But looking around, I could see people staring at me, screaming and sobbing in terror up and down the block. Off to the right, across the street, someone who’d kept his head was crouched behind the back end of a blue sedan, a cell phone held up to his face, frantic words pouring out. I stood over Pauly Paggiano, the worthless, piece of shit, the scumbag rapist who’d set all this in motion, and I fired three hollowpoint bullets into his back, and two more through the base of his skull.
After the echoes died away, I shouted at Pauly’s corpse at the top of my lungs. “Idi na hui, zasranetz!” which, roughly translated from Russian, meant “Go fuck yourself, shithead!”
Having a Russian roommate my sophomore year bore surprisingly helpful fruit.
Now it was time to run, as Richard once said, as if the Devil himself were dogging at my heels. Half of the police cars in Boston were probably descending on my location at the moment. I dropped the pistol into my gym bag, zipped it shut, and pushed it around so it was slung across my back, cinching the shoulder strap tight. This done, I took off at a dead sprint, running as fast as I possibly could. As I ran, I shouted “Ubiraisia c moyevo puti!” as loudly and clearly as I could at the gawking bystanders, another purloined Russian phrase that meant “Get out of my way!”.
That one I had to find on the Internet.
I ran down the sidewalk until I reached the corner, turned left, sprinted diagonally across the street, ran up half a block, turned right down a narrow side alley, ran the length of the alley, turned left again as it opened onto the next street, ran down another full block, crossed right at the next intersection, and finally came to another alleyway. I could hear sirens passing to my left, closing in on the scene of the shootout, and I knew it was a matter of moments before the first witnesses turned to the police and screamed "He went that way!" while pointing in the direction I’d fled.
Halfway down the alley, I ducked between a pair of dumpsters and into a little hidden nook I’d prepared two hours ago. I kicked aside a stained and crumpled cardboard box and revealed a bright pink gym bag, and into this open bag I stuffed my red and white gym bag. Then with a single, practiced motion, I stripped t-shirt, wig, cap, and glasses off my body and crammed them into the bag. I followed this a moment later with my baggy white basketball shorts.
Underneath those garments, I wore a hot pink athletic tank top and a matching pair of scandalously brief running shorts. A pink sweatband went around my head, and I produced from my bag of tricks a pink water bottle with a pull-top spout. In fifteen seconds, I had transformed myself from a casually-dressed basketball player into a proudly gay college student returning from the gym. I took the water bottle, popped the nipple, and jetted a stream of water over my head and down the front and back of my neck, giving the appearance of someone who'd worked up a sweat.
Thus costumed, I took several deep breaths and emerged from the other end of the alleyway, pink gym bag carried loosely in one hand, water bottle carried in the other, the faintest hint of a sway in my step. I turned left as I exited the alleyway, eyes peeled to ensure no one noticed me emerge, and I began to walk at a natural pace towards Commercial Street and downtown, where I would avoid public transportation and any potential bag searches in favor of walking back to the Fens. I passed people along the way, someone occasionally looking at me with a second glance, but all anyone would see was my fabulous pink outfit and a big smile, and once or twice, when I thought I could get away with it, a wink to any good-looking guy who paid too much attention.
Two blocks and six minutes after I emerged from the alleyway, I saw a police cruiser turn and come down my street, the blare and glare of sirens and lights conspicuously absent. This wasn't an officer dashing hell-bent to the scene of the crime, this was a hunting hound sniffing for the scent of the prey. As soon as it took the turn, I lifted my water bottle to my lips, tilted my head back, and mimicked taking a long, deep drink, using the bottle and my upraised hand and arm to conceal my features from the passing police cruiser. The vehicle was rolling at a measured pace, not much faster than a brisk walk, and the two officers inside were no doubt comparing everyone they saw to my description.
This was the critical moment. If I could slip free of this strand of the dragnet, I would likely on the safe side of the manhunt. But what if my costume change wasn't complete enough to fool the officers in the cruiser? Rather than the pink outfit and assumed harmlessly gay personae, what if the cops notice the white high-top sneakers, the gym bag, an athletic physique, and a height comparable to the suspect? Then a street stop and a search of my bag would follow, and I was done for. All I could lay my hopes on would be a flat out dash as soon as the officers approached, and I knew there would be no hope to perform a second costume change; I would have to rely on pure speed and luck to break free. I didn't favor those odds.
