The Hitman's Last Job

by Aaliyah Jackson

  “Oh yeah? You think somethin’s goin’ on?”

  “I dunno… I mean maybe,” Lucas chewed on a bread stick and took a sip of wine. “I just can’t put my finger on it,”

  “It’s probably nothing,” the Don shrugged as he focused on his food.

  “But you know what? He ordered two breakfasts… but he was there alone,”

  “So what?” the Don wiped his mouth with a napkin. “He’s probably a hungry guy!”

  “Yeah but he didn’t go home. I followed him for a little bit. He pulled into the motel off the freeway on the south side, only a few miles from Tommy’s place,”

  “Oh yeah?” Angelo’s eyes widened and he scowled. “I wonder why he’d do that….” The cogs in his mind started whirring. “He sure was slow gettin’ to mine last night,”

  “Yeah, and I just can’t trust the guy. I reckon he’s up to something,”

  “We’ll see…” Angelo swept back his hair. “I want you to go out there to the motel. Tell me what you find and be quiet about it. Don’t go knocking on any doors or nothin’,”

  “Sure… I’ll be in touch,” Lucas threw a 50 dollar note on the table as he left.

  ~

  Carl and Anna were lying on the bed side by side. She felt the impulsive urge to cuddle into him but couldn’t’ bring herself to do it. What if he got the wrong idea about her? But over the course of the morning he had softened to her more than he thought was possible. She reminded him so much of someone he knew when he was younger. Someone he couldn’t help anymore.

  “There’s a sad look in your eyes,” said Anna.

  She was as far as she could be on her side of the bed without falling onto the floor. She wanted to be closer but at the same time was worried she’d scare him away. All she really wanted to do though was hold his hand and look in his eyes, to hug him tightly, to just say thank you.

  Carl wasn’t sure what to say to Anna. He had so many conflicting thoughts running through his head. To him she looked so beautiful and sweet, so pure and kind. And she also looked so beautiful… lying there on the bed with her wet hair tumbling off the pillow. Her body even looked glamorous with the cheap motel towel wrapped around her.

  He wanted so badly to be closer to her but he kept his distance and made sure not to touch her. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was some sort of sexual predator that kidnapped her for his own pleasure. Looking at her bruised limbs as they fell out from the towel he felt that he wanted to buy her beautiful clothes. He wanted to make her feel pretty for once in her life.

  “So are you sad?” Anna asked with wide eyes.

  “I guess I am… well kinda,” his furtive words were guarded. He didn’t want to have to explain.

  “Well why’s that? Are you missing your family?”

  “I have no family….” Carl spoke heavily.

  “Well that makes you and me alike. We’re both orphans in an evil world,”

  “How old are you?” Carl had to ask, her mind seemed so much older than her face.

  “19,”

  “At college?”

  “No… I wasn’t allowed to go,” she sighed.

  “But you wanted to I take it?”

  “Always wanted to study anthropology, call it a pipe dream I dunno….” she looked away awkwardly.

  “Hey you’re still a kid! You’ll get yourself back to school someday,”

  “I hope so…. but stop changing the subject. I can tell you’re hiding something you’re bursting to talk about. Your eyes betray you,”

  “Well….” Carl didn’t have to tell her but he thought he’d like to. “You just remind me of someone I use to know,”

  “Oh yeah? Like an old girlfriend?”

  “Kinda….”

  The truth was that she couldn’t have been more like Eileen unless she was her ghost. Pale and curvy with red hair, he used to have a crush on her when they were neighbours as children. She was the quintessential girl next door, all smiles and flirtatious chatter. Carl and she used to meet up on their front lawns and wile away the summers together listening to classic rock on the radio and eating ice cream. They even found a novel way to get drunk. Raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets they’d freeze vodka in Popsicle holders and tell everyone it was lemonade. But they didn’t have to lie because her parents never asked. They didn’t care whether she drank or not.

