The Ethical Assassin

Then, ten years ago, the old man died. He’d reached ninety-seven, kept alive by free-floating Achilles-like wrath and a similarly quasi-divine hatred of do-gooders, women, television, politicians, corporations, changing fashions, and a world turning ever more youthful while he turned ever older. B.B.’s own father had died long before in a drunken and coke-fueled motorcycle accident, the helmetlessness of which smacked of suicide. After his grandfather’s death came the registered letter from the lawyer telling him he’d inherited the farm, and at just the right time, too, since things had not been going so well for B.B. in some of the various careers he’d been trying on, including car salesman, unlicensed real estate agent, landscaper, security guard, and a stint as a Las Vegas poker player.

This last had involved long and delirious runs under casino lights that obscured the difference between night and day, drunke

With no other options, he took on hog farming. It paid the bills, though barely, but it stank and filled him with a vile repulsion toward animals, animals that stank and shat and demanded food and bellowed in pain and misery and deserved to die as punishment for being alive. And the land itself- that god-awful farm with its memories of his fucking grandfather, for whose sake alone he sincerely hoped there was such a place as hell. The barn by its simple proximity so disturbed his sleep that he convinced a trio of potbellied and thick-forearmed locals to take it down for him. He paid them in beer and a whole roasted pig.

Going back to the farm, working his grandfather’s lots, had been degrading, a waking nightmare, but he’d been broke, beyond broke, and the farm kept him afloat. There was money for food and a roof over his head and occasionally the wines he’d learned to love in Vegas.

Then this guy he almost knew- spoken to a few times in a local bar, a friend of one of the men who had taken down the barn- a biker in a gang called the DevilDogs, came to see him one night. How would he feel if a couple of the boys set up a small lab on the property? No one would know, since the smell of the pigs would hide the smell of cooking meth. B.B. wouldn’t have to do anything except keep quiet, and he’d get $1,000 a month.

It was a good deal. After a month or so of not wanting to know about it, B.B. began to hang out with the meth cooks, learn how they did it, learn how easy it was to turn a few hundred dollars’ worth of over-the-counter cold medicine into speed so potent that it made coke look like a watery cup of Maxwell House. Then the guys who worked the lab were busted while distributing. He figured they’d roll on him, but they never did. He figured other guys from the operation would come by and take over the lab, but they never did. There it was, a fully operational moneymaking machine on his property. He’d be crazy to ignore it.

The problem was, B.B. hadn’t known the first thing about distributing drugs. Had no idea how to go about it. He couldn’t see himself on the corner, wearing a trench coat, pssting to any ski

He made it and he stored it. Just a hobby, really, like putting ships in a bottle. It took only a couple of days of work, and then there it was, this lovely yellow powder. He got better, more confident, made more, learned how to dispose of the waste, which was so toxic that it ate through the ground. Within a year, he had thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff and no idea how to unload it.

When he read in the business section of a local newspaper that Champion Encyclopedias was looking for someone to run an operation in the state, it all began to come together for him. He convinced them he was an entrepreneur, that he could run the book business as well as he ran his “agricultural concern”- his term. But enthusiasm was wasted on them. They cared no more for his acumen than his crew chiefs cared for the acumen of new bookmen. You hire everyone you can, you cast them to the waves, and you see who’s still floating.

This happened three years after Vegas, and when B.B. met with the top crew chiefs in the state, he knew one of them. A guy by the name of Ke

B.B. had been thinking only of revenge, of exorcising his demons, when he’d hired the Gambler. Let him work for B.B. Let him think he was doing a great job, in on the deepest secrets of the organization, part of the whole pla

Things had gone so well for so long, he should have expected something like this.

“Can you get me the thing I asked for?” B.B. said. He tap tap tapped a pencil on the night table.

“I don’t know.” The Gambler kept his voice devoid of content. “Right now it’s missing.”

“Missing? Jesus Christ. Where’s, um, the guy who is supposed to have it?”

“He’s gone. Gone in a permanent and messy way, if you know what I’m saying.”

“What the hell is going on there? Who caused him to get gone?”

“No idea,” the Gambler said. “We’re working on it.”

“Yeah, you working on getting me my stuff, too?”

“We’re working on it, but right now we don’t have a whole lot to go on.”

“Am I going to have to come out there?” B.B. asked.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” the Gambler said. “We can take care of everything. I’ll keep you updated.”

B.B. hung up the phone. He’d keep them updated. Great, with their little “I spy with my little eye” games?

He turned to Desiree. “Get dressed. We’re going to Jacksonville,” he said.

She scrunched up her nose. “I hate Jacksonville.”

“Of course you hate Jacksonville. Everyone hates Jacksonville. No one goes to Jacksonville because they like it.”

“Then why do people go to Jacksonville?”

“To find their money,” B.B. said, “and to make sure their people aren’t trying to rip them off.” And maybe, he thought, to take care of the Gambler. If he’d lost the payment, then there was a pretty good chance he’d outlived his usefulness. Maybe even if he could find the money.