Zero at the Bone

by Jane Seville

  But he’d come back pretty quick. Tried to get D to talk to him. Asked his name, told him his own. Tried to engage him in fucking conversation. D had heard plenty of begging and crying and swearing and bargaining, but he hadn’t ever been on the receiving end of some guy’s college psychology courses.

  Now D wondered why he’d thought Francisco would be a pussy. Guy had the balls to testify against the brothers. He had to have at least a little lead in his pencil to do that, knowing what it’d earn him, namely a one-way ticket to Witness Protection and a lifetime of looking over his shoulder.

  He’d been all set to do it. Spent two days talking himself through it so he wouldn’t have to engage his brain when he got here, hoping that’d get him past. Just sit the guy down, pump a couple rounds into him, close your eyes if you have to, and leave. He’d done it dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe. This wouldn’t be no different.

  But it was different, and there was no use pretending otherwise. He was used to killing people who’d earned the kind of death he brought them. He’d even come to think of it as his contribution to society. Cleaning up the scum. People who’d killed, raped, hurt, stolen. Bad people. But Francisco, he wasn’t bad people.

  You don’t do it, you know what’s gonna happen. They ain’t gonna even bother sendin’ them photos to nobody. They’ll just come after you guns blazin’, and Francisco too. Probly got a couple on yer tail already, just ta make sure ya do the job ’cause they know you ain’t so keen on it.

  So why’d they pick you in the first place?

  That was the question he couldn’t get out of his mind. The brothers had gone to considerable effort to get him to carry out this hit, even going so far as to tail him for months. There were dozens of other professionals who would have taken Francisco out without batting an eyelash or losing one minute of sleep. They knew D wasn’t one of those types. So why him?

  Maybe they just wanted ta pop yer cherry and make ya kill an innocent man so’s it’s easier next time. Maybe they’re gentlin’ you inta executions like you’d break a horse ta the saddle.

  That just brought him back around to the sleep-killing idea that Josey might somehow have engineered all this. She’d made no secret of the fact that D’s disinclination to carry out certain hits was a burden to her. Maybe she just wants ta make me do it. Maybe she’s sick a my bullshit. Maybe she knows….

  He couldn’t go near that, though. Cain’t be. If she knew, I’d already be dead.

  Now here was Francisco, thinking he understood a damned thing. “Guess they’d be mad if you don’t kill me,” he’d just said, like he’d discovered some earth-shattering revelation of the goddamned universe.

  Mad, sure. The brothers will stomp their feet and say “Curses, foiled again” and then throw up their hands in surrender. “Guess we cain’t stop Francisco from sendin’ us to the hoosegow,” they’d say, and sit back and wait to get hauled away.

  Mad. Mad like a hornet’s nest gets stepped on. Mad like a fuckin’ hurricane, and that’s about how strong they’d come after him. Not him… them. ’Cause if he decided not ta kill Francisco, he couldn’t leave him here. They’d just send somebody else.

  That’s what they always do, a quiet voice, a familiar voice, whispered to him. You won’t kill no innocent folks, so they just send somebody else. Never bothered you before.

  That wasn’t true. Not by a long shot. But this was different, anyhow. He ain’t never had a gun in no one’s face and then spared their life. In the sparing was the keeping, and if he wasn’t gonna do Francisco himself, then no one else was gonna do him neither.

  If you don’t do him, yer gonna hafta run. And yer gonna hafta take him with you, ’cause he ain’t gonna last two days once the brothers realize he’s still breathin’ and you took off.

  Fuckin’ Francisco. Couldn’t he have been an irritating, snot-nosed fool who’d have gotten down on his knees and begged D to spare his sorry-ass life? Couldn’t he have been a jerk-ass fucker who secretly strangled kittens or something? If he had been, maybe D could have pulled that trigger.

