The Stuff of Legend
By Andy Rausch
Orlando leads a double life, a mild-mannered teacher by day and a ruthless hitman by night.
Orlando was half asleep and maneuvering through the darkness when he felt the soft, gooey dog shit squish between his toes. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted louder than he should have, trying to hop to the light switch at the end of the hall with his sticky foot raised to avoid further soiling the carpet.
As he flipped the light switch, he heard Dierdre’s voice behind him, “Why don’t you have your robe on, baby?”
Of course that was what she noticed—that he wasn’t wearing the blue robe she’d given him as a gift. The woman was obsessed with that robe, constantly asking him to validate the gift by telling her how much he loved it.
He turned halfway around to look back at his blonde girlfriend. Dierdre looked at the smudged shit on the carpet and then back up at Orlando, giggling.
“Ha-ha-fuckin’-ha,” he said. “Could you please get me a rag?”
She moved past him, making her way to the bathroom where he’d originally been going before stepping on the dog shit. Orlando heard the faucet run for a moment and then Dierdre was back with two maroon face towels in hand. She handed one to Orlando to wipe off his foot while she went to work cleaning the brown stain from the gray carpet.
Once his foot was clean, Orlando went to the restroom and took a leak. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands. As he turned back toward the hallway, Dierdre stood and turned toward him. Now face to face, they both smiled.
“I’m sorry, babe,” she said. “I promise Dax won’t do it again.”
Orlando looked at her beautiful face, taking it in, “You can’t promise that.”
“I can,” she said. “I’m promising.”
He grinned. “Then we’re in agreement that if he does it again, he goes to live someplace else.”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe doggie heaven.”
Dierdre frowned. Orlando wrapped his arms around her. He’d never wanted the Scottish terrier to move into his apartment, but he had wanted Dierdre, its owner, to move in, and one thing his marriage to Maralys had taught him was that working relationships were built upon a foundation of compromises. So Dax living at his place was his first compromise. As they stood in the hallway at three in the morning, holding one another, Dierdre still holding the dog shit-stained rag in hand, Orlando thought about how strange it felt to hold a woman again. After his daughter had been killed and his wife, Maralys, had left him, Orlando had felt certain he would never love again. But here he was, living with Dierdre. She was wonderful, or at least wonderful-adjacent, but the truth was, Orlando wasn’t completely certain he loved her. But he felt that he might come to love her in time. He definitely felt something, and she was breathtakingly beautiful.
Orlando went back to bed. A moment later, after Dierdre had cleaned up, she climbed in under the covers and snuggled up against him. Just as he was starting to get comfortable, Dierdre turned her face upward and whistled for Dax. Orlando pulled back, looking at her but barely seeing her. “Now I know damn well you aren’t calling that dog in here now, after what he just did on my carpet.”
She giggled again. This was Dierdre’s go-to move. She would tease Orlando or get under his skin a little and then giggle at him, irritating him. A moment later, Dax hopped his little ass up on the bed, did his mandatory three turns before finally burrowing down into the blanket between their legs.
As they lay in silence, Orlando pondered whether it was normal for a woman to get under a man’s skin—or vice-versa—so early in a good relationship. They had only been seeing each other for a little over three months. It had all been quick, and everything had felt smooth. Even the things that hadn’t been smooth had felt smooth because Orlando forced them to be that way by ignoring certain things. Had they been red flags? Was the fact that she routinely got under his skin a red flag? Probably so, but for now Orlando was just happy to have a woman to hold in his arms at night. Just being somewhat happy was still better than being terribly unhappy.
The next day was a Saturday. Orlando and Dierdre spent the morning listening to music together. He played her some Brahms and she played him some Weezer. Orlando played along, pretending to at least tolerate the pop music while feeling like he was dying a little inside, and she stared glassy-eyed at him as he played his classical music. She even appeared to be unmoved by “Hungarian Dance no. 5 in G Minor,” which was Orlando’s favorite. Just as he pretended to not completely hate Weezer, he pretended to not be annoyed by her dislike of Brahms and classical music in general.
