Paid In Full

Paid in Full
By Billy Mau


Spence Lincoln was less than enthused by The Boss’s choice of lunch venue. There were a good two or three thousand restaurants, eateries, bistros and rat pits in the city, but Burger Temple was in a class of its own.
Burger Temple was part marketing gambit and part cult. A corporate think tank decided about twelve years earlier to tackle the decline of western spirituality from a financial standpoint. The result was a quasi-religion based on fast food. To the skeptics, of which there were surprisingly few, it was hard to tell if Burger Temple was a legitimate spiritual hub or the next step in the evolving mockery of Judeo-Christian ethics over the last 2,500 years. Spence figured it was a healthy mixture of both.

The place was packed. The True Believers were streaming in for Midday Mass. Spence made his way to the counter, where the register jockey greeted him with a big smile.

“Hello brother, what would you like today?”

She was decked out in the standard Burger Temple garb – a long purple smock that bore the image of a papal looking fellow with a spatula in one hand and a fry basket in the other. On her head was the headdress from a habit. Her nametag said “Sister Veronica Guadalupe.” The outfit was an inquisition for they eyes, Spence thought.
“Give me two Loaves & Fishes with no cheese and extra tartar sauce and a large Jolt Cola.”

Spence’s tone was considerably gruffer than the other customers, which threw Sister Veronica Guadalupe off a little. He was also under-dressed for Midday Mass. Most people went for business casual at a minimum, but Spence wasn’t even close to that. The guy standing in front of Sister Veronica Guadalupe was wearing jeans, a plain gray shirt, a well-worn leather jacket and a baseball cap from some team back east she thought. Sports were not her thing.

“And what size fries would you like with that?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Excuse me?”

Sister Veronica Guadalupe was genuinely confused. He had to want fries. Everyone loved Burger Temple fries, it said so on a banner outside.

“No fries,” Spence said. “I don’t want any.”

I hate this place, Spence thought. There were umpteen-million scanners in this city capable scanning a person’s retina from seventy-five yards. One flash of Spence’s eyes could bring up all his vital information – name, age, height/weight, occupation, as well as his criminal and medical records. Yet with all this technology Burger Temple couldn’t install some system that would identify Spence as someone that just didn’t like French fries.

“Are you sure?” Sister Veronica Guadalupe asked in a tone that suggested fry refusal was never covered in employee training.

“Very. Is this going to be a problem?”

Well maybe it is, Sister Veronica Guadalupe thought. Why couldn’t this guy just get the fries and then give them away? That would be like charitable and stuff.

“No, “ she said. “It’s just that I’ve been working here for nearly eight years and no one has ever not gotten fries. I just think it’s a little strange.”

“Well you know what I think is strange?” Spence barked. “I think it’s strange that you’ve been here for eight years and you’re still just a register jockey.”

He swiped his pay card and gave Sister Veronica Guadalupe an impatient scowl.

“Now give me my goddam food.”

Sister Veronica Guadalupe was in shock. Who did this guy think he was? He couldn’t curse her like that. They were in Burger Temple. This was God’s Kitchen, it said so on another banner outside just above the one about the fries.

Spence got his food and started wandering around the dining area looking for The Boss. Of course Spence had no idea what he was looking for. Anyone in here could be The Boss, depending on what kind of mood he was in.

“Linc, my man, how they hangin’?”

Spence froze. Anger welled up in the pit of his stomach and started bubbling up like heartburn. The voice that called him was light and sweet. It was the voice of a child.

He turned to see a dark-haired little girl, no more than eight years old, sitting alone a table to his right.

“Hey boy-o,” the little girl said. “I thought you were going to stand me up again.”

“You son of a bitch,” Spence said as he sat down. “I fucking hate it when you do this.”

The goddam shapeshifter, Spence thought. This guy could be anything he wanted to be, but every once in a while he’d turn up as a kid. Spence figured the asshole did it just to rattle his cage.

“Aw, come on Linc, don’t be mad. You wanna see my panties?”

“Shut up,” Spence said through a mouthful of fish sandwich. “Are you trying to get me arrested?”

“Of course not buddy boy. I just want to know how the job is going. You’re really dragging your feet on this one.”

“It’s a tough job.”

“The fuck it is,” the sweet little girl said. “You’re sandbagging me and I’d like to know why. You gone nervous in the service, Linc?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the big fucking deal?”

