The Intern's Handbook: A Thriller

by Shane Kuhn

Easy, John.

  Dorothy:

  That is one possibility, John, so I am pursuing it. I can stop if you wish.

  Lago:

  No. Go ahead. I want to know.

  Dorothy:

  Okay. I do have some good news. Presuming I’m correct about all of this, when you were in the NICU, you were there with four other babies. From the time you were admitted to the time you were discharged, forty-seven people visited the unit. One of them might have come to visit you.

  Alice:

  Oh my God, John. One of them could have been your father.

  Lago:

  Interesting. Safe to say that if he did come to visit, he probably wasn’t the one that shot my mother. Whoever wanted her dead wanted me dead too.

  Dorothy:

  I would say that is a reasonable assessment.

  Alice:

  Do you have the actual names?

  Dorothy:

  Right here in my hot little hand. I have it narrowed down to forty or so strong possibilities. Of course, even if your father did visit, he might have used a false name to protect himself. So let’s not count our chickens just yet. Anyway, if these don’t work out, we can gather some more information and refine the search.

  Alice:

  John, this is so exciting.

  Dorothy:

  Now there’s no guarantee one of them is his father.

  Alice:

  I know but, if one of them is . . . Thank you, Dorothy.

  LAGO IS BREATHING FAST, SHALLOW.

  Alice:

  John, are you okay?

  Lago:

  I’m fine. Just a little overwhelmed.

  Dorothy:

  John, do you know anything at all about your father? Anything that might help us narrow down the list?

  Lago:

  Nothing. According to one of my social workers, my mother had a photo in her purse of her holding hands with a man. But the photo was covered in blood and they couldn’t make out who was with her.

  Alice:

  Do you have the photo?

  Dorothy:

  Yes, the photo could be helpful.

  Lago:

  I’m sorry. This is . . . I need some air.

  Alice:

  Wait, John. Don’t leave.

  PAUSE. SOUND OF ENTRY DOOR CLOSING.

  —END TRANSCRIPT—

  17

  * * *

  OKAY, NOW I AM FUCKING PISSED

  I just finished work and I’m up in Scarsdale, casing Bendini’s house. Actually, it’s more of a compound that sits on nearly thirty-five acres in one of the wealthiest areas on the eastern seaboard. Yeah, he’s a rich lawyer, but give me a fucking break. This is stupid money. As I sit waiting in a small school parking lot on a hill above Bendini’s house, my night vision specs reveal approximately twenty armed guards patrolling the grounds. I think back to the Scarface plan, and Bendini’s place is perfect for it. The grounds are too expansive for such a comparatively small security detail to cover it all. As long as I make it to the house without getting devoured by the man-eating dogs he has patrolling the grounds, I can create a big enough distraction to pave the way for me to creep in and have my way with Bendini. After that, I’ll kill him. Bob’s right. Ha, ha. My jokes do suck.

  A quiet walk around the perimeter of the house yields many disturbing revelations. In addition to the bodyguards roaming around, he does have many dogs, three iron fences—one with electrified razor wire, cameras up the wazoo—that’s Dr. Seuss’s word for “asshole”—and motion sensors covering every square inch of the property. If a housefly farts, the system will know it. But I like these little Rubik’s Cube problems. Makes the job interesting. Never underestimate the power of legit black ops to take your mind off your troubles. And don’t be afraid to tackle the biggest security systems. It doesn’t matter how much money someone puts into it, there is always a way in. Human beings are not capable of setting up a system with zero errors. They would have to be aliens with superior intelligence or Norwegians to pull that off. And Norwegians don’t even lock the doors to their own houses, so they’re out. Armed with a shitload of night vision photos and copies of Alice’s case files, I set up shop in a nearby diner and start to work out some ideas. That’s when I feel the gun in my back.

  “I’m gonna sit next to you and you’re gonna act like you’re really fucking happy to see me. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  He sits. Goombah. Pockmarked mug. I could cave his fucking pizza face in with one palm strike and watch his brains ooze out his eye sockets if I wanted to, but I’m interested in what he has to say.

