I.
I kill, not murder. There’s a difference between the two. A murder is guilt after the act, it’s eventually being caught, to seek some sort of justice in its aftermath. A kill is pure, paid for, no hard feelings and turned away from, to cash the check.
“You’re a cop, right?” she asks me. Her name’s Shelly, like shelter, like what I’m looking for.
“No,” I reply and study how she pulls on her cigarette, lips puckered, her black eyes locked onto my stare. Her dress is tight around the right places but I don’t give her the satisfaction of mentioning the fact. I order her another drink and the barmaid still won’t take my money.
Shelly rolls her eyes, cynical, “Don’t bullshit me. I knew once you walked in. Your eyes on every face and taking the last stool”, she puckers and takes a drag, then squints, “Detective? Plainclothes? Anti-crime?”
I grin ‘cuz I’m nervous, it’s a good way of hiding it, “You into cops? One of those cop freaks?”
“My ex was a cop who played more with his gun than with me, so I know about the Job.”
“And what if I was?” I ask and notice who comes and goes. You have to be aware at all times who’s paying attention and who’s not. I’m thinking of Shelly’s buttons to press, her hook, to get her to leave with me.
Shelly gets smug, “I’d tell you to fuck off.”
“What?”, I lean in closer, “…Suck off? You’d want me to suck you off?”
She laughs and it’s a pleasant sound, “Maybe handsome, maybe…”
And it goes on like this in the bar. It’s Coffee Shop, on l6th and 5th, right side of Union Square, coming down the ave. I buy her drinks, we talk, and my drinks are getting more and more watered down, just like I had told the barmaid, while Shelly’s are getting stronger. The place gets darker, moodier, trendier, as the late summer sun dips under the skyline. By her sixth drink Shelly wants to suck me off, so I stuff a hundred down the barmaid’s shirt, just so she’ll take it and she says silently ‘Call me later’, and I’m out the door with Shelly.
II.
Few really know what I do. Those who do usually have a death certificate or have one ready for their loved ones, their kids, their mistresses, their parents, their bosses, their employees, whoever. I don’t take Visa and the cash has to be wrinkly and non-sequential. One kill per customer, that’s it. Think about who you want dead carefully ‘cuz you only get one shot. After that, I’ll deny we’ve ever met and I’ll shoot you in the back for coming back to me again. This is all explained the first time I meet a customer and only once. Simple and everyone is happy. This is my life, don’t fuck with it.
Nobody finds Shelly and I’m left satisfied. It’s a job, I’m not sick or anything, some damn weirdo out for headlines. I do what I do and make the body blink out, disappear. The little boy’s blond and his fingers are grey with cement. Daddy’s patting him on the head, in front of their Massapeaqua home. Both of them smoothing out the cement on their new sidewalk. It’s the second layer. The first I cracked and redid about two days ago, while the family was away, six hours worth of work. Shelly will like it here. Wiping her face with a napkin, she had looked up from my thigh and said, “I want a house in the suburbs and have kids. What do you say?”
Sorry Shelly, I drive away and it’s been a week since the night I killed her, business before pleasure.
III.
There are only two other guys in this city as good as me. One’s Shade and he takes care of the blacks, almost exclusively gets all his jobs from them. People tend to stick with their own. Most of his kills look like o.d.’s, so nobody asks any questions. Once in a while, somebody does, and by the time word gets out, that somebody is dead and cardioarrested. The other guy is Killshot and even I’m scared of him. He’s known throughout organized crime, high and low, works for any and all sides. What scares me about him is that none of the bosses mind that, nobody dares. I’ve heard that he’ll kill anyone as long as that contract is dirty in some way. No innocent bystanders in his firing zone. I’ve never met Shade but I met Killshot.
He bumped into me at a bar in Soho, tracking the same contract. The bar, Lucky Strike, was humping and bumping. I don’t know how he knew, but as I’m studying this contract, Lorenzo Something, Killshot puts a gun to my thigh and brings me here. We’re shooting pool at the Golden Q, on Queens Boulevard, about 5 a.m. It’s dark, smokey, big with soft murmurs and balls dropping and spinning. There’s a crack of dawn over the front window and Killshot breaks.
“..who?”, he asks, meaning, who hired me, and a low ball drops. He’s six feet even, thin but wide shouldered, dark boxy sunglasses with long, spiked up wild black hair. No jacket, black t-shirt, face like a model’s and worn out jeans, not baggy, and I wonder where he keeps his gun.
I smile, “You know you shouldn’t ask.” and I cue my stick, waiting for my turn.
Killshot pauses before taking a shot, bent over the table, looking over the rims of his sunglasses and I keep smiling. He says, “..I’m curious, not patient.”
He misses and I know it’s on purpose. The cue ball slides behind the fifteen and it’s a clear side shot. I know he’s watching as I position and I answer, “Waterhouse. Some chick from Astoria.”
I shoot, the fifteen goes in and pops back out of the hole, too hard, and ends up on the rag, back on my side. I lied and Killshot doesn’t move, he’s staring at me through those dark sunglasses. It’s another one of his rules, his being more worked up than mine. Don’t lie to him, he’ll know, and I smile, cuing my stick, “Your shot.”
Just a second longer of staring and then, he lights a cigarette, moving around the table, positioning. He’s one ahead having dropped the four and then knocks in the seven, two, one, six, three, and five. There’s just one left, the eight ball. I’m by one corner, by the black ball and Killshot’s at the opposite end, behind the cue ball.