Spence washed down a bite of sandwich with some cola and sighed. “With the other jobs I got a big, fat dossier. I knew everything about the target and I had a pretty good sense of why I was doing it. This time all I get is a photo, a map of the park and a time schedule. No name, no background.”

“So what? You’re doing the job because I say you’re doing the job. I know you’ve been to the park. Shit, I’ve seen you there.”

“If you can get so close why don’t you just do it yourself?”

The girl took a long pull off her shake and slammed the cup on the table. Some of the people in the dining area had started to take notice of the foul-mouth little girl giving the big guy at her table what-for.

“I’m not going to do it because it’s not mine to do. Now I did you a solid and the deal was you were going to pay me back with some solids of your own. This is the last one you owe me and you’re dragging ass on it. Now I suggest you get to fucking work or I’ll un-miracle your granny’s little miraculous recovery. Are we clear?”

Spence took his time chewing the last bite of his first sandwich.

“Yeah, we’re clear.”

“Good,” the little girl said and got up. She skipped to the trashcan and threw away her lunch trash. She spun around, stuck her tongue out at Spence and disappeared into the flow of kids heading to the playground.

“That fuck,” Spence said and started in on his second Loaves & Fishes.

The Boss was right to an extent. Spence was dragging his feet. It didn’t feel right. Not that any of them felt right, of course. All Spence had to go on for this job was a picture of the old man The Boss wanted taken care of and a map of the park where he spent his time. One of the park benches was marked as the old man’s regular park haunt.

Spence had seen the old man. He scoped out the park and found the dead spot in the sensor grid that The Boss had marked. The dead spot wasn’t big, but it was big enough for him to get a shot off without being ID’d. It was really an ideal setup, but it was the why of the matter that made Spence uncomfortable.

The man was old, very old in fact, and it looked like he’d crap out on his own at any minute. Maybe that’s what he was waiting for. Let nature run its course and be done with this contract.
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Spence lived with his grandmother. It wasn’t much for a guy his age to brag about, but he was OK with that. The way he saw it, he was helping her out. Of course his grandmother figured she was helping him out. He was almost thirty-five and hadn’t been able to hold down much of a job since his divorce just over a year ago.

Spence climbed the stairs to the Granite Street apartment that his grandmother had lived in since before he was born. Walking into that apartment could be disorienting to those not aware of what was in store. Shelves full of knick-knacks populated nearly every available inch of floor space. There were narrow pathways to the other rooms and furniture, but everything else was pure knick-knackery. Spence had spent a good portion of his childhood visits to Granny’s house dusting these things. There were so many of the damned things that he was convinced his grandmother possessed the ability to bend time and space in order to fit them all in the place. He was also fairly sure that if she sold all of them she could buy the apartment building and the better part of the surrounding three blocks.

“Did you get my coffee?” she yelled from the kitchen.

“Yes, Granny.”

“And the ointment?”

“Yes, Granny.”

“What about the lottery tickets? Did you remember to get them this time?”

“Yes, Granny.”

The old gal was a bit of a nag, but Spence loved her all the same. Loved her enough to make a deal with The Boss when she was hit by one of those automated garbage trucks. The thing’s sensors had gone screwy and it either didn’t see or didn’t care about the old lady crossing the street at Newcastle and Green.

She survived the accident. That miracle was of the natural variety, but the prognosis was not good. She was busted up pretty badly and folks her age generally don’t have enough left in the tank to pull through those kinds of things. Her brain shut down two days later and Spence was about to give the doctors the OK to remove her from life support when a heavy-set man in a cheap-looking suit walked up to him in the hallway.

“That lady means a lot to you doesn’t she?” the heavy-set man said. “I bet you’d do just about anything to make things right for her; wouldn’t you, boy-o?”

It was the first time he’d met The Boss. Just thinking about it made Spence mad.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“Language, Spencer,” the all-hearing Granny in the kitchen yelled.
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The old man showed up at the park bench right at three-fifteen in the afternoon. He did this every day. You could set your watch to it. Spence watched him from the dead spot in the bushes. All he had to do was point and shoot and this would all be over. No more visits from The Boss.

Of course he would need a gun for that plan to work. Spence hadn’t even brought a weapon with him today. Why bother? He knew he wouldn’t use it. Instead he just sat and watched the old man.

