Revenant

Chapter 12

As a general rule, a good hit man will take as much time as he or she needs to get the job done properly. I mention this because, well, I think I'm a pretty good hit man. I've taken out people that had more protection than the Pope, and who were about as twitchy and unpredictable as Howard Hughes. Though I've had a few contracts canceled from time to time, I've never had to give up a job or return cash for failure to come through, something that happens more commonly than you might think. One of the reasons for this is simple - I rarely accept contracts with time limits.

I was starting to realize, however, that this job appeared to have an implied due date. That date seemed to be 'before everyone involved ends up dead'.

It was the morning after my brush with the police that I came to this conclusion.

Really, everything seemed to be normal at first. I got up, scratched Myrrh for a little while, and made myself some coffee. Then I went online to read some of the news and check to see if anything was happening on my pub's website, which, aside from walk-ins and face-to-face meetings, was where most of my communication with customers took place.

There were four new file records in my secure uploads area, the oldest of which been uploaded a little over half an hour after I last saw Nick. Considering that this represented more uploads than I'd received in the last month, I became a little concerned. I opened the first item, I read it, and then I frowned.

I know what you're thinking, and no - Nick, the convenience-store-robbing idiot, was fine.

Some guy named 'Furio' wasn't fine. Strictly speaking, he was dead.

The note didn't exactly say that he was dead. Not precisely, anyways. It was a copy of a memo that looked to have been written and distributed by one Maria Calvino, assistant to Angelo Diavolo, and which was directed to all employees of Diavolo. It was a pithy note involving a reprimand for someone named Furio 'losing their phone' last night, how the sheer number of company phones being lost in the past while was rather troubling, and that, until further notice, company phones were no longer allowed to be taken out of the office.

If you can't read between the lines there, I'll give you a hint - replace 'lost his phone' with 'was violently killed by a junkie lunatic who was hopped up on animal tranquilizers'. The bit about phones no longer allowed to leave the office was clear as day as well - they were all supposed to stop their day-to-day business and hunker down somewhere safe, probably in some shady warehouse next to a whole pile of guns.

That first note had me staring at it for a while, and I considered the ramifications. An entire organization like Diavolo's shutting down and turtling was no small thing. Something like that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, if I had to guess.

Which meant that this problem of theirs was no longer merely costing them my quarter-million fee.

That had me worried right down to my toes, because the next conversation I had with Diavolo was very likely going to be of the 'I don't want to rush you, but could you please hurry up' variety. At that point I'd either have to agree to rush the job, which I desperately didn't want to do, or I'd be forced to tell him that I don't really work that way, which I was equally desperate not to do.

Suppressing the uncomfortable ball of stress that had suddenly appeared in my gut, I closed that particular file and went on to the second.

It was a follow-up memo from Diavolo himself, and contained a handwritten amendment to the original memo issued by Maria Calvino. It was dated four-thirty-seven in the morning, was saved as a jpeg image, and contained the following hastily scrawled words:

'Just so that everybody's clear and there's no misunderstanding, Nobody is allowed to take company phones anywhere outside the office! Call me directly if you require clarification. Signed, Angelo Diavolo.'