(no subject)
Target Four:
Leroy Thomas
Home was good. Always is.
But it was exactly two days before there was an envelope in my mailbox. That kind of an envelope. It was not a good one either. It was marked “SAD” which is an acronym for Slow, Agony, and Definite. We use this acronym in the Business for when the client doesn’t even want the particular target to just die. They want them out of their lives, one way or another, definitively. ON my end of things, there’s some creative license to the procedure, but it can be a bit tricky. You can not tell what the client wants. But you can always rest assured they do not care.
He was in New York, New York. So I went to New York.
It was raining. I was in casual clothes so I did not care, and I have never cared for umbrellas. New York is always perfect in the rain. The lowered heads everywhere, shuffling about through puddles. Cars spraying dirtwater up at you. The garbage and the trash washed inside the coffee shops and delis, trying to get dry and warm. Windshield wipers wiping away the distortion, but only for a second or two. Lights go blurry and turn into red amoebic orbs, people change into ghoulish silhouettes, and there is the ever-present gentle cacophony of pitter-patters on the glass and metal roof of your taxi cab that can put you to sleep. Then another rhythmic wipe and we can see clearly again. But the rain keeps falling. Rinse and repeat.
Leroy lived in a crappy apartment in Claremont Village. I pressed my hand against all of the buzzers in the building. It wasn’t nice enough to have cameras, so somebody buzzed me in and the door opened. Somebody’s always expecting somebody. Leroy was not expecting anybody. He was at work.
In only seven seconds I had his lock picked. Practice.
The apartment was just as shabby as a his building and his neighborhood. Another final resting place for the old and tired. The dining table was covered with stacks of papers and books and the things he had picked up at some point in the past days and set down here without thinking he would put it back later. Several different coffee mugs sat precariously on different surfaces at different levels in different rooms, but they all had the same thin brown residue on the bottom. The TV was still on but the cable was not, so just a solid green number 3 sat on the upper left corner of the black humming screen. He had left a window crackedDishes piled in the sink waiting to be washed, next to the pile of clean ones set there after doing the dishes last week. Rinse and repeat.
Whoever took out a SAD assignment on Leroy Thomas was a real asshole. That, or Leroy must be a real asshole. Or once again, done something wrong to the wrong person. A person who knew about the Business.
In his bedroom, I saw the rest of this man. Clothes all over the floor. Stacks of books sitting at the feet of the bookshelf, half full. Bed stand with the familiar bright red numbers on his alarm clock. A place to set his reading glasses. His bed frame was wood, with high legs. Bingo.
I opened my briefcase and withdrew the sliver-thin saw blade. It cut through the soft grain of the wood easily, as I worked off the top of one of the legs, near the pillow. Then came the small power drill. It was specially designed to be as quiet as possible, so you could not hear the engine or whirring of gears, but nothing could stop the sound of the drill bit eating straight down into the leg shaft and turning the carved out back up and out of the hole. It was not very loud though.
I meticulously cleaned up all of the sawdust with a tiny brush and pan. I have done this exact procedure more times than I care to admit, since it’s particularly nasty and by-the-book SAD. The sawdust went out the window and into the wind and the rain. Never to be noticed again.
Here come’s the fun part. After placing the tools back, I put on the protective gloves, and face mask and neck strap, all a heavy weight. I removed the tiny lead box from the briefcase and unlatched it. Inside sat a tiny tray with handle, which I carefully lifted out. On this tray sat three grams of 241Am, or americium. A highly radioactive member of the Table of Elements. I dumped the three tiny squares of this very shiny and silvery material into the hole I created. The tray went back into the box, which latched and went back into the briefcase. Then came the small bottle of wood glue. Four drops equidistant around the hole, and the removed top fit right back over, flush with no edges overhanging. As I pressed down, some excess glue slipped out the side and formed a globule that almost began it’s journey towards the gravitational center of our planet, but not before I wiped it smooth with my glove around the tiny line that remained from the schism. The glue filled the line and quickly dried, leaving no trace.
I put it back and shut my case, leaving my protective gear on until I was at the front door, then quickly exited the apartment. I am not very educated in chemistry but I believe americium is very rare and produced only in laboratories. My guess is on some assignment, an operative came upon a large store of americium is a storage facility or something along those lines. If I were quitting this job tomorrow, I would access inaccessible files and find the client for this job and make him eat a handful of this stuff. No one needs to go like this, and even a professional with a seriously skewed sense of moral values like me can recognize that.
Leroy would notice in one week’s time that his hair was beginning to fall out. He will sigh and curse his age and regret not doing more with his life and not having kids and not getting a better job and never going to Rome. He’ll call an old friend, maybe make plans, but shortly after feel very nauseous and cancel. Then he will vomit profusely. If he decides to call a hospital, they will come for him and find severe irradiation throughout his body, specifically his brain and ask if he has family they could call. Not depending on the answer of this, they will try and make his last few days as comfortable as they can.
Leroy Thomas will die. There will be a funeral. There will be some study into how his brain became suddenly exposed to high levels of gamma radiation, but who knows how long that will take or interest will last. Leroy’s job will miss him, but eventually replace him with someone a bit younger and more capable. His apartment and things will be repossessed and given to some charity or auction. Or just thrown away. Leroy’s remaining siblings will slowly age and die of their own individual causes and Leroy’s memory will fade until it is nothing.
Never to be noticed again.
Outside, my taxi was still waiting. And it was still raining. I stood for a moment and let it run through my hair. Let my clothes get a little damp and heavier even with the lining of lead. Inhale. Exhale. New York is perfect in the rain.
