Suddenly Delmar lurched up from his chair, staggered backward, then turned in a feeble attempt to reach for the phone. He never made it. He fell hard and struck his head on the corner of the desk, then crashed to the floor and lay there in a heap, blood shooting from his skull.
Was he dead? Milo rushed forward to check for a pulse. Tripping on the edge of the rug, he lost his balance and landed with a thud on top of Delmar. When Milo regained his feet, his shirt and pants were covered in Delmar’s blood. He stared down at the lifeless face until he was absolutely certain the man was dead. It wasn’t until he thought he heard someone coming that he finally moved. Maybe it was just the sound of his heartbeat roaring in his ears, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He skidded across the hardwood floor, ran out the back door, and kept on running the three long blocks to his car. He was halfway home before he realized he was still wearing his mask, an error he didn’t mention when he was writing about his lessons learned. After all, legends didn’t make mistakes, did they?
Lesson two: bring food for the dogs.
Case in point: Jimmy Barrows.
Barrows was a meaner than usual loan shark who was squeezing Mr. Merriam’s nephew for payment. Milo had been instructed to kill Barrows with one shot between the eyes. Mr. Merriam wanted to send a message that no one messed with his family.
After this job was completed, Milo reported to Mr. Merriam that he’d had a little trouble with a couple of Barrows’s pesky, yapping dogs. Still, he swore, he had made the kill with little fuss at all.
Well, not quite. The real story was much more painful and embarrassing than Milo would admit.
Mr. Merriam had given him a photo of the loan shark, and one look at the man convinced Milo that killing him was going to be a walk in the park. Barrows wasn’t big, maybe five-two or five-three, and he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred ten pounds with clothes on, but Milo knew he had to be cautious. Size didn’t matter if Barrows happened to be holding a gun in his hand. Milo doubted he was carrying, though. Rumor had it that Barrows was a prissy man who didn’t like to do anything he considered unpleasant. His clothing and his manners were as meticulous as his well-manicured hands. He left the unpleasantness to the people who worked for him, but Milo planned to make sure none of them were around when he walked in pretending to be in need of money.
The loan shark business was an odd profession for someone as cultured as Barrows. He was the complete opposite of what Milo thought a loan shark should be, a thug.
Barrows worked out of a converted storefront on Second and Cypress Lane. It was in a bad-ass part of town where anyone who stood on the corner more than fifteen minutes was bound to get stabbed.
Milo had no intention of lingering. He spotted Barrows through the glass window sitting on a sofa across from his desk, sorting through bank receipts. He was dressed in a black suit with a red-and-white-striped tie, and draped on the other end of the sofa was a brown fur coat. Must belong to his wife, Milo thought, and he wondered what he could get if he tried to fence it.
“Are you Barrows?” Milo asked as he approached.
“Mr. Barrows,” the loan shark corrected in a peevish tone of voice.
“I need a loan,” Milo said. “I’ve got some papers here you could look at and maybe keep as collateral.” He reached into his raincoat, pulled out his .38 and pointed it at the loan shark.
Barrows froze when he saw the gun. Almost instantly he recovered and relaxed against the cushions. “Are you here to rob me?” he asked calmly. “If so, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t keep any money here.”
“I’m not here to rob you. The man I work for wants to send a message.”
“Oh? And who do you work for?”
“Never you mind.”
It seemed odd to Milo that having a gun pointed at his head didn’t seem to faze Barrows.
“All right then,” Barrows responded. “What message does this mysterious man want to send?”
“He wants you and everyone else to know that you don’t mess with his family.”
“Then you simply must tell me who he is.” He sounded amused as he added, “What family can’t I mess with?” Barrows’s right hand was slowly edging down between the cushions.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Milo ordered.
He steadied his aim and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. In his haste, he had forgotten to flip the safety off. He was about to correct his mistake when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fur coat moving. Spooked, he took a hasty step back and lowered his gun just a little. The heads of two dogs, Shelties, emerged from under the fur showing their razor-sharp teeth and growling.
“Show some love,” Barrows ordered.
Confused, Milo jerked back. “What?”
The animals understood the command and came flying at him. Milo half turned toward them and got off one shot quite by accident. The bullet went wide and struck the wall.
The sound scared the dogs, and both of them looked at their owner, who very calmly repeated the command. “Show some love.”