The old man wore a gray herringbone suit jacket and gray slacks. Layered under the jacket was a white shirt, gray tie and navy sweater vest. The colors changed from day to day, but this was this was the old man’s basic uniform. He had a short, scraggly gray beard and thinning gray hair that puffed out a little around the sides. A pair of thin-rimmed glasses aided his aging eyes and he carried an oversized umbrella every day, rain or shine.

None of those details held Spence’s attention like the look on the old man’s face. It was a look of true wide-eyed optimism usually seen only on small children and the occasional well-adjusted dog. The look told Spence that the old man couldn’t wait to see what marvels the world held for that day. He may well have been the only truly happy person in this city.

Some days – Spence had been watching the old man for nearly two weeks – the old man would read, but he’d usually just soak in his surroundings. He’d get up and leave around four, always looking just slightly disappointed. It was almost as if he was hoping something would happen that never did. But there was still that glint to his eyes; there was always tomorrow.

Be careful what you wish for, Spence thought.

Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t it be more like the first one? That one was easy.
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His name was James Mitchell and he sold insurance. More accurately, he took advantage of the poor and elderly with cheap insurance scams. The people would pay their monthly premiums, all the while unaware that the legalese in the contract made it next to impossible to collect on a claim. Mitchell amassed a quick fortune and reinvested in his little enterprise in the form of bribes to various political and regulatory officials to make sure things continued to run smoothly.

Reading this in Mitchell’s dossier made Spence sick. The explanation for the job was that Mitchell had a debt to The Boss that had come due, but that didn’t matter to Spence. This was justice in Spence’s eyes. If there ever was a guy who had it coming it was this one.

He wasn’t crazy about the killing part. He figured he could beat the hell out of Mitchell feel guilt-free, but The Boss had made the consequences of not carrying out the job very clear to Spence. He continued to make it clear with each assignment after that as well.

The job ran smoothly considering Spence had never killed anyone before. It was a sniper job, and Spence appreciated it. It wasn’t intimate. No struggle and no mess, at least not on his end of the deal. Spence was instructed to be on top of the building across the street from Mitchell’s office at exactly four-thirty two days after The Boss gave him the job. The file said that the sensor grid in that area would be down for eight minutes while a software upgrade was put in place. All he had to do was get the shot off while the sensors were down and book it home.

Easier said than done.

Mitchell wasn’t in his office when the sensors went down. He was in the john, but Spence didn’t know that. All he knew was that his target wasn’t where he was supposed to be and time was ticking away. Spence only had two minutes remaining when Mitchell finally came back into the office, and even then the bastard wouldn’t stand still. Mitchell paced back and forth in front of the window like a carnival duck shoot. The pace was steady and Spence got off a shot as Mitchell was making his turn at the left end of the window.

Spence saw the unscrupulous insurance agent, haloed by a pink mist, fall to the floor. He looked at his watch. The green LED numbers showed just thirty-seven seconds until the sensors kicked back in. He flung the rifle across the alley to the roof of the adjacent building and ran for the roof access for his building.

Spence jumped in an elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor repeatedly until the doors closed and Spence’s attention shifted to the watch. 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1. The display switched from green to red and displayed the time. 4:38.
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The watch now read 4:02 in green numbers. He was still in the dead spot in the park. The old man got up and looked around with that “maybe tomorrow” look. Spence hated that look. The old man seemed so optimistic and it made Spence sick to think that the only surprise coming got the old guy was a visit from the Reaper Man.

Spence exited his hideaway once the old man was out of sight. One step out of the bushes and the display on Spence’s watch switched from green to red, meaning he was back in the sensor grid. He was shaking the pins and needles out of his legs when a jogger almost knocked him to the ground.

“What the fuck, Linc?” The Boss said, this time in the form of a black man in his early forties. “Do I strike you as the kind of guy that likes to get fucked around?”

At this very moment, yes, Spence thought but decided not to say. The Boss’s latest avatar was nearly as tall as Spence, putting him in the neighborhood of six-foot-three. He was wearing a pair of almost too-short running shorts, a fanny pack and a baby-blue tank top featuring the foul-mouthed cartoon character Jib-Jab the frog flipping off anyone that dared to look. The Boss was jogging in place with his left hand raised to his neck to check his pulse. The guy was a great method actor.

