The Anatomy Of A Gun – Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

‘A JOB OFFER’

The bang of the ‘Smith and Wesson 1006′ firing loudly reverberates against the disused theatres walls as Reynold’s body falls to the floor in a crumpled heap. Whilst the blood slowly pools around Reynold’s lifeless corpse, the man in the trench coat stares at his gun in awe. He watches the smoke swirling from its barrel slowly make its way up to the spotlight before becoming invisible in its luminescence. He lightly strokes the gun, feeling the heat radiating from the beautiful silver chamber. For a single moment, the theatre and the corpse of Reynolds and the car outside that will have to be disposed of as quickly as possible, every tiny triviality of life and death and killing and hiding your secrets from the rest of the world, every little idiosyncrasy of every little problem fades into the darkness and all that is left is the man in the trench coat and his gun that is so small and has caused so much destruction. The denouement of the kill is always, relentlessly, just a facsimile of the last; another body on the ground whilst the man in the trench coat stares at his gun with his one bloodshot eye, fully fascinated by the life-ending power that he holds in his hand.

The darkness disappears as the contrast of life is turned back up and the theatre is filled with the funeral march slow sound of one set of hands clapping. The man in the trench coat rapidly swivels his entire body around one-hundred and eighty degrees and points his gun at the fire exit ten rows away where a pitch-black-suited man stands, applauding the show before him. The black-suited man, visibly old with a full head of bright white hair, stops clapping and, smiling a wicked smile, says, “Oh I do love the theatre. There’s just something about it that makes a man feel alive. Sorry, If that’s a slight cliché on my part. I never was very good with introductions. Then again, you don’t appear to have much of a predilection for people yourself so you probably understand my problem…”

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.” replies the man in the trench coat, his weather beaten face visibly perturbed.

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you three. For one, I’m not here to kill you. If I wanted to, I could have had a hundred different men kill you in a hundred different places in a hundred different ways, but I don’t want that. I want you very much alive and well. For two, I’m worth far more to you alive than dead. That man – Reynolds, I believe you knew him as – how much money did you receive for killing him?”

The man in the trench coat warily replies, “Two-fifty.”

“Wow. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money to spend. It’s not very much to kill a man though. What had poor Mr. Reynolds done?”

“He made the mistake of thinking no one was watching.”

The old man sighs, then shakes his head and says, “Never a good mistake to make. One would have to be a fool to believe that no one is watching. It would be like believing that there are no repercussions to ones actions.”, At these words the old man in the black suits wicked smile turns to a grimace, then quickly back to a smile again, “Nevertheless, that’s still a poultry amount for a hired killer. As it happens, I have a few jobs that I’m willing to give you if you would be willing to take them. Well-paid jobs too. Think of that two-hundred and fifty thousand and triple it. All laundered cash with no links to anyone. What do you say?”

“Who are you?,” Asks the man in the trench coat, still firmly grasping his handgun.

“I’m a very successful man. I’m a man who wouldn’t usually come down here to ask you to do these jobs for me. Usually I would delegate the task to someone else but you were so hard to track down that I just had to meet you in person. You truly are an illusive figure. No files. No birth certificate. No police record. Not even a real name. You must be the only man in America whose managed to not leave any kind of discernible paper trail behind you. Just rumours and conjecture told in hushed tones in the most unholy dives imaginable. Just little pieces of information here and there to lead me to another place, then another and another and now here. I’m the man who was told a thousand and one times that I wouldn’t be able to find you unless you wanted to be found and yet here I am and here you are. That’s who I am.”

The man in the trench coat half-smiles, a little flattered, at the old man as he says, “That’s real nice and by all means well done, but I’m gonna need a name.”

The man in the fire exits smile once again falters, showing more wrinkles in his face, “Why do you need my name?”

“Background checks. Standard policy.”

They both stare at each other in silence for a few moments, a few pockets in time, the old man with a gun pointed at him, the man in the trench coat waiting for an answer, until a smile reappears on the black-suited man’s face and he says, “fair enough. I’ll play by your rules. Derek. Derek Simmons. If you’re interested in the contracts then you’ll be at my club, ‘Popescu’, in New York in exactly three weeks time. If you don’t show then I will assume you’re not interested and find someone else. But I know you won’t disappoint me like that.”, He nods his head and says, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I shall leave you to clear up this mess. I have other business to attend to.”

Derek Simmons turns to leave before the man in the trench coat barks, “Hey wait! You didn’t give me a third reason to not kill you.”

Derek laughs mildly and says, “You’re so arrogant that you only ever put one bullet in that gun and I believe that that is now firmly lodged in Mr. Reynold’s skull. Oh, and by the way, would it be possible for me to have a name? Something to call you by?”

The man in the trench coat instantly, coldly, replies, “No.”

*******

Sixteen miles away on the fourth story of a faceless grey multi-story parking lot, a thin man in his mid-twenties in a pin-striped suit is pacing up and down smoking a cigarette beside a blue SUV. With every journey he takes past the parked car and past it again, his face becomes more and more racked with concern. When he has smoked his cigarette down to its filter, he stops pacing and pulls a pack out of his trouser pocket. His hands shake so much that the pack falls onto the dirty ground and he is forced to drop onto his knees to retrieve it. He picks the red and white packet up and stands back up, his hands still quivering uncontrollably. The low rumbling sound of a car engine begins to softly echo around the parking lot, causing the nerves in the meagre man’s stomach to grow almost unbearably. The sound of the engine becomes louder with every passing moment, every tick of the clock, before the source becomes identifiable on the fourth floor as a black BMW, its windows tinted. The car drives up to the thin man and stops beside him with its engine still running. The back window slowly winds down revealing darkness inside. A man within the vehicle, merely a shadowy spectre to the eyes of the man in the pin-striped suit, says, “Get in the car.”

The thin man, his innocent blue eyes brimming with fear, stutters, “A-a-are you from the Simmons gang?”

The shadow within the car points a black handgun with a silencer attached to its end at the man and says, more forcefully this time, “Get in the car.”

The man reluctantly opens the car door and gets inside. Instantly, the black BMW begins moving again and leaves the fourth story of the multi-story parking lot. The sound of the engine slowly dissipates before disappearing completely, as if it had never been there at all.