Since the Layoffs (8 page)

I walk down to the end of the mall and peer around. Nothing but snow falling on a weed-covered parking lot. I go out onto the street, cross it, and walk up into a run-down residential neighborhood where everyone owns a dog, it seems. Every time I pass a house a new animal starts barking. Down a hill, then a gas station, which is closed. But it also has a dumpster, which is almost full. I push the gun down amid some trash bags, walk another few blocks, then dump the briefcase, but first I take out the files. I can’t help myself. What could be more damning than walking around with a recently murdered man’s files? I tuck the files up under my denim jacket and walk the rest of the way home.

I get home and crack a beer and settle down to read some files. One thing about the late-night convenience store shift, it’s killed my sleeping patterns. Now I want to stay up all night and go to bed in the morning.

File one … Just a bunch of invoices from distributors. I lay it carefully on a stack of newspapers which I have to take to the dump for recycling. File two is more of the same, and seems to contain a lot of personal stuff, bills, and so on. File three is what I’m looking for, a record of what he’s been doing at the store. I flip through it. The first page is a list of what he’s accomplished since he has arrived here. Enforced our agreement with Wenke to make all their products more visible, blah blah blah. Then a few printouts of all our timesheets. Then …
taadaa …
personnel files.

This is what he says about Tommy:

Tommy Waretka, store manager, was a former factory employee who would be more suited to that kind of work. He lacks the ambition and direction to become a general manager or to move up in the company. He ignores his directives and permits the employees to run the store. I have moved him from management and told him the move is only temporary, but would prefer a more ambitious manager be brought in to allow the store to perform more efficiently.

And another file.

Kenneth Prezda (Jughead’s real name) is a fairly responsible young man who lacks the social skills to operate Gas’n’Go. I would prefer to see him in a largely janitorial role, for which I feel he is better suited. Perhaps we could move him across town to the Wolsely store, and give him a job which requires no customer contact. T. Waretka was overpaying him by over a dollar an hour. I have rectified this.

Last but not least …

Jake Skowran is a former factory manager who feels he is above convenience store work. He is intelligent and, I believe, dangerous. I sense he might be friends with T. Waretka, which is the only reason he was hired, as far as I can tell. His customer service skills are limited and he dislikes authority. I believe he is a heavy drug user (he refused to be drug tested and created a scene at the clinic) and probably the drug boss of the neighborhood. I believe he is still selling drugs out of the store. I have told him to take a week off, and when he returns, I hope to have his job filled.

Well, Brecht just loved us, didn’t he? Right about the dangerous thing, though. Too bad no one will ever see these files. Or see Jughead’s pay reduction recommendation, which I also find. Or see Tommy’s demotion paper, which I also find. Or read Brecht’s paranoid fantasy about me being a drug boss. I shove all the files into the stack of newspapers, and put them by the door to run them down to the recycling center at 7 a.m. Then I head into the bathroom to take a piss, and see myself in the mirror.

I have about a thousand little flakes of pillow stuffing stuck in my hair.

Christ. I am covered in evidence. There are pillow-stuffing flakes everywhere. On the couch, by the doorway, on my raindrenched jacket. I look in the closet for the vacuum cleaner. Gone. Kelly took it with her, said I’d never use it anyway. I have another pillow, just like it. They were a set. I get a knife from the kitchen and cut the fabric on my second pillow, pull out a bit of stuffing. There, that explains that.

No, it doesn’t, I realize. They were A SET. One of my pillows is lying by the body of a murder victim, and the matching one is on my couch. Jesus, what was I thinking? I take the second pillow, throw it in a plastic bag, and set about picking up every microscopic flake of pillow stuffing I can find. Then I take a shower, and clean the small bits of stuffing out of the drain. Then I check the couch again, and again, and again. Each time I find a small fiber of pillow stuffing. This is how people get convicted. I need a damned vacuum cleaner.

At seven, I head down to the dump and throw all the files into the recycling bin. Then I buy a new Red Devil vacuum broom at K-mart, go over every last inch of the couch and the living room. Then I go to bed, and sleep the sleep of a man who has finished a job well done.

At about five in the afternoon, Karl, Gardocki’s henchman, comes to see me. “Get up,” he calls through the door. “Ken wants to see you.”

