the waiter came over. Mandy ordered for us both.

  I was grinning again. Amanda Diaz knew how to take a day out of the dumper and light up memories that could take the two of us into old age.

  We started our five-star dinner with sautéed jumbo scallops and continued with scrumptious honey-cilantro-glazed sea bass with mushrooms and snow peas. Then the waiter brought dessert menus and chilled champagne.

  I turned the bottle so I could read the label: Dom Pérignon.

  “You didn’t order this, did you, Mandy? This is about three hundred dollars.”

  “Wasn’t me. We must’ve got somebody else’s bubbly.”

  I reached for the card the waiter had left on a small silver tray. It read, “The Dom is on me. It’s the good stuff. Best regards, H.B.”

  Henri Benoit.

  Fear shot right up my spine. How had that fucker known where we were when I hadn’t known where we were going myself?

  I got to my feet, knocking over my chair. I pivoted around, a full 360 and then back again in the other direction to be sure. I scanned every face in the room: the old man with soup on his whiskers, the bald tourist with his fork poised over his plate, the honeymooners standing in the entrance-way, and every one of the waitstaff.

  Where was he? Where?

  I stood so that I blocked Mandy with my body, and I felt the scream tearing out of my throat.

  “Henri, you bastard. Show yourself.”

  Chapter 96

  AFTER THE SCENE in the dining room, I locked and chained the door to our suite, checked the latches on the windows, closed the drapes. I hadn’t brought my gun, a gross mistake I wouldn’t make again.

  Mandy was pale and shaking as I sat her down next to me on the bed.

  “Who knew we were coming here?” I asked her.

  “I made the reservation when I went home to pack this morning. That’s all.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Except for calling Henri on his private line, you mean?”

  “Seriously. You talk to anyone on your way out this morning? Think about it, Mandy. He knew we’d be here.”

  “I just told you, Ben, really. I didn’t tell anyone. I just called in my credit card to the reservation clerk. That’s all I did. That’s all.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I had been thorough. I was sure of it. I revisited that night when I’d just returned from New York, and Henri called me at Amanda’s apartment minutes after I’d walked in the door. I’d checked Mandy’s phones and mine, checked both of our apartments for bugs.

  I hadn’t noticed anything unusual around us on the highway this afternoon. There was no way anyone could have followed us when we took the off-ramp to Santa Barbara. We had been alone for so many miles that we’d practically owned the road.

  Ten minutes ago, after the maitre d’ escorted us out of the dining room, he’d told me that the champagne had been phoned in, charged to a credit card by Henri Benoit. That explained nothing. Henri could have called from any point on the globe.

  But how had he known where we were?

  If Henri hadn’t tapped Mandy’s phone, and if he hadn’t tailed us —

  A stunning thought cracked through my mind like a lightning strike. I stood up, and said, “He put a tracking device on your bike.”

  “Don’t even think about leaving me in this room alone,” Amanda said. I sat back down beside her, took her hand between both of mine and kissed it. I couldn’t leave her in the room, and I couldn’t protect her in the parking lot either.

  “As soon as it’s light tomorrow, I’m dismantling your bike until I find the bug.”

  “I can’t believe what he’s doing to us,” Mandy said, and then she started to cry.

  Chapter 97

  WE HELD on to each other under the bedcovers, our eyes wide open, listening to every footstep overhead, every creak in the hallway outside the room, every groan and pitch of the air conditioner. I didn’t know if I was being rational or extremely paranoid, but I felt Henri watching us now.

  Mandy had me tightly wrapped in her arms when she started crying out, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

  I tried to comfort her, saying, “Honey, stop. This isn’t such bad news. We’ll find out how he’s tracking us.”

  “Oh, my God — this,” she said, poking me hard high on my right buttock. “This thing on your hip. I’ve told you about it. You always say it’s nothing.”

  “That thing? It is nothing.”

  “Look at it.”

  I threw off the blankets, switched on the lights, walked to the bathroom mirror with Mandy close behind me. I couldn’t see it without contorting myself, but I knew what she was talking about: a welt that had been tender for a few days after Henri had clubbed me in my apartment.

  I’d thought it was a bruise from the fall, or a bug bite, and after a few days the soreness went away.

  Mandy had asked me about the bump a couple of times, and, yes, I’d said it was nothing. I reached around and touched the raised spot, the size of two grains of rice lying end-to-end.

  It didn’t seem so nothing, not anymore.

  I rifled through my toiletry kit, dumped it out on the vanity, and found my razor. I beat it against the marble sink until the shaving head broke into parts.