Leroy Thomas
Home was good. Always is.
But it was exactly two days before there was an envelope in my mailbox. That kind of an envelope. It was not a good one either. It was marked “SAD” which is an acronym for Slow, Agony, and Definite. We use this acronym in the Business for when the client doesn’t even want the particular target to just die. They want them out of their lives, one way or another, definitively. ON my end of things, there’s some creative license to the procedure, but it can be a bit tricky. You can not tell what the client wants. But you can always rest assured they do not care.
He was in New York, New York. So I went to New York.
It was raining. I was in casual clothes so I did not care, and I have never cared for umbrellas. New York is always perfect in the rain. The lowered heads everywhere, shuffling about through puddles. Cars spraying dirtwater up at you. The garbage and the trash washed inside the coffee shops and delis, trying to get dry and warm. Windshield wipers wiping away the distortion, but only for a second or two. Lights go blurry and turn into red amoebic orbs, people change into ghoulish silhouettes, and there is the ever-present gentle cacophony of pitter-patters on the glass and metal roof of your taxi cab that can put you to sleep. Then another rhythmic wipe and we can see clearly again. But the rain keeps falling. Rinse and repeat.
Leroy lived in a crappy apartment in Claremont Village. I pressed my hand against all of the buzzers in the building. It wasn’t nice enough to have cameras, so somebody buzzed me in and the door opened. Somebody’s always expecting somebody. Leroy was not expecting anybody. He was at work.
In only seven seconds I had his lock picked. Practice.
The apartment was just as shabby as a his building and his neighborhood. Another final resting place for the old and tired. The dining table was covered with stacks of papers and books and the things he had picked up at some point in the past days and set down here without thinking he would put it back later. Several different coffee mugs sat precariously on different surfaces at different levels in different rooms, but they all had the same thin brown residue on the bottom. The TV was still on but the cable was not, so just a solid green number 3 sat on the upper left corner of the black humming screen. He had left a window crackedDishes piled in the sink waiting to be washed, next to the pile of clean ones set there after doing the dishes last week. Rinse and repeat.
Whoever took out a SAD assignment on Leroy Thomas was a real asshole. That, or Leroy must be a real asshole. Or once again, done something wrong to the wrong person. A person who knew about the Business.
In his bedroom, I saw the rest of this man. Clothes all over the floor. Stacks of books sitting at the feet of the bookshelf, half full. Bed stand with the familiar bright red numbers on his alarm clock. A place to set his reading glasses. His bed frame was wood, with high legs. Bingo.
I opened my briefcase and withdrew the sliver-thin saw blade. It cut through the soft grain of the wood easily, as I worked off the top of one of the legs, near the pillow. Then came the small power drill. It was specially designed to be as quiet as possible, so you could not hear the engine or whirring of gears, but nothing could stop the sound of the drill bit eating straight down into the leg shaft and turning the carved out back up and out of the hole. It was not very loud though.
I meticulously cleaned up all of the sawdust with a tiny brush and pan. I have done this exact procedure more times than I care to admit, since it’s particularly nasty and by-the-book SAD. The sawdust went out the window and into the wind and the rain. Never to be noticed again.
Here come’s the fun part. After placing the tools back, I put on the protective gloves, and face mask and neck strap, all a heavy weight. I removed the tiny lead box from the briefcase and unlatched it. Inside sat a tiny tray with handle, which I carefully lifted out. On this tray sat three grams of 241Am, or americium. A highly radioactive member of the Table of Elements. I dumped the three tiny squares of this very shiny and silvery material into the hole I created. The tray went back into the box, which latched and went back into the briefcase. Then came the small bottle of wood glue. Four drops equidistant around the hole, and the removed top fit right back over, flush with no edges overhanging. As I pressed down, some excess glue slipped out the side and formed a globule that almost began it’s journey towards the gravitational center of our planet, but not before I wiped it smooth with my glove around the tiny line that remained from the schism. The glue filled the line and quickly dried, leaving no trace.
I put it back and shut my case, leaving my protective gear on until I was at the front door, then quickly exited the apartment. I am not very educated in chemistry but I believe americium is very rare and produced only in laboratories. My guess is on some assignment, an operative came upon a large store of americium is a storage facility or something along those lines. If I were quitting this job tomorrow, I would access inaccessible files and find the client for this job and make him eat a handful of this stuff. No one needs to go like this, and even a professional with a seriously skewed sense of moral values like me can recognize that.
Leroy would notice in one week’s time that his hair was beginning to fall out. He will sigh and curse his age and regret not doing more with his life and not having kids and not getting a better job and never going to Rome. He’ll call an old friend, maybe make plans, but shortly after feel very nauseous and cancel. Then he will vomit profusely. If he decides to call a hospital, they will come for him and find severe irradiation throughout his body, specifically his brain and ask if he has family they could call. Not depending on the answer of this, they will try and make his last few days as comfortable as they can.
Leroy Thomas will die. There will be a funeral. There will be some study into how his brain became suddenly exposed to high levels of gamma radiation, but who knows how long that will take or interest will last. Leroy’s job will miss him, but eventually replace him with someone a bit younger and more capable. His apartment and things will be repossessed and given to some charity or auction. Or just thrown away. Leroy’s remaining siblings will slowly age and die of their own individual causes and Leroy’s memory will fade until it is nothing.
Never to be noticed again.
Outside, my taxi was still waiting. And it was still raining. I stood for a moment and let it run through my hair. Let my clothes get a little damp and heavier even with the lining of lead. Inhale. Exhale. New York is perfect in the rain.