The Hitman: Dirty Rotters (4 page)

I found an escape by attending church
each Saturday with Little B. I had told her about the dream I had
where I died. She saw it as more than a dream. She told me it was a
sign. My mother didn’t talk religion at all. I couldn’t shut Little
B up about it. Not that I had tried. After burying my mother, I was
ready to accept some sort of spiritual way of living.

“
Rotter.” Little B cursed
from the door behind me. “Dirty Rotters. All of them.”

She had witnessed what I had. Being
that she had lived there for about seventy years, she had witnessed
far more than I cared to dream.

“
Good morning, grandma.” It
was two o’clock in the afternoon. She just awoke.

“
Hah!” She yelled, as if
the day was anything but. It was June and already sweltering. It
was ninety out with no wind. Suffocating. Trees and grass were
brown and dying. I had mistaken gunfire for car tires exploding due
to the melting road.

“
Want some tea, grandma?” I
didn’t call her Little B to her face. Ever. Her real name was
Beach. I never called her that either. Sometimes I had to talk
loud. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea of what I was
saying.

I turned to face her, staring at her
behind the screen in the door. She looked like she just woke. Her
short grey hair was standing on ends off the left side of her head.
The right side was matted flat against her pale skin, already
sweaty. She wore the same nightgown now for the past three years.
It was an off-yellow color, with a faded red flower pattern. At one
point in the Jurassic Period when she had purchased it, I’m sure it
had been vibrant.

“
A day like this and you
would think all those Rotters would be at home in front of their
stolen rotating fans.” She pointed straight across the street to
where about five people my age were lounging. She didn’t have an
indoor voice. Some were looking back at us. “Like them right there.
Don’t they have a back yard for crying out loud?”

I was sitting on the porch step. I did
it every day. Never once considered sitting in the back yard. “I
tossed out your hamburger. It looked like carpet.”

She laughed. “I was saving it for the
squirrels. Hoping to kill some of them off!” She walked out of
sight.

I stopped feeding the squirrels. I
gave a friendly wave to the folks across the street and stood. I
turned to head up the steps when I saw him. Angelo Garboni. The
only Italian around. He was already looking at me, walking the
sidewalk two houses down, heading my way like a side-show Santa
Claus, with his head turning quickly this way then that, eyes
moving sporadically, searching. His left hand clenched tight the
black garbage bag dragging behind him that everyone knew held
nothing but empty pop cans.

As I walked out to meet him, I felt
the sweat beads race down my back. The center of my T-shirt was
wet. My plaid shorts looked a lot more comfortable than Angelo’s
black sweat pants and shirt. Same outfit every time I saw him. My
sandals were open-toed. His black boots had the thick laces
dangling untied. His sweats were tucked down into his boots. I
fought against the thought of how bad he must have been sweating.
Just looking at him made me want to go take a shower.

I met him with a handshake and a smile
in front of Little B’s at the sidewalk. His hand was sticky from
the pop cans. His face was shiny with sweat. I could smell the bag,
the thick scent of old pop. The smell I got when I walked into
Meijer. But he was smiling, lopsided and genuine.

Angelo stuck out like a sixth finger.
I think he suffered from brain damage. His head was always cocked
to the side, and it never stopped moving. He was tall and could use
a few pounds. His thick black hair was always wild and unkempt, a
frightening contrast against his pale skin. Fine, wispy black hairs
lined his upper lip like he just couldn’t manage to grow a real
mustache. It was pathetic looking. But he was oblivious to his
appearance. All that mattered to him was finding the elusive empty
pop can.

Angelo Garboni’s smile never left.
There was innocence in his brown eyes. He was genuinely happy. I
liked the guy.

“
Angelo, let me take that
bag off your hands.” I smiled.

