16(S2E3)-The Librarian

16

(Season 2 Episode 3)

The Librarian

Vince sat on the park bench waiting for his contact.  It was 4:00 am and he was armed with his trusty .38 caliber revolver.  The sun hadn’t yet started to rise, but it was just barely light enough to see.

The perfect night for a killing.

That is what Vince did, after all.  He killed people for money, or at least he attempted to. He had been quite worried that he was out of a job after the last one.  He had botched it when, during a long range kill, a dog had walked into the shot.  As brutal as he could be with humans, he had not yet been able to kill a dog.

Fucking dogs.

After that it had been a couple of weeks before he had gotten a call for anything and he was worried.  When you screw up in the business of death you usually end up getting killed.

Nevertheless, the call for work had come.  He was contracted to run back-up for another hitter.

Vince had never been a fan of being back-up, but in the long run, it was easy money and he knew he had to build up his reputation again with his booker.

Vince was an average sized guy, and he tended to dress like a rock star.  His hair was disheveled and he sported a five ‘o-clock shadow.  He wore jeans and a tee-shirt with a faded logo on the front.  He also wore an old blazer over that to conceal the shoulder holster where his gun sat.

He’d been sitting on the bench for an hour now and was fighting off sleep.  He didn’t exactly like the early morning shit, after all, he had a life.  As much as he loved movies like The Professional and Hit Man, about the brooding super loner hitter that doesn’t let anyone in, this was not the kind of killer he was.  Vince had a vibrant night life and a good amount of friends who all thought he did ‘something with the internet’.

Vince also had three different girlfriends; Cindy, an eighteen year old Asian grad student who fucked like she was getting back at her dad, Monica, who was good at taking care of him, and Rhonda, a punk rocker bitch with pink hair who liked to think she was the best lay on the planet but was in fact not quite as good as Cindy.

His life was good.

Vince heard the sound of someone clearing their throat, and turned.  Standing in front of him was a woman.  She had blonde hair in curly locks that were a little longer than shoulder length.  She wore a long sun dress, stretching to her ankles.  The thing was white with big red dots all over it.  On her feet were sandals strapped in the back.  She held a duffle bag in front of her and looked at Vince with bright green eyes from behind a pair of wispy glasses.  She looked twenty but was probably more like thirty or so.

 Like out of a fucking fairy tale.

“Can I help you, babe?” Vince asked the woman.

Her face was stone cold with the exception of a slight eyebrow twitch on the word ‘babe’.  “I believe you are waiting for someone?”

Vince looked confused, this couldn’t possibly be the hitter.  “Yeah, I am.  How did you know that?”

She just stared at him waiting for him to get it.

“You’re my contact?” he asked, confused.

“Bright one, aren’t you?” She said, plopping the duffle bag on the bench next to him.

Vince frowned.  “Hey, hey.  At least I was on time!  I have been waiting here, literally all day!”

“Metaphorically.”  The woman said, without turning toward him, pulling a Kevlar vest out of the bag and strapping it to herself.

Vince looked confused.  “What?”

She stopped what she was doing and took a deep breath.  “Metaphorically.  You have metaphorically been waiting all day, because you haven’t actually been here all day.”

Vince became confused.  “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about English.  The language you speak, or at least attempt to.”  She answered as she pulled a Tech-9 sub-machine gun out of the bag.

“Jesus, that’s a little much, isn’t it?”  He said as he watched her drag a clip out of the bag and rammed into the gun expertly.

“No, it’s not.”  She continued.  “The word literally means actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy.  When you say ‘literally’ in that sentence, it means you are saying you have actually been here for a full day.  I know you have only been here for an hour.”

“Well I-”  Vince sputtered and the woman interrupted.

“Whereas, ‘metaphorically’ means something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; an emblem; a symbol.  As in, to say that, while you haven’t actually been here a day, you, in fact, have been waiting long enough to feel as though you have been here a day.  Do you understand?”

