“Wait here for me,” I told Belle, and got into the elevator with the nurse and the crippled guy.
I got out on the same floor. The corridor was empty, I could snuff the two of them right there, but my jobs are always done intelligently. I took a paper from my pocket and pretended I was trying to read something on it, while looking nearsightedly at the numbers on the doors and following the wheelchair. I waited for the nurse to open the door of the apartment, and when she went in, pushing the wheelchair, I went in too. Her eyes widened, but before she could make a peep, I shot her in the head. I always go for the head.
“Take it easy,” said the customer, facing me with both hands palms outward. He was in the business, he looked me in the eye. “We can make a deal, I’ll pay you more,” he said.
I fired two shots into his head. Then I unscrewed the silencer, stuck the Walther in my belt, the silencer in my pocket, and left, shutting the door. I got in the elevator and went downstairs. If I was lucky, it’d be some time before they found the pair of stiffs.
When I got to the lobby, I took Belle by the arm and we left. No one looked at me, anyone looking in our direction would see only Belle.
I got in the car and said, “Let’s go to the lake.” But when we arrived at the lake, I didn’t have the heart to toss the pistol in the water. Shit, a Walther P99, the best thing to ever come out of Germany.
“Let’s go to the movies,” Belle said. We went to see a detective film; she was crazy about detective films. If someday she ever cuckolded me, it’d be with a cop.
We got out of the theater at midnight and Belle said she wanted to go dancing at the discotheque. But first we stopped at my place, and I put away the Walther, after patting it like it was a puppy.
At the discotheque Belle led me to the floor right away to dance. Watching her dance was mind-blowing, but I danced shaking like a dead tree branch in a high wind. Then we had a drink, and she asked what I thought when I saw I was about to kill a cripple. “Nothing,” I answered, “and you, what did you think?” She said she thought it better to kill a cripple than a healthy guy who could dance and do aerobics on a treadmill.
When we got back to the apartment, Belle, in bed, said she wanted to talk to me about something serious. Her father was threatening to cut off her allowance.
“Fuck your father’s allowance, I’ll give you the money,” I said.
“But that’s not all, he’s so pissed at me that he says he’s going to leave everything to charity, so that when he dies I won’t inherit a penny.”
“Fuck your father’s money, I’ll support you.”
“Man, it’s a lot of money,” she said. “I think it’s very cruel. I’m only eighteen, I’m going to last at least another sixty. Can you imagine sixty years in poverty?”
“I’ve already said I’ll take care of you,” I insisted.
She looked at me pensively and said, “Sweetheart, I love you, but who can guarantee that you—in the business you’re in, that you’re, you’re …”
She stopped, and I finished the thought for her: “Who can say if I’m going to stay alive for long, isn’t that it?”
She answered, “That’s it, I’m very sorry, but that is it.” Then she gave me lots of little kisses and told me she loved me, and added that she had a proposition for me.
“Leave it till tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s go to sleep. It’s almost dawn, and if day breaks I can’t get to sleep.” I took off my clothes, stripping down to my undershorts, and got into bed. She remained seated in the armchair.
When I woke up, Belle was still sitting in the chair.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “can we talk now?”
“Talk about what?”
“My proposition,” she replied.
“Talk,” I said.
She got up from the chair and sat down beside me on the bed. “I want you to kill my father.”
I remained silent. Shit, I thought, you can kill everybody, except your own father and mother.
“Give it some thought,” I said.
And she answered, “I spent all night thinking about it, and all week, there’s nothing left to think about. What’s the problem? Since I’ve known you you’ve killed five people. Yesterday you killed a cripple, and now you’ve got scruples about killing my son of a bitch father who wants to leave me without a penny? If you tell me to jump off a bridge I’ll do it, and I ask you for one little thing and you hesitate, is that how much you love me?”
She bent over me, took off my shorts, and started sucking my cock. “Is that good?”
Some five hundred women have sucked my cock, but none of them had such a magical mouth as hers. “Is that good?” After repeating that, she stopped, sat down on the bed and said, “If you don’t kill my father I’m leaving you. You’ll have to find some other girl to fuck.”
There wasn’t another girl like her in the whole world. But Belle wanting to kill her father made her ugly, and my cock wilted.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“I’ll give you a week,” she said.
I shadowed her father during that week. He was a tall man with white hair, nice looking, who left the house every day and got into the chauffeured car waiting in front. One day, before he got into the car, I went up to him and said, “Excuse me, I’m not from here. How do I get to downtown?”
He answered, “I’m heading there, I’ll give you a lift. Please, get in.”
We talked in the car. I told him I was from Minas Gerais and was looking for work. It could be as a servant, anything, I just needed work, and he handed me a card and wrote a name on the back.
“This is Dona Estela, my secretary. I’m going to tell her to look for a position for you. Come to this address tomorrow morning and speak to her.”
I thought it was time to leave and said, “I’ll get out here. Thank you very much. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
I got out of the car and walked down the street, thinking. When I got to my apartment there was a message from Belle on the answering machine asking me to call her.
“How’s it coming?” she asked.
