Final Sins Read online

  FINAL SINS

  Michael Prescott

  michaelprescott.net

  Final Sins

  By Michael Prescott

  Copyright © Douglas Borton, 2007

  All rights reserved.

  Anyone who rises in a world that worships success should be suspect, for this is an age of psychopathy.

  —James Hillman, The Soul’s Code

  There were times, later, when she wondered if she could have done things differently and saved his life. If she had been smarter or more cautious, if she had been more aware ...

  Probably it wouldn’t have made any difference. Probably he would still be dead. And it would still be her fault. Ultimately and inescapably, her fault.

  She was unaccustomed to recrimination. She didn’t like it. Didn’t believe in beating herself up, or looking back in the vain hope that somehow the past would change, like the shifting scenery in a rearview mirror.

  It was done, and she had done it, and that was that.

  But if it was really over, why did she spend every night awake, moving from bed to sofa to armchair, holding books she didn’t read and playing music she didn’t hear? Why did she never fall asleep until dawn? Was she so afraid of the dark?

  She never had been afraid of it in the past. She had loved and embraced the night, the shadows. Nighttime was when she worked, when she lived.

  But that was before.

  Now she was a different person. She caught herself doing things she never would have done in her old life. Fretting about slight aches and twinges. Reading religious books. Crying a lot—so much that she was constantly surprised there were more tears left in her, when she’d been sure she had cried herself dry. Sometimes she tried bargaining with God like a small child.

  Please make it so it didn’t happen. Please make it all right again.

  It would never be all right again. She knew it. God knew it.

  The days of being all right were over. They had ended, though she didn’t suspect it at the time, at eleven thirty in the morning on Wednesday, May 2, when she’d entered a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard.

  She had come early. But really she was already too late.

  1

  Abby Sinclair checked the special compartment of her purse where she kept her .38 Smith & Wesson, the snub-nosed model. In an emergency she knew she could get her hand on the gun in less than one second, firing through the purse if necessary.

  It was doubtful she would need any firepower today, but nine years on the job had taught her the value of the Boy Scouts’ motto: Be prepared.

  Not that she was paranoid or anything. Well, maybe a little. The thing was, the dumb old joke was true: Sometimes they really were out to get you.

  Take this situation: meeting a stranger in an unfamiliar cafe in Hollywood. All she knew about him was that he was a prospective client, he’d asked her to meet him here at noon, and he had a foreign accent. Over the phone she hadn’t been able to identify it. Something European. Swiss or German, maybe. Accents weren’t exactly her area of expertise.

  He’d given no name and no details. Caller ID said he had phoned from the 323 area code, which could mean Hollywood, West Hollywood, or nearby points. She’d tried looking up his address in an online reverse directory, but he wasn’t listed.

  He might be someone famous. He had sounded cultured, sophisticated. She almost thought she’d heard his voice somewhere.

  Movie actor? Rutger Hauer could be hiring her. That would be cool.

  Or maybe the accent was fake, a way to disguise his voice. She might have met him before. Not as a client, but as a target.

  It was just possible that the caller was setting her up. She’d made enemies over the years. Many of them were still in jail, but some were out. Although she had covered her tracks as thoroughly as possible, there was always a chance that one of them had identified her and tracked her down.

  The voice on the phone hadn’t sounded like anyone she’d put away, but she’d worked enough cases that she could no longer remember them all. And it would take only one man with a grudge to put a serious crimp in her afternoon.

  So, yeah, she was being paranoid. And she made no apologies for it. Keeping her head securely attached to her shoulders was priority number one. She would have a hard time earning a living if she were dead.

  Her first precaution was to get to the cafe ahead of time. The caller had said noon, so she was here at eleven thirty. She wanted time to suss out the place, get her bearings, and choose an advantageous table.

  Of course, he might have anticipated this ploy and arrived even earlier. He might already be inside, watching the entrance. She attended to that possibility by pretending to window-shop the boutique next door until a small crowd of teenagers entered the cafe. She followed them, using the group as cover. As they moved into the room in search of seats, she drifted away and faded into a dim alcove that led to a unisex bathroom.

  The alcove gave her a clear view of the coffee shop. It was crowded, and some kind of ugly noise was banging over the big speakers scattered throughout the room. Thrash metal or black metal or death metal—one of the countless variants on heavy metal music, anyway. It all sounded like howls and growls to her. She liked soft jazz and light classical pieces. Somehow, inexplicably, she’d outgrown her taste for rock ’n’ roll, despite having sworn that this would never happen.

  The music, such as it was, should have made it harder for her to concentrate, but she was accustomed to noise and distraction. She’d spent a lot of time in nightclubs and other cacophonous dives where conversation was carried out via hand signals and lip-reading. This place was almost sedate by comparison.

