INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  When Justin had come in and seen Dead Bill at the bar, he hadn’t thought anything of him right away. Dead Bill just sat there, nursed a beer, ate free pretzels, and looked just like any other barfly. But when Justin took a good look at him, saw the way he was dressed and the black cowboy hat next to him on the empty stool, he knew he had to talk to the guy.

  Justin loved the weird people he ran into at bars around the city. Sure, there were other places he could meet the strange and unusual, but people at bars tended to wanted to talk, to tell their stories. And some of the stories he’d heard had been so good, so unique, they had to be told.

  That’s why he’d started his blog in the first place. He’d speak to people he met, ones that seemed like they had a decent story to tell. Some of them rattled on and on for hours, went from one story to the next, then retreaded over the same ground again and again. Justin would sit and listen to it all. He didn’t interrupt much, nor did he ever mention it if they repeated themselves. He just listened, then went home and edited everything down to something interesting and marketable. Once he felt it was good enough, he’d post it online for people to read.

  He called the blog The Secret World Under Our Noses and, within a month, the site received nearly three-hundred-thousand hits a week. It became so popular that the New York Times picked it up. Millions read his postings. He knew there were so many strange and interesting people in the city that he’d be in business forever—as long as he could keep hunting down the good tales.

  When he pulled up next to the city cowboy, he hoped it would be good. He switched on the tape recorder hidden in his shirt pocket and then introduced himself. The man turned, gave him a nod, and then went back to his beer. Justin was worried that he’d be hard to crack, but a moment later the man turned back and said his name was Dead Bill. Justin was sure the story he’d get from the man would be the best to date.

  “What do you mean by that? The thing about how you’ve been killed so many times.”

  “You’re a curious sort, aren’t you?” Dead Bill asked and downed the last of his beer. “Maybe you should order me a drink if you’re going to try to get all intimate with my brain.”

  “Sure.” Justin said and called the bartender over. “Can we get another beer for him, and just water for me?”

  “Water?” Dead Bill scoffed and slapped Justin on the back. He shook his head and looked around the bar as if to see how many others heard the dumb words leave the kids mouth. “Look here, kid, if you want to sit with me and ask me questions, you’re gonna need to man up and get something with more balls than a glass of water. Water is for plants and dogs, and you don’t look like neither. Jack, get this boy same as I’m having.”

  “No problem, Bill.” The bartender said and put two beers down.

  “Now, kid, why you wanna know all this anyway? You some sort of cop? A reporter? What is it? I mean, I don’t mind tellin’ you. Hell, I love to talk. I think I’ve a voice as sweet as sugar, but I’m wondering. Not many people come in here with the curiosity you have.”

  Justin wasn’t sure if he should tell him the truth. The man might seal his lips and walk away without as much as a whisper of “have a nice day,” but there was no good way to lie about it. He usually told people what he did, and that made them want to talk even more. One thing he’d learned in all his time doing the blog was most people want to have their stories—even the mundane ones—out for others to read or hear; as though it was a way to leave something about them behind. So, Justin explained about the blog and hoped the old cowboy wouldn’t mind. As he told him, Dead Bill smiled brightly and nodded.

  “Well, hell then. That’s as good a reason as any, I guess. Might be good advertisin’ for me too.”

  “How so?” Justin asked.

  “Well, I offer a service, you see. It’s part of the reason I’m called Dead Bill. You might not know this, but some people just need to get things off their chest. They can do that with a priest, with a hooker. A few people might write in a journal, or just beat their kids to get these things out. But some people need to come see me and get into a little murder. You’d be amazed at how gettin’ your hands all warm with blood can heal a soul. That’s what I offer them. A person they can kill guilt-free. Me. No worries of goin’ to jail or havin’ their souls condemned to Hell. It’s not a thing many, if any, can offer.”

  “Wait,” Justin said, not sure he understood the old cowboy. “You mean you let people kill you? I take it this is some virtual version of murder. Like a video game thing or something acted out like those murder mystery weekends, right? They don’t actually kill you?”

  “Didn’t I tell you my name is Dead Bill, son? I’ve been shot, stabbed, decapitated, disemboweled, exsanguinated, electrocuted, dismembered, and drowned. People have ways they want to kill someone and I let them use me. I have a talent for being killed and wakin’ up right as rain the next day.” The old cowboy said it so easily, believable and nonchalant, that Justin started to think the guy might not even know he was full of crap.

  “That makes no sense. There’s no way someone could kill you and you’re still here.” Justin said, and immediately thought about just getting out of there. If the old kook planned to tell him something so farfetched that there be no way for him to use the story, he figured he should just move on and find someone else to talk to.

  Yet, there was a part of him, the child inside maybe, that wanted to believe the fantastic story, to hear him out. He briefly looked around the bar, looked for other marks that might give him a better story, but it looked like slim pickings. So he stayed in his seat and let the man that called himself Dead Bill finish his story.

