Entourage AU Fest Hitman 1/3 V/E
Title: Hitman
Fandom: Entourage
Author: chase65
Rating: PG
Pairing: V/E
Warnings: See Author's note
Disclaimer: I've been negotiating with Ari, but he is one tough s.o.b., so as of yet none of the boys belong to me.
Word Count: 11,000+
Prompt #46:Eric Murphy is a hitman. His next target: Vincent Chase. It’s supposed to be like any other job. But when the time comes to pull the trigger, he can’t do it.
A/N: Written for entourage_fest . This is my first fic in the fandom, the first of two for this fest. There is a character death. Wait, wait come back. It’s not Vince or E and it’s ‘off camera' as it were. It really could not be helped. Some mentions of sex with an underage girl. It's in three parts cause that's the way lj rolls. Parts are linked. Entourage is primarily my reading for pleasure fandom, but I love AUs and wanted to try my hand. Thanks for reading.
Hitman
Eric Murphy sat at the end of the bar nursing a seltzer and watching his mark. He'd been watching the man for about a week, just to make sure he had the guy's schedule down. He did. It was ridiculously easy. It was the Hollywood idle. When the kid, Murphy knew they were roughly the same age. It was all part of the file, he'd put together for the job, but with this guy, there was no other way to call it, he was a kid. Irresponsible, immature, undisciplined. All of the flaws that had caused their paths to cross.
"Do I know you?"
Murphy's landlady, Jane, who had been a studio contract player at Universal with Clint Eastwood before she realized her talents would have her spending more time on the casting couch than the screen and switched to real estate, thought he was a grip. It was the cover he'd used to smooth his way into the apartment complex. The building was well situated on Barham close to the Cahuenga pass on a dead end street. It gave him quick access into both Los Angeles and the Valley and was modern enough that his security enhancements didn't look out of place. He'd driven by the building once and decided on it instantly. His pre-resident surveillance and research revealed that his landlady only ever rented to film people, so he'd become a film person. Few people cared about grips and few ever stayed through the credits of a film long enough to see who the grips were. Even his landlady hadn't looked at it too closely,
There were few enough tenants that he could keep close track of them if necessary. They were frequently on location, at auditions or the gym so his own odd hours and work related absences did not stand out or attract undue attention. He subscribed to Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and the Star to keep his working knowledge current in order to further support his cover. It worked, had been working for five years. He'd embraced Los Angeles as his base. That is was the home to so much of the entertainment industry, for both the professional and the personal made hiding in plain sight easy. There was nothing about him at first glance that could compete with the Brads, Toms, Wills, Vinces or their wannabes. It was easy to get lost in the sprawl.
Still, he was incredibly careful. It helped that for the most part, if someone thought he looked familiar more often than not, it was because they thought they'd seen him at an audition, cater waitering or thought he had attended of the same high school. Contract killer never made the list. And that came in incredibly handy, like now.
Fear of looking a mark in the eye had never been a problem for him. He figured the man, he never took contracts on women, on the wrong end of his bullet had the right to look the end of his life in the eye. Even if he didn't realize that's what he was doing. There were others in the business who didn't like to get that close. A bullet to the heart or head, sometimes both was his preferred method.
The kid had raw talent. He was good looking, charming, could act his way out of a plastic bag, to some extent. It never took him very long to get into the pants of any of the girls he turned his green focus on. In the course of surveillance, Murphy had never seen his target leave a club alone unless by choice. Many had made it far being either charming or good looking. Those combined could have made the kid one of the greats. That was all over now. He returned the kid's smile easily.
"Were you at Kress, last night?"
"Yeah, yeah. On the roof right?"
The dark haired mark took his beers from the bartender.
"Take it easy man. Happy hunting." The curly head nodded at Murphy and walked away. Murphy took a slow sip of his drink. It was time.
Two days later he intercepted Vincent Chase, the man he’d been paid to kill, on his way into a bar on a Hollywood side street.
"Hey man, how's it going," Chase asked when Murphy stepped into his path on the sidewalk. The mark grinned.
"You been in? How does it look?"
Murphy took a moment, glanced back at the bar's entrance, then shrugged, shook his head.
"Kind of dead actually. I did hear about a party downtown though, underground thing DJ AM is supposed to be spinning. Interested?"
