The Twelfth Card

and he kept the details in mind. (When you lie, he knew, lie big, ballsy and specific.)
    “He drove his Supra over a beer bottle.”
    “Is he all right?” Jeanne asked.
    “He was just parking. The putz can’t get the lug nuts off by himself.”
    Alive and dead, Vern Harber was a couch potato.
    Thompson took the paintbrush and cardboard bucket to the laundry room and set them in the basin, ran water to soak the brush. He slipped on his jacket.
    Jeanne asked, “Oh, could you get some two-percent on the way home?”
    “Quart?”
    “That’s fine.”
    “And some roll-ups!” Lucy called.
    “What flavor?”
    “Grape.”
    “All right. Brit?”
    “Cherry!” the girl said. Her memory nudged her. “Please,” she added.
    “Grape and cherry and milk.” Pointing at each of the females, according to her order.
    Thompson stepped outside and started walking in a convoluted path up and down the streets of Queens, glancing back occasionally to make sure he wasn’t being followed. Breathing cold air into hislungs, exhaling it hotter and in the form of soft musical notes: the Celine Dion song from Titanic .
    The killer had kept an eye on Jeanne when he’d told her he was going out. He’d noted that her concern for Vern seemed real and that she wasn’t the least suspicious, despite the fact he was going to see a man she’d never met. But this was typical. Tonight, he was helping a friend. Sometimes he said he wanted to place an OTB bet. Or he was going to see the boys at Joey’s for a fast one. He rotated his lies.
    The lean, curly-haired brunette never asked much about where he went, or about the phoney computer salesman job he claimed he had, which required him to be away from home frequently. Never asked details about why his business was so secret he had to keep his home office door locked. She was smart and clever, two very different things, and most any other smart and clever woman would have insisted on being included more in his life. But not Jeanne Starke.
    He’d met her at a lunch counter here in Astoria a few years ago after he’d gone to ground following the murder of a Newark drug dealer he’d been hired to kill. Sitting next to Jeanne at the Greek diner, he’d asked her for the ketchup and then apologized, noting that she had a broken arm and couldn’t reach it. He asked if she was all right, what had happened? She’d deflected the question, though tears filled her eyes. They’d continued to talk.
    Soon they were dating. The truth about the arm finally came out and one weekend Thompson paid a visit to her ex-husband. Later, Jeanne told him that a miracle had happened: Her ex had left town and wasn’t even calling the girls anymore, which he’d done once a week, drunk, to rage at them about their mother.
    A month later Thompson moved in with her and the children.
    It was a good arrangement for Jeanne and her daughters, it seemed. Here was a man who didn’t scream or take a belt to anyone, paid the rent and showed up when he said he would—why, they felt he was the greatest catch on earth. (Prison had taught Thompson a great deal about setting low bars.)
    A good arrangement for them, and good for a professional killer too: Someone in his line of work who has a wife or girlfriend and children is far less suspicious than a single person.
    But there was another reason he was with her, more important than simple logistics and convenience. Thompson Boyd was waiting. Something had been missing from his life for a long time and he was awaiting its return. He believed that someone like Jeanne Starke, a woman without excessive demands and with low expectations, could help him find it.
    And what was this missing thing? Simple: Thompson Boyd was waiting for the numbness to go away and for the feeling in his soul to return, the way your foot comes back to life after it’s fallen asleep.
    Thompson had many recollections of his childhood in Texas, images of his parents and his aunt Sandra, cousins, friends from school. Watching Texas A&M games on the tube, sitting around the Sears electric organ, Thompson pushing the button for the chords while his aunt or father played the melody as best they could with their pudgy fingers (they ran in the family line). Singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” and the theme from The Green Berets . Playing hearts.Learning how to use tools with his father in the perfectly neat work shed. Walking beside the big man in the desert, marveling at