Read Online The Ethical Assassin: A Novel by David Liss - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Liss
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Psychological, Suspense fiction, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Assassins, marketing, Sales Personnel, Assassination, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
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elevator music, and let them have their laugh, but in the end they had to agree there was something reassuring about these songs everyone already knew, maybe in a more raucous form, handed back all soft and powdery, prechewed, going down so smooth that you didn’t even know there was something in your throat.
This restaurant skipped the music. And no fish tank. He liked a fish tank. B.B. wasn’t one of those guys who took cruel pleasure picking which fish gets to die—he had to make cruel decisions enough for work—but he liked to look at fish. He liked to watch them swim, especially the big goldfish with the bulging eyes, and he liked the bubbling in the tank.
The Cutting Board had palm trees, though—a few small groves of plastic palms stuck here and there to give the place a touch of class. Palm trees were important for obscuring views. He didn’t want to be seen, and he didn’t want to see. The glory of a fine restaurant was its semiprivacy. Pillars could work, too, but he liked the palm trees since the fronds added extra cover. The restaurant was also into low, ambient lighting, so in the end, the dark and the plastic trees made it acceptable despite its other drawbacks. B.B. would return at some point. It would never be on his A-list, but he would put it on rotation. In any case, he didn’t like to visit a place more than once every six months. The last thing you want is for the waiters to start to recognize you, recognizing that the last time you were in it was a different boy, and the time before that, too.
It was a little steak-and-seafood place near the Ft. Lauderdale airport, far enough away from Miami that he wouldn’t just happen to bump into anyone he knew, and catering largely to the old and retired set, so that his sort of people—the nonwithered, the surgically nonwithered, the power-golf players, the Rolex wearers, and the convertible drivers—would never be caught dead in a place like this. B.B. believed firmly in picking places that drew the old and the retired. A man could be a prince in the eyes of a waiter simply by not sending back the drinking water for being the wrong temperature.
On the other side of B.B.’s candlelit table, Chuck Finn sat in concentration as he worked a breadstick with a waxy slab of butter. He’d have it under control for a second or two before it slipped out from under his knife, and Chuck would lurch in sudden and astonishingly ungraceful motions to regain his grip on it. And each time he would smile at B.B., flash those slightly crooked teeth in sophisticated self-deprecation, and then go back to his business. The third time, B.B. had been forced to reach across the table to keep the boy from knocking his goblet of Saint-Estèphe onto the tablecloth. At $45 a bottle, he wasn’t about to let any of it tip over, particularly when the boy had taken his first sip, probably his first sip of wine ever, and nodded with knowing appreciation. At a steakhouse, a man drinks a nice Bordeaux. It doesn’t get much more complicated than that. Most of the other boys, maybe all of the other boys, had taken a sip, grimaced, and asked for a Coke. Chuck had half closed his eyes in pleasure and let the tip of his very pink tongue tickle his upper lip. Chuck got it, and B.B. began to suspect that he had on his hands not only a boy willing to be mentored, but one ready to be mentored.
He’d taken only one sip, and then somehow the glass was covered with greasy boy-fingerprints. B.B. understood that’s what it was to be a boy. Boys made messes. They almost knocked over wine. Sometimes they did knock over wine, and unless you were eager to keep from drawing attention to yourself, you didn’t much care because you didn’t keep boys from being boys. That wasn’t a mentor’s job. A mentor turned a boy in the right direction so that at some future date, when the time was right, he’d become a man. That’s how you mentored.
“Be graceful, Chuck,” B.B. said in what he hoped was
This restaurant skipped the music. And no fish tank. He liked a fish tank. B.B. wasn’t one of those guys who took cruel pleasure picking which fish gets to die—he had to make cruel decisions enough for work—but he liked to look at fish. He liked to watch them swim, especially the big goldfish with the bulging eyes, and he liked the bubbling in the tank.
The Cutting Board had palm trees, though—a few small groves of plastic palms stuck here and there to give the place a touch of class. Palm trees were important for obscuring views. He didn’t want to be seen, and he didn’t want to see. The glory of a fine restaurant was its semiprivacy. Pillars could work, too, but he liked the palm trees since the fronds added extra cover. The restaurant was also into low, ambient lighting, so in the end, the dark and the plastic trees made it acceptable despite its other drawbacks. B.B. would return at some point. It would never be on his A-list, but he would put it on rotation. In any case, he didn’t like to visit a place more than once every six months. The last thing you want is for the waiters to start to recognize you, recognizing that the last time you were in it was a different boy, and the time before that, too.
It was a little steak-and-seafood place near the Ft. Lauderdale airport, far enough away from Miami that he wouldn’t just happen to bump into anyone he knew, and catering largely to the old and retired set, so that his sort of people—the nonwithered, the surgically nonwithered, the power-golf players, the Rolex wearers, and the convertible drivers—would never be caught dead in a place like this. B.B. believed firmly in picking places that drew the old and the retired. A man could be a prince in the eyes of a waiter simply by not sending back the drinking water for being the wrong temperature.
On the other side of B.B.’s candlelit table, Chuck Finn sat in concentration as he worked a breadstick with a waxy slab of butter. He’d have it under control for a second or two before it slipped out from under his knife, and Chuck would lurch in sudden and astonishingly ungraceful motions to regain his grip on it. And each time he would smile at B.B., flash those slightly crooked teeth in sophisticated self-deprecation, and then go back to his business. The third time, B.B. had been forced to reach across the table to keep the boy from knocking his goblet of Saint-Estèphe onto the tablecloth. At $45 a bottle, he wasn’t about to let any of it tip over, particularly when the boy had taken his first sip, probably his first sip of wine ever, and nodded with knowing appreciation. At a steakhouse, a man drinks a nice Bordeaux. It doesn’t get much more complicated than that. Most of the other boys, maybe all of the other boys, had taken a sip, grimaced, and asked for a Coke. Chuck had half closed his eyes in pleasure and let the tip of his very pink tongue tickle his upper lip. Chuck got it, and B.B. began to suspect that he had on his hands not only a boy willing to be mentored, but one ready to be mentored.
He’d taken only one sip, and then somehow the glass was covered with greasy boy-fingerprints. B.B. understood that’s what it was to be a boy. Boys made messes. They almost knocked over wine. Sometimes they did knock over wine, and unless you were eager to keep from drawing attention to yourself, you didn’t much care because you didn’t keep boys from being boys. That wasn’t a mentor’s job. A mentor turned a boy in the right direction so that at some future date, when the time was right, he’d become a man. That’s how you mentored.
“Be graceful, Chuck,” B.B. said in what he hoped was
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