16 Hitman

by Parnell Hall

  Alice went on as if she hadn't heard that assessment of her opinion. "See how he's being a jerk? He's taking a bad situation and presenting it to you so that there's nothing further you can do."

  "He offered to trace another name for me"

  "You got another name for him to trace?"

  "Of course not. He's the guy."

  "Of course he is. MacAullif's being a jerk."

  "He traced him and got nothing."

  "That should tell him the guy's a pro. He'd have to be to have a spotless record."

  "He had a moving violation."

  "I bet MacAullif got some mileage out of that."

  "He seemed to enjoy it."

  "I bet he did. The prick"

  "Alice-"

  "Stanley, did you stop to think why MacAullif is having so much fun?"

  "Because I made an utter fool of myself."

  "Talk about ego."

  "What?"

  "You'd see a lot more clearly if you didn't define everything in terms of you."

  "Alice-"

  "I'm not you, so it's easier to take you out of the equation. What is MacAullif doing? He's sweating bullets. He's been presented with a situation that might blow up in his face. What if this guy that he checked out actually killed someone? That's gonna be embarrassing as all hell. Does MacAullif want to face that possibility? He most certainly does not. He ridicules the theory. But it's scaring the shit out of him"

  "I think you're overreacting"

  "I'm overreacting? How did you feel when he told you the guy was clean?"

  "I thought we were keeping me out of it"

  "Oh, no. We were keeping you out of MacAullif's evaluation. Never mind. The main thing is MacAullif checked the guy out, came up empty. Which is good. He's paying cash. Still, you wouldn't want to be working for a deadbeat."

  "That's the least of nay problems"

  "You think so? Take a look at the monthly bills."

  She had a point. Living in Manhattan isn't cheap. Even with rent stabilization we were barely getting by.

  "I can work for Richard"

  Alice blinked. "What?"

  "I don't have to pick the guy up until this afternoon. I can do some cases first."

  "I thought he was paying you by the day."

  "So?"

  "He's paid you for the day. You gonna work for someone else?"

  "Absolutely. I'm gonna work for Richard. I'll call the switchboard, tell 'em I'm on the clock till three."

  "You gonna tell the guy you're doing it?"

  "No. Why?"

  "You don't think he has the right to know?"

  "I don't think he gives a damn, as long as I do what he wants."

  "You really took the job?"

  "It seemed the only thing to do."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Well, what would you think of nie if I said, `Screw it, go ahead and kill the guy'?"

  "Oh, you idiot," Alice said.

  She leaned forward to pat nay head, and I forgot what we were talking about.

  8

  "I'LL HAVE TO HEAR IT from Richard,"Wendy/Janet said.

  Richard Rosenberg's two switchboard girls had identical voices. I never knew which one I was talking to. Not that it mattered. Neither had the brains of a turnip.

  "Okay," I said. "Put him on the phone."

  Wendy/Janet gasped. She always did when I talked like that. The prospect of bossing Richard around was more than she could handle.

  Richard came on moments later. "You're back to work. So, the job's done?"

  "No, but the hours are flexible."

  "I don't like the sound of that."

  "Why not?"

  "Flexible things stretch and bend. I don't like the idea of my cases getting short shrift."

  "Richard, your cases are trip-and-falls. I could do 'em in my sleep. I'm going stir-crazy sitting around. I need the work."

  "You just sitting around?"

  "Yeah. Why?"

  "You talk to MacAullif?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "So you did. You realize that'll hang you, if things don't work out"

  "What could possibly go wrong?"

  "Yeah. All right, you want work, I got work. Hang on."

  I heard the buzz of the intercom, Richard's voice saying, "Pick up line one," then a click and Wendy/Janet's voice saying, "Yes?"

  "Stanley's on the clock, give him work," Richard said, and hung up.

