Generic Action Story VII: Death to Fatty

The CEO of UNILINE sat in his outlandishly expensive desk chair about six feet in front of me. From where I was, I could barely see the top of his graying hair, which was swept back from his face with copious amounts of hair gel; the back of the desk chair was in the way. I knew he wore a charcoal grey pinstripe business suit with matching slacks, a deep blue shirt, and a white handkerchief in the pocket. I was sure that his shoes were polished to a shine, but not from his own hard work. Joseph Delafluer, the CEO, was a greedy man who had never done an honest days’ work in his life; he was corrupted since birth. Before his desk was a small, pious, looking man who seemed to be pleading with the CEO. I couldn’t hear what was being said from my position, but I gathered, from body language, that there was some serious ass kissing going on. Mr. Pious was soon to be Mr. Brown-noser. Welcome to the suck-up-club, buddy; you’re now a life time member.

Eleven other men stood around the large, lavishly decorated office, trying to look innocuous, but failing. Hired muscle just doesn’t ‘blend’ well. I could tell they were all armed; each of them showed the lines around the shoulders that indicated holsters, a few had heavier steps when they moved which showed ankle holsters, and a few were sporting odd lumps in various places meaning there were weapons, of which kind I couldn’t tell, hidden on their bodies somewhere. They were all dressed alike, non-descript business suits and loafers; I’d never been able to run in loafers and I don’t know how they could either. I liked black tennis shoes for my line of work and they weren’t nearly lucky enough to have my job. The eleven men stood around the room in a rough circle, with only a few pieces of furniture between themselves and the center of the room. This was a good thing.

I could feel the vibrations through the window when the boss slammed the solid wood desk with his fist, probably hard enough to fracture something; but that wouldn’t matter soon anyways. He rose from the desk and showed his girth to the world. The man seriously needed to lay off the Twinkies, but who’s going to be the one to bust a multi-millionaire’s bubble? Other than yours truly. The back of his pudgy neck was turning red from the strain that he was putting onto himself, though I don’t know if the strain was from his yelling, his standing up, or just his body weight.

I looked at my watch and quickly calculated that I had to be ready for action in one minute and six seconds. A smile fell across my lips and I went back to studying the office on the other side of the thickly paned window.

The boss was sitting in his chair again, which was good for me, and he was puffing heavily from a cigar. Didn’t he know that tobacco was bad for his health? Fatty was fanning himself with red portfolio that had big black letters saying ‘Ecology Report’ across the top and ‘Confidential’ across the bottom.

I already knew what the report said: their leading factory, somewhere in the Middle East, was spewing toxic waste into the water table, the runoff was killing hundreds of people every week within a hundred mile radius. The small country’s government had given mandates that the waste was to be disposed of properly and UNILINE had repeatedly failed to update its factory and address the waste disposal. Instead, UNILINE had threatened to take their factory to another country, where they would be free to pollute and kill people indiscriminately on their own free will; this would have left more than half of a region’s population jobless and there were no new jobs that didn’t stem from the UNILINE factory. It was really a sick deal, but people do need to eat and, God knows, the best way to get food stems from earning an honest living.

I looked back at my watch - fifteen seconds. I was brimming with excitement. I loved my job.

Mr. Boss threw the report in Mr. Pious’ face and motioned to the goons to take him out. I was hoping this wouldn’t fuck with my plans, but was glad when Mr. Pious started fighting with the goons. He seemed to be a man willing to fight for what he believed, I’m glad that I would be able to let him live. Mr. Pious slammed the report back onto the CEO’s desk and was then summarily wrenched away from the desk. Poor guy was going to have one hell of a headache tomorrow. It also meant that they were all still standing in the room when the first of my two grenades dropped from the air vent in the center of the ceiling. I pushed myself off the window, gripping the rope that I hung from, as the first grenade went off. It was a phosphorous grenade, aka ‘flash-bang’. They’re fun to throw into a field of those fainting goats…not that I’d know.

Before the second grenade was released from the timer I had rigged, I was already smashing through the darkly tinted window, eighty-six stories above busy New York City. The second was a rubber-ball grenade, non-lethal. The goons went down all around the room, and so did Mr. Pious. I was smart and hid behind Mr. Boss-man’s chair. It’s tubby occupant providing convenient and safe cover.

Once the grenades were done, I quickly checked the room to make sure that everyone was down. I grabbed the Ecology Report and stuffed it into my jacket - I’d need it later - and then turned the fat man around in his chair.

