The children beamed. Their faces pointed outward as they tried to absorb the scene. “This is really beautiful, isn't it, guy?” Max said.
“It is,” Andy replied.
“Are you still scared?”
“I don't know.”
“Kinda?” Max asked.
“Yeah. Kinda.”
The memory faded there.
He dipped down low into a bow before resting the tulips where the stone met the grass. He stayed down there for a moment, almost wishing he could sink down into the ground and be reunited with the most important person in his life. This didn't last long before he snapped back up and looked at the grave. It looked nice now with the yellow tulips detracting from the overabundance of gray. It looked like something Max could sigh to, a final sigh before he was truly at peace.
Max may be at peace, Andy thought, but I am not. For that, he took one of the tulips for himself.
Softly did his feet tread as he walked away from the sight, the tulip held in between his loose fingertips. The cab driver waited for him and for that Andy handed him a crisp new fifty-dollar bill when he climbed in the back. He directed the taxi home, a good hour away. He wrote the check for fifty dollars over the fare and took himself and his luggage up to his apartment.
Andy's apartment sported style, sacrificing space for class at the same price of both. A spacious loft above a boutique on the corner of the block, it had already been furnished before he ever set eyes on the brass door handles. The entire interior seared whiteness, as if to point out every speck of grime or layer of dust that accumulated in his frequent absences. A decorative waterfall trickled from its spot in the hallway wall. It made him anxious, but he cared too little to remove it. The lamps were very decorative; the tall metal ones bended in strange angles so they seemed more unique. The shorter ones were made of stained glass. The type of stuff that ruins your day when it breaks.
Andy threw the tulip into a vase on his nightstand and rested his luggage at the foot of his bed. From it he retrieved his deep purple bathrobe and slipped out of his clothes. He had received a large gash along his upper left arm that he didn't notice until now as it screamed pain at him when he deftly tossed his shirt off. Not too deep, Andy observed. No stitches.
Water rolled off of him as if it preferred not to be on him for too long. However, it still soothed as he showered. He needed to wash off every bit of St. Petersburg that made the trip with him. How he loathed that city. And how he just wanted to weep. No one would be able to hear him. He might as well have just done it and gotten over with it, but he felt unable to cry. His eyes felt dried and his heart just felt cold. Try though he might, he couldn't shed a tear. He was a killer. Not a philosopher.
He clicked on the television before seeing the news channel and turning it off again. Escape was impossible within reality. His fingers danced over his collection of movies until he found a favorable Mel Brooks film, to which he fell asleep in the late morning.
Andy was dreaming. He felt that fact nagging at him in the back of his head, but he dismissed it and continued his walk down the dark, snowy streets. The night sent pleasant shudders down his spine, warm but hollow, like a crystalline dream scape. He needed the burgundy suit he wore so well, but it didn't warm him up too much either so there was little sacrifice in looking this good. He carried with him a box of chocolates, the really good kind that you can't even find in a department store.
His feet led the way, taking him someplace that he remembered, yet he couldn't imagine. Where ever it is, he thought, I hope it has much less snow. He didn't want to ruin his jet black cowboy boots.
A door. That's where he finally arrived, cleared his throat, and then knocked. A beautiful woman threw open the door, dressed even more extravagantly than Andy himself.
“Andy!” she cried before embracing him.
“Hi,” he said. “I got these for you.” He indicated the chocolates.
She beamed at him. “For me?” she asked.
“For us,” he answered before allowing himself into the house.
She helped him peel off his jacket before taking the chocolates and kissing him. She disappeared into another room. He followed her in and leaned against the doorway as she pulled out a large tray of some sort of odd pastry. “Spanakopita!” she announced. “I felt Greek tonight.”
Andy beamed in response, then rushed over to help her light a couple of candles.
The small dish ignited Andy's taste, a man not often for spinach. The woman's company felt like a familiar presence. She smiled at him, her eyes fertile with love and trust. She shared casual facts about her day and romantic plans for the future. Plans that almost tore him up. None of this came off as strange to Andy, though. It was common. He knew this feeling.
Suddenly he remembered the ring in his pocket. Tonight he planned to propose.
The night slipped by them as quickly as the wine drained from the large bottle she had brought out in a decorative ice bucket. He felt himself getting drunk. Such a peculiar sensation, getting drunk within a dream. He felt light as a feather. He didn't get his typical wave of nausea that he had to bear once the alcohol decided to intoxicate him.
Proposing didn't seem like such a great idea on such a great evening with such a great buzz going on. It wouldn't seem as genuine. So at the end of the night, thumbing the ring in his pocket, he said his goodbyes and called a cab.
