“Theoretically,” I said. “But practically speaking, unlikely.”
“Don’t argue. Leaving fingerprints scattered about is unprofessional.”
It seemed to me that Igor looked lonely, lying there in a brown polo shirt that didn’t cover his belly, and when Kingsley made a phone call to his mysterious government agency, I found Igor’s iPhone in the grass, clicked on his iTunes, and set it on repeat so that “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” would accompany him to the afterlife.
But Kingsley plucked it from the grass on our way out. “Leave it here? Are you mad? A mobile is a font of information.”
Once on the train, Kingston kept up a steady stream of conversation, clearly for my benefit. We tacitly avoided the subject of Robbie. “Shall I tell you what became of the cat?” he said suddenly.
“Touie,” I replied, “is stuffed into Mirko’s freezer. You had to remove a twenty-pound turkey to make room for her. I hope she was dead when you did it.”
“She was. I stopped by Robbie’s flat this morning to drop off the dog — my landlady, an excellent woman, claims she’s grown allergic to him. I must’ve just missed you. You, on the other hand, did not even see a dead cat on your brother’s bed.”
“I saw her. It didn’t occur to me to check her for signs of life.”
“Ah. You see, but you do not observe.”
“Why’d you give her collar to Gladstone?” I asked.
He looked at me, surprised. “Dogs need tags. She had no use for it anymore.”
“Well, anyway,” I said. “It was kind of you to spare me the ordeal of a dead cat.”
“It was curiosity, not kindness. I’m interested in cause of death; I plan to test her for butane and benzene, for a monograph on mattress toxicity.” He was quiet for a long moment, then said, “What is the other definition of a walk-in? Other than a client without an appointment?”
“It’s a New Age term,” I said. “It’s someone who’s tired of living, whose soul vacates their body so a more... evolved soul can move in. A spiritual celebrity.”
“What nonsense.”
I shrugged. “Some souls don’t want to waste time with birth and childhood. They’ve been here before, and they’ve got work to do. But after the trade happens, the new souls generally forget they’re walk-ins. Which means you — or I — could be some kind of historical figure and not even realize it. Da Vinci. Michelangelo. A dead Beatle.”
“Right,” he said. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard all day. And it’s been a long day.”
“Whatever,” I said. “But next time you impersonate a psychic, you might want to notice the sign outside your shop.”
“I saw the sign. All my senses are excellent. Evolved, even.”
“You saw, but you did not observe,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “I observe that you are picking out the sultanas in that trail mix I bought you. So you dislike sultanas. Does your twin share this aversion?”
I looked down at the small pile of dark, withered rejects, swept aside on the table in front of us. “What’s a sultana?”
“A dried grape. Ingredient in sultana cakes, scones, Garibaldi biscuits, and the like.”
“Ah — squashed flies?”
“Precisely.”
“Oh, yeah. Robbie hates them. Raisins, currants, all dried fruit.”
Kingsley blinked. And a slow smile spread across his face.
As the train neared Liverpool station the ping! of an incoming text woke me. I’d dozed off, my head against Kingsley’s shoulder. I looked at my phone.
So long story short, I’m allergic to my new bed, thought it was something more serious and went to the ER and some idiot gave me penicillin, so THAT nearly killed me, but anyway, finally home, hope u weren’t worried and btw, where are u? and where the f is my cat? xox
“What does that mean,” Kingsley said, reading over my shoulder, “when you Americans sign xox? I understand x, but what’s the o?”
I smiled at him. “I think I’ll just show you.”
Preston Lang
Top Ten Vacation Selfies of YouTube Stars
from Deadlines
There are no professional hit men in America. That’s not to say people don’t take money in exchange for shooting a guy in the head. Some heavy kid gets a thousand bucks to whack another banger? Sure. But there’s no suave pro who lives a normal life until he gets the call from his handler to take down your difficult mistress, your work rival, your wealthy uncle. And there’s certainly no telephone number some suburban dad can call to order a fifteen-thousand-dollar hit on a Little League coach. It’s a cool setup for a story, but I’ve been a reporter too long, covered too many murders — it can’t really happen. Not only would a business like that get busted in a week, but there just isn’t enough work out there to make it feasible.
Yet there I was, drinking with a man who told me that’s exactly how he’d made his living. He called himself Brack. He had big, rough hands, but his voice was smooth and unexcitable.
“Another time I had to dress up like an emo kid to get into this club. You can laugh, but I put on the makeup and the skinny pants. Dosed the target’s drink, then I hit that dance floor. Flopped around all moody. I even took home a girl with a fish skeleton on her backpack. The hit went down as an accidental overdose. A work of art, if I do say so myself.”
His email had come to me out of the blue — I’ve got a story to tell. With nothing else going on, I decided to meet him. Then I almost walked out when he said he was a hit man. You can’t write a legit article about a guy spreading bullshit in a bar, but in truth I’d been writing more and more trash lately.
I used to have a regular job with a real newspaper. Then I didn’t. I used to do reporting. Next thing I knew I was putting out a lot of trend nonsense: Why are the kids wearing their socks over their shoes? Interview a few hip young things, generalize a bit, then get a clinical psychologist with a few bromides to put a button on it. I sold an article like that to the online arm of a national magazine. A few people read it. A lot of folks didn’t read it but wrote salty comments underneath. Old friends probably thought, Hey, Mike’s doing pretty well for himself, but when you factored in expenses that I never got reimbursed for, the piece netted me just over eight hundred bucks. It was my only income that month. My cousin works thirty hours a week at a frozen yogurt place. Last year she made more than I did, and she lives in a trailer with her mom, an EBT card, and a stack of really poorly written collection threats. I get just enough work that I still feel like a professional journalist but not enough to actually survive as a human being.
“Strangled this guy in a park one night with an ace bandage,” Brack said. “Then I set him down on a bench. He sat there a day and a half before anyone thought to check if he was dead.”
Body in a park, dead for more than twenty-four hours in public view? I’d look it up when I got home. We kept drinking and Brack kept right on talking. He once impersonated a Department of Agriculture agent, then shoved a rancher into his own decomp pit. He drowned a lady at the YWCA. He got a hunter with bear shot during pheasant season.
“But I haven’t been in the field in years,” he said. “I’m on the admin side now. It’s a job like any other. Answering phones, managing personalities.”
“How many people do you have working for you?”
“A few. It varies. Right now I’m a bit strapped for talent. They don’t always last as long as you’d like them to.”