by Jay Hopler
Copyright
First published in the United States in 1996 by
The Overlook Press
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Copyright ©1996 Jay Hopler
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-46830-553-1
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following copyrighted works.
“In Search of the Assassin” by Jay Hopler originally appeared in a longer form in Pequod.
From This Gun for Hire by Graham Greene. Copyright ©1936 by Graham Greene, renewed. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Appeared as A Gun for Sale in the U.K. Used by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.
“The Hit Man” by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Copyright ©1980 by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the author.
“Gentlemen, The King!” by Damon Runyon, from Guys Dolls: Twenty Stories by Damon Runyon. Copyright ©1956 by Damon Runyon. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books, U.K.
“Loose Ends” by Bharati Mukherjee, from The Middleman and Other Stories. Copyright ©1980 by Bharati Mukherjee. Reprinted by permission of the author.
From The Butcher’s Boy by Thomas Perry. Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Perry. Reprinted by permission of Lescher & Lescher Ltd. for the author.
“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway from Men Without Women. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon and Schuster. Copyright ©1927 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Copyright renewed ©1955 by Ernest Hemingway. Also: © Hemingway Foreign Rights Trust. All rights outside the U.S., Hemingway Foreign Rights Trust, by a deed of trust of Mary Hemingway 16 March, 1992 as widow and sole legatee of the author.
“Screen Image: (Royal Emerald Hotel, Nassau)” by Mark Rudman, from The Millennium Hotel. Copyright ©1996 by Mark Rudman. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Same, Only Different!” by Jiri Kajane, from Wake Up. It’s Time to Go to Sleep. Copyright ©1993 by Jiri Kajand. Translated by Kevin Phelan and Bill U’Ren. Translation Copyright ©1995 by Kevin Phelan and Bill U’Ren. This translation originally appeared in the minnesota review. Reprinted by permission of the author and translators.
“Hit Man” by Charles Bukowski, from South of No North. Copyright ©1973 by Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of Black Sparrow Press.
“The Death of Mrs. Sheer” by Joyce Carol Oates, from Upon the Sweeping Flood. Copyright ©1964 by Joyce Carol Oates. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Memories of West Street and Lepke” by Robert Lowell, from Life Studies. Copyright ©1956, 1959 by Robert Lowell. Copyright renewed ©1987 by Harriet Lowell, Sheridan Lowell and Caroline Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. and by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
“Cain” by Andrew Vachss, from Born Bad. Copyright ©1994 by Andrew Vachss. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.
“When This Man Dies” by Lawrence Block, from Sometimes They Bite. Copyright ©1983 by Lawrence Block. Reprinted by permission of Knox Burger Associates on behalf of the author.
From Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith. Copyright ©1993 by Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“In the Beginning” by Ian McEwan, excerpted from a novel in progress. Copyright ©1995 by Ian McEwan. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the author.
“The Assassin” by David Ray originally appeared in The Chicago Review. Copyright ©1996 by David Ray. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Shelter by Dave Kost. Copyright ©1993 by Dave Kost. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Stephen Dixon, Bill U’Ren, and Dr. Richard Macksey for their comments and suggestions.
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Introduction: In Search of the Assassin
from: This Gun for Hire
The Hit Man
“Gentlemen, the King!”
Loose Ends
from: the Butcher’s Boy
The Killers
Screen Image: (Royal Emerald Hotel, Nassau)
The Same Only Different!
Hit Man
The Death of Mrs. Sheer
Memories of West Street and Lepke
Cain
When This Man Dies
from: Ripley‘s Game
from: in the Beginning
The Assassin
Shelter
APPENDIX: HIT MAN MOVIES
If it is important to be sublime in anything, it is especially so in evil. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t withhold a certain respect from a great criminal. His courage bowls you over. His brutality makes you shudder. What you value in everything is consistency of character.
—DENIS DIDEROT, Rameau’s Nephew
Introduction
IN SEARCH OF THE ASSASSIN
Jay Hopler
It is easier to find a good hit man than it is to find a good hit man story. In Baltimore, you can have anyone killed for $25—more if you want finesse. I knew of a dozen street corners, all within five blocks of my one-bedroom apartment on Saint Paul Street, where an assassin could be hired; the only modern hit man story I knew of was Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers.” But the existence of the one argues favorably for the existence of the other, so I began, one afternoon in a rainy November, what would turn out to be almost three years of research into the literature of professional murder.
