The Intern's Handbook: A Thriller

  Anyway, D-day comes for our white slaver and Bob planned a Triad-type hit as our revenge scenario. Party line on the street would be that the Triads wanted white slaver to pay hefty tribute money for operating in Asia. White slaver stupidly refuses. White slaver gets butchered instead so Triads can just take his business. Pretty clean. Unfortunately, an authentic Triad killing is about as far from clean as you can get. Let’s just say it involves the use of heavy, rusty meat cleavers, the Triad signature weapon of choice.

  The plan was to do the deed in the early morning when the white slaver arrived for work. He always came in at around 4:00 A.M. to deal with calls from Asia. Staff usually arrived at 8:00 A.M. So we would have a solid four hours to make a jigsaw puzzle out of him. I picked up Juno at 3:00 A.M. For the first time ever, she was quiet. Now my paranoia was reaching a fever pitch and I was fully prepared to kill her if she even looked at me the wrong way. And I had an exit strategy. With the rest of the gear, I had brought with me a bugout bag that would enable me to survive for up to four weeks at sea. After killing her, I could stow away in one of the cargo containers, like my human trafficking brethren, and go dark in Asia. A little chop-sockey plastic surgery and I’d be golden.

  Juno and I slipped into the white slaver’s office and waited for him to arrive. He was a little early, so we made our move inside. I won’t bore you with the gory details (literally) of white slaver’s demise. Let’s just say I can see why the Triads have done hits like this for hundreds of years. The prospect of being horribly mutilated is an excellent deterrent against ever fucking with them. First off, it is not a quick, painless death by any stretch of the imagination. Second, you don’t want your loved ones to have to bury pieces of you. That’s just a bummer for everyone. Speaking of loved ones, Triads usually chop up your whole family too. Bob never entertained going that far for “authenticity” or he and I would have reached a moral impasse.

  Somewhat surprisingly, Juno froze up when it came time to do the deed. I was pissed as hell at her and made her pick up all the body parts and bag them. After we were done, we were preparing to leave when I got a text message from Bob.

  “Kill her.”

  Okay, so maybe my paranoia was not as based in rationality as I thought. I completely misread this situation and should have seen the signs, like the fact that Juno was nineteen and had not yet completed an assignment. I had completed seven by the time I was seventeen. Turns out it was because she was an annoying idiot whose endless mundane banter was getting her shit-canned from her intern gigs. Seen and not heard never really sunk in with old Juno.

  So I was looking at her, covered in blood, gathering up gear, and I did something that, to this day, sort of escapes me. I showed her the text. She blanched and I could see her mind racing, thinking of what she would need to grab to defend herself. I held my hands in the air and told her that I wasn’t going to kill her. She was confused. If I didn’t kill her, Bob would kill us both. Bingo! Not as dumb as you look, Juno. Then I handed her my bugout bag and told her I thought Asia was nice that time of year. She started crying, hugging the pack much in the same way I’m sure she wanted to hug me. She told me no one had ever done anything this nice for her, ever. I told her I wasn’t doing it because I’m nice. I told her I did it because she’s one of us, and even though Bob does not have honor, we do.

  * * *

  Rule #15: We kill others, but we do not kill each other.

  The fact that Bob asked me to do that should tell you everything you need to know about him. There are ways to deal with people like Juno among the ranks, but that is not our problem. It’s Bob’s problem. And as much as I wanted her to shut up, I had no desire to shut her up for good. We found her a nice empty container on a boat bound for Hong Kong and I bid her adieu. But before I saw her off, she asked how she could ever repay me. I told her she would have plenty of time to think of something. When I got back to the office, Bob never even asked how it went. Now, that’s trust.

