gilesdereis
Forum Newcomer
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2011
- Messages
- 19
- Location
- London, England
I really don't like being angry. It bothers me. Angry people lose control. Anger makes you do stupid things, and in my line of work, stupidity can have serious, potentially terminal, consequences.
But, in spite of what is widely believed, I am human. I even can cry at films about dogs and things like that, sometimes. That is not a detail that I need clients to hear, however. They are happier if they think I am a monster.
So, to begin, I admit that this whole incident happened because I got seriously, deadly angry.
The story started about seven years before, when I was a relative «*newbee*» as an independent contractor. Everything was different then – I dealt with clients directly, got paid in cash and I even looked significantly different than I do now.
There was a job to do, and the money was good. It seemed that a high flying lawyer, who had made mega bucks constructing and operating a «money go-round» for some South American businessmen who were engaged in, the « informal*pharmaceutical import» trade, found the temptation of all that cash floating around him to be simply too much to resist; he had been dipping his fingers into it, to fund a lifestyle that was beyond lordly.
In other words, he was a common thief. And these «businessmen» having ethical standards of their own, took a dim view of thieves.
Perhaps the biggest change between me then and me now is that, as a new independent, the clients sometimes insisted on giving me an someone to «help» with the project. Today, at the first suggestion of that sort of interference, I return any money I have received and tell them to fuck off.
To cut to the chase, I got a younger guy assigned to me., to help with this lawyer job.
The guy, whom I will call «Adonis» for this story, was around 24 at the time, a bit below normal height, but one of the most physically beautiful human beings I have ever laid eyes on, male or female. Not just that, I had never, up till then, or since, encountered anyone with the sexual magnetism that Adonis had. The lad could make pouring cornflakes into a bowl a sensual experience.
One thing that I learned early on, is you never mix work with pleasure. And, in spite of the fact hat I had been overwhemingly straight (sorry to disappoint anyone), I felt urges just being around Adonis that really caught me by surprise.
It was difficult to take your eyes off of him. He had black hair, which is wore slightly long, a face that could have been lifted from a Michelangelo sculpture and a body in which every muscle seemed to be visible. Adonis had the greenest eyes I have ever seen – they seemed to glow, which should have told me something, but didn't, - naturally olive skin which was unmarked, except by a tattoo that he had on his inside right forearm, of two intertwined snakes.
What is more, the guy knew exactly how to make use of his physical attributes. It wasn't charm, that is too passive a word, Adonis was on a 24/7/365 campaign of seduction. Everything about him was seductive – his voice, his mannerisms, his laugh.
To my relief, he also was intelligent, and proved to be quite useful in planning and spotting. He was also a good shot. It was astonishing how comfortable I was around him. Looking back, I was like a not too bright Labrador, all anxious to please its owner.
The elimination of the thieving attorney was not going to be subtle. This was before I came to specialize in accidents and natural causes. And the South Americans were willing to use a messy and public murder «*to encourage the others.*» At least, that was what I was told my my client, who had himself all the attributes of a card carrying psychopath.
The lawyer who was, unknowingly, sitting in the bull's eye, was a creature of habit. We worked out his habitual route to work from his six bedroom house with a pool and tennis court in his top-of-the-line Range Rover to his top two floors of a fancy downtown office building, and it was clear that en route he was vulnerable.
There was one concern of mine. On some mornings, he took his three daughters – ages 7, 10 and 12 – to school en route to his office. After my time in the military I became almost phobic about the danger of hurting children. having seen way too much of that in combat. If something was going to happen, it would have to be after he dropped the kids off. I would do nothing that would either endanger the daughters, nor have them witness the death of their father, who, scumbag crooked lawyer that he was, gave every appearance of being a good parent.
Adonis was supposed to watch the car leave the house, and tell me if the kids were on board. If they were, we would scrub the action, and wait for tomorrow. We had a pair of motorcycles, a two way radio link in the helmets, and silenced Glocks with hollow point ammo. He would tail the car to the point where I would join up. Then, at a stoplight, he would cruise up along the passenger side of the car, which would, by my estimate, distract the driver from my arrival on his side of the car. I would put two bullets into his head, and the pair of us would zoom off. Quick, easy. No one survives two head shots with hollow point slugs.
In my research of the vic, which was primitive compared to what I do now, I had learned that he had a license to carry a handgun, and owned several of them. So I decided, at the last minute, on a precaution, but it proved to be useful in a way that I had never expected.
On the morning of the job, I was waiting for word from Adonis that the lawyer had left the house, and was en route. My staging area was a wooded area next to the road he would drive down, and I remember wondering why I hadn't heard anything from Adonis. Then I looked up, and he was there,
I started to ask what the hell he was doing there, he was supposed to be watching the house, when he lifted the Glock he had in his hand and shot me, twice, in the chest.
