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Young Writers Society



1,000 Ways to Kill

by Evangelina


Chapter One

“What the hell,” barked Perez, “I thought I said fast and clean, I thought I told you to make it a quickie? It was nice and easy, Bridget, nice and fucking easy. The easiest job I gave you. You fucked it up alright, big damn mess you made.”

It was Sunday morning, and Manalao Perez sat in a small, wire-framed chair with green vinyl, staring at a small, scrawny woman sitting opposite of him, leaning against a life-sized portrait of a horse with faded lettering. They were in a corner of a small café, San Franciscan, some little thing called Café Très. The place was littered with people; men and women waiting in line to snatch up almond rings, kids sipping tall glasses of orange juice and whining to their parents who dipped baguette into large saucers of coffee and hot chocolate. He wondered what it’d be like to suddenly discharge a large gun from his waistcoat pocket, a Desert Eagle maybe. He relished the thought of the frightened faces of the crowd, the stunned silence that would ensue, the power, God, the power he would have.

He dumped the idea. Killing innocent civilians wasn’t his job, fun or not. Besides, he’d rather be the hunter. It’d be too easy, to simple, gunning down a busy café full of boring people who led boring lives. He’d much rather catch and trap, cat-mouse style, someone whose intelligence measured at least half of his. Oh, lord, the fun of it. Following twisted paths, his foot hitting the metal of his Mustang, flooring the damn thing, the California air pushing back his hair. That was what he liked. Then of course, the catching. That was the best part.

“Calm down, Manny,” Clara Morales said, casually crossing her legs. She hated it when people cussed continually. It was a breach of manners, every word a pop that zipped its way down into her brain. She thought it was lack of values.

Ha, like she had the right to judge. She spent five years, almost six, always being where she wasn’t supposed to be, breaking rules not meant to be broken. Her life was a whirlwind of chaos and unimaginable secrets that she cleared, filed, and destroyed. Well, she had asked for it. She had picked this occupation, this life, hadn’t she? There was no one else to blame for her mistakes, her weaknesses. She was alone in this dark, mysterious world, grinding the beans of justice under her palm like ants on an anthill. She uncrossed her legs, the smooth velvet of the light blue sweatpants rubbing each other with a soft motion.

“Calm down.” She repeated. She didn’t even know why she was saying it. Calm down? It was something a consoling grandmother said to a boy who’d lost his shoe and had run, screaming and crying, to her. Calm down. Manalao Perez calming down, who was she kidding.

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Perez hissed, eying a small girl with dark brown hair, licking white creamy foam off her lips. “Don’t fucking tell me to calm down. We’re in a disaster here Clara, and it’s all because you don’t give a damn about what I say. Who do you think is in charge here? You?” His voice was filled with contempt and scorn.

“I don’t work for you.” Clara matched his tone with icy perfection, pushing a lock of wavy black tendrils away from her hazel eyes. Perez imagined ripping every hair from her head.

“Yeah, but who gets the blame when something goes wrong? Who gets the finger when the plan gets fucked? Me.” He slammed his fist on the table, almost knocking over the plate filled with crusty flakes from the bear’s claw he had been chomping on while waiting for her. A few people looked up, saw the vicious glare that was sent in their direction, and returned to their monotonous motions.

He was right about that, though. If anything happened, a body landed where it wasn’t supposed to be, a bell that rang an alarm to people who should be minding their own business, it all went to Perez. She was only an actress in the whole scheme. Perez was the director, and if Clara didn’t like what she saw, she had the free will to get the out. Well, on the surface at least. She couldn’t get out of her life.

Clara shrugged dismissively, trying to meet Perez’s cold gaze with determination. “The plan isn’t completely trashed. So what if I left a fingerprint? I don’t exist, remember? My name isn’t on any records, nothing. Nada. Zilch. So they got one fingerprint, they can’t trace it to anything. They got no leads, no suspects. They got a dead end and they’ll be chasing their tail down at the office.”

“They got something, is what,” Perez said between gritted teeth. He had no patience for explaining things. “They weren’t supposed to get anything. Those dumbfucks down at LAPD are gonna think they got something, get it? They’re such brainless shits that a fingerprint will make them sniff things out. They sniff long enough they might smell something. You know the saying. A fiber leads to fabric, leads to a carpet, leads to a room. What do you think they’re gonna find in that room? White walls and a fucking sign that reads ‘game over?’ Use your brain for Christ’s sake. What they’re gonna find is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a clue, and if you had done what your job, we wouldn’t be in this shit.”

“So they get all hyped up. So they mess around a little. All we gotta do is lay low for a while and they’ll get tired. I’ve worked there for nine years, Manny, I know how low their IQ is. It’s unbelievable, really. They’ll broadcast it everywhere, how close they are to the murderer, when all they got is a fingerprint. Then they find nothing for a while and decide, case closed, next file.”

“You’d better be right.” Perez said, making an X in the pile of crumbs with his forefinger. “You’d better hope to God your right. In the meantime, get as much information as you can on what the police are doing. I have to head to Wickenburg, got the head of a big-time firm to catch. I’ll be in touch.” He stood up, stuffing his fists in his pockets.

“Arizona, eh?” Clara said, looking up at him through her messy bangs, “I hear it’s hitting the hundreds this weekend.” Perez thought he detected a slight smirk from under her dark lipstick.

