Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

Harriet peered at him. “If you weren’t an assassin, what was your Fedayeen specialty? I know you weren’t standard-issue.”

“I was a laundry clerk. I never met a stain I couldn’t get out.”

Harriet smiled, moved along to a display of butchered meat, bright, shiny slabs of beef and sheep and goat. “Yes, that’s one way to look at it.” She checked out an arrangement of goat heads, tapping her chins with a forefinger. “Lovely, aren’t they?”

Rakkim glanced at the heads, all eyes and snout. Pink rivulets ran through the bed of ice they were nestled in. “I don’t like food that looks back at me.”

“Well, aren’t you the delicate flower.”

Rakkim saw the brute in the peacoat reflected in the stainless-steel basket of the butcher’s scale, the man’s image distorted as he shifted from one foot to the other. The one with the cane limped toward them from the other side of the street. “I think your boys are getting restless.”

“You spotted them.” Harriet shook her head. “I’m still evaluating these two. They may not be much good for surveillance, but they both have high combat ratings. Tipps, the tall one with the cane, was a street-fighting instructor with the Congressional Police. Grozzet, in the peacoat, is ex-Special Forces. Led a Black Robes kill squad for five or six years. A real Jew hunter from what I hear, passionate as a pig going after truffles. I guess I pay better or maybe he didn’t like the idea of working for the new mullah, Ibn Azziz.”

“Maybe Grozzet just ran out of Jews.”

“They say Oxley had a heart attack. That’s the official version, anyway.” Harriet made another hand sign. “What do you hear? Did Redbeard have anything to do with it?”

Rakkim kept his eyes on the scale. “Call off your boy.”

She turned, saw Grozzet closing in. “I don’t think I can. He’s a little twitchy.”

“I’m in a bad mood, Harriet.”

Harriet stepped away from him, settled into the soft pleasures of her sable coat. “Let the games begin.” Her eyes were girlish.

The other one…Tipps, was on the far side of the street. He pulled a rapier from his cane, circling. Grozzet was closer, fist flashing with something sharp, making no attempt to hide his intentions. Definitely twitchy. Probably on one of the heavy-duty amphetamine variants. The kill squads functioned best on lab courage…anything to amp them up and diminish any moral overrides for the dirty work.

“You sure you want to do this, Harriet? They’re not going to be any use to you dead.”

“They’re no use to me now. Not yet.”

The early-morning shoppers scattered, but not too far, taking cover behind the nearby counters. They wanted to watch, and so did the security guards, and the butchers and fishmongers, all of them leaning forward, murmuring to each other. A couple of Black Robes stood on the corner with their prayer beads, expressionless, silently counting out the ninety-nine names of God.

Rakkim greeted Grozzet. “Good morning.”

Grozzet slowed, a big man with a bull neck and a scraggly black beard. His eyes were pinwheeling. “This kike bothering you?” he said to Harriet.

“Do you require verbal confirmation of my distress signal?” snapped Harriet. “I’ll have to mention that to any perspective clients.”

“I was just leaving,” said Rakkim.

“No, you were just dying.” Grozzet crouched, clasping a Special Forces dagger.

“I never liked that fighting stance,” said Rakkim. “That position is fine for slash-and-dash Black Robes ops, but you lose mobility.” He yawned, clocked Tipps at the edge of his peripheral vision. “You’re holding it too tight, but maybe you don’t care.”

Grozzet smiled. He had beautiful teeth, even and white. Everything else about him was coarse and well-worn, but his teeth looked as if they’d come right out of the box. He kept his eyes on Rakkim as he adjusted his grip on the dagger. “You watch this, Harriet. When you see what I do to this monkey, you’re going to double my minimum rate.”

“You’re hurting my feelings.” Rakkim watched Grozzet, his attention not on the man’s eyes, but the corners of his eyes. That’s where his attack would be launched. “I feel like I should sit down and have a good cry-”

Grozzet charged, gave a little stutter step that was actually a pretty good move. A change of pace threw plenty of fighters off-balance. A good move, but Rakkim was fast enough not to need to watch Grozzet’s hand…he just watched his eyes.

When the stutter step didn’t force Rakkim off-balance, Grozzet came in hard. Rakkim timed it perfectly, grabbing a goat head and swinging it into Grozzet’s face. The goat head, all bone and horn, broke Grozzet’s nose, shattered his front teeth. Grozzet staggered, dropped the dagger, then collapsed onto the pavement.

Rakkim swung the goat head by one stubby horn as Tipps slowly approached. Tipps had the rapier out, but Rakkim just kept spinning the goat head round and round. Blood dripped off his fingers.

Grozzet lay curled on the sidewalk, blood gushing over the stumps of his teeth and sluicing through his beard.

“It’s hard to know what to do, isn’t it?” Rakkim said to Tipps. “Maybe I got lucky…or, maybe Grozzet wasn’t as good as everybody thought. I bet you’re a lot better.”

Tipps hesitated, then raised the rapier to his forehead in salute and backed away. When he got to the other side of the street, he started running.

Rakkim tossed the goat head back onto the bed of ice.

Harriet watched Tipps dodge between the stalls across the street, knocking people aside in his haste. “You can always tell a college man-they’re smart enough to know when they’re overmatched.” She patted her hair. “Ah, well, look around, Rakkim. There are thirty or forty people who watched your little show. Ten times that number will have heard all about it by lunch. How many do you think will decide they have to have a bodyguard? It’s a dangerous world, you proved that to them.” She watched Grozzet crawling away, touched her pearls. “I thought he would give you more trouble. He was very highly recommended.”

The crowd stirred, the shoppers started on their way, eager to get on with the day. To tell their friends. Just as Harriet said. A butcher called out the special of the day, chicken breasts, $3.99 a pound, and a huge laborer trudged past with a half side of beef on one shoulder. A truck horn blared at the end of the street, sending the people scurrying. The two Black Robes stayed where they were.

Rakkim washed his hands with a hose the fishmongers used, rubbing hard, the water so cold he felt numb. “This man I’m looking for, this assassin…people might not know him, but they wouldn’t be able to forget his work. I want you to ask around.”

“You make it sound like an order.”

“Consider it the cost of doing business.” Rakkim wiped his hands on his jeans.

Harriet stroked her throat. “You know I’m always happy to help you.” Grozzet had made it to the gutter before collapsing. She watched the blood streaming down the cobblestones, eddying around a curled lettuce leaf. “I don’t know if this qualifies as interesting dead, as you put it, but last Thursday a bounty hunter was found in a Ballard apartment with a chopstick shoved through his eye. Is that the kind of style your Fedayeen assassin might display?”

“No…” Rakkim cocked his head. “Were they working for you?”

“Of course not. You know I don’t deal with that element.”

“Who were they looking for?”

“Some runaway bride.” Harriet selected a ripe peach from her bag. “All very hush-hush, as usual, but I heard they were paying top dollar and they didn’t mind if the goods were a little damaged during retrieval.”