Marvin, I’m Glad You’re Here
by Victor Kreuiter
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
Big Marvin took the kid outside, stopped on the sidewalk in front of the office, smiled, slapped the kid on the back and forced a laugh, merriment for the visual monitor bolted right above the doorway leading into Miller Racketeering. He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, pointed at the monitor and told the kid to look at it and smile. The kid looked up but did not smile. Marvin scratched an ear, patted his pockets like he was looking for something, turned to the kid and said, “Wait here a minute.”
He walked back inside, waited for the guy at the desk to look up and, when he did, Marvin closed his eyes and touched each eyelid with an index finger. He opened his eyes to see the guy at the desk do the same, then point up at the monitor and speak for the first time. “All legal,” he said. He leaned back, labored to bring a smile to his lips and scratched at his chin, looking relieved. “It’s legal for sure,” he said.
He waited for a response from Marvin, and when none came he put his pencil down, stretched, and said, “Marvin, I’m glad you’re here.”
Big Marvin shuffled his feet, chewed his lower lip and said, “So, we going through with this?”
The guy in the suit leaned forward, put elbows down on the desk, dropped his head and clasped hands behind his neck, like he was thinking. Without looking up, he said, “What else can we do?”
Marvin dropped his gaze and thought about it. “I don’t know.”
“It’s legal.”
Big Marvin hesitated a moment, trying to think of something to say, looking for an alternative. Legal? Well, it wasn’t illegal. If it’s not illegal, is it legal? He tried and could think of nothing to say, nothing he wanted the monitors to hear. His stomach was upset, and he had that crummy taste in his mouth again.
He went back outside, tapped the kid on the shoulder and said, “Follow me.” He walked halfway down the block, turned into an alley, walked to a dumpster, stepped around it and touched the kid on the shoulder to stop him.
“Look,” Big Marvin said, “this guy we want you to kill probably has ReTurn® in place, paid for in advance.”
Chin up, mouth open, Donald Silva gave Marvin the look they all did: tough guy, no fear, anxious to use a gun. He said, “Does that matter?”
Marvin took a deep breath, looked away and counted to ten. “This guy, he’s experienced taking a bullet, okay? He’s been gone-and-back a couple of times. He’ll know you’re coming the minute you buy the Kill Permit.”
The kid started to say something, and Marvin cut him off.
“You think a Kill Permit is sealed?” He shook his head. “Don’t think that. Don’t ever think that. Every kind of crime certificate is shared, particularly a Kill Permit. Shared with medical authorities and law enforcement and the tax people. Politicians and bureaucrats and the insurance companies. And those people can share it with anybody they want to, or anybody who pays them for the info. What I’m saying is, you might be at a disadvantage here. It’s something you might want to think about.”
The kid shrugged, looked away, playing tough-guy again, then turned and asked: “You ever been shot?”
Marvin held up three fingers. “Three times dead. God bless ReTurn®.” He inhaled, relaxed and went loose-limbed and rolled his head back and stared up at the sky, thinking, Is there anything I can say to this kid that would make a difference? He decided to try.
“The first one, I went through it thinking it was nothing. The second, not so much. And the third taught me a lesson, and that lesson was: ‘Don’t ever do this again.’ So I’m dispensing free advice. The people you kill, they hold a grudge. For the record, I quit doing hits decades ago and, just between you and me, I’d like to leave this entire business behind. It don’t pay anymore. It’s not easy, and the people you deal with are...” Marvin let the words hang, looked back down the alley toward the street, shoved his hands in his pockets and went quiet.
“You trying to talk me out of this?” the kid said.
Marvin bit his lip. He wanted to hit the kid. What would that accomplish?
Marvin had a buddy, a guy he’d known most of his life. His buddy had been a shooter but got out early. He walked away or bought his way out — whatever — then moved to Michigan or Minnesota or Missouri, somewhere like that. He’d left the rackets and now he had neighbors who spoke to him. He had friends. He got some job that paid the mandated wage and he spent his time living like a real human being.
He told Marvin he went fishing on the weekends. He told Marvin he had a bungalow to live in and a yard, a porch to sit on, and nobody pointed anything at him more dangerous than a finger. And he lived where there were lakes and trees and clean air. He said he had a lady friend. Imagine that.
Marvin would call him and they would talk on the phone, once a month or so. When his buddy asked how he was doing, what could Marvin Schoenhorst say? He had a couple rooms to live in. A subway pass. A little money. Friends? Well, there were the bandits and swindlers he tried to dodge. Was he one of them? Marvin didn’t ask himself that question.
When Marvin asked his buddy how he was doing, his friend would say the week had been fine and his job was okay. He had co-workers he actually liked, and he’d gone fishing or he’d been invited to dinner at a friend’s house or he’d played nickel-dime poker with some guys, and nobody cheated.
It sounded like heaven.
This guy — in Michigan or Minnesota or Missouri — he was 104. After his second reanimation, he couldn’t take it anymore. He got himself out. Marvin wondered about Michigan. Minnesota. Missouri. Where were those places, exactly? How do you get there? Just go? Quietly? He found himself thinking about that more and more.
He looked at Donald Silva. Why was he trying to talk this kid out of the hit? Could he even do that? He wondered if he should lose his temper. He could bat the kid around a bit, but he was tired of that, too.
“I’m just trying to explain this whole thing to you. Crime is ...” He stopped and rubbed his chin, watching Donald Silva stare into space, ignoring him. Why was he still talking? “You’re not gonna like it,” Marvin said. “Everybody’s tired of it, everybody trying to scratch out a living doing crime. You may think you’re the type of guy who’s gonna love it, but until you’re knee-deep in this business, you got no clue. And once you’re knee deep...”
