Cold Mental World E-Book

J.M. Barber

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Four stories and one novel by J.M. Barber

10 BLOCKS DOWN-He's an old assassin with dementia. But he has one more job and he's willing to go through a new kind of hell to get his target.

A COLD WORLD-In a world that kills babies to deal with overpopulation you do whatever you can to fight back. How cold can a person be?

THE HITCHHIKER RULE BOOK-What Happened to famous author Dennis Ridge? There's a reason they say never to pick up Hitchhikers.

MR. CLEANUP-He's black and hates black people. He's a man who has an ear to the street and knows the neighborhoods mysteries. Let the murder and evasion begin.

THE LOVE BOX-If you lose this love test you die

All works released previously as singles and have now be included in one collection for your enjoyment.

Leseprobe

J.M. Barber

Cold Mental World

Five Previously Released Stories

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Cold Mental World

Five Previously Released Stories

10 Blocks Down

1

Being a hit man like the hardest gangsters you see in movies never had a thing to do with it. That shit’s always been just glamorous in films, and whether an escape or not, that remains only a form of entertainment. It might teach you too, no doubt about that, movies that is. Those small lessons manage to show up from film to film. Still, at the end of the day it’s just entertainment, not a guide to live by. It’s the kind of thing I can delve into pretty deeply when I’m not aiming my pistol, or forcing someone to take their own pistol—or whatever gun they own—and shoot themselves. Yeah, the latter is obviously meant to stage a suicide and force those suited, over coat donning, hot shot detective motherfuckers to focus their sites on another case.

See, this whole thing, this life I live, is so scary to a person like you, because I don’t look like you’d expect. With the exception of being black, which despite having a black president still puts some white folks up in arms, there’s nothing that gives me away. Nothing that would make you say—if you have been unfortunate enough to have this early sixties, half bald man on your side of town—‘hey, that’s the guy that they’ve probably sent after me’. When you get knocked off by me, you’re getting knocked off by an elderly nigga that has to stick himself with a needle four times a day to keep up with his diabetes. And based on my year old prognosis, following a cat scan as part of all that incredible shit that hit man money buys, I tested positive for dementia. It was caught late, but with pills, I’d still be able to keep it together for a little while.

There’s a point I’m making here, with all of this background info. These things about me—including the green sweats and black extra large tees I wear to encompass my overweight frame—make me invisible to you. Your eyes pass over me like that spot of dirt on a black shoe, or that homeless guy that gets on the bus with all his teeth missing. Being invisible out in the open is my greatest asset.

Before we get into the hardest target, the one that for the first time brought down full weight of just how old I was, you need to know that nothing is official until there is a face to face. Extensive conversations and texts on the phone, just isn’t the way that things become official. You can never really know who is listening. I have someone that brings me the word on each job. He’ll text me from out of state, with something along the lines of hit me back when you can. It’s always kept simple, nothing anyone can draw anything from. I hit this nigga up and he only confirms that he has something, says a price, and the rest is discussed in person where I’m needed. Got it?

I met up with my connect in the city of Houston TX for my thirty-first hit, after a long drive from New Mexico on a devil hot day in July. I stepped out of my car after I pulled into the lot of a popular Mexican eatery, and shoved a worn Houston Texans hat on my head. It was a fine addition to the prescription sunglasses shading my age-weakened eyes. But I was in my signature green sweats and black T—this T-shirt ironically one of Bob Marley—so I wasn’t trying to make a fashion statement.

The middleman, my consultant, my connect—whatever name you like—sat in the back of this fancy place, in a booth with a view of the parking lot. He had probably watched me come in. He was comfortable, I could see, noticing a perspiring Heineken bottle and an iced glass cup filled half way with the golden brew. I sat down, and he looked at me, this mid-thirties black man with a tan T-shirt, and what looked like a tramp stamp on his brown neck. A small smiled curved his lips.

I sighed, going for the menu almost at once.

“Trip okay Ronnie?” my connect asked.

The trip wasn’t okay, but I told him it was. Speaking of the days discomforts wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

“All right, so what do you got for me Roger,” I asked. I removed my hat and put it on the table, then rubbed a hand quickly over the bald center of my head.

“You want a drink,” Roger asked, ignoring my question. He called the waitress over—a cute, thick-hipped blonde girl with a thick southern accent—and I ordered a Budweiser draft.

“Wait until your drink gets here first,” he said, taking a drink from his glass. He clasped his hands under his chin and looked studiously at me. I didn’t know this at first, my eyes on a grilled chicken platter for about twelve bucks.

When I finally looked up at him, I asked how the family was doing. He said he might have gotten another girl pregnant, and that you know how that goes.

“They have this thing called contraception,” I told him. “Why don’t you look into it brother?”

“Heard of every kind,” Roger said with a smile. “Doesn’t change the way you feel when it’s all going down.” The waitress brought my beer over and we ordered our meals.

I poured the beer into the cold class and took a drink. “All right young blood,” I said. “You going to tell me what you have for me or are you going to wait until I have to stick myself with another needle?”

“How do you like Houston,” Roger said, with the same small smile.

“It’s good man. I’ve been here before, Roger.” I exhaled. “Now come on brother, tell me, what do you have for me?”

“This city, Downtown. That’s where you’ll be doing this.”

“And the target?”

“Melanie Jackson.”

I scratched at my scruff of gray beard, then took off my sunglasses. “And,” I said, moving my hand in a hurry up motion.