  “What you got there?”

  He’s referring to my photos and schematics on the table.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Don’t be a fucking smart-ass. You want the back of my hand?”

  I’m trying very hard not to laugh.

  “Okay, sir, calm down. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “That’s more like it, you fucking pussy.”

  I want to feel his spine as I pull it out of the base of his skull.

  “What’s this all about?” I inquire innocently.

  “I’ll tell you what this is all about.”

  I see the other guy’s reflection flash in the chrome of the shake machine and—WHACK!—he hits me in the head with the butt of his pistol. The weight feels like a .357 snub. I go all Lebowski, sprawled out on the linoleum, dreaming of broads and bowling pins.

  When I wake up, I feel like I’ve spent a week in a Mexican whorehouse. My mouth tastes like blood and fish guts. There is a miniature donkey in my skull, kicking my eyeballs like piñatas. And for some reason my nuts are red-hot on fire. When they pull the greasy gasoline rag off my eyes, I see why. Goombahs have been Tazing my cash and prizes to get me to wake up.

  Okay, now I am fucking pissed.

  For some reason, I can take a beating anywhere else but in my junk. When I was in juvie, a kid kicked me in the nuts and I shanked him with a number 2 pencil. My sensitivity about my twig and berries probably stems from the innumerable molestation and full-blown rape attempts perpetrated by sweating, mouth-breathing foster fathers, uncles, grandpas, older brothers, and other trolls that the state put in charge of giving me a good Christian upbringing. You’ll note I said “attempts.” Many of those fine stewards of wayward youth ended up having to suck their government meat loaf through a straw. Anyway, I digress.

  “Oh, now the motherfucker is awake.”

  I’m duct-taped to a wooden chair in a room full of greasy meatballs wearing suits covered in luxury logos, like those poodle carriers you see babysitter mistresses toting around places like Beverly Hills and the Upper East Side. And the shoes! Who knew Gucci made ostrich loafers with a four-inch heel and a silver toe cap with an etching of the Virgin Mary? I missed that one at Fashion Week. I thought these Atlantic City dinosaurs had faded into pop culture lore, like Pet Rocks and dental dams.

  “Here’s the deal, fucko. We’re gonna ask you questions. You’re gonna give us answers. If we like your answers, we’ll be nice. If we don’t like your answers, we’ll fuck you up like you never been fucked up before in your life.”

  The rat-faced owner of the borrowed mobster dialogue gets in my mug and gives me a hard look.

  “Capisce?”

  I can’t help but laugh at “Capisce.” He backhands me and his pinky ring chips one of my teeth.

  “Is there anything else fucking funny that you would like to share with the rest of us?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Now we understand each other.”

  Another pork chop gets into my face. More pockmarks. Garlic and espresso breath. Guy smells like the inside of a rotting log.

  “Why you so interested in Frank Bendini?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Thump! This time I get a punch to the sternum. I was expecting the face, so I am momentarily paralyzed by the series of sickening palpitations that result from
my heart taking a punch in the face.

  “As you can see, asshole, I was not fond of that answer.”

  “Is this guy stupid or what?!” another one yells.

  I make a quick assessment of the room. It appears we are in the unfinished basement of what is undoubtedly a nondescript, working-class Jersey home typical of a gangster who is trying to move up but isn’t quite Tony Soprano yet. There are six of them, including the one in my face. There may be seven. I can’t tell if someone is standing in the shadows staring at me or if that’s Mama Luigi’s plastic Jesus lawn jockey that only comes out for the holidays. It’s weird. I thought for sure I saw someone in there, but when I blinked he was gone.

  Whack! I take a tasseled loafer to the shin. Fuck that smarts.

  “Are we boring you?”

  Raucous laughter. These assholes think they’re so fucking funny.

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Then tell me what the fuck you’re doing casing Bendini’s place. Since you ain’t a fucking eggplant, I’m guessing you weren’t there to steal his cuff links.”

  This brings the house down. I’m no longer amused.

