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Normally, Fallon would look for places to stash weapons, as well. Here he didn’t consider that to be a factor. If he was found, escape would be the thing, not confrontation.
“Now,” Meeks said, the cursory tour over, “let’s show you your classroom.”
Eighth-grade honors English, Language Arts, was just finishing an abridged, heavily censored version of a book called Catch-22. Fallon rented the movie that night and didn’t really get most of it, except the title concept of a wartime pilot in search of a loophole to be deemed too crazy to fly. Fallon thought parts were supposed to be fu
His classroom overlooked the front of the building, including an oval-shaped drive that enclosed a parking lot used by teachers, as well as visitors. Fallon couldn’t see the main entrance but had a clear view of any vehicle approaching it, which was the next best thing.
“So who do we think is the villain in the story?” Fallon asked his class.
His remark was greeted by shrugs and quick glances cast amidst his young charges. Having no real concept of how to teach exactly, he’d constructed his classes around discussion. Fortunately, he’d come at a time of the semester devoted to literature and didn’t expect to still be around for the next unit. More than a month in any one setting would be tempting fate indeed.
“The villain?” Fallon prompted, leaning back so he was halfway sitting on the lip of his desk.
“Frankenstein,” a boy named Trent said from the rear. Trent had floppy hair and the first signs of acne.
Fallon liked him because he recognized a worn patch in the rear pocket of his jeans as the outline of a switchblade. Fallon looked into Trent’s eyes and saw emotionless, stone-cold resignation. A boy after his own heart.
“Not the monster,” Trent continued, without further prompt. “The doctor.”
“Why?” Fallon asked him.
“’Cause he fucked with nature.”
The moment froze, everyone staring at Fallon in shock. Trent resumed again, saving him the bother of coming up with an appropriate response.
“So the monster kills all these people, terrorizes the village, scares the crap out of people. But it’s not his fault, not really.”
“So he’s not responsible for his own actions?” Fallon challenged.
“Poor bastard doesn’t even know what he’s doing. Blame Frankenstein for bringing him to life.”
“Like parents,” a frizzy-haired girl named Chelsea chimed in between crackling chomps on a wad of gum, sending a brief laugh rippling through the classroom.
“Maybe that’s Shelley’s point,” someone else said.
“So the monster’s not evil,” Fallon raised.
“No,” came the multiple response.
“But he’s not good, either.”
“No.”
“So what is he?”
“The same as everybody else,” Trent said, booted feet propped up on the desk before him.
Five weeks earlier Fallon had received his next job through the usual means. A text message sent to his cell phone dispatched him to a public e-mail Web site. He logged in at the nearest FedEx-Kinkos and entered the coded details into his PDA. Fallon never knew the reason for his targets’ selection. He only needed to know who and where; sometimes how and when. His logon automatically triggered the deposit of half his fee into a previously designated offshore bank account.
Setting up a kill could take considerable time, up to several weeks, a period during which Fallon became intimately acquainted with the habits of his targets without immersing himself into the minutia of their lives. The last job was different because it specified the target’s entire family be included. Someone out to set an example, obviously, make a point.
Discussion here was not an option. Even if Fallon had wanted, he couldn’t have asked for confirmation and clarification. And if the fact that the target’s family consisted of a wife and three young children bothered Fallon, there was no way to contact his employer to change his mind. The URL from which his assignment had been sent was a dummy site automatically deactivated as soon as Fallon logged off. Declining a job was never an option, once the mechanical triggering apparatus made Fallon an even richer man. Catch-23.
Wiring the target’s house with explosives was easy enough, doing it in a way that would make it look like a tragic accident only slightly harder. The only drawback: he’d have to trigger the blast manually himself. Not an attractive prospect, considering he much preferred being somewhere else far away when the explosion ripped lumber and concrete, flesh and blood, apart.
Fallon was not a man prone to question or marred by pangs of conscience. And the early stages of the job progressed without being terribly struck by either. A man like Fallon could not view human beings with any higher regard than, say, crash-test dummies or department-store ma
And his latest assignment should’ve have gone down like all the others, all in place and on schedule. Fallon following his instructions to the letter to make sure all family members were inside before triggering the blast.
Detonators were a thing of the past mostly, cell phones the thing these days. Simple matter of wiring the trigger chip with a number and then dialing it at the appropriate time. There’d be a brief delay, several seconds or more, but that wasn’t a problem in this case.
Fallon took his throwaway cell phone from his pocket and dialed. Let it ring once and then settled back to wait from his car parked safely down the street, counting the seconds out in his head.
One…two…three…
By five, Fallon began to feel edgy, and at ten he redialed, let it ring twice this time. Counted the seconds again.
Same result. Nothing.
Setbacks were nothing new to Fallon; failure something else again. There was no time to consider what had gone wrong. Better to focus on damage control, what to do from here. Fallon had weapons, a bounty of them. But murdering an entire family in the suburbs with guns and knives without a clear plan of access and approach would be a desperate move not befitting a professional of his level. Worse, he’d be acting rashly with the eventual outcome dictated by fortune instead of forethought. Better to come back, rethink the next step tomorrow.
Except tomorrow turned out worse.
The next book on the honors English list was called Joh
The book was short. And Fallon understood nary a word, much less what the book was supposed to be about. Antiwar, that much was clear, if nothing else. So he decided to focus the class’s discussion on war itself, something he knew plenty about.
But Mr. Beechum, of course, didn’t, which meant Fallon couldn’t appear to, either. He listened to the surprisingly intelligent, unsettling comments made by his students. Unsettling because it made him realize how much he missed that part of his life for its simplicity and clarity. The ability to kill for a cause with impunity. Of course, the cause meant little to Fallon; it was the impunity he embraced with a fervor and passion unknown in any previous segment of his life.
An unpleasant end to his military career was as expected as it was inevitable. Fortunately, there were plenty of private firms willing to pay far more while letting him practice his same skills. That, too, ended badly, in an embarrassing scandal for the company and yet another inglorious dismissal for Fallon. But there was no shortage of work for a man with Fallon’s skills, and he’d been stateside barely a week when a similarly ex-member of the same private firm came calling with an offer to join a network of professionals whose work was appreciated instead of vilified. Fallon didn’t bother himself with delusions of morality, of right and wrong. He did what he did, and he liked it. Simple as that.