The Hitman's Last Job(8)

“I have no family….” Carl spoke heavily.
“Well that makes you and me alike. We’re both orphans in an evil world,”
“How old are you?” Carl had to ask, her mind seemed so much older than her face.
“19,”
“At college?”
“No… I wasn’t allowed to go,” she sighed.
“But you wanted to I take it?”
“Always wanted to study anthropology, call it a pipe dream I dunno….” she looked away awkwardly.
“Hey you’re still a kid! You’ll get yourself back to school someday,”
“I hope so…. but stop changing the subject. I can tell you’re hiding something you’re bursting to talk about. Your eyes betray you,”
“Well….” Carl didn’t have to tell her but he thought he’d like to. “You just remind me of someone I use to know,”
“Oh yeah? Like an old girlfriend?”
“Kinda….”


The truth was that she couldn’t have been more like Eileen unless she was her ghost. Pale and curvy with red hair, he used to have a crush on her when they were neighbours as children. She was the quintessential girl next door, all smiles and flirtatious chatter. Carl and she used to meet up on their front lawns and wile away the summers together listening to classic rock on the radio and eating ice cream. They even found a novel way to get drunk. Raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets they’d freeze vodka in Popsicle holders and tell everyone it was lemonade. But they didn’t have to lie because her parents never asked. They didn’t care whether she drank or not.

Behind the closed doors of idyllic suburban life Eileen hid a dark and violent secret. Only her bruises told Carl the story and each day he saw her, another one would be added to her collection. Her father, who looked not too dissimilar to Thomas Martin, was a brute. An alcoholic and ex-Vietnam veteran, he ran his home like a prison camp. And he obviously had little trust in women, as he brought his fists down on his wife and daughter at even the slightest hint of disobedience.

Eileen never said a word though, and Carl never asked. But he desperately wanted her to explain everything. It wasn’t like he didn’t care. He was just emotionally ill equipped and too young to articulate that he wanted to help. Often at night he’d lie in bed and look across at the house next door.

But one night he didn’t get to sleep and the pleasant dreams never came. Instead sirens alerted him to the fact that he was too late. If he’d only made his dreams come true one night earlier everything would be ok. He watched in silent tears from the darkness of his bedroom as they took Eileen’s body away. Her father said it was an accident, a mistake.

In a moment of drunken anger he’s struck her hard, and she’d lost her balance. Stumbling into the fireplace she’d hit her head against the cold marble and died. Carl’s father tried to claim that it was a fluke accident, a one in a million chance, there was nothing he could have done, but he knew better. Luckily, the judge disagreed.

Here in the motel he looked to the flaming, red hair of Anna and knew that he’d done the right thing. She was his Eileen and this time he’d made her dreams come true.
“You’ve drifted away in thought again,” Anna smiled. “Do you always do that?”
“No, I don’t think so,”
“Maybe it’s your pain meds?”
“Maybe….I dunno,”
“Why do you take those anyway?” she asked with genuine concern.
“My back… It got hurt real bad when I was on tour,”
“In Afghanistan?
“Yuh….”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you sometime,”
There’ll be a sometime…. Anna thought. I guess that means he won’t kill me….not too soon anyway.


They lay in silence for a long while, just listening to the television and resting. Anna didn’t know if there was a protocol for a hitman the morning after. What were they supposed to do? She wanted to know more about the Mob, to know more about this mysterious man… but she also didn’t.

“So you know why my father had to die?”


Carl rolled over to face her. “Cops pulled him over drunk and he had mob money in his car,”

“Oh…. It almost seems too tame,”
“What do you mean?”


Anna rolled to face away into the sunlight. “I always thought if he had to die it would be over something more dramatic but I guess he didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t exactly an interesting man,”

Carl thought it was an odd thing to say but he didn’t have time to mull it over because he suddenly caught something out the corner of his eye. It was a shape, a fleeting movement. He sat bolt upright and immediately put his hand on his gun.

“What’s wrong?” Anna was worried. “Is someone here?”
“Shhhh…. Stay there…”


But Anna didn’t want to stay there. In a panic she grabbed her coat and ran into the bathroom slamming the door shut. She sat on the floor and doubted her minimal weight would be able to keep the door closed if an intruder attempted to open it.

She tried to hear what was happening but all she heard were the muffled footsteps of Carl as he edged his way to the window. Then silence… It seemed to last forever. A thousand scenarios ran through her head as she worried about what could possibly be happening. Was it just Carl’s paranoia? Or was someone actually there? Someone dangerous… But her questions were answered when she heard two popping sounds that could have only been bullet’s travelling through a silencer, then the sound of a body falling onto the venetian blinds… and then the floor.