  Behind the closed doors of idyllic suburban life Eileen hid a dark and violent secret. Only her bruises told Carl the story and each day he saw her, another one would be added to her collection. Her father, who looked not too dissimilar to Thomas Martin, was a brute. An alcoholic and ex-Vietnam veteran, he ran his home like a prison camp. And he obviously had little trust in women, as he brought his fists down on his wife and daughter at even the slightest hint of disobedience.

  Eileen never said a word though, and Carl never asked. But he desperately wanted her to explain everything. It wasn’t like he didn’t care. He was just emotionally ill equipped and too young to articulate that he wanted to help. Often at night he’d lie in bed and look across at the house next door.

  But one night he didn’t get to sleep and the pleasant dreams never came. Instead sirens alerted him to the fact that he was too late. If he’d only made his dreams come true one night earlier everything would be ok. He watched in silent tears from the darkness of his bedroom as they took Eileen’s body away. Her father said it was an accident, a mistake.

  In a moment of drunken anger he’s struck her hard, and she’d lost her balance. Stumbling into the fireplace she’d hit her head against the cold marble and died. Carl’s father tried to claim that it was a fluke accident, a one in a million chance, there was nothing he could have done, but he knew better. Luckily, the judge disagreed.

  Here in the motel he looked to the flaming, red hair of Anna and knew that he’d done the right thing. She was his Eileen and this time he’d made her dreams come true.

  “You’ve drifted away in thought again,” Anna smiled. “Do you always do that?”

  “No, I don’t think so,”

  “Maybe it’s your pain meds?”

  “Maybe….I dunno,”

  “Why do you take those anyway?” she asked with genuine concern.

  “My back… It got hurt real bad when I was on tour,”

  “In Afghanistan?

  “Yuh….”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you sometime,”

  There’ll be a sometime…. Anna thought. I guess that means he won’t kill me….not too soon anyway.

  They lay in silence for a long while, just listening to the television and resting. Anna didn’t know if there was a protocol for a hitman the morning after. What were they supposed to do? She wanted to know more about the Mob, to know more about this mysterious man… but she also didn’t.

  “So you know why my father had to die?”

  Carl rolled over to face her. “Cops pulled him over drunk and he had mob money in his car,”

  “Oh…. It almost seems too tame,”

  “What do you mean?”

  Anna rolled to face away into the sunlight. “I always thought if he had to die it would be over something more dramatic but I guess he didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t exactly an interesting man,”

  Carl thought it was an odd thing to say but he didn’t have time to mull it over because he suddenly caught something out the corner of his eye. It was a shape, a fleeting movement. He sat bolt upright and immediately put his hand on his gun.

  “What’s wrong?” Anna was worried. “Is someone here?”

  “Shhhh…. Stay there…”

  But Anna didn’t want to stay there. In a panic she grabbed her coat and ran into the bathroom slamming the door shut. She sat on the floor and doubted her minimal weight would be able to keep the door closed if an intruder attempted to open it.

  She tried to hear what was happening but all she heard were the muffled footsteps of Carl as he edged his way to the window. Then si
lence… It seemed to last forever. A thousand scenarios ran through her head as she worried about what could possibly be happening. Was it just Carl’s paranoia? Or was someone actually there? Someone dangerous… But her questions were answered when she heard two popping sounds that could have only been bullet’s travelling through a silencer, then the sound of a body falling onto the venetian blinds… and then the floor.

  She felt incapacitated with fear. She never was any good in a crisis. Creaking the door open gently she looked for signs of a body but all she could see was the back of Carl as he stood cautiously next to the window. As she got up she finally saw it. Obscured by the bed and lying lifeless in a heap was a body. She screamed and reeled back, jumping on the bed.

  “Be quiet!” Carl barked.

  She instantly shut up and sat shaking in her coat.

  “Who is that?” she whispered ever so quietly as if talking to herself.

  “This,” Carl pointed his gun to the ground. “This is trouble….”

  She could see the redness in his cheeks and hear the panic in his voice. His eyes were wide with worry and he was losing his calm demeanour. He began to pace nervously with his gun still in his hand. Every minute or so he’d look through the blinds into the parking lot as if he thought someone would arrive any second.

