What do Assassins do for Fun on a Saturday Night?
Keelie
A blanket is pulled over my shoulders at the same time I feel lips under my ear.
“Baby,” he whispers.
“Hmm?” I burrow my head into his pillow. Still so tired.
“I’ve gotta run an errand,” Asa keeps on as he swipes the hair out of my face. “Stay in bed. Levi is with the kids and I told him to keep them in the house. Your alarm is set and Ozzie is outside until I get home.”
I pry my eyes open to peek at him and wonder how long I’ve been asleep. “That’s a strange name.”
He smirks. “I guess it is.”
“Is it really necessary for someone named Ozzie to be here?”
He loses his smirk. “I hope not. I’ll be home soon. Go back to sleep.”
“I should get up.” I start to push away from Asa’s pillow, but he stops me.
“Trust me, they’re fine. Sleep.”
He leans in to kiss me, and when I sink back into his pillow, I wonder how I could be so tired after one of the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years along with a nap. But my eyes are so heavy it’s easy to give in. I barely hear the click of my door when he leaves.
*****
Asa –
Jarvis found Dooley.
I’m not surprised, Jarvis has proven he can find anyone over the last three years. We still have no idea what Dooley’s real name is, but Jarvis branched out and here we are, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in D.C. on a Saturday night.
Jarvis is with me and I’m following him through a dark hall to the back of a restaurant that wouldn’t look welcoming during the day and looks absolutely unwelcoming at night. The hall opens into a shadier room where semi-circular booths line two walls.
Jarvis explained that someone who works for Dooley arranged this meeting, but was told we had to be fast and arrive unarmed. He must know who he’s looking for and strides straight to the back corner where a man sits with a woman clinging to him like a bad rash.
Dooley’s head is shaved with flamed tats licking up one side of his neck. He’s got an arm draped across the back of the booth and the other is feeling up his rash of a woman in a way not meant for many establishments other than the kind we’re standing in.
“Dooley?” Jarvis asks.
He doesn’t greet us, but threatens, “I never forget a face. If you turn out to be under-fuckin’-cover anything, you’ll regret the day my name passed your fuckin’ lips.”
Jarvis holds his hands out low. “Told your man I’m not a cop. I barely work in this country, let alone have time to pretend I’m one when I’m here. My buddy has some questions about an incident yesterday, that’s all.”
I step forward. “There was a drive-by shooting yesterday out in the Plains, in the kind of neighborhood where there are never drive-bys.”
Dooley appears unimpressed. “The Plains? Why the fuck would I know what’s going on in the Plains? There aren’t enough people out there to justify the gas money.”
“I’m not asking about your business. I’m asking about the drive-by.” All I need to do is to find the car and I can chase the trail from there.
“Wasn’t me or my crew. Drive-bys are for chicken-shits. I don’t operate that way. You can leave now.”
I ignore his dismissal. “It was a dark blue four-door sedan, Chrysler 300, an older model, at least six or seven years old. You know anyone who drives that?”
His expression doesn’t flinch, but he angles his head and says nothing for a beat before he asks, “If you’re from the country, how’d you get my name?”
He knows something. I cross my arms and keep as cool as him. “Met someone who said they worked for you. I had nowhere to start, so I’m starting with you.”
“Yeah?” He snakes his fingers, heavy with knuckle brass rings up into his woman’s hair. “Who’d that be?”
I use his street name first because after talking to his parole officer, he doesn’t go by Raymond often. “Ritchie.”
If a drug dealer could look annoyed, this would be an example of it. “My fuckin’ cousin. He really fuckin’ dropped my name?”
I don’t answer, but raise a brow.
“He’s an errand boy at best. I don’t trust him with money because I don’t trust that he wouldn’t try to step out and work for someone else.” He shakes his head. “Doin’ business with family. Fuckin’ pain up the ass is what he is.”
I can see how that could be, but get back to what I want to know. “You know the car or not?”
The woman at his side is oblivious to what’s going on around her. She drops a hand to his crotch and starts going to town on his neck like a cow on a salt lick.
Dooley looks between the three of us and I can tell he knows, but instead of giving it up, he shrugs. “I’ll check around, but only because your buddy here offered me a future favor and he seems like the kind of guy I might need at my back someday.”
“Just remember, there were exclusions,” Jarvis intercedes.
Fucking great. Jarvis is offering favors to drug dealers. Who knows what kind of outstanding markers he’s got around the globe.
“Your man knows how to get hold of me,” Jarvis reminds him.
Dooley gives us a chin lift and we head for the door, not knowing anything more than we did when we got here.
