The Hitman: Dirty Rotters (7 page)

“
English,
grandma.”

“
If I wanted to come back.
It was so beautiful that I didn’t. But I knew I had to. I had to
come back for you.” She had tears forming.

“
What do you
mean?”

She took my hand in her own. Her eyes
wouldn’t stay open for long periods. Her breathing was peaceful.
She began to smile, drifting back into slumber.

“
I saw angels. Thousands,
Michael. Everywhere. They were magnificent.”

“
Where,
grandma?”

Her eyes closed tight. “You can be one
of them. You can be someone’s angel, Michael.”

Then she was asleep.

I stood over her in absolute
confusion. I had wondered if she even knew she had been up,
speaking to me about the dream she was having. I sat back down in
my chair and tried to get back to sleep. Sleep didn’t come though.
My mind wouldn’t relax enough. It was too busy trying to decipher
what Little B had just told me.

The next day they released her. We
went home and sat in the heat. It was sweltering and humid. The
carpet and couch felt sticky. I turned the fan on and put it in
front of her as she rested in her chair. I even turned her favorite
programs on the tube. I made her eat fruits, gave her plenty of
water. I was worried. She looked like she was living on borrowed
time.

“
Anything else?” I asked
her.

“
I’m fine.” She took a sip
of water. The glass left a wet ring on her glass stand. “Question
is, how are you?”

She took the remote control and turned
the television volume down. She looked over to me with concern. She
meant business. I knew then that we were going to talk. We were
going to open wounds that were trying to heal.

“
I’m finer than frog’s
hair.”

“
Oh no you’re not.” She
gave me a stern look. “What’s going on with you?”

“
Really, I’m fine. Look at
me. I’m young and fit and every woman on the planet is lined up
outside just to get a glance. I can’t be better.” I looked away.
When I looked back, she was still staring me down.

“
I cheated a death that I
longed for to be here for you a little while longer. Don’t you dare
get sassy with me. You won’t have this moment back, so start
talking.”

“
What do you want to
know?”

“
I want to know that you’re
going to be alright, that’s what I want to know. You’re not the
same person. You act differently now.” She held up her hand quickly
to stop me from responding. “No, just listen. I understand full
well what it means to lose somebody you love. I know heartache, let
me tell you. But you cannot let it control you. You have a life.
You cannot simply toss aside everything and let the hate own you.
Because it will, Michael! It will grow and fester and you’ll lose
yourself to it!”

Her shrubbery patches of eyebrows
furrowed low and angrily. Behind the mad look in her eyes was love.
Genuine concern. But what could I even say at that point? She was
right. I knew it. The problem was I didn’t care.

“
I’m fine,
grandma.”

“
No you’re not. Don’t you
lie to me! When you lost Pamela, you lost yourself. All you can do
is pray, Michael. Let God do what only God can do.”

I shrugged off the bitterness. I felt
the sting in my eyes, tears forming. “I don’t know how anymore. I
don’t know what to believe.” The words hurt. I had buried my
emotions from her and myself for months. “None of it should have
happened.”

“
But it did! You have to
accept it!”

“
I can’t accept it! Can’t
you see that?! How can I just let it alone and say that it was all
meant to happen? How?!” I cried into my hands. Tears and snot fell
between my feet. “I don’t even know what happened to her! I hate
God for this!”

Little B’s frail hand was on my
shoulder, rubbing ever so gently. Her voice was soft, barely a
whisper. “I’m sorry, Michael. But you cannot blame God.”

“
He didn’t do anything to
find her!”

“
He works in mysterious
ways, Michael.”

“
I don’t!” I stood,
towering over her. “I don’t know what to trust anymore. I just know
everyday hurts so bad that I wish I was dead. I feel dead. And I
want every one of them dead too!”

I stormed away. I went to the bathroom
and washed my face, cried hard into the porcelain sink, then
finished cursing God in short whispers, and finished feeling sorry
for myself for the moment. I looked in the mirror. I was red-faced
and pathetic.

When I went back into the living room,
she was in her chair reading her bible. I sat on the couch again.
Little B said without looking at me, “Don’t ever give up on God and
He will never give up on you.”

Nothing more was said that
night.

The next couple of days Little B spent
giving me words of wisdom, read me passages from the book of Job,
trying to have me relate, trying to give me some hope, trying to
comfort me without setting me off again. It worked slowly. She
talked to me about angels too. She told me that she saw them in the
hospital that night. She said there were some in the room with us.
She said they were powerful. They fought against the evilest of
things. For some reason it took root in me. It comforted me. She
told me I could be like an angel to someone in this
world.

“
They’re all around,
Michael. Fighting off demons we can’t see.” She said with a smile.
“I saw them. Unafraid. Powerful. Beautiful.”

I believed her. The look in her eyes
forced me too. She was wise. I listened and said nothing. I was
going to miss her someday soon.

I didn’t realize how soon
though.

She had been sleeping more of the day
and all of the night. She ate less and less each day. On borrowed
time, I knew.

Our talks made us bond and our growing
closeness opened my heart and allowed me to feel alive once more. I
sobered up and even went to church again.

It was a Friday morning when I stepped
into Little B’s bedroom to check on her. I found her up, awake and
packing a suitcase. She wore a pretty yellow dress with a string of
pearls around her neck, her hair was dolled-up in curls, and she
wore makeup. Bright red lipstick. I stood to the side and watched
her put clothes and certain items into her black suitcase. She
zipped it up and set it by the bed.

I was baffled.

“
Grandma?” I didn’t want to
startle her. “What are you doing?”

“
Packing.”

I have heard of sleeping disorders
like sleepwalking and sleep-eating. But sleep-packing?

“
Packing?”