  Wendy/Janet paid me back for going over her head to Richard by giving me the worst case she could find. Maybe I'm just projecting. Still, the crack house in East New York in which one Yolanda Smith lived had to be way up on my list of least desirable abodes. The two black guys on the front steps had about three front teeth between 'em, and that was counting top and bottom, and one on the side. The tatters they were wearing were fine for the summer. In winter their balls would have frozen to the stoop. Neither had shaved in this millennium, nor ever seen a comb. Somehow or other, these unprepossessing souls had managed to score enough drugs to get high. Either that or their brains were just permanently addled. But they looked at me without fear or loathing or even the slightest interest as I marched up the rickety steps and pushed open the front door. Neither rain, nor snow, nor strung-out homeless junkies ...

  On the first-floor landing a slightly more upscale clientele were smoking crack.You could tell they were more upscale because they had crack, not to mention a crack pipe and a butane lighter. They probably took me for a cop, because no white man in a suit and tie who wasn't a cop would ever be there. They made no move to hide the drugs. If I was gonna bust them, I was gonna bust them. Not much they could do about it.

  The guys on the third floor were mainlining crystal meth. I wondered if that was a step up from the crack smokers, or a step down. I'm just not up on drug etiquette. Anyway, they were sharing needles and probably HIV. I tried not to appear terrified as I gave them a wide berth.

  On the next floor I found Yolanda.

  Her story blew me away.

  The problem with the negligence business is you build up a contempt for your clients. No matter what your good intentions, the job quickly wears you down. Part of it's the monotony, and the repetition, and the fact that each case seems exactly like the one before. But it's also the fact that your clients aren't the most intelligent people in the world. Not that intelligent people wouldn't call Richard Rosenberg, but, in point of fact, intelligent people wouldn't call Richard Rosenberg. They'd go to their own or some friend's recommended lawyer, not some guy they saw on TV. So, for the most part, we're talking about people who tend to fall into the category of greedy, indolent, and not particularly bright. Sort of hard to root for. Sort of hard to work up any enthusiasm for their cases. Add to this the fact that the people most likely injured themselves through some stupid action of their own, and it's really hard to care.

  Yolanda Smith was something else.

  For one thing, she was gorgeous. A light-brown-skinned African-American woman, lithe, large-breasted, though not disproportionately so, twenty-three years old, mother of two.

  For a few fleeting moments, a mother of three.

  Usually, I ask questions and take notes.

  Yolanda, I just listened to.

  A welfare mother with two kids living in a crack house in East New York gets her big break, meets Mr. Right, a young whiz-kid, hip-hop record producer who's gonna to put her in rap videos, gonna make her a star. Meanwhile, she's gotta earn her keep.

  I sighed.

  "Not like that." Brown eyes flashing. "He no pimp. He legit. He real. "

  "Go on"

  "He gotta friend. Inna business. Movie business. Not porn. Jus' playactin'. No sex. No danger. Like HIV. Unnerstand?"

  "The sex was simulated?"

  "Ain' no sex. Jus' skin. Give me 'nuff to live on, with the welfare check."

  "So what happened," I prompted.

  "I tellin' you what happen. All parta what happen. Is why it happen" She took a breath, composed hers
elf. "Director, he say the rap work inna bag. Only I gotta wait 'cause he can' use no big bitch inna video."

  "Big bitch?"

  She looked at me as if her estimation of my intelligence, never high, had just dropped a few notches. "Like big." She patted her tummy. "Don' work for a song."

  "He can't use you in a rap video if you're pregnant?"

  "Tha's right. Is on hold, he say, till the kid. After that, he line me up wit' someone like Snoop Dogg, only he ain't got him."

  "And what went wrong?" I said, gently urging her toward the point.

  "I tell you what went wrong.You don' listen, you don' hear."

  In a less attractive woman, it would have been rude. In her it was spunky.

  "I'm listening. Go on"

  "I's inna hospital. An' the baby come. Only it ain't right. Lotta pressure. Lotta pain. Doctor say, `Shit!"'

  "The obstetrician?"

  "Head's not down! Tha's what he say. Head's not down!"

  "It's a breech?"

  "Tha's right. Is a breech. Baby can't breathe. Baby gotta come out now!"

  "The baby was in fetal distress. The doctor had to do a C-section."

