Bag, Book, Bundle, and a 38

Michael felt the messenger bag swinging awkwardly and hitting him in the side as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop down a closely packed and filthy part of Chinatown. This was supposed to be a simple job. But then he'd been seen running away, so that added a name to the list in his little black book. And that name belonged to a sister who wasn’t nearly as innocent as she looked. But a risky ‘chance’ encounter in a mostly empty park had at least shown that she hadn’t seen his face, so she wasn’t really a risk. And she’d been nice. In a not so innocent way. So he picked up “Angel” and decided to spend the day with her.

But in the middle of that night she’d heard him talking on the phone when she was supposed to be asleep, and there was an ugly scene at two am in her apartment as he was grabbing clothes and his phone and charger and bag, and she was looking for a knife in the kitchen. “How was I supposed to know?” He shouted at her as he scrambled to get dressed. “It was just a job. Just a name. It wasn’t personal!”

“Not personal? You shot him!” The noise of clattering silverware from the kitchen stopped abruptly. “You can’t get more personal than that!”

He’d begun to try to pull his pants on, but stopped. If she’s done looking for the knife, he was out of time. “It’s just a job! Just a living!”

“He was my brother!”

Michael noted that she was still talking from somewhere out of sight. She hadn’t come back for him yet. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know he was your brother!”

Then she was there, in the small bedroom, blocking the door with all of her ninety pounds and bright and shiny carving knife. “Oh, you’re sorry? That’s different. That makes everything okay.” Her eyes were gleaming. Shit. She was crazy and mad and high and seconds away from stabbing him. But she had lowered the knife to her side. And ridiculously, Michael noticed how the moonlight was coming in through the window and illuminating the knife and one breast that had freed itself from her loose tank top.

“Yeah, look-,” he said as he threw the messenger bag’s strap over his head and pulled his pants up and held them there. “I swear, I’ll-.” And he ran towards her, aiming for the side without the knife. He hit her and the door frame, and tumbled past her as she loosed a string of obscenities at him. “Sorry!” He yelled one more time. Then he stopped at her front door. “Hey Angel! I might have dropped some crack in your place somewhere. I’m not sure. Shame if the cops found out.” And he was gone.

Angel may have been discouraged from calling the cops, but she still wanted a piece of him. A big piece. He was on his scooter and speeding away quickly, sparing a glance back to see her jump into an ancient Honda Civic that coughed and sputtered before finally reluctantly starting. “Shit.” He gunned the little engine and the scooter sped away.

Three blocks and two turns later, he was starting to think he’d lost her. Then there was an explosion seemingly close to his left ear, and he lost control of the scooter, laying it down on its side and scrambling away. Another explosion caught the scooter near the gas tank. “Wha-?” She was shooting at him. He dug into the messenger bag to find that his 38 caliber revolver was missing. A third gunshot got him off his feet and running.

“Keep moving,” he thought. “Run like hell. Lose her. Disappear.” As a low-priced killer, Michael was good at moving. Disappearing. Losing people. He knew how to spot escapes on the run. Because if he couldn’t do that he’d never have made it past the first kill. At this point, he was five in, and there were four more he was contracted for. If he could lose Angel. And so he darted down an alley behind a string of diners. Closely packed buildings. Loading docks. Grease barrels. Dumpsters. Garbage. Locked doors. Suddenly the noisy Honda came from around the corner ahead of him, and he ran for a door propped open by an old man smoking a cigarette. He pushed past the old man and was slipping through the doorway when the Honda jerked to the right, crashed over a broken pallet and past a garbage can to hit the door. The old man dodged and ran, and Michael went down hard. “Angel!” He yelled. “Stop!”

But she was out of the now immovable car and coming at him with the gun pointed at him.

“Twenty thousand bucks.” He said. He held the messenger bag out in front of him. “It’s what I got for your brother. Take it and we’re square?”

Her eyes gleamed again, and not from what she’d been smoking. “Twenty grand?” The gun lowered, and her eyes focused on the bag.

”Sure-.” He swung the bag around and caught her in the side of the head. She dropped and the gun clattered down at her feet. Michael grabbed the gun and ran further down the alley. He had to disappear before she came to, because gun or no gun, ancient Honda or no ancient Honda, she’d get him now if she found him. He had to get out of Chinatown quickly.

A homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans gave him an idea. “Hey pal, I need to borrow this.” Without giving him time to react, Michael pushed the shopping cart against one of the smaller buildings close by and climbed on top of it. A quick jump, and he was on the roof. A hundred yards ahead, cords were strung across the street, supporting red lanterns. And from there, quick access to a residential district with plenty of places to disappear. Could he get across? Maybe, if he was quick and didn’t think about the traffic. It was only five of the small restaurants ahead, and they were pretty closely packed. Some were even connected. Okay. The first jump was five feet. Easy. Like in the movies. Securing the bag over his head, he gave himself plenty of room, ran for the edge and jumped.

He made the jump but came down awkwardly, with his right leg crumpled and his head scraped on the gritty surface of the roof. He picked himself up shakily and kept moving. The next three buildings were connected. He went quickly over those and was getting ready for the last jump he’d have to make when he heard a siren coming from behind him. Shit.

Michael got a good start for the final jump, and leapt as he reached the edge. He landed in a crumpled heap again. He quickly got to his feet, and his right leg almost gave. Without slowing, he limped to the front, where the cords were attached. “This is stupid,” he said. But the siren was sounding closer. There was lots of traffic for the middle of the night. He’d never make it across on the ground. So he knelt down and gripped the twin cords as tightly as he could and stepped off the roof. It was like something from a playground, he thought. One hand at a time, slowly. Ignore the traffic and people shouting at him. It’s nothing. Just noise. He felt ridiculous, but he was slowly doing it. Inch by inch. Then he reached the center, the cord sagged, and something slammed into him. He was aware of being hit impossibly hard, and then nothing.

Charlie had pulled into Chinatown to get a drink and something to eat, but had found only a ridiculous amount of traffic for the middle of the night. And to top it off, his wife called. “I don’t care, Barb,” Charlie said. “I’m getting the divorce.”

She shouted back but he was barely listening. In any case, he had an answer that would cover pretty much anything she had to say. “You’re driving a new Jag. I’m driving a ten year old Mercury Cougar. You’re on an iPhone. I’m on a 7/11 flip phone. I have no money. And even if I did-“. He was interrupted by the blast of a horn behind him. He leaned out the window and waved to the driver behind him. “Thank you!” He turned again to face the road and lurched the car forward just as something crashed into the windshield, before rolling off the hood and onto the street. It was a person. “Shit, Barb, I just hit someone!”

She was laughing uproariously. “Congratulations Charlie, you ruined someone else’s life! You’re drunk, aren’t you? I hope they catch you.” She laughed again, and Charlie dropped the phone.

He jumped out of the car, oblivious to the traffic and noise. It was a man, maybe twenty years old, wearing thinning blue jeans and a grey t-shirt that had probably been white once. Long black hair in a ponytail, matted with blood. The thin, pockmarked face was smashed in and there were pieces of glass embedded around his eyes and down to his throat. There was a lot of blood. Too much blood. “Shit, I killed him.” A messenger bag was on the ground next to the dead man, and Charlie saw that things were spilling out of it. A small, cheap, black notebook. Like he’d had in high school. Glancing at the crowd starting to gather, he opened the bag and saw what else was there. A few baggies that probably had drugs in them. A cellphone. A small black revolver. And an envelope stuffed with two thick bundles of hundred dollar bills. He thumbed through them quickly and guessed that it was twenty thousand. Maybe. A siren that he’d been hearing for the last ten minutes suddenly changed its tone, as if in an intersection. Then it started again, unmistakably heading his way. “Whoever you are, I’m sorry. I need this more than you do.” Feeling possibly stupider than the day after he married Barb, he threw the baggies as far away as he could and stuffed everything else back into the bag and took it. Then he jumped into his car and gunned the engine. A path had somehow cleared to the left, and Charlie took it. By the time the cops arrived, he was gone.

Charlie had no illusions about getting away with it. It was just a matter of time before they found the car. The only thing he could do was try to get rid of it, but how do you get rid of a car? He needed to destroy it. And the only place that would do that was a wrecker. If he was lucky. Fortunately, he knew where one was, about a half hour away. So he drove quickly and quietly, doing his best to avoid attracting attention. Once there, he smashed the car through the front gate and parked it amongst the other wrecks awaiting crushing. From there, he started walking further away from Chinatown, to a string of cheap motels. As he walked, he started to thumb through the little black book. Names. Addresses in some cases, or just parts of town. Some of the names were crossed out, with a dollar amount next to them. Jules, for example, had 20K next to his name, which was crossed out. Next was Angel. No price for her. He stopped reading them as he realized that he’d found a hit list. He’d done the cops a favor. Then the dead man’s cellphone rang. He picked it up, inadvertently thumbing the ‘accept call’ button. He recognized the voice “Hello? Michael? This is Barbara. Did you get Charlie? Did you get that son of a bitch?”