“
No way, Michael.” His
words spit out like rapid gun fire. “Notta chance today. Not today.
Hot out, butta good day. Lotta finds. Lotta people too. Real hot
though. My brother has a furnace. That’s hot too. Like this. People
don’t drink pop on hot days. I do. I would. But people don’t. At
baseball games they do. I see them on TV. Tigers are playing. Not
too hot for them.” A machine gun at work. Barrel smoking. The enemy
gunned down.

“
It’s going to rain later.
That should cool things off.”

“
Rain is worse. Worse is
not good. Not good for walking. I gotta lotta walk. Found a Mt. Dew
bottle. Big one. Half full. I don’t know why they didn’t drink it
all. Maybe they ate the hot dog too fast.” Definitely not bolt
action.

I gave him my best ‘disgusted’ look.
“You didn’t drink it, right? Don’t ever drink anything you find,
Angelo. Remember?”

He laughed and wagged a finger at me
like an excited puppy’s tail. “No, no, no. You tell me before not
to drink. I know. I know notta drink. It was green. No bubbles. I
think it was old. It was hot. Too hotta drink. I dumped it in the
trash. Some is on my hand. Some is in my boot.” He put an Uzi to
shame.

I could only smile. He’s happy in a
way I never would be.

Right before summer of last year, I
had saved up bottles for a few months and gave them to him. Three
jumbo garbage bags filled. Thirty dollars’ worth, to a normal
person. To him, it was priceless. He was a little kid on Christmas.
His mouth ran out of ammunition that day.

“
Anybody give you trouble
today?”

“
In the park. There was a
car. White car. Notta truck. Trucks are big. The car was long like
a hot dog. Two guys in it called me. Yelled at me.” He looked
proud. “But I know what you taught me. I walked fast. They yelled.
But I walked faster. I didn’t go to them. You taught me. I listened
to you. Me and you are friends, Michael.”

“
Not just friends, Angelo.
Best friends. Me and you are best friends.” I patted his bony
shoulder. It made him happy. “Good job. You did the right thing.
Never let someone stop you, right? Keep walking. If they follow
you, drop your bag and run. Run all the way home. Lock your door
when you get in and don’t answer it if they knock.”

His head nodded. “Yup. You taught me
that. Yup you did.”

I looked into his little kid eyes. He
was smiling still. Happy. The city was no place for Angelo. The
world wasn’t, for that matter. He was special. He saw the world as
everyone should. He made it a better place. I was grateful that we
had met.

Angelo wiped the sweat off his face
with his sweat shirt. He reeked. He had fruit flies
swarming.

“
Angelo, you need to go
home and take a shower.”

“
I need a red dog. Like
that book you gave me. You know that book. That dog. The red one.
Big like a horse. I can ride it. He would let me. He would sweat
then. I would stay dry.”

He laughed hard. I did too. His eyes
squinted past me then and his smile vanished. He looked scared. “Oh
no. I go now. I go straight home.”

I turned to look behind me. I saw it
right away. The black car. It came from the Red Square, nice and
slow, like a shark at the beach. Others saw it as well, word was
spread, and people scattered off the street, out of sight, up into
their homes for safe hiding.

I felt as nervous as Angelo looked.
The black Rolls-Royce.

“
Yeah, Angelo. Go straight
home.”

“
Bye.” Sniper
action.

Angelo turned fast, snatched his bag
from the ground, hoisted it up over his left shoulder, and walked
back the way he had come, clanking all the way. I did the same,
back to the porch, opening the door and stepping in. Once inside, I
shut the door and locked it. My heartbeat quickened. I walked
around and stood in front of the sofa, and looked through the
windows from a safe distance. Within seconds, the neighborhood went
silent. It looked empty. A minute later and the black beast was
rolling by like a nightmare. Like it was Death itself.

“
What’s going on?” Little B
entered the room in time to see for herself.

“
The black car is
coming.”

“
King of the Rotters,”
Little B cautioned me.

I stepped back, but I kept looking. I
felt her press close to me, watching as well. Her breathing was
quick. She held a cup of coffee.

It was a long car, wide and tall. All
regal and class. Extremely expensive. Tinted windows so black that
I could only imagine something evil lurking inside. It strolled by
like it had not a care in the world.