  “Casing? I don’t understand what—”

  A loud buzzing sound, and my nuts are quivering and on fire. I scream in spite of myself. And I am immediately sorry I did, because showing pain to these guys is like showing Slim Jims to a fat kid. The more you scream, the more they get a hard-on for making you scream.

  “Okay. We’ve been nice long enough.”

  They show me a rusty rose pruner.

  “From now on, we take a finger for every wrong answer. You keep fucking with us and you’ll be finger-banging your sister with a stump.”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “Shh.”

  He presses a fat finger that smells like ass against my lips.

  “We know you’re on the make, dickhead. It’s our job to know these things. We found a lot of interesting shit in your car. We’re guessing you’re looking to whack the guy.”

  He pats me on the shoulder and puts my thumb between the blades of the rose pruner.

  “You know, losing a finger sucks. But losing a thumb . . . you go back to being a monkey again.”

  They laugh.

  “Shut the fuck up!” he yells.

  “So you guys work for Mr. Bendini I take it?”

  They laugh their asses off. I’ll take that as a yes.

  “Yeah, dumbass. We called him. Told him we caught a fucking rat. Said he was gonna drive over here to have a look. Which means you’re screwed ’cause he ain’t as nice as us.”

  Shit shit shit. Can you hear the ticking clock? Time to blow this lame-ass party before I blow my cover and the whole fucking gig. But let’s have a little fun first.

  “I’ll tell you what I know but you got to give me a cigarette.”

  One of them lights a cigarette and shoves it between my lips.

  “You guys ever see True Romance?”

  “Great fucking movie.” A chorus of agreement.

  How these morons ever got control of anything in this country is beyond me.

  “Remember the scene with Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper? The one where Hopper smokes a Chesterfield and tells Walken where Sicilians really come from?”

  Now I’m the only one laughing.

  “Yeah, Hopper took a fucking bullet in the head after he said it.”

  “I know. But it was so classic. He knew he was dead, so he just decided he was going to go out with a bang, insulting the shit out of one of the biggest mobsters in the city.”

  “What’s your point, dickhead?”

  “My point is this. You’re not even Sicilians. What you come from is much lower on the food chain. You’re the fucking grease spot that trickled down your mama’s ass and stained the gingham tablecloth.”

  “You wanna run your mouth? Let me open it for ya.”

  Fat face comes at my mouth with the rose pruners. But I’m already thinking two steps ahead as I fall back hard on the chair, splintering it. I am free of the chair except for the two jagged pieces of the chair arms that are still firmly duct taped to both of my wrists. I think it’s my lucky day as I shove the sharp stake strapped to my right wrist under fat face’s double chin, skewering his tongue and ripping through his soft palate into his brain. He jerks around on the floor like a bluefish that just got the hammer, bright red blood jetting in arterial spray from his mouth.

  Hands go to jackets for guns but I already have fat face’s gun and I use it to treat Slow Draw 1 and 2 to a bullet in the balls. They hit the ground, clutching what is left of their junk. Judging by the .45 hand cannon I lifted from fat face, there isn’t much to clutch. One of them lunges at me, and I finish him by breaking the other jagged chair arm duct taped to my left wrist off in his eye socket. Another fish on deck! Fire up the grill!

  And then there were two. One is smart. Takes cover first, then goes for his weapon. The other is trying to flick the safety off his Glock.

  “Allow me,” I say as I kick the gun out of his hand, catch it, and put two pills through his open mouth.

  “Did you say something?” I say with my hand to my ear.

  He gurgles and falls hard on his face. His teeth float out on the pool of blood that gushes out of his new suck hole.

  Oh yeah, the guy that took cover. He’s standing behind a water heater. I switch to the .45 and blow a hole in the canister, showering him with scalding water that turns his face and neck into an angry red blister. As he staggers out, I side kick him in the neck, crushing three of his cervical vertebrae, and dropping him like a sack of shit.

  “I think I’ll take that Chesterfield now.”

