By the next morning, LaRue had a plan and was on the other side of the world. Ray had traced A to living in a cave in the Middle East. His current alias was unpronounceable, but the chef had an approximate location and a current photo.
He had spent the last part of yesterday getting into character. He had become considerably darker, now sported a full beard and (?). He was currently riding a camel, and had another two hours on it until he arrived.
LaRue had named his camel Bruce. ‘Why Bruce?’ he could hear Emily ask.
‘Because it looks like a Bruce.’
It had been only he and Bruce for the last ninety minutes, winding their way through the desert with nothing but sand in front of them.
“So Bruce, I got to tell you, you are a good travellin
“Are you Petree?” a dark complexed man of about twenty asked LaRue before he could even get Bruce completely stopped. He could tell that the young guy’s first language was not English. Probably not even his third language. “That is one of my names.” “The boss is expecting you.” The chef wanted to laugh. Apparently A thought of himself as a Mob boss and had turned all these middle eastern brutes into cliched gangsters. “I never like to keep your boss waiting. I got here as quick as I could.” LaRue noticed A’s helicopter parked to the right of the entrance, roughly where Ray said it would be. He had spent the twelve hour flight roughly learning how to fly a chopper. Based on the age and the scrawniest o
The murder of A had affected the rotation of the helicopter blades, albeit slightly. LaRue had to grip the joystick tightly and hold it farther and farther to the right in order for the copter to fly straight. He had left his private plane at an airfield that had been abandoned decades before, and that only a few people knew of when in operation. As he landed, he saw Ray step out from the plane. It wasn’t until LaRue stepped out that he saw the look on Ray’s face. His eyes were huge, his mouth hung open. LaRue had only seen that expression in movies. “Holy Mary Mother of Christ!” Ray yelled above the roar of the blades. “What?” “Look down.” As he looked down, LaRue discovered that from the waistband of his pants
The next person on Ray’s list was a female. LaRue had no qualms about killing a woman. He had only killed five in the past, six if you count Amie. But this meant that he didn’t have the same comfort level he did with men. The new target’s name was Karen Ford. She currently lived in the United Kingdom. The dossier was thin. She was a hired killer, however it was the people she killed that had put her on Ray’s radar. Her specialty was children. Ford’s clients were people who lived in the shadows. She would be hired by whoever needed extra leverage during negotiations. She had worked both to and for labor unions. Likewise, she had been contracted by every major as well as most of the minor countries. As he sat on the runway before his flight, he dictating more of his new book.&n
Ford met him at the door. She was slender, dressed in black with her long brown hair pulled back. “Welcome Chef.” “Thank you for meeting me,” he answered, shaking the proffered hand. After a short walk Ford motioned to a loveseat. After sitting on a wicker chair, Ford poured herself a glass of wine. When LaRue refused her, he began. “Thank you for offering me wine, but my drink is whiskey.” “I hear your drug of choice is heroin. A ten percent solution.” “Your information is accurate. That’s part of my problem. When I was in my twenties,” he muttered under his breath, “even my thirties,” his voice became conversational again “my drug use didn’t affect me detrimentally. I was able to do every project I had on m
On his ride back to Ford’s estate the next morning, the chef thought of his conversation with Ray. It was a surprise knowing that Tony was the next hit. “He was not one of the three in your original dossiers.” LaRue had told Ray. “The more I get into doing this, the longer the list becomes. So I start re-prioritizing.” The chef heard papers rustling. “You sound very busy. Should I call back?” “I’m going through a script spec. It’s a decent story by a guy I went to high school with.” Ray laughed. “My God, Harry the Hippo has a good story, but he can’t write for shit.” LaRue chuckled. “With a name like Harry the Hippo, he must have a few stories in him.”
In the two weeks since LaRue had gotten home, he had ran over and over in his mind things he could have done differently after leaving Ford’s estate. After killing her, he hadn’t bothered cleaning anything up. After looking through her appointment book, he saw she had nothing listed for another two days. Ray had one of his old associates watching the house. He watched LaRue’s car leave, then slipped in through the unlocked door. From there, Ford’s body would disappear with nothing more than the few bits of blood left behind. “We did everything we could Chef D.” “I know that Ray. I’m just worried about Tony.” LaRue sipped his coffee. One of the few things he insisted he traveled with was his coffee grinder and French press. He had ground two this morning, which was the last of his beans.
LaRue sat in his office. He was having a ‘writer’s rush’ as he called it. Writing about himself was boring and usually took a long time for that reason. However, there were times he almost found it impossible to keep up with the flood of words rushing to the page. Both he and Emily were back at home. He sat in his office and had been writing nonstop for two hours. Emily and Cowatv were playing outside. Coffee steamed from the cup beside him, almost forgotten in his quest to get words on the page. Beside his cup was a syringe filled with his ten percent solution and Vitamin B12 . What does it mean to be ‘America’s Guest?’ It means that millions of people trust me enough to think of me as family. Beyond Grandpa Lou an
That information was going to make this hit more personal that anything LaRue done before. He was nervous. Hell he was scared. In the past, even when his events might have ended in his death, the chef had taken the brazen confidence he had learned from Tommy. With more swagger than smarts, LaRue simply did what he was told. His time with The Box would now be personal. After making one final note, the chef grabbed his two prepared injections left his office and his home. He read Em’s note taped on the door. ‘Doc, I’m with Cowatv at Statler Park. We will spend a few hours here. You know he’s always tuckered out afterwards. I’ll stop afterwards, grab a hotdog and let