Meds

PROLOGUE

1.

The two men exchanged brief smiles as they entered the steam room. There were three others already there, sitting in the steam, two of them chatting with the familiarity of longtime friends, the third, a fat old man, slumped silently against the wall. As the two newcomers took seats on opposite sides of the room, the two men who were talking got up and left together, laughing at a joke and talking about getting lunch. The old man remained slumped against the wall on a bench, eyes closed, his great, lumpy, pasty-white belly rising and falling slightly in the rhythm of a doze.

The two men who had just entered settled on their towels. The one on the far side of the room had short curly hair, dark but shot with grey, and was in his early forties, of medium height, soft and fleshy but not fat. He sat on one of the lower benches, seeking a more moderate temperature, and stared remotely at nothing in particular, deep in thought. Across the room, the other man sat on a high bench. He looked to be about fifty but was in excellent shape, tall, slender and athletic, with close-cropped blond hair. He sat naked on his towel, leaning against the wall behind him, head tilted back, eyes closed.

After awhile, the dark-haired man's eyes wandered over to the slender man. He watched him for a moment, then looked away, but his eyes darted back repeatedly, curious and questioning. He kept this up for a short time, a slight frown developing over his eyes. Finally, he leaned forward and said hesitantly, "Excuse me, but... you look familiar."

The blond man opened his eyes slightly but did not move or speak as he looked at the other man.

The dark-haired man smiled a little sheepishly. "Sorry, I guess that was rude. I mean, I know a lot of celebrities come to this resort and it's probably bad etiquette to horn in on their privacy the way I just did yours. In fact, I've recognized three celebrities here already and I just arrived this morning. My first time here, by the way. But I can't seem to figure out where I've seen you before." He added with a chuckle, "Are you a celebrity?"

The blond man's left eyebrow rose as he continued to look at the other man with heavy-lidded eyes. After a lengthy silence, he said, "You watch the news much?"

"Oh, sure," the dark-haired man said, nodding. "I like to stay well-informed. I get a lot of my news on the Internet, but I watch CNN, too." He suddenly straightened his back. "Oh, by the way--" He stood and crossed the room to the other man, hand out to shake. "--my name is Maurie Silverman, nice to meet you." He stood there for a long moment, hand outstretched, before the blond man finally leaned forward slowly and shook.

"Arnold Shipp," the blond man said.

Silverman frowned again. "Even your name sounds familiar. So, have you been on the news?" He returned to his bench as he waited for an answer.

"I'm in politics," Shipp said. "Normally, I'm on the news now and then, but lately... yes. I've gotten more coverage than usual."

"You a politician?"

"I'm Senator Walter Veltman's press secretary."

Silverman's eyes immediately widened and he smiled with recognition. "Of course! I knew I'd seen you somewhere."

Shipp smiled, but it held tired indifference, as if he were already bored by Silverman.

"You're right in the thick of everything, then," Silverman said with interest. He smiled as he leaned forward with elbows on his knees, hands dangling between them. "That must be pretty exciting work. I mean, the people alone--hell, you must know just about everybody in Washington, from the politicians to the news media people, right?"

Silverman briefly lifted one shoulder. "You can't get much done in that town unless you know a lot of people."

"Well, I sure don't envy your job the last few months. The senator has an ugly little sex scandal and you've got to dig him out of the hole, right?"

"Something like that."

"So, did he really have sex with that young woman, or is she setting him up?"

Shipp's mostly expressionless face dimpled slightly with a smirk as he chuckled. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and said flatly, as if by rote, "The senator staunchly maintains his innocence in this matter and remains focused on the business of the country."

Silverman smiled. "You've been saying that in your sleep lately, haven't you?"

Shipp said nothing, didn't move.

The two of them sat silently in the moist heat as the old man continued to sleep, his belly rising and falling with his soft, purring snore.

"So, what do you do, Maurie?" Shipp said halfheartedly, eyes still closed.

"Me? Well, I guess I'm retired now."

"You're a little young for retirement, aren't you?"

Silverman chuckled. "My age might be wrong, but the money was right. I had a chain of drive-through coffee stands all over the Midwest. Pretty lucrative little business. Just before the economy went tits up, a larger chain made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Now... well, now I relax. I never married, don't have a family of my own. I've got a couple of nieces I dote on, even though my sister is a pain in the ass. I've been seeing the country slowly. Thought I'd come check this place out, see what it is about it that all the beautiful people seem to like so much. Mostly, I spend a lot of time with my trains."

