The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 15: The Meeting with My Hitman
When I opened the door for my hitman he seemed surprised. I had drawn him to my apartment by turning on the lights, while still making sure to remain obscured from his view. I did this by crawling on my belly to the halogen floor lamp on the far side of the room. I figured if he saw the lamp come on but then didn’t see any movement in the apartment, he would eventually get curious and come on over. I waited, lying on the floor, hidden beneath my window for a better part of an hour. Finally, my partner gave a knock to the wall and that meant he was on his way.
I heard his footsteps in the hallway as he carefully approached my door trying to step as softly as a boulder can, but it was no use, it was impossible to mask one’s steps in that hallway, he might as well have had a servant formally announce his presence to me. I could even hear his breathing through the door as he listened for movement inside. That’s when I opened it. He looked at me with dinner plate eyes; startled, confused, concerned, with a gun with a silencer in his right hand.
“It’s about time we met, don’t you think?” I said before he could raise his gun to me.
He didn’t say anything. His eyes still stretched to their outer boundaries. His gun slowly raising. His brain trying to assess the situation.
“Please, come in. Sit down.” I held out my hand David Humphrey receptionist-style to show him the way into the apartment. It was obvious I wasn’t armed. He kept his gun on me as he slowly stepped over the threshold of the doorway. (I suppose it’s better to kill me in my apartment than in the hallway, less chance of witnesses.) I was smiling at him, welcoming him like a guest to the housewarming party I never had. I closed the door and walked over to the shelves in my kitchen area that held all of the full bottles of liquor for that housewarming party I never had. “Want something to drink?”
He was standing in the middle of the apartment, still holding his gun on me, still trying to make sense of the situation.
“Come on. I’m your only assignment, aren’t I?”
“What?”
“You don’t have to kill anybody else tonight, do you?”
“No.” He was still disoriented, wondering what the trick was.
“Then please have a seat.” I had put 2 chairs in the middle of the room for us with a Target-bought coffee table in between, a deck of playing cards on the affordable Target-bought coffee table. “There’s no need to rush through this. I think it’s only honorable to give a dying man his final drink, don’t you?”
He was staring at me like I was crazy. Such craziness, or the perception of craziness, can amazingly be an advantage in certain situations, and this was one of those situations. I held up 2 tumblers and smiled again. (I had borrowed the tumblers from Angel. Paper cups didn’t seem appropriate for the occasion.) He was still staring at me like I was crazy, with the same look of disbelief he showed when he picked up a pack of gaudy purple thank you cards with disturbingly realistic depictions of carnivorous owls at the stationary store. Surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous at all.
I was still smiling and his gun and silencer were still aimed at me. I held the 2 empty tumblers up higher, as if asking the question about the drinks again. I could see his eyes wander to the shelves of liquor behind me.
“Scotch.”
“Scotch, it is.”
I moved to the mini-freezer in my mini-fridge to get some ice.
“No ice.” And stopped. He probably thought I had a gun planted in my mini-freezer. It would have had to have been a very small gun.
I took the full bottle of scotch down from the shelf, twisted off the cap, and poured the tumblers full. Then I turned around, one tumbler in each hand, “I always say a well-stocked bar is the first sign of a cultured man.”
No response.
“Please have a seat.”
Guardedly, he sat down in his chair. I sat down across from him and put the 2 tumblers of Scotch on the table between us. His gun was still aimed at the center of my forehead.
“Cheers.” I picked up my tumbler and held it high in the air. The hitman didn’t move. I think he was waiting for me to take the first drink. So I did.
“Aaaaaah, refreshing.” It was refreshing.
While keeping his gun aimed at me, the hitman picked up his glass in his unoccupied left hand, sniffed the scotch, and took a drink. And then took a second drink. Then set his glass back down on the table between us.
“So, here we are, the hunter and the hunted, the predator and his prey, the killer and the…”
“Dead.” He stopped my momentum. I regrouped as he took another drink.
“Do you know why you’ve been hired to kill me?”
He didn’t answer.
