vertical-takeoff Chrysler. They had some bucks, my backers. The same night I was on the last flight from São Paulo to Chile; I’d used an ultraquick cosmetic surgery kit on my face during the ride to the airport.”
Plotkin drew in his breath. “Shit, that must have made some noise, even in Brazil. Were the victim’s parents okay with the collateral damage and all the hassle that came with it?”
Van Halen smiles. It is the smile of death at work.
“Those Brazilian fuckers? Not even Brazilian—Honduran, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Colombian, Cuban…you’re talking shit, Plotkin. The family that paid me was old money, from Venezuela. Oil, emeralds, electric energy, communications, civil war. Big money, nasty people; really hard-boiled. They’d been dealing with kidnappings for generations. Their daughter had been kidnapped and raped by that pedophile in Brazil while she was spending a school vacation with one of her friends near Rio, and the prick got the case against him dismissed because there was no concrete proof. No DNA traces, plus an alibi that seemed solid. He’d been hiding in France, and then cut out for parts unknown but influential. He disappeared for a couple of years and then turned up in Ecuador, in Quito, and went back to Brazil after that, with a false ID right out of
The Internet Catalogue of Pseudos for Pedos.
He found a place to stay; we followed him; we got him. And you know the funniest part?”
“No,” says Plotkin, curious to hear the pearl of humor that would close this story, like the final nail in a coffin lid.
Van Halen. Van Halen’s grimace-smile. The grimace-smile widens, filling the world with a luster that could chase away any divine shadow. “The funniest part is that five or six years later, just after the civil war, cops from the Free Midwestern Confederation found the real killer. The guy was living in Kansas; he’d been keeping a detailed journal of his crimes, and he’d just hung himself to avoid being arrested for murders committed there and in Missouri. I ran into a friend in China; he told me about it without knowing my part in the whole thing.”
Plotkin is silent. He stares at the grimace-smile, which has taken over the universe. He guesses. The whole original-terminal dream knows it; all his being knows it: this ending has a moral. And the moral is this:
“I
am
sorry for the kids in the brothel, you understand, but they were all infected with AIDS. Not to mention all the new mutable sexually transmitted diseases; more than a thousand of those on the list now. They were doomed, no matter what. Plus, I mean, come on—that was a hot mess; a psychopathic killer settling accounts between gangs. The cops in Bahia really fucked that whole thing up.”
Plotkin knows this moral. It is the moral of all assassins and spies. It is the moral of the World hidden underneath the World.
He also knows, though, that the grimace-smile isn’t saying all there is to say. It is filling the world like a blinding truth—a truth that becomes invisible when brought to light. You need to have eyes used to seeing things in the shadows to bear such unknowable light.
This is the Batavian killer’s moral:
“That French pedophile was a real prick. He was guilty, the bastard. Okay, not of kidnapping the little Venezuelan girl, or of the crimes committed by that asshole in Kansas, but he’d raped hundreds of minors, lined the pockets of human flesh peddlers all over the continent. You know just as well as I do that there are no innocent people in our game. Just guilty ones, actual or potential.”
Plotkin remembers the World-grimace-smile. He remembers choking on the martini with its little fluorescent pink straw. The dream is entirely made of memory. The moment when he decided that he must always carry the plan all the way to the end. Exterminate the target, and kill the fucking German tourist.
Human Termination System.
We live in shadow. We never see the light of
Plotkin drew in his breath. “Shit, that must have made some noise, even in Brazil. Were the victim’s parents okay with the collateral damage and all the hassle that came with it?”
Van Halen smiles. It is the smile of death at work.
“Those Brazilian fuckers? Not even Brazilian—Honduran, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Colombian, Cuban…you’re talking shit, Plotkin. The family that paid me was old money, from Venezuela. Oil, emeralds, electric energy, communications, civil war. Big money, nasty people; really hard-boiled. They’d been dealing with kidnappings for generations. Their daughter had been kidnapped and raped by that pedophile in Brazil while she was spending a school vacation with one of her friends near Rio, and the prick got the case against him dismissed because there was no concrete proof. No DNA traces, plus an alibi that seemed solid. He’d been hiding in France, and then cut out for parts unknown but influential. He disappeared for a couple of years and then turned up in Ecuador, in Quito, and went back to Brazil after that, with a false ID right out of
The Internet Catalogue of Pseudos for Pedos.
He found a place to stay; we followed him; we got him. And you know the funniest part?”
“No,” says Plotkin, curious to hear the pearl of humor that would close this story, like the final nail in a coffin lid.
Van Halen. Van Halen’s grimace-smile. The grimace-smile widens, filling the world with a luster that could chase away any divine shadow. “The funniest part is that five or six years later, just after the civil war, cops from the Free Midwestern Confederation found the real killer. The guy was living in Kansas; he’d been keeping a detailed journal of his crimes, and he’d just hung himself to avoid being arrested for murders committed there and in Missouri. I ran into a friend in China; he told me about it without knowing my part in the whole thing.”
Plotkin is silent. He stares at the grimace-smile, which has taken over the universe. He guesses. The whole original-terminal dream knows it; all his being knows it: this ending has a moral. And the moral is this:
“I
am
sorry for the kids in the brothel, you understand, but they were all infected with AIDS. Not to mention all the new mutable sexually transmitted diseases; more than a thousand of those on the list now. They were doomed, no matter what. Plus, I mean, come on—that was a hot mess; a psychopathic killer settling accounts between gangs. The cops in Bahia really fucked that whole thing up.”
Plotkin knows this moral. It is the moral of all assassins and spies. It is the moral of the World hidden underneath the World.
He also knows, though, that the grimace-smile isn’t saying all there is to say. It is filling the world like a blinding truth—a truth that becomes invisible when brought to light. You need to have eyes used to seeing things in the shadows to bear such unknowable light.
This is the Batavian killer’s moral:
“That French pedophile was a real prick. He was guilty, the bastard. Okay, not of kidnapping the little Venezuelan girl, or of the crimes committed by that asshole in Kansas, but he’d raped hundreds of minors, lined the pockets of human flesh peddlers all over the continent. You know just as well as I do that there are no innocent people in our game. Just guilty ones, actual or potential.”
Plotkin remembers the World-grimace-smile. He remembers choking on the martini with its little fluorescent pink straw. The dream is entirely made of memory. The moment when he decided that he must always carry the plan all the way to the end. Exterminate the target, and kill the fucking German tourist.
Human Termination System.
We live in shadow. We never see the light of
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