  37

  * * *

  BLEEDING ON THE PAGE

  Just as Juno’s brief tenure at HR, Inc. came to an abrupt, yet inevitable, end, we have now reached the end of The Intern’s Handbook. I’ve told you almost everything I know. One of you might be assigned to take me out, so I need to keep a few tricks up my sleeve. You have to make your own way. That’s the only way you’ll survive. Things that work for me may not work for you, and you can’t allow your flexible mind to become rigid to someone else’s dogma. I’ve tried to teach you that you are an exotic weapon all on your own. Like the swordsmiths of Japan, you need to temper that weapon with great patience and a mind that is open like the sky.

  To those of you who are sick of my blathering and can’t wait to make your mark on the glamorous world of human extermination, I wish you good luck and guns that don’t jam. If any nuggets of wisdom you manage to dig out of my sprawling diatribe help you in any way, you can thank me by not getting your ass shot off before you’re old enough to buy a six-pack.

  To those of you who are like me and can’t help but gawk at a train wreck or a twenty-car pileup, I invite you to read on, brothers and sisters. I am going to continue this more as a memoir now. I have enjoyed the process of “bleeding” on the page, as Hemingway so aptly put it. As a matter of fact, writing this handbook has been fairly cathartic. Maybe there is something to the whole confession booth thing. I sincerely doubt that God gives a shit if we whine to her about the transgressions she has given us the proclivity to commit and has clearly seen us perpetrate. However, I’m beginning to get the feeling that confession is what we need in order to forgive ourselves.

  I have never told another soul what you’ve borne witness to in these pages. And although I don’t feel absolved per se, a weight has been lifted. Evil deeds may not have actual mass, but they feel like they weigh a ton, especially if you’re the only one trying to schlep them all the way to the grave. And then there’s the matter of Locke and the fact that he’s still breathing. Even though he probably “deserves to die” as much as any of my previous targets, I didn’t kill him. It may seem like a small thing, but making that decision has made me feel free for the first time in my life. And right now, an ounce of redemption is worth more to me than a pound of the illusion insurance salesmen like to call “peace of mind.”

  So enjoy the rest of this train wreck if you like. Just don’t expect there to be any survivors.

  38

  * * *

  MARCUS

  I’m in Honduras because this is where my father lives. Until recently, I was convinced he was dead. But throughout my life, I have always been driven by a compulsive desire to know where I came from. I’m sure many of you can relate to this, considering our similar pasts. And now, due to what is probably the only stroke of good luck that will ever come my way, I have found him and gotten a step closer to finding myself. To offer a brief history, which I am sure you can also relate to, I am the son of two junkies. My mother was murdered by her drug dealer while I was still in the womb. My father fled the country to avoid prosecution for being an accessory to her murder through his connection to the dealer. My father loved my mother. He did not kill her, but in the eyes of New York State, he was complicit in her death, as he was the killer’s partner and they were wholesale heroin dealers. When you are a dealer of that caliber, the law is designed to completely own you if you are ever caught. Everything becomes part of the case against you. And, God forbid, if anyone should get whacked as a result of your dealing, you are an accessory to Murder One and you are looking at twenty years to life, depending on your three strikes status.

  So, after my mother was killed, I took up residence in an incubator for several weeks so I could fully develop into a human from what probably looked like a fetal pig. While I was cooling my minuscule heels in the NICU, my father visited me a few times before the heat got to be too much and he had to hightail it to Honduras. It was those visits that were the key to me finding him. A Mormon family lineage consultant, recommended to me
by Alice (R.I.P.), helped me with the process. Those people are good at helping adopted and disenfranchised kids find their bio parents. It’s part of their religion I guess. Anyway, she was the one who had the idea to use the visitation list from when I was in the NICU. During the time I was writing this handbook, Alice and I both chased down the leads. And eventually I found my father. Nice guy. Feels bad for what happened to my mother. Wants my forgiveness. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want anything from him. Just knowing where I come from and even meeting him one time is all I’ve ever wanted.

