Since the Layoffs, page 7
This is how right Zorda was raised. He took a volunteer job with the ambulance company after the layoffs, he tells me later in the evening, so he would get access to the homes of the sick and dying. When old people who lived alone were taken to the hospital and admitted, he would go back to their apartments or houses the next day and ransack them. He would take credit cards, pills, anything of value. Apparently, in church, when they were telling him it was wrong to kill, they okayed this.
I am back home, drunk and furious. I want to call Ken Gardocki and scream at him, but I know I can’t contact him. Why in God’s name would he try to hire Zorda before me? I’m smarter than that fuck, and I’m more trustworthy. Straight-Arrow Jake, isn’t that what they used to call me? Maybe that was it, because Ken thought I was too much of a straight arrow to even consider the offer. Yeah, that had to be it. Still, next time I see him, he’s going to hear about it.
And why did Zorda get offered twice as much money? Does Ken think Jeff’s a sharper businessman than me? What the hell’s going on? I am too pissed off to think straight. It’s almost midnight. I grab the gun from the closet, pull on my gloves, grab some rags and two shopping bags and a small pillow, and head out into the cold.
The Kellner Suites is a three-mile walk. It’s snowing again, but just a light dusting, not enough to keep cars off the road but enough to make everything seem quiet on the side streets. Cars pass me and I wonder who is in them, whether or not they have noticed me. Someone called in about me throwing rags into the creek last time, so people are watching. They watch everything, all the time. There are always eyes. The trick is to make them not notice you. I walk without any stride, try to make nothing memorable about myself, just a guy shuffling along the road on his way to nowhere important.
When I see the sign for Kellner Suites off to the side of the highway, I stoop down amid some trees to wrap the rags around my feet. Then I pull the plastic shopping bags over the rags and tie them to my ankles. I don’t want the mud on my boots. There are different types of mud, and some scientist in some lab would be able to match the mud from the Kellner Suites parking lot to my boots, and that would be it for this career. The shopping bags make a noise, though, crinkling and rustling every time I take a step. Have to do something about that for next time. Maybe get some canvas bags, and then throw them away. I’m sure not buying new boots every time. These took months to break in.
I go back into the trees at the edge of the parking lot and look for Brecht’s car. I’ve noticed, since my hit-man career began, that almost every building has a little nook or cranny where you can effectively hide. There are so many deserted buildings and crumbling facades around here now that this town is particularly blessed with such hiding places. Once again, I find the darkened treeline to be the best concealment. I don’t see Brecht’s car anywhere. Working late again, perhaps training his new hire. I crouch as a car pulls into the well-lit parking lot and drives up to the room. Not Brecht. There is some giggling as a young couple get out and go into one of the other bottom floor rooms.
This is going to be a problem, I realize. Chances are, Brecht will park right up against the well-lit building. With so many spaces available next to the door, why would he park back against the darkened treeline? No, he’s going to park in the light, which means I’m going to have to wait in the light. Or run all the way across the lit parking lot with crinkly bags on my feet, shoot him, and then run back the same way, which would be begging for witnesses.
Brecht pulls into the parking lot, and parks right up against the building.
I step forward into the light of the parking lot and freeze there. Dammit. There’s nothing I can do. If I started running toward him now, and shot him in his car, it would be too risky. What if he heard me running? Then …
Brecht opens the car door quickly and darts up to his room, leaving the engine running and the car door open. He uses his entry card on the lock and darts inside his hotel room. For a panicked second I think he has seen me, has figured out exactly what I’m doing there, and is running inside. But he leaves the hotel-room door open, too. I realize what is happening right away.
Brecht needed to take a piss.
Or a shit maybe. Who knows. That convenience store food’ll do it to you. At any rate, I’m running, streaking across the parking lot, maybe forty yards. I do the distance in under ten seconds, taking care not to slip on the ice and snow, my shopping bagged feet crinkling madly. I get up to Brecht’s door, and push it open. I can hear the unmistakable sound of a urine stream. He grunts a little. Then I hear a toilet flush.