  Just do it. Fuckin’ do it. You can live with it. You cain’t live with what’ll happen if you don’t, and that ain’t no figure a speech. Only takes a second. Two shots. Shut them eyes a his lookin’ at you like they see through ta yer bones. Fucker; why does he keep lookin’ at me like that? Most folks look away. Look at the floor, at the ceiling, at their own hands, anywhere but at me. Biggest damned eyes I ever saw on any man, and bluer’n the sky down in Bryce Canyon. Big enough ta hold all the life in him so’s I can see it, the life they want me ta take, the life I’ll hafta stand here and watch leave him. Stupid motherfuckers killin’ their own and makin’ me clean up for ’em like they fuckin’ branded me.

  D sighed. It chapped his ass something fierce, but there was no choice.

  ~~~~~

  “You ain’t got no idea, doc,” HAL mumbled. Then, to Jack’s amazement, he reached up and removed his sunglasses. He shut his eyes before Jack could even see what color they were, his brow furrowing. With his free hand he pinched the bridge of his nose, like he was getting a headache. He sat like that for a few long moments. Jack felt like his senses were amplified, honed into hypersensitivity by the gun still grasped in HAL’s right hand. He was aware of the hum of his air-conditioning, the stickiness of his damp skin where it rested against the leather chair, the rustle of HAL’s clothes against the couch cushions, and the faint sound of cars passing and kids playing.

  People are living out there. How can they? I’m in here with some kind of hired assassin and he has a gun with which he might shoot me at any moment and meanwhile, people are driving to the grocery store and screwing each other and cooking meals and watching fucking Oprah.

  HAL dropped his hand and stood up. Jack managed not to recoil as he met the eyes of his would-be killer for the first time. Without the sunglasses, the machine quality was gone and he just looked like… a man. A man with strong, high cheekbones and brown eyes that might have been warm had they not been filled with such flat resignation.

  He sighed, the sigh of a man about to shoulder a heavy load. “Get up, Francisco,” he said.

  Somehow, Jack peeled himself out of the chair and stood up. His legs felt like Jell-O. “Want to look me in the eye when you shoot me?” he said.

  The killer gave him a little head shake that clearly said God, the idiots I have to deal with. “Pack a bag.”

  Jack blinked. “A… a bag?”

  “Yer comin’ with me.”

  “The hell I am!”

  HAL raised the gun again. “You forgettin’ who’s in charge here?”

  “Look, if you’re not going to shoot me, just get the hell out of my house and we’ll forget it ever happened.”

  The man shook his head again like he couldn’t believe Jack’s stupidity. “You think the brothers’ll forget? I don’t kill ya, they’ll send someone else who will, probly someone who’ll do it slow ‘n’ messy.”

  “The program will move me again. They won’t find me.”

  “They found ya here. They’ll find ya again.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “D’you have a fuckin’ death wish?” HAL hissed at him. “Those fuckers are gonna come after me fer not killin’ you, and they’re gonna come after you fer not bein’ dead yet, and no one can protect you from them! No one, ya hear? Not the Marshals, not the police, not the goddamned Neighborhood Watch! Yer only shot is ta stick with me!”

  Jack blinked, not sure if he was hearing what he thought he was hearing. “What, you’re saying that… now you want to protect me?”

  “You wanna live? You gotta come with me. Is what I’m sayin'.”

  “You must be out of your mind if you think I’m going to trust you!” Jack shouted.

  HAL seized Jack’s shirt and yanked him forward until they were chest-to-chest, the gun barrel pressed underneath the shelf of Jack’s chin. Jack stiffened but didn’t drop the man’s gaze. “You don’t gotta trust me.
You just gotta do what I fuckin’ say. Now. Pack. A. Bag.”

  ~~~~~

  D paced in Francisco’s living room, smoking. The man was a goddamned caution. Giving him lip when he’d be better advised to just hop to. Thinking the damned Witness Protection Program would save his lily-white ass. D wondered what Francisco would say if he told him that the brothers had probably learned of his location by buying the information off someone in the Marshals’ office.

  Take Francisco’s car. Probly got somebody watchin’ the house. Since I come in the back, hopefully they don’t know I’m here. We leave in his car, me ducked down, maybe they jus’ think he’s goin’ out fer groceries or somethin’. Gotta try ‘n’ get a head start.