“No, I suppose not. I’m sure you don’t care anyway.”
“It’s not any of my business.” He took another drink of scotch. He really likes scotch. (In fairness it was one of the more expensive brands.)
“Maybe, maybe not. It could be.” He raised his gun a little at this.
“Before we get too hasty, I have a proposition for you…” I stopped mid-sentence. “You know, I just realized I didn’t properly introduce myself at the door. I’m Benjamin and you are…”
“Fingers.”
“Fingers. That’s an interesting name.”
“I used to break people’s fingers for a living.”
“I see.” This might be more difficult than I had originally hoped. He wasn’t exactly warming up to me. “Well, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I have a proposition.”
“I’m getting paid enough already.”
I laughed a hearty laugh. “My offer isn’t money. It’s much better than that.” I leaned in over the coffee table. “How would you, Fingers, do you have a last name?” Again, no response. I kept moving forward. “How would you, Fingers, like to be the second most powerful man in the world?” I leaned back in my chair confidently.
Fingers didn’t say anything as he took another drink. I think he was wondering about the ethics of killing someone who was obviously insane. I needed to work on him some more. (However, I was becoming more confident he wasn’t going to rashly pull the trigger on his gun because he was enjoying the show and like most people was just too damn curious to see where all of this was going to lead.)
“Being a hitman is a pretty tiring job, isn’t it? Probably quite dangerous, too.” I stood up from my chair, making sure to keep an eye on Fingers, I didn’t want to startle him and get shot out of panic, but he seemed like the kind of hitman who wouldn’t panic, who wouldn’t shoot from anger, but would keep watching me as I ambled back and forth behind my chair. “Why I bet you don’t even have a pension plan and a man your age, no offense, needs to start thinking about those types of things.”
“So what I am offering you, Fingers, is an opportunity that will not only give you money and power beyond your wildest dreams, but I think will also give you a level of job satisfaction you didn’t think could exist. I, Benjamin Abbott, want you, Fingers, to be my right-hand man as I take over the world.” I put both my hands on the back of my chair and flashed a glowingly optimistic smile.
Fingers finished his drink and set it back down on the table and refocused his gun on me. For the first time during our little talk, I was having doubts about my abilities of persuasion, and of Fingers’ capability for imagination. Then Fingers spoke, his voice dropping a few octaves like a baritone trying to reach a low bass note in a song, he was hooked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Look at it this way, right now you are chattel. Your employers hire you for assignments and keep you around for only as long as they need you, as long as you serve their interests. You’re expendable. You may like the freedom of being a contractor now, but once your services are no longer needed, when you’re at your most vulnerable, you’ll be completely let go, maybe even disposed of.
“So, let me ask you this. How many hitmen do you know who’ve had a peaceful retirement? I’d bet most of the retirements have been of the 6 feet under variety or in Chino, am I right?
“My proposition to you, the question I’m asking is, how would you like to be the person who makes the decisions, the one who determines who is kept and who is let go. I know things, Fingers. I know a lot of things. I’m going to be one of those people who makes the decisions. No, check that. I’m going to be THE person who makes the decisions, for everybody, and I want you to be my second in command.”
Fingers picked up his empty drink and tried to suck down the thin film of scotch residue that had resisted his earlier efforts to clear the glass. He was clearly trying to make sense of my soliloquy as he took a second sip from the empty glass.
“Do you know why you’re here right now?”
“Sure.”
“No, I mean in the larger sense. Why did God Almighty see fit to bring us together at this moment in time. Is it so you can quickly dispose of me and ruin both of our destinies? Or is it so we can combine our powers, so that we can serve God’s will.” I was going all southern preacher on him. “You believe in God, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I think you’re fucking nuts and that’s why they want you killed.”
“No, I’m just confident. It’s going to happen. I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to rule the world and you can either join me or go about running errands for your superiors like their little…shit.”
‘Shit’ wasn’t supposed to be the end of that sentence. Fingers had passed out, slumping over in his chair, right as I was reaching the big finale of my speech.