Winning the Game and Other Stories

xania

I PHONED THE DISPATCHER.

“You sent a girl to do the job? You sent a virgin to face off against an old whore?”

“I was counting on your weakness for women.”

“It didn’t work.”

“She’s very pretty.”

“Was. I had to sacrifice the girl, you sonofabitch.”

“I made a mistake. It happens. Zé, Zé, don’t take it the wrong way, but you’ve become a problem.”

“Shit, what kind of problem?”

“You can’t give up the business, you know too much.”

“You clown, they knocked my teeth out in the Glock case, but did I do the job? They tortured me, I’m crippled in one hand, but did I do the job?”

“They got the wrong hand. They didn’t know you’re a lefty. But look, Zé, we gotta do what we gotta do. Rules of the game. You know who gives the orders.”

“I don’t fucking know about anybody ordering anything.”

“You said it yourself, not too long ago, that by knowing the victim you know who ordered it. Remember?”

I did say that. Fuck.

I hung up the phone.

This was my situation: The Dispatcher had put out a contract on me and thought that a pretty girl could get to me, but he screwed up and now he was sending The Man after me. I’d always thought I was The Man, and I’m sure I’m right, but there must be others. The problem was that I didn’t know where to find the Dispatcher; he was the one who set up the meetings. He’d call and say, “We’re going to meet at such-and-such restaurant,” a different one each time, and he paid in cash. Every week he got a new prepaid cell phone and threw the old one away.

I rented a place at another apartment hotel using fake ID and passport. They knew my real name. I was thinking of the Dispatcher and the ones who were after me as they, a sign my paranoia was increasing. Fuck.

I started wearing loose-fitting shirts and carrying two pistols, one under my right armpit and the other in my belt. I let my beard grow and dyed the hairs that were gray a light brown. In my family we go gray early. I bought a pair of glasses with clear lenses from a street vendor. I inspected myself in the mirror. It didn’t look like a disguise; my face is so common that it goes with everything.

I went on paying for the old apartment hotel and left my car in the garage. I wanted them to think I still lived there. Under my false name, Manoel de Oliveira, I rented an apartment on the same floor. The doormen didn’t recognize me with my brown hair, beard, glasses, and Portuguese accent. Besides that, my apartment hotel was constantly changing its personnel. And doormen at apartment hotels by the water only look at the women, preferably at their asses in bathing suits as they head for the beach.

I was in luck. The peephole in my new apartment allowed me to see the door of the old one where I used to live and which to all intents and purposes was still my address.

I spent all day looking through the peephole. My neck ached, but I knew that one day someone would show up, and this time it wouldn’t be some beginner of a girl.

The woman was wearing the uniform of the restaurant on the ground floor and had a tray in her hand. She rang the doorbell of my old apartment.

The Dispatcher must’ve thought, Zé will never suspect I’ve sent another woman.

I came out from where I was, calmly. The woman with the tray gave me a perfunctory glance—she must know me only from an old photograph—and rang the bell again. I went up to her, stuck the pistol in her ribs, and put the key to the apartment in her free hand.

“Open the door,” I said.

She opened the door and we went inside.

“Put the tray on the table,” I said, “and lie down on the floor with your hands behind you.”

She lay down and I handcuffed her. I removed the napkin covering the tray; on it was a cheese sandwich, a Coca-Cola, and a Luger Parabellum, 9mm, with silencer.

I like cheese sandwiches. While I ate the sandwich I asked, “Where’d you get this piece? It’s a collector’s item. I’m honored you chose such a tool to do me.”

“Are you Zé?” she asked.

“I am. What’s your arrangement with the Dispatcher?”

“A shot in the head.”

“Nine millimeter … Gray matter all over the wall. What’s your name?”

“Xania.”

“Xania? You’re The Man? A woman?”

The Man is what the Dispatcher’s best operator was called.

“If you’re asking if I’m the best, if I handled the most complicated cases, yeah, I’m The Man.”

“Xania.”