When we get out of the smoke and grease laden building, I turn to Jarvis. “You planning on mowing his yard as a favor?”
Jarvis keeps his eyes forward as we move down the street. “I’m never in the country anyway—good luck to him cashing in on that favor. The more I looked into him, he’s a big man in the District—bigger than we thought. He dabbles in a lot of shit and knows what’s going down in the metro. Not a bad contact to have in case I need one in the future.”
Just when I was about to agree—especially if he can get me a name of who owns that damn car—my eyes lock onto a group standing diagonally across the intersection. Right in the middle is the man who’s disappeared for days—Raymond Wallace.
I pick up my pace and Jarvis looks over when I say, “It’s Dooley’s MIA pain-in-the-ass cousin.”
I have a feeling if anyone knows who drives that dark blue sedan, it’s him.
After glancing up and down the street, I head for my target with Jarvis right beside me. We make it half-way across the street when Raymond and his group catch wind of us, and the second he lays eyes on me, panic transforms his dumb-ass face. In that moment, he bolts.
I pick my tempo up to a flat-out run and we round the corner where he disappeared. The streetlights become fewer and farther between off the main drag, but it’s easy to spot him as he crosses the next street and turns again.
I hear footfalls behind us and Jarvis growls, “I’ll take care of them.”
I never take my eyes off my target, even when I hear grunts, groans, and bodies colliding behind me in the distance.
Raymond might be as tall as me, but he’s scrawny, and I catch up to him easily. When he jumps on a chain-link fence, fierce barks and howls break through the night. Raymond changes his mind and falls to the ground, landing on his back.
When I approach, he pulls his hoodie up from his waist and goes for a pistol tucked into his jeans. I kick his hand, dislodging the gun at the same time, and it skids across the sidewalk.
Raymond reaches up to fight me off with one hand while grasping for the gun with the other.
“Did you not learn your lesson last time?” I growl, putting a knee to his chest and grabbing his stray weapon at the same time. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Why the fuck’re you all over my ass?” His voice is husky from running and my weight on his chest.
“You’re a hard man to find the second time around. I need more info.”
Three dogs behind the fence are barking up a shit-storm, bringing us all kinds of unwanted attention.
“I don’t know anything about anything,” he sputters.
“Who else do you work for besides Dooley?”
“I paint houses sometimes. Told you I have a legit job.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” I warn. “Who else do you work for besides Dooley who’d be fucking around out in the country? There was a shooting in the neighborhood where we met. I want to know who did it and I want to know who you were making a delivery for that day.”
He says nothing but his eyes flare.
I give him more of my weight and can’t help my hand from cinching around his neck. “Was it you?”
His head shakes. “No. No fucking way.”
“You know about it, though?”
He keeps shaking his head. “No.”
“I’ve got surveillance video, Ray,” I add. “It was a dark blue Chrysler. Late model 300. Who do you know who drives a ride like that?”
He stays silent, but we both jerk when we hear a gunshot. It’s close and came from the direction where Jarvis broke off from me.
Fuck.
Losing my temper once and for all after the longest and most intense couple weeks of my life, I get in his face and yell, “Tell me what you know or I’ll put a fucking bullet through your head without a second thought.”
I hear sirens and whip my head around when I hear someone coming.
Jarvis appears from around the corner of the dilapidated building like he’s out on a stroll for a fucking ice cream cone. “That was annoying and the cops are on their way. He tell you anything worthwhile yet?”
I look back down at Raymond. “I’ve got your parole officer on speed dial and the cops are looming. Talk.”
His breath becomes shallow and I loosen my hold on his throat. When the sirens get louder, he finally sputters, “I heard it was supposed to be a warning—just a warning. They didn’t even know why they were doing it. It was a paid job.”
A warning?
The sirens are getting louder and I don’t feel like dealing with the cops. We’ll be here all night. “Warning for who?”
“I don’t know, okay?” He cranes his neck around to look down the street. He wants to avoid the cops more than anyone. “Some chick, I think.”
I freeze right before my hand constricts around his neck again. “What chick? Fucking answer me!”
“If we don’t get outta here, we’ll be here all night,” Jarvis echoes my thoughts.
Raymond wheezes. “Some girl, but I don’t know why. It’s just what I heard. Like I said, it was a paid job.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you kill him now, he’ll never be able to tell you who did it.” Jarvis is standing over us and, for the first time since I met him, is acting as the voice of reason.
I loosen my hold. “Who did it, dammit? Last chance.”
Lights from police cruisers peek around the corner.
“You’re in violation of your parole, Ray. Your choice,” I remind him.
He shakes his head and his jaw tenses before he gives. “Arsen and Jules, okay? But you can’t say it was me who gave ‘em up.”