I read hundreds of short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, songs, poems and essays all concerned with hired killers only to find that perhaps one in every twenty met the criteria I had devised. I was looking for an accurate and compelling literary representation of the assassin and the margins he so emphatically occupies. Though the modern hit man story is an independent literary subgenre that had its genesis with Hemingway in a lonely hotel room in Madrid on May 16, 1926, the psychological profile of the character predates its modern appearance by at least 320 years, with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the last and darkest of his four great tragedies written most likely in the latter half of 1606. Take lines 91-113 of III.i, in which Macbeth secures the services of two assassins and arranges for Banquo’s murder:
MACBETH: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept
All by the name of dogs. The valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The housekeeper, the hunter, every one,
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed: whereby he does receive
Particular addition, from the bill
That writes them alike; and so of men.
Now, if you have a station in the file,
Not i‘th’ worst rank of manhood, say’t;
And I will put that business in your bosoms
Whose execution takes your enemy off,
Grapples you to the heart and love of us,
Who wear our health but sickly in his life,
Which in his death were perfect.
2ND MURDERER: I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of
the world
Have so incensed that I am reckless what
I do to spite the world.
1ST MURDERER: And I another,
So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance
To mend it or be rid on’t.
(the italics are mine)
The specifics change with every author, poet and playwright who appropriates it—that’s to be expected—but the core of the character remains essentially the same, a singular feat when you consider it has been employed by authors as diverse as William Shakespeare and Elmore Leonard. Even more amazing is that the narrative structures of these stories have also remained fixed. While professional killers have fascinated writers for centuries, there are for the most part only two kinds of hit man story—each with its own set of variables, each with its own set of rules.
Type one, the “Metamorphosis tale,” is the less common of the two and has a scenario much like the sample which follows.
(1) The killer is introduced. Usually a male, blue collar, luckless though still pursuing acceptable means of improving his situation—he is not a killer when the story begins. He has few friends, none very close. If he is married, he is apathetically so. What is most important here is the killer’s relationship to his surroundings—there is no contrast between the two. Though he is aware of the banality of his situation, he is also perfectly suited to it. This is not to say that he is resigned, quite the contrary. In fiction, as in life, realization rarely connotes acceptance. Take this passage from “When This Man Dies,” by Lawrence Block:
He went on doing his work from one day to the next, working with the quiet desperation of a man who knows his income, while better than nothing, will never quite get around to equaling his expenditures. He went to the track twice, won thirty dollars one night, lost twenty-three the next.
The hero’s quiet desperation is suffused with the knowledge of his placement as it relates to the other—he merely survives while those around him thrive. His self-awareness is defined by his inability to act in any decisive way—the climax of a “Metamorphosis tale” is inaction brought to its highest power. In the beginning of all stories told in this mode, the hero embodies one of life’s most terrifying prospects (certainly one more terrifying than death!): he is exactly equal to the sum of his parts.
(2) The beginnings of initiation.
Murder is a negative creation, and every murderer is therefore the rebel who claims the right to be omnipotent. His pathos is his refusal to suffer.
—W.H. AUDEN
As the banality of the situation verges on suffocating the hero, a way out is presented: murder as vocation. He immediately disregards the possibility, but his arguments against it (which are most often morality arguments used to strengthen the hero’s sympathetic bond with the audience) lack conviction. The real obstacle is his fear of the consequences naturally contingent upon the imposition of disorder in order—the wake that focused action inevitably leaves. There is always the possibility, as was the case with Macbeth and his wife, that the world of order will somehow reform and crush that which sought to alter it. Look at these lines from “The Assassins,” a brilliant—if almost completely unknown—prose riff done by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814:
To produce immediate pain or disorder for the sake of future benefit, is consonant, indeed, with the purest religion and philosophy, but never fails to excite invincible repugnance in the feelings of many. Against their predilections and distaste an Assassin, accidentally the inhabitant of a civilized community, would wage unremitting hostility from principle. He would find himself compelled to adopt means which they would abhor, for the sake of an object which they could not conceive that he should propose himself. Secure and self-enshrined in the magnificence and pre-eminence of his conceptions, spotless as the light of heaven, he would be the victim among men of calumny and persecution. Incapable of distinguishing his motives, they would rank him among the vilest and most atrocious criminals.
The professional killer is at ease with the possible consequences of his actions because his forays into the daily world are brief—he is not of that which he alters. The initiate’s ultimate success depends largely upon his ability to break from the society of men (Shelley’s “civilized community”) and survive in the margins. To do that, he must completely embrace what amounts to the nihilist’s call to personal responsibility: futile action is no viable means of confronting the world, only action which alters carries weight.
(3) The situation worsens. The hero adheres to his old methods of operation even though the hopelessness of his situation is steadily increasing. It is important to note that there is nothing in the hero’s life that can be of any assistance to him in the making of this decision. There is rarely any family and no faith in organized religion. Once the initiation is complete, this lack of faith is replaced by a fanatical belief in his own personal code of conduct. Every decision he makes thereafter is in keeping with his code and, while its strict observance is never enough to subdue the world, it makes his being in the world a gallant gesture.
