Finally, five minutes ago, I decided to get on with it. I slipped on my shoes and jacket, started preparing the weapon. It looked to be a straightforward assignment, and I anticipated no difficulty.
But now the phone is ringing, and that can’t be good.
I settle on the edge of the bed and study the telephone warily. It rings a fifth time, and a sixth. If someone has dialed a wrong number, they are in it for the long haul.
That, of course, is the likely explanation: a drunk in a bar, somewhere out there in the city, has accidentally punched a 7 instead of a 6 while calling a cab, and is too soused to even consider hanging up. But I know otherwise. Professionals in my field can sense impending complications like sailors smell rain.
I sigh on the eighth ring and pick up on the ninth.
“What?” I say without inflection.
At first I hear nothing but an intermittent hiss, the hallmark of a cell phone. Then a voice I immediately recognize as the Client’s. “Is…is this the, the person…?” He trails off, bewildered.
It’s strange, though not unpleasant, to hear him at a loss for words. Whenever I’ve seen the Client on television-and when I briefly met him in person yesterday afternoon-he’s been self-confident to the point of arrogance. Understandably, I guess, as one of the few dot-com billionaires to survive the crash in the late ’90s. His Web site, Opulence Online, sells luxury items to the obscenely wealthy-art, yachts, jewelry, even low-orbit space flights-and he currently presides over the company as CEO. While not the richest man in the country, he is rumored to be in the top twenty.
So I let a couple seconds tick by before answering. Let him sweat, for once in his life.
“This is Xerxes,” I say at last. “Did you forget our arrangement? No more contact, ever. Those were the terms to which you agreed.”
“The…? Ah yes! That’s why I am calling!” He instantly reverts to his typical, businesslike manner. “It’s off. I’m canceling the job.”
I shrug. “Okay, fine. It’s off.”
“Excellent.” The Client’s voice is fraught with relief. “I’m glad I caught you in time.”
“Just. I was walking out the door.”
“My lucky day.”
He hesitates, waiting for me to ask something. I don’t take the bait. “I suppose you want some sort of explanation,” he prompts.
“Not especially,” I reply. But I know he’s going to provide one. They always do.
It’s the same when they hire me: clients seem compelled to account for themselves. I tell them up front that I don’t give a damn, but they tell me all the same.
When I first started in this line of work, I thought they felt guilty, or didn’t want me to think them a bad person. But you become a pretty astute observer of human nature after a few years of doing this, and I eventually tumbled to the truth.
See, here’s the thing. To get to the point of killing someone, the typical person has to invest considerable time and energy into justifying the decision. They don’t call it “premeditated murder” for nothing. By the time they contact me, clients usually have a nicely polished rationale all queued up and ready to go. A real labor of love. Something to be proud of.
And they want to show it off. Convincing yourself that murder is acceptable takes as much skill and dedication as building a ship in a bottle. My clients don’t want to set their completed project on a shelf somewhere; they want someone to admire their handiwork.
So I pretend to listen, assure them that, were I in their shoes, I’d be doing the same thing. They beam like they’ve won a blue ribbon at the fair.
I don’t often get to hear the other end of the story, where they explain why they no longer want a target dead. Only three of my assignments have gone uncompleted-four, if you count the guy who keeled over from E. coli the day before I got to him. Even in the cases where a client calls it off, it’s never because of misgivings. It’s always for reasons as self-serving as the first.
This client’s tale is no different. The Target is a business rival who’d been blocking a key acquisition. Suddenly, the situation has changed. They’d been up all night negotiating a new arrangement, one in which the Target is now essential to the transaction’s success. Or something. I’m only half listening, honestly, though I dutifully hold the receiver to my ear for the entire story.
He reaches the culmination of his narrative, and I utter some stock phrases to imply I’ve paid attention. My goal is to wrap this up as quickly as possible.
“Anyway,” the Client concludes, “our meeting just finished, and I’m on my way to your motel. I should be there in ten minutes.”
“Why are you coming here?” I ask. “Our business is complete.”
“Well, yes. Except for the refund.”
Huh. That’s a first.
I should simply hang up, but can’t resist a riposte. “Ah yes, I see what the problem is: you appear to have confused me with a Radio Shack. I do not give refunds. Under any circumstances.”
“You never said that.”
“You never raised the possibility that the contract might be terminated,” I counter. “If you had, I would have made the policy explicit.”
“Your oversight,” says the Client, “not mine.”
At this point it occurs to me that he might be joking. It happens. Some clients, having hired a hitman, come to fancy themselves “hard-boiled,” start thinking they can treat me like a drinking buddy. They pull out all the stock phrases they’ve heard on The Sopranos, asking what kind of “heat I’m packing,” wondering when I’m going to “whack the guy.” I had one client-a woman, even-who managed to cough out the phrase “twenty-five large” with a straight face. You can see why I strive to keep my contact with these idiots to a minimum.
I have a hunch that the Client is serious, though. A refund is the sort of thing he would expect.
The customer service provided by Opulence Online is legendary. Small items are hand-delivered to the buyer within hours of purchase, occasionally by the Client himself; ownership of larger items is transferred with lightning speed. You can buy an island in the morning and be sitting on its beach in time for sunset. It’s often said that the company will bend over backwards for all their customers, and bend over forward for an elite few. And they never-never-refuse a refund.
But I have a different business model, a fact I reiterate.
He barrels ahead, undeterred. “Look, I know you had to fly out here and everything. And I’m sure you had other expenses, meals and your motel. I don’t expect you to pay for that stuff out-of-pocket. But there’s no way I’m going to let you keep forty grand for nothing. That’s outrageous.”
The Client pauses, as if considering. Then: “Let’s say you keep five thousand and return the rest? I think that’s more than fair.”
“How about I keep it all and you shove off?”
I appear to have touched a nerve. He abruptly shifts into Intimidation Mode, bellowing, “Do you know who I am?”
The question is certainly rhetorical, a line used to bully his way into restaurants and out of speeding tickets. But I decide to answer anyway. “As a matter of fact I do, Mr. O’Sullivan.”
I like to foster, in my patrons, the illusion of anonymity. I tell them not to reveal their names or any information that might enable me to identify them. It’s a charade, of course. As soon as my intermediary tells me that someone is interested in my services, I conduct a thorough background check on the potential client. The goal is to weed out the nutcases. Mr. Sullivan is proof that it doesn’t always work.
The legwork was unnecessary in this case, as the Client had delivered the money to my motel room himself. I told him to send it via courier. But when I opened my motel door yesterday afternoon, there he was, Steffen O’Sullivan, with his ridiculous hair and trademark bomber’s jacket, a duffel bag of money in hand. Behind him, in the parking lot, I could see his brand-new Lexus wedged between a run-down pickup truck and a Datsun with a garbage bag taped over a missing window.