The Pit of Retribution

Killing is a serious matter, and K42 knows it well. He's been calling himself that since he quit bank robberies to become a full-time hitman. K stands for killer.

The house sits at the end of a narrow road, paved at first before transforming into a floor of stones, potholes, and depressions. Hostile to low-chassis cars and deadly for fragile ankles. The woods shield that '70s villa from prying eyes, far enough from the provincial road to be noticed only when winter strips the trees and the low sun makes the veranda windows glitter.

He arrives by bicycle, dismounts, hides it at the bottom of the embankment, and continues on foot. The backpack weighs enough but contains nothing superfluous. The gun will stop the heart of Mario Eliani, a retired aviator who spent his life scanning the sky hoping to spot a UFO. That's what his wife had told him, and when they arranged the hit through that protected chat, she had mentioned all the flight attendants who had knelt at her husband's crotch while she spent her time raising their son straight and healthy. The last affair, with the big-breasted woman who sells fruit at the market, was the final straw.

The gate at the garden entrance is the work of an improvised blacksmith. Construction bars welded together by an imprecise hand and painted in alternating Napoli-blue and white, with the upper crossbar bearing an inscription in digit-font characters, the kind derived from the luminous diodes of old calculators. It reads: ELIANI COUPLE and celebrates the grotesque end awaiting that family, soon to be extinguished by a cynical calculation.

K42 can't hold back a bitter smile. He bends over his backpack, pulls latex gloves from the outer pocket and puts them on, then slips on the wool balaclava, pulling it down to his neck.

The client had been blunt:

"He mustn't see your face. Until the end, he'll believe it was a thief who killed him, not his poor cheated wife. They'll only reveal that detail to him in hell."

With a five-thousand-euro advance, every wish is his command.

The key is the right one.

It turns obediently in the well-lubricated lock, and the heavy door of knurled iron opens silently on its hinges. K42 crosses the cement curb and passes the evergreen bush trimmed into the shape of a flying saucer. Before the house stands half a dozen scale models of the most famous sightings. There's the cigar shape photographed everywhere, lying on the ground on a support of solid bricks, and the Roswell flying saucer, half demolished. A rather approximate reproduction of the spacecraft from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as large as a car, shines in the twilight of electric lights stuck on with glue, and is actually half-covered by a climbing plant on the side facing the house. The garden is chaos of grass clippings, rakes, other work tools, and mole repellents planted here and there. Right next to the gate is a pit, hand-dug and at least two meters deep. There's that construction site smell that takes him back to childhood, and the shovel used for the work is planted in the mound of loose earth at the edge of the hole, just as his bricklayer father used to do before lunch break. Calluses, sweat, and fatigue.

"My husband is strong as a bull. As long as he has muscles and can get it up, he'll always cheat on me. Better he goes first, killed by a thug who wanted to steal the jewelry..."

The second key is also docile and silent. It opens a hand-crafted wooden door, and the dimness of a living room with leather sofas, solid wood furniture, and velvet curtains welcomes him into the most ordinary country house imaginable. K42 moves with light steps, avoiding tripping on the carpet under the ten-person table and bypassing the turned-off TV, then locates the safe. It's built into the wall at the beginning of the corridor, behind the framed Chagall print, and he sees it by moving the frame just slightly.

"Enter with the keys I'll get to you, and when you hear him arrive, position yourself near Dream of Love, and he'll come at you in a fury. He's always in a fury. He's big and strong, but you know what you're doing. Make sure he gets some wounds and then put a bullet in his stomach. At that point, you'll have time to ransack the house, leave, close the door behind you, and then force it with a crowbar so they'll think it was a break-in. Bring a sturdy one."

And he could feel it weighing in his backpack, but he had to bear it. It was part of the play his client had calmly architected, feeding on bitterness and humiliation, which would serve to dismiss the cops with a few condolences muttered between teeth and an offer to help if needed. That woman may be cheated on, he thinks, but she's as evil as a witch.

The mirror at the end of the corridor could be useful for anticipating movements.

At the right angle, he'll see his victim while still in the living room, and he's sure that with a decisive push, bull-strong or not, he could send the husband back toward the fireplace and finish him with the poker. Knowing about a struggle, the cops would have an easy time and a path to follow. They'd look everywhere for hair, skin fragments, and drops of saliva. The bag he keeps in his pocket contains a bit of all this, collected from the barber shop, service station napkins, and the bar. Of him, K42, paid hitman with twelve unpunished murders to his name, they would find no trace.

The stranger waits for him in the bedroom.

