A little over an hour had passed when the big guy stepped out to the porch. There was an unlit cigarette in his mouth, which he lit after sitting in one of the deck chairs. The smaller guy had his back at a forty-five degree angle to the wall of the house. The big guy sat to his right with his back facing west toward the river. I wanted to approach from behind the smaller guy, so I moved around to that side of the yard.
As a general rule, I didn’t kill except for food. That’s why I’d brought the blackjack. I was waiting for the big guy to turn his head to the east, so he wouldn’t see me approach. When he finally turned, I came out of the woods along the back wall of the house, up onto the deck, and gave the smaller guy a tap with the blackjack. He went limp in his chair. I stepped behind the big guy and paused, a little surprised he hadn’t heard anything. When he turned back and saw his partner slumped in his chair, he chuckled. It was probably the first time he’d ever caught him sleeping on the job. The big guy took a slow, meditative drag on his cigarette, as if enjoying his partner’s lapse of professionalism.
“Frank,” the big guy said, conversationally. Then again, “Frank,” a little louder. He leaned forward, reaching out to shake his partner’s knee. I could have watched more, but I was there for other reasons, so I clocked him on the back of the head and he rolled forward onto the deck. I took out two of the cable ties and bound their feet, then dragged them both off the porch and into the woods, out of view from the house. I tossed their guns and searched them. The big guy didn’t have any other weapons, but Frank had a small tactical knife sheathed on his belt. I put it in my fanny pack, then turned them onto their stomachs and bound their hands behind their backs. As a final precaution, I positioned them back to back and looped another cable tie through the two already on their wrists. If they woke up before I was finished inside the house, this would make it harder for them to move around.
Once inside the house, I made my way to the open door of the master bedroom. From the doorway, the bed was on the left, centered against the wall, with nightstands on both sides. The room must have been about four hundred square feet. It made the over-sized bed look smaller than it really was. Richardson was asleep on the near side of the bed, his girlfriend on the far side, with about three feet of empty space between them. Ron’s dog was sleeping at the foot of the bed. I stepped into the room, moving to the left of the doorway, and made a little clicking noise with my tongue. The dog raised its head, looked at me for a second or two, then very slowly got up and walked the perimeter of the room, keeping the maximum possible distance between itself and me, until it came to the doorway. I could hear it picking up speed as it ran down the hall.
Richardson had failed to make his first monthly deposit, and now there was a penalty to be paid. It wasn’t fair to make the woman pay for Richardson’s bad judgment, but, as so often happens, expediency ruled the day. Or in this case, the night.
I went around to the woman’s side of the bed. The room was warm. The blankets were pushed down to her waist. She was laying on her right side, her back to me, the left side of her bare neck offering itself. She groaned quietly when I bit into her, tensing for just a second before her body relaxed again. When she was dead, I wiped my face with the sheet and went around to Richardson’s side of the bed. Richardson was lying on his back with his mouth open, snoring like an asthmatic. There was a large crystal bowl full of m&m’s on the nightstand. I scooped up a few, then sat in an armchair against the adjacent wall. I tossed one of the m&m’s in a gentle arc. It landed with a faint tap on Richardson’s forehead. He twitched, but didn’t wake up. The next one landed in his open mouth. It must have gone deep into his throat because he choked and bolted up to a sitting position, hacking. The m&m shot out of his mouth onto the bed.
“Fuck god!” Richardson half whispered, feeling around on the sheets for whatever had been in his mouth. Then abruptly giving up the search, he flopped back down on his back.
The next one hit Richardson on the cheek. This time he was awake. He flipped onto his right side, brushing the pillow frantically, as if something alive and unwelcome and been on his face. When he saw me sitting in the chair, an explosive hiss came out of his mouth as he pushed himself backward and up onto his right elbow. He must have backed into his girlfriend’s body, because he glanced quickly behind him.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You aren’t disturbing her.”
“You!”
I smiled, got up and switched on the lamp on the nightstand, then sat back down.
“How the fuck did you get in here?” Richardson hissed.
“Your guards left the back door open.”
That got Richardson thinking. His eyes darted over to the nightstand, then back to me.
“What’s in the drawer?”
