The Hitman: Dirty Rotters

by Sean McKenzie

  I was shivering.

  The coldness growing inside me was freezing me inside out. Organs were smothered in frost, encased by Arctic air far below zero. I couldn’t get warm. I couldn’t stop the trembling. It was a horribly unpleasant sensation.

  I moved my hands together for friction and looked over to the Russian who held a red box of crackers and ate handfuls casually. I could only think then that none of this was real.

  The big Russian smiled at me. He was probably a foot shorter than I was, but at least three hundred pounds heavier. His bulging form owned most of the backseat. His skin was grey like old meat, and his hair was shaved really short as if he were in the military.

  I still had not said a word. He ate crackers while I stared at him. He had the largest head I had ever seen, oval shaped like a football, like a Ninja Turtle but not that pleasant. It was more toad-like, with brown splotches everywhere. Everything about him suggested that he wasn’t capable of physically harming anyone. Save for his eyes. I could feel them burning into me. I knew he was dangerous.

  The Bear?

  His hand extended and I shook it. It was huge, but soft like a pack of marshmallows. My hand disappeared within his. His tone was strong and confident. He was used to dealing with lesser individuals. “I am Andrik. Russian Warrior. And you…?”

  He hesitated, waiting for me to say my name. I paused, thinking of what I should tell him, of what he might be expecting to hear. But he continued, somehow amused.

  “Fine. I have secrets, so a hitman should have his too.” His hand reached into his silky black suit jacket and withdrew an envelope. He slid it over to me across the leather seat, then ate a few more crackers. “For you, Hitman.”

  I took the envelope. It felt thick, heavy. I didn’t open it. My hands were sticky. I left red marks on the upholstery. Andrik didn’t seem concerned. I figured he had seen a pair of bloody hands before.

  “Disposing of idiot was unfortunate.” He stared over to the white Corvette. “Work for me very long time. Was good for me. But now you see how important competence is and what measures we go to keep it. There can be no mistakes, Hitman. Da?”

  I nodded.

  “Did idiot give you the list?”

  I nodded. It was still clutched tight into my right hand.

  “Very good then. Of course, now that you killed him, the task of collecting falls squarely on your shoulders.” He looked at me again for a moment. “But after what I see you do to him in small car, I think you can handle a few women. You are either a madman, or a lunatic!”

  Andrik laughed. It shook the seat. His voice was deep. He scared the hell out of me. “Maybe your mother was Siberian tiger, too? Da?”

  I was too shaken up, too confused then to even attempt an answer. Not an intelligent one anyway. It was better if I stayed silent. I was out of the pan and into the fire. Surely to him I was the same someone idiot pegged me to be. A killer, no doubt.

  Which I surely was now.

  The arctic freeze in my chest hurt to the point where I was losing focus of everything else. Something was happening to me. I never felt anything like it before and I was getting concerned. Andrik noticed my behavior. He put his crackers away.

  “Don’t worry about the mess. I will send peoples to take care of it. Go to your home and get cleaned up. Be ready for next assignment.” Andrik shifted in the seat with the ease of changing a lug nut with a plastic wrench, turning slightly away from me, as to suggest that we were finished.

  But I wasn’t.

  “What assignment?”

  “The girls, Hitman. Vladimir arrives Saturday night. Girls must be ready on Friday. We need time to prep them.”

  “Of course.”

  Which was probably the only right thing to say, if anything was. Details had probably been ironed out already with the real guy he had been waiting for. I knew I was dead the minute he figured I wasn’t him. I just needed to stay alive long enough to get back to the El Camino and get the hell out of there.

  “Work tomorrow,” he said. “For now, you rest. I tell The Bear all is taken care of.”

  The door at my left side opened suddenly. The driver stood outside, waiting. I exited, trying to remain calm, trying to not let the driver see my eyes, to see the fear in them.

  Like a man asleep in a trailer park hearing the tornado siren at two in the morning, I was concerned. Very concerned.