“I’m setting things up,” I said, “it won’t be long. I’ll do the job in a few days.”
“I’ll come by there later,” Belle said, “and I’m giving you my sweet little ass.”
Normally that would have aroused me, but that day, I don’t know why, it was disagreeable. “I can’t today, I’ve got a meeting with the Dispatcher.”
The next day I went to look for Dona Estela. She was very pleasant and said she’d found me a position as a driver and that I should bring my documents to her as soon as possible.
At that moment Belle’s father came into the waiting room and clapped me on the back, saying, “Everything all right? Is there anything you need, an advance?”
“No, sir. Thank you very much.”
When I got to the apartment, I called Belle and said that doing her father at the office would be hard; it had to be on the street or at his home.
“I’ll arrange a key for you,” Belle said. “I’m coming over there so we can fool around a bit; I want to suck you.”
“It’s not possible today either,” I said.
“Hey,” said Belle, “I miss that big dick.”
“There’s been a screw-up,” I said. “I’ve got another meeting with the Dispatcher to straighten it out.”
She gave me a key.
“What about the servants?” I asked.
“Not to worry, they stay in an apartment over the garage.”
I called Belle and asked, “Is tonight okay?”
“Yes,” she replied, “he always takes a sleeping pill around eleven. Get here at midnight, but when you arrive, first let’s go to my room to fool around a little.”
I got there at exactly midnight, the Walther with its silencer in my pocket. When I entered, Belle was standing in the living room waiting for me. We went upstairs. “His room is that one over there, and mine is here. Come on.” We went int
o her room, and Belle immediately got naked and asked, “What do you want, my ass? Want me to suck you? Want to suck me? Whatever you want, that’s what I want.”
That talk didn’t appeal to me anymore. It used to get me excited, now it kind of disgusted me. She lay down on her stomach, arching her ass. In the world, the entire world, there wasn’t a prettier ass than hers, and she knew it. I approached Belle, took the Walther out of my pocket and shot her in the head, right in the back of the neck, for her to die instantaneously and painlessly. Then I covered her body with a sheet and left, closing the door to the street. How could anyone want to kill their father or mother?
Now the Walther was really hot. I drove to the lake and sat down, thinking, without the heart to throw that jewel in the water. Day was starting to break, and I could feel something happening to me. I felt like crying, but crying is for fags, and I didn’t cry. I took the Walther and threw it as far as I could. It hit the water without making much noise. The sun was so white it hurt my eyes.
xania
I PHONED THE DISPATCHER.
“You sent a girl to do the job? You sent a virgin to face off against an old whore?”
“I was counting on your weakness for women.”
“It didn’t work.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Was. I had to sacrifice the girl, you sonofabitch.”
“I made a mistake. It happens. Zé, Zé, don’t take it the wrong way, but you’ve become a problem.”
“Shit, what kind of problem?”
“You can’t give up the business, you know too much.”
“You clown, they knocked my teeth out in the Glock case, but did I do the job? They tortured me, I’m crippled in one hand, but did I do the job?”
“They got the wrong hand. They didn’t know you’re a lefty. But look, Zé, we gotta do what we gotta do. Rules of the game. You know who gives the orders.”
“I don’t fucking know about anybody ordering anything.”
“You said it yourself, not too long ago, that by knowing the victim you know who ordered it. Remember?”
I did say that. Fuck.
I hung up the phone.
This was my situation: The Dispatcher had put out a contract on me and thought that a pretty girl could get to me, but he screwed up and now he was sending The Man after me. I’d always thought I was The Man, and I’m sure I’m right, but there must be others. The problem was that I didn’t know where to find the Dispatcher; he was the one who set up the meetings. He’d call and say, “We’re going to meet at such-and-such restaurant,” a different one each time, and he paid in cash. Every week he got a new prepaid cell phone and threw the old one away.
I rented a place at another apartment hotel using fake ID and passport. They knew my real name. I was thinking of the Dispatcher and the ones who were after me as they, a sign my paranoia was increasing. Fuck.
I started wearing loose-fitting shirts and carrying two pistols, one under my right armpit and the other in my belt. I let my beard grow and dyed the hairs that were gray a light brown. In my family we go gray early. I bought a pair of glasses with clear lenses from a street vendor. I inspected myself in the mirror. It didn’t look like a disguise; my face is so common that it goes with everything.
I went on paying for the old apartment hotel and left my car in the garage. I wanted them to think I still lived there. Under my false name, Manoel de Oliveira, I rented an apartment on the same floor. The doormen didn’t recognize me with my brown hair, beard, glasses, and Portuguese accent. Besides that, my apartment hotel was constantly changing its personnel. And doormen at apartment hotels by the water only look at the women, preferably at their asses in bathing suits as they head for the beach.
I was in luck. The peephole in my new apartment allowed me to see the door of the old one where I used to live and which to all intents and purposes was still my address.
I spent all day looking through the peephole. My neck ached, but I knew that one day someone would show up, and this time it wouldn’t be some beginner of a girl.
