The Antepenultimate Assassin

The phone in his back pocket loudly began to growl as a wild animal does when feeling threatened. The ringtone had been assigned to those entries in his contact list that were unwanted yet impossible to ignore. It was, after all, his livelihood. He answered and began speaking without even looking to see the identity of the caller.

“Ten million dollars.” He spoke into the phone and immediately pulled the device an arm’s length away from his ear. He walked to the refrigerator while the person on the other end complained, rather demonstratively, in a stream of words interlaced with vulgarities and pleas for mercy.

“Now it is twelve million dollars.” He pulled out a Diet Mountain Dew from the cold of the refrigerator and poured it over ice in an insulated mug. “You know what happens if you complain. Continue and you may engage in sex with yourself after I hang up.”  He walked over to the easy chair in the living room and turned on the television. Switching to the all-news channel he muted the sound before putting the phone back to his ear.

The caller had calmed down and explained that he was desperate and would gladly pay the price if he could see about this piece of business at his earliest convenience. He was reminded that he knew what was needed and looked back at his phone. In a moment he received an alert from his financial institution that the appropriate amount had been deposited by wire. Once more putting the phone back to his ear he gave instructions as to where and how to send the particulars. Thanking the caller for the business he told the client to have a nice day before hanging up.

Laughing out loud as he spoke to the air in the room, “If these clowns would call me first, it would only cost them million a pop,” he finished his drink and reminded himself to eat before he left to go to work. Making himself a frozen dinner, chicken and roast potatoes, he opened his laptop and downloaded the information on the job. Aaahh! He complained to himself when he read the particulars. The target was a twenty something girl who had inherited quite a few billions of dollars and the other family members decided it was time for her to meet her maker. Scumbags! He went and got another Diet Mountain Dew. Once he left for a job all he would drink is tap water in wherever the job happened to be. He carried field rations enough for the length of the job with the proviso that if he ran out, he would just fast. The tap water was danger enough given the odd places he often worked. He was not about to ingest parasites and/or bugs not sufficiently cooked.

His name is Jeremiah Jabloncesceu and he is a contract killer specializing in difficult targets. He is something of an odd fellow and most clients did not like calling him because of the manner in which he operated. He always left the bodies out in plain sight at locations where the maximum amount of people could see the body before the police showed up. He never leaves any clues or evidence from which the authorities might discover his identity. He ALWAYS leaves the body with numerous horrible mutilations denoting that the individual suffered long and hideously. His name in the print and news media is, wait for it…The Mutilator.

He had not always been like this. When he first got in the hit for hire business it was quite different. He would ask the client as to their preference in how the body was found, and he never made any kind of splash in the media. He was not well known and never made much in comparison to his competition. He would do a murder for as little as low four or five figures.

Until he took a contract from a scorned woman who wanted her philandering husband castrated before being shot to death.

She paid him extra to leave the body in a public place so that the entire world would know what a cheating bastard he was. As soon as he got paid, he made plans to disappear and did so successfully. The woman was promptly arrested and is serving a life sentence without parole. The police did an extensive search for the killer and came up empty. She is currently working for the prison chaplain and praising the Lord for helping her change. An ambulance chasing law firm told her they would get her out if she let them write a book about her having her womanizing son-of-a-bitch husband killed. She agreed and is still shuffling bibles while the law firm has published the book and move into much nicer offices.

Jeremiah enjoyed the entire business and began doing similar stunts. This did not sit too well with those that broker professional hits and he saw some lean times. There were a few jobs come through which he was able to get, but not that many. He almost thought he would have to find a regular job until happenstance saved him and he was given another chance when a job came in right up his alley. He found the job interesting and, being a good businessman increased his fees commensurate with the special needs of the job.

A music executive commissioned a hit on a well-known rock star which was promptly botched…twice.  The first guy tried to give him a hotshot of drugs without taking into account the tolerance level of a two decade rock star drug addict. The second guy tried cutting the brake line on the limo taking him to a concert. Turned out the dope was primo which ensured that he wasn’t going to show in the first place because he thought it was Thursday instead of Friday. The limo was sent out after another client whose family gave him a wonderful sendoff at the funeral without asking any questions. The driver blew a .14 and went down for vehicular manslaughter. Jeremiah simply knocked the rock star with a sleeper hold from behind and slit his wrists in the bath tub making it look like a drug induced suicide.