  It didn’t quite live up to its name, though: Cafe Eden. She didn’t think Eden had been this noisy. And Adam and Eve sure hadn’t looked anything like Eden’s clientele. Most of them were young, but here and there she saw a few of those balding ponytailed men who were in perpetual denial of middle age. Males outnumbered females, though it was hard to tell because their clothing and hairstyles were mostly identical. Metal wasn’t only in the air; it bedecked the customers in the form of nose rings, chin piercings, tongue studs, bracelets, anklets, and heavy chains. There was a lot of leather.

  So what exactly was this, an S and M cafe? Would you like a little bondage with your latte? A half-caf cappuccino and handcuffs?

  Abby wasn’t easily creeped out, but she’d never related to the idea of torture as a sexual stimulus. It seemed to her that if two people needed to hurt each other to show their affection, maybe their relationship was in need of a professional tune-up. She knew a little about that, having taken a master’s degree in psychology more years ago than she cared to acknowledge.

  These folks, though, didn’t look like hard-core bondage types. More like poseurs, wannabes—though why anyone would want to be mistaken for a shackles-and-whips enthusiast was beyond her. Then again, she didn’t get why people dressed their dogs in sweaters or ate rice cakes or collected porcelain frogs. Some aspects of human nature were just plain mysterious.

  She was quite sure the man who’d spoken to her on the phone was no kid. If he was here, he would be one of the few older men. None of them looked familiar. Nor did any of them look dangerous, in spite of their efforts to dress the part.

  Abby took her time memorizing the layout of the room, then found a corner table with a view of the front door. She sat with her back to the wall. Her purse was on her lap, her hand on the clasp.

  A waitress wearing various steel doodads on her otherwise attractive face asked for her order. Abby requested coffee—nothing fancy, not a triple-caf mocha-cherry cappuccino with extra foam and cinnamon sprinkles. Just coffee. Ordinarily she would have specified decaf, since caffeine made her jittery, and jumpiness was not an
asset in her line of work. Today it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to drink the coffee anyway. It was a prop, an excuse to occupy the table.

  The coffee arrived. She let it steam in front of her. Through the steam, she watched the door. The time was nearly noon. She wondered if her mystery man would be punctual.

  He was. The door opened, and a man walked in. Not a boy, like most of the members of the male persuasion already inhabiting the cafe. This was unmistakably and unarguably a man—a dangerous man, dangerous in a way that the poseurs in leather and chains could never match.

  He stood in the doorway, limned by daylight, his features difficult to make out.

  He had said he would know her. You have been described to me, he said, by a mutual acquaintance. She hadn’t asked who the acquaintance was. She never did. Most of her clients came to her via recommendations from previous customers, whose names were not to be mentioned.

  If she had been described accurately, then he would be looking for a woman of thirty-five, of medium height, her dark brown hair cut in a pageboy. He did not move, but somehow she knew that his eyes were tracking horizontally across his visual field, scanning the room with slow precision. He saw her and started forward.

  As he advanced, a second figure took shape behind him. A woman. Slender, almost too thin. His spindly shadow.

  Neither of them showed any weapons. Abby read no threat in their body language. But she didn’t take her hand off her purse.

  The man arrived at the table. He leaned forward, bending at the waist in a move so elegant it was nearly a bow. And she saw his face.

  Just as he introduced himself, she knew.

  “Good afternoon. Miss Sinclair. I am Peter Faust.”

  Abby pushed back her chair and stood. Her voice was toneless and firm.

  “This interview is over.”

  She started to walk away. Faust’s voice stopped her.

  “Now, that seems hardly fair.”

  She looked back. Faust was regarding her with what she might almost describe as a merry twinkle in his eyes.

  “What would have been fair,” she said, “is if you’d told me your name right off the bat. Then you wouldn’t have wasted my time.”

  “I am prepared to pay you handsomely for your services.”

  “I’m not working for you.”

  “And why, pray tell, is that?”

  She stared at him. Did he really say pray tell?

  She’d seen Peter Faust before, of course. Never in person, but in photographs and video clips. He was famous, a celebrity. It was a measure of the sickness of today’s world that a man like him could qualify, in his own way, as a star.

  “You know why,” she said. “Just like you knew I would hang up on you if you identified yourself on the phone.”

  His eyelids dropped briefly in the equivalent of a nod, hooding his pale blue eyes. “I did suspect as much. And yet perhaps you would have come anyway. If only to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “That’s what sideshow tents are for.”

  “You are most amusing.”

  “You’re not.”

  They stood facing each other. She was conscious of the adrenaline stiffening her body, the clenched-fist fury that threatened to lash out. Faust, by contrast, seemed utterly composed. He might have been posing for a portrait, striking the casual stance of a bon vivant. Behind him, the too-slender woman stood watching the scene, her face unreadable.

  “It is your rigid attachment to your ethics that I find humorous,” Faust said. “You dislike me because I am a criminal. But so are you.”

  Abby felt red heat in her face. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know that you routinely violate the law in order to serve your clients’ interests. Deny it if you can.”

  She couldn’t deny it, so she took a different tack. “Breaking the law is one thing. Murder is something else.”

  “Have you never used force against another human being?”

  “In self-defense.”

  “Perhaps you have even killed a man, hmm?”

