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  Shaking the thought from his mind, Alex focused on the situation at hand. The sounds of distant sirens began to drift to his attention. As if that sound snapped him out of his fragmented thoughts, he reverted to his instincts.

  Glancing around at the scene, Alex noticed a half-buried cigarette butt in the snow. It was a curious thing. Instead of the normal yellow speckled ass-end of a cancer stick, this thing was as black as the tar residue it was doomed to leave in your lungs. The filter sported a thin gold wrapping encircling it, but for the most part it was of the flat Black Russian variety. Interesting to say the least. It was the one thing he saw of any material value.

  As the sirens became louder, Alex weighed the possibility of letting the homicide unit cover the case; after all he had a conflict of interest.

  Fuck it, he thought. Personal conflict be damned.

  Jack meant a lot to him. For Christ’s sake, the best man at his wedding to Charlotte was Jack. With a grunt, Alex leaned over to the cigarette and scooped it up and slipped it into his jacket. He eased upward and shook the numbness from his frozen legs. The veteran undercover agent maintained enough connections out here on the streets to rustle up some information. Favors could be called in easy enough.

  No, he decided with a satisfied grimace. This one is personal. The conflict is real.

  Alex wanted to taste the sweetness of revenge. Rules be damned.

  *

  Rafael Rontego walked up the narrow and dim stairway that led up to his one room flat. The apartment building itself was not much to look at, and the inside of Rontego’s room was even less aesthetic in its appeal. Rafael pulled his room key out from the hidden compartment in his left boot.

  The assassin kept a small knife or handcuff key there. It worked wonders if an unsuspecting cop was so kind as to handcuff him in the front. And if he wasn’t, Rafael practiced many times the maneuver which enabled him to pull his shackled hands over his feet and to the front of his body in one fluid motion. After all, one could never be too prepared.

  Silently, he slid the key to his apartment into the lock and shifted the bolt. He pushed the door open. Before stepping inside, however, he knelt down and peered about six inches above the door. The small breakaway thread he tied across the doorway was still intact. Rafael rose back up and stepped over the string.

  All is well on the home front.

  He walked over to the center of the room and glanced about. He hated this place. In the center was a mattress with no box spring. To the left was a small kitchen area that grew dusty from disuse. Cooking was best left to others of more…domestic persuasion. To the right of the bed was a lazy-boy which was a faded red due to age. Further to the right of that was a small closet and through the closet, toward the back, was a small bathroom.

  With a cough, the assassin moved forward, pushing the door closed behind him. Rontego pulled a chair from the corner of the room around to face him. With one fluid motion he removed his black felt hat, his tribute to the gangster days of yore, and sent it swirling on to the chair. He took his black trench coat off of his shoulders—shoulders deceptive in their slenderness—and tossed it onto the chair’s back. Hanging from both shoulders was a leather holster, which contained his weapons of choice: silenced pistols.

  With a prudent look toward his lone window right above his mattress, Rafael took his weapons off and tossed them on top of his jacket. He walked over to the window and pulled up the blinds. From here he had a good view of the street.

  Exactly the room he wanted. The previous tenant didn’t want to give up this abode, but everyone could be persuaded where the assassin was concerned. He made sure the bolt locking the window was in place, and then pulled the blinds back down. Prying eyes were not welcome here.

  Passing through his closet, he pushed open the door that led to the bathroom. The door itself was a nice touch to the place. Rontego added it himself. The door was the same color of the wall and, in the dim light of the interior of the closet, nearly impossible to find unless one was mentally on his toes.

  Once in the bathroom, Rafael pulled the light string dangling down from the ceiling and stood in the swinging bulb’s shifting light. He leaned on the ancient, shoddy porcelain sink, contemplating his reflection in the mirror. A lesser man would not be so bold as to look too long, lest he become disgusted with the view.

