The Hitman: Dirty Rotters Read Online Free Page A

chest. I had a feeling I didn’t need it. I kept still,
waiting. I thought to myself that I had been lying there for two
days and my mother must be a worried mess. I planned on asking
Amber if she could get a popsicle for my mother. She liked the
orange ones.
    It was only a few minutes later when
Amber returned. She stepped in and held the door open. I waited for
my mother to walk in, but it wasn’t her that followed. It was
Little B. She had been sleeping. Pain filled her red-streaked eyes,
and the lids were puffy from crying. Her short grey hair was a
mess. Her face was streaked with tears. Her lips were moving
quickly. I could hear her whispering repeatedly, “Thank you,
Jesus.”
    “ Grandma?” I was beside
myself. She looked so in anguish.
    Where was my mom?
Sleeping? Shouldn’t they wake her?
    Little B’s thick arms were wrapping
around me. I wasn’t sure what she said, she just grabbed a hold of
me tight and kissed my forehead. She was trembling. Her false teeth
were chattering together. She smelled like mothballs.
    “ I’m fine, grandma. It’s
okay. Really.” I tried to calm her. I failed. “Where’s
mom?”
    Little B pulled herself off of me and
stared over to Amber. The looks that passed between them made me
feel worried.
    Amber spoke in a slow and clear
manner. “I can, if you want me to.”
    Little B began to nod desperately. “I
can’t…” she trailed off in a blend of sobs and slurred words. Her
stout little body was shaking. Her hands were trembling, taking
mine into them.
    Amber moved in close to me. Her blue
eyes were captivating. But the look she gave me let me see that she
was all business now. Her lips separated slowly as she began to
tell me that my mother was dead.
    Little B’s voice cried loud, drowning
everything else.

Chapter 3
     
     
     
    Three years later, I turned
twenty.
    The driver of the car got out and
opened the back door. The man walking hesitated then entered into
the backseat, as if he really didn’t have a choice. The driver shut
the door, returned to his seat behind the wheel, and drove
away.
    I had been sitting at my usual spot on
the porch tossing bread chunks to the fat squirrels and just
watching life. Little B’s neighborhood was full of it. It was an
episode of COPS all day long, in any direction I looked. Nothing
like the peaceful country setting I had known all my
life.
    At first I hated it. I couldn’t sleep
at night. It wasn’t just the cop sirens, the people screaming, the
gun shots, the car alarms, and the trains. It was all of that. But
there was also a nervousness which wouldn’t settle. It was anxiety
stirring to life once the sun set. It was the reality that at any
moment someone could break in and try to rob or kill us. Little B
had told me once that it could be even worse than that. They could
take us. We would wish then that dying was an option.
    Little B had a small, old two-story,
two bedroom house, sitting on a very small chunk of land. Less than
ten feet on either side stood another house. Blocks and blocks of
the same run-down houses, packed together at the edge of the city
like sardines in a can. The environment was in poor condition.
Small businesses were vacant and abandoned. There were no
legitimate prospects legally. By day the parks were empty, save for
garbage blanketing the deep grass. By nightfall they were plagued
with prison-bound folks making shady deals. Teens were buying or
selling drugs, like an all-night pharmaceutical company. Whatever I
could think of, it was there. Anything and everything.
    But after thirty months, it all seemed
normal.
    Which is why it didn’t strike me as
odd that maybe I had just witnessed a man being abducted. I watched
the car drive to the end of the block, towards the train tracks and
abandoned buildings, turn left and disappear, heading into the
heart of what we knew as the Red Square. I figured it was a drug
deal gone bad. Someone looking to settle a score. Someone out for
what they thought was