I close the motel room door and wait for him to come out of the bathroom.
Brecht walks out of the bathroom still zipping up his fly. He is looking down, but notices me in the room pointing a gun at him and he freezes.
“What are you doing?”
Bang!
Bits of pillow fly everywhere. DAMMIT! The pillow didn’t help worth a damn. My ears are ringing again. Don’t use that pillow trick they always show on cop shows. All you do is destroy a perfectly good pillow. I notice also how much smoke is released by a single gunshot. It’s like a bomb went off in here. Last time I shot someone I was outside. I got the smell, but the smoke just wafted away and I never noticed it.
Brecht is lying on the ground, his head by the little refrigerator. His glasses have been knocked askew by the fall. His eyes are closed. If he’s not dead, he’s doing a good impression of someone who is.
There is a good amount of blood on the wall behind us, but nothing has touched me. Pillow flakes are settling all around the silent room. I look at him for a few seconds, thinking deep, philosophical thoughts about him now versus him ten seconds ago, the only difference being those few ounces of lead that have passed through his head, changing everything. Then my hearing starts to return, and I hear the car’s engine running outside.
I open the motel room door. But for his running engine, it is complete silence out in the parking lot, no one around. I close the door softly behind me, shut his car off, leaving the keys in the ignition. I see his briefcase on the passenger seat, take it, shut the door and walk off.
Okay, that was stupid. Every time I kill someone, I do something stupid. Last time I kept the gun, this time I steal a briefcase. Why’d I do that? I am walking back out onto the highway with a gun that has killed two people and a dog, and I have a briefcase. If a cop pulled over and started asking me questions about what I’m doing walking around at two in the morning with a briefcase, I’d be completely screwed. I’ve got to get rid of this shit, but where? I need a place to hide and settle down.
I cross the highway and on the other side is the back of an abandoned discount strip mall. There are dumpsters everywhere. Too perfect. The first place cops would look for stuff to be dumped. I take the bags off my feet, and the rags, and throw those into a dumpster. Just rags and bags, nothing too incriminating. I notice my boots are clean, no mud at all. Very nice. Then, leaning by the dumpster, I decide to open the briefcase.
Inside are a lot of files, pens, calculators and … a girlie mag he took from the store. It is called Juggs and Leggs. I flip through it. By porn standards, this one is on the low end, the girls worn out ex-strippers and the paper quality barely above newspaper. Why would Brecht, who obviously had access to Playboy or Penthouse, go so low? Was this his thing, worn out ex-strippers pulling their pussy lips apart for a black-and-white gynecological exam? Guess so. To each his own. Into the dumpster with it. Everything else goes back in the briefcase.
I walk down to the end of the mall and peer around. Nothing but snow falling on a weed-covered parking lot. I go out onto the street, cross it, and walk up into a run-down residential neighborhood where everyone owns a dog, it seems. Every time I pass a house a new animal starts barking. Down a hill, then a gas station, which is closed. But it also has a dumpster, which is almost full. I push the gun down amid some trash bags, walk another few blocks, then dump the briefcase, but first I take out the files. I can’t help myself. What could be more damning than walking around with a recently murdered man’s files? I tuck the files up under my denim jacket and walk the rest of the way home.
I get home and crack a beer and settle down to read some files. One thing about the late-night convenience store shift, it’s killed my sleeping patterns. Now I want to stay up all night and go to bed in the morning.
File one … Just a bunch of invoices from distributors. I lay it carefully on a stack of newspapers which I have to take to the dump for recycling. File two is more of the same, and seems to contain a lot of personal stuff, bills, and so on. File three is what I’m looking for, a record of what he’s been doing at the store. I flip through it. The first page is a list of what he’s accomplished since he has arrived here. Enforced our agreement with Wenke to make all their products more visible, blah blah blah. Then a few printouts of all our timesheets. Then … taadaa … personnel files.