“There’s a hotel room reserved for you,” Roger answered, sliding a receipt across the table with the address and room number. Under the receipt, I noticed the room key, enfolded in a piece of custom glossy cardstock. I shoved both items in my pocket.

“All right,” I said, taking another drink of my beer.

“She’s ten blocks down, in an apartment. The place she’s in is your average project apartment; doesn’t stand out, but you’ll notice the bus that heads past your room every day. You have forty-eight hours. Shouldn’t be an issue.”

I finished my beer.

“Now,” Roger went on, sliding a picture of the next job across the table. He didn’t need to tell me what he told me next. It was obvious. “As you can see she’s really pretty. Young too. Just twenty-two. Do yourself a favor and don’t think of how much she reminds you of one of your daughters or a niece, or something.”

I looked closely at the girl in the picture. She had a wide smile on her face, and straight hair that went to her shoulders. She had a nice shade of skin, medium brown. And no surprise, she did remind me of someone. That someone happened to be my first wife from forty something years past.

“And who is this being done for?”

“Doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

“No, it does. Come on Roger, you worked with me the last ten years, about half my career. You know how I work.” If I didn’t find it passed muster, I would walk away. At least that’s what I’ve been claiming. I’ve never done it once though.

“Word is she had her boyfriend killed by another dude. Mad at him because he liked to be at the clubs more than he liked to be home. Maybe he hit her a couple of times is the word. That boyfriend was some white boy, by some ultra white boy sounding name of Thomason Matthews. She didn’t know he was connected, so she won’t see this coming.” Roger finished his beer, and turned to the highlights of last night’s Miami vs. Oklahoma game. It was the finals, and from what I’d last heard Miami was up. Roger watched this for a couple of minutes then turned back to me.

“All right,” Roger went on, “you—”

The waitress came out the kitchen then, using her butt to push open the double doors. Roger had his back to her and only noticed because of the shift in my eyes. When she put our food down—for Roger a plate of Quesadillas and for me, cut grilled chicken with a side of tortillas and salsa to make fajitas with—I began to eat.

Roger leaned in close when the waitress left, his food temporarily ignored in front of him. “All right, Ronnie. She’s connected, kind of. Not anything like us, but she has her little gang of wannabe thugs that are always around her place. You need to get her somewhere where she’s alone and blah blah blah, where no one’s looking. After you’re done, you know the deal. You’ll meet me at a spot that is yet to be determined, you’ll get your bread, you leave. Now—”

“Okay, wait, wait,” I said putting my hand up, feeling a bit irritated. It was about time for one of my insulin shots. “How many niggas we talking about? The niggas packin?”

Roger gave a shrug. “They probably are. Look, you have forty-eight hours Ronnie. You’ll see her. She’s always out and about, around with her bunch of hooligans. But they’re trouble in a pack, so make sure you find a way to separate her from them.”

“Okay,” I said, and took a large bite of my second fajita. These people knew how the cook. As usual, Roger had chosen an excellent meeting spot.

“She takes the bus. You get on the bus with her. Don’t get caught staring. Or actually, you could, I guess, because you’re just going to be dismissed as a perverted, horny, old man.”

“Okay.” I was finished my second fajita with a total count of two and a half bites. I was hungry as hell today, and hadn’t really known it until the food had come.

Roger finally started on his meal, taking a couple of bites before he started to wrap things up.

“She’s pretty, don’t forget,” Roger said. “And that picture you have has nothing on what she really looks

like is what I heard. Word is she’s sweet until you get on her bad side. She turns into a crazy cunt mighty quick. A bonafide bitch out to rip off a nigga’s nuts. Not to be taken lightly. So you’ve been warned. If she gets an upper hand, even with you being a man, she’ll have the advantage because of her age and because of everyone around her.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

“Yeah, you better be. Get it done in less than twenty-four hours and there might be a bonus in it for you too.”

I only nodded.

“All right,” Roger said, with a smile. “You have GPS, so I’m guessing you won’t have trouble finding the spot. If you do you know my number. Don’t forget to burn the picture when you’re through with it.”

“Yeah, it’s funny that you think I’d forget.” The instant I said that I thought of last year’s prognosis of dementia. Roger knew a lot about me, more than he should. But he didn’t know where I lived and didn’t know about my condition. If he did know that I wouldn’t get any more work. Roger, in good faith, wouldn’t have let me do it. He would’ve found some other young, but far less reliable source. I was the guy for this, and as long as I felt I was, my dementia was going to stay a secret.

“All right,” Roger said, wiping his large hands together, then grabbing a napkin. “Any questions?”

“No,” I said. Though I’d already forgotten the name and the face of who I was supposed to be killing. Yeah, it could happen just like that. I knew it was a girl but wasn’t sure if she was white or black. Wasn’t sure about the age either. But I had the picture, and wasn’t going to let Roger know, no sir. When Roger left for the bathroom I snuck a peak at the photo, saw the girl, and remembered what Roger had said about her good looks. Yeah, she was a very pretty girl indeed.

Sitting here, looking at the shape of her wide eyes, and the curve of her lips, I couldn’t help but think she reminded me of my late wife of forty years. The thought felt new to me.

