either Judakowski nor Lansdale cared how any problem in their territories got solved. When they wanted a problem out of the way, they didn’t care if it left in a limousine or a pine box. I didn’t have any special taste for killing, so I always tried the softer way.
Tried it first, I mean. When I took a job to move someone, they got moved. My word was a contract, and I never failed to live up to my end, even when that required the end of someone else.
Sometimes, you can get the exact effect you’re after without any bloodshed at all. What I learned was that achieving such an effect depended on a lot of different things. Not just how smart the target was, but how much he had already invested, be it in his racket or his image.
Lansdale or Judakowski would give me the name of a man who was causing a problem. Rarely would anyone be causing them both a problem, but even that happened every so often.
Besides the name, I’d also need the right place to have a package delivered—the target’s home was always best—and a copy of a return address he’d trust on sight. I can print up an exact duplicate of any label you show me, right down to the bar codes. The next step is for the man to open that package. Then a big puff! of talcum powder would float out in a gentle cloud. The only thing inside the box would be a piece of paper, with a typed-out message:
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN ANTHRAX
If the man was smart enough, that would do it.
But maybe the man had himself committed so deep that he’d already built himself some stronger walls. Maybe he’d never get mail at his home, so any package delivered there would just sit unopened until he had someone come by and pick it up for him.
For a man that cautious, a better move would be if his electricity went out late one night. No warning, everything just snaps! off.
Now, that does happen around here. Which is why so many folks outside of town keep backup generators. But this man would look out his window and see all the other close-by houses still showing lights.
Before he can ponder that mystery, his phone rings. The house phone, not his cell. The house phone with the number kept in someone else’s name, and unlisted to boot.
A mechanical voice says: “It would be just as easy to turn off your lights.”
Then the phone goes dead in the target’s hand. And the electricity in his house suddenly pops back to life.
It wouldn’t take that kind of man too long to think over all the different electrical things he uses every day. All the things he has to touch.
That’s when he understands that there’s people out there somewhere who can touch him.
t’s a formula: the higher the target’s intelligence, the more subtle you can be about sending him a message.
Some people are just plain mulish. Science can do a lot of things, but there’s no cure for a man’s personality.
That threw me at first, and it shouldn’t have done so. I’d seen too many times how a man’s ego can take over everything else inside him—make a usually accommodating man as stubborn as a tree stump.
That’s why I always delivered my messages direct into the hands of the man I got paid to fix. I learned the force of ego not so much by reading as by watching. I’d learned that if a man gets warned off in front of his crew, he’s never going to act reasonably. It’s almost as if he can’t do that.
I could always get the job done. No matter what it took, I knew where to find it. Or how to build it. All I ever needed was certain knowledge I couldn’t get on my own. Knowledge of the target, I mean.
My preference was always for precision. There’s no reason to blow up a whole schoolhouse just to kill the principal. That’s why I needed the best possible knowledge of the target … so I could decide on the best method to make him go away.
I turned myself into a persistence hunter. The fastest animal on earth is a cheetah, but there’s a tribe that kills them for food. They can’t outrun a cheetah, but they can keep running long after the cheetah can’t draw another breath. Takes them hours and hours each time, but they know, if they stay at it, the outcome is always the same.
When I took a job, it was known I’d stay on it until it was done. How could I charge the prices I did—how was I supposed to keep earning the money I needed—unless my word carried its own worth?
Here’s an example of that. I didn’t know why Judakowski needed that new preacher gone, but I was assured the Reverend Elias never went to sleep in his own bed without spending some time with his Presentation Bible—the one they give you when you graduate from divinity school.
That Bible was precious to him. It never left his house, even when he traveled. But he had others—whoever heard of a preacher who went around without at least a pocket-sized one? And he was leaving on a two-week circuit soon.
I’m no burglar—that’s understood, and such a service is never expected from me—so Judakowski’s men had to bring that Bible over to his place for me to pick up.
When I told them they had to take digital photos of that Bible from several angles, including tight close-ups, before they so much as touched it, they gave me a funny look. When I told them I would need the camera they used, too, so I could check to see if they’d done their job right before I started on mine, I felt them getting ready to buck.
“Do what the man tells you,” Judakowski said. He didn’t have to say any more.
His men were expert thieves, but they didn’t know anything about putting stuff back.
It was almost three days before I was satisfied with the wire-thin string of microchips I built. But it took me only a couple of hours to drill a tiny hole through the binding between the pages of paper and the spine. Then I threaded the string of microchips through that hole and touched each end with a tiny droplet of nail polish to hold it in place.
When I handed that Bible back to Judakowski, it was open to the same page it had been when it was stolen. I told him his men had to use the blown-up digital shots I’d made to guide them through putting the Bible back exactly where they’d found it. I even drew a diagram for them, with all the measurements in inches.
I also told him they had to handle that Bible like it was made of spun glass. Most important of all, they had to be absolutely sure not to close it.
hen I say “fix,” that’s just what I mean—solve a problem. That’s why Judakowski never hired me for one of those blood feuds he was always getting into—that’s not the kind of job you can outsource.
Lansdale never seemed to have those kinds of feuds. Whenever he hired me, it was to move someone aside who was standing in his way. Business. Nothing personal.
That’s why I was so taken aback when he called over to the barmaid one night, “Bring Esau his usual, will you, Nancy? Uh … better make it a double, okay? We’ve got a lot to talk over.”
Everyone who worked in Lansdale’s joint knew I only drank apple juice—not even cider, pure juice. They always kept some on hand for me. Fresh, too.
I didn’t show it, but that meant a lot to me. Not the juice itself, the way they respected the decisions I made about my own body.
The first time I’d ever come alone to his bar, Lansdale had asked me what I’d have. Didn’t bat an eye at what I told him. Ever since then, I could count on a big mug of apple juice being brought over to the table whenever I visited.
What had taken me aback was that Lansdale asked the barmaid to bring me that drink after we were done talking business. That made it clear that he didn’t want anyone else hearing whatever it was we were about to talk over.