Nine

I spent the next two days the same way as I had spent the previous two. I’d exercise, watch bad television, go to the bar for some drinks and some food, and not sleep. I couldn’t get you out of my mind, not even for a moment—not that I tried. Each day dragged on endlessly. I considered going back to see you but I worried about what would happen if I got caught. If I got caught now, I’d probably never see you again. I decided that calling would be too painful. To hear your voice when I had no idea when I would see you again was too much. It wouldn’t be fair to you. That’s what I told myself, anyway. So I worked through each minute of each day, watching the clock, wishing that I could simply push the hands of the clock forward to make time move faster. Your last words to me echoed through my head: “I’ll wait for you, for as long as you need me to.” After two more agonizing days, I drove to Boston to catch a plane to Florida.

I landed in the Fort Myers airport outside of Naples in the middle of the day. The crowd at the airport was sparse. There were a few grandparents there to greet their grandchildren but that was pretty much it. I stepped off the plane with my backpack. The backpack was lighter than usual because I had actually checked a bag this time, a small duffel bag that I could have carried on if it weren’t for its contents. I wasn’t ready to give up the gun yet. The way things were going, I thought that I might need it.

I slung my backpack over one shoulder and had begun to walk toward the baggage claim when a broad, silver-haired man with a wide smile walked up to me. He extended his hand. “Joe?” he asked me as he presented himself. I nodded and shook his hand. His smile widened. His handshake was firm and deliberate, like the handshake of a man who had spent a lot of time shaking hands. I thought that maybe he had once been a salesman or a politician. He was wearing aviator glasses with clear lenses. His face was friendly and earnest. He looked way too honest to have been a politician. “Name’s Dan,” he said. “I think you’re staying with me for the next couple of days.”

“Pleased to meet you, Dan,” I replied, speaking much more formally than I normally would, inadvertently aping Dan. “I appreciate you coming to pick me up.”

“Of course. Of course. It’s an honor, really. I just want to pitch in where I can.” He nodded his head as he spoke. “You ready to go?”

“Actually, I have to get my bag.”

“I didn’t think that you boys checked bags. I thought you traveled as light as possible.” As he spoke, he turned and starting walking toward the baggage claim.

“Usually I do, Dan. I just didn’t want to carry everything on the plane today.”

Dan smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t blame you, kid. I don’t blame you. I can’t stand fighting for space in the overhead compartment.” We got to the baggage claim area and stood behind the women and children.

“You been here long, Dan?” I asked, as we stood there, waiting for the buzzer to sound that would announce the arrival of the luggage from my flight.

“Just about an hour,” he replied.

“An hour? Was my flight delayed?” I asked. I knew that it hadn’t been.

“No, sir. Right on time. But I didn’t want to keep a working boy like you waiting. Besides, I like coming here, watching the action, seeing the people coming and going.” I don’t think I’d ever met a man like Dan before. I looked over at him. He stood there, never taking his eyes off the baggage carousel even though there were no bags on it yet and it wasn’t moving.

“Well, again, I appreciate it.”

After we retrieved my bag, we walked to Dan’s car in the parking lot. Dan drove the car that I expected him to drive, a large white sedan, and for some reason, that made me happy. As Dan drove us into town, I peppered him with questions, trying to decode him. He was retired and, after a short stint in the navy, had indeed spent much of his life working as a salesman. He sold whiskey and cocktail napkins to bars in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He was excited to hear that I was from New Jersey too. He told me that nearly half the people in this part of Florida were from either New York or New Jersey. He had been a “working man”—those were the words he used to describe my job—in his earlier years too. Back in his day, he informed me, the soldiers worked and kept day jobs too. Traveling around as a salesman was good cover. He’d do his routes, make his sales, and once or twice a year duty would call, as he put it. I asked him how many people he had killed during his days as a “working man.” He said that he hadn’t kept track, that the numbers didn’t matter anyway and that he wouldn’t be proud of the number even if he knew it. He was just proud that he had been able to do his part during his time. Now he was proud to be helping me, proud that he still had something to give to the cause. Oddly, he made me feel proud too. I had almost forgotten what that felt like.

I asked him about his family. He told me that he didn’t have any family left. His parents both made it to the end, dying of natural causes well into their eighties. He’d had a wife once and a daughter. Both had been killed. His wife was a civilian before he married her but that didn’t stop them. She was murdered eight years into their marriage when their daughter was just three years old. It was a sloppy job, he said. She was killed in their home one day while he was out running errands. He was pretty sure they were looking for him. When he got home that day, there was blood everywhere, blood in multiple rooms. She must have put up one hell of a fight, he said. He found her body sprawled across the dining room table. They had stayed and watched her die before laying her on the table and leaving. His daughter was home the whole time. When he got home, she was hiding in the bedroom closet. He couldn’t be sure if she ran there or if they put her there. She never said. She never spoke about what she saw that day, not once. She never talked about what she saw them do to her mother but as soon as she was old enough, she threw herself into the War. We have to teach some people to hate. Others learn it all on their own. She became a high-level Intelligence officer, one of the youngest in history. She rose through the ranks quickly because of how aggressive she was. That aggressiveness made her a prime target. She was murdered just two weeks shy of her twenty-eighth birthday. “Look, Joe, I don’t like ’em and I’m proud that I’ve done my part in the fight against ’em,” Dan said to me as he drove, “but too much hate will ruin you. My poor little girl, I don’t know if she had more than a couple of happy days in her life after seeing what happened to her mother. I’ve always felt guilty about that.” We were silent for a few moments. “Enough about me, son. What about you?” he said, slapping the top of my knee.

I didn’t expect to tell him much. What was there to tell? Once I started speaking, though, it was hard to stop. I told him about growing up in New Jersey, about my family members who had been killed in the War. I told him about my job, about what being a “working man” entailed nowadays. He was thrilled to hear the War stories. He wanted to know as many details as possible. He seemed to think that my life was extremely exciting. To him I was James Bond, no matter what that bastard Allen had said about me being a pawn. I told him about how my two best friends were “working men” too. I loved using the phrase in front of Dan. It made me feel honest. I told him all about my adventures at the Jersey Shore, embellishing the story in some places. Dan ate every bit of it up. The only thing I didn’t tell him about was Montreal. I didn’t tell him about you.

