The Killer & the Coffee Maker

"Coffee makes killing easy."

At least that is what Aidlen’s mentor used to say. As he watched the chocolate-colored drops fall into his favorite chipped mug, the voice of his teacher, Blarero, whispered out with the steam.

“There are only two tools you need to make it in this job,” said the grizzled old man. “A weapon and cup o’ mud. Coffee makes killin’ easy.”

Aidlen had scoffed, back then. It sounded like an exaggerated simplification of the necessary skills a hitman (or hitwoman) needed. How to clean your gun, the patience to watch your target for weeks, the self-control not to brag about your line of work — these were part and parcel of the real tools a trained killer must learn. Aidlen, with respect, tried to counter old Blarero with these facts. But the leathery-skinned veteran would only shake his head.

“A good, black cup of coffee will save your life. Trust me on that, guy.”

So serious was his mentor about this one (seemingly) inane bit of advice, that before his first contract, Blarero took Aidlen over to Pan’s Pawn Shop. An angelic ding of the bell above the door announced their entrance into the shop. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, thought Aidlen.

The Pan of the eponymous store was a small, stout, Greek man. He was perched like a hairy harpy on a tall stool behind the counter at the back of the dingy store. He greeted his customers warmly with a head nod. Blarero moved swiftly towards the shop owner, navigating between the overly-laden shelves covered in the remnants of people’s tragic lives. Aidlen looked around, but felt that to even pick up and consider any of the items was akin grave-robbing. He wanted to learn how to kill people, but didn’t feel it appropriate to loot from them.

Blarero had no such qualms.

“We need a coffee maker”, he told the man behind the counter.

Pan took a long time respond. Any outsider would have thought the two men were engaged in a heated staring contest. Finally, the Greek shop owner lifted a heavy finger encircled with a gold ring and pointed to the left. “Over there.”

“Thank you, sir,” Blarero beamed.

His sure-footed mentor headed where he was directed. Aidlen tried to follow, but was finding it difficult to navigate the maze of pawned items that formed walls, and towers, and bridges throughout the premises. The store became an obstacle course, littered with leftover fragments of lives shattered by bankruptcy, addiction, greed, loss, or simple ill-fortune. Aidlen was tripping over tragedy.

By the time Aidlen had found his way to Blarero, the guff assassin already had a coffeemaker under his arm and was on his way back to the front counter.

“What if I don’t want that one?” said Aidlen.

“You do,” was the reply.

Blarero paid for the machine, and they were out of Pan’s Pawn Shop in a matter of minutes. The whole experience did not eclipse more than half-an-hour. Though obtaining a coffee machine appeared to be an inconsequential ripple in his timeline, Aidlen would often reminiscence and acknowledge that Pan’s Pawn Shop, in fact, was a major current propelling him through the river of his life. Yes, it was the river Styx. But even the roaring stream of death needed to be navigated.

From that first day when he received the coffee maker, Aidlen never completed a contract without brewing a strong, earthy, cup of coffee from his, now cherished, machine. The sun had blanched and cracked the black plastic. Tan stains littered its body like measles. The sound of a thousand dying cats preceded the machine producing a thin stream of brown liquid. Like all things, the coffee machine grew old. But it still brewed the elixir that stapled Aidlen’s eyelids to the inside of his sockets, and steadied the trembles in his trigger hand.

“That’s my girl,” Aidlen would coo and pet the coffee maker as it worked. “Gimma that black gold!” That first sip immediately sharpened his mind and dulled his nerves. Aidlen loved the feeling of the steamy beverage falling down his throat and warming his insides. The experience was so intoxicating that Aidlen willed himself to only drink from the coffee machine during a job. The only addiction he wanted was to his craft. Yet, Aidlen could not deny the benefit of his coffee’s caffeine kick. After hundreds of successful jobs and a pile of broken bodies, Aidlen had come to rely on a cup of black coffee. Only a long draught from combination of burnt beans and scalding water awakened in Aidlen the ability to shoot straight and true. “You were right,” he’d whisper to Blarero, his fallen mentor. “Coffee makes killing easy.”

