Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder (15 page)

“Went to the movies,” I said, peeking in the bag to make sure he remembered to buy something for himself.  He became so focused on his jobs that I sometimes had to remind him to eat while he was working.

“Again?  I thought you said it was terrible.”

“It is terrible.  And don’t worry, I’m being careful.”

“I know you are,” he said, shaking his wet hands to dry them instead of using a towel.  Frank never touched the towels, though he didn’t deny me the pleasure.  Even after showering he’d just stand there and drip-dry, something I regrettably never got up early enough to witness.

Frank was out of bed at four thirty every morning, regardless of the time zone or when he’d gone to sleep.  Then he’d shower, get dressed, and go run for a couple of hours.  Once he was finished he’d come back, take another shower, and fill the tub for me while he dried off and shaved.

He knew how much I liked the water, and because the frightful places we stayed at had questionable swimming pools, if at all, it didn’t matter if the bathwater had gone completely cold by the time I got up.  On top of that, Frank had a huge phobia of drowning, and he seemed to think that if I ran my own bath it was somehow less safe than when he did it for me.

I’d learned of his fear when we had to travel through the Florida Keys for a job.  He’d been an absolute wreck driving across the Overseas Highway; his knuckles whiter than me on the steering wheel, swearing at Charlie for booking him a gig in Key West when there were plenty of kill-worthy people in Miami.  As soon as we were back on land he’d pulled over to throw up, and spent the next two hours chain-smoking, explaining through breaths of smoke that he didn’t
do
water.  I couldn’t even enjoy the scenery because I was so worried about him, though he did make it up to me by not breaking my toes for getting sand in his car.

Frank would usually be gone for the day before I woke up, but sometimes I’d get to watch him finish shaving with his shirt off while I took my bath.  He was better-built than I’d realized, his slender body wiry underneath his clothes, with the perfect amount of chest hair and a delicious dark line trailing down his stomach, leading my eyes where they’d go anyway.  And he had scars all over, a great story behind each one.

He’d been grazed twice by bullets, there were several gashes from knives and a few puncture wounds, but the unusual ones were all from Bella.  She’d tried to carve her initials in his shoulder while he slept, leaving him with half a B before he’d woken up and smacked her, and the small round scar above his left kidney was from a Gucci stiletto.  She’d stabbed him with it because he commented on how much noise they made on tile.

When Frank shaved, he used a beautiful, black marble-handled straight razor, the kind they had in old-fashioned barber shops.  He did the whole routine from sharpening the blade on a leather strap and applying thick cream with a brush, to quickly but carefully shaving his face without once looking in the mirror.

I’d never seen anything like it.  Watching him blindly wield a weapon that close to his jugular was both unbelievably sexy and extremely disconcerting.  Frank had a lot of issues with the way he looked, something I would’ve had difficulty comprehending even if I wasn’t in love with him.  He was handsome, it was undeniable.  But he didn’t see it, and I finally understood that his reluctance to be around people had more to do with his distorted perception of himself than his overwhelming shyness.  The poor man hadn’t even known that his eyes were green until I mentioned how pretty they were, and he’d dared to look at his reflection in an attempt to prove me wrong about the color.

“Is he dead yet?” I asked, laying our food out in front of him and then sitting on his lap.  I constantly tested the boundaries of our platonic relationship to see exactly what physical contact I could get away with.  Frank let a lot slide simply because he was in denial about how much I desired him, and he liked to pretend that I was just a very affectionate person rather than admitting that he might be worthy of my adoration.

“Not yet,” he sighed.  Famous people came with a heftier fee, but with that he had to deal with paparazzi, and cameras made him nervous.  Though I couldn’t see what he was worried about.  If anyone could kill a celebrity without being seen, it was Frank.  “He should be soon.  I did my part.”

Drugs.  Not the illegal kind either.  Mr. Marshall was a big fan of pharmaceuticals.  It was no wonder he’d been making a fool of himself on every talk-show that would have him for the last four months.  Of course, there were speculations about what was causing his odd behavior, but his reps denied it until they were blue in the face.  It had only taken Frank a few hours of surveillance to know the truth.  And to decide how he’d kill the man.