The demon dogs came at Milo again. In a panic, he turned his back on the animals, thinking to get the hell out of there, but was stopped in his tracks by his own piercing scream. One of the dogs had clamped down on his backside, digging his teeth in. Milo whirled in a circle thinking to fling the animal off him, but try as he might, he couldn’t shake the cur loose.
The other dog sprang at Milo’s throat. He tried to knock him away with his gun, but the dog was quick and took a bite out of his hand. Milo barely noticed. The pain the ass dog was causing was so excruciating he couldn’t stop yelping.
The second dog let go of Milo’s hand long enough to drop to the floor, bounce back up like a damn tennis ball, and go for Milo’s throat again.
Barrows had pulled his gun from between the cushions but didn’t fire. He assumed the threat was over. Vastly entertained, he watched his dogs in action.
Milo did the unthinkable. He dropped his weapon. The bouncing dog caught it in its teeth before it hit the ground, and boom … a bullet discharged hitting Barrows in the chest. For a split second Milo froze. The damn dog was a better shot than he was.
The noise freaked the dogs again. They let go and ran back to the sofa to wait for the next kill order from their boss.
Barrows was dead. The crimson color from his tie seemed to be oozing down his impeccably laundered white shirt. The bullet must have gone through his heart, killing him instantly. He died with the amused expression still on his face.
Thankfully, Milo had the presence of mind to snatch his gun and shove it back into his pocket before he ran out the door. He couldn’t stop crying. People gave him strange looks as he limped the several blocks to his car, but he didn’t care. Let them stare. His ass was on fire and he could feel the blood from the wound dripping down the back of his leg. Lucky for him, no one in that particular neighborhood talked to the police.
Damn dogs. Should have killed them, too.
He reached his car, got inside, and howled when he sat down. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and continued crying all the way to the hospital.
Needless to say, he didn’t mention these details as he talked to Mr. Merriam about his experience. He didn’t want to tarnish his image. Mr. Merriam only cared about results.
The third lesson he had learned was still so raw he couldn’t put any kind of spin on it yet, couldn’t even think about it without shuddering.
Lesson three: learn to swim before you try to kill someone beside a swimming pool.
Case in point: George Villard.
Milo still had nightmares about that one. Villard, the man he’d been ordered to kill, was a bodybuilder. He was also a notorious drunk and womanizer. Mr. Merriam hadn’t given Milo any background information on this assignment. His only orders were to get rid of Villard, and do it immediately.
Milo didn’t have time to research or plan. He made sure there were bullets in his gun and headed out. By the time he found the house in the maze of twists and turns up in the hills, it was after midnight. Villard was in his backyard next to his kidney-shaped pool. Milo hid in the shrubs observing his target, who was teetering on his feet. It was only a matter of minutes before the hulk passed out.
As drunk as Villard was, Milo figured he wouldn’t put up much of a fight, but he was wrong about that. Milo burst through the bushes and was fumbling to get his gun out of his raincoat pocket when Villard spotted him and his weapon and attacked, getting in one solid punch before tossing Milo into the pool.
Milo tried to dog paddle to the side and climb out, but his clothes and his panic worked against him. He was going under for the third time when, with one hand, Villard hauled him out and began screaming questions at him.
“Who sent you? Was it Jo Ann’s husband or Crystal’s? Tell me,” he yelled. His head rolled to the side and his eyes drooped as he slurred the words of his demand. Suddenly jerking his head up, he kicked Milo in the stomach. “Answer me, damn it!”
Milo couldn’t speak. Flopping around on the concrete like a dying carp, he was fully occupied with choking on all the water he’d taken in.
Impatient to get answers, Villard kicked him again. “Was it Lenny? It was, wasn’t it? That no-good bastard.” He gave him another vicious kick in his side and snarled, “You’re going to tell me who sent you, and then I’m going to throw you back in the pool and watch you drown.”
The threat wasn’t much of an incentive to cooperate, Milo thought, though he doubted Villard, in his drunken stupor, realized it. As inebriated as he was, the bodybuilder could still do some damage. Milo wanted to run away, but he was afraid to even move, afraid to reach for his gun—which he wasn’t sure would work since it, too, was probably waterlogged—afraid to provoke the drooling muscleman in any way.
