The Ethical Assassin

I walked up to the counter and put down a dollar. The soda was seventy-nine cents.

“Wait your turn,” the girl told me. “Can’t you see that there’s people ahead of you?”

“There aren’t people,” I said. My voice sounded edgy and nervous, and I wished I would shut up. “There’s person, and he’s not buying anything.”

“You being rude to this little girl?” the Confederate asked.

“Rude as in pushy?” I asked. “Or rude as in trying to stick my hand down her shirt?”

“Boy, you don’t know who you’re messing with,” the Confederate said.

But I did. I knew I was messing with a guy who wouldn’t give a second thought about sucker-punching me and kicking my head when I was down. Still, I was apt to run my mouth. The thing I’d learned over the years was that the only power I had against someone like this was in mouthing off. It didn’t keep me from getting my ass kicked. It might even promote an ass kicking, but at least I got to perpetuate the stereotype of weak kids being verbally dexterous.

But this wasn’t high school, and I’d already learned tonight that the stakes were higher than a few bruises and a dose of humiliation. It was time, I decided, to show some deference.

“I didn’t mean to be pushy,” I said quietly. “I just want to pay.”

“It ain’t time for you to pay. You think you go walking around here in your tie and your fancy briefcase and you don’t have to wait on line? You think you’re somehow better than us?”

The math, science, and language arts curricula had been pretty weak, but the one thing I’d learned back in middle school was that accusations of thinking I was better than someone else were a prelude to violence. Some asshole revving his engine, in the process of convincing himself or witnesses or God that the ass kicking he was about to unleash was utterly righteous.

I needed to cool things down, but it was hard to figure out my next move when my brain was spi

The Confederate angled his head and stared. “What?”

It was an out-of-body experience. I saw myself speaking, and I had no power to stop.

“You meant, ‘You think you’re better than we.’ We is a subject. ‘We are here.’ Who is here? We are. Us, on the other hand, is an object, the recipient of action. ‘Bob gave the ball to us.’ Who gave the ball? Bob, the subject, did. To whom did he give it? Us, the object.”

A stupid smile flattened out across my face.

The Confederate stared as though I were a formaldehyde freak behind Coney Island glass. The girl behind the counter took a step back. Her eyes went wide and she half raised her hands as though to protect her face from the coming blast.

The blast never came. Outside the store, Bobby’s Chrysler Cordoba pulled gloriously, miraculously, into the parking lot. The most fortunate timing in the history of the world- far better luck than my nearly eighteen years had led me to expect or even hope for. “That’s my ride,” I said, as though we’d been hanging out, talking sports.

The Confederate didn’t say anything. I looked to the counter girl, but she would not meet my eyes. Nothing to do but forget the soda, so I put it down on a pile of Coors cases and began to head for the door.

“You leave now, and you’re stealing.” It was the counter girl. Her voice had grown small, and her hands, which now hung limp by her side, trembled just a little.

I stopped. “Then let me pay,” I said.

“You gotta wait your turn.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

Now the redneck bent toward me. He wasn’t unusually tall, just under six feet, and he had maybe an inch or so on me, but he bent forward like a giant stooping to offer advice to a midget. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “Correcting me?”

I turned away, hoping to God that Bobby could see me, would come to my rescue if he spotted trouble. Feeling the burn of the redneck’s eyes, I picked up the soda and took the dollar out from my pocket. I put it back on the counter. I didn’t care that they were assholes, and I didn’t care about the change. I cared only about getting out of there.

I turned away and pushed open the door, which chimed merrily along with the sound of my laughter, unhinged with giddy disbelief.

I had survived a double murder, I had survived an interview with the killer, I had survived a sure beating by a redneck whom I had insulted. I ought to have felt some measure of relief, but a churning dread burned away at my stomach. I had survived only that moment, and plenty more moments were coming.

Chapter 7

NO ONE ELSE was in the car yet, which was some small comfort since it was a two-door and I hated being crowded into the backseat. In the months since I’d signed up, I’d become Bobby’s biggest earner, and that meant I received certain trivial privileges, like good pickup times and the moochiest neighborhoods.

“You don’t look so hot,” Bobby said. “You blank?”

I shook my head and then peered into the store to make sure we weren’t in any trouble. The Confederate had gone back to flirting with the counter girl, and appearances suggested I’d been more or less forgotten.

“No, I scored.” I opened my bag and handed Bobby the paperwork. “I almost got a double, but it didn’t pan out.”

Bobby smiled. “Hell, my man. You scored two days in a row. You’re on fire.” Pronounced, for sales motivation effect, “fie-yah.” “Just stay pos, keep thinking pos thoughts. It’s the pos attitude that will get you the double or triple tomorrow.”

Bobby was a big guy, big like a football player or more like an ex-football player. He had meaty arms and thick legs, no neck, but he also had a sizable gut that jutted out over his cloth belt. Bobby’s face was wide and boyish and almost preternaturally charismatic. I wanted to be too smart to be drawn in by Bobby’s charm, but I was drawn in all the same.

The fact was, I found it impossible not to like Bobby. He enjoyed everyone’s company, and he displayed a generosity beyond anything I had ever seen. Part of it was his command of the power of money. Bobby wanted always to demonstrate to his crew that he had cash, that cash was good, and that cash made you happy. He would buy us beer and lunch and, on occasion, a night out. During long drives, when we stopped for fast food, Bobby tipped the counter workers at McDonald’s and Burger King. He tipped tollbooth attendants and hotel clerks. He was, to use his word, pos.

“You don’t have a check here,” Bobby said, waving my paperwork at me. He ran a hand through his short, almost military style hair. “You didn’t get green on me and forget again?”

I had scored a double my first day on the job. My first day. No one expected people to score their first day, so Bobby hadn’t yet talked me through the credit app, and consequently I hadn’t asked my buyers to fill one out. Bobby had then taken me over to both houses- and this was now after midnight and all lights were out- getting the people out of bed so they could sit around in their robes and fill out credit apps. I would rather have given up the sales, but Bobby worked himself up into a feverishly rotating tornado of sales energy, and he’d insisted. Then again, he knew he could get away with it. He had that chummy grin and inviting laugh and that way of saying hello that made strangers think they must have met him before and simply forgotten. I would have had the door slammed in my face, but Bobby had the wife at the second house making us all instant hot chocolate, the kind with the little marshmallows that melted into gooey clouds.

And he had motivation. I made $200 off each sale, Bobby made $150 each time I or anyone else in his crew scored. That’s why people wanted to be a crew boss. You made money for getting other people to do work.