The Humanist

by Kenneth James Allen

  “I’ll take it. How much?”

  “For you...two large.”

  I coughed. Loudly.

  “Look,” I said. “I appreciate the sentimentality, but I’m not paying sentimentality prices, if you get my drift.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ve got fifty buck hunting knives if you just want to slit a deer’s throat.”

  Sheesh. A hunting knife. It didn’t feel right, didn’t feel like something they would purchase, own, or use. Why was this harder than it should be? Buy a knife. Stick it in someone’s heart. Do A. Do B. Get result. Easy as that.

  I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “But I’m only paying a grand.”

  “Do I look like a charity to you?”

  “My love, I thought we had something. I thought there was something between us.”

  She chewed her lip. “Fourteen hundred.”

  I nodded.

  “And,” she continued, “you come back here. Two fingers this time.”

  I threw my head back. “Fine!” The things I do. “But there are a few other things as well.”

  “Oh, really? What other things.”

  I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder in case a customer had silently slipped into the store.

  “I’ll need a receipt for that.”

  “And?”

  “And I want it backdated...I don’t know, maybe, six months?”

  She turned as if caught off guard. “What sort of shit are you involving me in here?”

  I looked down, ashamed. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “Look, I don’t mind the dubious stuff. Spent time here and there. But you’ve piqued my interest.”

  “Listen, I really think it’s best you don’t know.”

  “Nothing you can tell me? Come on?”

  Her eyes drooped at the sides. She was desperate.

  “Well, there is one more thing. Maybe this gives it away.”

  She looked in expectantly.

  “Some cops may come in asking about this knife.” I pulled out my phone and pulled up an image. “If they show you some photos, I want you to tell them this guy bought it.”

  “That guy? Really?”

  I nodded.

  “He doesn’t look like someone who’d use that knife.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just say he did it.”

  She looked me up and down. She was contemplating playing along. I could see it in her face. Worst case, she would throw me under the bus, which would be fine, I guess. She didn’t know who I was, anyway. Besides, I look like more than half the population. They wouldn’t be able to track me down with her information.

  “I said two fingers, right?” she asked.

  I looked at her.

  She grinned. “Better make it three.”

  Chapter 28

  I sat on the bench seat and stared at the door. I was on my third beer. She was late. My hands shook as I noted three missed calls and four unanswered emails from Tealson.

  I had found a target. His family—a wife, a son, a daughter—were to become collateral damage. I knew where they lived. I knew where they holidayed. Social media was a gem. I even knew they owned two Maltese pure breeds named Cookie and Penny. I knew what their lounge looked like, the fact they had a deck overlooking a pool. I knew where they ate, what they ate.

  I had a weapon, the object that would do the job. The cover story seemed solid. I had the pawn shop owner on my side. At least she better be, after what I did for her. I tried to picture myself using the fighting knife to slit a throat or puncture a chest. I prayed the liquid from Talon would do the trick, that it would wipe them out before I had to, that my part in the physical murder was purely for the story that forensics would piece together.

  I had the means and opportunity. There was only one thing missing: motive. Why would someone on the verge of success do something as horrible as murder his whole family? Not to mention the two dogs. No, scrap that—not the dogs. I wasn’t a complete animal. I didn’t think a mental snap would be enough. PTSD? Some military-related incident coming back to haunt him? No. An argument that got out of hand? Maybe. It was a start. But it needed to be more. He needed out. Domestic abuse? No one would believe it. Besides, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to back it up.

  My thoughts led me to the diner and to a meeting with Sonja. I put my head down on the table while I waited. I needed to get a move on. Time was short. Lots needed to get done. I wished for it to be over with already. That the day was D-day plus one. That everything was in the rear-view mirror, and I was accelerating away from it at breakneck speed.

  A beer bottle plunked down on the table aroused me. I looked up. Sonja was there, drinking a beer, watching me. I didn’t even hear her come in, let alone slide into the booth.

  “You all right, there, sleeping beauty?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I was just thinking.”

  She took another swig. “Didn’t look that way to me.”

  “I don’t give a shit what it looked like!”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “How long have you been there?”

  She shrugged. “What matters is I’m here now.”

  Then I noticed it. A half dozen beer bottles lined up on the table against the wall.

  “Jesus,” I exhaled.

  “Yeah, yeah. Now, what are you bothering me now for?”

  “Did you drink those?” I asked incredulously.

  “Do you know how busy I am?”

  “Like, all of them? How long have you been here?”

  Another swig. “Not everything is as it seems.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not supporting your drinking habit.”

  “You can afford it.”

  “So can you!” I threw back at her.

  She sat back and smirked, somewhat satisfied I had snapped back at her.

  “Why am I here? Why have you called on me? Why have you interrupted my slumber?”

  “Because I need you.”

  “No shit,” she said, sitting back, disinterest flooded her features. “You always call on me when you don’t know what to do. Sometimes, I wonder about you.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve gotten myself into something.” I contemplated how much I should tell her.