After that he got all the jobs where he was the third choice. This gave him the latitude to charge exorbitant rates. It also gave him houses or apartments in several major cities and an island in the south pacific with a full time staff of female servants who worked topless and had amazingly loose morals.

This job, being a young girl, made him think twice. Killing had not been a problem. He went to war in the Middle East as an Marine sniper when he was eighteen and never once had any lasting feelings about it. Not even the children who occasionally pulled out a grenade to toss at the American monsters invading his or her country. He did get a twinge the first time he had to kill a pregnant woman. Fortunately it was not much of a twinge considering he had watched her strap on a suicide vest. He shot her right in the chest and blew her helpers to kingdom come along with her terrorist ass. He could justify that. A young heiress did not fit the same description. He had to focus on the twelve million and push it out of his head.

The trip to the job was uneventful. Jeremiah was not a big man so he easily fit in the economy seats. This gave him the added benefit of being, more or less anonymous in the crowd boarding and exiting the plane. He accepted the water offered by the attendant and the bag of nuts. When it came time for the meal, he feigned sleep and was left alone for the rest of the flight. Upon landing he made his way from the luggage pickup to the shuttle bus which deposited him at the closest subway station outside the airport. He found a motel and settled in for the night. He opened the file on the girl and the family to study. His work would begin the next morning.

The potential victim was an enigma by any definition of the word. She worked as a barista at a coffee shop near the college she attended, and lived in the dorm even though she was a senior as well as the richest person in the state and all the states bordering. She bought clothes at thrift shops and set up a table every Sunday at the Arts fair, after church, where she sold jewelry and trinkets she made herself. Nothing about her was remotely intimidating or selfish. She came to holidays with gifts from her collection of arts and crafts for all who attended. The file reported that she was in excellent health and never drank or did drugs. Well, she did dabble with some marijuana but only because she lived in a state where it was legal. She never bought off the street but in dispensaries. Her bank account showed that the amount she bought was ridiculously small for a college girl.

As he read, Jeremiah thought there had to be some deep dark secret lurking about to explain why anyone would want to have this girl killed. Stepping out of character, and in violation of his own better judgement, he decided to find out why.

It turned out that she had inherited the money from her Great Grandfather. She had always been his favorite person in the family. She woke up with a smile and stayed that way all day long. Being from a rich family she declined the advantage of private school and attended the nearest public school. She asked when she was four years old if she could go to church. They sent her in a limousine but she paid the driver from her allowance to drop her off at the subway and pick her up at a certain time so that no one knew she was rich. She would give her expensive birthday and Christmas gifts to kids at her school that didn’t get anything. When the Great Grandfather got sick with cancer, she spent all her time outside of school taking care of him. She told every person in her life that she loved them several times a day. She was the only one that cried at the old man’s funeral.

The family embraced the other side of life by being terribly evil people. They tried to stop the will from being read. They were enraged when they discovered that the old man had locked down all the control of the business and money to the girl who had just started college. She went to a local state university that was paid for by an academic scholarship she earned for herself. The job was so that she could eat and live without using any family money. There was a class action suit filed by the family that was dismissed five minutes into the first day of the trial. The old man had started by slinging coal off the back of a truck when he was ten years old and from there he worked his way into making his billions. He made sure that the will was iron clad and irreversible. He left each member of the family, except the girl, one dollar. Their only recourse was to have her killed.

Jeremiah showed up at her coffee shop the next morning with a book and sat slowly sipping Irish Breakfast tea while he watched her. She refilled his cup ignoring the big sign on the wall stating that refills were a dollar. The place was packed and everybody seemed to know her name. She had a smile that lit up the room and went about her job as if it were a mission instead of a crappy job at an overpriced coffee shop. A scruffy looking guy came in dressed poorly and appeared as if he had seen better days and needed a bath. The girl stopped what she was doing and came from behind the counter and hugged him tightly and long. She shooed a couple of kids from their table and held the chair for her friend. She went back behind the counter and came back with two extra-large coffees and two breakfast sandwiches. She sat down and placed all her attention on the man even to the point where she waved off her boss when he told her it was getting busy. They finished eating and she cleaned the table before embracing the man again, this time kissing him on the cheek before going back to work.

