The Trashman Read online

  Chapter 4

  My flight to Guatemala to join Dawn took off the next afternoon at 4:37 pm. I wasn’t on it. At 12:09 pm I was still in my office when officers from the sheriff’s department barged in and presented a warrant for my arrest on fraud charges. The warrant was sworn out by LifeEnders, Inc.

  While irrational love for a girl half my age dominated my every waking moment, I wasn’t completely unhinged. Unlike other Shooters, franchisees could initiate their own contracts instead of being assigned clients by LEI Corporate Headquarters, and only original LifeEnders, meaning the mercs who had taken out the terrorists, could be franchisees. The first thing I had done upon getting my franchise was to take out a contingency contract against any Shooter who killed me. It was a loophole, but since it didn’t require a counter-signature, nobody noticed. I paid all the fees up front and let it sit there until and unless needed.

  The feeling of danger persisted after I left Guatemala. When the cops pulled up in front of my office, I opened the long dormant file and waited for it to load. When the first man crashed through my door I pushed “upload.” That was me being smart.

  The rest of the story was me being stupid. The instant her father died, Dawn Delvin hopped a flight home. So, if you guessed I didn’t kill her, you were right. Good for you. Her first stop was the worldwide headquarters for LifeEnders, Inc. in Dallas. To make a fraud charge stick against a Shooter, you had to have definitive proof they hadn’t fulfilled the contract they’d been paid to do, and no proof was more definitive than the target showing up alive and healthy at LifeEnders’ corporate headquarters. The company immediately informed the local sheriff they’d be pressing charges. In turn, the sheriff’s department was more than happy to throw the cuffs on me. Cops don’t like Shooters.

  Call me a dumbass, idiot, or love-struck fool, they all apply. I’d bought her suggestion back in the jungle that we could be happy together if only I let her live. This was when she was kneeling in the bushes. Yeah, I know, Man Flu, a potentially fatal condition that comes from thinking with something other than your brain. I was an idiot, but not a total one.

  I’d tell you it wasn’t my fault if I thought you’d believe it.

  My bail was low thanks to my lawyer. Over the years I had done odd jobs for a high voltage ball-breaker who terrified both opposing counsel and presiding judges alike. She convinced an otherwise tight-assed judge that I wasn’t a flight risk, so he gave me a bail amount you’d expect for a Class C misdemeanor instead of a Class B felony. I got bonded out so I could save some cash, but had to put up my retirement collection, including the signed copy of Mein Kampf and a swath of bin Laden’s death shroud as collateral.

  My mouthpiece was so convincing they didn’t even take my passport, so I immediately jumped bail and took off for parts unknown. I knew without doubt there’d be a Shooter on my tail who wouldn’t stop until I was dead. It would likely be a friend of mine, since Shooters aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. Unlike what you hear in mob movies though—“it’s nothing personal, it was only business”—defrauding LEI made my crime very personal.

  I felt sorry for Dawn, however. She hadn’t thought this through. Or so I believed. But this time I was smart enough not to take her for granted.

  I had some cash. Enough to last a while if I was careful, once I wrapped up a few details. At the top of that list was a way to keep me breathing, although I figured four months was the max I could expect before somebody got me.

  Even so, I still had friends inside the company who owed me favors. One of them took a contract on spec, being another franchise owner who could negotiate his own contracts, with a promise of payment later. Once you’ve hunted al Qaeda together in the mountains of Afghanistan, you develop an unbreakable bond. He must have known there was a good chance he’d never get paid but did it anyway.

  Hiding in secret costs a lot more than hiding in plain sight, and either way, I knew they’d eventually catch up to me. If I killed the first one, they’d just send more. The one who did kill me would then be exposed to the contract I’d activated just before my arrest. It was entirely legal—I’d seen to that—and under American law LEI could not void it without being guilty of the same crime I’d committed.

