Uncommon Assassins

by F. Paul Wilson

  “G’night,” he called to Sam and Aimi as Mercy towed him toward the front door, locked now.

  “If you wait a minute, Carter, I could give you a ride home,” Aimi offered.

  Although she strove to sound offhanded, Carter heard the longing in her voice. An involuntary tightening in his groin made his step falter. For a moment, he was tempted. It had been a long time. Years. But, no. If he gave in to temptation, things would end sooner rather than later, with Aimi disappointed or angry or disillusioned. And he’d be out of a job. It wouldn’t go over well with her husband, either. They might be separated, but he’d come by the restaurant two weeks ago, trying to get her to talk to him. They’d argued in Sam’s office.

  “Carter?” Aimi’s voice held a promise, but he made himself keep moving. He needed this job for another half year. Two or three more contracts and his nest egg would be sufficient to allow him to retire to Morocco, as he’d planned since being posted there as an Embassy guard on his first assignment. The clarity of the light, the sky so blue he could drown in it, had sucker-punched him the moment he got off the plane. He’d still be able to absorb that light, he thought, even though he could no longer see it. The fact that the country had no extradition treaty with the U.S. was a plus.

  “Thanks,” he said over his shoulder, “but Mercy and I like the bus. We like to people watch.” With a snort of self-deprecating laughter, he let Mercy lead him through the door. If Aimi was still interested, maybe he’d screw her brains out before he left the country.

  Carter inhaled deeply and then blew the air out hard. It was four blocks to the bus stop and he let Mercy take the lead, fishing in his pocket for the pay-as-you-go cell phone. He stripped the sim card from it and crunched it between his teeth, spitting it out when he was satisfied it was mangled. Stopping Mercy with a tug on the halter, he set the rest of the phone down and stomped on it. It splintered beneath his heel. Cheap plastic crap. He kicked at it and a chunk skittered down the sidewalk before falling into the gutter. A car whooshed by. Carter’s watch alarm beeped softly and he urged Mercy to pick up the pace, not wanting to miss the bus. The next one wasn’t due for forty-eight minutes.

  The next morning, Carter and Mercy got off the bus two stops away from Little Octopus so he could check his post office box. Sure enough, the clerk handed him a padded envelope. Mercy nosed it, as if asking him to tear it open, but he said, “Later. When we’re home, girl.” Waving his thanks to the clerk, he put the envelope in his backpack and headed toward the restaurant, walking despite the drizzle that misted his face and hair. Mercy shook herself vigorously when they arrived, then trotted into Sam’s office while Carter washed his hands and put on the paper chef’s cap. He exchanged greetings with Sam and the waiters, simultaneously relieved and disappointed that Aimi wasn’t working the lunch shift.

  Busying himself with preparing tekka maki and California rolls, Carter chatted with the early lunchers already seated at the sushi bar. He was on his own for the lunch rush, since Sam was in the kitchen with the fugu, the puffer fish that required great precision in its preparation to avoid spreading the poison in its entrails to the delicate flesh. Carter had tried fugu once, on Okinawa, shortly after he became interested in learning to prepare sushi, but hadn’t thought it was worth the hype. Still, he’d been fascinated by the preparation process, and by the tetrodotoxin, or TTX, that paralyzed a victim’s nervous system so he asphyxiated, fully conscious, if not hooked up to a respirator in time. One of his Navy buddies had died from eating fugu. Carter had been with him on leave in Kyoto, although not at the restaurant, and had seen him laid out, naked, on the stainless steel table in the morgue, his eyes staring, his lips blue. It was by no means the first body he’d seen, but it was the least violated, the most clean. No blood, no bullet holes or knife wounds, no abraded hands from trying to fight off death. Carter had stared at the body, fascinated, until the waiting policeman had prodded him for an identification.