  So I hike into Puerto Cortés, a small coastal city about ten miles from the airstrip. So fucking hot in Honduras. My pores are hurting from the sweat they’ve been spraying out since the first mile. But I am light on my feet because I am done with Bob, I have a ton of cash hidden all over the world, and I am going to meet my biological father for the first time. It’s a weird feeling, freedom. I have never been free anywhere other than my own head and having that extend into the rest of the world is almost overwhelming.

  I arrive at my father’s modest house by the sea in the late afternoon. He is not home, so I go and sit on a rusty beach chair behind the house and look at the ocean. Then I think I see him, surfing about a hundred yards offshore. I don’t know for sure that it’s Marcus yet because we haven’t met, but I think it’s a safe bet that he’s the tall white man in a cluster of small brown ones. He rides a long wooden board and it’s clear that he has been doing it for years. He walks up and down the board and “hangs ten” off the nose. Then he rides a wave all the way to the beach and walks up to me.

  “Either you’ve come to kill me or you’re my son.” He smiles.

  I know in an instant he’s my father. He has all of the qualities I would have had in full if I had not been a premature baby and if I had not been fed what amounted to cat food growing up. I am a smaller, slightly undercooked version of him.

  This is the moment I have wanted ever since I was eight years old and I was getting ready to retire Mickey and Mallory with two plastic bags and a roll of duct tape. This is who I am.

  And even if it ended right now, I would be satisfied. I am a real person, not a robot like I always fantasized about as a child.

  “I’m John.”

  We shake hands. He does this kind of “fuck it” shrug and hugs me, soaking my shirt with warm salt water.

  “Marcus Hunter. Good to meet you.”

  “You too.”

  “Beer?”

  “I could murder one.”

  As the sun goes down, we drink a cooler of cold local beers and talk about surfing. Neither of us has much interest in rehashing the past. There is sort of an unspoken boundary that is raised, allowing us to build something for the future without ghostly distractions. After all, we are father and son, but we have never known each other until now. So, in many ways, this is our beginning. When night falls with the chatter of what sounds like a million parrots and monkeys, Marcus’s housekeeper, Marissa, arrives and cleans and dresses all of my wounds. She is a trained nurse but makes more money cleaning toilets and I am impressed by her fast, efficient technique. She puts a homemade poultice on the frostbitten flesh, which instantly relieves the throbbing pain.

  When she is done mending me, she cooks us dinner. It’s a simple meal of fish and fruits and I think it might be the best one I’ve ever had. This is the taste of freedom. I hope you can experience it someday. Over dinner, I regale Marcus with my entire life story, starting with the time he held my tiny hand the last time in the NICU, up to now. To say that he is stunned would be a gross understatement. By the end of dinner, he has a look of deep sadness that tells me he truly regrets leaving me in that hospital.

  Marissa cleans up and goes home and Marcus and I retire to the beach to enjoy some hand-rolled cigars and a cold glass of Marissa’s homemade guaro—a sugarcane liquor similar to silver rum.

  “You really have something here, Marcus. A nice life.”

  “Why don’t you stick around? You can have it too.”

  “As much as I would like that, I can’t. Have to move on soon.”

  “Too bad. Would be nice to have you around.”

  “I want to stay. I just can’t. It wouldn’t be safe for either of us.”

  “Same people that killed Alice?”

  “I think so. Maybe others. It’s hard to tell.”

  We spend the rest of the evening drinking, smoking, and talking. Marcus has a way about him. A fatherly way. He keeps the emotional responses he can control to himself and listens. I have never experienced that before. All my life, people have been barking shit in my face and never listening to anything I said.

  This is why I was so good as an intern.

  I never fell out of character as the android order taker because that is how I was raised. But Marcus makes me feel like my story has importance and impact on someone else—him. And that makes the story more of a legacy. It’s like the oral tradition. I have passed mine on to Marcus, and now it has a life of its own, regardless of whether I live or die. The burden of bearing witness to my life has been lifted.

