Two
I woke up the next morning and went through my normal routine. Exercise. Two hundred push-ups, four hundred sit-ups. Breakfast and then an eight-mile run. I was up early enough that the streets were barren. I had gotten back to my host’s apartment in Jersey City at about one-thirty in the morning. I got four hours of sleep, woke up, and started my day. It was a travel day. I wanted to get started as early as my body could handle. I had a flight to catch out of Philadelphia in the early afternoon and was anxious to leave. I was always anxious to leave after a job. Maybe there was something in me that regretted doing what I did. I don’t know. The plan was for me to take a bus from Jersey City to the parking lot of a shopping mall in the New Jersey suburbs. Once there, my friends would pick me up and drive me to the airport.
The early morning air was crisp. I found myself running through a light fog that had settled in around the four-story brownstones that lined the Jersey City streets. I ran hard, trying to drive all thoughts from my mind. As I ran, I kept an eye out for anything suspicious, gazing to my left and my right as I took each step, looking for anything odd or out of place, trying to make eye contact with the vendors opening up their stores to see if there was even the slightest hint of recognition. It wouldn’t be long before they realized what had happened. “They” could be anywhere. The night before had been a concerted effort. Three hits in the same night all around the same city. All told, we were leaving five corpses in our wake. I had the easy kill. At this point, I could only assume that my friends had been able to complete their jobs too. If not, I could be waiting for my ride for a long time.
I turned a corner and began running up a steep hill. Ahead of me was a man in front of a dry cleaner unloading a truckful of cleanly pressed shirts and suits. Our eyes met and his face turned sour. I quickly turned down another side street and kept running. I doubted that he recognized me but you can never be too safe. After another block, I turned and looked back, but there was nothing. Paranoia. It was a helpful tool in my profession. I was taught early on that only the paranoid survive. Let your guard down for even a moment and that moment could be your last.
If Jared and Michael’s marks went down without much fanfare, they might not realize what had happened until later today. Knowing Jared and Michael, however, their marks probably didn’t go down quietly. If their jobs weren’t clean, then there was likely already a team of people out looking for us. Three jobs and five bodies in one night was sure to stir up trouble. I guess stirring up trouble was the point.
The police didn’t worry me. Sure, the cops were going to be investigating, and New York cops were some of the best, but the cops had a protocol to follow. They had a system. Seemingly mindless, senseless killings by perpetrators who come into town for a night or two and leave without a trace were not their forte. Motive? What motive? Anyone who could piece the motive together for these killings already knew why each person was killed. Those people were already on a side. Did we have any guys on the inside in New York? I don’t know. Probably. Did they? It’s just as likely. We are everywhere—so are they.
I turned another corner and started to run back to my host’s apartment. I pumped my arms and lifted my knees, kicking it into a higher gear and pushing the last two miles hard.
My host was a nice guy. Roughly thirty years old, he was single and lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Jersey City. He was a computer programmer at some insurance company in downtown Manhattan. He took me out for drinks my first night in town and peppered me with questions. I answered a few and left a lot more unanswered. He knew the drill. He also knew that the more information he could pry from me, the more dangerous it became for him.
I finished my run at a slower pace than normal. I blamed the lack of sleep.
It was nearly noon by the time Jared and Michael pulled up in their rental car. We would have to move pretty quickly for me to make my flight. Jared was driving, so speed wasn’t going to be a problem. Jared swung the car around as Michael hung himself out of the passenger-side window. “Joe,” he called out to me as the car slowed to a stop, “your chariot has arrived.” He spread his arms out wide, welcoming me. “Come here and give me a hug, you ugly bastard.”
I picked up my bag and headed toward the car. I had spent the last hour or so people-watching on the sidewalk in front of Macy’s. I watched the people as they strolled into the mall, destined to spend their day trying to decide which pair of jeans made their ass look smallest or which television set would best fit in their living rooms. There were moments when I was jealous, but my life, our life, is never going to be normal like that. “You guys are late,” I said as I stepped toward Michael’s outstretched arms.
