As a professional, I can tell you that killing a human being is about the easiest thing in the world. The rules are simple, and if you follow them the risks are almost zero. I should know. I’ve taken a hundred contracts, and the cops have never come close to me. Follow the rules. Don’t be dumb. You don’t get caught. It’s that easy.
Always take your payment in advance. Lots of people think they can weasel out on you once the job’s finished, like you would hesitate to take them out or some stupid thing. It’s a mess, killing people for free. Don’t do it.
Make sure your money is untraceable too. Getting caught by some bank whiz kid is about the most amateur thing you can do. After that it’s even easier. Find the mark outside some time when they’re isolated, and then a silencer and a slug to the head later you’re vacationing in Malibu for the next two months. Don’t use names, shut up if you don’t have anything to say, and don’t get attached to anyone. The only way you get caught is if you try to make the job fancy. Keep it simple, don’t get romantic, and it’s easy as apple pie.
Rosie, my cat of five years, meowed into my ear as I belly crawled from behind the garage to my sister’s play-house, interrupting my grim ruminations. “Shush!” I whispered at her, in panic that she would blow my cover. She probably thought I wanted to play He-Man and Battle Cat, which I was apt to do every time she was near and had something at hand I could pretend was the Sword of Grey Skull.
“Oh my God, Rosie! Leave me alone! I’m trying to plant a bomb!” The bomb in question was hidden inside my Superman back pack, consisting of two boards, and about forty 3.5V batteries usually used in walkie talkies. I had saved for two months to buy all the components. Having my assassination attempt botched by my cat was having a severe effect on my ability to pretend I was an internationally renowned hit man.
After gently throwing Rosie, back across the yard, several times since she seemed to enjoy it, I quietly got back down on my stomach and belly-crawled the rest of the way to my sister’s playhouse. At the age of ten, I was just small enough to slide under it. Once underneath, I was dead silent as I went about setting up the bomb. While I believed that this particular device would in fact explode, I pretended it was a small nuclear warhead just for fun. As an internationally renowned hit man I always made sure the job got done.
I owed the plans for the device almost entirely to my cousin Vincent, who had told me last Thanksgiving that if you stuck two walkie talkie batteries end to end, given five minutes they would explode like a propane tank on a bonfire. This was before I had decided he was a big liar for going into a lengthy diatribe on his death touch pressure point technique, so I figured it had to be true. Thereafter, it had not taken me long to save enough money to buy forty batteries. Killing a human being may have been easy for an internationally renowned hit man. Killing Rachel? I was sure that was going to take some extra fire power.
Buying the batteries was a minor obstacle, that I overcame by mowing lawns and doing yard work for my grandparents. The hard part had been figuring out a way to stick them together all at once. To that end I had cut two pieces of ply wood. At regular intervals I had glued twenty to each board, spending hours to make sure that the alignment was perfect. When it came time to detonate, I didn’t want a delay that would leave me in the blast zone.
As a lonely child, I had, over the course of years perfected a number of characters to keep myself company, and developed a fitting voice for each one. The Scotsman was my personal favorite, as I enjoyed being able to thickly roll my r’s so that no one could understand what I was saying. The Irishman, another favorite, was more whimsical, given to reflecting upon old Eire and the farm where he had grown up. To kill my sister, I drew upon my Russian voice, who strangely enough had a Mexican name. Diego Freelance. An assassin from the Eastern Bloc, who loved “wodka” and had a scar that dragged from the bottom of his cheek up to his hairline. This scar changed colors depending on the availability of markers, and on rare occasion Diego had an eye-patch should one become available by some miracle.
I assembled the explosive device quickly. I had spent a long time practicing for this moment, and my fingers knew where to move before my mind could give orders. I could hear Rachel and her friends stomping on the floor above me, cursing in hushed voices. Her friends had never really done me any wrong, but that could not be helped. Diego Freelance understood that sometimes collateral damage was unavoidable. His parents after all had been burned to death in a bombing meant to take out dissidents, leaving him orphaned on the streets of the Soviet Union, to survive any way he could. I pieced this history together out of MacGyver episodes and various action films.
My hands shook fervently as I put my them on either side of the plywood, prepared to jam my bomb together. “I have waited for this moment all my life,” I said in my best Russian accent. I sounded like one of Clint Eastwood’s cohorts from “Firefox.” When I slammed the weapons together I could not stop the tears that slid down my cheeks, but I could not afford to reflect. I had a firework show to attend. Diego Freelance did not ruminate when he had a job to do.
The belly crawl from under “Rachel’s Ranch,” was quicker than the crawl to it, as I was unburdened by explosives. Driving me on was the deep concern that the bomb would go off before I had a chance to clear the blast zone. When I rounded the corner of the garage, I stood up and dashed inside to the nearest window, standing on top of the table saw to watch the inevitable kaboom. I waited for ten minutes.
My back started to hurt. I was reminded of the time I had spent in the Gulag in Siberia, when I had waited for the guards to switch guard so I could escape. Longing for the explosion that would send my wicked sister high into the sky, I made a mental note to make sure to ask for an eye-patch on my birthday. Eye-patches are a go to symbol of the expert assassin.
I waited for half an hour. Then an hour. I saw Rachel leave and come back. Two hours. I began to cry. I saw Rachel go inside for dinner, done playing for the day. I began to get the sneaking suspicion that walkie talkie batteries do not explode when you connect them end to end. Hearing me sob, Rachel turned to flip me off.
Vincent, you liar. You goddamn liar.
Diego Freelance and I vowed revenge.