After about an hour on the road, we pulled into a little retirement community just outside downtown Naples called Crystal Ponds. We drove slowly through the neighborhood. Everybody we passed waved to Dan and Dan waved back to everyone. All of the lawns were superbly manicured and there was a flagpole adorned with a waving American flag in every yard. After making a couple of slow turns we pulled to the end of a cul-de-sac and into Dan’s driveway. Dan’s house was a small white ranch sitting in front of a tiny pond. “We’re home, kid,” Dan said to me after pulling into the garage and turning off the car engine. “Go inside and grab yourself a drink. I’m going to get the mail.” Then Dan hopped out of the driver’s seat and began sauntering down the driveway toward the mailbox.

I walked into the little house and was immediately hit by the rush of cool air from the air conditioning inside. The first room that I stepped into was the kitchen. Not wanting to disappoint Dan, I decided to take him up on his offer and help myself to a drink. I walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. Everything in the fridge was newly stocked. There were two full six packs of beer, an unopened loaf of bread, an unopened orange juice, an unopened package of hot dogs, and on and on. Dan had done some shopping in anticipation of my visit. God knows what he ate when I wasn’t there. I reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer. I twisted off the cap and threw it in the garbage under the sink. That’s when Dan walked in. He spotted me with the beer in my hand and asked, “Mind if I join you?”

“Be my guest,” I replied. I turned back toward the fridge and pulled out another bottle. Then we sat at the kitchen counter together and drank our beer in comfortable silence. “So, Dan, I believe you have a package for me,” I said to him, midway through our beer.

“Yes, sir,” Dan replied. “Wait here.” Dan walked off into another room and returned with a familiar, sealed manila envelope. “I suppose you’re going to want some time alone to go over that?” Dan asked as he handed me the package.

“I think that’d be best,” I replied, feeling the weight of the package in my hand. It was light—that tended to mean that the job was supposed to be pretty easy.

“My office is just down the hall.” Dan pointed in the direction from which he had come with the envelope. “I won’t bother you while you’re working. Just let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Dan.” I took the package and began walking down the hall toward the office.

“You going to be up for some dinner tonight?” Dan asked as I walked away, eager for the company.

“You name it, Dan, and I’m up for it,” I replied. I was eager for the company too. I turned into Dan’s office and closed the door behind me.

Dan’s office was just a small room with a sofa and a desk. Above the desk were bookshelves containing a few books and a bunch of pictures. I stared at the pictures for a while. It was obvious that every picture was of Dan’s family. In some, the colors were fading into a sepia tone. One was in black and white. Not a single picture could have been less than thirty years old. It was like Dan’s life had stopped then. There was one of Dan and his dad. Dan had to have been about eight years old but he looked exactly the same. In the picture, Dan was holding a fish that he had just caught up to the camera. His father was squatting down behind him with a wide grin on his face. There was a picture of Dan and his wife at their wedding, decked out to the nines. Dan’s wife was gorgeous. She looked a little bit like you, only taller. I imagined for a moment what you’d look like in a wedding dress. There was a black-and-white picture of two people that, from the looks of them, must have been Dan’s mother and father looking young, smiling, standing in front of a small box with a roof that I could only assume was their first home. Then there was the picture that stopped me cold. It was a picture of Dan and his wife, standing next to each other, Dan’s arm draped around his wife’s shoulder. His wife was holding their baby girl in her arms. In the picture, Dan and his wife were gazing directly at the camera, but the little girl, who couldn’t have been more than six months old, was staring up, smiling at her father. Finally, there was the newest picture, still probably at least thirty years old, but the one whose color had faded the least. It was a picture of Dan’s daughter, as a teenager, standing in a white, puffy prom dress next to a pimply faced boy in a tuxedo. In this picture, Dan’s daughter was smiling. This must have been one of her few happy days. As I stared at the picture, Dan’s voice echoed in my head, reminding me, “Too much hate will ruin you.” “But not enough and the world falls into chaos,” I whispered to myself. I sat down at the desk, opened up the envelope, and began to study the next man whose life I was supposed to end.

My target’s name was Jimon Matsudo but he just went by the name “Jim.” He was born in Hawaii to Japanese immigrants and fought for the United States in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He was a logistics expert who had, throughout his career, planned multiple deadly and strategic operations for the United States Army. He had also, separately, planned multiple deadly and strategic operations against us. He retired from the U.S. Army as a major general. As far as our Intelligence could tell, he stopped actively planning operations against us at about the same time. To this day, however, he continued training their logistic experts. In fact, most of their top guys had been trained directly by Mr. Matsudo. It was impossible to gauge exactly how much damage he had caused in his lifetime, either directly or through his pupils, but taking Mr. Matsudo out would apparently be an enormous blow to their operations. According to my paperwork, this was a key strategic strike. Even so, Mr. Matsudo apparently kept a low profile, with little evidence of protection. It looked to me like the job would be relatively easy. Then I got to the end of the report, the part that contained the information I needed to actually find my target. That’s when I found out that my target lived in a small, quiet, unguarded retirement community in Naples called Crystal Ponds. That bastard Allen had me killing one of my host’s neighbors. Brian never would have pulled a bullshit move like that. I couldn’t help but think that this was a test.

 

 

That night, after I had reviewed my target’s file and slipped the envelope into one of the drawers in Dan’s desk, Dan and I headed out for dinner. Instead of driving toward the fancy part of Naples, we drove in the other direction. We went to some backwoods joint that served ribs and catfish in the front and had live country music in the back by the bar. Dan told me that he couldn’t stand the pretentious new restaurants downtown. The ribs were great, drowned in a spicy barbecue sauce. Dan and I threw back a few more beers while we ate. The more Dan had to drink the more interested he became in my job. To Dan, I really was a hero. I was the avenger of his wife and daughter. I’ll have to be honest, I ate it up. After the verbal beat-down that Allen had given me on the phone, it felt good to be told that I was somebody; that there was a good reason why I didn’t have a life. It felt good to be told that the trade-offs that I’d made weren’t a complete waste.

We went to the bar for a few more drinks after dinner. “So, what else do you have to do to get your job down here done?” he asked me in between beers.

“I’ll go out tomorrow to do some reconnaissance, check out the target’s patterns and tendencies, try to figure out the best time and place to make my move. To be honest, this job looks pretty easy. I don’t think there should be too much trouble.” The quicker the job was done, the quicker I might be able to get back to Montreal, I hoped.

