Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder (30 page)

It was a fortress all right.  If I’d stumbled upon it without knowing who lived there, I would’ve thought it was a prison reserved for the most dangerous criminals in the Southwest.  One thing was for certain.  If it
was
a prison, it would’ve been easier to get inside.

“What do you think?” he asked.  He’d let me have the scope after giving the house a thorough search, and was now scowling into the darkness.

“We can ring his doorbell and ask to borrow a cup of sugar,” I said.  My mom used to be notorious for doing that sort of thing, lugging me around the trailer park with her recipe book, getting ingredients for dinner one door at a time.  It wasn’t as if we were
that
poor; she just wasn’t very good at planning ahead, and tended to have a pot boiling on the stove before realizing she had nothing to put in it.

Frank ignored my comment, which was in fact lippy, and got out of the car.  We’d parked about a mile away from the mark’s home, inching along slowly from the main road like we had four flat tires, using the full moon to guide us instead of turning on the headlights.

I walked by his side as we headed closer to the house, not daring to look directly at it as if it was a solar eclipse, my eyes straining to adjust to the contrast like seeing a pinprick of daylight at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

His footsteps were as silent as a child tiptoeing across plush carpet on Christmas morning.  I weighed a good fifty pounds less than him, and mine went crunch, crunch, smoosh.

“I think I just stepped on a lizard.”

“Shh,” he whispered, then crouched down and picked up a rock.  I hadn’t even seen him put on his leather gloves.  His paranoia over fingerprints knew no bounds.

We walked a little closer and he launched the rock toward the house, scanning the yard with the scope to his eye.  Two alert canine heads turned in unison at the sound we couldn’t hear, and they ran toward it, filling the night with vicious barking.

Frank quickly grabbed my arm and pulled me close to the ground, his body slightly in front of mine.  Shielding me.

I watched them sniff the dirt from behind Frank’s shoulder, clinging to his shirt to keep him from moving further into my line of sight.  They soon lost interest and wandered away to smell something else.  I wasn’t sure whether his experiment was a success or not, but I didn’t open my mouth to ask.  In all probability we’d crouch here the rest of the night.  He looked deep in thought.

“He was watching,” Frank said.  He pointed toward one of the windows, and handed me back the scope.  There was a slight scraping away of the dark paint at the bottom left hand corner.  I never would’ve caught it, but now that he’d brought it to my attention, I could see faint movement through the crack.

What was the point of having an alarm system if you ignored it?  He couldn’t possibly see what they were barking at from behind an inch of dusty glass.  Even if he had a scope like us, the lights would distort his view of anything past the fence.

Frank pulled me to my feet, setting his hand briefly over my mouth, a silent instruction to keep quiet until we got back to the car.

“He didn’t come out to investigate,” I said as soon as the car was in sight.  This was our in, and I wanted him to know that I’d picked up on it.

“They must bark constantly.  He’s used to it.  Too many false alarms.  But they didn’t keep it up.  There’s no telling how they’ll react if they see something worth attacking.”

“Like us?”

“Like
you
,” he said.  “The dogs look thin.  I’ll bet I can walk right up to the house with the proper enticement.  Train them to shut up until you get close enough.  We don’t want to give him time to think about it.  He needs to see you, react emotionally, and come out to help.  For that you have to be right at the gate.”

“How long will it take to train them?”

“Not long,” he said with a smile.  “We’ll bill Charlie’s clients for doggie biscuits.”

We went to a pet store first thing the following morning, and Frank picked out a bunch of dog treats with an enthusiasm I rarely saw in him outside of bed or books.  He said that his partner before me had been an old, disfigured mutt that he’d purchased off a homeless man for a cheeseburger.  He’d trained her to squat on his mark’s front lawn, so he could look innocent while he stood and watched their house.  But then Charlie found out and called him crazy, so he gave her away to a good home and didn’t speak to him for nine months.

