Superego

by Frank J. Fleming

  I managed a smirk. “That makes me antsy.”

  Morrigan leaned in close. “Well, no need to fear. I’ll be near you at all times.”

  I just wanted to kill her and flee this rock, but odds were on her winning that fight.

  She stood up. “Hey, if you’re not doing anything this afternoon, we should catch up over lunch.”

  I kept my face pretty stoic. “Yes, that would be nice.”

  “Great. Do you know The Blue Feather?”

  “I can find it,” I said, shrugging. A little too casually.

  “I’ll see you there at noon, then.”

  “Okay.”

  She and Verg left the room. I could feel Diane’s eyes on me as I watched the door, half-expecting Morrigan to step back in and rip me apart.

  “You don’t seem to like her,” she said.

  “No.” I usually don’t care whether my victims suffer or not, but I wanted to hear her scream. Not rational, but I am only human…basically.

  “So what did…I guess that’s not my business.”

  I forced myself to stop watching the door and looked at Diane and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. There are just some unsettled issues between us.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  I usually work alone, so Morrigan probably wouldn’t expect me to come at her with someone else’s help. Of course, I assumed she was also working for the Nystrom syndicate, so I’d get in trouble for killing her.

  I’d sleep better at night, though.

  But using Diane’s help was out of the question, anyway. “Thanks, but I should be fine.”

  “Well…I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

  It seemed like she might have been jealous, but I really did not want to share the feelings I had for this other woman. “Maybe we can catch dinner or something tonight.” I wasn’t sure why I said that. I guess it was because I didn’t know what my plans would be that night, and I wanted to have dinner with her.

  “Yeah, that would be great…I have a church thing, and I really need to be there with all that’s been going on with Hana and her family, but after that I’d be free.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you later, then.” Diane’s usefulness to me was over; I should have just blown her off. Even though I would much rather have spent time with her than the deadly redhead, the important thing was that “Agent Dawson” had something Diane didn’t: answers. And that was all I should have cared about.

  CHAPTER 22

  “So you’re sure this is the same woman?” Dip asked.

  “I’m pretty good with faces of people who almost killed me.” I had lost so much blood, I had been unable to act. I’d been at the mercy of others to help me. I hated that. Intensely.

  “But you believe she is on your side in this?”

  I continued up the stairway. “If she’s simply here to kill me, she’s doing it in a very odd manner.”

  “You think the two women you killed were associated with her?”

  “That I will ask her.”

  “So what is the plan?”

  “I don’t trust her—and I don’t like her—so I’ll try and put things on my terms.” Difficult when unarmed, but I am always up for a challenge.

  “Do you know her beyond her cutting off your hand?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You said you don’t like her. Maybe if you get to know her in a more social setting, you’ll like her better.”

  “She bested me. Perhaps that means I should respect her and learn from her, but I really just want her dead so I don’t have to worry about her. She injured me and rendered me helpless; I do not want that to happen again.”

  “You think she’s on your side, though?”

  “It’s a cutthroat business; no one is really on my side.”

  “Then just remember you have taken measures should such a situation as when you lost your hand happen again.”

  “That I will remember.” It’s easier to face anything that comes at you if you have a plan for it…even if it’s not a great plan.

  “I will remind you again that fleeing is always an option. It’s a big universe; as wide as the syndicate’s reach is, you could still find countless places where they would never find you. You could live in peace.”

  That made me laugh. “Explain to me how I could live in peace.”

  “That I do not know, Rico.”

  I reached the top of the stairway and slowly opened the door to the building’s roof. The restaurant Morrigan had mentioned was in a nice little plaza downtown. It was one of the most popular places in the city, filled with musicians, artists, fancy restaurants, and quaint shops. It was not a place for privacy. Morrigan didn’t trust me—which was smart, because I wanted her dead and had intentions to follow through on those wishes. As for Morrigan’s intentions for me, those were hard for me to determine. Assuming the two women I’d caught following me and killed were associated with her, she wasn’t just an ally in this. But her position seemed to suggest she was entrusted with more info about the job than I was. Things still didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t going to walk into the plaza without getting some leverage myself.