  "Right. He gonna cut me. Sean say no."

  "Sean? Who's Sean?"

  "Director."

  "The director. He was there?"

  "Yeah."

  "How come? Is he the baby's father?"

  "Could be."

  "And he said no?"

  "Tha's right. He say don' cut her. Baby come natural."

  "And the doctor listened?"

  "Sean, he persuasive."

  "I don't understand."

  "He don' want me cut. For the video. For my career"

  "If you had a C-section you couldn't be in rap videos?"

  "Not with a scar. Not there."

  "Did he order the doctor as the boy's father?"

  "No. He jus' tell him."

  "Is his name on the birth certificate?"

  "What birth certificate? Baby dead."

  "Did you write him down as the baby's father? When you checked into the hospital?"

  "No."

  "If he wasn't the father, what was he doing there?"

  "Lookin' out for his investment."

  "And he told the doctor not to do a C-section, and the baby died?"

  "Tha's right."

  "What was the cause of death?"

  "Couldn't breathe."

  "Asphyxia?"

  "Yeah."

  "Because the doctor tried to do a vaginal delivery?"

  "Tha's right."

  "Did you tell the doctor not to do it?"

  "'Course I did."

  "What did you say?"

  "Said save my baby."

  "And he didn't?"

  No.

  "I still don't understand. How come the doctor did what Sean said?"

  "They buddies."

  "Huh?"

  "He and the doc. Tha's why Sean had me go to him"

  Jesus Christ.

  Like I say, most of the cases I get are simple and straightforward. Some idiot falls down because he is too dumb to look where he is going. He then sues anyone he can think of for his broken leg.

  Occasionally I get a case that is so egregious, so clear-cut, so black and white, and so despicable in its nature, that it makes me want to turn the system upside down if necessary, to right a wrong, to see an injustice is avenged. They don't come often, but, when they do, god, how they shake me up.

  The bad thing about my job is most of the time you don't care.

  The worst thing is sometimes you do.

  IS

  MARTIN KESSLER DIDN'T WANT ME to pick him up at school. That doesn't sound right. That sounds like I'm carpooling. What I mean is, he didn't want me to stake out his school and start tailing him when he got out of class. Which I quite understood. Teachers with tails don't get tenure. Sounds like a PI novel. He didn't need me following him then anyway. I didn't know why, and I didn't really want to know. Probably the guy we were supposed to whack didn't get off work that early.

  Anyway, Kessler didn't want me going anywhere near his school, so he niet me at my office. That also gives the wrong impression. It's not like he came upstairs or anything. At four fifteen, he was waiting for me outside. I came down, spotted him staking out the place. As instructed, I gave no sign, just turned and headed west. He followed me on the other side of the street. At Broadway, we changed positions without ever appearing to do so. I turned south, toward Forty-second Street. So did he, but since he'd been on the downtown side of Forty-seventh Street and I'd been on the uptown side, I was now behind him. I tagged along for two blocks, then crossed Broadway, and paralleled his actions from the other side of the street.

  Kessler had told me this was only a trial run, so I shouldn't be nervous. That made nie nervous. I felt like I was auditioning. Which would have been fine, since I didn't really want to get the part. Only I was concerned about how he might inform an actor who wasn't hired.

  Kessler caught the light at Forty-third Street and crossed Broadway, which changed our positions again. I slowed to let hint catch up and pass me but otherwise paid no attention. Not following anyone. Just a businessman on his way home.

  We were heading for Times Square, which did not cheer me. If You ever want to lose someone, that's the place to do it. The Forty-second Street subway station used to be somewhat confusing, but they've remodeled it. Now it's totally confusing.Which is only to be expected, considering half the trains in the Northern Hemisphere meet there. If Kessler wanted to test my mettle, that was the place to go.

  But when I hit Forty-second Street and turned right toward the newly renovated subway entrance, guess who wasn't there?

  Good guess. Instead of going down in the subway, Kessler had walked past the entrance and was admiring the Lion King marquee across the street.