"Oh, yeah I heard something about that. Couldn't get a solid line on it." A shadow flickered across Chase's face.
Murphy smiled. "I got an invite. Wanna go?"
"My brother and my boy Turtle are parking the car. Lemme just call and -” As Chase reached into his pocket, Murphy stepped forward lightening quick and grabbed his wrist.
"The list is really tight. It's a plus one. I had to do some serious talking to get it."
"And you don't want to take a girl?" Chase asked, tone rife with innuendo tinged amusement as his gaze swept down to take in Murphy's hand squeezing his wrist. Murphy loosened his grip, unfazed.
"I won't feel as guilty about ditching you once we're there." A huge grin without shadows spread across the Chase’s face.
"Eh, Turtle and Johnny will be fine without me, probably do better without me for a night. Let's roll."
"You got it."
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Murphy'd parked a few blocks away from a downtown warehouse.
"It's pretty quiet." Chase observed as they approached the warehouse just south of Olvera Street.
"Yeah, they got state of the art soundproofing. Keeps the cops and the bottom feeders away."
Murphy slid the heavy door aside and let Chase precede him into the dimly lit, empty and cavernous space.
"Hey, where is everyone?" The other man pivoted to face him.
"What the fuck?"
That was the moment Murphy should have pulled the trigger, typically did pull the trigger. And in that moment where he would have, despite the Glock leveled at his heart, against all sense, Chase's shocked expression instantly morphed into a grin. Without guile.
There was always guile. Even if it only flickered for less than half a second, it was there. Murphy'd learned that when he was a senior in high school. There had been a girl who
Murphy had known her primarily by reputation. The bicycle, anyone could ride. He hadn't, it wasn't his thing. Ditching out of a school assembly one afternoon with the intention of cutting the rest of the day, he skirted across the track where he sometimes ran when no one else was around. Halfway across the athletic field, he thought he heard something but couldn’t place it, figured it was just something on the wind. As he quickened his stride toward the bleachers on the edge of the field, the last obstacle before the street, he heard it again. As he got closer to the bleachers, Murphy saw the source. His inclination was to keep moving. The last thing he wanted was to get caught, but the quality of the sound was so -.
Later he understood it as despairing. An S.A.T. word, not the kind of word he or anyone he knew used. But that day, hearing Audrey Poloni sobbing her heart out, the despair tugged at his insides and made it impossible for him to walk past her. He'd never heard anything like it.
When she realized she wasn’t alone her dark eyes had flashed angrily at him. Her finger jabbed in his direction as she hiccupped and vehemently declared, "Just because I like to get it on, that son of a bitch…I still decide yes or no. I decide. Andy Abetmarco, you lying son of a bitch." She’d screamed the last part, before flopping unceremoniously to the grass, her head pressed into her hands.
He'd known instinctually not to touch her or try to get any closer than he already was. And that was all he’d known. Freaked out, he’d stood uncertain, hands dangling uselessly for several seconds before he turned and ran. The rest of his truant afternoon was spent in a neighborhood bar where the owner let him hang out. In exchange, he did light janitorial work, filled in behind the bar on occasion and ran ‘errands‘. The owner had enough of the right people in his pocket that no one looked at Murphy twice. That day he worked the bar and managed to keep himself busy enough to forget about Audrey until the next day. Andy Abetmarco was a neighborhood kid just like he was, but they didn’t run in the same circles. Murphy didn’t really run in any circles. As soon as he saw Andy laughing with his friends at his locker in between classes, his mind emptied of everything but Audrey and what it had felt like to hear her.
Stepping up to the other boy, he’d said her name and watched as the laughter in his eyes of seconds before shifted into something accessing, deceitful. Evil. The complete opposite of Audrey Polini‘s eyes. If he hadn’t believed her before, he believed her then. As soon as Andy Abetmarco opened his mouth to perpetuate his assault, Murphy punched him. Hard. Kept punching, until he’d earned a broken hand and permanent expulsion. His boss at the bar pulled one of those people out of his pocket to prevent the laying of criminal charges.
The target of each contract he’d ever taken had all looked at him like Andy in the last moments of their lives. All except Vincent Chase. And it was so novel, so unexpected that Murphy’s finger faltered on the trigger, which allowed his current target to talk past the instant when he should have been choking on his own blood.
