The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

He likes to drive in silence because silence is golden. His mind is busy with thoughts, and when he spells them out, when he follows them, they all have the background music of one of his wife’s cartoons. When he thinks that he wants to kill Charlie Feldman, he’s thinking it lyrically. It’s annoying. In the past he’s tried getting headphones for his wife, so she can just listen to her cartoons without the need for him to hear them, but the headphones make her scream and cry and thrash about like a fish out of water. So right now his thoughts of cutting Charlie open and getting paid his dues are coming in a sing-song voice.

The headache came back not long after he woke up. And his stomach isn’t any better. The bravest thing he’s done all day is resist the urge to take another shot of morphine, but what he did do was take more anti-inflammatories and over-the-counter painkillers. Okay, that’s not all he did-he brought some morphine along with him. He doubts he’ll need it, but one thing he learned in the army is it’s best to take a gun and not need it than don’t take one and find yourself getting shot at. Same logic applies to pain medication. The result of what he has taken since waking is he still has the headache, but at least his thoughts are his own. Mostly. But there are still random thoughts slipping in there. When he looks at the woman he wonders how she would taste if he bit into her. The hate between them would surely make her taste sour. He knows that’s not normal. She’s looking at him, looking at him, looking at him as if he’s crazy, and he hates that look, and he hates the crazy thoughts even more. He can’t wait for all this to be over.

When they get to the pier he kills the motor. He has very little to say. So does she, apparently, but that’s because he hit her earlier and told her to shut up. He knows he’s going to have to kill her at the end of all this because she knows who he is and where he lives. She is what the army would have called collateral damage. Feldman is too. So was the cop. And the lawyer. It’s been a collateral damage kind of week. All that matters is getting paid. Years ago he might have thought different. But after his wife was hurt, he learned people don’t give a shit about you when you need help. It was only a matter of days after Macy tried to kill herself that he figured out the whole world could go and fuck itself.

He leans to his side. He takes out his cell phone and his wallet and puts them into the glove compartment. He never takes them on a job. He would never take the risk of leaving one of them behind by accident. The next day’s headline would be Killer Leaves Driver’s License at Scene.

“Let’s go,” he tells the woman.

He wraps a towel over her wrists to hide the handcuffs. He pulls her across the driver’s seat and outside. It’s gotten pretty windy over the last fifteen minutes. Feels like rain is on its way. He looks at the pier, but it’s too dark to see if anybody is on it. Feldman is out there somewhere, he can feel it. His car isn’t here. In fact the only car here is. . he looks at the Holden. The Holden. It looks familiar, but he has no idea where he saw it last, if indeed he did. Of course there are probably ten thousand identical ones within twenty miles.

They cross the road. He keeps looking back at the Holden. Something about it bugs him.

They walk toward the pier as the wind begins to pick up around them.