  When we’re finished, he tells me he understands why I have to go and says that, in time, he will try to find a way to join me if I’ll have him. I tell him I would like that. Then the guaro, the white noise of the ocean, and the miles I have put on my body over the past two days take over and we both turn in.

  39

  * * *

  RAPID EYE MOVEMENT

  I sleep deeply but am haunted by a horrific nightmare. In the nightmare, I am the one that beats Alice to death. It starts with the real fight that we had in her apartment the night she caught me there in my ninja gear. But then it changes into a different scene, a gruesome montage of us making love, covered in blood, and me pummeling her naked body to a pulp. I wake up with a start, completely disoriented in the unfamiliar bedroom, weeping. As I get my bearings and focus my eyes . . .

  Alice emerges from the shadows, smiling at me.

  I lose my breath. She looks so real.

  “Alice?” I whisper hoarsely.

  She says nothing. This is the most vivid dream I’ve ever had.

  Then Bob walks into the room holding a gun to Marcus’s head and the dream becomes a waking nightmare.

  The lights switch on and reality comes in the form of a Honduran death squad standing behind Bob.

  “Surprise,” Bob says with a casual grin.

  “What the fuck is this?” I hear myself say.

  Before I can even think about getting up, Bob shoots me with a tranq dart that feels like it was designed to penetrate the hide of an elephant.

  Lights out.

  40

  * * *

  THE BAGGAGE HANDLER

  When I come to, Marcus and I are both bound to chairs in Marcus’s living room. We’re surrounded by the Honduran death squad. They look like starved mongrels circling the last table scrap. Marcus appears to have taken a few shots to the face in the interim, but I can tell by his eyes that he’s lucid. Alice stands in front of me, fully resurrected, and I’m still in shock that she’s actually real. Add to that the fact that she’s clearly working with Bob, who’s smugly holding court from a bar stool, and we have ourselves a whole new definition of “coming out of left field.” Part of me thinks I might have had a psychotic break and I’m in a brownish grayish green mental hospital somewhere rocking, mumbling, and scratching my fresh lobotomy scar.

  But the worst thing is that I’d blow my own brains out right now for being such a dumb sucker if I could get my hands on a gun. In this moment I realize that I actually loved her. What a fucking shmuck.

  “I know what you’re thinking, John,” she says.

  “You do?” I inquire feebly.

  “And the answer is yes. All of your worst nightmares did come true in ways you never imagined.”

  She smiles. Quoting the handbook. I can’t let her into my head anymore. I find my anger. I think about Mickey and Mallory, how they were bound to chai
rs just like this. I can guarantee you there are plastic bags somewhere in the next act of Bob’s production here. Never took him for a lover of drama. But I guess there are a lot of things I don’t know about Bob. Maybe I’ll open his head someday and peek around a bit. Meantime, I need to get into this game as a player.

  “Alice, you’re looking much better than the last time I saw you.”

  “Bludgeoning is the new beauty treatment.”

  “Who the fuck was that?”

  “Does it matter?” Bob asks.

  “Yes, it does, Bob,” I say coldly.

  “It was nobody.” Alice smiles.

  “Nobody is nobody, Alice.”

  “What she means is that it was not a person, John,” Bob says.

  “I thought you were a movie buff,” Alice sneers. “That was a prop. We got one of those special effects makeup guys to build it for us. He’s a fucking genius.”

  She laughs, gloating a little too much.

  “That’s enough.”

  Good old Bob. All business.

  “I’ll say it again. What the fuck is this?”

  “This . . .” says Bob as he pats Marcus on the shoulder, “is your assignment.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “He’s talking about me, son.”

  “My great white whale, right, Marcus?”

  “Fuck you, baggage handler.”

  “Ouch.” Alice and her two fucking cents.

  “I found you, didn’t I?”

  “By using my son.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about!” I’m starting to lose it.

  “Why don’t you tell him, Marcus. I’m just a baggage handler.”