2

I drove out to the hotel, down near the outskirts of downtown Houston, as I’d been told. There was work to be done, but first I had to grab the one bag I came with, and check into my room. The girl’s face—never failing to amaze me when I looked at the photo—hadn’t left my mind since the restaurant, which was good. There was a moment of fear when her image first slipped from my memory, a moment when I didn’t think her face was going to come back and thought I’d forget I even had the picture to remind me. Dementia can be scary like that. What’s worse is when you make a commitment to keep certain thoughts, certain important numbers and information in your memory day in and day out, while promising that no matter what you’ll never let go of them, it goes anyway. What I’m beginning to get is glimpses of what having the disease is going to become at its worse, and what I can tell is that it will all eventually go. Every memory essentially. Come back to me—maybe—then go again.

I took the pills the doctor had prescribed me for my dementia in the car, grabbed my stuff and went to my room. It was a nice hotel—I always have to have something nice I tell them. One of the first things I noticed was a long, diamond-stitched, red carpet that spanned the length of each floor. My floor was number twenty, and I went right up.

My room had a floor color different from that of the hotel hall; it was covered with a tan carpet. The kitchen and bathroom area were made up of hardwood. I didn’t waste time. Feeling weaker than I had started to feel in the restaurant, I pulled a fresh syringe pre-filled with insulin out of its plastic bag and stuck the half-inch needle into my abdomen for swifter absorption. I wiped the small bit of blood that seeped out with a piece of tissue and put the needle back into the bag. I tossed the bag along with the tissue into the trashcan.

Melanie Jackson, my next job, supposedly strolled in and out of view of my window every day, obviously the reason I was given this specific room. I strolled through the living room, past a couple of landscape pictures on the wall—one was of a guy with a wide tan hat walking a horse through a misty meadow—and past a leather sofa, then stepped through a sliding glass door that led out to the balcony. It was nice, seeing this city from this high up. It relaxed me, this view and the fact that my insulin shot had hit quickly as expected.

When you make it to middle age and beyond you need your sleep more than ever. Yeah, older people sleep less, but when they need their sleep, it means they really need their sleep. And yeah, you suffer from something called relapses. The term usually evokes the idea of rehab, and addicts isolated from the rest of the world to be put into group sessions. That’s not what I mean though. No, not at all. A relapse for me is when one day I have energy and then one day, out of nowhere, I don’t. The energy is gone. Taken from me like age eventually takes life. Like age is taking my mind.

I hadn’t been energized this whole day and after the large lunch, I had hit the wall. Nothing was going to

get done without lying down and getting a good three hours in, I figured. It would be five by then, and I could shower, put on another outfit not soaked in sweat, and step out on the balcony and get to work. The work would start outside, waiting for Melanie to come into my line of sight.

But I needed sleep. I took my clothes off down to my underwear, and once I laid down on the king sized bed I felt like I was in heaven. I slept for hours.

3

The first sign that I had slept too long was how my room had dimmed considerably since I’d first laid down. I wasn’t worried, but I knew that I had probably missed a couple of shots to get a look at Melanie Jackson through my binoculars. The binoculars, the best pair I was able to find in an EZ pawn years back, was what I had brought with me for the job.

Sweet dreams of my wife had taken over my sleep, and the dream was so nice that I would’ve chosen to die if I could have stayed in it forever. Sadness swept over me when I realized that it was just a dream and that I wouldn’t get a chance to revisit it until tonight.

I rolled out of bed, showered, and dressed in fresh clothes that looked a lot like the ones I had taken off. I flipped the TV on and turned it to the game. Right now, from what I could see, Miami was going to work, Lebron getting his second chance with Miami to get a championship. I wasn’t rooting for him. Oklahoma needed to go on and teach Miami what being a real team was about. As Lebron went for a dunk, I grabbed my binoculars off the coffee table and stepped out onto the balcony. It had cooled a little, but the humidity hadn’t change much. I hated Texas. Really, I did. With damn near all of my heart. Why did I hate this state? Because of the heat, the heat, the damn heat. Bugs are no fun to deal with either (this was far from the first time that I’d been here and experienced them.)

I was in a nice room though, so I didn’t think I’d have to worry. I put the binoculars to my eyes and adjusted the dial to get just the view I wanted. Looked down at the street that passed the front of the hotel and noticed a white car—probably a Camry—pass by at an easy ten miles an hour. A moment later a red pickup truck passed in the other direction. The hood and the side of the vehicle were dinted and the paint chipped.

I’d just stepped outside, so I didn’t expect to see much. I was really looking for people walking on the sidewalks. There was a great view of the bus stop from where I stood, right across the street and down a few blocks. If Melanie went to this bus stop, like Roger said she often did, I should be good. I centered my binoculars in that direction. Behind the bus stop bench—an ad on the back rest reading Cheap Bargain Prices at www.pawncheap.com—was a stretch of grass that spanned an entire length of fence that ran all the way down the block. Behind the fence I could see tall mounds of dirt, yellow tractors parked indiscriminately throughout the construction site. I spotted a white twenty-something couple walking down the sidewalk on the side of the bus stop, the girl with blonde hair running down to her shoulders, and her boyfriend’s head as bald as an egg (some skinhead shit, right there, I thought, knowing that Texas was home to many racists.) They stopped in front of the bus stop bench and shared a kiss, the boyfriend’s hands sliding easily under the girl’s shirt, onto her bare waist. The girl, laughing, simply rested her head on her boyfriend’s chest.

“Obviously not who I’m looking for,” I muttered, beads of sweat already collecting on my forehead. I kept the binoculars pressed to my sockets and centered the glass lenses somewhere else. Down to the right, a block and a half from the sight of the young couple, I spotted three black teenagers, in different colored stocking caps, their pants sagging, strolling toward the bus stop bench. One of the boys, the shortest of the bunch—and all high school students by the look of them—playfully shoved the taller boy to his left. The taller boy laughed and shoved him back. He said something to his friend, and if I could read his lips right, he’d said, “Quit fucking around nigga.”