  I walked past the Corvette without a glance toward it and headed towards the El Camino. I moved fast. The warm air went unnoticed.

  Andrik worked for The Bear. So did Ponytail. They had some sort of operation going on that surely had something to do with the paper in my hand and the envelope.

  Once I reached my car, I entered without hesitation. I looked back and saw nothing of the Rolls-Royce, or the white Corvette. I opened the envelope slightly. It was full of one hundred dollar bills. Maybe five grand total. My heart pounded hard as if it were trying to bust the frost coating it. I started up the SS and tore out of there like the tornado was nipping at my heels.

  Sally wasn’t home yet.

  I showered and scrubbed my hands until the water went ice cold. I had the hot on full blast. The air was thick with steam. My skin was red. It must have been burning. I felt none of it. I was freezing. I was numb. I could do nothing to warm up. I was panicking.

  I tossed my clothes into Sally’s washer and used almost an entire bottle of soap, before crawling into the guest bed. I was trembling, shivering out of control, naked at the North Pole. I had turned the thermostat up to ninety and wrapped the blankets around me. I should have been sweltering. I should have suffocated from the heat. I should have been sweating bullets, soaking her sheets and pillow. But my teeth were chattering instead. My feet were rubbing quickly against one another like I was trying to start a fire using two sticks. All it did was tire me out.

  The cold was intense, frostbite within. Ice was smothering my organs. I exhaled frost. I hurt everywhere.

  My God, what is wrong with me?

  But as the spinning in my head began to drift me into slumber, I realized what it was. Not my skin, or even my body. It was my soul. The price paid for whatever happened inside the Corvette. I was a true Rotter now, soulless. I could hear Little B’s voice faintly, warning me.

  Be careful, Michael! You’ll become one of them!

  I felt for the first time what real regret was. Death was final. There was no taking it back. There was no making it right. There was no chance to. Who I was two days ago was just killed. My soul was lost.

  Sally woke me.

  She ripped the blankets off me and frantically looked me over. Her eyes held a deep fear and she spoke quickly.

  “What happened, Michael? Where are you hurt?”

  I rolled onto my back and felt the stinging in my eyes. I hadn’t slept long. It was still daytime. Sally grabbed my hands and gently looked over my knuckles. I sat up then and noticed for the first time that my hands were in bad shape. Skin around the knuckles was broke open like I had been beating on a cinder block.

  “What did you do?” Real panic in her voice.

  “I don’t know.” I trembled incoherently. “Something happened, Sally.”

  Sally gave me an incredible look. “I came home and found a bloody door handle. Your clothes are in the washer, and it’s so hot in here I can’t breathe. Don’t tell me that you don’t know what you did today. Don’t you dare shut me out.”

  She was on the verge of tears. I imagined how she must have felt. “It’s the truth, Sally. I must have blacked out.”

  Her look hardened. She said nothing.

  “I went to find the man Angelo said he talked to. And I did.”

  I looked away from her. She was a cop. It may have been in my best interest to keep quiet. But I’ve never been known for making good decisions.

  I told her everything.

  I watched her face change from being angry, to wonder, and then to something else. I wasn’t sure of what she was thinking as I fi
nished. She looked down and away. She said nothing. We sat in silence for a moment.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I need a beer.” She walked out. I heard the fridge door open then shut, heard the crisp snap of the can as she opened it, then saw her walk back in the room and then sit at the end of the bed. She took a nice long drink. When she was finished, she stared at the floor briefly, then nodded to herself, as if she had found the answer. The look in her eyes made me think it was the lesser of two evils though.

  “The Bear? Andrik? You’re way in over your head. Those two are the Red Square. Half the force are Russians residing there. And they didn’t get the jobs because of their skills. I strongly urge you to take the money and leave town. Go back to Florida. Forget this ever happened.”

  I mulled it over for a second. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Angelo Garboni.”