And the odds became foremost in my mind when, a few seconds after the cruiser passed me by, I glanced into the reflection of a van's rear window as I walked past and saw behind me the cruiser stopping with brake lights on, then with growing dread the second set of tail-lights glowing as the cruiser began to slowly back up the street towards me. They were coming in for a second look.
I had prepared, thankfully, a last-ditch gamble for this very situation, and it was time to put it into motion. I immediately altered my course and turned up the steps of the first apartment I came to, stepping confidently into the building's vestibule and up to the row of mailboxes lining one of the walls. I dropped the gym bag, bent down and unzipped the front pocket, then pulled free a thick wad of mail; letters, flyers, and a couple of magazines.
Standing quickly in front of the mailboxes, I assumed my act just as the police car backed into view out the front door of the vestibule. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the cruiser slow for a moment as the patrolman saw me sorting through the mail, but then I heard the clunk of the transmission as the cruiser was shifted out of reverse, and the vehicle accelerated back the way it came.
Now for the final phase of my escape plan. Moving as fast as I dared, I tucked myself into the corner next to the front door, where I could put solid wall between me and the outside world. I pulled from my gym bag my last disguise: a black t-shirt, bearing some morbid skull-themed metal band logo, and a pair of cut-off dark grey sweat pants. Shedding my headband and pulling on this new costume, I went from gay jogger to metal-head slacker, slipping the pink gym bag, water bottle, and mail pile into a heavy-duty black plastic trash bag. A ragged black baseball cap completed the quick-change.
I left the vestibule and turned to walk out of the North End, just another city kid taking out the trash.
EIGHTEEN
"We have a problem."
I was standing at a pay phone on the street in Central Square, Cambridge. Richard had told me to never use a pay phone in the same geographic location twice when I make contact, so today it was Central Square.
"Right now, my life is nothing but a series of problems. You need to be a little clearer," I said.
"Okay, smart guy. They've brought in talent. Real talent. Cat has become mouse, hunter has become prey."
"This is what you feared, right? They'd smarten up a little, start trying to find me before I found them?"
"I told you these people were cocky savages, but they aren't stupid. Your first act was handled well, but your encore was a little too artistic. That set off some alarm bells. They think there's a real pro whittling them down piece by piece, knocking away the struts until everything collapses."
"Well, that's what you told me to do,” I said, “go all Book of Five Rings on them. Cut at the hands and feet and shoulders until I could get at the heart. I've been following your advice here."
"And the advent of a pro being brought in was a calculated risk we had to take and make contingency plans to deal with. Well, now's the time to deal with it."
"Okay, so how's this going to play out?” I asked. “It's a big city, he can't just go looking for me."
"When you hunt a man-eat
ing lion in Africa,” Richard said, “you don't go wandering in the bush hoping to get the drop on it; that's its home territory. You stake out a goat and wait for it to come sniffing around for the kill so you can take your shot."
"So he's going to find some bait to draw me in?"
"He doesn't have to, kid. The bait is already in play, they’re your targets. He's going to attempt counter-surveillance, pick you out of the crowd and take you out before you have a chance to strike."
"That's what those bodyguards were supposed to do, but we saw how that played out."
"Don't mistake those torpedoes in suits for real talent, son. Those guys are shaved apes, real meathead bullyboy types. They might be mean and cautious, but they're looking to pick up on their own brand of predator. This guy is going to be a jungle cat, a real hunter-killer. You might be circling the goat, but he's going to be drawing a circle of his own around the whole field, pinning you in and waiting to sniff you out."
I scratched my head and shuffled my feet in frustration. "So what's the plan, then? How do I deal with this guy?"
"You can't hope to beat the guy while you're circling the goat, kid. That'll split your focus, make you half as capable of performing either task. We need to find his den and flush him out. Maybe if you can catch him before he knows you're playing a new game, you can drop him."
