Since the Layoffs (9 page)

* * *

I’m a crazy bastard? Look around you, Ken, at a world without rules. There are people whose job it is to drug test convenience store clerks. There are people whose job it is to make sure other people don’t bring guns to work. There are people in office buildings right now trying to figure out if laying off seven hundred people will save them money. Somebody right now is promising wealth to someone if they buy a video tape explaining how they can improve their lives. The economy is pain, lies, fear and silliness, and I’m carving myself out a niche. I’m no crazier than the next guy, just more decisive. I think Gardocki knows it. But “You’re a decisive bastard” just doesn’t sound right.

SIX

T
he plane touches down at La Guardia and I am giddy with excitement, like a schoolboy on a day trip to the big city. It is 1:15 Saturday afternoon and I have to call these people at three, but what I really want to do is go sightseeing. This is New York City, where every block recalls a scene from some movie I have seen, usually with Kelly. I take a cab downtown and find myself becoming nostalgic in a place I have never been before. I walk down the street where Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin walked in
Sea of Love
. I recognize the storefronts. Then I’m in the neighborhood where Jack Nicholson didn’t want to step on cracks in
As Good As It Gets
. I’m having a grand old time until I realize it’s time to go kill someone, and maybe also find a place to sleep tonight if I want to go sightseeing tomorrow.

I call the number Ken gave me. A woman answers.

“Hi,” I say awkwardly. I wasn’t expecting a woman, I was thinking maybe a raspy-voiced mobster with a hard New York accent. This lady sounds like Grace Kelly, and it puts me off guard. “I’m from Wisconsin. Ken Gardocki gave me your number.”

“Yes,” she says, as if I’ve just asked for directions to deliver her groceries. “How nice of you to call.”

Nice? Is she going to invite me to her garden party? “I suppose you’ll need directions,” she says cheerfully.

“I’ll need directions,” I say, at first trying to sound menacing, and then mimicking her polite enthusiasm. “Where are you?”

“Well, you’re not coming here,” she says, her voice suddenly cold, yet still with the prim accent. “You’re going there.”

“There. Gotcha.”

“It’s in Long Island City. Do you know how to get there?”

“No.”

“A cab driver will know.” She gives me the address, which I copy down. Some street, some number, apartment three. “There will be a man there.”

“And he’s the one?” The one that gets it, the one to take a bullet?

“Goodness, no,” she says, alarmed. “That’s Roger’s address. He’ll explain everything, and give you the other address. And all the … equipment.”

I realize suddenly that I don’t even have a gun. This Roger character must be the guy who gives me the “equipment,” which, hopefully, has a silencer attached.

“He’s expecting me?”

“Oh, yes. He’s expecting you. What time should I tell him you’ll be there?”

“How far is it?”

“About a fifteen-minute cab ride from downtown.”

“Fifteen minutes then.”

“Wonderful,” she says, as if we’ve just planned luncheon. “I hope you had a pleasant flight in.”

“Absolutely.”

“Very good then.”

I find myself talking like her. “Yes. Very good.”

How does the likes of Ken Gardocki know this Grace Kelly-like woman? I wonder what she looks like, what this is all about, who Roger is, who is the “one,” and what did he do to deserve a visit from me? I’m being paid not to wonder, so I try to stop, but I can’t help it. What if he’s a guy at one of Grace Kelly’s factories who has been causing trouble because the workers there are being mistreated? What would that make me, if I show up and shoot him? An asshole. Like all the others.

I flag down a cab and tell the driver the address, and we drive off. We go over a bridge into a seedy-looking area full of warehouses, trucks and dumpsters, and I immediately start to feel more comfortable. This is the type of place where people who arrange murders live. He starts driving slowly, then pulls up in front of a nondescript brick building under a heavily trafficked bridge.

Inside, the lobby has a musty smell, and crumpled newspapers and packaging are all over the floor. Outside, I can hear a truck beeping as it backs up, people yelling at the driver. There are mailboxes and an intercom, and I’m supposed to be buzzed through a door, but I don’t know Roger’s last name. I know apartment three, but all the apartment numbers have been ripped off. So I push the third one.

“Yes?” It sounds like an elderly woman.

“Uh … Is Roger there?”

She hangs up. I push another button.

“Hello?” Sounds like another woman.

