Patrick Quinlan - The Hit

After she’d lost the baby for the second time, Tyler had become ever more distant and consumed in his work. He didn’t want to talk about the options available to them – weird science, he called it. He didn’t want to talk about anything anymore. He took no interest in what she did. It was like they were two roommates in this lovely spacious home they shared, nearly strangers. They almost never had sex, and when they did – four months ago was the most recent time – it was perfunctory, a formality, maybe just a physical release for Tyler, but not for Katie. Katie needed more than a twenty minute session every four months to get a release.

In recent months, a funny thing had occurred to her – maybe she could take a lover. Of course she wouldn’t do anything to risk the marriage, but Tyler was away a lot. If it were the right person, someone who was discreet, and who wouldn’t get too attached, it was just possible that she could do it. At first, she pushed the thought away, was almost embarrassed by it, even though no one could possibly know she was thinking it. But after a while, she would return to it, again and again, and it began to fuel her fantasies. Her marriage had turned barren, and she needed physical intimacy. Everybody did, but perhaps her more than most. It was a simple equation after all.

An ever funnier thing was how, now that she had an emotional and physical distance from him, she began to see Tyler clearly for the first time. She realized that when Tyler had given her everything she needed, emotionally and physically, along with all the creature comforts that went with being his wife, she had never really looked at him with a critical eye. She had let him be the sugar daddy. Was she really that self-serving, that immature? It seemed now that she was.

But now that was she was looking at him with a clear eye, it turned out she didn’t like what she saw. It was as if she had suddenly awakened from a long and deep sleep. About the only source of income he had that she knew about for sure was his pension from the Philadelphia Police Department. Other than that, Tyler was secretive. Certainly, he was some kind of a security contractor. His pension wasn’t paying for this house in a gated, secure community, for the two cars they drove, for the black market gasoline, for the swimming pool they had put in, for the big dinner parties they sometimes threw, for his personal trainer, and for all the rest.

But what kind of security did he provide? He was gone a lot, but where did he go? He would disappear in the middle of the night sometimes, a car picking him up outside at the front curb. He would leave only a short note on the kitchen table, and then return a day or two days or a week later. It made her curious.

He had only brief telephone conversations in the house, and not very often. Tyler seemed to have plenty of workers and subcontractors, but the only one he allowed to come to the house was the big, grinning redneck named Vernon. Vernon had a hook nose and a huge jaw and tended to wear a Caterpillar baseball cap and T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, all the better to show off his massive, tattooed shoulders and arms. He had laughing eyes that seemed to size you up and find you wanting. Vernon struck Katie more as hired muscle than as some kind of security operative.

Katie would bite her tongue for long periods of time, but eventually she could remain quiet no longer. ‘How’s work?’ she would say to Tyler, usually after one of his business trips, or after one of Vernon’s appearances at the house.

‘Work is going good. It’s going OK. We’ve got something big we’re cooking up. It could be a step forward for us.’

‘Really? That’s great. What’s it all about?’

‘Katie, it really doesn’t concern you. You shouldn’t worry about it.’

‘Well, I’m not worried. I know you’ll be successful, whatever you decide to do. I’m just interested.’

‘Well, don’t be. OK? Sometimes it’s better if you just aren’t interested. You know a lot of my work concerns national security issues. I’m not free to talk about it, not even with my wife, who I love.’

National security issues? OK, that was one product she wasn’t buying anymore. It just didn’t feel like Tyler worked for the government. Tyler never seemed to look at any paperwork, and if Katie knew anything about the United States government, she knew that government contracts meant gigantic mounds of paperwork – she knew this from being an assistant at a law firm that dealt with government contracts. The paperwork generated could be astonishing. Breathtaking. And Tyler never had anything like that kind of paperwork lying around. In fact, he didn’t seem to have anything at all in writing. He was much more likely to sit in his study – which he kept locked from her when he wasn’t home – poring over maps than to ever read a contract. He had a telephone wired in there, and she didn’t have its number. Maybe ten minutes ago, yes, in the middle of the night, it had started ringing and then had gone to voicemail.

What was it all about? Anyway, would the government really hire an operation where the second in command was big, dumb Vernon? She thought not, and as she thought that, she realized she had reached a breaking point with Tyler. She would stay married to him, of course. It was hard times outside of this house, and she had no intention of being cast out there. But she didn’t believe in him anymore. And she would, within reason, snoop around to see what it was he was up to. She might even consider finding a way into that locked study – not tonight, but soon. He’d probably be back tomorrow, at least that’s what his most recent note said, but it wouldn’t be long before he was gone again.

‘Tyler Gant,’ she said aloud to the empty bedroom, and was just a little startled by her own voice. ‘What do you do for a living?’

Foerster lay awake in bed, in the small room that had been his throughout childhood. His bed was narrow, like a nun would sleep on, and the springs creaked whenever he moved. The mattress was lumpy. It was an uncomfortable goddamned bed. He probably didn’t get a decent night’s sleep the first eighteen years of his life, and it was no wonder why.

His door was open a crack, and down the hall he could hear his mother snoring. Good God, all his life, he had hated it in this house. He had half a mind to march down the hall and stifle those infernal snores for good.

The desklamp next to the bed was on, casting a weak pyramid of yellow light, and Foerster, on his back, held up a business card where he could see it. He’d found the card in the desk – he must have left it behind the last time circumstances forced him to stay in this pit of despair. Foerster had been given this card at least two years ago. Now it was a little crumpled and faded, but you could still make it out fine. On the left side of it was a picture of a chess piece, a white knight. Running down the right side were the words Executive Strategies – Security and Intelligence Solutions. Tyler Gant, President. Then it gave an office address in Charleston, South Carolina, and a phone number. No website or email address listed, but there was another phone number scrawled in ink along the bottom, which Foerster had called only a few minutes ago from the ancient rotary dial phone on the desk.

He wasn’t sure why he had waited until three in the morning to call the number, or why he had hung up without leaving a message, except that he wasn’t sure if he should call it, and at the same time he was curious to see if it still worked. It did work – the same bland ‘leave a message at the tone’ recording that was on the machine two years ago was still on there. Foerster knew that the phone rang in the upstairs den at Gant’s house. Or at least that’s where it used to ring. He also knew he was taking a chance by calling there. Gant had given him that card grudgingly, and had told him to never call the number except in a desperate emergency, and only from a pay phone.