  Rontego, though, had the unnerving ability to do just that. He could look time after time at himself and see nothing wrong. In fact, he liked what he saw. He saw a man who was the best at what he did, and Rontego never frowned upon success, even success like his. After all, he was the best at what he did. Nothing less was acceptable. He didn’t even dislike the people that opposed him, if they were good at it.

  Take Jack for example, Rontego thought to himself as he studied his face in the mirror. Jack was damn good at what he did; he knew him to be a decent cop. Jack just got careless. In this business carelessness was sure to end your tenure at the top. To be lazy was not a luxury one could afford when dealing with the likes of those on the dark side of society. So Rontego’s boss had to clean up and Rafael did the deed quick, clean, professional. One shot, one kill.

  With a satisfied grin, Rafael looked into the mirror. He shaved already once today, but the five o’clock shadow that followed his cheeks to his chin never seemed to lessen. His dark hair was perfect and combed backwards. His gray eyes could even be considered appealing, if not for the fact that there existed in them no humanity, no divine spark. He splashed some cold water onto his face and grabbed a small towel off the rack to his left.

  Drying his face, he left the bathroom and walked toward the kitchen. Perhaps there was some leftover Chinese in the kitchen. After all, he worked hard tonight. This was a well-earned meal. Rafael was hungry, and when he was hungry, he always ate.

  Chapter 3

  Alex pulled into the driveway of his townhouse apartment. The apartment looked dingy on the outside and had the look of a place where people stayed on their way to somewhere else. If the outside didn’t look like much with its peeling yellow paint, then the inside didn’t look much better.

  Alex walked inside; his only thoughts were bent on finding his bed. He was so tired that he was almost sure that the nasty spring that poked into his back night after night wouldn’t bother him.

  Though the apartment was not dirty, it was not a place of frequent use, or dusting. The inside was bare. Internally, the place consisted of three rooms on the floor that was Alex’s rent. There was a kitchen/small living room right in front of the entryway with a card table that Alex used to take his meals whenever he had a chance to dine in. Other than the two chairs pushed in at either end of the structure, no more furniture graced the room.

  Who needed more furniture than that, Alex thought. Both chairs could be pulled into the living room and used as a couch or love seat.

  The living room end of the kitchen was just a milk carton crate flipped over with an eleven-inch, black and white television holding on to a precarious perch atop it, in the corner of the room. Alex hated the damn thing but every now and then it would come in handy for a Sunday football game.

  “God bless the Buffalo Bills” was Alex’s Sunday motto. It used to be his motto anyway. Time, as of late, became a factor.

  Alex tossed his keys on the card table with a deep sigh. It’d been a long day. He tossed his jacket onto one of the chairs next to him and put his hands onto the small of his back, arching upward and tensing his back. With a satisfied smile, Alex heard the crack as his vertebrae released the air in between their joints.

  His underarm holster seemed to throw his back out a bit to the left, he was sure of it. Thinking of the Beretta, he slipped the holster off and walked to the wall left of his television. There in the wall was a nail wedged into a beam behind the wall. Alex hung his holster on the nail; he then bent down and lifted his left pant leg. Strapped to his ankle was a one shot Derringer. He unstrapped the ankle holster and hung that too on the nail. He unhooked the butt
erfly knife from his right ankle and slipped it into his back pocket. He turned right to head down the three-foot hallway that led to his bathroom.

  Alex looked to the right of the bathroom entrance. There was a picture there of Alex, a woman, and a small child. He pushed past the picture and went into the bathroom. Alex flicked on the light and turned on the bath water, turned the nozzle to warm.

  Damn pipes take forever to warm up in the winter, Alex thought with irritation.

  Alex undressed and put his hands on each side of the sink. Looking into the mirror in front of him, he glanced at his reflection.

  He needed to shave but then again, what was the point?

  Alex’s brown hair was long, just a few inches above his shoulders. His cheekbones, though prominent, were hidden by mud and blood that caked onto him, yet were visible in patches where tears had streaked the mottled artistry.

  Steam rose in white puffs from behind the shower curtain. Inch by inch, as Alex peered into the mirror and let his mind wander, the fog clung onto the glass and Alex’s face disappeared.

