Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder (11 page)

“Including his cut, yeah.”

“Can I count it?

“You can do whatever you’d like.  It’s yours.”

“No, Frank, I―”

“Vincent,” he started, then got a discouraged look. “Usually I’m really good with names.  I don’t know what the problem is.”

“I love the way you say my name,” I said.

It didn’t help.  He lit another cigarette.  “V.  I’ll just call you that.”

“Call me what you want, Frank,” I said. “But don’t do it because of something he said.”  Actually, I liked V almost as much his pronunciation of Vincent.  It sounded cool.  Sleek.

“Keep the money.  You don’t have to spend it, just keep it.  It’ll make me feel better.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad.  You had a noble reason for accepting the job.  And it’s not like you ever intended to complete it.”

“Charlie gave me that money
for
you.”

“I don’t think that’s what he meant.”

“Fuck him,” he said.  It was nice to see that my vocabulary was rubbing off.  I went and slumped down on the bed beside the stack of rubber banded bills.  Frank sat on the other side of the cash, collecting it in one hand and setting it on my lap.  “This is from
me
, not him.  It’s a gift.  My way of saying thank you.”

“Thank you for what?” I asked, tracing my hand over the bills, the unfamiliar face of Benjamin Franklin under my fingertips.  Hell, even George Washington was unfamiliar.

“Putting up with him.  I appreciate it.”

I’d actually forgotten that The Warden’s displeasure had been the reason for my long recovery.  Even if Charlie never figured out that his money had gone directly to me, Frank would always have the silent satisfaction.   “And you say
I’m
cheeky,” I teased.

“I have to work tonight,” he said. “You can wait for me here.  It won’t take long.”

“Okay,” I said, looking away.  The last thing I wanted was to be by myself, but there was no way Frank would agree to let me come with him.  It wasn’t like bring your child to work day, where I could sit with the other assassins’ kids and play with his gun if I got bored.

He put his hand on my shoulder, once again seeing right through me.  “Talk to me.”

For running my mouth off as much as I did, I wasn’t exactly the most eloquent person.  I sighed, wishing there was a
feeling defenseless please don’t leave me alone tonight
Hallmark card.  “Can’t I come?  There’s nothing on TV tonight and―”

“Vin—
V
.” Frank rubbed his face.  My mom used to do that when I was giving her a headache.  “This is a bad idea.”

“Is that a yes?” I asked excitedly, thinking of rubbing something else to alleviate his tension.

“Yes,” he grumbled.

I threw my arms around him, kissing him right on the lips because it looked like I might literally get away with murder tonight.

He turned away quickly, his face bright red.  I’d completely caught him off guard, and all he could do was smile embarrassedly and shake his head.  “Please don’t do that again.”

“I promise,” I said, my fingers firmly crossed behind his back.

I stood in the center of Frank’s hotel room while he wiped it down from floor to ceiling.  His actions were so practiced, so exact, that I could only observe in awed silence.

The entire process felt sanctified, something vital to his continued existence.  He seemed so defenseless while he worked, removing fingerprints that he had to know weren’t there.  It scared me to look at him.  As dangerous as he’d proven himself to be toward his fellow man, whatever was going through his mind made him seem like a greater danger to himself.  I couldn’t look at his face while he did it.  The blank expression concerned me about his sanity.  Instead I watched his body.

Frank was very graceful, the slightest movement of his gloved hands or turn of his head making me lose track of time.  His figure was willowy, standing over six feet tall with shoulders not much wider than mine and a too-thin frame from not eating.  He barely had to stretch to reach the ceiling, but it was just enough for his shirt to lift and expose the faintest sliver of exquisite skin on his lower back, giving me unholy thoughts.

I hadn’t asked him why he did it, why he went through this routine of cleansing a room that would be vacuumed as soon as he left.  He was obviously hiding from someone.  What other reason could there be for his fear of fingerprints and unrelenting desire to fit in with the American public?

