How I Murdered Your Mother

There is no one who can sit still when they faced with any sort of forever. Face death? Fight back. Face Jail? Run away. True Love? Really. Run away. Far away. Especially in my line of work. You see, my little darlings, I was what you might call a retailer of information. I acquired interesting pieces of information and found people who were willing to buy it for lots of money.

The trade—because it is not like an office job, you have to go outside and sometimes get a little dusty—the trade is not without its challenges.

Top me off, Vee? That’s it, love.

The trade is not without its challenges. The people I, um worked with, were not always the “play nice” kind of colleagues. Sometimes the information is not easy to get, at least the valuable information. And sometimes the people who you run into are not always of a mind to part with the information. You would be amazed at how zealous a small bureaucrat can be in some small, barely lit corner of the world. But maybe that bureaucrat had a copy the survey for a new lithium field. Or maybe There was a lieutenant in the ass-end of Shit-Hol-istan—

“Daddy!”

Sorry, maybe this small piece of brass managed the itinerary of the local apparatchik which may or may not have included which company he decided to keep after hours, at a certain hotel. You get my meaning.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that the world is fraught with scrupulous people who seem to think their particular ideology, or political poop did not stink enough for them to resist the gentler persuasions my profession preferred to deal in. Wet work was always a last resort for me. I raise my glass to these idealists, but if you are going to make an omelet, as they say…

Your mother was one of these people. Pure to the core. Hard at it too, working late in the bureau every day. The work-a-day slobs would shuffle in at nine, flustered at having had to wake up to the day’s hardships. Breakfast in their bellies, coffees in their hands. Coats over their arms, complaining about the cold, lamenting the heat, begging for rain, scorning their umbrellas and wet shoes. It was like a daily prison sentence for them. None of them noticed your mother, firmly seated at her terminal, crunching the numbers, who had arrived hours before them, often before the sun with no complaints…no one to complain to.

Lunch would roll around and these worthless knob-turners would file out into the street. Salads on Monday. Pasta by Wednesday. Beers on Friday. Then back into the bureau to be worthless in the afternoon only to slip out like a chain reaction as the first lever-puller broke the seal at quarter-to. No one said good evening to your mother as they raced out the door to their sad existence outside the scope of my high-powered range finder, fixed on your mother’s bent head from my vantage point in the empty office across the street. Your mother. She was steadfast at her terminal, pecking away, absently drinking that vending machine coffee, eyes fixed on her screen, spreadsheets, and inputs.

It was only when the cleaning crew, like beetles on a dung heap, started at their work that she looked up. Seemed to notice where she was, that a whole world existed outside her numbers, that, except for these imported automatons pushing trash carts, she was alone. Utterly unnoticed or regarded by her colleagues. Only then would she gather her personal belongings, shut down her terminal, and make her way to the elevators, almost in a daze of awakening. Or maybe she was falling back to sleep, the real-world torpor that existed when she was away from her work.

I know this about her because she was my target.

No! Vee, I am not an assassin. She was the bureaucrat who, in this case, ran the numbers on a Hedge Fund that was fed by, let just say “less than savory” investors. Your mother may not have known it, but she was working tirelessly to make sure the real criminals of this world avoided attention, taxes, and loss.

Well, until I was hired by some rival entities to steal that data.

Day after day on a job like this one, you really get to know the target. And, I am not proud to say it—because I view myself as the consummate professional—there was something about your mother that moved the calculous of my heart.

I was falling for her.

I don’t know if it was her dedication to her job, or if I had a soft spot for this lonely creature who threw herself at her work, invisible to the trolls around her, unknown to the rotted minds pulling the strings.

“Daaaad”

I know, you want to hear about the first time we met!

Well, getting a custodial uniform, the security badge, that was the easy part. Learning Polish, that was a little more of a challenge. I had done some jobs in Krakow. But blending into the cleaning crews would require some comments about football, the weather, and where my favorite cabbage spot was? That was the real challenge.

So, after some chitchat about Pasy’s performance over the weekend, the unseasonably warm March—

“It was February!”

You’re right, it was February, and unseasonably warm. And finally, after a small argument with Euli about whose cabbage was the best, the elevator doors opened to a (mostly) empty office floor. There, only slightly hidden by the coffee stand, sat your mother. As usual, face forward into the glow of her terminal screen, wide blue light glasses like the bow shock of a star through dusty space. She didn’t look up as I came into the floor lobby, humming a Polish pop song.