(4) The killer acts—the murder is completed. The deed done, the killer is nervous and expects arrest (Note: once the transformation is complete, the moral question is never again raised. It is not, should I have done this thing? but rather, can I get away with it?, can I succeed?). Time passes and when it becomes obvious the job was a success, he relaxes and marvels at how easy it was, the implication being that if he had just acted in the first place, he could have saved a great deal of time and trouble. (Macbeth, again, this time from the soliloquy beginning I.vii: “If it were done, when t’is done, then t’were well/it were done quickly.”) Here as in the “Utopia tale” (the description of which follows) intellectual contemplation is portrayed as the cause of problems, a hindrance to personal progress. Professional killers are successful men freed from the moral seriousness which necessarily attends contemplative thought. They are pure action—they do. This is why so many of these stories are short, written in a sparse—if not exactly hard-boiled, certainly non-lyrical—style.
There is social criticism implicit in the “Metamorphosis tale.” The underlying questions in all of the stories written in this mode are these: what kind of society would so neglect its members that they would see murder as a viable means of self-support? How can the danger inherent in the life of a professional murderer pale in comparison to the unremitting banality in which a man lives? Given the desperate situations in which many people live, the evolution from non-entity to killer seems an almost natural progression. These lines from chapter 3 of Shelley’s “The Assassins” could well apply to the way in which the hero of the “Metamorphosis tale”—the successful transformation—engages the world by story’s end:
Thy createst—’tis mine to ruin and destroy.—I was thy slave—I am thy equal, and thy foe.
There are certain elements all hit man stories share, for example, the killer is always a disinterested third party—something that sets hit man fiction apart from standard crime and detective fiction which focuses on the full realization of the bleaker human emotions: hate, fear, jealousy, et al. Hit men represent the perfect rupture of the relationship between cause and effect, something regular fiction (and certainly crime and mystery fiction!) cannot tolerate. As Auden makes clear in his essay, “The Guilty Vicarage,” the first requirement for a successful detective story is a closed society in a state of grace. Mystery and detective fiction depend upon the society’s original (apparent) innocence being altered by the unimaginable act: the murder; and then restored by the apprehension of the fallen member. It falls apart unless every member of the given society is a likely suspect—take the novel, And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (also published as Ten Little Indians). The best example of the kind of closed society that is so crucial to mystery fiction, it features a cast of ten characters stranded on Indian Island, a small, privately-owned rock completely isolated from the Devon coast. All ten have
been asked to the island for the weekend by a mysterious host whose motives are completely unknown and who never makes an appearance. Shortly after dinner on the first night, a gruesome phonograph recording is played in which the sins of each member of the party (the perfectly closed society) are detailed. At this point, the apparent innocence of the society is called into question, but not yet altered—accusations of past transgressions, whether true or false, are simply hearsay. The necessary alteration is not achieved until the first confirmed murder occurs—that of young Anthony Marston at the end of chapter four, a victim of poison in his after-dinner drink. As the story progresses, suspicion falls on each one of the surviving characters in turn because it is obvious the murders are being committed by one of them, the breakdown is internal. As a consequence—and this is especially true of And Then There Were None though it could be said with equal certainty about almost any decent example of the genre—no one is innocent.
But in the hit man story, the innocence of the affected society is never altered. There is a victim—a body—so it follows by obvious logic that someone is responsible for its appearance, that at least one member of the society has fallen from grace; but, because of the rupture of cause and effect, it is impossible to determine which one, and resolution in the classic sense is impossible. This, of course, is the crux of the most interesting paradox: because hit men are employed as experts in endings, hit man stories are not about conflict—their focus is entirely on resolution.
The issue of open and closed societies—the profound effect a marginalized other can have on the mainstream—raises the question of open and closed space, the moral implication of distance. The mastery of time-as-space (duration), as has been mentioned in the outline of the “Metamorphosis tale,” is a crucial factor in the making of a professional killer—as Lafcadio exclaims near the end of Andre Gide’s novel Lafcadio’s Adventures (first published as The Vatican Swindle in November, 1925), “What a gulf between the imagination and the deed!” In these stories, professional killers are able to eliminate that gulf easily, precisely because of their own marginalization—as Shelley points out, “[t]ime was measured and created by the vices and miseries of men, between whom and the happy nation of the Assassins, there was no analogy nor comparison.” But there remains a tension between the hit man and his moral relationship to physical distance. The same situation which allows for such a complete mastery of time—the fact that he is not of that which alters—interferes with his mastery of the deed. The distance between the killer and the victim must be closed completely if the act is to have merit. Take these lines from chapter 21 of the novel, The Assignment, by Friedrich Durrenmatt, in which the post-engagement feelings of Achilles, a bomber pilot who flew missions from The Kitty Hawk during Vietnam, are described: