The apprentice hit man

The recent death by shooting of a celebrity figure from the mining financial industry, the late Whatisname,has aroused much comment regarding whether his apparent murder was the result of a botched carjacking or a carefully executed assassination or 'hit'.

This reminded me about a story/poem that I wrote back in '92 when some things were altogether much as they are now; and when a third option presented itself to a financial man of my aquaintance who was in a state of desperation-So I dug the tale out and it is here for your reading interest. I filed it at the time because there was no such thing as the Internet and because it was a little slow moving, as it sets up the core plot

Nonetheless the pace does pick up and in the light of past events it becomes more enjoyable as it progresses, if such a story can be enjoyable. I haven't made any changes to it except to fix some of the grammar and update the numbers to current inflation adjusted reality.

It's about eight thousand words so it shouldn't take too long.

I would point out that the story is entirely fictional, was written thirteen years ago and so any similarities between the story and the real world and current events or anyone living or dead is entirely coincidental and in the mind of the reader only.

***************************************


The Apprentice Hit Man.


If it could be said
of some people
that they conspired in their own catastrophe then
undoubtedly Lucretious Sekati
would have to be included
amongst them.

Lucretious Sekati; one time yuppie, mover and
shaker, sophisticated materialist.
What the formerly glorious left would have called an arch-
bourgeoise.

Could Lucretious be a metaphor for our times?
the architect of his own destiny ?
or
was his fate preordained by some malevolent concatenation
of events,
orchestrated
by an evil conspiracy of nameless "enemies"?

Being a yuppie (or former yuppie) in a period post-
economic boom, for Lucretious-an era of unremitting financial callisthenics signifying nothing but
ongoing impervious decline,
was, he thought, rather like playing out a slow motion game
of musical chairs.

The realisation that the number of chairs in the game are
being steadily whittled down,
gradually dawns on the players
resulting
in an ever more evident and unscrupulous scramble
for the remaining places.

Of course the difference between party games and the
world, is what happens to the players when they're "Out".

If you remember those endless parties of our collective
youth, the losers would all congregate around some
variation of an ice-cream counter; and ignoring the rest of
the participating players, would start some new game unrelated to the
former, so that when the last player in the "real'" game
stalked triumphantly off the floor, it was to find
itself an outsider in a newly evolved game being
played elsewhere.

Now of course, it's much later, and it seemed to Lucretious [sometimes known as licentious Lucretious]
that
he had lost that easy ability to shift consciousness; embark
on new playtimes at will. He was suddenly old...not really
old you understand
not like actuarially old,
simply the wrong side
of thirty five...

Now many of the `losers' wind up sitting on the sidelines,
nursing a beer, a bloody mary, a large scotch or a fat joint,
spending their days playing all sorts of wonderful
sideline games on such themes as "Isn't everything
absolutely dreadful",

or

"Did you hear what happened to so n so?"

as urban legend became
bloodied truth.

And so the difference is the sidelines.

Win or lose you still pay the rent, eat and have to
scavenge about to settle all the other bills which you
just seem to have somehow accumulated whether you're up,
down or nowhere in the middle.

And when he was up he was up
And when he was down he was down

And by the time the new game starts
He'll be neither up nor down.

The former players are superseded by the new
upward mobile players and today's yuppies are tomorrow's
has beens or what is, from Luc's, perspective, worse. Do
yesterday's yuppies become today's has-beens? And is he
therefore condemned
to become part
of the name and blame generation.

Lucretious, bless him, was unaware of any world, which did
not specifically revolve around him. He made money and
spent it as though there were no tomorrow, which there
isn't, or wasn't, for according to his life script
he was supposed to live happily ever after.

His key philosophy had always been that truth was
subordinate to need, and if therefore the truth hurts then
change it. If reality intrudes on fantasy then either
ignore it or invent a better reality, on the absolute
principle that whatever he believed in with enough fervour
would inevitably come to pass.

Now what if disaster strikes? All best laid plans
explode in your face...it happens...then the most popular
strategy a is to get heavily into the game of Pin the
blame on the Donkey. And the donkey must always be someone
else.

And so, of course, you would understand that this process
of "blaming" would paralyse the very principle of self
help which had brought about Lucretious's climb to success
in the first place.(the less charitable would question
whether it was really self-help and not just the good
fortune to be in the right place at the right time with
the right idea and the right backing.)

Lucretious Sekati was the precise epitome of the thoroughly
modern man. He was well trained in the primitive rudiments
of exploitative understanding. Had been taught how to
manipulate the levers of finance in the advanced
literacy/numeric courses provided by his local School of
Business.

Armed with his high-powered .45 calibre MBA, Lucretious had
gone forth and conquered some newly defined market segment
in the field of investment scams.

He had been wonderfully successful setting up a succession of
`empty shell' corporations, whose stock he'd market on the
newly emerging Venture Capital Exchange to little old
widows with pots of cash and naive expectations. His
enormous success in this, together with the ministrations
of a flock of tame tax consultants meant that he had been
able to pour a vast stream of income into material
gratification.

