Life comes cheap.
A couple of thrusts, a grunt, an exchange of bodily fluids, and the mystery of life begins anew.
Life can also leave just as cheap. I like to make sure that in a few instances, it doesn't.
This is by no means my philosophy on life and how things are. I do what I do because I am good at it, and it pays. I'm a contract killer. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I kill for money. I hope you don't hold this against me. After all, we've all got to make a living.
Killing's not such a hard thing. Not when it and death have been a part of your life since you can remember. Similarly to how you can't remember much before you could walk and talk, I can't remember a life where death wasn't prevalent, as much of a routine as brushing after every meal.
Well, maybe not every meal. Let's be honest. Who really brushes after every single meal (other than dentists and Matthew McConaughey)? We'll say at least twice a day.
The first corpse I have an actual recollection of, a memory of some substance, I stumbled upon in the basement before Dad had really hit the big time. In case you're unfamiliar with my situation, my dad is a big-timer player in New York's underground criminal world. I am not tooting Pop's horn or anything but giving you an idea of the kind of environment in which I grew up. Pops is currently the man who gives me most of my contracts.
Anyway, back to the flashback. My first corpse, I think his name might have been Tony. It's a relatively good guess since half the guys I grew up with seemed to be named some variation of this whether Anthony, Antonio or even the Tonester. They brought this guy into the basement and splayed him out on a hard wood table down there, his blood everywhere, dripping like red sweat, splattering and forming star-shaped splashes on the cement floor. No one noticed me in their desperation to save the guy. I remember him lurching and coughing and then flopping back on the table, stone dead.
Sharky Fontana- my dad's right-hand man at the time- gave "Tony" a single-worded eulogy: "Fuck!"
I don't have the appreciation for life that others do. I don't cherish it. No one showed me how...
The hell! What is this? The Dr. Phil show? That kind of self-analysis sounds hammy even coming from me. More reasons to never go see a shrink. Trust me, "The Sopranos" is full of shit.
These are the kinds of thoughts that ran through my head as I watched my current target's guard run his half-assed patrol. The guard wasn't too big, but usually these turn out to be the worst kind, the type of guys who think they have something to prove. I observed the guard as he checked in on his walkie-talkie. If my intelligence was good (and it always was), I had a good fifteen minutes before the guard would check back in again.
I slid out of the darkness and crept behind the guard. Even in the dark, I got close enough to see the short hairs on the back of the guy's head bristle as he finally sensed me. Silencer at the back of his skull. A muffled blast. A sharp recoil in my hand. Quick, painless, and it shreds the bottom of his brain stem ensuring that the job is done.
He fell into the grass. I helped him a little to conceal the sound. I had fifteen good minutes to get in, do the job, and leave without a trace.
There had been worse jobs. Hell, I could be flipping burgers. Now THERE is a job you should reserve your judgments for; a country with a system of free, public education and kids cannot manage to find something better than McDonalds for the rest of their lives? It's a crying shame.
An unlocked window led me into the house, a spacious four story affair that made my bank account cringe at the thought of its cost. I couldn't understand how countless unused rooms, empty spaces, and doors that will never be opened except to flaunt the excess contained behind them equated one's symbolic status.
I was sure a perceptive metaphor lay in that thought somewhere, but I was on the job and metaphors were a job better left to lit professors.
Voices filtered down the corridor, and I slipped into a side room before the owners of the voices caught up with their words. I kept the door cracked, allowing a sliver of vision along the hallway. My target sidled up, his alligator shoes gleaming in the lamplight. He shadowed a buxom blonde decked out in a French maid get-up: frilly apron, short black skirt. She even had one of those little feather dusters in her hands. The maid stopped, stood on her toes and dusted the ornate gold frame around some gaudy portrait of a pregnant angel drifting on clouds. Maybe I don't get art, but the angel appeared half-retarded.
"Mister S---, I am trying to do my work," the maid was saying. She seemed to have a slight European accent, but I couldn't place it.
"Jesus, Greta, you just don't know what you do to me. Drive me crazy," the target said, unable to keep his wide eyes off the lift of the maid's skirt as she leaned up to dust the retarded angel's frame. I couldn't blame the guy, but it seemed somewhat sleazy to be ogling the help, considering he was married and a proclaimed "devout" Catholic. The press would have had a field day with what I was witnessing.
But I'm not one to pass judgments. I merely carry them out.
"Mister S---!" the maid squealed as my target's roving hands reached up into the folds of her skirt. She twisted around and at slapped his hands with her feather duster. Somehow, I got the feeling that Greta had played this game more than once.
"C'mon, I need you so bad. You don't know how bad I need you. I promise I won't be long," the target begged. Ironic how he was pleading with his own employee like a child begging his mother for permission to stay up past his bed time, but the maid seemed to mull his words over, waving her feather duster thoughtfully to one side.
"Well," she said and gave a slight pause, "I have been letting your candlestick get dusty."
I checked my watch in the thin light from the door. I didn't have much time, and if these two started getting naughty, things might get complicated for me. I didn't want to have to ice the maid if it could be helped.
