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"I contacted the people on the list you gave me and they all say you check out, but I gotta admit, I'm still a bit nervous."
"That's ok, Mr. Kendell," the man said as he reached in his coat pocket, "it's not everyday you hire a hit man." The man pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. "Smoke?"
The old man laughed but the laugh turned into a cough. He leaned forward on the park bench, catching his breath, all the while nodding his head. "Why the hell not? Won't do me any harm now."
The man knocked the fresh pack against the back of the bench a dozen times before peeling back the cellophane wrapper. He had said his name was Al. It wasn't, but it didn't matter. He handed Kendell a cigarette and cupped his hand around his lighter while the old man got it lit. He lit his own and drew in a lungful of smoke which he let out in a long, even stream.
"I started smoking when I was still in grade school," Kendell said. He started coughing halfway though his words but managed to get them all out. "How 'bout you?"
"Rangers. Not much to do in the desert besides smoke."
"Good for your airways, the ads said. But I can't blame 'em, I mean you have to be an idiot to think inhaling smoke is good for you. Nope, I knew what I was doing, just never thought I'd end up like this. My son hated cigarettes, wouldn't touch 'em. You better be careful, Al. You could end up like me."
The man looked at Kendell. He looked healthy enough, his skin was tanned and his eyes were bright and clear. Although lined with deep wrinkles and dotted with liver spots, he seemed trim, even athletic. He knew there were many types of cancer, some showed, some didn't. He took another long drag on the cigarette. There weren't many things in life he enjoyed as much as smoking, and he knew that said a lot about him. He waited for the conversation to turn.
"I suppose we should get down to business, Al. There's five thousand in the bag," he glanced down at the small brown shopping bag at his feet. "The other half will be paid out after the job. Is that alright with you?"
"That's the way we usually work it."
"Now you probably have your own ways of doing things and it's probably best I don't get involved."
"Again, that's the way we usually work it, Mr. Kendell."
"Alright, sure, but there's a few things that we gotta agree on first." Kendell shifted a bit, trying to look the man in the eyes. The man didn't make it easy. "I know you're the professional, but the job's gotta be done my way."
"This is not what we talked about before, Mr. Kendell."
"I know, I know, but just listen a minute. If you don't like it, you can walk off, no harm done. Alright?"
The man didn't say anything. He stretched his legs out and propped his elbows up on the back of the bench. Kendell took this as a sign to continue.
"The job's gotta be done by the shore. There's a long strip of beach, not very pretty, but secluded and quiet. There's a section with these steep sand bluffs, lots of tress and such along the top. You could set right up there and nobody would ever spot you. There's an access road 'bout a mile or so from the bluffs and that'll get you to a main drag real quick."
"So you're saying it's got to be a rifle shot?" He didn't like when clients tried to get involved. It wasn't out of an obligation to protect the client, but rather the need to make the kind of choices that would never occur to the amateur.
"Oh it's definitely got to be a rifle shot. And it's gotta be one shot. Like a bolt from the blue. I don't want no suffering."
It was always one or the other, he thought. Cheating husbands looking to get out without the mess of a divorce always wanted a quick and painless death for their wives. Knowing that they'd die that way seemed to relieve their conscience. But he could kill slowly, too, breaking bones and slicing flesh. That was the option the mob always went with. It was the one most wives chose as well.
The man watched as Kendell flicked his half-smoked cigarette across the pathway into a small puddle. He smoked quietly for another minute before making the same shot.
"Is the target dangerous?"
Kendell laughed. "Dangerous? That's a good one. Nope, he's as harmless as a fly."
"Is he connected?" he said but realized Kendell didn't understand. "Is he in the syndicate, a gang? Do you have reason to believe he's in the mob?"
"He belonged to the Lion's Club a few years back, but that's as 'connected' as he ever got."
"How do you plan on getting him to the shore, right by the bluffs?"
"Oh he'll be there, right on time, exactly where you need him."
The man looked over at Kendell. "You sure know this guy pretty well," he said.
"I ought to," Kendell said. "It's me."
From the top of the bluffs you could make out the outline of Sandpiper Island and you could see the half dozen sailboats taking advantage of the early spring winds as they angled their way through the whitecaps and the spray. Below a desolate stretch of beach, littered with a winter's worth of trash and driftwood, was bathed in the full noonday sun.
"It's not much to look at but when I was a kid I spent a whole lot of summers down on those rocks. There was always something washing up on the shore, but it seems like it's gotten worse in the past few years. I taught my son to fish off that big rock. He could dive off the rock, swim across to that point," he gestured to the far end of the cove, a mile away, "and back again faster than I could row the boat. All county swim team, all through high school." Kendell took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped the lens of his sunglasses. "You know they let that bastard off with out so much as a suspended license?" He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and added, "Bastard."
