The Fine Print
A Killing Machine Story
Hi, Friends!
I’ve got something different for you today.
I’ve decided to experiment with the format of this newsletter, so I’ll be posting a short story every Thursday for the next three months, starting today. My regular posts about upcoming books, stories, and events will still come out on the occasional Tuesday, and I’ll label each of these Thursday stories with the subheading “A Killing Machine Story,” so you’ll be able to tell the difference.
While cleaning up my computer I ran across an old writing challenge I set for myself and I thought it might be interesting to turn it into a new writing challenge. Many years ago I would drive my wife back and forth to work, and each Monday morning in the car I’d ask her to name an object, any object.1 Then I’d come home and write a short story incorporating that object. It was a way to get my creative juices flowing for the week and a way to motivate myself to sit at my desk and get work done.
I (we) did that for about three months before I had to stop and concentrate on finishing my first novel.2 But I wrote a dozen of those stories, and I got a solid start on another handful. All of them involved a hitman named George Coleman3 who never carried a gun or any weapon that could be traced back to him. He improvised, using whatever he could find at the scene of the crime to carry out his contracts. Whatever object my wife suggested was the thing George eventually used as a weapon.
George also had a strict ethical code of sorts. If he took your money, he killed the person you asked him to kill, but only that person. He avoided collateral damage at all costs.
These stories were pretty obviously influenced by Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake, but there’s some Patricia Highsmith4 in George’s DNA, too. George started off as a brutal guy, a loner, but the more I worked with him, the sadder and more complicated he became, and the messier his perfectly ordered life became. The tone of the stories shifted as they built on one another. So if you like this story, great! Thank you! But if you don’t, maybe give the next one a try? George might grow on you, at least a little. He certainly grew on me, which is why I’ve decided to share these with you.
One more thing. I’m working without an editor here, which scares me. So I’m leaning on my wife, who has always been my first reader and who, after twenty-five years of marriage,5 doesn’t pull any punches or soften her critiques to preserve my fragile ego. If there’s something here that doesn’t quite work for you it’s because I ignored her advice.
So here we go. First up is “The Fine Print,” in which we meet George Coleman and learn a bit about his peculiar (and very violent) worldview…
THE FINE PRINT
George Coleman rose at precisely six o’clock every morning and ate two eggs, sunny side up. He took a shower and washed his hair with two squirts of shampoo. He cleaned his shoes and tapped them twice on the floor before putting them on. He set aside half an hour to clean his apartment and wash his breakfast dishes before walking three blocks to the doughnut shop on Truman Boulevard and ordering a cup of black coffee, which he carried to a booth at the back of the dining room. The same booth every day. Like clockwork.
Isaac was waiting for him today. George slid into the booth across from him and drank his coffee while Isaac ate a doughnut. They were not friends. George had no friends. When a new assignment came in for George, Isaac appeared at the doughnut shop and handed over the details of the job, then George went away and did the job. George’s fee was wired to a bank in Akron, Ohio, a city he had never visited, and Isaac moved the money around. They had never met one another outside the doughnut shop.
Isaac slid an envelope across the table. “Another cheating husband,” he said. “Nothing special.”
George pocketed the envelope, stood without a word, and left the shop, tossing his empty coffee cup in a bin beside the door.
***
Paige Brewster sat up in bed, breathing hard, her nightmare already fading from memory. It was unseasonably warm and the bedroom windows were open. An owl hooted, and something scrabbled at the window screen before buzzing away. A man stood in the bedroom doorway.
“Please,” Paige whispered. She bunched a thin sweat-damp sheet under her chin. “I changed my mind.”
Bruce snorted in his sleep and rolled over.
The man at the door sighed and adjusted an acrylic glove on his left hand, pinching it between his thumb and index finger. His silvery hair glowed blue in the light of a neon sign outside the window. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. His voice was so low she wasn’t sure he had actually spoken.
“You can keep the money,” she said.
“I will. But I can’t take money I haven’t earned.”
“I’m telling you, you don’t have to do it now.”
“We have a contract,” he said.
Paige laughed, a wet rattle somewhere deep in her chest. It surprised her.
“People break contracts all the time,” She said. “We never signed anything.”
The man ignored her and moved farther into the room. Paige tried to catch her breath, tried to focus on the man’s bland expressionless face, tried to think of a way to appeal to him. It occurred to her that she might still be asleep, but there was nothing dreamlike about the room, the bare yellow walls where she and Bruce had argued about what to hang and had subsequently hung nothing at all, the textured ceiling she stared at every night, imagining shapes within its random patterns: the witch, the friendly dog, the gingerbread house that was also an upside-down bird if she turned her head. The table on Bruce’s side of the bed held an alarm clock, a short stack of magazines, a lamp with a heavy base and a faded yellow shade. Beneath the table was Bruce’s small black safe. She had never known the combination.
The man circled to the other side of the bed where Bruce softly snored. The man glanced at the safe, then reached for the lamp.
“You can give the money back,” the woman said. “I mean, you could do that, right? You said we have a contract, but that would, um…” She wiped her nose on the sheet and squared her shoulders, leaning toward him as if they were in a conference room negotiating the fine print. As if she weren’t in her pajamas. “That would nullify it. If no money’s exchanged, the contract gets nullified. That’s right. That’s how it works.”
