“What’s Henry doing here?” the whispered question drifted across the darkened room from the paired silhouettes shouting their presence from the window’s moonlit background.
“He’s watching you!” she let the whisper float on the suddenly still air,“for me.”
Both froze at the sound, one watching as Henry lifted his head and looked up at them from the warehouse landing below, white gleaming at them from his moonlit smile so full of the perfect white teeth that looked so out of place in his derelicts demeanor.
“You need to leave now, don’t look back, don’t come back,” her voice sounded flat as they looked in the dark toward the sound of it.
“He’s gone,” the silhouette voiced in surprise as he looked once again out the window. Henry had vanished, but they both knew he wasn’t gone.
They moved towards the door, groping in the darkness. The closest to the door reached toward the light switch.
“No lights!” she said.
They stopped cold for a moment then opened the door and slipped into the hallway.
…
I swept the alley with the rifle’s scope. There was nothing in the night but darkness in the alley, but Henry said she came there to watch him while he knelt in the dark. He said she watched him thinking she was unseen, he wouldn’t say why.
I swept the walls and windows of the building opposite just to break the tedium and saw the startled and reddened face of a baby, eyes wide with the impact of a slapping hand, a hand that slapped far to hard for to little reason, a hand poised at the apex about to descend again, framed from the wrist up in the scopes cross-hairs.
I loosed a whisper from the rifle’s silenced barrel into the night, into the window, into the hand. Between the wrist and knuckles, away to one side away from the thumb, the round tore through bone and flesh and set to spinning out of the scopes field of view two now severed fingers.
No sound came from the open window across the alley except the sobbing of a child. I saw once again a flicker of motion against the alley wall, stealthy and momentary, it was gone in an instant and all else was quiet.
I dropped the rifle from the window as Henry crossed the alley and stopped beneath me. I stepped out onto the fire escape, jumped to the next, then the next, then slid down the drain pipe to the alley floor, Henry was waiting.
“I blew it”, I said, as Henry broke down weapon, putting the pieces one by one in the shoulder case.
“She hit the child often, its why I come here to listen” Henry said, his eyes gleaming in the starlight motioned to window above. “She was standing against the wall in the open, you didn’t see her?”
“No I didn’t, she is very good!” I said.
“No, she is good, but not that good, something else here that I can’t see, helping her, or maybe not really helping her. She won’t be back – it was the child.” he said almost to himself as he looked up at the window again in the night.
“They are still inside, I think they are afraid to leave.” he said.
“Go home Henry.” I said.
“I am home!” he said as he walked to the alley’s end and out onto the street.

He froze as he felt the chilly end of the silencer nudge, ever so slightly, up against his hairline.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Just making a point dad”, she said, as she stepped away into a waiting car, “you have to stop helping me, and you have to stop having me watched; before somebody slips and one of your soldiers gets hurt, I don’t know all of them personally yet. Call me when you get home, I need some information.” …

“Tracy?” he said, as she answered the ringing phone.
“Yeah Dad”.
“That was pretty stupid Tracy”
“It was pretty necessary Dad, and you’re still not listening; what you’ve been doing is stupid and its becoming stupid on my behalf as well – you need to stop it”, she said, her voice getting rough with anger. “Did you send Jiles after someone tonight?”
“How did you know about that, is he there, let me talk to him,” he said, sounding startled.
“Henry called me Dad, he found him dead in an alley downtown, hung by his heels, killed ritual style; unprofessional except the killing part.”
“How ritual Tracy,” he said.
“A thousand razor cuts, none of them deadly; or so says Henry, he counted them. Who was he after Dad?”
“ A hit gone bad and still in the hospital, we only just found out he wasn’t dead.”
“Too busy following me around?” her voice sounded petty.
“Jiles is dead Tracy!” he said, the angry edge was unmistakable.
“Sorry Dad.”
“I would have sent Henry for this one but he would have gotten in trouble in the hospital, he likes it in places like that, only the doctors don’t care for what he likes.” almost sounding amused now.
“Then you still use him?”
“Absolutely, deadliest man I have, and I can hide him right under the lamp. The cops just don’t take him seriously.”
“Then he was watching Jiles, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then he probably knelt in that alley and watched him freeze Dad!” she said.
“It would be in character for Henry to do that, Jiles got himself into a jam and Henry didn’t like him much anyway. It won’t help for me to talk to Henry about it Tracy, if that is what you’re thinking; he doesn’t really listen to anyone but you, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that; I don’t understand it, but I’ve heard that.” she said.
“Your turn to stay out of something Tracy, leave this one alone!” she could hear a touch of frightened in his voice that she had never heard before.”
“Its too late Dad, I wasn’t alone in that alley. I could smell her. I didn’t get a good look at her, but she knows who I am. Get word to Henry that we need to have a Pow-Wow, if I knew she was there so did he – and stop watching me, especially now. They distract me and I need to be able to listen.” she said.
“Tracy?” the tone of his voice was enough to tell her he wasn’t listening.
“When I see them, I’ll start taking them!” she said.
“Tracy?”
She hung up the phone and waited for it ring again, when it didn’t she relaxed just a little. “ Maybe, just maybe, he actually heard me this time.” she thought to herself.