“Reconnaissance, huh? Back in my day, you were just given a name. You’d go out and find the bastard and do the job. Bang, bang, two in the head behind the shed, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, well, they don’t make them like you anymore, Dan,” I replied. I couldn’t help but think about how much Dan would like Michael.

“Nah. It’s just more complicated now,” Dan said. “You kids have it a lot harder than we had it in my day. I don’t think I’d last twenty minutes on the job today. God bless you.” Dan lifted his bottle of beer toward me in a toast. “So, who’s the bastard?” Dan asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Who’s the bastard that you’re going to kill?” he asked again, more loudly than I would have liked.

“I really don’t think I can tell you that,” I whispered back to him. I could immediately see the disappointment in his eyes. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What, I buy you dinner, buy you beers, welcome you into my home, and you still don’t think you can trust me?” Dan was kidding. He knew the rules. Still, he would have loved for me to answer him.

“It’s not that,” I replied. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that the information is dangerous. The more people who have it, the more dangerous it becomes, for you and for me.” I swallowed hard. “That’s what they taught me.”

“I know. I know. Fucking protocol, right?” Dan said, slapping me on the back. “Play it by the book, kid. Make me proud.” Dan paused for a moment, trying to think of something else to say, trying to think of something else that mattered. Dan threw back the rest of his beer. When he was done he slammed his hand back down on the bar. “Barkeep,” he shouted, “two scotches, neat. The cheapest single malt you got.” The bartender came over and poured us two half full glasses of scotch. Dan lifted his glass toward me and made a toast. It sounded like an old toast, like Dan had lifted a glass to it many times before. “To breaking the bastards’ backs before they break ours,” Dan said.

I was game. “To remembering what it is we’re fighting for,” I countered. Dan was pleased, finding a drunken man’s wisdom in my words.

Dan put his hand over my glass to make sure that I didn’t drink before he was finished. “I got one more, one more.” Dan lifted his glass in the air again and looked me in the eyes. “To not drinking alone.” Then Dan took his hand off my glass and we both threw our heads back and swallowed our drinks whole. The cheap shit burned and the burn felt good. After that, we paid our tab and headed home.

We were both still a little drunk when we got back to the house. There was no way that Dan should have been driving, but that didn’t seem to faze him any. I was feeling pretty good. Then I remembered what Jared had told me back at the beach. He told me that these old guys would tell stories that would burn your ear off. I had to imagine that Dan was pretty high up in the ranks when he retired. I wondered if he knew something.

“I think I’m going to call it a night there, kiddo,” Dan said to me as we walked into the kitchen from the garage.

“Wait,” I said, not sure where I was going with this. “I’ve got a question for you, Dan,” I said.

Dan looked at me. I could see the old soldier in him now. He wasn’t dead. It wasn’t too long ago. “Shoot,” he directed me.

“You were in the War a long time.” Dan nodded. “So did they ever tell you what the whole thing was about?”

“The War?” Dan asked.

“Yeah,” I said, though I almost told him to forget it. Maybe I didn’t want to know. What if knowing made things worse? I’d watched my family die in the name of this War. I’d killed in the name of this War. What if it wasn’t worth it? Dan looked as if he had suddenly become sober.

“Sit down,” Dan said, pointing to the small table in the corner of his kitchen. I walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Instead of walking to me, Dan walked to the refrigerator. He opened the door and took out another two bottles of beer. He twisted off the caps, placed a beer in front of me, and then sat in the chair on the other side of the table.

He took a long swig from his beer. “What do you know?” he asked me.

“I’ve heard stories,” I answered.

“What stories have you heard?” he asked. I wanted him to just tell me the truth. I didn’t want to play games anymore.

I cleared my throat. “The one I’ve heard the most is that hundreds of years ago, we were slaves. They were the slave masters. But we revolted and after years of battle, we won. So they told us we were free and we left. But as we left, we got word that they’d already begun enslaving other people. Our leaders stood up and said that we couldn’t let them do that. We knew what it was like to be slaves and we couldn’t let it happen to other people, especially other people who were basically just taking our place, people who would be free if it wasn’t for us. So we went back to fight them for everyone’s freedom and that was the beginning of the War.” I looked up at Dan. I tried to figure out what was going on in his head but I was too drunk. I couldn’t read him. “So as long as we fight them, the innocent people stay free.”

Dan leaned back in his chair. He took another slug from his beer. I could see that it was already nearly half finished. “I don’t have anything to add to that,” he said, putting the beer down on the table.

“So you’re telling me that everything I just said is totally accurate?” I asked.

“As far as I know,” Dan said. He was holding something back now. I could tell.

“I also heard that there used to be five groups fighting and that we’re the only two groups left,” I said.

Dan looked uneasy. “I think there’s a kernel of truth to each of the stories.”

He was bullshitting me. I didn’t expect that from Dan. “How is that possible, Dan? How is it possible that we started fighting them because we were slaves AND that there were originally five groups fighting each other? How can there be a kernel of truth to both of those stories? Do you even know the truth, Dan? Because if you don’t, just tell me.” I waited for his answer. He sat there in silence for some time. Then he stood up.

“Wait here,” he said to me. He walked away from the table and into his office. I stayed in my chair. I could hear him rummaging through the closet of his office, lifting boxes down from the top shelf. About five minutes later, he returned holding a picture in his hand.

“You see this?” he said to me, handing me the picture. It was an old picture of a young Dan shaking hands with a tall, dark-haired man with a mustache. Dan couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. The man with the mustache had to have been in his fifties. “Do you know who that is?” Dan asked me. I shook my head. I had never seen the man before. “That’s General Corbin,” Dan said, “General William Corbin. Of course, ‘general’ wasn’t a real title in the War, everyone just called him General Corbin or just the General. He was the head of North American operations when I was working. The man was a genius. A lot of the methods and protocol that you use today were his design. He turned the War around for us in North America.” I looked at the picture again. It was hard to imagine the man in the picture doing all that. “And you’ve never heard of him?”

“No,” I answered.