The impact of the bullets lifted me off the ground, and I toppled backwards down into a dry creekbed, my conciousness rapidly fading. I hit the ground hard, and he put a third bullet into my back as I lay there.
Afterwards, I worked out that I was only unconcious for a few minutes, but when I woke up, the pain hit me.
It must have been an hour before I began to try to really move. The entire upper part of my body hurt, and I tasted blood in my mouth. Finally, gritting my teeth, I sat up, vomited from the pain, and ever so slowly stripped off the top of my black leather motorcycle suit. I then tore the velcro strips which held the kevlar vest in place, and pulled it off. The kevlar still had the three hollow point bullets in it, smashed flat from the impact. I had bruises that looked like I had gone 10 rounds with a jackhammer. From the radial pain I was sure that I had one or more broken ribs, and from the blood in my mouth, and my shortness of breath, it seemed likely that a rib had punctured a lung.
The motorcycle was where I had left it. Just getting on was a struggle. Riding it was a nightmare.
But I worked my way, slowly, nearly blacking out several times, to a hospital, where I claimed to have had a fall with my bike. I had, indeed, punctured a lung, so needed surgery, and was on my back for a week.
Adonis had, a few minutes after he thought that he had murdered me, met up with the lawyer's car, and had his gun out, when, apparently, according to witnesses, the Range Rover accelerate away, against the red light, and tore across the busy intersection, horns honking behind him.
The lawyer probably saw the gun in Adonis' hand, as he came along side. It was in order to briefly divert his attention that I wanted to use two motorcycles. But that is a guess, since no one ever asked the lawyer why he took off like a startled rabbit.
With his powerful bike, Adonis chased after him, and should have been able to catch him, in a mile or two. Again, I assume that was Adonis' intention.
In films, this chase would have gone on for some time, but in real life, the lawyer was no stunt driver. He quickly lost control of the car at the speed he was going, sideswiped another vehicle, and careened into the forecourt of an Esso gas station, just when a tank truck was delivering 5,000 gallons of gasoline. The Range Rover hit the gas tanker, which sprayed gasoline all over the landscape, caught fire and the car, the tanker, the service station, three other cars in the station and nine people all vanished in a massive fireball when the fuel in the underground tanks exploded.
Among those who died were the three daughters of the lawyer, who were being taken by their father to a school field trip in town. I was still in the hospital when I read that in the paper. My hatred of Adonis had acquired a new rationale. As I said, someone killing children was a «*thing*» for me.
But the job that I was hired for was done, and I was supposed to be dead.
When I got out of the hospital, I made a quick trip to «have a serious conversation» with the client who hired me, and set me up to be a target, as it was clear that Adonis had been ordered to do what he did. The more I thought about the whole thing, the angrier it made me. I think, looking back, that I was angry at myself for both mis-reading the signs, and making the cardinal error of confusing physical attraction with trustworthiness. The dead little girls fed that rage, as well.
I was lucky and unlucky, at the same time. The guy who hired me, it turned out, was himself dead. He had been very overweight, suffered from high blood pressure, smoked and drank a lot, so when he dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the fourth hole of his golf course, the day after the thieving lawyer and eight other people were cooked at the Esso station, it surprised no one. It probably upset no one, as well. His younger brother, who was a much closer approximation of a human being, stepped up to be in charge of the business, and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
Either he was a great actor, or he didn't know about his older brother's double dealing with me. He cheerfully paid me the other half of my fee, and kept congratulating me on «*making it look like an accident.*»
He claimed to know nothing about having an assistant assigned to me. His brother, he told me, kept him in the dark on a lot of things. I would get no help in finding Adonis from him.
I got three things out of this job*: first, a reasonable fee, second, a reputation, which Younger Brother would build up, to anyone who would listen, as exactly the person to call for a job where you wanted «*an accident*» and third, a deep and enduring hatred for Adonis, and a promise to myself that if our paths ever crossed again, he would not survive the encounter.
Of those, the reputation turned out to be the most materially valuable. I found more and more highly paid jobs, as the number of «*problem solvers*» who can work undetected is small. We command premium prices, can choose our jobs and, if we do our work well, never even have a police investigation to worry about. I have some pretty nice artwork and several well padded bank accounts to prove it, too.
Also, as I realized only much later, post my encounter with Adonis, I never felt the slightest physical attraction to a man again.
That is the long way to give you the background to when lost control of my anger.
All of that happened seven years ago, Many things had gone down in those years. Every so often I thought about Adonis, and once or twice believed that I had seen him. On closer inspection, it was always a case of mistaken identity. This was no Great White Whale for me, but it was a piece of unfinished business that nagged me.
The Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. is very lively on Saturday nights. That warm spring evening the crowds along M Street were bigger than normal. I had come to Washington to see an art exhibit, and also look over two small building that I had bought on Wisconsin Avenue – my fees were growing far beyond my modest lifestyle, so I had investment capital, and putting some of it into real estate seemed a prudent move. The two building were rented out to big retail chains on long leases.
So I was in a commercial, as opposed to homicidal, mood, as I wended my way through the crowd of students, tourists, trendy locals and so forth. I noticed two striking blond girls, speaking Russian, and greeted them in their language as we passed. They both giggled, and fled. Ah, well.
But you cannot be a professional predator without having some part of your brain at work all the time. And that part of my brain latched on to an arm. An arm, just ahead of me, in the crowd.
It took me a moment to realize what I saw. It was the tattoo with the two snakes, on the inside of a muscular forearm, two meters in front of me.
I promptly forgot about going to see my real estate holdings.
When I was able to get a clear look at him, there was not a shadow of doubt in my mind.
The hair was shorter, and had highlights, but the shoulders, shown off in the white tank top tee shirt were still Greek statue material. I began to notice the glances, and even outright stares, he got as people passed him going the other way. Clearly the years between had not cost him his looks.
Well, wherever Adonis was going, I was going. I fell into stride behind him, always keeping someone between us. The anger that had been there was rapidly coming to the surface. I felt it like a blush.
We didn't go far. He turned off M Street, and went into an expensive looking bar. I followed him, a moment later.
The place was packed. It took me a moment to get my bearings, work out where Adonis was and find a spot where I could watch him without being noticed.
As I adjusted to the dim light, I realized that the clientel was young, old, and middle aged, dressed casually and in business suits, it spanned a range of ethnic groups, but was 100% male. Great, a gay bar, albeit a clearly up-market gay bar. With any luck, I will just go unnoticed.
So I got a drink, a spot to watch Adonis, and settled down, only occasionally having someone try a version of «do you come here often?» with me, which I politely cooled, saying I was waiting for someone. Which, as with all successful lies, was partially true.
Meanwhile, Adonis had either found a new friend, or linked up with someone he already knew. In either case, it was an odd couple.
The guy Adonis was chatting up was not his «type» at all, I would have thought*: tall, pudgy, and, while dressed in a very expensive looking lawyer/lobbyist/Congressman blue suit, if he had had the word «*faggot*» written in large letters on his forehead, could not look any more «*gay.*» It was also clear that the blue suited guy was totally entranced by Adonis. He simpered at the muscular killer sitting next to him.
Yeah, I am afraid that I could understand his reaction. I felt nothing but loathing for Adonis, since he made me act stupid, and nearly made me act dead, but could still see his dangerous seductive power.
The two of them were going nowhere, for the moment so I went to the back of the bar, where they were serving steak sandwiches. There were streak knives on the bar. I palmed one. I might need a weapon, and I scarcely could go to the National Gallery, or wander around Georgetown, with an automatic in my belt. Not in 2011, at least. One can get nostalgic for the 1940s, sometimes, even if I am nowhere near old enough to remember.
About an hour on, the Odd Couple made a move to leave. I was right behind. Mr Pudge had an arm around Adonis' waist, as they made their way down towards the Potomac. I nearly lost them when they turned into the garage of one of the buildings on lower Wisconsin Avenue. Then a car came up, so I went into the garage before the automatic door closed. Inside the garage, I heard voices. I followed them.
Pudge was opening the back door of a giant black Maybach (crass vehicle, why would anyone own one*?) and Adonis climbed in. Pudge climbed in after him. How teen-aged; sex in the back of a parked car
It was too dark to see inside the car, but from the general movement of shadows, I thought that got the idea of what was happening. That is, up to the point where I heard the scream.
A car like a Maybach is built to keep noise out. It also is pretty good at keeping noise in. So I worked out that this must have been one hell of a scream, for me to hear it standing outside.
Fortunately no one had locked the car doors. I pulled the back door open, and saw Adonis broad, naked back, arched over Mr Pudge, who was down on the thick pile carpet between the front and back seats, with Adonis' hands around his neck. Not that pretty to start with, Mr Pudge was even less so with his eyes bulging out of his head, and his face turning purple with anoxia. That was when my white hot anger took over. It was like watching things happening in a film.
The steak knife seemed to take on a life of its own. I don't remember telling it to bury itself, first in one lung, and then in the other, with quick, darting moves. Adonis screamed, but he suddenly had no air in either punctured lung, cutting off his cry of pain.
Focused on Mr Pudge, who was still struggling, the opening door and the knife attack were so sudden that Adonis must have been extremely disoriented.
