Fifth Monday Fiction

Chapter 1. The Hit, from the novel Frank O’Hara – The Last PI

By D. Michael Pain

[Editor's Note: The novel is in preparation for print publication in 2015.]

The sound of the hammer striking the back of her head was not as loud as he thought it would be. More like a muffled thump. If it wasn't for the blood spatter hitting the lampshade and wall it might not have even been noticed. There was no scream. No word from her mouth. It was a silent kill. For reasons known only to him, he knew he hadn’t swung as hard as he could. But still, it was hard enough.
    The page from the Ann Lamont book she had been reading when the hammer drove into skull bone and splintered it into her brain caught the first drips of blood as her head fell to the side of her slumping torso. Her long red hair, still damp from the shower she had taken moments before sitting down and picking up the book, was mixing with the stream of brain matter being pulled down the back of her head by gravity.
    The last image her brain recorded was a movement to her left, which automatically caused her to flinch and turn her head at the exact second the head of the carpenter’s hammer made its initial contact. She was clinically dead when the steel head came back up through the hole in her skull.
    It truly was a case of she didn’t know what the hell hit her. In fact, it was quick and painless, as her nerve endings had no time to register the pain of the impact to her brain.
    He couldn’t believe the immediate mess death had made. Blood splatter was on the wall to both sides of her body as well as the textured ceiling. Her terry cloth robe now had little red spots all over it like she had purchased it with a polka-dot design. Her body was shutting down and made some gurgling sounds. Her bladder no longer engaged, spilling urine out on the chair between her legs.
    Wasting no time, he rifled through her purse lying on the table next to the eyeglass case. He took only business cards and any paper that had a name or phone number. He didn't touch the two twenties. He went through the table drawers. Then into her bedroom. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. All he was told was to get anything that looked “legal” – whatever the hell that is, he thought. Papers with name and address – phone numbers – legal documents? He hurriedly searched through her closet and dresser drawer, throwing her undergarments and other clothing out of the drawers randomly onto the bed and floor. He looked beneath her bed. Then finally through her “Coach” briefcase lying on a table by the side of the bed. He took anything that had any writing...business cards included, putting them into a plastic garbage bag he had brought with him for the purpose.
    He returned to the living area and gave a final glance. Stepping over her twitching foot, he took the Rolodex on the table next to the phone. She had been listening to music when the fatal blow came. Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto. He turned the music up and, putting the plastic sack under his arm, exited the front door.
    He had entered her one-bedroom condo minutes earlier when he had heard the distinct sound of the shower running. She hadn’t the slightest idea an uninvited guest was waiting in the hall closet for her to finish.
    He locked the door with the key that had been obtained just for him and just for this one-time use.
    He was certain no one had seen him enter or leave. He was a professional – if you wanted to call it a profession. It wasn't something that his mother would have been proud of. She wouldn’t be able to say at the family reunions, “Oh, Vince is doing well. He had three contracts last year and they were all clean jobs.” But he knew he was good at it. He left, marking the time on his wristwatch. It was over in less than 15 minutes. The exact time frame he had allotted for this assignment
    He ran down the short outside three stairs of the condo and, looking both ways, continued walking at a quick pace the two blocks to the rental car. Sal had kept the engine running.
    “How’d it go?” Sal asked. Vince took seconds to answer. He was out of breath and didn’t answer immediately. They pulled away from the curb – neither noticed that it had started to rain. A rare occurrence in Phoenix.
    “A mess, a shitty mess...I know she didn’t feel a thing.” He felt a little pride in giving that information.
    “Did you get anything?” Sal questioned.
    “How the hell do I know? I took anything that looked like it had a name on it...here.” He reached into the plastic bag, pulled out the Rolodex, and tossed it into Sal’s lap.
    “I’m going to bet there’s a phone number here we can use.”
    Feeling the first time a bit nauseous, Vince stretched his hand over his shoulder and then to his forehead and felt the beads of sweat that had just formed.
    “My God,” he said softly, “the hammer went right in like her head was made of warm butter.” His memory pulled up the last sound she made. The soft wheeze as the last air in her lungs escaped up through her throat and out her partially open mouth. Thankfully, he thought, her eyes were closed. That would make the memory of this job slightly easier.
    They had driven only six blocks till they came to the construction site they’d seen earlier. Sal slowed the car and rolled down the passenger-side window. Vince wiped the hammer with gloves he had been wearing and, looking again to make sure no eyes were watching, tossed it with the apartment key out the window into the mangle of lumber and debris on the unlit construction site left by the workers a few hours earlier.