Dan shook his head and laughed. “What do they teach you kids nowadays? Anyway, there’s a reason why I’m telling you all this. After my twentieth kill, and twenty was a lot back then, mind you, I was invited to have dinner with the General.” Dan had told me that he hadn’t kept track of how many people he’d killed. He obviously knew more than he let on. Dan pointed his finger at the picture on the table. “That picture was taken during that dinner.” I could feel myself sobering up as Dan spoke. “I was a cocky kid back then, kind of like you.” It was clear that Dan meant it as a compliment. “So at that dinner, I asked the General the same question you just asked me. Which one of the stories was true? And you know what he told me?” I shook my head. “He told me that he didn’t know either. He told me that he didn’t want to know. It wasn’t important to him. What was important was that each soldier picks the story that inspires them the most and believes that story.”

I hated that answer. “And you were okay with that?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” Dan said, shaking his head. “But the General also told me this.” Dan’s voice suddenly grew quiet. “He told me that in the last two hundred years, we’ve reached peace agreements with the other side on three separate occasions after long, drawn-out talks.” Dan held three fingers out in front of him for emphasis. “Everything was worked out, agreed to. War’s over.”

I’d never heard this story before. “What happened?” I asked.

“Each time, they went back on their word.” Dan’s voice was deadly serious now, like he hadn’t had a drop to drink all night. “Each time, they reneged. Each time, they tried to take advantage of the fact that we were willing to negotiate. Each time, good people died. No matter how much we give them, Joe, they want more.” Dan finished off the beer that was in front of him. “So the General told me that we weren’t going to negotiate anymore. Now, if you want me to tell you why the War started, Joe, you’re out of luck. That information is above my pay grade. But if you want to ask me why we’re still fighting, then there’s your answer.” I sat there in utter silence. “Can I go to bed now?” Dan asked me after waiting to see if I was going to say anything.

“Yeah,” I answered him. My head was spinning.

Dan got up from the table and walked toward his bedroom. “See you in the morning, son,” Dan said before closing his bedroom door behind him. I had barely touched the beer that Dan had placed in front of me when he started his story. Now I lifted it up and downed the whole thing. Then I went to the refrigerator and got another.

I called you that night at two in the morning, drunk. You were half asleep when you answered. I told you I was in Florida on business. You sounded jealous and told me that it was cold in Montreal. After I spoke to you, I went to bed. In the morning, Jim Matsuda awaited.

 

 

The next day, I went to do my due diligence on Jim. I got up early and went for a run around Dan’s neighborhood. It was my normal routine—get up early and run. Usually, I’d be running through desolate streets during the early-morning hours. Not at Crystal Ponds. The folks at Crystal Ponds got up early. Old, gray-haired people were already out on their morning strolls. I passed house after house of old men working in their garages, fixing fishing poles, or painting mailboxes that had just been painted months earlier. Everybody waved. Everybody smiled. The sun was bright and the land flat and it felt good to be outside in shorts, working up a sweat. I deliberately made two passes by Jim’s residence. On my first pass, the place seemed empty. As I approached his house for the second time, however, a small Japanese man with glasses and a graying goatee was standing out on the front lawn in his bathrobe and slippers. It was Jim. He looked like he had come out to get the morning paper but had stopped at the end of his lawn, still a few feet from the paper. He was standing there, holding a mug of coffee, gazing off into the distance. His robe was undone in the front and underneath he wore light blue boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. He must have heard me running because he turned his head toward me when I was about a half a block away. When he saw me, he lifted his hand in a wave. I tried to act casual. I waved back just like I had waved to everyone else that I had passed. Mr. Matsuda’s eyes followed me as I ran. As I neared him, reaching a point no more than three feet from the man I was planning to kill in the very near future, he made eye contact with me. There was recognition in his look, like he had come out that morning just to wait for me to run by. That look frightened me. I began to think that maybe this new Allen character at Intel was more careless than I’d thought. Maybe Jim Matsuda had been tipped off that I was coming. I tried to ignore the ideas in my head. I told myself that if Jim knew that I was coming for him, he wouldn’t be standing outside in barely more than a bathrobe and slippers. Everybody waves here, I thought. Everybody. He’s no different. I broke off eye contact with him. He had still been staring into my eyes. Then I looked down at my feet and ran past him.

From what I saw that morning, my job should have been easy. Mr. Matsuda had no security. Not only that, but he seemed to have no concern for his own safety. I decided to tail my target for a day anyway. I couldn’t afford to blow another job. Beware the easy target—another lesson from early on in our training days.

I spent the rest of the day following Mr. Matsuda. Dan lent me his car. I stayed just far enough away as to not be seen by Mr. Matsuda again. I was afraid that he might recognize me. I was afraid that he might recognize Dan’s car. It all seemed unnecessary, though. Mr. Matsuda simply went about his day’s business. It was a day full of nothing. No danger. No urgency. No fear. Mr. Matsuda’s life seemed ordinary—terribly, frighteningly ordinary. We went to the grocery store. We stopped at the pharmacy. We stopped for gas and he got out of the car to wash his windshield. We stopped at a local diner for lunch. Jim had a tuna melt. I had a cheeseburger. We went back to Crystal Ponds for a bit, dropping in on a few friends. We stopped at the bank. There was an ATM machine outside but Jim didn’t use it. Instead, he walked inside, flirted with the tellers, deposited some checks, and took out some cash. Then we headed home. I could have easily taken him out at any point during the day. At around six o’clock, I decided I had seen enough. I wasn’t learning anything. There wasn’t anything to learn. I headed back to Dan’s. That’s where things got complicated.

 

 

When I got back to Dan’s house, Dan was sitting in a chair, facing the front door. His face was blank, expressionless. The chair he was sitting in was out of place. He had moved the chair that way, facing the door, so that he could sit in it and wait for me to come in. God only knows how long he’d been waiting. In his lap, Dan held the manila envelope containing the details about my mission. He must have found it in the desk and taken it. I stepped into the silence. Neither of us said a word for a moment. Dan just sat there staring at me like you’d stare at an animal at the zoo. Eventually, I broke the stillness. “You know you weren’t supposed to look at that, Dan,” I said, reproaching the old man as if he were a misbehaving child. It didn’t feel right but that’s what I did. “It’s not safe.”

“I know,” he replied to me, his voice warbled and weakened by the phlegm in his throat. He held the envelope out to me. “Take it. I’ve seen enough.” I took the envelope from him and placed it under my arm.

“What did you see?” I asked. The man in the chair in front of me was a deflated version of the one who had picked me up at the airport the other day. Dan looked smaller.