"Dude, I gotta tell you if this is a robbery, I have like forty bucks in my wallet right now and an ATM card, but we're nowhere near my bank."
The charm he'd watched over the last days was in full effect. Murphy felt the corners of his mouth trying to twitch into an answering smile in spite of himself. The bright smile, the sparkling eyes. The kid really had no idea.
"This isn't a robbery. You and I need to have a little chat." He flicked the gun a fraction to indicate the mark should sit in one of the two folding chairs in the space.
Still smiling, the dark haired man held his hands up in supplication. "You've got the gun. I'm guessing you'll be the one doing all the talking." Murphy indicated with the gun again and waited.
Once he was seated, Murphy took the other chair and pulled it opposite. Far enough from the long legs and reach, should the kid suddenly decide to have a normal reaction to being held at gunpoint and try something stupid.
He held green eyes for a full minute, still searching. Long enough for the kid to see what it meant to be deadly serious. When the other man started to fidget a little and look uncertain, he spoke.
"You met a girl, had sex with her last month. Average no silicone, no Botox makes up for not being gorgeous, by having great original style. That's probably what got your attention. Although, just being a girl with a nice body, in a short skirt probably would have been enough. You met her at Pure. You went back to her house, her family's house. Had sex."
"Hey look dude, if she was your girl, she didn't say anything to me."
"How do you know? Do you have any idea who I'm talking about?" He watched with some amusement as lines furrowed in the other man's forehead, as he scrunched his face and tried to remember what he had no hope to.
"You won't remember her telling you that because she didn't." Just as the actor relaxed a fraction -
"I wonder what you were the most that night, drunk or high. I mean don't you think you had to be one or the other to commit statutory rape."
The chair clattered to the concrete floor as Chase shot straight up. Face suddenly red with outrage, he took at step forward. Murphy leveled the gun at his heart. Chase stutter stepped to a stop.
"What the hell are you talking about? I don't have to force women to sleep with me. I have never forced a woman to sleep with me. If that's what this is about you have got the wrong guy. Trust me."
"She was fifteen and you fucked her in her parent's bed. Statutory rape. Her father is not the kind of guy to let that go. Or call the police. He is the kind of guy to ship his kid off to boarding school because of it. He is the kind of guy to want very bad things to happen to the guy involved. That’s where I come in."
"Look I didn't know," Chase insisted desperately, the easy charm faltering. "I mean she was in the club, you can't be in the club unless you're of age."
"Lindsey Lohan might have something to say about that."
"My friends -”
"What friends? The girl you were with last night? The girl from the night before? Your dealer? Name one person that would come get you, no strings at three in the morning."
"My brother -”
"Your brother, who you ditched tonight, doesn't count. Do you really want to bring him into this, you want your family involved in this? Right now Vincent Chase, I'm the only person you need to be concerned about."
All the previous cool completely dissipated. "I can't. This can't be happening. I gotta call my ma or Johnny, I -”
"Vincent, the man who hired me is no joke."
Finally, the horror fully registered. Murphy lowered the gun to knee level and watched impassively as it happened, watched as the weight of his situation settled fully on Vincent Chase's shoulders, hunching them.
"My client wants you dead and he wants proof."
"Like what a finger or something," Chase yelped.
"His exact words were 'some fuck stole my little girl’s innocence and I want his fuckin' head on a pike."
"What the hell is a pike?"
"It's like a pole." Chase suddenly flung his hands in front of him in a warding gesture.
"Okay, okay. I, please, please don't do that. I don't want my ma...please."
Murphy had other colleagues who offered proof of death. He didn't. His reputation was his proof. He'd explained that to his client, but Chase didn't need to know that now.
As he stared at the kid, fascinated by the lack of duplicity, Murphy realized that he wasn’t going to shoot him. At least not tonight, which meant he had to contain him.
"You need to go away Vincent. Right now, tonight."
Vince dropped his hands.
"Good, it’ll be easier if you don’t fight me." Weapon still trained on him, Murphy flipped open his phone and pressed a button.
"Hey," he said into the phone, eta is about an hour. He ended the call.