***

The aged coffee maker spit out the last of its liquid with a hiss and groan. Aidlen wrapped his fingers around the mug, brought it to his lips, closed his eyes, and sipped. Perfection. He opened his eyes and looked out of the grimy window in front him. He had been holed up in this abandoned storefront for three days now. Watching. Waiting. Content to let his prey come out into the light. A tiger on a hunt will crouch down among the tall grasses and remain still for hours. All movements nonexistent except for the occasionally flick of a tail. All a cat’s energy is concentrated on the target. Aidlen was like those predators. For seventy-two hours he had not moved from his roost in the upper room of burned-out department store, save for the steady twitch of a hand raising a worn cup to his lips.

***

Here is your target was the text message Aidlen received on his encrypted phone a week ago. The digital message was accompanied by an image of jowly man with a stern look and a knotted tie. It was clearly a passport photo taken by another encrypted phone. Aidlen had spent the next two days diving into this man’s life and swimming laps in the knowledge. Like picking up broken pieces of glass, Aidlen carefully searched for and handled every aspect of his target’s life. Where he worked. What car he drove. How he liked his steak. When he used the toilet. Meticulously, Aidlen combed through this person’s existence. There was no emotion tied to what he discovered. Had Aidlen found that this man served at the soup kitchen every Thursday, the possession of this fact would not have elicited the least bit of empathy, sympathy, or even caring. Aidlen would have simply written in his lined notebook “Soup kitchen every Thursday, 4 – 7 pm.” Butchers did not care whether pigs cared for other pigs. They had a job, and so did Aidlen.

Though it made little difference, Aidlen would discover that his recent target did not, in fact, care for animals, especially not people. His name was Albert Calhouven, and he was the CEO of a large insurance company. Mr. A. Calhouven was widely known in many corporate spheres. A golden child of capitalism, Mr. Calhouven, throughout his career, had proven to increase the stock price of any company he ran. And he was richly compensated for doing so. Aidlen never went to business school (in fact, he dropped out of high school in 10th grade), but he surmised that Mr. Calhouven was able to heighten the value of the organizations though less than savory tactics.

For an insurance company, that meant denying coverage, or increasing premiums. It probably required a boardroom full of greasy lawyers on retainers, defending the company’s decision to cancel the policy of a Mrs. Hinkle, who was right at this moment being eaten away by liver cancer on a yellowing hospice bed. It likely meant charging policy-holders even more money for shoddy health care plans, while simultaneously unearthing all the possible loopholes that would prevent paying any hospital, doctor, or pharmacy a red cent. One could also imagine Mr. A. Calhouven in a velvet black suit, his pendulous face lifted to the ceiling, eyes closed, waving a conductor’s baton at a symphony of sycophants, their voices raised in harmonious cries of “DENIED!” “NOT COVERED!” “DELAY” “DENY” “SUE” “FIGHT.” The audience of stodgy stock holders would be enraptured in sheer delight. The notes that would flood the hall would be dollars. It would be music to their ears.

It has been said that money is the root of all evil. But in reality, money is the driving force of all evil. Money compels Mr. A. Calhouven to do his job, and do it well. And money is the reason Aidlen drank enough black coffee to be able to shoot people through the eyes. All hail currency.

“C’mon out, c’mon out,” Aidlen whispered, sitting still in a broken folding chair in an abandoned building and waiting for a rich man to walk through the double doors of an apartment building. Aidlen had tracked Mr. Calhouven to this rather seedy side of town. The insurance CEO was the regular customer of working girls in this area. Today, M. Calhouven was being entertained by a popular girl who went by “CeCe.” Her real name was Cecila Villanue. She was very surprised when two days ago, Aidlen handed her a large bundle of that almighty money and did not expect any physical favors. “Watcha you want?” she demanded, not touching the money yet.

“Just information about a John” said Aidlen quietly.

“Why?”

“Because I am going to kill him.”

This news did not shock Celicia. “He bad, or sumting?”

“Yes, something.”