  His friend’s death hadn’t put him off wanting to be a sushi chef, and he’d responded to Sam’s ad for an apprentice when he settled in the D.C. area after Syria. Sam had spent five years training to prepare fugu in Japan, before immigrating in the late 1970s. He had a special area in the kitchen for slitting open the fish and removing its entrails, and special knives he never used for anything else. He double bagged the scales and organs, sealed them, and labeled them “Poison,” disposing of them as hazardous waste so no unsuspecting cat or homeless person gleaned them from the rubbish bin. Carter had volunteered early on to transport the baggies to the facility that burned the contents. Sam didn’t need to know that some of the baggies never reached the incinerator.

  Carter followed Mercy into their small house later that afternoon, plastic baggie of TTX-laden offal and padded envelope in his backpack. He hung the backpack on its hook by the door with Mercy’s leash beside it. Since childhood, he’d been a stickler for order, organizing toys and books and clothes by color and size or purpose. His parents used to joke that he was destined for the military, and his habits had come in handy in the ships’ cramped quarters. They were even more important now. Carter headed into the small laboratory he had set up in what was meant to be a second bedroom. Closed blinds discouraged peepers and an exhaust system vented any fumes through the roof. He’d told the workman who installed it that he built model airplanes and needed the fan to disperse the fumes from glues and paints. Shutting Mercy out of the room, he stripped, and slipped into the protective coverall he wore when extracting the TTX. The toxin didn’t absorb through skin, but he couldn’t run the risk of having Mercy lick off any particle that might adhere to his regular clothing.

  Gloved, he ran his hand over the smooth glass top of the lixiviating chamber, and poked a finger against the stainless steel filter. Intact. He’d built the extractor himself, before Syria, using a paper he’d read by Chinese scientists about extracting toxins from biological tissues, and lab items he’d bought off the Internet. It was compact, intended to process small batches, but he was proud of it. His vessels, tools, and measuring vials arrayed in front of him, Carter used small tongs to lift a portion of the fish’s organs into a Pyrex bowl and mashed them thoroughly. Reaching automatically for the quarter-cup measure and teaspoon, both arranged in ascending height on hooks along the shelves that rose from the counter, he added water and acetic acid to the bowl, wrinkling his nose at the vinegary smell. The solution had to soak for several hours before he could return and heat it to coagulation, add acid to adjust the pH, crystallize and dry it with vacuum pressure, and prepare it as an injectable solution. Not a complicated process, at least not for anyone with the slightest understanding of chemistry, but a long one. It would be almost twenty-four hours before he had the product he wanted.

  Removing his coverall, Carter walked naked into the hall, closing the lab door behind him. Fishing in his backpack, he retrieved the envelope and carried it to the kitchen table, Mercy padding beside him, her nails clicking on the wood floors. “Need to get you to the groomer for a nail trim,” he told her.

  She whined.

  Laughing, he patted her, and then tore open the envelope. Its contents slithered into his hands. Aah. All slick silk and spaghetti straps—a camisole. Perfect. He balled the wisp of lingerie in his hand and held it down to Mercy. The dog sniffed at it. “Good girl. You won’t have any trouble finding her, will you?”

  Mercy barked sharply, once, and Carter laughed again before finding a plastic baggie and sealing the cami inside. “Soon,” he promised the dog. “Very soon.”

  The target’s name was Renuart and she was a runner. According to the client, she was forty-six, five-foot-four, a hundred thirty-five pounds, with brown hair and eyes. She lived in a condo in Bethesda, attended Mass on Sunday mornings, and ran daily at six p.m. in a park two blocks from her home. She was most vulnerable during her run, Carter had decided early on, and he’d ridden the Metro to the park four times, walking the path that circumnavigated a small lake, a middle-aged man an
d his dog out for a little exercise, innocuous, invisible. Now he sat on the bench he had selected, fingering the syringe in his pocket.

  Opening the plastic bag containing the camisole, he offered it to Mercy, with the command, “Alert.” The dog snuffled at the lingerie, then stood in front of Carter, quivering with excitement. Without her, he wouldn’t have been able to continue in this line of work, but her nose was more reliable at identifying targets than anyone’s vision; no disguise or change in hair color or weight fooled Mercy’s nose. Carter’s leg jiggled and he stilled it, only to have it start up again thirty seconds later. Waiting was the hardest. Children’s laughs drifted from the jungle gym on the far side of the water. His fingers caressed the slim plastic tube of the syringe, ready to pop the protective cap off as soon as Mercy let him know the woman was approaching.

