by Derek Haas
ALL those months Pooley had been silent, pretending to be resigned inside himself, he had really been watching, studying, understanding the motivations of our Pete. Taking his beatings in silence, letting me take mine, but watching, waiting. Twice he had overheard Pete in Mrs. Cox’s room, pouring out his penitence to her mindless eyes. Twice he had heard Pete begging for forgiveness, only to increase his savagery two hours later. So Pooley began to figure out that Pete needed her there to continue doing what he did to us. He needed someone who wouldn’t judge him, but would sit passively and let him forgive himself so he could do it again. While I trained, trying to make my body stronger so I could one day fight back, Pooley cracked a mirror in the back bathroom, sharpened a shard on the side of the bedroom headboard, and waited. When Pete came home early and found me getting stronger, he knew he could wait no longer.
The police picked us up before we had gone a mile. We were indicted for killing Mrs. Cox, and my descriptions of our treatment seemed to fall on deaf ears. I had a petty-crime juvenile record in my past, and Pooley was done talking to adults for a long time. I can’t say I blamed him; he saved my life, after all. Nor was I surprised when we were convicted. But because of some of the oddities that came out of Pete’s mouth when he talked cryptically to the judge about swift, painful discipline—lending some credence to what I had said about our treatment—we were tried as juveniles and sent upstate to finish out our youth.
SO Pooley was the first assassin I had known. When I decided to begin this life professionally—or you might say it was decided for me—he was a natural to be my middleman, though he wasn’t my first.
CHAPTER 3
POOLEY agrees the coincidence surrounding my father is too odd to let pass without some digging. Since I need to head west without delay, he’ll handle the shovel for me. We agree to speak again when I call next week from the road.
My rule is eight weeks out. I will not agree to complete a job in less than that time, and, as such, have turned down quite a few assignments, even when offers for more money have been dangled like grapes. I can flawlessly plan and execute a job in less time; of that, I have no doubt. But assassinating a target takes psychological preparation, and shortchanging yourself in that area can lead to debilitation long after the mark is in the grave.
I open the folder again and this time, study the contents without flinching. He will be traveling by bus, a “whistle-stop” tour crisscrossing the country, culminating in Los Angeles at the Democratic National Convention. His path is strategically haphazard, planned randomness, with stops in most of the major television markets surrounding battleground states and enough small towns peppered in so that no economic demographic will feel slighted. Three thousand miles and a million handshakes in eight weeks. I will follow the same route, and will wait for him in the Midwest, allowing him to catch up, before I follow him the rest of the way to California.
The next morning, a rental car is parked out on my street with no paperwork to sign, no instructions to receive, the keys on the floorboard under the steering column. A beige car, a sedan, with nothing to distinguish it from the millions of other cars sprawling across American highways at any given time. With only a small duffel tossed in the backseat and a larger case lodged in the trunk, I head west, the sun at my back.
When I pull over to eat lunch at a small roadside dinette with the provocative name Sue’s No. 2, I am approached by a prostitute. I had grabbed a booth in the back of the restaurant in order to avoid contact with the local denizens of this somewheretown, but this girl could care less where I sat. She honed in on me as soon as the bells jingled on the door.
She is dressed in a skirt that stops well above her knees and a white halter that exposes the baby fat around her middle. Her hair is stringy blond with burgundy roots and hangs away from her head like a web. She possesses a crooked nose but an uncommonly pretty mouth with perfectly straight teeth. Her eyes are sharp and intelligent.
“Hey there, mon frer,” she says, plopping down in the seat across from me. My guess is she cannot weigh more than a hundred pounds nor be older than seventeen.
I don’t say anything, and she proceeds, unfazed.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. I got dropped off in this shithole town, and I need a lift outta here.” This comes out between smacks of bright purple gum and the smell of grapes left too long on the vine. “So I’m prepared to grant you favors in exchange for a lift.”
“A lift where?”