  “And how may my brilliance service your excellency today?” She slowly bowed her head.

  I took a deep lungful of air. Then I told her everything. The request (or more correctly, the orders) from Talon, the threats, the drugs. I told her about the target. What that meant for Oliva. What that meant for me. The fact I had the future murder weapon in my pocket.

  She looked at me blankly. Was she bored?

  “Why don’t you just shoot them? Or poison them? Save you the heartache.”

  I told her my thoughts on why that couldn’t work.

  “So, conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “What are you, a cop?”

  “No,” she defended. “Are you?”

  I sat back. “No, shit, of course not.”

  “Why do you keep dragging me into your shit?”

  “I...I don’t know who else.” I looked down at the table.

  She finished her beer. Another one magically appeared in front of her. She thanked the waitress, who removed one empty bottle without uttering a single word.

  “Well,” she said, “we are connected in so many ways. So, I guess, if you wanted to go down this route, then we are really in this together. But what exactly are you asking me to do?”

  Motive. I had the what. I just didn’t have the who.

  “I need to find someone,” I said. A person close to the target. Ideally single. Someone who my target could have an affair with.”

  She pulled out her phone and tapped away. She swigged her beer while she read, and then kept going. I waited. I looked around the diner. Nothing had changed. There was an overweight guy eating eggs at the counter, his big rig out front. An elderly couple sat at a table, pointing to a map, their caravan parked under the awning. The waitr
ess noiselessly did laps of the establishment, filling coffee cups, tending to bills. I could make out part of Sonja’s bike through the glass doors. I heard something that resembled music, but it was too faint to figure out what it was. Maybe something from the eighties or early nineties. Whatever it was, a crackle interrupted the song every few seconds, like the signal was just out of reach and the antenna only caught it if the wind blew just right.

  “There,” Sonja said at last. “Isabelle Chalmers. Don’t know why that took me so long. I think I was making it harder than it should have been.”

  “Great. Who’s Isabelle Chalmers?”

  “Intern in his office. Young. Pretty. Unattached.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, good.”

  “Should we make it look like some sort of suicide pact?” she queried.

  “Whatever it looks like...I need you to create a trail. Text messages between the two. Say, for six months. Flirting, sexting, I don’t care, just make it believable.”

  “What about pics? Can I send pics? Everyone is doing it.”

  I rubbed my head. “Sure, whatever.”

  “Because I can, like, photoshop their heads on naked bodies and shit.”

  “Fine!” I hushed.

  She looked at me as she swigged her beer. There was a gleam in her eyes—a surreptitious wink. She leaned forward. “You know you have to kill her too, right?”

  I sighed. She was right. She was always right.

  “I guess,” I said, resigned.

  “No! Not ‘guess.’ This won’t work if she’s alive. She can deny it six ways from Sunday. Plus, there’s no other evidence to suggest anything between them. Besides, I can’t add something to her phone bill from six months ago, it wouldn’t line up. If they look too hard, someone is bound to spot it. If she were alive, they would undoubtedly check.”

  I stared at her, but she faded into the seat. My mind was deep in thought, too deep in thought. Task. Business transaction. Needed to keep my mind off the emotive and keep it entirely in the rational. It was my only chance at pulling off any of this stuff.

  “You’re gonna see it through, right?” Her voice was soft, soothing, hypnotic...convincing. “I mean, I don’t want to do all this shit and then find out you didn’t have the cajones to go through with it.”

  I wondered if it took balls to kill someone, or a psychotic ailment, like a depersonalization disorder. I’d like to think in the moment I could get there. In fact, I was banking on it.

  “It’ll happen. It has to happen.”

  “I see,” she said, skeptically. “So, when are you planning on doing the deed?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Well, that doesn’t leave us any time.”

  “No,” I said. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Best be on my way.” She stared at me.

  I stared back.

  She cleared her throat.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  She held out a hand.

  “Oh, sorry.” I reached inside my jacket and pulled out a thick envelope and slid it across the table.

  She stuffed it into her jacket, zipped it up, and scooted off the bench, helmet in one hand, finishing the beer with her other.

  “Hey,” I said. “Is there any way the app can send out a group announcement?”

  “Sure is,” she said. “It’s in the app. You’ll find it.”

  “Right.” I stared off again, lost in thought again.

  “Listen. When it comes down to it, when it’s time, just pretend they don’t exist. It’s easy to kill someone who isn’t really there.”

  She always knew what to say.

  Chapter 29

  I gaze at Taylor.

  “D-day. This was it. I had acquired the target—which was you, by the way, just in case you were thinking this was about something else. I got the weapon, and the back story was clean. Sonja had found the fake love interest, and she was ready to upload texts to mobile devices. A bottle of champagne chilled in my fridge at home. It was all set.”

  He seems very uncomfortable in his chair. His face is going red. Looks like he’s just run a half marathon. Sweat beads on his forehead, and, with his hands still locked to the table, he attempts to dab it with his shoulder.