“
I’m going home, Michael.”
She looked at me and smiled. I swore that she looked right through
me. “I’m going dancing with my husband tonight.”

“
Oh, I see.”

“
I’m tired. Who on Earth
gets up this early?”

She kept her dancing shoes on and
carefully got back into bed, lied on her back, moving so her outfit
and hair would not become a mess, pulled the blankets up to her
waist and placed her hands over them wearily, then sighed with
vindication.

I almost cried for her. She needed a
doctor, I knew. She was losing her marbles. Maybe she had dementia.
Maybe she could get treatment before it was too late. I didn’t
know. But I hated to see her like that.

“
Should I wake you for
lunch?”

She gave me a sympathetic smile, like
I missed what she was saying. “Not this time, Michael.”

Her eyes closed. She lied
still.

I walked out and shut her door
softly.

I had never seen her up that early
before.

I never saw her up again.

Chapter 6

I left the city.

I had gone car shopping with the money
Little B had left me in her will and stumbled upon a 1970 Chevrolet
El Camino SS 454 LS6. It needed some restoration, mostly interior
work, but it was all about nostalgia and I had the money. The motor
was in excellent condition, a 450 horse powered beast; a muscle car
collector’s dream. I had found black vinyl bucket seats and put
them in, replaced the existing carpet with new black fibers,
replaced the pedals and the four speed shifter, and painted the
exterior triple black. The chrome bumpers and stainless trim were
polished to a blinding shine, then I called it good. Gorgeous
actually. Fast like a bullet. Heads turned at every
stoplight.

My mother would have loved
it.

Little B had left me her house too,
but I couldn’t stay there. Too many painful memories. I had to
leave. I had to go someplace far away and start over to keep from
tying bricks around my ankles and taking a dip in Lake Michigan. It
was either Florida or California. I flipped a coin. The house was
on the market and within a day I sold it for forty grand to a
Russian couple who paid in cash. No questions asked.

Dasvidaniya.

I drove to Florida and never looked
back. I found a place to live, and a decent job as a carpenter’s
apprentice. I started life over, the way Little B hoped I would. It
took some time to adapt, to put the pain and the past behind me and
truly move on, but I did. And it was warm and sunny. Things were
going well.

Then I got the call.

An old friend from the precinct left
me a message on a Tuesday in the middle of May. The message was
short. It was precise and to the point. It wasn’t a conversation by
any means.

“
We found her. We have a
confession. Arraignment at zero nine hundred hours
Wednesday.”

The next thing I remembered was
speeding north on I-75 with the intent of being the first car. The
gas pedal was threatening to cut a hole through the floor mat. I
replayed the message over and over again. It wasn’t going to be
good. It was going to hurt like hell all over again.

Sally Rhode had called. I had met her
during the first week of Pamela’s disappearance. She had been a cop
who was involved in the case. She helped me post missing persons
fliers in the surrounding neighborhoods. I didn’t know if she was
just doing a job, or if she liked me, or if she just felt sorry for
me. But she had went above and beyond reason to help me cope. Some
nights I rode shotgun in her personal car, off duty, and we just
drove around looking for Pamela. I called her twice a day for any
updates. I begged her to call me if something broke
though.

Sally was tall and thick. She had a
deep voice for a woman. She had straight blond hair that was always
in a braid ending just below her shoulder blades. I thought she was
German or Hungarian, due to her size and those thick eyebrows and
blocky teeth. But I didn’t ask. The one thing I did know for sure
was that she was a brute. I didn’t want to get her mad.

Sally Rhode had once punched a horse
between the eyes and sent it to the ground.

I liked her being on my
side.

Definitely not marriage material
though.

I hoped that I would never have to
tell her that.

It took me twenty-two hours to get
back to Michigan. I had only stopped for gas, but that was often.
The El Camino SS LS6 drank fuel unmercifully. I however didn’t have
an appetite. I was wired and anxious. Ready to find out what had
happened. Ready to hear some of my burning questions answered. I
was nervous. I began to chew my fingernails. A couple of them went
too deep. Rookie mistake. I guess deep down I hadn’t really
believed this day would ever come.

I didn’t think Pamela could still be
alive. I knew the statistics. I knew the reality. I knew the
neighborhood. And I knew that Sally’s voice wasn’t filled with
relief. Someone goes missing and turns up after a few years, you
talk about them with an excitement in your voice. Sally was to the
point. Direct. Not excited. They had found a dead body.

I accepted it.

But I needed to know who did it, why,
and how. Then I needed to kill the man responsible.

I entered back into the city just past
eight-thirty Wednesday morning. I thought back to a show I watched
with Little B. There was a man in his forties who claimed that he
had died momentarily and when he came back into his body it had a
dirty feel to it. It was like putting on a shirt you found in a
dumpster, he had said. Going back into the city gave me that same
feeling.

I made it to the courthouse a few
minutes before nine o’clock. I parked next to a slew of TV station
vans. I got out, locked up the El Camino, and mall-walked to the
front entrance. My legs were cramped and it felt good to stretch
them. The morning air felt good as well, though the temperature
wasn’t nearly as nice as southern Florida. This day I was fine in
my jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket.

I made it inside and was greeted by
Sally Rhode right away. She was like a giant, parting the sea of
regular folks and lawyers and news reporters with her dull stare
alone. She came for me and ushered me inside the courtroom to a
seat in the back. A giant clock with roman numerals hung high above
the judge’s bench. The air conditioner was making it a bit cooler
than comfortable. The place was full. Well groomed men in sport
jackets holding long-lensed cameras and small recording devices
filled most of the room in the back where I was. Normal looking
folks were packed in front of us. Several uniformed police were
gathered in the back rows too.