The knife, still on autopilot, dove into the back of Adonis' neck and shoulders, again and again. Blood began to spurt in the confined space of the luxurious German car.
I pulled Adonis off of Mr Pudge, and tossed him against the back seat. Only then did he get a look at his attacker. He didn't recognize me for a moment, then -I think - he did, but didn't believe what he was seeing, all the while the steak knife buried itself repeatedly into his torso, with more red spray errupting with every strike. I got a jet of blood in the face when the knife found his heart. The graceful features of his face were contorted in a mask of fear, as he knew that he was dying, and disbelief, as he must have thought, in those final moments, that he was being killed by a ghost.
I have no clear recollection of doing it, but I must have stabbed him at least twenty times. Maybe thirty.
The eyes began to glaze over, he stopped trying to fight back or defend himself, but clawed at his wounds, seeking to stop the blood, and his life, from leaking out of him. Then even that futile and weakening effort ceased, and the only movement was jerking limbs as the last nerve messages were sent from the dying brain to the arms and legs. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth.
I pulled the blubbering, gore covered Mr Pudge out of the car. He promptly threw up all over himself, and collapsed in a gibbering heap in the middle of the underground garage.
Never before had I attacked anyone with the wild violence that I had unleashed on the now late Adonis. I was shaking like a leaf from the huge surge of adrenalin. It took a couple minutes before I could even speak. Mr Pudge was still sprawled, weeping, in a puddle of his own vomit.
When I recovered, I quickly took control of the situation. I told Mr Pudge that he had been targeted by a professional killer, and that whoever he had upset, he should find some way to make it up to them, or the next killer might be luckier than this one. He offered me money, any money I wanted, for saving him. Pudge was still weeping, and covered with barf, even as he offered me a reward. The whole scene was somewhere between black comedy and quite disgusting.
All I wanted, I said, was his car. He looked stunned. I told him to wait two hours at least, and then report the car stolen. I would handle the rest. I never wanted to see or hear from him again, but if I ever needed anything, he would give it to me, any time any place. He nodded so much I thought that his head might fall off and roll across the garage floor, and handed me the car keys - with a Maybach its actually like a credit card.
Of course, there was the small problem that I was drenched with blood. It was clear that this windbreaker that I was wearing would need to be burned, and my new Armani shirt along with it. My face and hair were red with Adonis' blood. As luck would have it, there was a sink in the garage, and someone had left a pair of overalls there, which fit me. I shed own, blood stained, clothes, bagged them, and dressed like a car mechanic.
The back seat of the $250,000 Maybach looked like a butcher store. There was crimson on the windows, in the ceiling padding, pooled on the expensive leather seats and soaking into the thick pile carpets. Adonis' half naked corpse sprawled across the back seat.
I drove the German metal monster (they do handle well, but its still an absurd car) to the No-Go part of Southeast Washington near the Old Navy Yard. In a secluded area along the fetid Anacostia River, I stripped the punctured and bloodstained corpse of Adonis naked, and dumped it into the polluted river. He was 80 kilos of limp, dead weight, and I tried to get as little new blood on me as possible, while dragging him to the edge of the river. It was a lot of work, but it was closing out a piece of business which had nagged me for years.
I made sure not to ditch the late Adonis' clothes, wallet and expensive watch anywhere near by. Good luck with identification after the body had been in that filthy water for a day or two.
I gave Adonis' Rolex to a begger near the Supreme Court, and shoved the large amount of cash that had been in Adonis' wallet in to the contributions box of a church that I passed. There was an irony in both acts, and I don't go with stealing from the dead.
The car I disposed of, shortly after dumping the body, by the simple method of leaving it, with the key/card in the ignition, on a run down street with lots of grafitti on the walls, within sight of the dome of the Capitol Building. I had only gone a few blocks on foot, when the car passed me, with two young black guys in it. Once the professional buyers of stolen cars in The District cleaned it up, I would expect the Maybach would be in a container on its way to Russia or China within a day or so.
The overworked District of Columbia Police give little effort to car theft, even from socially connected lawyers with political clout, and only slightly more for unidentified bodies fished out of the river, which don't relate to any missing person reports. There was mild puzzlement when was discovered that the bloated corpse which had been in the Anacostia for close to a week, had no fingerprints, but that was not enough to do anything with. The case file went into a drawer, and never emerged. The unclaimed cadaver finally went into a crematorium and its ashes were dumped into the mix of a local brick factory. At least Adonis became something useful, in the end.
In all of this, I did make a new friend in Mr Pudge. He got me the details of the police report on the «*floater*» in the Anacostia, and, subsequently, bits and pieces of information when I need them. I never see Pudge, and have no desire to do so, although he is becoming a minor celebrity in legal circles. When I have occasionally come to him with requests, they are responded to with great speed. He seems absolutely delighted to assist me in any way he can, and has remarkable connections.