They showered together at noon and then made love—or “like” at the very least—on the tile floor in the kitchen. Then they held each other for a while. After that, they got up and got dressed and sat on the couch reading for a couple of hours. After that they watched The Postman Always Rings Twice. It was the version with Jack Nicholson, which Orlando kind of hated. He’d enjoyed the original—the one with Lana Turner—and had enjoyed the book even more. But it was the version that was on at the moment, so he watched it.
When the film was over, Orlando leaned in to kiss Dierdre. She looked at him with big sad eyes. “Is it that time already?”
He nodded. “Time to make the doughnuts.”
They kissed a good, long kiss. Whatever faults Dierdre might have had, kissing and making love were not among them.
“When are you gonna tell me what it is you do?” she asked.
Orlando exhaled, trying to maintain his smile. “I teach. You know that.”
She gave him a look. “You’re not teaching today. It’s Saturday. You’re not even wearing your normal clothes.”
This was true. Today Orlando was wearing a blue track suit and white Nike sneakers, which were clothes he would never wear in his normal day-to-day life.
He looked down at his apparel and grinned. “You ever think maybe I’m just going to the gym to work out?”
“Really, Orlando. It’s not good to keep secrets. Not if you want our relationship to work. When are you going to share your secrets with me?”
He kissed the end of her nose. “Soon,” he said, although he wondered if that was true. Either way, he wasn’t telling her today.
He stood up. She remained sprawled out on the couch.
“What are you gonna do while I’m gone?” he asked.
She tilted her head and gave him an expression conveying boredom, “I’m gonna read some more of my book.”
“Are you still reading Bridges of Madison County?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Bridges of Madison County was Dierdre’s favorite book and she claimed to have read it eleven times. Or maybe it was twelve; Orlando didn’t care enough to remember.
He went into the extra bedroom, knelt down, and slid the brown briefcase out from beneath it. He then stood and walked back out to where Dierdre was. She looked at the briefcase. “Well, aren’t you the fancy man?” she asked.
“You know it,” Orlando said, leaning down and kissing her forehead one last time.
He stood and looked at her, her big blue eyes staring up at him. In this moment, Orlando remembered fully why he adored her. She was gorgeous. If her personality ever caught up with her looks, she’d be the stuff of legend.
“What time you gonna be home?” she asked.
“I’ll probably be back by midnight.”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she said in a purr. “If you play your cards right, I’ll be naked.”
He chuckled. “What, are you trying to kill me? I’m an old man, Dierdre.”
“You’re not old,” she said. Then she grinned. “Not that old, anyway.”
Orlando walked down to the parked Escalade and opened the door. He climbed in, setting the briefcase in the passenger’s seat. He switched on the CD player and Boccherini started to play.
Orlando drove eight miles to the parking lot of the Super-Saver grocery store. The parking lot was about half full. Orlando spotted the stolen blue Caprice Don Vitelli’s men had left him. He then parked the Escalade, grabbed his briefcase, and went to the Caprice. He reached under the wheel well and felt around for the Hide-A-Key. Finding it, he unlocked the car and climbed in. He started the vehicle and drove across the city to a rural neighborhood near Echo Park. When he was a couple of blocks from his destination, he saw the headlights of another vehicle half a block back. He watched in his rearview, but then the vehicle parked on the side of the street and its lights went out.
Orlando drove another two blocks, hooked a right and parked along the curb in front of what looked to be an empty house. He turned and clicked the locks on the briefcase, opening it. He removed the .45 and the silencer, then screwing the silencer on to the weapon. He shut the briefcase. Then he put on his sunglasses, climbed out, and stuck the pistol down into the waistline of his sweats and began walking. He checked his watch. It was 7:36. He still had a few minutes. He walked another three blocks, encountering no one. A couple of cars passed by, but Orlando just continued walking.
It was cold as all hell. “Colder than a witch’s titty,” his father had liked to say. Certainly colder than Orlando had guessed it would be. But it was November, so he got what he deserved for not wearing a coat.