They had met earlier at a K-Mart parking lot, ten miles from the shore. They drove over in Kendell's pick-up truck, Kendell showing him the back trails he would need to use to find this spot. They agreed that the hit would take place the following week. Kendell would show up everyday to walk on the beach. On one of those days, the man would be there too.
As he drove, Kendell talked. The man didn't want to any details, but Kendell seemed more to be thinking out loud than talking to him.
"We read the insurance policy over again and again, looking for that proverbial loophole, but no, I guess they got the kind of lawyers who'd spot things like that. When my health insurance runs out, 'bout a month from now, give or take, the hospital starts to bill me. That'd be fine since I won't be around much longer than a year anyway, but the bill won't die with me, it gets passed on to my wife. Now Claire's a bit younger than me and she never did smoke so she'll probably live another twenty years or more. I got no pension and Claire never worked outside of the home, so you can see the problem." He looked over at the man and waited for a comment. When none came, he continued.
"My insurance policy's worth $50,000 and Claire could probably live on that. The house is pretty much paid for and she don't even drive. And it'll just be her. Our only son, Phillip, was killed by a drunk driver a month after his college graduation. He'd be thirty-two now. And that bastard is still walking around, free as a bird." He stopped talking for a mile, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he tightened his grip. His lips moved over words he kept to himself. He started speaking again as if he had never stopped. "Medicine is where the money's at. Right now my health insurance has been paying the hospital bills. You should see 'em. A thousand dollars for this test, six thousand for that procedure. It don't make a difference no how seeing as that the docs all say I'd be lucky to see Christmas. That fifty grand would be eaten up before I finally passed."
Kendell slowed at the edge of a wooded field and eased the truck down to the dirt road that ran alongside a stone wall. Twenty yards down the dirt road the truck was hidden from the highway. Kendell knew the roads well and pointed out deep ruts that were covered with last fall's leaves.
"The first thing I thought of was suicide," Kendell said minutes later when they started back down the dirt road. "I got nothing against it, religious or otherwise, but the lawyers at the insurance company must have counted on that too. They don't pay out on suicides."
"They have to pay out eventually," the man said. He didn't want to, but he found himself being drawn into Kendell's story. Outside the mob, he found that people liked to justify the murder they were hiring him to commit. It was always the same, just the names and genders changed. And it was always the target's fault, something he brought on himself. He didn't care one way or the other, as long as they paid. But Kendell was different. He was taking himself out, and that was fine too. As long as he paid.
"That's true, they gotta pay out if I die. Fifty grand. But," he said as he slowed the truck down at the end of the dirt road, "if I die by accident - hit by a car, struck by lightning, murdered - there's a little clause that kicks in called 'double indemnity'. The insurance company pays out twice the face value of the policy. One hundred thousand. Claire ought to do just fine with that."
Out on the bluffs, the man assembled his rifle. Kendell had insisted that the man demonstrate how well he could shoot. "I'm going to be on the receiving end, if you know what I mean. I wanna make sure I don't feel a thing." The man had resisted but Kendell had made it clear, no demonstration, no job.
The man assembled the rifle and although Kendell had hunted most of his life, he had never seen anything like it. The stock was some sort of burnished aluminum with odd-shaped open spaces, individually ground down to obtain a perfect balance. The single-shot, bolt action lacked any refined details and a short L-shaped tube hung below the barrel. It took less than a minute to assemble the rifle but two minutes to mount the scope. Kendell noticed that there were no markings on any of the parts. He noticed the tight-fitting latex gloves and wondered if the man had been wearing them all morning.
Kendell had set up a half dozen beer cans on a log, a hundred yards away along the top of the bluffs. "The distance'll be greater, but I figure if you can plug a can from this distance, you ought to be able to hit me alright."
The man wrapped a cord around a tree trunk, level with his right shoulder. He wedged his right arm up and through the loop and drew it tight with his left hand. He positioned the rifle and sighted through the scope.
"A southpaw, huh?" Kendell said as the man made final adjustments to his stance. "I guess it don't make no never mind."
The man had blocked Kendell out of his mind and focused on his breathing. He fired off six rounds in ten seconds, each shot sending a beer can flipping through the air.
"Well god damn," Kendell said as the man worked his arm free. He quietly disassembled the rifle and placed it back in the case.
"Let's head over and grab those cans on the way out," Kendell said. "No use trashing the place any more than it is."
Each can had a hole in the same spot, midway through the beer company logo. The man watched as Kendell picked up each can. He moved slowly, staring at each hole, and the man wondered if Kendell understood what they represented.
"In court he said that he'd been drinking beer all afternoon before he got in his truck. He didn't think a few beers would make a difference." One by one he dropped the empties in a plastic bag. "If I had more guts." he said but let it trail off without finishing.