She sits in a rocking chair that sways noiselessly on a carpet next to the valet stand, and she's not hospitable. She points a Glock 17 with a screwed-on silencer and looks like she knows how to use it. K42, backpack over his shoulder and revolver tucked in the side pocket next to the crowbar, raises his hands and can't help noticing her wide, intelligent blue eyes and those eyelids that don't blink in unison. Her lips are slightly parted in a hint of a smile, and the hand holding the weapon is as steady as a photograph. She wears a black turtleneck and equally dark pants so tight they leave nothing to imagination. She's one of those girls who can cross a beach stopping waves and taking away the breath of onlookers. She smells good, with a faint scent of vanilla lip gloss accompanying the mint smell of her candy.

"And who are you?"

"I'm the one asking questions. You, who are you?"

K42 considers a series of more or less evasive answers and finally yields to her probing gaze. He feels naked, vulnerable. "I'm a thief."

"Right, one who enters using keys. Bullshit! Who are you?"

"If I tell you, will you shoot me?"

"Since you've fucked up my job, I'll shoot you either way."

"What job?"

"I ask the questions. Who are you, what are you doing here, and who sent you? Why do you have house keys and a balaclava on your face?"

"I said, I came to steal."

"Then why aren't you stealing? As far as I know, in this room, apart from that questionable porcelain cat, there's nothing valuable, and the safe is in the hallway, behind the Chagall print..."

K42 feels his mouth go dry, and a taste of rotten apples replaces his saliva. He's sweating from his armpits, and the balaclava weighs like a helmet. He thinks the lady of the house has screwed him, that soon she'll ask for the advance back, and that the blonde is a cop. The thought crosses his mind that the wall closet might hide a couple of reinforcements and that an entire SWAT team could arrive from the bathroom. He can already hear the prison doors creaking.

"I came to kill the master of the house..."

This time her eyelids blink, and the half-smile vanishes in an instant. If you paid attention, the silencer's tip lost its target for a split second. The blonde is a little less icy than before when she saw him enter the bedroom. Nervous, she freezes on the rocking chair, which stops swaying, and it's clear she's considering whether to shoot him. She doesn't.

"Are you a cop?"

"God forbid!"

Pause. It lasts just long enough to question the meaning of life. K42 would pray if only he knew where to start.

"So you would have come to take out the homeowner, Mr. Mario Eliani."

"Exactly, him."

"An old slight, a betrayed friend, a screwed colleague?"

"No, the cheated wife."

And if the revolver weren't in his backpack, he could grab it and aim at the blonde, who lowers her weapon toward the floor and incredulously shakes her head. But when she jumps up as if the chair were a springboard, the blonde targets him again, takes a couple of steps back, and picks up a framed photo from the marble top of the dresser, next to the life-sized porcelain cat with a pair of brilliant green stones for pupils. The Eliani couple are photographed in 13 x 19 format, by the sea, after a walk in worn-out, faded beach shoes and before a waist-high wall good for sitting and eating ice cream. He's a strapping man; she's tall and slender. They're embracing, and there's a mischievous wind that ruffles the man's few hairs and lifts his wife's skirt, revealing a pair of long, still toned legs despite her age. The husband's leather jacket seems to date back to the Happy Days era, and she carries an unfashionable purse. A couple of sailboats complete the background.

"You really have to kill the husband, this handsome gentleman?"

He had memorized his face: broad jaw, precisely trimmed goatee, healthy complexion, and small, penetrating eyes under a pair of rather anarchic gray eyebrows. Baldness flaunted with dignity. He had studied the photos the wife had provided and had learned everything needed thanks to some stakeouts, to sniff his ass like dogs do.

"That's right. It's work, after all..."

"And this meek lady, all house and family, who has the courage to walk around with that skirt and that questionable purse, would have hired you to kill him?"

He squints, but that face means nothing to him. "I've never seen her. The job came through certain dark web channels."

"And the money?"

"Bitcoin."

The Glock now aims at his head. "Off with the balaclava!"

"Wait..."

The blonde grimaces. "I don't have the time or patience to wait, and I'm in charge here. Let me see your face."

He stalls. "I don't think the Red Cross sent you. What are you doing in this house?"

Her eyes laugh, a mixture of malice and desperation. The twisted grin is frightening, and the gun is steady. No tremor or doubt, and from that distance, she would hit him without even taking aim.

"I came to kill the lady, and now I have to shoot you..."

The gesture is sudden. K42 steps back and shields himself with his hands. "No, stop. Wh...what do you mean, kill the lady?"

"I have to hide under the bed, wait until she loads up on sleeping pills like she does every night, and then suffocate her in her sleep. They'll think it was sleep apnea. The lady suffers from it, and those junk meds she takes for sleeping can cause it..."

"And how do you know that?"

"Those are the instructions the husband gave me, and I'm capable of consulting a medication leaflet online..."

"The husband, my target?"

