The Hitman: Dirty Rotters (12 page)

The Bear?

His hand extended and I shook it. It
was huge, but soft like a pack of marshmallows. My hand disappeared
within his. His tone was strong and confident. He was used to
dealing with lesser individuals. “I am Andrik. Russian Warrior. And
you…?”

He hesitated, waiting for me to say my
name. I paused, thinking of what I should tell him, of what he
might be expecting to hear. But he continued, somehow
amused.

“
Fine. I have secrets, so a
hitman should have his too.” His hand reached into his silky black
suit jacket and withdrew an envelope. He slid it over to me across
the leather seat, then ate a few more crackers. “For you,
Hitman.”

I took the envelope. It felt thick,
heavy. I didn’t open it. My hands were sticky. I left red marks on
the upholstery. Andrik didn’t seem concerned. I figured he had seen
a pair of bloody hands before.

“
Disposing of idiot was
unfortunate.” He stared over to the white Corvette. “Work for me
very long time. Was good for me. But now you see how important
competence is and what measures we go to keep it. There can be no
mistakes, Hitman. Da?”

I nodded.

“
Did
idiot give you the list?”

I nodded. It was still clutched tight
into my right hand.

“
Very good then. Of course,
now that you killed him, the task of collecting falls squarely on
your shoulders.” He looked at me again for a moment. “But after
what I see you do to him in small car, I think you can handle a few
women. You are either a madman, or a lunatic!”

Andrik laughed. It shook the seat. His
voice was deep. He scared the hell out of me. “Maybe your mother
was Siberian tiger, too? Da?”

I was too shaken up, too
confused then to even attempt an answer. Not an intelligent one
anyway. It was better if I stayed silent. I was out of the pan and
into the fire. Surely to him I was the same someone
idiot
pegged me to be. A
killer, no doubt.

Which I surely was now.

The arctic freeze in my chest hurt to
the point where I was losing focus of everything else. Something
was happening to me. I never felt anything like it before and I was
getting concerned. Andrik noticed my behavior. He put his crackers
away.

“
Don’t worry about the
mess. I will send peoples to take care of it. Go to your home and
get cleaned up. Be ready for next assignment.” Andrik shifted in
the seat with the ease of changing a lug nut with a plastic wrench,
turning slightly away from me, as to suggest that we were
finished.

But I wasn’t.

“
What
assignment?”

“
The girls, Hitman.
Vladimir arrives Saturday night. Girls must be ready on Friday. We
need time to prep them.”

“
Of course.”

Which was probably the only right
thing to say, if anything was. Details had probably been ironed out
already with the real guy he had been waiting for. I knew I was
dead the minute he figured I wasn’t him. I just needed to stay
alive long enough to get back to the El Camino and get the hell out
of there.

“
Work tomorrow,” he said.
“For now, you rest. I tell The Bear all is taken care
of.”

The door at my left side opened
suddenly. The driver stood outside, waiting. I exited, trying to
remain calm, trying to not let the driver see my eyes, to see the
fear in them.

Like a man asleep in a trailer park
hearing the tornado siren at two in the morning, I was concerned.
Very concerned.

I walked past the Corvette without a
glance toward it and headed towards the El Camino. I moved fast.
The warm air went unnoticed.

Andrik worked for The Bear. So did
Ponytail. They had some sort of operation going on that surely had
something to do with the paper in my hand and the
envelope.

Once I reached my car, I entered
without hesitation. I looked back and saw nothing of the
Rolls-Royce, or the white Corvette. I opened the envelope slightly.
It was full of one hundred dollar bills. Maybe five grand total. My
heart pounded hard as if it were trying to bust the frost coating
it. I started up the SS and tore out of there like the tornado was
nipping at my heels.

Sally wasn’t home yet.

I showered and scrubbed my hands until
the water went ice cold. I had the hot on full blast. The air was
thick with steam. My skin was red. It must have been burning. I
felt none of it. I was freezing. I was numb. I could do nothing to
warm up. I was panicking.

I tossed my clothes into Sally’s
washer and used almost an entire bottle of soap, before crawling
into the guest bed. I was trembling, shivering out of control,
naked at the North Pole. I had turned the thermostat up to ninety
and wrapped the blankets around me. I should have been sweltering.
I should have suffocated from the heat. I should have been sweating
bullets, soaking her sheets and pillow. But my teeth were
chattering instead. My feet were rubbing quickly against one
another like I was trying to start a fire using two sticks. All it
did was tire me out.

The cold was intense, frostbite
within. Ice was smothering my organs. I exhaled frost. I hurt
everywhere.

My God, what is wrong with
me?

But as the spinning in my head began
to drift me into slumber, I realized what it was. Not my skin, or
even my body. It was my soul. The price paid for whatever happened
inside the Corvette. I was a true Rotter now, soulless. I could
hear Little B’s voice faintly, warning me.

Be careful, Michael!
You’ll become one of them!

I felt for the first time what real
regret was. Death was final. There was no taking it back. There was
no making it right. There was no chance to. Who I was two days ago
was just killed. My soul was lost.

Sally woke me.

She ripped the blankets off me and
frantically looked me over. Her eyes held a deep fear and she spoke
quickly.

“
What happened, Michael?
Where are you hurt?”

I rolled onto my back and felt the
stinging in my eyes. I hadn’t slept long. It was still daytime.
Sally grabbed my hands and gently looked over my knuckles. I sat up
then and noticed for the first time that my hands were in bad
shape. Skin around the knuckles was broke open like I had been
beating on a cinder block.

“
What did you do?” Real
panic in her voice.

