Just Another Day...

Jeremy was whispering to himself.

"Off the train at four, into his hotel at four-thirty, starts to relax around five, Jones comes in at six, he leaves by six fifteen. Off the train at four, into his hotel at four-thirty, starts to relax around five, Jones comes in at six, he leaves by six fifteen."

Jeremy was in the hotel lobby, sitting in a big green leather chair, in front of a clock. The lobby was nice, deep marbles and golden tinted everything. He kept looking at the doors, and kept whispering to himself. He shifted in the chair. He had been sitting here since three thirty this afternoon. The sun had started to set, and Jeremy was starting to get a little sleepy. He had already sifted through the newspapers they had sitting on the cherry wood tables next to him. Not much was happening in Haven these days; a body was found in the harbor, Mayor Wright still denying the charges, there was another building fire in Rome Island. It was just another sleepy day for Haven City.

Jeremy reminded himself again, consciously shifting his feeling towards the small of his back, where he kept his Beretta, full clip and an empty pipe. He hoped he didn't have to use it very much today, but he secretly knew that he had to. It was three till six.

Jeremy shifted again; his legs were getting cramps. He rubbed his eyes and rubbed his cheeks, clean-shaven today. He tried to look like he belonged in the Filtmore Hotel. He wore his best suit, the black le-breasted number, with a paisley tie on a white shirt. Jeremy, by no means, was a professional.

He was still pretty new at this. Sure, as a kid he tried some stuff, boosting cars from mall parking lots at Christmas, shoplifting, the occasional neighborhood break in. After a misspent youth, Jeremy went to college. That didn't work out very well for him, so he came back to Haven City, tried to see what he could do. Somehow, he fell into this. He guessed his life really changed when he shot a security guard two months ago. Jeremy and some friends of his (guys he just met through the grapevine, really) tried stealing a shipment of diamonds, or money, or something, from a storage facility. It didn't work out very well; the guard hopped out in front of Jeremy and Jeremy shot him in the face.

Strangely enough, it didn't faze him. One minute, guard was alive, alive enough to jump out in front of Jeremy and do his job. The next minute, he had a .45 slug buried deep inside the back of his brain, after it ripped through his teeth and jawbone. Jeremy watched him die on the pavement under a buzzing blue light, and it didn't seem to affect him. He always thought that killing somebody would be like it was in books, how a silence comes over everybody, how everyone stares at the body, and someone says something poetic, or mythic, something like that. It wasn't like that at all. The first thing Jeremy noticed was how much his ears rang, and how Ronnie Huber, one of the other guys, just said, "You shot the guard. Fuck, man." And then he took the keys off of his body.

It didn't even matter, because they couldn't find the diamonds, or find the money, or whatever it was. After that, Jeremy found out that killing somebody made you "a name" made you someone that wasn't afraid of anybody, because you had a gun, and weren't afraid to use it. The older guys, the guys like Max Frost and Tommy Lincoln treated him like a kid who just hit his first home run, like he finally made the big leagues. That's how it was in Haven City.

Jeremy finally spotted Jones. He walked in, strutting that pimp walk he had, moving through the lobby, making his way towards the glowing elevators. Jeremy trailed him the whole way there, began to follow him. He remembered that Jones didn't really want to pimp walk, but a taxicab crushed his foot when he was a kid.

Jones stood in front of the elevator, holding a shopping bag. The shopping bag was filled with cocaine, maybe some heroin. As Jeremy made his way to the elevator, he noticed some bad luck starting to walk near him.

"Hey, hey, Jeremy Finch, Mr. Mass Hysteria himself"

"How you doing, Finch, huh? What you doing here?"

These two guys were a joke. Vinnie Alveoli and Wilford "Punk" Brewster. These were two of Haven's most annoying criminals, and general sinkholes of bad luck. Alveoli was the kind of guy that insisted that his looks alone would get him laid at least three times a week. Brewster, Jesus, Brewster was a pathetic example of a human being; at best, he barely understood human reaction. These two guys just seemed to be lucky to the total extreme. They could walk into a bank, stick it up, and walk out, and nothing would happen, because the guard was taking a leak, and the electronic alarm system was re-setting itself at that very moment. A while back, the managed to clean out Dick Gano, just because the old guy had a heart attack the just before they walked into his money room in the back of his grocery store, and he couldn't call his goons.

"My mother's in town, I'm here to see her. She's up on six."

Alveoli was going to be the first one to talk. Then Brewster would say something to back him up, trying to make the both of them look tough. And they really looked tough here, wearing Metallica shirts and ripped jeans in one of Haven's best hotels.