  “My God, man, are you okay?”

  He mumbles a reply. I can’t understand it.

  “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

  “I said, ‘So many innocent people.’”

  “But, of course. What’s that expression? Something about breaking eggs to make an omelet? No, that’s not it. Shells in the yolk? Nope. Whatever it is, whatever metaphor you want, as sad and as dark and as depressing as it may be, that’s what was required. One doesn’t magically become two. You need to add something to it.” I looked down. “Or, I guess, you could subtract a negative number. I suppose mathematically that’s correct.” I snapped my head up. “But that doesn’t make any sense here.”

  I can see he’s not focusing.

  “Grant. Grant? Grant! Listen to me. Stay with me man, we’re almost there. We’re so close to the end. But I’m here with you for this one. We’ll step through it together. You and me. So, you know. You know everything I went through to accomplish what I needed to accomplish. And at the end, there will be no more or no less—it’ll just be.”

  More mumbles.

  “I’m sorry, Grant, but you must speak up. It’s really getting on my nerves, you know?”

  “I just don’t understand why it was me, why it was my family.”

  I stand up. The chair vanishes from under me, sliding backward. “Jesus, Grant! Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been telling you?” I lean on the table, my palms flat. “It had to be you. There was no one else.”

  Taylor moves his hands in circular motions. It looks like he’s running a finger over the table, as far as his constraints will allow him. Maybe it helps him think, or maybe it’s a nervous tick, something he picked up in solitary confinement to keep him occupied for twenty-three hours a day.

  “Tell me everything,” he slurs. “I want to know every detail.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Taylor. That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past hour. Let me do this, then they can go pump your veins full of some poisonous shit, and you can go see your family again.”

  He sniffs, his eyes downcast, and focuses on the table.

  I leave him for a moment to collect the chair. As I pick it up, a flash of white enters my vision. Stop. Breath quickens as I look down. My expensive suit has morphed into a white gown. Rapid blinking. Heart pounding.

  “What the hell is going on?” I breathe to myself.

  “What’s going on over there?” I hear Grant shout from the other side of the room.

  I turn back to face him. “What the hell has happened to my clothes?”

  He looks at me with a furrowed brow. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this,” I say as I grab my outfit.

  He shrugs. I look down and note I am holding the lapel of my jacket.

  I gather the fallen chair and return it to the table, sliding it neatly in its place. I stand behind it, grip tightly. White knuckles. Eyes shut. Count in my head. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Count to seven.

  “Hey, I haven’t got all day here?”

  One last deep inhalation and I am ready to continue. I decide I am going to ignore what’s been happening to me. Going to chalk it up to the fact I am nearing the apex of my story.

  I step back from the chair. I prefer to be standing for this next bit. Actions always help tell a story. I run a hand over my tie and straighten my jacket. Just because I’m talking about murder doesn’t mean I have to look unprofessional.

  “You know,” I being. “Assassins are not serial killers.”

  “Really?” Taylor replies.

  “Oh, yes, it’s a common misconception and quite the debate among psychologists and law enforcement. You see, serial killers murder based on emotion. Contract killers d
o so for financial recompense.”

  “I see.” More hand-rubbing on the table.

  “Unless you’re talking about the Iceman, of course. And we won’t.”

  “So, which are you?”

  “Sorry?” The question puts me off-guard.

  “Are you a hitman or serial killer?”

  I think about the question. I never considered myself in either camp, one way or the other. “A little from column A, a little from column B. I had to out of necessity. Talon forced me. I had no choice.”

  “You had a choice. You always have a choice. You aren’t a puppet. That’s what you told that Alan person. That he had to take ownership for his decisions.”

  Son of a bitch.

  He continues. “Maybe you should start taking responsibility for the things you do.”

  “Well, we can agree to disagree all day, Grant. The bottom line was I had to do this to protect Olivia. Which is quite the paradox, when you think about it. I had to kill her to save her. What Talon and Stone would have done to her, haunted my dreams. Strange how things work out.”

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” he asks. “Something you’ve forgotten?”

  “I...I don’t think so. Not so far. Is there something you want to know?”

  A hard stare.

  “No. You’ll tell me when the time is right.”

  “Well, then listen up, Mr. Taylor. I’m about to tell you all.”

  Chapter 30

  I left my apartment at six in the evening. Black shirt, dark pants, black shoes. Shit. I looked like someone who kills people. They were older clothes. I was planning on burning everything at the end of the task anyway. Like I said, I’ve seen the shows. This was how people got arrested—they kept the clothes. They attempted to wash the blood out. Suckers. I would destroy my belongings shortly after I completed the deed.

  I had slicked back my hair and grown out my stubble over the past few days to change up my appearance. An old pair of reading glasses finished my ensemble. I know, I was quite the criminal mastermind. In my left pocket was a pair of latex gloves, in my right was the knife. I tapped both pockets as if they were talking to me, begging me to caress them.