Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder (25 page)

“Tell me about the job,” I said, pulling off my wet clothes and tossing them over the side of the tub for him to clean up.  Frank spent a good portion of his day picking my clothes up off the floor; though to be fair most of my spontaneous bouts of nudity were his fault.

“You tell me,” he said, handing me an eight by ten photograph of a warm place to stay, fifty-ish, borderline okay-looking with a graying, expertly trimmed beard and what was probably fake hair.  He looked like he smelled heavily of money, and not in a good way.  I shrugged, keeping my wet hands to the edges of the photo.  I didn’t have much energy to be excited about the job, especially since my previous attempt at speculation had ended in bloody and bruised knuckles. “Um, suit and tie means white collar?”

“Good.  What else?”

“He looks like he gets manicures,” I snickered.

“If you underestimate a mark, it could cost you your life,” Frank said sternly.  “What if I told you he was one of us?”

I stared at him, the severity of what he’d said the only thing keeping me from swooning over his use of the word
us
.  “Is he?”

“No, he’s an accountant.  But you never know what someone is capable of based solely on appearance.”

“Then why’d you ask what I thought?” I grumbled.

“I wanted to know,” he said.  “Tell me more.”

I rolled my eyes.  He could be so aggravating.  “He’s married.  Or at least wearing a wedding ring.”

“That’s better,” he said.

“He
does
look like he gets manicures.  So, he’s proud of his appearance?”

Frank nodded.  “More.  Look at his clothes.”

“Suit and tie.  I already said that.”

“What about his suit?”

I leaned back, putting my poor feet up on the side of the tub.  “The jacket’s a little too tight.”

“Perfect,” he said proudly.  “What does that tell you?”

“He’s gained some weight?” I said unsurely. “But his pants fit fine.  It’s not weight.  He’s been working out.”

“Vincent, that is absolutely right,” he said.  I beamed at him.  “And why would an accountant suddenly start working out?”

“He’s got a new lady,” I said cockily.

“I really thought you would’ve got this one,” he said, single-handedly deflating my newly filled ego.

I glared at the picture.  This man’s death couldn’t come soon enough.  All I wanted was for Frank to be impressed with my natural assassin abilities, and I’d struggled with every lesson he’d given me.  “I don’t know, Frank,” I said, and fickly flung the picture into the water.

“Yes, you do. 
You’re
his type.”

“What?” I gasped.  “He’s—”

“Absolutely.  And I’m sure you’re cuter than the tart he’s been seeing.”

Flattery never got old.  But compliments didn’t come free.  These days, they didn’t even come cheap.  “Tell me I’m not bait.”

“You are
so
clever.”

“Frank!” I whined.  All my weeks’ worth of training and I was a worm on a hook.  I’d been enticing men since before I hit puberty.  If that was all I was going to be responsible for, he should’ve let me sleep in.

“This is an ideal job for your first time, V,” he said, stroking my wet hair.  He knew me too well. I’d agree to just about anything if it came with a petting.

“Does Bella ever have to play bait?” I asked.

“Bella frequently plays bait.  Except that she’s predator
and
prey.  This will be a simple setup.  Robbery turned violent.  Client’s like these are always the same.  They want to brag about how brave their husbands were.  How they got killed defending their wedding rings.”

That didn’t sound like anything worth bragging about.  If Frank ever got killed defending a material possession, I’d drown his corpse.  Unless that material possession was
me
.  “Are we actually going to rob him?”

“Yes.  Cash we keep, everything else is discarded.”

“Can I have a gun?”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he said meanly.  “Besides, you could take this guy one handed.”

I tried not to smile.  This was typical of the new and unimproved Frank.  He’d only offer praise while insulting me.  But I’d take what I could get.

“What do you say, killer?” he asked.  “You think you can feign interest in him?”

“I’ll pretend he’s you,” I teased.

“Good kid,” he said, which I thought was a strange thing to say to someone you’ve been fucking practically non-stop since right after he turned almost legal.  Then he moodily left the room, which wasn’t quite as strange, but in context, meant I was on drama duty.

