Mostly Murder (15 page)

Malice ended up liking the Merchant Marine a lot. In fact, he loved it. He loved being at sea. He loved shore leaves in exotic places that he'd never seen before. He loved the hardness and callousness of some of his shipmates and the crudeness of their words and actions. He loved being able to find prostitutes in the slums of the cities they visited, and he loved pretending they were the bitch who had betrayed him with his best friend and hurting them the way he wanted to hurt her. He beat them, took them by force, slapped them around, bit them until he drew blood, and nobody said a word, not if he gave the pimp a little extra cash.

After a couple of years of service, he met his new best friend. He was an older guy on the crew, a lot older than Malice was. He was from Algiers, a town just across the river from New Orleans. He, too, was of Cajun birth, and they had a lot of stuff in common. They both liked to be violent and cruel and fed off each other when they had opportunities to find victims they could abuse. But he learned a lot because the older man finally admitted one day when he was drunk that he worked for a Louisiana crime family out of Algiers, that he did contract hits for them, and had actually murdered people for money, lots of money. He was a cold-blooded killer for hire, an actual hit man, and he fascinated Malice. He told Malice how he committed his murders when he was home on shore leave so he could ship out right afterward so no one could connect him to the crimes. It was a good and lucrative job. The hit man said that he was willing to put in a good word for him with the Mob bosses, but only if Malice was willing to study hard and learn the ropes. He said time would tell if Malice had it in him to kill people for money. But he did. Of course, he did.

As time went on, the hit man taught him to murder with precision without leaving incriminating clues. They began to practice their skills in other countries, sometimes killing some drunk they picked at complete random. His new friend taught him to stalk and watch and plan and then swoop in and stick the knife in, so to speak. He learned a lot about the art of assassination and he learned it fast and he learned it well. More important, he liked it, even better than scaring people and killing somebody by mistake like he had with Betsy.

As soon as he served a few stints, he decided he would return home. He would get a reputable job first, so he'd have a good cover, and then he could start his shiny new life as a professional hit man, earning lots of blood money and spilling lots of blood. He grinned at the idea. If only that betraying bitch at home knew what he had become, she would be terrified of him, and fear his return. And for very good reason. He intended to kill her and the man who had taken her away from him. But she wouldn't know that, no way, uh-uh, not until he stabbed the knife into her heart, cut her jugular, and then stepped back and watched her blood flush out of her, red and sticky and slick, just like his new best friend had taught him.