I shut the door and returned to my seat on the couch.
I picked up my phone and searched for complications of type one diabetes. My screen filled with search results from the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and the American Diabetes Association, and a quick scan revealed cardiac, kidney, neurological autoimmune, and ophthalmic complications were a risk even if the condition was well managed. I had no idea it could be so serious, and it seemed Toni had been right to flag the need for money. These would be choppy waters to navigate in a leaky boat. We needed something more solid beneath our feet.
But could I kill a man?
This wasn’t just about my debts anymore. If Skye was sick, there was no question I had to do whatever was needed to take care of her. And if I could put a little money in my pocket, I might even be able to fire Mitch Hoffman and buy justice in the form of an Ivy League, high-flying lawyer. Someone with perfect teeth, easy charm, and a back-of-the-hand loophole map that could clear me of assaulting the mechanic and trashing the sheriff’s car, and make sure I’d be around to be a better father. I couldn’t go to prison now. I couldn’t leave Skye and Toni. Not with this hanging over us.
You’re nuts, I told myself. No one hires a killer like this. Even if you had the balls to kill Walter Glaze, the money would never come. It’s a scam.
I grabbed the rest of the cash from behind the cushion and looked at it closely. Seemed real enough, and my would-be patron claimed to have paid my bail. Why couldn’t this be real? Who said a killer had to be hired with a briefcase full of bearer bonds? This is the digital age. People put out contracts on Craigslist. If you wanted someone dead, didn’t it make sense to choose an assassin who had no connection to you?
Is that what I was now? An assassin. This morning I’d been a deadbeat drunk.
I picked up my phone and typed “Walter Glaze Ultima” into the search bar. My screen filled with search results. Most related to reviews of his popular nightclub, but as I scrolled down, I saw a couple of links to The Gray Letter, a gossip site. I clicked through and found a story that suggested Walter had underworld connections. It seemed my anonymous patron was right about ties to organized crime.
I couldn’t take this seriously, could I?
A hundred grand.
The sum rolled around my mind like a cloud swollen with potential. After a long, hard drought I needed green rain.
Could I kill a man? Could I murder someone with malice aforethought? Could I double-tap someone at short range?
Why should someone bad enjoy life if their end could ease my daughter’s way through life?
Part of me couldn’t believe I was even considering an execution, but make a person sufficiently desperate and their mind will turn to anything. And Toni was right; Skye needed money not just if she was ill, but for her future, for college. She needed a good start in life. Toni and I had our shot, and we were broken and battered beyond repair, but there was still hope for Skye.
The sins of the father shouldn’t pass to the child.
Skye was shiny and new, and I prayed with every ounce of my depleted faith that our daughter wouldn’t end up like either of us. If the offer of a bounty for the head of an evil man might be real, didn’t I have a responsibility to consider it?
Put yourself in my shoes. Sitting in the wreckage of a life gone most bad, facing jail and ruin, and someone throws you a lifeline, not only for you, but for your loved ones; what would you do?
People have killed for greed, revenge, ambition. How would it hurt the world to lose one evil man and gain one healthy successful young woman?
I mean, what would you do if someone offered you a way to transform your life? How much would it take? Does everyone have a price?
Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a rare choice. People are faced with this very question every day. We just don’t see it clearly because it’s obscured by the pollution of life, but allow me to blow that smoke away. The CEO who knows he or she could reduce workplace accidents, deaths even, by implementing higher standards at a mine, the hospital board that could improve clinical outcomes by investing in better diagnostics, the clothing company that could increase health outcomes for sweatshop workers by setting minimum wages for subcontractors; life is taken from people every single day. We really notice only when it’s taken quickly, or when a lot of people are robbed. When it happens slowly, far away, it’s invisible.
Think back to your most desperate moment, when you felt defeated. Imagine yourself drowning in the sea of life, overwhelmed by wave after wave of bad news, bad luck, bad judgment. Imagine if someone had thrown you a lifeline. No matter how thin and tenuous, you’d have grabbed it even if you knew it would snap, because holding on to something is better than dying with empty hands.
Desperation makes people cross seas in tiny boats, ingest baggies full of smack, sell their minds, bodies, and souls. My anonymous patron had put up my bail, so this person clearly had some money, and I was already in his or her debt. Desperation made me take the offer seriously. A stronger man might have laughed it off.
One life, and I could change everything.
One soul.
This wasn’t a decision I could make alone. I needed advice and I was short of friends, so I stuffed the remaining fifties into my pocket, grabbed my keys, and headed for Rick’s.