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I’ll be fifty soon.
It didn’t really occur to me, but then again, I’m on my own right now, in bitter cold in Estonia. No one really to remind you when you’re trudging through the heavy snow, over to the warehouse you scoped out days ago for the perfect shot.
I’ve been getting texts from Lupin here and there through the days, and the occasional video call. I will say this about Estonia, it’s surprisingly high tech; even an old guy like me is having a pretty easy time working his way around stuff. Apparently it’s the “Silicon Valley” of Europe.
Each video call has the same or a similar backdrop. Palm trees, the sun, and some seagulls shrieking overhead. Lupin says it’s a spontaneous vacation; I know better. It’s just another day at his second job of Professional Fujiko Follower. She’s in the background, too. Never really moving to talk, content to enjoy the beach and the beach chair she always seems sprawled out on.
I try to imagine the beach and the warmth, but all that comes through is pure envy. That, and the strong desire to kick myself for forgetting my hand warmers back at the hotel.
The money’s good for this gig. This guy’s a pretty high-up mob boss that I’ve been sent out to take care of. He got a little too flirty with a guy’s wife, and said guy happened to be a bigwig in the Latvian mafia.
It’s always a woman at the root of it all, isn’t it? I’m not exactly picky when it comes to taking up jobs, but I feel like I could have made a living at scorned lovers alone.
But I’m not picky. Not as long as the money’s good.
Why even bother with charging what I do now? Because it’s quality, I guess. An expert craftsman wouldn’t just go and slash his prices when he knows he’s getting older. He’s got a legacy to maintain, after all. If anything, he’ll charge more.
But why bother? I’ll be fifty, then in another few years sixty, and then…. Hell, why even pretend like seventy is on the table with the way I live?
I have no kids to my name—Or at least none that have popped up yet. Who knows? I could run into some hotshot sniper or assassin with a familiar, hunched-over position or with a slightly Mediterranean look to them. Maybe if it’s a son he’s got a beard, too. Maybe if it’s a daughter… Well, hopefully she’d have the good sense to look like her mother. The thought of a female version of me almost makes me laugh as I pull out the picks from my pocket and begin to fiddle with the padlock chaining up the double doors of what I think could have been an old bank or hospital once upon a time.
A son or a daughter…. In another life it might have been nice. But not with this one I made.
Maybe once I die I’ll leave it all to charity. Lupin pays me, but still hasn’t got a clue what I’ve got squirreled away just on these side gigs alone. I really don’t, either. I inherited a couple of things from my old man—Namely the drinking and the distrust of banks. He was the type to leave it stuffed in a mattress, or shoved in an old coffee can out in his toolshed. I remember cleaning out his place when he died and finding a solid fifteen grand in there... And that cheap bastard never splurged enough to buy brand name bread a day in his life. I could have kicked the can when I found it. Instead, I used it to bury him.
Maybe I’ll find some random charity… Maybe a church or something, as a last-ditch effort to get my way out of Hell. Not that I’m afraid of the devil, I just don’t want to think about spending eternity with my dad and all of those people I’ve killed over the years.
What animals do I like? I could donate to save some random species. No kids to my name, but maybe I’ll save the pangolins or something. Pangolins aren’t bad. Goofy-looking sons a’ bitches. Never really did anyone any harm though. Maybe wolves. I always felt enough of a connection to those. Yeah, wolves sound promising…. Jigen Daisuke Lone Wolf and Pangolin Reserve.
Jigen Daisuke…. Or my other name?
Back before Lupin, before all of the globetrotting, I was just another kid in the States, with a name I didn’t like. Mainly because it was another thing I had to share with my dad. “Junior” wasn’t any better, either. It was still enough to connect me to him.
No one ever tells you when you’re a junior, a third, a fourth, or whatever, and you bury a parent, that you’re also gonna see your name associated with death. It’s one of those things you don’t think about until someone’s gone and you’re stuck with all of the funeral prep because your brother’s drunk and in a ditch somewhere and your sister… Who even knows where she is? Left as soon as she was eighteen and abandoned you. Promised to come back and never did. Promised to save you from dad and his drink ‘o clock schedule, followed by drunk ramblings about mom dying and leaving him with three ingrates for kids…. Never did.
Promised to see you for your birthday.
Never did.
The door opens with a creak—Sounds like me when I woke up this morning.
It’s dark, save for the streetlights beaming through the tall, floor-to-ceiling windows on the right side. There’s coatings of dust and cobwebs decorating absolutely every inch of the place. I look around the walls, at all of the graffiti scrawled everywhere, and I pick up a few swear words in Estonian.