This is what he says about Tommy:
Tommy Waretka, store manager, was a former factory employee who would be more suited to that kind of work. He lacks the ambition and direction to become a general manager or to move up in the company. He ignores his directives and permits the employees to run the store. I have moved him from management and told him the move is only temporary, but would prefer a more ambitious manager be brought in to allow the store to perform more efficiently.
And another file.
Kenneth Prezda (Jughead’s real name) is a fairly responsible young man who lacks the social skills to operate Gas’n’Go. I would prefer to see him in a largely janitorial role, for which I feel he is better suited. Perhaps we could move him across town to the Wolsely store, and give him a job which requires no customer contact. T. Waretka was overpaying him by over a dollar an hour. I have rectified this.
Last but not least …
Jake Skowran is a former factory manager who feels he is above convenience store work. He is intelligent and, I believe, dangerous. I sense he might be friends with T. Waretka, which is the only reason he was hired, as far as I can tell. His customer service skills are limited and he dislikes authority. I believe he is a heavy drug user (he refused to be drug tested and created a scene at the clinic) and probably the drug boss of the neighborhood. I believe he is still selling drugs out of the store. I have told him to take a week off, and when he returns, I hope to have his job filled.
Well, Brecht just loved us, didn’t he? Right about the dangerous thing, though. Too bad no one will ever see these files. Or see Jughead’s pay reduction recommendation, which I also find. Or see Tommy’s demotion paper, which I also find. Or read Brecht’s paranoid fantasy about me being a drug boss. I shove all the files into the stack of newspapers, and put them by the door to run them down to the recycling center at 7 a.m. Then I head into the bathroom to take a piss, and see myself in the mirror.
I have about a thousand little flakes of pillow stuffing stuck in my hair.
Christ. I am covered in evidence. There are pillow-stuffing flakes everywhere. On the couch, by the doorway, on my raindrenched jacket. I look in the closet for the vacuum cleaner. Gone. Kelly took it with her, said I’d never use it anyway. I have another pillow, just like it. They were a set. I get a knife from the kitchen and cut the fabric on my second pillow, pull out a bit of stuffing. There, that explains that.
No, it doesn’t, I realize. They were A SET. One of my pillows is lying by the body of a murder victim, and the matching one is on my couch. Jesus, what was I thinking? I take the second pillow, throw it in a plastic bag, and set about picking up every microscopic flake of pillow stuffing I can find. Then I take a shower, and clean the small bits of stuffing out of the drain. Then I check the couch again, and again, and again. Each time I find a small fiber of pillow stuffing. This is how people get convicted. I need a damned vacuum cleaner.
At seven, I head down to the dump and throw all the files into the recycling bin. Then I buy a new Red Devil vacuum broom at K-mart, go over every last inch of the couch and the living room. Then I go to bed, and sleep the sleep of a man who has finished a job well done.
At about five in the afternoon, Karl, Gardocki’s henchman, comes to see me. “Get up,” he calls through the door. “Ken wants to see you.”
I open the door, cobwebs of a deep sleep still on my brain. “You gotta give me some warning when you’re coming over,” I tell him angrily. “You can’t keep waking me up like this.”
“You know how it works,” he says, henchmanlike, and goes back down to the SUV to wait for me.
As we’re driving out to the bar where I meet Gardocki, Karl asks, “So, you’re whackin’ people for Mr. G, eh?”
I say nothing. I just stare out the window. Is he offended because he wasn’t offered the job? Where did this guy come from? He’s not a factory worker, I know that. There’s something about him that just doesn’t fit in. Who winds up here if they’re not from here? This isn’t a place people come, it’s a place people leave, especially now the factory is gone.
“Where’re you from?” I ask.
He says nothing, just stares out the window.
Conversation isn’t happening. We drive the rest of the way in silence.
* * *
“Jeff Zorda tells me you asked him first,” I say, trying not to sound wounded, but rational. “That puts me in danger. You told me I was the only person you asked.”