Vince stared at the puzzling woman, then finally decided how to respond.  “You have been watching me for an hour?”

She shook her head and pulled one more clip from the bag, slipping it into the pockets of her vest.  “Of course.  I had to be certain of your identity.”

“Okay, whatever.  Let’s just do this job and get out of here.” Vince said, frustrated with her.

She nodded.  “I agree.  The location of the hit is in this direction.”

She slid the bag under the bench and began to walk into the more wooded area.

Vince shook his head and began to walk next to her.

Time ticked by as they moved through shrubs and Vince became anxious.  Something about this whole job felt wrong.  She felt wrong.

“So, how long you been in the business?” Vince asked, trying to start up a conversation.

She took a deep breath.  “Have you.”

“What?”  He said, regretting it as soon as he did.

“That sentence is wrong.  It should be, ‘how long have you been in the business?’ and to answer your question, I prefer this to stay as impersonal as possible.”  She said in response.

“Jesus,” he said, the irritation showing in his voice.  “Impersonal it is, then.”

“Thank you.” She said without emotion.

There was another moment of silence.  “So this mark likes early morning jogs, right? That’s why we are out here?”

She remained silent.

“Perfect time to hit him if you ask me,” Vince continued.  “So, is it a man or a woman?”

“The target is male.”  She answered.

Vince was happy about that.  He hated killing women.  At the end of the day, he could pull the trigger no problem, he just always felt bad about it.  He had considered the reasons for this and thought it was probably some latent ‘man protects woman’ instinct, or possibly that men were usually less attractive.

“Okay, well, impersonal as this is,” Vince began again, “I need to call you something.  You can call me Vince.”

“You may call me the Librarian.”  She said in response and Vince was surprised she didn’t argue it.

Vince made a grunt of interest.  “The Librarian?  I know you.”

The Librarian stopped and turned, feeling they were sufficiently removed from the main path.

Vince stopped moving, but not talking.  “Yeah, I heard the Librarian was good, but I thought she specialized on taking out other killers, like a private cleaner or something?”

She racked the slide on the sleek killing weapon, waiting for him to figure it out.

“So the guy we are here to kill is a hit man, himself, huh?” Vince asked.

She stared back at him and raised her eyebrow.

Vince figured it out. “Fucking dogs.”

The Librarian emptied the entire clip of ammunition into Vince’s chest and head.  The entirety of the weapon’s 9mm, 32 round clip, finding their marks in his body somewhere.

Vince’s lifeless body hit the ground.

The Librarian removed the spent clip and slid it into one of her pockets before taking out the new one and placing it into the gun.  She then watched the body for a second. When it didn’t move, she walked over to it and squatted down next to the bloody mess. She took a single latex glove out of a vest pocket and slid it over her right hand, snapping it in place.

She pressed two fingers to Vince’s throat, looking for a pulse.

There was none.

She pulled the latex glove off her hand and pulled out a small zip lock bag.  Placing the glove into the bag, she then sealed the bag and replaced it in her pocket before walking back through the shrubs to the bench.

She removed the vest and broke down the gun, putting them back into the bag before zipping it up.

She suddenly heard Johann Sebastian Bach’s, Fugue in G Minor.  She recognized it as the ringtone of her business phone.  She pulled out the phone and recognized the number.

She answered.  “How may I service your request?”

“Are you near Cleveland?”  The voice on the other end was that of Elmo Kincaid, a man she had worked with before.

“Perhaps.  I have just completed an endeavor and would be available.”  She answered.

“It’s a big job, a cleaner type job,” he said and she could hear the desperation in his voice even though he tried to conceal it.  “It’s serious wet work.”

“Will we have to rendezvous?” She asked.

“Defiantly.  I can give you the details then.”

“Understood.  I will contact you with a confirmed rendezvous schedule.”  She said, and then hung up.

She was happy about this offer.

She had been in dire need of a challenge.