BEHIND ME, SOMEONE spoke, but I didn’t hear a word.

  It wasn’t Vincennes in the bed.

  It was Sherry.

  Her face was blue. Her body was bruised. Her amber eyes were empty.

  The voice behind me spoke again, and I turned.

  Larry Vincennes stood in the bathroom doorway. He wore a paisley dressing robe and a contemptuous smile, held a 0.50-caliber Magnum Desert Eagle in his right hand. The pistol looked enormous in his delicate fingers.

  We stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Why is she naked?” My voice like rusted metal.

  Vincennes smiled. “Gave her to the boys.” Then he raised the gun, the dark barrel wide enough to crawl into and fall asleep forever.

  I hurled the pillow as I lunged, and the roar of the Desert Eagle was a cloud of goose-down filling the room and glass from the window falling in sparkling sheets. My eyes caught every detail, the tangents of a thousand drifting feathers, the way Vincennes’s robe flapped open to expose a gold necklace laying against his skinny chest, the play of his muscles as he struggled to recover from the recoil, realizing only now that his cannon was way too much weapon to fire one-handed, and I drank the panic in his eyes as he understood he wouldn’t make it, and then I snapped his neck as automatic as breathing.

  When the guards raced in from the hallway, I held the Desert Eagle in both hands. Squeezed once. Squeezed twice.

  I WASN’T SURPRISED to find Sammy gone when I made it back to the penthouse.

  Sammy. Always playing angles. If I was determined to quit the game over some woman, why shouldn’t he make a buck on it? And if that got her raped and beaten to death, well, can’t make an omelet, right?

  His abandoned cigarette still smoldered in the ashtray, and I stubbed it out and stepped onto the balcony. The red light on the radio tower flared and died, flared and died, and I stood holding the gun and thinking of a patch of dusty sunlight and the hum of air conditioning.

  He’s gone, but Sammy never did know when to quit. I’ll find him. Because he forgot one thing.

  I only stopped for her.

  It’s like shooting pool. The cue moves, the ball drops.

  Natural as breathing.

  DAVID ELLIS

  DAVID Ellis is an author and trial attorney in Chicago. His first thriller, LINE OF VISION, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. David followed up with the critically-acclaimed novels LIFE SENTENCE and JURY OF ONE. His latest novel is IN THE COMPANY OF LIARS.

  “Why do I (and so many others) like movies and books about assassins? They are daring and adventurous. They are risk takers. They are mysterious. They are highly skilled. But most of all, they are fascinating from a psychological perspective. Taking another person’s life for nothing but money? I like the quirky ones, the ones who are painfully shy (William H. Macy in Panic), emotionally conflicted (John Rain in Barry Eisler’s series), scrawny (Steve Buscemi in Things To Do in Denver When You’re Dead), or even a little goofy (Travolta in Pulp Fiction). But I’ll take them any way I can find them!”

  Visit Dave at www.DavidEllis.com.

  THE SHINING KNIGHT

  David Ellis

  AN ACTION. A LITTLE SCARE. New for me. I usually scare people, but that’s because I’m killing them. So this is a first. How hard can it be?

  Probably not that hard, but I’m off to a bad start, spending thirty minutes standing on this isolated corner downtown. A couple of cabs drive by but they’re occupied and drive past. This isn’t the best street to look for cabs, because I’m standing near a stop for the elevated train; most people at this intersection are taking mass transit, and the cabbies know it.

  The action will take place twenty-six blocks north of where I’m now standing. That’s three and a quarter miles. Timing is, shall we say, rather critical here. I check my watch, shake my head, pick up my briefcase, and walk over to the stairs to the elevated train platform. Doesn’t hurt that there’s a woman arriving at the staircase just before me, a few stairs above. Doesn’t hurt that she has long, athletic legs, either. I’d climb a lot more than a dozen grimy, stained, cracked concrete steps to follow her.

  I slide my pass through the automatic register and head up the next flight of stairs, the princess still ahead of me.