  A head start to where? D had no idea where to go next. None of his usual safe places felt safe at all. The brothers probably knew about them if they’d been tailing him, or they could pound the information out of Josey. He thought back to hidey-holes he hadn’t used in a long time, places no one else knew about, weighing their relative tactical merits.

  He could hear Francisco thumping about upstairs. He heard something fall and break, and Francisco’s angry “Goddammit!”

  Yer an idiot, lettin’ him pack alone. He could hide a gun or a knife or God knows what else in his bag, ambush you in yer sleep. Which was true. In a way, D half-hoped that Francisco would try something like that. At least it’d tell him what kind of man he was dealing with. One that’d offer his jugular to the alpha dog? Or one that’d bite at his neck to challenge him?

  The man came half-tumbling down the stairs, looking frazzled and carrying a backpack over his shoulder. “Okay. I packed a goddamned bag. Satisfied?”

  D crushed out his cigarette into the carpet. “I’ll be satisfied we get five hours distant. Let’s go. Take yer car.”

  ~~~~~

  Jack backed out of the driveway, D hunkered down in the backseat so that any observers couldn’t see him. “All right, where are we going?” he asked.

  “Head north outta town.”

  “Whatever.” He drove quietly, being careful not to speed or run any red lights. The thought occurred that he could probably manage to flag a cop, or signal someone for help… but to what end? What help could be offered? And did he really need help? He wasn’t being kidnapped, exactly.

  I’m on the lam, he thought crazily. On the lam with a hired killer who was supposed to execute me. What’s next? A femme fatale? A car chase? Maybe we’ll have a showdown in some abandoned warehouse like in some half-assed action movie they’d show on TNT on a Saturday afternoon.

  Jack shook his head in amazement. Actually, if this were a movie, you’d be a beautiful woman and you’d be sleeping with HAL by the second act.

  “Check if anyone’s following us,” HAL said from the backseat.

  “How do I know that?”

  “Uh… look in the rearview mirror.” Jack was getting a little tired of the subtextual dumbass that seemed appended to most of HAL’s statements. And he was getting really tired of thinking of the man as HAL.

  He kept a close eye on his mirrors for a few minutes. “No one’s following us.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  HAL sat up, then peered over the dash. “Gotta stop ‘n’ get gas.”

  Jack pulled into the nearest gas station. He was just about to swipe his debit card in the pump when he felt a hand on his arm. “Cash. Pay cash. Cain’t leave no trail.” Dumbass.

  “I don’t have any cash.”

  HAL sighed wearily. “I got cash.”

  Jack watched his unlikely companion return after paying for the gas, bearing two bottles of water. “Lemme drive,” he said.

  Jack gladly gave up the driver’s seat and buckled himself in. He uncapped his water bottle and HAL’s, setting them in the cup holders. HAL glanced at him. “Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised at this miniscule courtesy.

  “Thanks for not shooting me.”

  HAL snorted as they pulled back onto the road. “I’d say no problem, but the truth is that it’s a real big fuckin’ problem.”

  They drove in silence for a few miles. “So now will you tell me your name?” Jack asked. “I can’t just keep calling you HAL.”

  He frowned. “Why would ya call me Hal?”

  “Long story. So? You know my name. Give it up.”

  “Less ya know about me, the better.”

  Jack shrugged. “Fine. Long as you don’t mind being addressed as ‘hey, you.’”

  Beat. Sigh. “Call me D.”

  “D?”

  “You asked my name, I told ya.”

  “Yeah, it’s just that… well, most of the time in names, D is followed by some more letters. Like –onald, or –avid.”

  D stared at him for a few seconds, then seemed to relax. “D’s good enough.”

  Jack nodded. “Nice to meet you, D.”

  Chapter Three

  Jack said nothing as D drove in what seemed like aimless, meandering circles around the Vegas suburbs, taking his time and turning randomly right and left, doubling back on himself. His eyes were alert; Jack suspected he was still watching for someone following them.

  Finally, D pulled into an alley behind a strip mall and parked the car. He reached into the backseat, pulled a laptop out of his messenger bag and booted up, balancing the thing on his knees. Jack tried to look nonchalant and unconcerned, as if he parked in alleys with hired killers every day of the week and this was nothing new.

  He glanced over at D’s laptop screen. Looked like Google Maps. “Uh… what are you doing?” he finally asked, when it became clear that D was not going to volunteer this information.

  “Gotta get new plates fer this car,” D muttered. The words were given up grudgingly, resentful at having to taste air to explain D’s actions.

  Jack frowned. “How? Don’t think they sell those on Amazon.”

  That earned him a withering sidelong glance. “Hafta steal a set.” Dumbass.

  “Oh.” He supposed he ought to feel uneasy at the thought of perpetuating petty theft, but after witnessing one murder and almost starring in another, he couldn’t quite work up any indignation over a set of license plates. License plates…. A light bulb went off in Jack’s head. “Wait! I know this! Airport long-term parking, right?”

  D sighed. “Ya watch too many movies.”

  “That isn’t right?”

  The black HAL lenses of D’s sunglasses swiveled toward him. “When ya leave airport parking, ya gotta pay the guy ta get out. Might remember somebody who came in and then came right back out again. Cain’t afford ta get noticed.” He turned back to the laptop.

  “So… what are you looking for? The License Plates Store on eBay?”

  A half-smile crept onto D’s face. “Nope. Found somethin’ better.”