“Wherever it is you’re headed.”
“What kind of favors?”
She drops her chin and looks at me from the tops of her eyes like I don’t have the sense God gave me. Just then, the waitress approaches. The girl waits for me to order, and before the waitress can disappear, I find myself asking her if she’s hungry.
“Fuckin’ starvin’, man.”
The waitress takes an order for steak and eggs and hashbrowns and bacon if they have any left over from breakfast. Oh, and some orange juice and some milk and that’ll be it. The girl’s eyes are merry now; there is a break in the storm clouds. I don’t normally talk to people, but it’s been an abnormal week and those merry eyes stir something inside me I thought wasn’t there.
“How’d you get here?”
“This nut-rubber wanted some company for his ride over to Boston. He wanted me to jerk him along the way.” Hand gestures for emphasis. “I gave him what he asked for and when we pulled over here to get something to eat, he split as soon as I stepped out of the car.” Matter-of-factly, as though she were telling me about her day at school. “Stiffed me, too, the bastard. It’s gettin’ to where there’s not any honest people around.”
“How old are you?”
“I lost track.”
I swear she’s seventeen. “What’s the last age you remember being?”
“Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about—”
But she’s interrupted by the food. We both eat in silence; I because I enjoy it, she because she can’t get the breakfast into her mouth fast enough. The food is flying up to her face like a power shovel at full steam, and she is as unembarrassed as a hog at a trough. She devours all of hers, and when I proffer half of my plate, she attacks it.
After I’ve left money for the tab, she asks, “So how about that ride?”
“What do you think?”
Smiling now with those beautiful ivory teeth, she puts one finger in her mouth. “I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at taggin’ along with you.”
SHE’S asleep in the passenger seat, and I am pissed. Pissed I let my guard down, pissed I’ve committed a cardinal sin, pissed I’ve ignored every professional instinct in my ken to allow her to share this car with me. I can still kill her, can still pull the car down one of these farm-to-market roads, roll the tires against some deserted brush, and pop, pop, dump the body where it won’t be found for weeks. She won’t be missed, that’s certain. Except, goddammit, people saw us at the diner, the waitress, the old man in coveralls at the counter, the couple in the booth at the far end of the joint. They saw her lock in on me, and they saw us leave together, and they saw us get into my beige sedan. People noticed. They noticed, goddammit. What is happening to me?
Bad luck. The name at the top of the page was bad luck, and now picking up this girl-whore is as black bad as it can get. My stomach is queasy with the blackness.
I must be slipping.
“So, where are we headed?” She puts her bare feet up on the dashboard in front of her and blinks groggily.
“Philadelphia.”
“Yeah? Good. That’s where I came from.”
“Originally?”
“Naah,” she snorts, finding the question funny. “Originally I’m from a little hovel outside of Pittsburgh that you’ve never heard of. Recently, I’m from Philly.”
“That’s where you . . . work?”
She snorts again, not at all self-conscious about the way it makes her sound like a sow. “Yeah, work. Working girl.” She pause
s thoughtfully, and then, as though she’s struggling with the weight of her question, “What do you think about that?”
“About what you do?”
“Yeah. I’m curious. You seem like a normal dude.
What’s a normal dude think about a working girl?”
“I think it can’t be too good of a way to make a living.”
“You got that right, buddy. You certainly got that right.”
“So, why do it, then?”
“I don’t know. I can tell you one thing, I’m rarely lucid enough to sit and think about it. You got any liquor in here?” She tries to swivel in her seat to look in the back, but when she reaches for my duffel, I grab her with my free hand and spin her around hard.
“Owww. Shit, man! I’m just looking to see if you got anything to drink!”
“I don’t.”