  I check my watch again. Quarter past nine. On the train platform, the humidity in the July air has mixed the odors of urine and garbage and refined them into a wretched smell.

  The woman sits on the yellow bench in the glass canopy, looking meek and innocent, her leather workbag between her feet, a small purse over her shoulder. Dressed professionally in a jacket and skirt and low heels. Blond hair pulled back off her face. Delicate features. Looks to be early thirties. No wedding band. Above her is a billboard for the latest sitcom with dreadfully thin women and average-looking guys, having lots of zany fun. All of their features have been altered with magic marker, none of the changes flattering and one obscene.

  Besides the beauty queen and me, the only person up here is a tough-looking kid in a muscle tee, pacing around as he talks on a cell phone. I lean against a pole and wait for the train, my eyes naturally moving in the direction of the woman. That’s how it works with men, the eye always latching onto the most attractive female form. She’s the only one in this case, but she’d do in most circumstances.

  You look without looking. If you keep your head still as you stare, she’ll eventually notice—that sixth sense, combined with peripheral vision, that tells you someone’s watching. The key is to keep yourself moving—check your watch, clear your throat, adjust your position, whatever—while you ogle.

  I keep my eye on the young kid, too, but not because he’s black. White people are unrealistically fearful of African Americans. He says something into the phone and closes it. He looks at me just as my eyes move off him.

  Over five minutes of nothing passes. My stare carries beyond the platform to the elevated tracks. Death all around us. I could throw either one of these people onto the third rail. I could push them onto the tracks, third rail aside, and leave them for a train. I could snap either of their necks. It’s an honors system, really, the whole thing. But it’s right there, if you’re looking for the invisible.

  The headlight of the elevated train appears on the horizon of the track. The lady on the bench looks up, which means she looks in my direction, but I’ve already moved my eyes off her, pulling down my tie and opening the collar of my dress shirt. She makes me for a professional working late, like she is. In a way, she’s right.

  The train stops with a heavy sigh and the doors on the cabins part in sync. There are a few people in each of the cars. The woman pauses a moment, then gets in the closest one. I notice her glance over at the black kid on the platform, wondering if he’s going to move in her direction, but he doesn’t. Must be taking a different train, she’s figuring. I get in the same car as the woman.

  Musical chairs now. The seats in the train car face in different directions. Some face north or south, others east or west. Cinderella takes one of the seats against the wall, facing east, and I sit across from her. There are two women, a couple of older Hispanic ladies, down the way. Funny how we do that. We give each other as much space as possible. We spend hours together sometimes, on airplanes or buses or trains, without saying a single word to each other. We do our very best to avoid interaction.

  Wait. Another guy in the corner. Homeless guy, wearing at least three shirts, though none of them covers his belly as he lies across two seats in the corner. He is coming to, smacking his lips and moaning softly. The beauty queen hears him and watches him struggle out of his coma. Then her eyes hit mine. I give her that universal, non-threatening smile, tucking in my lips, which is closer to a grimace than a grin, especially on me. She seems disarmed by the brief contact and casts her eyes downward. I get that a lot.

  The doors close, the train exhales as it starts up again.

  I look at the woman without looking, because she is even more attractive in better lighting, and it’s either her or the obnoxious advertisements for drug-addiction hotlines and AIDS awareness that run along a top shelf of the train. She has blond hair and soft green eyes that move across the page of the Cosmopolitan magazine she’s fetched from her bag. She doesn’t wear much makeup but her skin is tanned and healthy. She wouldn’t be confused with a supermodel but she has my attention, though she doesn’t indicate, in any way, that she wants it. She blinks once and looks in my direction, probably aware, as people are, that she is being ogled. Soon she returns to her magazine as I pretend not to stare. But stare I do. I make her for an athlete, for a timid woman who doesn’t seem overly occupied with her looks. The type I would normally go for. Pretty but unaware of it.

  I need a girlfriend, I decide. But I have no illusions about this woman.

  The rear door of the car pops open. Two young black men walk through, coming over from the adjoining car, holding onto seats as the train rocks and buckles. You hear about this sometimes, gangbangers patrolling the cars, looking for prey. They are laughing about something I can’t make out.

