The Contractor

By Paul Moomaw

Daniel Harms refers to himself as an independent contractor, one with a special skill. He earns a very good living by making people die. He has a reputation for dependability and efficiency. He is the Mob’s go-to guy when they need an outsider, and has even done occasional jobs for the federal government. But his identity is a mystery to everyone who has ever hired him. The firewall between his professional and personal lives is absolute.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TheFictionWorks
• Release date: Oct 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781581243161

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Author

Chapter 1

I have never killed a woman. I have nothing against the idea, but no one has ever paid me to. I think most women are not considered important enough to hire dead. Mostly they die by accident, or are collateral damage, or taken out in a fit of pique.

Now someone does want the death of a woman. His name is Edward Angwin, and he wishes his sister to die. Despite the possibility of complications that make my inner scold call me a fool, I have agreed that I will take the contract, but down the road. I have a job to do right now, and I will not distract myself with thoughts of anything else. I am no multitasker. One thing at a time is my way, and always has been. I was one of those children who have to have every type of food separated on the plate. First eat all the peas, then all the chicken, then all the yams. My father knew that and always brought my dinner with everything mixed together in one big pile. He called it teaching me to deal with the real world, but I understood early that it was because he was a sadistic asshole.

At any rate, Angwin can wait. He is not even on my plate. The man who is, whose name is Erubiel Lucero, sits across from me right now.

Some of my targets make me work. Others might as well step in front of a truck. That is Lucero. Maybe he was too lucky too long and got careless. Or he may just be too stupid to believe that he can die. He can, and he is about to. He has become a nuisance to the people who sent me to do this—the Mob, the old one run by the wise guys, the made men with operatic names.

They have been my fiscal bread and butter for years. I am not one of the Family, just a contractor they have access to when needed, another example of the growing corporate habit of outsourcing. I am a deniable asset. If I get caught on a job they never heard of me. It works both ways because they do not even know my real name. I am David Hyde in their Rolodex. It is a marriage of convenience and I have no doubt that one of us will want a divorce some day. In the meantime I am on call when they have an inconvenience that needs dealing with.

Lucero is an inconvenience. The wise guys already feel hemmed in by newcomers. On the East Coast the Jamaicans have shut them out of valuable real estate and the Russians are nipping at their heels. In the West, drug lords from Mexico are pressing hard. All that pent-up irritation needs a place to go, and when an upstart home boy from Albuquerque defies them, he gets it. The Russians, the Jamaicans, the Mexicans have to be accommodated in an uneasy peace; but Lucero has no connections. Slap him down and no one will care.

I sit in his house, drinking his booze and getting to know him. I make a point of meeting and connecting with the people I kill. Some might call that a waste of energy, but it is how I do things. Part of it is practicality. I learn their strengths and weaknesses, the chinks in their armor, so that when I make my move I can be precise and deadly. I am sure part of it is ego, too, engaging in harmless chatter with someone, disarming him with my presence, fooling him. It is the ultimate con game with the highest stakes of all. But it also offers them a place in my memory, a little bit of the only kind of immortality I believe in. Sometimes in my idle moments I imagine all of them in a room deep inside the recesses of my consciousness, sitting together and talking about me.

Lucero is going through his important man act, laying it on heavy, and I can feel the start of a sneer forming in my mind. Then my inner scold whispers, Never underestimate your opponent, and the sneer dies stillborn. That is one of the oldest rules. Condescension leads to carelessness, and I am never careless.

Lucero fed me drinks the first time I met him, too. He was easy to find. He owns a restaurant that serves as his headquarters and money laundry, and he is dependably there every evening from six to nine. He prides himself on being businesslike, he says. All I had to do was walk in and ask to see him, and out of his office he came. Nobody seemed interested in who I was or what I wanted. He shook my hand, led me to a table at the back and offered me a drink. Anything you like. It’s on the house, he said, with an expansive wave of his hand. He enjoys grand gestures, like making a big deal out of a two-bit drink.