“Hello? I’m looking for Roger.” This person hangs up too. What they say about New Yorkers seems to be the case. At any rate, I’m getting sick of this shit and am considering just smashing something through the glass. What kind of asshole hires a killer and doesn’t even leave a note for him, or check to make sure the numbers are on the intercom buttons? Then I hear the buzzer go, and I grab the door.

The stairwell is ancient, unpainted. I climb the stairs, which have a faint reek of urine and beer, much like Tulley’s. I hear a door open and someone calls down, “You’re very punctual.”

At the top of the stairs, waiting for me in the doorway, is a thin, very effeminate man slouched, with his hand on his hip, looking me up and down as if I were a runway model. So Roger is not a raspy-voiced middle-aged mobster. He’s a flaming queen.

But he’s definitely a friendly one. He extends his hand and smiles warmly. “I’m Roger,” he says. I shake his hand, not bothering to give my name. “You don’t look anything like what I was expecting.”

“You either. What were you expecting?”

“Oh, you know, trenchcoat, dark shades, two-thousand-dollar Armani suit. That sort of thing. Like in the movies.” He backs away from the door. “Please, come in.” He ushers me into a warmly lit and exquisitely decorated apartment, plants and paintings everywhere, jazz playing softly on the stereo. I was thinking the inside of the apartment would be as run down as the stairwell, but Roger has been taking care of the place.

“I must say,” he starts out, “I just think it’s so neat to meet someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” What does that mean? A straight guy? Someone from Wisconsin? A loading dock manager?

“You know …” Roger looks awkward, and I suddenly see what he is trying to say.

“Oh, a killer.”

He looks relieved. “Yes, a killer. It’s so … neat.” He pauses. “I really was expecting a black Armani suit, though.” My slovenly blue jeans have disappointed him.

“And sunglasses,” I finish for him.

“Yes, and sunglasses.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s always what they wear in the movies.”

“Don’t you think it would be smart not to dress like everyone’s idea of a killer?”

This profound piece of brilliance impresses Roger no end. He stares at me, awestruck. Roger thinks talking to a hired killer in his living room is a hoot. I need to put a stop to this, pick up my pistol, get the address and be on my way. I adopt my serious, hiredkiller expression. “I’m here to get a gun and an address,” I say.

“Oh, right, right.” Roger laughs. He waves his hands around, almost flirtatiously, giggling. “I’ll be right back.” He darts off into his bedroom and returns holding a pistol, which he is carelessly pointing right at me. I sidestep slightly, to get away from the barrel, an instinct born of hating guns, and Roger puts his hand to his mouth in shock over his own carelessness.

“I’m so sorry,” he says.

“It’s all right,” I say. He hands me the gun and I motion toward the table. “Just put it down. I have to put gloves on first.”

He nods. “Yes, of course.”

“You might want to wipe your prints off it, too.”

Once again, he is awestruck by my brilliance. I see now why he has hired me. He doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of intelligent criminal behavior.

“What should I use,” he asks, “to get rid of the prints?”

“A rag.”

He bursts out laughing. “A rag!” I have scored points for being a criminal genius. He gets a rag from the kitchen, and begins to polish the gun from barrel to handle, then gently, ceremoniously, lays it on the kitchen table. I stare at it. It is cheap and tinny looking and there is no silencer.

“How many bullets are in it?”

“I’m not sure,” he says. “You’ll only need one, right?”

“I don’t know,” I say, as I pull a pair of gloves on and pick up the pistol.

My answer seems to have disturbed him.

“I only want you to shoot him once,” Roger says nervously, the giggling flirtiness replaced by worry and fear. “I don’t want him hurt. Just killed.”

I find the little latch that releases the magazine, and it slides into my palm with an expertness that I don’t possess. Roger’s conviction that I am an experienced gun handler appears strengthened by this accidental show of dexterity, and I examine the magazine as Roger stares at me. He is waiting for reassurance. The magazine is full.

“I’ve never needed a second bullet for a hit,” I say truthfully, professionally. “But once I got attacked by a dog.”

“Jason doesn’t have a dog,” Roger says.

“That’s a relief.” I pull back the slide and cock the pistol, and am about to put the gun in my pocket when I realize what I have just done. The slightest jolt would send a bullet right into my own spleen. I gently click the hammer forward, un-cocking it, then slip it into my coat, acting like it was a test I always perform before carrying out my work. Roger is still waiting for me to reassure him I am not going to make a mess of the victim.

“I only want him shot once,” Roger says again.

“Hopefully, that will do the trick,” I say. “You never really know until the time. He might put up a fight.”

