Jim and I got back to work the day after the failed hit. My first failed hit ever. Jim and I agreed that if I gave up my pay for the week, no one in the syndicate would find out about it.
And so I gave up my pay for the week, and supposedly no one found out about the failed hit.
Except for one person. John Clay.
Apparently, he had never left Jim's employment, even after the incident occurred in which he very publicly quit Jim's service. I guessed he realized at some point that he couldn't just quit working for Jim; he needed a high-paying job so he could keep on living the way he always did.
But he was in a much lower position. He was the syndicate equivalent of a toll booth collector; a man whose only job was to make sure that everyone else kept their payments for certain things in line.
Why anybody ever trusted Clay with large amounts of money such as that, I will never know. But he visited Jim one day to express his utter fury over my failed hit.
"An old man? You sent Sabrina to kill an old man in the Diogenes Club?" Clay asked Jim one day as I sat with my friend Becca at her desk outside Jim's office. I sighed as I listened to Clay rat me out to Jim. Becca shook her head in disdain.
I heard Clay throw a paper onto the table in front of Jim. It was probably the newspaper that had come out that day with the headline "This old man was clubbing so hard that he's dead!"
Jim Moriarty spoke then. "Take that filthy paper off my desk immediately, Clay or I swear I will make you into shoes!"
My eyes went wide. Jim never threatened to make people into shoes unless he really hated them.
"You get the idea. If it were anyone else, you'd have had them killed. You're soft on her. You always were since the day she got here!"
"Do not even fucking think about deferring to me in such a manner. If I'm being soft on anyone, it's you! You're lucky I haven't stabbed you yet just because of the way you talk to me. I've done it to people before. Sabrina is no different. But I know she would never do what you do. So get your goddamn act together or leave this operation before I have her kill you."
"She FAILED. I've never even failed a hit and this is the way you treat me?"
"See here's the difference between you and Ms. Moran. She doesn't demand special treatment from me. She isn't arrogant like you are. You make me sick. You are so bloody arrogant that I want to take this knife out and slash it through your voice box so you'll never make another noise again!" Jim shouted, opening his desk drawer and pulling a knife out and lunging over his deck, pulling Clay's neck to the knife and just touching it to the very deadly-looking weapon.
I heard Clay gasp slightly. "You demand special treatment from me. You want a special invitation to do what's right. You think you're something special, don't you, Clay?" Jim asked his former head sniper.
"I just think I deserve better than this," Clay said, trying to free himself from Moriarty's grasp, and failing.
"Everyone does," Jim said wearily, with just a little catch in his gravelly voice. "You exhaust me," he stated, shoving Clay away from him again and wiping his hands off on his pants.
"Look at what you did. You even ruined my Westwood. I should have had you skinned years ago. Or maybe I'll get Sabrina to do it. She'll skin you to the bone like she did that tiger."
Clay seemed to shudder a little bit. "I don't have time for this," he said, walking out of Jim's office. "I have to get back to work."
Clay opened the doors and walked out. He stared at me when he closed the doors again. "Fuck you, Moran," he said to me.
YOU ARE READING
Consulting Sniper (Moran's Story)
FanfictionA companion fic to The Autobiography of Mycroft Holmes. Not really a sequel since you don't need to have read the first book to understand this, but does reference events and people from the first book that will be explained. Ties in also with "Holm...
