Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder (24 page)

Frank walked toward the center of the room, taking full, measured strides that made me think of a little kid trying to break in his rain boots by stepping in every single puddle.  Then he set down his bag and knelt on the dusty floor, and started pulling up boards.  I moved closer, watching as each board he lifted revealed another staggering amount of cash.

He smiled up at me, his eyebrows raised expectantly.  He looked like a puppy that had just learned to fetch, waiting for the familiar
good boy
before he’d drop the stick at my feet.

“Fuck” was all I could think to say as I slumped to the floor beside him.  The stacks of cash went deep into the hole, all neatly strapped in bundles of ten thousand and covered in a plastic tarp.  But something else caught my attention.  There were books in the hole, some titles I’d seen him read, others by the same authors.  They were all new, and all in different languages.

“What are these?” I asked, picking up a copy of
Les Hauts de Hurlevent
.
  Wuthering Heights
.

“Someone I knew gave them to me,” he said, carefully taking it from my hands.  I didn’t let it offend me that he was treating me like a kid in a museum.  I still hadn’t been entirely forgiven for desecrating his copy of
Jane Eyre
back in Chicago.

If it was Bella, he would’ve said so, and Charlie wouldn’t buy him anything that wasn’t in English.  But he said he
knew
them, and that meant something had happened. “Someone dead, or dead to you?” I asked.

“I’m dead to them,” he said, and put the book back.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and didn’t press him any further.

“You shouldn’t carry so much cash,” he said.  “You can leave it here.  It’ll be safe.”

“Why do you have an apartment here?” I asked, looking around.  I rarely knew what city we were in anymore.  I wasn’t even sure of the state.

“It’s not just here,” he said, actually switching one stack of cash from our bag for a different one of the same size from the hole, keeping it separate with a barrier of books, as if he really did consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars to be mine.  “I have a couple more like this in different parts of the States.”

“Does Charlie know?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, then he closed up the hole and proceeded to dust the floor with our last clean shirt, clearing away our footprints and the possibility of leaving any others.  I would’ve offered to help, but there was nothing available to use.  Anything dirty could’ve left DNA, or whatever it was he was scared of leaving.

I didn’t even allow myself to think the word
crazy
as he wiped down walls we hadn’t touched, in rooms we hadn’t entered.

“Switch off the lights,” he said, standing before a large rectangular block of vertical blinds that I assumed covered a floor-to-ceiling window.  I turned them off and he opened the blinds, letting in all the artificial glitter of downtown.  I went to him in the semi-darkness, pausing behind him to watch his silhouette like he was my shadow, flawlessly black and taller than I would ever be.

He lowered his coat to the floor, then gestured for me to lie down.  Frank was very romantic in that respect.  He would never ravish me on a bare floor.  But the fact that we were so near a window dashed all hopes of this trip being an exciting one.

I lay down on my front, legs slightly spread, assuming the position just in case.  He smiled shyly and lay down beside me, and handed me the scope from his rifle.  Voyeurism didn’t interest me nearly as much as christening this and every apartment he owned, or having dinner a second time, but I knew it was something he enjoyed, and having him bestow the gift of sight felt like an honor.

Frank rested his head on his elbows, watching me while I took it all in.  The amount of time he spent staring at me would’ve been creepy had it been anyone else.

I moved the scope from window to window like flipping channels on the remote, the TV on permanent mute.  There was a little old lady feeding a little gray dog right off her plate, and a guy playing a violin, and I paused on a man and a woman shouting at each other, until their little girl or boy, I couldn’t tell which, came sleepily into the room and they all went to bed.  A lot of blinds were closed, some backlit, mostly just darkness.  It felt lonely, watching from a distance, even with Frank right beside me.

“This is what you do?”

“Yes,” he said, and he smiled.  “You’re bored.”

“No, it’s
fun
, really…there’s nothing on.”

Frank leaned close to me, kissing the top of my head and taking the scope.  “You can learn a great deal about someone by speculating.  Did you see the old woman?”