“I didn’t want to cause trouble.” Dan spoke softly, speaking as much to the air as he was to me. The sun was setting around us and the rich colors of dusk were seeping through the windows. “It’s just that the days here, they all run into each other. I wanted to feel like part of the action again. I wanted to remember what it felt like.”

“What did you see, Dan?” I asked, looking down at the opened envelope, trying to see if the papers were organized as I had left them. “What were you doing?”

“They killed my daughter, Joe. They killed my wife and my daughter.” Dan looked up at me, his eyes swollen but dry. Dan had cried all his tears ages ago. He kept looking at the envelope out of the corner of his eye. “I wanted to know who it was. I just wanted to know who the big shot was that they sent a professional killer down here to kill. I wanted to see the name of man you were going to end and I wanted it to feel good. I wanted it to feel like revenge.” He spoke the last few sentences through clenched teeth.

“So you looked in the envelope?” I asked, knowing full well there wasn’t any doubt.

Dan nodded. He unclenched his teeth. “I just wanted to feel good again.”

“So you looked in the envelope and now what do you feel?” I was mad. He’d had no right.

“I knew that it couldn’t bring my wife and my daughter back to life, but I thought that maybe it could do it for me.”

“Do what for you?”

“Bring me back to life, Joe. I wanted it to remind me what it was like to be alive.” Dan began wringing his hands together in his lap.

“So what did it do, Dan?” My anger passed quickly. “It’s just a name, Dan. He’s one of them. I’ll take him out. The world will be a better place for it and you’ll have done your part. Isn’t that something? Didn’t you tell me last night that there was no negotiating with them?”

“You don’t get it, Joe. I don’t care about doing my part anymore.”

“Then what’s the problem?” I asked. I probably should have figured it out, but reading people was never my forte.

“He’s my best friend, Joe.” Dan took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “He’s one of the few friends I have left. And you’re going to kill him.” If he’d had any tears left, I think he would have cried.

“Jim Matsuda?” They were friends. Fuck Allen. Fuck him, that bastard.

“Yeah,” Dan responded. “It started as an old military thing. Army versus navy. But when you get to be our age, all the bullshit fades away and you just see each other as old soldiers. We bonded over that. I guess we have more in common than I realized.” Dan looked down at the floor. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

“I didn’t know, Dan,” I said, not that it mattered.

“He fought for this country in two wars, you know. Two wars. I fought in one of those wars. He and I, we were on the same side, fighting those bastards together”—Dan smiled a little as he spoke—“fighting against the bad guys on the same team, defending our families together. That’s how we bonded—old war stories.” Dan began to shake his head. “I thought I knew him.”

“What do you want me to do, Dan?” I didn’t know what I could do. I couldn’t take myself off the job. Dan knew that. But if Dan had asked me to, I would have tried.

“He defended our country, Joe. Our country. I play poker at his house. He’s been in here, in my home, standing right where you’re standing. I’ve shared my scotch with the guy. I celebrated my seventieth birthday with him. He’s a good man. How can he be the bad guy?” He didn’t expect me to answer.

“What do you want me to do, Dan? Tell me what you want me to do.”

“This War has taken a lot from me, kid.” Dan closed his eyes and shook his head again. I thought he was going to rub the skin off his hands the way he was wringing them together.

I got down on one knee in front of him. I pried his hands apart and held each one of his hands in one of mine. Once Dan opened his eyes again and looked at me, I asked again, “What do you want me to do?” Whatever he said in that moment, I would have done it, no matter what the cost. I just wanted someone that I trusted to tell me what to do. I didn’t want to have to make the decisions. “What do you want me to do, Dan?”

“Your job, Joe. Do your job.” He didn’t look at me when he answered. Instead, he just stared at the floor. Once the room grew quiet again, Dan got up out of the chair, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and walked into his bedroom. He closed the door behind him without saying another word.

 

 

I considered going right over to Jim’s immediately after my conversation with Dan and getting the whole damn thing over with, but then I thought better of it. I had to stay disciplined. I had to stay under control. I had to stick to the plan. I couldn’t afford any mistakes.

Dan didn’t come out of his room in the morning, at least not at first. I got up early and went for another run. This time, I steered clear of Jim’s place. I kept my head down and kept my waving and my hellos to a minimum. The web was already tangled enough. I didn’t want to risk making it any messier. When I got back to the safe house, I showered. When I got out of the shower, Dan was standing in the kitchen. “Morning, Dan,” I said to him.

“Morning, Joe.” Dan stirred his cup of coffee in his hand. “You didn’t go out last night, did you?”

“No,” I replied. “I thought about it, but decided not to. I decided it would be smarter to stick with the plan.”

“You’re probably right.” There was no emotion in Dan’s voice. It was flat, monotone. “So when are you going to do the job?”

“This evening. As soon as it gets dark.” I didn’t ask him again what he wanted me to do. He’d had his chance. The fates were sealed. He knew it too.

“Okay.” Dan nodded. “You know, he knows you’re here,” Dan said.

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. “How so?” I asked.

“I mean, he doesn’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I told him that I was going to have a visitor.”

“Okay. That’s good to know.” It really was useful information.

“He was happy for me.” Dan swallowed his last gulp of coffee and put the mug in the sink. “He was happy that I was having visitors.” He had aged ten years overnight. When I first saw Dan at the airport, I could tell that he was old, but he looked old and sturdy. Now he looked frail.

“Does he have any reason to suspect that you’re on the other side or that you know who he is?”

“No.”

“Then everything should be fine.” I felt horrible using the word fine. Nothing was fine. Nothing ever was fine. I could count the hours in my life that had been fine on one hand.

“Right,” Dan responded. “I’m going to be out all day. I probably won’t see you until this evening. You’ll be okay without the car?”

“Yeah, Dan. I’ll be fine.” There was that word again. Dan took the keys off the hook on the wall and walked toward the door that led to the garage. The same door I had first entered two days earlier. “And, Dan . . .” He turned to me as I spoke, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say. All that came out was “Be okay.”

 

 

At some point during the day, I walked to the hardware store and bought a length of rope with cash. On the way home I picked up a sandwich. I spent the rest of the day sitting on Dan’s porch, staring at the pond in his backyard. It wasn’t crystal. It was more of a murky green color. When the sun began to drop below the rooftops of the surrounding houses, I walked into my room and got ready. I put on a pair of long pants and a light, long-sleeve T-shirt. I was trying to leave as little skin open to scratching as possible. I couldn’t dress too warmly for fear that I’d arouse suspicion. I packed my backpack with the rope, a pair of gloves, and some Wet-Naps in case I needed to clean anything up once the job was done. I left everything else—the rest of my clothes, the ski mask, the gun. I wouldn’t need those. This job would be hard for all the wrong reasons. Once the sun had completely disappeared from the sky and the incessant chirping and croaking that haunted the Florida night began, I stepped outside of Dan’s house and began my walk across Crystal Ponds to Jim Matsuda’s.