At the end of her shift she collected her tip jar, which was full to the brim and overflowing onto the counter. She grabbed a handful out of her jar and put it in the other baristas jar without being seen. She stuffed her tips in a paper bag and left out the front door without regard to who might be watching her leave with what looked like almost one hundred and fifty dollars. Jeremiah left behind her and followed her to a church where a small priest was trimming the hedge out front. She handed the paper bag to him and bowed her head while the priest placed a hand on her head and gave her a blessing.

Jeremiah watched her walk away without following. He stood and stared at her back until she disappeared in the crowd entering a subway station. Without realizing he was speaking out loud he asked himself, “How in the world am I going to kill and mutilate Mother-Freaking-Theresa?”

He went back to his motel and ordered a pizza and a six pack of beer. He spent the night and most of the next day struggling to convince himself into completing the job. It wasn’t as if he had never killed a good person before. Hell, most of the time he paid no attention to who they were or acted. It had always been kill them, mutilate them, and disappear. This girl is special. She is, well, good. She deserved, to be left alive. He changed that…this girl HAD to stay alive. The worst part was that he had no idea why she must remain alive. He did not like this confusion, and thought of just giving back the money he’d been paid. That was a momentary lapse in judgement. If someone was prepared to spend twelve million to kill this girl, they probably merited being the one on the end of his skills. Besides, his lifestyle outside of work was expensive.

He went to bed, sleeping fitfully. Tossing and turning the entire night accompanied by dreams he thought he had long since left behind. Shooting his first child, the pregnant woman with the suicide vest, and the van full of aid workers he put a RPG round into killing them all. All left over horrors from being in a war. His assassinations since were mostly bad people and never bothered him. Hell, the dreams had always been there but, until that night, had never really bothered him. Now it seems he had grown a conscience. A paid-in-full conscience that was giving him fits. The only relief in the entire night of arguing with himself came when he thought of killing the people who had paid the twelve million.

He would have too murder the contractor also. The clients(s) probably paid much more than twelve million when his commission was added. The total undoubtedly was twenty or twenty-five. It would not be easy, but a dive into the contractor’s financials would tell everything. Hmmm…

A week later the news, both print and digital news was splashed with a report of fifteen members of the richest family in the state being discovered dead. They were all found in a conference room on the top floor of the family skyscraper. Scene investigation and autopsies were going to be a nightmare for the police. Crime scene techs were pretty sure each had been killed in a different manner. Some appeared to have had heart attacks, several had no outside evidence as to their demise, two had suffered blunt force trauma from an unknown source, one had its throat sliced open, and the last one was found in the restroom with its wrists slit.

Jeremiah watched from the comfort of his island, lying in a hammock with a goofy straw hat, sunglasses, and white sunscreen on his nose while sipping a drink made in a hollowed out pineapple with a straw and an umbrella poking out. It took three months to ascertain that it had been a mass murder. The baffling part was that security cameras had no record of anyone but the family members entering or exiting the room. It had card code entry on the elevator and palm print entry on the door to the conference room. The police had called the FBI in whom, it turned out, were equally unable to fathom what had happened other than the fifteen dead bodies.  

A few months later the assassin sat in the coffee shop sipping a cup of tea while the girl sat with her scruffy friend eating breakfast. Two rather large men stood at the door checking for cameras or other evidence of paparazzi or reporters. She had got through all the funerals, and the will reading naming her the sole heir only to surprise the entire world. She sold all the holdings converting everything, including her own fortune, to cash and set up a foundation to give it all away. She kept back some to pay for security to keep the gaggle of people wanting to interview her away. She just went back to her life as usual.

As he followed her to the church for her blessing and subsequent subway stop his phone began growling. As always he answered simply saying, “Ten million dollars.”