  I had headed out for our meeting quite early and scoped out the area around the plaza. There was one building in particular that provided a good vantage point of the whole area. It was an office building, with lots of people coming and going. This made it easy to get into. And as I moved out onto the roof, I saw right away that my gut had called it correctly. A sniper—looked like a dark-haired woman—was perched at the edge of the roof, watching the crowd below.

  I crept up behind her carefully and knelt down next to her. “What’s with all the chicks with guns? Some sort of amazon assassin squad I don’t know about?”

  The woman whipped around with a panicked look on her face. I slammed her head into the metal roof and pulled a pistol out of her jacket. It was nice to be armed again.

  She clutched her bloody face. “D-don’t kill me! We’re on the same side!”

  I casually pointed the gun at her. “And I’m being friendly. See how I haven’t killed you yet?”

  She was rather pathetic-looking for a trained killer. She was crying, and it wasn’t just an act to get me to drop my guard. She seemed pretty useless for anything…except as a decoy. Realization came just as something struck me in the back, and electricity shot through my body.

  “Rico, you were unconscious, but since your vitals were normal I did not institute emergency measures.”

  I didn’t respond to Dip. I was lying on a soft bed on top of red satin sheets; I was quite comfortable, and part of me wanted to keep lying there and ignore my failure. I smelled something strange—maybe incense. I sat up. The room was dimly lit by candles scattered around a few small tables and hanging in sconces. A thin, pink sheet fell in a canopy around the bed. A young platinum blonde woman stood near the bed looking down at me with a mocking smile. It was at this point that I realized I had no pants.

  “Where am I?”

  “A brothel. A very exclusive one.”

  She was wearing pretty normal-looking, functional street clothes. “You don’t look like a prostitute.”

  “I don’t know how to take that.” She seemed to be enjoying this.

  “So why did someone take my pants? Was it you?”

  “Nope. I’m guessing Morrigan did it because it was funny. ‘Hey, you know that Rico guy who is the universe’s deadliest hitman? Let’s steal his pants.’” I think she was trying to make me angry. She wanted me to know she wasn’t afraid of me. Noted.

  “I guess I can see the humor in that.” She did succeed in making me want to hurt her, but there was nothing to be gained from that. “I was supposed to talk to Morrigan.”

  “I’ll take you to her.”

  “Good. Let’s go.” I got off the bed and picked up my shoes, which were conveniently next to the bed. I moved toward the door of the room, but just as I walked by the woman, I quickly stopped and turned to face her, just inches
from her. “And you are?”

  She flinched ever so slightly but kept up her smirk. “Vance.”

  “Nice to meet you, Vance. You’re cute. I like you.” I didn’t.

  “Well, don’t get any ideas just because you’re pantsless in a brothel.”

  She led me down a softly lit hallway, careful to keep me in her peripheral vision. All I could see were numerous doors. I couldn’t even hear if there were other people in the brothel. Eventually we stopped. Vance knocked on the door. “He’s awake and ready to see you.”

  “Bring him in.”

  This was another small room furnished with a heart-shaped bed, more candles, and a couple of nude paintings—one of a human woman and the other Corridian—quite tastefully done. Morrigan sat on the bed, working at a computer. Next to her were my neatly folded pants. She looked up at me and smiled a very friendly smile that I didn’t buy at all. “I know this is an odd place to meet, but there are lots of regulations that guarantee privacy to brothels and the people going to and from them, so it works pretty well for our purposes. I’m afraid the women you see here aren’t actually in the business of sex for money.”

  “You told us what we do here on our own time is our own business,” Vance said.

  Morrigan laughed. “See, Rico? That’s the attitude I like to see in the people working for me. We do some very dark things, which I think necessitates that we joke around a bit and have a fun work environment.”

