Pest Control

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Chapter Forty-one

  The news of Ramon’s failure and subsequent demise did not sit well with Miguel DeJesus-Riviera. “That bastard! That dog!” Miguel screeched as several of his men stood cringing nearby. “I will have his liver cut out, wrapped in bacon, and served to my soldiers!”

  The men looked uneasily at each other, none of them really cared for liver.

  “How is this possible?” Miguel continued. “Ramon was my best man! I will kill this son-of-a-bitch Exterminator yet!”

  Miguel’s tirade was punctuated with a buzz from his intercom. “They are here,” said a disembodied voice.

  “Good, send them in,” Miguel said.

  A door opened and four men as tough as goat’s knees entered. They were heartless bastards from a world gone wrong. They had spent the last two years running death squads in Sao Paulo, hired by wealthy businessmen to kill the meninos de rua, the homeless street children, who they blamed for slow retail sales. Their hearts were harder than trying to open an oyster with a wet bus ticket.

  Miguel looked them over and smiled.

  An assistant handed the men copies of the now famous fax of Bob’s photograph.

  Miguel spoke. “This is the cabron who murdered my beloved brother.” He spit on the photo for effect before continuing. “Kill this pig and I will pay you…” He paused as he did some mental calculations, “…one million dollars!”

  The four murderers looked at each other with cold eyes. One of them finally spoke.

  “Each?” he asked.

  Miguel shook his head. “No, split.”

  The leader mulled that over for a moment. “Are you firm on that?”

  Miguel nodded as the three assistants mentally began to spend their quarter of a million dollars.

  “Very well, if that is your final offer I have no choice.” The leader casually pulled a handgun from his waistband and shot one of his three assistants, dropping him like a bad transmission. “We accept.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  There was a buzz in the CIA office that afternoon. The Exterminator’s reputation had received quite a boost because of his recent kill. Two young agents stood by the water cooler discussing the incident in reverential tones.

  “Nailed the sucker between the eyes,” said the first. “One shot. Bang!” He slapped his hands to give the “bang” an effect.

  “This guy’s the best,” said the second agent. “First he did that job in Istanbul, then he iced Madari and Pescadores. Then he ‘accidents’ Huweiler and takes out Riviera and Ramon, all within what, six months? And nobody knows where he came from?”

  Mike Wolfe appeared, casually stirring a cup of tea. “Almost nobody,” he said.

  “You know him, sir?” asked one of the agents.

  “Is he as dangerous as they say?” asked the other.

  “Worse. Much worse,” he said dramatically. “Either of you debutantes ever hear of Dan Mitrione?”

  The historically challenged agents shook their heads no.

  “Figures,” Wolfe said disdainfully. “See, the problem with you techno-pups is you never bother to read books. You get more useful information from one good book than a hundred intercepted satellite transmissions. Mitrione worked for us, and believe me, he was no altar boy. But I tell you, this Dillon character makes him look like a pissy little Girl Scout.”

  “I hear he calls himself the Exterminator. I love that,” said the first agent. “I think that’d make a great TV series.”

  “Or a movie,” said the second.

  “Yeah, well, you can bet your little green asses the screenplay’s gonna be based on my book. And they damn sure better get Sean Connery to play my part.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Klaus was looking over the Racing Form. The knock on the door startled him as it would any assassin not expecting guests. He pulled a gun from under the pillow and went to the door.

  “Yes?” Klaus said.

  A man’s voice replied. “Room service.”

  “I didn’t order room service.”

  “Complimentary breakfast and newspaper, sir.”

  Klaus hid his gun behind his back and quickly threw open the door. From the corner of his eye he saw the glint of chrome and his instincts took over. He fired a lightning-quick side kick toward the gleaming object, sending his complimentary breakfast to the floor, the toast jelly-side down.

  “Fuckinay!” the waiter said, his weapon a silver cream pourer. “You seem a little jumpy sir, let me get you some decaf.”

  Klaus apologized profusely and helped clean up. He tipped the waiter generously and asked for wheat toast next time.