He was more than grossly obese: it was more along the lines of obscenely obese or maybe offending-ly obese. Either way, he was the most disgusting creature I’d had the opportunity to kill and I’m glad that by his death I could, at the very least, make the world a more visually pleasing place to live. I didn’t know who to feel sorry for; the men who had suffered through him, or the women who had suffered under him. I looked into his small, beady eyes wide with terror and had to smile. God, I loved my job. I took the loaded .45 that I knew he kept taped underneath his desk and shot him twice in the chest and once in the head.

My business concluded, I turned and jumped out the window. I could feel when the auto-return caught the line and started to pull me back to the roof. It was like being the buckle on your seatbelt as you fling it over your shoulder and the automatic mechanism brings it back to where it started out. If your seat belt was eighty stories off the ground. Luckily it wasn’t that bad, I only had two stories to the top; Mr. Boss was one of the few CEO’s that I’d killed whose offices weren’t on the top floor. I had a quick second to wonder about that again, and then the rope stopped so that I could climb over the edge.

I gathered my quick-release equipment, ran to the top of the elevator shaft and dropped down onto the steel grating beneath me. Closing the hatch, I made sure that I re-locked my entrance from the inside. I didn’t do an amazing stunt, like jump onto the cables, gripping the steel with leather gloves, and slide down to the elevator cab. Instead, I used the ladder.

I went down to the car and stood on the roof, next to an abandoned brief/suitcase. The fucking thing was huge. Into it went all my gear and my coveralls. Before long, I was wearing a nice light grey suit, a cotton white shirt, non-descript loafers, and a steel blue tie. I was dressed to impress and happy I wouldn’t need to run anywhere.

The fire alarm went off, just as planned, and the elevator started to slowly drop to the bottom floor. I slipped into the empty elevator car and closed the lid behind me. The doors opened with relative ease.

Blending in with the other business workers trying to escape the sprinklers, I exited the building and lost myself in the crowded streets of New York City. A few blocks away, I dropped the Ecology report, sealed inside an envelope on its way to Dateline NBC, off at a privately owned postal store. I sent off my own box of goodies while there too.

I took one lesson away from this job: don’t piss off a wealthy and sadistically vengeful Sheik who cares for his subjects.

When I took the job, the Sheik had made two stipulations to my ‘employment’. The first was that the company be humiliated, utterly and completely humiliated. The second was that they were to be destroyed, no one should want their business around. Mission accomplished.

  

A few hours later, I was at JFK International Airport and heading towards my next vacation, Amsterdam! I hated all the happy holiday music playing overhead, the parents rushing their snow-clothe-decked kids into planes heading for the Bahamas, the horrid holiday sweaters that no one should have to look at…the whole bit made me nauseous. As I got into line at security, the TSA were doing their best impression of sexual assault and people heading towards their gates looked pissed.

The agent who came to greet me looked as pleased as I was at his soon to be violation of my space. They ran my ticket through their scanner and then guided me over to the examination area.

It sounded horrible, even to me.

I was expecting much worse, truth be told. I was looking for the blood stained chair with leather restraints, a bucket of rusty nails, and a partridge in a pear tree. As I was getting the Hershey-highway-rundown, I had a moment to think about where I’d go next and then a crack rang out through the concourse and a bullet hit me in the shoulder. The bullet hurt like a bitch, but, just like everyone else, my fight or flight instinct took hold and I ran.

As I ran towards the door, hating the loafers I’d put on in the elevator, more bullets rang out around me. Next to the door I wanted was a small child shaking her shot mother and realized I really didn’t need to use that door.

I slide into a turn that would take me a completely different route. Needless bloodshed was needless, and I am nothing if not efficient. I crouched low and hoped to hell that the mystery person(s) firing at me hadn’t had substantial training. So far, so good.

I headed towards the next exit sign and slammed through it. As I followed the long corridor I examined my shoulder. It had been a small caliber bullet, meant to take out my heart in one blow. He missed. My lucky day. The bullet hadn’t exited and I wasn’t losing too much blood; I could make it out of here. Silently I hoped I was right as I stuffed part of my ripped shirt into the hole to stifle the bleeding. When I saw a red sign declaring “STAIRS”, I slipped through the door next to it and closed it silently. The door I’d used from the concourse opened and I could hear someone banging open each door I’d run past.

I didn’t have much time. I flew down the stairs and to the first floor. Opening another door, I found myself in the belly of the beast with conveyor belts of luggage whizzing past my head. I scanned the area and climbed the conveyor belts to very top; lying as flat and as silent on an unused belt as I could. Again, the door I’d come through open my assailant.

