The Blind Spot

    THE BLIND SPOT

Walter walked to the window and flicked the ash from his cigarette onto the street below. He then turned slowly to face the woman he had been hired to kill. “Everyone I have ever met has a story to tell,’ Walter thought to himself, ‘and maybe I missed the most important part of hers.” Walter was uncommonly perplexed with this assignment. Hesitation and questioning himself was not a part of his natural purview. Most of his assignments had been basically mundane. Walter in the past had barely thought of his target. But this one bothered him and he didn't know why.

Kate was her name, and she was to believe she had met Walter accidentally on the boardwalk that night. He remembers standing close to her at the boardwalk rail, so close that he could feel the touch of her blonde curls as the wind blew them softly against his cheek. Below them, Kate watched an orange peel float by in the wake. Her eyes followed it as it bobbed and sank in the white foam. With her eyes ablaze and lips apart she suddenly turned toward Walter. It was a warm and romantic moonlit evening.

The nature of Walter’s chosen profession had compounded his outlook on life by creating confusion surrounding the many elements of good and evil. But he was sensitive to the appeal of beautiful things, especially women, and his passions were strong and deep, too often having their way with him.

  This seaside town was proving to have a strange effect on Walter. He whispered  Kate’s name so easily that it caused her to lift her head and playfully smile at him with a little nod. Then turning away from him with her lips pouting prettily she glanced over her shoulder, “Please be nice to me!” she said softly. Kate followed by adjusting her clear blue eyes slightly, as though she was attempting to summon her courage.

 Walter began to wonder if Kate somehow knew the real purpose of their meeting or was she just being playful in her spontaneous way. His senses said to get on with it. Anxiety was setting in, a feeling Walter had never experienced before. Now contemplating walking away from an assignment, he struggled to comprehend why this was so different.

 The night found Walter and Kate becoming unconsciously at ease with each other. Their normal composure softened as they talked and laughed together without restraint. It had been a long time since Walter had laughed and joked with a woman in this way as his mood seemed to be changing with every tick of the clock.

Suddenly as comfortable as Kate had become she abruptly stopped talking and her eyes began to shift uncontrollably from side to side. Kate’s eyes telegraphed confusion and a hint of fear---fear of what might happen next as Walter hastily displayed an accusing look.

Walter’s entire mood changed as he began to speak with considerable irritation. Kate reacted by falling into a half mocking frame of mind, but her teasing glances did nothing to relax Walter’s current mood.

      Walter’s disturbing disposition caused him to speak more harshly to Kate, who was now concerned about that look in his eyes. She studied him more carefully and saw an air of assurance about him that puzzled her deeply. Kate became frightened by Walter’s arrogance but even more so with his disturbing coolness.

Because of Kate’s behavior, Walter quickly regained control of his emotions. He had always been a manipulator. Never knowing his father, his mother had died when he was ten years old. Everyone was amazed and then troubled because he showed no grief and seemed to feel nothing of the sorrow all about him. It was obvious even then he clearly understood death but never felt that lump in the base of his throat, he was told should be there.

Walter realized that Kate had that type of beauty that could vanish with the smallest change in her mood. Kate began to sulk, and Walter knew from experience, that a woman, sulking, could be a sly trick to get what she wanted. Her tears were bright in her eyes as she bent her head with the slightest of inclinations.

A polished assassin, Walter was not. He approached most of his problems in a childlike manner. You might say he was a boy of moods, but his cleverness was amazing when he applied himself. Simplicity tended to mark all of his arrangements. Walter expeditiously began to experience real gratification as his imagination built up some possibilities of a fresh kill. Walter knew a lot about killing but beyond that, not so much.

The very breath of the stillness that night gave Walter Pause as he approached Kate. Contained in his right- hand jacket pocket was a very sharp 6- inch switchblade. His face carried a troubling smile as he put his arms around Kate and muttered a lackluster apology. His mind was schooling him, once again, to enjoy his chosen profession.

As he and Kate caressed, she sarcastically asked, “Do you ever get tired of playing the fool?” An unforeseen aspect of heaven in Walter’s mind blackened as clouds seemed to roll rapidly in, and coupled with a cold wind moaning dismally. The warmth of the projectile tore into Walter’s midsection causing his sudden silence to speak volumes. He knew immediately this was a miscalculation on his part and why his client had insisted on him using a knife, not his normal choice.

Walter arrived that night with all the best plans, but the melody of the evening had struck a wrong note. A thought rushed through Walter’s head, “He was seconds away from committing murder, but now he needed to find the words to sweet- talk his way past Saint Peter.”

Kate’s face was a masterpiece of craftsmanship but with the perfect artwork of a soulless manikin. She had honored her contract, catching Walter off guard as planned by acting as an ordinary player but executing an unforeseen extraordinary play--- in the game of death by assassination.

                                             THE END