  Because of the huge bounty on my head, I figured some Shooter would eventually take the risk and kill me. Until then, I intended to lie on a tropical beach sipping frosty drinks in tall glasses with ice sliding down the sides. That way if I died at least I’d go out reveling in joie de vivre. I’d never be without some lethal device at the ready, though. And while I’d have to be careful with money, I knew I could stretch it far enough for a few months of sloth and hedonism. I saw no point in ending my existential pleasure until somebody ended it for me.

  But I don’t hold grudges, and if some of the men who came to kill me were old friends, it was all part of the game. I wasn’t even mad at Dawn. If she showed up and asked, I’d pull up a lounge chair for her.

  I didn’t think she’d live that long. Assuming that my friend who took the contract didn’t fall in love with her, too. That part still bugged the hell out of me. Love at first sight didn’t fit my persona; it wasn’t me. And if my friend remained the professional that I couldn’t, then soon enough, Dawn’s not-quite-beautiful-but-incredibly-cute face would shrivel and decay and get eaten by worms, and that thought made me sad. Those bottomless blue eyes with impossibly long lashes might even now be staring at the inside of a coffin lid, embalmed to be so lifelike and yet so dead, like the reconstructions of ancient people you see in museums. The eyes always shine with a vitality they no longer possess.

  Cynics might think I confused love with lust. I can only answer that I have had plenty of the second in my life and precious little of the first. I did have an ex-wife, but that didn’t count. So, if it wasn’t love it sure felt like it. As to explaining it, don’t all the poets say if you can explain love, it’s not really love; that the real thing is beyond mortal understanding?

  Maybe, I don’t know; I’m not a poet.

  I wound up in Jamaica, my favorite place. After a couple of drinks on a beach in Ocho Rios, I convinced myself she was already dead. That way, mourning the love of my life I’d only met once gave me a good reason to make the all-inclusive resort sorry they’d let me stay there by drinking up all of their rum cream and Appleton’s Dark Reserve. Like hellhounds on my trail weren’t a good enough reason to stay drunk, or knowing I’d gotten fatal vengeance on only the second woman I would ever have died or killed for.

  Died for or killed for free that is. The irony was that I’d paid somebody else to fulfill the contract that I hadn’t fulfilled, and whether I’d killed her or my friend did didn’t matter, either way Dawn Delvin was dead.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  Tropical beaches are amazing places. Forget the visual impact of clear waters lapping over cream-colored sand as the tide brings waves ever closer to a line of towering coconut palms that mere words cannot describe. That’s all true, but the amazing part is the effect such a beach has on your state of mind. There’s something in the sand that deepens your self-awareness and refreshes your soul.

  Despite very dark sunglasses and closed eyelids, the corona of the Jamaican sun filled my vision with a kaleidoscope of dancing red and orange flashes. Or maybe it was due to the jigger of Appleton’s Dark Reserve Rum on top of my fourth mojito. The traces of burnt sugar in the liquor always makes my eyes water. Either way, the darkness I craved didn’t come, the one that brought with it forgetfulness.

  It’s amazing the sounds you hear when you least expect them.

  “You look maudlin,” Dawn Delvin said as she dragged a beach recliner through the sand and placed it three feet from mine. Between us she laid a blanket and emptied the contents of a large blue bag. Two tubes of suntan lotion, cigarettes, lighter, brush, and a Heckler and Koch P2000SK 9mm pistol.

  “Nice gun.”

  “It’ll do.”

  “For me?”

  She considered the question,
pursing her full, naturally red lips. While she paused, sweat ran down her chest and turned her white swimsuit transparent. I didn’t care if she ever answered.

  “Not necessarily.” She ordered a drink and took off the towel wrapped around her middle. Some of the nearby resorts had nude beaches, but she wore a bikini that made me not care that she wasn’t naked. “You don’t have one? A gun, I mean.”

  “I’ve got a rifle I can show you.”

  She smiled. Despite everything, I felt my heartbeat quicken and I tried to keep my voice from trembling like it had when I was thirteen and asked Mary Walsh to a school dance.

  What is it with this girl?