“I say how it works, ma’am,” he said. “And I don’t issue refunds.”
“But things are okay now. Bruce and I made up. After I hired you he promised he was done with her and we’re going to counseling.”
“You don’t get to change your mind about a thing like this. It’s the same as catching a train. Once the train’s moving, you’re on it or you’re not.” The man removed the yellow lampshade and set it on the table.
“Wait!”
Bruce finally woke up. He blinked at Paige, then up at the man.
“What’s this?” He came fully awake and sat up, scooted away from the man, closer to Paige.
“Change the contract,” Paige held up her hand, as if to ward the man off. With her other hand she grabbed Bruce’s shoulder. “I’ll pick a different person. Would that fit your rules? I get it, you took the money so you have to kill someone. That’s your idea of a contract, but what if you don’t kill him? What if I give you a different name, someone else you can kill instead?”
The man hesitated. Something flickered behind his eyes. Or maybe it was the sign blinking blue outside the window.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Kill me?” Bruce looked back and forth between them. Spit had crusted in the corner of his mouth.
“It was before,” she said. Some panicky animal was hollowing an escape tunnel beneath her ribs. She could talk them out of this situation if she could settle that animal down, if she could keep Bruce quiet. “Let me think of somebody.”
“You hired someone to kill me?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Bruce pushed her away and stared up at the man. “She hired you to kill me?”
“A new contract then,” the man said.
“Really?” Paige said. “I can pick someone else?”
“Give me a name.”
“Her,” Bruce said. “Kill Paige.”
The animal clawed its way up Paige’s throat. “What?”
“How much did she pay you?” Bruce said. “She doesn’t even have a job.”
The man said a number.
“Holy hell, that’s a lot,” Bruce said. “That’s my money she gave you.”
“Bruce,” Paige said.
“You used my own money to get me killed,” Bruce said. “Mine! I earned that money while you were sitting around getting fat.”
He jabbed a finger at the bisected shape beside their bed, half blue, half unseeable.
“That means I’m your client,” Bruce said.
The man sighed. The curtains moved.
“Yeah, you work for me now,” Bruce said. “Not her, me.”
Paige could see her husband warming to the idea, his eyes narrowing, his nostrils flaring, taking charge of the room the way he did every room. She remembered now why she had gone to that awful old man at the donut shop.
The man turned the lamp over in his hands. “I’m sorry, but I have to make a decision.”
“I’ll double what she paid you,” Bruce said. “That work for you, big guy?”
Bruce held his palms out, nothing to worry about, we’re all friends here. He pointed at the safe and slipped out from under the sheet, knelt on the floor and punched a number into the keypad. Paige’s tongue felt too big for her mouth. She wished she could take control back from Bruce, to reaffirm the original contract. She wished she could offer the shadowy man whatever he wanted, anything he wanted, but money always won out and she had given him all she had.
“Congrats,” Bruce said. Still squatting, he held out a stack of bills bound with a paper band. His damp underwear was bunched below his waist. “You just doubled your payday, pal.”
“Thank you,” the man said. “This clears things up.”
He brought the base of the lamp down on Bruce’s skull. Bruce fell forward against the table, knocking the magazines to the floor. The alarm clock buzzed once and went silent. The man hit Bruce again, then leaned back to avoid arterial spray.
Someone was screaming, and it took Paige a moment to realize it was her own voice she heard. The man moved efficiently around the end of the bed. He swung the bloody lamp at her face.
***
The woman stopped screaming and slumped against the headboard. The base of the lamp cracked in two and fell apart in George’s hands. He dropped it and felt for a pulse in the woman’s throat. Her heart beat twice, then stopped. She glared up at him with one lifeless eye.
George went back around the end of the bed and made sure the man was dead.
There was more money in the open safe, but George left it there. He’d been paid twice what he’d expected and he had done two jobs for two clients in a single night. That was enough.
It had been a complicated transaction, but no rules had been broken.
There you go. If you like this story and/or subsequent Killing Machine stories, I hope you’ll share, comment, and (even if you didn’t care for it) let me know what you thought.
Let’s try this again next week.
I hope you’re doing well. Take care of yourselves and others.
Your friend,
Alex
After the first couple of weeks, she started asking her coworkers to pitch in, so I had multiple objects to choose from, but most of them were office supplies.
The Yard.
Named after two actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, George Raft and Ronald Coleman.
I’m a big fan of The Talented Mr Ripley (and its four sequels). There’s a surprising number of great film and TV adaptations, too, including Ripley and Ripley’s Game. (Tom Ripley’s been portrayed on screen (so far) by Matt Damon, John Malkovich, Andrew Scott, Dennis Hopper, Alain Delon, and Barry Pepper. Amazing!) Anyway, Highsmith’s in my personal pantheon of the best authors. Give her a read if you haven’t already.
Twenty-five?!? Wow!
Great idea for a hitman! It also leads to a potential conflict: what if nothing suitable is handy?
Looking forward to future installments!
Finally getting to read these and I am SO excited that you're posting short fiction here!! 🎉 What a treat!!