From the outdoor cafe across the street, Malafacha watched in disgust as his henchmen turned a simple jewelry-store stickup into shambles. He saw a woman run from the tony shop only to be caught in the doorway by a burst of submachine gun fire; an almost-straight line of red holes popped across her waistline. Too bad: They ruined a beautiful yellow platilla suit, Malafacha thought. Screams began tearing apart the overcast afternoon, and Malafacha wondered in that moment if it might rain. His men ran from the store and jumped in Milo's car, with Kanzur – the idiot – spraying one last burst across the building facade. Malafacha shook his head. He picked up his paper and headed off down the street as distant sirens spiraled through the air.
Then he saw him.
Youthful. Studious in those glasses. Slim and very graceful. Malafacha saw a glint of gold on his breeder finger and wasn't surprised. Marriage probably suits him. Expensive haircut. Camel-hair sport coat, very nice grey and blue broad-stripe shirt and dark trousers. Stock broker? Apprentice attorney bossed around by the partners, maybe, but managing to keep his dignity with good nature? Perhaps.
Who cares about the bio, Malafacha thought, and slipped across the street to fall in step with him.
He liked his target's swing when he walked; it bespoke confidence and some breeding. Horsey set – maybe he didn't get pushed about after all. He bounded quickly up the steps of a hospital built before either of them were born, and disappeared in the door. Malafacha faded in with him.
Malafacha picked up an idle newspaper from a chair and feigned a crossword puzzle while sidling near the nurses station where his target had paused.
Blah, blah, minor surgery this afternoon, blah, blah, room 213, blah, blah, Dr. Wexler.
Malafacha had heard enough. He whisked out the door and around to the emergency entrance. Excellent! This nurses' station was at a hub of hallways surrounding it like wheel spokes. Malafacha sat in a waiting room chair that afforded clear sightlines to three of the hallways, and his cell rang. Chewing out his crew captain with a few menacing words he thumbed the call off and wondered for a moment how he could manage to keep five of these gangs running like clockwork with leaders as stupid as Durazo. The robbery was far too bloody. Object of these exercises was to spread fear and terror, to be sure, but this one was sloppy and desperate. His men looked amateurish and nothing more irritated Malafacha.
Just then he saw an orderly emerge from a door down hall number one and approached the nurse on duty. Malafacha strode up to her when she was alone; he knew his lie was hopeless – that he'd forgotten his shades in a bathroom down that very hall... The nurse waved him an OK without looking up and he was off down the hall. Whipping through the door from which the orderly emerged, he saw to his delight it was as he suspected – filled with neatly shelved scrubs and even a few lab coats!
After putting on the green scubs over his street clothes, he was just donning a white coat he'd fished from the racks when the door suddenly opened and the orderly re-entered. A look of surprise, the beginning of a puzzled smile and then the deep thump of Malafacha's eight-inch stiletto plunging into his belly. The orderly began to gasp and Malafacha whirled him inside and against a wall; he wailed softly at the rough treatment, the dagger still painfully buried in him. Malafacha pulled in out with a whispering hiss and held it up tight to the orderly's face. Young himself and quite good-looking, his expression was still a little surprised, with terror of imminent death seeping in. And Malafacha stuck him deep in the abdomen again; he felt sticky blood on his clenched forefinger and thumb as the hilt stopped the thrust. The orderly gurgled a little, and when Malafacha yanked it out again, he gasped almost silently this time, and dropped.
As Malafacha wrapped his body in a cheap plastic tarp and dropped it in a laundry basket, he was reminded of how much he enjoyed stabbing people in the belly. The perky secretary a few nights ago made a strange cooing sound when he spindled her, naked and especially vulnerable.