By the time I got near Mr. Matsuda’s house, the sky was dark and colorless. I didn’t have much of a plan. Frankly, I didn’t think I’d need one. I stopped on the street in front of his house at roughly the same spot where he and I had made eye contact the morning before. I stood there and peered inside his windows. The lights inside his small house were on, and I could see a shadow moving inside. If he wasn’t alone I’d have to come back later. If he was alone, I figured the whole job would be finished within the next half hour. Finish this awful job, I thought, and I could head back to you. One step at a time, Joe, one step at a time.

Unfortunately, from where I was standing on the street, I couldn’t really make out whether or not Jim had company. After about ten minutes I got sick of waiting and decided to go ahead with the plan anyway. I could always abort and regroup if need be. So I stepped forward, walking up the gravel path that Jim had leading to his front door. The plan, if you could call it that, was to knock on the door, tell a few lies, get inside, and then wring the life out of him. After that, I’d clean up and go home. War hero or not, for my purposes he was just an old man.

I walked lightly along the path to the door, not because I was afraid that Jim would see me but because I didn’t want to attract the attention of his neighbors. The whole neighborhood was quiet; the only sound came from the crickets and frogs. I stepped up to Jim’s door and rang the bell. I could hear some noises coming from inside. I could hear people talking. Then, Jim clicked off the television and the only sound that was left was that of a small, elderly man shuffling toward the door.

Jim answered the door wearing a pair of light blue pants and a striped polo shirt. He wore the same slippers that I had seen on him the day before. He pulled the door wide open without first checking to see who it was. He sized me up quickly upon opening the door and then asked, “Can I help you?”

“I’m not intruding or interrupting anything, am I?” I said, trying to peer inside the house to be sure that Jim was alone.

“No. No. Not at all. I was just catching up on some television. What can I do for you, young man?”

“You’re Jim Matsuda, right?” He nodded. “My name is Joe. I’m staying over at Dan’s place for a few days.”

“Yes. Yes. Dan told me that he was going to have a visitor. Pleased to meet you, Joe.” Jim held out his hand for me to shake. I had never killed a man after shaking his hand. I looked down at Jim’s extended hand for a moment and paused. Then, not wanting to draw suspicion, I shook it.

“Pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Matsuda. Mind if I come in?”

“Of course, of course. Where are my manners? Please.” Mr. Matsuda extended his arm into the apartment, welcoming me. After I stepped inside, he closed the door behind me and shut out the rest of the world. Mr. Matsuda had all of the windows closed and was blasting the central air conditioning. Unless someone was standing right outside the front door, no one would hear a sound. Mr. Matsuda’s impeccable manners doomed him from the start. “So, how do you know Dan?” Mr. Matsuda asked as he led me toward the sitting room in his house.

“Old family friend,” I replied. I didn’t even consider it to be a lie.

“Well, it’s nice to see Dan have visitors. It seems that fortune hasn’t dealt him the easiest hand.” Don’t remind me, I thought. “It’s nice to know that there are still people out there in the world thinking about him. Sometimes, it feels like we’re in our own little world down here, floating off into space. It’s only when we have family or friends, young people like you coming for a visit, that we’re reminded that we’re still attached to reality. Can I get you something to drink?”

“A glass of water would be great.” Jim stepped into the kitchen and I could hear him opening up a shelf to get a glass for me. While he was gone, I did a quick study of the sitting room to see if there was anything inside that Jim could use as a weapon. The most lethal thing in the room appeared to be a lamp. I wasn’t worried. The room had two exits, one into the kitchen and the other into a hallway that must have led toward the bathroom and bedrooms. Jim wouldn’t have anyplace to run. There was a window facing the backyard, but the blinds were drawn.

In only a couple of minutes, Jim came back holding two glasses of water, each with two floating ice cubes inside. He handed me a glass. “Would you like to sit down?” Jim asked, motioning toward one of the sofa seats along the wall in the room.

“No, thanks,” I replied. “I’m fine standing for now.”

“Do you mind if I sit?” Jim asked. “Old legs.”

“Be my guest,” I replied. Jim walked over and eased himself down in a chair. As long as he didn’t have a gun hidden between the cushions, he couldn’t be in a worse position. “You said before that you thought Dan’s had it kind of rough. How about yourself?” I asked. I don’t know why I was bothering with the small talk.

Jim sat and thought for a moment before speaking. When he answered, he stared into my eyes with the same prescient look that he had given me the morning before. “The fortunes, I believe, have been a bit kinder to me. I never married or had any children, but I’ve lived an eventful life. Even now, I keep busy.” I bet you do, I thought. “I do some military consulting here and there. But still, getting old is never easy for anyone. I’ve been in three wars, young man, and I daresay that getting old is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Jim leveled his gaze at me and it sent a chill through my body. “So, Joe, to what do I owe this little visit of yours?”

“Three wars?” I asked. “Dan told me that you were a veteran of two wars.”

“Well, until recently, I suppose, Dan only knew about two of the wars.” Jim swirled the ice in his glass and then took another drink. “But there are three: Korea, Vietnam, and this godforsaken War that you and I are fighting in now. Three wars, over fifty years, and I still don’t have one damn clue why we fought any of them.” He knew. I could feel sweat beginning to seep out of my pores. I held my glass of water down in front of my face and swirled the water, trying to see if I could see anything inside. Jim laughed at me. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing in your water. Although, I do have to say, you’ve been doing a pretty careless job.”

My emotions quickly ran from fear of being poisoned to embarrassment. “How long have you known?” I asked.

“I’ve known that Dan was one of you for years. But I also knew that he wasn’t causing us any harm. He hadn’t done anything to us since we had his daughter killed. That’s when they retired him, whether or not he wanted to retire. And I like him. He’s a good friend.” There was something in his words that disgusted me. It was a reflex.

“Did you have something to do with his daughter’s death?”

