There is a certainty of imminent death brought on by having the barrel of a gun pressed to your temple. I'm on good speaking terms with death, and I don't believe in the cliche of your life flashing before your eyes. I do believe in the weakening of your bowels and also that you might have enough time to regret the decisions that have brought you to the point of death. Exhausted, injured, and utterly without options I pondered on the fact that the whole reason I was in this mess was because one man couldn't follow the rules.
If you try to look up "Lucas Moon" in the phone book, you won't find me there. Certainly there could be some other guy that shares a name with me, and maybe he's in the phone book, but none of my cell phones are listed. I don't keep a Yellowpages ad saying "Professional Hitman, specializes in the supernatural". You want an ad open for the public, I hear there's a guy in Chicago who might fit the bill for you. You want to contact me? It's not easy.
I don't object to taking on jobs. I'm not burdened by a conscious that regrets what I do for a living. Everyone has something that they excell at, and a lucky few are able to translate that natural talent into something that can provide them with money. For me, it's killing. I was born to be a killer, a predator walking among the lambs. It's instinct, it's pleasure, and if I didn't channel it the way I do I hate to think what kind of monster I'd be.
Because I'm good at killing, especially at killing the things that fall "beyond the norm", I'm able to command a high price for my services. I have a stable body of regular customers that manage to keep my schedule relatively full. Some of you may be horrified of that thought, but frankly violence is in our natures, just most of us can't bring ourselves to act on it. Even those institutions held as "good" or "pure" have need to remove someone from this earthly coil on occasion. One of my regular customers is the Church. Yes, the one in Rome. I doubt the Pope has ever seen a line item on the budget that describes paying a hit man, but the checks always cash.
I have strict rules regarding setting up a meeting with me. When you make a name for yourself in this business you run into two main dangers. First, you make enemies who will want to see you dead. Second, there's always some new up-and-comer looking to make a name for themselves by taking out the business's celebrities. With so many people gunning for you, it becomes natural to just assume that you are in someone's crosshairs at any given time. This isn't paranoia, it's just the dangers of the profession, like torrid sex affairs are a danger for politicians and TV elevangolists. My rules are in place to minimize the risks to both myself and my potential clients. All of my regulars understand and accept my rules.
My first rule is simple: You never schedule an appointment with me. I don't answer my phone, I don't have an answering service that keeps a copy of my calander. You want to reach me, you contact a phone number that always go voice mail. You leave details about yourself, and I contact you with a when and a where. This offers me the chance to research any new clients that have been referred to me by my regulars. Lowers the chance of an ambush or being hired for a job that is really a trap. I maintain multiple cell phones, each kept in a safety deposit box at a different bank. When the voice mail gets a message it sends a text message to the phone I keep at my house. I check it once a day, leaving it on only for as long as I need to in order to retrieve missed call messages, and then I visit the phones in question with fresh batteries and listen to the voice mails.
My second rule is also simple: If you're not one of my regular clients, you go through a test. This allows me to see if you can follow simple directions. The test also proves that you have the means to pay my fees, by checking to see if you can handle a down payment. To that end, new clients that have passed my screenings get told to drop a briefcase full of cash at a location and walk away. That simple. If they can handle doing that, and can afford the amount I set, which is a minimum of twenty thousand, then I contact them a second time with the location where we will meet, usually thirty minutes before I want to meet. Failure to follow my rules gets you fleeing in terror and a loss of a briefcase full of cash, with no meeting to show for it. Call it a penalty fee.
Regular customers don't go through this. They've already proven they can follow the rules. They get their own private cell phone number to contact when they want to hire me, and typically can get a meeting arranged almost as soon as I've received their message. That's one of the benefits of being a reliable customer, excellent customer service, and a hit man who likes doing business with you.
My new potential client had been refered to me by Marcus Gioni, who isn't the head of the crime families in the city, but he's the lieutenant who will inherit them. The referal had turned out to be an accountant who double as a mouse of a man. I had decided to set him up for the payment test for two reasons. The first was because I didn't want to anger a regular customer who had sent several good jobs my way. The second was because I couldn't fathom what this guy could want with a hit man whose reputation was centered around taking out supernatural creatures.
I arranged for him to drop the money at a construction yard at one in the morning. No lights, no witnesses, and plenty of high places for me to watch how well the mouse followed my rules. I had arrived early and taken a perch high enough to observe his action without risking his noticing me. The moon was half way to being full and hidden behind a patch of clouds.