"This is the real shit, then. I'm not just going for a leg breaker, I'm going to be looking for a pro, a hitman."
Richard chuckled that graveyard laugh of his. "I never told you this was going to be easy, or that you'd get out of it alive. Still want to keep walking down that long, dark tunnel?"
I let out a long sigh. "Fuck it, what's the worst that can happen?"
I could almost hear Richard's grim smile over the phone. "No one gets out of life alive, kid. I'll be in touch."
A week had passed since I’d killed Pauly Paggiano and his three bodyguards in the North End. By the time I’d made it back to my apartment and switched on the television, the shooting was all over the news, from local affiliates right up to CNN. There were artist’s renditions of my face plastered all over the news, but the shaggy blond wig and sunglasses were enough to hide my appearance, and in the days after the killing, I didn’t bother to shave, growing a thick stubble that further changed my look. Because of my Russian ruse, the prevailing theory was a Russian mob power-grab looking to prune the family down until they were powerless and incapable of stopping the Russian mafia from moving into Paggiano territory. There was some coverage of Pauly’s rape and murder trial, and my family’s name came up several times. Thankfully, it had been a couple of months since my family was killed, and when a correlation was made, the angle was always showing the Paggiano family as weak and desperate. Now, the alleged killing of my family was considered the work of a criminal organization using primitive, barbaric methods that showed how out of touch they were with the realities of organized crime in the 21st century.
The most disconcerting part of this publicity was seeing the reporting on my family’s tragedy. I’d never gone back to Providence to see where the house had stood, and I’d never visited my family’s graves. Photos of my parents, my sister, and myself would flash on screen and stab me in the heart, and I began to worry that someone might see me on the street and make the connection. But a close look at the photos of myself, most taken more than a year ago, showed a much different face than the one I saw in the mirror now. I was leaner, harder looking. There was no trace of softness in my features, and I’d become more tanned and mature-looking, no longer the pale, baby-faced Irish boy. It occurred to me that I looked like the photos I’d seen of my uncle in Vietnam. Someone would have to really make a reach to associate my new face with my old face.
After the phone call with Richard, I took myself out of the game for a week. I spent the time focusing myself solely on the mission at hand. I went for a run twice a day, at least five miles every time. A hundred pushups three times a day, crunches until I couldn't lift myself up off the floor. I purged the caffeine from my system, no alcohol, no jerking off, no nothing. I was going positively monastic with my regimen.
The news of another predator in the mix put me on edge, made me nervous, made me actually scared for the first time since I’d flown in to Boston. The fear wasn’t of death; I think I'd moved past that notion out in the desert. No, it was the fear of not being in control of the situation, of the destabilization of the plan that I had put into motion. I had confidence in what I had started because I was calling the numbers as I put the plan into action. I was always the initiator, the instigator, never the one reacting to the situation but instead the catalyst. Being in control was the edge that allowed me to operate, to do what I needed to do. Now that edge was being dulled, ground down by the notion that someone out there was just waiting for me to wander in. I was just some fucking kid who watched too many movies; he was a guy who really, actually killed people for money and was good enough to keep doing it and become a "professional".
So I worked hard, tried to find my center. I broke down my guns, cleaned everything the way Richard had taught me. Oiled and wiped down every part, made sure to keep them as clean as possible, made sure there were no prints, dust, or fibers inside the parts, made sure each round of ammunition was also oiled, wiped down, and reloaded. I inspected the casings, the primers, made sure each cartridge was as perfect as it could be. I went through the disguise kit Richard had provided for me, and went out to acquire a few things that I thought I might need. I bought new clothes, new accessories; I even practiced dressing up in a few different "personalities" and going out to try them on for size.
Richard always told me one of the keys to his success was being comfortable in any skin he needed to wear, and if he was comfortable, he would make others around him comfortable too. You had to be more than an actor pretending to play a part: the punk, the stoner, the preppie business-school student, the starving artist. You had to convince yourself that you were who you were pretending to be, that the skin you were wearing was your own. I knew I didn't have his skill or talent in being able to do that, but I did pick up a few tricks during our time together, and I knew I was going to need them all when the time came.