“Can I help?” I asked, though he’d turned down my offer for assistance earlier, when he was removing
his
sheets from the bed and replacing the ones that came with the room.  When he’d told me that this place was cleaner than it looked, he hadn’t been lying.  He’d even scrubbed the shower, something he said he’d do again before we left.  He only let the maid in enough to avoid suspicion, otherwise taking care of the tidying up himself.

“Next time,” he said, collecting the trash bag and tossing it by the door.  He’d already told me that it was coming with us, to be burned at the first opportunity.  He always burned his trash.  “Take those clothes off.”

Never in all my life had I stripped so fast.  I was completely naked before I saw that he was trying to hand me a change of clothes.  “These will be big on you, but they’ll have to do for now,” he said with a slight smirk.

I closed my eyes and groaned.  Although vanity never ceased to outweigh shame in my case, getting an erection from a simple statement
was
a bit mortifying.  “Can I take a shower?”

“Make it quick.” Frank hadn’t even turned bright red this time.  He was getting more comfortable with my blunt sexuality.   I’d have to turn it up a notch.

I slung my new black clothes over my shoulder and strutted to the bathroom, wishing futilely that he’d follow.  Even after the events of the day, I would have jumped at the opportunity to go to bed with him; to have his body against mine, warm inside of me.  But while being with Frank would’ve been enough to make me forget about Charlie’s perverted pal, merely thinking about him wasn’t.  As soon as I was alone behind the bathroom door, all I wanted was to get dressed.

Wearing Frank’s clothes was a poor substitute for being nude in his embrace, but it would have to do.  I pulled on his pants, rolling the legs up several times so they wouldn’t touch the floor.  His clothes were by far more comfortable than mine; they were hardly worn, the cotton soft against my skin.  After wearing jeans that had been washed with hand soap and shampoo, I relished in having something that had actually been to a Laundromat.  Though, I would’ve preferred to wear something right off his back.

I’d always taken pleasure in wearing clothing that didn’t belong to me, especially if it came from somebody I cared about or desired.  It made me feel like I was wanted; secure, as if anyone who saw me would know I was spoken for just because my shirt was too big.

I fixed my hair in front of the taped-up mirror, my eyes still bloodshot from crying.  I looked like someone else, more so than a change in wardrobe could accomplish.  It was like I’d undergone a transformation, one that had been set in motion the moment I first saw him, and had now boiled over to every part of me.  Things were different.   There was a separation in my mind between the Vincent Sullivan I recognized and a new person, Frank’s V.  He hadn’t even changed the way I looked yet, and I was forever altered.

Frank had shoved my old clothes into the trash bag, and was systematically placing molded metal bits into a carrying case that reminded me of Bobby Wilson and his flute, until he’d figured out that playing a flute, and playing with me, made him gay.

“Tell me about your job.”

“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said, moving to the bathroom.  I followed him.  I didn’t want him out of my sight.  I felt like he needed to be protected, and even though there was nothing I could do if someone did come knocking on his door, or if he decided to do himself in, I was determined to stay at his side.

“Point and shoot?” I asked.

Frank smiled instead of answering, then he wiped the bathroom walls just as he had the rest of the room.  He even did the door, without me having to tell him that I touched it.  I instinctively put my hands in my pockets like I was in a museum.

“Are you okay?” he asked.  “You look pale.”

I shrugged.  “I’m wearing black.”

He came toward me, gently pulling a black skullcap over my hair.  His hands were warm.  “I bet you glow in the dark,” he teased.

“Uh huh,” I sighed, closing my eyes and moving my face against his fingers.  I had never wanted anybody as much as I wanted Frank.  If he would only kiss me, I could die a happy boy.

“V?”

“Yeah?”

“We have to go.”

I opened my eyes again, the fantasy ruined.  “To work?”

He smiled.  “You sure you’re okay?  Now you’re all flushed.”

God, he was a prick tease and he probably didn’t even know it.  “Your hands are warm.”

“Sorry,” he said, starting to release me.

I held his wrists before he could let me go.  “It’s a good thing.”

Frank roughly pulled away from me like I’d hurt him.  I stepped back, not out of fear, but to give him some room.  “You and I need to have a discussion about boundaries, Vincent,” he said, the tension clear in his voice.