I told him on that first visit that I was a small businessman from Montana who has lucked into a source of prime British Columbian weed. The Montana part is true. I was raised in Livingston, in the shadow of the Absorakee Mountains. Everything else is a fairy tale. The multiple entry points across the border through the woods. The out-of-work loggers who need money and aren’t too choosy about how they earn it packing the stuff on foot to hidden drop points, where my brother and I—I made him up, too—pick it up and take it to his isolated farm. The need to market it, which is difficult to do in Montana, because there aren’t that many people there to begin with, and most of them prefer beer. My fear of trying to make a connection in the Northwest, because it is too close to home.

The only question he asked was, Who sent you to me?

He will find that out too late to matter. For now, I have made up a story about a migrant worker who tried to be bigger than he was and bragged that he used to work for the guy who runs it all in New Mexico, Erubiel Lucero.

He said you own the best restaurant in town, too.

What’s his name?

Manuel Baca.

A shake of the head. The only Baca works for me is my father-in-law, and he’s in the back counting my money.

He probably wanted to look important. At least he knew who you are.

Around here, everybody knows who I am, even the cops. Another shake of the head. Those cops. My father-in-law is always complaining they cost too much. Biggest line item in the budget, he says.

That was the end of the first visit. He might be interested, he said. He would let me know. He asked where I was staying. I gave him the name of a hotel near the Old Town district, an overpriced, pretentious place that offers only suites, and attracts two kinds of people—the very rich who don’t have to care how much they spend, and the people who want others to think they are that rich.

Pretty pricey for a struggling little businessman.

Champagne tastes. So I need some champagne money,

A flicker of disdain passed through Lucero’s eyes, and knew I had him. The hotel bit closed the deal. Now he thought he understood me, that I was just another greedy guy with big eyes, someone he could handle. Suddenly I wasn’t a threat, didn’t have to be taken seriously, which was exactly what I wanted. He was opening a wide door, and if he had the sense to look through it, he would see his grave marker.

It was back in my hotel room, after that meeting, that I had my first contact with Edward Angwin. When I checked for messages with my cellular phone, there was one, from a number in Seattle. The voice was male, careful and tentative, and asked me to call, no reason offered. I was immediately on my guard, first, because the number he called is my business line, so to speak, and I am not used to getting calls on it from people I don’t know, and second, because the call was from Seattle.

I have developed a set of rules over the years. I think of them as rules of engagement that determine how I conduct my business. There are only a few, but I try to follow them with rigor. One of them, and one that I have never broken, is that I do not do business in Seattle. I live there and it would be reckless to risk fouling my own nest. So my first impulse was to delete the message and forget it. But my curiosity was aroused as much as my caution and I decided there was no danger in answering. I could always drop it afterwards with no harm done. It was only ten-thirty in Seattle, so I punched in the number. It rang several times, and I was about to hang up, when the phone picked up on the other end.

Hello? It was the same man who left the message.

You called, I said, and repeated the number he used to reach me.

I was told you can help us, he said. His voice was cultured. More than educated. Trained, with the carefully modulated crispness of a radio announcer, an actor, a person for whom the voice is a tool, or a shield to hide behind. We have a situation.

We have a situation, he repeated, when I did not respond immediately.

I heard you. I waited for him to speak again

I think it’s the kind of situation you make a living resolving, he said, and paused into my silence, long enough to count to ten perhaps, before adding, A life or death situation, you might say. He fell silent again.

Who is we?

The people I represent. I can’t be more specific right now.

And who referred you to me?

A Mr. Valenti, I talked to him in Phoenix. He said you are very efficient.

I smiled and shook my head at the thought of this person, whoever he was, walking up to Guido Valenti and trying to hire him to whack someone. This fellow was lucky he was still breathing.

I will have to verify that.

I understand. You can reach me at this number any time after seven. When should I expect to hear from you?

I hung up without answering. It was too late to call Guido Valenti. He was undoubtedly already in bed, sampling the wares of his latest male model. He thinks his sexual tastes are a secret, but it is really that nobody gives a damn whom he fucks. On the other hand, it is also why he will never go any higher in the organization that he is right now.

So I waited until I got back to Seattle to call Valenti, who confirmed he was approached by a silly shit looking to hire a hit.