“Inner windows on the divine, a synchronous sea of mind. The metal so cold that newspapers help, why, if God knows that I’m here, does he leave me in the night alone?
Guilty! they charge, As her own indiscretions fly to the four points of the compass with the shouting sound of her gavel. She was dead? she wasn’t going to need it anyway, for no better reason than a parking place – a truly infinite blindness.
Walking from bench to bench, news behind the wire all that I can afford. A struggle for cold from cold – under the trees are better. 2000 dead, almost a better risk than being here, but not alive – at least not entirely. But then, I’m not welcome, or so I’m told – no one tells me why.
Tough decision, spend the last I have on something to eat, or on a place to get a shower, then maybe some kind of work that I won’t be turned down for. I choose to eat. I don’t bother with what little change is left over from that, it’s not going to be good for anything anyway.
I’m not sick, or tired, but I throw up anyway. I’m not sorry I bought food, even if most of it is now on the sidewalk. I’m supposed to be scared, but somehow I’m not, not in a synchronous sea of mind. A fortnight of five benches. Why, if God knows that I’m here, does he leave me in the night alone?”

“Henry, what happened here?” he didn’t move or show any sign that she had interrupted his reverie, he lived mostly in his own mind now.
She looked at him, on his knees in front of a body hung in an alley by it’s heels. His camouflage coat and pants were old, she knew that he had worn them in a war, and couldn’t be separated from them without violence.
“Henry,” she repeated.
“I knew it”, he spoke without stirring, “ but I counted them anyway just to be sure, but I knew when I first looked.”
“Like you know the Sox, Henry?” she said.
“Yup! I could see it as he turned in the wind Tracy, one thousand on the button, not one more, not one less.”
“One thousand what Henry?”
“Cuts!” he said under his breath, “the eyes were first, or pretty much, see the blood run over the gook, seen that with napalm. Yup, one thousand exactly, very methodical. Didn’t die of the cuts though, none of them are deep enough, and there isn’t enough blood. Died of the cold – or fear.”
“Do you know who he was Henry?”
“Yup, hit man named Jiles; very bad, very smart, very careful; doesn’t make sense this doesn’t. Someone had to have brought him here while he was out, you couldn’t beat him in an alley by hitting him in the back of the head – look at that knot.”
“I gotta go Tracy!” he finished.
“Who do you have for the game Henry?”
“The Sox,” he said, his camouflage pants made a crinkling noise in the cold as he got up, frozen from the time, who could guess how much, he had spent on his knees. “Willis’s gut is swollen, so is his neck; whatever it is, no one has caught it yet. Even if they do, it won’t be in time for the game.”
“Do you miss anything Henry?” she tried to smile, and get it to show in her voice.
“People that its alright to kill,” stopping for a moment to look her full in both eyes.
“But not like that Tracy – not like that,” he said as he turned to leave.
She looked down at where Henry had been kneeling, he’d been kneeling in his own vomit, kneeled long enough that it had frozen; like the pool of blood beneath Jiles.
…
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Body hanging in an alley, probably not an emergency though, he’s frozen solid as the hamburger in my freezer. He’s in an alley south of Main, between 8th and 9th.”
“May we get…”
She cut the call short and turned to leave, looking back only for a moment as she left the alley – but it was enough to see a shadow slide silently back into the darkness.