“I thought you weren’t going to call me that anymore.”

He sighed, regaining his composure.  “
V
…I am nearly
twice
your age.  Even if I weren’t―”

“I know, Frank,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You
have
to do as I say tonight.  You cannot wander around.”

“Okay.”

“You also have to be quiet.”

“Damn.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “In fact, you’ll probably be bored.”

He was
absolutely
right.

Frank’s place of work was at the top of a thirty-story tenement building.  He said that the job itself would take less time than walking up the stairs to the roof and back down again, and there would be nothing to see.  No blood, no carnage, just the inside of a stairwell and a bunch of snow clouds in the sky.  At least I had him to look at, though I could barely see him thanks to the arctic wind blowing fiercely in my face.

Snipers, he told me, were the prima donnas of the assassin world; sitting high up on their perch, shooting someone so far away that they couldn’t see it coming.  He considered it not only one of the most cowardly ways to kill a person, but also expressly dull.  And unfortunately, most of his jobs were just that.

“The real entertainment comes from watching them before the hit,” he said as he set up his rifle.  I was under a strict gag-order until he gave instructions otherwise, so all I could do was shiver in response.

Frank seemed completely immune to the glacial weather.  I was wearing the thicker of his two coats
and
his hat and wool scarf, huddled against the ledge in an attempt to escape the elements.  He sat completely still, hugging cold metal.  “Although,
he
wasn’t very interesting,” he added, and fired twice.

I blinked in disbelief.  Frank was back on his feet with the gun put away before I’d even registered that we were finished.

“Let’s go,” he said, hauling me up and pulling me toward the door.

I wouldn’t have known what to say even if I was allowed to speak.  At least with Charlie’s friend I was connected to the action.  I’d met him, smelled him, and now he was gone.  This man, a man Frank had followed for weeks, who worked downtown and lived alone on the highest floor of a tall building, was less real to me than an extra in a crowd scene of one of my soap operas.  I felt nothing for him.  I didn’t even know his name.

Frank kept his hand on my arm as we quickly walked down the stairs, just as he had going up.  His standard pace was relaxed, his long legs never having to live up to their full potential.  But while he was on a job, his speed increased tenfold.  Everything he did was quick, in and out before the parking meter six blocks away finished with his quarter.

And that was it.  We were on our way out of Chicago sooner than the police could have arrived at the crime scene.  I could feel Vincent starting to fade away.

My hometown was basically a truck stop that sucked people in to the point where they couldn’t leave, and they had to start a community.  And even though I’d seen the plates, from all fifty states and even some from Canada, it seemed that the possibility of someone leaving Illinois, of
me
leaving Illinois, was nonexistent.  So as Frank’s car sped—at exactly the speed limit—toward the sign that declared we were leaving the only state I’d ever been to, it seemed like he had super powers.  It
seemed
like we were destined to crash into it.

“Wait!” I yelled.  He slammed on the breaks, the car sliding off the icy road and onto the even icier shoulder.  But even as the car fishtailed to a stop, I wasn’t scared.  Frank never lost control of the wheel.  He didn’t say anything, he didn’t swear, his expression didn’t even change.  He just handled it, and then once we were stopped, actually fully stopped, safe and sound and not flipped over dead, he turned to me and calmly asked “What the fuck was that all about?”

I hopped out of the car and ran back to the sign to get a closer look at it.  Frank walked over to my side.  “You know what that means?”

“Freedom!” I shouted, and picked up a rock so cold it hurt my hand.  Even though I threw like a girl and didn’t come close to hitting it, I was fairly certain that the sign knew precisely what I was going for.

“Felony,” he said.  “I’ve just taken a minor across state lines.  That’s a felony.”

“You’re not kidnapping me, Frank.”

“That’s the way they’d see it.”

I had a feeling
they
would see the double homicide and double arson as more of a felony than giving an enthusiastic sixteen-year-old a ride.  “How many years is that?”

“None,” he said, and he pressed two of his fingers to his temple like a gun.

“No, you wouldn’t,” I said, and I thought about that look on his face back in his hotel room.  Yes, he
would
.  “I’d miss you.”