Frank took a shower and changed into clean clothes before going out that night, trying to smell as little like me as possible.  He didn’t want the dogs to get confused when I came stumbling by the house, pretending to be injured.  But it turned out that the dogs weren’t treated very well by their owner, and Frank’s presence became welcome almost immediately.  He stayed with them from sundown to sunup, feeding them treats through the fence and teaching them to sit.  He probably could’ve gotten them to attack our mark if he felt like it.

My responsibility while he was away was to put together a costume worthy of an Academy Award, and make sure my acting skills were equally up to par.  With the amount of television I watched, it wasn’t difficult to pull something together.

I bought a light colored shirt and washed Frank’s car with it, then found a pair of old torn jeans at a thrift store and added some new holes.  Next came the need for road rash, so I tracked down the parking lot in the most desperate need of being repaved, and played around in a pothole so deep it could’ve fit the late Walter Jones.  A few drops of food coloring and some corn syrup in an empty Coke bottle, mixed with a couple handfuls of loose asphalt and an expertly placed Q-Tip, and I looked so bad I felt sorry for myself.

Frank actually paled when he saw me in full makeup, which was the best compliment he could’ve ever given me.  My expert job as a special FX artist left him without a doubt in his mind that our mark would fall for it.

We drove out to the desert together, parking where we had before.  But we didn’t get out of the car.  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

“A little,” I said, playing with one of the holes in my pants.  I was less nervous than I’d been on the previous hit, but it was a different kind of anxiety.  We’d gone over everything that could possibly go wrong with the Goldman job.  This one had way more unknowns.  We didn’t know whether he’d come out or let me come in, we had no idea what kinds of weapons he had in the house, and on top of that, if he called an ambulance the whole ruse would be worthless.

“I have a good feeling about this job,” he said reassuringly.

I nodded.  He would be out of sight, though still close enough to hit our mark without having to use his sniper rifle.  I also had my gun, hidden in the deep pockets of my baggy jeans, but I wasn’t to use it until our man was down.

Frank headed off to get in position while I touched up my makeup.  Our mark had a camera screen on his intercom, we’d seen it.  Even if it was in black and white, he would’ve had to feel something when he saw me.  I looked like I’d gotten run over by a tank.

I walked until the dogs were in sight, watching me tensely for Frank’s command of “sic ‘em,” then I took off one shoe and dropped it to the dirt.  Frank would remember to pick it up if I didn’t.  “Okay,” I said to myself, “make him proud.”

The harsh lights all over the yard made my faux injuries look ghastly, and I found that all the preparation I’d done to coerce the tears from my eyes was pointless.  It didn’t take thinking of my parents or of Frank leaving me, all it took was my determination to get him a good shot and I was bawling like a baby.

I could imagine his face, smiling, maybe even laughing, watching me limp and cry like I was actually hurt.

The dogs had been released from their verbal restraints and were going nuts, jumping at the fence and barking their heads off as I approached the intercom.  I pressed it a few times, using my palm instead of the tip of my finger and getting my face as close as possible without touching it.

“You’re trespassing,” came a voice from the other end.  His side of the screen wasn’t on.  I couldn’t see him.

“Please,” I stuttered, “I need help.  I got…I got hit by a car…on the road.  Please.”  I sniffled, snot and red corn syrup dripping down my face.  I knew it was going to stain my skin.  I already had pink spots in my hair from it.

There was a loud whistle, and the dogs went running toward the house.  I started swaying, trying to keep my head from being an easy target in case he wanted to shoot at me.  The night was eerily still now that the dogs had finally shut up.

“Mister?” I asked the intercom.

“I’m coming.”

I let go of the button, looking toward the front door.  The gate started opening first with a mechanical whir and the crunch sound of small wheels traveling over dirt, then Michael Brown, formerly Michael Bianchi, stepped out of his house.

He’d changed a lot since the wedding photo Charlie had provided.  His hairline had receded nearly to the back of his head, the mustache was gone, and his belly protruded over his pants like his internal organs were trying to escape.  There was a handgun down the front of his pants.

Frank shot him twice in the abdomen, and he stumbled backward through the open door, landing with a slight bounce in his hallway.

I pulled out my gun, aiming with my left hand supporting my right just as he taught me, feet shoulder width apart.  I stayed where I was until Frank got to my side, then we walked onto the property, guns raised.