“Do you even have your piece?”

“No,” Spence said, looking at the ground.

“And why not?”

Spence grasped for the first excuse that came to mind.

“I’m scoping him out. Establishing a pattern.”

“Bullshit! You’re establishing a pattern of fucking off when you should be working. The guy comes to the park, sits on the bench for about an hour with that dopey grin on his face and then he leaves. There you go, pattern fucking established.”

Spence was still staring at the ground. It was the posture of a child on the receiving end of a scolding.

“What day is it?” The Boss asked, still jogging in place.

“Wednesday.”

“You’ve got until Friday. You realize that I’m being supremely generous here don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Spence said. “A regular Mother-fucking-Teresa.”

“Now there’s that spark, boy-o,” The Boss said. He stopped jogging in place and bent over to catch his breath.

“You do much running, Linc?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t start. It’s a bitch,” he said and took off down the path.
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Granny was in the kitchen when Spence got home. She was always in there. Spence figured there was something in the genetic code that made women flock to the kitchen at age fifty-five, where they would forget any healthy recipes that they may have known before. Of course that was total bunk. Recent scientific breakthroughs proved that both men and women posses the “casserole gene,” it was just dormant in men and also in women of child-bearing age.

He wove through the knick-knack jungle and flopped onto the couch.

“Did you find a job today, sweetie?”

“No, Granny.”

Spence turned on the television and the screen lit up with a flicker. A racially neutral-looking young woman appeared and smiled.

“Hello Spence. What would you like to watch?”

“Sports,” Spence said to the television.

“Sports or sports?” The racially neutral woman asked. The second sports was knowingly drawn out and accompanied by a wink.

“Regular sports,” Spence said, nervously glancing over his shoulder to the kitchen. “Preferably not soccer.”

The TV cycled through about 20 soccer matches before settling on a lively vanging contest. Vanging wasn’t really Spence’s thing. It normally took a few gallons of stout for him to truly appreciate six overweight, nearly naked men trying to catch a shaved badger, but Spence figured it was still better than soccer.

“Chelsea’s grandson works over at the water plant. He says they’re hiring.”

“I’m sure they are,” Spence said. “They probably need muck divers.”

“Well, that beats sitting around watching dirty movies on your grandmother’s television.”

“What?” Spence gasped.

“Don’t act so surprised. The TV told me everything.”

Spence’s bewildered gaze shifted from the kitchen door to the double-crossing home entertainment system. The young woman appeared over the vanging action.

“Sorry Spence,” she said, “but she is the primary user of this unit.”

“No, she’s the owner,” Spence said. “I watch much more TV than she does you 900-channel goddam NARC.”

“Spencer Levi Lincoln, I’ve told you to watch your language in my house.”

Spence felt like a little kid again. He was half expecting her to tell him to start dusting the knick-knacks and ground him from the television for a while.
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Spence planned on taking Thursday off. The Boss said Friday was the deadline, and Spence’s inner procrastinator said Friday was when it would get done. He tried to put the job and the old man out of his head. He set out for town that afternoon to look for a straight job, but he kept thinking about his first meeting with The Boss and the start of this whole mess.

“I bet you’d do just about anything to make things right for her, wouldn’t you boy-o?”

“What’s it to you?” Spence said. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy with exhaustion. He was teetering on the edge of an emotional breakdown. His parents had been dead for nearly twenty-three years and his older sister was in Europe. It was all on him to take care of this situation and he was about to tell a doctor to let his grandmother die.

“Actually, it means next to nothing to me,” the heavy-set man had said. “My world’s going to keep on turning whether she lives or dies, but I can help her all the same.”

“You don’t look like a doctor. What can you do?”

“A little of this, a little of that.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a glass tube about six inches long and as big around as his thumb. He put one end of the tube to his mouth and sucked air through it like he was smoking a cigar. He held the breath in for a moment and exhaled. Lights danced inside the tube, diffusing into the air at the end of the tube.

A doctor rounded the corner at the end of the hall. He scanned around, spotted Spence and made his way over in long, fast strides.

“Mr. Lincoln,” the doctor said as he worked to catch his breath, “your grandmother – and this might not be anything – but her vitals just started to strengthen and her brain activity spiked a couple of times. Again, this might not be anything, but we’d like to hold off removing her from life support until we figure this out.”