  “I know why you did it,” I said. “It took me a while to figure it out, but I did.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. You showed up at LEI because daddy didn’t have as much money left as you counted on. Lila went through cash faster than men went through her. Oh, you weren’t strapped, daddy wasn’t broke, but he wasn’t as rich as you thought. Then you read his contract with me and saw the standard refund clause if I didn’t carry out my assignment. If you killed me then the company had the legal right to send someone in my place and the contract would still be in force, but if I reneged or defrauded then it became null and void and daddy would have gotten a full refund, including my commission on top of the fee. With daddy dead it goes to the estate, for the benefit of the sole remaining heir. You.”

  “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know he’s here,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. She adjusted a small pillow and leaned back into the beach chair.

  “My killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured as much. So’s yours. And his.”

  “His?”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Dawn. You might look like an angel, but we both know better. You took out a contingency contract on the man who was hired to hit you, just like I did.”

  That stopped her.

  “When did you do that?” she said, enunciating each word to slow their cadence, an old trick to buy time when you’re taken by surprise.

  “What does it matter when? If I die, you die and my killer dies. Then your killer dies.”

  “And maybe the one after that?”

  I nodded. “Maybe. And maybe down the line, too.”

  She didn’t move and could have been asleep. Hot Jamaican sunshine reflected off the blue lenses of her sunglasses. For a nineteen-year-old fresh out of high school, she had the calm demeanor of an apex predator, not exactly what you would expect from a teenager who’d gone to prep schools her entire life. Her entire act was designed to make it seem like she understood less than she really did.

  “I suppose it won’t matter to us,” she said in a voice so low I involuntarily leaned her way to hear better. “We’ll be the first ones to get a bullet.”

  Now it was my turn to smile. I knew exactly what she was doing and loved her all the more for it. Young, with a smokin’ body and the face of an angel, highly intelligent and completely amoral, Dawn was my perfect match. If she won this little game we were playing, there would no doubt be more saps after me to fall in love with her, and the thought drove me wild. For the first time, I regretted not killing her back in Guatemala.

  “MAD only works if neither side walks away the winner.”

  “MAD?”

  “Mutually assured destruction. It kept the Cold War from going nuclear and now our lives depend on doing the same thing. None of the assassins we’ve hired will dare pull the trigger if they know they’ll wind up underground, too. As long as the number of contracted hits are equal then nobody walks away the winner, but if either one of us has one more than the other…Well, the whole thing might collapse. Everybody dies, nobody wins. It all depends on someone being the first to fire. But you’ve already figured that out, and probably put various triggering clauses into effect depending on what I do.”

  “Touché.”

  “And since we’re both still alive that means there’s a balance. But if one of us dies accidentally, even from slurping down a bad oyster or drowning in the pool, that could be a problem for the other one.”

  That got her attention. However devious Dawn might be, she was still very young. She hadn’t considered the aftereffects of an accidental death.

  “That could trigger everything?”

  “Like a row of dominoes.”

  “What if you die of cancer? Or some other disease?”

  “What about it? I’ve killed more than one person by injecting them with cancer cells.”

  “You have?”

  I got a rush seeing her adorable face twist with fear. I should have felt guilty about that, but didn’t.

  “Only when the contract called for it, but yeah, I’ve done it. Twice.”

  She removed her sunglasses then reached over and removed mine. I inhaled the mixture of pheromones and sunscreen on her wrist. She stared into my eyes, as if she could judge my honesty that way. The two things I’m best at are killing people and playing poker. She might as well have tried to read a rock lobster.

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I’m going swimming.”

  “In the pool?”

  “In the ocean.”

  “But aren’t there sharks out there?”

  I chuckled. “Maybe. But if you’re worried about me dying then you should really worry about riptides. They’re vicious along this stretch of the coast.”

  Without warning Dawn’s flip switched and the scared girl once again became the manipulative femme fatale. You wouldn’t have thought such a girl-next-door face could devolve into such a sinister expression, especially that quick, but it did. And yeah, my warning senses became so strong they overrode the feelings of lovesick obsession. Eyes that seemed impossibly big and blue narrowed as the apples of her red cheeks were pushed upward by a wide, knowing grin. In that moment I loved her more than ever, feared her more than ever, and prayed that she didn’t fight my plan to keep us both safe. It would help if I could explain it to her, but if I did I knew she would immediately start trying to get the upper hand again; that’s who she was. Fortunately, she said almost word for word what I hoped she’d say.