A few minutes later, he reached the fenced in-track behind the high school where Councilman Timms liked to walk each night. Orlando made his way to the gate of the high chain-link fence. He looked around the track, seeing only one man walking. The man was all the way across the track. Orlando began walking in the opposite direction the man was walking, hoping like hell it was Timms. A moment later, he and Timms approached one another. It was dark, but Orlando could see that Timms was squinting at him, likely trying to figure out why he was walking in the wrong direction. Or maybe he was just frightened by the sight of a black man out here alone in the dark.
Orlando moved to the left to clear the way for the man. They both nodded hellos as they passed one another. Once Timms had passed, Orlando stopped and pulled out the gun.
“Jerry Timms?” he asked, just to be sure.
The man stopped and turned, saying, “What? You know me?” Just as the words had left his mouth, he saw the open hole of the silencer staring at him.
This was where Orlando was supposed to say, “Angelo Vitelli says to tell you ‘shame on you,’” but Orlando saw no point in this. Timms would be dead either way and Vitelli would never know the difference. Vitelli was always asking him to say dumb shit like that to his marks, but Orlando never did it. This wasn’t the movies. This was a job and Orlando was a pro. That nonsense was beneath him.
Orlando squeezed the trigger, dropping the track suit-clad councilman. He walked towards the body, standing over it, and fired another two rounds into the man’s face. Then he stuck the pistol back into his waistline and began walking briskly back to the stolen car.
During his walk, Orlando again encountered no one.
Once he was back inside the car, he took off his sunglasses and stuck both them and the pistol into the briefcase, started the engine, and headed back to the parking lot to retrieve his own vehicle.
He was back home at the apartment complex by ten. When he pulled into the parking area behind the building, he saw that Dierdre’s Ford Fusion had moved and was now parked in a different spot than it had been when he’d left. He wondered where she’d gone. After he parked and started walking back to the apartment, he considered this. Was she cheating on him? And then, to his surprise, he realized he was actually hoping she was so he’d have a reason to get rid of her. This realization hit him suddenly and made him feel sad, so he tamped the thought back down into his the recesses of his mind so he could ignore it.
When he entered the apartment, he found Dierdre sitting on the couch where he’d left her. She wasn’t reading or listening to music. She was just sitting there staring at him with a strange expression that seemed like a mixture of confusion and disappointment.
Seeing this, he knew immediately something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked. “You okay?
Her lips spread into a half smile; another expression he couldn’t quite read.
“Have a seat,” she said.
Unsure what the move was, Orlando sat down beside her, standing the briefcase on the floor by his leg. He would put it away later.
Dierdre eyed the case. “You put your gun in there?”
This startled Orlando and he knew his expression had to be one of shock. He tried to play it off, but found difficulty in doing so. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, I know where you go when you leave. When you’re not teaching.”
He stared at her. He would just feign ignorance and push this as far as he could to find out what she knew, or if she really knew anything at all.
“Go ahead and open the briefcase, Orlando.”
He stared at her, giving her an incredulous look like she was nuts.
He chuckled a fake chuckle. “You’re acting crazy, Dierdre.”
One of her eyebrows lifted and she gave him a defiant, challenging look. “Am I? Am I really?”
“You know you are.”
“Then go ahead and open the briefcase.”
“I will not open the briefcase,” Orlando said. “What’s in there is none of your business.”
She smiled a crooked smile. “What if I told you I followed you last week to that pawn shop where you shot that man?”
This stunned him again, but he did a better job selling it this time. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you do. I followed you to that pawn shop. I parked down the street and watched you go in. You were only there for about five minutes. Then you left. And guess what? Lo and behold, the owner of the store was found dead the next day.”
Orlando stared at her, saying nothing.
“Guess how he died, Orlando?”
Orlando knew how he died, but he said nothing. He was trying to decide what to say next.