It wasn’t very often that Frank was the one to choose the means to his victim’s end.  Most of the time, Charlie’s clients had something very specific in mind; sending a message with an assassin’s bullet, or exacting some sort of brutal revenge by having the mark tortured in unimaginable ways.  But occasionally he’d get one where the client just couldn’t be bothered, and they’d leave the decision to the professionals.

Accidental suicide was generally what Frank would go for when he murdered someone.  It was quiet, untraceable, and above all, it gave him the opportunity to get up close and personal with his victim before they died.

He admitted to me that seeing a person die was one of the most incredible experiences he’d ever had.  It made him feel human, watching the life leave their eyes.  I tried to tell him that fucking me would make him feel like God, but he didn’t buy it.

“Did you mess with his pills?” I asked, finishing my meal.  He was still picking at his.

“Of course I did.  Serves him right,” he said.  He really disliked drug users.  They couldn’t be trusted, and trust was extremely important to him.

Before he’d started working professionally, a group of intoxicated junkies had thrown rocks at his dog.  The animal was injured badly enough to have to be put down, which Frank took care of himself.  But not before he did the same to them.  He still had its collar in a safe deposit box in Paris.

I stood up, jumping onto the bed and turning on the TV.  I couldn’t wait for the story to break that leading man and action superstar Robert Marshall had been found dead on the set of his latest film.  It wasn’t every day that I got to see Frank’s work on the news.  Usually we were on the road, away from the area of coverage before anyone was the wiser, and the majority of his hits weren’t high profile enough to go national.  But in this case, we couldn’t leave until the job was finished, and we wouldn’t know that until we got word.

Frank came and sat beside me.  He didn’t normally even glance at the television, preferring to lie next to me and read his book while I destroyed more brain cells watching brightly colored garbage.  But since this was work-related, he made himself comfortable.

It took until morning.  I was fast asleep with my head against his chest when he shook me awake, nodding toward the TV.

I rolled over, finding the control buried between us, and turned it up to hear the pretty reporter announce what we already knew; apparent overdose, no foul play suspected.  Frank smiled a little, then stood and started wiping down the room.

The road stretched for miles ahead of us, an eighteen-wheeler on the horizon the only vehicle within sight.  I stopped mid-sentence, turning toward the back of the car.  At first I thought Frank had hit some cuddly jackrabbit, but the thudding sound continued.  “Is there someone in the trunk?” I asked, gaping at him incredulously.  Here I was, telling him a heartwarming story about my first and only pet, a goldfish that died the day after I won it with a well-placed ping-pong ball at the County Fair, and he had a still-breathing corpse in the trunk.  Its name was Mr. Walter Gene Chrysanthemum.  I was an odd little boy.

He casually flicked his turn-signal and slowed down for the impending rest area.  “Stay in the car,” he said, grabbing a bottle of something I hadn’t realized was in the backseat.

“Is that chloroform?”

“Yes,” he said, parking the car and stepping out.  I watched him in the rearview mirror instead of turning around, because I figured that’s what he would do.  It was sneakier.  But as soon as he opened the trunk, I lost my line of sight.  I opened the window and stuck my head out, watching while he leaned over, the car rocking while someone struggled under his grip.  Then he shut it, glanced at me disapprovingly, and came back to the driver’s seat.

“I stayed in the car,” I said as he put his seatbelt back on.

“Most of you did.  Hold this.”

Frank handed me the bottle, which I immediately sniffed, and nearly fainted.  He must’ve known I’d do that.  He was grinning the whole time I felt light-headed.

“That’s really potent,” I said composedly, like nothing had happened.  My sinuses were on fire.  “Who’s back there?”

“A mark.”

“Is he gonna disappear?” I asked with excitement.  In the months that I’d known him, Frank had yet to make anyone disappear.  Just the standard leave-a-crime-scene type of jobs, or the one accidental suicide which I’d gotten to see on the news.  Having a living mark in the trunk meant that I’d at least be
near
the murder when it took place, and might even get to watch.  I would’ve kissed him if he wasn’t driving.

