“I’ll arrange a key for you,” Belle said. “I’m coming over there so we can fool around a bit; I want to suck you.”
“It’s not possible today either,” I said.
“Hey,” said Belle, “I miss that big dick.”
“There’s been a screw-up,” I said. “I’ve got another meeting with the Dispatcher to straighten it out.”
She gave me a key.
“What about the servants?” I asked.
“Not to worry, they stay in an apartment over the garage.”
I called Belle and asked, “Is tonight okay?”
“Yes,” she replied, “he always takes a sleeping pill around eleven. Get here at midnight, but when you arrive, first let’s go to my room to fool around a little.”
I got there at exactly midnight, the Walther with its silencer in my pocket. When I entered, Belle was standing in the living room waiting for me. We went upstairs. “His room is that one over there, and mine is here. Come on.” We went into her room, and Belle immediately got naked and asked, “What do you want, my ass? Want me to suck you? Want to suck me? Whatever you want, that’s what I want.”
That talk didn’t appeal to me anymore. It used to get me excited, now it kind of disgusted me. She lay down on her stomach, arching her ass. In the world, the entire world, there wasn’t a prettier ass than hers, and she knew it. I approached Belle, took the Walther out of my pocket and shot her in the head, right in the back of the neck, for her to die instantaneously and painlessly. Then I covered her body with a sheet and left, closing the door to the street. How could anyone want to kill their father or mother?
Now the Walther was really hot. I drove to the lake and sat down, thinking, without the heart to throw that jewel in the water. Day was starting to break, and I could feel something happening to me. I felt like crying, but crying is for fags, and I didn’t cry. I took the Walther and threw it as far as I could. It hit the water without making much noise. The sun was so white it hurt my eyes.
xania
I PHONED THE DISPATCHER.
“You sent a girl to do the job? You sent a virgin to face off against an old whore?”
“I was counting on your weakness for women.”
“It didn’t work.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Was. I had to sacrifice the girl, you sonofabitch.”
“I made a mistake. It happens. Zé, Zé, don’t take it the wrong way, but you’ve become a problem.”
“Shit, what kind of problem?”
“You can’t give up the business, you know too much.”
“You clown, they knocked my teeth out in the Glock case, but did I do the job? They tortured me, I’m crippled in one hand, but did I do the job?”
“They got the wrong hand. They didn’t know you’re a lefty. But look, Zé, we gotta do what we gotta do. Rules of the game. You know who gives the orders.”
“I don’t fucking know about anybody ordering anything.”
“You said it yourself, not too long ago, that by knowing the victim you know who ordered it. Remember?”
I did say that. Fuck.
I hung up the phone.
This was my situation: The Dispatcher had put out a contract on me and thought that a pretty girl could get to me, but he screwed up and now he was sending The Man after me. I’d always thought I was The Man, and I’m sure I’m right, but there must be others. The problem was that I didn’t know where to find the Dispatcher; he was the one who set up the meetings. He’d call and say, “We’re going to meet at such-and-such restaurant,” a different one each time, and he paid in cash. Every week he got a new prepaid cell phone and threw the old one away.
I rented a place at another apartment hotel using fake ID and passport. They knew my real name. I was thinking of the Dispatcher and the ones who were after me as they, a sign my paranoia was increasing. Fuck.
I started wearing loose-fitting shirts and carrying two pistols, one under my right armpit and the other in my belt. I let my beard grow and dyed the hairs that were gray a light brown. In my family we go gray early. I bought a pair of glasses with clear lenses from a street vendor. I inspected myself in the mirror. It didn’t look like a disguise; my face is so common that it goes with everything.
I went on paying for the old apartment hotel and left my car in the garage. I wanted them to think I still lived there. Under my false name, Manoel de Oliveira, I rented an apartment on the same floor. The doormen didn’t recognize me with my brown hair, beard, glasses, and Portuguese accent. Besides that, my apartment hotel was constantly changing its personnel. And doormen at apartment hotels by the water only look at the women, preferably at their asses in bathing suits as they head for the beach.
I was in luck. The peephole in my new apartment allowed me to see the door of the old one where I used to live and which to all intents and purposes was still my address.
I spent all day looking through the peephole. My neck ached, but I knew that one day someone would show up, and this time it wouldn’t be some beginner of a girl.
The woman was wearing the uniform of the restaurant on the ground floor and had a tray in her hand. She rang the doorbell of my old apartment.
The Dispatcher must’ve thought, Zé will never suspect I’ve sent another woman.
I came out from where I was, calmly. The woman with the tray gave me a perfunctory glance—she must know me only from an old photograph—and rang the bell again. I went up to her, stuck the pistol in her ribs, and put the key to the apartment in her free hand.
“Open the door,” I said.
She opened the door and we went inside.
“Put the tray on the table,” I said, “and lie down on the floor with your hands behind you.”
She lay down and I handcuffed her. I removed the napkin covering the tray; on it was a cheese sandwich, a Coca-Cola, and a Luger Parabellum, 9mm, with silencer.
I like cheese sandwiches. While I ate the sandwich I asked, “Where’d you get this piece? It’s a collector’s item. I’m honored you chose such a tool to do me.”
“Are you Zé?” she asked.
“I am. What’s your arrangement with the Dispatcher?”
“A shot in the head.”
“Nine millimeter … Gray matter all over the wall. What’s your name?”
“Xania.”
“Xania? You’re The Man? A woman?”
The Man is what the Dispatcher’s best operator was called.
“If you’re asking if I’m the best, if I handled the most complicated cases, yeah, I’m The Man.”
“Xania.”
“You think my name is odd? There’s a TV character named Xania, but my parents chose the name of a city on the island of Crete. I think in Portuguese it’s spelled with Ch, but they thought it was more interesting with X.”
“Xania, I have a proposition for you. Here it is. By the rules, I ought to eliminate you. But I want the Dispatcher, understand? I want peace and quiet, to go somewhere and raise chickens. The Dispatcher won’t let me.”
“You want to raise chickens?”
“It’s a metaphor. I’m tired of this work. I kill you, and the Dispatcher will send somebody else, I think he’ll send a man next time, and I’ll go on killing people, something I don’t want to do anymore, especially when it doesn’t pay me a cent. I want you to tell me where I can find the Dispatcher, the address where he lives.”
“I don’t know. I meet him in a restaurant, never the same one twice, every time he sets it up in a different one.”
“Did he already pay you for the job? How much?”
“He gave me half.”
Xania mentioned the amount.
“You make more than I do.”