“The guy’s name was Tommy Spinks, like the fighter. Only he was a white guy. Turns out, somebody put a couple of .45 rounds into Tommy’s head.” She had an almost cocky look in her eyes now. They then moved to the briefcase. “Now go ahead, open the case, Orlando.”
“Come on,” he said weakly.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You afraid I’ll see your .45 in there? It’s probably got a silencer, like in the movies, right?”
Orlando stared at her. “You’re acting crazy, Dierdre.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you murder people. Probably for a living.”
He said nothing.
“What if I told you I followed you to that grocery store where you dropped off your truck?” she asked. “And what if I then told you I followed you from there out to Echo Park?”
He stared at her, knowing his face must be registering his shock, but he couldn’t help it.
“You know what I think, Orlando?” Dierdre said. “I think they’re gonna find some poor bastard dead somewhere down there in that neighborhood tomorrow. Hell, maybe they’ve already found them.” She stared into his eyes, knowing she had him. “So you gonna tell me about all this, or what?”
Orlando stared at her.
“You know what I can’t figure out?” she said. “In the movies, hitmen always use a .22, but you use a .45. So either you go against the rules or the movies have it all wrong.” She stared at him. “Which one is it?”
He sighed, seeing no use in continuing this.
“The movies got it right for once,” Orlando said. “Traditionally speaking, hitmen use .22s.”
“And you don’t,” she said.
“Right.”
She didn’t seem upset. She just made a face, considering this. Then she looked at him. “Why a .22? Isn’t that a really small weapon? Couldn’t that allow them to survive?
“Thing is, the .22 doesn’t have the power to go all the way through the head,” Orlando said. “So the thought is, the .22 slug will go into the front and then bounce around inside the skull, obliterating everything.”
She nodded. “But not you. You use a .45. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just prefer the .45. Other than it’s tendency to occasionally jam, it’s a good weapon.”
“But it doesn’t knock around in their brain?”
Orlando said, “It gets the job done.”
He told her everything. She looked happy that he was sharing these things with her and she didn’t look at all offended or judgmental, so he told her about how he’d gotten into his line of work and about damn near every hit he’d ever carried out. The truth was that it felt good to get these things off his chest. It felt good to have a confidant.
When he finished speaking, they just sat there staring at one another.
Orlando said, “So?”
“So what?” she asked without expression.
“Where does that put us?”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand.”
He took a breath so he wouldn’t rush this; so he could say what he wanted to say clearly without screwing it up. He looked into her eyes. “I’ve just told you every dirty little secret I have, Dierdre. Enough to put me in hot water for sure.” He paused and then said, “To drown me in hot water, actually.” He stared into her eyes. “So what I need to know is, does this change things with us?”
“No,” she said without hesitation.
He stared into her eyes—deep into them. “Can I trust you, Dierdre?”
She flashed him a genuine smile, showing off her bright white caps. “Of course you can.”
“Good.” He put his arms around her and pulled her close, kissing her. It was a long wet kiss, his tongue wrestling playfully with hers. Then he stood up, looking down at her for a moment, lost in ecstasy. He reached down and slid one arm under hers and the other under her ass, lifting her. He carried her to the bedroom, where they then made love. Orlando generally liked to play music when they had sex, and he would have liked to have had some light so he could see her expressions change with each thrust, but neither of them adjusted anything. They were both consumed by their lust, too wrapped up in the moment to make any adjustments.
When they were finished and Orlando had rolled off of her, Dierdre propped herself up on her elbows and said, “That all you got, old man?”
Orlando was tired, but this woke him back up. “Who the hell you calling old man?”
She giggled. “You’re the only old man here, Orlando.”
Even in his fifties, Orlando was easily temped by a challenge. Within a matter of seconds he was inside Dierdre again, making love to her. Or like. Orlando didn’t give a damn one way or the other. Whatever it was, it was good enough for the moment. Dierdre had two hard, quivering orgasms, and when Orlando climaxed he came as hard as he ever had.