“No. That happened long before I met Dan. Since meeting him, I’ve heard the stories, though. She, apparently, was a pistol. I really don’t think we had much of an option.”

“You don’t think you had an option about killing your friend’s daughter?”

For the first time, Jim’s tone was less than pleasant. “I told you, Joe. I had nothing to do with it. But this is war and ugly things happen during wars. There’s little that you or I can do about it.”

“Well, you could always end the War.”

“My God, son. You still think that you’re the good guys and we’re the bad guys? The same way I was taught to think about you when I was young, over half a century ago. The same way that I was told to think about the Chinese and the North Vietnamese. Good guys and bad guys. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. They’re all children’s games, Joe.”

I was in no mood for a lecture. Jared’s words echoed through my head. It’s either them or us. Either Jim’s evil, or I am. “You do realize that I’m going to kill you?” I was hoping that this sentence would end the lecture.

“I’ve had my suspicions ever since I heard that Dan was going to have a guest. A visitor that I have never heard of. A man whose background Dan couldn’t explain. That’s why I went outside yesterday to watch you run by, after your first pass by my house. I thought you might be the young man sent to do me in.”

“So are you going to fight me?”

“Is there any sense in fighting?” Jim finished off his water and placed his glass on the coffee table. The liquid was thicker than I had thought at first. He’d given me water. He was drinking vodka.

“No. There’s no sense in fighting. You’re not trained for this.”

“Don’t be silly, Joe. I’ve been training for this day my entire life.”

“So you plan on putting up a fight?”

Jim laughed. “I haven’t been training to fight, Joe. I’ve been training to die. Three wars, countless deaths. Some at my hands, some in my arms. I’ve seen enough.”

So had I. I took my backpack off. I reached in and pulled out the gloves and placed them on my hands. Then I pulled out the rope, which I had tied into a cinch with a loop. The cinch could be tightened but it couldn’t be loosened without untying the knot. The loop was large enough to fit a man’s head through, along with some extra space, in case he struggled. I walked over and stood behind the chair in which Jim was sitting. I slipped the noose around his neck. “I do worry what this will do to Dan,” Jim said. Those were his last words.

“That’s not what I’d be worried about if I were you,” I whispered in his ear and tightened the noose around his neck. As the life wrenched out of Jim’s body, he struggled, but there was no clawing or hitting. There was no attempt to reach out and pry the rope away from his neck. Instead, Jim struggled against his own will to survive. His reflexes kept kicking in and he would start to lift his hands up toward the rope wrapped around his neck but then he would fight his own reflexes, stopping his hand in midair before it had a chance to reach the rope. His face started to glisten with sweat as he struggled. During the final few moments, his eyes began to bulge and his entire body jolted in such a strong spasm that he almost flew out of the chair. Eventually his body weakened, his arms dropped listlessly to his sides, and his will slipped out of his body. The moment before his life left him, his mouth opened as if he were trying to say something, but with no air going in or out of his throat, no sound came out either. Then his eyes glazed over and he was gone. Once I was sure he was dead, I untied the knot and slipped the rope back off his neck. I had to move in close to untie the rope. When I did I could see the blood on his neck from where the rope had burned through his skin. Even without his wanting it to, his body had put up a hell of a fight. It always does.

I left Jim’s lifeless body sitting in the chair. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before anyone missed him, before anyone realized he was dead. I poured the rest of my water into the sink. I cleaned my cup off with the Wet-Naps that I had brought. I placed the slightly bloody rope back in the backpack and headed for the door. After closing the door behind me, I took off my gloves and placed them into my backpack as well. The rest of it should have been simply making it back to Dan’s house without being noticed. Killing someone shouldn’t be that easy.

I really didn’t expect to see Dan when I got back to his house. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he somehow managed to avoid me until I left. I wouldn’t have blamed him. It came as a bit of a shock, then, when I walked through the door and Dan was sitting at his kitchen counter, nursing another beer. He looked up at me when I walked in. He had gotten some of his strength back. The eyes weren’t nearly as heavy as they had been the day before. I didn’t say anything. He had to break the silence. He took a swig of his beer. “So, is it done?”

“Yeah,” I replied. I walked passed him and into my room, where I dropped off my backpack. I didn’t want there to be a chance that Dan might see some of the evidence. Then I came back out into the kitchen.

“You want a beer?” Dan asked me when I got back out.

“Sure,” I responded. I took a seat in the stool next to Dan’s. Dan got up and went to the refrigerator and pulled me out a bottle of beer. I noticed when he opened the refrigerator door that there was only one beer left. This meant that he had saved the last beer for me. It also meant that he’d had a lot to drink in the last twenty-four hours.

He handed me the bottle and I immediately began to drink from it. I didn’t even want the beer. Drinking after a job seemed disrespectful to me. But as long as I had the beer bottle to my lips, I had an excuse not to talk.

So we sat next to each other in silence. It was the loudest silence I’d ever experienced. Eventually we both finished off our beers. When the bottles were empty, Dan turned to me. “I’m going to go to bed,” he said. “It’s been a long day.” I nodded and watched him as he walked toward his bedroom door.

Right before he closed the door behind him, I finally mustered up the courage to speak. “He wanted to die, Dan,” I said. “He was waiting for me.” Dan looked at me and nodded to let me know that he understood. Then he closed the door. I’m glad that I said something. I wish it had been enough.

I sat at the counter for another twenty minutes or so before I decided to go to sleep myself. I don’t remember what I thought about for those twenty minutes. Before walking back to my bedroom, I turned off all the lights. The darkness felt good. When I got to the bed, I stripped down to my boxers and climbed in. I usually showered after a job, but I didn’t need to this time. I just lay in the darkness and closed my eyes.

I awoke to the sound of a bang. A loud, horrible bang. I remember shooting up in bed, sitting up straight, my heart racing, short of breath, before I could even remember what it was that had startled me. Then I remembered. The bang. I jumped out of bed and ran over to the dresser. I pulled open the top drawer and peered inside. My gun, it was still there. I pulled it out of the drawer and carried it with me as I moved through the house. The bang. Had they found out? Had they come back for vengeance already? I moved through the house without turning the lights on. If there was anyone in there, I’d get the jump on them. I moved quickly, holding the gun up near my head so that I could aim and fire it quickly if I needed to. The gun was starting to feel dangerously comfortable in my hands. The living room was empty, as was the kitchen. I noticed a light coming from Dan’s room. I moved more slowly and quietly as I approached. I turned the doorknob to his bedroom and swung open the door. His bedroom was empty, his bed unmade. There were six or seven empty beer bottles sitting on top of his nightstand. The light was coming from the crack below the door that led to his bathroom. “Dan?” I shouted. There was no response, no movement whatsoever. I held the gun out in front of me and pushed open the bathroom door.

The white linoleum was covered in blood. It was splattered all over the tiles on the wall. It had already begun to drip toward the floor, creating long red stripes against the white wall. Dan’s body was slumped against the wall, his head slacked and his jaw hanging open. The back of his head was missing. In his hand was an old revolver. I looked down at the gun. There were still five bullets left. The only one that was missing was the one that had traveled through Dan’s mouth, out the back of his head, and into the wall.

I had no time for sympathy or anger or whatever other emotion I was supposed to have at that moment, looking down on Dan’s wasted body. I had to get out of there. I had to move fast. Anyone could have heard that gunshot and called the police. The police could already be on their way. Dan’s suicide would be easy enough to cover, but they’d eventually find Jim’s body too. I had to leave, and I had to cover my tracks. I ran back into my bedroom and grabbed my backpack and my duffel bag. I’d be leaving on foot, so I would have liked to carry as little as possible. I took the gloves back out of the backpack and slipped them back onto my hands. I pulled the rope that I had used to strangle Jim out of the backpack as well. Then I dropped the backpack and the duffel bag near the back door and went back into the bathroom where Dan’s body was lying. I knelt down beside his body, careful not to step in any of the blood that had seeped down to the floor. I didn’t want to leave any suspicious shoe prints. I took the gun out of Dan’s hand. I took both his hands in mine and began to wring them around the rope that I had used to kill his best friend. I rubbed until there was visible rope burn on his hands. “Sorry to tarnish your good name, Dan, but you didn’t exactly leave me with much choice,” I said to what was left of Dan’s head. Some of the fiber from the rope and possibly even some of Jim’s blood should have gotten on Dan’s hands to match the rope burn. When I was done with that, I put the gun back in Dan’s hand. I took the rope and placed it on Dan’s night-stand, near the incriminating, empty bottles of beer. Then I grabbed my things and ran out the back door.

Crystal Ponds didn’t afford much cover. The palm trees and low bushes wouldn’t have worked in a ten-year-old’s game of hide-and-seek. They surely didn’t provide cover for a full grown man. Instead, I slipped from house to house, hiding along the unlit outside walls of homes, trying not to walk past any windows. Eventually, I got out of the neighborhood and onto the highway. Next to the highway there was a long stretch of barren woodland. It would provide me with enough cover to get away from Crystal Ponds.

I was just hoping to make it downtown before it started to get light out. There I could find some shelter in the crowds. Maybe I could even find a place to stay and rest for a couple of hours. A couple of hours, then I wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. On my way downtown, I passed a brand new condo development. There were only a couple of finished units, but one of them had a sign out front labeling it an open house. I decided to see if there was any truth in advertising and was lucky enough to find that the sliding glass door in the back had been left unlocked. I slipped inside, thinking that I could lay low in there for a few hours while the heat died down. I’d attract a lot less attention walking around with my duffel bag in the daytime than I would at four in the morning.

The little model home was fully furnished. There were even some cookies and bottled water in the refrigerator. I drank two bottles and tossed the empties in the garbage under the sink. I didn’t turn on any lights or any of the appliances, but I did set the alarm clock in the bedroom for six-thirty. It was three o’clock in the morning when I climbed into the bed. Three hours of sleep would have done me well. Unfortunately, when I lay down, it was like uncorking a bottle. All the emotion that I had suppressed upon seeing Dan’s body slumped on the floor slowly came to me. I ached, but I don’t know if I was feeling anger or grief. I wanted to be mad at Dan, mad that he couldn’t have waited one more day and let me leave with a clear conscience. But what I felt was grief, grief for this poor old bastard who’d had every last thing in his life taken away from him. What had I done? First I had almost killed a civilian in Montreal and now this. I tried thinking of you, to see if it could clear my head, but the image of Dan’s body slumped on the floor, streams of his own blood trickling down the wall around him, kept returning. I thought about the pictures on Dan’s bookshelf, souvenirs of a life gone horribly wrong.

“I’m sorry, Dan,” I whispered into the darkness. I hoped somehow that he could hear me. I closed my eyes but didn’t sleep. I just lay there for three hours, wishing time away. I thought about Dan’s first toast, when he took me out drinking, “To breaking the bastards’ backs before they break ours.” I guess the order didn’t really matter, did it, Dan? A broken back is still a broken back.

I got out of bed at six, a half hour before the alarm was set to go off. There was simply no sense in my lying in bed anymore. I searched the house for a phone. They had one phone set up, hanging on the wall near the kitchen. I picked it up and got a dial tone. I dialed the number for Intel. Jimmy Lane, Sharon Bench, Clifford Locklear. I was patched through to Allen.

“Don’t say anything to me unless the job is done,” Allen said as soon as he picked up the phone. So much for hellos.

“The job’s done, but there were complications,” I replied.

“You’re the fucking king of complications.” Allen was on a roll. “Is he dead?”

“My target?” I asked

“Yes,” Allen replied.

“Yeah, he’s dead.”

“Well, then, that doesn’t sound that complicated. That actually sounds pretty simple.” God, I hated him.

“He’s not the only person who’s dead. My host is dead too. He shot himself in the head.”

“Well, it serves your host right for fraternizing with the enemy.” Allen knew. The bastard knew. People knowing more than me was quickly becoming an unpleasant trend. “So how did you handle it?” Allen asked. It was a test.

“I planted the evidence of the murder on my host. I tried to make it look like a murder-suicide.” That’s what the papers would say, and the police, “murder-suicide.” In the end they’d be right; they’d just have the labels backward.

“Good work, kid. Very clever. Maybe I’ll make something of you yet.”

“Anyway, I need to get out of town. I did your job. I’m ready to go back to Montreal.”

“I’ll send you back to Montreal, kid, but it’s going to take some time. Rent a car. Start heading north. I have a few jobs that I want you to do along the way.” I wanted to argue, but I remembered how far that had gotten me last time. Allen gave me the next code: “Mary Joyce. Kevin Fitzgibbon. Richard Klinker.” Then he hung up.