While Milo desperately tried to think of a plan to save himself, Villard began blinking furiously and squinting down at him, obviously trying to concentrate. He must have remembered what he was doing because he suddenly nodded and smiled, then swung his foot back to kick Milo again, but the vast amount of alcohol he had consumed interfered with his balance. His body swayed; his eyes closed, and still grasping his glass in his hand, he plunged headfirst into the pool. He was too drunk to know he was drowning.
The death was ruled accidental.
It was another near disaster for Milo, yes, but as he did with the other hits, he took credit, and in Mr. Merriam’s eyes, he had a perfect record. Three for three. Merriam was so impressed, he gave Milo a bonus for a job well done.
Two weeks later on a Thursday afternoon Milo was called into Mr. Merriam’s office for a new assignment.
His boss usually wasn’t one for idle chitchat, but today he wanted to talk.
“You may have noticed how distracted I’ve been this past couple of weeks.”
Milo hadn’t noticed, but he thought maybe he should have, and so he nodded. “Yes, sir, I have,” he lied.
“I’ve got a situation, and you’re the man for the job. This one is going to be tricky and will require a little more guile. You understand?”
“Yes, sure,” he lied again. Guile? He’d never heard the word before. He wasn’t about to admit it, though, for showing his ignorance might diminish his standing with Mr. Merriam, and he couldn’t have that. Just as soon as he left the office, he would find out what guile was and where he could get some.
“A business associate I once considered a friend screwed me. Screwed me good. Bill Rooney is his name,” he added with a sneer. “I took that weasel to dinner more than once, sat down across from him and broke bread with him, and what does he do in return? He stabs me in the back, that’s what. He’s got something I want.”
Milo didn’t know if he should say something sympathetic or not, so he stayed silent and waited.
“Just goes to show, you can’t mix business with pleasure. I learned my lesson, and Rooney’s about to learn his. I’ve got the edge here because Rooney doesn’t know I found out.”
He pulled the chair out from behind the desk and sat down. “I discovered quite by accident where he’s hiding it. I knew he had a safe in his office. Everyone knows. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door. It’s big and must be a hundred years old.”
He opened a carved wooden box on his desk and reached inside for a cigar. He stuck the stogie between his lips and continued talking as he struck a match and sucked the flame into the tobacco. “He doesn’t have to worry someone’s gonna pick it up, and run out the door with it. It would take a crane to lift it.”
He motioned for Milo to take a seat before continuing. “Rooney wants everyone to see the safe. Naturally, they’d think that’s where he keeps his valuables. Right? The shmuck. It’s all a sham. Turns out he’s got another safe in his office. It’s built into the floor under the desk. I got the combination. Let me tell you, that took some doing.”
“Do you want me to break into his office—”
“No, no, I’ve got Charlie on that. I want you to take care of Rooney and his wife.”
Though Milo knew Merriam’s office was soundproof and was checked for bugs at least once a day, he skittishly glanced around the room. “You want his wife dead, too?”
“That’s right. Rooney might have told her what he did. Keep her alive, and she could go to the feds. Too risky. So here’s how I want it to go down. Rooney always leaves his office at four o’clock on the dot, and it takes him an hour to get home. He never goes out on Friday night. Never,” he stressed. “He’s predictable and that’s going to work for us. He takes his loudmouth wife out every Saturday night, and Sunday he rests up for his mistress. He sees her every Monday and Wednesday.
“I want this to look like a murder-suicide. Wife kills husband, then kills herself. The police will investigate, of course, and they’ll find out about the mistress. They’ll assume the wife found out, too, and that’s why she killed him. Everyone knows she’s got a hell of a temper.”
“When do you want this done?”
“Tomorrow night at five o’clock. Charlie’s going into Rooney’s office then, and he’ll be in and out of there in no time. If there’s a problem, he’ll let me know, and I’ll call you. Take this cell phone,” he ordered, tossing it to Milo. “It can’t be traced. Don’t kill anyone until you hear from me. Got that?”
Once again, Milo was being rushed. He didn’t have time to do much surveillance, but he vowed there weren’t going to be any glitches this time. He drove through Rooney’s neighborhood the next morning to familiarize himself with the layout and to see if there were any nosy neighbors. Once he’d checked out all the entrances into Rooney’s house, he drove to a grocery store about a mile away. Milo purchased a couple of pounds of hamburger meat he planned to stuff in his pockets just in case there was a dog lurking inside the house.