Lent 2023 Day 3 - Introducing Raymond the Fat Assassin

Chapter 01

For a big guy, I get overlooked a lot.  To be honest, most fat guys get overlooked most of the time.  The only times that fat guys really stand out to people are 1) when an airplane is boarding (“Dear God, please don’t let fatty sit next to me. Pleeeease.) and 2) at a pizza buffet (“Aww man, that fat dude is heading up there. I bet he takes all the bbq pizza.”). I don’t mind getting overlooked; I actually like it that way.  When a person is up to no good, standing out is not ideal.  And, let’s face it - one of the best ways to disappear into a crowd in an average American city is to be a big fat guy.  People underestimate us.  We are seen as jolly Santa Claus types, with roly poly bellies full of jelly.  Other times we are seen as slobs with spaghetti sauce stains on our dingy white t-shirts, cargo shorts, and New Balance sneakers.  I’ve seen the looks and felt the judgment.  I may be an IT guy, a plumber, a salesman.  

Nobody thinks that I may be an assassin. 

But that is exactly what I am.  I’m not one of those movie assassins, though.  You know the type.  The ex-Navy Seal named Quartz Thrasher, jumping out of helicopters, climbing up the Burj Khalifa, setting up some sniper rifle a mile away and shooting right through the eye of the Prime Minister of Fartknockistan, played by Mark Wahlberg in the movie Assassin.  My name is Raymond and I am more of a run of the mill hitman type assassin.  A stone cold killa.  Maybe not that awesome.  

In fact, I’m on a job right now, not that anyone in the Silver Palms Town Center would know it.  I’m decked out in a highly fashionable untucked faded green short sleeve JCPenney polo and the fat guy uniform requirement of khaki cargo shorts.  I decided to mix things up and swap the New Balance out for Skechers walking shoes.  I’m just some big dude on an errand.  I have a pretzel in my right hand to help paint the picture, and to eat when I get hungry on the job.  (Mallpretzels are awesome.). With my billowing shirt flapping in the breeze, the pistol tucked in my back waistband doesn’t even draw attention.  I’m just a big goofy white guy walking through the mall.

And that is exactly what I’m hoping everyone thinks when they see me lumbering along.  In reality, my eyes are scanning every person I pass, evaluating them as potential threats.  I highly doubt that there is another shooter present, or some kind of highly trained squadron of soldiers hiding in the air vents.  Those challenges rarely, if ever, surface.  However, potential threats come in many other forms that appear more innocent, but are just as dangerous.  A paranoid nosy old woman can root out nefarious schemes better than a seasoned detective.  Some snot-nosed punk kid running away from his mom easily can knock even the best assassin for a loop - literally.  And mall cops.  Ugh.  It would be just like one of those guys to accidentally disrupt a mission.

Hot Topic. Children’s Place. Rando Cell Phone Accessory Shop.  From the stink emanating ahead, the next store will be Abercrombie.  And right past that cloud of Eau de Douchebag is an employees only hallway I scouted out well beforehand.  Most of the time jobs are not those tightly scheduled Quartz Thrasher attacks on some visiting dignitary or celebrity.  They are just taking out some regular scuzzy citizen who is going about his normal routine, unaware they are actually being stalked by a predator. (Stone cold killa!) So it is much wiser to take precautions and pick up on patterns, habits, and schedules before firing randomly at people. 

Confidence is the key when you are about to do something against the rules - no matter how small the rule is. The more unsure you look about your decision, the more others will wonder why you’re acting sketchy. For example, I know this hallway is supposedly off limits to customers, but there isn’t a security guard or mall cop posted. It would probably be a bigger issue if I was coming in from the outside. So I just keep lumbering along at my normal pace, push the door open, and stroll into the poorly lighted hallway. 
Ahhh, just as I expected.  There are no employees roaming the hallway.  I timed my trip to avoid the standard shift changes and meal breaks.  As much as I hate to do it, I toss my pretzel into an open cardboard box haphazardly stuffed with plastic hangers and shirt packaging. With my left hand, I reach into my lower left cargo pocket. You know, cargo pants get a bum rap.  They aren’t fashionable enough for the hip determiners of culture.  But I like them.  They aren’t just for the image, you know.  They also can carry a serious collection of equipment. Like, in this pocket I find a handy dandy silencer.  No one saw that.  If they did, they probably thought it was a candy bar.  But it wasn’t.  HA!  Fooled you!  So I’ll just screw this here silencer onto this here pistol I grabbed out of my waistband earlier.  Voila.  

