AFTER EVERYONE WAS GONE, POREMBA TOOK OFF HIS COAT, PUT IT OVER HIS seat, poured himself a cup of coffee and one for Sal, too, and then moved to the other side of the table. “No offense,” Poremba said. “I’ve been watching you imagine turning everything in this room into a weapon, so I thought a little distance would be good.”
Sal said, “Habit.”
“One hundred and sixty-two,” Poremba said. “That number mean anything to you?”
Sal thought for a moment. “You’re including freelance jobs?”
“That’s right.”
“But not Las Vegas?”
“Well,” Poremba said, “the day is young.”
Sal did the math. Used to have an exact memory of every person he killed, but that was before his brain was scrambled by so many hours of surgery. It sounded about right. “I must have left DNA,” Sal said, “seeing as I didn’t know what DNA was when I started out.”
“Turns out,” Poremba said. “The advancements have been incredible. An eyelash. Some sweat. A tiny bit of skin. Saliva. Not that most of your kills fought back. Benefit of shooting them in the back of the head.”
“Painless.”
“Where’s your proof?” Poremba said.
“No one complained,” Sal said. “When I used a knife, I heard about it.”
“Parker House,” Poremba said, “that was a bonanza. Blood, urine, hair, skin, everything. Just had to wait for science to catch up.”
“A few years from now,” Sal said, “FBI won’t even need you. They’ll just send a robot to pick me up.”
“No,” Poremba said. “We’ll have a Predator Drone blow up your house with you in it.”
“What’s stopping the terrorists from getting those, too?”
“Nothing,” Poremba said. He pointed out the window behind Sal. “Could be we’re two seconds from one blowing us up right now.”
One.
Two.
“Must have been a dud,” Poremba said.
“You mind if I stand?” Sal asked.
“Just stay on your side of the table,” Poremba said.
Sal walked to the window, looked out at the cars stopped on Wilshire Boulevard. Half expected to see the sky filled with robots, but all he made out was a tinge of smog. It wasn’t noon yet and the streets were filled with people, the 405 freeway stuffed with cars. Maybe LA wasn’t such a dreamland, after all. “Can I ask you,” Sal said, “the status of Rachel Savone?”
“She flipped, immediately,” Poremba said. “You were right about that. She was very upset about Melanie Moss, to say the least. She claimed her husband hadn’t personally killed anyone in years.”
“She was wrong,” Sal said.
“No she wasn’t,” Poremba said, “but I don’t really give a fuck. Savone ordered enough hits over the years. Let him try to figure this one out.”
“Where are her children?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Poremba said.
Poremba cleared his throat, which made Sal turn from the window. Poremba made a subtle pointing gesture with a pen, to the camera recording the room, the red light illuminated.
Sal nodded. “She’s a good person.”
“Were you . . .” Poremba didn’t finish his sentence. He put up a finger, walked out into the hall for a second, then came back, stood under the camera, stared at it until the red light disappeared. Started again. “Were you sleeping with Rachel Savone?”
“Never, no, never,” Sal said. “But I cared for her. Legitimately. She made me understand what a terrible position I’d put Jennifer in all these years. That I made the person I loved the most always within reach of people who would kill her.” He rubbed his jaw, which ached constantly, but Sal was keeping off opiates this week, because he really fucking liked them. “This isn’t something I expect you to understand, because I don’t understand it, but seeing how Rachel was so desperate to be free that she’d ask me to kill her father . . . that’s . . . that’s not how normal people behave, is it?”
Poremba said, “That’s not how anyone I’ve ever encountered behaves.” This made Sal laugh. Not that it was funny. What he was recognizing in these moments, and in the long nights at the UCLA Medical Center, when he was once again doped out of his mind, was that he’d never viewed the world in the right way. He’d been twisted from a very young age. That his recent moments of clarity were happening in fucking hospitals was a pretty good message about that.
“Tell me something,” Poremba said. “I know why you killed Jeff Hopper. It’s part of the game we all signed up to play. But I don’t understand why you embalmed him. We could have checked dental records on his head and had him in a day or two, regardless.”
Sal shrugged. “I didn’t have anything against him. He was just doing his job. I gave him a proper burial.”
“After you murdered him.”
“Technically speaking,” Sal said, “it was self-defense. But yes. After I killed him.”
“And you took out his eyes.”
“He was an organ donor,” Sal said.
“You checked to see if he was an organ donor?”