He stopped the driver at the large park that they passed along their ride home. He paid him and climbed out of the taxi. It might have been the wine, but Andy didn't want to end the night in his apartment alone, so he went for a stroll through the park. He made his way knowingly toward a large pond that sat hidden in a cluster of trees within the park. Kind of a walk to get to, but his favorite place to dream. He hadn't sobered up so he walked along the edge of the water until all that filled him was a desire to dip his toes into the cool pond. He labored over his nice black cowboy boots, trying to coax them off of his drunken feet in an aloud manner. He looked up at the sole street lamp that sat at the edge of the pond bright faced as he struggled. He managed to pull them and his socks off and sat on the edge of the pond, breathing in the cool night air and staring into the infinite blackness between the stars. Never had he felt so peaceful.
That's when the bullet hit him, knocking him into the lake and back into consciousness.
Dreams always came that way to Andy. Cryptic and incomplete. Andy thought nothing more of it. He had many dreams with similar themes and he paid none of them much thought. They all ended the same way, and none of them were more significant than another.
He tried his best to not know what it meant.
Andy climbed out of his bed and slipped into a casual attire. Instead of his customary suit and classic style, he threw on some jeans, a peace-sign t-shirt and a blue hoodie. Less than he'd need in wintertime Chicago, but he wouldn't be out long. He grabbed his bag and slipped out of the door.
Here walked a man enshrouded in strange, home brewed superstition. This man here, the murderer wearing a peace-sign shirt. Andy, of course, realized the irony of that being his favorite symbol, the only one he could wear on a shirt if there be any symbol at all. Perhaps he wanted to avoid all the brand-named merchandise that corporations just like the one that employed him peddled out. He had no clue what company it he worked for these last ten years, no tangible names by which he could identify the faces that represented that company. But that wasn't quite it. The most probable explanation of all is that there is a balance to things and Andy felt very strongly about upsetting it. If you paint it black, you need to paint some white. If you sing a little high, you must sing a little low.
If you take a life, you must help one to grow.
He walked with that purpose in mind. Andy admitted it to himself without hesitation; he wasn't driven by the generosity in his heart but by the guilt of his crimes that pushed him on into the downtrodden neighborhood of Chicago's local homeless population.
He made his way through the sea of the impoverished until he came to a bearded black man. He was about the same age as Andy but misfortune had aged him faster than he should look. He looked up from the conversation he was having with an old white man, who stopped talking and started reading the papers that covered him like a blanket.
“Hello,” the black man said with a genuine, human smile. His warmth came across without effort.
“Homer, hi,” Andy greeted.
His friend grinned, exposing yellowing teeth. They must have received little maintenance since he left last. “How are you?” he asked.
“I'm well,” Andy started, drifting off. He stared up and down the road at all the faces. He noticed himself coming off as distant, so he returned the question. He dropped the bag from his shoulder on the street and sat beside Homer.
They exchanged surface pleasantries as Andy pulled out the bag with his leftovers in it. “This is for you,” he said as he handed the food over to his friend. Homer accepted, thanking him. Andy grabbed the envelop he had stuffed in his bag and set it in his lap as Homer looked over and smelled the steak sandwich and potatoes that Andy gave him. The food steamed. Andy heated it up before leaving his apartment.
“Man, these other people are going to start realizing why you visit so often and then you'll never get any peace of mind when you come back,” Homer joked. Andy cracked the slightest smile and laughed himself.
“I'd love to help them all,” he started, looking at the lot of them. “It's not right to pick favorites, but Homer, you are indeed mine.”
“Why's that?” Homer asked.
Andy's eyes smiled at Homer. “You helped me. For no other reason than you could,” he explained.
The black man nodded but the expression on his face was not convinced. “You know I love the help, Andy,” he started. “I love getting to see you and all, but maybe you should take a lesson from that and don't pick favorites.”
It was something to consider. Random generosity to help his fellow man just because he could. However, Andy did not see the point in the philosophy. He felt he could never make a dent if he spread all of his resources over the random population. He would much rather support his friend than people who never gave a damn about him. Then it came to Andy that perhaps Homer didn't refer to food and money, but just basic human compassion.
“You're an endangered species, Homer.” Andy commented.
Homer brightened up again after a brief pause of conversation when he asked, “So where'd you go this time?”
“Russia,” Andy replied, trying not to convey his dislike of the country through his face. He failed according to the way Homer looked at him. He looked down into his lap and thumbed through the money in the envelop as they talked, double checking its quantity.
“What's wrong with Russia?” the black man asked.
Andy handed the envelope with the money in it to Homer, who tried his best to seem like he did not want to accept it. He took the thing after a moment of hesitation, at a loss for what to say. There was nothing left to say soon as Andy stood up from the road, looking down at his kind friend. “It was cold,” he answered.
Andy awoke a handful of uneventful days later to find that the tulip had withered and died overnight. With its death came the call from his employer, and his next assignment.