  “There’s plenty in this world that makes no sense and ain’t right, son. But it is what it is. When I was twenty, I was shot twice by some druggie that decided to rob a liquor store. He got all twitchy at the end, decided he didn’t want witnesses, and I took a round of buckshot to my chest. I saw the room get all dark, felt my body go as cold as a lake in January, and then saw that light everyone talks about. Not sure if it was heaven or not, because I never found out. As soon as I started to move toward that warm light, things got dark again. That’s when I woke up the next day to see the sun shinin’ and hear the birds singin’. Not a scar on me. And I wasn’t in a hospital or still in the liquor store. I was in my old comfy bed in my small but cozy house.

  “Months later, I got hit by a car that lost control and took out a group of people on a sidewalk. I saw it comin’, wanted to get out of the way. But it was like one of those dreams where your legs are frozen in place. The metal hit flesh and I went to that dark place again. And yet, I woke up from that too.

  “Then I had an idea that death might not want me. For whatever reason, death wanted nothing to do with yours truly, or so I figured. Not sure why really. I’ve never been a particularly bad person, even went to church on the regular as a tike. But it was all I could think of, so I put the old theory to the test.

  “I don’t believe in suicide, but decided to kill myself a few times and test out this death thing. I woke up the next day after each one and felt great. Now my momma didn’t raise no fool, so I knew I had a special gift here. A little somethin’ God had blessed me with and I needed to make the best of it. The only question was—how? And after a few days of ponderin’ the possibilities, I came up with somethin’ I thought was great; and it would earn me a few bucks too. It wasn’t anything criminal, mind you, but a way to help out people live out that darkness that lives in them. It’s not an easy thing to admit, I know at first it was hard to find clients that would, but I think that we all have a little killin’ in our hearts. Otherwise normal people, moms, dads, teachers, you name it, have thoughts of murder from time to time. Lots of people have a dark streak, kid, and I’m here to help them get it out.”

  Justin, who hadn’t had any alcohol since he left college four years before, grabbed the beer and chugged half of it down. It was cold and bitter, but he hoped it would help a bit to make sense of
the whole situation. He was with a man that looked like a cowboy from an old movie, who carried himself with such strange confidence and had just told him the craziest, most unbelievable story he had heard since he had started doing his blog. He was so glad that he had stuck around and let the old coot tell his tale, because it was amazing, even if it was utterly impossible. Here was Dead Bill, a man that found he couldn’t die, and had decided to use the gift to hire himself out to be murdered for money, only to wake up the next day without a scratch. To Justin, the old guy was pretty much saying he was immortal, could be a superhero if he wanted, yet instead he had become a businessman and sold people the chance to take the life of a human with no consequences.

  This is going to make me famous!

  “Have you had a lot of clients?” Justin asked.

  “A fair amount. I usually have one or two a month. Been doin’ this for about fifteen years, so you do the math.”

  “And how much do they pay?”

  “Depends on their station in life. I ain’t going to make a single mom of two pay the same amount to kill me as I would some high-priced lawyer or doc. I have a heart, you know. Better to see what they can do and take it from there.”

  “You get single moms hiring you?” Justin asked as he tried to wrap his head around someone like his own mother hiring a man to murder. It was absurd.

  Dead Bill laughed and ordered another beer on the kid’s tab. “Son, mothers bite down more urges to kill than anyone else in the world. They have to deal with their snot-nosed little brats, husbands that think workin’ all day absolves them from raisin’ a child, teachers and other parents that tell them they’re doing their job wrong, and their own family that can only nitpick about how they’re rearin’ their own spawn. So yeah, I get a lot of moms doin’ all sorts of evil to me. They do have a mean streak in them too. Creative little bitches.”

  The bartender had lingered there and began to nod when Dead Bill told him that. “Hell, even I paid Dead Bill here once. You might be surprised, but this job can push someone over the edge too. So many idiots come through that door every day and nine out of ten make me angry enough to kill.”

  Justin watched him walk away and felt that there was instant credibility with that statement. There was no reason for the bartender to lie, to jump in and say something like that. Justin saw the green of money and heard the echoes of fame ringing in his ears.

  “So how do people find you?” Justin asked as he tried to hide his elation at how great the story was.

  “Word gets around and they just do. I don’t usually ask how someone finds me, but if you are puttin’ up this blog I will give you my website address and it will be easier for more people to find me.”

  “You have a website?”

  “These days, everyone has a website. A businessman with no website usually goes out of business right quick. I might look like some dim cowpoke, but I ain’t ignorant, kid. I’m a modern hillbilly.”

  Justin knew what he said about websites was true. Everything was digital and had to be faster than fast. Blink for one second and the world forgets all about you. Becoming yesterday’s news is as easy as taking a nap. Even with his own blog, there’s always a chance someone else would write a better, more interesting one using pretty much the same formula as he did and people would just move on. Fast times for fast people.

  But he wanted to make a mark. He’d always been on the lookout for bigger, crazier stories in the bars so he’d be able keep people reading and coming back to him. He was sure that Dead Bill would be his blockbuster. But for it to be a real hit, he knew he had to ask the right questions. As Dead Bill spoke, Justin thought about how he could make the story a multipiece set. He’d start big and then leave the readers hanging and begging for more. So the questions he asked had to be targeted and he knew he couldn’t shy away from things. Nothing should be sacred.