  “So, it looks from here like you’re in the same boat. Shouldn’t you be spending your time keeping me safe from accidents?”

  Perfect.

  I shrugged. “I’m a trained assassin, not a bodyguard or boyfriend, although I’m willing to interview for the latter job. But if you slip on a mango slice and crack open that devious head of yours, I’ll kill any Shooter who comes after me. They’ll keep assigning new ones, and I’ll keep on killing them until somebody finally gets me.”

  She pulled a cigarette out of a pack and tried to light it, but the ocean breeze kept blowing out the flame. I used both of my hands to shield it, held it close, and she finally got it lit. I watched the line of her jaw as she sucked down the smoke, not wanting to forget one detail of her face.

  “So…now what?”

  “Now I go swimming. After that I’ll take a shower, grab another drink, and go find some lunch. If you’d care to join me, you’re more than welcome.”

  The cigarette flared. It seemed to have centered her again.

  “For the lunch or the shower?”

  “Preferably both.”

  “Well…” Her full bottom lip receded under a slight overbite I’d never noticed before. “You still haven’t shown me your rifle.”

  Chapter 5

  I showered alone but ate lunch with Dawn. One thing I figured out early on was that youth and looks notwithstanding, Dawn Delvin exuded danger the same way a lightning storm did, with an electrically charged atmosphere and flashes of incinerating energy. Sitting at a glass table in the shade of the café patio, watching her eat a strawberry salad with blueberry dressing, logically I knew she wasn’t going to stab me with the butter knife. That young woman could have been Homecoming Queen, but logic had nothing to do w
ith it.

  Other guests probably thought of us as powerful influencers or TV reality stars, Real Shooters of Dallas or The Shooterette, maybe, because everywhere we went, a posse followed. Men and women of various races, ages, and sizes shared a common gait, a light footfall on the ball of the foot that allowed for instant action. Sweeping the room, I saw mostly a sea of red, save for a few actual tourists, and one curious exception; two tables over, a man about Dawn’s age had no aura whatsoever. That had never happened before.

  “What do Shooters talk about when they talk shop?” she said, snapping me out of my reverie. Five mojitos had loosened my tongue to a subject I never would have talked about otherwise.

  “Hmm? Oh, mostly the weird stuff people do when they’re under a death sentence. We’re not obligated to do anything more than fulfill the terms of the contract—kill them—but most Shooters empathize with their targets to some degree, and some more than others. We’re humans, too, despite allegations to the contrary. A fast double tap from behind is always best. That way it’s over fast, because if you give them time they’ll start to beg, pray, offer you money, all the usual things people try to keep you from killing them. LEI’s continually screening for Shooters who might be psychologically vulnerable to such pleas. Before me, nobody ever cracked.”

  Resting her chin on her palm, she stared at me like my ex-wife had done on our first date, with calculated interest. Once inside Dawn’s eyes, I didn’t care if she wanted to cut out my right kidney.

  “Is that what you did with me?” she said. “Crack?”

  “I didn’t kill you, so what do you think? You expect targets to try and avoid death, and you know that some won’t go gently into that good night. I sure as hell won’t. Knife fights with targets aren’t rare and shootouts happen, especially in America, and there are always a few who soil their clothes. None of that’s weird, though.

  “But the guy who bit off two of his own fingers? You don’t see that every day. It happened to a Shooter I named William Bonney—yeah, like Billy the Kid. That was his call sign at LEI. I’m not supposed to tell you that, but even LEI can’t kill me twice. Anyway, to hear Bonney tell it, he was gonna put two into the back of some guy’s head in a dark alley one night, no fuss, no muss, pop-pop and done. Except before pulling the trigger he kicked a piece of metal and alerted the guy, who whirled, saw the pistol aimed between his eyes, and bit off the first and second fingers on his left hand.