Diary of an Assassin (3 page)

CHAPTER
6

The night air had a chill to it and the moon was covered by clouds. Rhett sat on the roof of a small apartment building across the street from Stephanie Johnson’s home, a large multi-level condominium. The telescope was set in front of him on the ledge and the audio receiver was next to it, appearing like some miniature satellite dish. It could receive sound from over two hundred feet away and permeated through brick walls.

As
her husband, Paul, parked in a reserved spot up the street, Rhett turned the receiver on and put in his headphones. Stephanie sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee. It was one in the morning. Rhett peered through the telescope and could see that Paul’s tie was undone, his shirt untucked, and, even through a telescope, that he had make-up smeared on his collar.

“Were you with your whore again?” she said mildly.

“She’s not a whore,” Paul said as he went into the fridge. “But she does fuck like an animal.”

Stephanie winced. “Do you really have so little respect f
or me? What happened to us, Paul? You used to love me.”

“I know.”

“Was it something I did, to make you fall out of love with me?”

“You fell outta love with me a long time ago. If you ever loved me at all. I think you might’ve married me just to get away from that family of yours.”

“I want a divorce. I saw an attorney and he’s drafting the paperwork. You can have the condo and the car. I don’t want anything from you.”

“We’re not divorcing,” he said, placing some sandwich items on the counter.

“We’re no-fault, Paul. It’s not up to you.”

Paul
swiped his arm across the counter, a jar of mayonnaise hitting the wall and shattering. He spun around and grabbed Stephanie by the collar, lifting her up and slamming her against the fridge. She was crying and begging as he slapped her across the face twice before letting her drop to the floor.

Rhett’s grip on the telescope tightened
till his fingers were turning white.

Paul
stood over her, wiping a splatter of mayonnaise off himself with his hand. “Clean up this mess and make me a sandwich.”

“Get out!” she screamed.

He laughed. “My name’s on the deed too. You get the fuck out.”

As he walked away, Rhett followed him. He stood by the stairs, debating something, and then grabbed his coat and went back outside and down the street t
o his car. Rhett turned back to Stephanie. She was on the floor, curled up with her knees against her chest. She was crying, her face buried in her arms.

He lowered the telescope, tapping his fingers against it for several seconds.
Pulling out his phone, Rhett opened her dossier and clicked on a telephone number. Stephanie sniffed a few times, pulling herself together before answering.

“Hello?”

Even to a number she didn’t recognize, she had to portray strength.

“Hi, is Andy there?
”

“I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name.”

“Oh, you sure? I was under the impression he would be there.”

“No, this is the Johnson residence,” Stephanie said, standing up and beginning to clean the mess.

“Oh. I’m sorry about that. I had a friend from a long time ago at this number. I guess I don’t know why I still expected him to have it.”

“That’s okay.”

“My name’s William.” Stephanie was quiet a moment. “Sorry, I know it’s weird. I was just lonely right now and felt like talking to somebody.”

“I’m sure they have chat lines for that.”

“Yeah. I’m sure they do. Sorry again, I’ll leave you alone.”

“No, wait, I was rude. I’m the one that should be apologizing.”

“It’s fine.”

“So who’s your friend that had this number?”

“A friend that was there for me once when I didn’t have anyone else.”

“Those kinds of friends are rare
,” she said, standing up and going to her purse. She removed the divorce papers and put them on the kitchen table.

“I know, but I didn’t realize that until too late. We met in high school, two nerds that got beat up together.”

“I know the feeling. I was captain of the chess team.”

“Ouch. I purposely avoided the chess team. Science Club was bad enough, especially when the supervising teacher made us wear Star Trek uniforms.”

She chuckled. “That’s bad.”

“Yeah, it was a pretty quick sprint home that day after school.”

“I bet.”

Rhett was silent, watching her through the telescope. “Well, I better leave you alone before you think I’m some stalker.”

“Yeah. I hope you find your friend.”

“Me too. Bye.”

Rhett hung up and watched her. She cleaned up the mess and then shuffled upstairs to change. He turned away as she stripped down and stepped into the shower, packing up his scope and receiver. As he was about to leave, he glanced in one more time and saw her nude outline behind the frosted glass.

He turned away and headed back to his hotel.

CHAPTER
7

Rhett was working out in the hotel’s gym the next morning when his phone buzzed. The black app had a one on top of it. He clicked it. It was the Messenger:

Contract must be carried out tonight. Make it happen.

I can’t do it. I’m leaving.

Why????

I told you before: no women.

It’s different killing a woman. I know. But this contract is no different than any other. Don’t delude yourself: a life is a life and you’ve taken plenty.

I won’t do it.

If
you don’t do it I’ll get someone else. Someone sloppier. She’s going to a family reunion tonight. Maybe I’ll just have them set explosives and take out the whole family????? :)

Rhett thought carefully before he replied.

I will cover whatever you’ve been paid for the contract and more.

Tsk tsk
, Houdini. Now you know we can’t rescind contracts. It’s bad for our reputation.

It’s not
rescinding…I’m buying a new one. Tell the purchaser that I’m taking a contract out on them unless they remove hers.

Now we wouldn’t be in business long if purchasers thought we would suddenly flip
and take contracts on them, would we????

Rhett thought a moment.

Don’t send anyone else. I’ll do it.

I thought you would see reason. Good luck.

Rhett hung up the phone and continued his workout.