  “Does it hurt when you die? Do you feel the pain when you’re getting shot or stabbed?”

  “That’s the one bad thing about it all. Getting shot hurts. Gettin’ stabbed or skinned alive is not pleasant, but those things are nothin’ compared to that moment when my body shuts down and pushes me into the darkness of death.” Dead Bill paused there. He stared off into space and seemed lost for a second, as though the terrible memory was too much. Justin reached over and put his hand on the old man’s forearm. The man was thin, but muscular; his skin had the texture or cracked leather, and looked like it too. These were details Justin knew he would need to remember and add later to his notes.

  “You okay?” he asked the dusty cowboy.

  “Sure, kid. I’m fine. It’s just sometimes the memory of that pain can be something like a wall I need to get over. Damn, the cold I feel then is so vivid in my mind that I think I can feel it now, and it’s a hard thing to get past. There’s a moment, usually before I wake up, where the pain and the cold leaves me and there is such a sense of peace, total calm, and I feel like it’s a place I want to be. But then my eyes open and I’m back in my apartment with just the memories of it all. I guess that’s the downside. Never getting to feel the peace and calm for very long. But what can you do? Bitchin’ about it ain’t going to turn water into wine, right?”

  “Have you ever denied someone? Was there ever a person whose idea seemed so over the top that you backed off, or at least wanted too?”

  “Never. The customer’s always right. That’s my business motto, as it should be. Sure, there were some people that needed to know that there is a difference between killin’ and torture. I don’t allow that twisted shit where people get to spend hours messin’ with me. Even the ones that dismembered me had to kill me straight out first, and then they can do the other stuff. I’m not lookin’ to spend hours feelin’ the bad part of it.”

  “You ever worried about people, you know ...”

  “What? Let me guess, the whole sex thing?” Dead Bill said with a raised eyebrow and a sly smile on his face.

  “Yeah,” Justin said, and felt a little uncomfortable with the question. But he knew it had to be asked. Readers would want to know these things.

  “Never. I make them all sign contracts and then the whole thing is videotaped. Never had someone do anything like that before. After all, I ain’t the prettiest dame at the ball. My clients may be twisted a bit in wantin’ to kill me, but they ain’t so twisted as to want to saddle up on this buckaroo.”

  “Wait,” Justin said, and felt excited. “You have them on video? All the killings?”

  “Yeah. I usually give the client one and keep one for myself. Nothing I’d put on YouTube or anything, but I like to show new clients examples of what they can do. And I do like to make sure there’s no real funny business going on when I’m all vulnerable.”

  “Could I see one?” Justin asked. He hesitated a bit because he wasn’t sure how bad they’d be—but how could he not try? It wasn’t something you saw every day. And it would also be hard proof that what the cowboy told him was legit, that he wasn’t a complete nut. Even with the confirmation from the bartender, he still had doubt, and the videos would eliminate that completely.

  “You ain’t gonna get to post the videos on your blog, or record them. There’s privacy to consider. My clients pay to have their dirty and violent secrets kept.”

  “Of course. I would never think of it. But to see them would make the blog even better. I could mention them only in the vaguest way, and say that I saw proof, firsthand, of what the process is like.”

  “Sure then. Why the heck not? How about one for the road though?” Dead Bill said and nodded to his empty beer bottle.

  Justin happily ordered another beer for Dead Bill. Then the two of them left the bar and headed to the old cowboy’s place. On the way there, Justin tried to picture where the man would live. In his mind, he saw a bachelor apartment in a less-than-perfect part of town, decorated with neon beer signs, posters of Dolly Parton, and a horseshoe over the door. He thought about a small, portable stereo set on milk crates with CDs by T
ravis Tritt, Hank Williams, and Bill Monroe.

  When they stopped at an old industrial building that had been turned into loft space, he was surprised. They took the elevator to the top floor and what Justin found there was not anything close to his expectation.

  The place looked classier than the man who lived there. Expensive furniture, state-of-the-art entertainment system, and tasteful paintings filled the stylish interior. As they walked in, Dead Bill turned to Justin and saw the look on his face.

  “Not what you were expectin’?” Dead Bill said with a smile.

  “Not really. Very modern.”

  “I might have a cowboy in my heart, but I do love the comforts the city offers. Let’s go over here.”

  Dead Bill led Justin over to the computer, pulled a chair out for him, and motioned for him to sit. As he did, the old cowboy turned the computer on and scrolled through video files in his hard drive until he found what he wanted.

  “This is a good one to start with, to give you an idea of what I do.”

  Dead Bill hit play and stood behind Justin. At first there was just darkness, but soon the camera focused and on the screen was a dimly lit room with an empty chair in the middle of it, and nothing else.

  “Now, no tapin’ this,” Dead Bill said, and Justin nodded. He would record it all in his memory. “Give it a second and it’ll start.”

  Justin waited with nervous excitement. He’d reported so many great stories with his blogs over time, but nothing would be as amazing as what he would write up for Dead Bill. He thought that it would be so good that the Times might even move him from resident blogger to something with a little more panache to it. It might even be something that paid better than his normal rate, and then he’d be able to live somewhere as nice as Dead Bill’s loft.