I shuffle through the dust, paint chips, and bits of fallen ceiling toward a lone, metal spiral staircase. Its railing is freezing, even through my gloves, as I walk up it.
My favorite gift my dad ever got me was a set of cap guns from “Bonanza,” complete with leather holster. It was on my bed when I got home, with a note. My father was a rat bastard, but he was also a hard worker. I never knew him to take a single vacation from the slaughterhouse he worked at in Chicago.
Watching “Bonanza” was about the only thing we did that didn’t end in a fight. That, and drinking. I’d lay down on the floor, on this thick, olive green shag carpeting that my mom had insisted on before she died, and we’d watch hours of it while he was reclined in his chair, smoking and covering up the smell of blood from spending the day killing pigs for cookouts. Whenever we said something, it was usually him asking me to grab him a beer, or to adjust the rabbit ears on the TV.
I’d stand there for a good ten, twenty minutes adjusting that goddamn thing, and now I can get every episode of the show on my phone. Shit’s really changed over the years.
The second floor is just as dusty, and there are more windows, letting in more light. There’s a half-fallen poster of a kitten hanging on a tree branch, and a bunch of chairs stacked up in a corner. I continue on up. I need more height for this to happen.
….My sister would usually take me out a lot on my birthdays. My brother was around too, but he was from dad’s last marriage and a lot older than either of us. He wasn’t “Junior,” I was. I know that bugged him. He could have had the old bastard’s name, for all I cared.
She didn’t make too much, but she still made the birthdays she did spend with me after mom died good. Ice cream and movies, followed by whatever I wanted from the local general store. New shoes for school, maybe a record… Didn’t matter. Jeannie’s eyes would light up and she’d put it all on the counter.
My sister worked the makeup counter at a Zayre’s; she was beautiful enough to. House full of men from the time she was ten years old, but she always looked pristine with curled black hair, dresses she’d make herself, and nails with polish so slick you could see your reflection in them. So it didn’t take too long for her to notice the eye of a guy in the fishing department.
Five months of dating, she was married, she was out of the house, and it was just me, dad, and Donnie. I was just about to two twelve.
Something happened when she got married. It was like she looked older overnight. I’ve never been married, so I wouldn’t know if it just ages you… But she looked older when she was loading up the car. Not in a worn down way. Just… Like an adult for the first time in my life.
I remember she was loading in an old Ottoman into the back of her new husband’s black Studebaker when she told me she’d be back for my birthday. So I waited up for her that day, opened my dad’s gift in the meantime—Some “Hardy Boys” books. Dad must’ve been drunk off his ass when he bought them, because no one in that house picked up a goddamn book, ever. Still, I read them. It was a good escape for the time being. Helped me to not realize the time.
I stuck around by the window until it got dark. Then I realized it was me and the Hardys.
I don’t know why she didn’t show up, or why she never called after that. I heard some rumors about the guy she married… Apparently he wasn’t a bad guy, but a bit controlling. Either way, it’s easier to blame that asshole than to think the only person who paid attention to me other than my mom would go out of their way to lie about something like that.
Only person to pay attention, I guess, until Lupin.
Hell of a thing, to be yelled at by your old man for most of your life, then by military superiors, then by mob bosses, all about how goddamn useless you are. Then this younger guy flounces in and thinks you’re the best thing since color TV.
I’d never known a personality like Lupin before. And he was more personality than person. He was always on all cylinders, always with a glint in his eye, always looking for the next great, big thing. Always chasing after something. If nothing else, it was intriguing to a guy who’d never had anything to chase in his life. So I followed. And my “gunman” persona extended to including thievery, too.
We were complete opposites, but had a little bit in common—Surprisingly enough, with our families. Both had moms who were Japanese and who we lost way too early. Both of us had decades of issues with our dads. And both of us were perfectly content to never bring up our moms or our dads, which was perfect for me at this point.
I hadn’t been “Junior” in years when I met Lupin. I was Jigen Daisuke, a name I picked out from two random words I was able to make out while wandering through a Japantown and in need of a cover.
I remember Lupin chuckling a bit at the name “Jigen,” but never asking anything further about it. Even now, he’ll say it in a playful enough tone sometimes that he knows it’s a bullshit, fake name. But I’ve had it long enough that I guess it’s my real name by now. The only real proof of my name I was born with is on a headstone in Kankakee. If that doesn’t scream “dead,” I don’t know what does.
Lupin met my dad exactly once, and it wasn’t by my hand. Shithead Donnie had been drunk and told me dad had gotten in an accident. He was sobbing over the phone. The very fact he had gotten ahold of me told me it was serious. So Lupin, without a word or question, went back with me to the States, with me expected to see my dad on life support.
