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He should have known better. He should have had her vetted—or at least he shouldn’t have dismissed his guard detail so hastily. He shouldn’t have put the need for stress relief above his own security. Or, he should have gone with option two for the night: getting plastered instead.
All things aside, even if he’d done everything else the same, he should have at the very least been suspicious. The girl that had shown up had fit his desires almost too perfectly. It should have crossed his mind before now that when something seemed too good to be true, it most certainly was.
One thing you never did when you sent for a whore with some regularity was to have a “type.” It was dangerous. You started going for something specific and word got out. Next thing you knew, someone planted a girl in your bed that would plunge a knife in your back or poison your whiskey or whatever.
Frank Blanchard had been a prime example of that. He’d liked the tall, well built and athletic type. Everyone who’d ever met the pervert knew it, and so had the Patriots. They’d found the perfect girl in Crockett—she’d been exactly what Frank would have wanted and he never questioned it. In her case, she didn’t even have to be willing—the Patriots never worried about a little thing called free will.
At any rate, Monroe had learned the hard way the first time around. He’d had his share of assassins dressed in whore’s clothing. One had tried to plant a bomb, another had tried to slit his throat while he slept. A leader was never truly safe, even when it came to hired companionship.
And so, personal experience and being there to witness Frank’s near miss had been enough to ensure he’d never ask for what he really wanted. And yet tonight, he’d gotten her anyway. Slim, lithe, well-toned. She was a little on the short side, with hair that fell in tangled waves of honey-gold and eyes the color of cornflowers.
She’d been sassy, she’d been smart and she’d acted like she’d hated his guts. Inside and out, she was about as close to the real thing as he’d ever get. He’d sat back in his chair and she’d stared daggers at him as he’d ordered her about. Yes, the resemblance had been too perfect—he should have known the second she walked through the door that something wasn’t right.
But he hadn’t. He’d just closed his eyes and had let the after image of this hired girl morph into someone else in his mind’s eye. All the while he’d had his hands tangled in her hair, gently guiding her as she’d given him the best blow-job he’d ever had in all of his depraved years. More than likely, the intense pleasure had just as much to do with the illusion as it had with her skills at her trade—although “Like a Hoover” had come to mind the second her lips had closed around his shaft.
He’d been bucking up and trying so hard to not call out a name he’d long forbidden himself to say when he’d felt the barrel of a gun at his temple. And goddamn it if he hadn’t come hard into her mouth right at that very moment. How sick is that?
She’d bit her lip just so (just like she would have) and then the whore had stood up and backed away, an eyebrow arched in amusement. He’d glanced up and had looked right into the eyes of the grandfather of the very woman he’d been trying so hard to pretend wasn’t on his mind.
The old doctor had tossed her a pouch and had thanked her for her time. For a split second, Bass hadn’t been able to help being amused. Of all the people to orchestrate something so perfect, this was the man to do it? This was the first person to truly figure him out?
Time now still stood as he watched the whore take her money, get dressed and saunter out the door. The second it closed quietly behind her, the hilarity of the situation began to wear out. And, judging by the grim expression on his face, it was obvious that Gene Porter didn’t appreciate the irony of it all.
“Hello, General,” he said evenly, even though his hands were shaking.
“What’s up, Doc?” was Monroe’s dry response.
“It’s been four years since the last time we killed you, and I’ve finally made it here,” Gene murmured. “All that planning, and it’s actually happening—you’ll finally pay.”
Monroe realized then and there that the doctor actually really meant to pull the trigger. This wasn’t just a scare tactic or one of those empty moments of victory. The man was scared, maybe even a little sickened at what he was going to do, but he also seemed almost euphoric.
In that same moment, Monroe also realized that he didn’t care. He could call for his men, and they’d surely come running—they might make it in time too, but the urge just wasn’t there. He’d spent the past two and a half years of his life winning their loyalty back, waiting for someone to put a stop to this second experiment in stupidity. Now that someone is about to do just that, he was almost relieved. He might even be able to say that he was as happy about it as his would-be assassin.
Well, he was happy for the most part. His hands slowly slid down to his lap, which earned him another jab of the gun to his temple. If there was a mirror, he’d be willing to bet that there was a mark. The doc wasn’t being gentle and the cold metal was digging roughly into his skin.
“Don’t move,” Gene said in an eerily calm voice.
“Relax, Gramps. I’m just putting my junk away. Dying is something I can handle. Dying with my dick out? Well, not so much.” He moved again to finish the task at hand. “At least allow me a little dignity here.”
“Did they get any?” Gene’s voice began to waver with the outrage of it all, but for some reason, he allowed Monroe to shove his now flaccid flesh back into his uniform pants and zip them up. “They died for nothing!”
