The Hit

The Hit


Franky Palmer loved the solitude of the mountains. With the mist, and the trees, and the space, it was a world of fantasy, and it was incredible to think that Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, was only five minutes away by car. To be sure, Hobart was a lot smaller than New York. He never realised how, back home, the constant crowds walking up and down the streets had been like a security blanket for him, a flow of anonymous faces that always looked straight ahead. When he first arrived in Tasmania, he felt like everyone was watching him, his thick Brooklyn accent making him stand out even more. Standing out for Franky had always been a bad career move. Then he found the mountains, and things didn't seem so bad. And then, in the mountains, New York found him.

He'd become careless, falling into routines. Back home routines were deadly. He never used to follow a pattern for more than a fortnight. But here… the air was clean, the people were uncomplicated, and he walked up Mount Wellington once a week, every Saturday. And today, when he got back into his car, there was someone waiting for him. An old, shocking feeling of cold metal pressed up against the back of his head, and a man's voice with an oh-so familiar accent said, "Let's go for a walk, you asshole," and so they headed deep into the bush blanketing the slopes, far away from any walking tracks, Franky walking ahead with his hands above his head, not catching a single glimpse of the fellow New Yorker behind him. All the time his heart was racing, wondering if the man would cruelly shoot him in mid-stride just for laughs, but he had a hunch that this guy would want to say a few words to him first. And that's when he'd play his ace. He just hoped the man liked cards.

After what seemed like hours but was probably about twenty minutes, Franky was told to stop and kneel on the ground. He did so, and then said, his voice shaky, "I have your father's signet ring."

"Excuse me?" said the man behind him.

"I have it. It was given to me. I was told to give it to you if you ever found me."

There was a shifting of damp of leaves as the man moved around in front of him. His black hair was slicked back, revealing a clear, broad forehead and burning brown eyes. He was wearing a red and black flannelette shirt underneath a thick hunting jacket. He must have been in the state at least a few weeks. God, I've gotten sloppy, Franky thought.

The man pushed his gun into Franky's temples. "If you're jerking me around, I'm gunna shoot you in the face so your pretty little wife can't identify you."

"Yeah," Franky said, "I'm with you, just let me…" he slowly put one hand down the neck of his shirt, while keeping the other hand open and well above his head. He drew out a chain, threaded through a heavy golden ring carved with the signet of a grizzly bear on its haunches.

Tears came to the man's eyes as he took it with his free hand. Then suddenly a snarl consumed his face. "Where did you get this, you cock sucker? Did you steal this from my father, or have you had it made to sell me some bullshit story? Huh?" He dug the gun into Franky's head to punctuate each point.

"You hadn't seen that ring for a long time before your father died, right?" Franky said. "And not many people outside your family know that it exists, so it's unlikely I could have got a forgery. Paul Rothman gave it to me."

"Rothman?" the man said. "Our Rothman? If that's the best you've got, pal, you'd better start saying your -"

"There's more. He told me to tell you my story if this ever happened, that you'd at least hear me out, because you always used to love hearing stories when you were a kid. You are Bruno Scapelli, right?"

The man nodded. He looked confused. Kind of like most people would who'd spent months hunting for revenge only to realise they didn't know what they were avenging, Franky thought.

"Can I sit down?" Franky asked. Bruno nodded, and although he kept the gun pointed straight at him, while vaguely toying with the ring, he let Franky tuck his legs underneath him and tell a story that would decide his fate.

"You know what I am, or what I used to be."

"Yeah," said Bruno. "You murder people for money. The Freeze, they call you."


"That's right," Franky said with a sigh. "You must have had a bit of trouble getting that piece in here. The government's made everyone give their guns up."

"I heard. Madon, if they did that in the States it would make our work so much easier. Like Prohibition for firearms. Anyway, you have a story to tell me, Frank the Freeze." He sat down cross-legged on the wet foliage, draping the chain across his knees.

"Well, one day in fall, 'ninety-nine, somebody arranged an appointment with me in the usual way; that's to say, not through my secretary. We met in a parking lot, and the somebody turned out to be two somebodies, an old man in a black coat, being held up by a middle-aged guy wearing a hat, like he was back in the fifties. They were both cold-faced, icy calm, where most people dealing with me shit their pants within a meter - ah, three feet of me.

