Page 72 of Vipers & Roses

Jeezus, Smiler, and co have been busy lately. This would have to be the third assassination in two weeks. Again, I like to convince myself the people being knocked off are bad guys, but I have no way of knowing, and I deliberately avoid the news and missing persons reports. The money is good, and that is why we do it.

Quickly, I yank my T-shirt and shorts off and slip on an old pair of grey, baggy sweatpants with holes in the knees, a wrinkly old T-shirt, and a pair of washable fabric sneakers. Z supplies the PPE gear and cleaning products, so all I have to do is turn up and work.

The message from Z comes through on my phone just as I’m tying my hair up. It’s late, just after 10 PM, and since I’ve been jumped in my apartment block before by Lyons’ paid dickheads, my fingers twitch towards my dresser.

“It’s better to be safe than sorry,” I mutter to justify my decision to myself because obviously too much time alone has turned me into a nutter, “and the thief says I have to get used to it in my hands, like a second skin.”

As I check the magazine, I remember Blake told me to empty it out before putting it away, so I reload it quickly, chuck it into my bag, grab my phone and keys, and head out the door to meet Z.

“Is he in a bad mood or something?” I ask Z when I spot her waiting outside my building entrance. She’s wearing a black T-shirt over her ample bosom that reads I Scissor Yo Mama, and I don’t bother asking what the hell it means.

“You know the rules…I ask no questions,” she replies, “so I’m told no lies.” She points to her white van across the road, and we check the traffic before crossing. Coincidently, she’s parked right outside the apartment where the man had fallen onto the roof of a car. It’s weird how quickly life returns to normal as if the incident didn’t happen in the first place. The car with the smashed roof has gone, the dead body is gone, all the cop cars and their orange cones and police tape have gone, and here we are several days later, walking along the crime scene without a trace that a crime took place here.

Z sniffs and glances at me sideways when we climb inside her van. “Have you been rolling in the grass again?”

“Earlier today, or more accurately, kneeling in the dirt. Why?” I ask. “How can you tell?”

“Or is it your deodorant?” she mumbles, starting up her old van, which never fails to go. “Jeez, fuck, Rae, why don’t you wear a normal fragrant like Cashmere Mist or Amazon Rain.”

I place my hands to my nose and inhale the scent of rosemary, and I realize she’s talking about that. “Seriously? Grass? There’s a world of difference between culinary herbs and grass scents.”

She pulls out in a hurry as we’re often on edge when we have a job to go to, just because we don’t want to get on the wrong side of who we work for. “It’s all the same to me, except the stuff we smoke,” she says, pulling up to the first set of traffic lights.

“I brought Til,” I confess.

“Why? Are you expecting to be plundered and pillaged tonight?” she asks, half joking. “And I hope you’ve got the safety cap on because if one of Smiler's men turns up and you accidentally shoot him, well...you know, you can kiss your dreams goodbye when you’re buried six feet under.”

“Yes, I put the safety cap on,” I groan at her. “And who cleans up the blood and guts of the cleaners anyway when the cleaners have been killed? See, you’ve got to think these things through. They’re unlikely to butcher us-”

“Us?” she barks. “They’ll kill you. Not me. You.”

“So, will you’ll clean up my brain bits and shit and blood,” I clown around.

“Yes,” she answers teasingly, I think. “I’d do just about anything for money.”

“So sweet,” I say sarcastically.

I spot the shore of the lake with streetlights, and the single light of a lone boat floating on a sea of black catches my eye on the endless horizon.

“Same location?” I ask Z since we seem to be going in that direction and the impending doom of what we’ll find when we get there as we draw closer to the house of horrors.

“Yep,” she answers, and I sense her growing anxiety. It’s a job that can mess with your head if you’re not careful, but luckily, we have each other to lighten the load and crack inappropriate jokes.

She pulls up outside the decrepit old house smothered in overgrown shrubs and roses. It’s pitch dark because the two nearest streetlamps are not working. It’s always been this way, and we assume the bulbs were smashed to keep the house in the shade.

Z takes out her flashlight from the glovebox and flicks it on to open the back of the van to take out our supplies. A shiver runs down my spine when a black SUV cruises past. We know who it is and ignore it because playing dumb is part of the gig. They don’t pay us to have opinions or take note of the hitmen behind the blacked-out windows.

“It’s just one body,” Z whispers as I grab the plastic trolley of cleaning products while she seizes the mop and bag of PPE gear.

We know our way well in the dark, so Z lowers the flashlight until we’re at the front door to avoid arousing suspicion. No one in this forgotten suburb cares what their neighbors get up to anyway. Z finds her copy of the key, slips it into the keyhole, turns the lock, and pushes the door open with a freaky squeal that makes me jump.

Immediately we’re hit with the heady scent of hospital-grade disinfectant from when Z was last here, but it doesn’t come close to the repulsiveness of the stench of blood, piss, and shit all mixed together.

“Well, lookie here,” Z mocks, flashing her light at the old kitchen table as she closes the door behind us and turns the lock. It’s another single red rose laid out for someone to notice.

I sigh. “Oh, the romantic side of serial killers,” I mock, having no interest in touching it because, like Z always says, it might be booby-trapped. Besides, my hands are occupied with steering the trolley of cleaning products.

I follow Z down the hall to the basement door, and she pauses before opening the door to say, “Are you ready?”

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