That is what friends are for, aren't they*?
Giles
But, in spite of what is widely believed, I am human. I even can cry at films about dogs and things like that, sometimes. That is not a detail that I need clients to hear, however. They are happier if they think I am a monster.
So, to begin, I admit that this whole incident happened because I got seriously, deadly angry.
The story started about seven years before, when I was a relative «*newbee*» as an independent contractor. Everything was different then – I dealt with clients directly, got paid in cash and I even looked significantly different than I do now.
There was a job to do, and the money was good. It seemed that a high flying lawyer, who had made mega bucks constructing and operating a «money go-round» for some South American businessmen who were engaged in, the « informal*pharmaceutical import» trade, found the temptation of all that cash floating around him to be simply too much to resist; he had been dipping his fingers into it, to fund a lifestyle that was beyond lordly.
In other words, he was a common thief. And these «businessmen» having ethical standards of their own, took a dim view of thieves.
Perhaps the biggest change between me then and me now is that, as a new independent, the clients sometimes insisted on giving me an someone to «help» with the project. Today, at the first suggestion of that sort of interference, I return any money I have received and tell them to fuck off.
To cut to the chase, I got a younger guy assigned to me., to help with this lawyer job.
The guy, whom I will call «Adonis» for this story, was around 24 at the time, a bit below normal height, but one of the most physically beautiful human beings I have ever laid eyes on, male or female. Not just that, I had never, up till then, or since, encountered anyone with the sexual magnetism that Adonis had. The lad could make pouring cornflakes into a bowl a sensual experience.
One thing that I learned early on, is you never mix work with pleasure. And, in spite of the fact hat I had been overwhemingly straight (sorry to disappoint anyone), I felt urges just being around Adonis that really caught me by surprise.
It was difficult to take your eyes off of him. He had black hair, which is wore slightly long, a face that could have been lifted from a Michelangelo sculpture and a body in which every muscle seemed to be visible. Adonis had the greenest eyes I have ever seen – they seemed to glow, which should have told me something, but didn't, - naturally olive skin which was unmarked, except by a tattoo that he had on his inside right forearm, of two intertwined snakes.
What is more, the guy knew exactly how to make use of his physical attributes. It wasn't charm, that is too passive a word, Adonis was on a 24/7/365 campaign of seduction. Everything about him was seductive – his voice, his mannerisms, his laugh.
To my relief, he also was intelligent, and proved to be quite useful in planning and spotting. He was also a good shot. It was astonishing how comfortable I was around him. Looking back, I was like a not too bright Labrador, all anxious to please its owner.
The elimination of the thieving attorney was not going to be subtle. This was before I came to specialize in accidents and natural causes. And the South Americans were willing to use a messy and public murder «*to encourage the others.*» At least, that was what I was told my my client, who had himself all the attributes of a card carrying psychopath.
The lawyer who was, unknowingly, sitting in the bull's eye, was a creature of habit. We worked out his habitual route to work from his six bedroom house with a pool and tennis court in his top-of-the-line Range Rover to his top two floors of a fancy downtown office building, and it was clear that en route he was vulnerable.
There was one concern of mine. On some mornings, he took his three daughters – ages 7, 10 and 12 – to school en route to his office. After my time in the military I became almost phobic about the danger of hurting children. having seen way too much of that in combat. If something was going to happen, it would have to be after he dropped the kids off. I would do nothing that would either endanger the daughters, nor have them witness the death of their father, who, scumbag crooked lawyer that he was, gave every appearance of being a good parent.
Adonis was supposed to watch the car leave the house, and tell me if the kids were on board. If they were, we would scrub the action, and wait for tomorrow. We had a pair of motorcycles, a two way radio link in the helmets, and silenced Glocks with hollow point ammo. He would tail the car to the point where I would join up. Then, at a stoplight, he would cruise up along the passenger side of the car, which would, by my estimate, distract the driver from my arrival on his side of the car. I would put two bullets into his head, and the pair of us would zoom off. Quick, easy. No one survives two head shots with hollow point slugs.
In my research of the vic, which was primitive compared to what I do now, I had learned that he had a license to carry a handgun, and owned several of them. So I decided, at the last minute, on a precaution, but it proved to be useful in a way that I had never expected.
On the morning of the job, I was waiting for word from Adonis that the lawyer had left the house, and was en route. My staging area was a wooded area next to the road he would drive down, and I remember wondering why I hadn't heard anything from Adonis. Then I looked up, and he was there,
I started to ask what the hell he was doing there, he was supposed to be watching the house, when he lifted the Glock he had in his hand and shot me, twice, in the chest.