Shipp's head pulled away from the wall and his eyes opened, more abruptly than before. He was suddenly alert and interested. "Trains?"

Silverman's sheepish grin returned. "You believe it? I'm forty-two and my favorite thing in the world is to play with electric trains."

Shipp sat up straight for a moment, looking at Silverman with a very serious expression, then he leaned forward. "You're serious? You're into model railroading?"

"Yeah, most people think I'm nuts. My dad bought me a train set for my ninth birthday and I've been crazy about them ever since. I've got some beauties, too." He added with a shrug, "But the only people who appreciate them, of course, are other train nuts like me. Everybody else thinks I've got a screw loose."

As Silverman spoke, Shipp stood and snatched up his towel. He crossed the steam room in three broad, quick steps, a wide-eyed, boyish smile making the dimples return to his cheeks, deeper this time. He put his towel on the bench beside Silverman and sat down, then slapped a hand onto Silverman's shoulder.

"Say hello to a fellow train nut, my friend," Shipp said. His voice sounded different now, fuller, more alive, genuinely engaged.

Silverman's eyebrows rose. "Really? Seriously?"

"Listen, if I took all the money I've spent on trains and gave it to charity, I could probably end world hunger in time for dinner."

They laughed so loudly that the sleeping old man jerked, made a startled blurting sound, and looked around with blinking eyes as he sat up a little. His eyebrows stood high over his eyes at first, then lowered sharply when he figured out where he was and realized he'd been disturbed. He slowly leaned back against the wall.

Maurie Silverman and Arnold Shipp began to talk about model railroading with the kind of enthusiasm and relish typical of pre-pubescent boys talking about what it might be like to touch a naked woman's breast. Actually, to be more accurate, it was Arnold Shipp who did most of the talking while Maurie Silverman listened and expressed his vigorous agreement. Shipp was quite eloquent and seemed to know it--he spoke with the non-stop momentum of someone accustomed to talking and being listened to, someone who enjoyed the sound of his voice as much as he imagined everyone else did. As he talked about his passion, from the first train set his parents had bought him at the age of seven to the latest vintage Lionel he had purchased for several thousand dollars, Shipp became ebullient and animated and years fell away from his face. Finally, he stopped talking abruptly and looked around as if startled to find himself in a sauna.

"You know what?" he said. "I think I've had enough of this place. Let me buy you lunch."
* * * *

It was an exclusive cottage-style resort in the green foothills of Montecito, just outside Santa Barbara. Five hundred acres of everything one might need to relax and enjoy the good life, providing one could afford it. The man who called himself Maurie Silverman--his name was as phony as his hair--had never been there before, and had his work not required it, he never would have considered going. It was not to his tastes. While quite wealthy himself, he typically did not enjoy the company of other rich people. At least, not the kind of rich people who came to resorts like this one: nipped, tucked, coiffed, tanned, and manicured to within an inch of their lives, wearing expensive brand names the way kings wore crowns and dropping names into conversations the way Messerschmitts dropped bombs into Chelsea during the Blitz. He was not there for his own enjoyment, though. He was there because it was a favorite haunt of Arnold Shipp.

Maurie Silverman's real name was Oran Rubinek. He had never owned a chain of anything, much less drive-through coffee stands. He did not collect electric trains. He didn't even like trains. He'd learned just enough about them to get through his conversation with Shipp. He knew much more about Arnold Shipp, including the fact that once Shipp started talking about model railroading, he would continue with such speed and so little pause that Rubinek's knowledge of the subject would be much less important than his ability to feign enthusiasm for it.

In the resort's quiet restaurant, they lunched on smoked trout pasta with verde sauce as a man wearing a dark suit and sunglasses plinked quietly at a piano in the corner. Shipp continued to soliloquize about electric trains--his favorites, his least favorites, the ones he had, the ones he wanted to get. They were halfway through lunch when Shipp finally said the very thing for which Rubinek had been waiting.

First, Shipp smirked as he chewed his food, arched a brow, then leaned forward and said secretively, "You're not going to believe what I have in my cottage."