The dumb bastard had broken a finger punching a wall while at work. I could have murdered Donnie, but he wasn’t worth the effort or the bullet.
The first thing my dad asked Lupin was what his accent was. Lupin spun around explained he was a man of the world.
Then he asked Lupin if he was “one of those gays” and it was the closest I’d ever gotten to strangling my father in his recliner.
Ah, top floor of the building—And there’s a window with a perfect hole in it. The good news is, it’s perfect for my shot. The bad is that it’s letting it all of the damn cold.
I sit cross-legged, unlit cigarette in my mouth, as I assemble my rifle alone in the darkness of the dusty top floor. Looks like it’d been an executive suite at some point.
All that effort… Now covered in dust.
I’d been grateful that Lupin had found dad’s lack of filter more hilarious than anything, and then went on a long diatribe about the woman who owned his heart, Fujiko Mine. I think my dad was still unconvinced, truth be told.
That was something I’d gotten asked exactly twice by my old man. Once was when I was fourteen and trying to catch a baseball. The other was after the incident with Lupin. The boss and I decided to crash for the night in dad’s old house, Lupin owing and ahing of the wood paneling lining the hallways before turning in for the night in Jeannie’s old room, and it left my dad and me alone to sit up and drink a whiskey I had gone out and bought. I knew I’d need a drink if I was gonna get through seeing him again.
“So you follow him around? No matter what?” he asked me.
“Pretty much,” I answered.
My dad gave a nod and threw back the whiskey especially quick—This was usually his method of getting out what he was really trying to say and getting it out quick.
“And you ain’t married?”
“No. Never found no one.”
“Junior…. Lemme ask you somethin’…. You eh… Ain’t a little light yourself, are ya?”
I think I only made a shout in return. Maybe I said “no” somewhere in there, because eventually he leaned back and nodded “okay”. But I dunno if he was fully convinced.
I gotta admit, the evidence looks bad at this point. I do follow Lupin around everywhere… No matter what the hell he throws at me. Even Goemon has the good sense to say no and go sit under a waterfall or whatever the hell he does in his time off from time to time. And I’ve been doing it for what… Twenty years now? My parents weren’t even married that long. And I’ve never left for long… And when I do leave, I come back. I always come back. No matter how bad Fujiko has screwed him, and therefore me, over, I come right back.
Three things in the world do that, over and over again—Dogs, boomerangs, and stupid spouses who always swear they know better now but don't.
And I ain’t a boomerang, and I’m scruffy, but I’m no dog.
My mind doesn’t let me mull over it too long. I feel too damn old to be having a crisis over my sexuality at this point. I feel like if I would have done it, it would’ve been when I was a hell of a lot younger and not as rough-looking.
Plus who would even take me at this point, man or woman? I’m short-tempered, sleep too damn much, and smoke like a chimney.
Lupin always takes me back.
Ugh.
I can’t think about it too long. He’s more than made it known who he hitches his wagon to at the end of the day. Plus I’m not even sure if he swings that way. That’s not something you can really find a way to bring up in conversation.
Once we got drunk enough where I thought about asking. But instead I stormed off for a cigarette. I would have rather have the guy think I was mad at him than thinking I was coming on to him. I mean… What the hell if he got the wrong idea?
It’d be me, the Hardy Boys, and I all over again.
Part of being an assassin is assessing risks. And that’s just one too high to take. I’d rather push it out of my mind and out of the way than lose what I have. Plus at the end of the day, he’s Fujiko’s. He’s made that apparently clear.
But he always comes back to me, and always lets me come back to him…
Why’s he always let me come back? And why come back to me, time after time?
I lay on my stomach and glance in the site. Target should be showing up any moment. I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone and my lighter—The lighter’s a gift from Lupin, about ten years back. Fancier than I’d ever buy myself, but fancy is the name of Lupin’s game.
I light the cigarette and glance down at the cracked phone screen—Midnight.
Huh.
I guess I’m fifty now.
I nearly jump out of my skin as the phone begins to buzz—Shit! I thought I set that to silent. Who the hell could even…?
“Happy birthday, buddy! We’ll celebrate with some fine winin’ and dinin’ when you get back” it reads. And then a name under it.
Lupin.
Another year, and it doesn’t matter if we’re in different time zones, if I swore off talking to him, or hell, if he’s in jail and in the process of busting out.
He always remembers my birthday.
I look into the site again, and there he is, the mob boss, unloading himself out of his limo and heading towards his headquarters hidden in the warehouse district.
I position my shoulders, and take aim.
Here’s to another year of perfecting my craft.