He leaned down and kissed Dierdre’s forehead and said, “Old man, my ass.” They kissed and Orlando rolled off of her again. He lay on his back and Dierdre maneuvered her head, resting it on his bicep. They fell asleep almost at once.
Orlando woke up the next morning with the smell of bacon and French toast in his nostrils. He got out of the bed, still naked, and walked to the dresser where the blue robe lay folded. He slipped it on and made his way through the apartment, his bare feet padding on the soft carpet. Just before he reached the kitchen, Dax met him enthusiastically, sniffing his ankles.
When he reached the kitchen, Dierdre was standing there naked beneath her own robe. She smiled a bright smile that seemed to light up the room.
“I made you some breakfast,” she said.
“So I see,” Orlando said approvingly.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, kissing her. Once their kiss was concluded, Dierdre made them both plates. While she was doing this, Orlando poured them both orange juice. They sat down across from each other at the table.
As Orlando took his first bite of bacon, Dierdre asked, “How’d you sleep?”
“I slept well,” he said. “You wore my ass out.”
She smiled, eating some of the French toast. She looked at him with a mouthful of food and said through it, “I’ve been thinking.”
The words were simple and didn’t carry much weight, but Orlando sensed something unpleasant was coming.
“Oh?” he said.
She met his gaze with a level stare. “I’ve decided on something.”
He stared at her, waiting, trying his best to appear happy and comfortable, as if he wasn’t expecting to be hit with a bomb.
And then came the bomb.
“You and I both know that I could go to the cops,” Dierdre said. Orlando did a double take, but Dierdre held out her palm to stop him from getting excited. “Hear me out. I could go to the cops, but I’m not going to.”
He stared at her. “No?”
“No, of course not,” she said. “You and me, we’ve got a thing. At least I think we’ve got a thing. What do you think?”
She wasn’t saying it was a relationship or love, so Orlando saw no harm in agreeing. But the truth was, at this moment he was relatively certain he didn’t want to be with her any longer. However, he had painted himself into a corner. He decided to play along and see where she was going with this.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “We’ve definitely got a thing.”
She smiled happily.
“Okay then,” Dierdre said. “Here’s my deal.”
“There’s a deal?”
Dierdre smiled and nodded. “There’s always a deal.”
Orlando stared at her, waiting.
“So,” she said, “you remember me telling you about my ex-husband Ray, right?”
Orlando nodded. How could he forget? Ray had been all she’d talked about when they’d first met. She’d told him about how Ray had beaten her and couldn’t keep a job and was an alcoholic and lots of other vile fucked up shit. Ray, Orlando now saw, had been the first red flag, so it was fitting that he came up now, bringing everything full circle.
“Well, I was thinking,” she said. “You could kill Ray. You do that, and in return I keep my mouth shut.”
He stared at her, feeling anger boiling up inside. “I thought you said we had a thing,” he said irritably.
“I know, I know,” she said dismissively. “And we do have a thing, baby. We absolutely have a thing. But I don’t think I can move forward with this until Ray’s gone.”
He looked at her. “By gone you mean dead.”
“Exactly,” she said, nodding. “Once Ray’s dead and in the ground I’ll be able to move forward with my life.” She looked at him. “Our life. Together.”
Orlando just stared at her, thinking about how much he was starting to dislike her. He’d told her his secret—the one thing he’d never told anyone else—and this was how she repaid him? Hadn’t his life been hard enough? First he’d lost his little princess, Keisha, and then, on top of that, his wife had walked out on him. Despite his being a hitman, Orlando didn’t see himself as a bad man. The things he did, he did out of obligation. It was his job and a man had to eat. And if Orlando hadn’t clipped those men, someone else would have. That was the game. So why, he wondered, did all this shit have to happen to him?
“I don’t know,” Orlando said.
She looked at him hard now. “You’d better know.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “What? You’re threatening me now?”
She smiled. “Don’t be like that, baby.”
His hard eyes remained fixed on hers. “But you did just threaten me, right?”
Her smile didn’t fall away. If anything, it contorted into something almost mocking. “Take it any way you need to, baby, but I need you to do this one thing for me.”