I open the door, cobwebs of a deep sleep still on my brain. “You gotta give me some warning when you’re coming over,” I tell him angrily. “You can’t keep waking me up like this.”

“You know how it works,” he says, henchmanlike, and goes back down to the SUV to wait for me.

As we’re driving out to the bar where I meet Gardocki, Karl asks, “So, you’re whackin’ people for Mr. G, eh?”

I say nothing. I just stare out the window. Is he offended because he wasn’t offered the job? Where did this guy come from? He’s not a factory worker, I know that. There’s something about him that just doesn’t fit in. Who winds up here if they’re not from here? This isn’t a place people come, it’s a place people leave, especially now the factory is gone.

“Where’re you from?” I ask.

He says nothing, just stares out the window.

Conversation isn’t happening. We drive the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

“Jeff Zorda tells me you asked him first,” I say, trying not to sound wounded, but rational. “That puts me in danger. You told me I was the only person you asked.”

Gardocki smiles and nods. Nothing rattles him. “I asked Jeff,” he says. Gardocki knows why I’m mad, and it has nothing to do with fear of discovery. It is comforting to be understood, even by someone who pays you to kill people. Especially by them.

We are back at the bar off a highway in the middle of nowhere, the bar with no name and a jukebox always playing country songs. The same five guys are playing pool. Ken and I are sitting in a booth away from everyone, and Karl has been sent off to join them. He looks over at us every now and then.

“Why?” I ask. I am almost whining. Gardocki smiles again.

“I mentioned it to him, and he was so enthusiastic about it, I knew I’d made a mistake. So I acted like I was only joking. Then he started acting like he was only joking, too. That’s when I decided I had to get someone different, someone like you.”

“Like me? What am I like?”

“Honest. Jeff’s a scumbag. You can’t cheat an honest man, but you can get him to kill people, if he’s angry enough. I wanted someone angry, broke, and honest.”

I am flattered again. Gardocki knows how to flatter me. “Anyway,” he says. “Let’s talk about New York.”

“Can you get me a silencer? I don’t like the gunshot noise. It’s dangerous, and it hurts my ears.”

He winces. “The factory was loud. What’d you do there?”

“I wore earplugs.”

“Wear earplugs, then.”

“There’s still the noise, though. People can hear it. I’d really like a silencer.” Besides, it’d be cool to have a silencer. Isn’t that what all hired killers had? What kind of gun-for-hire just walks around with a loud, crappy pistol?

“I’ll ask the guys out there. They’re going to give you a gun. But if they don’t have one, can you get one yourself?”

“I don’t know where to get a silencer. Do they sell them at K-mart?”

Ken shrugs. “Have you asked? They sell shotguns there.” We look at each other, and burst out laughing.

Being a hired killer, like anything else, has its lighter moments.

I go home, start making dinner, and the phone rings. It is Tommy, from the store.

“Jake, have you seen the news?”

“What news?”

“Turn on Channel Four.”

“I don’t have a TV.” I already know what this is about.

“Jake, man, Brecht got killed. In his hotel room.”

Okay, sound surprised. “Brecht? No …” No, don’t sound grief stricken, that would be too much. “No shit?”

“Someone killed him. Last night.”

“Jesus …” Go with shocked. And ask the questions someone who hadn’t committed the murder would ask. “Was it a robbery?”

“I don’t know. They just say it’s the second in two weeks. Peeping Tom Murders, they’re calling them. Remember Gardocki’s wife?”

“Someone was peeping in on Brecht?”

“I guess.” Tommy is watching the news, not paying much attention to me. Tommy doesn’t care at all about Brecht, probably breathed out a sigh of relief when he heard Brecht was dead. He wouldn’t say it, but he does say, “Jesus, I hope I’m not a suspect. I’ll tell you, Jake, I didn’t care too much for the guy.”

“Me either.”

“Well, that’s fucked up,” Tommy says. “Just thought you’d like to know.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“Sure thing. You coming in Monday?”

“Seven p.m. sharp.”

“Come in at six thirty. Brecht started this new thing, we have to come in a half hour earlier now.”

“What time do
you
want me in?”