“Yes.”

“Cool,” I said. “Are we gonna shoot him?”

“No.”

“Are
you
gonna shoot him?”

He smiled.  “Tell me about your fish, V.”

“Tell me about our mark.”

He raised his eyebrows without looking away from the road.  “Be good or you’ll be riding with him.”

“You’re so sexy when you’re threatening me,” I said, though he had put me in the trunk before, and would undoubtedly do it again.

He’d gotten a flat-tire outside of Iowa, and after I changed it I found myself accompanying the flat in his trunk, simply because I called him a girl for not knowing which one of the “metal bits” was the tire iron.

Frank got a kick out of the fact that no matter how many times he tried to be a tough-guy, I never took him seriously.  It was no wonder his empty threats had become more and more violent; from breaking my fingers or smacking me to strangling me in my sleep.  Even if he pointed a gun at me I would’ve simply smiled.  For being a cold-blooded killer, he was a total softie.  I was so completely safe in his care that I didn’t even feel uncomfortable in the car anymore.

I supposed it helped that he was such a good driver.  He was always aware of his surroundings, checking the rearview and side mirrors constantly and keeping both hands on the wheel whenever possible.  He didn’t drive a single mile over the speed limit, and he had never even turned on his radio because he liked to concentrate on the road.

Of course, not everyone was as fond of silence as Frank.  I’d always found quiet time to be boring time, and if there wasn’t enough noise in the air I had to make some.  I would talk for hours on end, entertaining myself to the best of my abilities and amazingly not driving him up the wall.

Frank said that he liked listening to me, though at first I thought it had more to do with him not having to do the talking than being interested in what I had to say.  I didn’t have that many years of life experience to fill all the time we spent on the road, especially because I’d already told him so much about myself before we even left Chicago.  Instead, I got into narrating episodes of soap operas, or sometimes even movies, since he’d never seen one.

I would’ve been surprised by that revelation if it had been anyone else, but Frank was so abnormal in general that it didn’t shock me at all.  He didn’t know how to turn on a television, he wasn’t into music, and he never read anything by an author that wasn’t fully decomposed long before he’d been born.

We were polar opposites in that respect.  I was all about pop culture, and although I considered myself far less intelligent than him, Frank seemed to think I was the cleverest person he’d ever met.

We pulled off the freeway, driving slowly down dirt road after dirt road until traffic was a distant memory, and there were no tire marks to discern if any cars had come before us.  The thumping sound started back up again just as Frank stopped the car.

“I’d prefer if you stayed here, V,” he said, though there was no conviction in his voice.  He was fully aware that he’d have to put me in the trunk if he wanted me to miss this.  “Okay, here’s the plan.”

Frank leaned in close to me, whispering as if the person in the trunk wouldn’t learn our plan soon enough.  His cheek touched mine as he spoke, his five o’clock shadow brushing lightly against my ear.  I gripped the leather seat below me, holding on desperately as though I’d melt to a puddle on the floor mats if I let go.  His being completely ignorant to his effect on me only made it worse.  There was a virginal purity about him that made me want to get him dirty.

“Here,” he said, putting a cold, heavy gun in my hand.  It was as unloaded as a gun could be, but I was still excited as hell to hold it.  I hadn’t gotten my hands on any of his weapons since the pistol in his glove compartment, and at the time I was scared of it.  Now I wanted to shoot off every round in his arsenal, with him standing behind me, holding me tight.  And the more I wanted it, the more he seemed to resist.

Ever since I expressed an interest in learning about his vocation professionally, he’d started pushing me away.  He wasn’t even subtle about it.  He’d just say that I was too young, and if I asked him how young
he
had started, he’d brazenly change the subject.

But now wasn’t the time for playing coy.  I was his companion and seeing him kill again was inevitable.  The gun he gave me wasn’t for protection so much as keeping me entertained.  He said this would be a long night.

We got out of the car, Frank acting normal while I was trying too hard to synchronize our actions like a stylized scene from a movie.  He shut his door gently, I slammed mine a second later.  He walked coolly around to the trunk, I bounded to meet him.