I put all my weight on him before pushing off to stand and slip his gun into the back of my waistband.
“You gonna give me my gun back?” he asks.
“It’s a violation of your parole to have a weapon. I’d disappear if I were you, and the next time you see us, you’d better not fucking run,” Jarvis says.
Raymond shakes his head, but doesn’t waste any time. He disappears down a dark alley.
Jarvis and I make our way down the street at a normal pace.
“Who fired the gun?” I ask.
“One of them thought pointing a gun at me would stop me from holding down his buddy. The shot went wide when I kicked it out of his hand. No big deal.” Jarvis shrugs and looks over at me. “So, this is all about Emma?”
I exhale, trying to control my rage, and nod.
Someone tried to deliver a warning to my daughter in a storm of bullets. What the fuck could she have done to attract a warning like that?
I don’t know, but whoever did it is going to pay.
*****
Keelie
It’s after one in the morning and I’m wide awake. Just another reason why I shouldn’t day drink. I’m pretty sure I slept for over four hours.
I woke up to find poor Levi babysitting. He and Knox were playing more video games and Saylor had a right-fine mess all around them with crayons, markers, glitter pens, scissors, glue, and so much paper, I’m sure she killed a small forest.
Seriously, if today wasn’t a major parenting fail, I don’t know what would be. A man walks into my life, buys me a wine barrel, I get shot, and then poof—I become an irresponsible parent.
I could tell Levi was happy to be relieved of his babysitting duties. He grabbed his phone and escaped to the guest room as quick as a bunny right after telling me Emma locked herself in Saylor’s room all night.
Since it’s late and I’m merely the woman who’s secretly seeing their father in the pantry, I decided to leave Emma be. Instead, I got my kids to bed, ate cold Chinese food until I was stuffed, and started to wonder where Asa went.
Who runs errands at this time on a Saturday night?
The moment I ask myself this question, I put it out of my head. I do not need to know what a retired assassin does on a Saturday night out.
Still, I wait.
Tones I don’t recognize sing faintly from my laundry room off the kitchen. Startled, I look up from my Kindle I’m doing my best—but failing—to concentrate on. It’s not from my security system, but as I sit here trying to figure out what to do, I hear the garage door slam and Asa appears.
I start to smile, but it dies quickly when I take in his face. My time with Asa isn’t vast, but I’ve never seen him like this. His expression is hard and every muscle in his body is tense.
I stand and soften my voice. “Um, are you okay?”
He stalks through the kitchen and doesn’t stop, making his way toward the front of my house. “I’m gonna shower.”
“Oh.” I’m taken aback, wondering where he plans to shower, and decide to follow. “Do you need anything?”
He jogs up my stairs and calls without looking back, “I’m good.”
I follow him into my bedroom and see him digging through a huge duffle bag I didn’t realize he’d deposited here, pulling out a bottle of shampoo. It must have been during my marathon-nap. I don’t want to rouse the dogs or bother Emma and Levi, so I close my bedroom door. “Where did you go?”
“Just want to take a shower, Keelie.” Without giving me a glance, he reaches over his head and fists his shirt behind his neck and pulls. Tossing it to the floor, I get a good look of his wide, muscled back as he heads into my bathroom and, without shutting the door, I hear the water to my shower flip on.
Well, now.
Are we to the point of showering with the door open?
Since the door is still open, I guess Asa has decided we are.
I sit at the end of my bed and wait, my foot bouncing a mile a minute, thinking of Asa naked, wet, and in my shower. With the door open.
Why would he shut the door? Even if I haven’t seen him naked, I have felt every plane of his body. Every muscle, his heavy leg between mine, his arms … I had it all.
I’m not sure how long I sit here thinking about all that is Asa while wondering what’s up with his disposition. I don’t know him well enough to read his moods.
The water flips off and it’s all I can do not to lean back and peek in my bathroom. That would be embarrassing and weird, even if he did sort of invite it by leaving the door open. But when I hear him, I can’t stop myself from looking.
He’s tossing his dirty clothes in a pile on my floor next to his bag as he runs a hand towel over the top of his head. Stray water droplets are chasing one another down his chest and my white fluffy towel is tucked low around his waist.
He drops the damp hand towel on my carpet, which would throw me into a tizzy at any other moment that Asa wasn’t standing in front of me almost naked.
“So, what do assassins do for fun on a Saturday night?” I ask, not knowing what else to say and my voice breaks in the process. Looking up into his hazel eyes that are penetrating mine, I’m forced to lick my lips so I can form the words and ask what’s really on my mind, “And, um, where are you planning on sleeping?”