He says his name is Mr. Smith. Believe it? He comes to the hotel, walks up to the front desk, and tells Toussaint, who is working that shift, that he needs to see me, that it’s confidential, and it has to do with my other business. So I saw him. Figured it couldn’t hurt to know what he’s up to, if maybe he knows something I don’t want him to know. I made him give me his real name and address, and his social security number. He coughed them right up, so he’s either federal, or an idiot. Either way, I didn’t want anything to do with him, so I passed him on to you. Do whatever you want, as long as you keep it away from us.

Hey, thanks, I said.

Any time.

Valenti had passed his hot potato very firmly to me, and so I did meet Angwin two days later.

That was last Wednesday. Now it is Friday, and I am back in Albuquerque, sitting at Lucero’s kitchen table with a shot of tequila in front of me. Lucero has called personally and given me directions to his house. He lifts his glass.

Here’s to maybe getting richer.

I was surprised you called me yourself, I say. I thought the boss always had someone else do the phones.

Lucero shakes his head and drains his glass. Until I’m sure what I’m going to do, I prefer to keep things to myself. He gives me a look. That goes for you, too.

Of course.

What’s your brother’s name again?

Jared.

Funny name.

Not in Montana.

Lucero asks for my brother’s telephone number. I give him a number and he reaches for the telephone. Say it again?

I repeat the number, slowly, as he punches it in. His call will go to a telephone in Montana, where it will be bumped by satellite to a room somewhere in Minneapolis, where a man who has been waiting for this call will answer. The switch will be seamless. Why be the Mob if you can’t afford a little high technology? I vetted the man in the room, and he sounds more North Dakota than Montana, but Lucero won’t know the difference.

After a long pause, Lucero says, Is this Jared? He listens, then says, This is Lucero. You know who I am. I’m sitting here with your brother. He listens again, then grins and offers the telephone to me. He wants to make sure you’re really here, he says, and nods approvingly as I take the phone. Good to be a little cautious.

Hey, Jared.

You really with Lucero, the man on the other end says.

I really am.

Does it look good?

I glance at Lucero and smile. Looks really good. Mr. Lucero is someone you can count on. Lucero grins and waves his glass again.

Get it arranged, the man in Minneapolis says. Call me back when it’s done.

I’ll call right away. Let me see if Mr. Lucero wants to talk some more.

Lucero shakes his head.

He says no.

Be in touch, the man on the other end says, and hangs up.

I hand the receiver back to Lucero and he replaces it on its base. What kind of deal do you want to make with me?

I lean forward and do my best to sound tentative. My brother and I can bring the marijuana into the country and store it at his farm. After that, we need to hand it off. We can’t take the time away from our own work, and there’s no one up there we can trust to be loyal enough. I pause and grin. Or smart enough.

So you want my organization to transport the weed.

That’s right.

How much are we talking about?

It’s been building up. We’ve got maybe three hundred pounds right now, and we can probably bring in fifty to a hundred pounds a month most of the time.

I can see Lucero calculating expenses versus potential profit.

It’s killer stuff, I say. It will fetch a good price.

And we have to bring it all the way from . . . from where?

The nearest town is called Eureka. It’s in northwest Montana, ten or twelve miles from the Canadian border.

All the way from there to here. He shakes his head. "That’s a hell of a long way, primo."

It’s not that far.

Far enough.

We’ll sell it to you for a good price.

Lucero shakes his head again, more emphatically this time. You don’t sell, and we don’t buy. If we’re going to do this, we will take the stuff, and sell it in our pipeline, and give you a percentage.

I look across the table at him, hoping I can make him see greed and caution battling inside me. How much?

You’ll get thirty percent, he says.

That’s not very much.

That’s the deal.

I hem and haw for a moment, then say, How do I know we’ll get our money?

For the first time since I have been around him, anger flares in his eyes. He leans forward and slaps the table.

You calling me a fucking crook? he says, and then the anger is gone as quickly as it came, and he leans back in his chair and laughs. That’s a good one, ain’t it? I guess I am a crook, now I think about it. He grabs the bottle of tequila and fills both our glasses. So here’s to getting a little bit richer.