The kid was tapping his leg with one hand, eyes down, not paying attention, uninterested; Marvin knew he’d said enough. He’d told the kid the truth. Anything else about the fatigue and the agitation and the stress and the anxiety and the enduring bad health wasn’t going to register.
“Okay,” Marvin said. “You ready for this?”
Donald Silva nodded. He was anxious to get going. He knew exactly what he was going to do because Vincent Sozso had told him what to do and how to do it.
* * *
Vincent Sozso considered himself the city’s rising star of crime, and he wasn’t even 70 years old yet. He was small-time, with a small-time operation, like all the rest. He’d never been shot. He was cocky, ambitious, and vain... some combination. Vincent Sozso was one of those bent guys that had no idea how badly bent they were. If somebody could have explained it to him, he would have laughed and puffed out his chest, or started swinging.
Sozso had prepped Donald Silva for his interview at Miller Racketeering, presenting the job like this: there was a rumor that Allen Pierce, now known as Randall Miller, was looking to avenge his most recent murder, and that meant hiring a shooter. Sozso sat down with Donald Silva, like they were friends, and gave him the identical murder spiel Silva would hear from Big Marvin, minus the lecture about the shortcomings of criminal life.
Then he put his personal spin on the story. He explained to the kid what he wanted the kid to do and how to do it, and what he would pay the kid to make it all happen. The kid’s eyes lit up when Sozso mentioned money. It sounded like a lot, so the kid listened carefully, nodded when required, and when the kid walked out of Sozso’s office, he was confident he was a shooter.
“Okay, kid,” Marvin said. “We’ve been monitored. You’ve heard what I’ve got to say, so if you think this is what you want to do...”
The kid wouldn’t look at Marvin. He scratched his forehead, looked down and breathed deep, like he was tired of listening.
They retraced their steps to Miller Racketeering.
Once inside, Marvin looked at the guy at the reception desk, waited for him to look up, then put an index finger to each closed eye. The guy nodded, rubbed his chin, then took a deep breath. He knew something was going to happen. He wanted to appear relaxed and comfortable but he knew something was going to happen. Was it going to happen now?
The kid was trying to look nonchalant. Marvin saw that. The guy at the reception desk saw it and tried to look nonchalant, too.
Nobody said a word. That was what made it so obvious.
A moment later Donald Silva lunged, grabbed Big Marvin at the shoulders and kicked his feet out from under him. Marvin went down hard. The kid kicked him three times, once on the shoulder, once on the hip and once on the thigh, forcing Marvin down between two chairs, then he pulled a pistol out of the back of his pants and pointed it at the guy at the reception desk. Moving the gun to his left hand, he looked at the guy behind the desk and raised his right index finger to his lips. “Ssshhh,” he said.
Silva walked to Randall Miller’s office door, grabbed the knob and found it locked. He stepped back, kicked it open, stepped into the office and walked quickly toward a small man sitting behind a large desk. “Arrivederci, Mr. Miller,” he said, then he raised the gun and fired twice at point-blank range. He put a hand on the desk, leaned across and looked into dying eyes. “Vincent Sozso sends his greetings.”
He pulled his Kill Permit out of his pocket, put it on the desk, then laid the gun on top of it. He walked back out into the reception area where Marvin was slowly getting up. The guy at the reception desk had the phone in his hand; he looked at the kid and said, “Should I dial it in?”
Big Marvin was slow standing up. He was holding his back, trying to straighten out; he was breathing hard and flexing that bad knee, then looked at the kid and said, “Kill Permit?”
“The permit’s in there with Miller,” the kid said. He was breathing hard. He rolled his neck and shook his arms and clenched and unclenched his hands. He rubbed his neck with both hands. “Dial it in,” he said.
Marvin shook his head, disgusted. “Wouldn’t listen,” he said. He wasn’t looking at the kid. “I tried to talk sense.”
The kid shoved hands into pockets, stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders, a tough guy now. “Easier than I thought,” the kid said. He tried to smile. His whole body was buzzing; his ears were ringing.
Marvin limped into the office, pulled the papers out from under the gun and walked back into the reception area. He held the form in front of the kid, and pointed at the name on the TARGET line.
“Read that,” Marvin said.
The kid wouldn’t look. “Randall Miller,” he said. “I know what it says.” He was pacing, quick-tapping one hand against his thigh, then stopped, looked at Marvin and jutted out his chin. “I took out Randall Miller.” He said it like it was an accomplishment.
Marvin put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, raised the other hand and pointed at the guy behind the receptionist’s desk. “See him?”
The kid wouldn’t look. He was nodding his head over and over. Why? He was breathing through his nose, lips tight, trying to slow everything down.
Big Marvin grabbed the kid’s head, straightened it out, and pointed it toward the receptionist’s desk. “See that guy? The guy that ain’t dead? That’s Randall Miller.” The kid’s head jerked, but Marvin tightened his grip and dragged the kid back into the big office, pointed at the figure slumped behind the desk, and said, “See that guy, the guy you shot?”
The kid looked once, looked away and pulled himself free of Marvin’s grasp. Marvin grabbed him again by the collar, used both hands to grab the kid’s face and force him into an eye-to-eye. “The guy you shot is a ringer,” he said, “not Randall Miller.”
Copyright © 2023 by Victor Kreuiter