"Apparently. Mario Eliani is worried because he suspects his wife wants to kill him." She peers through the holes in the balaclava, and K42 feels a shiver running up his back. "And look at that, he was right..."

The calculation is quick, especially when the bullet in the chamber is ready to go.

K42 knows how to handle women and knows that, even armed, they always think before acting. He controls his voice, which comes out as steady as the hand of a bomb disposal expert handling wires.

"So, if I get this straight, if I came to eliminate Mr. Mario and you're waiting for his wife to take her out, and each of them hired each of us..."

The blonde adopts a subtle sarcasm. "Good, continue. You don't seem stupid..."

"Neither of them, husband or wife, will return home tonight."

"And we'd better disappear from the radar before things go to hell."

"I think exactly like you, colleague."

Sometimes, a step forward weighs like a cast-iron pour, and the room temperature rises accordingly. The four steps the blonde takes, until bringing the silencer's tip a few centimeters from the balaclava, open a new debate.

"Except that you've seen my face, chubby, and there are two options. Either you show me your ugly mug and we're even, or I'll rearrange your features with a lead anti-wrinkle cream. I'll open a third eye in the middle of your forehead, what do you say?"

He would have preferred to remain anonymous, but so it goes. The bargaining power of a loaded gun equals the charisma of an unscrupulous businessman with his entire entourage of lawyers. He raises his hands and calmly brings his right one to grip the fabric, and slowly, as if unveiling a statue at an inauguration, the balaclava slides off. First over the chin with its distinctive dimple, then over the fleshy lips surrounded by a hint of dark mustache, and then over that slightly oversized nose that had cost him some frustration in his youth. His eyes are gray, the color of ash, and his forehead is low, with some expression lines that amplify with tension before the beginning of a head of thick, long hair. The last strands, those on top of his head, are pulled up by the wool. Finally, they fall back into the pile with a comical effect.

She studies him, focuses on the details, investigates his gaze, and with quick eye movements brings the shape of that face into focus, and finally relaxes. She lowers the Glock and sighs. "But who are you?"

K42, as mentioned, knows women well and knows how vulnerable they can be when caught in the shadow zone between distrust and trust. He knows that among the certainties of the existence he has chosen to lead, one is never to associate his face with his profession, or his voice, or that way of moving his hands, bending his neck, or simply walking.

The sudden headbutt he delivers to the blonde is so strong that her skull cracks and her upturned eyes confirm that her brain has stopped functioning, and then, as soon as the Glock with the entire silencer falls to the floor, his hands close around her slender, long neck and squeeze.

They tighten.

Surrounded by a deep wine-red hue that matches the swelling of the arteries, two taut cords beneath the skin stretch across the entire neck. The air is cut off, the beautiful lips contort into an unrecognizable shape, and saliva foams between clenched teeth, trickling down in thin, milky rivulets. Arms, legs, the entire body convulses in erratic spasms. Then the eye sockets flood with blood, and only a faint, imperceptible thread of air scrapes through the throat. Suddenly, the strength drains from the legs, and the blonde—who once made the sea waves halt and stole the breath of men on the beach—collapses onto the bedroom floor. Her legs cross over each other as if in a yoga pose, palms facing upward in silent surrender. Her final gaze locks onto the ceiling.

K42 nudges the pistol away with his foot, crouches down, and presses his ear to her lips. The last breath is trapped within her lungs.

He needs to catch his breath, wait for his heart to stop thrashing inside his ribcage. Then clean up. Scatter false clues. Disappear. A failed job is a stain not easily erased, but if his career is at risk, his life might still be salvageable.

He must take the body and hide it somewhere safe.

Even if his killer’s hands were gloved, the thousands of microscopic saliva bubbles she expelled in her struggle must have landed everywhere—in her hair, in the fibers of her clothes, on her skin. In the carpet beneath the rocking chair. The virus of murder is everywhere, ready to be placed under a microscope, ready to speak. Ready to name names.

His plan is simple. He’ll get on the bicycle, retrieve the car from the city, return, and load the body—all before one of the Elianis comes home. He’ll figure out the rest along the way.

The hallway, the mirror, the print of Chagall’s Dream of Love. The spacious living room with leather sofas and a massive table.

The twilight has melted into darkness.

The sliding door moves smoothly, and outside, the air is fresh. The garden, still in progress, is strewn with scattered tools, heaps of clippings piled here and there, and mole-repelling devices. There’s the Roswell crash UFO. The cigar-shaped one. And the moon. It casts a bluish light over the landscape, spreading like a shroud over a corpse.

He fumbles in his pocket and finds the key to the outer gate, built from construction iron. The welded inscription on the architrave reads CONIUGI ELIANI, but seen from behind, it looks like an alien mantra: INAILE IGUINOC.

And that’s when K42 feels the breath of death.