  Klaus returned to his room and skimmed the Times as he waited for his decaf. It was there, buried deep in the D section, that Klaus noticed a small headline:

  “Bolivian Assassin Gunned Down”

  The text revealed that government sources had credited an American assassin known as the Exterminator. The government sources also denied any other knowledge of this assassin, except to insist that the U.S. government had never hired him or any other professional killers to do anything in this or any other country as that was illegal and not the sort of thing they did, or even thought about doing and anyone who said otherwise was lying.

  Klaus lowered the newspaper slowly into his lap. Something was definitely wrong with this picture. He had to figure out exactly what the hell it was before he made the decision to kill.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Bob woke the next morning feeling especially hopeful. In his dreams he had been at the wheel of a gleaming new Dodge Ram full-size pickup with an exquisite fiberglass Termite (Reticulitermes flavipes) perched proudly on its roof, its wings flapping excitedly as the truck hurried Bob from one job to the next.

  Bob was about to sign a multimillion-dollar Natural Pest Control contract with Sy Silverstein when his alarm went off.

  Bob took the dream as a good omen. In his bones Bob felt certain that success was looming large and nearby, like a mugger in a dark alley.

  Today Bob was installing his third strain of Assassin Bugs, bringing him one step closer to his dream. But the glow of his impending success dimmed at the thought of carrying his tool kit and boxes of bugs on the subway.

  Screw it, he thought. Today he’d drive into the city.

  After a weak cup of instant coffee, Bob mounted the old smoking Pinto and rode it down to the edge of SoHo near where he was going. He had the address on a scrap of paper, but had lost the damn thing. All he remembered was that he was looking for a failed restaurant that had been named for its location in North SoHo.

  There were no parking meters in sight. For half an hour Bob cruised up Mercer, down Greene, and back up Wooster. He finally lucked into a nine a.m. to seven p.m. spot on Sullivan across from the Napoli Bar and Grill. He had no idea how far he was from where he’d be working, but an all-day parking space was a rare and wonderful commodity, so he seized it.

  He grabbed his tools and his boxes marked “Assassins, Strain Three” and started looking for…what the hell was the name of the damn place? It had something to do with its location. That was it! NoSoHo—as in North SoHo—a flash-in-the-pan eatery which had been frequented by pointless people resembling characters in Tama Janowitz novels. And while the name—NoSoHo—was bad, the food (a mix of French Vietnamese, Cajun, and Tex-Mex) had been much worse, and the restaurant had failed. Somehow, bayou blackened snails in cilantro mole sauce had not caught on in the Big Apple.

  Bob roamed the streets aimlessly for twenty minutes and was beginning to wonder if he should be roaming around SoSoHo instead of NoSoHo. He finally accepted the fact that he was lost and began looking for someone of whom he could ask directions.

  Bob turned when he heard a noise approaching from the corner. The noise became a homeless man pushing a shopp
ing cart. Like many people, Bob assumed anyone pushing a shopping cart down a sidewalk was homeless.

  The cart rattled with cans and bottles and big plastic sacks stuffed with God-knows-what hung like saddlebags from the sides. The cart rolled ahead smooth and straight. Bob had long wondered why the carts at his supermarket always pulled to the left with the front wheels shuddering wildly. Now he knew—all the good ones had been converted into poor men’s Winnebagos.

  The man at the wheel had a long, Rasputin-like beard drizzling from his chin which ended up neatly tucked into the top of a dingy white mix-and-match costume, apparently assembled from thrift shops and trash bins. It looked like a uniform that might be required at a radioactive deconstruction sight after World War III. A white hardhat sat so low on his head that his jaundiced eyes were hardly visible. His ears were protected by a headset normally worn by people directing jets around a tarmac. A dirty white scarf around his neck assured that the only skin visible was his nose. His yellowing pants looked to be made of plastic and were rubber-banded tightly around the ankles. A pair of soiled white Converse high-tops completed the post-nuclear apocalypse ensemble.

