Uncommon Assassins

by F. Paul Wilson

  Skills honed.

  Why pay when you could simply steal them?

  Now he just needed to call his chosen partner, have her confirm, if asked, that yes, he’d, as the Americans say, cut class.

  She’d swear through forty cows that, oh, yes, indeed, he’d been with her all the time.

  Was it airtight?

  But therein lay the beauty, keep the edge riff going.

  SOME ARE BORN

  TO

  ENDLESS NIGHT.

  Ex-detective Dylan Norton summed up his life in Ds—

  Depression

  Debilitation

  Disgust

  He’d been with The Garda for twenty years.

  He’d been on the fast track. Having done nigh on ten hard years as a street Guard, he’d managed to gain detective rank and, straightaway, he was assigned to two spectacular cases,

  I.e., the ones the papers write about and the TV pundits bleat on.

  He was way down the food chain with the hard-bitten detectives, but he solved both cases.

  One was a brazen arts theft from the National Museum, and he’d followed his instinct and checked out a young girl whose father had bestowed the precious artifacts.

  She confessed as soon as he went to see her.

  It didn’t make him many friends in the department.

  And what should have been glory.

  A second major case, the kidnapping of a prominent businessman’s daughter, was on the TV constantly.

  Paramilitaries were blamed.

  Dylan felt different and, purely on a hunch, went to see the man’s wife. He was left out by the other detectives as they followed down the leads on dissidents, telling him,

  “Wonder boy, man the phones.”

  Simply put,

  “Fuck off.”

  He’d barely introduced himself to the wife when she started crying, said,

  “She’s upstairs, I’m so sorry, it was all a stupid mistake.”

  He was in clover.

  Sort of.

  Twice he’d delivered, and big. The other guys, they were seriously pissed.

  While the papers lauded him, his colleagues ignored him, apart from muttering,

  “Bollix”

  As they passed him in the corridors.

  He took his pension when his twenty were done, and he was still a young forty.

  He had no idea what to do next, so he set up as a Private Detective.

  Sign of the new Ireland when he checked the yellow pages and saw there were nineteen other P.I.s

  In business.

  In Galway!

  There were, of course, stories of the first P.I.

  A drunk named Taylor.

  Dylan discarded them as the work of fiction.

  Dylan was tall, with a slender frame, and what women called sad eyes.

  He called it depression.

  Even had it checked out.

  The doctor telling him,

  “You have clinical depression.”

  And prescribed various medications.

  None worked.

  So, he figured,

  “Live with the bad bastard.”

  He always knew when it was about to hit and ensured he’d be busy as a banshee during those episodes.

  Business was brisk.

  The new Ireland, now in deep recession, had multiple cases of husbands disputing divorces.

  Companies going to the wall and wanting scapegoats.

  Missing pets.

  Mad as that sounds, it paid well and he had to hire a secretary.

  A girl in her late twenties with real attitude and a mouth like a fishwife.

  Named Kaitlin.

  She was a looker, no doubt.

  Knew it, too.

  A degree in economics.

  So why on God’s Holy Ground would she want to be a secretary for a P.I.?

  Which is what he asked.

  She had long dark hair, hazel eyes, a figure she knew you’d kill for, and was dressed like she could give a toss.

  In a Clash t-shirt, tight, (very) black skinny jeans, and pink Converse trainers.

  She said,

  “Do I look like a babe who is going to work for some bollix?”

  He thought,

  “Jesus wept, of all the women out there looking for work, I get the mouth.”

  He asked,

  “How do you know I’m not ... am ... a ... one of those guys?”

  She laughed out loud and, Lord, she had one of those great laughs, didn’t care how she looked, just went with the merriment.

  She said,

  “I could get near most jobs I wanted. I’m smart, look hot ... right?”

  Waited for his response.

  He hadn’t any, least none this side of decency, so she continued,

  “I figured it would be fun to be a private dick—sorry, that’s you in theory—but I’m the glamorous sidekick you fall secretly in love with but never can have.”

  The hell was wrong with him? He felt his heart sink when she said never.