“You’re such a dork, dad.”

“I was thorough!”

I began my rounds (my fake rounds!), pulling the trash from one cubicle, then the next, making my way toward her desk. Suddenly, your mother did something I’ve never seen her do: She slammed her hand down on her desk in frustration, pushed herself abruptly from her work, and huffed away, maybe towards the vending machines or the lavatory.

“I think I even cursed”

“She even cursed!”

“Mommy never curses!”

“Oh, she can, with skill and economy.”

I was so startled I forgot that I was a spy, not a cleaning man, not at all interested in garbage and not at all (supposed to be) interested in your mother’s emotions. But this was my chance! My plan had always been to infiltrate the building. Done. Have a reason to casually be on her floor. Done. And find an opportunity to install my spyware. Easy peasy. And this was my chance.

I pushed my cleaning cart quickly but quietly to her cube, bent to make like I was after her bin, and palmed the portable drive. But I had been out sneaked! Before I could reach for her terminal, your mother was standing right there behind me. I stiffened and stood up quickly, maybe too quickly to not look guilty. Relying on my espionage skills honed across Europe and many parts of Asia, I relaxed, leaned on my cart, and said—

“He said: ‘Hello, miss, working late?’”

“Groooossss, dad”

Your mother was the definition of a civilian. A square. Her world was not my world. But she had seen into its guts, night after night, crunching numbers. You can see when a person so pure and sweet as your mother is touched by the darkness. It’s not right, like using motor oil to brush your teeth. I could see it in her eyes.

I could not be so forward yet, even though I wanted to scoop her up and carry her away from the baseless toiling. There was so much I wanted to say, to ask, learn about her—beyond what my professional, my very clinical, background investigation had offered as a glimpse into the real person your mother was.

But her standing there before me, exhausted, hands empty except for a torn-up bill told me the whole story, as well as gave me the socially acceptable way to use my charms. You see, she was frustrated, she knew the numbers would never add up. That there would be questions. Questions above her pay grade, that she would raise flags, draw attention, get noticed by the wrong people, and they would wring her out to avoid the kind of attention her number crunching would draw.

They would kill her for her silence and all she wanted was a cheap machine coffee that cost a quarter the vending machine would not yield because of her tattered bill. It was my way in.

“’Please,’ your father said. ‘Let me buy your coffee.’”

“Smooth, daddy.”

“He was the most handsome custodian I had ever seen.”

Well, yes, espionage had given me the confidence, but your mother was a delicate matter. You see, I had fallen in love with her from the start, watching her from building across the street, night after night. And now I was here, talking to her at last, and to my horror, I saw that I would lose her. She had been too diligent. Too caring. Too focused. She had learned too much. There was more at stake then chatting up a beautiful woman. She needed a way out and I finally saw that I too needed a way out She was my chance as well as I hers.

Thankfully, she followed me back to the vending machines. I produced a crisp bill that the coffee dispenser greedy consumed. Out came two lovely coffees and, bidding her sit at a table, I opened up. I told her about the work she was doing, who she was really working for, how I knew, and the danger she was in.

“It was a wild story and was a little hard to swallow.”

But I was able to show her that I was indeed a spy, spying on her, and the company that she was so tirelessly drilling numbers for was owned by this company, that company, and eventually some very bad people. It was then that she realized the danger she was in if she spoke up. She asked me what she could do.

Well, I had reached a point in my career where my skills were getting outpaced. The tech, smart phones, cartels and dictators all essentially limitless in their ability to do evil. The spy game was not what it used to be. I had been smart. I had saved money, I kept my list of enemies low. And I had numerous contacts—people I trusted—who were specialists in the business. I knew a guy who made people disappear, who gave people second chances in life. They just had to die.

So there, in that ill-lit corporate break room, with twenty-five cent coffees clutched in our hands, staring into her lovely, lovely eyes, I proposed the way forward. I would rig a device that would cause a failure in the gas line and fire-bomb the whole floor—and anyone in it. We would have to leave some evidence, some jewelry, ID, a shoe. I essentially would murder your mother and we would run away together to a new life, have you lovely children, and raise a family in a safer corner of the world away from the rat race and all the tarnish it comes with.

“Is that really what happened, mommy?”

“Oh yes, love. It was a hell of a blind date.”