When questioned on his profligate lifestyle his favourite
boast, once made public through an indiscreet well
lubricated aside to a `dolly' from that ghastly "Stylish
Living" magazine was "Work sucks just gimme the Bucks".

In fairness to Lucretious however, the article in `Stylish
Living" did go on to point out that the tax payable on not
spending his money was a terrifying prospect...better it
had noted to pour the money, into tax avoidable perks and
live for the day.

And Lucretious now believed he had had his `day'. The
economy, masked by inflation and government inspired hype
had resumed it's former onward decline. The interlude of
bullish yuppiedom had come and gone, great global systems
had decayed and vanished into the dustbins of history,
nonetheless mortgage bonds and lease agreements
marched resolutely onward.

For those with a yearning for the `good life', I'm sorry to tell you that
we're not dealing with that part where he was making pots
of cash. Its a great soapy, filled with brilliantly
executed scams, devious, ruthless and immensly
profitable. And with the money, long joyous nights gang
banging with a succession of beautiful people in warm
jacuzzis at the expense of grieving widows...And then of
course there was the romance. Luc's fairy tale
marriage to his secretary cum bookkeeper, who knew all
about his scams and used the promise of glorious
nights between her thighs combined with not so subtle
threats of blackmail to get him to the nuptial bed.

No that's it, as Lucretious is now wont to say,

'Happiness is ephemeral but depression is forever.'

And so we find ourselves at the point where "the going has
become tough"...at the point where our hero has grievous
doubts about his own toughness. For when the going got
tough, Lucretious's tough wife went shopping and
Lucretious Sekati found himself at the end of his tether.

There are certain questions that usually arise here
concerning the issue of comparative poverty. To those
whose sympathies tend to lie with the traditionally poor:
that great crowd of ragged unwashed fellows who hover
around at the off-ramps of up market highways, hands
outstretched, tugging at the heartstrings of our
collective guilt; the question of poverty is obvious, and
identifying the victims even more so.

To these, the idea that the Lucretious Sekatis of the
world could be in the same category is laughable, the man's
worth a billion. Sod him! ... If he's suffering... good!

However when we look closer...at the empty fridge...the
bare shelves...the extended structure of debt...the
television lifestyle exposed as a hollow sham...then...for
what we may ask the old Dickensian dictum: ... Income Ten
Million, expenditure Thirty... result misery, confusion,
anger, despair and depression in roughly that order.

So it's all very well sitting there smugly saying, Good!
Serve the bloated yuppie right. How dare he claim poverty
driving around in his AMG Mercedes swapping plastic for
food?....let him sell it all and lose it all, and should we
dare, we may compare..

For the truth, according to Lucretious Sekati is that
"When yuppies bleed the world haemorrhages." and to
Lucretious, his tragedy is the tragedy of a modern
Everyman. The man who `Has it all'...when he suffers all
suffer. And Lucretious is truly suffering...he is three
months behind on his 4,000,000 mortgage, the market has turned and the house is
unsaleable at the price he needs. He's six months behind on the Merc, and he's
ages behind on his wife's Bee Emm. He's also being sued by
the Orthodontist who is in turn four months behind on his
mortgage etc...And he hasn't paid for his daughter's dance
classes since forever.

Now you're probably asking, What happened to all the
money! Well join Lucretious because he doesn't know either
neither do I if it comes to that. The only one who might
have known was a Minister of Finance who resigned on
grounds of exhaustion, probably caused by digging around
desperately trying to figure out where it had all gone.

In fact the whole question of where the money had gone had
become a burning question at almost all the ritual meat
burning ceremonies which traditionally fill the summer
weekends.

This is where the story of Sekati's conspiracy with
himself starts, at a crucial Sunday afternoon "Meat eat n
defeat" programme. A special day party for Luc' with a whole cow on a spit roasting gently
in simmering heat washed with sumptuous liquids.

The topic of the day, excluding those more important
topics like who had died, had a baby, was getting married,
or had made the national team, centred around increasingly banal revelations
of mass scale corruption in some or other
government departments.

What was happening was that many amongst the group felt,
like Lucretious, that they had to work hard to steal
their money, and that now they were finding their sources
of cash increasingly strapped. People had less and less
disposable income to blow on attractive investment scams
due amongst other things to paying ever increasing amounts
of stealth taxes to fund the increasingly avaricious appetites of
state officials. It was an extreme form of unfair
competition, said one of Luc's family.

"Of course this is a global phenomenon, I mean how's
Italy, The mafia's got it my man, the people can fight but
everyone's got a price....like you know what I mean hey.

The idea of globalisation had become tres fashionable
and if Levi jeans and pocket sized information communicators
could be
part of a worldwide phenomena so could corruption, angst
and economic decay.