  Alex pulled back the curtain and stepped into the scalding hot water. Water, which was Alex’s purification. Day after day, it was this burning hot water that cleansed more than Alex’s body. It seemed to somehow, for the moment, cleanse his soul.

  The water pounded on his skin, refusing to relent, yet Alex seemed to not notice, to disregard the heat. Face turned upward toward the showerhead, as if to ask why, Alex began to relax in his own private meditation. For a long time, Alex stood there and felt the grime wash away. He began to drift into a trancelike sleep.

  All at once, he stood at the scene of Jack’s death. Sure enough, there was Jack, lying on the snow, lifeless. Alex, in a dreamlike drift, got closer to the body. Jack was cold, as was apparent by his bluish-white complexion. Jack’s face rested on a slight drift of snow and faced Alex. As Alex drifted closer he studied Jack’s face. It looked as if Jack were asleep.

  As he got even closer to his friend’s face he noticed a shift in the temperature, a sharp decrease in the frigid air’s already less than warm embrace. As the freezing air encircled him, a shiver found its way and crept along the length of Alex’s back. As the shiver leapt off of his tailbone, Alex noticed he drifted too close to Jack’s face. He began to retract from the body, and with one more glance at Jack everything stopped.

  The air seemed to stop swirling, its biting cold gone for a split second. The blood that dripped from Jack’s mouth stopped mid-drip and hung suspended in the air. Alex strained to get a better look at this phenomenon. And that’s when he noticed it.

  Jack’s face, more important, his eyes, snapped open. They pierced into Alex with a stern ferocity. Alex willed himself to retreat, to run from this misadventure. But Alex could not move, could not close his own eyes. Everything, including him, was frozen as much as the air was before time stopped.

  Alex pulled away with all his mental strength. He pulled away to keep his sanity, to hide from his friend’s piercing gaze. The unblinking eyes poured into Alex like nothing he knew. With all of his mental energy he strained.

  “Wake up Alex,” he heard. “Wake up!”

  With a start Alex awoke half-leaning, half-kneeling in his shower.

  How long have I been in here?

  The water was now running cold. Alex shivered.

  *

  Rafael woke up at dawn. He always woke up at dawn. His bed was right in line with the sun as it too woke from its slumbers. He had an alarm clock. Ages passed since the alarm woke him up. His daily wake routine always began with Rontego deactivating the alarm of the clock shortly after the rising sun announced the new day’s arrival.

  Rontego rolled out of bed and grabbed a glass of water. He felt the cool liquid go down his throat and couldn’t help but enjoy it as the water refreshed his throat, parched from the hours of sleep.

  Rafael suspected that he slept with his mouth open. He never asked anyone if it were true. Perhaps it was too personal of a thing to know. He’d once been told that his legs kicked with a spastic twitch while he slept. He kicked the whore out of his place. He didn’t believe in mixing the personal with business.

  Never liked her anyway, he thought.

  Slamming his cup down, Rafael wiped the sleep from his eyes and wandered toward the window. He checked the street below his flat.

  “Good,” he muttered to himself.

  Nothing was below except the newspaper stand where he often picked up the most recent headlines. Every now and then he liked to read the advice columns. One time an associate of his asked why he read ‘those damned things’.

  Even though he hated being interrupted, much less by some jerk reading over his shoulder, Rafael answered “I like to see how fucked up everyone else’s lives are. It amuses me and lets me know I’m the most normal guy I’ve met.”

  Normal. What an interesting word. Rafael led a life that most would consider the antithesis to normal. He often contemplated what it meant to be ‘normal.’ To him his life was normal, structured, and routine. Sure, he did things on the fringe of society, things that other’s dubbed ‘illegal’ or even ‘cruel’. He didn’t dwell on the issue long.

  He seldom dwelled on anything long. He came to the conclusion that ‘normal’ was accepting what the weak constructed to stave off the strong, to impede the takeover of the elite.

