The Man in the Black Suit
The Job
Without bothering to ensure that they were watching, he entered the gas station, progressing down an isle and waiting at the end of it. This late at night the store was not busy, but there were too many people for any physical confrontation to be likely. Every now and again, an employee or a tired trucker wandered past. Black suit analyzed them, not dismissing any out of hand. Finally, an older, grey haired man walked by. His eyes touched black suit's for a moment, then leapt away. The leap was more telling than the look. He made to move past, but black suit cleared his throat, and the man stopped. The two faced each other.
"There was something you wanted to ask me." Black suit waited patiently.
"Hmm . . . I suppose so." But the man hesitated, and black suit's instincts screamed at him.
In two steps his back was against the glass of the refrigerated goods. Visibly he remained perfectly relaxed, but his mind was a scalpel, dissecting his surroundings as his body prepared to follow whatever pattern was necessary. That was when he noticed the woman who'd been coming up the isle behind him. Her eyes did not bounce away when they met his, but neither did they slide past. She took her position next to the older man.
"He certainly isn't slow," the older man remarked.
"Yes, but is he fast enough?"
Black suit tilted an eyebrow. "Yes," he said, and he shot them both dead. The silenced S&W he'd drawn from his jacket barely made a spitting noise.
Obviously, they'd been approaching him with a job. But he hadn't liked their way of asking. Obviously these people were more professional than most of those he worked with, yet they'd broken every rule with a disgusting lack of etiquette. The rules were there for a purpose, because in this craft, common courtesy was common sense. When you approached someone for a job, you let them see you coming, and you certainly didn't bully them or pretend to be a threat.
Stooping quickly beside the two corpses, he removed their wallets and relieved the woman of the vanilla folder she'd been carrying. His fingers slid deftly in and out of pockets, avoiding the growing stains of blood. In the man's breast pocket, there was a substantially thick envelope. Black suit transferred it to his own jacket. Then he left.
The isle he'd chosen had been in the blind spot between two security cameras. Now, as he walked freely from the gas station, he averted his face from the cameras perched around the exit. Avoiding sight-lines was a trick you learned quickly. There was science to it.
Black suit got in his car and drove away.