I’ll give it to the guy that was on my ass. He had potential, but not enough skill. Eventually, they found a hole in the fence and assumed the shooter had escaped the locked down airport. Somehow.

While I hid on the belt, I pulled the bullet out with my fingers and then stitched myself up with the thread and ceramic needle I carried in my wallet. Then, spread sugar on it from a small pack out of the same place. It hurt like something worse than a bitch.

As I wait for the frenzy to calm down, I thought about that little girl. Why, I don’t fucking know. I remembered her face; the way her small hands pushed into her mother hopefully, the unsure quality to her voice. Why the hell was I thinking of a little girl anyways? It made me worry I was turning into Pedo-bear.

I thought about how I'd been blown and I wasn't talking about Sherry from eight hours ago. All my loose ends were tied in a neat little bow, all the 't's were crossed and the 'i's were dotted; so where the fuck had it all gone wrong? I didn't know and I wasn't getting any answers in my hidey hole.

After a few hours, I stole a uniform and out the employee entrance. Walking to the front, I hailed a cabbie, gave him fifty bucks, and told him to drive.

  

I’d had the cabbie stop at a bank, whose name shall remain undisclosed, and had him wait outside while I went it. A half hour later, I returned carrying a black duffle bag that contained everything I’d need. Then I told him to head the nearest, and nicest, hotel he knew.

“And step on it.”

He complied.

I checked into the hotel and was happy when I could partially relax. There was someone after me, so I wasn’t all zen and shit, but I was more relaxed than I’d been in at least twenty four hours.

The first thing I did was take a shower. It wasn’t very relaxing. Not when I had to keep half my body out of the warm jets so my stitches didn’t get all gooey.

After the shower, I cleaned my wound with some contents of the retrieved bag, dressed, and then put the stolen uniform and the suit I’d been shot in into a plastic garbage bag. Cleaned, garbed, and feeling only marginally better for it, I sat on the bed and looked through the remaining contents of my emergency stash.

There was a secured cell phone. Untraceable. Disposable. A secured, and durable, computer. Same. A Canadian identity, because no one expects a Canadian, and all the bullshit paperwork that went with it; done better than the CIA’s. And a box of hair dye.

The dye job was annoying as hell, seeing as I did it one handed. It came out rough, but good enough. I wasn’t going for an award in cosmetology, so fuck it.

Knowing that looking for the gunman wasn’t the way out of this mess, I started thinking about the money. The source. So I called Blank. Blank was a last resort call. He had been one of my trainers back in the day. The most loyal guy I’d ever met in this business; also one of the oldest guys I’d ever met in the business.

I pressed the numbers from memory, no use in leaving that kind of information around anywhere someone could find, and a few rings later his gravelly voice came on the other end.

“Mr. Falconé didn’t like the deal you’d brokered. He hired a less reputable man to finish what he wanted for the price he wanted and then sent him after you.”

The line went dead. That was Blank for you; brief. Not that I wanted to sit and chic-chat. I’d rather be hunting.

  

Fourteen hours of driving later, I stood outside another skyscraper; this time I was in The Windy City. A black glass structure loomed overhead at around sixty stories. Men in suits carrying briefcases passed through the doors and into a semi-secured lobby. There were guards watching people and monitors from behind their kiosk and to get to the elevators you needed a pass-card for the turnstiles. It was heading towards closing time, so more people were heading out than in.

If I went in guns blazing, it’d be a quick trip to the big house. If I went in too stealthy… There is no such thing, so stealth it was. I went around the back of the building and slipped in the delivery area while carrying a box from an open truck.

“Put it over there.” Said the foreman as he focused on a clipboard.

I set down the box and headed back towards big rolling doors, but slipped out of sight before I got there. I’d gone shopping earlier and the crisp pair of overalls I had on felt nice and tight over my second suit in so many days. The shoes on my feet weren’t loafers, thank God.

I headed towards a restroom and hopped into the ventilation ducts. Remembering the building plans I’d seen, I headed towards a bathroom near the elevators I wanted to take. Popping down into an empty stall, I slipped out of the coveralls and tossed them into a trash bin on the way out. The business suit I wore was like all the others; darkish in color, crisp, and tailored-looking. The collared shirt was comparatively bright and the tie was dull. Men’s Warehouse had a sale going on. I walked out the nicer restrooms and over to the elevators.

The small group I stood with entered the elevator and I had to stop my inner scamp from pressing all the buttons like a jackass. It was so tempting. I brought my brain back to the job as the box rose and the level’s dinged by.