“With the dog?”

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s old.”

“So we’ve established.”

“She has a dog.”

“Yes,” he said, and he handed me the scope back.  “Look again and tell me more.”

“I don’t
know
more, Frank,” I griped.  “Can’t we just fuck up here and go home?”

He smacked me hard on the ass.  When it came to spankings, there was a
very
fine line between being rewarded and being punished.  This was definitely on the punishment side.  “Shall
I
tell you about her?”

“Yes, please.  Sir.”

“She’s a widow,” Frank said.  “See the pictures of the elderly man on the bookshelf?”

“Maybe he’s still alive.”

“See the urn?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to really concentrate.  “No other pictures, so they didn’t have kids?”

“Good.  How old is she?”

Just when I was getting used to speculation.  I kept my mouth shut about him changing the rules of our game.  “Extremely.”

“How much does she weigh?”

“I don’t know.”

“Height?”

“She’s sitting down.”

“How would you kill her?”

“With my bare hands.”

“Why?”

“Because you haven’t taught me weapons yet.”

“So you
do
pay attention,” he teased.  “Let’s try another.”  I gave him back the scope, feeling him up until he returned it to me with a new assignment: a guy in a tight wife beater and boxers, holding what was definitely not his first can of Coors Light, judging by the way he walked. He looked like the kind of guy I’d go home with, someone without a maid or mother to clean up after him, who’d shoot his load all over my face and never reciprocate.  Blowjobs were for queers.  I’d sleep on his sofa, not in his bed.  It looked uncomfortable even from here.

“He has a little cock,” I said, and the world went black.  I took the scope away from my face, until Frank took his hand away from the lens.  “I was speculating.”

Frank smiled abashedly.  “I thought he’d exposed himself to you.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” I said, which was as good an excuse as any for
not
exposing himself to me.  For as long as I could remember, I’d been a magnet for male frontal nudity, as if I wore a sign around my neck,
Gentlemen, display your penises. 
A few months before I left home, I’d gotten such a reputation that the truckers across the street from my school used to seek my advice as to whether they were adequate or not, or if that rash might’ve been something serious.  Some of them weren’t even after giving me a taste test, like the guy who eventually drove me out of Branford.  His rash was normal.

I looked again, the scope on my other eye, since I now had a perfectly circular bruise forming on the right side.  Mr. Coors Light had slumped on his leather sofa with another beer, and was channel surfing to his heart’s content on a giant HDTV.  The car key on the coffee table was for an Audi, probably a fast one.  No photographs to give me hints, but I knew all about this guy.

He shouted something at his TV.  I tensed, even though I couldn’t hear him.  The anger on his face was what did it for me, anger that could’ve very likely been at his favorite football team, but had proven time and again to be directed towards me.  Frank instinctively moved closer.  “He has a temper,” I said.

“Oh?”

“And he’s a bachelor.”

“Must wear the wedding ring for fun.”

“Separated,” I said glumly.  I hadn’t caught the wedding ring.  I was too busy looking at his split knuckles.  “Her choice.”

“Because of the temper?”

“Little cock.”

“He seems pretty upset about it.”

“He’ll get over it.  Find someone to meet his needs.”

Frank took the scope from me, paused a moment, and thwacked it against my knuckles.  He had me pinned under his body weight before I could follow through with a punch.  “What was that for?”

“You’re not speculating, you’re projecting.

I was also under him for the first time in hours, and somehow found myself a bit distracted.  “Maybe I’m right.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re right.  The majority of our marks will be middle-aged men, Vincent. You cannot see every single one of them as a warm place to stay.”

Frank liked to accuse me of being too emotional.  And yet he would piss me off without even moving to protect himself.  I guess he was under the impression that his cock was too important to me.  But he underestimated my willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.

I brought my knee up between his legs, rolling him off me as easy as you please once he was curled up in pain.  “I think all those stairs did me some good,” I said, hopping to my feet and pulling the blinds shut.

Frank laughed through the pain, his jaw clenched.  He was on his knees, holding his balls, forehead pressed to the floor.  It was a good look for him.