The heavy-set man was beaming next to Spence.

“Yeah,” Spence said in a daze. “I’ll be there in a second. I need a moment.”

“Of course, Mr. Lincoln,” the doctor said and then rushed back down the hall.

The heavy-set man in the cheap suit gave Spence a slap on the back.

“So, boy-o, what’s it going to be?”
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Spence did not realize that he had walked right to the park while he was daydreaming. He snapped back to reality to find himself approaching the park bench. The old man was there.

Spence took a seat next to the old man and gave him a slight nod as a greeting.

“Nice day for it,” the old man said. His voice was warm and friendly. A person doesn’t hear that in many voices in this city anymore, Spence thought

“Excuse me?” Spence said.

“I said ‘nice day for it,’” the old man replied with that same warmth.

“Nice day for what?” Spence asked, wishing he could match the old man’s tone.

“Oh, just about anything I guess,” the old man said, admiring the park. “Just one of those beautiful days.”

The old man eyed Spence slumping at the other end of the bench. The smile faded into a look of thoughtful consideration, and then back to the smile.

“You’ve got something on your mind.”

“Yeah,” Spence said. He was staring at the bushes up the path, the dead spot.

“Anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Not really, not to a stranger at least.”

The old man nodded and stroked the hair on his chin.

“I’ve always felt that strangers are just the people to talk to sometimes. They tend to be less judgmental and you’ve got a puncher’s chance at never seeing them again.”

What the hell, Spence thought. He didn’t have to get into specifics and the old man would be dead by this time tomorrow anyway…at least that was the plan.

“Have you ever made a deal you regretted?” Spence asked.

“Well, I once bought this hair tonic off the television,” the old man said, rubbing what was left of the hair on top of his head. “Didn’t work out too well.”

The old man chuckled in an effort to lighten the mood.

“I’m guessing we’re not in the same ballpark, are we young man.”

Spence returned the old man’s chuckle. “No sir, I don’t think we are.”

“I see.”

“My grandmother was in the hospital. She had been in an accident and I got some help from someone I probably shouldn’t have so that I could help her out.”

“Ah, a loan shark?” the old man ventured.

Spence considered that idea for a second.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Bad people, those loan sharks,” the old man said. He looked like his only experience with the topic came via the television. “They always take more than they give.”

“You’re telling me.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” the old man said in a lower voice, “how much do you owe?”

“Nothing, not money at least. He says he did me a favor and I’ve been doing favors for him to pay him back. He says I’m almost done.”

“Well if you ask me – and I know you didn’t – I’d say pay him back as quickly as possible and be done with him.”

“Easier said than done.”

“It always is,” the old man said. He looked at his watch and stood. He was smiling again. “Time for me to go.”

He put a hand on Spence’s shoulder. “It was nice to meet you, young man. I hope things work out for you. I’m sure they will.”

And then he was gone, walking down the path to Ackerman Avenue. Spence stayed on the bench and stared at the ground between his feet. He couldn’t do it. There was nothing wrong with the old man. It wasn’t like the insurance agent or the woman with the lottery ticket or the bus driver. Those were all bad people. The old man was not.

The others also owed The Boss a debt. Maybe the old man did too, but The Boss never said anything about it. Spence understood that he owed The Boss a debt now also and that debt was just about due. Did The Boss have a dossier on him, or maybe even Granny? Did he have some poor bastard ready to collect Spence’s debt if this job wasn’t done by tomorrow afternoon?

A soccer ball bounced up from between his feet and caught him square in the face. He looked up, rubbing his nose and saw a teenaged boy wearing an FC Montana jersey and a very angry look on his face.

“Please tell me you’ve mastered the art of talking someone to death.”

“No,” Spence said flinging the ball back at The Boss.

“Really? I heard that over in Korea there’s this group of monks that learned to use phonetics as deadly weapons. They jump out from behind a rock and yell ‘riverboat’ or some shit like that and your liver turns into jelly.”

“Do you have a point?”

“Yes, smartass, I do. The point is that I come here expecting to see a dead old man and a jackass with his debt paid in full, but instead I see you chatting up the mark.”

“Whatever,” Spence said as he got up. “You said Friday and it will get done on Friday.”

He turned and walked away from The Boss.