  There and then, he decided not to hire her. Christ, who needed this shite?

  She said,

  “I’ll start Monday. Don’t worry about references, you’d be too mortified to read how amazing I am.”

  She was at the door, added,

  “Salary ... you’ll do the right thing, you poor thing.”

  He’d envisaged a Mannix-type gig, where like mostly he shouted,

  “Peggy, coffee.”

  And the poor dumb bitch in that series always brought him his coffee with worship in her eyes.

  He cringed even now as he thought, did he actually mention Mannix to her?

  He did.

  She’d given him the blank stare.

  And she’d asked,

  “Who?”

  Fuck, age was a bastard.

  Dylan, unfashionably, didn’t have a whole load of baggage or angst or whatever they were calling it.

  He had his depression, and that was enough freight on its own self.

  One thing he tried not to think about was the time he’d been shot.

  Fifteen years in, seen his share of ugly fights, violence, the awful remains of murder victims and worse, the telling of a family about a deceased family member.

  He’d never been good at that. But then, how could you?

  It wasn’t even the weekend, when most of the heavy stuff went down and the drunks went bananas.

  It was a quiet Monday.

  The call came in about a man behaving strangely in his home in Newcastle.

  You had to tread careful there.

  The University, the hospital, rich families, old money, and all that nonsense.

  He’d gotten the call and took a raw young Ban Garda named Ridge with him.

  Upper Newcastle, near where the Franciscan Priory was.

  Class.

  He’d said to Ridge, who was so eager it damn near broke his heart, and she kept calling him Sir.

  He’d cautioned,

  “I’ll do the talking and just follow my lead.”

  Her agreement was more than he could actually face.

  They knocked on the door; it was answered by a portly man, dressed in silk pajamas.

  Dylan had said,

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we’ve had a report of some shouting from your house?”

  The man was civility personified, said,

  “Please, come in and, oh, it’s Professor. I’m at the University.”

  At least explained the silk pajamas, if ever such could be rationalized.

  OK.

  They went in.

  A large comfortable room lined with books, and the man asked,

  “Might you be allowed some refreshments? I know you’re on duty, but it’s late and we all break protocol sometime, am I correct, Miss? Is that the right PC term? I don’t want to break any rules here.”

  Dylan had nodded at Ridge and she said,

  “That would be lovely.”

&
nbsp; The Professor had that acquired collegiate accent that was loosely termed West Brit.

  Mainly it said ... you’re a peasant and I’m a complete bollix.

  Dylan was playing for time, see if maybe the poor bastard’s wife was lying dead in the kitchen or something.

  The man poured Ridge a dry sherry in a very impressive crystal glass, handed it to her, said,

  “Chin chin.”

  Then added,

  “You must excuse me, I’ve been teaching those morons some Evelyn Waugh, they still think Waugh was a woman.”

  Dylan should have been more alert, he knew that now but back then, he’d been literally listening to the sounds of the house, and what he heard, was

  Nothing.

  He was about to ask when the man said,

  “Inspector? ... or have you even attained that rank? Did they send the dregs of the barrel to a man of my standing? I have something more belly warming than dry sherry.”

  And up came the shotgun, both barrels at point-blank range in Dylan’s stomach.

  He was reloading, muttering about the decline in The Booker Prize quality when Ridge cold-cocked the professor with the dry sherry bottle.

  Twice, in fact.

  They say nothing on God’s Earth hurts more than a gut shot.

  They’re right.

  They had just moved him from the IT unit. He opened his eyes, the morphine giving him a cloud of, if not unknowing, then, unfeeling. A nurse fluffed his pillows, then said,

  “You have a visitor.”

  Ridge, he figured. But his voice wouldn’t come. She moved his IV, said,

  “It’s your son.”

  Son?

  WTF?

  Before he could say he’d no family, she ushered in a young man, smirk in place, who greeted,

  “Hi, Dad. I killed the school version of Oprah.”