  “Morrigan! Why didn’t you tell me you were using me as bait?” shouted a woman as she barged through the door. It was the sniper I’d met on the rooftop, now with a bandaged forehead. When she saw me, she stopped immediately and backed up a step. She then glanced at my lack of pants with a little confusion and took another step away from me and looked at Morrigan. “Did you see what he did to me?” She pointed at her bandage. “Are we going to stand for this?”

  Morrigan let out a sigh. “I know. It’s awful, Donner. Did you tell Harper and Atkins about it?”

  This seemed to give the woman pause. “Well, no, they’re…”

  “Oh yes! They’re dead!” Morrigan shouted. “He killed them! Isn’t that awful? Now they can’t hear about the bump on your head!”

  “Well…um…”

  “I need to speak to Rico alone and brief him on what’s going on, okay? So shoo.”

  “But—”

  She scowled. The intensity of her gaze almost made me back off, and it wasn’t even directed at me. “Shoo!”

  Donner took one last, wary glance at me and sulked off.

  “Need me to leave you two alone as well?” Vance asked.

  Morrigan rolled her eyes and waved Vance away. “If I need someone to rescue me from the mean man, I’ll scream really loud.”

  Vance left the room and shut the door behind her. “I hate Donner so much,” Morrigan said. “She’s someone’s niece or something, and I got stuck with her despite the fact that she probably wouldn’t even make a competent prostitute. I’m basically now middle management in Nystrom, and everyone above me thinks they can force whatever crap they want on me. Anyway, thanks for hitting her in the face for me. I’d probably get in trouble if I did it, but with you, we can write it off as another little misunderstanding.”

  This was a lot of nonsense for me to deal with, but I thought I was doing pretty well so far. Now was the time to start unraveling the situation piece by piece. “You stole my pants.”

  She glanced at the pants folded up next to her. “Yes, to prove a point. I knew there would be some trust issues going into this job, considering our history.”

  “You knew I’d check the rooftops.” She’d given me what I was expecting in order to make me drop my guard. A good strategy, and she had me dead to rights because of it. It was a little bit scary, and I wasn’t going to underestimate her again, despite how asinine all of this seemed.

  “You’re a big, scary guy, and I just wanted to ensure there was no further unnecessary violence. And now I’ve had you at my mercy—pantsless even—and I did nothing to harm you.” She stood up and handed me my pants. “So obviously you can trust me.”

  I put my pants back on and then my shoes. “So should I just start asking questions, or are you going to explain what’s going on?”

  She smiled. She got the eyes right with her smiles, but something still seemed fake about them. “Sure, let’s get down to it. Yes, I’ve always been working with the Nystrom syndicate. Our unfortunate run-in all those years ago was just the right hand not knowing what the left was doing.” She pointed to my right hand and chuckled. “No pun intended. Anyway, this happens with big organizations. I’m in charge of the operation here, though, and I’ll try to keep it orderly.”

  I fixed my clothes. They’d been ruffled a bit from all the unconsciousness and being dragged to the brothel. “If those two women I killed the other day were with you, then you failed at that.”

  Her smiled faded. “Yes, I guess I did. I trained them myself, and they were good people—as good as trained killers can be. Plus, good female assassins are not easy to come by. They’re sort of my specialty. I train them for kills that are, let’s say, more subtle than you’re probably used to. It’s hard to find women worth training, though—and then I get people like Donner forced on me. Anyway, I’m rambling. It was my fault with Harper and Atkins, and I’m trying not to blame you. It’s a little hard, because…well, why don’t I just put this out there: I didn’t want you on this. I had this whole operation planned out myself, using just my people—and I have those plans still in place if for some reason you don’t work out—but orders came from the executives on exactly how they wanted this to go down, and those specific details necessitated including you.”

  “So is that why you tried to get me blown up by terrorists?” I tried to casually get a look at her. She had a nice body—had probably paid good money for it—but my interest was more in whether she had a gun on her, and where. If this went poorly, turning her own gun on her was my best bet, as experience said I was no match for her physically.