“We’re leaving now. If you try to run, I will shoot you in the back of the head and then I will take a trip to Queens and have a chat with your mother.”
Chase paled and nodded.
A mile from the warehouse, Murphy found a liquor store. He reiterated his threat and ordered Chase to buy a bottle of Jack and a baseball cap.
“Put the cap on and start drinking,” he instructed when Chase returned to the car purchases in hand. Picking up the thread of his adjusted original plan, Murphy drove out of the bowels of downtown LA towards the Dorothy Chandler. He left the car parked on a side street. Blending with the patrons coming out of the Pavilion, Vincent Chase in tow, he hailed a cab.
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Eric Murphy had learned the fine art of creative accounting while working in the bar. For two years, in addition to his other duties, he’d and kept both sets of the bar’s books. The grip story got him into his apartment building, but it wouldn’t pass muster with the IRS or legitimize his income.
A client had paid him with a G4, which he immediately put up for auction. With the proceeds, he bought two Cessna seven passenger jets in the name of Fulton Executive Air. On paper, he was employed by Fulton Executive Air as one of two Client Services Managers. Fulton had five other employees, four pilots and a full-time office manager/bookkeeper. A contract with a production company, brought in by the other Client Services Rep kept Fulton in fairly regular business. All of the employees were real working people, save one. The absentee owner compensated them well and paid his corporate taxes on time.
When he climbed out of the cab at the Fulton hanger with a slightly tipsy man in a baseball cap pulled low on his head, neither of the pilots batted an eye. Fulton Air employees understood discretion.
His house in Costa Rica had been a happy accident. After a job, he'd gotten stranded in Costa Rica by a cancelled commercial flight. With no other flights available until the following day, he'd taken some time to explore. Wending his way through an exclusive neighborhood, he came across a house with a se vende sign posted. Stretching out of his rental onto the street in front of the walled property, he could hear the crash of the waves and smell the salt of the Pacific. The next nearest property was at least an acre away with its own high walls. He stood in that spot for several minutes with his eyes closed, letting the sounds and smells wash over and through his senses.
He was freelance, always had been. Unaffiliated with any family, he wasn't looking over his shoulder for the next dispassionate gun moving through the ranks to take his place. No one would make their bones with his blood. He wasn't sure how he'd know it was time to pack it in, but he understood he should have a place, no one knew about to land. The Costa Rican house was part of a potential exit strategy.
Unlocking the door to the house, he helped a now completely drunk Vincent Chase over the threshold. He hadn't considered that he would ever need the house for something like this. Never thought that anyone would be inside the house, but him. He'd taken an incredible risk, but all he felt at the moment as he shouldered his burden into his living room was exhilarated, intrigued.
Later, watching Vincent Chase, inelegantly sprawled on his back where he‘d been deposited, snoring to the heavens, Murphy realized that he wouldn’t be killing Vincent Chase in the foreseeable future. He didn't kill puppies. And that's what Chase was, a shaggy, goofy puppy that had made a gigantic mess on the carpet. He could be corrected. But there was still the matter of the contract.
He’d never blown a contract before. Something would need to be done. Backing out of the doorway, he began to consider what that might be.
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Around noon, Murphy heard something thud to the hardwood floor above his head. It hit like a body. He smiled at the picture of Chase falling out of bed. It was another twenty minutes of random noises from above before his houseguest found his way to the staircase. Clutching the banister, Chase made tentative, hung-over progress down the stairs. He was barefoot and sporting a serious case of bed head. At the bottom, he paused. Looked around, with as little movement of his head as possible, trying to remember where he was. But he wouldn’t. He’d been too out it to have any idea. One of the bare movements of his head brought Murphy into his field of vision. He started badly.
“Good morning Vincent.” Fear flickered in bleary eyes before settling into resignation. He trudged toward the couch opposite the one Murphy occupied and gingerly lowered himself. They were separated by a heavy lucite coffee table. The table, like the identical blue striped couches that had come with the house were simple and indicative of the houses overall design.
“Thank you for the water and aspirin,” the kid said softly, without making eye contact.
“You’re welcome Vincent,” he replied and let the resulting silence play. Long enough for Chase to start jiggling his knee nervously.
