My appearance is nondescript: I’m a thin guy with a big nose, an inoffensive look, hair starting to go gray. Wearing that dark suit I looked like an insurance salesman. The Dispatcher had told me the customer was going to a meeting away from the hotel and should be back around nine that night. I had two pictures of his face in my pocket.
Then the customer showed up. I was a bit surprised to see him, not much, I’m an old whore and don’t really get surprised. But the guy was in a wheelchair, being pushed by a young woman who looked like a nurse. That fucker the Dispatcher hadn’t told me the customer was a cripple.
“Wait here for me,” I told Belle, and got into the elevator with the nurse and the crippled guy.
I got out on the same floor. The corridor was empty, I could snuff the two of them right there, but my jobs are always done intelligently. I took a paper from my pocket and pretended I was trying to read something on it, while looking nearsightedly at the numbers on the doors and following the wheelchair. I waited for the nurse to open the door of the apartment, and when she went in, pushing the wheelchair, I went in too. Her eyes widened, but before she could make a peep, I shot her in the head. I always go for the head.
“Take it easy,” said the customer, facing me with both hands palms outward. He was in the business, he looked me in the eye. “We can make a deal, I’ll pay you more,” he said.
I fired two shots into his head. Then I unscrewed the silencer, stuck the Walther in my belt, the silencer in my pocket, and left, shutting the door. I got in the elevator and went downstairs. If I was lucky, it’d be some time before they found the pair of stiffs.
When I got to the lobby, I took Belle by the arm and we left. No one looked at me, anyone looking in our direction would see only Belle.
I got in the car and said, “Let’s go to the lake.” But when we arrived at the lake, I didn’t have the heart to toss the pistol in the water. Shit, a Walther P99, the best thing to ever come out of Germany.
“Let’s go to the movies,” Belle said. We went to see a detective film; she was crazy about detective films. If someday she ever cuckolded me, it’d be with a cop.
We got out of the theater at midnight and Belle said she wanted to go dancing at the discotheque. But first we stopped at my place, and I put away the Walther, after patting it like it was a puppy.
At the discotheque Belle led me to the floor right away to dance. Watching her dance was mind-blowing, but I danced shaking like a dead tree branch in a high wind. Then we had a drink, and she asked what I thought when I saw I was about to kill a cripple. “Nothing,” I answered, “and you, what did you think?” She said she thought it better to kill a cripple than a healthy guy who could dance and do aerobics on a treadmill.
When we got back to the apartment, Belle, in bed, said she wanted to talk to me about something serious. Her father was threatening to cut off her allowance.
“Fuck your father’s allowance, I’ll give you the money,” I said.
“But that’s not all, he’s so pissed at me that he says he’s going to leave everything to charity, so that when he dies I won’t inherit a penny.”
“Fuck your father’s money, I’ll support you.”
“Man, it’s a lot of money,” she said. “I think it’s very cruel. I’m only eighteen, I’m going to last at least another sixty. Can you imagine sixty years in poverty?”
“I’ve already said I’ll take care of you,” I insisted.
She looked at me pensively and said, “Sweetheart, I love you, but who can guarantee that you—in the business you’re in, that you’re, you’re …”
She stopped, and I finished the thought for her: “Who can say if I’m going to stay alive for long, isn’t that it?”
She answered, “That’s it, I’m very sorry, but that is it.” Then she gave me lots of little kisses and told me she loved me, and added that she had a proposition for me.
“Leave it till tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s go to sleep. It’s almost dawn, and if day breaks I can’t get to sleep.” I took off my clothes, stripping down to my undershorts, and got into bed. She remained seated in the armchair.
When I woke up, Belle was still sitting in the chair.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “can we talk now?”
“Talk about what?”
“My proposition,” she replied.
“Talk,” I said.
She got up from the chair and sat down beside me on the bed. “I want you to kill my father.”
I remained silent. Shit, I thought, you can kill everybody, except your own father and mother.
“Give it some thought,” I said.
And she answered, “I spent all night thinking about it, and all week, there’s nothing left to think about. What’s the problem? Since I’ve known you you’ve killed five people. Yesterday you killed a cripple, and now you’ve got scruples about killing my son of a bitch father who wants to leave me without a penny? If you tell me to jump off a bridge I’ll do it, and I ask you for one little thing and you hesitate, is that how much you love me?”
She bent over me, took off my shorts, and started sucking my cock. “Is that good?”
Some five hundred women have sucked my cock, but none of them had such a magical mouth as hers. “Is that good?” After repeating that, she stopped, sat down on the bed and said, “If you don’t kill my father I’m leaving you. You’ll have to find some other girl to fuck.”
There wasn’t another girl like her in the whole world. But Belle wanting to kill her father made her ugly, and my cock wilted.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“I’ll give you a week,” she said.
I shadowed her father during that week. He was a tall man with white hair, nice looking, who left the house every day and got into the chauffeured car waiting in front. One day, before he got into the car, I went up to him and said, “Excuse me, I’m not from here. How do I get to downtown?”
He answered, “I’m heading there, I’ll give you a lift. Please, get in.”
We talked in the car. I told him I was from Minas Gerais and was looking for work. It could be as a servant, anything, I just needed work, and he handed me a card and wrote a name on the back.
“This is Dona Estela, my secretary. I’m going to tell her to look for a position for you. Come to this address tomorrow morning and speak to her.”
I thought it was time to leave and said, “I’ll get out here. Thank you very much. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
I got out of the car and walked down the street, thinking. When I got to my apartment there was a message from Belle on the answering machine asking me to call her.
“How’s it coming?” she asked.
“I’m setting things up,” I said, “it won’t be long. I’ll do the job in a few days.”
“I’ll come by there later,” Belle said, “and I’m giving you my sweet little ass.”
Normally that would have aroused me, but that day, I don’t know why, it was disagreeable. “I can’t today, I’ve got a meeting with the Dispatcher.”
The next day I went to look for Dona Estela. She was very pleasant and said she’d found me a position as a driver and that I should bring my documents to her as soon as possible.
At that moment Belle’s father came into the waiting room and clapped me on the back, saying, “Everything all right? Is there anything you need, an advance?”
“No, sir. Thank you very much.”
When I got to the apartment, I called Belle and said that doing her father at the office would be hard; it had to be on the street or at his home.