-Chapter Three-
Lumnin
A small plane waited for him on the runway, just as it had dropped him off. He said his farewells to Homer, leaving just a sheet of mystery over the whole occasion. Despite his friend's curiosity, he couldn't say where he would be flown to next because he never knew himself until he was seated across from the middle-aged man on the expensive jet. Like he was now.
His employer had started growing out a beard during Andy's holiday, which he played with through most of their discussion. “Good to see you,” he greeted the hitman.
“You as well,” Andy replied, strained by the force of the take-off.
“We're flying now to Lumnin, a city about three hours drive from New York City,” the man told him with no dulling of the twinkle in his eye.
“Lumnin?” Andy said the name of the city, let it try to get comfortable in his mouth. “That would be my first assignment in the country since --”
“Merely coincidental,” his employer interrupted, leaving out none of the significance. “Interest has found itself in America.”
“What is this interest's name?”
The man smirked. “Flynn,” he answered. “For reasons that don't concern you, we'd like to offer a hundred-and-fifty percent your normal salary to rid this burden from my mind.”
“First name?”
“Haley.”
“Why is she a problem?” Andy asked. A valid question, but he saw his error as soon as he made it. You never ask for a reason. Every other question should float through his head, when, where, how, but never why. “Forgive me.”
The man nodded once in response.
“This one requires a very tasteful touch, Winter, but I think that you're up for it,” his boss started. “You're on American soil. A lot is invested in this run, and your expertise is crucial. Any mistakes, anything that could be traced back to us would be cataclysmic.”
“There will be no mistakes,” Andy said very straight faced. His skill for murder was no joke for him. He had no pride for it.
The man smiled. “I don't expect you to fail us. The key element to this whole thing is that you ensure it looks like an accident. Any thorough investigation, any suspicion that something might have been orchestrated will be complete failure. Nothing can go wrong,” he said. “You can't take an extra three seconds with this one. Too much is at risk.”
Andy nodded. “I'll do nothing less than extraordinary,” he promised.
“Because of the delicateness and sheer difficulty of the task,” the man started again, giving Andy some strange horrifying feeling, “you won't be alone in Lumnin. You'll be staying and working with one of our most talented data collectors. His name is Amidon.”
“A data collector?” Andy asked.
“Please take this as no offense,” the elder man replied. “As capable as you are, Amidon is skilled at gathering information about a topic. The most thorough of his kind available. The catch, however, is that he is unaware of some crucial details.”
“What doesn't he know?” Andy interrupted.
His boss let it slide. “That Flynn is to die. He believes this to be an illegal slander operation. We've informed him that you represent media that we have hired to 'dig up dirt' on Flynn. He believes that you mean to discredit her,” he explained.
“So I'm supposed to be a reporter or something?” Andy asked for clarification.
“A writer, yes,” was the answer he received. “Anyway, it is also very vital that Amidon not be aware to your true purpose. If he gets nervous or scared, we may have to have another loose end cut. I'd prefer not to have that happen.”
“How will he be ignorant once I kill her?” Andy asked. “His job is to study her. Won't he realize what's been happening when she turns up dead?”
“No, he won't,” the man replied. “That is how convincing this accident must be. Even the man working as the informant for her assassination must not know that she was killed. Only that she died. Then we win some brownie points by releasing a statement saying that we had discovered controversial information about the dead girl, but out of respect, will not release it.”
Andy smiled only because the skin of his face crawled in that direction. Truly despicable. That's what he must become to do this. He believed he was prepared.
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“Salt in the wounds, if I may say,” Andy commented.
“Pain,” his employer explained, “is a reminder to intelligent beings to know their place and a harbinger to those too dumb to obey.”
When Andy landed this time, he didn't say anything to the cab driver before the taxi lurched forward onto the streets of Lumnin, darkening as the sun had begun setting. He couldn't discern where he was going and wouldn't be able to recognize it even if he did. It was an unfamiliar city. Even though it was labeled as a city, Andy could see it much more as a college town. A large town. However, there was no campus as Andy learned while they drove down the cobblestone street that served as the city's main vein. Instead, it seemed that the city was built around an ancient and now abandoned soda factory that rested on the bank of a small river. Andy had no idea which river it was.
Andy could only make out the dead shell of a building in the distance from the small stretch of freeway that wound through the outskirts of town. The sun made a remarkable twinkle as it began sinking behind the dilapidated form. Shortly following, they exited onto a thriving avenue that contained tower-like apartment buildings and large houses. It was a very young neighborhood. Through it prowled hipsters and naive trend followers. Ambitious people with no talent. Your local pot dealer.
He almost believed that the taxi driver wanted to pick up a sack once he stopped the car in a dingy part of the neighborhood, but he only collected the blank check Andy was left with, helped him with his luggage and then departed, leaving him in front of a strange house. He walked up to the front stoop and rang the doorbell. After a minute of waiting, he looked around to make sure that this was the house he had to go to before ringing it again. Now he heard movement.
A Guardian Angel Page 2