“They died for a cause,” Monroe snapped. This man could say what he wanted about him, but to say that their deaths were in vain was to cheapen them. That was something he couldn’t stomach.
“And yet somehow you survived it all and came out on top… again. Funny how things work out,” Gene said, each word coming at him hard, striking Monroe to the very core.
“I didn’t plan on things going this way, believe me. I only came back because there was no other way.” And he meant it too. He’d woken up on that field after that final battle and found that he’d been the only survivor. Range and desperation and his unquenchable thirst for revenge had been his only motivation in resuming command and seeking such slaughter. “This was just supposed to be a means to an end.”
“Bullshit! You just wanted your fucking kingdom back!” The doctor howled his pain and outrage as he pressed the gun further into Monroe’s temple.
“I just wanted revenge—and I got it. We won, didn’t we? You got your fucking town back and everything. Wasn’t that what you wanted?” He hated to point it out, but if Gene hadn’t been so damned good at convincing everyone else of the importance of saving one small and insignificant town, maybe things would have gone down differently.
The doctor started to cry then. “At what cost?”
They stared one another down; the old man softly sobbed and Monroe just sat there, quietly accepting what was about to happen with more grace than he’d ever managed to muster up before now.
“Beg,” Gene finally said.
“Why should I?”
“Don’t you want to live? Fucking beg!” And then he froze. This obviously wasn’t going according to his plans at all. The General was supposed to tell him he wanted to live and give the old man the satisfaction of pleading, but he just wouldn’t. .
Monroe kind of felt bad for being such a disappointing murder victim, but it really couldn’t be helped. “What for? You think I care? Go ahead; I’ve done everything and I’ve lost everyone.” There was something about having a gun pressed up against his head that made Monroe’s mouth move when his brain was screaming for him to stop. The words just kept flowing out. “I don’t want all this, Doc. I never did. I just wanted to find a quiet place after the war; I wanted a little peace and a chance to convince her to love me—to forgive me. I’m tired and I’m fucking bored, so pull the goddamn trigger—stop being a fucking coward and do it.”
Gene flinched a little and his hands began to shake more violently. For a second it looked like he was about to drop the gun rather than use it. “You—you want..?” No, this wasn’t the plan at all.
“What, are you deaf in your old age? Yes. Do it—maybe if I wasn’t such a little bitch I’d have done it myself months ago.” Monroe laughed then. The idea of how they’d gone from the roles of assassin/victim to whack-job/mercy killer was hilarious. He knew that the doctor was about two seconds from doing one of two things: either that trigger was gonna get pulled, or he was gonna break down into a puddle of sobbing retiree. He gave it one last little push. “At least I’ll get to do something new—my next big adventure. Anything is better than this place.”
******
The guards at the other end of the wing heard the gun go off just once. They raced down the corridor and burst into the room. Gene Porter turned, his eyes wide and rimmed with tears. Seconds later, he was riddled with bullets. He fell to the ground and revealed their dead leader.
The next day, word went out that President Sebastian Monroe has been assassinated by an elderly man. No one in Chicago, the capital city of the New Republic recognized him, of course. Other than Monroe himself, the only people that had known him were long dead.
The major that got left in charge of the whole mess left out two little details in his report: The General died with a relieved smile on his face and that the guards’ bullets had gone straight through the assassin and a few had hit the General’s corpse. Of course, any one could tell that the bullet hole in the General’s forehead was point blank. Still, it’s poor form to fill your dead leader full of lead, and no one needed to know that Monroe was as happy as a lark (or lunatic) at the time of his murder.
The story will end up being retold over and over again—how a missing whore (they really did try to find her) and an old man conspired to kill the President-General of the new version of the Monroe Republic. A new leader will be chosen and life will move on. The new President (not General—the decision was made to separate the roles for the first time since the betrayal of Miles Matheson) eventually will chose a new capital building. He’d want to separate his administration from this tragedy.
As the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years, life in Chicago and in the rest of the Republic moved on. Eventually the building was scheduled for demolition to make good use of its materials. In all that time, no one noticed the lone bullet that was lodged in the ceiling above where General Monroe’s desk once sat. Once the building had been torn down, all evidence was erased forever.
*****
He wakes up in a field… it’s one he recognizes all too well…
… the bodies that should be here are somehow not… Instead, he’s surrounded by wildflowers… They’re cornflowers, all a startling blue…
… he gets up and looks around him. Endless clear skies are above. There isn’t a cloud in sight and the sun is low in the sky. It blinds him and he has to squint against the brightness…
… out of this light comes a shadow… it’s moving towards him and he finally recognizes its form…
Bass smiles as he walks towards it. As he gets closer, he can hear the whisper-quiet jingle of a chain as it moves against the figure’s hips. His next adventure awaits…
Death is only the beginning…