The impact of the bullets lifted me off the ground, and I toppled backwards down into a dry creekbed, my conciousness rapidly fading. I hit the ground hard, and he put a third bullet into my back as I lay there.
Afterwards, I worked out that I was only unconcious for a few minutes, but when I woke up, the pain hit me.
It must have been an hour before I began to try to really move. The entire upper part of my body hurt, and I tasted blood in my mouth. Finally, gritting my teeth, I sat up, vomited from the pain, and ever so slowly stripped off the top of my black leather motorcycle suit. I then tore the velcro strips which held the kevlar vest in place, and pulled it off. The kevlar still had the three hollow point bullets in it, smashed flat from the impact. I had bruises that looked like I had gone 10 rounds with a jackhammer. From the radial pain I was sure that I had one or more broken ribs, and from the blood in my mouth, and my shortness of breath, it seemed likely that a rib had punctured a lung.
The motorcycle was where I had left it. Just getting on was a struggle. Riding it was a nightmare.
But I worked my way, slowly, nearly blacking out several times, to a hospital, where I claimed to have had a fall with my bike. I had, indeed, punctured a lung, so needed surgery, and was on my back for a week.
Adonis had, a few minutes after he thought that he had murdered me, met up with the lawyer's car, and had his gun out, when, apparently, according to witnesses, the Range Rover accelerate away, against the red light, and tore across the busy intersection, horns honking behind him.
The lawyer probably saw the gun in Adonis' hand, as he came along side. It was in order to briefly divert his attention that I wanted to use two motorcycles. But that is a guess, since no one ever asked the lawyer why he took off like a startled rabbit.
With his powerful bike, Adonis chased after him, and should have been able to catch him, in a mile or two. Again, I assume that was Adonis' intention.
In films, this chase would have gone on for some time, but in real life, the lawyer was no stunt driver. He quickly lost control of the car at the speed he was going, sideswiped another vehicle, and careened into the forecourt of an Esso gas station, just when a tank truck was delivering 5,000 gallons of gasoline. The Range Rover hit the gas tanker, which sprayed gasoline all over the landscape, caught fire and the car, the tanker, the service station, three other cars in the station and nine people all vanished in a massive fireball when the fuel in the underground tanks exploded.
Among those who died were the three daughters of the lawyer, who were being taken by their father to a school field trip in town. I was still in the hospital when I read that in the paper. My hatred of Adonis had acquired a new rationale. As I said, someone killing children was a «*thing*» for me.
But the job that I was hired for was done, and I was supposed to be dead.
When I got out of the hospital, I made a quick trip to «have a serious conversation» with the client who hired me, and set me up to be a target, as it was clear that Adonis had been ordered to do what he did. The more I thought about the whole thing, the angrier it made me. I think, looking back, that I was angry at myself for both mis-reading the signs, and making the cardinal error of confusing physical attraction with trustworthiness. The dead little girls fed that rage, as well.
I was lucky and unlucky, at the same time. The guy who hired me, it turned out, was himself dead. He had been very overweight, suffered from high blood pressure, smoked and drank a lot, so when he dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the fourth hole of his golf course, the day after the thieving lawyer and eight other people were cooked at the Esso station, it surprised no one. It probably upset no one, as well. His younger brother, who was a much closer approximation of a human being, stepped up to be in charge of the business, and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
Either he was a great actor, or he didn't know about his older brother's double dealing with me. He cheerfully paid me the other half of my fee, and kept congratulating me on «*making it look like an accident.*»
He claimed to know nothing about having an assistant assigned to me. His brother, he told me, kept him in the dark on a lot of things. I would get no help in finding Adonis from him.
I got three things out of this job*: first, a reasonable fee, second, a reputation, which Younger Brother would build up, to anyone who would listen, as exactly the person to call for a job where you wanted «*an accident*» and third, a deep and enduring hatred for Adonis, and a promise to myself that if our paths ever crossed again, he would not survive the encounter.
Of those, the reputation turned out to be the most materially valuable. I found more and more highly paid jobs, as the number of «*problem solvers*» who can work undetected is small. We command premium prices, can choose our jobs and, if we do our work well, never even have a police investigation to worry about. I have some pretty nice artwork and several well padded bank accounts to prove it, too.
Also, as I realized only much later, post my encounter with Adonis, I never felt the slightest physical attraction to a man again.
That is the long way to give you the background to when lost control of my anger.
All of that happened seven years ago, Many things had gone down in those years. Every so often I thought about Adonis, and once or twice believed that I had seen him. On closer inspection, it was always a case of mistaken identity. This was no Great White Whale for me, but it was a piece of unfinished business that nagged me.
The Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. is very lively on Saturday nights. That warm spring evening the crowds along M Street were bigger than normal. I had come to Washington to see an art exhibit, and also look over two small building that I had bought on Wisconsin Avenue – my fees were growing far beyond my modest lifestyle, so I had investment capital, and putting some of it into real estate seemed a prudent move. The two building were rented out to big retail chains on long leases.
So I was in a commercial, as opposed to homicidal, mood, as I wended my way through the crowd of students, tourists, trendy locals and so forth. I noticed two striking blond girls, speaking Russian, and greeted them in their language as we passed. They both giggled, and fled. Ah, well.
But you cannot be a professional predator without having some part of your brain at work all the time. And that part of my brain latched on to an arm. An arm, just ahead of me, in the crowd.
It took me a moment to realize what I saw. It was the tattoo with the two snakes, on the inside of a muscular forearm, two meters in front of me.
I promptly forgot about going to see my real estate holdings.
When I was able to get a clear look at him, there was not a shadow of doubt in my mind.
The hair was shorter, and had highlights, but the shoulders, shown off in the white tank top tee shirt were still Greek statue material. I began to notice the glances, and even outright stares, he got as people passed him going the other way. Clearly the years between had not cost him his looks.
Well, wherever Adonis was going, I was going. I fell into stride behind him, always keeping someone between us. The anger that had been there was rapidly coming to the surface. I felt it like a blush.
We didn't go far. He turned off M Street, and went into an expensive looking bar. I followed him, a moment later.
The place was packed. It took me a moment to get my bearings, work out where Adonis was and find a spot where I could watch him without being noticed.
As I adjusted to the dim light, I realized that the clientel was young, old, and middle aged, dressed casually and in business suits, it spanned a range of ethnic groups, but was 100% male. Great, a gay bar, albeit a clearly up-market gay bar. With any luck, I will just go unnoticed.
So I got a drink, a spot to watch Adonis, and settled down, only occasionally having someone try a version of «do you come here often?» with me, which I politely cooled, saying I was waiting for someone. Which, as with all successful lies, was partially true.
Meanwhile, Adonis had either found a new friend, or linked up with someone he already knew. In either case, it was an odd couple.
The guy Adonis was chatting up was not his «type» at all, I would have thought*: tall, pudgy, and, while dressed in a very expensive looking lawyer/lobbyist/Congressman blue suit, if he had had the word «*faggot*» written in large letters on his forehead, could not look any more «*gay.*» It was also clear that the blue suited guy was totally entranced by Adonis. He simpered at the muscular killer sitting next to him.
Yeah, I am afraid that I could understand his reaction. I felt nothing but loathing for Adonis, since he made me act stupid, and nearly made me act dead, but could still see his dangerous seductive power.
The two of them were going nowhere, for the moment so I went to the back of the bar, where they were serving steak sandwiches. There were streak knives on the bar. I palmed one. I might need a weapon, and I scarcely could go to the National Gallery, or wander around Georgetown, with an automatic in my belt. Not in 2011, at least. One can get nostalgic for the 1940s, sometimes, even if I am nowhere near old enough to remember.
About an hour on, the Odd Couple made a move to leave. I was right behind. Mr Pudge had an arm around Adonis' waist, as they made their way down towards the Potomac. I nearly lost them when they turned into the garage of one of the buildings on lower Wisconsin Avenue. Then a car came up, so I went into the garage before the automatic door closed. Inside the garage, I heard voices. I followed them.
Pudge was opening the back door of a giant black Maybach (crass vehicle, why would anyone own one*?) and Adonis climbed in. Pudge climbed in after him. How teen-aged; sex in the back of a parked car
It was too dark to see inside the car, but from the general movement of shadows, I thought that got the idea of what was happening. That is, up to the point where I heard the scream.
A car like a Maybach is built to keep noise out. It also is pretty good at keeping noise in. So I worked out that this must have been one hell of a scream, for me to hear it standing outside.
Fortunately no one had locked the car doors. I pulled the back door open, and saw Adonis broad, naked back, arched over Mr Pudge, who was down on the thick pile carpet between the front and back seats, with Adonis' hands around his neck. Not that pretty to start with, Mr Pudge was even less so with his eyes bulging out of his head, and his face turning purple with anoxia. That was when my white hot anger took over. It was like watching things happening in a film.
The steak knife seemed to take on a life of its own. I don't remember telling it to bury itself, first in one lung, and then in the other, with quick, darting moves. Adonis screamed, but he suddenly had no air in either punctured lung, cutting off his cry of pain.
Focused on Mr Pudge, who was still struggling, the opening door and the knife attack were so sudden that Adonis must have been extremely disoriented.
The knife, still on autopilot, dove into the back of Adonis' neck and shoulders, again and again. Blood began to spurt in the confined space of the luxurious German car.