Later, as they drove back to the K-Mart, Kendell explained the final payment. "For about the last year or so I've told my wife that I had a business arrangement with a equipment supplier, a Mr. Jones. Even though I don't have the shop anymore, I still tinker enough to warrant some hefty purchases. Here," he said, handing the man an envelope. "That's a bill for some parts for equipment in my shop. I made it out for $5,130.99. I hope you don't mind the extra money but I figured an even five grand would look strange. You drop in next month some time, my wife will pay the bill."
"I don't work this way, Mr. Kendell," the man said as he looked the bill over.
"I was a business man too, Al. Owned the shop for fifty years. Kendell and Son. Ok, so it's not worth much and maybe I wasn't the best businessman around, but I got enough sense not to pay a man till the jobs done. No offence, Al, but didn't you want fifty percent up front? My wife will pay, no questions asked. I pay my debts and she knows it."
The man sighed and slid the envelope into his coat pocket. He hoped that the old woman would honor her late husband's debt. If not, he'd still get his money but he preferred if it remained professional. He pulled his cigarettes out and offered one to Kendell.
"Remember when they had cigarette commercials on television?" Kendell said as he pushed in the dashboard lighter. "Boy, they sure were pretty. Those sunsets and those horses." One hand on the wheel, the other propped in the open window, despite the coughing Kendell seemed to enjoy his smoke.
"I guess it's justice," he said as he shifted the cigarette to the side of his mouth. "Here was this perfectly healthy body, strong, young. And what do I do? I kill it. Can't blame anybody but myself for that. My vices ," he said and gave a short laugh. "You know what that word used to mean? Wickedness. Evil. Now people treat a vice like it's a virtue. Hell, most of 'em are legal. And once you get hooked, there's another whole set of vices to cure you. Get a patch, see a shrink, join a club. But that don't change the vice. It's still there, part of your soul, eating away at you."
Long ago he had stopped believing in souls and guilt and vice and justice. In his line of work you couldn't afford that luxury. He could try to explain it to Kendell but that would mean thinking too much about it and that was another luxury he couldn't afford.
"But like I said, it's my fault, and now I gotta pay for it," Kendell said as he ground the cigarette out in the empty ashtray. "Just one last thing," he added. "Don't miss."
Four days later, as Kendell stood skipping stones between the waves, the man did not miss.
"I hope you don't mind cash, Mr. Jones," Mrs. Kendell said as the man scrawled a fictitious signature on the receipt. "I haven't sorted out Hank's accounts well enough to use the checks yet."
"No, this is fine," the man said, adopting the light and casual approach he thought would go best with the role he was playing. "Mr. Kendell often paid in cash."
"I appreciate your patience, too. The insurance company had to review the police file before they would send a check. But that's all in the past now."
"Yes it was quite a shock to us as well," the man said, putting the money in an envelope and then into his coat pocket. "I knew that Mr. Kendell's health had been poor but this." He waved his hands slightly to illustrate his surprise.
"His health?" Mrs. Kendell said. She squinted, as if it would help her understand. "Hank wasn't sick a day in his life."
"I had heard he was in the hospital. Something about cancer?"
"Oh God no. Hank just had a check-up last month. The doctor told him he was in perfect health."
"But the cigarettes."
"Hank hated smoke, had me smoking outside until I quit. No," she said nodding at the photograph of Hank Kendell on the side-table, "Hank was in perfect physical shape. Emotionally, well, you know. He never really recovered when our son died. I wanted him to seek help and told him that his depression was treatable, but Hank could be so stubborn."
The man nodded, pretending he recalled Hank's endearing quirks. "It must have been hard on him. I know he was close to his son."
"It was hard on me, too, but I learned to put it away. I tried to get Hank to move past hatred, to work towards forgiving and accepting, but no, he kept his fires stoked. I loved him so much but that anger made it hard to be around him at times." She walked towards the front door and the man followed. He was glad there had been no trouble.
"I remember him saying that the courts didn't assign any jail time," the man said as he fished in his coat pocket for his car keys.
"It was Judge Hendricks. He said that there had been enough suffering already."
"But it was a D.W.I. I know that Mr. Kendell felt that there should be some punishment involved."
"Punishment. That's all Hank ever thought about, I'm afraid," Mrs. Kendell said.
"I can understand that," the man said. "If my son was killed by a drunk driver, I'd want revenge, too. Just be thankful that your husband had more sense than to hunt the guy down himself."
Mrs. Kendell tilted her head slightly. "What guy?" she asked.
"The drunk driver. The guy in the other car who killed your son," he said, opening the door.
"I'm afraid you're mistaken," Mrs. Hendricks said. "There was no other car."
"But it was a D.W.I.," he said, turning around.
"It was," she said. "And Hank was driving."
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