Monkey in the Middle Read Free Page A

Carter likes about him. Except for the money, of course, and the jobs that lead to the money.
    Speaking of which . . .
    Carter’s e-mail is one sentence long: The deed is done. With a single click, he sends it off to a computer in Rumania. From there, it will find its way to Thorpe, who might be anywhere in the world, who might be living next door. Thorpe will respond by dropping $20,000 into Carter’s bank account on the island of Jamaica. And promptly, too.
    But not this time. As Carter goes to shut his computer down, the machine emits a sharp ding. Then a little envelope appears at the top right of the monitor. The envelope waves at him.
    Thorpe’s message is not as simple as Carter’s: The deed is NOT done, though perhaps well on its way to being done. Suggest you proceed to next stage. Also, FYI, contract terms are strict. Payment on closing only. Please advise as events transpire .
    Slippage? Carter closes his eyes for a moment, remembering the knife’s arc, the blade punching through the soft flesh just below the sternum, the descending aorta only a few inches away. Cutting a vessel of this size results in more rapid blood loss than a similar injury to the heart, and there are no ribs to avoid.
    So, he must have missed. To the right, the left, low, high? Carter goes online, to the homepage of the Daily News where he scans the longest of several stories on the ‘Macy’s Mayhem’. The victim, he learns, is still alive, though in a critical condition, and the cops think it likely that he was targeted by a deranged man, perhaps one of the many homeless schizophrenics who roam the city. Nevertheless, the victim’s room at Bellevue Hospital is being closely guarded, just in case.
    Carter shuts down the computer, then swivels his chair in a half-circle to face a largely empty room. There’s the computer station, a neatly-made bed, a nightstand bearing a small lamp, and that’s it. The spotless walls are blank rectangles, while the gleaming parquet floors are without rugs. Carter’s clothes are stored in labeled boxes in a closet, each item precisely folded.
    Carter shrugs out of his shoes and walks over to the apartment’s single bedroom. There is no bed here and the floor is covered by judo mats. At the doorway, he takes a moment to center himself, then strips to his shorts before approaching a table with a long wooden box on top. Here he again pauses, staring down.
    The box’s elaborate carvings include every large animal on the African savannah. The reproductions are crude by western standards, but Carter believes they are designed to illustrate the spirits that inhabit the creatures, not the creatures themselves. The box’s maker was endowing his creation with power. The other part, a symmetry so exquisitely planned the overall design had seemed abstract the first time Carter saw it, was a secondary consideration. As was the wood chosen to construct the box, black ebony hard enough to ward off decay and termites both.
    When Carter flicks a switch on the wall, two rows of tightly focused spotlights, mounted on tracks, throw small circles of light on the floor. Carter adjusts three of these lights, then opens the box to reveal a pair of Burmese daggers. Carved into fire-breathing dragons from blocks of white jade, the daggers are intended for ceremonial use and that is the way Carter has always used them. The dragons’ arched heads and necks form the daggers’ pommels, their bodies the handles, their wings the guards, their tails the blades. Though exquisitely crafted, the daggers are not antiques. Even so, in order to possess them, Carter had to surrender a big chunk of the pile he accumulated in Africa.
    Carter takes the daggers and crosses them over his chest with the points to the sides of his throat. He turns slowly, his eyes moving to each of the little circles of light. These are the marks he will hit as he crisscrosses the room.
    There are no