“Why don’t
you
tell me about him, dearest?”

“In a minute,
sweetie
.”

I set my foot against his ass, and tipped him onto his side.  He smiled and shook his head.  That’s when I decided it would be best to run for my life.  Slowly.  After all, what was the point in misbehaving if you didn’t get punished for it?

I’ll never forget what it was like to walk around Chicago for the first time, the buildings so tall they blocked the sky, everyone anonymous, avoiding eye contact.  It makes you feel so small, and so alone, but in that moment it also gives you strength, and suddenly you’re self-reliant, and you’re avoiding eye contact too, even though you grew up in suburbia, looking at people when they spoke to you.

And then you feel someone watching you, and that’s breaking the rules so you look too, only it wasn’t Frank.  Just a
warm place to stay
.  I held my hands together, pressing against where Frank had split the skin with his scope until it nearly brought tears to my eyes.  Resisting the urge to sneak off with strangers was easier when I was in pain.  It reminded me that I belonged to him.  It took away temptation.  I kept walking.

We were in Pittsburgh.  A torn newspaper in the gutter told me so.  I stood on the corner and watched the traffic light change from red to green, trying to imagine how many times Frank had been here.  Killed here.  Ten letters in Pittsburgh.  Ten kills, I decided.  And Vincent makes eleven.

The light changed again and I nearly crossed, but I felt someone’s eyes on me.  I knew without turning around that it was Frank.  By the time he got to me, I’d completely forgotten about being mad at him.

He briefly set his hand against my back, where he could rip out my heart from behind, and we walked side by side to his apartment building, not speaking, not even looking at each other.  It was the calm before my favorite kind of storm, and I was sure to be limping the rest of the night.  Then his phone rang, and Frank ducked me into the car without so much as pulling my hair.  Kneeing him in the balls wasn’t enough to ruin my ravishing, but a phone call from Charlie did it on the first ring.

I slumped in my seat and pouted in protest.  It had been so nice when Charlie was ignoring Frank, and even nicer when Charlie left the country.  He’d actually been back for awhile, but apparently he found the process of giving up money so traumatizing that it had taken him weeks to recover, and he’d been holed up right where Frank left him, recovering from his
jetlag
.

Frank got in the car and tossed his phone on my lap.  I sighed at the poor excuse for a groping.  “Well?”

“I’m meeting him tomorrow.  Put your seatbelt on.”

I sat up quickly, yanking the belt over my shoulder as he floored it in reverse, slamming us into a cement post so hard it shattered the back window.  We smiled at each other, and headed back the way we came.

It was bright red. 
Bright
red.  The color red that comes with a glove compartment full of speeding tickets.  Or comes
from
a thorough spanking.  Frank was not amused. 
I
was thrilled.  “Can’t I please just drive it once before you take it back?”

He glared at me.

“Please?”

“Get out of the car.”

I gave him my best pout.  It didn’t work.  “How is it fair that I get punished when you’re mad at Charlie?” I said to myself, since Frank was too busy driving away, zero to sixty in three seconds.  I counted.  Then I coughed for effect as the dust settled around me.  It was a long walk back to our hotel.  Long enough for him to trade the car Charlie brought him for a crummy old slow black one.

The old man had finally put his foot down in a way that Frank would understand.  If he wanted a new car, it would be a flashy one.  Frank didn’t
do
flashy.  And I’d blown it the last time he had to depend on the kindness of his associates, so all I could do was look at the tire tracks he’d left and imagine what it would be like to drive flashy, while blisters formed on my feet.

“Cheer up,” Frank said as I fell dramatically to the carpet the moment he opened the door.  “We have work.”

“
Work
?” I balked. “I just walked fifteen miles!”

“
Walked
?” he said in mock amazement.  “I thought I told you to
run
.”

I screamed for mercy as he scooped me up off the ground, slinging me over his shoulder and plopping me unceremoniously into the full bathtub.  It was warm.  With bubbles.