“Vincent, look at me.” Wide eyes complied. Positioning himself on the edge of his own couch, Eric Murphy broke it down.
"People have let you get away with a lot because you're pretty. But what that's done is make you soft, make you take the easiest way. You have no discipline. That stops right now Vincent. From this moment, we have to be on the same page.”
The former mark rallied a little, showing some of himself. "One thing, you gotta call me Vince man. It’s weird when you call me Vincent. Like you're my mom or something. And I'm guessing we're exactly the same age. Right?"
Murphy just tilted his head slightly and said nothing.
"Okay, what? What do I have to do?" He watched, not entirely surprised, as Chase relaxed into the couch and spread his long legs. The emerald eyes, still without cunning. The seductiveness was natural, slipped on and worn like a second skin. It struck him Vincent Chase would always stand out in a crowd; always attract a certain kind of attention. His flaw was not being able to differentiate between the good and bad. Murphy slid back, away from the invitation.
"You don't have to whore yourself. That would be the easy way. I'm going to put a bullet in my client. One in his head, one in his heart.”
Murphy waited. Watched the information settle on thin shoulders and register fully in long lashed eyes as horror.
"It's him or me," the kid said softly.
"Yes."
Eric Murphy gained some respect for Vincent Chase when the other held eye contact as he said,” Okay." The eyes gone shocky, dropped to hands trembling in his lap.
"Vince."
"Yeah?" The dark head tilted, but didn't raise enough for their eyes to meet.
"Why don't you go down to the beach? It's supposed to be beautiful today."
"I, okay."
"There are towels in the first closet at the top of the stairs."
Vince's legs were a little wobbly when he stood. Murphy braced to catch him if he collapsed. Recovering quickly, Vince flashed a shadow of the smile Murphy had seen him turn on dozens of people in dozens of situations.
"What should I call you?"
He thought about giving the other man an alias from one of his passports, but when he opened his mouth to speak, the truth reared its head.
“Murphy, you should call me Murphy.”
“Got it.”
As he shambled up the stairs, Murphy watched until he was out of sight. This territory was unchartered. He’d just become his own client. The particulars would be the same, surveil, then pull the trigger. It crossed his mind that sub-contracting might be an option. There was a guy, Lloyd, who specialized in the 'accidental death'. He was seriously tempted, but another person would further muddy, the now murky water. This was his double cross. His eyes lingered for a moment before he grabbed one of the ten disposable cells he kept around the house.
Three Days Later
Murphy punched the code into the keypad just inside the front door of his house. Although it was midday, the interior was cool, dark. Except for the sound of the water, it was also extremely quiet. The silence did not concern him. Although, he couldn’t see Chase, he knew his houseguest was more than likely sitting on the beach. His three day return to Los Angeles to tie up the loose contract end had necessitated locking down the Costa Rica house with Vincent Chase inside. The house’s security system allowed him to monitor the property remotely and he’d done so. He’d never taken simultaneous jobs so splitting his focus while completing a contract had been odd. But there’d also been a kind of low thrum of pleasure as he watched Chase move through his days. Days that included extended time on the private beach. His houseguest was just where he expected him to be. Sitting on the sand, in nothing but his boxers.
"Hey, have you eaten?"
The dark head turned just enough that his response wasn’t swallowed by the ocean. His eyes hit Murphy at about knee level.
"Um, no?"
"That shouldn't be a hard question."
"I lost track of time."
"What about yesterday?"
"Um, sorry. I - ."
"There is plenty of food in the kitchen. I'm going to make something. Here."
Reaching into the pocket of his slacks, he handed Chase a disposable cell phone. Before he took the phone, Vince lifted his eyes, giving Murphy the once over.
"That's some interesting beachwear."
Murphy's eyes dropped down to take in his silk dark blue dress shirt and wool slacks.
His client, Ari Gold had drinks at his private club on Tuesday afternoons. The Club’s men's room attendant would find Gold slumped in a stall, shot close range in the heart and head. Murphy’d gone straight from the club to the Bob Hope airport.
"Call your family. You let some rich girl pick you up and take you to Cabo. You're really sorry for not calling, but they know how you are. When you're done come in the house and eat something. We need to talk about the rest of your life."
One Year Later - chase65.livejournal.com/20626.html