Still, there was no sight of Melanie. The search went on like this for some time. My plan was to spot her ahead of time, then get my ass downstairs before she was out of view. If she was taking the bus I’d have until it arrived, and if I didn’t see it before I headed down, I’d have time to catch up with her.

I thought of the girl and how she looked. Put the binoculars down on the outside table and took the picture from my wallet. I was supposed to burn this thing at one point, wasn’t I? Looking at it, I couldn’t help to notice how much she looked like my wife of forty years ago. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed this before.

I picked the binoculars back up from the glass table, and continued my search. So far I’d been searching for this girl for close to half an hour. When I reached an hour I would take a ten minute break, then come back out and try to do two hours straight. That was my plan.

As I looked down at the sights of the city, I couldn’t help but think that I was forgetting something. My insulin came to mind, and though I would need to use it soon, I was probably fine for the moment. It was something

else. I continued my search for Melanie and racked my brain trying to remember, but it wouldn’t come. After a couple of minutes I let it go. I was sure I’d recall it before long.

Thirty minutes later I sat at the bar-side of the island kitchen counter, eating food that I had taken from the restaurant in a doggy bag. I munched on chicken and tortillas until the remainder of the food was finished, and stood up and tossed the styrofoam tray into the trashcan, stepping on the lever to open the lid. My break had been over ten minutes ago, and for all I knew, Melanie might have come and gone by now. If worse came to worse, I was going to have to go downstairs and park outside her house. I didn’t want to get that close though. Not unless I was about to strike. This was the spot to catch her. This was the safest place.

Night time had begun to fade in, and the Miami game had long since ended, Miami winning yet again, and well on the way to their first championship. I watched the highlights, realizing that I was going to have to call it a night. Yeah, I wanted to get this done early, but there was a reason that I’d been given forty-eight hours to complete the job. And as old as I was, chances are I would need most of it.

4

I asked around and found a bar that was a fifteen minute walk from my hotel room. I didn’t have to drive, which was the best part. Whenever I visited a bar I liked to drink—sometimes to excess despite my age—and I liked not to have to think about what would happen if I got pulled over drunk. On the radio coming out here and from the countless people who lived in Houston that I’ve talked to at one point or another, DUI’s were serious business out here. Yeah, I suppose they’re serious business anywhere. But Texas, to me, is a state that seems to take its DUI’s personally. And to pay upward of ten thousand dollars in fines, nah, no thank you. That’s a quarter of what I’m making for this job. And no, forty thousand is not a lot of money for this job, though there are those that would most likely think it is.

I stepped into the bar with my Houston Texans hat and a pair of sunglasses on. Almost at once I liked the environment, and I hadn’t as much as made eye contact with a single person. Sometimes when you walk into certain places, you can kind of pick up a vibe, and that’s what it was like with this place. It was a black bar, mostly, from what I could see. I was one of the older gentlemen in here. Even with this, no one paid me any mind. Not much more than a couple of glances in my direction before they went back to their drinks, or knocking the cue ball into a triangle of numbered balls on the table.

The place was laid back, my preference. It was all I asked for when I went out on any night, was a place that was calm. My age begged for it. I went straight to the bar and took a seat, and the instant my butt hit the stool I went back to thinking about what I had forgotten in the hotel. It wasn’t my insulin shot. I had dealt with that before I came out here.

“What can I get you man,” a deep voiced, buff brother asked me, his large hands flat on the bar before me. A white towel hung over one enormous shoulder.

“Just give me a Gin on the rocks,” I told him, and looked around with shaded eyes, taking everything in.

The bartender left wordlessly, grabbed my drink, and asked me if I was doing tab or paying cash. I said cash, and slid him a ten.

“Keep it,” I told him. I’d start a tab but I didn’t need anyone staring at an ID or debit card while I was here. That might make me easier to remember if someone came here asking questions.

The bartender didn’t thank me for the tip, only strolled away to help someone several stools down. Young brothers these days. A bunch of ungrateful assholes. Back in my—

“Hey!”

The voice, clearly a female, came from my left, and I turned to face her. My right hand clenched my drink; I had been a split second away from taking my first sip. Then the next second, the drink was the furthest thing from my mind.

“You look like my granddad,” a young black girl said. She was very pretty. Had the Texas accent. Definitely homegrown. Right in the middle of thinking this the strongest inclination that I was forgetting something hit me again. It hit me so hard I had to push it away to keep my mind on track with the conversation I was having with this girl.

“Is that a good thing or bad thing,” I said.

The girl, wore a halter top and had medium brown skin. She was hard not to look at. She looked like someone I knew, looked like—

“That’s a good thing,” the girl said, bleary-eyed. She was unsteady on her feet, almost swaying. “I love my granddad. He’s no longer here though.”

I leaned forward slightly, taking off my sunglasses. Yeah, it might have looked weird to her, but there was something about this girl, and I needed to know what that thing might be.

“What,” she said, furrowing her brow.

“I swear girl,” I said. “You look like someone I know. Yes, you do. I’m just trying to think of it right quick.”

Her eyebrows went up, her smile fading a bit. “You trying to think of it, huh?”

And like that, I remembered everything. First, I had forgotten to take my pills to deal with my dementia—really Alzheimer’s at this point—and this girl was Melanie Jackson, talking to me like I really was her granddad or something.