  “You’re not going to… Ben! You don’t want me to do it?”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll hurt me more than it hurts you.”

  “Wow, you’re funny.”

  “I’m fucking terrified,” I said.

  Mandy took the blade from my hand, poured Listerine over it, and dabbed at the spot on my rump. Then she pinched a fold of skin and made a quick cut.

  “I’ve got it,” she said.

  She dropped the bloody bit of glass and metal into my hand. It could only be one thing: a GPS tracking device, the kind that are implanted into the necks of dogs. Henri must’ve injected it into my hide when I was
lying unconscious on the floor. I’d been wearing this damned bug for weeks.

  “Flush it down the toilet,” Amanda said. “That’ll keep him busy.”

  “Yeah. No. Tear some tape off that roll, would you?”

  I pressed the device against my side, and Mandy ripped off a length of adhesive tape with her teeth. I patted the tape across the chip, securing it to my body again.

  “What’s the point of keeping it?” Mandy asked.

  “As long as I’m wearing it, he won’t know that I know that he’s tracking me.”

  “And… what good is that?”

  “It starts the ball rolling in the other direction. We know something he doesn’t.”

  Chapter 98

  FRANCE.

  Henri stroked Gina Prazzi’s flank as his breathing slowed. She had a wonderful peach-shaped ass, perfect rounded haunches with a dimple on each cheek at the small of her back.

  He wanted to fuck her again. Very much so. And he would.

  “You can untie me now,” she said.

  He patted her, got up, reached under a chair and into his bag, then went to the camera that was clipped to the heavy folds of the curtains.

  “What are you doing? Come back to bed, Henri. Don’t be so cruel.”

  He turned on the floor lamp and smiled into the lens, then went back to the canopied bed, said, “I don’t think I caught the part when you were calling out to God. Too bad.”

  “What are you doing with that video? You’re not sending it? You’re crazy, Henri, if you think they’ll pay.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “I assure you, they will not.”

  “It’s for my private collection, anyway. You should trust me more.”

  “Untie me, Henri. My arms are tired. I want a new game. I demand it.”

  “You always think of your own pleasure.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “But there will be a price to pay for this.”

  Henri laughed. “Always a price.”

  He picked up the remote control from the ornate night table, turned on the television set. He clicked past the hotel welcome screen, found the channel guide, pressed the buttons for the BBC.

  First there were sports scores, then a market wrap-up, and then there were the faces of the new girls, Wendy and Sara.

  “I absolutely loved Sara,” he told Gina, who was trying to loosen the knots binding her wrists to the headboard. “She never begged for her life. She never asked any stupid questions.”

  “If I had use of my, ah, hands, I could do some nice things for you,” Gina said.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Henri clicked off the remote, rolled over, and straddled Gina’s fantastic ass. He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbed his thumbs in circles at the base of her neck. He was getting hard again. Very hard, painfully so.

  “This is becoming boring,” she said. “Maybe this reunion was a bad idea.”

  Henri closed his fingers gently around her throat, still just playing a game. He felt her body tense and a film of sweat come over her skin.

  Good. He liked her to be afraid. “Still bored?” He squeezed until she coughed, pulled at the restraints, wheezing his name as her lungs fought for air.

  He released her, and then, as she gulped for breath, he untied her wrists. Gina shook out her hands and rolled over, still panting, said, “I knew you couldn’t do it.”

  “No. I couldn’t do that.”

  She got out of the bed and flounced toward the bathroom, stopping first to wink at the camera. Henri watched her go, then he got up, reached into his bag again, and walked into the bathroom behind her.

  “What do you want now?” she asked, making eye contact with him in the mirror.

  “Time’s up,” he said.

  Henri pointed the gun at the back of Gina’s neck and fired, watched in the blood-spattered mirror as her eyes got large, then followed her body as she dropped to the floor. He put two more slugs into her back, checked her pulse, wiped down the gun and the silencer, placed the weapon at her side.

  After his shower, Henri dressed. Then he downloaded the video to his laptop, wiped down the rooms, packed his bag, and checked that everything was as it should be.

  He stared for a moment at the three diamond wristwatches on the nightstand and remembered the day he met her.

  I… have time for you.

  Together, the watches were worth a hundred thousand euros. Not worth the risk, though. He left them on the table. A nice tip for the maid, no?

  Gina had used her credit card, so Henri left the room, closing the door behind him. He walked across the forecourt without incident, got into his rented car, and drove to the airport.

  Chapter 99

  BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I was back in my bunker, back to my book. I had a month’s supply of junk food in the cupboard and was bent on finishing the expanded chapter outline for Zagami, who was expecting it in his e-mail box by morning.

