Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

Jasmine added cream to her coffee and sipped. She had been beautiful, in her way, and still was, even though time and events had worked their way with her. Hers was an indestructible kind of beauty. The crow’s feet, the mottled complexion, the crazy hairdo that was all curls. It was as if wear could change her, but she was impervious to time.

“What city would we go to?” she asked.

“Where we’d be least likely to go. St. Louis.”

58

St. Louis, the present

Now here they were, back near the banks of the Mississippi and its muddy secrets. Jordan had a friend in St. Louis, name of Christopher, who would lend them a vacant apartment he often subleased while he was away on business trips in Mexico. There would be no paperwork. The rent money had to be fast and up front, and beyond the attention of the IRS.

Jordan didn’t ask Christopher what kind of business he tended to in Mexico. And Christopher didn’t ask Jordan why he wanted to keep a low profile in St. Louis. Jasmine didn’t ask where the money came from. Or how.

If pressed hard enough, she would have to guess it involved gunrunning. Or perhaps people smuggling. There were a fair number of illegals in and around the city, and trafficking in them was said to be wildly profitable. She deliberately didn’t think too much about it.

Everyone profited by not knowing too much.

Jasmine and Jordan had finally stopped running, in body and spirit, the first time since they’d originally arrived in St. Louis.

The landlord Christopher, from whom they’d subleased the condo unit, was short but hefty in a muscular way, built like an offensive lineman. He had a nervous air about him. Jordan and Jasmine were sure he was wanted by the police. That would explain why he was so eager to leave St. Louis.

Four days after Jordan introduced Christopher to Jasmine, Christopher left for Mexico.

He didn’t say where in Mexico.

“Can we trust him?” Jasmine asked. After living on the streets in New York, the St. Louis apartment, which was actually barely adequate, seemed luxurious to her. And it was their sanctuary.

“We won’t stay here any longer than we have to,” Jordan said.

“How long are we going to have to be on the run?”

“For the foreseeable future.”

Jasmine lowered her head, said, “God!”

Jordan looked at her and smiled. “We can survive anywhere, and for as long as it takes.”

As long as what takes? Jasmine wondered.

Jordan paced to the window of the small living room and looked out toward the neighborhood beyond Grand Avenue. So many cities took on another identity at night. Outlined and punctuated by lights.

He felt the throbbing, heard the thrashing noise, growing louder, and massaged his temples with his fingertips.

Jordan actually didn’t mind staying here for a while. Now and then he would buy a Southwest Airlines ticket and fly to New York to check the condo he had on the Upper West Side. He wasn’t prepared to share that information yet with Jasmine. He was reasonably sure she was loyal and dependable, but that person might be the old Jasmine. People changed. To know that, you had only to look at the haggard and worn Jasmine and compare her with her younger self.

He smiled thinly. Did we all finally have to live in the clothes that we disdained, with the faces we deserved?

They might have left St. Louis for the larger, more anonymous city of New York. But they felt safe there, and a Midwest apartment was a hell of a lot better than the New York streets. That was where he would be, along with Jasmine, because he didn’t like the thought of her knowing about the New York apartment.

Stay, do nothing noticeable, and keep a low profile. Let time wash some more of the past away. That was Jordan’s plan. He couldn’t figure out Jasmine’s plan, but was sure she had one. The longer she lived in St. Louis, the safer she seemed to feel, and that scared Jordan. She would follow his lead for a while, but not forever. How could he totally trust her?

Totally.

Life for Jordan and Jasmine flowed easily enough for a while in St. Louis. They really did feel separate from the rest of humanity. Detached and reasonably safe in their isolation.

They seldom went out, but each morning Jasmine would walk to a corner bakery and get two toasted bagels and two coffees to go. No one paid any attention to her. She was simply another creature of the city, scraping to get by like others in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in a lousy economy.

So, too, seemed Jordan, but in two neighborhoods half a continent from each other. He didn’t have to explain to Jasmine that he had another apartment in another city, or where he got his money. She didn’t know he was moderately wealthy, and didn’t need to know. She only now and then brought up the past, as she had this morning when they were seated at the small kitchen table having their breakfast. She had learned early that they both ate lightly for breakfast, and shared a liking for bagels and orange juice with coffee.

She also knew that this man she was living with killed. And he knew that she knew. That she also had killed.

They pretended otherwise.

The reason why was, to Jordan, irrelevant, though not all that hard to understand. If these kinds of very private arrangements didn’t take place, a functioning modern society wouldn’t be possible.

One thing Jordan couldn’t get Jasmine to do was to stop collecting news items from Web sites and newspapers. What bothered Jordan was that the items she seemed to be saving were mostly about the Gremlin.

Days passed, Jasmine shed some of her street-person habits and mannerisms, and regained some of her belief in herself. She looked people in the eye now, and carried herself differently, with a straighter back and a bolder stride.

While Jordan had come to trust and admire her more and more, he still didn’t trust Jasmine enough to reveal how he’d nurtured a sub-rosa stock portfolio, though he was aware that she knew he was the Gremlin. He always established an escape hatch in life. He could, if need be, disappear quickly and without a trace. From time to time, he did.

Once Jasmine had found a playbill from a Broadway theater in his suit coat pocket. Another time, a receipt from a New York restaurant.

All right, Jasmine thought. We can still lead our private lives. Better that right now, Jordan was leading some of his in New York and not in St. Louis.

What Jordan did that sometimes irked Jasmine was to bring home gifts that she considered to be mostly junk. It was never a surprise to get up early, or in the middle of the night, to find some gadget, either whole or dissected for analysis, laid out on the kitchen table.

The man simply loved gadgets, and delighted in disassembling them so he could better understand them. It was a sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior, Jasmine knew, and not the only obsession he had. That was okay with Jasmine. She understood and could accept addictions.

At times, these gadgets, or renderings of them, would appear in the media along with explanations or further description. Everyone seemed to know who was responsible. What was obviously the work of the Gremlin dominated the news and the online speculation at the fringes of news. Jasmine was saving just about everything in print. Sometimes photographs or video. Crime in the time of tech.

Jasmine clipped most of the horrific news items describing how a riverboat had sunk with six of its passengers. It was thought at first that the boat had struck some flotsam. Later it was learned that the stern near the paddle wheels had been damaged by a small, homemade underwater mine.