Gardocki smiles and nods. Nothing rattles him. “I asked Jeff,” he says. Gardocki knows why I’m mad, and it has nothing to do with fear of discovery. It is comforting to be understood, even by someone who pays you to kill people. Especially by them.
We are back at the bar off a highway in the middle of nowhere, the bar with no name and a jukebox always playing country songs. The same five guys are playing pool. Ken and I are sitting in a booth away from everyone, and Karl has been sent off to join them. He looks over at us every now and then.
“Why?” I ask. I am almost whining. Gardocki smiles again.
“I mentioned it to him, and he was so enthusiastic about it, I knew I’d made a mistake. So I acted like I was only joking. Then he started acting like he was only joking, too. That’s when I decided I had to get someone different, someone like you.”
“Like me? What am I like?”
“Honest. Jeff’s a scumbag. You can’t cheat an honest man, but you can get him to kill people, if he’s angry enough. I wanted someone angry, broke, and honest.”
I am flattered again. Gardocki knows how to flatter me. “Anyway,” he says. “Let’s talk about New York.”
“Can you get me a silencer? I don’t like the gunshot noise. It’s dangerous, and it hurts my ears.”
He winces. “The factory was loud. What’d you do there?”
“I wore earplugs.”
“Wear earplugs, then.”
“There’s still the noise, though. People can hear it. I’d really like a silencer.” Besides, it’d be cool to have a silencer. Isn’t that what all hired killers had? What kind of gun-for-hire just walks around with a loud, crappy pistol?
“I’ll ask the guys out there. They’re going to give you a gun. But if they don’t have one, can you get one yourself?”
“I don’t know where to get a silencer. Do they sell them at K-mart?”
Ken shrugs. “Have you asked? They sell shotguns there.” We look at each other, and burst out laughing.
Being a hired killer, like anything else, has its lighter moments.
I go home, start making dinner, and the phone rings. It is Tommy, from the store.
“Jake, have you seen the news?”
“What news?”
“Turn on Channel Four.”
“I don’t have a TV.” I already know what this is about.
“Jake, man, Brecht got killed. In his hotel room.”
Okay, sound surprised. “Brecht? No …” No, don’t sound grief stricken, that would be too much. “No shit?”
“Someone killed him. Last night.”
“Jesus …” Go with shocked. And ask the questions someone who hadn’t committed the murder would ask. “Was it a robbery?”
“I don’t know. They just say it’s the second in two weeks. Peeping Tom Murders, they’re calling them. Remember Gardocki’s wife?”
“Someone was peeping in on Brecht?”
“I guess.” Tommy is watching the news, not paying much attention to me. Tommy doesn’t care at all about Brecht, probably breathed out a sigh of relief when he heard Brecht was dead. He wouldn’t say it, but he does say, “Jesus, I hope I’m not a suspect. I’ll tell you, Jake, I didn’t care too much for the guy.”
“Me either.”
“Well, that’s fucked up,” Tommy says. “Just thought you’d like to know.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Sure thing. You coming in Monday?”
“Seven p.m. sharp.”
“Come in at six thirty. Brecht started this new thing, we have to come in a half hour earlier now.”
“What time do you want me in?”
It suddenly occurs to Tommy that since Brecht is dead, none of his company directives have to be heeded. “I want you in at seven,” Tommy says cheerfully.
“Seven it is.” Tommy is the manager again.
I sit down to dinner and think about this guy I’m going to kill in New York. What did he do, to deserve having me come out there and kill him? Was he a Mafia squealer? I doubt it, because I’m sure they have their own guys to take care of such things. A wife beater, a thief, a drug dealer? Or someone like Brecht, a walking automaton from whom all humanity had been removed for the sake of personal success? I know asking questions about him would be wrong. Part of the job is discretion. One thing I do know is that if he had led a good life, nobody would be willing to shell out ten grand to have me kill him.
So I make up stuff about him. I decide he’s a wife-beating, thieving drug dealer who owned a corporation and laid everyone off so he could save himself a few dollars. He’s going to get it, all right. Right in the head, one shot.
