Uncommon Assassins

by F. Paul Wilson

  She looked around the cramped room. Then she shrugged, a roll of fat bulging out of her collar. “I could live with that.” She laughed nastily. “If it means getting him out of the way. Really, though, I can’t live with him any longer.” She placed a pudgy hand over her heart. Her eyes rolled back and I was looking at the vein-marbled whites. “I solemnly promise I won’t say a word to anyone,” she said in a singsong voice. “So? We have a deal?”

  “When I see the cash.” I smiled in encouragement.

  She dug an envelope out of her overcoat pocket and slapped it down on the Formica. I tried to weigh the contents with my eyes. Couldn’t, so reached over and lifted the flap. Plenty of purples, not enough gold notes. “Looks a little light to me.”

  “Half now, half on completion.”

  “That isn’t the way I work.”

  “How can I be sure that you’ll even do the job? For all I know you could just pick up the cash, walk away, and that’s the last I’d ever hear of you.”

  “Sometimes you have to take things on faith,” I told her.

  “I’m struggling with that ... you don’t look like a professional assassin to me.”

  “That’s because I’m not an assassin. Assassins tend to take out politicians, religious figures, royals ... me, I just do normal, run-of-the-mill people. I’m just a regular ol’ hitman.”

  “You don’t look like much of a hitman either. Nothing like the ones you see in the movies.”

  “Who were you expecting? Matt Damon?”

  “I should be so lucky,” she snorted. She started picking at the half-healed scab on her chin and I thought, No one with a face like that has that kind of luck!

  “You’ve heard my credentials,” I said. “You know I’m up to the job.”

  “I only know what you told me on the telephone. You could’ve been spinning me a line, just to get your hands on my cash.”

  “I don’t do kids, I don’t do handicapped folk, and I don’t do lies.” My legend was growing.

  “By the look of things you don’t do much exercise either,” she said with a wicked smile, the old kettle and pot argument raging on. “You sure you’re fit for your line of work?”

  “These days I hardly run for a bus,” I acquiesced. “But I don’t have to. A bullet’s quicker than any man.”

  “How pat,” she smirked. “You still have to catch up with them first, don’t you?”

  “Nope, I wait until their guard’s down. Take them when they’re least expecting it. My strategy has served me well, believe me.”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “You’re sure you want to hear?”

  “I want to know I’m going to get value for money.”

  “Thirty-three,” I said.

  She adjusted her weight on the chair, covering a sniff of disdain with the creaking of the plastic.

  “You still doubt me?”

  “Can’t blame a girl for being nervous with her hard-earned cash, can you?”

  “OK. You want proof?”

  She patted her opposite coat pocket. I didn’t look; I was still watching the disgusting flake of scab hanging off her chin. “I have the rest of the money right here. Show me something that will convince me that you’re really up to the task and you’ve got a deal.”

  “That’s fair,” I decided.

  I lifted my silenced SIG Sauer from under the table and pointed it at her tremulous gut. I pulled the trigger.

  The thud of the bullet pounding her flesh was louder than the gun’s retort.

  The femme took a moment to realize she was dying. She looked down at the hole I’d just put in her coat, then up at me.

  “Will that do it?” I asked.

  Her mouth hung open, a string of saliva tethering her tongue to her dentures. She blinked slowly and there was disbelief in her eyes. Maybe it was because I’d shot her, or maybe she still doubted me. That damn flake of scab still waved at me and I used it as a target. Scab and chin disintegrated together.

  “So I guess we’ve got a deal?” I asked. Her head was nodding, her floppy neck riding the ripples still shuddering through her body. The nod was enough to seal it for me.

  I jostled myself out of the chair, thankfully unhitched material from the crack of my cheeks, and went over to her. Her arms had fallen to her sides, but her girth pushed them away from her. She reminded me of that spoiled bitch that blew up with juice in Willy Wonka’s factory. I dipped a hand in her pocket and pulled out another envelope.