And of course talk drifted over to whether someone had
taken a bribe to include Louie someone in some national
team and there was a long discussion about the importance
of knowing people and so what if a few bucks had to move
around a bit as long as the team won.

"A Man's a man you know?'

"Yeah; It's what a guy does you know, not what he thinks."

"Yeah there's too much thinking, and talking and nothing
doing."

Like a man who has slowly, dispiritedly lost all appetite
Sekati wandered steadily off indoors, manoeuvring through
The interminable ritual backslapping "How's it
going man" type introductions .

Does it mean, he thought gloomily, that if what a man
does, is all his life means, and if what he does comes to
nothing then was he therefore also nothing...a blankness
on the page of history.

He was talking to people through a cloud, reaching out in
slomo through a fog, a so familiar fog

"determinism is out, uncertainty is in ...and nothing we
have ever known will be in vogue again,"

Who said that? Who let that man into the party?

Lucretious felt an abyss open up beneath his feet. For an
instant he was staring into a void...a no mans land; and
he felt a moment of absolute terror. The ghost wandered
over to the liquor cabinet. That's what I am he thought
distractedly, a ghost. I am the ghost of Lucretious Sekati
playing out the hours and moments of my stay in purgatory.

He could hear the murmur of conversation from the
fireplace where discussion had shifted from the
abstractions of corruption in all places to the ever escalating
volumes of violence sweeping the country.

He found himself standing next to Angina Oline, his sister- in- laws
brother-in-law who had spent years living in Nepal in exile during
the bad years, and was now designing software
programmes in his own networking company. Why Nepal people would ask. He would shrug and smile.

'Yes," Angina said, "They forget that for a lot of people life
had no particular meaning, it was just something they
did, and therefore death was a relative non-event, a simple
abstraction."

"After all" he said, "We can never know the fact of our
own deaths and therefore the idea of death is, in effect
meaningless...beyond the terror of it's inevitability."

Now usually Lucretious couldn't stand this guy. He used
big words as if he knew what they meant, and Lucretious
often didn't and that pissed him off, and for a moment he
sparked.

"What's this bull, we never know the fact of our own
deaths...where you getting off with that shit man."

"What I said man, did you know someone who came back and
said "how's it my man,?"

"..........No."

"So"

"No.."

"So here, you're here, there you are not, so how could you
know here that you're there."

"Lucretious's mind folded up...for a moment something
flashed away, as if he almost grabbed something
precious and it was gone and he was instead paralysed with
an unaccountable terror."

"We shy away from the terror of our non-existence because
we fear the loss of what we have in exchange for the
unknown place beyond our understanding...these gangsters
who terrify them," waving in the direction of the
fireplace, "They who commit acts of desperation act from
nothing, have therefore nothing to value...or lose and the
concept of death never arises.

"The Terror", Lucretious thought, standing at that abyss
before the cabinet, staring at his ghost reflected in the
glass. It is life which is pointless, not death...and in
that instant he resolved upon a plan.

This, he decided was to be the last plan...plan Z... all
other stratagems had failed completely to resolve the
dilemma in which he found himself. He'd contemplated suing
for insolvency...the act of financial suicide, and had
decided that it would solve very little; he would still be
who he was when all the stuff was gone...even if his wife
left him, and took the child he would still be responsible
for the maintenance, only then, having nothing he could
only envisage himself on the edge for the rest of his
life.

"I have lost all confidence in myself,' he told the ghost staring back at him impassively; as if
it too had written him off. In his rising paranoia he
sensed that former associates were shunning him, labelling
him a loser, unwilling to maintain contact lest they
become contaminated in the ever more vicious real world
game of musical chairs upon which his business life had
come to be based.

Now you may well recognise that Lucretious was suffering
from some form of chronic depression which had reduced him
to a de facto state of impotence (definitely in the
sexual sense, and his wife's carping on this subject was
not helping his self-esteem either).This state made it
increasingly difficult for him to focus on the necessary
requirement to go out and score the `big one' in the
market place.

He felt boxed in...The debt was mounting...he was caught
by the balls...and absolutely nothing was working...like,
the world, for him, had stopped.

It was so bad he'd even looked for a job...discreetly only
to find to his horror that he was redundant...too
expensive, too experienced ...too threatening perhaps, but
mainly because he had lost that virginal naive enthusiasm
which is the herald of success, a complete inability to
understand the concept of failure.

Lucretious felt that overwhelming aura of failure hang on him
like one of his old overcoats which hung on that scarecrow
he called a gardener.

And so, staring at his ghost in the cabinet he suddenly
realised that the only way out of his cul de sac was to
kill himself.

"Yo ho ho" he said to himself immediately the thought ran
through his mind..."this is madness...I must be insane or
I wouldn't be thinking this"...so thinking he poured
himself a large scotch and made a mental note that he was
drinking too much, and then he sat listening to the
murmering voices from the nearby patio, trying not to think about
the idea he had just had.