“Well you don’t have to be a cocksucker about it.” She’s showing me the same mouth that can use words like “hovel” and “lucid” can spew vitriol as well. And she’s testing the envelope to see how far she can push it. Was the way I spun her around portentous of a beating to come? Did she get a rise out of me with the severity of the way she pronounced “cocksucker,” the way she paused right before the word, collecting her breath and then pounding that first syllable like she hit it with a hammer? COCKsucker! We drive on in silence. I can tell she’d rather pass the time talking than pouting, but she wants me to make the first move.
After two minutes, she gives up. “I was just looking to see if you had something to drink.”
“I don’t.”
She decides to get off the subject. “You like music?” “I like silence.”
This seems to do the trick, and for a few minutes more, the only sound in the car is her nasal breathing, in and out, in and out, like wind through a cracked window.
“I need to pee,” she says suddenly, nodding at the approaching exit where a Texaco sign pokes just above the tree line.
I throw up my blinker and guide the car toward the exit. As we approach, I can’t help but notice a farm road running directly behind the service station, leading off into obscurity. Maybe I can get away with it, with a little extra time. If I can find some soft earth, I can dig a little hole to hide her body, and it’ll be months, maybe years before anyone finds the remains. But it’s broad daylight and I don’t know this road and any dumb farmer could happen along at just the right time.
By the time I’ve rejected the temptation, she’s opened the door. I watch her ask the attendant where the rest-rooms are and he hands her a giant block of wood with a key attached and points around to the back of the building. I watch him watch her all the way out the door, and when he catches me observing him, he quickly looks back down at the binder he had splayed on the counter.
What am I doing here? I should just gun the car and forget I ever saw this girl, but for some reason, I’m paralyzed. What is it about those teeth and that mouth? What do I see in them?
I turn off the ignition and head into the convenience store portion of the station where the clerk gives me a once-over and shuffles his binder down below the counter. I move to the drinks stacked like bricks up to the ceiling in the back of the store and withdraw a six-pack of Budweiser. For someone whose every move is performed to draw the least amount of attention—domestic over import in rural Pennsylvania—I realize I’ve already attracted notice just by parking the car and having this girl ask for the bathroom key. The clerk’s once-over wasn’t because he was worried I’d shoplift something from the store; he wanted to know what kind of man would pick up a girl like that. And he is going to remember who it was and what the man looked like when and if he is asked.
This is how it happens. In the game I play, you cannot give in to temptation, even if temptation is merely to hold a conversation with someone, to connect with another human being on a superficial level. And once you give in to temptation, even if you only do it one time, then the dominos start to topple until the entire floor is covered with a dark blanket.
I pay for the beer and the clerk only grunts at me without meeting my eyes when he hands over the change. Maybe this isn’t so bad. I’ve done a thoughtful thing for this girl, and the clerk is back looking at his binder before I even leave the store. Maybe I can pull this off, talk to this girl, gain some insight into her world and what she imagined she would be doing with her life. Find out where her life took the left turn instead of the right, where she missed the exit and eventually got lost and discovered that her map was terribly inaccurate. Maybe I can learn about someone for once, someone whose life had been like my mother’s, with no hidden motives.
In the car, I slide back behind the wheel and put the six-pack on the seat so the girl will see it when she returns. It’s as simple as that, buying her breakfast, giving her this six-pack of beer, and that smile will come to her lips again, and she will lean back in her seat, and she will be warm and rosy, and she won’t have to say things like cocksucker and pee and we can have a normal conversation like normal people.
A moment exists in time—a flash of a moment—right before you realize how fucked you are. You can’t explain it scientifically, but a shiver settles on the back of your neck as though someone placed an ice cube there. The fine hairs on your neck stand erect like they’ve been jolted with electricity. A rush of heat flashes through your body and your muscles all contract in unison. This happens instantaneously, when your mind hasn’t quite caught up to your body’s impulse. It is what I felt when I happened to glance in the back seat.
My duffel. She had reached for my duffel and I had immediately seized her arm and jerked her around hard. Therefore, there must be something valuable in the duffel. She must have taken it while I was in the store.
