Dave Zeltserman - Killer

Looking at him I could feel the heat rising off the back of my neck, especially with how much more smug his smile had gotten.

“If you’re going to be knocking on doors expecting favors from people the least you can do is answer a civil question,” I said. “And show some consideration. What the fuck are you doing knocking on doors at nine in the morning, especially given that people might’ve been working late the night before?”

“You have a job, huh?” he asked pleasantly. “And you’re working nights, too. Mind my asking where?”

I started to close the door on him, but he moved a foot into the doorway to block me, then squeezed his shoulder through the opening. I didn’t fight him as he muscled the door open and pushed his way forward, only stopping when his face was inches from mine.

“I showed you more consideration than you showed the people you murdered,” he said, his voice tight, his breath sour as if he’d been eating chopped herring. He was still smirking at me, but there was no humor in his eyes any more and his skin color had dropped a shade. “About waking you up – I didn’t think there was much chance of that, at least not after talking to prison officials about you and finding out about your sleep habits. So Leonard, let’s quit the bullshit. What’s your cost for an interview?”

“Two things,” I said. “First, tell me how you found me.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “I went to every low-rent apartment building starting near Donnegan’s Liquors, and showed your picture around until I found you at this dump. What else?”

“Ten thousand dollars. In cash and off the books.”

He didn’t bat an eye at that price. “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor,” he said. “But for that amount of money we’re going to want a lot more than what went down at that liquor store. We’re going to want to know about your life as a hit man for the mob and your time in prison.”

“Okay.”

He stepped away from the doorway and rolled his shoulders in order to adjust his turtleneck sweater. “Why don’t you give me your phone number so I can call when I get an answer about your price?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Leave me a card and I’ll call you next week.”

He looked like he wanted to argue with me about that, but he reluctantly fished a card out of his wallet and handed it to me. “For ten grand it’s going to have to be an exclusive interview,” he warned me. “You can’t be talking to anybody else.”

I watched him walk away before I closed the door shut. When I gave him that ten grand figure I never expected him to be able to meet it, I just threw out that number to get him away from me. I stared at his card for a long minute trying to decide what to do with it. I wanted to rip it up – I sure as fuck didn’t want to do an interview – but I started thinking about what I could do with ten grand if I could get it paid to me under the table, and Sophie figured in the equation. If it wasn’t for her the money wouldn’t have even been a thought. In the end, I stored the card away instead of tossing it like I had first intended.

There was only one person who knew the truth about any of the things I’d done, and that was me. If they were able to come up with ten grand and I decided to go along with an interview, whatever I gave them would be better put to use as fertilizer.

I had an hour before I was going to be meeting Sophie. I stripped off the ratty clothes I’d put on when I first woke up, took a long shower, shaved, then splashed on some new aftershave I’d bought the evening before. After that, I put on a new pair of slacks, shirt and sweater that I had dropped two bills for at a local department store after I had left Sophie the other day.

I stepped outside and pulled the collar of my leather jacket tight against my neck. The weather had turned colder with the sun nowhere in sight and the skies darkened by thick purplish-grayish clouds. Sophie and I were going to meet in a park near Moody Street. I hadn’t been there before but I followed her directions, walking briskly with my head lowered and my hands buried deep in my jacket pockets.

The park was empty when I arrived there. There wasn’t much to it: a few benches, a swing set, a small area of dead grass. As I made my way to one of the benches I saw Sophie off in the distance. I smiled at that. As good as she’d been so far with the con she still had things to learn. The smart play would’ve been to keep me waiting at least a half-hour to get me more invested. Anyway, I waved to her and she waved back.

Her hair was as much a hornet’s nest as every other time I’d seen her, and she looked even colder than I felt in her threadbare cloth coat and jeans that weren’t in much better shape. I couldn’t help feeling a jitteriness in my stomach as I watched her hustling towards me carrying a paper bag under one of her arms. When she joined me on the bench she handed me the bag while she rubbed her hands together and blew into them. Inside the bag were two large coffees and cream cheese bagels wrapped up in paper. I handed Sophie one of the coffees, then unwrapped a bagel and cream cheese to hand her as well. We sat quietly eating our sandwiches and drinking our coffee, but it was a comfortable quiet. When we were done Sophie commented that it was nice having breakfast with someone for a change, then glanced up at the sky and remarked how it might start raining soon.

“That would put a dampener on things,” I said.

She got a laugh out of that. “Yes, it certainly would,” she agreed.

“How come a beautiful girl like you doesn’t have someone to share breakfast with?” I asked.

She smiled at that. It was a sad, almost tragic smile, and it made me think again about my original thought of her having done time in prison, and I couldn’t help feeling that that was probably what had happened, and maybe it was only recently that she had gotten out. It would explain a lot, especially the connection I knew we had.

“Leonard,” she said softly, but with a heavy breath, “that would be a long and complicated story, one I could write a book on. And I have to thank you for the ‘beautiful’ compliment, although I certainly don’t deserve it. Also for thinking that I could be young enough to be thought of as a ‘girl’. How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty-five,” I lied.

“You’re ten years off, my friend.”

“You’re only fifteen?” I said, raising an eyebrow in mock surprise. “Chrissakes, I could get myself thrown back into prison for corrupting a minor.”

The word “prison” put a dampener on her mood, and for a few seconds a darkness clouded her face to a color that came close to matching the skies. Then just as quickly it was gone. I couldn’t help feeling something bad had happened to her when she was young, and I wanted to ask her about it but I didn’t want to hear what I knew she would tell me: that she had been abused at one time in her life and ended up serving time for manslaughter or maybe even second-degree murder. Instead I sat there tongue-tied, feeling an awkward silence between us.

She reached over and took hold of my hand and squeezed it, the way a friend would, and just like that, knocked away any of the awkwardness that we had started to feel.

“You’re a charmer, Leonard,” she said. “But as you well know, I’m thirty-five, and it hasn’t been the easiest thirty-five years so far. Not exactly the fairy-tale princess life I’d dreamed about when I was a very young child.”

“The next thirty-five then,” I said.

She nodded solemnly at that. “The next thirty-five it will be,” she agreed.

“If you want to tell me anything, feel free,” I said. I forced a rigid smile. “I’m not exactly someone who could hold you or anyone else in judgment.”