The shot comes from the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The bullet zips through the row of lights along the hull, strikes his ribs, tears through his back, and exits his abdomen, carrying with it a piece of him—flabby, red, and stringy. His legs give out. He falls to his knees, then crumples. His hand pressing against his stomach does nothing to stop the blood from gushing out. His curses spill out incoherent, shredded by pain.

A pair of long legs, still toned despite age, descend from the craft with practiced agility. A woman in a gray-silver tracksuit strides toward him, gripping an automatic pistol.

K42 thinks that Mrs. Eliani looks even better in person than in photographs—and that her husband is even more imposing than that burly man standing beside her in the seaside snapshot.

They both watch him writhe in the dirt. Then, without ceremony, she grabs him by the feet and drags him a few meters away. She lets him roll into the pit dug in the garden. The impact rattles his organs, and a fresh spray of blood spurts from the wound.

From down here, Mrs. Eliani looks even taller.

Two powerful floodlights mounted on the house’s facade blaze to life, cutting through the dark like a blade.

"Darling, will you take care of the sign?"

Her husband’s voice is deep, perfectly suited to his stature.

"I’ll do it after I fetch the other one," he replies, and K42 watches his shadow disappear from the edge of the pit.

His stomach acid rises, scraping his throat like a sea urchin. Mrs. Eliani conceals her sadistic grin among the folds of her wrinkles. Out of spite, she kicks dirt into the grave. He can do nothing to stop himself from swallowing it.

"Wha… what did I do?" Every word costs him agony, and the pain is unbearable. His blood has soaked his pants up to his knees. The crowbar grins its jagged teeth at his shoulder blade. The pistol lies useless and cold at the bottom of his backpack.

Another kick of dirt. This time, it clogs his nostrils.

"You pulled one heist too many, bastard!" she sneers, then walks away. Soon, the lanky shadow vanishes as well, leaving him alone to fill a grave that reeks of labor—calluses, sweat, exhaustion.

He thinks of his robberies. The boss, always in disguise, who orchestrated them. The gang that gathered in an abandoned warehouse to discuss details. They all wore masks, all used voice modulators. There was Bugs Bunny, Pluto, Popeye, and even Andreotti. He himself always wore a plastic Bill Clinton mask—the 42nd president of the United States. That’s why he had chosen the number 42 for himself.

And through all those heists, only one person had died: Ettore Foiano, a young, foolish bank clerk who had tried to play hero. He and the Queen of England had to shoot him together.

And then—

The blonde’s weight slams onto him like a meteorite, and the shock forces him to vomit blood. Darkness swallows his vision. Deafness dulls the world. A vibration of shattered bones hums through the earth.

He faints.

Then wakes immediately. But he can no longer feel his legs.

It seems as if his belly is full of liquid, sloshing like gasoline in the bottom of a canister. And then…

Mrs. Eliani reappears, this time holding a shovel.

She laughs.

"The Queen of England will keep you company."

"Bitch," he snarls, hoping to scream. But his voice is feeble, a mere shadow of a rage too weak to manifest.

"You shot her in cold blood, and now my husband and I will rewatch the video at our leisure. Remember the porcelain cat? It was a camera. Would you have ever guessed? You and that whore—what a show you put on!" she cackles as the first shovelful of dirt—heavy with sharp stones—falls over the lifeless blonde, over the Queen of England.

The second mound of earth mingles with his blood. And the robbery scene blazes before his eyes, a film projected onto the darkness.

Three customers stood in line.

One wore wide-wale corduroy pants, a little frayed. Another had on a windbreaker, too cautious for the season shifting into spring. The last—a twenty-year-old blonde, full of hope—was polished and pristine, like a mannequin in a storefront.

The guard was being held by his colleague, the one wearing a Scalfaro mask—gripping his hair, pressing a gun to his temple.

The first teller had her hands up, jeans soaked in urine. The second had shut off her emotions, a statue of salt.

Then there was Ettore Foiano.

First, he had tried to press the alarm. Then, he made the fatal mistake of reaching into his leather bag for his personal weapon. And so he—Bill Clinton—and at the same time, she—the Queen of England—had fired through the glass.

Bang—one shot to the chest.

Bang—one to the base of the neck.

Bang.

The third bullet had taken half his cheekbone.

Ettore Foiano had died a fool.

Mrs. Eliani is cruel.

She takes her time. A shovelful of dirt at a time.

And as the last red-hot iron bar completes the inscription, as the earth begins to press on his neck, K42 understands.

He doesn’t need to see Mr. Eliani forge the final letter.

He knows.

And as his breath is replaced by soil, he watches the welding sparks divide into a thousand falling stars.

And the scent of smoke, molten metal, earth, and sweat takes him back—back to when he was just a boy.