Now if you have never viewed suicide as a viable option in
times of trouble it need hardly be pointed out that it's a
serious concept with practical as well as philosophical
implications. Consider the facts. Lucretious is broke...he
has used up all his reserves attempting to find alternate
solutions to his financial dilemma, and he has reached
the stage where all seems hopeless. The country is in a
deepening financial crisis, as is the world.

This never bothered him in his hey day, after
all here a bribe there a bribe everywhere a bribe,
bribe. The real problem was a growing problem of connections, who sensing a decline in his cash flows had themselves flowed and he, currently
too cash strapped to go out and make some new ones
in the time honoured way.

And of course there was a picky investor confidence
in the country's destiny, for a man who made his living
promoting high risk ventures a business environment which
regards the bluest of blue chip as dodgy, is a total
disaster. So it's time, he thinks to down tools.

For Lucretious his survival is now to be measured in weeks
not even months, he has run out of ideas and his wife's
credit limit has just been raised as the banking sector
desperately seeks to sell it's products...credit, in the
wake of sluggish demand.

On a philosophic level therefore he can readily justify
suicide on the grounds that it is a rational response to a
deranged circumstance...He thinks briefly of a line from
"The Brother's Karamazov", when Ivan says to God, "If you
exist, I respectfully return my ticket." he laughs remembering his fifteenth year when he had discovered
reading for pleasure, and the "Brothers" whilst laid up
with a broken leg...he had done precious little reading
since.

So to the practical problems. [One realises that there are
aspects to this decision which would be of concern to
those of a Theistic bent, ie damage to the immortal soul
etc, and that there should be rather more anguishing over
the decision than there is going to be. However
Lucretious, being essentially given to Sybaritic pastimes
had never given any thought to his immortal soul...wasn't
in fact aware that he might have one]

The first question was, did he simply "do himself in"? or
should he include the family?...He resolved this one quite
quickly by deciding that mass family suicide\murders were
altogether too trendy these days with every disaffected
Tom, Musa and Jacobus bumping off his whole family at the
drop of a divorce notice.

Then there was the very real consideration that he was not
overly fond of his wife...resented her spending
habits...her threats of blackmail to get him into marriage
in the first place, and since things had gone from bad to
worse she had taken to deriding his performance in bed,
which wasn't helping him at all.

No...he thought ... if there was any life after death the
last thing he wanted was to be saddled along with her
again..let her rather stay in purgatory.

Lucretious's death would bring in enough Insurance money
to pay off the bond, the two cars, the shack at the coast,
the stereo hi fi, this that and the other, and still leave
enough over to send his daughter to a good private school
where they would teach her how to get out of the AMG
Mercedes without revealing her knickers. He could
therefore get out of the rat race while leaving his honour
intact.

And so, his mind made up, he headed for his study where he
kept his collection of firearms, The shotgun, he decided,
messy but efficient...no foolish errors with inadequately
powered bullets bouncing off a bone fragment to leave him
brain damaged, vegetating in some expensive clinic. One
thing which could always be said of Lucretious, he was
never a man to mull over an idea...if it sounded good then
"lets do it" The motto over his desk read "There are no
obstacles only opportunities"

He was already dusting off the ole Purdey side by side 12
gauge when it occurred to him that his life policies might
not pay out on suicide, and that therefore killing himself
would not actually solve the problem unless he could make
it look like an accident. This stopped him in his
tracks...could he blow himself away in the study with
enough panache to give the appearance of an
accident?...surely questions would be asked about why he
was fooling around with a loaded shotgun while all his
guests were outside burning his meat? It wasn't as if he
was even showing it to someone, For an instant he thought
of dragging in a few dudes as witnesses to an accident.
Russian Roulette? No even the thought that questions may
be asked was enough to induce caution.

Of course it could also be argued that the human spirit is
too resilient to allow us to immolate ourselves willy
nilly, there is some corner of our erstwhile minds which
remains forever cautious: However be that as may be
Lucretious felt sufficiently justified in his caution to
embark over the next few days on a series of strategies to
achieve his end...a set of activities carried out with a
degree of masochistic pleasure and more enthusiasm than
he'd shown in weeks.

Perhaps though, it was no more than the joy of finding
himself engaged in some worthwhile pastime with a definite
payoff.

First thing Monday, Lucretious begins a discreet process
of establishing the precise nature of his affairs...a
horrible experience...there is, he decides nothing more
conducive to self-immolation that sitting down in the
middle of a crippling down cycle in one's fortunes and evaluating one's
financial status. It was no less than he expected. Dead he
is worth a fortune...alive he's technically insolvent.

His death however is hemmed in by specific guidelines
which would rule out anything self actuated unless it
appeared not to be. He also discovered that some tame tax
type he'd once employed had structured his estate into a
trust...for the prime benefit of his daughter. It would
therefore have proved imprudent to alter all these
arrangements in favour of some obscure beneficiary prior
to a staged disappearance cum insurance scam.