  At seven p.m., I turned on the tube: 60 Minutes had just started, and the Barbados murders were headlining the show.

  Morley Safer was speaking: “Forensic experts say that when combined with the five Maui murders, the deaths of Wendy Emerson and Sara Russo are part of a pattern of brutal, sadistic killings, with no end in sight.

  “Right now, detectives around the world are reexamining unsolved murder cases, looking for anything that can lead to a serial murderer who has left no known witnesses, no living victims, not a trace of himself behind. CBS correspondent Bob Simon talked with some of those detectives.”

  Film clips came on the screen.

  I watched retired cops interviewed in their homes and was struck by their somber expressions and quavering voices. One cop in particular had tears in his eyes as he displayed photos of a murdered twelve-year-old whose killer had never been found.

  I turned off the set and screamed into my hands.

  Henri was living inside my brain — in the past, the present, and the future. I knew his methods, his victims, and now I was adapting my writing to the cadence of his voice.

  Sometimes, and this really scared me — sometimes I thought that I was him.

  I uncapped a beer and drank it down in front of the open fridge. Then I wandered back to my laptop. I went online and checked my e-mail, something I hadn’t done since leaving with Mandy for the weekend.

  I opened a dozen e-mails before I came to one with the subject heading “Is everybody happy?” The e-mail had an attachment.

  My fingers froze on the keys. I didn’t recognize the sender’s address, but I blinked at the heading for a long time before I opened the message: “Ben, I’m still working like a madman. Are you?”

  The note was signed “H.B.”

  I touched the strip of bandage stuck to my left side and felt the small device that was beaming my location to Henri’s computer.

  Then I downloaded the attachment.

  Chapter 100

  THE VIDEO OPENED with a burst of light and an extreme close-up of Henri’s digitally blurred face. He turned and walked toward a canopied bed in what looked to be a very expensive hotel room. I noted the elaborate furnishings, the traditional European fleur-de-lis pattern that was repeated in the draperies, carpet, and upholstery.

  My eyes were drawn to the bed, where I saw a naked woman lying facedown, hands stretched out in front of her, tugging at the cords that tied her wrists to the headboard.

  Oh no, here we go, I thought as I watched.

  Henri got into bed next to her, and the two of them spoke in offhand tones. I couldn’t make out what they were saying until she raised her voice sharply, asking him to untie her.

  Something was different this time.

  I was struck by the lack of fear in her voice. Was she a very good actor? Or had she just not figured out the climax?

  I hit the Pause button, stopping the video.

  Henri’s ninety-second cut of Kim McDaniels’s execution flashed into my mind in sharp detail. I would never forget Kim’s postmortem
expression, as if she was in pain even though her head had been detached from her body.

  I didn’t want to add another Henri Benoit production to my mental playlist.

  I didn’t want to see this.

  Downstairs, an ordinary Sunday night was unfolding on Traction Avenue. I heard a street guitarist playing “Domino” and tourists applauding, the whoosh of tires on pavement as cars passed under my windows. A few weeks ago, a night like this, I might have gone down, had a couple of beers at Moe’s.

  I wished I could do it now. But I couldn’t walk away.

  I pressed the Play button and watched the moving pictures on my computer screen: Henri telling the woman that she cared only about her own pleasure, laughing, saying, “Always a price.” He picked up the remote control and turned on the TV.

  The hotel welcome screen flashed by, and then an announcer on BBC World News gave a sports update, mostly football. Another announcer followed with a summary of various international financial markets, then came the breaking news of the two girls who’d been killed in Barbados.

  Now, on my computer screen, Henri shut off the TV. He straddled the naked woman’s body, put his hands around her neck, and I was sure that he was going to choke her — and then he changed his mind.

  He untied her wrists, and I exhaled, wiped my eyes with my palms. He was letting her go — but why?

  On screen, the woman said to Henri, “I knew you couldn’t do it.” Her English was accented. She was Italian.

  Was this Gina?

  She got out of the bed and strolled toward the camera, and she winked. She was a pretty brunette in her late thirties, maybe forty. She headed to an adjoining room, probably the bathroom.

  Henri got out of the bed, reached down, and pulled a gun from a bag that looked to be a 9-millimeter Ruger with a suppressor extending the muzzle.

  He walked behind the woman and out of camera range.

  I heard muffled conversation, then the phfffft sound of the gun firing through the suppressor. A shadow passed over the threshold. There was a soft, heavy thud, two more muffled shots, then the rush of running water.