  “Are there more of them comin?” Anna asked innocently.

  “Fuck I don’t know. Fuck. FUCK!” he paced even quicker and in a frenzy of panic began to kick frantically at the dresser. The TV toppled and fell to the ground. Smashed pieces of screen glittered all over the carpet.

  Anna wanted to run straight back to the bathroom but couldn’t move. She just sat there huddled and shaking with tears in her eyes. Carl looked to her and saw the fear in her eyes. He could smell her sweat, feel her fragility

  “Right. Quick. Move. Into the car,” he ordered.

  Carl grabbed his backpack then his dog tags and hurried out the room while dragging Anna by her coat sleeves. As they climbed in the SUV Anna hadn’t even closed her door properly before Carl had begun to drive away. He pulled out quickly onto the freeway and sped as fast as he could out of Chicago.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Shit! You’re supposed to be dead, shit!” Carl was so angry as he drove that Anna was petrified he’d start head butting the steering wheel.

  “What are you saying?” she whimpered.

  “You were supposed to die! You were meant to die too…. I wasn’t supposed to leave a witness!”

  “Is that why they came to the motel?”

  “I think so….I mean yeah! Of course! Why else would Lucas be there? I knew there was something weird about that kid…knew he couldn’t be trusted,”

  “Who’s Lucas?”

  “Just one of the Don’s boys, a foot soldier,”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “Be quiet….just let me think….” and they drove in silence for a few miles until Carl could regain his breath.

  “Thank you…” a timid little whisper suddenly came from the passenger seat.

  Carl looked over to see if he’d heard right. “What?”

  “Thank you,” it came again.

  “What the fuck for?” he was confused, stressed.

  “For keeping me alive,”

  “Oh….” he didn’t think of himself as a good person to be thanked. “You’re welcome…”

  “But why? I mean why didn’t you kill me like you were paid to. It was your job after all,”

  “I had my reasons,” and he didn’t elaborate.

  Anna took the hint to not ask more questions and instead lay her head against the window and looked out to the country. They were far out of the city now and speeding headlong into obscurity. She’d never been out of Chicago before and she guessed that he knew where they were heading as much as she did. She wondered how long it would take for Carl’s boss to find them. She knew nothing about him but she could guess that he was incredibly rich and insanely dangerous. She thought of all the gangster movies she saw with her Dad as a kid and knew people like her and Carl didn’t live long. She closed her eyes and began to pray.

  Carl looked over to her and guessed she had fallen asleep. Poor kid, he thought. She’d been through so much recently. She looked so beautiful lying there against the window and he felt the compulsion to lean over and stroke her hair, to tell her everything would be ok.

  ~

  The door to the abandoned motel room was flapping in the night time breeze. The Don never came to do his own dirty work never mind attend the scene of a crime but Lucas was family…or at least it felt that way. He stood over the corpse with a cigar in between his chunky fingers. He blew out smoke into the moonlight.

  “And you’re sure no one else has been here?”

  “No…. just me,” the motel manager was having a panic attack in the presence of the Don and his cronies.

  “Good…You better not be lying to me,”

  “Never! I wouldn’t do that,” his voice was shaking and his hands were trembling. He was growing paler by the second.

  “Well you better get this cleaned up, we’ll take the body,” and a quick nod in his men’s direction made them sprint into action and take Lucas away and into a nearby van.

  Angelo stood in the room for a moment longer feeling more angry than upset. What had that dumb bastard Carl got himself into? He was supposed to be one of the good guys! Urgh never mind, Angelo thought as he chucked the end of the cigar away and thoughtlessly left the carpet to singe. He’d be taken care of. He pulled a wad of fifty dollar notes out of his blazer pocket and threw an indiscriminate amount onto the floor next to the motel manager. He was scrubbing nervously at the carpet with ammonia.

  “Here….keep ya mouth shut,” and Angelo walked away.

  ~

  “Urgh….where are we?” Anna woke up with a stiff neck.

  “We’re somewhere near St Louis I think,” Carl yawned and fidgeted in his seat.