Or it was doing a thorough search for
someone.

It came out of the Red Square. Twenty
square blocks of Russian-owned lifestyle. All of it controlled by a
single man. A feared one. One dubbed The Bear. I heard he was over
six and a half feet tall and three hundred pounds of solid muscle.
He was cold. A psychopath. He had wrestled tigers back in Siberia.
He was the King Pin. The Don. Red Square’s Al Capone, with a mess
of loyal followers. A lunatic capable of bringing your worst
nightmares to life with a mere snap of his fingers. The black car
was his. Though I had never seen him in person, he was the scariest
son of a bitch I had ever heard of.

And just that fast, the car was gone,
down the block, out of sight. The street came back to life a few
minutes afterwards, like the woods when a predatory animal leaves
and the birds begin chirping again. As if all was safe. I had hoped
that Angelo Garboni had made it home.

Little B took a sip of her coffee and
whispered, “Rotter.”

She stepped away from me and sat in
her grey recliner. The living room was small, an eight by ten with
an eight foot high ceiling. Two large windows with white trim faced
the street behind the sofa. A long black and yellow knitted blanket
lay over the cushions. In between the sofa and the TV stand sat an
old end table. It was short with faded polish. The only other piece
of furniture was another small chair, a solid wooden piece of which
comfort was not found. Little B had her chair facing the
television, where she could see into the kitchen, and also out the
door when opened.

She grabbed the TV remote and turned
on her favorite show, COPS. She sang the intro song to herself. I
sat on the couch feeling my blood pressure return to normal and
recalled the first telling of The Bear.

I met a thief on the street selling
Nike shoes for ten bucks my first weekend with Little B. I didn’t
have ten bucks. He said he would take five. I didn’t have five. I
didn’t have one. He said he would take any pills Little B might
have in the bathroom cabinet. Any watch. Anything of any value. I
had nothing. I only came over to him to see what he had because I
was sitting on the porch crying when he yelled that he had
something to show me. I wasn’t used to the city life just then. I
was still wet behind the ears. I still trusted people.

“
Whatever you got,
kid.”

He made me feel like the trade was
going to happen. It was an order. Little B was still asleep, it was
only noon then, so I was by myself. I had started to get a bad
feeling about the guy. He needed to shave and shower. He was
grubby. His look was hard and devious. A city man, I knew. Nothing
like me.

“
I don’t think so,” I
said.

I turned, wanting to run away from
him, but I walked. About a foot later I felt the hard, firm grasp
around my left bicep and he spun me back towards him. The look in
his eyes told me I was dead. I saw the flash of a pistol beneath
the waistband of his sagging jeans. My jeans fit.

“
You misunderstood me,
kid.” His hand was reaching for his gun.

A black car pulled up behind him then.
It stopped. We both looked. The back door opened. He let go of my
arm right then. My look became his. He stuttered a bundle of words.
An explanation of some sort. A plead. A lie.

The man exiting the black car looked
calm and unfazed. He looked like a million dollars. He was clean
and well taken care of. With a Russian accent, he simply said, “Get
in.”

“
Now?” Panic. “Tell The
Bear I didn’t know!”

The other said nothing. He motioned
towards the car.

“
It was an accident!” He
was frantic. “Tell him I’m sorry, alright!”

The other gave a sympathetic
look.

I saw the thief swallow hard. He took
a step backwards but then thought better of it. He looked over to
me. He was terrified. He tossed me the shoes. He looked defeated.
He walked to the car slowly. He tried to apologize again, but the
guy holding the door open simply waved him in. He didn’t care. A
punishment was coming. Nothing was going to stop it.

The thief entered. Before the man shut
the door, I heard the thief’s pleads turn into screams. The Russian
looked at me for a second, then walked around to the passenger
front door and entered. I could still hear the screams from within;
the car began to rock slightly. I set the shoes carefully down onto
the cement.