“You think my name is odd? There’s a TV character named Xania, but my parents chose the name of a city on the island of Crete. I think in Portuguese it’s spelled with Ch, but they thought it was more interesting with X.”

“Xania, I have a proposition for you. Here it is. By the rules, I ought to eliminate you. But I want the Dispatcher, understand? I want peace and quiet, to go somewhere and raise chickens. The Dispatcher won’t let me.”

“You want to raise chickens?”

“It’s a metaphor. I’m tired of this work. I kill you, and the Dispatcher will send somebody else, I think he’ll send a man next time, and I’ll go on killing people, something I don’t want to do anymore, especially when it doesn’t pay me a cent. I want you to tell me where I can find the Dispatcher, the address where he lives.”

“I don’t know. I meet him in a restaurant, never the same one twice, every time he sets it up in a different one.”

“Did he already pay you for the job? How much?”

“He gave me half.”

Xania mentioned the amount.

“You make more than I do.”

“I’m The Man,” she said, laughing.

“What about the other half?”

“He’s going to give it to me when I—I mean, was going to give it to me—”

“Let’s agree on something. You call him and say the job’s done. Ask him to set a time and place to pay you the rest.”

“I’m running the risk of death if he learns I’m ratting him out.”

“You’re already at risk of death, immediate death right here. Besides which, I’m going to eliminate the sonofabitch, don’t worry about that. Go on, Xania, make the call.”

I stuck the pistol against the back of her neck.

“I’ll count to three. One, two—”

“Wait, wait,” said Xania, taking the cell phone from her purse.

It took a while, at least that was my impression, for the Dispatcher to answer. With my pistol in Xania’s neck I leaned my body so close to hers that I could feel her ass against my groin.

“The job’s done,” Xania said.

I heard the Dispatcher’s voice asking if I’d given her a hard time.

“Not at all. He thought I was the waitress. What now?”

“Put another bullet in his head,” I heard the Dispatcher say.

I took the Parabellum from the tray and fired. I gestured for Xania to continue the conversation.

“Done. There’s brains splattered all over the floor.”

“In an hour, come to Niraki, the Japanese restaurant,” I heard the Dispatcher say. “Know where it is?”

Goddamn, the Japanese restaurant where Olive Oyl tried to teach me how to use chopsticks. What was the Japanese name for them? For chopsticks?

Xania and I got a taxi.

“You go in first. Sit down with the Dispatcher if he’s already there. If not, wait for him. I’m only going to shoot the sonofabitch after he pays you the other half.”

The restaurant was surrounded by glass, and from the street I could see what was going on inside. It was six p.m. and beginning to get dark. The Niraki was empty. The Dispatcher hadn’t arrived yet. Xania sat down at a table.

It crossed my mind that the Dispatcher might not show up. After I’d waited for fifteen minutes that seemed like fifteen hours, he finally showed up. He arrived in a large chauffeur-driven car and went into the Niraki.

The Dispatcher sat down at Xania’s table, and after they exchanged a few words he handed her an envelope. I entered quickly and shot him twice in the head. I’ve already said that I always shoot for the head. The fucker had his back to me and never even saw me.

I looked at Xania, who looked back at me and saw what was going to happen. I felt bad and hesitated a little, but I did what had to be done. The two collapsed on top of each other.

The Dispatcher had made me kill two women, and I hate killing women. I pressed the pistol against his face and opened a large hole where his nose had been. The fucker would need to have a closed-coffin funeral.

The waiters looked at me in horror.

I left, went to the Dispatcher’s car, and knocked on the window. The driver opened the glass, and I put two bullets in him, in the head like always.

Afterward, I went to the apartment I’d just rented, shaved off my beard, threw the glasses into the trash. The Portuguese tenant was no more.

I put on a beret and went back to my old place. The Luger and the tray were still on the table. I needed to make plans for a trip, but I was tired and it could wait till the next day. I lay down and slept badly.

It was a relief when day began to dawn.