  It was a numbers game. The weak had more of ‘em so took the necessary precautions to ensure their safety, at the detriment to the few strong ones out there with any balls. Every so often the weak could trick a strong one on to their side, often through money and brainwashing them on the value of a moral society; moral in the eyes of the weak. This meant protecting those little bastards at the expense of your own time, sweat and blood.

  No, Rafael thought, I am the normal one, taking what’s mine.

  After all, wasn’t it Herbert Spencer, a man of considerable mental strength, who coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’? Darwin’s “natural selection” at its finest. The weak tried to berate him into silence too; his ideas tore apart their notion that there was a creation. A creation that a God would have made with equal love for all.

  Rafael was not sure of God’s existence, neither did he deny one. Hell, he witnessed too many people call out His name either moments before or during their own actual trip to the other side.

  Perhaps one day, he too would find this God waiting for him on the other side of some cosmic journey on the coattail of whatever soul he had.

  More than likely, Rontego mused with a morbid sense of serenity, he would just become worm food in some anonymous hole in the ground.

  Rafael shook the thoughts from his mind. Today was not a day for such morbid thoughts. He leaned over and stretched to his toes. He always enjoyed a good stretch. With a grunt Rafael jerked up and began getting ready for the day.

  Today he was going to talk to his boss. The boss. Rontego never dealt with anyone but the boss, though he ran into a lot of the old man’s associates when he was getting an assignment or collecting his cash. He always dressed nice when going into ‘the office’. After all, he was a professional.

  Minutes later, Rafael Rontego was walking down the streets of Buffalo. The office was a mile or two down the road and the cold invigorated the assassin.

  From top to bottom, he was dressed in the finest quality clothing. Atop his jet-black hair rested his trademark hat. A gangster-style, black felt hat that brimmed outward from his head several inches in circumference was traced by a black ribbon that was almost flush against the felt. The hat was perfect and round except in the front where it indented as if to allow a forefinger to sweep from the wearer’s head.

  He wore a black Giorgio Armani suit measured to perfection and lined by smooth gray pinstripes. Tucked into his jacket was an elegant Gianni Versace silver tie. His white cuffs trimmed the outside of his suit and his silver French cufflinks appeared and reappeared in time with his brisk gait.

  If you were lucky enou
gh to get a close view of his cuff links, your death was probable. However, if one could speak from the grave, they would tell you that the letters engraved on the links were S and M. Rumor had it that Rafael might be a sadomasochist. Rafael ignored the absurdity of the claim. He’d be damned if he ever told what those initials stood for.

  Rontego stopped. He tucked his most recent purchase, a copy of the Buffalo News, under his arm and stooped over to tie his Gucci wing tips. Rafael continued his walk to the office.

  A block later he reached inside his long overcoat and pulled out a wad of twenty-dollar bills. Without breaking step, he snatched one out of his money clip, reinserted the wad, and folded the twenty into a smooth crease. As he rounded the corner of the block there was an old beggar. Predictable. The man sent his cup up to Rafael. Rontego dropped the twenty into his cup and started to walk away.

  I don’t shit where I sleep, he thought.

  As an afterthought, Rafael turned around and grabbed the man by the collar of his welfare duds. With a quick yank, Rafael stood nose to nose with the homeless man.

  “Take that money and eat something for fuck’s sake! I swear to whoever you call God that you will meet him if I catch you buying a drink with that twenty.”

  Before the startled man could nod, Rontego let go of the beggar’s lapel and moved on. Wiping his hands on the folds of his jacket, Rontego entered the club in front of him. The parking lot was all but deserted at this hour, yet he knew that inside there were at least half a dozen guys.

  Rumors was a nice enough place, for people who went out.

  Chapter 4

  Alex awoke to the alarm’s incessant beep ringing in his ears. He rolled over to turn the damn thing off and let out a groan. His head was pounding and the infernal spring in his back was always a pleasant way to greet the day. Alex rolled back the other way toward his nightstand.