  Okay, two can play that game.

  I walked by the subway entrance, walked by Kessler, continued on down Forty-second Street toward Eighth Avenue.

  Hoped like hell he was tagging along behind.

  He was. I ascertained that when I stooped and tied my shoe. The oldest trick in the book, but damned if it doesn't work. From down on one knee you can see in all directions without being too conspicuous. It's a nice position, assuming someone doesn't kick you in the ass or steal your wallet.

  Anyway, Kessler was tooling along, just your average out-oftown, sightseeing hick without a care in the world.

  Excellent. If I stayed on my knees a bit longer, he'd go right by me. But he was gawking at the Wax Museum like he'd never seen it before, and there's a limit to how long one can tie one's shoes.

  I got up, continued on down the street.

  Forty-second Street's changed a lot in the last twenty years. There are two movie theaters on the corner of Eighth Avenue, but they don't show porn; they're huge multiplexes, showing legitimate flicks. The AMC has twenty-five screens. The Loews, with thirteen, probably has screen envy and gets spam about being embarrassed in the locker room.

  The movie seemed as good a ruse as any. I popped in the front door of the Loews, pretended to be checking out the films.

  Kessler didn't go by. I know because I was looking out the glass door for that to happen, and when it didn't, I started to freak out. If I was doing this poorly on the doesn't-matter, bullshit, dry-run part of the assignment, I hated to think how I'd do when it was the real deal.

  While I was having a meltdown, Kessler came in the door and stood looking at the movie times on the illuminated sign over the box office.

  Good god, was the guy actually going to the movies? If so, I hoped it was one I wanted to see. With my luck, it would be some god-awful chick flick. Surely a hitman wouldn't go to one of those, would he?

  I headed for the street. It was either that or see a movie, and I didn't feel like one. If Kessler bought a ticket, I could change my mind. I would be too far away to see which one he bought. But it didn't matter. The theater was far from full, any ticket would
get me in, and I could follow him to any show.

  Having worked all that out, I was almost disappointed when he came out the front door. As usual, he didn't look in my direction, just turned and sauntered by. He walked to the corner of Eighth Avenue, stopped at the light.

  Okay, was he going to go west across Eighth Avenue or south across Forty-second Street?

  Tough call. The light was green on Forty-second Street and traffic was going through. But the WALK sign was flashing DON'T WALK, indicating the light was about to change. A man who didn't want to sprint across the street could wait for the lights to recycle. Assuming he was heading west. Or he could simply be waiting for the light to change, if he was heading south. He wasn't doing anything helpful, like facing any particular crosswalk. No, he was just hanging out on the corner, looking around, as if he didn't know where to go.

  That made two of us.

  I was coming up on the corner. I had to make a move or I'd wind up standing right next to the guy. Which he wasn't going to like. And I'd hate to piss off a hitman.

  The light changed, and traffic streamed up Eighth Avenue. Well, I was looking for a sign from god. How about one that said WALK?

  I joined the flow of pedestrians crossing Forty-second Street. If Kessler followed me, good. If he waited for the light to change and crossed Eighth, I'd cross Eighth, too, and follow him from the south side of Forty-second. If he went north up Eighth Avenue, he was a total asshole, and if I lost him, it was his own damn fault.

  Not to worry. A casual glance backward when I hit the sidewalk showed that Kessler was right on my tail.Which should mean he was headed down Eighth. I tested the theory, walked two doors south, and stopped to check out the window display.

  There was a Mickey Mouse watch for $14.95. Surely that couldn't be an original Mickey Mouse watch. Then, again, what was a fake Mickey Mouse watch? How would you tell? The hands have five fingers? Could you get busted for selling knock-off Mickey Mouse watches? Who had the patent? Walt Disney. Who's dead. His estate, but-

  In the store window I caught the reflection of Martin Kessler walking by. He was going south on Eighth. For what purpose, I had no idea, but mine not to reason why. The thought that the quote ended "Theirs but to do and die" did not cheer me.

  I fell in behind, wondered how long we could keep up our tagteam tailing act.