It suddenly occurs to Tommy that since Brecht is dead, none of his company directives have to be heeded. “I want you in at seven,” Tommy says cheerfully.

“Seven it is.” Tommy is the manager again.

I sit down to dinner and think about this guy I’m going to kill in New York. What did he do, to deserve having me come out there and kill him? Was he a Mafia squealer? I doubt it, because I’m sure they have their own guys to take care of such things. A wife beater, a thief, a drug dealer? Or someone like Brecht, a walking automaton from whom all humanity had been removed for the sake of personal success? I know asking questions about him would be wrong. Part of the job is discretion. One thing I do know is that if he had led a good life, nobody would be willing to shell out ten grand to have me kill him.

So I make up stuff about him. I decide he’s a wife-beating, thieving drug dealer who owned a corporation and laid everyone off so he could save himself a few dollars. He’s going to get it, all right. Right in the head, one shot.

As I’m taking my last bite, there is a knock on the door. Henchman Karl again. “Jesus, just once, couldn’t you call first?”

“No phones. Those are the rules.”

I grab my coat. “Let’s go.”

The ride is the usual thing. “You whackin’ people for Gardocki?” Henchman Karl asks.

“Where’re you from?”

We drive out there in silence.

Gardocki is furious. He says nothing and doesn’t smile. He tells Karl to go play pool (the guy must be a shark by now) and motions to me to come for a walk. Karl watches us go, looking wounded.

We leave the bar and walk out into the dark parking lot, over by some trees. He stares at me for a few seconds before he talks. “What are you, some kind of fucking maniac?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was the same gun, you dickhead. You used the same gun to kill some guy last night. I just saw it on the news.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes that. What’s the fucking matter with you? You were supposed to throw it in the creek.”

“Ken, they dragged the creek. It was the first place they looked.”

“How do you know?”

“I went out there the next day.”

“Jesus, you didn’t.”

“And there were five cops sifting around in the creek. If I’d thrown it in the creek, they’d have the gun now.”

“And you knew that.”

“It was just lucky.”

“You’re lucky they didn’t see you there.”

He stares at me for a few seconds, then throws up his hands in exasperation. “Are you going to kill anyone else with that gun? I’d just like to know.”

“I’ve gotten rid of it.”

“Really? Or in two weeks am I going to be watching TV and see that some customer in the convenience store who was rude to you got his brains blown out with my gun—”

“Technically, it was
my
gun. You gave it to me. And no, I’m not a maniac. I’ve really gotten rid of it this time.”

Gardocki shakes his head. “Peeping Tom Murders, that’s what they’re calling them.”

“I know.”

Gardocki lights a cigarette. “Who was that guy? What’d he do to you?”

“He was going to fire me.”

“From a convenience store? You killed someone because he was going to fire you from a convenience store? Christ, Jake, I would have found you some work.”

“You already did.”

“Is this what you want to do, then? Kill people? Because if that’s it, I can probably keep you busy.”

“Okay, then. Keep me busy.”

He looks up at me, stares into my eyes for a few seconds, with the intensity of a lover. He’s good with looks. Years of breaking the law have taught him how to unnerve. “I just need to know you got rid of that gun.”

“It’s gone, I swear.”

Gardocki nods. Then he laughs, and slaps me on the shoulder. “You’re a crazy bastard,” he says. He reaches into his jacket pocket and hands me a piece of paper. “This is the number you call when you get to New York. I said you’d call at three p.m. on Saturday.”

“Okay.”

“Well, that’s it then.”

“That’s it. Talk to you next week.”

“I’ll have Karl drive you home.”

“I’ll take a cab.”

Gardocki shrugs. “You got a problem with Karl?”

“He’s not my favorite person. Where’d you meet him?”

“Here.”

“Where’s he from?”

“How the fuck should I know? He said he was out of work a couple of months ago, so I had him deliver packages for me, that kind of thing. Figure he used to work at the factory.”

“He didn’t. Or if he did, I never saw him there.”

Gardocki shrugs again. “You want to shoot some pool while you’re waiting for a cab?”

“I’ll just wait out here. I like the fresh air.”

He turns to go back inside, shaking his head, smiling. “Crazy bastard,” he laughs as he staggers across the parking lot. “You’re a crazy bastard, Jake.”