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“Her uncle was in direct contact with Henry. Why do you think he keeps a stash of burn phones here? She knew right where they were and he’s not the kind of guy to meet us during the normal course of business. He’s been running off-book for a while. Get yourself another phone and give us the number.”
“Why?” asked Pretty Little Thing, but Giant already had his knife out and was heading to where the burner phones were kept.
“Because Rachel was probably in on it and you will need to leave that phone turned off. Only turn it on to check messages and make a quick call” Giant instructed.
“And only do that at a location with at least three different major exits, preferably having no security cameras” continued Slim.
“Little girl” began Stretch in his charmer voice. “We don’t have time to teach you everything they teach in the training program, but you need to know all of it now. This situation is six inches from sideways. Old Timer is correct. If there is a fourth system and it has an assignment log which we unwittingly violated, we are all just as fucked as he.”
Giant had the phone on and made four copies of the number on more stickies. This time he put the sticky pad and pen in his pocket. Grabbing the garbage back of toilet paper he said “Let’s go.”
“Do I even want to know what the toilet paper is for?” she asked.
“When in New York!” we responded in unison.
“Oh God” she said in disgust. “Which subway station so I don’t use that one?” she queried.
“Beats me?” I responded. “Just work late or go out for supper. Your clothes should be here soon.”
With that we left.
Yes, we hopped that elevated platform the Acrobats had found and paid our respects to New Yorkers in true New York fashion then we walked all the way back to the office building and had supper in a place less than a block away. No, it wasn’t a Mexican place. Yes, I had cod fish. Staying alive in this game is all about not giving a shit. The Acrobats have figured that out. Too many of the young-lings don’t. We, the older mechanics, especially those of us old enough to remember being called mechanics, call the young-lings condoms. They are used once and disposed of properly.
It’s not a business model, it’s a business need. They are all Jason Borne during the training. They even hold up well when ordered to kill a defenseless captive in a training facility. Some of them even make it past the follow on course where the cleaners make them do a clean of that very body. Acid washing the flesh away in an acid resistant tub sack. Washing the bones then either grinding them to be spread on a gravel road somewhere or using a mortar and pestle to turn the bones into powder which can easily be dumped ahead of a rain or into wet concrete without causing any deformity years later.
Just don’t ever look into the tub sack while it is going on, especially without goggles. Forget the psychological issues. The vapors from that process will take your eyeballs in under a second.
Oh, you don’t need to know any of that stuff to do my job. In fact I never went through that particular training. Other than some hand to hand kill training and some advanced marksmanship work, both of which came years later in my career, I never got any training. It was a simpler time then. I suspect the board of directors was smaller and their financial appetite easily sated by the money from killing drug dealers, both the pay we got and the money we took.
Stretch pulled me back to Earth. “Old Timer. Are you with us?”
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