“Hot as hell,” he replied, kicking his chair into place and striding off, “and it’s only March! Christ!”

Clara grinned.

+++

Clara sipped her Kirin and sighed. She checked her watch, a small wiry thing that left small marks on her dark skin. It was only one thirty. She stared at the amber glass bottle that sat before her. Drinking before three, typical. That was one con of leading this kind of life. You were bored out of your mind half the time, waiting, sometimes just killing time. Small jobs were rare nowadays, big jobs even more so. Clara figured people liked to do their own jobs now and again. It was thrilling after all, adrenaline-rushed, making tiny veins all over her body pulse. It was invigorating. Death was quite attractive, she had to admit.

The bar was a complete crap-out, a stuffy little place off Fisherman’s Warf. Smelled like oysters and garlic, and something that made her stomach gurgle nauseatingly. She hated fish. The slimy little buggers were so repellent, she couldn’t stand the thought of gulping them down. She stared gloomily out a window a few feet away. It was grey out. It never got blue, it was never too warm or too sunny. Always the grayness, the slight drizzle, the chill that ached your bones.

San Francisco just wasn’t for her. The gloomy weather, all fog and moistness, and the constant buzz of people. You couldn’t even think it was so loud, the entire city hummed with action. It definitely wasn’t for her. She chuckled into her bottle, raising a suspicious look from the barmaid at the counter. She couldn’t choose were to go, she was sent. The Bronx, Cincinnati, Palo Alto, San Francisco…wherever there was a job to be done. She did the deal, got the green, and headed out as soon as she could.

She wondered how she’d gotten this far, sunken down this low. She hadn’t done anything wrong, not really, not by the world’s standards. She had a pretty well paying job, at least a couple grand every deal (before splits). She lived decently. She didn’t have friends or anything, no family she knew of, besides a mentally challenged uncle and her grandfather who was running a small restaurant in Spain. But she got on alright. Better than when she had worked for the LAPD, that was for sure. The long hours, the low-income, the flirtatious eyes of old men in tight suits, oh god, she didn’t need that.

Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she picked it up on the first ring. “Hello?” she asked in a disguised voice, much deeper and with a clipped, almost Eastern accent. You could never be too careful, she thought.

“Knock it off, Clara, it’s me.” Perez’s voice was staticy. He must have already hopped on the highway. “I got some bad news.”

“Already?” she asked, startled. She checked her watch again. “It’s only been four hours!”

“I know, I know,” Perez said gruffly, his voice cracking over the bad connection. “Don’t give me shit. I got a job for you in Des Moines.”

“Iowa?” She asked with undisguised disbelief, “You’re sending me to Iowa?”

“I told you, don’t give me shit. This is an opportunity for you to get away as my men fix up the little mess you left in the LAPD. I got Adamson to file into the homicide department. You should be grateful.”

“Adamson?” she repeated with utter bewilderment.

“You got a hearing problem, Clara?” Perez asked with exasperated annoyance lining his words. “Adamson. He took the twelve-thirty flight from Tijuana. That’s over half an hour ago. He should be there in a few hours.”

Clara shook her head at the idea of Adamson, Bob Adamson, coming up to LA on request. She watched as a line of Kirin trickled from the bottle, now only half full, and drip down onto the edge of the counter. The barmaid, whose name tag read Samantha, quickly wiped it up with a wet towel, staining white linen with brown beer. She mouthed sorry, and received a stern look.

“You still there, Clara?” his voice had raised an octave.

“Still here.”

“Des Moines. I want you on a plane in three hours, chica. It’s a big one, this. Almost ten grand, all arms covered.”

“Good price,” she muttered. She was thinking about Adamson, about his muscled body of perfection, the bright green eyes that had stared into her for long periods of tensioned time, the soft hands, a pick-pocket’s, able to slip behind her neck and touch her back gently. Adamson, whom she had shared three glorious years of battling with drug-warlords, taking out those who came short, filling in the gaps with private intimacies. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to feel what she felt.

“Damned good price,” broke in Perez. “You get the details when you reach farmland. I’ll give you the number to the place I’m heading for. A Motel 6 off the I-17. I’m on the road now, and I’ll get there in a couple. Head for a bank in Des Moines, America 1st, the big tan one with a wooden rooster in the front. You can’t miss it.” Perez hung up the phone.


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188 Reviews


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Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:32 pm
Evangelina says...



Thanks for checking it out! I've decided to dump it...




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Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:28 am
Misty wrote a review...



I read it!
All I can say is...infodump! Okay, and The Godfather reincarnated. The biggest issue with this story is that we've seen it before...in fact we've seen it many times, and you don't do it any better, so we're not interested. The conversation, I suppose, is believable. Where is the human element in your characters? There is nothing that makes me relate to them, nothing that makes me care for their situations.

I want to like your story--give me a reason to like it--give your characters fallacies, weaknesses, give me their backgrounds, ages, past loves. Tell me what they love, what they hate, what they truly, truly want.

And let me know when you do, I'd be more than happy to help. ^_^




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188 Reviews


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Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:47 am
Evangelina says...



Yeah, I forgot to add the mature label too.
Um, are you gonna read it?




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Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:34 am
Emerson says...



I upped this to R because it does use the F word a lot more than I think should be PG-13 ^_^





I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
— Pablo Neruda