"They looked at me for a while, especially the old man, really checking me out from my hair to my toenails. Then he said, 'You are a professional killer, yes? Here is the person who is to die.' He signaled to the hat guy, who pulled a large manila envelope from his jacket. He opened it and removed a photo, which he handed to me.

"I looked at the photo. I looked at the old man, who could have made a great poker player for all the expression he had. I looked at the hat guy, who's face was screwed up as if he'd swallowed a lemon, and I said, 'You're kidding me.'

"'You've accepted contracts on figures involved with organised crime in the past,' the hat man said. 'In particular, one Ralph Vendetti.'"

"You whacked Vendetti?" Bruno said. " That job with the knife? Nice. Gruesome, but nice. I always assumed it must have been an inside job, someone in his own family turned traitor. I mean, how did you get all the way into his study, past armed soldiers and everything, and then out again? I mean, weren't you afraid someone would come in while you were spreading his guts around?"

"I'll tell you what I told my clients," Franky said. "Ralph Vendetti was high up in the family tree, a made man. If I whacked that guy, then all the Families in New York would be after me."

"And what did your clients say to that? Who are your clients, anyway?"

"The old man said, 'We were all in agreement that Ralph had to go. He was dangerous, and he was out of control.'"

"Fuckin'-a," Bruno said. "That guy was doing more smack than a Colombian soccer team, and going out shootin' up night clubs. This, from the second in command of the Scapelli Family? So you did do it, didn't you? You must have been shitting your pants when these guys told you what they knew."

"Can I continue here? Well, yeah I did almost shit myself, actually." Bruno smiled, although he kept that gun pointed at Franky's face. He felt a bead of sweat slide down his forehead, despite the misty, fresh air.

"So the hat guy basically says that he knows I've done mob hits before, and this is no different. 'This target is just a little higher up,' he says. 'That's all.'"

"The target," Bruno said, his eyes tightening. "You mean my father, right, you fuck? Roberto Scapelli?"

Franky could almost feel the bullets smashing into his teeth, his eyes. He didn't want Jessica to see him with no eyes. "Yeah, but look, let me tell the story, please. Remember the ring."

"Fuck the ring!" Bruno staggered to his feet. "You tell me right now who those two guys were."

"Look, Rothman said you'd take it better if you heard the whole story properly. I will tell you who the guys were, I'll tell you everything. But please…"

"Okay, Franky Freeze," Bruno said, "keep going." He remained standing, pointing the gun down at him like a statue of Zeus.

"Yes, the photo they gave me was of your father, Roberto Scapelli." Franky rushed on. "They gave me detailed information, about the hospital he was in, the room he was in, when the men protecting him changed shifts. I told them, 'Ah, I don't know about this. This isn't exactly my usual kind of work.'

"'It's a mob hit,' hat man said. 'Pure and simple.'

"'I will pay you well,' the old man said. He took out a little notebook and a fountain pen, and wrote a number on it. It took him a long time to draw all those circles.

"'We'll give you half now,' hat man said. 'And half later.'"

"'But who the hell's meant to protect me when I've done the job?' I asked. 'This ain't exactly like Ralph Vendetti.'

"'I will,' said the hat man. 'You'll be fine.' The old man added, 'Noone in my family will find out the truth about this, not for a few years.'"

"Who was the hat man," Bruno said, "to give you protection against the murder of my father? God in Heaven couldn't protect you against that. Time to die, Frank." He cocked the gun.

"I swear on the eyes of my child that I didn't murder your father," Franky said quickly. "I'll tell you the rest of the story, and you'll understand."

"If this story isn't good, pal, I'm not even gonna use the gun. I'm gonna gag you, and then use a branch from one of these trees and puncture your appendix, then throw you down this mountain so that you break every bone in your body, and take days to die without even being able to scream."

"Fair enough," Franky said. He'd never tortured anyone like he was feeling now. "So I asked when this was supposed to go down, and the old man said, 'Three days. Late at night. I don't have much time left.' He was right there. He looked sick, even in the dim light from the street lamps.

"So I spent the next couple of days starting to prepare, memorising the details I'd been given. But there wasn't really much to do, and I ended up getting drunk, wondering if I was even going to go through with it - "

"Oh, please!" Bruno said. "What, you think I'm gonna believe that you were all full of remorse and didn't want to kill my father because he was such a nice man? You're a murderer, Franky, you kill people for money, people you don't know, people you've never met, people who don't even have anything to do with you. You're like a fucking whore with a gun."

