need a new teaching assistant…”
This seemed to please her, and he leaned in and gave her a kiss. At least I think that’s what he did- couldn’t quite make it out, though it lasted a while and was not just a peck. I could only wonder why Alice hadn’t realized he was tacitly admitting that he boinked his teaching assistants, but logic was never that big in Wonderland.
He shut her in the little red car and she drove off, and he watched, and waved, and smiled, and then the smile drooped and he shivered, not with the cold I didn’t think, and he stooped his shoulders and trod back up and inside his cobblestone cottage.
Killing this fucker wouldn’t lose me any sleep. I finished my Coke and leaned back against the rolled-up sleeping bag I’d brought with me. Like I said, I didn’t figure to spend any of the nights here, but that option was good to have and, anyway, the sleeping bag rolled up made a nice soft object to rest against.
Twilight turned to honest-to-shit night and a couple of street lamps-well-spaced-came on. Though I sat in a split-level, the world across the way was woodsy and rustic with those quaint-looking cottages like something out of another era.
Around seven, “American Woman” was on the radio, throbbing despite the low volume, when the white Corvette pulled up. I turned the sound down to zero and watched, impressed, as the tall brunette unfolded from a vehicle that should have been splashed with winter grue but was showroom shiny. She’d taken time to run it through a car wash, I’d bet, as careful with her wheels as with her own appearance.
And she was careful with her appearance, all right. Her coat was white leather with a white fur collar, her long legs in black-and-white geometrically patterned bell bottoms, her boots white leather with heels. Her long dark hair went halfway down her back, straight as a waterfall, the mane of a lanky lioness. Her complexion was olive, almost tan, whether from some vacation she’d grabbed or just her natural state, I couldn’t say.
Alice had been cute, perky, if psychotic. Annette was a different animal, and not the short, plump Italian Mouseketeer Frankie Avalon had tried to beach ball. This was a fashion-model type, her oval face, her full dark- lipsticked mouth, her big brown eyes, her well-shaped dark eyebrows, a study in symmetry.
Teaching assistant my ass.
He came down out of the cottage to meet her, and the bathrobe had been replaced by a tan leisure suit with a brown shirt with one of those collars that could put an eye out. Both eyes.
He came down, his breath pluming in the cold-the temperature had dropped some-and slipped an arm around her shoulders and led her up and inside. She had a little brown briefcase with her, so perhaps they were just going to work.
Three hours later they were still in there.
I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I was getting bored. Surveillance was not what I’d bargained for, though the Broker had made it clear sitting watch would come into play from time to time in this line of work. Anyway, I was getting bored and itchy and frankly curious.
So I stuffed the nine millimeter in my waistband, zipped the cord jacket over it, and went out the back way and cut through some undeveloped wooded property until I could cross the street a quarter of a mile away, and come up behind the cobblestone house and peek in a window or two.
Which is exactly what I did.
They were in a small room that I would best describe as a study-lots of books on shelves, and a big rolltop desk littered with more books and manuscript pages and a typewriter with a ream of white typing paper next to it. That’s where he was sitting.
So maybe they were working, right?
Well, she was anyway. She was in pink panties on her knees, blowing the guy, his leisure suit pants around his ankles.
Fuck, I would have killed this lucky prick for free.
TWO
I have a pretty good memory. I can recall conversations well, at least well enough to write them down for your benefit and have them pass muster. Same is true of people, their physical descriptions and the sounds of their voices and even what they were wearing-it all seems to stick.
But I don’t remember the exact words when the Broker came around to that little two-room apartment and recruited me for his team, even though it was one of the more important conversations of my life.
That was a bad period for me. For the month or so I’d been living in a rough patch of L.A., alternating between staying in bed feeling sorry for myself, watching daytime TV (game shows, not soaps), eating TV dinners, and venturing forth looking for women who were willing to fuck me for free, even if a certain venereal after-fee might get tacked on.
I was also drinking heavily, which is something I don’t normally do. In fact, I am more a soft drink kind of guy, though I do like wine, on special occasions, like New Year’s Eve or getting back from Vietnam.
And getting back from Vietnam is where I should start, really, to fill you in a little on how I became somebody who killed people for money. Or I should say somebody who killed people for good money, because in Nam I killed people for shit change, didn’t I? And the only person I ever killed for free was probably the only one that really counted, the only one that really mattered, and that I truly enjoyed doing.
Before I went over, I’d been stationed on the West Coast, and that’s where I met the California girl who became my bride. It was one of those whirlwind romances that are passionate and romantic and run to montages in the movies where the couples are hand in hand on the beach and in the park and share one ice cream cone with pop songs playing in the background. In our case it would have been something by the Association, “Cherish” maybe, though “No Fair At All” would have been more like it.
Because when I got home to our little bungalow in La Mirada, a day early, meaning to surprise my darling girl, I got surprised myself because she was in bed with a guy named Williams. I didn’t know his name was Williams at the time, but when I asked around the neighborhood later that day, I got filled in fast. He lived in La Mirada, too, just a couple blocks away, which is one reason why his car wasn’t in my sweetie’s driveway.
Another reason was that, at the moment, his car wasn’t running right. The next morning he and it were in his own driveway, Williams under the spiffy little sportscar, on his back working on its rear end-a coincidence, because the day before he’d been working on my wife’s rear end-and he looked up at me from under there, the buggy jacked up with the back wheels off, and gave me this look, which I read as contemptuous, and commented, “I got nothing to say to you, bunghole,” which didn’t take much reading at all, and I said, “Fine,” and kicked out the fucking jack.
That almost caused me some trouble. Had I killed the prick still in the sack with my wife, I’d have been in a better position to claim temporary insanity and irresistible impulse and suchlike. Instead, after I’d found them together in what I’d presumed was my bed, I’d walked off and settled down and thought about it overnight and gone around to his house the next day and crushed the fucker under his car.
That got me arrested, though I explained that if I’d gone over there to do anything but talk, I would have taken a gun. I’d killed his ass, all right, but it wasn’t premeditated. He’d just gotten on my wrong side, calling me a bunghole and being generally disrespectful, and the thing hadn’t been planned. Not calculated at all. It was just he said “Fuck you” in his way and I said “Fuck you” in mine-only mine took on a more physical form.
The media had a whale of a time with it, and the public was on my side, so there was no trial. The war wasn’t popular, sure, but Johnny couldn’t be expected to come marching home and not get pissed off catching some son of a bitch fucking his wife. So the D.A. dropped it, saying it would be a waste of the taxpayers’ money, and then some fuss followed, since a public servant can’t really win in a situation like that. Damned if you do…
Only there was a backlash against me. I couldn’t find work, not that I was qualified for anything except shooting yellow people from atop brown trees between green fronds. Sure, I’d worked in garages as a high school kid and was a pretty good pick-up mechanic, certainly qualified to pump gas and learn on the job. But nobody was interested, not even where Williams used to work as a mechanic, and it wasn’t like they didn’t have an opening.
By the way, I had nothing to do with my wife after that. At this point I didn’t want to kill her any more than I wanted to fuck her (though fuck her and kill her had flashed through my mind as an option, on reflection not a
