Casual Friday

by Shane Kuhn

  But concentrating on that was a little hard, seeing as how Special K had abandoned ship and the whole crew was waiting to shoot the biggest scene of the movie. This was the scene wherein Peeka’s character would turn the tables on the assassin who had come to kill her and was disguised as a motivational speaker. It was actually a great scene that Peeka and I had written. The CEO of the fictitious company had hired the motivational speaker to come do his spiel to the executive core group as a team building exercise. The assassin’s surveillance rotation picked that up, and he decided he would replace the speaker—since no one at the company had actually seen the speaker before. So, in the scene, he shows up to the conference room, greets everyone, opens his briefcase, and instead of pulling out brochures with pictures of people climbing mountains, he pulls out an Uzi with a suppressor and opens fire, killing everyone in the room except for Peeka’s character, who had seen the reflection of the gun in the conference room windows and hit the deck. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you anything other than the fact that the gun battle and ensuing hand-to-hand fight between the assassin and Peeka’s character would have made Sam Peckinpah cringe.

  Speaking of which, that was the moment when I realized that film sets need a director or they immediately plunge into chaos. And that’s what began happening. The actors tried to direct themselves and the director of photography just rolled his eyes and waited for them to come to blows. Peeka wasn’t helping by telling everyone to shut the fuck up every five minutes and sneaking away to do lines of blow. The first AD tried his hand, but the actors just sneered at him like hungry zoo animals and drove him away with their contempt. So I stepped in.

  “All right, everyone! Listen up!”

  Heads turned and the place went deathly quiet.

  “Special K had to leave because he’s a total pussy. So, I’m going to finish the day as director until we find a replacement. You can all either listen and do your jobs and we’ll all be heroes to the studio, or you can act like assholes and perpetuate the stereotype that we’re all fucking useless compared to the almighty director. What’s it gonna be?”

  They mumbled a bit, but all departments started dialing in the scene and the actors listened to me like I was Moses leading them to the promised land of blockbuster hits. While I blocked the scene with the actors and the rest of my brain worked on Izzy’s execution scenario, I was getting extremely vexed with the actor who was supposed to be playing an assassin but who handled the gun like his first dick in prison. Evidently he had lied on his résumé about gun handling experience. Shocker! Not only was he going to have to wield one of the trickiest submachine guns ever made, but he was also going to have to fire about four hundred blanks out of it in order to match the tiny impact explosions of the plethora of squibs we’d planted on the conference room set. Problem was, this glorified game show host didn’t even know how to find the trigger.

  When I was just about to backhand him, the scene was ready for the rehearsal. Actors were in place, camera and sound were ready to roll, and Peeka was beaming with pride and admiration for me. I tried not to think about the fact that I would never see her again if I wasn’t watching one of her movies or catching a glimpse of her on a gossip rag at the grocery store.

  “Please excuse us for a quick conference,” she said to the crew and pulled me off the set.

  She kissed me and smiled.

  “You make me so hot. Mr. Take Charge, Motherfucker.”

  I kissed her back.

  “I’m going to miss you when this is all over,” I said, feeling a rogue tear track insolently down my cheek. I quickly slapped it away.

  “You’re not going anywhere . . .”

  She kissed me again. When we parted lips and returned to set, I saw Izzy’s thugs filing quietly into the studio. Shit, I thought, I never searched him for a phone. Rookie mistake. For a moment, I went numb. Then I started rolling through exit strategies. First, I would bolt out of the set, then make my way to Central America, then keep moving until I felt like my trail was faint enough to confuse Bob’s dogs. Then I lamented my bad luck with Peeka. Here I was, the one guy in a petri dish literally teeming with suitors, and she wanted to wear my chain.

  “Come on, rock star. Let’s blow these fuckers away,” Peeka said.

  This pulled me out of my defeatist daydream and that was when I had an Isaac Newton moment. An idea fell from the sky like a lead apple and coldcocked me. I smiled confidently, mostly for the thugs, but also for the actors waiting for the captain of the ship to bark orders.

  First, I told the increasingly nervous actor playing the motivational speaker that I myself would perform a live demo of the scene where he guns down the company’s entire board and then gets into a fierce gun battle with Peeka. Of course Peeka knew how to handle a gun, which made her even hotter to me. So, I called over the prop master and the weapons wrangler and told them we were going to fire blanks for the demo but that we could save the squibs for the real thing. While the weapons wrangler loaded up the five mags that the scene called for, I stole two mags and a box of blanks from his kit bag and took them with me to the bathroom for a little bit of customization, John Lago style.

  When I returned, everyone was set. The full scene required the actor to shoot and cycle through five mags. Each mag holds thirty-two rounds, so that’s a hundred and sixty rounds total. That included the gunfight with Peeka. So, I told the crew I was only going to do the first part, where the motivational speaker shoots the board members. That required two mags, or sixty-four rounds. I mixed my customized mags into the pile and pretended to choose those at random for the demo. I threw my mags into the briefcase with the Uzi, and everyone got into their A positions. The house lights went down, leaving only the set lights, the actors got into character, and I was suddenly transported into the script. Fantasy became reality in a surreal landscape that both excited and terrified me. What snapped me back into reality was the muffled sound of Izzy’s voice coming from inside his prison-trailer.

