Blood Test
December, 2001
a rookie hit man gets on-the-job training
Don't put that on!" the gray man driving the generic-looking gray sedan said to the much younger man in the passenger seat.
"The boss said--"What the boss said was, I'm in charge."
"Yeah, but--" "The cops see a guy driving around this hour of the night, wearing a ski mask in the middle of June, they make up some excuse--busted taillight, smeared license plate--and they pull us over." "They got to have probable cause--
"Where'd you hear that, from one of the big-time gangsters last time you were in the county tank? The cops tell the judge how they found us both wearing rubber gloves, with a couple of unregistered pieces under the seat, and the judge, he's going to, what? Toss out the case?"
"That's why the boss has lawyers, man. He said no matter what happened, he could always--"
"You know what we're supposed to do tonight, right?"
"Yeah. We're going take out that--"
"That's the job, understand? That's what we have to get done. That's what a job is, something you have to get done. You think we could go ahead and get it done after we got stopped by the law? Gun-felony bust, this town, even if some bought-and-paid-for judge eventually kicked us loose, they'd hold us for 24 hours minimum, just waiting on arraignment. We've got a schedule--we have to stick to it."
"I--
"Never get impatient. That's always a mistake. We put the masks on just before we go in. That way, anybody spots us back of the joint, they make us for two drunks, maybe trying to wait on the girls when they come out."
"I don't see why we got to do it right where he--"
"This is a job, all right? It's work. And part of every job is doing it the way the client wants it done. Where he wants it done, when he wants it done and how he wants it done, understand?"
"The boss--"
"The boss is the client."
"Yeah, yeah. I got it. But why does he want it done like this?"
"You ask a lot of questions."
"Hey, I'm just trying to learn, OK? You're supposed to be the big pro, right? The boss said I got to do this one with you, I'm doing it, ain't I? I mean, I could do it myself, but--"
"But you never have."
"Everybody's a virgin once. Even you. When was your first one, about 100 years ago?"
"More questions?"
"I didn't mean nothing by it."
"Sure."
"Look, after tonight, you won't have to put up with me, OK? The boss said, I do this one with you, I pass the test, I'm blooded in. After that, I can do jobs on my own. Just like you."
"That's between you and the boss."
The gray car rolled past a one-story building set in the middle of an unlit parking lot. The building had no windows; its slab-sided monotony was broken only by the glowing red outline of an impossibly proportioned nude woman and various other promises, wrapped around three sides of the building in streams of neon:
XXX Totally Nude XXX Girl-Girl Shows XXX Private Rooms XXX
The gray man checked his watch and said, "Four-fifteen is the time we move. We've got a seven-, eight-minute margin. We'll pull into the back, sit there for a minute, make sure it's clear."
"What's the big deal, a few minutes either way?"
The gray man made a sound of disgust. He slowly wheeled the gray sedan around the back of the strip joint, positioning it at an angle so he could watch both the back door of the building and the streets that ran along either side of the lot.
"Yeah, well, I guess you ain't perfect, pal," the younger man said. "I heard you did a real long stretch a while back."
"Is that right? What else did you hear about that?"
"I heard you did almost 20 years. For a contract hit."
"It was 17 and change. And it was for a homicide--nobody ever proved it was paid for. In fact, I'm still on parole from that one. It was a life sentence. But it looks like you didn't hear anything you could use."
"What're you talking about, man? I'm not planning on doing no 17 years."
"Nobody plans on doing time. It's how you do it that's the test."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I went down by myself. You following me?"
"Sure. You didn't rat nobody out."
"Which is why I'm still working for the same people, see? Like I said, that was a test. And I passed it."
"You did all that time, and you're still doing this?"
"If I was a plumber and I did 17 years inside, what would I do when I got out, be an architect?"
"The boss should've taken care of you. I mean, 17 years...."
"I was the one who got caught, not the boss. So I was the one who had to do the time. That's the way it works."
"But he did take care of you while you were--?"
"Everyone makes their own arrangement. I made mine, and I stuck to it."
"Big deal. I--"
"Put that away! No smoking on the job."
"Why not? We ain't playing with gasoline here."
"We're not playing at all. They can get DNA from saliva."
"Fine! Jesus, look, how come it's gotta be exactly 4:15?"