That time was the afternoon of the seventh day. I came back from a run before lunch, and the mail had arrived. There was a manila envelope from Sophia crammed underneath my door. I never figured out how she got into the building, and she never saw me face to face after our one and only night together. Ultimately, I figured it was for the best.
After a shower I sat down to some interesting lunchtime reading. Apparently the professional hired on by the Paggianos was a man named Julian; no last name, no doubt an alias. He was rumored to be a cop from somewhere down south (cosmetic surgery had rendered his former identity inconclusive), who went rogue and turned his talents for hunting criminals into a more "for-profit" venture. Now, he was hunting criminals, for criminals, who apparently pay better than the police; his usual fee was $100,000. Julian’s method of elimination was shooting his quarry dead, typically twice center mass to put them down, then a shot to the head to finish the job.
He was apparently a very good marksman, favored small, suppressed automatics, and tended to dress well, live well, and maintain a very slick, professional appearance. He was no coked-up 'banger, nor a needle-using addict; not a gambler or a boozer - although he favored the occasional bourbon - and tended towards expensive, very clean, very stable prostitutes who, as best as can be determined, have never voiced any complaints about his company.
Most importantly - at least from my current point of view - he had an estimated nineteen contract kills, two collateral kills (a panicking waitress and a driver, from two different jobs), and was suspected in at least three other killings, all in a four year period. It was unknown if he had killed anyone while a police officer, but it could be safely assumed.
I sat back and stared at the wall for a moment. Over a score of bodies behind this guy, and probably many more,
over the course of more than four years. In the last three months I'd killed eleven men in three separate engagements. None of them was expecting me, and most of them never even shot at me. I wondered about this Julian, wondered how most of his kills went down. Was it that a guy gets in the elevator with him, doors close, doors open again, the guy's dead and Julian walks out? Did most of them even realize they were about to die until the moment they stared down the muzzle of his gun? Or did he stalk them through dark alleyways and down fog-shrouded streets, a shadowy figure relentlessly pursuing until the victim tired out and turned and uttered one final breathless curse as the first bullet struck? If this guy found me, would I even see him coming?
The last page of my "care package" from Sophia contained the address of his current apartment building downtown, as well as two photos of Julian, taken at great distance with a telephoto lens. He looked tall, slim, well-dressed, and clean shaven. A strong jawline, good cheekbones, close-cropped dark hair, and a good tan. A handsome guy but not particularly striking, he was someone who wouldn't ping anyone's threat radar. In one photo Julian was driving a black Audi TT coupe out of the apartment building’s underground parking garage. A nice car, but not at all remarkable in a city like Boston.
So there it was: name, address, photo, bio, butcher's bill. If I was going to continue with my bloody business, this obstacle before me had to be removed, a chess piece to be taken off the board before we could achieve the checkmate. But Julian wasn’t a pawn, he was a knight, poised to strike at me from an unexpected angle. Unless I walked away for good, and I wasn't about to do that, I needed to man up and face him.
The next day, I began by building my costume persona. Faded brown corduroys, slightly grubby white t-shirt, frayed long-sleeved check shirt. Battered green Converse all-stars, white tube socks, brown leather belt. Cheap watch, even cheaper sunglasses, wig of shaggy black curls, coupled with the careful application of matching sideburns and a little soul patch under the lip. A necklace of wooden beads, a bracelet of woven hemp. I quickly transformed myself into just another anonymous, benign, artsy-slacker douchebag wandering Boston to and from Newbury Comics, Starbucks, maybe even an art supply store. About as far from the appearance of an assassin as I could get, but the loose-hanging check shirt hid the Beretta's shoulder holster quite well, and the cords were baggy enough that I could slip the snubnose .38 into my hip pocket as backup. Two spare magazines for the Beretta hung under the opposite arm, doing a little to balance the weight of the pistol and its attached suppressor. I didn't know what else to bring with me, so I clipped a small Gerber lockback knife into the front pocket of my cords, slipped a pair of latex gloves into another pocket, and stuffed an unreasonable amount of cash in my wallet in case I needed to throw money around in a hurry.
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