"What's that?"

"I always take a train with me whenever I travel. Especially on business. Helps me relax. The one I brought here--it's a beauty." He lowered his voice a little, as if what he were about to say might cause an outburst in the restaurant if overheard. "It's a switching layout that's--well, it's a beautiful logging scene, just beautiful, with a shay that's--oh, you've just got to see it, really, it's brass, custom-made by Tenshodo."

Rubinek said, "You have it here with you?"

Shipp nodded, smiling. "In my cottage."

"Can I see it?"

"Oh, I insist!"

As Shipp went on about the layout, the train, how he'd painted it in meticulous detail, Rubinek became aware of the fact that he was bored. He chewed his food mechanically behind his empty, unfelt smile. The piano music was like the chirping of distant crickets heard from indoors. Shipp's smiling lips moved rapidly around spoken words that seemed to drop to the table before they fully reached Rubinek.

I've been doing this too long, he thought.

The food was delicious, the view through the restaurant's enormous windows was beautiful, and Shipp kept talking, scarcely stopping to chew--but all Rubinek could focus on was his own boredom. Once satisfied, he pushed his plate a couple of inches away, his food half-eaten. The train chatter continued even after Shipp stopped eating.

Pouncing on one of the tiny pauses in Shipp's ongoing monologue, Rubinek finally said, "How about we go to your cottage? I'd like to see that Tenshodo shay."

"You kidding? I'm gonna show you the whole layout."

The walk seemed longer than it was. Shipp did not stop talking as they went past the busy tennis courts, along the edge of a small pond where a few ducks waddled out of their way and splashed into the water.

Shipp led Rubinek through his peak-roofed cottage to one of the two bedrooms, where the train set sprawled on the hardwood floor. The track followed a wandering oblong course through a meticulously fashioned forest of pine trees and large rocky outcroppings. Despite his lack of interest in trains, Rubinek was impressed with the beauty of the layout. It was clearly a labor of love, and even with his extremely limited knowledge of the hobby, Rubinek could tell it was pricey.

As he got down on his knees beside the track, Shipp rambled on--something about the romance of trains that appealed to young and old alike, blah blah blah.

Rubinek slipped his right hand into the pocket of his sport coat, pleased that the job was almost done.

"I brought this one because it's so... peaceful," Shipp said quietly, almost reverently, as he started the train. He looked up at Rubinek with a gentle boyish smile. "It's a pain packing all this stuff around, but setting it up--that's fun. I thought this was perfect to bring with me on my vacation, don't you think?"

The train made a whispery-clickety sound as it snaked along the track. Rubinek smiled and nodded. When Shipp turned his attention back to the train, he took the garrote from his pocket.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Shipp said as Rubinek got a grip on each of the garrote's small handles.

In one smooth, quick movement, Rubinek slipped the garrote down past Shipp's face while pressing his right knee into the center of the man's back, then pulled the handles together behind Shipp's neck and twisted them. As he pulled back with his hands and pushed forward with his knee, he felt the wire cut through skin and muscle and slice into Shipp's throat. Shipp made a wet gurgling sound as his back stiffened. Rubinek kept pulling the twisted handles, pushing Shipp forward with his knees, his own arms outstretched to keep a distance and avoid any splashes of arterial spray. After a little struggle, the garrote hit bone.

Shipp's legs kicked as Rubinek let him fall forward across the small railroad tracks. He crushed a section of the little pine trees as he fell and blood gushed from his open neck onto the idyllic miniature scene. Rubinek reached under his sport coat and removed a sleek hunting knife with a large deadly-sharp blade. He waited for the bloody spurting to stop, then straddled Shipp's body, bent down, and hacked through the bone until the head fell free and rolled slightly to the left. Before the train could reach it, Rubinek lifted the headless body away from the track and placed it on the floor a couple of feet away. He got a paper towel from the bathroom, then went back to the body and retrieved the garrote, wrapped it in the towel, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

Shipp's head--eyes and mouth open wide, blood on the lips--lay on its left cheek. Rubinek picked it up by the hair and set it upright in the center of the train layout. He stepped back and viewed his work.

Shipp appeared to be poking his head up through the forest, a surprised, bloody-mouthed giant. The train chittered whisperingly along the track, oblivious and unfazed.

