Dying Is My Business Read Online Free Page B

the truth was there was nothing distinctive about my appearance. I’d scoured my body for scars, tattoos, anything that might help someone identify me, but there weren’t any. It was frustrating, but not entirely surprising. If my body could heal bullet wounds then surgery scars, tattoos, or marks from childhood accidents weren’t likely to stick around either.
    Two. My amnesia was retrograde, a word I’d learned when I researched my condition on the free computers at the Brooklyn Public Library. It meant that I couldn’t remember who I was or where I lived, but I could still talk, tie my shoes, drive a car, feed myself. I also learned that the condition most likely stemmed from one of two possible causes, either brain damage or a mental defense mechanism against a traumatic event. So had I suffered a brain injury or seen something my mind couldn’t accept? There was no way to know. My memory, up until a year ago, was like a frustratingly blank piece of paper. Which brought me to the final item on the checklist of what I knew.
    Three. The brick wall. My earliest memory, and only a vague one at that. I remembered regaining consciousness lying on my back in front of a brick wall. I wasn’t sure how much I could trust that memory, since my mind was constantly trying to fill in the blanks with fabricated stories, but this one at least felt true. The wall in question seemed average, but there was something about it I still wasn’t sure if I’d really seen or only imagined. One of the bricks had a symbol scratched into it. In the fuzziness of my memory I thought it looked like an eye inside a circle. I remembered sparkles of light dancing along the wall and fading away like dying embers as I opened my eyes. I remembered a small, swirling wisp of smoke, as if someone had just put out a cigarette.
    I figured the brick wall probably belonged to an alley somewhere in the city, only I had no idea where. My next memory was of running down an empty street at night, lost and confused. I found a hospital, but without any ID and with no signs of physical trauma they turned me away. After that I camped on park benches and under bridges, rummaging through garbage cans for food and shooing away the rats that came too close at night. In the mornings I would move on, hoping to find someone or something that would remind me who I was. But all I found was Underwood.
    He’d been in one of his stash houses, off of an alley in Harlem, a small, concrete hut with a counterfeit Con Edison sign on the door to keep people out. I was ravenously hungry, and the smell of food lured me down the alley. The lights coming out of the hut’s windows had looked so warm that I couldn’t help myself. When I saw the door was slightly ajar I didn’t bother knocking, my hunger was too great. I just walked right in. They were all there, Tomo, Big Joe, Ford, Underwood, and the dark-haired woman, standing around a table loaded with stacks of cash and empty fast-food wrappers. The woman saw me first, her dark eyes widening with alarm. She didn’t say a word, but the look on her face was enough to alert the others. Tomo, Big Joe, and Ford turned on me with their guns drawn. Then I felt something hit me in the chest. That was the first time I died. The next thing I knew I was waking up in a Dumpster, my shirt riddled with bullet holes. Only I didn’t have any bullet holes in me anymore. As I crawled out, I stepped on something that crunched underfoot. I looked down and saw a shriveled, desiccated corpse lying beside the Dumpster. Ford. He’d been unlucky enough to get the order to carry my body out to the Dumpster, and being the closest living person had paid the price for it. Ford’s was the first life I stole. The first name on my list, and the reason Tomo and Big Joe wanted me dead. The three of them had been like brothers.
    After that, Underwood knew someone like me could be useful. He took me off the streets, put a roof over my head, and filled my pockets