    “How did it get to this?” he said. How the hell did it get to this?
    Why couldn't he use a gun, he thought. The boys in Philadelphia were sending a message to someone. Put a hammer to the broad’s head and take any phone directory you see...any phone numbers or notes from her purse, and especially anything that looks like a legal folder or legal papers. His orders were explicit. Especially the part about the hammer to her head. It was just as quick and painless as a bullet, he thought—but the simple brutality will leave a message to those who need to know. He knew it was a business decision made by someone much higher than him in what he and others like him referred as the “organization.”
    A 22 pistol with a silencer was his usual method. “'I'm getting the hell out of this business,” he said to Sal. “The old boys would never have ordered it like this...this is getting bull shit now.”
    The realization that what he did as part of his “job” was brutal and without empathy had registered with him.
    He wouldn’t admit it to anyone else but he did’t like killing women. Even with his twisted values, it just wasn’t the manly thing to do. “Business is business, but still.” His thoughts were still attempting to justify his last brutal action.
    Like many men of retirement age, he couldn’t wait to wrap things up, take what he had stored away in an offshore, untraceable bank account and move to some small beach city in Florida.
    “Damn,” he said, “that’s the last one like that I’m doing; it’s a gun or nothing.” But he knew that the big boys in Philly always got what they wanted...If it was a hammer to the head, then that’s what they got. There was no room for discussion. It was the loyalty, wrong or right, of the profession that was instilled to his very core, and the one thing that he considered the virtue of his life was loyalty. He didn’t require or ask for a reason.
    They pulled up to a pay phone and Vinnie got out and called the number he had memorized. The message he left was short – “The fish aren’t biting anymore.” He hung up, and now could go meet his friends for a beer and see how his numbers did in the weekly football pool. His assignment was complete. His small circle of friends had no idea what he did for a living – or that some of those “out of town” business trips were to stop someone from breathing. Either as punishment or to keep their vocal chords from ever singing to someone not intended to hear their song.
    Like most workingmen, he and Sal were happy the job was finished and they were off work.
    “Drop me off at Luigi’s...I’m going get some pasta and have a few beers before going home.”
    He was a lonesome man due to the simple fact that he couldn’t share his real life with others. How do you pop a cold one and tell the boys you just eliminated a beautiful young woman by smashing a hammer to her head for reasons you didn’t even know?
    Sal was maybe the only one who might understand. He purposefully avoided Sal except when they were teamed for an elimination project. Hell, for all he knew Sal could be his next assignment. Sal pulled up in front of Luigi’s and Vinnie got out...there were no good-byes or handshakes. He simply shut the passenger door and Sal drove off in the light rain. There was no glance back by either one of them.
    There were few like him still in the business, but all such men remaining knew the value of silence. There were no yearly conventions where secrets of the trade could be shared, no one to complain to if work conditions were inadequate. No overtime pay, and the real stress in his occupation wasn’t the police, or getting caught. What he feared was that one of his brethren had been given his name for termination. The biggest reason for silence and the isolation of his profession was to keep his name off such a list. He did have one comforting thought – it wouldn’t be by a hammer to his head – it would be a bullet which he would never see coming. By someone, maybe even a friend, who he would never know had the end of his life as a business “assignment.” He avoided knowing too much about any of his assignments – having too much information always carried the burden of having someone wanting your memory erased along with the body that housed it.
    Lately the thought was lingering longer in his mind that, sure the money was good, but the benefits of being an “organization” member were not as desirable as when he was a younger man.
    He unfortunately was outgrowing, simply by age, the benefits he once so enjoyed; hookers without charge, free drinks, fear and respect from those who knew him and his connections. That always got him the best table at his favorite clubs.
    Worst of all, he was starting to have problems sleeping. The alcohol didn’t wash his memory as it once did. He was getting drunk alone more than once a week and popping Ambiens like they were jelly beans...he was up until three at night...A long way past the first one he took just a year earlier that took effect by the time he took the first two swallows of wine.
    He always got drunk alone...but he knew for him it was a dangerous condition – drunks tend to talk or decide they need forgiveness for some past act, and if that news ever got into circulation it would bring an intervention – only the “rehab” would take place in a freshly dug hole.
    Becoming a drunk or finding religion in his profession was a fast way to have a bullet heading for the back of your head.

Copyright © 2014 by D. Michael Pain