I’ll have to pass it by Jared.

You tell him it’s a take-it-or-leave-it deal.

I nod and take a sip of tequila. I hate tequila. Only a Mexican could drink it sober. But anything to get the job done. He’ll go along. The farm loses money. He has to do carpentry jobs to break even.

Lucero shrugs. I guess being poor sucks. I used to be poor, but so long ago I don’t remember for sure. He drains his glass and stands up. For now I’m going to trust you to get your end ready, just as long as you know that if you let me down, you can’t run far enough.

I stand up, too, keeping a straight face. He is so full of himself. It will be interesting to see his expression when I kill him. I appreciate you trusting me, I say.

I don’t have to trust you. I had you checked out since our first meeting. He grins broadly. I know where you live, what kind of car you drive. I even know your bank account number. He pauses, stares at me with cold eyes. So you have to understand, I will know where to find you if I have to.

The poor fucker doesn’t have a clue. I stare at my shoes so he won’t see the contempt in my eyes. You won’t have to, I mutter.

Right, Lucero says. You call me when you’re ready for a truck You’re sure your brother’s farm is a secure transfer place?

It’s in the middle of nowhere. And people up there mind their own business as long as you let them.

As we walk toward his front door, Lucero pulls out a restaurant business card and scribbles on it, then hands me the card. When you call, use this number.

It’s safer?

Lucero laughs. It’s my girl friend’s number. I guess it’s safe enough as long as I treat her good. He pauses. And as long as my wife don’t find out, he adds, and laughs again.

He has given me what some magazine used to call news you can use. My sources did not tell me Lucero had a regular squeeze. Men like him usually don’t. They just have the occasional quickie, and then home to the wife and kids. I know about the wife. Her name is Ermalina, and she tries to be big socially. She never will, and not because Lucero is a crook. It is just that the Anglos keep a pretty high fence around their social turf, except for a few, very old Latino families, and the old-line Latinos, the ones who have been here for five hundred years, look down their noses at Mexican Americans. The Lucero kids—he has a boy and a girl, both in their teens—may do okay. They have their mother’s looks, and talk like real New Mexicans, not wetbacks.

As I drive back to the hotel, I review the supposed deal in my mind, looking for flaws in verisimilitude, and not finding any. It’s a damn good plan. It’s a shame it will never happen.

* * *

At the hotel I open my bag, remove a bottle of brandy, and pour myself two fingers, enough to wash away the aftertaste of tequila. It is a very good brandy, Remy Martin, very old, one of the small luxuries I allow myself. I am not a believer in conspicuous consumption. That is my nature, but it also goes well with my chosen profession. It does not pay to be conspicuous. I pride myself, in fact, on being a sort of Everyman, who can walk into a room of people, stay for an hour, and no one can describe me afterwards.

I pour myself a second and final drink, and make a mental note to track down the address of Lucero’s girlfriend. Lucero is fairly careless at best, and he is even more likely to let his guard down when he has his mind on fucking. If he has her tucked away someplace reasonably isolated, and if I can get myself properly organized, I should be able to combine a scouting trip with the hit itself.

Chapter 2

I met violent death the first time three days past my nineteenth birthday. The occasion was an auto accident—a murder of sorts. A father and son had slowed to turn left from a country highway. A drunk in a pickup truck struck them from behind.

We were four college students, members of the fencing team, on our way to a tournament at another school. Fencing is the only sport that ever caught my interest; even then, long before I dreamed of what my true calling would be, the combination of delicacy, precision and violence appealed to me.

The drive had been long, and a party the night before longer, and filled with chemical substances, so that my perceptions then, and my memories now, have an unreal quality. I remember staring through the windshield from the passenger seat, half dozing, into the purple dusk. It was that time, at the end of daylight, when headlights are necessary, but not sufficient. An orange blossom appeared in the road ahead, and resolved itself into a ditch-to-ditch wall of flame out of which the stark black silhouettes of spinning vehicles appeared and disappeared in a ghastly dance.