The woman was wearing the uniform of the restaurant on the ground floor and had a tray in her hand. She rang the doorbell of my old apartment.
The Dispatcher must’ve thought, Zé will never suspect I’ve sent another woman.
I came out from where I was, calmly. The woman with the tray gave me a perfunctory glance—she must know me only from an old photograph—and rang the bell again. I went up to her, stuck the pistol in her ribs, and put the key to the apartment in her free hand.
“Open the door,” I said.
She opened the door and we went inside.
“Put the tray on the table,” I said, “and lie down on the floor with your hands behind you.”
She lay down and I handcuffed her. I removed the napkin covering the tray; on it was a cheese sandwich, a Coca-Cola, and a Luger Parabellum, 9mm, with silencer.
I like cheese sandwiches. While I ate the sandwich I asked, “Where’d you get this piece? It’s a collector’s item. I’m honored you chose such a tool to do me.”
“Are you Zé?” she asked.
“I am. What’s your arrangement with the Dispatcher?”
“A shot in the head.”
“Nine millimeter … Gray matter all over the wall. What’s your name?”
“Xania.”
“Xania? You’re The Man? A woman?”
The Man is what the Dispatcher’s best operator was called.
“If you’re asking if I’m the best, if I handled the most complicated cases, yeah, I’m The Man.”
“Xania.”
“You think my name is odd? There’s a TV character named Xania, but my parents chose the name of a city on the island of Crete. I think in Portuguese it’s spelled with Ch, but they thought it was more interesting with X.”
“Xania, I have a proposition for you. Here it is. By the rules, I ought to eliminate you. But I want the Dispatcher, understand? I want peace and quiet, to go somewhere and raise chickens. The Dispatcher won’t let me.”
“You want to raise chickens?”
“It’s a metaphor. I’m tired of this work. I kill you, and the Dispatcher will send somebody else, I think he’ll send a man next time, and I’ll go on killing people, something I don’t want to do anymore, especially when it doesn’t pay me a cent. I want you to tell me where I can find the Dispatcher, the address where he lives.”
“I don’t know. I meet him in a restaurant, never the same one twice, every time he sets it up in a different one.”
“Did he already pay you for the job? How much?”
“He gave me half.”
Xania mentioned the amount.
“You make more than I do.”
“I’m The Man,” she said, laughing.
“What about the other half?”
“He’s going to give it to me when I—I mean, was going to give it to me—”
“Let’s agree on something. You call him and say the job’s done. Ask him to set a time and place to pay you the rest.”
“I’m running the risk of death if he learns I’m ratting him out.”
“You’re already at risk of death, immediate death right here. Besides which, I’m going to eliminate the sonofabitch, don’t worry about that. Go on, Xania, make the call.”
I stuck the pistol against the back of her neck.
“I’ll count to three. One, two—”
“Wait, wait,” said Xania, taking the cell phone from her purse.
It took a while, at least that was my impression, for the Dispatcher to answer. With my pistol in Xania’s neck I leaned my body so close to hers that I could feel her ass against my groin.
“The job’s done,” Xania said.
I heard the Dispatcher’s voice asking if I’d given her a hard time.
“Not at all. He thought I was the waitress. What now?”
“Put another bullet in his head,” I heard the Dispatcher say.
I took the Parabellum fro
m the tray and fired. I gestured for Xania to continue the conversation.
“Done. There’s brains splattered all over the floor.”
“In an hour, come to Niraki, the Japanese restaurant,” I heard the Dispatcher say. “Know where it is?”
Goddamn, the Japanese restaurant where Olive Oyl tried to teach me how to use chopsticks. What was the Japanese name for them? For chopsticks?
Xania and I got a taxi.
“You go in first. Sit down with the Dispatcher if he’s already there. If not, wait for him. I’m only going to shoot the sonofabitch after he pays you the other half.”
The restaurant was surrounded by glass, and from the street I could see what was going on inside. It was six p.m. and beginning to get dark. The Niraki was empty. The Dispatcher hadn’t arrived yet. Xania sat down at a table.
It crossed my mind that the Dispatcher might not show up. After I’d waited for fifteen minutes that seemed like fifteen hours, he finally showed up. He arrived in a large chauffeur-driven car and went into the Niraki.
The Dispatcher sat down at Xania’s table, and after they exchanged a few words he handed her an envelope. I entered quickly and shot him twice in the head. I’ve already said that I always shoot for the head. The fucker had his back to me and never even saw me.
I looked at Xania, who looked back at me and saw what was going to happen. I felt bad and hesitated a little, but I did what had to be done. The two collapsed on top of each other.
The Dispatcher had made me kill two women, and I hate killing women. I pressed the pistol against his face and opened a large hole where his nose had been. The fucker would need to have a closed-coffin funeral.
The waiters looked at me in horror.
I left, went to the Dispatcher’s car, and knocked on the window. The driver opened the glass, and I put two bullets in him, in the head like always.
Afterward, I went to the apartment I’d just rented, shaved off my beard, threw the glasses into the trash. The Portuguese tenant was no more.
Winning the Game and Other Stories Page 17