You go up the elevator, down a corridor, into an office. The man behind the desk is grinning. He’s fat and wearing a suit that doesn’t fit but why in hell should you care if he’s kidding himself? You’re kidding yourself, always have been.
He tells you to sit and you do. He asks if you’re Jones and you nod. He gives you an envelope. You open it and count the money. He tells you it’s all there but you count anyway. Twenty thousand. Old bills. Like a bad movie.
He asks if you know a man named Jack Davies. You say no. He says Davies is a killer, that he killed an old friend, and now he has to die. You say you’ll do it. You’ve been wanting out of the business. You don’t love it anymore. You haven’t been happy in a long time. But you’ll do it anyway because you want to earn the money. And killing a killer isn’t really murder is it? The man says no. So you say yes. You shake his hand. You leave prints on the desk, the chair, the wall, everywhere.
You take a bus to the airport. You ask how much a flight is to Asia, South America, the Islands, anywhere. The woman behind the counter tells you. She smiles. You smile. She’s very pretty. You feel the money in your pocket. You’ve had it before. At least as much. But now’s the first time you’ve really felt like getting out. Getting away from it all. You look at the pretty face and say you’ll think it over. You shake her hand. You leave.
You take another bus to the animal hospital. Mrs. Bender is there, crying. She says it’ll take thousands to remove the tumor and she doesn’t have it. You go back and pet Spike and whisper in his ear that it’ll all be okay. You go and give the doctor the money and tell her not to tell. You tell Mrs. Bender goodbye. You go home.
You have to earn your money.
You sit down at the kitchen table and write letters. To Mrs. Bender and Spike. To the cops. To a cousin you haven’t seen since Christmas when you were ten. You have coffee. You order a pizza, eat it, and watch a baseball game. You feel strange. You’re happy.
You get the gun. You take it to the bedroom. You load one bullet. You look in the mirror at Jack Davies.
You are going to earn your money.
You are going to get away from it all.
~ fin ~
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K.R. Eckert is the author of the History Hunters Thrillers and the Q.A. Caine Mysteries. He’s a moderately obsessive reader, an immoderately obsessive baseball fan, and Pennsylvania’s worst golfer. He lives in Amish Country with a great view and several thousand books.
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