  “Get me the fuck out of here! We’re gonna kill that—”

  “Action!” I yelled.

  I threw my briefcase onto the conference table and delivered my line:

  “Lesson number one for success in the business world: always be a straight shooter.”

  With Izzy yelling in the background, and the thugs working the trailer door to get him out, I snapped open the briefcase, slapped in a mag, and opened fire.

  Keep in mind, I had to fire at the actors so that they could practice their death scenes. The tricky part was that each of my mags was filled with half blanks and half live rounds. The blanks were for the actors, and the live rounds were for Izzy and his men. But I couldn’t just shoot a few blanks, then raise my weapon to whack the thugs. The whole crew would have been privy to what was happening in a moment. To solve this problem, I had spaced the bullets and blanks in intermittent groupings of two. So, I would fire two blanks at actors and slip two rounds between them for Izzy and his men. An Uzi fires roughly six hundred rounds per minute at a rate of ten rounds per second. That’s how fast I was counting as I emptied mag number one and then slapped in mag number two.

  Since this whole thing went down at lightning speed, let’s do the slo-mo recap. When I first opened fire, two blanks popped in the general direction of the fictitious CEO. He jerked violently in his chair and fell back to the floor. The two live rounds after that hit one of Izzy’s men in the jaw and neck. He landed facedown on the cement floor and the gun in his jacket fired, blowing the hand off that was reaching for it. The second of Izzy’s five men saw his buddy go down and managed to pull his weapon. One of my Uzi rounds hit the barrel of his gun and filled his face with hot metal fragments, while the other ripped into his liver. He fell backward onto the front hitch on Izzy’s trailer and impaled himself on the hand crank. Meanwhile I almost started laughing out loud watching the actors overdo their death scenes in the foreground while the thugs
died quietly and for real in the background.

  Speaking of which, Izzy’s third thug managed to pop a round off at me, which buzzed past my ear and smashed into a huge light, which promptly exploded. Then I put two rounds into both of his eyes and he sat down dead on a director’s chair like a frustrated auteur. At that point, the exploding light set off a chain reaction in the electrical and all of the lights began to explode. While sparks flew, I saw Izzy’s last thug just as he opened the trailer door. My two Uzi pills blew his brains and half of his hand all over Izzy just as he was crossing the threshold. Just before the final light exploded and the set plunged into darkness and chaos, I put six live rounds into Izzy Katz’s face so his mama wouldn’t be able to bury him with an open casket.

  I dropped the Uzi and tried to find Peeka in the smoke and panic. She was long gone. Her entourage had whisked her away, leaving only the red scarf she had been deciding whether or not she wanted to wear in the scene, lying delicately on the empty conference table. It was slightly illuminated by the sliver of light coming from the exit at the far end of the studio. I gathered it up like a man trying to stop the bleeding and slipped out on that sliver of light. As I made my way to my extraction point—reveling in the completion of my first gig and what I felt was a triumph of life imitating art—the dusty orange glow of the Los Angeles afternoon was all that remained of my trial by fire.

  Fade the fuck out.

  Turn the page to read more about John Lago in

  THE INTERN’S HANDBOOK

  At the ripe old age of twenty-five, John Lago is already New York City’s most successful hit man. He’s also an intern at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, clocking eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all the grunt work actual employees are too lazy to do. Part confessional, part DIY manual, The Intern’s Handbook chronicles John’s final assignment, a twisted thrill ride in which he is pitted against the toughest—and sexiest—adversary he’s ever faced: Alice, an FBI agent assigned to take down the same law partner he’s been assigned to kill.

  Coming from Simon & Schuster April 2014

  United States Department of Justice

  Federal Bureau of Investigation

  * * *

  Washington, D.C. 20535

  Priority Memorandum

  ALL INFORMATION HEREIN IS CLASSIFIED

  To: All field agents

  From: William Cummings, director

  Subject: JOHN LAGO

  Case File #36-F42

  Age: 25

  Ht/Wt: 5' 10" / 175 lbs.

  Hair: Brown

  Eyes: Blue

  Whereabouts: Unknown

  The United States Department of Justice has issued a nationwide and international arrest warrant for John Lago. Lago is believed to be a senior operative in a network of contract assassins working within a shell organization known as “Human Resources, Inc.” Human Resources, Inc. (HR, Inc.), presents itself as a placement agency for office interns. However, it is believed that these interns are actually assassins trained to infiltrate multinational corporations and government agencies in order to eliminate heavily guarded executives and principal employees. The number of contract murders HR, Inc., is responsible for is unknown.

  This organization has been the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation. Our objective has been to identify and apprehend the head of HR, Inc., and its chief financiers, and effectively terminate all operations. Until recently, our audio and video surveillance efforts have yielded hundreds of hours of raw data, but no actionable evidence.

