Page 63 of Redemption
“Sure. Talk later.”
I disconnect without waiting for a response. I’m not taking a fucking flight. I’m in no rush to get anywhere. I haven’t got anyone I want to see, nowhere I want to be, and I’m not Luci’s lap dog. History has taught me to make my own fucking decisions.
The tank is almost dry, running on mere fumes, and my throat feels no better so I decide for a lunch break at the first place I pass. A sign for Middlebro comes up. That’s my watering hole for today, whatever it has to offer.
Not much as it turns out. It’s rural, to say the least. There’s one main street but it has what I need. A gas station, a small coffee shack and a grocery store right by it. I pull in and groan as I step out of the car. I’ve been driving more than 300 miles straight and my back is stiff and my legs numb. Inhaling deeply, I relish the fresh air. Despite its pathetic town center, this seems like a decent place to live.
At least if you have tuberculosis.
After filling up the car, I park it and march off to the little restaurant, diner, or whatever they call it. My stomach growls in protest from having been denied for so long.
Eggs, beans, bacon swimming in its own grease, a piece of white doughy bread and a large cup of black coffee. It’s not the best meal I’ve had and, for the hundredth time this journey, I long for my favorite Italian restaurant back in San Francisco. The important thing is, though, that it refuels me enough to be able to get the next leg on this journey behind me. I stuff a proper amount of bills partially under the plate, nod at the woman behind the bar and push open the heavy glass door. Steering toward my car, I then have a change of heart and decide on some fruit, maybe a coke and a newspaper. It’s always good to know what the locals are up to.
Inside the grocery store it’s dusky, and a faint smell of rotten fruit and poorly cleaned floors, lingers in the air. One of the fluorescent lights in the roof flickers annoyingly. Behind the counter stands a heavy man in his sixties. He nods at me with a bored expression but then his face changes and he straightens, smiles. I see the change in him, and now that I get to see him more clearly, I realize he is no more than forty—forty-five.
Unbelievable what humans do with themselves.
“How may I help ya, Sir?” His voice is light and rusty, as if he hasn’t used it yet today.
“I could use some fruit, a coke, and a newspaper.” My skin crawls. I don’t want to venture deeper into this stinking hole.
I put just the right amount of demand in my voice and in a New York second, I have him whirling all over the place, gathering items on the counter before me. I cross my arms as I study the man before me, literally having to keep my telltale signs of scorn in place, the lifted eyebrow, the curled upper lip, the cold disdain in my gaze.
He stops before me and holds up two newspapers, black and white, each less interesting than the other. His belly still quavers from the movement he stopped a moment ago.
“Which one da’ ya’ want?” he pants.
I wonder what he’d look like with a gun shoved down his throat the second before I pull the trigger. I know what he’ll look like after. Flesh and blood always looks the same. It takes effort to pull myself out of my reverie. I’m even worse than usual and this isn’t going anywhere. I feel like shit and I need to finish this.
“That one,” I say and point to whatever he’s holding in his right hand. I start sweating as bile rises in my throat and I feel my salivary glands start working overtime. I gotta get out of here. The almost fetid stench, the so-called food from the diner that rolls like heavy stones in my stomach, and the ugly man who’s undressing me with his eyes.
I flick a twenty on the counter, figuring it’ll be enough and swipe up the items in my arms. Middlebro. They’re insane. Fucking insa—
He comes running after me. “Change, mister… ya… change.” He’s wheezing heavily and stops in the middle of the street, an abandoned white blob on black asphalt, as I speed out of his world.
It’s not my kind of place. There’s nothing for me there. It’s notmyworld. The cold, damp, run-down apartment in Chicago, where I spent the first few years of my life before Mama Bianca started making some real money, flashes before me.
I’m better than that!
I’ve risen above it.
Mrs. Erica Davenporthas a well-known name, a husband in high politics, a mansion, private guards and some mighty enemies. She lives behind iron gates on a hill on the outskirts of Winnipeg and I’ve been keeping her under surveillance since Tuesday. That’s four days. Her big blonde bob bounces on skinny shoulders as she makes her way through the small boutique. Her so called bodyguard carries a pair of jeans on his right arm, a Gucci bag, and a couple of glossy paper bags from the previous shop she visited on his left.
Sloppy. Very sloppy.
If she knew the danger she’s in, she wouldn’t occupy him with nonsense like bags and shopping. She’d have him call in three other security details from his company and she wouldn’t leave her house, terrified, her shining hair a mess, her makeup smeared on her cheeks from all the crying and whining. She’d be praying to a God she’s long since forgotten if he exists or not. But she doesn’t. Instead she hauls out her Platinum AmEx for the third time in an hour and pays the little tough-looking, gum-chewing bimbo at the front of the store before she heads out to her limo.
All the easier for me.
Before I hit the road, I give the little twenty-something in the store one more look through the large window. Way too confident. Way too cocky. My pants grow tighter and I squirm as I adjust in my seat. Tempting. But I’m here on a job. Maybe another time.
I back out the car and weave in and out through traffic to get at a working distance to my target. Wonder who wants her dead. She seems to be stepping over corpses on a daily basis and appears anything but likable so the choices are numerous. Still, there are many of her kind out there, and most people wouldn’t hire a professional.
Most people wouldn’t even know where to find one.
As I follow a couple of cars behind them and watch her park outside her lover’s apartment complex, the thought strikes me again it could be her husband. But rememberinghetook a little mini-vacation in Toronto with his mistress—his secretary—leaving last night, scheduled to return tomorrow morning, I doubt he would be too upset by her adultery. Disgusting people. All of them.
Waiting, my feet propped on the dashboard, the hours dragging by too slowly, I pick my nails with the tip of my blade and think of Kerry for the hundredth time since I turned off the ignition. She’s out there somewhere. Mydaughteris out there somewhere, and it’s eating at me. She must be a year and a half now, starting to become aware of her own self, starting to talk I figure, maybe walk. And I’m not there! The blade slips as my hands tremble and I feel a prick at the tip of my index finger. One single drop of fresh red blood forms while I look at it.