Page 85 of The Children of Eve

I thanked Moxie and hung up, but not before reminding him that I regarded 8:30 a.m. calls as a severe test of our friendship. Though I wasn’t about to let Moxie know, I’d already been up for an hour because I had a gym session scheduled for ten. I had recently begun working out with a personal trainer named Valentin, which might have counted as a luxury if I hadn’t been in pain so much of the time. It came from being shot and punched more than was advisable—that is, at all. When I went to the gym alone, my instinct was to take it easy for fear of making a bad condition worse, with the result that I was doing less and less, which caused me to stiffen up more and more. Eventually, I began to worry that I would wake up one morning and find myself barely able to move, hence Valentin.

It was possible that Valentin might once have been teased about his name, but only by someone with a death wish. If Valentin stood still for long enough, he’d be forced to apply for a building permit. Even the Fulcis, known to block out sunlight, openly confessed their admiration for the man’s physique. But Valentin, Slovenian by birth, was also clever and patient, the former evinced by a handful of college degrees and the latter by his never growing irritated by repeatedly being forced to explain where Slovenia was. So I got in the car and drove to Valentin’s private gym, all the while wondering if my decision to train with him was a facet of the same masochistic streak preventing me from allowing Wyatt Riggins and Zetta Nadeau to sink to the bottom and drown.

CHAPTERLXII

Aldo Bern had assumed personal responsibility for tracking down Eugene Seeley, which was why Bern was currently in Nashville, Tennessee, a place that already appeared as alien to him as the moon. An additional element of urgency had been added to Bern’s quest by the death of Donnie Ray Dolfe, whose heart had been removed the previous night without a small army of yokels becoming aware of it until someone tried to wake Donnie Ray for breakfast.

In addition, the Swishers, who had been keeping two of the children on their property, had died in a fire at their home. According to Donnie Ray’s grieving daughter Clemmie, there was no sign in the smoldering ruin of the cases in which the children were being kept, suggesting that whoever killed Donnie Ray had also dispatched the Swishers, recovering the kids along the way. The remaining two children were in the possession of Devin Vaughn and Mark Triton, and both men were understandably anxious that the Seeley difficulty should be resolved as quickly as possible.

But Aldo Bern was very weary.

BERN UNDERSTOOD THAT TROUBLES,when they came, had a habit of arriving not individually but in numbers. That was life, as Frank sang—or maybe it was Marion Montgomery first; Bern couldn’t say for sure—but sometimes those troubles were cumulative, caused by a failure to pay attention to details. A pebble dislodged on a hillside by a careless step caused a stone to shift, followed by a rock, then a boulder, until finally everybody was lying under a ton of rubble.

Bern tried to locate the moment when that first pebble had come loose. It might have been when Blas Urrea offered Devin Vaughn a seat on the cryptocurrency carousel, a ride on which Urrea himself had opted to pass. Then again, it might have been the gold or the scrap metal, and before that the coke and the fentanyl. It might even have been their initial meeting, when nothing more than a handshake had been exchanged. Bern wasn’t prepared to go so far as to describe Blas Urrea as the author of their misfortune, but he’d helped underwrite it. Devin Vaughn had done the rest himself.

Bern couldn’t recall the last day that had gone by without some contact from Devin: a fire that needed to be extinguished, or a decision that required Bern’s input. Bern had grown to accept that he’d cease to be bothered by others only when he was dead, although even then, given the life he’d led, his problems might only be starting. Nonetheless, the days when he would have preferred not to turn on his phone were becoming more frequent, as were those when he elected not to pick up a newspaper or watch BBC News first thing. Bern wondered whether it was a function of age: that at some point a person had seen and heard enough, so that even the seemingly infinite variations on human suffering grew monotonous.

I should have walked away long before now, he reflected.I ought to have left Devin to navigate this world’s obstacles unaided.

I stayed too long.

I am a dead man.

BERN COULD HAVE ASSIGNEDthe task of tracking down and neutralizing Eugene Seeley to an underling or independent operator, but he didn’t like farming out scut work to others, notably when it might involve taking a life. It wasn’t that Bern cared to spare someone else from guilt, because he knew plenty of men, and a few women, who had a better chance of spellingguiltthan feeling it. However, all those movies featuring intelligent, ruthless, highly paid professional assassins charging seven-figure fees for hits were, in Bern’s experience, largely horseshit—Reapers being among the few exceptions, and even they had been relatively affordable. A modest four-figure sum would buy you a disposable chump with a gun and no conscience. Five figures would secure you someone who might actually do the job without getting caught, or slipping on the blood and knocking themselves unconscious. No, it was more that murder was a solemn endeavor, and the fewer trailing hooks and loose ends left after the act, the better. That was why, in all his years of lawbreaking, Aldo Bern had sanctioned only a handful of killings. In Bern’s view, executing someone wasn’t just a last resort but an admission of failure.

