Samson
One last job, I tell myself. One last job and then I’m done. New York can go to hell. I’ll go away, somewhere, anywhere. I’ll meet beautiful women and see beautiful things. I’ll screw a woman from every country in the world and I’ll stand on the Great Wall of China and piss off the edge of it.
The life has been kind to me because I’ve always understood the life. My dad was a killer and so am I. That’s what I am: a killer. Not an assassin or a hitman or a contract man. Just a killer, and when you can come to terms with that, really accept what you are, this life will be kind to you. You kill, you get paid, and the cycle continues until you’re where I am: twenty-nine and rich, all my limbs intact, my face remarkably unscarred. These days I do less work, only take contracts I have some personal belief in, sort of like an artist who’s earned enough to paint or write or sing only what they want to now.
But if I’m an artist, I’m a Jackson Pollock type, the only difference being that my paint is blood.
In this case, it’s the blood of a worm of a man, a barely-human creature who doesn’t deserve to breathe and should’ve been put down a long time ago. A half-life man. Less than a slug. Less than an atom. I was never much good at school—deep in the life, even then—but as I understand it an atom is the smallest thing there is. He’s less than that, this man. Taking him out for a large paycheck won’t be a struggle, and that’s a fact.
I stand a few people over from him, watching Anna Hill. It was her father who hired me, a big-time businessman, wealthy, but with a complicated relationship with his daughter. I knew before I even met with him what he was going to ask me to do. I make a habit of researching my clients. He’s richer than God, or close, and yet his daughter dances to pay her way through college when he could easily pay it. He wants to pay it, too; I managed to get that out of him. So Anna Hill is dancing because she does not want to take his money. Instantly, I respect her. Working for it means more. That’s what my old beast of a father used to say.
Her father, Ian Hill, told me that Eric Lewis was married to his daughter once. I already knew this. But he also told me that he has contacts in prison, and all Eric’s talked about to his cellmates is that when he’s finally free, he’s going to kill Anna. He used to beat her when they were married. This from a man who was released early for good behavior. God bless the justice system.
The man will be dead by the end of the night. The evidence is conclusive, as the boys in blue would say. One of my hacker contacts found encrypted emails on his hard drive, sent through the dark web, containing all sorts of juicy details about how he was going to slice and dice his onetime beloved. Three different cellmates confirmed that he’d bragged about wanting to kill her.
But I like to be sure, which is why I found Eric in a bar two weeks ago and bought him a drink, and another, and another, until he began to talk to me. He talked about his bitch wife and how she never valued him or gave him what he needed. Then he’d leaned in, swaying from how drunk he was, and he’d whispered to me about how he was going to do her, do her nice and proper. I laughed with him, stifling my emotions. I couldn’t kill him there in the bar. It wasn’t one of my bars.
But here, tonight, it won’t be so hard.
I push past the people and tap Eric on the shoulder. With a visible effort—as though he is dislodging his haze—he turns and faces me. I laugh, a fake laugh, and he laughs too. “It’s you,” he grunts, in his stupid slow drone of a voice.
“It’s me,” I say, and we both chuckle. “You’re a fan of the Nicks, then?”
“The Nicks rule, sure,” Eric says. His lips spread into a snakelike grin, all gums. “But that’s not the only reason I’m here.” He stops for a moment. “You’re a good guy, aren’t you, Reed?” I’d told him I was Reed because I never take risks. What if he’d mentioned Samson Black to somebody and discovered that Samson Black is an infamous boogeyman?
“Of course I am, buddy,” I say, and then I slap him on the back.
He nods to the dancers. Anna: short and blonde and bouncy, smiling widely as she waves her pom-poms. It’s a fake smile, of course. I can tell that just by looking at her. It’s the same smile I’m using now, forcing the muscles of my face to contract in a certain way, with absolutely no emotion behind it. But when she shakes, wiggles, it’s magic. My mind tries to stray, but I force it back on track. There will be enough time to fantasize about this woman later. Maybe I’ll even introduce myself when this business is done. Doubtful, I think. I’ve never been to prison because I don’t do stupid shit like that.