  FOR THE LOVE OF BOYS

  BY ROB M. MILLER

  The neighborhood’s okay, I guess, for a middle-class series of streets—brightly painted hydrants; split-level homes; the usual assortment of SUVs, soccer-mom wagons, PT Cruisers, and the lemons belonging to all the just-starting-on-the-road teens. But, when it comes to having a playground for the kids, it has one fantastic, magical place—Glendale Park. It’s where I can go and do my favorite thing in the world, watch wonderful little boys.

  Today was perfect for it—a gorgeous, cloudless Saturday afternoon in June, and the heat perfectly riding that fine knife-edge between just-right hot and oppressive misery. From a distance, the aroma of barbecued ribs wafts over the grass and into the play area—the tantalizing tang pushed along by a perfect breeze.

  A fine, park-roaming, boy-watching day.

  “Mommy, that scary man’s looking at me.”

  The lad, quite beautiful, sat on a swing, no longer moving, but mother-caught and at a halt.

  “It’s okay, hon.” The smart, protective mommy ruffled her boy’s blond curls, and then lifted him off the swing. “Beat mommy over to the teeter-totters.”

  Mr. Cute-Stuff, perhaps six years old, hurried to the totters, probably having already forgotten about me.

  Too bad the mother hasn’t.

  She walked toward me, a mass of conflicting issues. Her telltale body lingo no mystery, but clear and painful: huffy, nervous, scared, all that. Yet her demeanor’s layered with the confidence and haughtiness reserved for those who find safety in daylight, in numbers, and in looking good.

  For us monsters, it’s different.

  “Who in the hell do you think you are?”

  The woman stood just a few feet in front of where I sat atop a wooden picnic table layered with graffiti. Pretty brave, considering.

  “I’m thorry. Just watchin’ your boy. Very handthome.” Talking to strangers could be such a pain.

  “Stay away from my son.”

  She walked off a bit less haughty, and perhaps a little more fearful, picked up Mr. Cute-Stuff from the teeter-totter, and carried him away. Pretty sad. I could tell the boy was disappointed. He probably blamed me. I was frustrated, too. I wanted to watch him play.

  I couldn’t blame the woman. How could I? She had no way of knowing I’d never hurt her boy, or any child. She was just a mom who’d probably just moved in. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me, hadn’t heard of me yet—the Mr. Wheat, the face- and body-scarred Quasimodo of Clarksgrove Housing Community. But I knew her son. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my six-inch clip-it, and with its serrated edge, start carving into the top of the picnic table: I love you, Elijah.

  A prophet’s name. Shame, though, that the woman only seemed to call him that when she wanted his attention; otherwise it was a host of pet endearments. Elijah—not a bad name, at all. Just hope the lad doesn’t learn to associate such a grand identifier with being in trouble.

  I’m sure the lady will ask around about me, and that’s all right. I’m a stellar citizen of our little community.

  Strangers never know how to take my appearance, and of a truth, neither do many who know me. But I can’t complain. I get along all right. Most of the folks in the community know me, treat me well, and don’t even mind me keeping an eye on their kids. At least not when there’s plenty of adults around.

  It’s what monsters like me have to deal with.

  I know.

  “Mrs. Wheat, I’m sorry.” The doctor looked sincere enough, but he talked to mom like I wasn’t there.

  “Sorry? You say you’re sorry?” Mom’s eyes flooded with tears. “Look at my son!”

  “There are bright sides.”

  “Bright sides?”

  “The reconstruction of his face and jaw are going well. By next year his lips will be functional. And he’ll be walking. We’re very happy with the spinal surgery. With some speech therapy—”

  “Very happy? Look at my boy. MY BOY. How’s he ever going to get married, be normal? Have a life?”

  “He will have a life, Mrs. Wheat. He will. In the future, with some plastic surgery—”

  “My son looks like a monster!”

  That’s when I knew. I had become a monster. My mommy’s little monster. Her little boy no more, little boy long gone.

  Mom had been poor, never had a hubby around, and no money ever showed up to fix my pretty face. And there wasn’t anything that could ever fix my crooked, ugly, broken back.

  What I got, I got for life. But the man that had used me, tortured me? He got twelve years before buying the farm from a shiv in the shower. Far too merciful.