Near 2
nd
Ave was a small bookstore with a picture of Hemingway up in the window. Rhett stood outside, staring in. His wife had loved this bookstore. Once they had spent over an hour here until she decided on a book of poems. They were so broke at the time, that when the cashier rang it up and it came to fifty dollars because it turned out to be a rare edition, they couldn’t afford it and had to put it back.

The bookstore was dilapidated and had three employees, none of which said hello or tried to
see if Rhett needed anything. He walked to the poetry section and began scanning the books. In the middle of the second shelf was a small, brown, leather-bound book with gold-leaf trim. He took it out and read the first poem, the one that had interested his wife:

We shall be notes in that great Symphony

Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,

And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be

One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years

Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,

The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

He closed the book and walked to the front. The employee rang it
up and the price had gone up to a hundred dollars.

“That seems pricey,” Rhett said, pulling out his wallet.

“Take it or leave it,” he said, not looking up from the comic book he was reading. “No returns either.”

Rhett paid him the cash. “Always a pleasure being back in New York.”

A woman, one of the employees, strolled up from behind him and leaned against the counter. “Nice ring.”

Rhett looked to his wedding-ring finger. A large, silver band with Celtic decorations emblazoned across it took up a third of the finger. “Thanks. I forget it’s there.”

“Your wife get that for you?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s got good taste. In poems too,” she said, playfully flipping a few pages in the book on the counter. “Unless this is for you.”

“It’s for both of us I guess.”

“Where is your wife?” She looked past him into the book aisles. “I wanna see her ring.”

Rhett took the book without a bag and tucked it into his jacket pocket
, next to a little red journal he kept there. “She passed away three years ago.”

He left the store
and checked his phone: the address he needed to be at had arrived in the black app.

CHAPTER 8

The Willard Estate sat on four acres of property an hour outside Albany, New York. It was a wooded area with nothing but forests around it as far as Rhett could see. He’d never been out this way, and it surprised him just how much wilderness was only a few hours’ drive away from Manhattan.

It had rained recently and the ground was wet, the vegetation glistening as the clouds parted and the sun
peeked back out. It wasn’t cold but it wasn’t hot either as Rhett sat in his car two blocks down the street from the Willard in a secluded area. He was in a parking lot for people going hiking up a trail just in front of him and he had seen exactly one person in the space of an hour as he sat there killing time.

His phone’s timer buzzed. He
pressed it off and slid out of the car, grabbing the backpack in the trunk. He had changed into sweatpants and a Sundance T-shirt with hiking boots and a cap. Strands of red hair from the wig he wore underneath the cap hung out, just enough for anyone looking to see and later describe his hair as red. The strands grazed the wire-frame glasses he had opted for. Two fake tattoos marked his forearms: a dragon and a bright red heart with a knife through it. Anyone as close as ten feet away would be able to see the tattoos—and also later describe them—not knowing they would wash off in a few minutes under running water.

He strapped on the backpack and headed toward
the Willard Estate, walking through the trees rather than on the side of the road. The forest was quiet except for the leaves crunching under his boots, and as he walked, he stared deep inside the mass of twisting trees. Someone could hide in there and pounce on any unsuspecting sucker that happened by.

He saw danger everywhere and had a difficult time focusing on the beauty all around him
. He remembered he didn’t feel that way as a kid and thought that maybe that was just part of becoming an adult. You see the things under the surface of perceived reality and it changes you.

When he arrived at th
e estates, he saw that there were no gates: anyone could walk up to the main house. He casually approached the back, surveying the massive white mansion as guests poured in from the parking lot. He retreated from the property line about twenty feet, remaining parallel to the house. Lifting the binoculars that hung around his neck, he looked into the home: he had an unobstructed view of every room on this side of the home, including the living room where everyone seemed to be congregating.

Rhett
lay down on his stomach. The wet leaves clung to him and he felt the dampness through his shirt. He took off the backpack and unzipped it. The rifle was still in pieces. He expertly assembled it, securing the Rimfire vision scope and the infrared scope last before slipping on his goggles. With infrared, unless someone was wearing the same tinted goggles he was, no one could see the little red dot that screamed out so brightly to him.

To get his bearings, he followed the dot
to the forehead of an overweight man shoving shrimp into his mouth. And then over the heart of a woman seated in a chair, discussing something with a younger woman.

R
hett took out the audio receiver and put in his earbuds. Jarring static came through at first, but as he adjusted the frequency he began to pick up the clanking of silverware and the ting of glasses. Feet were shuffling and doors were closing: he figured he was in the kitchen. He twisted the receiver twenty degrees and adjusted the frequency: he was in a quieter room somewhere on the second floor. He could tell from the way the floors creaked as they were walked on.

Several men were having a conversation about futures and foreign exchan
ge derivatives. In another room, two men talked about NASCAR racing. The two crowds were not the types that typically mingled. At first Rhett guessed Stephanie’s crowd of suck-ups, hoping to curry favor with a member of Congress, had decided to come to the family reunion as well. He thought this was odd until he heard someone discussing what a nice presentation they had had earlier and realized that the Willard Estate rented itself to several parties at the same time.

Moving the receiver
over every room in the house he found a clear demarcation between the north side of the house and the south side, the north being Stephanie’s party. He focused his attention there.

In the corner of the room, among a group of men
speaking with her, Stephanie was smiling with a glass of wine in her hand.

Rhett took out a single round and loaded the rifle.