  “Ho, now,” one of them says, his tone less spirited.

  I work the car clockwise. The homeless guy seems entirely unaware. The two Latina women, hearing the punks at the other end, look at the floor, take each other’s hands. The lady across from me freezes, but her eyes come off the magazine with intensity. She’s pretty sure the kid’s reference was to her.

  We rock as the train turns a corner, crossing the river and moving to the nearnorth side of the city. Now the sound of hands clapping.

  “My, my, my.” He’s a skinny African American with a healthy stalk of hair, slapping his large hands together in exaggerated fashion. “Look-at-the-pretty-lady.” He says it like a song.

  That confirms it—he isn’t admiring me.

  His friend is shorter, stockier, actually a little meaner. Younger, too, looks like. Not the leader. You always identity the leader.

  I peek at the woman, suddenly focusing on the zipper of her leather bag at her feet. She has just crossed her legs but now she adjusts, placing them together, her knees hugging each other, a defensive position.

  “Ho!” the kid calls out. “Wha’s yo’ name, girlfrien’?”

  I turn and look at the guy, make a point of holding my stare until he notices. The woman does, too—I see her look up at me from my peripheral vision. Looking without looking.

  “Aw, c’mon, I’s just askin’ yo’ name, pretty girl.”

  The woman’s eyes dart across mine. She is, essentially, holding her breath now. Waiting it out. Hoping she can hold these bozos off until her stop.

  I look over at the homeless guy, who is stirring, but he doesn’t seem like he’ll be much help. Then I glance back over at the kid, who is standing up again, holding one of the vertical poles as the train rocks forward again, the overhead speaker calling out the next stop.

  “Tell me yo’ name, pretty woman.” The kid cups his mouth with a hand, like he’s calling across a canyon to her, when in fact he’s only about ten feet away.

  “Ya got yo-self a player, lady?” Punk Number Two, the younger, stockier one, calls out. He’s wearing a wife-beater tee and baggy jeans. “Ya want yo-self a boy-friend?”

  The two of them enjoy that for a moment, menacing laughs, pushing each other. The young woman can hardly pretend not to notice now. Her eyes are intense, boring holes in the floor, darting about as her knuckles turn white gripping her magazine. She is calculating, no doubt. A non-response could be as escalating as the wrong response. But if her mind is racing, it doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere, the paralysis of fear.

  The train stops. No one gets off, no one gets on. I half expected her to exit here, even though it’s not her stop, just to be rid of these idiots. But they might follow her, and she wouldn’t even be near her house. She’s probably made the safe move, in her mind.

  “Now come on.” Number One advances, followed by Number Two, gripping a pole close to her as the train starts up again. He could almost reach out and touch her now. The woman’s chest heaves, her eyes blinking rapidly. She continues to look away from the morons, until her eyes catch mine.

  I clear my throat. The punks are aware of me but don’t show it.

  “What’s your name?” I ask Number One.

  The kid, facing the young lady, turns his head so I can see his profile, moving his head slowly like I’m being a nuisance. “What-choo sayin’, guy?”

  “I want to know your name.” I get to my feet, holding a pole lest I fall over as the train rocks along the track. I doubt I threaten too many people but I’m over six feet, wide-shouldered, and credible enough.

  The kid chuckles, like he’s impressed with my cojones but I’m nothing but a pest.

  “I ain’t talkin’ to you, man,” he sings in a threatening melody, like he’s already lost patience with me. He swings around on the pole to box me out from the young woman.

  “Why don’t you and I talk,” I say. I suppose if I were looking for something snappy, I missed, but I have a deep voice and I say it like I mean it.

  Generally speaking, people looking to make trouble want easy marks. Low resistance. There’s nothing personal to it whatsoever. The problem is, this isn’t a purse-snatching. This is the very definition of personal.

  “Don’t make me turn around,” Number One says. Punk Number Two hasn’t spoken for a while, studying me.