I decided not to let her know who I thought she looked like. I didn’t think that it was going to do me any favors. Remembering what Roger had told me about her clique, I looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was with her. I looked over my shoulder next. She said nothing about this odd behavior.

“You here with anyone,” I asked her.

She looked nice, this girl. I’ve met a lot of scandalous people, and they come in all different shades and expressions, but this girl could’ve fooled me had I not been told about her ahead of time.

“Nah,” she said shaking her head. She flapped a hand drunkenly in the direction of the door, her eyes remaining unsteadily on mine. “A couple of niggas I know—they’ll be showing up soon. They ain’t here yet. They—” she put her thumb and index finger together to mime smoking reefer, “—you know?”

I nodded, then bared my yellow teeth in a smile. I had to wonder why the hell this little girl was talking to me. Naturally, my mind considered the idea that she might have been on to this old man. I wasn’t as sharp as I used to be, and that had to do more with bad health choices than aging. Aging, to be honest, played a very small part in it. If you exclude the dementia anyway.

“Take a seat,” I said, facing forward. I had no idea if she was going to take the stool next to me, but I thought I should at least ask.

She sat down on the stool, and clasped her small hands together in front of her, all properly. She had class, I could see, though most of it was masked with the drinks sloshing around in her belly.

Did Roger know what he was talking about, I asked myself. Is this really the girl?

But I had to remind myself that I’d dealt with other nice looking girls before. Girls that looked like they’d graduated high school five years ago and had their hopes and dreams ahead of them. Well, they didn’t. I made sure of that. And this girl, sitting next to me had no dreams to look forward to either. She may have looked sweet, but that didn’t mean anything. And I wasn’t going to forget that.

“You think when your boys get here,” I asked, “that they’ll hook this old man up? Give an old man, you know a little something?”

Melanie burst into laughter, and touched my free hand briefly. “What do you want?”

I didn’t mind her laughing. Young people were stupid as shit this day and age anyway.

“Seriously though,” she said, when I didn’t answer, seeming to sober up. “What do you want?”

“You can get all businesslike real quick, can’t you?”

“You tell me what you want I’ll make sure they get you.”

I took a moment to think, not sure exactly what I wanted to ask for. I hadn’t actually wanted to smoke or snort anything. It was supposed to be half-hearted conversation.

“Just a little old dime bag,” I said. “Nothing more than that.”

She scooted closer, and put her hand on my leg. Calmly, I picked her hand up and put it back on the counter. A girl that looked like her, as young as her, shouldn’t just be putting their hand on any old man’s thigh like that. It was strange, but when she did it, I saw my wife from forty years ago, approaching a random guy in the bar and doing the same thing. The thought scared me.

“They have Swishers too,” Melanie said, talking faster. She chuckled briefly. “I can get you that, a dime sack and Swishers. My nigga coming in, he just sell sticks to if you want to buy one off him.”

I nodded automatically, saying yes just to simplify the situation.

“We’ll do that,” I said. “When are your boys getting here?”

Of course, I didn’t care about when her friends were arriving for the sake of purchasing weed from her. I was looking for an opportunity to get this job done early and get on home. But then again, I couldn’t just leave the bar with this girl, not with everyone around. They were all witnesses waiting to happen. I needed information for where she was going to be, and would have to show up at an unexpected time. Of course, I knew the building she stayed in, but doing it right in her neighborhood, out in the open was an easy way to end up in a Texas jail. I had to think this out.

The girl put her hand on my leg again, and instead of moving it away like I had before, I asked myself what this could mean. I was an older man. Not the kind she’s going to come on to because of real attraction or something like that. Was she—

“Girl, are you working?”

“Working?” She didn’t seem to understand, the space between her eyebrows narrowing.

“Trickin’.”

She shook her head, but before I could feel self-conscious about what I had said she squeezed my leg tighter.

“Of course that can change,” she said, biting her bottom lip.

Yes, this girl was young and very attractive, and if you could take fifteen years off my age I might have taken her back to my place for a fuck before killing her. Then again, no I wouldn’t have. I would have been seen alone with the girl on camera, and hotels were full of them.

“Change for what?” I asked, taking a considerable drink of my gin. Drinking any amount of liquor, especially with my mental condition, was probably not the best decision. This was supposed to be a night to relax. I hadn’t planned for all of this and I was already starting to mess it up.

Melanie scooted her stool closer to mine, leaned in and whispered into my ear, the hand that had been on my thigh now back on my free hand. I could smell the minty aroma of what couldn’t been Peppermint Shnopp’s on her breath.

“I could do, like, three hundred for some head and six hundred for a half hour fuck. A thousand and I give you the night.”

I looked at her like she had lost her mind and wiped the expression off my face the second I realized what I was doing. She could charge half a mil for some head, a full mil for some sex and by the time I left Houston, it all wouldn’t have amounted to shit. For the sake of not arousing her suspicion—though she seemed a bit too tipsy and high to recognize anything—I acted like I was thinking hard about this.

Melanie watched me closely with her wide, bleary eyes. Suddenly a deep feeling of sadness came over me and I didn’t want to do it. I’d been doing this for years, and the last time I hadn’t urges against doing the job had been with my second time out. Why my second job but not the first? Because the first hit had been one evil motherfucker. And after I got used to it. I pushed the feeling away and smiled at her.

“Okay,” I told her. “The whole night. But I don’t want to leave together. You never know who’s watching.”

“Nigga, ain’t no one watching,” she said, and cackled loudly, her small brown hand finding my wrist.

