Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

“Talk,” I said.

She got up from the chair and sat down beside me on the bed. “I want you to kill my father.”

I remained silent. Shit, I thought, you can kill everybody, except your own father and mother.

“Give it some thought,” I said.

And she answered, “I spent all night thinking about it, and all week, there’s nothing left to think about. What’s the problem? Since I’ve known you you’ve killed five people. Yesterday you killed a cripple, and now you’ve got scruples about killing my son of a bitch father who wants to leave me without a penny? If you tell me to jump off a bridge I’ll do it, and I ask you for one little thing and you hesitate, is that how much you love me?”

She bent over me, took off my shorts, and started sucking my cock. “Is that good?”

Some five hundred women have sucked my cock, but none of them had such a magical mouth as hers. “Is that good?” After repeating that, she stopped, sat down on the bed and said, “If you don’t kill my father I’m leaving you. You’ll have to find some other girl to fuck.”

There wasn’t another girl like her in the whole world. But Belle wanting to kill her father made her ugly, and my cock wilted.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“I’ll give you a week,” she said.

I shadowed her father during that week. He was a tall man with white hair, nice looking, who left the house every day and got into the chauffeured car waiting in front. One day, before he got into the car, I went up to him and said, “Excuse me, I’m not from here. How do I get to downtown?”

He answered, “I’m heading there, I’ll give you a lift. Please, get in.”

We talked in the car. I told him I was from Minas Gerais and was looking for work. It could be as a servant, anything, I just needed work, and he handed me a card and wrote a name on the back.

“This is Dona Estela, my secretary. I’m going to tell her to look for a position for you. Come to this address tomorrow morning and speak to her.”

I thought it was time to leave and said, “I’ll get out here. Thank you very much. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

I got out of the car and walked down the street, thinking. When I got to my apartment there was a message from Belle on the answering machine asking me to call her.

“How’s it coming?” she asked.

“I’m setting things up,” I said, “it won’t be long. I’ll do the job in a few days.”

“I’ll come by there later,” Belle said, “and I’m giving you my sweet little ass.”

Normally that would have aroused me, but that day, I don’t know why, it was disagreeable. “I can’t today, I’ve got a meeting with the Dispatcher.”

The next day I went to look for Dona Estela. She was very pleasant and said she’d found me a position as a driver and that I should bring my documents to her as soon as possible.

At that moment Belle’s father came into the waiting room and clapped me on the back, saying, “Everything all right? Is there anything you need, an advance?”

“No, sir. Thank you very much.”

When I got to the apartment, I called Belle and said that doing her father at the office would be hard; it had to be on the street or at his home.

“I’ll arrange a key for you,” Belle said. “I’m coming over there so we can fool around a bit; I want to suck you.”

“It’s not possible today either,” I said.

“Hey,” said Belle, “I miss that big dick.”

“There’s been a screw-up,” I said. “I’ve got another meeting with the Dispatcher to straighten it out.”

She gave me a key.

“What about the servants?” I asked.

“Not to worry, they stay in an apartment over the garage.”

I called Belle and asked, “Is tonight okay?”

“Yes,” she replied, “he always takes a sleeping pill around eleven. Get here at midnight, but when you arrive, first let’s go to my room to fool around a little.”

I got there at exactly midnight, the Walther with its silencer in my pocket. When I entered, Belle was standing in the living room waiting for me. We went upstairs. “His room is that one over there, and mine is here. Come on.” We went into her room, and Belle immediately got naked and asked, “What do you want, my ass? Want me to suck you? Want to suck me? Whatever you want, that’s what I want.”

That talk didn’t appeal to me anymore. It used to get me excited, now it kind of disgusted me. She lay down on her stomach, arching her ass. In the world, the entire world, there wasn’t a prettier ass than hers, and she knew it. I approached Belle, took the Walther out of my pocket and shot her in the head, right in the back of the neck, for her to die instantaneously and painlessly. Then I covered her body with a sheet and left, closing the door to the street. How could anyone want to kill their father or mother?

Now the Walther was really hot. I drove to the lake and sat down, thinking, without the heart to throw that jewel in the water. Day was starting to break, and I could feel something happening to me. I felt like crying, but crying is for fags, and I didn’t cry. I took the Walther and threw it as far as I could. It hit the water without making much noise. The sun was so white it hurt my eyes.

I PHONED THE DISPATCHER.

“You sent a girl to do the job? You sent a virgin to face off against an old whore?”

“I was counting on your weakness for women.”

“It didn’t work.”

“She’s very pretty.”

“Was. I had to sacrifice the girl, you sonofabitch.”

“I made a mistake. It happens. Zé, Zé, don’t take it the wrong way, but you’ve become a problem.”

“Shit, what kind of problem?”

“You can’t give up the business, you know too much.”

“You clown, they knocked my teeth out in the Glock case, but did I do the job? They tortured me, I’m crippled in one hand, but did I do the job?”

“They got the wrong hand. They didn’t know you’re a lefty. But look, Zé, we gotta do what we gotta do. Rules of the game. You know who gives the orders.”

“I don’t fucking know about anybody ordering anything.”

“You said it yourself, not too long ago, that by knowing the victim you know who ordered it. Remember?”

I did say that. Fuck.

I hung up the phone.

This was my situation: The Dispatcher had put out a contract on me and thought that a pretty girl could get to me, but he screwed up and now he was sending The Man after me. I’d always thought I was The Man, and I’m sure I’m right, but there must be others. The problem was that I didn’t know where to find the Dispatcher; he was the one who set up the meetings. He’d call and say, “We’re going to meet at such-and-such restaurant,” a different one each time, and he paid in cash. Every week he got a new prepaid cell phone and threw the old one away.

I rented a place at another apartment hotel using fake ID and passport. They knew my real name. I was thinking of the Dispatcher and the ones who were after me as they, a sign my paranoia was increasing. Fuck.

I started wearing loose-fitting shirts and carrying two pistols, one under my right armpit and the other in my belt. I let my beard grow and dyed the hairs that were gray a light brown. In my family we go gray early. I bought a pair of glasses with clear lenses from a street vendor. I inspected myself in the mirror. It didn’t look like a disguise; my face is so common that it goes with everything.

I went on paying for the old apartment hotel and left my car in the garage. I wanted them to think I still lived there. Under my false name, Manoel de Oliveira, I rented an apartment on the same floor. The doormen didn’t recognize me with my brown hair, beard, glasses, and Portuguese accent. Besides that, my apartment hotel was constantly changing its personnel. And doormen at apartment hotels by the water only look at the women, preferably at their asses in bathing suits as they head for the beach.