So his first thought centred on some form of accident.
What if he was killed in a horrendous crash in his AMG
Mercedes...the car was regarded as being so safe that his
death in an accident could hardly be regarded as anything
but ordained...So the thought so the act, and Wednesday
sees him racing up the Great North Road at hi-speed searching
out a handy concrete
bridge pylon with which to connect.

Of course deciding to make an "accident" happen is
considerably more difficult than having one
spontaneously...The nagging thought is of course will it
be final, will I be no more than crippled, and shall it be
`now'.

So on that first day all he did was use up a quantity of
credit sponsored petrol to no avail..."there was too much
traffic to make it convincing", and too many doubts. He
also, so he told himself, had no really valid reason for
being on the Great North Road, all of which he realised
were merely excuses for avoiding action.

'Yeah, you've got too many excuses bra...don't think...do"

Then on Thursday some visitors arrived at the house, just
as he was leaving; large fellows with drooping moustaches
and big hands. They held him for a while, almost lovingly in
fact. They were certainly more gentle than "That Bitch" 'his otherwise unmentionable wife, had
been for awhile. They pointed out politely that he
owed someone called Louie a large sum of money.

They actually had to gently jog his memory a bit and it
turned out that the money had originally been
`borrowed' from a very amiable old gentleman by Lucretious
who had appropriated it on the pretext of investing it in
a secure place. Peter had long since been ravaged by Paul
to pay Helveen who had been plundered to pay Rspv and all....

The Gentleman had been trying to contact Lucretious for
some weeks and he had been avoiding him. Now it seemed he
had "factored" his investment to this Louie chap who
didn't favour the telephone at all.

They also didn't favour cheques and so Lucretious had to
raid his final reserve stocks of cash to pay a percentage
of what was owed on the basis that he hadn't expected them
and would pay the rest later....

"No sweat China...." gently picking up a photograph of
Lucretious's daughter and pushing his thumb nail through
her crotch.

"We'll call again..". holding the picture, impaled upon his
thumb, under his nose...to him...and then the big hairy fellow gently pushed
his thumb into Lucretious's mouth pressing the picture
against his lips, while his head was equally gently held immobile,
and until Lucretious gagged.

Afterwards he set off, racing up towards the Great North
Road in a mixture of fear, terror and revulsion, and so
intent was he on the incident which had just transpired
that he lost concentration going around a bend and slid
the AMG off the road at a place where the road was being
widened and narrowly missed ploughing into a huge piece of
earthmoving equipment before he ended up shredding the
entire underside of the car on a huge pile of concrete
paving blocks.

People rushed over to see if he was ok and to goggle at
the wreck. A few shouted at him for being stupid and
putting their lives at risk. Were they living now for the
first time, he wondered. A site foreman told him he was
"Lucky, cause some ou was killed only a few days before
when his car ploughed into the blade of the grader".

Did he need that luck thought Lucretious, realising that
being alive held no joys for him, rather like surviving a
journey to the gas chamber only to discover that they'd run out of gas and the real
ordeal was still to come, again.

And so he climbed unscathed out of the AMG..."The safest
car in the world", but it would be weeks before he could
drive it again, and in the meantime he would have to hire
a car which his burgeoning credit limits would just permit
for a short time yet.

When he got to his office there was a registered letter of
demand waiting for him from the tax department, requiring
an immediate accounting of his financial affairs for the
past five years.

So to plan Z part the second.

The following day Lucretious went off in his newly hired
car to a surgical supplies store in the city. There he
purchased a hundred metres of Haasrek, surgical rubber
band of the type with which he used to make catapaults,
during the unstressed moments of his childhood.

Then on the pretext of "business" he set of North into the
deepest reaches of untamed rural countryside with the
objective of killing himself in a very elaborate manner
designed to give the appearance of murder.

His reasoning was that given the inordinate level of
violence in the country at large, with people being
slaughtered on an apparently random basis in their scores
daily, the police force was stretched beyond capacity
simply coping with the flood of death reports, burglaries, streams of illegal immigrants etc,
with precious
little time available to investigate specific cases. He
also hoped that a country policeman would be less
scrupulous about detail, forgetting of course that he
might be "lucky" and get a country policeman with a
burning desire for promotion.

His plan was complex yet inherently simple, he would
select a spot at the edge of some trees with an open space
of about two hundred metres separating him from more
heavily wooded forest land. He would then climb some fairly
accessible tree and attach one end of the rubber hosing
to it. Then he would extend the hosing for some two
hundred metres, at which point it would be at full
stretch. The other end was attached to his .357 Magnum
revolver.

His idea was to hold the thing at about arms length from
his head with the hammer cocked. Then, using a twig pushed
through the trigger guard as a lever he could pull the
trigger with his thumbs and the ensuing recoil combined
with the heavy elastic band should comfortably send the revolver
hurtling off a few hundred metres into the tops of a few
trees where it would hopefully remain for years. A very
simple and probably most effective plan.

