The Hitman: Dirty Rotters (33 page)

“
The Bear?” Anna
asked.

Palo sat upright and looked through
the sky. We all did. Then she pointed to it. “Timer is
set.”

Anna hugged Palo.

“
He needed to go to prison
for life,” Sally said.

“
He’ll get what he
deserves,” Frank replied. “They all will.”

We watched the lights of the cargo
plane for a moment more. Palo stood and took my hand into her own,
pressing her lithe form against mine. Then the sky was lit brightly
with a giant fireball. The sound came a second later in a
thunderous, magnificent boom.

“
Now it ends.” Palo
said.

We watched in silence for a few
minutes. Bits of fire fell to the ground. We had put the C-4 and
the timer in one of the bags of money. It was a beautiful sight. I
could imagine a hundred people sorting through the wreckage and
finding burnt money, wondering what the hell had taken place while
they were fast asleep in their plush, comfy beds.

We waited a moment more, then left.
Belsay had to get to a hospital. The bullet wound on his leg wasn’t
life threatening, but the doctors had enough work to do on him to
last a week or so.

“
You should check yourself
in as well,” Sally told me on the way to the hospital. “You look
like you got the brains beat out of you.”

Frank groaned something underneath his
breath. I let it slide. I sat in the backseat and rested my head
against Palo’s shoulder. I closed my eyes.

Dreams found me right away.

I woke in the afternoon.

We had checked into a fancy hotel near
the hospital. Belsay didn’t want to be far from us. He didn’t want
to be alone. None of us did. None of us were. Anna was getting
treatment for her eye, sharing a room with Belsay, who made jokes
and kept Anna smiling.

Frank and Sally checked into a room
across the hall from mine and Palo’s. The hotel was nice, full
service. There was a swimming pool and a hot tub outside. I loved
the idea of a hot tub underneath a canopy of stars. And Palo. But
we slept instead. Deservingly so.

There was a breakfast cart bedside
when I woke. It was a quarter to three in the afternoon. I needed a
dinner cart. Palo was up and showered already. She was sitting by
the window staring out at the bright sky. The sun was shining and
the sky was blue and cloudless. A beautiful day. A new
start.

“
Palo,” I said. She turned
to me. “Pinch me.”

Palo walked over to me with a smile
and sat next to me on the bed. “Pinch you?”

“
I just wanted to make sure
this isn’t a dream.”

Her smile was heartwarming. It slowly
faded. “Frank and your friend were here. There’s police statements
to give. Your friend said that when you awoke you should call her.
I think she is worried about you.”

“
She’s a good friend.” I
smiled. “So are you.”

Palo’s eyes twinkled. She had tried to
keep her promise by giving me the money due for what she had hired
the hitman for, but I couldn’t take it. It wasn’t about the money.
She understood. Anna would use it to help set up an organization to
provide for battered women. A just cause. She had lost all sight in
her left eye, but none of the fire.

“
I have to leave now.” Palo
stood. I sat upright. “So much work to be done now.”

“
What will you do
now?”

“
All my father’s businesses
will be sold. We want nothing to do with them. But now Anna and I
will go back to Moscow and work with the police there to rescue the
other women kidnapped.”

“
Does that mean you’re
leaving for good?”

Her smile said it all. “You saved me
from so much. I have so much to return. But I cannot stay here.
This is not my home. I never had intended…”

“
It’s okay, Palo. I
understand. I will miss you.”

Palo leaned down and gave me a kiss on
the cheek. “What will you do now? Date again? Maybe
retire?”

I thought about it for a moment while
I stared at her beauty. I was really going to miss her. “No. I
think the world needs a hero.”

“
Yes. It does.” She walked
to the door, opened it, and then looked back with a dazzling smile.
“Go be our hero.”

Palo stepped through the doorway and
out into the hall. The door closed and I was left alone. I sat for
a few minutes doing nothing but remembering her face, savoring her
scent, and missing her already.

I threw the soft sheets off of me and
hit the shower. I had a busy day of talking to police. I needed to
get back to the train station and collect the El Camino and take
her for a long drive. But first I had something important to do. I
would have to stay in the city for another day or so. But old
friends are worth the wait.

Three days later and hope still clung
to me.

I stood slumped against the El Camino
SS, relaxing comfortably in the shade of an elm, staring at the
brick courthouse building as he came out. He moved so fast that I
thought for a second he was going to walk right past me.

“
Angelo!”

Angelo Garboni stopped and turned. He
looked shabby, unkempt, and even slightly oblivious to what his
fate nearly was. He walked from the sidewalk over to the street
where I was parallel parked between two police cruisers. He looked
confused.

“
Angelo, I came to pick you
up. Do you want to take a ride? I have something special to give
you.”

His head nodded eagerly. “Yeah. I go.
I go with you. They had bologna again. It’s not good. Not every
day. And no pop cans. Milk only. No chocolate.”

I laughed. “Get in. I think you’ll be
happy.”

I drove Angelo across town. He talked
more in between blocks than I had in two years. He was on machine
gun mode. I didn’t mind. What free man didn’t enjoy a good story or
two from someone in the pen?