Everyone had gotten off by the time I came to Mr. Falconé’s floor. I went up to the receptionist.

“Be a good girl and let Mr. F know that his one o’clock is here, dear.” I put on my best British accent that I could muster. I’d fool the Queen herself.

“Um.” She fumbled. “I’m sorry, the Director doesn’t have a one o’clock, Mr…” She trailed off, looking for my name.

“Mr. Hunter, from the research department of MacMoen Corporation.” I’d done my research before coming here. Mr. Hunter might not have existed, but their shell company, MacMoen, did.

“I’ll let him know you’re here if you’d like to take a seat.” She gracefully bowed through the door and reappeared a few moments later. “He’ll see you now.”

As she escorted me through the doors I noticed how nice and thick the walls were. Sound proofing was handy. After introducing me, she stepped back out the doors and left me in another expansive office. The whole place looked sterile and modern, except the splashes of disgusting art on the wall. And here sat another man who thought hired muscle was a necessity. Well, I guess it was.

“Mr. Hunter,” he looked just like I remembered him from the dossier. He was tidy; prim and proper. His graying hair was streaked with bits of white; Bride of Frankestien style. The tailored suit had mother of pearl cufflinks and his shoes were the latest fashion from Paris, or so I’d assume. “What brings you in today?”

“I’ve got that report you wanted from Mr. Takahata.” I spouted a lead researchers’ name, knowing that their departments worked closely.

“Finally.” He said while returned his gaze to his computer screen. His had stretched towards me and his fingers snapped a few times in beaconing. I stopped myself from smiling. No one smiles when beaconed like a dog unless they’re reaching into their jacket to un-holster a .45.

I reached into my jacket and unholstered my .45. The four bodyguards took the only rounds fired and you only needed one when you aimed for the head.

They were down before they could react and Mr. Falconé was sitting in his chair, a little wetter than he had been.

“How…How…” He sputtered.

“How did I survive?” He didn’t answer so I barreled through, all the while replacing my pistol and walking towards his desk.  “You’ve been dumb. You hired an amateur to finish me off. I’m offended.”

“You didn’t finish the job.”

“You only paid me for the man.” I said. “The wife and kids cost extra.”

“You were supposed to make it look like an arson!”

“And you were supposed to pay me two hundred and sixty grand.” I stated. “Looks like we both got fucked.”

“You asked…too much for their deaths.” He hesitated.

“It’s a deterrent you fucknut!” I stated. “Workers cost as much as they make in a year, non-providers are forty grand a head, and kids are sixty. You knew that and still you chose me.”

He blinked past his tears. “You’re going to kill me aren’t you.”

“No.” I lied. “Yes.” I changed moments later and a new, foul aroma rose to attack my nostrils.

I walked around his desk while bringing out my K-bar. This was personal.

“You only made one mistake.” I told him. He gulped and I continued. “You hired someone to kill me.” He quivered in fear. I continued. “I’m going to take from you the exact amount for the deaths in your office and a little bonus for offing you. For that, I’m going to empty your personal accounts, your corporate accounts, and your children’s college fund.” I lied about the college fund.

Squatting in front of him, I grabbed his hair with my left hand before he could back away and used the remainder of his graying hair to position his chin on his chest. With my right hand, I brought the knife into his line of sight. “No, please.” He begged and I ignored. He struggled, but it was useless.

I slid the knife from left to right, creating a happy face across his neck. His breath stopped coming through his teeth and started gurgling out the hole in his thorax. His eyes went wide and his hands gripped at my suit jacket. When his eyes stared off into the distance, I wiped the blade clean with his suit jacket and re-holstered it at the small of my back.

Before I stood up, I noticed a small, blinking, red light under the desk. Turning to the window, I looked down and saw small, flashing, red and blue lights below. This was my kind of party, but I didn’t want to meet the host.

Using his desk as a stepping-stone, I pushed back a white square tile and climbed into the crawlspace between floors. Again, I waited. Police came and went. Later on, I climbed out of the musty purgatory and dropped into an empty office nearby. I took the elevator down to the first floor and, confidently, walked past skeptical security guards. I waved bye to a guy named Jimmy, said a few nice words another named Sam, and the guards’ suspicions eased.

I walked to the public elevator, separated for security reasons, and took it to the parking garage below. In the spot nearest to the elevator was Mr. Falconé’s car. I drove off into the rising sun driving a white Ferrari 458 Italia, the stolen stallion’s cry rising above the din of the city.