He would then arrange everything to give the appearance of
a possible hijacking and robbery with a final execution at
the end of some supposed "ordeal". The newspapers were
filled daily with such reports; so unless there were vast
numbers of citizens throughout the country wilfully
committing suicide by proxy, his demise should be no more
than a byline in a local newspaper.

And so to the "best laid plans" as the great Scotsman
observed...His car hidden in the trees a few hundred
metres ( in fact nearly a kilometre) from the spot
eventually chosen. (had he subconsciously prevaricated over
the "right" spot, you may ask) His wallet, Rolex and other
valuables carefully buried far from the spot; and then the
elaborate preparations with the elastic band.

Perhaps it was that final moment staring into that
drainpipe that masqueraded as a handgun. Perhaps his hand
flinched at that penultimate instant, or his head
twitched, or a sudden unaccounted breeze ruffled the
branches, Lucretious never knew, and probably never would
know whether his indomitable human spirit simply refused
to be quenched or whether it was pure funk or plain
incompetence...there was a loud explosion, slightly behind
schedule, and blackness.

When he awoke it was to the thought that he had died and
gone to hell except that his throat was drier than a fuck
without foreplay. He was also freezing cold and he was
surrounded by a circle of squatting children, some sombre,
some simply silent and some giggling behind their hands.

Standing over him was a near naked infant with a rancid
snot regurgitated face, all streaked over with streams of
dirt. He was prodding at Luc's genitals with a stick.

At this point Lucretious realised that he was stark naked
and that his genitals were coated with
something that could be white enamel paint, and in terror
he leaped to his feet, scattering children and evoking
equal terror in a group of other onlookers whom he had not
previously perceived but now sees to be a group of young
village girls.

Embarrassment on top of catastrophe, he has died and gone
off to some place where it is his fate to be humiliated. Characteristically
given his former obsession his first
thought is:
what is this going to cost him ?

A Great deal as it transpired, because of course he had
failed to kill himself. He had knocked himself out in some way
and given himself a headache that reduced all the worst
hangovers of his excessive moments to mere phosphene
kaleidographics with twinkly lights flashing merrily in front of aching eyesockets.

While he'd been unconscious some thieving bandits had
snucked up on him and stolen all his clothes [They'd also
stolen his carefully buried wallet, Rolex and other
valuables and the 357, as well as the hired car, and had
disappeared never to be seen again.]

It appeared as if they had also been intent on stealing
his genitals, for why else had they been coated with that
white gunk, had they perhaps been disturbed? Possibly. He
was unable to find out. It certainly appeared that they had
been watching his elaborate preparations from some secret
vantage spot. On the other hand, perhaps the white painted
genitals were simply intended to "make his day".

Nonetheless the former assumption was the basic position
taken by the extremely laid back constable who came out to take
down Lucretious's report, and who was really not that much
more interested in the living than he was in the dead. So
much for ambition.

And so Lucretious returned to the city in a friendly police
squad car with borrowed clothes. His wife, who had been
shopping, pauses long enough in her labours to register
that with all the credit cards having been stolen she will
now be subjected to the inconvenience of having to go
through all the elaborate paraphernalia which goes with
reissuing new cards and she is furious: In fact she is
beyond furious.

"I could murder you " she screams, frequently, "You are so
inconsiderate, it's a pity you weren't killed!"

After he told her about the bit with the genitals, she
sneered openly. She pointed out that it was a long time
since he'd shown any sign of having balls, and if he
really thought about it the act was more likely to have
been ceremonial than real.

Luc's daughter pauses for a moment in some video
game, to complain that their argument is ruining her
concentration and Lucretious sinks into a depression too
profound for discussion here.

Reviewing the entire thing over the next few days
he is painfully aware that if he believed he could
no longer afford to live, then dying is proving
catastrophically costly. It was time to seek professional
help: He decides to hire a "Hit Man".

Now this is a lot easier said than done. After all one
doesn't simply open the yellow pages and find one listed
in the easy reference index. Like lawyers, hit men are only
available on referral: and they are frequently expensive.

So he approaches the man he calls the Scarecrow, his
gardener, a fellow, with an awkward way of walking, called
Lucas. Lucas Radebe, one time factory worker, until his
leg had been injured in an accident at work; a former
gatekeeper, dagga smuggler and prison gardener, (Not that
Lucretious actually `knew' any of this.) He simply made an
assumption that Radebe would have some contact in the
townships who could do the deed efficiently for a small
sum.

At first Lucas is incredulous; not that Lucretious should
be seeking a hit man, that after all was quite common,
everyone with a gripe against his fellow man was out
hiring hit men at the moment, the rate of slaughter was
after all really quite astronomical, if anyone cared
enough to analyse it.

Ironically Lucretious was turning to one of the few growth
Industries left in the country for his solution: death and funerals.

