The Wrong Goodbye

Shit. I’d picked this place because the drinks were tall and cheap, but the trade-off was it was an oldschool pub, with long, narrow tables and benches to match —the kind of bar where strangers sat together and left the place as friends. Only I had all the friends I could handle —zero, to be exact —and I wasn’t in the market for another.

My would-be new acquaintance was a lanky kid of maybe twenty-five, standing at the end of the table with an expectant half-smile pasted on his face as he awaited my reply. British, by the accent, and a bit of a dandy, if his outfit was any indication. He was decked out in a darted charcoal sport coat over a crisp white dress shirt, open at the throat. Pale khaki chinos terminated in loafers the color of cognac. A tartan scarf hung loose around his neck, and a porkpie hat tilted rakishly atop his head. I fixed my gaze on him a moment, and then dropped it back to my glass, hoping he’d get the message.

He didn’t.

“You’re a Yank, aren’t you?” he said, sliding onto the bench opposite me with a casual grace that spoke of moneyed arrogance. “You’ve got that look, like you think in English, or at least what passes for English on your side of the pond. I’ll tell you, mate, I’m glad to have found you —I haven’t had a proper conversation for bloody ages. I mean, yeah, most of these guys, they muddle through well enough, but you can tell by the way they screw their faces up when you talk to them they’ve got to concentrate, and they’re not exactly chatty. Everything’s all ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘toilet is jusht down ze hall’. It’s nice that they try and everything, but you know what I mean?”

I said nothing. Just sat and stared at my drink.

“Or maybe you don’t,” he said. “Bloody hell, you ain’t drinking jenever, are you? I wouldn’t wash brushes in that stuff. I swear, I could murder a decent pint right now, but all they’ve got in this place is some God-awful Pilsner that tastes like rat piss. I’d have to be completely off my face to even get it past my lips, and even then, I’m not sure I wouldn’t spew it straight back up.”

I closed my eyes, and massaged the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. This kid was giving me a headache. If he noticed, though, he didn’t seem to mind.

“So what brings you to Amsterdam? Business? Pleasure? A bit of both, maybe? Me, I just got off the train from Brussels. Thought I’d see the sights, maybe check out the Red Light District, know what I mean? After all, a man cannot live on bread alone.”

I tossed back the remains of my drink and got up to leave.

“Oh, come on, mate, don’t go yet —the night’s still young!”

I shot him the kind of look I normally reserve for ax-murderers and pedophiles, and then made for the door. When I reached the table’s end, he called to me.

“Hold on!” he said. “Don’t go. We’ve a lot to talk about, you and me.”

I turned and flashed the kid a rueful smile. “No offense, kid, but you and me don’t have shit to talk about. I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”

“I do, do I?” He smiled, and raised his hands in mock acquiescence. “All right, Sam, if that’s the way you want to play it. I just figured you might like a little company, now that the Haas unpleasantness is behind you. The job is over, is it not? Or did you decide to tie one on before disposing of his soul?”

I flinched as if stung. By the look on his face, the kid knew he hit his mark. I closed the gap between us in a flash, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt in my bony hands and hoisting him up out of his chair until his face was a scant inch from mine. “Who are you?”

“Easy, tiger! I’m a Collector, just like you,” he said, his tone placating. “Name’s Danny.”

“Why the hell are you following me around?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

“So what —you thought you’d swing by, swap some war stories or whatever? Well you came to the wrong guy.”

“No,” he said, not unkindly. “I don’t believe I did.”

“I don’t care what you believe. Contact between Collectors is strictly forbidden. Do you have any idea what’d happen to us if our handlers caught wind of this? I ought to kill you just for being here.”

“Perhaps you should, but I don’t believe you will. It’s my understanding you’ve got a certain affection for the living. You may wish to get rid of me, but I’m guessing you aren’t going to sacrifice this perfectly good skin-suit to do it. Now, have a seat and let me buy you a drink.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” I asked.

“Because the way I hear it, we ain’t so different, you and me. We both know this job of ours is designed to chip away everything decent and human about us, until we’re no better than the monsters we work for. I, for one, am shitting myself at the very thought of that, and I reckon you probably are too. Look, I know it’s a losing battle, trying to hold on to what makes us who we are, but I also know that isn’t going stop me from trying. And if I had to guess, I’d say you aren’t going to, either. All I’m saying is, maybe it’d be easier if we weren’t going it alone.”

He was right, about the job part at least. See, this vocation is punishment for a life misspent —and as punishments go, it’s a doozy. Every time we take a soul, we experience every moment that brought that person to our grasp —every kindness, every slight, every gruesome act our mark inflicted. Mind you, I don’t mean we see those moments; we live them, with painful, blinding clarity. Over time, it wears on you. Breaks you down. Not to mention, every time you leave a vessel behind, you lose a little bit of what makes you who you were in life, until eventually there’s nothing left. It was the thought of that happening —that, and the horrors I’d experienced collecting nutjobs like Haas —that kept me up at night. It was these that kept me talking to Danny.

“So what,” I said, “you’re asking if I’ll be your friend?'

“I’m asking if you’ll let me buy you a drink.”

“You’re fucking nuts, you know that? If anyone were to find out about this–”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sam, all we’re talking about is a drink. What’s the harm in that?”

What’s the harm? I swear, over the years, I must’ve played that sentence back a thousand times. I’d like to think that if I knew then what I know now, things would’ve gone differently. And who knows? Maybe they would have. Or maybe I’m kidding myself, thinking I had ever had a choice. In those early years as a Collector, I was so lonely, so desperate —so scared of what I might one day become —there was really no other way for me to play it.

So yeah, I took that drink, and we got to talking. Turned out, we did have a lot in common. As I said, those who wind up marked for collection are either contract kills or freelancers, and since all Collectors were once collected, that means the same holds true for us. Now, I don’t want to tell tales out of class, but the guy who collected me? He was a freelancer, and if that sadistic bastard is any indication, they’re not a group you want to hang out with come the company picnic. Me and Danny, we were contract kills. The deal I made saved the life of the woman that I loved. Danny made his deal at the tender age of fifteen when, in the wake of the First World War, the British economy took a bad turn and left his onceaffluent family penniless, and his once-loving parents hateful and embittered. He was but a child, and the only education he’d ever had was in the classics as had befitted his family’s station; he hadn’t the skills to reclaim their fortune by wits alone. So he sought help —help of the demon variety. The way he told it, if he had it to do all over again, even knowing what that deal would cost him, he would’ve played it the same way. Something else we had in common, I suppose.

As the evening wore on, one drink became three, three became five, and by the time we stumbled armin-arm out of the pub and into the chilly November pre-dawn, me and Danny’d become friends.

Was it stupid? I don’t know. Fate? I couldn’t say.

One thing I know for sure, though: right or wrong, things would’ve been a lot simpler if I’d just killed him.

3.

The Plaza de Bolivar sparkled in the midday sun, still rain-slick from a spate of showers that had burned off when the first rays of morning light crested the Andes to the east. It was Sunday, and the massive square was flush