  I pick up my lit cigarette and take a long drag on it.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  Shit. Someone was in the dark. He steps out. Looks like a boss. He has the drop on me. Love that phrase. 1950s western style. Got the barrel of a Desert Eagle trained on my chest. Finally, a man with pistol training. But I don’t like my odds if I get hit by one of those bowling balls in the chamber.

  “Let me guess. Don’t try anything funny?”

  “Smart-ass. You know how long it’s gonna take me to replace all these dead greaseballs?”

  I laugh. I like this guy. But he’s going to shoot me.

  “Gun like that has a lot of kick.”

  “Not to worry. I can squeeze off two rounds and pattern them in the same hole. It just takes practice.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Not as impressive as what you just did.”

  “Actually, I’m a little off today.”

  He laughs. When someone laughs, they expel a shitload of air. Plus, he is a chain-smoker, as evidenced by his raspy voice. The air goes out, and for a few seconds, the body is slightly relaxed. This calms everything down. This is why snipers shoot on exhale. Steadies the hand. When he’s finished laughing, he will suck in a huge breath. This will expand his chest and make it difficult for him to shoot straight.

  He inhales. I exhale.

  I fire the .45 from my waist level so the only thing his brain has to react to is the motion below his sight line. If I had tried to raise it, I would be dead. The round hits him square in the Zegna belt buckle, splitting it and blowing a hole in his abdomen. Gut shot. Best I could do. I sit down hard on the floor when he fires. This is risky because he could hit me in the head. But trying a side move would be futile because when it leaves the barrel, a .50 caliber round is as big as a baby Portobello, and even an indirect hit in my chest spells catastrophic blood loss and tissue damage that the best trauma surgeon can’t fix on a good day.

  As I am falling, the lead mushroom from his gun whines past my right ear and puts a six-inch hole in the drywall behind me. When my butt hits concrete, my teeth make a loud clack and my .45 makes a loud bang. This time I have it raised and I fire my kill shot. I instantly see a smoking hole in his throat and I can tell by the way he collapses to the ground like a marionette on severed strings tha
t my lead mushroom severed his spinal cord, closing him down like last call. He slumps in a crooked heap against an avocado green washing machine and stares at me with dime-size pupils.

  “Why didn’t you just kill me when I was shooting your boys? You could have easily taken me out while I was distracted,” I say to his corpse.

  I know the answer: Lack of humility.

  * * *

  Rule #9: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

  To survive and be successful in this job, you don’t have to be that smart. You don’t have to be that tough, or tenacious, or have that killer instinct. Above all, you must be humble. When you are humble, you are like a sponge, taking in the world and letting it fill you with the knowledge of what is real. Pride and arrogance are a dry sponge. You learn nothing. You think you know everything when it’s not even possible to know everything. And then you’re the dumbass with the surprised look on your face when someone puts a bullet in you.

  If you ever ask a kung fu master who has been training for three decades how much he knows, he will always say, “A lot less than when I started.” That’s because when he started, he was a know-it-all, his master beat the shit out of him in ways he never dreamed possible, and then he knew that he was nothing but a blind, slow, ignorant slob. And the more he learned, the more he realized that there is too much to learn in anyone’s lifetime. And you mother-fuckers only have about ten years to perfect your craft while you are doing it. So, be the blank slate or you will have a blank stare on your face like Jimmy “hand cannon” Goombah over there, shitting his gabardine slacks.

  18

  * * *

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

  That night, as I nurse my wounds and swallow a drugstore of Vicodin, I decide that what Bob doesn’t know about my little field trip tonight won’t hurt him and I get into the business of formulating my endgame for Bendini. I’ll use the fact that my face looks like raw hamburger to my advantage. So I call the office and let Bendini’s assistant know that I was in a nasty car accident. This is the perfect excuse, because lawyers despise it when someone dents their fancy cars. They consider it an affront, an intentional act to destroy the only sliver of personality they have in this world. They figure if they are bald, fat, ugly, hairy, smelly, and suffer from acute micro phallus, as long as they drive a 7 series, 911, or Jag (even though it’s basically a Ford), they “still got it.” So if you mess with the only thing they truly love anymore, they will go all jihad on your ass.