Children of Paranoia (16 page)

The first words out of Brian's mouth were “Shit, is he dead already?”

“No. I need a gun,” I answered.

“In Canada? You're nuts. I thought you weren't going to call me until he was dead.”

“Shit happens. Can you help me out here?” I wasn't in the mood for a long discussion. I just wanted to do what I had to do for the day so that I could be with you again.

“You know that we don't like to use guns, right?” This was standard policy. Guns were to be used on a need-only basis. Guns were traceable. Guns aroused suspicion. You strangle someone, knife someone, bash someone's head in with a bat, and people get scared but no one thinks that there's something bigger going on. Hate crime, crime of passion, no way there's an organized war going on where people are killing each other with kitchen knives. Anyway, standard policy or not, for this mission, I needed a gun. I wished I could call Jared. He'd know where to get one, but I'd already cashed all those chips in. I was on my own.

I told Brian what I thought of his policy. “Yeah, well, you want to explain the policy to my mark's bodyguards, because I'm not sure they care. You know, I'd prefer not to die taking this guy out. So can you help me out or not?” In the past, I might have tried to pull this off without the gun. Death just seemed like an especially bad idea at the moment.

“I can't help, but if that's what it's going to take, I can point you toward some people that can. I'd prefer it if you didn't die too. For some silly reason, I've grown fond of your bullshit.”

“Yeah, that silly reason's called pity. Who do I need to see?” Brian told me to hold on while he checked some things on his computer. I could hear him clicking away on his keyboard. Then he put me on hold while he made a couple phone calls. I had to drop a few more coins into the phone. Finally, he clicked back on and gave me an address not far from the safe house. I was to go in, ask for Sam, give Sam a password, and then get down to business.

“Brian—” I started before the voice on the other end of the line cut me off.

“Joe, it's Matt. Remember. It has to be Matt.”

“Sorry. Matt. I'm curious, is there anywhere where you guys don't have connections?” I asked.

“Go everywhere,” Brian responded. “You'll find out.”

“Thanks, Matt.” I tried to clear my mind so that I'd remember the code. Clearing my mind usually wasn't this difficult.

“You got it, Joe. Just don't fuck this one up or it'll be my ass. Carol Ann Hunter. Robert Mussman. Dennis Drazba.” Click.

 

 

I went to the address that Brian had given me. It was a shop that sold sex toys down near Chinatown. Sex and guns. It was just like being in the States. I thought for a minute that this might be Brian's idea of a joke. I walked into the store, through the aisles of dildos, novelty lingerie, and porn DVDs, and up to the counter. At noon on a Saturday, the store was empty except for a woman standing behind the counter. I walked up.

“Can I help you?” she asked, sounding nothing like the receptionists at Intelligence. Even though she was young, her voice had the raspiness of a longtime smoker. She wore leather pants and a sleeveless, army-green top. She had tattoos running up and down both of her arms, angels and devils in some sort of battle. The devils seemed to be winning on her right arm but the angels had the upper hand on her left.

“I'm here to see Sam,” I replied, hoping that this girl was in the loop.

“I'm Sam,” she answered. I gave her the password and she told me that she'd been waiting for me. She walked to the front of the shop and locked the door. She flipped the sign on the door to Closed. Then she walked past me again and motioned for me to follow her. We walked up a flight of stairs. We passed a bunch of video booths where you could plunk in a couple of bucks and watch five minutes of porn.

“Wouldn't want to be the guy who has to clean these floors,” I joked. Sam glared at me. It dawned on me that she might be the guy who had to clean the floors. Past the video booths was a door labeled Staff Only. We pushed through the door into the stockroom. The stockroom was nearly as big as the floor. It was immediately obvious that they weren't just selling sex toys.

“So, what is it you need?” Sam asked.

“What do you got?” I replied playfully, hardly able to control my good mood. I felt giddy.

Sam wasn't amused. “What do you need?” she repeated.

I finally got the point that this was not time for fun and games. “A handgun. Preferably something powerful but quiet. At least eight rounds before I have to reload.”

“Okay.” Sam walked over to a shelf about three rows from us, climbed a few steps up a ladder, and opened a big cardboard box. She lifted a few boxes of lubricants out of the box and set them aside. Then she reached deeper into the box for something that was buried beneath the other products and pulled out a small black handgun. “This should do the trick.” She handed me the pistol. “Lightweight. Can carry a silencer. Can kill a horse. You'll get twenty-five shots before you need another cartridge, and with a little practice, you can reload a cartridge in about a second and a half.” For the first time since I had entered the store, Sam seemed to be enjoying herself. I took the gun in my hand. I held it out in front of me, aiming it. It would do.

Once the sale was completed, I put everything—the gun, the silencer, and three cartridges—in my backpack. Three cartridges, but if I needed more than three shots, then something went drastically wrong. After we got back downstairs, Sam unlocked the front door and reopened the store to other customers. I walked toward the door but stopped before I was halfway there. Sam was on her way back to the counter. I turned toward her. There was a question that had been burning in my brain since I first laid eyes on her. “Sam?” She looked up at me. “I was just wondering. Are you in this for the cash or are you one of us?” It wasn't a question that you were ever supposed to ask. I didn't care. I couldn't help myself.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Sam answered, her voice even, her eyes emotionless. She walked back behind the counter. I turned again and headed toward the door. Before I could open it, Sam spoke again. This time her voice wavered slightly. I turned and looked at her. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she repeated, “but I'm rooting for you.” Before I walked out the door, I took one last look at the tattoos on her arms. Angels and devils. I wondered which side I was on.

 

 

That night we had dinner, our first meal together. You plowed through your food. There was no pretense, no self-consciousness. We shared a bottle of wine. Then we went back to the safe house. We made love on the sofa, not patient enough to make it to the bedroom.