No...Lucas was simply amazed at the target of Lucretious
request. However once he realises that Lucretious is
serious...the ways of the bosses are after all
mysterious...he decides to recommend his cousin who has
been out of work for some months and has become an
apprentice hit man for a small family syndicate based in a
township on the north east side of the city.

Not being a man to let an opportunity slip Lucas also
ponders whether Mrs Sekati might not also be interested
in laying out a few bucks as well ...just for
insurance...he had after all been party to their frequent
outbursts of acrimonious table talk for weeks now. It was
also quite well known that women of certain classes often
seemed to benefit considerably from the deaths of their
husbands. And so with this thought in mind he arranged for
Lucretious to meet his cousin

Five Grand! That's how much it would cost, five G's
to sneak up and blow Lucretious's head off.
Lucretious natural instinct to haggle over the price was
arrested at the thought that he was haggling over the
price of his own demise...was he only worth five
grand dead! Try wrestling with value and what have you
got, an empty corpse for a grave. It would cost more to
bury him.

He also discovered that it would cost seven and a half grand for a serious beating if he wanted to give someone a lesson. Killing is not such a mission, Lucas pointed out. With a beating you had to take more care and that could be more dangerous.

This presented Lucretious with an intriguing problem...he
didn't have the five thous in cash that was required by the hit
man...his world revolved ever less easily around a web of
extended plastic credit...and the "Apprentice Hit Man"
wouldn't take a cheque...didn't actually know what it was.

He certainly had no idea de of plastic and
therefore carried no merchant's machine for a Visacard .So
eventually Lucretious pawned an original Chagall at a
place on the Rietfontein road, gave the fellow his five
large and prepared more or less to meet his doom.

What we do is we make it look like a hijacking the hit man explained to Lucas.
We will use nine millimetres and hard-nosed ammunition so that it looks ordinary and we
wear gloves.
We collect him as he drives out of the gate get in behind him take him to a place
where he is
executed. Then walk away.
Two kilometres away dump gloves: firearm goes back to rentagun.

Now a curious thing begins to happen, gradually,
insidiously Lucretious feels his deep depression lift, he
is like a man playing out the last few days before his
annual holidays. Interestingly he begins to notice things
he hadn't seen before. The leaves are falling from the
trees and he sees with a particular enthrallment the last
glow of sunset, a golden rage of light behind the bare
etched branches on an avenue of Jacaranda's.

There are other things, the nuances of speech listening to
people talking in a shop, he notices too with growing and
profound amazement that there appear to be people who
actually sound as if they are happy. It is possible that
he feels a moment of regret at this insight, however he
rationalises that these are essentially people who have
nothing anyone really wants.

He also notices the garbage in the streets and girls with
bizarre spikes where most had hair. Even his wife's
carping and whining, her substitutes for love and
affection take on a peculiar air of finality.

He had left the actual "moment" open ended. The element of
surprise would add a certain zest to the exercise, which
could otherwise take on the ghastly planned agony of end
of the year school exams. Nonetheless after some six or
seven days had passed he began to get restless, the real
world of debt and anxiety was beginning to close in again
and here he was all dressed up and nowhere to go as it
were.

Then on the morning of the eighth day Lucas appears just
as Lucretious is preparing to leave the house and tells
him that his cousin wishes to talk to him. Lucretious
feels his stomach lurch, was it now, and did he want to
go...he panics inwardly, and is overwhelmed for an instant
by a feeling of utter futility and despair.

With a sense of dread he watches the approaching figure of
the apprentice hit man, smiling, almost embarrassed. At the
same time he notices that his wife is watching them from a
window in the lounge. He waves to her out of a sense of
nonchalance, and she disappears. The hit man coughs, his
eyes shift away and he mumbles something incoherent.

"What did he say" Lucretious asks when it is obvious that
there is to be no more said.

"He says he needs more money" replies Lucas.

Lucretious is dumfounded..."More money?"

"Yes".

"We agreed on the figure, why does he now need more"

A discussion ensues between Lucas and the hit man.

"He has expenses" says Lucas at last...and no further
information is forthcoming.

It occurs to Lucretious that technically his contract has
been voided, however he doesn't think that the hit man
will really understand the finer nuances of this argument,
and anyway as it dawns on Lucretious that his plan may
come to naught he feels the oppressive world of debt and
failure grabbing him again, his disappointment is acute,
his rage overwhelms him and he starts screaming at the hit
man, who cowers stoically.

Eventually however they all calm down and Lucretious
agrees to renegotiate the contract, drawing on another of
his Chagalls, this time at a different pawnshop.

"This is the last payment" he tells the surprised hit
man. "If you don't do it properly this time the deal's
off"

And so life returns to it's former tenor, and gradually as
Lucretious feels the comforting aura of immanent closure.
he begins to relax, he sets about his daily routine of
trying to put a "Big deal" together with renewed vigour
with the thriving confidence of a man with a million
dollar bank account.

