I am thankful that he drives an SUV; I could not have done this if he drove a Prius instead of an Expedition. I'm also glad he cares enough about his paint job to park on the top level of the garage where hardly anyone else parks. There's less of a my being seen up here.
Let me clear about this: I am not a hitman or an assassin; I'm a cashier at Tyranno-Mart. Three weeks ago, I knew nothing about this sort of thing, but the offer was too good to pass up. I think I could do this though, this has gone really smoothly so far.
I spent the first week and a half learning his routine, learning about him, trying to find out where he was most vulnerable. Trying to figure out how I could get away with it.
His name is Dexter Press the Fourth, and without my interference he would someday inherit the Press family laundromat “empire” from his father, the imaginatively named Dexter Press the Third. Someone doesn't want that to happen, although why the fate of one hundred and forty-two coin-op laundromats is worth killing someone I don't know.
Then again, the offer wasn't made to me with an explanation.
While my primary objective is simple, Dexter Press the Fourth dies, my secondary objective is a little more difficult: get away with it. I'm not exactly going to be able to receive my payment if I'm behind bars... but maybe that's what my mysterious employer wants. I seriously doubt he will come to my rescue if I am caught.
Of course any old idiot could just ring his doorbell, shoot him in the face and then run away, but that seems like a great way to get caught. I did buy a gun, getting it was easy enough: I just went to one of those gun shows where a guy with a Confederate flag and a bunch of racist political bumper stickers sold me one for cash without questions or paperwork, but I decided ultimately not to go that route.
In my mind I have come up with a hundred imaginative ways to kill a person, but I've discarded most of them. Some of them would be too easy to track to me, some leave too much chance of innocent people being killed, and a few would require supernatural occurrences to pull off. It would be cool if I could pull off some from that last category though.
It is all of this that has led me to be under Dexter's car, planting a bomb while he is at work at the Press Laundry home office. I hope he remembered to tell his wife that he loved her on the way out the door this morning; it would be shame if the final words exchanged between them were a reminder to pick up dog food.
And that should do it. Now I just need to wait for him quitting time, which for him seems to frequently be around three-thirty.
You know, if someone had made me this offer twenty years ago, I would probably have had to go ahead with just shooting the man. Aside from only being ten years old, I would have had no idea how to go about planting a bomb in a car. Thank goodness for the internet and free wifi at an Apollo Coffee nowhere near my home. You can find out how to do almost anything on the internet.
Even deciding on a car bomb isn't the end of it though. You need to decide on what type of bomb you want to use and how to set it off. You can wire it to the ignition, to the brakes, you can add a timer into the mix to delay detonation, you can even make a bomb that doesn't even connect to the car; you just set a pressure switch behind one of the wheels and wait for the target to try and drive away.
I didn't do any of those though. I have set up a remote detonator so I can make sure that Dexter is not near anyone when the bomb goes off. I'm not a murderer or a terrorist; I was only hired to kill one person, not just anyone who has the misfortune of being near him at the time.
Here he comes now, four-fifteen; he stayed late today. Good, he's alone. A couple of times he had a young woman who is most definitely not his wife with him, but not tonight. Hopefully he just heads straight home so I can get this over with; I'm sweating, I'm so nervous.
Okay, it looks like he's going home. We're getting on the freeway. I'm staying a few car lengths back. I'm not too worried about my generic little compact even being noticed by him, but there's no reason to take extra chances. Even if I lose him, I know where he's going, or at least where he should be going.
We're off the freeway now, but he's going left instead of right! Where are you going, Dexter? I forgot to bring anything to eat with me today, so I'd really like to get this over with so I can go get some dinner; I'm starving!
Ah, a grocery store. I could never afford to shop at Amber Waves; they're one of those fancy organic stores that charges three times as much as where I go just because their stuff is all ethically raised and pesticide free. You can buy a single meal's worth of food for what I spend on a week of groceries.
Hurry up! You're only delaying things, Dexter! No one's going to get to eat whatever you're buying!
Finally, he's out with a single bag of groceries that probably cost more than I make in an eight-hour shift. He places the bag under the net in the back of the car, and then he's back inside and on the road again.
I have to speed u a bit to catch up to him after he blew through a yellow light, leaving me to wait at the red, but I see him again. We're right where I was waiting for; a quiet street with big houses on huge plots of land, all set back from the road.
There's no one else on the road except for me and him now. I grab the remote from seat next to me. I got it from some guy on Craigslist; it was for a rather nice radio controlled plane that his wife was making him get rid of. I pull out the antenna, and power it on. I take a deep breath, and press the button.
And nothing happens.
Shit!
What did I do wrong? The remote worked last night; I tested it before adding the explosives. Maybe it's the explosives? Maybe my detonator doesn't provide enough power to ignite that much of it. Maybe I made it wrong, but it worked in my small-scale tests. Maybe-
Oh, wait, there it goes. Maybe I just wasn't close enough because when he stopped at the stop sign his lovely silver Expedition turned into an almost beautiful orange fireball. That's that then. I'd love to stick around and watch the fire, but this is a nice neighborhood, and the cops and fire department will probably be here in just seconds.
* * *
I meet up with my contact the next day during my lunch break. He looks the part of someone who deals in shady doings dressed in a brown overcoat with matching hat and vest. I'm not sure where he thinks this look is inconspicuous, but the Apollo Coffee in the Tyranno-Mart Shopping Center isn't it.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up,” he says to me when I set opposite him at the patio table set farthest away from the road, “I was wondering if perhaps the guilt was too much for you; if perhaps you went and turned yourself in.”
“Nope, my lunch coverage just came back late,” I reply, “As for guilt, well the way I look at it, I was just the instrument of someone else's will. I'm no more guilty than a knife or a sword.”
“That's a good attitude. Just remember that the law will not see it that way,” he reaches down and lifts a metal briefcase from the ground where it was sitting next to his leg, and places it on the table, sliding it over to me, “This is yours then.”
While I open the catches on the case, he stands. My eyes go wide as I open the case and see its contents, “Hold up, this isn't what we agreed to. There's more here!”
“Yes, my... employers were pleased with the job you did, and felt you deserved a bonus. Most people would not have been so careful to avoid... collateral damage as you were. My employers dislike sloppy work. If you are interested, they may have more opportunities for you in the future. Good day.”
While he walks away I look at the insulated liner of the briefcase, and the shining silver sitting at the center of it: two Klondike Bars.
Score!