We pulled into the lot and I parked
beside the giant bulldozer. Police were everywhere still. The dead
bodies had been cleared out but the business wasn’t about to be
open for some time. Definitely under new ownership.

We exited the El Camino and I walked
Angelo Garboni around the big heavy equipment, to inside the giant
warehouse structure, to the massive piles of uncrushed pop bottles
waiting to be recycled. These were heaped in piles towering over
us. An old pop smell filled my nostrils. But to my friend, it was
Heaven.

“
All yours,” I told him.
“Every bottle.”

Angelo’s mouth opened. Not a word came
out. Not a sound. Nothing. He was mesmerized. Frank and Sally
pulled some strings for me and we had several business in the city
donate their empty bottles for a simple man who had been wrongly
imprisoned.

“
Well, should we count
them?”

Angelo smiled brightly. Then he ran
and jumped into the pile and began to play like a kid in leaves. I
let him. We all need moments like that.

Hours later I pulled into Sally’s
driveway for the last time.

She was outside walking to her Hummer.
I parked beside her and got out. The sun was dropping below the
tree tops and the heat was going with it. It would be a cool night,
cloudless and moonlit.

“
Where to?”

“
Hospital. I was going to
take Belsay a book to read. With his swelling receding, it is
easier for him to focus.”

“
Good. Tell him I said
hello.”

“
Will do. He’s been asking
about you. He says you would make a great cop.” We both smiled.
“Doctor says he can come home in a few days. He’s pretty excited
about that.” Sally paused, then asked me the question she already
knew the answer to. “Will you be around then?”

I didn’t answer with any word. I
walked up to her and extended my hand. She looked down to it,
accepted it, held back her emotions, and nodded.

“
Tell Frank not to hate me
so much.”

Sally smiled. “He wouldn’t
listen.”

“
Take care, Sally. Thanks
for everything.”

“
Don’t be a
stranger.”

I walked back to the black El Camino
SS, started it up, backed down the driveway, hit the road, hit the
gas, and never looked back.

Chapter 28

Four days later I was in
church.

Sort of. I was there for confession
only. I found Saturday mass in southern Florida to be too hot to
sit through. When I attended mass, it was Sunday morning. If I got
there early enough, I would spend a minute or two outside talking
to the priest while he smoked a cigarette.

It was good to be back
home.

But I felt that times were changing
for me. It felt almost hypocritical to sit in a church, after the
week’s events. I didn’t feel like I had the tunnel vision as the
other grey birds filling the pews. I had been exposed to such
gruesome activities that I could never train my mind to forgive and
forget. Not with knowing what I knew. Not knowing that out there,
all over the world, there were helpless individuals who were
kidnapped, stolen, beaten, enslaved, hidden from the world,
screaming for someone to come and defy the odds and rescue them.
The thought of it bothered me more than anything else ever could.
The world did need a hero. I had no issue with attempting to be
one.

I sat in the pew with a heavy mind. I
was about to do something that I never in my wildest dreams thought
I would ever have to do. I was troubled, really. Bothered by the
fact that the words I was going to say were real and mine. I could
barely think them. I had no idea how I was going to say them
aloud.

The confessional door opened and a
frail old woman came out. I went in and knelt down right away. I
didn’t want too much time to think about it. Better to do it fast
and get it over with.

The small purple curtain on the wall
before me slid to the side and I heard him speak from behind the
fake wood paneling. He was young, maybe my age, maybe younger. He
was full of energy too. A quick talker.

“
God is listening,” he
said.

“
I killed a man,
father.”

I said it fast, one breath. I sighed
deeply. But not in a bad way. It was off my chest and I was
relieved.

“
I’m sorry. Can you repeat
that?”

“
I killed a man. Several,
actually. That is all, father.”

There was a pause. I imagined his face
was twisted in confusion and shocked with my abruptness.

“
Are you a cop?”

I sighed again. This time out of
annoyance.

Acknowledgements:

First and foremost I have to give
credit and thanks to God for helping me pull this together. Winging
it isn’t always easy. I need to also thank my wife and my kids for
continued support, as well as those fans I do have.

Dirty Rotters
was a phrase heavily used by my late grandmother,
Beatrice, of whom I am grateful to have had spent time with, though
it doesn’t seem quite like enough.

This was by far the most
fun I have had writing anything, save for the notes I have left to
my wife on the bathroom mirror with her lipstick. Guess I should be
thanking Windex and Brawny as well. I look forward to jumping back
into the saddle and continuing on with
The
Hitman
series.

About the author

Sean McKenzie began writing
shortly after high school, publishing his first novel, the epic
fantasy
The Elf King
, following it with a short novel based on a screenplay he and
his wife had written called
Project
Human
.

Sean also continues his love
for writing screenplays.
Dating Casey,
Again
is a romantic comedy he co-wrote,
which should be available in spring of 2015.

Sean currently lives in northern
Michigan with his lovely wife and two children.

You can connect with the author
at:

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSeanMcKenzie?ref=hl