  It was pitch black outside and they were parked at the side of the road. Too tired to drive anymore, and having no idea what to do, Carl had eventually given up and pulled over for the night.

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “Nah….” was all Carl could say. “They’ll be onto us. They’ll be looking for our car and they’ll have every bagman and hitter in the state looking for us,”

  Anna realized the danger they were in and her face was stricken with fear.

  “So…. What now? We can’t just sit here waiting to die!” Anna shivered and pushed her toes into the floor to try and drive some feeling back into them. She looked down and saw that they were turning purple.

  “Well what do you suggest?” Carl asked angrily.

  “Torch it,”

  “What?”

  “Torch the fuckin’ SUV Carl! It’ll be the first thing they’ll be looking for. Hopefully if they stumble across the burnt out husk of the vehicle whoever finds us will think someone got to us first. But at the very least it’ll throw them off track, make them hit a dead end.”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV,” Carl smirked.

  He looked to her face that was so sweet and innocent yet had just been so forthright. She was a real hard ass and could take care of herself more than he’d given her credit for. And the more he thought about it the more he realized. Her childhood was a crazy catastrophe of living the Mob life with a drunken father who treated her like an animal, who brutalized her and kept her in squalor but she rose above that with grace.

  “I bet you know what you’re doing?”

  “Er….kinda,” Anna hesitated as she fiddled with a rag she pulled from the trunk, pushing it into the gas tank. “Right ok…pass me your lighter,”

  Carl handed it over and watched as she expertly set the end alight.

  “Now RUN!” she screamed.

  And the pair pumped their legs headlong down the empty road. They made it about 200 yards away before Anna had to stop to catch her breath. Her feet were in tremendous pa
in from running barefoot and she was breaking out in a nervous cold sweat. They watched from a distance as the SUV caught alight. Giant auburn flames grew up into the air like fiery tendrils that were reaching for the stars.

  “Any second now,” said Carl as he hoped they were far away enough.

  Anna prayed that no one would accidentally stumble on them out there, but she doubted it. All around her was wilderness and frost. Nobody apart from them had any reason to be stranded out here.

  The two watched the flames for a moment as if hypnotized by the beauty of the fire and just as they relaxed into the vision….BOOM! The noise was deafening and flocks of sleeping birds instantly flew screeching into the night. The stars were quickly hidden by the smoke that trailed from the vehicle and the flames grew even taller as they gained a new lease on life.

  Carl looked on sadly as he thought about all the time he’d spent driving his prized car, but his and Anna’s life weren’t worth risking over a heap of metal and glass. He was however glad he’d taken the precious seconds to grab his trusted backpack. He’d rescued it from the flames at the last minute as if reaching for an old friend and that’s what it felt like as it hung from his shoulders. It was his only remnant of his former life and as the two walked away he began to wonder what his next life would look like.

  “First thing tomorrow I’m gonna get you some clothes. Promise,” Carl put his hand on Anna’s back to comfort her.

  “Thanks…” she said weakly. “I’d appreciate that,”

  CHAPTER 7

  They’d walked for nearly 4 miles and Anna was on the brink of passing out when they reached the lonely motel at the edge of St Louis. Carl had gotten them both a double room with separate beds and as soon as Anna’s head hit the pillow she fell into a deep sleep. Carl wasn’t so lucky though, and he wriggled in his bed trying to alleviate the pain that was striking into his back like a flaming dagger.

  He felt like he needed more than painkillers, he needed a goddamn drink. He couldn’t believe the situation he had found himself in, but as he looked over to Anna he felt it was worth it and he’d do it again if he had to.

  Anna’s toes were poking out from the side of the bed and Carl could see the cuts and blisters. She was a tough lady though and never complained once despite the fact she had to walk barefoot in the cold for miles through the country. But it was probably just a walk in the park for her and as he thought about all the violence she must have experienced growing up, he felt angry. So angry, that he began to swell with pride at the thought of killing her father. Bastards like him should always get what’s coming to them. His only regret was not taking his time with him. If he knew what a monster he was he would have used a knife instead… or his fists.