  Even though he was waiting for it, Mercy’s sharp bark startled him. She had the woman’s scent. “Seek,” he told the dog, rising to his feet. He pulled the syringe from his pocket and held it cupped in his hand. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickled.

  Mercy pulled him forward, into the path of the woman, and, as trained, jumped playfully at the target. Carter stumbled to his knees, knowing almost everyone would stop to help a blind man up. The woman, already off-balance, thudded into him. Before she could draw back, he drove the syringe into her thigh and depressed the plunger. She gasped and staggered backward.

  “Carter? What—?”

  Susan’s voice, scared, confused, froze him. Oh, God. He’d never known her last name, never connected her to the Susan Renuart whose husband had paid him $75,000 to kill her. He thought briefly, wildly, of phoning 911. Cops, questions, prison. He couldn’t bear the thought of having his world curtailed any further. Rising, Carter reached for Susan and brushed her hip before he caught her hand. He guided her gently to the bench and maneuvered her into a sitting position. Her muscles were already stiffening; the TTX worked much faster when injected than ingested. Within a very few minutes, she’d be totally paralyzed, her lungs refusing to inflate or deflate, and she’d die of asphyxiation. The least he could do was be with her until it was over, hold her hand.

  “You’ve killed me, haven’t you?” she said. Two harsh breaths, more than the words, revealed her fear. “The last man Jacob sent failed. That damn restraining order wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.” Bitterness and resignation fought in her voice. “I thought ... I thought you liked me.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was you.” He stood in front of her, shielding her from the view of the few passersby. Usually he’d be gone by now, knowing it would be minutes, or even longer, before someone realized there was something wrong with the victim, and frequently a day or more before a doctor or medical examiner identified the cause of death.

  “Are you really blind?” She mumbled the words. She shifted and a zipper rasped.

  In answer, he raised his dark glasses, letting her gaze on the seared and ridged flesh burned by the acid attack in Syria.

  “My God.”

  An explosion of sound followed her words and the bullet plowed into Carter, who jolted backward, his hands automatically covering the entry wound in his neck. A gun. The client should have told him she’d be armed, that he’d tried to kill her once before and put her on her guard. You couldn’t trust anyone, Carter thought, vaguely aware of Mercy barking. He fell to his knees, blood gushing warmly through his fingers as he pitched forward into Susan’s lap. Excited voices neared and Mercy whined, her cold, damp nose pushing into his hand.

  Suddenly, he could see anew, the painful blue of the Moroccan sky, the glitter of sun on water, a flash of white that might have been a bird. It zipped across his field of vision and was gone. He stared after it, elated, as his blood pulsed over Susan’s thigh. When the darkness came, moments later, it extinguished even the memory of seeing.

  SCRUB

  BY MICHAEL BAILEY

  The complex is a maze of endless hallways and all of the doors are the same color, except for mine. The door is painted red, with the numbers 691 etched onto a little plaque above the keyhole. Ethan and I live on the sixth floor in the ninety-first flat. That’s how the building works, with even-numbered tenants living on the right and odd ones like me on the left. A folded piece of paper waits for me as I return from work, tucked beneath the door—smashed against the mat—with a copy of a copy of a copy of my lease agreement stapled to it: page three. There’s a circled section of small print near the bottom for me to read.

  Our even-numbered neighbor anticipates my arrival, as usual, with his robe giving birth to a hairy beer gut. He smiles. Even though he’s old enough to be my father, the oily bastard doesn’t mind undressing me with his eyes while I fetch the note.

  The circled text reads: “Tenants shall not modify exterior walls and/or doors.” The note has scribbles telling me to return the door to its original color and provides a paint code I can take to any number of stores: 1325DS#2-66.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve come home to this type of notice, but until the stain’s gone from my kitchen floor, the front door remains a vibrant, reminding red.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You a scrub nurse?”

