“Bad everything,” he replies. Frankie and Cindy were like Bonnie and Clyde ten years ago but now he’s a two-bit womaniser and she’s a used-up whore. Frank still has his looks, though—the only reason Lacey looked at him twice. She’s shallow like that. It’s part of her charm. Frankie leans back in his leather chair, eyeing me.
“You know why you’ve been given this ticket, Zeth?” he asks.
“Am I supposed to?”
Frankie shrugs. “Most times people know why they’re killing a man.”
So he does know why I’m here. Hardly surprising; you don’t piss of Charlie to this degree without realizing you’re gonna reap the consequences. “I’m not what you’d consider…inner circle. I get an address and some instructions, nothing more.”
“And a suitcase full of cash, too, right?”
My turn to shrug. No point in being shy. “Right.”
“Well how ‘bout I offer you two suitcases full’a cash instead, Zeth? Hire you to go right back where you came from and put an end to this once and for all?”
“You want to hire me to kill Charlie?”
“Why not?” Frankie is one composed motherfucker. He’s richer than God—the eighties might be long gone but cocaine is still Seattle’s drug of choice—and I doubt this is the first time he’s offered to buy his way into someone’s good graces. No doubt he’s never had anyone tell him no before, though. See, the thing is I don’t have any good graces. And I don’t need his money. I dump the duffel I’m still carrying onto his desk. Unzip it. Pull out my go-to—my duster.
Frankie’s still not blinking. The fucker must have cast iron balls. “I’m Charlie’s man, you know that, Frank. Now, I have other jobs to get to tonight. Let’s tidy up these loose ends, huh?”
The reason for Frankie’s calm appears in hand a split second later. The little shit’s had a gun on me under his desk the whole time. Desert Eagle 50-calibre. Nice. He holds it up at shoulder height, arm held straight out. “Shame you won’t just do the job for me. Charlie’s been running this place into the ground for years. Time for him to move on if you catch my drift. And time you were leaving right now, okay?”
I’ve had a lot of guns aimed at me over the years. A man’s intent is always right there, shining in their eyes, to be read like the pages of a book. Some of them just wanna scare you enough that you back off; some of them are so desperate in trying to hide their own fear that they forget to make you believe they mean it. You gotta mean it. And some of them are sharks. Stone cold. People who’ve pulled the trigger countless before and haven’t thought twice.
Frankie, the little fuck, is a shark.
I’d never have called it. I clench my fingers around the duster, staring down at my fist. There’s little to be done about this now. Things will play out the way they’re meant to. “I suppose this is where you shoot me, then?”
“I suppose it is,” he answers.
Someone, somewhere, said something I felt compelled to have tattooed onto my chest when I was drunk once: So it goes. I know it was Billy Pilgrim from Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five, but I frequently pretend I don’t. That would mean admitting to the fact that I actually read something in high school before I dropped out. But never mind that. As the bullet zips through the air, I realize how absolutely fucking perfect that saying is. So it goes. There is something so inevitable about me getting shot here tonight. Something so obvious and unbelievable, all at the same time.
Pain ricochets through my body like a hot, white lance. The bullet hits me in the chest, two inches below my collarbone…and suffice to say, it hurts like a bitch. Frankie seems stunned that I'm still standing. If I were him, I would already have shot me another five times and emptied the clip just to make sure I was dead. Fucker’s gonna wish he had. I launch myself across the desk and grapple the gun from his hand, ripping it free from his grip.
"Big mistake, Frankie. Big mistake." I raise my fist and bring it sailing down into his face with a brutal force. The crunch of metal crushing bone, skin and muscle separating, isn't something I ever get used to, but on occasions like this I allow myself to enjoy it a little. Just a little. We have to try and enjoy our work, after all, and pain always awakens my dark side.
Frankie’s head rolls back as I pound my fist into his face over and over and over again. My hands, T-shirt, jacket, jeans, everything is covered in blood by the time the guy falls slack. I’m laughing hysterically as bubbles of blood form on his lips.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he mumbles. His now broken teeth make the words a little muffled, but I get the gist. “You lock people inside a sealed shipping container for three…three days, they’re gonna d—die, Zeth. How…how is that my fault?”
The burritos I ate an hour ago start churning in my stomach. What the fuck is he talking about? I raise my fist to smash it into his mouth again, but…I can’t. Just…this is just fucking perfect. “What people?”