  ~~~~~

  “You’re kidding.” Jack looked around, confused, as they pulled into the nursing home’s parking lot. D drove around to the back, away from the visitor parking. He parked Jack’s nondescript Witness Protection-issue Ford Taurus and got out. After a moment’s hesitation (petty theft) Jack followed him. “A nursing home?”

  D ignored him, his head turning back and forth as he surveyed the cars. Jack suddenly realized that these were the cars that belonged to the home’s residents. Most of them were Old People Cars: sizable sedans, stolid and sedate, none of them too new. This parking lot felt neglected; many cars had dead leaves and other detritus piled around their tires and rain-dust streaking their windows. The back of the nursing home was secluded and not visible from the street; they were alone. Suddenly D stopped and his chin tilted down; he zeroed in on one car like a hunting dog pointing at a kill. “That one,” he muttered, nodding toward a nearby Toyota.

  “Why this one?” Jack whispered, feeling conspicuous but following D to the car.

  “Dusty like it ain’t moved in awhile.”

  Jack tugged on D’s sleeve. “No, this one’s better,” he said, pointing to a Buick sedan a few cars
down.

  D hesitated. “Why?”

  “The tags are six months expired. I don’t think anyone’s driving it at all.”

  The HAL lenses rested on Jack’s face for a beat, and then D nodded. “All right,” was all he said, but Jack detected (or hoped he detected) a note of admiration for Jack’s deduction. Maybe I could be a ninja assassin too, Jack thought.

  D took a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, crouched by the Buick, and had the plates off in a few quick twists, then went around to the front and repeated the procedure.

  They went back to Jack’s car and D swapped out the plates, carefully peeling Jack’s current registration tags off his plates and putting them on the stolen ones, then tossed Jack’s plates in the trunk. “Shouldn’t we put those on the Buick?” Jack asked.

  D looked at him like he was crazy. “Why’n hell would we do that?”

  “Well… no one would notice wrong plates on the Buick, but no plates might stick out.”

  “Look round,” D said, impatiently. “Folks don’t come back here much; by the time anyone sees we be long gone. Besides, we put yer plates on this car, if it gets reported they’ll know we was here, and they’ll know what plates we got!”

  Jack nodded, feeling like he deserved that particular dumbass. “Right. Sure.”

  Back in the car, he said nothing as D drove out of town. As they put Vegas in their rearview mirror, the adrenaline began to leave Jack’s body and he slumped against the passenger door, his head aching and his muscles twitching. In the past few hours he’d gone from the safe (albeit dull) life of a protected witness to being on the lam with a man who’d come to his house to kill him. A man who, it seemed, had decided not to kill him but couldn’t be bothered to actually talk to him. It yanked all the moorings out from beneath his feet when he could see no more of his future than he could of the highway ahead. “Where are we going?” he finally asked.