“So, if you're not a student here, what is it that you do?” you asked, propping your head up sideways on your hand, your elbow resting on my chest.

“I can't tell you. I wish I could,” I answered. I didn't want to lie to you.

“Is that because you have a wife?” You tried to pretend that you were kidding. I could tell that you weren't.

“No. No wife.” You were already the longest relationship I'd ever had. Before this, everything had been a series of one-night stands.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Do you count?” You laughed. “Listen, Maria. Now that there's you, I have two women in my life—you and my mother.”

You paused to consider my comment, still trying to figure out my secret. I knew that my secret was safe, too unbelievable, to be guessed. “So, are you sleeping with your mother?” As you laughed I pulled your face toward mine, catching your head in my hands and kissing you again. I knew then that I would never be tired of kissing you. I wanted to stop you from asking any more questions that I couldn't answer. I was hoping the kiss would be answer enough. It wasn't.

You began an inventory. “So, no girlfriend. No wife. Do you work for the government?” I shook my head. “Then what do you have to hide? Just tell me what you do. I want to
know
you.” You kicked me under the covers.

“I can tell you,” I finally answered, “but I'd have to lie. Do you want me to lie to you?”

You thought about it for a minute, seriously thought about it. Then you looked me in the eyes. “No. I don't want you to lie to me. I don't ever want you to lie to me.” Then you kissed me. I could feel the kiss in my toes. The questions stopped for the time being. I knew that one day I would have to answer them. I thought that on that day, you would be able to choose whether or not you wanted to stay with me. I guess sometimes life makes decisions for you.

 

 

The next morning, Sunday, you snuck me into one of the school libraries. You had some research to do. I took the opportunity to use one of the library computers to do research too. I looked up security cameras and took note of everything that I could find—coverage angles, heat sensors, everything. We spent Sunday afternoon in the park. I tried to steer us as far from my mark's house as I could. I tried not to think about tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. We walked through the park to the top of Mount Royal. We stood there and looked down on the city, our city. Standing there, that day, Montreal was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. You stayed over again that night.

On Monday morning, you left early to go to class. I left early too. I didn't like how the apartment felt when you weren't there. I spent the day staking out my mark's home for the final time. Everything ran like clockwork. My mark woke up at the same time as he had on the previous two days, dressed at the same time, left for work at the same time. The extra bodyguard arrived at the same time. The maid arrived at the same time. The maid's daily schedule was the same. She moved from room to room in the same order every day. First she cleaned the kitchen, then the bathrooms, then she dusted and vacuumed. Once the rooms were clean, she'd go out to the end of the driveway to get the mail. When she returned, she'd change the sheets and do the laundry. It seemed that the expert toxicologist was a bit of a germ freak.

We saw each other again that night. I told you that I thought I was falling in love with you. You told me that I was being a fool, that it was too early for talk like that. What you didn't know was that, if everything went according to plan, I'd be leaving Montreal in two days. I didn't know how to tell you that. So I didn't. All I told you was that I had to work all day Tuesday and that we wouldn't be able to see each other. “Wednesday, then,” you said, and kissed me on the cheek.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up early, packed my backpack—a large bottle of water, three power bars, my binoculars, a change of clothes, a ski mask, a pair of black leather gloves, and the gun—and headed toward my mark's house, ready to finish this job.

 

 

The plan was simple. Jared always tried to teach me that all good plans are simple. This one was good. The fact that things got so messy wasn't the fault of the plan. Sometimes things just get messy. There were two phases to the plan. First, I needed to get inside the house without being caught on the surveillance cameras. Once inside, I'd hide out until my mark and the American bodyguard returned. Then phase two would begin. I needed to avoid being caught on the surveillance cameras because the first thing the bodyguards did when they returned home was to review that day's video from all four cameras. They'd watch it in high speed and slow it down for anything suspicious. I was sure that if the cameras caught me, not only was the whole plan sunk but I'd be trapped inside the house.

I had learned a few things about the surveillance system through my research. At first I was hoping that the cameras would have an exploitable blind spot, an area in the yard that I could safely move through without being taped, but that was a dead end. Whoever installed the cameras knew what they were doing. I had to find another loophole in the surveillance system. What I came upon was reaction time. The cameras were thorough and they were accurate, but they weren't fast, or at least they weren't so fast I couldn't stay ahead of them. Really it seemed that asking any set of surveillance cameras to be all three, fast, thorough, and accurate, was nearly impossible.

During my stakeouts, I had timed and mapped out the movement of the cameras. Each camera stayed on its target for at least five seconds. When something moved, all cameras that could get a clean visual on the movement would turn toward the movement and focus. The cameras would then stay focused on the moving object until it stopped moving or until something else diverted it. If two things moved in succession in different parts of the yard, the cameras would first focus on the initial moving object for at least five seconds, and then, while one camera stayed locked in on the initial moving object, the other cameras would begin to chase the secondary movement. It often took the cameras as much as two seconds to find and focus in on a moving object. That meant that as long as there was a primary diversion, I could move within certain areas of the yard for eight seconds before being caught on camera. The weekday routine at the house provided me with four usable diversions before my mark made it home at night: First was the arrival of the maid; then the arrival of the second bodyguard; then the departure of my mark and the bodyguards for the day; and, finally, the maid's journey to the end of the driveway to get the mail. Because it would be impossible to make it from the front gate to the front door in under eight seconds, I would need each of those four diversions.

Even sitting here, watching the house, waiting for the right moment to put my plan into action, I couldn't help but think about you. I just wanted to get this done. I wanted to finish this job so I could see you again. I tried not to think about what would happen after that. The only part of my future that I cared about at that moment was the next twenty-four hours, and fourteen of those would be wasted on this son of bitch. It made me hate him even more.