  I want to tell him No, the blue scrubs are a fashion statement, but I politely nod.

  The man grins—only one side of his mouth moves, as if he’d survived a stroke. He scratches himself, turns away and enters his studio. The complex was a hotel at one time, later converted to cheap housing, so his flat’s down the hall a bit, across from ours. For two months I’ve put up with him standing there, waiting for me when I come home from work. He asks a different question every day that doesn’t need answering.

  After heating a microwave dinner and forcing half of it down, I go to the kitchen floor. It haunts me, calls to me each day more than the last. The kitchen is where he died. Gunshot wound to the head. I find a new brush under the sink—the bristles on the old one are nearly gone—and go to work on removing my husband’s death from the cold linoleum.

  As I scrub, I see it clearly: Ethan’s corpse gazing at the ceiling, a blackish-red hole above his right eyebrow, a pool of blood surrounding his head. The granite countertop and the blender and the toaster and dishes in the sink and even the faucet handle—I cleaned the blood spray from all of it after he was taken out, but his blood on the floor remains a stain.

  It lifts a little more each day.

  What our neighbor should ask is, “Why don’t you move on?”

  Not until Ethan’s gone, I would say.

  I clean until the brush is a light shade of pink and frayed, and then I go out to get the paint.

  My job is what keeps me sane following Ethan’s murder. During the day, I wear the rubber gloves, the face mask, the fancy blue hairnet, the matching uniform. Everything I do in life involves organization and cleaning messes, it seems.

  I come home to the same jerk waiting outside his studio.

  My door is still red.

  No note this time.

  No stupid question.

  He wants me to ask the question this time, but I don’t.

  The next day, he’s there. He wears a wife-beater and a pair of jeans with a belt trying to bury itself into the chasm of his belly button.

  “Got another notice,” he says.

  It’s wedged under my door and I ask if he put it there.

  He sips his can of cheap beer with that stupid-looking smile.

  “Want me to paint your door?” he says. “I don’t mind doing it for you.”

  It sounds sincere, but I’d then owe him a favor.

  “Please do not paint my door, and stay away from my apartment.”

  “Just being nice.”

  “Thank you, but no thank you.”

  He stands there as I pick up the note. It’s the same message as before—the same copy of a copy of a copy of page three from our lease agreement. Ethan’s name is still listed as the primary resident, I notice, as wel
l as the circled small print near the bottom about tenants not modifying exterior walls and/or doors. The scribble tells me to return the door to its original color, like before, and provides a different paint code from before: 451MA-48.

  I skip dinner this time and work on the kitchen floor before going out to get the paint.

  “Another notice?”

  It’s another one of his questions that doesn’t need answering.

  “Please, I don’t need this right now.”

  We lost a patient in the ER, so my day isn’t off to a great start. It was an extensive operation involving two surgeons and took most of the day. I was in charge of draping and gloving the team, blood irrigation and monitoring blood loss for the patient, as well as counting needles, sponges and sterilizing instruments. A really long day.

  “I asked you to stay away from my apartment.”

  He points to his door, fewer than ten feet away.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of seeing them under your door,” he says, “those notes?”

  I do. I come home to my door each day and am reminded of Ethan. I want to paint over the red and move on. Instead, I come home to the same red door, the same note, the codes.

  The paint codes are really just that: codes.

  1325DS#2-66 stands for 1325 D Street, Apt. 2. The number 66 tacked onto the end of it is simply the last two digits of the zip code. Not rocket science. The second address of 451MA-48 translates to 451 Morris Avenue, different part of the city.

  My neighbor wants me to talk.

  I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk about the lease agreement and the fake message about painting the door in case someone else reads it. I want to go inside and scrub. I want to forget that Ethan died because I once received a notice wedged under my door with a paint code of 101FR#691-70. This one stood for 101 Feagleship Road, Studio 691: our studio apartment.