  Number One says, “Am I botherin’ you, pretty lady? Huh? Now I’m talkin’ to you.” He snatches the magazine out of her hand.

  Contact. An escalation. Now is the time.

  “You’re bothering her, pal,” I say. “And you’re bothering me.”

  “Pal?” Number One switches hands on the pole, shifts his feet and opens himself up so he’s facing me.

  The play here is to throw water on the fire, not gasoline. Chesting up to this kid might make him want to leave, but he wouldn’t want to lose face. He’d probably want to mess up mine first. That’s how anyone would look at it, anyway.

  “Go back to your seat,” I say. “Keep the magazine.”

  “Maybe my seat’s right here.” He nods in the direction of the young lady while his expression grows cold. The second kid moves to his left, like he’s getting a better angle on me.

  “I don’t remember it that way,” I say.

  “No?”

  Our conversation is reaching new lows.

  “Listen, kid. I’ve got somewhere I gotta be, and I really don’t need your blood all over my suit. So do me a favor—run along.” I gesture with my head.

  The kid pauses, blinks away our eye contact. The woman, still seated, is watching our conversation with interest, sizing me up to see if I’d be able to handle myself. To look at me, you might not think so. To know me, that’s another story.

  The kid makes a point of seeming unaffected, rolling his tongue against his cheek as he chuckles. Looking to save face. There’s two ways he can do that. One of them is take me on.

  “You might mess me up,” I allow. “Wanna find out?”

  The other is to gain some small victory, a minor concession from me.

  He takes the latter option, predictably. “Damn right I could mess you up.” He leans forward until his forehead almost touches against mine, then he’s on his way back to his seat, Number Two close behind, after giving me a steely glare.

  I look again at the woman, who is deflating with relief. I take my briefcase and sit next to her, her personal bodyguard.

  “Thank you so much,” she whispers.

  I lean into her. “I’m not really a tough guy,” I said. “But I play one on subways.”

  The kid strolls to the end of the car, by the door connecting to the next car over, and kicks an empty soda can hard, the woman next to me flinching at the echo of the aluminum colliding against the rear door.

  “He’s harmless,” I say quietly, but evenly, to this woman. “I’m Jason,” I add.

  She looks at me briefly, a sweet smile. Kings have sent armies into battle, I imagine, for smiles not as endearing as this one. She shakes my hand without offering her own name, which is smart of her.

  The kid is on the cell phone now, talking to one of his buddies in his own private lingo, but I’ve spent enough time around gangbangers to catch a few choice words, most of which describe parts of the female anatomy.

  The lights inside the train make it hard to see out, leaving me with a collage of my own reflection in the window and the passing shapes outside, the sides of brick buildings and the tops of trees and billboards advertising for home equity loans and cellular phones, as the train moves on in clunky fashion. We hit another stop, the doors open and close with no one getting on or off, including the punks sulking in the corner.

  “The next stop is mine.” I say it like it’s an apology—her Knight in Shining Armor is getting off the train.

  “Mine, too,” she says. I can see she’s still tense, still trying to keep an eye on the punks through her peripheral vision. She has not, apparently, found them to be so harmless.

  I check my watch and sigh. “Would you like me to walk you home?” I ask, quietly, looking over at the kid who is watching us with a hard stare.

  “Oh.” The woman looks at me again. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

  I raise a hand. “No bother.”

  The overhead speaker blares out the name of her stop, and I stand with indifference, grab my briefcase and offer the young lady a hand. Quite the gallant nobleman, am I. She takes my hand and smiles. She sees what I’m doing, not looking nervous, and tries to follow suit. We walk over by the door and wait for the stop. The kid watches us, and I make a point of watching him. I whisper a joke to my female companion, again to look not the least bit unraveled.

  The car doors open and we step out. “I’ll be right with you,” I say to the woman, and I turn back to the door I’ve just passed through, looking dead-on at the kid, Punk Number One. He gets up quickly, like he might move toward the door. He shouts something at me, then the doors close between us and he slams his hand hard on the window, pressing his face against the glass.