"I was!" Franky shouted. "I know. That was my life. I killed people for money. But listen to me, this was different. I was having real problems psyching myself up for this hit. I'd never done anything like it before. What did it mean? Did I have the right to…"

"You're talking shit," Bruno said.

"I drank a bottle of Jack Daniels on the third night, hoping I'd get pulled over by the cops on the way to the hospital. I didn't. Instead, I hung around the hallway near your father's room, hiding in an empty room right next door. He had a room to himself, and when the nurses finished their rounds, I went in and closed the door behind me. Your father was asleep with a tube in his arm, leading up to a bag full of blood, and I gently shook him awake.

"'Ah, it's you,' he said. His voice was wheezing, and I could see how painful it was for him just to reach over and turn on the bedside lamp. He looked a lot worse than the last time I saw him.

"'Are you ready?' I asked. He nodded.

"'Make it look like a put up a struggle,' he said. 'I don't want my kids to think their old man got caught unawares.

"So I ripped his night gown a little, mussed up his sheets, knocked over the lamp, and then I shot him in the heart. He died right away, no pain. Then I pulled the tube from his arm and let it drip a pool of blood on the floor, because God help me, I knew it was the kind of gruesome touch that went with such an act. Then I left.

"I received an invitation to the funeral, and I went, although I was reluctant, believe me. I didn't know how much any of you knew. As soon as the service finished I was going to leave, and pay my respects to the old man later, when your counselor Paul Rothman took me by the arm, this time without his hat. He told me that a briefcase with the rest of the money and his signet ring was in my car, although I parked five blocks away. He told me that he'd wait a couple of years for the sons to get the family business in order, but that he would then have to tell them about my involvement in the affair, and that I should probably get as far away as I could in the meantime. As you can see, I took his advice, although I knew it wouldn't be far enough. I was thinking about going to Antarctica soon. Maybe the moon would have been better."

"He was really sick," Bruno said, staring through Franky, although still holding his gun steady. "Fucking cancer. He couldn't have killed himself though. Too religious. What better way for an old gangster to go out? Tell me one thing though, how am I supposed to know you and Rothman didn't just set this whole thing up between you? Maybe our Jew consiglierrie decided it would be a good business move to get my father out of the way. Maybe my father wasn't present at your little meetings at all, and really did struggle with you in the hospital room before you killed him."

"You called me a whore with a gun," Franky said, "and yeah, that's what I was. But the money from your father… it's all still in the two cases I got it in, sitting in a closet at home, under a pile of sweaters. You must know where I live, so we can go there now and check. Would a whore take money for a job, and not spend it in over three years? You can have it back, all of it."

It seemed that was the strongest argument for Bruno, a business man as much as a family man. He nodded, and helped Franky to his feet. He put the gun away, then slipped the ring off its chain, and into his finger. His eyes were red with unshed tears. He kissed Franky on both cheeks, and said, "Thankyou. As sad as we were to see the old man go, we were all glad that his suffering had ended. The doctor said he might have lingered for months, even years. And all the other families have walked lightly around us ever since, afraid that they're going to be held responsible. Keep the money. Do something good with it."

"Really," Franky said, "I couldn't spend it. I had no problems taking blood money, because I was a murderer, doing evil, and bad money seemed the obvious payment for bad acts. But your father… I felt like I was doing something good, even doing the will of God, for once in my life. I guess that's why I didn't want to go through with it, I felt uncomfortable doing something so decent when I'd lead such a black life. I couldn't taint this one honest thing by profiting from it. Anyway, with the economy over here, the money I had already was worth almost twice as much, so I've been doing okay. Oh, I have something else for you, too."

He pulled out a folded piece of paper. Opening it up, it was a photo of a late-fifties man with dark, greying hair and a look of calm authority radiating from his brown eyes, which looked remarkably like those of Bruno standing before him. It was creased along the edges from the many times Franky had taken it out to look at the face of the man, not as when he had asked him for death in a dark parking lot, not as when he waited for that death and the release it would bring, but as a man of strength, and dignity, and respect. Franky looked at the photo often, to try and block out the image of that other, sick face, and when he looked at it he knew that he had done something good with his life.

He gave the photo to Bruno, and they walked back out of the bush.