I sat down at my desk and opened up my decade-old laptop, hitting the power button and waiting for it to whirr to life. The air around me was thick with smoke as I put my cigarette butt into an old beer can and scooted forward, scratching the old metal stool against the dirty cement floor. Car parts and rusty tools littered my desk, and as the log-in screen of my computer illuminated the dark room I rummaged through my desk to find a note-pad. As I typed in my password I knew it would be another few minutes before my laptop would be ready to use, so I stood up and wandered to the bar fridge I kept in my shop. I grabbed a cold beer and struck up another smoke and peered out the small window of the garage doors. The parking lot remained devoid of life; in fact it only held death. Rain pattered down onto the old rusty cars and scrap metal, and one lone street light illuminated the lot, not that there was anything else to see for miles other than trees and abandoned warehouses which had remained vacant for years. This small business was a front: I was a different kind of mechanic.
As I took one final drag from my cigarette I turned around and wandered back into my office, hitting my shin off of a trailer hitch from a decrepit Corolla that I had been working on for a couple days. "Shit," I hissed, looking down to see a tear in my jeans and a small amount of blood seeping out, "Ray, you idiot, wouldn't hurt to turn a goddamn light on every once in a while," I muttered to myself. I went into the office, put my smoke out, and went to grab the first aid kit from a nearby cupboard. I took off my boots and pants and took out a piece of gauze and some medical tape as I heard my laptop ding, alerting me to a recent e-mail. I cleaned my small cut, bandaged myself up, and then turned my attention to the screen, opening the new message.
Mechanic needed: Tegan Quin, female, musician, will be staying in a brown and grey tour bus the night of the 18th outside the Foxx bar downtown, funds transferred.
-JL
"Fuck," I muttered. I hated when my jobs were girls. My computer dinged again, and I opened up the newest message, alerting me that a transfer of $3000 had been accepted into my bank account. Three grand. I'd done hits for less than three grand before, but as my skills developed over the years I had started to charge at least five, sometimes up to fifteen grand depending on how hard the hit was going to be, how high profile the target was, and how much my clients could afford. Normally I'd meet with clients face-to-face, well, they wouldn't see me as I'd remain shrouded in the darkness of whatever back-alley in which we'd decided to rendez-vous, but this client has given me virtually nothing to go on. I usually liked to know how someone had heard of my services, why they wanted someone taken out, and I required insurance, usually something that could be used as blackmail, to ensure that my clients didn't snitch. This situation was less than ideal.
"Tegan Quin, and a musician, at that" I started mumbling to myself as I scribbled the sparse details down in my notebook. "Who are you, Tegan Quin? And why does JL want you dead?"
I opened up my browser and looked her up in my favourite search engine. Shit, she was gorgeous, and in a band with her twin sister. "Tegan and Sara Quin," I read aloud, "lesbian twin duo performs at the Oscars."
I looked at some pictures, read some bios, and my mind was running a mile per minute.
"Moral dilemmas, moral dilemmas..." I stammered. I grabbed my leather jacket and put it on, along with my pants and work boots. I walked to the back of the shop and opened the steel door, hinges screeching from years of rust and zero maintenance. The rain fell from the sky in buckets, and I put my hood over my shoulder-length brown hair, and started walking into the smallish scrap-yard out back, full of the carcasses of once loved automobiles, boats, trailers, trucks, passing row upon row of rusted metal deathtraps as mud splashed all over my boots and pants. I reached the back of the yard and hopped up into an old decaying war-time plane, and pulled down my hood now that I was out of the rain. Raindrops splattered all over the metal carcass, echoing loudly and violently in my ears. I reached to my left and felt my flashlight hanging from a piece of twine on a hook in the side of the hull, and pulled it off, smacking it a few times when it didn't turn on at once. As it flickered to life, I looked down the tubular hull of the plane and saw my old, red, indestructible Snap-On toolbox sitting at the back. I walked back towards it, using the light to ensure that I didn't trip and fall over the copious loose straps and nets littering the floor, and approached it with excitement. I crouched down to the floor, putting the butt-end of the flashlight between my teeth, and slowly slid out the bottom shelf. In it were my tools, the tools I used for my real job, the tools I used to kill. Two unregistered pistols, silencers, ammo, and my personal favourite, an incredibly common and mediocre Browning pocketknife, that if ever found at the scene of a crime, could be nearly untraceable considering how many hunters in the area had similar ones. I grabbed it and put it in my pocket, and carefully slid the drawer shut.
I walked back through the scrap-yard and the rain had started to get even more intense, thunder threatening to crack the sky in half as I became thoroughly drenched and cold. I ripped open the steel door and kicked my boots to the side, turned off the flashlight and discarded it, along with my coat, on the floor.
"What am I going to do about you, Tegan Quin?" I thought aloud, though I already knew what I was going to do. I walked to the office, deleted the messages, and turned off my laptop, grabbing my pack of smokes and heading upstairs to my apartment. As I got upstairs I turned on my lights to my small living room and plopped down on my couch. I took the knife from my pocket and I flicked open the blade, running my dirty calloused fingers across it, working up a plan in my head.
Someone paid me three thousand dollars to kill Tegan Quin, a high-profile musician, a wonderfully attractive female musician, who had a twin sister to boot. I can't kill a twin, that's a new level of messed up, and I definitely can't kill this girl for a measly three grand; I had plenty of money and I would not be desperate for quite a while. The fact is that I am bored. I haven't had a job in three weeks and I miss the rush. I twirled the knife in my hand, looking at my reflection in the blade. My eyes were a striking green, and my hair was a greasy disaster. I put the knife down and ran my fingers through it, deciding that a shower and a good night's sleep would help me devise a proper plan.
I walked to my bathroom and turned on the water, waiting for it to become warm enough to enter. I stripped off my damp flannel shirt, my drenched jeans, and stood in my underwear and sports bra waiting for the water to heat up. I brought my leg up onto my toilet and peeled off the bandage I had applied earlier, deciding that I should probably clean my wound in the shower. As I stepped beneath the water and felt it cascade down my skin, I smiled to myself. Tomorrow night I was going to the Foxx, and I was going to figure out why someone wanted Tegan Quin dead.