  “There’s nothing you can do to help him.” She finished her beer and gave me a sympathetic look. “The one man who could have helped you is now dead. His body will probably never be found. Which might be in your best interest.”

  “There has to be another way, Sally. I can’t just leave him in jail. He’s innocent.”

  “Twenty percent are innocent. The problem is his confession.”

  “Ponytail framed Angelo. He killed Pamela. But he was just doing his job. He was just following orders. There’s more going on than what we know.”

  “He must have hit you pretty hard in the head. I know what you’re thinking.” Sally gave me a blank look.

  I nodded. “I can’t get you involved, Sally. I’ll get a room someplace. The less you know, the better.”

  She stared at me like I was a lunatic. Which maybe I was.

  “Take out the main man, the entire operation crumbles. That’s justice, Sally. That’s how Angelo will get out.”

  Sally stood up. She paced back and forth. She sighed heavily. She was thinking. Hard choices.

  “Where’s this note?”

  I had to think back to where I had left it. I retraced my steps, what I could remember anyway. I did laundry, so I told Sally to look there. She left and came back a moment later holding the folded paper and the envelope. I had already told her about the money. She tossed it to the bed beside me. I told her to go ahead and read the note. I had still not even looked it over.

  Sally did. She unfolded it and turned it around. Her mouth opened and she gasped. I knew it was serious.

  “What?”

  “My God.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “It’s a shopping list. Blonds, brunettes. Heights and weights. Age and race.” Her skin paled. She slowly handed it back to me. I thought she was going to be sick. “He’s collecting women.”

  Pamela must have fit a description on a list one day.

  “I don’t like this.” Sally looked ill.

  I looked at the list myself. Sloppy handwriting, probably from someone not used to writing English. The sweat and pressure of my hand helped to smear some of the blue ink, so the letters at the bottom of the note was nearly impossible to read. Could have been three letters. The first could have been an A. I didn’t have a clue. Sally was right though. There wasn’t any other real explanation to what we were looking at. It was like a grocery list, two of these, three of those.

  Pamela.

  The cold that had consumed me earlier had just drown in an avalanche of heat. Angry heat. The best there was.

  I became mad at myself then for blacking out in the Corvette. I wished at that moment I had witnessed everything I had done.

  “I’m going in, Sally. This settles it.”

  “I’ll put a bulletin out for females in those categories to be on the alert.”

  “Don’t worry about them. It was my job to find them. All I have to do is kill The Bear and Andrik and the rest of the cockroaches scatter. The women won’t even know they were in danger.”

  “You’re too naive.”

  “No. I am just unwilling to fail.”

  Like an angel.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Sally said.

  I could feel my face getting hot. It must have been red. I was burning from the core out. Ice was melting. Frost turned into steam.

  “Michael? Are you alright? I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

  “I need to finish this.”

  Sally shook her head. “It’s suicide, Michael.”

  “Please, Sally.” I gave her a look.

  “Michael, we don’t have anything on him.” She said as a matter-of-fact. I gave her a hard look. She caved then. “I do have the address of, and this is all just hearsay, just street rumor, of a business he owns.”

  “Where?”

  “A recycling business in the heart of the Red Square.” She paused, reluctantly. She sighed heavily then gave in. “Maple Street. 14182.”

  “I could kiss you!”

  “I would rather you just remained alive.” She gave me a look then as if she had just sealed my fate. Maybe she did. “She must have been a great woman.”

  “I loved her, Sally.”

  “I know the feeling.” Sally stood quietly for a moment, then walked out of the room.

  The anger inside me was multiplying by the second. The room was too hot. I was sweating. I was normal again. A plan was already forming. Andrik said that someone was coming on Saturday night to pick up the women. It was Thursday evening. I had enough time to figure it out and end it once and for all.

  I sat on the bed then and pictured a set of six foot wings attached to my back.

  A moment later, I tried to figure out if they were black or white.

  Chapter 10