It always surprised him how easy it was to spot the capable by the way they moved, even in a loose fitting smock. He guessed in this lady’s case it was martial arts, more than just Tea-bo, the way she carried her weight entirely over her body – always – even when she stopped at the drinking fountain, was second nature; that meant not only practice, but training and some experience at least. What happened to the good old days when you could just go out and thump somebody without getting your ass kicked by his wife when she was done in the kitchen!.
His train of thought was broken by someone yelling doctor in the hallway. He didn’t realize they were yelling at him until he turned around, after watching miss martial arts as she walked around a corner and down another hallway. He turned to leave as another doctor in the hallway answered the call. Given the black look he got over miss someone’s shoulder as they stepped into the room together, he would have to get her name before he left, she might remember him later.
The smock and the name-tag were all it took once you were inside a hospital, the assumptions made on appearances from there were always pretty much the same; Doctor , Nurse, Intern, some kind of back room type? the way he carried himself almost always failed to Doctor for most.
The room was on the 3rd floor, the burn ward. He wasn’t told why they tried to make an example of this guy; acid in the face was always example stuff, a warning, but he wasn’t supposed to live. They only found out last week that he had, so he had been here for months; not good, and needed to be remedied.
He let all the people out of the elevator with his kindest smile; a gun with a silencer doesn’t feel right to someone if they brush against it walking by you, elevators are bad about that. The elevator remained empty for the short ride to the third floor. The room was unguarded, why guard a room with a vegetable in it? He closed the door behind him as he stepped in, and turned the lights up just enough to be sure who was there. Just a burn victim in a chair that didn’t even have wheels on it.
Wonder why they propped him up in that chair that way, strapped head held up and against the high back – it looked unnatural. There weren’t any eyelids left, but the eyes were clear, it can sometimes happen that way with acid, the blink reflex protects the eyes and the eyelids take all the destruction.
Before he had a chance to pull out his gun, he heard some one behind him ask, “Can I help you Doctor”, it was miss Martial Arts.
“No”, he said, “just checking on this gentleman.”
“Why,” she said.
“Some friends of mine think that they might know him,” he could tell she didn’t believe him.
“Really, he has been here for months, why now?”
“We didn’t know he was here, we have been looking for him.”
He tensed as she stepped around in front of him. The look in her eyes was searching. He was surprised to see that she was a doctor, that didn’t matched with the way her eyes slid away from his to the man in the chair. She stood motionless for what seemed a little to long, then moved suddenly toward the door as she said, “I’ll get his records out for you if you’ll meet me at the desk down the hall.” He got the full, frank appraisal in her eyes this time, as she noticed him start, “yep, doctor, he thought.”
“Nervous?” she asked, as she paused momentarily at the door.
“A little,” he said, “he looks kinda spooky”
“He is kinda spooky honey!” she said, still looking him up and down.
“The desk?”
“With you in a minute,” he said, as he turned away to look at the man in the chair.
Maybe today wasn’t the day, he thought, as his hand drifted over the gun in his belt… then the world went black.
…
The itching was infuriating, trying to blink didn’t feel right, and didn’t work to
relieve it. The eyes watered suddenly as the night breeze brushed over them.
“Looking for these,” she said.
He face looked strange upside down, he could feel the ropes around his ankles now, as he swayed and struggled in the dimly light alley. She opened her hand and showed him two small pieces of skin – they were his eyelids.
Her other hand flicked toward him, and it surprised him how little it hurt – at first.
Her knew from the reddened blur that was all he could see from his left eye, that what he felt running down his forehead was the fluid from inside it.
“Number three Honey”, she whispered in his ear, “number three.”

“Come here!”, the words rang suddenly in her head as she stood in front of the nurses stand. The whimper that escaped her lips, as she dropped her clipboard, grew into a sob as she ran for the door to the elevator – “to the elevator, then outside” she thought to herself. But she was being obvious and drawing attention, she would never be safe.
…
The itching, the gibbering of voices in my head – I awoke and nothing would move. I remembered what moving was – once, but not who or how or when I came to be here in this chair. I only knew that my eyes itched and my mouth was dry, and the pain was everything, everywhere – the pain was all; all except the voices endlessly in my head. Why wouldn’t they close my eyes, how could they not know – my God the itching.
Then one day they stopped, the voices, suddenly, like they had been ignored to long; and the pain – it was there – but distant and inconsequential, and I could reach out, reach out with mind – with such strength, strength that had always been there but that I had never found before.
I reached out once more, “Come Here”, I said, and I knew she heard me – I could sense the fear. The time it took to break her down was growing shorter and shorter, and I could make her do anything when she gave in. Soon she would stop the pacing outside the front door of the hospital, soon she would start up the back stairs, soon the knob would turn and she would step into the room – again. Again I reached out with all my strength, “Come Here!” I said to her mind as it quavered in terror, even as I heard the door click open ever so slightly, then wider, as she stepped into the room closing it quietly behind.
How difficult it must be, how frightening, to stand in front of a man in a wheel chair; a man incapable of even the slightest movement – not even blinking, a man you’re not sure can even see you, and disrobe completely. Her greatest fear is being caught – what if someone came along while she was here and caught her at this, but I could tell she was excited by it too.
I reached out with my mind once more, “the clothes!” but it wasn’t necessary; already a trembling hand was rising to her throat, the little finger toying with the top button of her blouse, the tips of her fingers moving lightly down her chest as the buttons loosened one by one. This was getting easier, and she was beginning to like it, even while hers eyes bulged in terror of it.