The Ethical Assassin

The Gambler hung up the phone. The asshole was going to come up here; he just knew it. The last thing he needed was B.B. and his freak-show girlfriend messing around with the business. Technically, of course, it was B.B.’s business, but that struck the Gambler as more a matter of happenstance than anything else. He’d stumbled into this deal. Met some people. Formed some alliances. Whatever. The money came in not because B.B. was so smart, but because people were willing to buy crank, crank was cheap to make, there wasn’t much competition for the market, and the cops were too busy chasing after cocaine cowboys to pay much mind to homemade meth. They could sell it out of ice-cream trucks- hell, they practically did- without the feds or local law taking notice. They had bigger fish to fry than some homemade bullshit that you could cook up out of over-the-counter asthma medicine.

The truth was that there was a lot more money to be made, and the Gambler was sick and fucking tired of baby-sitting this encyclopedia zoo. He wasn’t going to have the strength for it much longer, and he was ready to move on, to help expand the empire. He needed something less physically taxing, something that would enable him to sit and think. And make money. He’d told B.B. as much, though he left out the part about worrying about his strength. B.B. hadn’t been interested.

“Right now,” he’d said, “we’re all making money, the cops are oblivious, and everything is just fine. We get greedy, everything could fall apart.”

It was easy for B.B. to be happy with the status quo. He didn’t have to hang out with these door-to-door fuckos and assholes like Jim Doe. He didn’t have to perform for the sales monkeys twice a day. And he didn’t have to worry about the day coming- and it could be in a couple of years, maybe even next year- when he wouldn’t be able to do it anymore, when the medical bills would begin to pile in, when he would need the cash to make sure someone was taking care of him so he didn’t end up with psychopathic orderlies who would stick pins in his eyeballs just for the fun of it.

The Gambler had never been anything but effective and loyal, and he was getting sick of B.B.’s ingratitude. Not just ingratitude- there was something else. B.B.’s new residence in the land of oblivion. He was checked out. On another planet. That was no way to run this kind of operation. The Gambler had worked with guys in Vegas who could run six operations at one time, have three phone conversations, and handicap a weekend’s worth of football games- and give them all their full attention. Fucking B.B. couldn’t figure out if a yellow light meant speed up or slow down without fucking Desiree to tell him.

And sure, the money was good, but it wasn’t going to be enough- not when he began to decline.

He’d been forced to leave off working for the Greek in Vegas when the freezing started. He probably ought to have gone to a doctor right away. You’re in the middle of kicking someone’s ass and you just freeze, bat over your head, like you’ve turned into an action figure- that’s usually a sign to head for the doctor. But it was an isolated incident, a freak thing, so he forgot about it. Then it happened again three or four months later, out on a date with a showgirl. Ruined the whole thing. Then three months after that, this time while playing golf. Midswing- and frozen, just like that.

He’d been with the Greek that time, and the Greek had wanted to know, reasonably enough, what the fuck was going on.

Five doctors later, it was confirmed. ALS: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig’s disease. A form of muscular dystrophy. He was now one of Jerry Lewis’s fucking kids. It could start in any number of ways- muscle spasms, loss of coordination, slurring of speech, clumsiness, and the Gambler’s own freakish freezes. It would progress until he was a complete physical nothing, unable to move, even to breathe or swallow on his own, while his mind, meanwhile, remained in perfect working order.

It could happen slowly or it could happen quickly. No one knew. In the Gambler’s case, the progress appeared to be slow, so that gave him time to get his shit in order. It wasn’t the death he feared. He knew that death wasn’t the end; he’d seen those pictures of ghosts, heard the recordings of voices from the other side, even been to a medium who let him speak to his dead mother. Knowing that the body was but a shell and the soul lived on had helped him in his enforcement work in Vegas. It’s not so hard to beat someone to death if you know you’re not doing any permanent damage. What scared him was the time leading up to death, when he was alone and helpless, and the only thing that was going to keep him from being abused and tormented was money. He needed money.

If he told B.B. the truth, B.B. would be sympathetic, understanding, and he would send him on his way. Maybe with a nice little bonus, but not nearly enough. The Gambler needed money, piles and piles of money, enough money to pay for the bills, to pay for a personal nurse and pay the nurse so well that she would do anything to keep him happy and healthy.

The way things were going, the cause was in trouble. In the last six months, B.B. had been more distracted than ever. Business was falling off, and he didn’t seem to care. And Desiree, that sneaky bitch, was up to something. He was sure of it. Maybe she was pla

Desiree kept her eyes straight ahead. Next to her, in the passenger seat, B.B. sat quietly, his head tilted slightly away from her. She couldn’t tell if he was asleep or not or maybe pretending. His tape of Randy Newman’s Little Criminals had finished playing a minute ago, and now there was only the hissing silence of the radio. She wanted more music, the radio, anything to help keep her awake. Her fatigue, the darkness of the highway, the glare of oncoming traffic, lulled her into a hypnotic stupor.

“You had a good time with Chuck?” she asked at last.

B.B. stirred. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you have a good time?”

“We had a productive di

She let that hang there. “Okay.”

They said nothing for a few more minutes. Desiree winced when they passed a pair of squashed raccoons in the roadside.

“I never wanted to be like this,” B.B. said.

Desiree felt herself suck in her breath. In a way, she’d been waiting for this, the big confession, and she’d been dreading it. Once he told her of his shame, of how his desires controlled him, of how he had been victimized as a boy- whatever it was that he would say- she was afraid she would feel pity and sympathy, and the will to leave would be lost in a tangle of guilt and obligation.

“I never wanted to be in this business, you know. It just happened to me.”

Relief passed over her. He didn’t want to talk about his thing for boys, he wanted to talk about being a supplier. “I’m in no position to judge anyone, B.B.”

“I never wanted to do this,” he said again. “I don’t like it. I’d live off the hogs if I could, except I’ve gotten used to the money now. But it’s like a stain on my soul, you know? It’s a blackness. I keep thinking that I want to get rid of it.”

“So walk away,” she said. “Just walk away. No one is stopping you.”

“I was thinking something else,” he said. “I was thinking that maybe someone could take over for me. That you could take over for me. I’d cut you in on the profits, and I could retire from it all, work at the Young Men’s Foundation full-time. Live a decent life.”