I bolt from the car and around to the bathroom, knowing instinctively the clerk’s eyes are riveted on me. Nothing. Just a key stuck in the open door of a filthy bathroom and no trace of the girl or my bag. Behind the Texaco, a thick growth of trees, a country road leading to oblivion, and no sign of the fucking girl. Pandora has climbed out of her box.
My breath escapes quickly, four quick bursts, and then I’m off into the woods. I don’t even know what goddamn name to call her, to call out, so I just stay quiet, a determined expression now blanching my face. I have to improvise, to hunt her quickly. How long will the clerk look at that rental car parked in front of the store before he calls the police with a declaration that something a little strange is going on down at the Texaco? He saw the girl. He saw me. He saw her go around to the back and then he saw me spring from the car after her. Had I even shut the door of the car? I’m not sure. Son-of-a-bitch, how had I let this get so out of hand?
I have five minutes, maybe ten to find her before the clerk ventures out to see if we’re in the bathroom together. After that, who knows? Another five minutes to call the police? I’m fucked. That’s all there is to it.
Trees everywhere, and then, a clearing, and I catch a glimpse of her just as she crosses into the growth about a tenth of a mile from where I stand. She caught sight of me, too, and I spot a panic in her face usually reserved for wild prey. Maybe she’s seen what’s in the bag and she’s spooked. But she hasn’t dropped the duffel either; I can see its yellow flash caught against her dark skirt.
I close the distance in no time. She’s skittish, and she makes a mistake, turns and trips over a dead oak stump. Her hands go up as my footsteps crunch through the dead leaves, on her back, arms bent, scrambling, scratching the air, trying to get me off before I’m even there.
And then my foot comes down on her neck, twisting her face into the dirt so that those pretty teeth are smeared with earth.
“No, mister. Please. I don’t want it. I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
Fighting with everything she has, every inch of strength she can muster, her arms wailing at my shin, beating my pants leg, her eyes desperate with fear.
And then I step down harder until I hear the bones
in her neck crack like wood.
THE forest is silent in the peculiar way nature seems to go mute when a living creature is killed. I hesitate to say “innocent” creature, because if she hadn’t been so stupid, if she hadn’t been so goddamn reckless, she’d still be alive and we’d be chatting on our way to Philadelphia, making a connection, talking about the normal things normal people talk about and her mouth would be smiling and sipping on a beer rather than silent and gaping and half-filled with muck, and leaves, and decay.
Or maybe the woods aren’t silent at all. Maybe my ears are ringing so loudly all other sounds are drowned out. I am breathing hard and a bead of sweat has rolled from my eyebrows to the tip of my nose, but the silence is implacable, as thick as cream. Underneath my boot, the girl remains still, her energy as used up and wasted as her life.
I will need a little luck. I prop the girl on my shoulders as though I’m carrying a wounded soldier, and hurry back through the woods toward the convenience store. A little luck, a little luck. That’s all I’m asking. My footsteps are firm, finding solid ground again and again, weaving in and out of the trees, the back of the store looming larger and larger through the brush. Her weight is slight, and her body bobs up and down on my shoulders, light as a backpack. Thirty feet, twenty, and no sign of the clerk. Just stay at your counter, friend. Keep marking in your binder, counting up that inventory, and you’ll soon forget about us, just another couple of customers amidst a constant string of travelers.
I break through the tree line and I’m back at the store, the block of wood still dangling from the doorknob like a pendulum. In a quick step, I’m in the room with the body on my back and the block of wood in my hand and the door shut tight. Almost there. Stay with me, luck.
The smell in the bathroom is horrible, and stains splotch the walls like a foul mosaic. It doesn’t take me long to work myself up. The stench, the agitation, the degradation of killing in this animalistic manner, her body propped across the sink, her head facing me, her lips curling back away from her teeth in a sneer that is accusatory and mocking and hopeless. I double over and retch until I can feel the pulse thick in my ears.