Frank was already lighting up a cigarette by the time I pulled a towel around my hair and left our mark to enjoy my bath.  “Are we having issues?” I asked.  He flicked his cigarette at me.  Luckily, I was still wet, and it was mostly extinguished upon contact.  I sat on his lap and lit another one for him.  It’s the little things in life.

“Shall I guess, or do you wanna just tell me?”

He sighed smoke.  “If he touches you, I’m going to lose it.”

“He’s not gonna touch me.”

“You don’t understand, V.  I cannot get emotional on a job.  It’s not—”

“He’s
not
gonna touch me,” I said again.  “Listen.  I’ve been blowing guys like him since I was thirteen.  He’ll ask politely before even
reaching
for my cock.  ‘
Oh, uh, you’re so beautiful, I just want to, oh if I could only, oh uh, but I have a wife and oh I’ve never done anything like this before.’
  Trust me.  If I don’t make the first move, I don’t get dinner.”

“I wish you didn’t know that.” 

I shrugged.  “I wish I was taller.”

He laughed and shook his head.

“Tell me about the job, Frank.”

“You’ll probably be bored,” he said.  He was
absolutely
right.

Ernest and Edith Goldman, married twenty-four years, no kids.  He crunched numbers for a Fortune 500 company and embezzled millions from his clients, she did part-time CPA work out of their home and occasionally sold Avon.  Boring, boring, and more boring.

The tart, as Frank called him, was young, blond, and a whore.  That’s all Charlie had gotten out of her.  It remained to be seen whether Mr. Goldman was actually paying him for sex or not, but Frank didn’t think so, and I agreed.  Prostitutes weren’t swayed by muscle, they were swayed by money.  Unless there was relationship potential, Ernest would have no reason to change his leisurely routine.

Frank took me to breakfast before we officially got started.  He was his normal quiet self, watching me eat while drinking his second cup of coffee of the morning.  I’d been
ab
normally silent, waiting for him to enlighten me on what we were doing.  Then I got the attention of a trucker in a dirty button-down shirt who’d just come in, and I purposefully bit my tongue along with my toast.

“It took him sixty-eight seconds to notice you,” he said, glancing at his watch.  “Would you say that’s about average?”

Here I was doing my best not suck every cock I met, and he had to go and point a spotlight at it.  “I guess,” I said, feeling self-conscious.  I’d been secretly dreading what would happen when someone came sniffing around Frank’s now thoroughly marked territory.  Mark used to get so jealous when other guys looked my direction, but he always took it out on me like I was encouraging their behavior, which of course I was.  The fifteen miles Frank made me walk yesterday was nothing compared to the time Mark took me out for pizza after a track meet and caught me smiling at some other guy.  He left me in the next
county
with no ride home.

“Eat your toast,” Frank said, and then glared at my admirer.  It worked wonders.  Even with a broken face, he looked like he’d never lost a fight.  The trucker turned his head so fast he likely hurt himself, and didn’t dare look again.  “I have been
dying
to do that!” he said, and he smiled at me with such intense ownership that I could practically feel the heat of a branding iron on my skin.  If the waitress hadn’t come by with our check, we might’ve spent the rest of the day staring at each other.  He still over-tipped her.

We drove by the Goldmans’ house first, a two-story stereotype of the suburbs with green grass and a white picket fence.  The mark had already gone to work, but Edith Goldman was still at home.  She was pruning the roses in the yard, holding pink handled hedge clippers that matched her garden gloves.  I watched her from behind the tinted windows of Frank’s car, seeing no indication in her behavior that she’d paid for her husband’s murder.

“Did you see those roses?” he asked as we pulled out of the neighborhood.

“You’d better be careful, Frankie boy.  You’re starting to sound gayer than me.”

“Call me Frankie boy again and I’ll take you back to your buddy at the diner,” he threatened.  “I was referring to the bouquet on the piano in the living room.  They were a different color than the ones in the yard.”

“Oh,” I said.  I hadn’t even noticed that the living room was visible through the front windows.

“I’d say it was two dozen.  Baby’s-breath and all.  Why does a man buy someone flowers?”

“He’s trying to get lucky?”

Frank shot me a look.