  I flicked through the notes. They were all there.

  I pushed both envelopes into my pockets and walked along the cramped corridor to the far end, ignoring the pain in my knees. The corridor was long and I was puffing by the time I reached the far end. Maybe the femme was right and I should be in better shape for this game. I dabbed perspiration from my forehead before pushing open a door. I had to look the part. There was another room, not much bigger than the first.

  The femme’s husband was a little squirt with glasses and a comb-over. His jumper was a market stall special, all diamond patterned down the chest, the two-for-the-price-of-one type you buy on special offer. Black nylon trousers, white socks for frig sake! Couldn’t see how someone like him could be living the double life his wife claimed, but she was right in a way. Just shows you that looks can be deceiving. People look at me and don’t credit me with much either.

  “It’s done?” he asked.

  I looked down at the little man. His eyes looked huge behind the glasses. He was sitting in the chair where I’d left him earlier, while I prepped for his wife’s arrival.

  “Just like you asked,” I reassured him.

  “Did she suffer?”

  The malignant gleam in his eye told me the answer he was waiting for.

  “Yeah, she suffered.”

  “Good,” he said. “She deserved it. Did she tell you I gave her a sexually transmitted disease?”

  “Yeah, you called it right.”

  “Bitch. It was her who gave me the clap. It was her who was sleeping around.”

  I didn’t comment. It was beginning to sound like I was stuck in the middle of the Jerry Springer show.

  “What else did she say?” he asked. “Did she have any idea that—”

  “She was certain you were being unfaithful to her, chasing all these young skirts all the time.” I laughed at the absurdity of it.

  He laughed with me. “You think I’d stand any chance with a young girl?”

  Decorum isn’t my main strength. “Not a chance.”

  To his credit, he didn’t take any offense. “Crazy bitch has accused me of running after girls for years,” he said. “She’s made my life hell and I think it was all guilt over her own infidelity. Did she admit to having someone else?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “She must have said something.”

  “She did. She asked me to kill you.”

  “What?”

  I just smiled at him and he shook his head.

  “Isn’t that just like the bitch? What a nerve, eh?”

  I shrugged. “A job’s a job to me, a deal a deal.”

  “Good job we dealt first, then,” he said, blinking mole-like. “I know she despised me, but can’t believe she’d actually want me killed. But it does make sense, I suppose. She’d want me out the way so she could sleep around any time she liked. What a bitch!”

  I shrugged, held out my hand. “Forget about her; you don’t have to take her crap ever again.” I snapped my fingers. “Money on completion; just as we agreed.”

  The man pulled out a thick envelope and I took it from him. Didn’t bother counting the notes, because I knew he was good for the fee.

  “A deal’s a deal,” he said, smiling as he mimicked my earlier words.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  I shot him in the head, just like I’d agreed to do for his wife.

  But that wasn’t the main reason.

  The little squirt should have mentioned i
t when first we met. I wiggled my trousers out of my butt again, exhaling at the chafing pain. I lined up my SIG on his groin. One pull on the trigger and I got payback. “That’s for giving me the fucking pox.”

  SECOND AMENDMENT SOLUTION

  BY BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN

  June recalled her brother’s words the day they took away her husband. He had said, “When everything else fails, we have the Second Amendment.” The comment burst through her mind like a Roman candle going off in a dark sky. Yet all she could do was ask plaintively, “Where are you taking him?”

  The Right to Bear Arms.

  June had been bearing arms since she was a kid. Her brother, Lawrence, was three years younger so she was the first to be schooled with weapons. Their father was a hunter, a free spirit, and a firm believer in owning guns and using them. He had only once used a gun against another person and that was because the intruder got all the way through the house to his bedroom, despite the warning he would be shot if he didn’t leave right now. He didn’t listen and he didn’t leave. He ended up with a .45 caliber slug in his gut for his failure to take instruction.