“..corner pocket.” he calls and puts out the cigarette. Bending over, aiming, he says, “..take the contract..”, he slams the eight ball in and I never got a ball off the table. “..stop killing innocents…I’m keeping an eye on you.”
Another one of his rules.
He throws a twenty on the table, to pay for the time spent playing, even though he’s won. He then lays his pool stick on top.
“Or?” I try not to smile.
Killshot looks at me and grins. He shrugs and turns away, “..then well, then..”
I wait until he leaves, go to the bathroom and pop a Valium.
IV.
That was the day after Shelly and that was last week. Lorenzo Something I chopped and burned up with acid. Vice officer Chris Pappas is in luggage, flying over Tokyo. Susan Juenebelle is in a refrigerator somewhere underneath the Verrazano; one was a dealer, the other crooked and another a whore.
The barmaid from Coffee Shoppe, blonde hair on my chest, smooth legs, tan and tight, against my own, says, “Your father came looking for you.”
I turn on the lamp in her bedroom, “What?”
“Old guy, cute, had your picture”, she touches the scar on the side of my forehead, “..you, but with thick silver hair…”
I stare out the high rise window, looking at the lights of the Tri-Boro, seeing the night. “What’d he want?”
She slides up me and I’m thinking of shelter, she says, “your mother is in Sloan-Kettering Hospital, the cancer place…”
V.
All I hear is beeps and slippered quiet steps. All I smell is plastic and forced oxygen. The Recovery and Chemo rooms are blush pink, but the institutional green can’t be helped here, in Intensive Care. Through her door window, I see my father at her side. This woman is not my mother.
My mother is taller than me, olive skinned and has long brown hair. My mother’s alive and her round face smiles easily. This woman is dying. She’s old, hair more gray than brown, sagging, and from here, in a hallway behind a two inch door and her by the window on the far side, I can tell she’s in pain. Maybe it’s the way my father has to help her sit up,
or the way he holds her and pets her and says comforting things that, from what her doctor told me, mean nothing at this point, the pain will not end. I’m not a part of this and I find it hard to open the door, but I walk in.
My father stands but he still looks bent. “You…” forced, gruff, “How are you?”
“Fine.” I don’t look at him, my eyes on the crumpled sack that was my mother. “Please leave.”
He doesn’t know what I do, but he knows what I am, or he’s pretty sure and that’s enough to have him pause at the door. Eventually, he walks out.
“…yearss…” she whispers, I barely hear it, she has no voice, there’s a tube that comes out of her neck and is taking it away with each breath. And I’m amazed at how her arm doesn’t get tangled in all the tubes that go in and out of her as it rises and her blue veined hand touches the scar. Just like the barmaid did and I shutter for shelter.
I smile, “Not that long.”
“…yyearss…” she repeats, straining and blinks and even to do that seems to be too much. I remember how she fought off a mugger when I was five. A tall man strolled along and snatched her chains and she managed to get a hold of the loose ends. She screamed and he smacked her and she tugged. One hand was on my arm, the other on her chains, so she kicked him in the groin. He fell, she kept on kicking. In broad daylight, on the street, the mugger crawled for help as my mother dug a heel into his ear.
But it is now night. She looks at me then the machines and back. She tightens her grip on my jaw and again me, the machines and back to me. I see something in her eyes that I’ve seen in mine early mornings, what none of my contracts ever had. That longing.
“…I…ah..” she struggles and trembles, her neck quivering, the tube out of her neck quivering, “…kuh…can..NOT..”
She does not cry, she never did. I am a killer and I reach over to the machine that pumps breath into her. I am not a part of this as I dig into my pocket, finding a handful of Valium, placing them into her waiting mouth and after she swallows, nodding, I turn off the pump.
I smile ‘cuz it’s a good way of hiding.
She smiles and her eyes droop then close. I stand there, shallow breaths, a thousand of them, then the beep-beep machine screams…
VI.
It’s strange leaving, not being caught by my mother’s doctor or my father or by security. I wonder where they were, I wonder why car horns work the way they do as I cross First Avenue, against the light. There’s a playground opposite the hospital and within that darkness, comes the sound of a creaking swing, rusty. It’s dark, I can’t see who that is and I cry. I can’t breathe and I’m blind and I stumble to the swings… Everything is so far away but it’s clear…I’m crying and I fall, my stomach shrinks with my lungs and I see the spiked hair…(‘I’m curious’)…the glint of sunglasses hovering… (‘not patient’)…above the seat of the swing…(‘Who’)… I cry uncontrollably and fall to my knees… (blond little boy) ..I’m not a part of this…(‘Stop’)…this spinning out of control…
Killshot gets off the swing and it still sing-song creaks. He puts a silver gun to my forehead and I’m sweating as Shelly laughs …(‘Maybe’)…and I still wonder where he keeps it.
I don’t smile, I sob.
Killshot nods, knowing, and pulls the trigger.
-CLICK-
At first, I don’t recognize it, it’s an absurd sound.
My heart stops and I’m frightened.
The gun’s not loaded.
Killshot kneels, sunglasses level with my wide open eyes. He whispers,
“..soon, live with this first-”
“But-”
“ssshhh”, he puts the barrel to my lips and I…I…
“…then”, Killshot says, calmly as he puts the gun, beautiful and silver, behind his back. He lights a cigarette, “…only then.”
I feel something shiver and I’m exhausted and terrified and denied. My grave stands, looming above me. Killshot leaves and it’s not his promise that haunts me, but the time between now and its fulfillment.