The mouse, his real name was Arthur Cranshaw, arrived promptly on time and took the briefcase over to the barrel I had indicated as the drop point. I watched as he looked around the barrel, inside it, and then scanned the surrounding area. I waited for him to put the case inside the barrel and leave, just like I'd told him to. And waited. And then still waited. Arthur Cranshaw seemed to have failed to understand what "put the money in the barrel and leave" meant. Instead he was clutching the briefcase to his chest and looking around like he expected me to magically appear.
After half an hour I was annoyed. Forty-five minutes of waiting made me angry. After an hour the moon had come out and I was livid. I'd had time to study Arthur Cranshaw, and my impression of him hadn't changed. He had a small nose, a hairline that had fled long ago, and wire-framed glasses. His glasses were comically large, and I couldn't help but compare him to the Disney mouse. He was slightly overweight, the danger of a desk job, and he didn't look comfortable in his suit, possibly because it must have been purchased when his waistline was smaller. But the most important thing about him was that he was still standing there and not following my rules.
It was around 2:30 in the morning when Mr. Arthur Cranshaw finally did something that set me off. Apparently the fact that he had been standing around for over an hour waiting me to make an appearance I had no intention on making wasn't good enough for him. He must not have felt like a complete fool, because without warning he starte to call out, "Mr. Wolfman! Mr. Wolfman, are you there?"
Let's get this straight. I didn't come up with the name. I hate people calling me it. At one point a man named Gus who works at my favorite pizza parlor decided to use it as a joke. Unfortunately a sleezebag that works for Gioni overheard him, and the name spread like wildfire. I've made a concentrated effort on letting everyone I can know that referring to me as "the Wolfman" was a good way to end up holding your intesitines in your hands.
"Mr. Wolfman, I have the money like you asked."
That was it. I couldn't take it anymore.
I leaped down from my perch and stormed toward Cranshaw, determined to show the mouse what happens when it gets the big bad wolf angry. The problem with playing the part of the big bad wolf is that you have to be angry, and when you're angry you make mistakes.
Like breaking your own rules.
I didn't bother with stealth. I didn't bother with trying to make myself look scary, because you can never do as good a job as what you naturally do when you're furious beyond all belief.
Cranshaw wasn't a heavy man. Even with during the daytime of the new moon I could have picked the guy up with little effort on my part. With the moon waxing half full and feeding my strength I could have launched him past the roof. I settled for slamming him into the nearest girder with one hand, tearing the briefcase away from him with my other hand. His head slammed into the girder with an audible "clang" and I smelled the strong scent of urine. His glasses flew from his face and happened to land right next to my foot. Stepping on them was a sheer coincidence too, I promise you. If I had enough time I'd "coincidence" him into the hospital.
I got my face up close with his, let him feel the heat of by breath as I snarled at him. He must have been far-sighted, because he didn't seem to be having any trouble seeing me right now. I could see the reflection of my yellow eyes in his own. I bared my teeth so that as many of them showed as possible. My teeth are pointier than most people's. baring them at someone tends to get the desired effect.
"Is English not your first language? I gotta speak French, maybe Spanish, to get you to understand? 'Mettez l'argent dans le baril et partez'? 'Ponga el dinero en el barril y váyase'? Do you understand now?" His bladder betrayed him again.
"I... I don't understand, I thought we had a meeting Mr. Wolf- grrck!" He stopped talking because I had dropped the briefcase and grabbed his throat, shutting off his windpipe. My nails were digging into his flesh.
"Don't. Call. Me. That." I barely even spoke at a whisper. I'd narrowed my eyes, and my nose was almost touching Cranshaw's as I kept tightening my grip on him. Cranshaw was starting to turn interesting shades of blue and purple.
"Gack, gurk!" He managed to get out.
I have excellent hearing, beyond what anyone would expect possible. I heard the click of the bolt action of the rifle closing. My anger drained from me instantly as my survival instinct kicked in. I threw Cranshaw to one side as I dove to the other. Maybe the shooter would get confused and hit him by mistake. Maybe he'd just be surprised and slip on squeezing the trigger a fraction of a second. I didn't really care so long as the end result was that I avoided a bullet wound. This all assumed that I had correctly predicted where the shot would be coming from based on the direction of the sound of the click. For all I knew, I could be leaping into an even better position for the shooter to hit me.
The bullet didn't hit either of us, though it took a large chunk of the ground out. I landed in a roll, my eyes darting back and forth as I tried to pick out where the shooter was. I noticed Cranshaw land in a heap some distance away, sucking in large amounts of air. I also noticed that the briefcase of money was only a few feet from where the bullet had impacted. If I wanted some profit out of this exchange, I was going to need to put myself back into position to take a bullet in the head.
I should have known. Whenever someone breaks the rules, something bad happens. It's the universal rule. And it never gets broken.