“Just this one thing,” he repeated.
“Right. I just want you to kill Ray.”
He just stared at her.
“Ray is a shitty person,” she said.
You’re a shitty person is what he thought. But that’s not what he said. What he said was, “This is fucked up that you’re putting me in this position.”
“What’s the big deal?” she said. “It’s literally what you do for a living. It’s no different than a woman asking her mechanic boyfriend to change the oil in her car.”
Orlando stared at her. “I may kill for a living, but this is different.”
“Why?” she asked. “What makes this different?”
He thought about it. At first he couldn’t put his finger on it. He didn’t know Ray, so really Ray was no different from any of the other faceless pricks he’d put in the ground. But then he realized the key difference which was that Dierdre was blackmailing him into doing it. And for all Orlando knew, Ray might actually be a decent guy. At this point, there was no way Orlando could trust a single word Dierdre said. In his day-to-day work, Orlando could generally be certain his targets were all scumbags. But he didn’t know jack shit about Ray.
He stared at Dierdre. “How you figure I should do this?”
She lit up. “I thought we could make it look like an accident.”
“You mean me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You said we, but it’s not we,” Orlando said. “I’m the one who’s going to be doing the work.”
She shrugged. “Tomato, tomahto.” Her flippant attitude towards Ray’s death and Orlando’s work only served to make him hate her more. And the realization that he literally hated her now startled him, but that didn’t change it from being true.
He stared at her, nodding for her to go on with her plan.
“His car’s a beat up old piece of shit,” she said. “A Honda Civic. I figure you could do something to his car, maybe cut his break line or something.”
Orlando grinned. “You got it all figured out, huh?”
She grinned a devilish grin. “I always do.”
He believed that. Dierdre was a woman who saw all the angles and knew exactly how to play them. But Orlando decided right then and there that she wasn’t going to play him. And beyond that, she had overplayed her hand.
The conversation concluded and Orlando sat at the table and looked at the newspaper. As he did, Dierdre picked up the dishes and went to the sink, running water to wash them.
A few minutes later, she was midway through the dish washing when Orlando went to the kitchen. He stepped up behind her.
Hearing him approaching, she tilted her head. “You coming to give me a hug?” she asked happily.
“You know I am,” Orlando purred.
When Dierdre turned around, she saw him standing there with the blue belt to his robe up in front of her face. Her eyes went big and Orlando forcefully wrapped it around her neck.
As he strangled her, he became enraged. “Look at what you made me do!” he growled into the bugged out eyes in her now purplish face. “I trusted you, and this is what you do?! This?!” Orlando continued to choke Dierdre a full two minutes after she had gone limp. Then, finally, he let go of the belt and let her body topple to the linoleum.
He’d never killed a woman before. Dierdre was his first. And he’d never killed anyone inside his own apartment before. Dazed and confused, Orlando stumbled back a little, leaning against the kitchen island. He stared at her dead body. He didn’t mean to speak, but the words came out anyway: “I can’t believe you, bitch,” he said. “I thought we had something here…” It was a lie and he knew it. Remembering the phrase she’d used, he said sarcastically, “A thing, right? You thought we had a thing.” Staring at her he became angry once again and said through gritted teeth, “You murderous little bitch.”
He took a deep breath to compose himself. Then he went to the bedroom and grabbed his cellphone. He sat down on the bed beside Dax, who had been sleeping. He stroked the dog’s head as he called the familiar number.
“Hey,” he said. “I need you to send Teddy and his guys over to my place.”
He listened for a minute and then said, “Yeah, my apartment.”
Another pause and Orlando answered, “Unfortunately, yes, but it wasn’t supposed to be this way. An unforeseen problem arose that needed dealt with. It couldn’t be helped.”
Once Orlando finished the conversation, he pet Dax some more. “Sorry, Dax,” he said. “Mommy’s not gonna be around anymore.” Dax didn’t seem too much affected by the news and just lay his head back down on the bed.