“Then why’d you scoot closer like you were looking out for someone. Don’t play that shit with me. You know how this works girl. I know this isn’t the first time you’ve done this.”

I’d expected a colder response than the one I got.

“Yeah, you right,” she replied with a smile. “So what do you want to do granddad?”

“Like I said, let me leave first. Anyone asks, you going home. But meet me outside of uh…” I had to think about this for a moment. I couldn’t send her to my hotel room, unless I wanted my face on the news a couple of days from now.

“All right. I saw a grocery store a block from here.”

“You talking about the Family Dollar?”

Again, the possibility of store cameras. Then I thought of the bus stop across the street from the hotel. A spot several blocks down before its next stop would be perfect. There’d be no cameras. That was the location I gave her, telling her to meet me there in an hour.

She accepted this without issue, leaned in and kissed one of my rough, age-seamed cheeks. The dime bag that I had agreed to purchase seemed to have been forgotten.

“All right granddad,” she said, putting a piece of gum in her mouth. “Looks like we are good.”

“I never got your name,” I said, though I was fully aware of it.

“Melanie.”

When she didn’t say anything else I asked, “Don’t you want to know mine?”

She flashed her broad, gorgeous grin. “You’re granddad,” she said. Still smiling, she added, “I’m going to need some of the money up front, so I know you have money and ain’t just trying to rape me or choke me out.”

Not going to save you, I thought darkly, but extracted my wallet, opened it, and fished out a single hundred dollar bill. I handed it to her, and she made it disappear into her shirt.

“You get nine hundred more you show up,” I said. I considered giving her a warning not to try to jack me, and then thought better of it. I trusted this girl. Some crazy shit right.

Melanie nodded. “All right, you go ahead and go then. And I’m going to try to leave before my boys get here.” She seemed to have sobered up a little. She had her cell phone out, and was scrolling through numbers.

“You texting someone?”

“Don’t you worry,” she said. “Just checking my texts. Not telling no one nothing. Go on granddad.”

I finished my drink instinctively, and was kicking myself right after for not leaving the remainder in the cup. I left the bar and headed straight to my room to get ready.

5

When I made it back to my room I took only twenty minutes to get ready, grabbing all my stuff so I could make a quick getaway when the job was done. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this hotel after I popped this girl. Staying around too long only caused bad luck. No, the plan was to pop the girl, set up a place to meet with Roger, and get the hell out of town. The bag I carried with me contained a gun, and a couple of changes of clothes. It contained duct tape—I always brought that everywhere and almost never used it—and a small red box of bullets.

I left the hotel room, my duffel bag in hand, and my prescription sunglasses and Houston Texans hat back on. The sunglasses made it harder to see sure, but I’d forgotten my regular glasses at home. I’d taken another shot of insulin up in my room, so at least that lovely issue wouldn’t pop up to mess up the night.

I shoved the key into the ignition, turned and started up my 95 Lexus with rusted green paint and drove to the bus stop a couple of blocks down.

6

I shoved the gun in the waist of my pants, knowing that I’d have to make my move without much walking, because the waist area of my sweats wouldn’t keep the gun from slipping down my pant leg. Its hold on the gun was only sufficient when I was sitting down.

I wasn’t surprised that Melanie showed up late. I hadn’t expected anything better. Late or not, fact was I had been incredibly lucky tonight. It was all going to end early and I was going to get out of Texas before sunrise. It was a good thing because this hot weather was nothing for an old man like me to be dealing with. Word is black people are tropical people. There’s a limit on that shit though. Houston goes overboard in the summer, like a fat chick at the buffet, and weather like this could never work for me.

I waited by the curb with the headlights off, the radio tuned to smooth jazz, which was one of the few genres I could stand. When I was growing up, back in the days when living in the North was one of the blessings for the life of a brother, it seemed like artists tried harder. With the work ethic of the youth, it seems that these artists, these young millionaires, in almost every kind of music are not trying. I can’t lie, it makes me sick to my stomach at times. Not good for someone who’s already having problems with his health.

Obama might be the only exception of things going the right way. Even me, I’m no good. And I know that. In the beginning I looked at this job like something that someone had to do. Now I look at it like a job that I’m doing. And guess what? I’m killing people.

Melanie finally appeared, and approached the car from the side of the bus route, turning the corner when she reached the street I was on. She saw my vehicle, and stood still trying to peer inside, a large purse on one shoulder and wearing the red halter top and black jeans she’d been wearing inside of the bar. Still, she looked pretty. Then I realized that she looked just like my wife from forty years ago. Was I noticing this for the first time?

I flashed my headlights, then set the knob to leave them on. She smiled and came right over, moving quickly and carefully on high heels. I reached across the passenger seat and opened her door from the inside.

“Thanks,” she said, getting in quickly and shutting the door behind her. The dome light had popped on, and for the first few seconds it remained on after the door shut, I noticed her forehead glistening with sweat. It was a hot, uncomfortable night. No doubt about that. July in Houston was no joke.

“You mind if I smoke granddad,” she said, extracting cigarette from her purse.

“You can smoke all you want,” I said, feeling like Christmas had come early because she had come. “And if you don’t mind you can hand one over here too.”

She grabbed me a cigarette and a couple of seconds later two cigarettes smoldered inside my car, smoke billowing from the orange tips and filling the small space. We were still parked, just sitting inside and enjoying our smokes.

“You can roll the window down if you want,” Melanie told me and laughed.