  Bob approached the man to ask directions. But just as he was about to speak, the man urgently held up a white-gloved finger. Bob stared at the finger in silence. The man’s eyes opened wide and looked around at things Bob couldn’t see. The man then took a step forward, farted loudly, and began laughing and shouting, “I stepped on a duck! I stepped on a duck!”

  The man suddenly became quiet again and fixed a stare at Bob as if daring him to say something.

  What the hell, Bob thought. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the NoSoHo restaurant used to be, would you?” Bob asked.

  The man began laughing again as he pushed his cart up the sidewalk past Bob, as if he hadn’t heard the question.

  Farther up Thompson Street he noticed a forlorn brick building across the street. A sign in its broken window read, “NoTSoHoT.” Was that it? The placard said it was a Silverstein Enterprises building, but Bob didn’t recognize the name. A moment later he realized some local artist had added the two T’s as a postmortem restaurant review. This was the place.

  Bob hauled his tools and his Strain Three Assassins into the NotSoHot building. The moment he entered, his nostrils were assaulted by the malignant stench of old ashtrays and tarry cigarette smoke. Sticky brown streams of residual nicotine sweated down the walls like rivulets of poison pancake syrup.

  Bob struggled against his gag reflex. He thought that if the food hadn’t killed this place, it would have gone under soon enough when its patrons died of various cancers. He tied a bandanna over his nose and mouth to filter out the carcinogenic reek and got busy installing his bugs.

  Strain Three was the Western Corsair/Bee Assassin hybrid that, during experiments in the Bug Room had exhibited an uncanny resourcefulness in capturing large, winged insects such as the various types of cockroaches and the winged castes of termites. This hybrid also had an insatiable appetite for the egg capsules and the larvae of most household insects, so Bob saw them as both prevention and cure for infested dwellings. Bob was especially optimistic about Strain Three.

  He prepared his drill and again went to work. He drilled hole after hole, feeding his mutant assassins through the dear plastic tubes into the infested wall spaces before patching the holes up again.

  At the end of his long day of stooping and crawling and drilling, Bob was stiff and sore. His body resisted as he stood to stretch. His joints protested as he struggled to raise his hands above his head. Once outstretched, he arched his back and took a deep breath, getting a momentous whiff of himself. His eyes watered. He stunk like a sweaty brown onion and, what was worse, he really didn’t care.

  Bob hadn’t showered in days; in fact, all his personal grooming habits, especially flossing, had gone down the toilet since Mary left. The fact that Bob wasn’t now considering a bath indicated bad judgment, if not clinical depression.

  He slowly packed his tools and departed, leaving the floor littered with empty Strain Three boxes.

  Bob slouched toward the battered Pinto and saw the ticket on the window. It was 7:07 p.m. and the ticket was the city’s way of reminding Bob that he had lost track of time. He snatched the citation and slid behind the wheel. “Damn,” he wheezed. Another expense he couldn’t afford.

  Bob gripped the ignition weakly and went to turn the key, but he didn’t have the strength. His hand dropped to his lap. Where the hell was he going, he wondered glumly. Home? There was nothing for him to go home to. No wife, no child, no love, just a room full of noisy, stinking bugs.

  He slumped in the seat, defeated. He looked into the empty night with a glazed stare, his eyes fixed but unfocused the way they used to get while looking at the campfire when his father took him to Big Moose Lake. Only this time, no one was going to yell “fireflies” to snap him from his trance. He felt like crying.

  For the first time in his life a crushing black depression pressed down on him. Hopelessness pulled his optimism down a dark alley and cut its throat. He had failed to provide for his family and they had left—and who could blame them? Pratt was right; Bob was a loser. How depressing. He was inadequate and worthless and wasn’t kidding anyone but himself with this stupid bug plan. Bob deserved to be shit on and blamed for all the problems in the world. He had sinned against nature and—

  “Whoa! Get a grip on yourself,” he finally thought, “things aren’t that bad.” Bob seized control of his swarming thoughts and reflected on his life for a moment.