"All aboard," Rubinek said quietly as he left the cottage.
* * * *

Before entering his cottage, Rubinek put on his leather driving gloves. Inside, he conducted a quick inspection to make sure he'd left nothing. He'd touched nothing in the cottage with his bare hands and had not used the bathroom. He'd brought only one small bag when he'd come to the resort early that morning, and it was packed and ready to go. He'd expected to have to stay overnight at the most, and was pleased that he'd finished the job in only a matter of hours.

As he drove his rental car out of the resort, he asked himself, Did I enjoy that? It was a question he asked after every job and he asked it of himself very seriously. If the day ever came when the answer to that question was yes, he would walk away from the business immediately, without looking back. Because if the answer was yes, that meant he had changed. He'd seen the change in others. First, killing was a job. But over time, it became something different. It became enjoyable, a pleasure. Then there was a point of no return beyond which a professional killer could never return to the person he had once been. Beyond that point, he ceased to be a professional killer--someone who did it for money--and became simply a killer. Someone who did it because he liked it. Rubinek wanted to make sure that never happened to him, so he asked that question of himself after each job, and if the answer turned out to be yes one day, he would flee from the work before he passed the point of no return.

He traveled eight miles from the resort along a narrow, seldom-used road. At the eight mile mark, he pulled off the road and drove along a narrow path that cut through a dense patch of willows, eucalyptus trees, and low greenery. In a small clearing, he pulled the rental up next to the black Escalade he'd parked there that morning. Before getting out, he did a quick check of the car to make sure he'd left nothing.

It was a still, balmy afternoon. The only sound was the singing of birds in the trees overhead. Rubinek went to the rear of the SUV, opened it, and put his bag beside the leather satchel that awaited him. He opened the satchel, then carefully peeled off his toupee, uncovering his bald head and the narrow, close-cropped strip of dark hair that went around the back of his skull from ear to ear. He removed his sport coat and shirt, took a simple blue pullover from the satchel and put it on. He put his sport coat and shirt into the satchel, zipped it up, and put it back in the SUV. After closing up the rear of the Escalade, he got in, took off his gloves, started the engine, and headed out.

Rubinek had no idea why Shipp had to die, but he had his suspicions. Shipp himself had done nothing, he was certain. The press secretary's death was a message to someone else, most likely Senator Veltman, for whom he'd worked. The sex scandal in which the senator was currently embroiled was entertaining the burger-bloated, tabloid-sucking public, but Rubinek suspected it was just a diversion from what was really going on, whatever that was. It seemed the senator had pissed off the faceless people in the dimly lighted nether regions of government; people to whom elections and opinion polls were as insignificant as the insect remains that speckled the grills of their cars, the people for whom Rubinek used to work and who still hired him now that he was an independent contractor.

It would have been much easier and cheaper to have had Shipp dispatched in a safer, more sterile way--he could have been shot from a distance, for example. But that would not have delivered much of a message. When Senator Veltman--if he was indeed the target of the message--heard that his press secretary had been found decapitated in his resort cottage, his head upright on the floor in the middle of a train set, he would know without question that someone was giving him a message, and he would understand that message. The color would probably leave his face, his scrotum would shrivel tightly, and if he wasn't already sitting, he would drop heavily into the nearest chair. The message--whatever it was--would be clear. The story would make the news but only briefly. It wouldn't get a lot of attention. Normally a beheading like this would be covered exhaustively--if it bleeds, it leads--but Rubinek suspected those in charge wouldn't want this story to get that big. Word would move down through connecting channels--from the halls of power to the halls of the press--to report this but not dwell on it. The public's focus would be shifted to some actress's drug binge or the latest rape accusations against some grossly overpaid sports star. Arnold Shipp wasn't sexy enough to hold their attention, anyway.

Rubinek did not know why he had been specifically instructed to remove Shipp's head and place in the center of the electric train set, nor did he care. Well... that was not entirely true. Most likely it had something to do with the message being sent, and he wondered about that, too. So he supposed he cared a little. But he didn't want to know--at least, he shouldn't want to know. It annoyed him that he was even wondering. He never used to think about things like that.

