The Ethical Assassin

The paperwork Bobby now held in his big hands belonged to Karen and Bastard. I had handed over the wrong sheets. The momentary relief I’d felt at escaping the redneck was now gone. I was back to the roller-coaster feeling of plummeting straight down.

“Sorry,” I said. I was bearing down, clenching my abdominal muscles, to keep the fear from seeping into my voice. It was like trying to stanch a gaping wound. I knew that the more time went by, the more time I could spend living a normal life, the less I would remember Karen lying on the floor, her eyes wide open, a jagged crater in her forehead, blood pooling around her like a halo. I’d forget the acrid and coppery smell in the air. I wanted it gone.

“That was the one I blew.” I fished around in my bag and got the paperwork from early that afternoon. The quiet little couple in the run-down green trailer. Their two kids and four dogs. The stench of unpaid bills. That had been a walk in the park.

Bobby looked it over, nodded definitively. “This looks pretty good,” he said before filing the papers in his own bag. “Shouldn’t be a problem passing.” I had missed out on commissions and bonuses because credit apps hadn’t passed. I’d even missed out on a big one, a huge one, because of credit apps. My third week on the job, I’d rung a doorbell and a ski

Somehow I’d sensed that it wasn’t the right time for the usual line, so I’d said, straight out, that I was selling encyclopedias. “Come on back, then,” the man had said. “Let’s see what you can do.”

Galen Edwine, my host, was in the midst of a barbecue with about eight or nine other families. While the kids splashed around in the moochie aboveground pool, I pitched them all- nearly twenty adults. They drank beer, they ate burgers, they laughed at my jokes. I was like the hired entertainment. And when it was all over, I’d sold four of them. Four. A grand slam. Grand slams happened, but rare enough that they were legendary. That day there was a $1,000 bonus for a grand slam, so I racked up $1,800 for a day’s work.

Except I didn’t because none of the credit apps passed. Not a single one. It had happened to me before and it had happened since, and it never ceased to piss me off, but the tragedy of that day really got to me. I had a grand slam, and then it turned to dust. Still, the reputation stuck, and even if I hadn’t earned the commissions, I’d earned a certain respect.

“So,” Bobby pressed, “what happened here?” He held up Karen and Bastard’s app.

I shook my head. “They balked at the check.”

“Shit, Lemmy. You got inside and you couldn’t close? That’s not like you.”

I shrugged in the hopes that this conversation might simply go away. “It just sort of worked out that way, you know?”

“When was all this?”

Maybe I should have lied, but it didn’t occur to me. I didn’t see where he was going with this. “I don’t know. Tonight. A few hours ago.”

He glanced at the credit app for a minute, as if he were looking for some forgotten detail. “Let’s go back there. If this was only a few hours ago, I bet I can work them.”

I put a hand on the car for support. I shook my head. There was no way I wanted to return to the scene of the crime. “I don’t think it will do any good.”

“Come on, Lem. I can work them. What, you don’t want the money? You don’t want the bonus? Commission and bonus, so we’re talking about another four hundred in your pocket.”

“I just don’t think it will help. I don’t want to go.”

“Well, I want to try. Where’s Highland Road?”

“I don’t remember.” I looked away.

“Wait here. I’ll go in and ask.”

Bobby moved to go into the Kwick Stop. I figured asking for directions, especially from a guy who seemed already to want to kick my ass, a guy who had seen me go into Karen and Bastard’s house, and then going would be worse than just going. I let out a sigh and told Bobby that I now remembered the way, and we drove back to the trailer. It was just a few minutes along the quiet streets, but the ride seemed to go on forever, and it seemed all too short. Bobby parked the car along the curb and got out, slamming the door hard enough to make me wince.

The trailer looked quiet. Freakishly quiet, a beacon of stillness in the ocean of shrill insect sounds. No trailer had ever looked as still as this one. Somewhere, not too far away, a dog barked- an urgent bark that dogs saved for when a murder suspect lurked nearby.

Bobby walked over to the trailer, up the three cracked concrete stairs, and rang the bell.

I looked back and forth compulsively. A beat-up Datsun trawled past on a perpendicular street half a block down. Did it slow down to look at us? Hard to say.

Bobby rang the doorbell again, and this time he pulled back on the screen door and pounded softly, if pounding can ever be soft, just below the eyehole. I caught myself thinking that they were never going to write that check if they were pissed off at being pulled out of bed.

From the steps, Bobby leaned over to peer into the kitchen window. He pressed hard against the thin glass, and I was sure he would go crashing through.

“Christ,” he said. “Either they’re not home or they’re dead.”

I laughed and then realized Bobby hadn’t said anything fu

The inadequate air-conditioning washed over me, and I tried to recede into the freshly washed leather. I wanted to pass out and I wanted to weep and, on some level, I wanted Bobby to hug me. But Bobby busied himself by fiddling with the radio stations, finally settling on Blue Öyster Cult, but somehow the song’s insistence that I refrain from fearing the Reaper didn’t make me feel much better.

“A single isn’t bad,” he said, maybe thinking that I probably needed a good pep talk. “Not bad for a day’s work. You’re still in the game, but a double’s better, right?… Huh? But you’ll get a double tomorrow. You’re a power hitter, Lem. You’re doing great.”

If I hadn’t been numb from having witnessed a double homicide, I felt sure that Bobby’s pos comments would have perked me up. I hated the way I lapped up Bobby’s praise, as if being a good bookman, selling a set of books to people who would never use them and couldn’t afford them, were worth a pat on the head. Good doggie, Lem. But I loved it. Two people dead, holes in their heads, blood and brains on the peeling linoleum, and I still sort of loved it.

The other three guys in the Ft. Lauderdale crew- Ro

Kevin was a quiet guy, a bit short and stocky, but affable in a self-contained way. It was easy to forget he was around, even on long road trips. He laughed at other people’s jokes but never told his own. He always agreed when someone said he was hungry but probably would have starved to death before suggesting we stop to eat.

Ro

Ro