I pulled Adonis off of Mr Pudge, and tossed him against the back seat. Only then did he get a look at his attacker. He didn't recognize me for a moment, then -I think - he did, but didn't believe what he was seeing, all the while the steak knife buried itself repeatedly into his torso, with more red spray errupting with every strike. I got a jet of blood in the face when the knife found his heart. The graceful features of his face were contorted in a mask of fear, as he knew that he was dying, and disbelief, as he must have thought, in those final moments, that he was being killed by a ghost.
I have no clear recollection of doing it, but I must have stabbed him at least twenty times. Maybe thirty.
The eyes began to glaze over, he stopped trying to fight back or defend himself, but clawed at his wounds, seeking to stop the blood, and his life, from leaking out of him. Then even that futile and weakening effort ceased, and the only movement was jerking limbs as the last nerve messages were sent from the dying brain to the arms and legs. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth.
I pulled the blubbering, gore covered Mr Pudge out of the car. He promptly threw up all over himself, and collapsed in a gibbering heap in the middle of the underground garage.
Never before had I attacked anyone with the wild violence that I had unleashed on the now late Adonis. I was shaking like a leaf from the huge surge of adrenalin. It took a couple minutes before I could even speak. Mr Pudge was still sprawled, weeping, in a puddle of his own vomit.
When I recovered, I quickly took control of the situation. I told Mr Pudge that he had been targeted by a professional killer, and that whoever he had upset, he should find some way to make it up to them, or the next killer might be luckier than this one. He offered me money, any money I wanted, for saving him. Pudge was still weeping, and covered with barf, even as he offered me a reward. The whole scene was somewhere between black comedy and quite disgusting.
All I wanted, I said, was his car. He looked stunned. I told him to wait two hours at least, and then report the car stolen. I would handle the rest. I never wanted to see or hear from him again, but if I ever needed anything, he would give it to me, any time any place. He nodded so much I thought that his head might fall off and roll across the garage floor, and handed me the car keys - with a Maybach its actually like a credit card.
Of course, there was the small problem that I was drenched with blood. It was clear that this windbreaker that I was wearing would need to be burned, and my new Armani shirt along with it. My face and hair were red with Adonis' blood. As luck would have it, there was a sink in the garage, and someone had left a pair of overalls there, which fit me. I shed own, blood stained, clothes, bagged them, and dressed like a car mechanic.
The back seat of the $250,000 Maybach looked like a butcher store. There was crimson on the windows, in the ceiling padding, pooled on the expensive leather seats and soaking into the thick pile carpets. Adonis' half naked corpse sprawled across the back seat.
I drove the German metal monster (they do handle well, but its still an absurd car) to the No-Go part of Southeast Washington near the Old Navy Yard. In a secluded area along the fetid Anacostia River, I stripped the punctured and bloodstained corpse of Adonis naked, and dumped it into the polluted river. He was 80 kilos of limp, dead weight, and I tried to get as little new blood on me as possible, while dragging him to the edge of the river. It was a lot of work, but it was closing out a piece of business which had nagged me for years.
I made sure not to ditch the late Adonis' clothes, wallet and expensive watch anywhere near by. Good luck with identification after the body had been in that filthy water for a day or two.
I gave Adonis' Rolex to a begger near the Supreme Court, and shoved the large amount of cash that had been in Adonis' wallet in to the contributions box of a church that I passed. There was an irony in both acts, and I don't go with stealing from the dead.
The car I disposed of, shortly after dumping the body, by the simple method of leaving it, with the key/card in the ignition, on a run down street with lots of grafitti on the walls, within sight of the dome of the Capitol Building. I had only gone a few blocks on foot, when the car passed me, with two young black guys in it. Once the professional buyers of stolen cars in The District cleaned it up, I would expect the Maybach would be in a container on its way to Russia or China within a day or so.
The overworked District of Columbia Police give little effort to car theft, even from socially connected lawyers with political clout, and only slightly more for unidentified bodies fished out of the river, which don't relate to any missing person reports. There was mild puzzlement when was discovered that the bloated corpse which had been in the Anacostia for close to a week, had no fingerprints, but that was not enough to do anything with. The case file went into a drawer, and never emerged. The unclaimed cadaver finally went into a crematorium and its ashes were dumped into the mix of a local brick factory. At least Adonis became something useful, in the end.
In all of this, I did make a new friend in Mr Pudge. He got me the details of the police report on the «*floater*» in the Anacostia, and, subsequently, bits and pieces of information when I need them. I never see Pudge, and have no desire to do so, although he is becoming a minor celebrity in legal circles. When I have occasionally come to him with requests, they are responded to with great speed. He seems absolutely delighted to assist me in any way he can, and has remarkable connections.
That is what friends are for, aren't they*?
Giles