It had been said that knowledge was power, but in Rubinek's line of work, it could be a dangerous stumbling block. Knowing the reasons behind his assignment could lead to questioning those reasons and the people behind them. That had happened before and had nearly gotten him killed once. The questions had been coming more frequently in recent years. Along with the wit-dulling boredom that was creeping into his work like an encroaching fog, those questions were a bad sign. Maybe eighteen years on the job was long enough. But the possibility of walking away from the work brought up more questions. Would they let him pursue a civilian life? And if they did, what would he do with himself?

He'd almost quit once before. Back then, he'd had a solid reason and a future to walk into when he left the job. As he drove, he reached up and pulled down the visor. Clipped to the back of it was a small photograph of the solid reason for which he'd almost left the job, a photograph of the future that had opened up before him for a brief time. Her name was Olivia. The picture was oddly tilted because she'd snapped it herself, holding the camera at arm's length above her as she lay back on the bed, her hair spread out on the pillow in a pool of shimmering red. Her face was so open and alive--eyebrows raised high, eyes wide, lips parted and smiling. He kept the picture there on the visor and looked at it often, even now, after the years that had passed. It kept her face vivid in his memory, the way it had looked before the happiness was drained out of it by sickness, before she had died on him. That was how he always thought of it, what he always told himself had happened--that she'd gotten sick and died. That wasn't exactly true, it wasn't really what had happened. But telling himself that made life a little easier to live and kept him from eating himself alive from the inside out.

Once she was gone, he'd tried to make those responsible for her death pay. He'd stayed in the background, but had supplied her family with all the money they'd needed to hire the best lawyers available. But the best weren't enough, because they were only the best available--the real best, the lawyers who seemed incapable of smiling, who seemed to have mercury flowing in their veins, and who looked as if they'd never even vaguely considered the possibility of losing a case, were already on the payroll of the company responsible for Olivia's death.

Rubinek remembered their lead counsel, a big barrel-chested man with a black patch over his right eye who hadn't looked nearly old enough to have a full head of hair so purely, completely silver. Ronald Shelldrake.

"While Olivia Bello's death was unfortunate," Shelldrake had said, "there were many factors involved, including a long history of renal problems, and it would be the height of injustice to single out Braxton-Carville for punishment. As tragic as it is, I'm afraid it's just... one of those things. One of those things that happens."

When it was all over and Olivia's family had lost in spite of Rubinek's financial support, he'd come very close to killing that silver-haired man. He'd found out where the attorney lived, learned his schedule, and even planned the hit in detail. But he hadn't carried it out. Too risky. It would've made Rubinek too vulnerable to discovery. It wouldn't be like a job in which he had no personal or emotional involvement. It would be too dangerous. So he'd swallowed his bile and walked away.

After that, he'd thrown himself into his work, gotten lost in it. It had become his life... because after losing Olivia, he'd had no other life.

He flipped the visor back up and his thoughts returned to the job, to the possibility of walking away from it. He wondered again what he would do with himself afterward.

I could start collecting and assembling train sets, he thought, and then he chuckled without smiling.

He turned off the thoughts with customary ease and turned on the radio instead. It was a beautiful day, he'd just finished a job and fattened his bank account. He decided to enjoy the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that typically followed the completion of a job. Those feelings used to come automatically.

One of the things that had made Rubinek so good at his work was that he did not worry. He was not without a conscience, but he'd always had the ability to let go of problems quickly and easily. He did not ignore problems and was quite good at solving them when they cropped up, but he didn't let them bother him. Nothing bothered him. That had begun to change in recent years.

And that bothered him.

Rubinek hit the brake pedal hard and came to an abrupt, jerking stop when a squirrel darted into the road. He checked the rearview and was relieved to see no one behind him. He sat at the wheel and watched the squirrel. It was large for a gray squirrel, one of the biggest he'd ever seen. It sat up on its hind legs, front paws dangling loose at the wrists before it, and turned to Rubinek. Its little jaws rapidly chomped on something as it turned its head toward the Escalade. The small, glistening black eyes seemed to look through the windshield and directly at him. It stopped chewing, froze. For a long moment, it became perfectly still as it looked at him, almost as if it recognized him and were about to wave or, even more absurdly, shout a greeting. Then it shot across the road and disappeared into the brush.

Rubinek smiled as drove on, everything else forgotten for the time being. He loved animals.