And while competent individuals capable of murdering for money were rare, rarer still were the ones who could be relied on not to give up their paymasters under pressure. Offer them the choice of a needle or life with or without the possibility of parole and most would bite your hand off for a clean cell and three squares a day. That went double for somewhere like Tennessee, a state that always did have a taste for execution. Back in the thirties and forties, Tennessee was executing up to three prisoners a day. Now it was down to about three a year, but the executioners had a reputation for being half-assed by botching the lethal injection, and the electric chair would strike only the most desperate as a more favorable option. Hell, Tennessee liked judicial killings so much that if it couldn’t buy poison and the power went out, some hillbilly would beat you to death with a rock and invoice the state forhis efforts. In Bern’s view, the perfect assassination would conclude with the suicide of the assassin, but it being difficult to find a triggerman who might consent to such an arrangement, he had now been forced to take action personally. After all, if you couldn’t trust yourself, who could you trust? So Bern would find Eugene Seeley, and the woman from Mexico too, and kill them both.

INITIALLY, BERN HAD FEAREDthat the Nashville Codex Corporation might be nothing more than a front—a bare-bones website, a private commercial mailbox, and a telephone number that went to an answering service in India or Pakistan—but someone, somewhere, was producing ornately restored and reworked Bibles and religious books in the name of the NCC and accepting money in return. A little digging came up with an address that was now the site of a housing development, with no connection to the NCC. But thanks to the banker Elena Díaz, Bern knew of the various financial institutions with which the NCC did business and the account from which monthly payments were made to Shining Stone Senior Living in Murfreesboro to ensure that the NCC’s nominal president, Varick Howlett, didn’t expire facedown in his soup.

Meanwhile, a visit to Shining Stone confirmed that Howlett remained alive, because Bern was admitted to his company, or what passed for it, Howlett now consisting of barely more than a wrinkled bag of fragile bones that spoke little and remembered less. As if to prove the point, Howlett opened his eyes, regarded Bern blearily, mumbled something unintelligible, and immediately nodded off again.

Bern had brought a bunch of flowers, some premium marshmallows, and a refurbished iPod Nano onto which he had downloaded a selection of songs from the fifties. He sat next to Howlett as one of the orderlies hovered watchfully nearby, just in case Bern took it into his head to begin beating up on the old man. The dayroom felt uncomfortably hotto Bern, but was barely warm enough for Howlett and the other residents, who were all wrapped in layers of clothing and blankets.

“Varick doesn’t get many visitors,” said the orderly, “or not beyond the usual one, and even she don’t come by more than once or twice a year.”

The orderly’s badge identified her as Loucilla, one of those older Southern Black names passed down from generation to generation, and not always to be embraced with gratitude. Loucilla must have been content enough with hers; she could easily have shortened it otherwise.

“I worked for the Nashville Codex Corporation until I retired a few years ago,” said Bern. “I live in the Northeast now and don’t get back here very often, but I remain invested in Mr. Howlett’s care.” He smiled apologetically. “I’m glad to hear you calling him Varick so fondly, but to me, he was always ‘Mr. Howlett.’ Funny how these habits linger, no matter how many years go by or how old we get. The boss remains the boss.”

Bern saw Loucilla begin to relax. He’d talked his way past the front desk while her superior, Brent Cutler, was tied up on a call, Bern arguing politely that he’d traveled far and had only so much time to spare. Loucilla must have been worried that Bern might get her fired. It was important that he set her mind at ease. If she was relaxed, she might reveal more.

A middle-aged man, wearing a cream short-sleeve shirt and a red, white, and blue tie held in place by a gold Jesus fish clip, entered the dayroom. Bern, who had never owned a short-sleeve shirt and wouldn’t have accessorized it with a tie if he had, summoned up all his reserves of patience and diplomacy. He recognized Cutler from his profile on Shining Stone’s website. Cutler, not Loucilla, was the person whom Bern really needed to bring onside.

“You must be Mr. Cutler,” Bern said, rising to extend a hand. “My name is Whittier. I’ve known Mr. Howlett for many years, since backwhen I worked for the Nashville Codex Corporation. Best job I ever had. I even retain business cards as mementoes.”

From a cheap steel case purchased in a discount tobacco outlet on Lebanon Pike, Bern produced one of a batch of cards he’d had run off in a print store. According to the card, he was George Whittier, Northeast Director of Sales (Retired)—or GeorgeWhitefieldWhittier, named after one of the founders of Methodism.

“I believe that was why Mr. Howlett hired me,” said Bern, “even if I have to admit I got off lightly compared to him, Whitefield being less of a mouthful than Pantycelyn Strawbridge, fine compellations though they are.”

Just as Loucilla had done earlier, Cutler commented on Howlett’s general lack of visitors, and Bern offered the same explanation for his failure to present himself previously, adding that he couldn’t speak for the absence of any other current or former employees of the company.

“But Mr. Seeley comes by personally, doesn’t he?” asked Bern.

“We haven’t seen Mr. Seeley in years,” Cutler replied.

Cutler kept his tone neutral, avoiding any suggestion of judgment being passed, but it wasn’t hard to see that he regarded this lack of in-person contact as a failing on Seeley’s part, if not one to be criticized openly so long as the monthly payments continued to be made.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Bern. “It may be that I should have a word with him. But someone does come by to check that Mr. Howlett’s needs are being met, right? Ms. Loucilla here alluded to a visitor.”

---