  It was okay. Mom had only been partly right. No, there’d never been a marriage, and never would be. No woman wanted a man with only tufts of hair growing out of a burn-scarred scalp, a face that sagged down one side from a shattered cheek-plate, and lips like a fish. But still, I’d managed a life.

  Even monsters need a mission.

  Even monsters need love. Need to love.

  And I have that. I have boys. All boys. I love them.

  The picnic table was probably a mistake. But I couldn’t help it. The table, along with others of its kind across the park, as well as some trees, bear my marks: I love you, Bobby ... I love you, Anthony ... Tim, Will, Peter, Jamal. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty such names carved around Glendale Park. There were girl names, too. I saved writing them for days such as this, days when I was going to make a disposal. The writing commemorated such times, acted as an endorsement—a witness.

  Thank goodness the day was still young. It was a shame that Elijah was gone, but there were others out and about, playing on the monkey bars, the merry-go-round, out playing tag with their sisters, playing Frisbee.

  A great day.

  But I was bored sitting on the table with nobody close. For some reason, no one seemed interested in the swings.

  Too bad.

  I understand, though. I remember. I loved it all, being a boy: playing with my construction set, my Hot Wheels, playing in the park, eating ice cream with the moms—always out of one of those sugar cones, with a mini-mars
hmallow in the bottom to keep it from leaking—as we’d head toward Frog’s Pond to throw slices of bread torn apart to the ducks, my friends (even the girls), adventures, dreams. Oh, God, how I loved it.

  All of it.

  Poor Elijah. Doubt, playing at a park, that I would’ve wanted a monster looking at me. I know I wouldn’t have.

  I should know better.

  Why does a person buy a book, or pass it up to go to a more appealing aisle? The cover. It’s always about the cover. A nice cover’s no guarantee of quality, but it sure as spit gets your foot in the door.

  Fortunate for me, familiarity goes a long way in compensating for such an ugly cover.

  “’Ey, Donnie!” The boy doesn’t notice me. He’s way too focused on his deep-sea Captain Nemo escapades, Aquaman fantasies, or his journeys with the Man from Atlantis.

  Well, maybe not. Those were my fun times, back in my before. Still, the kid was having a blast, far greater than the pool deserved, his imagination surely pushing all his fun-buttons. It was great.

  Donnie’s mom, Mrs. Spadethrift—a Kathy, if I’m remembering right—maybe it’s Kathleen—watched on, face glowing, with a half-eaten Susie-Q cupcake in her hand, as her Donnie-boy played in the pool with his friends: Carlson, age seven; Marcus, six; Mary Beth, an eye-twinkling five-and-a-half; along with who knows how many others in his imagination.

  The small pool was designed for young ones, a wading pool, perhaps a quarter-inch in depth along the outer rim of its 25-foot diameter, with the water increasing to maybe two-feet or so, dead-center.

  I have to get a closer look, the short walk from my picnic table perch to the pool hardly worth being called a stroll.

  I love it, watching Marcus splash, little Ms. MB-Pretty and Carlson, playing their own coded game of water-ball, splash-tag-catch, and Donnie, trying to stay out of the way, in the center of the pool, with as much of his body underwater as possible. That’s key when playing in the water by yourself: Getting your whole body underwater. Then you could be anywhere, not just inches under the surface, but anywhere—on a submarine, hard ocean-diving, fighting some monster-shark—and doing anything, from grand escapes of facing and defeating slobbering pools of piranha, too awesomely fun but simple how-long-can-I-hold-my-breath games.

  Mary Beth’s mom, Sheila, dressed in a casual one-piece summer dress, was there, on the other side of the pool from where I was coming from, talking banalities—like the weather and stuff—with Marcus’s dad, Jim. The woman’s outfit wasn’t too sexy, but did show just enough leg to show she’d been putting extra pressure on herself in some vanity aerobics class. Tramp has been having an affair with Jim for three months now. Her dealings had nothing to do with my first love, or even my second, but cheating on her husband made me despise her. Bill was a good dad. Maybe he’d just have to get an anonymous tip about Sheila’s Wednesday one-o’clocks.