“He won’t put up a fight,” says Roger.

“Well, I doubt he’s just going to stand there and let me shoot him,” I say.

“He’ll lie there,” says Roger. “He’ll be sedated.”

“He’ll be sedated?”

“He has AIDS,” says Roger. “He’s dying. He knows you’re coming. But you have to go between five and seven. That’s when the nurse leaves for dinner. She drugs him up. I thought you knew this.”

“How the hell would I know this?”

Now Roger looks upset. Roger begins to realize that I really am a killer, that I would even kill someone who wasn’t already dying if the money was right. Up until now, it seems, he has been thinking of me as a public service professional, or a mercy killer like Dr. Kevorkian. Who, incidentally, he should have hired.

“So Grace didn’t tell you anything?”

“She told me where you lived, that was it.”

“Oh my,” says Roger. “You know you have to steal something?”

“What?”

“You have to steal something from his apartment. To make it look like a burglary. That way the insurance will pay for all his treatment.”

“I don’t like to steal things,” I tell him. “I’m not a thief.”

“You won’t actually be stealing it. Just take something valuable. You have to smash the lock and take something,” Roger says, and he sounds like he is beginning to panic. “I thought Grace explained all this … Oh no, oh no …”

I groan. “Settle down,” I say, trying to sound soothing. “We’ll just go over all the details to make sure we’ve got everything right.” Roger appears calmed by my paternal manner, so I keep it up, playing the kind-hearted, understanding hired killer. I certainly don’t want him freaking out, but I also realize that I’m being paid here, that I work for him. It really isn’t that different from having someone call the loading dock, freaking out because they’re worried about their shipment of machine-tooled tractor parts being lost. Service is service.

I sit down at the kitchen table. “Now,” I say, firmly. “Start from the beginning.”

Here’s the deal: Jason is a friend of Roger’s and he is dying of AIDS. That much I’ve figured out already. Jason and Roger have figured that if Jason dies during the commission of a burglary, rather than passing away in his sleep, some kind of homeowner’s policy will pay his estate enough money to cover the cost of the last year of his treatment. Jason has about a week to live anyway. Grace is in on this because she was Jason’s co-signer on some kind of hospital admission form, and the hospital is going to come after her for the bill. Despite her accent, I’m told, Grace doesn’t have a whole lot of money, and the ten grand the three of them have scraped together for me is about all they can come up with. Ten grand. So Gardocki is keeping a $2,500 finder’s fee. Fine with me.

As I am leaving, Roger suddenly realizes the finality of everything and bursts into tears. I tell him to take a walk, get to a bar or something where he’ll have an alibi, as he’ll likely be a suspect for a day or two. Once again, he gives me that awestruck look, a respect for my criminal mind. He runs down the street behind me as I walk off. He is sobbing like a child. I wonder how he’ll stand up to an interrogation, if it comes to that, and am glad he knows nothing about me.

I find the apartment, which is only about two blocks from Roger’s place and in an almost identical building. I go around back to the fire escape, looking at my little hand-drawn map, and see everything as I was told. The fire escape has been left in the down position for me, the rear window is open. I climb up to the third floor and look through the filthy window. Sure enough, in a dark room with paint peeling off the walls there is a man dying in his bed.

The window slides open, and I climb in. I look around the room and think, this is not how anyone should die, in a room like this, peeling paint, faded carpet with a damp and musty odor. I see the chair where the nurse has been sitting. There is a book there, some knitting, things to keep her busy while she watches this man die. Perhaps she gets up every now and then to fiddle with knobs on one of these machines. I look at a chart lying by the bed while some breathing apparatus pumps oxygen into him, an almost soothing rhythm, hiss, pump, hiss, pump. The chart says he was born the same month and year as I was, and it’s all over for him. This could have been my life. I look at his birthplace: Omaha, Nebraska. Gardocki’s hometown. A Midwesterner. I feel some kind of kinship with him. Maybe he came here because he was gay. I know people in my neighborhood aren’t too open-minded about shit like that.

Anyway, like me, he got fucked by circumstance and left to die. Circumstance did a more thorough job on him, though. I’m here because an insurance company fucked him. I’m here because a giant corporation fucked me. There is a broke ex-loading dock manager standing in a dying gay actor’s room, with a pistol, because of big business decisions made years or months before.

His eyes are closed, and he appears to be sleeping peacefully. No pain, anyway. I aim the pistol at his chest.