  June and Lawrence had run from their bedroom, wide-eyed pre-teens, to find the intruder dead on their father’s bedroom floor. Though they had seen dead animals before, this scene was enough to set them to shaking and crying. There was a dead man in their house bleeding all over the place.

  June’s Dad stepped over the corpse and said, “Go back to your rooms. I’m calling the police. You can come out when they get here.”

  Her Dad was all matter-of-fact about it. Later, when the authorities left, he sat them down at the kitchen table and said, “What I did was a terrible thing, but I was forced to do it. You can’t let a man come into your house and either attack you or rob you. I know that was a terrible thing for you to see, but I want both of you to face it and think about it. If you ever in your life have to protect yourself or someone you love, then just do it and don’t think about it. If you think about it, you may never get a chance to do it.”

  Now, twenty years later, with her father dead and her brother living across the country, they had come and taken away her husband. And she had shot no one.

  She still didn’t understand why it had happened, why they had taken him, and she didn’t know really who they were. They wore suits, not uniforms. They knocked politely on the door and when Charles opened it, they stepped inside, took out handcuffs, told Charles to turn around, and within seconds had possession of him. June had stood by, itching to go to the hallway gun rack for the semi-automatic .22, but this wasn’t an intruder in the night, this wasn’t a marauding force of maniacs swarming through her door. This was government. This was dark, deep, hidden government, and they acted as if they had all the right in the world to walk in and take her Charles from her.

  She had protested, as had Charles. “Where are you taking him? Who are you? What’s this all about? What’s he done? What law has he broken? Who do you think you are?”

  She was handed a single sheet of paper that mentioned the Homeland Security Act and the governmental right to arrest and sequester a suspected terrorist without recourse to habeus corpus. Before June could get the words read, her eyes swimming with tears and going unfocused, they had quick-stepped Charles out the door and down the walk to a waiting black car.

  June stood in the doorway calling, “You can’t do this! He’s not a terrorist! Are you people crazy? Where are you taking him?”

  For all the panic in her voice, for all the tears that spilled down her cheeks, neither of the two men acted as if they had heard a thing. Doors of the car were slammed shut and it abruptly pulled from the curb. It was morning, a bright, sunny Saturday. She and Charles meant to mow the lawn then go to a movie together. Their whole world had come unglued, and it spun around June as she stood helpless in her doorway looking after the disappearing black car as it sped down the quiet neighborhood street.

  Inside, she sank onto the sofa, holding the bit of paper in her hand so tightly it was crinkling. She stared down at it and read through the short paragraphs again.

  Homeland Security. Suspected terrorist acts. Rights of the government to arrest and sequester. Sequester.

  The reality of what had just happened left June emptied and as bereft as if her husband had suddenly died before her eyes. She sat back, the tears now turning into streams of fear and worry, her whole body racked with sobs, her breath coming in gasps until she had to bend over her knees and shut her eyes against the world.

  An hour later she still sat on the sofa, befuddled and spent. She rose slowly and went to the phone where it hung on the wall in the kitchen. She picked up the cordless receiver and took it to the table to sit in yellow sunlight. She dialed their attorney. When she was told he wasn’t available, June lost control and screamed, “PUT HIM ON THE PHONE RIGHT THIS FUCKING MINUTE!”

  There was a pause, an intake of breath on the other end of the line, and then a quiet, “Okay, hold on.”

  Steve Samson came on the line immediately. “June! Why are you cursing and screaming at my secretary?”

  “Steve, men came to the house an hour ago and took Charles. They handed me a paper identifying them as Homeland Security officers.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “What do you mean, ’uh oh?’ This is insane. Charles isn’t a terrorist, for God’s sake, he sells insurance!”

  “June? June, calm down. Let me talk to you a minute. I’m not just your attorney, I’m your friend. You and Charles have been to my house for dinner, for parties. And I have to tell you something, sometimes Charles’s ideas are ... well, frankly, they’re definitely left wing.”