  First of all, Mary was just upset; she’d be back. He knew Mary and Katy still loved him. Secondly, too many people whose opinions Bob valued had said his idea was worth pursuing. He certainly didn’t deserve to be shit on and if anyone was a loser and had sinned against nature it was Dick Pratt, not Bob.

  Heck, Bob was a dreamer; a visionary perhaps. Without people like Bob there wouldn’t be light bulbs or fiber optics or any of the exciting Ronco products. Bob deserved a pat on the back for his persistence alone.

  Fall seven times, stand up eight, as the proverb said. Be tenacious. Show resolve. Bob smiled. Things were going to be fine. He just had to keep at it and be patient and pray that success arrived before another dose of that depression.

  Bob looked up and noticed the bar across the street. Why the hell not, he thought. He reached in his pocket—two bucks and some change. That might buy a beer, and no one deserved it more than Bob.

  As he get out of his car, Bob was unaware of the man watching him from the dark sedan up the street. The man screwed a silencer into an H&K 9mm, holstered it, and followed Bob into the bar. It was an old neighborhood place filled with regulars and red Naugahyde. A television over the bar showed a Giants game.

  As Bob approached the bar, a couple got up to leave. The woman wrinkled her nose as Bob’s sweaty onion essence brushed past her. He grabbed the stool she left behind.

  The man with the 9mm sauntered in a moment later and went directly to the empty stool next to Bob.

  He sampled the air, wondering what had died behind the bar. Bob looked to his left to see what all the sniffing was about and found himself eye-to-eye with Klaus, an assassin on a fishing expedition.

  Bob acknowledged the handsome stranger with a nod, then put his money on the bar and counted the change. The audit revealed two dollars and forty-eight cents. What if a beer cost two-fifty? It would be bad enough to stiff the bartender with no tip, but to be two cents short on the cost of the beer, well, it wouldn’t be right. Maybe he would leave and go to the Pathmark, where beer money went a little further.

  The bartender approached. Bob considered getting up. He didn’t need the embarrassment. He stood just as the bartender arrived. “What can I get you?” the bartender asked.

  Bob scraped his money together and jammed it into his pocket. “Uh, never mind, I just realized
…” He was about to bail out with a lame excuse when the handsome stranger spoke.

  “Buy you a drink, friend?”

  Bob looked at the man. Maybe he was an eccentric who bought people drinks based on their smell. That would be weird, Bob thought, but screw it, New York’s a weird place and a free beer’s a free beer.

  “Sure,” Bob answered finally. “Why not? Thanks.”

  Klaus ordered a Bombay martini, up with a twist. Bob ordered a Bud. Klaus extended his hand. “My name is Kurt Schickling,” he lied.

  “I’m Bob Dillon.” Bob waited for the joke, gesturing for Klaus to go ahead and get it out of his system, but Klaus had none of the usual reactions.

  “Okay,” Bob said finally, “so what do you wanna hear? ‘Like a Rolling Stone’? No? How about ‘Lay, lady, lay…”

  Klaus looked confused. “I do not understand,” he said.

  “Bob Dylan. That’s my name, but I’m D-I-L-L-O-N instead of D-Y-L-A-N.”

  “I am sorry, I am not familiar with whomever it is you are speaking. I am not from your country.”

  “Dylan’s the guy who…never mind.”

  The bartender brought their drinks.

  “Thanks for the beer,” Bob said.

  “My pleasure.” Klaus raised his martini. “Salud.”

  Bob touched his bottle to Klaus’ glass before they drank.

  “So, your name, Schickling…that’s what, German?”

  “That’s right,” Klaus said. “My father was German. My mother was Greek.”

  There was a sudden excitement in the bar as everyone cheered a breakaway play in the Giant’s game. Bob and Klaus watched.

  Bob rooted for the home team. “C’mon Giants!”

  “The Giants will never win without turnovers, but their turnover ratio has gone to hell since they lost Conrad and Harkins to free agency,” said Klaus.

  Bob looked surprised. “That’s pretty good for someone not from this country.”