It was no wonder that the French had come up with the phrase
faux pas. 
“But that’s not why I bought
you
flowers.”

“Why else?” he grumbled.

“He’s in love?” I said.  That got me into even more trouble, and I wasn’t even sure why.  I’d have to hit up the florist before I made things worse.  Ah ha!
 
“To apologize!”

“Hmm,” he mused, and didn’t speak again until we were outside Ernest’s office building.  It reminded me of a place my mom had worked right before she died; dull and gray and full of assholes who made her yearly salary in a week.  They’d hired her as a secretary, even though she couldn’t type.  She’d been two days shy of qualifying for a life insurance benefit when she was killed.  Her boss hit on me at the funeral.  He thought I was a girl.

“What were you apologizing for?”

Breaking his nose came to mind…“I wasn’t apologizing.  I was feeling romantic,” I said, clutching his hand over the gearshift.  I could actually
see
it working.  Maybe I wouldn’t have to make the trip to the florist after all.  We spent the remainder of the morning in a cafe down the street, watching people come and go from the building.  Sometimes they came in to get caffeine, at which point Frank would continue watching for Ernest and I’d observe the new customers.  It was easy to tell someone’s status; executives came in one or two at a time and only ordered for themselves, assistants always came in solo, and left juggling so many drinks they could’ve qualified for circus work.

If nothing else, now I knew why Frank had such trouble sleeping at night.  He was on his fifth cup of coffee by the time our mark appeared to take his lunch break.  “Come along,” he said quietly, leading me out and following Mr. Goldman on the opposite side of the street.

Frank kept his body positioned close to me, nearly forcing me into the passing buildings so I’d be as far away from our prey as physically possible.  But I had to say this for him, it gave me a perfect view of what Ernest was doing, and I could stare freely because it looked as though I was giving my attention to the handsome man at my side.

Tailing someone was nothing new to me.  I’d followed men for entire city blocks just to get a better look at them.  Anything could set me off; the way they walked, how their clothes fit, absence of a wedding ring.  It was strange how readying myself to murder someone seemed more harmless than my previous actions, hunting to kill rather than to seduce.

Since I was the bait, I was supposed to be even less visible than Frank.  Now that the purpose for my pursuit had changed and I wasn’t supposed to be seen, it was considerably harder.  And not only because every time it looked like Ernest might turn his head our way, Frank would slow and force me out of the line of sight, usually stepping on my feet in the process.  My toes were throbbing by twelve ten, when our mark decided on a place to eat.  And he wasn’t alone.

“He’s hardly blond,” I scoffed.  The tart was a
light brunet
twenty-something with a decent body and clothing tight enough to show it off.  Though he did have a nice smile, and had he been about fifteen years older, I might’ve considered him for a conquest.

“Blonder than the missus,” Frank said, and steered me toward a deli that was diagonal to the restaurant they were entering.  “Go order something,” he added, sitting in the second to last chair by the window.  I could only guess what seat he was saving for me.  It was a good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic, his tendency to block me in was getting as compulsive as his other behaviors.

I bought two sandwiches, a soda for me and a bottle of water for Frank even though they sold coffee.  He gave me a look like I’d been stomping on
his
feet for the last ten minutes, but accepted it anyway.  “Eat slowly.  They’ll be awhile.”

“Okay,” I said, and started picking at my sandwich the way he did.  Usually I would wolf down my food at breakneck speeds.  Frank referred to it as “starving orphan syndrome” to explain how someone with only one mouth could eat so fast.  I’d never taken this long to eat, and my stomach growled at me the entire time.  I was actually hungrier when I was finished.

We were still left with some wait time before the lovebirds emerged, and even though I could’ve been honing my speculation skills on strangers,  I kept my eyes on Frank.
 
Being with him while he was on a job was an experience in itself.  He was almost a different person, completely confident with no signs of his previous awkwardness.  Then I’d say something distasteful and he’d turn away from me to smile, proving that he was still shy after all, and I’d get that protective feeling again, stronger than ever.

“We’ll follow the tart when they leave.  I want to find out where he lives.”

I nodded, picking at Frank’s sandwich since he was obviously done with it.  “So,
am
I cuter than him?”