“That’s my ex-wife,” he says, his beads of eyes glinting. “And tonight’s the night.”
“Wow,” I say, and I say it as though I am impressed, as though this wife-beating psychopath is my best pal, and he grins. I lean in. “When are you going to . . .”
He reaches up and touches my shoulder. Great pals. I want to snap his hand at the wrist. “After the game,” he says. “I’m going to wait for her in the parking lot.”
“Good man,” I say.
In the bar, I’d told him that I was an ex-con who was recently released for murdering my wife. And the fool had eaten it up. Eric is not a man to think about something he’s told. He is a man to strike a woman in the face and watch as the blood drips down her cheeks like tears, laugh and joke about it, and then, when the woman is lucky enough to escape, steal her life.
Killing him will feel good. Men who hurt women are no men at all.
“Maybe I should come with you?” I ask.
He should think: ‘I don’t know this man. I just met him in a bar. And why is he here, sitting near me at the game? Surely that isn’t a coincidence. Surely he followed me. I can’t trust him. I shouldn’t do anything tonight. I should retreat, come up with another plan, and lose this man’s trail.’
But that’s how a logical person would think, and men like Eric aren’t logical. They’re barely even human.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Eric says.
“Roll on out at the end of the game, then,” I say.
###
The man is almost frothing at the mouth as we thread our way through the crowd toward the exit. We’re not the only ones doing this, but I’m sure we’re the only ones who are leaving for good. Everyone else is going to the toilet or to get some food. I find myself jealous as I leave. The game, as much as I’ve been able to watch it whilst bullshitting to Eric, is a damn good one. If I wasn’t working, I know that my eyes would be glued to the court, and nothing would be able to unstick them. But work comes first, even before my amazement at a three-pointer scored milliseconds before the halftime buzzer sounds. I’ll watch the replays, I think reluctantly
Eric and I emerge into the parking lot, filled with cars but completely empty of people. It’s like we’ve wandered onto the set of one of those zombie movies that seem to be everywhere these days. The world has ended, and Eric and I are the only survivors. The thought makes me want to wretch. Just me and this ugly cruel man, wandering. Even if he was the only person alive other than me, even if he was my only chance at human contact, I’d still end the sadist.
He walks through the parking lot muttering under his breath, getting himself psyched up. There are some jobs where you have to worry about the body, but this isn’t one of them. Eric’s a large man, the type of man who’s just waiting for a heart attack, and the needle in my pocket is just that: a heart attack. No one will question and far fewer will care. He’ll be found amid the screams of a startled onlooker and then he’ll be carted off to a coroner’s office and forgotten about forever. Another job done. Most importantly of all, Anna will never be any the wiser. As far as she’ll know, her psychopath ex-husband came to one of her games and died of a heart attack.
We’re about halfway across the parking lot when I hear, far back near the entrance, the sound of the people emerging.
I have to act quickly, but I don’t panic. In one smooth motion I take the needle out of my pocket, step forward, and pierce him in the arm.
He looks down, dumbstruck, face already going slack, and then I remove the needle and step away.
“You shouldn’t have hit a woman,” I say.
Then I turn, pocketing the needle, and jog away.
###
Who? Why? And they must’ve been so damn fast. Too damn fast. To move it in between the gap of me killing him and the people emerging. What. The. Fuck.
I get the news when I’m sitting in my penthouse on the couch. The place is a bit of a mess, as it always is, but I never claimed to be a cleaner. Unless you count cleaning the streets of scumbags and woman-beaters and rapists and all the other filth that seems to haunt New York when the sun goes down.
I lean forward and turn up the volume on my plasma screen. The bottom of the screen is obstructed by empty beer cans, the coffee table radiates the smell of day-old pizza, and clothes are strewn across the floor between the couch and the TV.