“
I don’t know.” I trembled
incoherently. “Something happened, Sally.”

Sally gave me an incredible look. “I
came home and found a bloody door handle. Your clothes are in the
washer, and it’s so hot in here I can’t breathe. Don’t tell me that
you don’t know what you did today. Don’t you dare shut me
out.”

She was on the verge of tears. I
imagined how she must have felt. “It’s the truth, Sally. I must
have blacked out.”

Her look hardened. She said
nothing.

“
I went to find the man
Angelo said he talked to. And I did.”

I looked away from her. She was a cop.
It may have been in my best interest to keep quiet. But I’ve never
been known for making good decisions.

I told her everything.

I watched her face change from being
angry, to wonder, and then to something else. I wasn’t sure of what
she was thinking as I finished. She looked down and away. She said
nothing. We sat in silence for a moment.

“
What are you going to do?”
I asked.

“
I need a beer.” She walked
out. I heard the fridge door open then shut, heard the crisp snap
of the can as she opened it, then saw her walk back in the room and
then sit at the end of the bed. She took a nice long drink. When
she was finished, she stared at the floor briefly, then nodded to
herself, as if she had found the answer. The look in her eyes made
me think it was the lesser of two evils though.

“
The Bear? Andrik? You’re
way in over your head. Those two
are
the Red Square. Half the force
are Russians residing there. And they didn’t get the jobs because
of their skills. I strongly urge you to take the money and leave
town. Go back to Florida. Forget this ever happened.”

I mulled it over for a second. “I
can’t.”

“
Why not?”

“
Angelo
Garboni.”

“
There’s nothing you can do
to help him.” She finished her beer and gave me a sympathetic look.
“The one man who could have helped you is now dead. His body will
probably never be found. Which might be in your best
interest.”

“
There has to be another
way, Sally. I can’t just leave him in jail. He’s
innocent.”

“
Twenty percent are
innocent. The problem is his confession.”

“
Ponytail framed Angelo. He
killed Pamela. But he was just doing his job. He was just following
orders. There’s more going on than what we know.”

“
He must have hit you
pretty hard in the head. I know what you’re thinking.” Sally gave
me a blank look.

I nodded. “I can’t get you involved,
Sally. I’ll get a room someplace. The less you know, the
better.”

She stared at me like I was a lunatic.
Which maybe I was.

“
Take out the main man, the
entire operation crumbles. That’s justice, Sally. That’s how Angelo
will get out.”

Sally stood up. She paced back and
forth. She sighed heavily. She was thinking. Hard
choices.

“
Where’s this
note?”

I had to think back to where I had
left it. I retraced my steps, what I could remember anyway. I did
laundry, so I told Sally to look there. She left and came back a
moment later holding the folded paper and the envelope. I had
already told her about the money. She tossed it to the bed beside
me. I told her to go ahead and read the note. I had still not even
looked it over.

Sally did. She unfolded it and turned
it around. Her mouth opened and she gasped. I knew it was
serious.

“
What?”

“
My God.”

“
What? What is
it?”

“
It’s a shopping list.
Blonds, brunettes. Heights and weights. Age and race.” Her skin
paled. She slowly handed it back to me. I thought she was going to
be sick. “He’s collecting women.”

Pamela must have fit a description on
a list one day.

“
I don’t like this.” Sally
looked ill.

I looked at the list myself. Sloppy
handwriting, probably from someone not used to writing English. The
sweat and pressure of my hand helped to smear some of the blue ink,
so the letters at the bottom of the note was nearly impossible to
read. Could have been three letters. The first could have been an
A. I didn’t have a clue. Sally was right though. There wasn’t any
other real explanation to what we were looking at. It was like a
grocery list, two of these, three of those.

Pamela.

The cold that had consumed me earlier
had just drown in an avalanche of heat. Angry heat. The best there
was.

I became mad at myself then for
blacking out in the Corvette. I wished at that moment I had
witnessed everything I had done.

“
I’m going in, Sally. This
settles it.”

“
I’ll put a bulletin out
for females in those categories to be on the alert.”

“
Don’t worry about them. It
was my job to find them. All I have to do is kill The Bear and
Andrik and the rest of the cockroaches scatter. The women won’t
even know they were in danger.”

“
You’re too
naive.”

“
No. I am just unwilling to
fail.”

Like an angel.

“
I’m going to be sick,”
Sally said.

I could feel my face getting hot. It
must have been red. I was burning from the core out. Ice was
melting. Frost turned into steam.

“
Michael? Are you alright?
I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

“
I need to finish
this.”

Sally shook her head. “It’s suicide,
Michael.”

“
Please, Sally.” I gave her
a look.

“
Michael, we don’t have
anything on him.” She said as a matter-of-fact. I gave her a hard
look. She caved then. “I do have the address of, and this is all
just hearsay, just street rumor, of a business he owns.”

“
Where?”

“
A recycling business in
the heart of the Red Square.” She paused, reluctantly. She sighed
heavily then gave in. “Maple Street. 14182.”

“
I could kiss
you!”

“
I would rather you just
remained alive.” She gave me a look then as if she had just sealed
my fate. Maybe she did. “She must have been a great
woman.”

“
I loved her,
Sally.”

“
I know the feeling.” Sally
stood quietly for a moment, then walked out of the room.

The anger inside me was multiplying by
the second. The room was too hot. I was sweating. I was normal
again. A plan was already forming. Andrik said that someone was
coming on Saturday night to pick up the women. It was Thursday
evening. I had enough time to figure it out and end it once and for
all.