  “Are you saying because we hold liberal beliefs, the government had a right to come in here and take him? You can’t be saying that, Steve.”

  “I’m just saying maybe that has something to do with it. Has he made any overseas phone calls?”

  “Not that I know of,” June said, “why would he?”

  “Do you think he might have some friends that you don’t know about?”

  “Steve, you’re still talking like Charles has done something wrong and he deserved what just happened to him. Now, I’m going to say this as calmly and plainly as I can ...” She swallowed hard, tears trying to break her down into sobs again. “... Charles is not a terrorist. Charles doesn’t know any terrorists. Charles does not advocate the taking over of the U.S. government. He’s protested in the city Occupy movement, sure he has, but so have thousands of other people. He contributes money to Independent candidates. He sells insurance, goes to your parties, plays golf, and is my good husband. Now are you going to help me find out where they took him and get him back or aren’t you? Because, by God, this is wrong, Steve. A mistake’s been made.”

  Silence over the line lengthened a few seconds longer than June thought it should. Just as Steve began to clear his throat to speak, June said, “Forget it. You know what, Steve, you just fucking forget it, all right? I can tell you’re scared to death to get involved.”

  She hung up the phone and lay her head on her arms on the table. Now what was she going to do? She raised her head, smoothed out the sheet of paper given to her, and scanned it again. In the very bottom right corner in small print was a telephone number with a Washington, D.C. area code. She snatched up the phone and dialed, her hand trembling.

  “Hello? Homeland Security. How may I help you?”

  It was a woman, sounding as pleasant and cheerful as a greeter at Wal-mart. June said, “My husband was arrested this morning from our home and I want to know why.”

  “Your name, please?”

  “June T. Haver. My husband is Charles Allan Haver. He’s an insurance salesman.” She felt like falling into maniacal laughter. It was ludicrous to think the government feared an insurance salesman.

  “Hold please, while I transfer you.”

  June held the receiver so close to her ear it was causing her pain. She let up the pressure and tried to compose herself. Maybe she coul
d straighten this out and they could laugh about it later, make it a party joke.

  The line clicked, then a man’s voice said, “Mrs. Haver? My name is Cary Duma. It’s true your husband was arrested this morning and I’m sure you were given the statement with this number on it. I’m sorry, but we cannot tell you where your husband was taken.”

  “You can’t? Why can’t you?” The panic was back and the world was askew as a leaning telephone pole about to be uprooted by a tornadic wind. “He hasn’t done anything! What are you holding him for?”

  “Mrs. Haver, I’m sure you understand this is only a precautionary measure, and I’m sure your husband will check out fine and be home again soon. I suggest you be patient and let us do our job. If everything is all right, this will all be over soon.”

  Now she broke down completely. She hadn’t taken a breath since he began talking. She sucked in a noisy lungful of air and said, “This isn’t right. You shouldn’t be able to take an American citizen out of his home in handcuffs on some presumption of guilt and then not tell his family where he is. This is so wrong it ought to be criminal. I want to visit him. I am his wife. Tell me where he is.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Haver, I just explained that you need to be patient. You can contact us again in forty-eight hours for an update.”

  For the second time she hung up, slamming the phone on the table so hard she feared she’d cracked the hard plastic casing. She stood from the table, the chair legs screeching along the floor. She began to pace from the kitchen to the living room, back and forth. She was arguing mentally with herself, arguing with the faceless men who had just disrupted her life.

  Can’t do this, she thought, balling her fists, her feet scattering staccato sounds across the wood floors as she paced.

  But what could she do? This wasn’t like fighting city hall. It wasn’t even like having a dispute with a state governor or a chief of police or the FBI. This was the hidden, silent arm of the government given great power over the people, taking away their rights to counsel, their rights to let family members know where they were being held, their rights to protest. Charles had simply been swept away into a nether darkness where no one would ever answer questions about him, where anything could be happening to him, where any charges against him weren’t being met by an opposing attorney.