Lethal

“You sound surprised, Mr. Hamilton. Didn’t Tom ever mention to you that I’m brilliant? No? Well, I am. Most people don’t know that before Lanny was born and I became a virtual prisoner in my own house, I had a bright future as a business consultant and financial planner. All my career plans had to be abandoned. Then, a few years ago, when I’d had my fill of living a shadow life, I decided to apply my know-how to another, uh, field of endeavor.

“And I was in a perfect position to do so. Who would suspect poor Janice VanAllen, mother of a severely disabled child and wife to a man totally lacking in self-confidence and ambition, to initiate and orchestrate an organization as successful as mine?”

Here she laughed.

“Ironically, it was Tom who actually planted the idea. He talked a lot about illegal trafficking, the unlimited profits to be made, the government’s futile attempts to stop the ongoing tide. Mostly he talked about the ‘middleman,’ whose risk of capture is limited because usually he’s hidden behind a screen of respectability. That sounded very smart and attractive to me.

“Tom was an unchecked and guileless source of information. I asked questions, he gave me answers. He explained to me how criminals got caught. All I had to do was get to the men who caught them and, through men like Doral and Fred Hawkins, offer them a handsome bonus for slacking.

“The smugglers paid me for providing the protection. And those who didn’t lived to regret it. Most are serving time. They couldn’t rat me out as part of a plea bargain or deal for leniency because none knew who I was. There were always human buffers between us.

“Suffice to say, Mr. Hamilton, my little cottage industry expanded and became extremely lucrative. I had virtually no overhead except for my cell phones. Doral or Fred would deliver disposables every other week or so when Tom was at work.

“I paid my employees well, but even so, profits surpassed my expectations. That was important. You see, I had to save up for the day when Lanny would no longer be an impediment. After he died, I wasn’t about to stick around. I’d had it with that house, with Tom, with my life. I’d earned an easy and luxurious retirement. I never resented Lanny, but I resented the diapers I had to change, the meals I had to pump into his stomach, the catheters…