Hazel hadn’t touched the apple-fritter in five minutes, and Agnes had noticed she always noticed what sat too long on a plate in her shop.
She ran the rag over the espresso machine one pass more than it needed.
Cinnamon and burnt coffee hung in the air, same as every closing-time since Hazel had started coming here, the quiet settling in the way it did once the OPEN sign went dark.
The briefing case-file lay open on the booth table beside the plate.
The briefing was two days old.
He had pulled it from the booth-drop the case-clerk left Tuesday night, and it had sat in his jacket pocket through Wednesday and most of Thursday before he opened it.
That was unprofessional.
That was the kind of delay that got a man retired.
He read the first page.
Standard contractor reassignment.
A forty-fourth had surfaced in Bradford, the engine was hunting him, and the Commission wanted the file clean.
No loose ends.
No witnesses.
No second chances.
He turned the page.
Cha-Cha’s name was listed as primary contractor.
His name was not.
Hazel stopped.
Read it again.
Cha-Cha, solo assignment, effective immediately.
Protocol: partner reassignment pending administrative review.
Review scheduled seventy-two hours from briefing date, which was Tuesday, which meant the review was tomorrow.
He turned to the third page.
His name was there.
Not as contractor.
As administrative closure.
The Commission did not fire people.
The Commission retired them.
And the protocol for retiring a partner was to reassign the other half and let the case-clerk slip the briefing into the booth two days before the Handler signed the order so the partner had time to prepare or to run, and Hazel had been on the other side of this protocol six times in thirty years and he knew what the third page meant.
Cha-Cha had been told.
She had not said a word.
He closed the file.
The apple-fritter sat on the plate, untouched.
Agnes turned off the espresso machine and came to the booth with the coffee pot in one hand and a mug in the other.
She poured without asking.
She always poured without asking.
“You gonna eat that?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been staring at it for five minutes.”
“I’m pacing myself.”
She smiled.
It was the small smile she gave him when she knew he was lying and did not care.
“Clock says we closed an hour ago.”
“You want me to leave?”
“I want you to eat the fritter and tell me what’s in the file.”
“Can’t.”
“Don’t want to, or can’t?”
“Both.”
Agnes sat down across from him.
She folded her hands on the table.
She had flour under her nails and a smudge of powdered sugar on her left wrist and she looked at him the way she had looked at him the first time he walked into the shop three months ago, which was to say she looked at him like a woman who had seen enough men with bad news in their pockets that she did not need to ask what the bad news was.
“Hazel,” she said.
Quiet.
No question mark.
“Yeah.”
“You planning on coming back tomorrow?”
He should have lied. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
He had lied to better people for worse reasons.
But Agnes was not asking because she needed the answer.
She was asking because she wanted to hear him say it, and he was tired, and the briefing was sitting on the table between them, and the third page had his name on it in the Commission’s small serif font, and he did not have it in him to lie to her tonight.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it?
Okay?”
“You want me to ask what you did?”
“No.”
“Then okay.” She pushed the mug toward him.
“Drink the coffee.
Eat the fritter.
You look like you’ve been working.”
He drank the coffee.
It was burnt.
It was always burnt.
Agnes made coffee the way a woman made coffee when she had been making it for forty years in a diner that did not care if the coffee was good as long as it was hot, and Hazel loved it, and he was going to miss it, and the missing was going to be the thing that killed him if the Commission did not do it first.
He ate the fritter.
It was good.
It was always good.
Agnes made donuts the way she made coffee, which was to say she made them the way they were supposed to be made and did not apologize.
“I gotta go,” he said.
“I know.”
“Not tonight.
Soon.”
“How soon?”
“A week.
Maybe less.”
Agnes did not ask why.
She did not ask where.
She stood, picked up the coffee pot, and went back to the counter.
Hazel watched her go already decided, already three steps past whatever came next, the rest of the room just catching up.
He closed the briefing.
Picked it up.
Went to the counter.
Agnes was rinsing the pot in the sink, and the water ran hot and loud, and he stood beside her and waited until she turned off the tap.
“Can I use your sink?” he asked.
“For what?”
He showed her the briefing.
Agnes looked at it.
Looked at him.
Nodded once.
“Go ahead.”
Hazel tore the briefing into quarters.
Then eighths.
Then smaller.
He dropped the pieces into the sink and turned on the hot water and watched the ink bleed into the porcelain.
The Commission used archival paper.
It did not burn easy.
But it dissolved in hot water if you gave it time, and Hazel had time, and Agnes stood beside him and did not ask, and the briefing turned to pulp and the pulp turned to grey sludge and the sludge went down the drain and the sink was clean.
He turned off the water.
Dried his hands on the towel Agnes handed him.
Not long.
Not short.
The way a man kissed a woman when he did not know if he was going to get to do it again and wanted to remember the shape of it.
Agnes kissed him back.
Then she stepped away and folded the towel and set it on the counter and looked at him with the same steady patience she had looked at him with every night for three months.
“You need help?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that means you don’t ask questions.”
“I can do that.”
Hazel nodded.
He should have said thank you.
He should have said something.
But Agnes was already turning back to the counter, and the moment was gone, and the briefing was ash in the pipes, and his name was still on the Commission’s third page even if the paper was gone.
He left the shop.
The street was empty.
The sky was the grey-orange that New York turned at night when the clouds sat low and the streetlights bled into them.
Hazel walked three blocks before he let himself think about the forty-fourth.
The briefing had called him the engine’s blind spot.
A man the Commission could not track clean because the man had a kit that scrambled residue and a notebook that held what the Commission could not erase.
Hazel did not know what a forty-fourth was.
He did not know what a kit was.
But he knew what a blind spot was, and he knew what the Handler did to blind spots, and he knew that if the Commission could not see a man then the Commission could not see the man standing next to him.
He needed a forty-fourth.
He needed the man the engine could not hunt.
And he needed him in six days, because the Handler’s review was tomorrow, and the retirement order would be signed by Friday, and Cha-Cha would have the weekend to make it clean.
Hazel turned the corner.
The payphone on the corner was occupied.
He kept walking.
There was another payphone two blocks over, and he had a name, and the name was in the briefing he had just burned, but names were easy to remember when the name was the only thing standing between you and a bullet from your partner of thirty years.
Vega.
The forty-fourth’s name was Vega.
Hazel was going to find him.
And Hazel was going to make him an offer.
And if Vega was smart, he would take it, because the Commission was coming for both of them, and the only way out was through the blind spot together.
The second payphone was empty.
Hazel picked up the receiver.
Dialed the operator.
Asked for the listing.
There was no Vega in Bradford.
There were three in the surrounding townships.
Hazel wrote them down on the back of a receipt from Agnes’s register.
Then he hung up.
The night was cold.
The street was empty.
And somewhere in the city a man named Vega was holding a notebook the Commission wanted and did not know yet that the sweetest assassin alive was about to knock on his door and ask him to help a killer retire.
Hazel walked home.
He did not look back.
The donut shop was three blocks behind him, and Agnes was locking the door, and the last apple-fritter was gone, and the decision was made.
He was out.
He just had to live long enough to stay out.
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.