  Eighteen hours ago, we intercepted an electronic communication from suspect John Lago. It was addressed to several individuals believed to be new recruits at HR, Inc. It is titled The Intern’s Handbook and it appears to be an informal guide for assassins in training. In light of new evidence found in this document, I am placing a priority mandate on the investigation. A manhunt coordinated by the FBI and CIA is under way. The Intern’s Handbook is included in this case file as mandatory reading for field agents pursuing suspect Lago.

  As he is now the focus of this investigation, I am also providing transcripts from audio and video surveillance tapes in which Lago is a subject. We are attempting to identify the victims and associates referred to in the transcripts, whose names were previously censored. Any persons known to be in contact with Lago are now suspects or material witnesses and should be brought in for questioning.

  It is my hope that this case file will facilitate Lago’s capture before more lives are lost.

  Best of luck and Godspeed.

  —William Cummings, director

  SUSPECT JOHN LAGO IS CONSIDERED ARMED AND VERY DANGEROUS. FIELD AGENTS ARE REQUIRED TO FOLLOW STRICT PROTOCOLS AND ONLY ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND HIM WITH A FULL STRIKE TEAM AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT BACKUP.

  1

  IT’S THE HARD-KNOCK LIFE

  If you’re reading this, you’re a new employee at Human Resources, Inc. Congratulations. And condolences. At the very least, you’re embarking on a career that you will never be able to describe as dull. You’ll go to interesting places. You’ll meet unique and stimulating people from all walks of life. And kill them. You’ll make a lot of money, but that will mean nothing to you after the first job. Assassination, no matter how easy it looks in the movies, is the most difficult, stressful, and lonely profession on the planet. From this point on, whenever you hear someone bitch about his job, it will take every fiber of your being to keep from laughing in his face. This work isn’t for everyone. Most of you are going to find that out the hard way because you’ll be dead by the end of the month. And that’s still just the training phase.

  If you’re having second thoughts, that’s a natural reaction. The idea of killing people for a living is what second thoughts were made for. In response to all of your questions regarding whether or not you’ll feel bad, lose your nerve, live in constant fear, or even want to kill yourself, I can provide one simple answer: yes. All of your worst nightmares will come true in ways you never imagined. And either you’ll get over it, or you’ll be gargling buckshot. Either way, you’re covered.

  When you reach your darkest hour—which will arrive daily—take comfort in the fact that you never really had much of a choice in the matter. Like me, you’re gutter spawn, a Dumpster baby with a broken beer bottle for a pacifier. We’ve been described as “disenfranchised.” Our diagnosis was “failure to thrive.” We were tossed from county homes to foster homes to psych wards to juvenile detention centers—wards of the state with pink-slip parents and a permanent spot in line behind the eight ball. Little Orphan Annie would have been our homegirl. So, what were you going to do with your life, starve on minimum wage, greeting herds of human cattle at Wal-Mart? Sell your ass to Japanese businessmen? Peddle meth to middle school kids? I think not. For the first time, you’re going to be able to take advantage of being a disadvantaged youth because everyone knows that orphans make the best assassins. Try humming “It’s the Hard-knock Life” while you empty a fifteen-round Beretta mag into Daddy Warbucks’s limousine and you’ll see just how sweet revenge can be.

  If you’re reading this, you are a born killer and the people that recruited you know that. You have all the qualifications. First off, you’ve never been loved, so you feel no empathy for loss. To experience loss, you have to have had something to lose in the first place. Since love is the most important thing you can ever feel, and you’ve never felt it, then you are bereft of just about every emotion except anger.

  And let’s talk about anger. Have you ever heard of Intermittent Explosive Disorder? Even if you haven’t heard of it, you’ve experienced it. It’s that blinding, uncontrollable rage that turns you into a violent, sometimes homicidal, maniac. Maybe you beat your foster brother half to death for drinking the last Pepsi. Or maybe you fully unleashed it on your juvie cell mate and granted him an early release in a body bag. All the social workers, corrections
counselors, and psych doctors, with their nicotine-stained fingers and permanent caffeine twitch, have classified you as dangerously antisocial with a footnote about how you have nothing constructive to offer society. But at Human Resources, Inc., everything that made you a pariah will now make you a professional.

  Now let’s talk about brains. You’ve been kicked, thrown, and dragged out of every school you ever attended. But if you’re reading this, you are of genius level intelligence, even though you probably beat the shit out of every bumper sticker honor student in your town. How else would you have survived? Only someone with wits beyond her years can stay alive when the whole world thinks she’d be better off dead. You’re at the top of the evolutionary food chain, adapting to things in ways that would have made Charles Darwin soil his Harris tweeds.

  ———

  Finally, you may have noticed you have some extraordinary physical abilities. I’m not talking about superpowers, for those of you whose only male role models came from a comic book rack. If you had been raised by something other than wolves, you might have played football or basketball or earned your black belt in something. You would have excelled because you are stronger, faster, and more agile than the average person. Your reflexes are like lightning and your field of vision captures everything down to the finest detail. Incidentally, that’s why you avoid crowds. Simultaneously concentrating on every movement made by hundreds of people is not only overwhelming, but it also makes you hate humanity even more than you did before. Bottom line: you did not choose this career, it chose you.