I pushed the button and the window slid out of view. I rested my elbow on the door, the cigarette extended out the car as I exhaled more tobacco smoke. The doctor had warned me against behavior like this, but I could make an exception, couldn’t I? This was a special occasion after all.

“All right,” Melanie said. “Do you want to do this here or somewhere else?”

I thought it was funny that she would say that, because I thought this was a horrible place to do it. Good for a pickup but not for sex. The bus passed by here every thirty minutes to an hour from what I noticed in my time on the hotel balcony. People from all corners would walk past to catch the next one.

I shook my head, giving no sign of how ridiculous I thought the idea was. Melanie was making it more and more obvious how young she was. I mean, I guess she was kind of smart for her age; just had a few bad ideas is all. With that said, she was going nowhere fast, both in her mind and in her life. I was not impressed with her at all. This, I thought, would make it easier for me to do what I had to do. In this job sometimes you had to give yourself reasons

to move forward. Reasons besides the money.

“All right,” I said, tossing the cigarette out the window after one more drag. “Let’s go.”

“All right granddad,” the girl said with her beautiful smile.

I drove away from the curb and turned the car around, heading away from the hotel and down a dark street, toward the location I had found to do this. And it should be easy enough to get Melanie in because of what she expected us to do. On the street a stray dog, some type of brown lab mix, trotted in the direction of the hotel. Its tongue lolled. As I passed by it stopped and sat down, staring at my car as I passed by. It was like it expected me to give it a ride.

My headlights brushed over a few boarded up houses as we drove down the street, lit up dark alleyways on either side, and in an alley to the right, scared a stray cat off of a dumpster. I drove deeper into the neighborhood, Melanie with her feet kicked up on the dashboard, unconcerned about the common decency of keeping her feet on the floor. She had a half smile on her face, seemed to be thinking about something pleasant.

We arrived at the location a moment later. I pulled my car into a dark alley and parked by a dark door that led into an abandoned warehouse. I’d come here earlier on foot, and had tried the door, noticing that the knob looked like it was about to fall off. It had been locked, but with a couple of rams with my shoulder, it opened right up, and my nose had been met with the dank, dusty smell of the wide, web-strewn confines.

“You want to go in here,” Melanie said, her feet coming off the dash.

“Yeah, we’re going through the back entrance, so no one can see us. Great spot.”

Melanie, no longer seeming so comfortable, shook her head slowly. Her face was lit only by the green glow from my CD deck.

“I don’t know granddad.” She looked over her shoulder then out the window to her right. “How about we—how about we just do it somewhere with more light. Why not where you stay?”

I chuckled. Extracted my gun from the elastic waist of my pants and placed it on my lap, the barrel pointed in her direction.

“You have to get out baby,” I said calmly. “We’ll have a great time.”

Melanie’s eyes fixed down on my lap, and for a moment there was no real reaction, Melanie apparently trying to figure out what she was looking at. It was dark, and the green light from the CD deck didn’t shine on my firearm the same way that it washed over her young face. When she noticed, she put her hands up.

“Get out,” I said, flicking the barrel toward her door.

She ignored me, and instead fucking yapped. “Do you want the hundred that you gave me earlier, is that it? I can give you that, if you want it. I have it with me.”

“Get out,” I repeated, feeling my patience quickly fade. What was worse is that I was yet again becoming aware of how much she looked like my dead wife of forty years ago. I wanted to get this over with so that I could stop thinking about it. So that I could think about something else.

Melanie, unbelievingly, shook her head again. She shook it even slower, as if she had been on the verge of listening to what I had told her to do, and then had reconsidered at the last minute.

“All right cutie,” I said, yanking my keys from the ignition and getting out of the car on my side. I shoved them in my pocket and felt the weight of them as they clinked at the bottom. I moved around the car, the gun in my left hand, aimed toward the ground. I could see Melanie Jackson through my sunglasses—she wasn’t much more than a shadow with them on—try to get out on the driver’s side to get away. But she moved too late—maybe because all those drugs in her system—and when I reached her side I yanked her door open, grabbed the back of her hair and forced her out.

“Ow!” she half screamed, half sobbed, grabbing for my hand. “You’re hurting my hair! What the fuck do you want with me nigga! I won’t make you pay! I won’t make you PAY! Ow!”

I forced her back into her open door, and it slammed shut behind her. She was light, probably didn’t weight over a buck twenty. She smelled good, I noticed. Had prepared nicely for this night. I let her go.

“Ow,” she said, touching the back of her head with her hand, and looking up at me with stunned anger. “You don’t have to pay nigga, damn! We can do this for free! We—”

I may have been sixty-two, but I was able to bring that gun across her head like I’d just become legal yesterday. There was a muffled clunk and and a small amount of blood spurted from her temple before she fell back against the car. She leaned against it for a moment like a drunk, her hair in her face and her arms hanging, then spilled to the gravel with a soft clump. I may have had the gun and I may have been dealing with a female that was much smaller than me, but fact was, she was younger too, and if she was able to break away, she could probably outrun me. And I didn’t want to have to shoot her and leave her out in the street for the world to see. The sooner her body was found, the more I risked.

I shoved the gun into the pocket of my sweats where it clinked with the keys I had shoved in there a moment ago. Then I bent down with a grimace and threw one of Melanie’s arms over my shoulders to help the

unconscious dame into the warehouse. My knees popped as I straightened up with her added weight. Several steps later she was in the warehouse and the door was closed behind us. I let Melanie fall to the ground then took a couple of moments to catch my breath, doubled over with my hands on my large knees. A minute later I straightened up once again.

