VINCE
January 13th, 2015
I sat patiently and waited for him to arrive, thinking of Sienna the entire time. Love drunk and feeling completely different than I had ever felt before, I realized Sienna was exactly what I had hoped Natalie would have been. It had also become painfully obvious I wasn’t actually ever in love with Natalie, and it took my having met Sienna to realize it. Since I was eighteen years old, I was in love with the idea of who I wanted Natalie to become, but not who she was. With Sienna, there were no changes I wanted to see made, nothing I hoped she would do differently, nor was there anything about her I either despised or even lightly questioned as being in need of adjustment. In summary, Sienna was the woman of my dreams, and I was now filled with thoughts of her every waking moment of the day.
In many respects I felt as if her presence had become nothing short of a necessity. Having experienced her in my life for the last six months, imagining living without her was something I couldn’t force myself to do. Her being a permanent fixture in my life undoubtedly made me a much better man. Not completely convinced she wasn’t making me a softer more subtle version of my former self, but realizing it really didn’t matter, I allowed my days to simply include her, silently hoping she didn’t turn me into a twat.
Parked across the street from where he lived with me slumped down in the reclined seat, the vehicle I was in appeared to be empty, at least to a passerby. The neighborhood wasn’t at all what I expected, and I wondered how a man who could afford to live in a $600,000 house couldn’t afford to pay a $30,000 attorney’s bill.
I felt odd in the rental car I was using, but trying to blend in while driving my old truck or riding my motorcycle would have been impossible. Being dressed in my button down shirt and dark blue jeans did very little to make me comfortable, but again, in this particular neighborhood I realized the importance of fitting in. With my line of employment, the fewer people who witness my activities the better off everyone was. After what seemed like an eternity, but was only an hour and a half according to my new watch, an Audi sedan pulled into the driveway.
After the garage door closed, I patiently waited a few minutes and proceeded with my ritual. I confirmed there was a round in the chamber, secured the Glock pistol in my holster, and began to open the car door. The sight of him walking down the sidewalk was a surprise, but a welcomed one. I turned and glanced over my shoulder as he continued down the walk. Apparently, he was walking to his mailbox, which was only a matter of ten yards behind where I was parked, but on the other side of the street.
Dressed in jeans, a pull over camouflage sweatshirt, and military style boots, he didn’t at all appear like I had expected him to, especially after studying his photos at the attorney’s office. Obviously a physically fit man, I suspected he may put up a hell of a fight or try to run, but there was no way he was going to outrun a bullet.
As he removed mail from the mailbox and inspected each individual piece, I quietly pulled open the car door and took a few steps in his direction. Half way between the car and where he was standing, he turned and looked over his shoulder.
“Something I can help you with?” he asked in an obviously aggravated tone of voice.
“Come on, Rudy. I’m Paul. Paul, you’re acting like you don’t remember me.” I said as I turned my palms upward and continued to walk in his direction.
In the decade that I had been employed in my profession, I had collected debts from all walks of life including businessmen, criminals, the accused, the convicted, drug dealers, drug users, and everyone in between. Although neighborhoods like the one I was in were uncommon and lower class areas were more frequently the hiding places of my targets, I never changed my defensive posture regardless. A man willing to walk away from a $30,000 debt and tell his attorney to fuck off, knowing all the while I was eventually going to pay him a visit was a threat regardless of where he chose to reside.
The difference for me was not where Rudy Vallencio lived, but that he was known to be a collector of firearms, and more than likely would be armed if he was in the home. I needed to keep him outside for our negotiations if possible.
With his back still facing me, he turned his head toward the house as if I hadn’t even spoken. Assuming I was going to need to say something else to keep him within earshot, I took a shallow breath and prepared to continue our one-sided conversation.
As I saw the mail fall to the ground in front of him, I realized he wasn’t planning on talking.
Everything went into slow motion. The sound of a vehicle’s squeaky brakes behind me, the fluttering of the mail to the ground, his pivoting toward me, and the pulling his pistol from the waist of his jeans were all as clear and precise as if they were a scene from a movie. The sound of his gun firing and a scream from behind me were equally – and unmistakably – clear, and everything happened before I was able to clear my Glock from my holster.
My fear was now a reality.
I had become a twat.
I cleared the Glock from the holster, instinctively dropped into a defensive crouch, and fired the weapon twice. The sound of three gunshots rang echoed, and Rudy fell to the ground.
Fuck.
I ran the thirty or so feet which separated us, picked his pistol up, and searched him for additional weapons. The two gunshot wounds – one in his abdomen and one in his chest – were each bleeding profusely. The sound of shouting from behind me caused me to turn around, and I was shocked to see a US Mail Jeep, complete with a bleeding mail delivery person inside.
Fuck.
Rudy wasn’t dead, but he would be in a short period of time. The woman in the Jeep appeared to be shot in the leg. I ran to the vehicle and gazed down at her leg.
Fuck.
I pulled my knife, cut the sleeves off my shirt, and tied them together. After tying a tourniquet to her upper thigh, I asked if she had a phone. Relatively alert, and surprisingly calm for having just been shot, she pointed to her purse.
“In…in my…purse. Thank you…for…saving…me,” she said.
I reached into the purse, removed the phone, pulled out her pack of cigarettes, lit two, and handed her one.
“Thank you,” she said.
I took a long much needed drag on the cigarette, inhaled, and let the smoke fill my lungs completely. I exhaled the cloud out into the winter air, inhaled another long drag, and held it deep in my lungs. As the smoke burned against my lungs and I felt the pressure build, I made the call no one percenter ever wants to make.
I called the police.