“Better late than never,” Michael whispered to me as he grabbed me into a big bear hug. “Get in the car. We’ve got to get moving.”
I threw my bag across the backseat and climbed in.
“Jared,” I acknowledged my old friend with a quick nod, making eye contact with him in the rearview mirror.
“How’re things, Joey? I assume everything went well.” He showed me a wide grin.
“Easiest job yet. No hitches. How about you guys?”
“You don’t have to assume,” Michael said. He threw an edition of the New York Post in my lap. “Your lazy ass didn’t even make the paper.” I looked down at the front page. There, in bold print over a picture of two bloody bodies covered by formerly white blankets, was the headline “Bloodbath in the Bronx.” Beneath the picture, in smaller print, were the words “Mets Take Two from the Phillies to Pull within One.”
“Holy shit,” I said as I flipped to page three to read the story. “You guys are going to get yourselves killed.” I looked at the picture and the headline again. “And you’re going to get me killed with you.”
“They told me and Michael that they wanted us to stir things up. Well, Michael might have gone a little overboard.” Jared eyed me in the rearview mirror again. His smile didn’t fade. He was proud, proud of Michael, proud of the job we’d just done, proud of all of us. I began to read.
Last night at 12:35, two men were stabbed to death in front of Yankee Tavern, a crowded bar near Yankee Stadium. Joseph Delenato and Andrew Braxton were walking out of the bar where they had stopped for drinks after attending the Yankee game when they were assaulted. The assailant approached Joseph first, stabbing him twice in the chest, before turning to Andrew and stabbing him in the throat. Both men died within minutes of the attack. Witnesses say that the assailant, a white male about twenty-five years old, moved quickly. He did not stop to rob the victims, nor does there seem to be any other motive for the incident. “I was with Joe and Andy all night,” said their friend Steven Marcomi. “We just stopped in for a drink or two. I’d never seen the [assailant] in my life. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. It’s not like we got into any fights or anything. I can’t imagine why this happened.” While motive remains unclear, police say that this was likely the work of an experienced killer. “Whoever did this,” Lt. John Gallow said to reporters early this morning, “knew exactly what he was doing. He was efficient and precise.” Andrew bled to death on the scene. Joseph’s lungs were punctured when he was stabbed. “Technically, Joseph drowned in his own blood,” said the coroner’s office. “Each stab wound punctured a separate lung. They quickly filled with blood. The poor kid eventually drowned.” Joseph’s mother told this reporter, “I don’t know who could have done such a thing. My boy was such a sweet boy. He didn’t deserve this.” Andrew’s family was not available for comment.
Next to a picture of the bar was an artist’s sketch of the perpetrator. “Nice picture, Michael. I’m sure your mother’s going to be real proud.”
“That shit doesn’t even look anything like me.” Michael grabbed the paper away from me to look at his sketch again. It really didn’t look anything like him. It was typical. All artists’ sketches did was build up general suspicion. No matter what the sketch looked like, everyone knew someone who looked a little bit like it.
“And the quote from his mother. Real fucking precious. Like she doesn’t know why her son was killed.” Michael paused for a second, going over the story in his head again. “But did you see the quote from the cop? Precise and efficient. I’d like to get that quote on my business cards.”
“Did you really have to make things this messy?” I looked again at the bloody picture on the front page and then up at Michael.
“Maybe not, but it was my best move. I had to take both of them out and I had to do it before one A.M. or else I risked them finding out about your guys’ jobs and getting all defensive. When I saw them go into the bar, I knew that my best chance was to hit them right when they came out. I figured they’d be buzzed and their reflexes would be numbed.”
“That’s how you were able to stab the first guy twice before even turning on the second?” Michael was good at what he did. I had to give him that.
“Yeah. That and the fact that the second guy half knew what was going on. An innocent would have run. Instead, this guy stands there frozen. He knows what’s happening but can’t remember how he’s supposed to respond. He’s got this dumb look on his face, like ‘Am I supposed to run? To fight? To take a shit?’ Pffft.” Michael made the sound of a deflating balloon. “Too late.”
“And then what’d you do?” I asked Michael.