  “Don’t try to lower me to your level,” But he already had, if only by goading her into a debate.

  “I merely make the obvious point. What is the saying? Residents of glass houses should not throw stones?”

  She turned away. “Go to hell.”

  “An uninspired riposte.”

  She fixed him with her stare. “Eat shit and die. Is that inspired enough?”

  Without waiting for a response, she walked away, heading for the door. Her usual good humor had deserted her. She felt the urge to punish, to—

  To kill, she half acknowledged, hating the admission because it seemed to confirm what he’d said.

  She was pushing open the cafe door when she felt a hand on her arm.

  “Abby?”

  A woman’s voice. Faust’s companion. Black hair, doe eyes, skeletal arms with knobby joints. Abby thought of the Little Match Girl in the Hans Christian Andersen story.

  She almost pulled free, but there was something so waiflike and helpless about the girl that she couldn’t simply ignore her.

  “What is it?” she said coldly.

  “I can understand why you’re upset. Why you don’t want Peter as a client.”

  “If you really understood, you wouldn’t be hanging with him.”

  “He’s not what you think.”

  “Yes, he is. He’s exactly what I think.”

  “People don’t know him.”

  “Look, I’m as big a fan of self-delusion as the next person. A lot of times it’s all that gets me through the day. But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Making excuses for a man like Faust—well, it’s just not smart.”

  “Peter doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “He’s the one who called me.”

  “On my behalf.”

  “What are you, exactly? His girlfriend? Or just one of his groupies?”

  The girl drew herself up, straining for dignity. She must have been all of twenty years old. Her rail-thin body made her look younger. “I’ve been with Peter for three years. It’s very serious, what we have. Very special.”

  Very special. Abby closed her eyes. “You must have a death wish.”

  “I don’t. That’s why I need your help. Please. Just give us a chance to explain.”

  Abby looked past her and saw Faust watching from the corner table, a knowing smirk on his patrician features.

  “You’re crazy to be with him,” she said slowly. “He’s a killer.”

  The woman bit her lip, her eyes huge in her drawn face. “He’s not the one I’m worried about right now.”

  2

  Abby wasn’t happy about it, but she returned to the table. Faust, she noted, had taken her seat. Apparently, like her, he preferred to have a clear view of the door.

  She sat opposite him and pulled her coffee cup toward her. She still didn’t intend to drink it, but she wanted something to hold, and she didn’t need to keep her hand on her purse any longer.

  “I’m gratified you elected to rejoin us,” Faust said. Those ice blue eyes were twinkling again. She wondered how her eyes—light brown and coolly serious—looked to him.

  “I haven’t made any final decision.” She wrapped her hands around the mug, needing its warmth to counteract the chill of his presence. “But I’m willing to listen.”

  “We ask nothing more.”

  The waitress came by, and Faust ordered elaborate coffees for himself and his girlfriend. It was obvious he was a regular. The waitress even showed him a smile, revealing braces on her teeth that seemed to complement the studs drilled into her face. Abby wondered how she ever got through a metal detector at the airport.

  When she was gone, Faust leaned forward, resting one arm on the table in a pose that seemed, paradoxically, both calculated and casual.

  Abby took a moment to study him, and he waited, aware of her scrutiny and unfazed by it. He was in his midforties. His dark close-shorn ha
ir was gray at the temples, but his clean-shaven face was unlined. Even so, there was nothing boyish about him, no roundness or smoothness anywhere. His features were sharp, his mouth a bloodless line, razor thin and ruler straight. He wore a black turtleneck that emphasized his long neck and well-defined trapezius muscles. His hands were bony and long fingered, the hands of a pianist, deft, flexible, and strong.

  As far as she knew, he did not play the piano. He preferred other instruments. The branding iron. The leather strap.

  “Moments ago,” Faust said, “you compared me to a freak in a sideshow. This comparison, I hope you will admit, was most unfair.”

  “Yeah. To the freaks.”

  Faust laughed, a surprisingly hearty sound.

  Abby didn’t care for that laugh. It had too much merriment in it.

  “By the way,” she added, “that’s the second time you’ve brought up the issue of fairness. Not exactly playing to your strength, are you?”

  “It is your strength I play to, not my own.”

  “You think you can get me to work for you by appealing to justice and fair play?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Justice, in my book, would mean putting you away for life. Not in a nice, cozy mental hospital, either. In a prison with sexually adventurous cellmates and guards who look the other way.”

  Faust tilted his head back, allowing him to look down at her in an attitude of dominance, or perhaps simple arrogance. “And even this would not be justice, would it? A life for a life, that is justice. I should pay for my transgression with my very existence. I should die.”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  “You would perhaps be willing to administer the lethal injection yourself.”

  Her voice, always throaty, dropped to a huskier tone. “Gladly.”

  “You would punch the needle into my skin with a smile.”

  “That’s right, Peter. I would.” She showed him a smile to prove it.

  He smiled back—white teeth, feral against thin, pale lips. “So you see, we are not so very different from each other.”