“It better, Linc my man,” the kid in the soccer jersey yelled. “If not, your ass turns back into a pumpkin.”
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It would not be entirely accurate to say that Spence Lincoln awoke Friday morning knowing that, one way or the other, his period of indentured servitude to The Boss would be over. It would be inaccurate because Spence did not sleep.

The night was spent staring at the ceiling, pacing the bedroom and finally passing the rest of the night watching sports (the kind accompanied by the wink). Ironically the first movie that the TV offered up was a fetish flick that Spence found very similar to the vanging he watched earlier in the day.

Spence was back in his room before Granny woke up. He sat cross-legged on the floor with the sparse contents of this job’s file laid out in front of him.

“Why do you have to die, old man?” he said to the photo.

“You’re doing the job because I say you’re doing the job.” That’s what The Little Girl Boss had said at Burger Temple. The Boss had watched Spence at the park and even gone as far as confronting him there the last couple of days. He’d never done that with the other jobs, at least not that Spence had known about.

This job was special. The other jobs were business, but this one was personal for The Boss, Spence figured. Why else would he be there everyday? Spence could imagine The Boss, in one form or another, sitting in the park with a big grin on his face waiting for the old man to go down. Each day so hopeful, but ending in frustration.
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Spence nested in the dead spot a full hour before the old man showed up. The old man knew who he was now and could spot him heading for the bushes. That would blow the whole thing.

Lack of sleep and a healthy dose of moral upheaval had Spence looking the part of a crazed assassin. His eyes were red and glazed over, he hadn’t bothered to shave and he was wavering between jitteriness and narcolepsy.

The weapon in his hands was a Durgen NL-755, better known as the “shitter stick.” The NL-755 was created as a non-lethal (hence NL) weapon for police riot control. It delivered a jolt of power wirelessly that would incapacitate the target. The disruptive jolt would frequently result in a bowel movement, which is how it got its street name.

Spence had a modified version of the weapon. A few black market tweeks turned the NL-755 into what users called the QL-755 (quite lethal). The modification allowed the weapon to induce a fatal heart attack in the target. It quickly had become a favorite of assassins and contract killers for more public jobs because there was no mess and use of the weapon was virtually undetectable.

The old man showed up right on time at three-fifteen. Let’s get this over with, Spence thought and raised the QL-755 into firing position. He fixed his aim on the old man and went through the sniper breathing exercises from the training disc The Boss had given him with the first job. He took a deep breath in and then let it out. He took another deep breath that he would exhale as he pulled the trigger. Almost two minutes later he was gasping for air and cursing himself for not being able to do it.

He repeated this about a dozen times over the course of the next forty minutes.

Time was almost up. The old man wouldn’t be here much longer, which meant Granny wouldn’t be around much longer either if Spence couldn’t get his shit together. The old man had advised him to pay off the loan shark as soon as possible, but Spence doubted the old man would feel the same if he knew the actual terms of payment.

He raised the QL-755 again. The Durgen catalogue lists the weight of a standard NL-755 at nine pounds, but it might as well be nine hundred pounds given the weight of his current course of action. The weapon trembled in his hands and tears began encroaching on his field of vision. Breathe in, breathe out. He took another deep breath and held it. The old man looked at his watch and started to stand up.

“Forgive me,” Spence whispered.
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Spence rushed to the old man’s side. He should have slipped away amid the confusion, but he couldn’t. He needed to talk to the old man one last time.

A handful of park-goers had also rushed to the old man’s aid. He was on the ground convulsing and clutching at his chest as the remnants of the jolt echoed through his body. Spence muscled his way to the front and the old man smiled when he saw him. The convulsions stopped, but his left leg was still slowly flexing and his left hand was slowly opening and closing at his side. The old man’s face, however, still held the warm glow as he looked at Spence.

Spence knelt down next to the old man’s head.

“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed.

The old man responded in a labored whisper that only Spence could hear.

“You did what you had to.” He obviously knew he was marked.

“No I didn’t. There had to be another way.”

The old man’s whisper was even more labored this time.

“Don’t worry,” the smile was temporarily replaced with a grimace. He struggled to compose himself and the smile returned. “I’ve been looking forward to retirement, boy-o.”

There was a grunt from the old man and then it was over. The old man’s final breath came out as a wheeze and his body went slack. The crowd faded away in Spence’s mind. All that was left in the emptiness was a dead old man and a jackass with his debt paid in full.