Since we are now talking about guns, lets get some stuff out in the open.  Movies and television shows have given most people such an incorrect understanding of guns. They hurt. A lot. People usually don’t just jump up and run off after getting shot. They usually scream and bleed. These are two things a person aiming for subtlety try to avoid. And the silencer? It doesn’t silence the gun into a tiny thwip thwip like in films. It just makes it less loud. So instead of the entire parking lot jumping and looking in your direction, only the people in the closest five rows of cars will jump and look. Still, it is better than nothing. Truthfully, I am not a big fan of guns. While that may hardly be a common opinion of people in my chosen profession, I have my reasons. I find them unpredictable, a pain to dispose of, and a straight path to overconfidence. But, you gotta do what you gotta do.

As I reach the exit door, I drop my shooting arm to my side so the gun isn’t visible to anyone who may be approaching. I push the exit bar and briskly walk through the door, finding myself in a kind of loading area. The back entrances to several stores line the wall to my right where large items can be dropped off and retrieved. To my left lays a patch of asphalt lined on two sides by a twelve foot wall, blocking that area from view to patrons in the parking lot. Two giant green recycling dumpsters sit against one wall, while a giant brown trash-compacting dumpster nestles up against the wall closest to the lot.  In front of that dumpster, a scruffy forty-something year old guy is sullenly shoving boxes and bags into the open door on the side of the compactor. Once no more can fit inside, the guy stands up, slides the door closed, and hits the large red button. With a loud grinding of gears, the compactor starts crushing the new trash arrivals into the holding side on the right to meet the trash already smushed there. 

This is exactly the moment I am waiting for. I walk quickly towards this stellar example of humanity.  I dip into my cargo pants bag of tricks one more time.  I’ve modified these pants so that I can carry one of my favorite toys.  It’s a police baton - a foot long piece of metal that extends to a full length whippin’ stick when I snap it open with a flick of my wrist.  At the same time, I catch scruffy man off guard by yelling, “Sloopy Ramirez?”
The dirtbag slowly spins around and yells back, all classy like, “Yeah, who’s asking?” Then the wonderful picture in front of him swims into a clearer focus - a fat guy with a gun in one hand and a big metal stick in the other.  He starts swinging his face back and forth like a cornered dog, trying to find an exit.
Obviously, I’m not going to offer him one.  I smile and call back to him, “I always like to make sure.”  Then I whip Mr. Baton across Sloopy dirtbag’s unshaven face.  The impact knocks him back into the side of the dumpster, and then he collapses onto the pile of trash on the ground.  As the machine still is rumbling through its cycle, I raise Mr. Pistol and fire twice.  The not-quite-silenced gunfire is masked by the sound of the compactor, almost as if someone had brilliantly planned it.  Thirty seconds later, the compactor screeches to a halt as it finishes its scrunching work.

Being thorough as a killer is what keeps you employed and alive.  More than a few aspiring assassins had their careers(and lives) ended prematurely by not finishing the job. I am always thorough. I slide open the door to the compacting dumpster. You can’t just chuck a body into a dumpster.  First, you gotta toss in some trash. Then, I hurl the gun into the void. Next, I have to deal with Sloopy’s body.  I don’t care who you are, or how strong and muscly you may be, manhandling a body is never easy work.  But, I have to be fast and try not to get blood all over the place.  I half drag, half lift the ex-dirtbag and flop him into the opening.  Obviously, blood got all over the place. Blood getting all over the place is something I can’t control. I do my best to avoid headshots, which helps. Whatever you gain by disrupting a face you lose with the massive explosion of DNA evidence all over.  The truth is, though, someone gets shot and blood flies everywhere. It was already splattered on the dumpster, pooling on the ground, and running into a sewer grate. But there really is no time to do a proper cleanup in a hit like this. I follow the body with my green (and maroon mottled) shirt and the rest of the trash. Then I slide the door shut and hit the giant red button.  I’m obviously not going to wait for the dumpster to do its thing. Instead I hustle (fine, fat guy hustle) over to the recycling dumpsters and grab a plastic bag from the ground in between them. Inside the bag?  An identical green JCPenney shirt!  You gotta stock up when they go on sale. I pull it over my head and pat the large butter stain on the front.  What?  Butter already on a new shirt?  I guess I should have expected that when I put a half-eaten pretzel in the bag on top of the shirt when I stashed the bag this morning.  No use letting the pretzel go to waste, am I right?  I take a bite out of it and whip the police baton onto the ground to collapse it.  Back into the pocket.  Empty bag into the recycling bin.  Head to the parking lot.  I look around and verify there aren’t any lingering pedestrians trying to figure out where the noises came from.  Then I stroll casually to a sexy blue grey Dodge Caravan. Less than five minutes after coming through the mall hallway, my minivan joins the traffic exiting the mall. This evening, I’ll finish everything else up: return the car to the driveway where I “borrowed” it, clean the baton well in bleach, burn all of my clothes - trust me I won’t miss this outfit and I’ve got several others.  Then I need to notify Booker that another dirtbag low level drug runner has successfully been dispatched.  Once the garbage truck arrives after the mall closes to empty the dumpster, Sloopy Ramirez will disappear for good.