HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

“You coming or not?”
“Hey, dummy, what part of ‘done’ don’t you understand?”
I tried to make him feel better than I did, which was a stretch.
“No problem, kid. I’ve had worse gigs. Remember that flatbust
where the goddam neurotic cat attacked me?”
Timmy remembered; in spite of everything, he had to
laugh. “That was one sick beast.”
“The Norman Bates of cat-dom. I got an infection from
his claws and the owner didn’t even have a TV. Or the night
the cops hauled you in drunk, except I wouldn’t let go of you
unless they busted me too, so they did.”
“Do I remember that. Next morning in court you were
hung over and lippin’ off to the judge so bad, he could’ve given
us three years. I must’ve said a hundred Hail Marys. Christ,
Danny, don’t do this.” The words stumbled on something in
Timmy’s throat, and he ducked his head so I wouldn’t see the
tears start. “Didn’t hurt half this bad to die. You were always all
I had. Always came through.”
“Yeah, I’m a saint.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Carlos put in. “As our department
goes, the job’s wide open. I mean, the morons down
there can always get out, just they don’t know how. Even alive
they never knew; why should now be different?” He dug in
a frayed pocket of his coat, found a crumpled cigarette package
and threw it away. “Hell, I’m out of cigs. Let’s split,
Danny.”
I held Timmy for maybe the last time, saying but not
believing it: “I’ll be back, kid. Kiss Mom for me.”
I watched Timmy start across the sunlit street and break
into a run as someone waved to him from a high window.
So we’re back down in Losers’ Lane and Carlos is getting
antsy for a cigarette while all around us the shriveled explainers
are moaning their endless lament. Maybe in a hundred years I’d
get used to it, but there was one thing I wanted now.
“Can I have a decent chair? Even shrunk like Charley, no
way will I squat on one of those kindergarten stools.”
Carlos only said, “Here comes Ender.”
The man himself, towering over me, this time with something
more like a genuine smile. “Ah, Daniel. Good work,
Carlos. You may take him home now.”
That didn’t register right away. “Home?”
“Come on,” Carlos urged. “I’m having a nicotine fit.”
“But that jazz about the Front Office—?”
“They stand by the agreement,” Ender said. “You take
Timmy’s place; they just didn’t say where or in what capacity.”
He laid a hand on my shoulder and looked clean through my
soul again. “We tested your mettle with Lenihan.”
“That was personal.”
“No, that was talent. On a scale of one to ten, you rate
most of humanity as a minus two. The darkness in you senses
their weakness as a wolf smells a blood trail. Welcome to
Sanitation. You work for us now.”
“Said you were a class act,” Carlos put in. “Where to,
Mister Ender?”
“The way you came. Leave him at Feeney’s.” Ender handed
me a fat sheaf of large bills. “For Timmy’s funeral and a trifle
in advance.”
The money in my hand was—hell, did I say gravy? This
was caviar.
“Highest pay slot in the department,” Carlos allowed.
“Takes subtle work. Not everyone can do it.”
“Oh, a last sentiment from Timmy,” Ender remembered
as he glided off into darkness. “He said to give them hell.”
!nd that’s what I do now, sort of a long-range undertaker.
I don’t do hits any more and I can’t change what’s
bound to happen, just speed toxics on the road they’re
traveling anyway. Carlos sends the word through Feeney, what
you might call sales leads, but I don’t need much to spot my
kind of guy. Not garden-variety losers, just the dangerous ones.
I get their trust because I’m a good listener, and the story they
sing to me in Feeney’s is the same one they’ll be doing later.
Like the wife-beater who’ll really kill her someday because he’ll
never change. I sympathize about how women are always out
to take power away from a real man, and the loser swallows it.
Sooner or later he’ll do her and maybe himself because that’s all
that’s left.
Or the angry ones convinced they’ve been screwed all
their lives by a vast government conspiracy led by that s.o.b. in
the White House, and someone’s got to make the world a better
place by doing him, etc. When I tell him how many noble
men like him have died for that belief and never counted the
cost, I can see the inspiration glow in his eyes. A few nights
with me playing kindred soul, and he’s on his way into history.
Then an anonymous tip to the Secret Service data base and one
day he goes out doing his thing in a blaze of Mein Kampf.
Like the rapist last week who liked little girls. He was sloppy,
covered his tracks as well as a dog with diarrhea. After one
session with me, he was so revved up, he got whacked by the
girl’s father his third time out. I took that one below myself and
got him a stool near Lenihan.
Or this crumb I’m waiting for tonight, a low-rent Hitler
(think Manson and Koresh) so frustrated by failure that he’s
just thirsting for a cause and a bunch of little losers to follow
him, which they always will. I tell him the world doesn’t change
by laws but catalysts—“Man, guys like you with the balls to act
on what you believe.” Sure enough, there’ll be another Waco or
Ruby Ridge. Like the song goes, Lenihan, you’ll never walk
alone.
See, the object is to tag them early so that instead of a lifetime
of damage, we get them after a little. The downside is we
always get them after, and I’m beginning to look like Ender.
So—here comes my loser. ’Scuse me. I have to go to
work. n
Parke Godwin is the author of many books, including the Firelord
Arthurian trilogy and an acclaimed retelling of Robin Hood. His short
story “Influencing the Hell out of Time and Teresa Golowitz” was the basis
for an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone. He has also been
a radio operator, a research technician, a professional actor, an advertising
man, a dishwasher and a maitre d’ hotel.
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