  She giggled. At times, she seemed too young to be a convincing federal agent, but the eyes—alert, taking in my every move…anticipating….She was quite experienced at combat and necessarily older than she looked. “Sorry to leave you in the dark, but the plans have worked out much better that way.”

  “You planned for me to pretend to be a police officer and help stop the terrorists?”

  “Yes.”

  “A heads-up would have been nice.”

  “It’s much more convincing that you were surprised by a terrorist attack if you were actually surprised. If you knew we were manipulating the Calabrai into attacking, your behavior would have been different.”

  “And you knew my reaction to being caught in an attack would be to pretend to be a police officer?”

  “This probably doesn’t come up too often, since you never have the same target twice, but you’re sort of predictable. That’s how I got you today. It’s nothing for you to be concerned about, though, unless people know you’re coming.”

  Unless I was trying to kill her, I believed she meant. Helpful criticism noted.

  “I kept an eye on you, and I was ready to help you out when you needed it, but you and that Detective Thompson did a pretty good job hunting down the Calabrai on your own. I guess we had been tailing you harmlessly for so long that my people got a little cocky.”

  If she’d had others following me before that I hadn’t noticed, that felt like another failure. “And why would you have people tail me?”

  “You understand the interests of all the syndicates here, correct? Don’t think they haven’t noticed you. I’ve needed my people to run interference at times to keep suspicion off of you.”

  “Again, a heads-up would have been nice.”

  “Well, here you go now,” she said with a beatific smile.

  “Whatever our endgame is, this sounds like an idiotic plan so far.”

  She moved closer to me. I wasn’t sure if
she was trying to intimidate me, but she was doing it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t show it. “You’re a very skilled person—probably the most skilled for the limited area of wetwork the syndicate sometimes needs done,” she said in a calm, measured manner. “But you’re just a blunt instrument, and blunt instruments don’t get involved in the planning. So you’re going to do what I need you to do, and I don’t care what your opinion is.”

  It was true I was a blunt instrument, but I never quite got why those who planned the actions always felt so superior to those of us who actually carried them out. “So I don’t get to fill out an evaluation form for you after this is over?”

  She smiled slightly. “You’re cute. I read the files on you, and I wouldn’t have guessed you have a sense of humor.”

  Files?

  “I know your thing. A cold detachment from your actions, but I can sense a joy in your work. So—out of curiosity—did you enjoy killing my two people the other day? Was that entertaining for you?”

  She had quickly gone from intimidating me to getting on my nerves. “Does that have anything to do with anything?”

  She continued to hover right next to me, though she kept her expression neutral. “You don’t want to answer the question?”

  No, this wasn’t the sort of thing I just chatted about with anyone. “I didn’t enjoy it. It was messy.”

  “Really?” She looked quite fascinated. “Isn’t killing always messy?”

  “I like the hunting, the outsmarting, the outshooting—that’s fun. That’s skill. Killing is always a bit messy; never really liked it. With your girls, I was surprised, which pretty much made just a big, ugly struggle.”

  “Not to get all feminist on you, but don’t call them ‘girls.’”

  She was successfully damaging my patience. “Corpses.”

  She chuckled. “There’s that wit again. I think you look at killing all wrong, though.” Her hand was on my neck before I could react. I pulled at it, but her arm felt like a steel bar. She definitely had enhancements, and I don’t just mean to her chest (though that, too, probably). “You see, it’s the inelegance of death that makes it beautiful.” Her face didn’t look girlish at all anymore; it was the direct, emotionless face most animals get when preparing for a kill. “It’s brutal and dirty, and that in itself is something to enjoy. I love to kill someone slowly—to watch as a person finally reaches the realization that this is it. This is the end. It’s a tender moment to share with someone.” She released my neck and took a step back. “That’s a little sick, isn’t it?”