"Because that's when he'll be in the back office."
"The bouncers--"
"They'll all be out front. He likes to bring a couple of girls back there with him when the last shift's almost over, and he doesn't like to be interrupted."
"The back door--"
"It'll be open."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Sometimes a man's on more than one payroll."
"You mean one of the bouncers?"
"It's time," the gray man said.
He opened the door. The interior light did not come on. The gray man stepped out and slipped the ski mask over his head. He motioned for the younger man to do the same.
The gray man reached under the front seat and extracted a blued steel automatic. By the time the younger man joined him, holding an automatic of his own, the gray man was screwing a long tube onto the front of his weapon. Again, the younger man copied each move.
They walked to the back door of the club. No lights shone on the back side of the building. The gray man held his weapon straight down, dangling by his side, and used his free hand to turn the doorknob. Slowly. It yielded.
He stepped inside, the younger man close behind.
To their left, a sign said Dressing rooms. The gray man turned right, walked a short length of hall, then turned right again, heading for the far corner of the building. He motioned for the younger man to stay jack a few steps. The only sound was the music coming from the front of the strip club.
The gray man stepped through the door of the dimly lit office. A pudgy man with a red face was sprawled in an office chair. He was fully dressed, but the pants of his suit were puddled around his ankles. A skinny brunette with improbable breasts knelt in front of him; a heftier blonde with a more believable chest stood slightly to one side, as if waiting her turn.
"Anybody screams, everybody dies," the gray man said.
"You," he said, pointing to the kneeling brunette with his pistol, "get up. Go over and stand with the other one."
The brunette got up without a word. The gray man nodded. The younger man walked over to the two women, stuck his pistol in his waistband and handcuffed the women together.
"Turn around and face the wall," the gray man told them.
They did it, moving in sync as if accustomed to being yoked together.
"Where's the rest of it?" the gray man asked the man in the office chair, indicating half a dozen lines of cocaine on a mirror on top of the desk.
"In the safe," the man in the office chair said, his voice resigned.
"Get it."
"Sure," the red-faced man said, scrambling to pull up his pants as he rose. "Whatever you--"
"Open the safe," the gray man said.
As soon as the red-faced man started to turn the safe's dial, the gray man (concluded on page 191)bloodtest(continued from page 96) stepped close to him and fired a single shot into the back of his head. The red-faced man dropped. The gray man knelt next to him and put a bullet into each eye. Then another into his right ear.
The gray man stood up, unscrewed the silencer and pocketed each half of the disassembled weapon in a separate pocket of his coat. Empty-handed, he motioned for the younger man to move away from the women.
"Wait a minute," the younger man said. "You know what the boss said."
"Shut up."
"The boss said no witnesses, man!" the younger man whispered harshly, nodding his head urgently in the direction of the handcuffed women. "We got plenty of time. No reason why I can't have a little taste of that stuff first."
"No."
"No? The test is whether I can follow orders, right? Well, the order was no witnesses. You were right there when the boss said it."
"What he said was 'no witnesses,'" the gray man said. "But he wasn't talking to you. He was talking to me."
"So? What difference does that--?"
"All right," the gray man said. "But hurry it up. And give me that piece."
The younger man handed his pistol to the gray man and turned toward the women. The gray man briefly examined the weapon in his hand, shook his head, flicked off the safety and said, "Hey!" softly. The younger man turned. The gray man shot him between the eyebrows. He knelt next to the body and added three more bullets, exactly as he had done to the man in the office chair.
The gray man took the pistol he had used to kill the club owner from his pocket and reattached the silencer. He put the weapon on the desk. Then he stripped off the surgeon's gloves he had been wearing, being careful to turn them inside out, revealing still another pair of gloves underneath. He removed the single-layer gloves from the body of the younger man, pocketed them, then regloved the body with the gloves he had removed from his own hands.
Satisfied, he wrapped the younger man's hand around the pistol used to kill the club owner.
The gray man got to his feet. "You know the story you have to tell," he said to the handcuffed women, "and what happens if you don't."
They didn't answer.
The gray man walked out of the office, down the hall and out into the night. The gray sedan was gone. A black sedan was parked in its place.
The gray man got into the backseat. The black sedan pulled away.
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