We stopped and watched, spellbound, until the fires subsided, then drove cautiously to the site of the wreck. A sedan pulled up from the other side, and two men climbed out and walked up to one of the burned-out cars. Another man, black, stood next to it.

My baby is in there, he said, and reached out as if to tug at the arm of one of the other men, but then did not. This was the South, and blacks did not touch whites uninvited. The white man peered through the fire-shattered window of the car.

This one is alive, he said. He pulled out a handkerchief that gleamed in the headlights, and tugged the door open. Then he and his companion pulled a young boy from the car.

Careful, the man said. He might have a broken neck. They carried the boy to the side of the road and laid him down gently. Anybody have a blanket? the man asked. The kid’s probably in shock.

We had blankets for the trip. Wordlessly, I went to our car and got mine, and spread it over the young body. The boy was burned, but his eyes were open, and he breathed through his teeth as he stared at me. At some point I realized he did not really see me, and at another, that he no longer breathed. I had never seen death, but I had seen enough movies. I pressed at the boy’s eyelids, trying to close them. They refused to move. Finally, I covered his face with the blanket.

We waited, I do not know how long, until police and an ambulance came. They gave my blanket back to me, and my friends and I left. I still remember, can still hear inside my head, the boy’s father, who squatted on his heels at the shoulder of the road, staring at us as we walked past.

He was my onliest baby, he said, and shook his head. I stopped, and looked down at him, feeling as if I should do or say something, but not knowing what.

He was my onliest baby, he said again. He followed us with his eyes as we drove away.

Later, at the dorm of the college we stayed in, my friends tried to find a new blanket for me.

You don’t want to sleep in something a dead nigger was wrapped in, one of them said.

I don’t mind, I said.

They looked at me as if I were from another planet, but I took my blanket and made my bed. That night, I awoke from time to time, smelling the odors of fire and fear that rose gently from the brown wool fibers of the blanket. It was the beginning of an awareness that I might have a special affinity for death.

Chapter 3

The Bagel Bakery is clean and ordinary, a brightly lit place of small square tables in imitation bentwood with formica tops, and matching chairs. Its clientele mixes daily regulars and the odd visitor. The coffee is strong, the baked goods edible, and the employees so busy chatting with their familiar customers that they notice strangers only long enough to take their orders and serve them. That is why I chose it for the Wednesday meeting with Angwin. I had told him on the phone to wear something yellow, and to bring fifteen hundred dollars in cash.

No free first consultation? he had said, and I told him he had just had it.

When I got to the Bagel Bakery my man’s car was outside, against the yellow no-parking strip, its rear end jutting almost into the traffic lane. It had been there long enough to collect a ticket, and I knew immediately it belonged to him. It was a Mercedes Benz, a roadster, expensive but not kept up. It had a small dent in the front fender next to the sidewalk, a scratch in the driver’s door, and the weather had not been kind to the upholstery. The man would be like that, I decided—the kind who wears fifty-dollar ties that he never has cleaned, and who doesn’t keep his shoes shined. He would be coy with me, even though we both knew what he wanted. He would pay for my coffee, and be grand about it. And he would try to tell me why he wanted a murder. They always do, and I always let them, even though I know the reality will be more complicated, and I will learn that reality on my own. People who want to contract a death seldom understand their own motives.

I make an exception in my dealings with the underworld. There is nothing complex about the motive there. A writer, a man named Louis Auchincloss, once expressed his desire to become a stockbroker because it was clean, pure, and without hypocrisy, simply an effort to make the most money with the least work. He could have spoken the same words of organized crime. Murder there is simply business. The dark alleys of the unconscious are irrelevant.