But I can see well enough: see the reporter, and hear her.
“We have just had confirmation, Jack. The body was found in the trunk of a cheerleader’s car. The male, around twenty-five to thirty years old, heavyset, was found in the trunk of a cheerleader’s car earlier this evening by a Nicks’ fan who noticed a foot extending from the back of the car. The onlooker described the body as ‘jammed in there’.”
She was never meant to know, but even as the camera zooms in past the crowds and the police, I see that it is Anna’s car. They would’ve taken her for questioning, which isn’t a problem. She’s innocent of it all and she knows nothing. Plus, she has an alibi. There are cameras in the arena and the hallways, and they’ll exonerate her.
But it’s not the police that causes my hands to clench into tight fists.
It’s whoever the hell this phantom is, this phantom which appeared from nowhere and moved the body in the space of half a minute, who must’ve been watching me the entire time and must’ve darted from the shadows the second Eric fell.
I’m a predator; that’s how I think of myself. I lean back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling, a throaty groan escaping my lips. I’ve been outplayed, and now Anna is in danger. Whatever else this is, it’s an open declaration.
They’ve made her a part of this.
###
One thing you learn in this business is that very little happens by coincidence. The mafia, and even private clients, are big on messages. Sometimes you’ll have to arrange the scene in a certain way, or do the job with a certain tool, or record a short message before the grave is dug. Sometimes you’ll have to wait until a certain day or tell the target that they have so many days before the end. When some poor bastard pops up on TV with a finger in his mouth, it’s no random collection of meat; it was put there for a reason.
It’s the same with Eric in Anna’s trunk. He wasn’t crammed in there without any thought. I lean forward, bracing my forearms on my knees, and try to plot my course. I need a plan. Anna might be in danger. That’s my first concern. If I’m in danger, so what? I’ve been in danger my whole life. I don’t particularly worry about danger anymore. If it comes, it comes. It will whirl around me like a giant wave and I’ll emerge, untouched, and the hurricane will be bleeding.
I laugh softly. That was one of my dad’s lines, I realize. The giant wave of violence. Goddamn, don’t become like him. Dad was a good worker, a good killer, but a bad man.
No—Anna is my worry.
The thing is, if I go around there shouting to her that she’s in danger, that any minute whoever could smash through her front door and strike her down, she’ll panic. And it will ruin her life. Even the trauma of thrusting that upon her will ruin her life. I think I’ll need something I’ve had little use of in my life: tact. Perhaps with a side of charm.
‘But is that just about the job, Samson? Is that really just about the job?’ Uncle Richard’s voice floats through my mind. He was the man who raised me when Dad was too busy drinking himself half to death. He was a brutal killer, a nightmare for many, known as the Black Knight. Uncle Richard, grinning at me from deep within my mind, eyes glinting above a thick black beard. ‘Or do you like the look of this girl, eh? You can lie to yourself, boy, but you can’t lie to me.’
I shake my head, shaking that thought away. She is attractive, sure, but it’s not about that—
‘Liar.’
It’s not about that, I tell myself. It’s work, not pleasure; if I wanted pleasure I’d call up one of the bad girls, the ones whose skirts are perpetually around their asses, who wink and leer and jump on you because you’ve killed a man. Not a nice girl like Anna, a college girl, a girl with a life ahead of her that doesn’t involve killers—
‘Liar.’
In my head, I punch Richard in the face. He dissipates into black smoke, drifts away, his grinning smile the last thing to go.
“Maybe he’s right,” I mutter.
Then I jump to my feet and head for the door. Right or not, I need to do this. Charm her, calm her, and then ask her.
The problem is, for a man used to dealing with bad girls it can be a hell of a struggle to charm the good girl. I’ll follow my instincts, I decide, as I walk down the apartment stairwell. They’ve rarely failed me.