Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man

I sat on the edge of the narrow bed alone. The room they gave to me was nice enough. Small. Not spartan, but certainly spare. Like a little motel room, really. Right down to the bible in the drawer and a little picture frame on the wall. It was crooked again, but for once I didn't get up to straigten it.

I opened my mouth wide, feeling my lips slide over the points of my teeth. I pushed the thick double-barrels of the sawed off in my mouth slowly, careful not to bang the cold metal against my teeth. I felt the steel hit the roof of my mouth and I pressed harder, jamming the bore into my palate hard. I wanted to make sure that both barrels went right through my brain. Have to do it right.

I've always been good at "The Kill."

***

My father never went very far, never had a college education. But then, in his generation, you didn't need more than a high school diploma to get a decent job and so long as you weren't a woman you could rise as high as you reached. Well, so long as you had talent.

My father didn't have it. But he never stopped reaching, and that's what he taught me. He also taught me to "dress for success." He went to work every day wearing a suit and tie, hair slicked back no matter how thin it got. First impressions are all important. Image is everything. And of course "dress to kill." In every way I surpased my father.

The nineteen eighties was a good time for guys like me. The sharks, the professional predators. Buy, sell, trade, it was what we did. I didn't care that the hostile takeover from last week cost a hundred thousand jobs. I didn't think about the lives it changed or even ended. Hell, I didn't even think about the money.

It was all about the kill. Some guys go big game hunting, me, I hunted big business. And I was good at it. We didn't even have cell phones. Instead of stuffed heads on my walls, you could have decorated my office out of the pages of Forbes or Fortune 500, and I'd have given you a million dollars (and I mean nineteen-eighties dollars, not the watered down greenbacks circling the drain in the economy right now), if you could find so much as an inch of uncovered wall.

Yeah, I was good. Maybe that's even what got me killed. Like in the old west, if a gunslinger made a name for himself, it wouldn't be long before the next up-and-comer would be along, hoping to gun you down and earn glory by being the one who shot so-and-so. Once that was me, gunning for the biggest dogs, the most exclusive stock. Then it was my turn.

At first, I thought it was funny when I realized that my current holding company had been targeted for takeover. I was so used to being on the offensive that the novelty of being in my prey's place excited me. The excitement of the chase, the thrill of the challenge to turn the tables. I greeted it eagerly.

There wasn't much to find out about my ooponent. The name was Sombra. A closed corporation that mostly bought other companies. Just like me. They specialized in a lot of new technology, real estate and construction, and were based out of Nassau, the Bahamas. Oooh, I couldn't wait to own those offices. They affiliated a few other companies, North Central Positronics and Lamerk Industries, and I considered buying them up and leaving Sombra standing alone before knocking them down, but in the end I decided against it. It felt...personal. Like this was between me and Sombra. I had no idea how personal it would get.

I became obsessed, especially as the months went on and I couldn't get out of Sombra's shadow. Everywhere I turned, they were right on top of me, hemming me with lawyers and contracts and offers. Rather than get discouraged, I fought harder. I was getting maybe four hours of sleep a night, half the time just staying the night at the office. Coccaine and caffine kept me going. And the challenge. They hadn't bought me yet.

I fended them off for almost a year when their financial assaults eased up. I thought Sombra had given up. I was already planning my revenge, when I got the phone call. One Richard P. Sayre. I was invited to Nassau to meet with him. How could I pass that up? It was like getting the chance to meet a chess master you've only played with by mail.

The offices in the Bahamas were everything I thought they would be and only made me hungrier. I walked into Sayre's office like I already owned the building and full of plans to take his receptionist back to my hotel with me on the way out. But Sayre's grin wipes mine off my face. He's maybe sixty, but a young sixty. Or an old thirty, take your pick. He worea suit that probably cost as much as everything in my closet put together, but his shirt was an eye-straining yellow that only made his red tie look even more garish. His gray hair was swept back from a lean, predatory face and on his forehead was... I don't know. But I know what it looked like. It was a hole, like he was shot through the head, but he was still alive. Bleeding, but never dripping.

The door slammed shut behind me, less like the ominous clang of a portculis dropping in a dracula movie (though I'd have plenty of reasons to think of those soon enough), and more like the rapid bang of a door thorn shut in a heated argument. Three men had come into the room behind me. Two were wearing long, floor-sweeping coats in mustard yellow, one with a purple fedora pulled down low over his eyes, the other with a lime green bowler tilted too far to one side. The third man was wearing slacks and a hawaiian shirt; loud, but mercifully dull compared to the other two.

"I do hope you've enjoyed our little game, Sai Cain," said Sayre, causing me to whirl around again. "I certainly have. You were more of a challenge than I expected, but in every game there comes a time when it must end and a winner and a looser must be decided. And I, Sai Cain, am never the looser."

I was out of my depth here, well beyond the scope of any negotiation I'd ever been in before. A shark yes, but a shark out of water.

"However, as I have been amused by you, so has a certain giggling friend of mine. You may meet him in time, but if I were I'd pray that you don't He darkles... He tincts..." I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but I agreed that I didn't want to know. My blood froze in my veins. "He made quite an interesting little suggestion for what to do with you. You're about to learn what it really means to suffer a hostile takeover."

The term falls well short of describing it. The man in the hawaiian shirt leapt onto my back like the heroes do in movies when they're fighting ogres. Even wrapped his legs around me. We went down in a thrashing tangle of limbs, though that didn't last long. When he bit me it was the worst pain I had ever experienced, the worst pain I had ever imagined. But then, it went away. The pain. Everything.

He didn't just drain me of blood. He drained the world of it. Like the whole world was a television set with the color turned down. It was almost there, almost bright enough to see, but only almost. Maybe that's why the low men wear the clothes they do.

But not me. No yellow coats, no fopish hats. If you want to dress to kill, you dress sharp.

***

There's a knock at the door. Even before I heard the voice, I knew who it was. The rapping (as if someone gently tapping) was light and fast, very polite. And it comes from about the level of the doorknob.

"James?" she calls. I take the gun out of my mouth. I can't let her see me like this. The door handle twists in her small hands and the door begins to open. I slid the sawed-off under the pillow quickly and put my hands on my knees. I could still taste steel and gunpowder in my mouth.

"Hi, James!" She smiled. Dark hair, dark eyes twinkling. She only smiled like that for me. Why? "I made sandwhiches!" She shows me the paper plate with two sandwhiches on it. Peanut butter and jelly of course, on white bread with the crust cut off. She put the sandwhiches on the bed, then jumped up to sit next to me, hip to hip, with her little feet swinging above the carpet.

I tried to blink back the tears but one got past me. She saw it and put one of her small hands over mine. She was telling me that it's okay with that touch. Everything's going to be okay. More tears came after the first, but I picked up the sandwhich she offered. It was good.