12. Sweeter than Honey
That was another thing he hadn't been prepared for. Of all the things he thought he might see at this haphazard meeting, he hadn't expected to see one of his pins in her hand.
He had started his investigation with the easiest connection he had, the money. He had been paid a King's Ransom (or a Chairman's) but it had come from a scrambled code account. Those could be broken, but it meant dealing with Milluki. He wanted to keep his money and his dignity a little longer than that. He moved on to the Schedule book. The entry was in Zeno's hand so he simply asked who had asked for the job. Zeno told him Silva had given it to him, and said the client asked him to assign Illumi. That was a dead end. If Silva had wanted him to know, he would have told him. If he didn't tell him, and Illumi asked, not only would he not be told anything, he would be punished. Illumi had managed to avoid any serious punishment for several years, and he wasn't eager to have his streak come to an end.
The whole thing was strange. Clients were always listed. There was a line for their name. Unless it was something really routine like a killing in Skylark Park, which was where the Fabio Brothers offed their problems, they were always listed. And there had been nothing routine about this job. He remembered that a couple of years before, he had been with one of the girls who worked at the estate's telephone system. Would she tell him anything?
Apparently yes. One night's dalliance netted him a list of numbers that had called the mansion on the day of the entry, and back to three days before. Checking through the list was very easy, because of the meticulous accounts on the other jobs (and the phone sex for Milluki). So ultimately one number was unaccounted for, and that number was a government office, Padokia's Office of Interior Ministry.
How to know what that means? He didn't have enough information. Was someone trying to scare someone? Or were they trying to frame someone? Perhaps they wanted to stop someone. And were they finished, or were there going to be other jobs necessary? There was one prominent person he saw during that job who had a connection to the Interior Ministry, Lucia VerHoffen. And if it was a message, was it for her or her father? They had asked for Illumi before. Illumi was getting a very uncomfortable feeling. His calendar was free for the next ten days. He could be assigned. He'd better get booked, now. And he thought he knew of the perfect job.
And so he had slipped over the wall into her garden. He had frozen when he saw her there. He knew the house was empty before she had been dropped off at the front. Why had she come around to the back? She didn't seem very surprised to see him, though. She looked tired and distracted. When they went inside she had read her father's note (which he scanned when she left the room) and didn't like something about it. He would have to find out what it was later. After she returned from disposing of the caviar she seemed to be feeling a little better, but then she wanted to drink alcohol. She was already at the edge of her endurance. Was she looking to collapse? But she was insistent. She wouldn't listen to him; she wanted him to impair himself with the champagne, too. He had to get her to stop and listen. And then…
There, in the hand of this shining eyed, imprudent young woman, one of his pins. In her hand it was an abomination, he grabbed her wrist without thinking, and at last she stopped. But it was all wrong. She was looking at him in fear. Well, why not? Didn't she have the proof he was to be feared in her hand? On another level, Illumi had to admit to himself that it was exciting him to see her there with one of his weapons held between her fingers. She was almost holding it correctly, too; maybe she would be a natural like Killu. Where had she gotten it? Had she drawn it herself from Chairman Dewalt's head?
"Illumi?"
So she had decided on a name for him. And it wasn't Marie.
"You shouldn't touch these things. Sometimes they're coated with poison." He put his glass and then hers on the table behind him; then used his freed hand to gently pull the pin from her now lax fingers. Her hand was stained with dried blood and gore, so he pulled it toward himself, and slowly ran his tongue from the heel of her palm up through her first two fingers. Lucia promptly fainted.