Angwin sat in the corner, his back to the white wall of the bakery, the large front window at his right hand. He was drumming his fingers on the table and staring out the window so intently that he did not notice my approach. I was wrong about the tie. He wore a lemon yellow shirt with an open neck, and a handkerchief of a yellow that did not quite match in the breast pocket of his blazer. The coat was a Brooks Brothers hopsack, the bargain model with plastic gold buttons. He was what some people would call good looking. His hair was blonde and curly and covered his skull in a want to be Afro so tight that I knew it was a salon job. He had large blue eyes, a good nose, and one of those movie star chins with a cleft in the middle; but the overall impression was of weakness. He pouted as he looked out the window and I thought immediately, spoiled brat. He had the beginning of a jowl at the side of his jaw, and as he leaned back in his chair I could see a small pot belly under his shirt. As I approached, he lifted a cup to his lips, and the motion made it easier to see the shiny spot on the elbow of his coat that revealed how old the garment was.

You have a parking ticket, I said, and was faintly pleased to see him startle, so that he sloshed a bit of coffee down his chin. In these opening negotiations, every point counts. He craned to see his car, then sat back and composed himself, carefully, in the chair.

I seem to collect them, he said, and waved one hand toward the window to let me know it was a small thing.

I sat down and looked him over. I decided that he shaves his eyebrows in the space above his nose. The bakery was cool, but a bead of sweat rested in the middle of his upper lip.

Just like Richard Nixon, I thought. I am a great fan of Agatha Christie, and have always felt a resonance with Miss Marple, who so often achieved an insight because a villain reminded her of someone from her past.

I suppose you’re wondering why you asked me here, he said, and smirks.

No, I said, flatly. The smirk faded, then crumpled. I decided that he would be an easy person to dislike if I allowed myself to have feelings about my clients.

He fidgeted momentarily, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He pushed it across the table, managing not to glance around him as he did, but the strain of not doing it showed.

I picked the envelope up. It was sealed and taped. I sliced it open with a fingernail and looked inside. It was filled with a thick sheaf of currency and a sheet of paper. I put the envelope into my jacket pocket.

Aren’t you going to count it? he asked.

I don’t need to, I said. I know where you live.

Angwin looked away, then asked, What now?

The bakery menu stood tucked between the sugar bowl and the salt shaker.

I eat, I said, and picked up the menu. That’s why I picked this place instead of somewhere more traditional, like a park bench. I allowed myself a brief smile at my own humor.

The waitress noticed that I had gotten down to business, and tore herself away from the man she had been talking to, leaning across the counter so that their faces practically touched. I ordered a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, and coffee. The bagels here are only average, but cream cheese is the same anywhere, and the salmon is excellent, one of the fringe benefits Seattle offers. My tablemate grinned and stretched, pushing his pectorals at the waitress, and asked for more coffee. She nodded without looking at him, and he slumped and patted at his hair. We waited silently while the waitress brought my coffee and refilled his.

He took a quick swallow and put the cup down jerkily, so that it clacked against the saucer.

When the waitress returned with my order, Angwin tried once more. She was wearing long, dangling earrings, cloisonné peacock feathers that swung and caught the light as she moved.

Great earrings, he said. Really sexy.

Yeah. My husband thinks so, too, she said, and walked away. She returned to her position behind the counter, and I could see her nod toward our table and roll her eyes as she resumed her conversation with the man seated there. I was doubly irritated, first because jerks do that to me, and more important, because Angwin’s behavior made the waitress and her friend pay more attention than I would like.

My bagel was already split I cut the halves carefully into quarters and coated them with cream cheese. Then I divided the salmon into four parts as equal as possible—it was difficult because the slices were irregular—and covered the cheese with the fish. Angwin watched me silently, his eyes following every move, as if he had nothing in the world more important to do.

Your a real neat freak, aren’t you?

I ignored the remark and finished layering the fish, then took a bite, and gazed at him as I chewed. He was correct that I like order. My life contains structure. I live alone, and have done so since the death of my late, unlamented father. I have no relationships that might make unpredictable demands on me. For the same reason, there are no women in my life, except for one who satisfies my sexual needs at irregular intervals and otherwise stays out of my business. On Mondays I walk to a small Mexican restaurant on the north slope of Queen Anne Hill and have carne asada, which they prepare better than I could. On Tuesdays I walk to a little bistro on Queen Anne Avenue and have beef stew. Wednesdays I walk down the hill to the Seattle Center, ride the monorail to Westlake Shopping Mall, descend to the tunnel, and take the free bus to the