With a shrug, Cece took the money and gave Aidlen more information than he needed. Mr. Calhouven visited Cece every Friday morning, and left around 11 am. He was kind and respectful with her. He always paid, and often left a good tip. He smelled like leather and sweat. He needed little pills in order to fulfill his need. Again, more information than Aidlen wanted. But what he required, he received.

CeCe was right about it all. On Friday, Ailden watched from his fifth story hideout as Mr. Calhouven drove up to the rank apartment building, got out, waved the driver off, and preceded to go inside to his lady in waiting. Aidlen had already decided to shoot Mr. Calhouven when he came out again. No reason to shoot a man before he had seen his gal. Aidlen looked out from the corner of his eye at the clock in the room.

10:52 am.

He adjusted the high-powered rifle in his arms and remained staring at the double doors of the apartment building across the street. Aidlen’s fingers twitched, but he kept one over the trigger.

10:57 am.

Aidlen began to shake a bit more. He dropped the gun for a moment to rub his eyes and wave his hand back-and-forth like he was airdrying it after washing in a gas station bathroom. He felt very weird. C’mon he told himself. Get it together.

The coffee maker made a random gasp, as if it was ready to make more coffee. Aidlen regripped the rifle. A headache came screaming from behind his eyes and then ran around in circles, hitting each ear, before loudly taking residence in the center of his head. Aidlen’s eyes crossed with the sudden pain.

10:59 am.

He was trembling all over now. Between the pain in his head to the quivering in his hands, Aidlen could not hold the gun straight any longer. He felt nauseous. Am I about to pass out? Aidlen wondered. What is happening?

11:00 am.

Mr. Calhouven came out the apartment double doors with his mouth puckered in a whistle Aidlen could not hear from across the street. Seeing double from the headache, and his arm serving like a drunk driver across the midnight highway, Aidlen stood up and tried to aim at his target. He attempted to breath in and with his breath out pull the trigger. The gun fired.

A miss.

Mr. Calhouven heard the crack of the rifle and his face went white. He started to run. Aidlen tried to follow the fleeing man with the barrel of the rifle, but the trembling in his arms had traveled into all regions of his body, and he could not steady his weapon. He started shooting haphazardly, cursing loudly. Mr. Calhouven ran faster and farther than he had in 51 years. He dodged every wild bullet, and ran into a nearby alley. Out of sight. Safe. If luck was on Aidlen’s side, perhaps Mr. Calhouven would have collapsed from a heart attack. But finicky Lady Luck had abandoned Aidlen early that day, and was now flirting with a New Jersey gambler in early morning poker game now. Mr. Calhouven was still very much alive. He was likely wearing a soiled pair of pants, but still breathing oxygen.

Aidlen had never missed before. In the twenty-five years of paid assassin work he had never once missed hitting his target with a lethal dose of lead. But this day, he had. And now, it was all over. Once the word “miss” ran through the pipelines of the underworld, Aidlen would never again receive a contract. He was now a faulty tool. A hammer missing its head. A saw with dull teeth. A screwdriver that couldn’t screw. He was screwed. Aidlen didn’t need a crystal ball to peer into the future. He knew what awaited him now. Perhaps an eternal cold plunge into freezing Bison Bay. Maybe an injection of flying metal into the side of his throbbing head. The method of his death could be more creative. But the result would remain the same: a one-way ticket to the underworld. Charon would meet Aidlen, and carry him across the river.

Damn thought Aidlen.

Why, though? Why had he missed, and missed so badly? His head still pounding in ¾ time, Aidlen looked around the bare room. Nothing was here except the old, black coffee maker. Then Aidlen had a thought creep into his consciousness. He knew that he had brewed regular coffee. He had used the same brand of caffeine-ladled coffee for 25 years. The coffee had not changed since that first day when Blarero bought him the machine, and they brewed that first cup together.

But the physical facts offered a counter-point that was irrefutable. He was having caffeine withdrawals. Plain and simple. The coffee machine had turned regular coffee into decaf.

Aidlen looked at the beaten old machine and laughed. The coffee maker hissed and sputtered in reply. Aidlen reached for the small revolver in his shoulder holster and put it to his head.