Renaissance Killer

During a stay in Rome, towards the end of 1995, I enjoyed a brief romantic affair with famed art forger Eric Hebborn, though you likely have not heard of him, dear reader, unless you are one of the connoisseurs he humiliated, or one of the collectors he fucked over. He was quite ingenious when it came to replicating the styles of the Old Masters, and quite unconscionably underhanded and duplicitous in his methods by which he quintupled the values of his uncanny imitations. Perhaps because of this, he was also a very arrogant little prick whom I could not suffer for long, so, in the early days of 1996, I delivered him unto the street, where the police found him lying facedown, his skull crushed, and his disposition decidedly humbler.

Before leaving Rome, I was contacted by a certain high-up in the Vatican regarding a certain Bishop who was doing a certain something that he shouldn’t with a certain number of small boys. You know how they do, and you know how the Church has always preferred to cover these little incidents up, rather than deal with them in a more prudent fashion they won’t regret later, when it all inevitably comes out. But, to each his own. There will always be reasons for people to want to be rid of other people, and I’ll always be right there in the middle of things, making a fat profit out of it all.

Of course, I am unable to disclose the identity of the Church official who retained my services, as I am likewise disinclined to discuss the fee I accepted on that occasion. Let’s just say the golden, jewel-encrusted chalice sitting atop my mantlepiece at home didn’t come from Pier 1.

The year and a half that ensued was marked by a series of decidedly run-of-the-mill contracts, but they were nonetheless lucrative, and, whether I was doing away with a would-be corporate whistleblower in Nevada, a girlfriend-stealer in St. Louis, or a Washington, D.C. hooker who was blackmailing a politician-client of hers, I was enjoying myself, as always. I even got my chance to participate in the ‘96 Olympics, after a fashion, when one of our boys who fell just short of making the American team hired me to eliminate his competition, and thus secure for him the replacement spot. As for ensuring the death of ailing Chicago gangster “Buzzfly” Marone, that was as simple as intercepting his future kidney on its way from its donor to the hospital where Marone waited. Nothing like a shot to an ambulance’s fuel tank to do a kidney to a turn. I’ll have mine fried, and with onions, please.

In May of 1997, I had a close call with Josiah Trent and his FBI cronies at a Renaissance fair (I like Renaissance fairs, okay?) in West Virginia. They swooped down on me like a flock of vultures, just as I was being given my turn at the blacksmith’s, but I took a divot out of Trent’s leg with the hammer, and escaped by the skin of my teeth.

Because Trent had spoiled my holiday, I decided to spite my longtime enemy by making my next job – the assassination of a star witness against the mob, as it turned out – a much grander affair. So I put a time bomb inside a plain-looking duffel bag, and snuck it onto a luggage car bound for the passenger jet that was to convey my target and his federal babysitters – along with two hundred other passengers, and fifteen crew members – across the country. (Prior to nine-eleven, pulling a stunt like that was about as difficult as putting on a hat. I miss those days.)

The plane exploded in midair, thirty minutes after takeoff, killing all onboard. I can feel you hating me for this one, dear reader, but I think my friend at the FBI got the message; you couldn’t catch me, so two hundred and eighteen people died horribly. Pucker up and kiss it, Trent.

The very next month, I was hired to kill a recluse living on a patch of undeveloped land up in the Yukon, in Canada. It happened, you see, that this man’s land was rich in undiscovered gold, though I understood this useful knowledge to be unheard of by the landowner or anybody else, save for my client, who anticipated the government seizing the land after the death of its heirless proprietor, and putting it up for auction, at which auction my client would then acquire the extremely valuable property at disgustingly little expense.

The final major event of which I would like to make note is the death of Princess Diana, who met her untimely demise on August 31, in a car crash in Paris while fleeing from pursuers reported to be overzealous paparazzi. If you’re old enough to be reading this book, then chances are you remember what a horrific mess it all was, and, though I had never given the British Royals the credit for having the cast-iron balls to do away with the most troublesome branch on their family tree, I regret most bitterly that they didn’t come to me for the job, instead of whichever graceless hack it’s so obvious they took on. I couldn’t say who was pulling the strings – whether it was the princess’ conniving ex-husband, her jealous mother-in-law, or some agents of Israeli intelligence, whose primary target would have been her raghead boyfriend of the time – but you can be assured, dear reader, that, if I had been the blunt instrument employed, there’d be none of this conspiracy speculation ten years on.

But, you get what you pay for.

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