"Oh is she now? We think you're lying to us Finch," Alveoli comments

"Yeah, we know you're lying to us, Finch, we think you're here for something else," replies Brewster

"Oh, you think so, so what do you think I'm here for?" Jeremy comments back

"Well, Jeremy, since we know you're hardcore, and we like you..." Brewster starts

"...But that doesn't mean we're all pals here on this one, okay pal?" Alveoli finishes

"Like I was saying, we like you, so we thought we would let you in on a deal we know about." Brewster continues

Jeremy tried to feign interest, like this was the first time he heard about this. "Well, I'm open here. Go ahead."

"Well anyway, this guy just got on an elevator, he's going up on fifteen. When he gets there, he's going to sell some big shot from NYC some snow, and walk out of here with some thirty thousand dollars in unmarked bills," informs Alveoli. "But see the trick is he ain't gonna walk outta here with the money, see?"

Jeremy's eyes widened in false interest, "Is that so?"

"Yeah, that's so, Finch. What they don't know is that we're going to stop him, and get the money right when the deal goes down." Brewster replies harshly

"Yeah, that's what they don't know. And that's why we got these..." Alveoli begins to speak.

Both Brewster and Alveoli looked around, and lifted up their shirts. They had tucked some cheap pawnshop guns in there, probably bought less than an hour ago. They were showing them to Jeremy like fifth-graders showing off a pack of cigarettes they stole from their parents.

"So you guys are serious about this. Damn. What should I do then?" Jeremy notes

"We just want you to help us out, Finch. We go in, mess up this big shot from NYC, maybe rough up Jones some, Brewster watches the halls, and we get out of there with the money, we split up three way pies later. You slick on that job?" Alveoli states.

Brewster, for once, didn't say anything. He was looking around the hotel, Jeremy imagined, trying to look like he was looking for cops.

"Yeah, sure, I'm slick on it. Are we going to do this now?" Jeremy comments

"You know it." Alveoli says smiling

Soon enough, they were in the elevator, going up. Jeremy was sure that once they actually got the money, Brewster would probably come in and shoot him in the face. They weren't the kind of guys to branch out. They were going to try and kill him, so he decided he was going to have to kill them, or at least just try to get away. Admittedly, they were stupid, stupid thugs, but they were still coasting on their moronic luck, and Jeremy didn't know when it was going to stop.

The elevator bell dinged, and the doors silently slid open. The three of them stepped into the hallway, and the action, just like that, started up. Jeremy knew they were in room 1510, just to their right. He pointed at the door, and started walking fast. Before he could get there, though, Alveoli hustled up behind him, and launched his left sneaker into the doorframe. If the guys inside weren't definitely armed, Jeremy would have found it amusing that Alveoli probably broke his leg.

"Jesus, what the hell are you doing??!!??, these things are re-enforced steel!" Jeremy yells

Alveoli pulled out his pistol, popped off a shot at the door key slot. Mercifully, it had a silencer on it. The key slot popped, and the Jeremy heard the lock slide across. There wasn't much time for this, so Jeremy kicked in the door. Someone must have been standing right in front of it, because it kicked back at him, and he heard someone go down. Jeremy could see into the room a little bit. He could see some older guy grabbing some plastic bags full of coke, trying to fit them into a briefcase.

Jeremy pushed his body into the doorway, and saw Jones on the floor. Jones whipped his arm up, pulled off a shot. Jeremy saw his arms move, so he had time to move his head out of the way, but he had to move so much he fell down, his legs pinned behind the door. Once he hit the floor, he pressed his Beretta up against Jones' head and squeezed the trigger, leaving a little maroon hole in the top of his head. Jones was the second person that Jeremy had killed. Jesus, it really just was like it is in the movies.

Behind him, he could hear Alveoli screaming. Alveoli forced his gun into the doorway, and started firing randomly. The bullets didn't hit anything, just pecked off some of the wood and erupted the fabric in the furniture.

Jeremy righted himself, chasing the big shot into the room, hoping he wasn't going for a shotgun stationed by the bed or something.

Jeremy moved slowly through the room. It was a large, soft affair, three rooms, dark hallways between the living area and the bed. Jeremy leaned, squatted against the lip of the hallway, waiting until he heard something, like the guy coming back out, or loading a submachine gun. It was pretty quiet in the back, except for a TV, playing some news station or something like that.

Alveoli was still here, in the front room, holding his gun up and out like a flag, as he searched through Jones' body. Jeremy was still waiting. He heard something that sounded like a gunshot, only muffled, like it had a cheap silencer on it.

Jeremy got up, quickly ran to the bedroom. Nothing in there, he shifted his body around and to the right, his gun pointed forward; he was looking into the bathroom. The big shot was in there. He was dead.

He put a towel in front of a pistol and shot himself in the face, in the bathtub. The cocaine had been flushed down the toilet. Jesus, Jeremy thought that guy thought I was a cop.