And inevitably, as day follows night, the mood getteth the
deal and as ye believe so shall ye prosper and suddenly
out of the blue the biggest deal of Lucretious life comes
bursting in over the horizon: a hedge fund opportunity of truly mathematical glory.

Its everything he wants, a glorious scam calling for the
setting up of a syndicate to acquire property in
transitional suburbs in the city which could then be rack
rented by the square metre to the hordes of desperate homeless
seeking shelter in the city.

Suddenly Lucretious realises that his dilemma had been
caused by myopia. Just because the market for ripping off
the rich and naive had disappeared did not mean that all
opportunity was gone, there were all those masses of poor
out there with something to squeeze. He envisages a
wonderful future in which he can now live happily ever
after robbing the poor to feed the credit card classes.

Almost preordained the pieces come together with clockwork
precision. Had it been scripted it could not have gone
better until suddenly, days later, rejoicing in the rosy glow of
pre-eminant success he remembers the hitman. He must stop
him...buy him off if necessary before, like unwanted
taxes, now unwanted death sweeps uncomfortably in.

"I want to live forever" he shouts to Lucas as he bundles him into his replacement
hired car.

Lucas must take him to the Hit man so that they can cancel
the contract. So engrossed is he in his new mission that he
doesn't notice that Lucas is less than enthusiastic about
the change of plan, is in fact even more taciturn than is
monosyllabically normal.

So they set off on a bizarre journey through the
backstreets of dissolute townships, past rows of cardboard
and sinkplaat shacks. Lucretious is amazed that there are
so many people living on such confined places and, his
mind immediately filled with plans for squeezing rents from numbers
divided into space. He start's planning the replacement of his
AMG Mercedes with an updated model.

Their passage through the vast ocean of shacks is brooded
over by lounging lurking hordes of what appear to all
intents to be gangsters, thugs and general layabouts.
However Lucretious doesn't see them either...or perhaps he
sees only a romanticised version of them as he glances
incessantly at his new Rolex, anxious to be back at his
dealmaking.

Then Lucas spots his cousin walking across a rubble strewn
Square, between what could be a couple of main roads.
Lucretious skids to a stop and leaps from the car, shouts
to the hit man and takes off after him, Lucas in hobbly
pursuit. The hit man sees him, shouts back and from the
distance begins gesticulating violently.

Simultaneously some quick thinking lounging types nip in
and hijack the unattended vehicle which goes roaring off
with a flourish of agonised wheel spins.

Lucretious stops, suddenly shocked at what he has done so
intemperately, and he immediately realises that he is in a
completely alien place, which only hours before he had
never known to exist and that now, having suddenly got his
life together again he has exposed himself to the insanity
of loss.

He sees the Hit man starting towards him shouting and
gesticulating, and not understanding what he is saying,
knowing only that this man has a contract to complete,
Lucretious panics and races off back the way he had come
towards where he had left the car, realises in complete
disbelief that it is no longer there and then dashes in
mounting terror over the broad ribbon of patched tar which
served as the main road. The hit man pursues him.

And then suddenly it is over, halfway across the road the
Apprentice Hit Man is knocked down by a speeding bus and
instantly the scene is crowded with agitated bystanders.
Lucretious pushes through the crowd and sees Lucas
crouched down next to his dying cousin, who is desperately
trying to tell him something.

Lucretious is overwhelmed with guilt. This man is dying
because of him, he starts formulating pension plans for
the man's family, stops, realises the man is probably
related to the entire continent, revises his thought to
sending flowers.

"What is he saying " he asks Lucas at last as the man
continues to gasp out some things.

Lucas looks at Lucretious for a long time, everybody in
the crowd starts looking at Lucretious, he begins to feels
most exposed and starts shivering violently.

"He says he's sorry..."

"Sorry?"

"Yes he says he's sorry...he couldn't do it...he wanted to
you understand...but he couldn't"

"He couldn't do it" Lucretious says, dumfounded. It had
never occurred to him that the man had scruples, that
wasn't fair he was a hit man, what kind of a hit man has
scruples!

He looks around him at the crowd, they are all looking at
him, they are waiting. The hit man says something else to
Lucas before falling back. There is a long silence.
Eventually Lucretious breaks it. As he does
so he thinks inanely for a moment of the old sales
cliché. The first to break the silence loses...well the
hit man loses this one he thinks.

"What did he say then !"

Lucas stands, awkward on his game leg, he'd hurt it
chasing around after them. He stares at Lucretious.

"Well" Lucretious says, breaking the interminable silence
again....this time he doesn't think about the old sales
cliche...he is impatient...there are deals waiting to be
brokered. The crowd pressing around him also bothered him,
It was threatening.

"He said that he didn't want to disappoint you..."

"Yes"

"So he sub-contracted the job".



end.

Copyright...1992...Nicholas Williamson.aka...NiK...

P.O.Box 891224
Lyndhurst 2106. Azania/RSA.