I extracted the gun, and took the glasses off with the other hand and shoved them in my pocket. My sight was shit, the result of many years alive, but also the result of a famous history of generative eyes within my family. But I wanted to make sure I aimed right, and took her out without having to reload. I had six bullets in this gun. She’d still be breathing if I inflicted her with a bunch of superficial flesh wounds.

I locked my eyes on her body, curled in a fetal position on the floor. I could hear her breaths just barely, and though I could sense the gradual rise and fall of her small body, I couldn’t quite see it.

I aimed the gun for her head. Pulled the hammer back. Then the dusty interior of the warehouse was lit up with red and blue lights, the police happening upon the neighborhood at the most inconvenient time possible. I cursed quietly, and shoved the gun back into my pocket. Why hadn’t I heard them coming? Were they here for me? I left Melanie where she was and slowly made my way out the rear entry of the warehouse and to my car. I could see the moving lights, bouncing off the gravel and the exterior of a number of abandoned edifices. The cop cars weren’t in view, but were parked very close by, and I had a feeling more cars were on the way.

I opened my car door and grabbed the duct tape from the duffel bag in the backseat. It was something that I almost never used, but tonight looked like a great night for it. Melanie still lay in a clump on the floor when I went back in, her breaths still quiet.

The lights had brightened the space for the moment and I realized that I could see them through one of the thin rectangular windows, just barely. At least three cop cars were parked in the street. When I stepped closer, the roll of duct tape clutched loosely in one hand, I was able to see that they were trying to apprehend someone inside of a black SUV. A Black SUV. Really? Shit was so common for the hood, it seemed—but maybe that was just the result of too much TV talking. It looked like something was about to go down, but I knew if I didn’t hurry up and tie Melanie up, this whole thing could fall apart.

I strolled across the dust slicked floor of the wide space, accidentally kicked what looked like a crack pipe to the side, then reached Melanie and knelt before her. I lifted her slightly, so that she was sitting as straight as I could get her. She still hadn’t come to, but her breathing had grown a little louder. What that meant? I wasn’t really sure, but it probably wouldn’t be a good thing if I didn’t pick up my pace. I unrolled a length of tape, tore it free and bound Melanie’s small wrists with it. After binding her wrists I balled up a smaller length of tape, and forced it into her mouth. She didn’t resist, lucky me. I wrapped another length of tape around her mouth, concealing the ball of tape within, then tied her ankles together, fifteen to twenty layers deep.

My job was done for the moment. Now I could get back to the window and see what the hell was going on outside. When I made it back to my spot, I watched with one hand back on my gun, finger off the trigger. Outside, several cops were approaching the SUV, two with their guns drawn. The one closest to the driver’s side door had his hand on his holster, the strap undone.

And why couldn’t this have happened at any other time?

I didn’t spend much time thinking about it, knowing that I was going to have to wait them out. The cops would take whoever was in the car out, put them in the back of their vehicle or vehicles and leave. Then I’d be able to finish my business.

I was certain that was just how it would play out, then a split second later, gunfire exploded, first erupting from the SUV, hitting the officer closest to the driver’s side door in the head, and sending him down to the gravel in a spray of blood. Then it erupted from the firearms of the officers, their bullets puncturing the aluminum exterior of the vehicle and shattering the glass. Blood splattered against the back window of the vehicle. After the initial armed response of the cops, there was a pause, then a couple of seconds later a few more bullets were fired for good measure.

I watched all of this, wide-eyed, my hand clenching my gun like the leash of an overactive canine. Yet again, I was forced to wonder why this couldn’t have happened at any other time. This was ridiculous. Cops were going to be all over the scene now.

Then Melanie moaned, most of the sound muffled by the ball of duct tape I had shoved into her mouth. I approached her, keeping the gun out. I knelt down in front of her, watching her closely, waiting for her eyes to open. For thirty or so seconds they didn’t, Melanie only shifting this way and that. When they did I pressed the barrel of my pistol right into her left eye.

“Shhh,” I said, putting my index finger to my lips. “You try anything girl and I’m going to open a whole the size of my fist in the back of your head.”

Melanie looked at me, wordless of course. She didn’t even do as much as moan. I was hoping the cops would be done quickly, but forty-five minutes later the officers, and now an ambulance and a morticians van to take

the bodies away, were still on the scene. A couple of minutes passed. Then Melanie tried to say something, struggling against her binds. When she did this I was standing back at the window, not paying much attention to her. But I was getting annoyed and about ready to head back over to the door and put my gun back to her face.

I took a couple of steps in her direction, but before I reached her I became certain that I was looking at my wife of forty years ago. For a moment this didn’t make sense to me, but then it didn’t matter. Fact was, I was looking at my wife, Tiffany Chambers, from years back. And someone had tied her up from head to toe.

7

My heartbeat sped up and I rushed over to wear she was, shoving the gun into my pocket. Tiffany moved away from me, apparently scared as I reached for her face.

“It’s okay baby,” I said, knowing that she must have been traumatized from whatever experience she had been through. I managed to get my hands on the tape around her head and pulled it free. Tiffany spit out a ball of duct tape that had been in her mouth.

What kind of fucking animals would do this, I thought, feeling myself getting angry.

“You need to let me the fuck out of here,” she screamed. “What the fuck is you doing?”

Yeah, whatever she had been through had been bad, that was without a doubt. My Tiffany never talked like that. She never cursed. It wasn’t in her nature.