“Slipped away into the cool Bronx night. That’s one scary borough, man. I’m telling you, I was the least dangerous looking guy on the street.”
I began flipping further through the paper. “Jared’s is on page fourteen,” Michael said. I turned to the page. There, tucked onto the far right-hand side of the page, was a story about an affluent Westchester couple that left their car running in their garage and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was a litigation partner at some big law firm in Manhattan. She had been an advertising executive who gave up her career to take care of the children. The strange part of the story was how both children were found sleeping on the porch in the morning, wrapped in blankets, safe from the fumes. Officials surmised that the parents put their children outside before taking their own lives. No one could fathom why such a seemingly happy couple would want to kill themselves.
“You’re a master, Jared. Truly brilliant work,” I said as I flipped further into the paper past the article about my friends.
“You’re not in there, Joe,” Michael said as he continued to watch me flip the pages. “Nothing about your mark at all.” Just another body, I thought. Not newsworthy. Just an average woman killed in an average way. Nothing to see here. “You sure you actually remembered to do your mark?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, I remembered. It was easy.”
“Yeah, but your kill was probably the most dangerous,” Jared said. “Everything was set up for yours. We were just supposed to create noise. You had to take her out, show them that there are consequences.” Jared continued driving down I-295, changing lanes and slipping through traffic. “Her husband had to learn a lesson. You don’t take out eight of our guys in one year without repercussions.”
“I read the preliminaries,” I said to Jared. I stared out the window at the faces in the cars that we passed, scanning each one, trying to guess if they were one of us, one of them, or if they were just one of the lucky uninitiated masses. There was no way to tell. We passed a silver Volkswagen Jetta with a cute college-age girl behind the wheel and one of her friends in the passenger seat, passed a big black Escalade driven by a large man with a mustache and a tattoo on his left arm, passed a black couple driving a small red sports car, kept on moving forward, kept on passing people, all potential friends, all potential enemies. All I knew for sure was that I had one more professional killer who had plenty of reason to want me dead.
“What’s next on your agenda?” Jared asked me.
“I’ve got a lecture to do. You guys?”
“A little rest and relaxation for me.” Michael smiled. I looked over at Jared, wondering where he was off to next.
“I’ve got another job to do. It shouldn’t be tough. After that, maybe we should try to get together.” Jared nodded his head toward the passenger seat. “Where exactly are you headed for your vacation, Michael?”
“You know I’m not supposed to tell you two losers. What if you’re caught and tortured, you might give me up.” That was protocol. Even meeting for these moments after a job was unorthodox. We were always taught that as few people should know where you are as possible. It was safer that way. Keep moving. Keep quiet. Stay safe. It was boring and lonely as hell. “Besides, you two will probably cramp my style.” There was a pause. “But maybe, I might be headed to Saint Martin—the French side. Great sun, great food. My place is big enough for the five of us. Me, you two, and the two girls I’m bringing home each night.”
“What do you think, Joe? Saint Martin? Sit in the sun, drink liquor through a straw, stare at the beautiful women cruising the beach?” My eyes met Jared’s again in the rearview mirror. He was my oldest friend. We’d known each other since long before we knew what type of life we were destined for. When we were in first grade, we played cops and robbers. We pretended to be firemen, astronauts. This, we never imagined. We never played good and evil. Jared looked a little tired, a little worn down.
“I’m in,” I said.
At the airport we went our separate ways again. Michael dropped me off first. He’d drop Jared in a different location and then return the rental car. As they drove away, Michael leaned out of the passenger-side window, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Remember, young Jedi, the force will be with you always.” I could still hear Michael laughing as I walked through the glass doors into the terminal. From here on out, if the three of us saw each other, we were strangers.
When I got to my terminal, I went to the flight desk and got a seat assignment for a person whose name wasn’t mine. I showed them an ID with my picture on it but a stranger’s name. Then I boarded a plane to Chicago. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a longer flight because as soon as I leaned back in my chair, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I didn’t budge when we took off. I barely noticed when we landed. It had gotten to the point where the only place I could ever get a deep sleep was on an airplane.