His level of focus on a job was incredible, each step instinctual, each breath full of purpose.  He was so alert it made me look like I was in deep sleep.

The dogs had come to investigate, sniffing at their still squirming owner.  “Sit,” Frank called out to them without glancing their direction.  They did as he commanded, sitting attentively.  He tossed them some treats.

I could see that the gun in Bianchi’s pants was misshapen.  Frank had shot it, and now he took it from him entirely, unloading it and setting it on a small table beside a stack of never to be opened mail.

“You want to take the lead?” he asked.

“May I?”

He nodded, never taking his eyes off the dying man’s hands.

I shot him once in the leg for practice.  It didn’t bleed much, just a slow oozing from the hole.  I definitely didn’t get that reaction from a dinner plate.  “Do you know why we’re here?” I asked.

“Fuck,” Michael garbled, spitting blood all over his face as he coughed.  My injuries looked more realistic than his did.

I tapped a clean spot of his torso with my socked foot.  “Hey, you dirty rat.  I’m talkin’ to you,” I said, imitating what I remembered from every De Niro movie I’d ever seen.  My act would’ve been lost on Frank, even if it had been a respectable impression.

Bianchi squirmed on the floor.  “Fuck you!” he yelled, trying to spit at me but only managing to make a further mess of his chin.  “Fuckin’
finnochio
!”

“Oi!” Frank said, his voice raised in a way that made me fear for the dying man’s safety.  Then he shot him in each knee, and the guy screamed in pain.

“What does
finnochio
mean?”

“What do you think?”

I shot him again, though my bullet didn’t affect him nearly as much as Frank’s had.  Knee wounds were supposed to really hurt.  “
Finnochios
are cigarettes, jerk.”

“Not quite,” Frank said.

I shrugged and fired twice, widening the gaping holes in his knees.  I could see fragments of bone, pink with blood.  “This is for Bobby and Guido.”

“Tony and Bernie,” Frank corrected.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

I turned back to Michael.  “Were you really in the mafia?”  He ignored me.

“Are we going to be here all night?” Frank asked.

“Give me a break, it’s my first time,” I said.  I knew he was just teasing me.  We could’ve stayed all night if I wanted to.  There was no one around to call the cops.

Our mark groaned, my lack of expertise adding insult to injury.  I shot him in the throat. 
That
bled, spraying into the air and then bubbling from his neck all over the tile like a broken drinking fountain.  He still wasn’t dead, though it was coming for him soon.

“Should I shoot him again?”

“If you’d like.”

I aimed a little higher and fired at the center of his forehead.  It was the most accurate shot I’d ever taken, and I watched speechlessly as his pupils dilated.  Frank was right.  Seeing the life leave their eyes
was
amazing.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt almost as alive as I did after sex.

One of the dogs whined, but didn’t get up.  Frank threw them more treats.  “Nice shot,” he said, setting his hand on my back.

I released the next bullet from the chamber like he’d taught me, putting on the safety before pocketing it.  “Should we go?”

“I want to check on something,” he said, and he shut the front door with his foot, tapping his hand at his side and making the dogs follow him.

The hallway had taken on the unpleasant smell of bodily functions like middle of the night rest stops; piss and shit and a noticeable absence of cleaning products.  I headed after him, avoiding the spreading puddle of blood.

Frank walked to the kitchen, glancing at the calendar on the wall and heading toward the garage.  He returned with a bag of dog food nearly as tall as he was, which he tossed out the back door onto the shaded porch.  Then he turned on the hose, throwing it into the kiddy pool that was obviously their water dish, and he came back inside, locking them out.

“If they eat their owner, they’ll put them down,” he said, and he grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, scribbled
call the police
in what I doubted was his normal handwriting, and led me out, shutting the front door behind us.  I should’ve known what he was up to.  He was making sure the dogs were going to be taken care of.  The calendar showed the next delivery date.

Frank put the note on the intercom and pulled the gate closed.  There was something about seeing a man take care of the pets of someone we killed that made me want to marry him, too young or not.