The Hitman's Last Job Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t allowed to go,” she sighed.
    “ But you wanted to I take it?”
    “ Always wanted to study anthropology, call it a pipe dream I
dunno….” she looked away awkwardly.
    “ Hey you’re still a kid! You’ll get yourself back to school
someday,”
    “ I hope so…. but stop changing the subject. I can tell you’re
hiding something you’re bursting to talk about. Your eyes betray
you,”
    “ Well….” Carl didn’t have to tell her but he thought he’d like
to. “You just remind me of someone I use to know,”
    “ Oh yeah? Like an old girlfriend?”
    “ Kinda….”
The truth was
that she couldn’t have been more like Eileen unless she was her
ghost. Pale and curvy with red hair, he used to have a crush on her
when they were neighbours as children. She was the quintessential
girl next door, all smiles and flirtatious chatter. Carl and she
used to meet up on their front lawns and wile away the summers
together listening to classic rock on the radio and eating ice
cream. They even found a novel way to get drunk. Raiding their
parents’ liquor cabinets they’d freeze vodka in Popsicle holders
and tell everyone it was lemonade. But they didn’t have to lie
because her parents never asked. They didn’t care whether she drank
or not.
Behind the
closed doors of idyllic suburban life Eileen hid a dark and violent
secret. Only her bruises told Carl the story and each day he saw
her, another one would be added to her collection. Her father, who
looked not too dissimilar to Thomas Martin, was a brute. An
alcoholic and ex-Vietnam veteran, he ran his home like a prison
camp. And he obviously had little trust in women, as he brought his
fists down on his wife and daughter at even the slightest hint of
disobedience.
Eileen never
said a word though, and Carl never asked. But he desperately wanted
her to explain everything. It wasn’t like he didn’t care. He was
just emotionally ill equipped and too young to articulate that he
wanted to help. Often at night he’d lie in bed and look across at
the house next door.
But one night
he didn’t get to sleep and the pleasant dreams never came. Instead
sirens alerted him to the fact that he was too late. If he’d only
made his dreams come true one night earlier everything would be ok.
He watched in silent tears from the darkness of his bedroom as they
took Eileen’s body away. Her father said it was an accident, a
mistake.
In a moment of
drunken anger he’s struck her hard, and she’d lost her balance.
Stumbling into the fireplace she’d hit her head against the cold
marble and died. Carl’s father tried to claim that it was a fluke
accident, a one in a million chance, there was nothing he could
have done, but he knew better. Luckily, the judge disagreed.
    Here in the motel he looked to the flaming, red hair of Anna
and knew that he’d done the right thing. She was his Eileen and this time
he’d made her dreams come true.
    “ You’ve drifted away in thought again,” Anna smiled. “Do you
always do that?”
    “ No, I don’t think so,”
    “ Maybe it’s your pain meds?”
    “ Maybe….I dunno,”
    “ Why do you take those anyway?” she asked with genuine
concern.
    “ My back… It got hurt real bad when I was on tour,”
    “ In Afghanistan?
    “ Yuh….”
    “ What happened?”
    “ I’ll tell you sometime,”
    There’ll be a sometime…. Anna
thought. I guess that means he won’t kill
me….not too soon anyway .
They lay in
silence for a long while, just listening to the television and
resting. Anna didn’t know if there was a protocol for a hitman the
morning after. What were they supposed to do? She wanted to know
more about the Mob, to know more about this mysterious man… but she
also didn’t.
    “ So you know why my father had to die?”
Carl rolled
over to face her. “Cops pulled him over drunk and he had mob money
in his car,”
    “ Oh…. It almost seems too tame,”
    “ What do you mean?”
Anna rolled to
face away into the